Welcome to Monday January 19, 2025, and a holiday in America: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (the third Monday in January, which guarantees everyone gets the day off). As always, I’ll put up his famous “I have a dream” speech given in Washington, D.C. Sadly, King’s sentiments are is increasingly irrelevant (see 3:12). If you’ve heard it before, listen again to these seven minutes of rhetoric heard on August 28, 1963. The film is a bit out of synch with the sound.
Google has a special Doodle for Martin Luther King Day. Click on it below to see where it goes:
It’s also National Popcorn Day, Blue Monday, and Elementary School Teacher Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 19 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Europe is pushing back on Trump’s insane plan to take over Greenland, just exacerbated by his raising tariffs on some European countries.
In a single post on Saturday night, President Trump upended months of progress on trade negotiations with an ultimatum that puts Europe on a crash course with the United States — long its closest ally and suddenly one of its biggest threats.
In the Truth Social post, Mr. Trump demanded a deal to buy Greenland, saying that otherwise he would slap tariffs on a group of European nations, first 10 percent in February, then 25 percent in June.
It appeared to leave little room for Europe to maneuver or negotiate in a harsh and combative era of geopolitics. It also left Europe with few options to counter Mr. Trump without repercussions.
European leaders are loath to accept the forced takeover of an autonomous territory that is controlled by Denmark, a member of both NATO and the European Union.
Officials and outside analysts increasingly argue that Europe will need to respond to Mr. Trump with force — namely by hitting back on trade. But doing so could come at a heavy cost to both the bloc’s economy and its security, since Europe remains heavily reliant on the United States for support through NATO and in Russia’s war with Ukraine.
“We either fight a trade war, or we’re in a real war,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels.
Europeans have spent more than a year insisting that Greenland is not for sale and have constantly repeated that the fate of the massive northern island must be decided by its people and by Denmark. Last week, a group of European nations sent personnel to Greenland for military exercises — a show of solidarity that may have triggered Mr. Trump, since the same nations are the ones to be slapped with tariffs.
. . . .In that sense, the exercises were part of an ongoing effort to placate Mr. Trump. For weeks, officials across Europe had dismissed Mr. Trump’s threats to take Greenland, even by military force, as unlikely. Many saw them more as negotiating tactics and hoped that they could satisfy the American president with a willingness to beef up defense and spending on Greenland.
But Mr. Trump’s fixation on owning the island and his escalating rhetoric is crushing European hopes that appeasement and dialogue will work. Scott Bessent, the American Treasury secretary, doubled down on that message in a Sunday morning interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
American ownership of Greenland would be “best for Greenland, best for Europe and best for the United States,” Mr. Bessent said, suggesting that would be the case even if Greenland were taken by military force.
I can’t believe this. We do not need to own Greenland and I apologize to my European friends for Trump’s derangement: a fixation that seems to have suddenly emerged from of nowhere. We could have half a dozen military bases there, and that should satisfy any rational person. The danger of Russia and China taking over the country is nil, nor are their ships swarming around Greenland. With a couple more bases on Greenland and the presence American submarines, already in the area, that should be enough. We’re already going to be in a trade war, but our so-called President of Peace is going down a road that could get the U.S. involved in a war with NATO. I hope that Republicans can join with Democrats to stop this mishigass.
*The tweet below was scary, but I was a bit loath to believe it. It turns out it’s true, and a sad testimony to a failure of immigrants to live according to the standards of the European country they came to: in this case the Netherlands.
125 migrants were put in housing with 125 Dutch students, in hopes of integrating them faster. Instead Dutch kids got raped and beaten.
One girl, said: “He wanted to learn Dutch, to get an education. I wanted to help him.”
He raped her the first chance he got.
This is how… pic.twitter.com/uE0HUSQZhv
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 17, 2026
First, a tweet in Dutch with the translation:
The municipality of Amsterdam saw the Stek Oost housing project as the dream solution to the housing shortage: refugees and young people together under one roof. But it goes wrong: stabbings, confused behavior, and sexual violence. Zembla reconstructs how the housing experiment could derail so badly.
De gemeente Amsterdam zag het woonproject Stek Oost als de gedroomde oplossing voor het woningtekort: statushouders en jongeren samen onder één dak. Maar het gaat mis: steekpartijen, verward gedrag en seksueel geweld. Zembla reconstrueert hoe het woonexperiment zo kon ontsporen. pic.twitter.com/fswCpFOSLb
— Zembla (@ZEMBLA) January 14, 2026
I have checked with my friends in Amsterdam, who, along with Maarten Boudry (who reads Dutch), have verified the story and sent me links. The story in the Daily Mail is here, at Great Britain’s news channel is here, and a documentary video (alas, in Dutch) is here.
From The Daily Fail:
Terrified Dutch students made to live side-by-side with 125 refugees to aid their ‘integration’ were subjected to years of sexual assault and violence, an investigation has reported.
Stek Oost, located in the Watergraafsmeer district of Amsterdam, was sold to the Netherlands as the dream solution to the housing and refugee crisis.
A total of 125 students and 125 refugees would live alongside each other, and were even encouraged to ‘buddy up’ so the migrants would adapt to life in the Netherlands more quickly.
But students living there told Dutch investigative documentary programme Zembla they faced multiple sexual assaults, harassment, violence, stalking and even claimed a gang rape had taken place.
One woman said she would regularly see ‘fights in the hallway and then again in the shared living room’.
A man told the programme that a refugee threatened him with an eight-inch kitchen knife.
And they claimed they were ignored despite filing multiple reports to authorities.
In one shocking case, a former resident said that a Syrian raped her after inviting her to his room to watch a film then refusing to let her leave.
The woman, identified only as Amanda, said: ‘He wanted to learn Dutch, to get an education. I wanted to help him.’
Amanda described how he asked her several times to come to his room. She eventually relented and agreed to watch a film with him.
However, he soon made her uncomfortable and she asked to leave, only for him to trap her in his room and sexually abuse her.
Despite her filing a police report following the incident in 2019, police dropped the case due to a lack of evidence.
But just six months later, another woman living in Stek Oost raised the alarm over the Syrian, telling the housing association that runs the complex that she was concerned for the safety of herself and other women living there.
But the local authority, which had set up the arrangement, claimed it was impossible for the man to be evicted, the Zembla documentary claims.
It was only when he was formally arrested in March 2022 that he left the student-refugee complex. He was later convicted of raping Amanda and another resident, and was sentenced to just three years in prison in 2024.
Carolien de Heer, district chair of the East district of Amsterdam, where Stek Oost is located, claimed it was legally difficult to remove people from these blocks: ‘You see unacceptable behaviour, and people get scared.
‘But legally, that’s often not enough to remove someone from their home or impose mandatory care. You keep running into the same obstacles.’
. . .For its part, Stadgenoot wanted to shut the complex down as early as 2023, but the local authority refused.
It will, however, be shut down by 2028 after the contract to run the site expires.
There are other stories of gang rapes, and what strikes me (and one Dutch person I know) is that the government ignores these things for two reasons: they regard immigrants as more or less sacred (or at least untouchable), and the authorities have no idea about how “assimilation is proceeding”. (The second possibility is less credible when there have been reports about it. It is incidents like these, repeated in other European countries, which largely explains the turning of Europe towards right-wing politicians.
*The fracas in Minnesota, which is apparently costing Trump support, is about to get more oil poured on its fire as the “President” is apparently preparing to send 1,500 military to the state.
The Army placed the units on prepare-to-deploy orders in case violence in Minnesota escalates, officials said, characterizing the move as “prudent planning.” It is not clear whether any of them will be sent to the state, the officials said, speaking like some others on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military planning.
The White House said in a statement that it’s typical for the Pentagon “to be prepared for any decision the President may or may not make.” Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said in a statement Sunday that the Pentagon is “always prepared to execute the orders of the Commander-in-Chief if called upon.” Two officials said that the orders are unrelated to Trump’s recent rhetoric about the United States needing to take control of Greenland.
. . .Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Sunday called the federal government’s surge of immigration enforcement officials, and the possible deployment of active-duty soldiers, an attempt to “bait” protesters in the city.
“We’re not going to give them an excuse to do the thing that clearly they’re trying to set up to do right now, which is these 1,500 troops,” Frey told CNN. “I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal government.”
The Insurrection Act, a federal law dating to 1807, permits the president to take control of a state’s National Guard forces or deploy active-duty troops domestically in response to a “rebellion.” Invoking the act would be an extraordinary move and mark the first time a commander in chief has done so since President George H.W. Bush called on the military during the Los Angeles riots of 1992 that killed dozens of people and caused widespread destruction.
Typically, invoking the Insurrection Act is considered a last resort, when law enforcement personnel are unable to keep the peace during times of civil unrest.
Neither the Army nor the National Guard, with the latter already called up,. have experience in law enforcement. Given that many of the Minnesota protestors are already bent on keeping ICE from apprehending immigrants, you can imagine yet another bloody clash—and that’s on top of our threats to Iran, attacks on Venezuelan ships, threats to Greenland, and what is likely to be a clash between Hamas and Gaza’s new governing board (more on that tomorrow). If protestors would stop impeding ICE from doing its job, and just protest peacefully (and no, that’s not an exculpation of the agent who killed Renée Good), and if ICE would take off their masks and use force only when necessary, then this could be over soon, as it pretty much is in Chicago.
*There’s a column in the NYT called “An old theory helps explain what happened to Renee Good” by David French. It turns out that the old theory comes from James Madison. First, French shows the hopelessness of those who want an investigation of the Renée Good killing:
Imagine for a moment that you’re a member of Renee Good’s family. You’re mourning her death at the hands of an ICE agent in Minneapolis, and you want justice.
So you visit a lawyer to see what can be done.
First, you want to help in any criminal investigation of the officer. You’ve got information about Good’s intentions when she protested ICE activities — information you think might be relevant to prosecutors looking into the case.
“I’m sorry,” the lawyer replies. “The administration has already declared that the agent did no wrong, and the Justice Department’s civil rights division hasn’t opened an investigation into whether the agent violated Renee’s constitutional rights.
“Federal officials are, however, investigating Renee and may investigate her family, so you might need a defense lawyer.”
You didn’t have high hopes that the Trump administration would hold anyone accountable, but surely the next administration could? There’s no statute of limitations for murder, right?
“I’m sorry,” the lawyer replies. “Given President Trump’s past pardons, I’d say it’s quite possible that he’ll pardon the agent. And once he pardons the agent, he’s beyond the reach of federal law for the shooting.”
But there’s state law, right? You’ve seen the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, speak out. Tim Walz, the governor, is furious. Murder is still against the law in Minnesota.
“I’m sorry,” the lawyer replies, “but there is only a small chance that will work. There is a doctrine called supremacy clause immunity that prohibits state officials from prosecuting federal officers when they’re reasonably acting in their official capacity. It’s not absolute immunity like the administration claims, but it’s still a high hurdle for any prosecution to overcome.”
We can still sue the officer, can’t we? Even if the government can’t or won’t prosecute, we’ll still want to hold him liable.
“I’m sorry,” the lawyer replies, “but there is almost no chance that will work. There’s a federal statute that gives you the ability to sue state and local officials when they violate your constitutional rights, but there’s no equivalent law granting the right to sue federal officials for the same reasons.
“In 1971,” the lawyer continues, “the Supreme Court created a path for plaintiffs to sue federal officials for violations of their constitutional rights. Since then, however, the court has limited the reach of that case, and it is now extremely difficult to sue when the federal government violates your civil rights.”
This all leads up to the “lesson” imparted by Madison in a Federalist essay: we need both internal and external checks and balances on government. And we don’t have them, at least in practice:
Madison’s next words were crucial. “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
In the Trump era, those auxiliary precautions have utterly failed. They’ve been undermined to the point where the reverse is now true. Rather than providing additional precautions against the rise of authoritarian rule, American law and precedent seem to presume that angels govern men, and those angels would be free to do even more good if only they possessed a free hand.
Like many, I am wondering how we got to this point, and, of course, how we get out of it. Protests are not enough, and the courts, while they do their best, are impotent before the Trump-approving Supreme Court. What about Congress? It’s dominated by Republicans who are in lockstep with Trump, and they will do nothing. They will not stop wars that may be illegal, and they certainly won’t impeach Trump. Congress thus seems impotent. When one feels powerless, as many of us do, it creates anxiety, and believe me—I’m anxious and low. When Machado gave her Nobel Prize medal to Trump, that crushed the last faith in humanity that I have.
*More advice for Democrats! On the front page of The Dispatch, writer Nick Cattogio’s article is called, “What Democrats should be saying,” but the title inside is “The Good Guys: Democrats shouldn’t campaign on ICE or Greenland..” I’m a sucker for any column that tells Democrats how to win, so let’s see what Cattogio says. An excerpt:
. . . . The tricky part of all this for America’s opposition party is that it’s a grave political sin to assume that voters know things. (Some voters know pretty much nothing.) The art of democracy is educating people on the issues, convincing them that your position is the right one, and steering the electoral conversation toward subjects where the majority is on your side. Messaging, messaging, messaging: There’s a reason every elected official in Washington has a communications staff.
That being so, one could argue that Democrats should be devoting more time and money to highlighting ICE’s abuses and opposing Greenland’s seizure. They’re hot topics, and most adults agree with the left on the merits, which means they’re a no-brainer for midterm ad campaigns. Right?
I don’t think so, for a simple reason. If Americans still think of themselves as the good guys, not much needs to be said about either issue; if Americans no longer think of themselves as the good guys, nothing Democrats say will matter.
So apparently we don’t think of ourselves as the good guys. Why? Because, I guess, Trump represents “America” to the world. But French is a bit wonky because many individuals still think of themselves as the good guys.
. . . .The 2024 election blackpilled me about our country’s virtue, as regular readers know. An ex-president whose last major act during his first term was to attempt an autogolpe was returned to office because swing voters hoped he’d reduce prices at the supermarket.
George Washington’s heirs elected a fascist in exchange for cheaper groceries. (Oops.) The lesson going forward, inescapably, is that if your party has an advantage on kitchen-table issues, it would be insane to run on anything else. Especially appeals to civic conscience, which is what messaging about ICE’s brutality or respecting Denmark’s sovereignty would necessarily involve.
Last week Politico asked Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, how Democrats should address the capture of Nicolás Maduro and the White House’s exploitation of Venezuela this fall. They shouldn’t, Emanuel replied—except to use the subject as another example of Trump losing the plot on affordability. His recommended line of attack: “The president wants to focus on Venezuela? Democrats are focused on Virginia. He wants to talk about what’s happening in Caracas? I want to talk about what’s happening in Columbus.”
Seems right to me. If “he’s a fascist” didn’t work in the last election, why would it work in the next one? If the winds on managing the cost of living have shifted to favor Democrats, why would they trim their sails and squander such a momentous advantage by focusing on anything else? Pivoting to other issues would signal that the party still has yet to learn its own lesson about the primacy of affordability after the debacle of 2024, a political gift to the White House.
Well, the economy isn’t doing badly though the price of groceries has outpaced inflation. My concern is that running on the price of groceries alone, and ignoring inflation and ignoring the fact that the economy is indeed growing, is a losing cause for Democrates. Rahm’s message is that of James Carville in Clinton’s 1992 campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid.” But the economy isn’t bad and can Democrats win on the high price of eggs?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is apparently anti-China:
Hili: Did he catch a scent of something?
Szaron: A Chinese computer mouse.
In Polish:
Hili: Coś tam wywęszył?
Szaron: Chińską mysz komputerową.
*******************
Remember Laura Helmuth, former editor of Scientific American who woke-ified the magazine and, after an epic Twitter bout of cursing and unhinged ranting on the last election night, she parted ways with the magazine. What happened to her? Well, she’s now an advice columnist for Slate magazine, which of course will not fire her for being woke because the site is, as they say, “progresive”. But her anger persists, and comes out sometimes, as you can see on this public Facebook note about gardening—from 2025.
From Stacy:
From Jesus of the Day; how would you like to get this in your cookie?
Masih highlights another Iranian woman killed while protesting. Her Instagram account is now private.
Aida Aghili was 34.
loved nature, dance, and Iran.
Islamic Security forces answered her with a bullet during recent uprising.💔She was shot in the head with live ammunition. After days of searching, her family found her body in Kahrizak.
She was active on social media.
Her… pic.twitter.com/6IWufVSK4K— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 18, 2026
Simon sent this, which saddens me because it reminds me of Maria Machado, hamhanded act with her Nobel medal. (I’ve used a linked screenshot because, again, I can’t post the original BlueHair post.). It is, of course, made with AI:
From Malcolm; I think this couple is in trouble, but it could be a set-up:
«Infinite loop»pic.twitter.com/wSnvd5GlS0
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 1, 2026
One from my feed. One plaint; it’s not a pup but a CUB!
That moment the mother’s head appears gives you an instant reality check on just how small the pup actually is. 🐯pic.twitter.com/YbCCN5K57y
— Curiosity (@MAstronomers) January 17, 2026
The Number Ten cat isn’t having Trump’s lunacy, and I’ve never seen Larry use profanity:
1. The tariffs are paid by US consumers
2. Greenland isn’t for sale
3. Go f**k yourself https://t.co/FTvGs0DnNG— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) January 17, 2026
One I posted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
Two Hungarian Jewish children were gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. They were four and six years old. The girl, Sarolta, would be 86 years old today had she lived. https://t.co/Jwg0vudnlW
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 19, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, a Venn diagram:
Can confirm, British people do be like this.#Meme #Funny #VennDiagram #British #Ant #Insects #BritishPeople #Joke #LOL #WhyDoHashtagsWorkWtf #LikeThisPostOrElseTheBritishAreComing #BritishPeopleBeLike
Matthew says this of this post: “There’s a big argument on Reddit and on Bsky as to whether this is real or AI. I don’t know and I don’t care as it’s clearly staged one way or another and is still funny. If it’s AI, props to whoever came up with the repeated cycle of prompts!
New Batman
— Space Cowboy 🚀 (@teknasty.bsky.social) 2026-01-09T16:31:14.118Z
From The Independent, the full text of Trump’s letter to Norway:
““Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.
“Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.
“I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
I would be suggesting Article 25 over this were it not for my fear of Vance.
His grandiosity is off the charts!
On a lighter note, the Venn diagram of Brits and ants is hilarious.
It is far past the time for the MAGAts in Washington to grow a spine and remove this senile and vindictive toddler from office.
“Dear Mr. President,
Thank you for your recent letter that explains your rationale for annexing Greenland. We can work immediately on a transfer of the territory, once we settle on the price and once payment has been rendered in full.
In 1947, the United States had offered to purchase the territory for $100 billion in gold. Since then, the infrastructure on the territory has of course increased considerably, as well as recognition of its mineral and fossil fuel assets. As the Bestest Businessman the world has ever known, you will of course agree that the value of this property has expanded for those reasons alone, along with the cost of inflation over the ensuing decades. According to estimates that are readily available online, the lowest estimated cost for purchasing Greenland is at least $700 billion. Other estimates claim it would cost considerably more, and as a shrewd businessman you can understand how we would insist on making a good deal for us.
Whatever the eventual cost, there are of course various sticking points that you will have to work out on your end. The above low-ball amount is over 80% of the the U.S. defense budget, which I am sure includes numerous contracts to defense manufacturers, which you will have to break, and those contractors will have to down-size considerably. Plus there are salaries for your military personnel, and so on. It has not escaped our notice that much of this down-sizing will occur in what you call “red states”.
Perhaps funds can be extracted from social service programs for the poor, but in the U.S. those hold only a tiny fraction of your budget. I expect you will work something out, though.
I am also sure you will have much to discuss with the American people, such as explaining why America really needed this when most of its citizens can’t find Greenland on a map.
In closing, go fuck yourself,
Best regards, etc.”
Too much arithmetic. Just require the payment today in the same physical amount of gold as the 1947 offer. That would get his attention.
The USA have already a military base on Greenland: Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituffik_Space_Base
After the end of the Cold War, the base’s crew was drastically reduced. If Donald Trump feared a threat from China or Russia, he could simply suggest to Denmark that the US bring the base back to full strength and send more personnel there. Denmark, a loyal ally of the US since the founding of the NATO, would certainly not say “No”. The Greenlandic government would also certainly not be averse to such an agreement, as the additional soldiers would boost the Greenlandic economy.
So what is Trump really after?
Greenland’s mineral resources?
Neo-imperialist dreams?
Or a narcissist’s revenge on the Danish government for flatly rejecting his first attempt to take over Greenland in 2019?
In my opinion, the obscene letter to the Norwegian prime minister, which distorts the facts, supports the last view.
IMHO, Trump wants to “own” the biggest island. That’s it.
Yes, that is what happens when you only look at maps with a Mercator projection. Greenland is BIG. As BIG as Africa. 😉
I think you nailed it.
Unless Australia can be classed as an island.
Thinking about the motives of the Orange Toddler is not unlike picking scabs, or having explosive diarrhea. Not a pleasant thing to do on a bright January morning.
Anyway, I think he is driven mostly by an insane, pathological narcissism; your third point. The fool is always insisting he is the Greatest President in the History of the US. One thing I think motivates the little man is the idea that, if successful, he’d be responsible for adding the single largest piece of property to the US, bigger than Alaska or the Louisiana Purchase. The POS is that juvenile and pathetic.
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone. -Janis Joplin, singer-songwriter (19 Jan 1943-1970)
We don’t keep nationality stats on crimes in the US (just race and alien/citizen), but in Europe they do.
In recent years – to the horror of gvts – these stats have come to light.
It appears (in Germany and Scandinavia) sexual assaulters from the Islamosphere and Somalia are out of all proportion. 75 times in one case!
Afghans and Magrebis (Nth Africans) are particularly rapey. (Syrians more than locals but not AS spectacular).
Prompts some questions about policy no doubt.
D.A.
NYC
-back from sunny FL early. NYC needed me 😉
The latest relevant news here in Australia is that the largest Islamic organization in Australia, the Imams Council, has objected to the proposed revision of hate speech laws that would prohibit public expression of hatred for an ethnic group (this is part of the Labor government’s plan to address Islamic antisemitism in the wake of the Bondi massacre). The Imams Council not only objected to this but also proclaimed that Muslims are right to be angry and any speech by “Zionists” must be banned by law! Send the Imams back to whatever Krappistan they came from if they refuse to give up their hatreds and assimilate here.
It’s not just The Netherlands, in many European countries (Sweden, Norway, UK, Ireland, Finland, etc), the overall occurrence of rape is now 2 or 3 times what it used to be two decades ago. That’s because third-world migrant men are 10 or 20 times more likely to rape than European men. A recent report said that in Sweden 63% of all rapes were by first or second-generation migrants.
Hardly any of them then get deported, since the ECHR says that would violate their human rights. They’re also mostly poorly educated and less capable than Europeans, so are often unemployable and so live on welfare. Each third-world “asylum seeker” is estimated to cost the European taxpayer £1,000,000 over their lifetime (and the costs and elevated crime rates continue to 2nd and 3rd generations).
Very little of this gets discussed in the mainstream media because anyone who discusses it gets called “racist”. And since there is no pressure from the media the politicians are also happy to ignore the problem, because they don’t want to be called “racist” either.
So European leaders have hit on the perfect solution. Simply pass laws criminalising any speech that “vilifies” any non-white group, that way on-one can discuss it and everyone is cowed into silence. Sorted! Just keep repeating: “Diversity is our greatest strength!”. The EU also wants EU censorship of social media to hold worldwide, not just within the EU.
Along with (because of) the ever growing risk of Islamization of Europe and the resulting death of the Enlightenment, I worry that Europe could see a rise of the Olde totalitarian impulse that reached it zenith in the horrors of the 20th century. Europeans like to wag their fingers at others, but they’ve been trying to kill each other for thousands of years. That impulse is still there and the Muslims may be the trigger.
Over here on the other side of the pond, we have our own insanity to deal with. It’s hard these days, as our host notes, to maintain faith in humanity. Each day, if I’m fool enough to read the news, the despair I feel for our future ratchets up.
I think we simply forgot the old saying “si vis pacem, para bellum!” Not in the sense of war between states, but that social peace is only possible when the threat to people who do not WANT peace is serious enough. Otherwise, the hordes are enticed to bring the Rome down and take its place. There is a theory that St. Paul’s contribution to Christianity was a (successful) trick to make Rome weak due to implanting the ethical objection to violence. This objection is great, except not everyone read the memo.
Migrants may very well have an impact on sex offending rates, but not to the extent you claim. You’re misrepresenting the data by conflating reported rape statistics with actual incidence, then attributing the change to a single causal factor without justification. In countries like the UK and Sweden, long-term increases in recorded rape are well documented to be driven largely by changes in legal definitions, counting rules, policing practices, and reporting behaviour — not by a sudden explosion in offending. This is explained clearly in the reports from the UK’s Office of National Statistics.
You’re also making too much of the “63%” figure. What it refers to is the share of rape(plus) convictions in a particular register study involving people classified as having an “immigrant background”, which is misleading in itself, as it includes Swedish-born second-generation individuals. Yes, the study reports higher odds of rape conviction for people with an immigrant background, but the association reduces after adjusting for measured confounders (SES, substance use disorders, psychiatric disorders, prior criminal behaviour). However, it remains significant, especially for those born outside Sweden who arrived aged 15+.
The claims that third-world migrant men are 10-20 times more likely to rape are also not supported by solid evidence. Instead, they are spread by people who have misinterpreted studies and drawn wild, motivated conclusions.
Finally, the claims about deportation, inherent capability, welfare dependence, and a £1 million lifetime cost per asylum seeker are particularly dodgy. They are asserted rather than demonstrated, and mix legal, economic, and behavioural questions as if they were interchangeable. That’s not how we normally reason about complex social data. If we want to discuss immigration and crime seriously, we should do so with careful definitions, proper denominators, and some restraint about what the data actually show. Not by stitching together the most alarming interpretations available.
It seems to me the question whether immigrants from MENASP* countries are as really really bad as made out, or only kind of bad is beside the point….unless the proponents of immigration could point to all the wonderful benefits that immigrants from those countries bring that make up for the unfairly exaggerated bad effects. If the rape and dole rates are only a little higher than the old-stock Britons, Germans, French, and Swedes, well then certainly we’d accept that as a small price to pay for culinary diversity, the sweet sound of calling to prayer at 5 a.m., and an Islam-induced reduction in public drunkenness. Any additional benefits you could cite would increase our tolerance for (modestly) higher rates of social dysfunction to be accepted in the bargain.
I also question the fairness of controlling for SES, substance abuse, psychiatric disorder, and prior criminal behaviour. What you’re saying is that a Somali is only a little more likely to commit rape once you allow for the fact that Somalis are more likely than native old-stock Swedes to be poor (on benefits), substance abusers, mentally ill, and criminals. That is not exactly a reassurance about mass immigration from Somalia, much less a ringing endorsement. Rather, it’s more strikes against them in that it makes them unassimilable and incorrigible.
Is Somali cuisine any good, to countervail? Are they particularly good at engineering, or particularly compassionate in feeding and changing linens for patients in nursing homes? The ones that aren’t drug abusers, mentally ill, and criminals, that is.
(*Middle East, North Africa, Somalia, and Pakistan)
I think this makes the error of thinking of immigrants as collective groups. Immigrants arrive to countries as individuals, and governments should control that flow based on what their societies can manage. If violent crime statistics are rising, governments should reduce the flow, especially from countries where rates of such are highest.
If not, then there’s no great need to, particularly given the reality of declining working-age populations in Europe.
Hi Jeff, first, I accept that rape statistics can be unreliable (particularly given the low reporting rates and low conviction rates), but:
Re the 63% figure, I don’t agree that including 2nd-generation migrants is “misleading”, indeed one of the huge (and under-discussed) problems with third-world migration is that (the evidence shows) the 2nd and 3rd generations do not “assimilate”, but instead follow the pattern of 1st-generation migrants.
Nor do I agree that one should control for “SES, substance use disorders, psychiatric disorders, prior criminal behaviour”. That these are all much worse in migrant populations (1st, 2nd and 3rd gen) is exactly the problem. (“They’re not more criminal if you control for criminality” is a rather weird counter!)
On the “£1M lifetime cost per migrant” (noting that this is for third-world migrants; rich-country migrants are net contributors), I’ve seen defendable estimates arriving at this sort of figure. An example is this graph, relating to Denmark, published in The Economist, and deriving from the Danish Finance Ministry. This analysis is for MENAPT migrants. The figures for sub-Saharan Africans are distinctly worse than this.
And while we sit on our hands, maybe distracted by epsteingate or greenland, or venzuela and the like, please allow me to recommend the February issue of “The Atlantic” which provides a number of timely (and one very snarky and nellie-ish funny) pieces on the first-year actions of the trump 2.0 administration. I found Franklin Foer’s piece on the litany of expertise that has been purposely purged from the federal workforce. He provides photos of real people and partial cv’s….much more than just a disembodied, vanilla, and abstract skills list.
Ross Anderson has an article on the trashing on the NASA science budget, cut in half ($8B to $4B) in the president’s Fy26 budget recommendation to Congress. I have written earlier on this site that the Nasa budget has two major buckets of money: 1. Human Space Flight which included Space shuttle when they still flew, SpaceX rocket transportation to and from ISS (space station), buying Russian rides to and from Station, development of Moon, Mars, and beyond HUMAN spaceflight capabilities, and of course ISS maintenance and safety; and 2. Science, which includes basic/fundamental scientific research of the planets, sun, earth’s atmosphere, comets, asteroids, space beyond our solar system and beyond our galaxy. So the Science budget supports all the Mars observers and rovers, the fly-by data and photos of all of the planets, including the design and engineering of the one-off unique vehicles and instruments that must be purpose-built, and the space telescopes. It also includes providing unique data to other agencies such as NOAA and finally accomplishes all of this through a mix of knowledge, skills, and abilities amassed over the decades at mainly NASA facilities such as the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena and the Goddard Space Slight Center in Maryland (and the Goddard Space Flight Institute, late of NYC) and from professors at universities throughout the U.S. Anderson does a good job, I think, in enumerating some specifics of what is already lost and at a more abstract level what this new direction does to the image of the US in the world…and I would add should also do to our self-image.
One item in those losses is the cancellation of the sample return mission from Mars. Goddammit!
Yes. It is my understanding that even in the mini bill passed by house and senate last week, mars sample return is not funded. And getting back people and facilities that eager beaver managers and supervisors have fired, encouraged to leave or closed will not be a simple turn of a switch (or I guess touch of the screen these days) adding cost and time not accounted for in the current budget …. even if it can be accomplished.
Yes. I read that article. The mission is stashing parcels in various places for safekeeping, in the hope that someone, someday will be able to retrieve them. It’s a huge loss for science if we can’t get those sample back to Earth.
These are very complex engineering missions, put together over years and even decades. It is so easy to destroy something but so difficult to create new things. Alan Stern’s book, “Chasing New Horizons” details the 25 +/- year history of the scientific, political, and engineering struggles over which those incredible photos and data from the planet Pluto were successfully realized. There are photos in which we can watch early career engineers and scientists at the beginning age into senior staff by the time of the fly-by.
“put together over years and even decades” is such an important consideration as you say, Jim. It’s very difficult for governments, who often measure time as the periods between elections, to sustain projects that can take decades. The timeframes are out of synch.
Probably for a more niche readership than my usual, general articles about international politics, but the question got me thinking.
For the Zionist friendly and/or data scientists here and in Oz. With comparative context.
https://democracychronicles.org/is-australia-or-the-usa-more-antisemitic-a-data-challenge/
Enjoy.
D.A.
NYC
Too easy, took me seconds to look up. As a proportion of the population there are 3 times as many Muslims in Australia as in the USA, therefore Australia is 3 times as antisemitic as the USA. Simple stuff. (I’d guess the proportions of youthful Useful Fools on the Left are similar in both countries so those can be ignored in the calculation.)
Good work. I had no idea the ratio was that bad.
Thx Mike,
D.A.
NYC
The couple in the grocery store is certainly staged, but it expresses a dynamic that is common, I think. For myself and my better half, it’s about loading the dishwasher. I load it. It’s fine. But she will rearrange several items before running it.
Sometimes I put coffee mugs in the wrong row, just to make her happy.
The dishwasher story sounds familiar.
When I visit my parents and load the dishwasher there, I almost always do it wrong. At least, that is what my mother says. So I usually do not bother doing it. 😀
With great satisfaction, I can now report that the question of whether silverware should be loaded pointy side up or down has now been answered by the scientific method.
Turns out they are cleaned equally well by either method. So, load them pointy side down, so you can avoid touching the parts that contact food with your filthy hands.
That is all.
Goes without saying. Just like how toilet paper should be hung in the “over” orientation.
Our tweaky Thermador dishwasher has every imaginable feature, including a “feature” whereby if you load glasses in a certain location, the pressure from the spray causes the rack to push against the door such that it thinks it is open. Of course, the dishwasher shuts off. It took several months of quasi-scientific experimentation to figure this out, but now the dishwasher is “fixed.”*
So, there is a right way and a wrong way.
*The dishwasher also has an IP address and is on the Internet.
Does it post on X or on BlueSky?
“The dishwasher also has an IP address and is on the Internet.”
If your dishwasher ever wants to chat, let me know. I’ll send you my dryer’s contact information.
You folks are treating this as a joke. It is not. “AWS outage reminds us why $2,449 Internet-dependent beds are a bad idea”
We have a very nice, and completely silent, dishwasher. I know that I am loading it correctly because I read the manual.
One argument I can’t seem to win despite the obviousness of it is which way the toilet paper roll should hang. Obviously it depends entirely on whether or not a cat lives in your house. If you have a cat, you have to hang it loose side towards the wall. Isn’t that obvious? I know it’s easy to unroll it the other way round, but so does the cat. THAT’s the reason why, if you’re staffing a cat, it needs to be reversed!
jeez, you’d think I was suggesting setting the house on fire.
On my first day at NASA many years ago, I dropped into a stall in the gents. It brought a smile to my face to see two separate rolls of TP, mounted in opposite sense from one another: counter rotating toilet paper rolls to cancel out any net angular momentum of course!
Yes. The presence of a TP-philic cat is the exception to the “over” rule. The Only Exception.
Trump is an instability machine. His unpredictable and sometimes irrational behavior has some person, or institution, or country always on edge and on the defensive. Venezuela, Minneapolis, the Federal Reserve, Iran, the world economy through his tariffs, now Greenland and NATO. Each new day, the earth’s axis is thrown off-kilter by our erratic President. The Greenland thing seems to be borderline insane. Yes, Greenland has strategic value, but we can already realize that value any time we want though existing arrangements. Trump’s campaign to acquire the island creates, that word again, instability. This crap is getting dangerous!
Instability is also Trump’s superpower. By creating Sturm und Drang (or FUD in English—fear, uncertainty, and doubt), he influences others to give in to him, if only to relieve the dissonance he has created. So, little by little, the world bows to Trump. Whether this is deliberate or he is simply crazy, Trump will continue to generate chaos because it works for him and he can’t help himself. Ceiling Cat help us all!
To restate the obvious, were Greenland currently to be attacked by anyone, a response by NATO, incl US, would be triggered. If we take over and the same were to happen, the rest of Europe might just wish us good luck.
But thus whole Greenland business seems to have been triggered by Ronald Lauder, the octogenarian heir to the Estee Lauder fortune, who has investments there. You can’t make this stuff up!
While I tend not to spin, rage, or get demoralized about events outside of my influence or control, Trump certainly can test that disposition (as can the Woke and some in opposition). For those with a bit more fire in the belly or angst in the soul, just be glad it isn’t Donny Jr. in the office—all the chaos and another possible term.
Surely others see the humorous part of the Greenland kerfuffle? “Leave Greenland alone; we like the remnants of Europe’s colonial past! Denmark says “NO!” No need to ask those Inuit. This is about the sovereignty of a NATO ally, dammit!”
What humorous part?
Although Denmark has said that Greenland is a part of Denmark, Greenlanders themselves have said they don’t want to be a part of the US.
They don’t want to be part of Denmark, either.
https://www.readtheline.ca/p/anne-sofie-allarp-trump-has-noticed
Anne Sofie Allarp: Trump has noticed Greenland’s own political fault lines
The Americans are taking seriously the statements that have come from Greenlandic politicians in recent years.
Yep, but when given the choice between Denmark and the US, the citizens of Greenland want to belong to Denmark.
The point is they wouldn’t get a choice. If they declared independence from Denmark (which they apparently can do unilaterally under Danish law), they would be up for grabs and no longer a NATO signatory. Russia or China could then make aggressive moves at them which the Greenlanders might find themselves needing to accede to when their newly independent country went bankrupt. So by the United States invading and conquering (with NATO cowed into doing nothing), Greenland becomes sovereign U.S. territory by Right of Conquest whether the Greenlanders like it or not. Foreigners will have to back off, just as Russia doesn’t make designs on Alaska now.
But currently Greenland isn’t independent and in the face of the US desire, that independence movement is dying down. So the Greenlanders have a choice – be part of Denmark or be part of the US.
If you are afraid of them suddenly declaring independence, Denmark can simply change its laws making independence a slow process where the US can nab them at will.
I think the Greenlanders are doing it right. Too funny.
https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/2012647126312837340?s=20
As Minneapolis shows, immigration enforcement is not a pretty business. As the problems in the Netherlands show, it is quite necessary.
ICE did much the same thing in Memphis, a place that has declined tremendously over the last few years.
It did not make for much news, because the organized resistance was small, and the democratic mayor allowed his police force to assist in maintaining order.
The drama is proportional to the resistance. It is not unusual to be pulled over for a burned out taillight. Usually you get a ticket or a warning. The consequences largely depend on the actions of the driver. The best results come from being polite to the officer and following his instructions. If you scream obscenities at the cop, refuse to hand over your license, or jump out of the car and attack the cop, you can expect that the rest of your day is going to be unpleasant.
You should not afterwards claim that “the cops in this town are really tough on people with bad taillights”.
We have all read accounts where it was claimed that a driver was shot after being pulled over for such a thing. Inevitably, some activists reminds us that “the punishment for a bad taillight is not death”.
The transcript of the famous MLK speech can be found at “Read Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in its entirety” (https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety)
“[Trump was] returned to office because swing voters hoped he’d reduce prices at the supermarket…George Washington’s heirs elected a fascist in exchange for cheaper groceries.” That is absolutely insane. Progressive Democrats and Joe Biden returned Trump to the White House.
In his first acts as President, Joe Biden reversed everything he could that Trump had done. Biden opened the borders. Biden’s name hangs around the neck of the Inflation Reduction Act, which many voters rightly feel is a major cause of higher prices and higher inflation. Perhaps the most important thing Democrats did to help elect Trump was to put forward Kamala Harris as their candidate.
Clearly the author of that Dispatch article hasn’t learned why 2024 was such a catastrophe for Democrats. Does he want a President Vance? I don’t think I do–but keep insulting voters, and that’s exactly what will happen.
Don’t forget the “trans women ARE women” madness that was one of the hills the Dems chose to die on. The most effective ad in the campaign was “Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you”.