Baffled European

Tag: ICE thugs

  • Where will this lead?

    As well as a “word of the year”, Germany also has an “unword of the year”. The latter is a word or expression that undermines human dignity and democracy, or discriminates against groups, usually with some form of euphemism. Think “collateral damage”, which means “killing civilians”.

    The Unwort des Jahres 2023 was “Remigration”. This is a neutral-sounding replacement for “Ausländer raus” for the AfD and other identitarian groups. The idea behind it is to ruin the lives of millions and create a state of fear for many more, all to satisfy the paranoid hatred of racists. Nobody benefits from this insanity, but what else can you expect from blindly following baseless superstition?

    The German government of the 1930s spent a lot of time working on remigration in order to get rid of the undesirables in their population. After scratching their heads over the logistics for a number of years, they decided that murdering everybody and burning the evidence was the most cost-effective option.

    The State Department in the USA has found the resources to set up a new Office of Remigration. At a stroke, the US government places itself on the same level as the most extreme and radical neo-nazis in Europe. They have the same imaginary problem as 1930s Germany: millions of undesirables that the regime detests for no good reason. It’s only natural for them to form a group of ignorant racists to find some modern 21st century answers.

    I’m not optimistic.

  • RFK again, oh no

    RFK is a reliable source of lunacy and pseudoscience. Trouble is, it’s all a constant drip-drip-drip of stupidity. Every day, he comes up with something new and it just blurs together. So many small things that add up, it’s difficult to make a big issue out of each individual point.

    Take the development of a new vaccine. Moderna received a government grant last year to develop a new mRNA vaccine against pandemic flu viruses, including possible crossovers from avian flu. Early trials are looking positive and the company wants to continue work.

    RFK has stopped the funding with a set of standard anti-vaxx nonsense. OK. He’s wrong, he’s delusional, we know that. But this is at least consistent. We would expect him to do this, it fits the pattern.

    Now we get to a second story about an outbreak of avian flu in Canada. A flock of 400 ostriches are infected and are due to be culled to prevent the disease from spreading. RFK wants to “save” these birds by bringing them into the USA to “study” and “test” them.

    Let’s get this straight. RFK wants to import avian flu and incubate it. At the same time, he’s going to prevent development of a cure for the disease, should it make the jump to humans.

    Words fail me. He’s so irresponsible, so reckless. Fortunately for everybody, the Canadian authorities are unlikely to play along. They are sensible.

  • Tied up in blockchains

    Is cryptocurrency inherently fraudulent, or is that simply the way it has turned out? It is useless for any everyday task and indeed hostile to normal users. You got an elderly relative who struggles with online banking? Not only will they not understand how to set up and use a wallet, they also won’t understand how they suddenly lost all their coin. Or how somebody managed to steal it all.

    It’s no accident that the convicted fraudster should cash in on this scam himself. After all, it’s not so long ago that he was bilking the gullible with a set of NFTs (remember them?). Apparently, 40% of his wealth comes from the two coins he launched earlier this year. The value of both has collapsed, that’s no problem. The point of them was to transfer money from fools to the fraudster, and that has happened. The biggest “investors” in this scam have earned direct access to the president.

    The aim is now to tie various coins – including those from the president – to the US dollar. This is driven by the greed and corruption of the government, as well as the subservient Republican party. It will happen because some Democrats are fascinated by this shiny thing and think it is the future somehow.

    It’s as if the whole establishment of the USA is determined to destroy the country by every means possible. I don’t understand why so many are so enthusiastic about this project.

  • Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar

    I have a problem with the Supreme Court of the USA. This is unlikely to bother the justices there, but I’m going to complain anyway.

    The issue this time is lifting the protections that 300000 Venezuelans had against deportation. The Supreme Court has decided that they shouldn’t receive the protection of the law as a group, but rather fight each case on an individual basis. This is the same solution that they found with the purge of trans soldiers from the military.

    Laws control and limit human behaviour. They allow society to function by discouraging a range of destructive impulses. At the same time, they protect us and promote acceptable behaviour. Most of all, the law should be viewed as a system created by humans in order to serve humans.

    There is a breed of judge which regards the law as a clever logic puzzle. It is an enclosed, (fairly) consistent system, which can produce very unexpected results, if you set your mind to it.

    This approach enslaves humans to the law. So what if hundreds of thousands of people have their lives ruined? So what if it leaves them at the mercy of an over-powerful and vengeful executive? It fits in with their interpretation of the law, fine.

    Germany doesn’t get everything right, but emphasising human dignity in the first line of the constitution sets a good example. It tells judges exactly where their priorities lie. The US judges are failing at their job.

  • The most beautiful word

    Liberation is not quite going as planned. The trade war that was supposed to make the whole world treat the USA “fairly” is starting to make a mark.

    After weeks of trying to get China to start negotiations, the USA finally gave in and announced a great new deal. It was nothing of the sort, merely suspending the absurd 145% tariffs for 90 days and replacing them with an only slightly less absurd 30% rate in the meantime.

    Scott Bessant proudly announced before the talks that they had identified five or six areas of importance to the US economy and they were going to focus on those. I’m no expert, but I would have done this part first, and only then picked a fight with a massive, powerful rival. Alienating the rest of the world does not help. In fairness, it does look like none of this was Bessant’s idea, ace economist Ron Vara being the likely source of the policy.

    Walmart has announced price rises, leading to a wave of orange fury. Apparently, Walmart and China should “eat” the tariffs, although it’s not clear how anybody can absorb a rise of 145% of the purchase price. Even 30% is asking a lot.

    Hard to sympathise. Corporations, big and small, were so afraid of the “socialism” of Harris, they voted for a criminal who has now hit them with effectively a massive rise in corporation tax. Serves them right.

  • Antipope

    Pope Leo XIV is the first pope born in the US. His views and actions seem to reflect a solid Catholic. You wouldn’t expect anything otherwise, him being pope, but there are general expectations. He meets them more or less.

    How did maga take the news? Initial excitement, as they fabulated he was a registered Republican, until a spoilsport showed he had no party allegiance. Then the bomb dropped. He had criticised JD Vance in a tweet. “Extremely concerning,” noted interplanetary space-hopper Elon Musk.

    This was only the first of many shocking revelations. He had retweeted a criticism of the president himself! Worse yet, he had repeatedly honoured George Floyd. “WOKE MARXIST POPE” screamed Laura Loomer.

    Maga are aghast. How could the Catholic Church possibly elect a pope who has publicly criticised their president? The answer was quick to come: there is a deep state within the Church which globalists are using to promote the woke agenda.

    These people hate everybody. Everything politicised over a few trigger issues. Utterly intolerant of anybody who thinks differently to them, to the extent they generate conspiracy theories to explain away opposing ideas rather than address them. This extends to the leader of the largest Christian church in the world – supposedly Christians themselves, they reject his message without listening.

    There’s no way to deprogram this level of fanaticism. I don’t know how anybody can deal with delusion like this. Removing them from power would be a good start.

  • Snafu

    There were a few issues counting against Pete Hegseth when he was proposed as SoS for Defense. There was the wife-beating, the far-right tattoos, the philandering, the lack of any relevant experience outside of presenting a show on Fox News, and him being an alcoholic. His confirmation was close-run, with JD Vance supplying the casting vote.

    His actions since then have shown his determination to stamp out wokeness. First by sacking trans, black and female soldiers. Evidently righting historical wrongs, he has renamed an army base after a Confederate general. He has also gone through naval libraries, removing books such as “Memorializing the Holocaust”, but keeping “Mein Kampf”. Priorities.

    A recent memo instructs the army to suspend all recreational activities other than those for sport or fitness. Soldiers will no longer be allowed to play pool, darts or cards to unwind. I guess the beatings will continue until morale improves.

    I guess he thinks these are all steps in the right direction, but he has overlooked the danger posed by the straight white cis males that he appointed. A leak enquiry has implicated his chief of staff, the deputy and his senior advisor in releasing top secret operational information to the public.

    They have all been sacked. Combined with previous purges, this leaves a huge hole in the leadership at the Pentagon, with more chaos expected. Hopefully this will prevent them from starting any wars in the near future.

  • Legal difficulties

    Law firms were an early target for the administration. The criminals see the law as either a hindrance or a tool they can use for oppression. They need to control the lawyers, even if they can’t control the judges.

    Much of the chaos in the country is caused by Executive Orders. People view them as if they are legal documents. Royal proclamations. Everybody must jump to the president’s will. However, they are merely glorified memorandums, directing the government bureaucracy to focus on certain tasks. And yet everybody behaves as if this is a new law that must be obeyed.

    Law firms should know this. When a new orange order comes along targeting them, they should simply use the massive legal firepower they have to tell the government to mind its own business. Instead, they have simply turned their legal services over to the government. Good for the government – not only do they get free service, but fewer opponents.

    At least there is now some resistance. Other firms are being targeted. By now, the bad intentions of the regime are obvious. In any case, like all protection rackets, the extortionists have taken the first payment and are now coming back for more.

    These efforts are succeeding, for the time being. At the same time, Harvard has commendably taken a stand to defend its independence and integrity from maga’s ideological attacks. They may as well go down fighting than just simply give in.

  • Academic freedom

    I saw a scatter graph recently, showing how many Nobel prizes each country had won over the years. Germany was the clear Weltmeister until 1933, when the number of awards suddenly dropped, never to recover. The USA, followed by the UK, have been dominant since 1945.

    There’s a good chance this will change. The USAians are happily destroying their university system. Some reasons are transparently ridiculous, such as withholding $175million from Penn because they had a trans swimmer in their team. Florida has sacked a professor because he is a Chinese refugee. Harvard and Columbia are both knuckling down to suppress unwanted opinions or disband departments that the government doesn’t like.

    These elite universities have collected literally billions in endowments over the years. I get that there might be a tight spot in the short term, but they don’t need government money. Instead of compromising their charter and sacrificing academic freedom, they are genuinely in a position to say no. For whatever reason, they don’t do this.

    The exodus is starting, with academics seeking new positions in Canada and Europe. This is indeed a good opportunity to attract the brightest and best, if the USA doesn’t want talent anymore. Not to mention that many foreign scholars are too scared to enter the country even for conferences, let alone for permanent positions.

    We won’t see the effects of this for a few years, but it’s pre-programmed.