[eugyppius: a plague chronicle] Now I provide just a little dessert for my longsuffering subscribers. This is glorious, I promise.
You must understand that Trump’s victory has plunged all of Germany into a national trauma. It is the worst thing the Americans have ever done to us. Particularly a certain kind of ageing pinched female — the sort who is always sending her entrées back to the kitchen — is extremely upset. This is just the end, she is screaming, to her befuddled cats.
Not to worry! One of Germany’s dominant newsweeklies, Der Spiegel, is on the case. Yesterday, they brought in some totally insane psychotherapist named Maren Vogel from (of course) Berlin to help our battered estrogenic nation deal with the psychological consequences of Trump’s victory. Please, subscribe to my Substack if you haven’t already, so we can enjoy this gem together.
Donald Trump’s election victory has dismayed many people, also in Germany. Maren Vogel, a behavioural therapist, reports on her bewildered clients — and offers advice on what to do.
I just want to emphasise that this is all totally real, I am not making it up, nor is my translation in any way embellished (aside from bold for emphasis).
SPIEGEL: Ms Vogel, is Donald Trump’s victory an issue in your current work?
Vogel: Yes, absolutely. I was both surprised and unsurprised. It’s been on the minds of many of my clients, we’ve been talking about it a lot.
SPIEGEL: What’s bothering people in particular?
Vogel: I can’t get into too many details because I don’t want to violate the privacy of my clients. But in general, I can say that there is a lot of fear: Fear of the future, fear of war, fear of what is happening in world politics right now — will the world ever be the same? There is also a sense of bewilderment: How can the Americans do this — just elect this terrible person again? This leads to anxiety, frustration and also to anger.
Hahahahahahahahahahhahahaha. But we’re only just warming up.
SPIEGEL: How do you explain this reaction?
Vogel: For the most part, that’s just how it is. And I think it’s very understandable to be concerned.
SPIEGEL: But actually the US is very far away. Why does Trump worry people more than Orbán, Kickl or Putin?
Vogel: These things aren’t mutually exclusive, that it makes it even worse. Trump is not an isolated case. It looks as if more and more like authoritarian or fascist politicians are coming to power or striving after it everywhere. Putin is bad enough, but now we’re getting Trump too.
[TheFreePress] Israeli soccer fans were ambushed, beaten, and pleaded with their assailants: “not Jewish, not Jewish.” I grew up in the Netherlands. I wasn’t surprised.
As the Amsterdam Jewish community joined with local officials to commemorate the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht at the city’s Portuguese-Jewish synagogue—established by Jews who escaped the Inquisition—a pogrom was taking place outside. Following a soccer match between the Dutch club Ajax and the visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv, Jewish and Israeli fans of the visiting club were ambushed and beaten in the city’s streets and alleys.
Footage shows an Israeli soccer fan being struck by a car, cartwheeling across the windshield. More footage shows the scene in downtown Amsterdam, where Israelis are pleading with their assailants, "not Jewish, not Jewish." And they are beaten mercilessly.
In video of other attacks last night, a victim is struck and lays injured on the ground, seemingly unconscious. A father can be seen fleeing with his son. A man jumps into one of Amsterdam’s canals to escape his assailants. In the recording, where he is forced to say "Free Paleostine," his assailants laugh and jeer that he is a "cancer Jew"—a classic slur in Dutch, where both diseases and the Jewish ethnicity are deployed as put-downs.
Much about the origins of the attack are still unclear, but early reports suggest that it was carried out by youth gangs from the Dutch Moroccan and Dutch Turkish community, and was orchestrated in advance. Visiting Israelis report being ambushed by groups of 10 to 15 masked assailants in various alleys.
Much about the origins of the attack are still unclear, but early reports suggest that it was carried out by youth gangs from the Dutch Moroccan and Dutch Ottoman Turkish community, and was orchestrated in advance. Visiting Israelis report being ambushed by groups of 10 to 15 masked assailants in various alleys. Fleeing Israelis told Channel 12’s Elad Simchayoff that "Amsterdam police instructed [Israelis] not to go by taxis. Police officers told fans that taxi drivers in the city are helping organize the riots and assisting the gangs."
Before the local authorities meaningfully intervened by dispersing the rioters and arresting assailants, Israel announced it would send two planes and a rescue team to Amsterdam to extract trapped Israelis. (Israel ultimately recalled the mission.) "We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again," the Dutch king Willem-Alexander reportedly said to Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in a phone call on Friday morning.
The shame these events bring to Amsterdam—where 75 percent of Amsterdam’s Jews perished in the Holocaust, and which takes pride in being the city of Anne Frank who, despite her betrayal and murder, has been embraced by the city as an emblem of its liberal, postwar attitude of tolerance—should be lost on no one.
Many are shocked, wondering how this could happen in the Netherlands.
To me, their bafflement is what’s shocking.
I grew up in The Hague, where real and abundant antisemitism, from epithets in the street to physical threats to the community’s safety, was part of our daily life. As a young boy, I vividly recall how The Hague's football hooligans—viciously opposed to Ajax, Amsterdam’s "Jewish" team—walked the streets under a banner reading "We’re hunting for Jews." (Indeed, for my entire life, football stadiums in my home country have been filled with lurid chants like "Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... , Hamas, all the Jews on gas!" and "My dad was in the commandos, my mom was in the SS, we like to burn Jews, because Jews burn the best.")
In high school, second- or third-generation Moroccan kids would point and hiss "Psst, psst, that’s a Jew, that’s a Jew!" as they passed by on their bikes.
But most impactful were the myriad security measures our community had to undertake. Seen from the front, The Hague synagogue is not recognizable, two thick green doors presenting a closed facade to the street. Behind these doors are glass doors that open only once additional permission is given. All the windows are made of bulletproof glass. A permanent police post guards the synagogue. In Amsterdam, the Jewish primary school has even more dystopian levels of protection, hidden behind several layers of metal spikes and fencing. From the outside, the view of the school is entirely closed off. (Even as I write this, I feel uncomfortably conscious of not revealing any sensitive security details.)
Self-protection was a constant—and to me, natural—part of Jewish life. Leading youngsters to a summer camp in northern Friesland meant bringing a dedicated security team and, when possible, keeping quiet the fact that it was Jewish children gathering here.
Violent, antisemitic assaults have become increasingly regular occurrences. In May, a student at the University of Amsterdam, a young man, was assaulted by a protester in a keffiyeh, struck in the head with a wooden plank. In August, a statue of Anne Frank was defaced—for the second time—with anti-Israel graffiti. Today, walking around with a kippah in the Netherlands is an act that requires bravery.
The most alarming thing of all is the transformation of the people who are meant to protect us: the police. Just last month, Dutch police officers indicated they would not be comfortable guarding Jewish institutions over their “moral objections” to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
As the situation worsened over the years—motivating some, including me, to move, others to adjust, and so many to worry—one of the most painful aspects was the way the Jewish community was gaslit. Dutch society repeatedly told its post-Holocaust Jewish remnant—and itself—that "never again" was not merely a concrete promise, but a core concept of modern Dutch morality. However,
a clean conscience makes a soft pillow... the dominant culture of the country’s immigrant communities has proven manifestly hostile to that worldview—and to Jews.
For the North Africans living in Holland, the dominant Jewish story of the twentieth century is not Auschwitz, it is Israel, which in their distorted conception is an illegitimate, one-directional criminal enterprise directed at an innocent population. Nor—and this is crucial—is this merely an attitude about a conflict. They believe it is the crime of the twentieth century, conferring ultimate guilt on the Jewish people. "Paleostine" is a phrase felt to carry the gravity of "Holocaust," grotesquely inverting the perception of the Jewish experience.
For Holland’s Jewry, this reality has been palpable for decades. Yet nothing—no politician, no policy—has altered this reality. In the aftermath of every single violent mostly peaceful attack—as will most likely be the case now—the political answer has been a room-temperature broth of subsidies, youth centers, dialogue forums, visits to Islamic pensioners clubs, and interfaith dialogue.
So it did not surprise me when international media outlets, like The News Agency that Dare Not be Named and The New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... , covered this widespread attack as if it was the unfortunate, but perhaps expected, result of the Israeli fans’ conduct before and during the match, such as reportedly taunting Ajax fans with inappropriate slogans. Further, the AP wrote, the attack followed a Paleostinian flag being "torn down from a building in Amsterdam on Wednesday," and the rioters were angry because "authorities banned a pro-Paleostinian demonstration near the stadium." The Times originally pinned the attack on differences over sport and on taunts, as "violence tied to a match between Dutch and Israeli teams," and reported that "the tensions in the hours leading up to the violence" was in part caused by "one man [being heard] saying in Hebrew, ’The people of Israel live,’ while others shout[ed] anti-Paleostinian chants using expletives." (The Times has apparently stealth-edited its reporting numerous times since publication.)
In other words, if all you read were the initial reports, you might think that the Israelis started it, or at least had it coming.
What the news hounds and media fail to understand is that this was an attack on Israeli football fans, but not one carried out by football hooligans. The Ajax team is itself Jewish friendly—fans of Amsterdam’s Ajax are affectionately (and sometimes not-so affectionately) referred to as "super Jews," and Ajax is understood as the "Jewish team," so it would make little sense that Ajax supporters would attack Jews or Israelis for their ethnicity—even if they are fans of an opposing team.
No, this was straightforward: According to the accounts of witnesses and victims, it was an attack by immigrant, Moslem communities against Israelis and Jews.
Between 1977 and 2002, more than 700,000 immigrants colonists and refugees from Islamic countries settled in the Netherlands, now making up about 5 percent of the Dutch population. For decades, issues surrounding the integration of these minorities have riled passions and dominated Dutch politics—first in the form of the assassinated populist leader Pim Fortuyn; then filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in broad daylight 20 years ago this month; and most recently Geert Wilders, who lives under permanent police protection.
In other words, modern antisemitism in the Netherlands has, for the past several decades, been an affliction of the immigrant and secular communities, which few care to do anything about. In secular Dutch society, teachers find it increasingly difficult to teach the country’s recent history—its complicity in the Holocaust—in schools with large immigrant communities. (As the Algemeen Dagblad related as early as 2015, if a teacher says "Holocaust," students reply, "That’s all bullshit" and "You are on the side of the Jews.")
The most alarming thing of all is the transformation of the people who are meant to protect us: the police. Just last month, Dutch coppers indicated they would not be comfortable guarding Jewish institutions over their "moral objections" to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Surely the dark irony of the Dutch refusing to protect their country’s Jews—citizens or visitors—would not be lost on anyone. But lost, it seems to be. Will a pogrom in 2024 be sufficiently horrific to wake Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... up?
[SDUT] They totally lied to get the original bond votes: costs, ridership, extent. It's a boondoggle going nowhere and people are awake now
The changing of the guard in Washington, D.C. on January 20 will likely complicate the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s plans to fund construction of its Early Operating Segment in the Central Valley.
Good.
A new administration, hostile to California generally and rail funding in particular, will be less willing than its predecessor to offer additional grant funding. Rather than wait out the new administration and hope for better results in 2028, now would be a good time for the Authority, the legislature, and the governor to scale back the project.
The most recent high-speed rail business plan, released in May, projects an additional $4.7 billion in federal funding to cover the projected $35.3 billion cost of the initial project scope, which includes connecting Merced to Bakersfield, funding "bookend" projects such as Caltrain electrification between San Jose and San Francisco, and covering administrative expenses. Of the $4.7 billion federal funding the Authority hopes for, only $221 million is included in submitted grant applications that the Biden Administration might approve in its waning days.
The remaining $4.5 billion would have to be approved by a Trump-controlled Department of Transportation.
Or possibly by President Trump himself. He has been known to organize little bits of construction in his spare time, slashing costs as he goes…
During the first Trump administration, no high speed rail (HSR) grants were approved and the Federal Railway Administration even attempted to cancel a grant previously approved under President Obama. Since the Authority has not spent all the grant money approved under President Biden, it may be vulnerable to another such retraction which would expand the fiscal hole beyond $4.5 billion.
Recently, congressional Republicans have shown their continuing opposition to the project. The House of Representatives’ FY 2025 transportation budget bill specifically forbids further funding of California high-speed rail. The Senate’s version contains no such restriction, and neither bill is likely to be enacted during the lame duck session. Although the House’s ban on high-speed rail funding probably won’t become law now, it is indicative of the GOP’s current stance on the issue. With Congressional Republicans looking for discretionary spending cuts to offset the fiscal impact of their planned tax reductions, high-speed rail will continue to be on the chopping block.
One key influencer on the second Trump administration, Elon Musk, also has a record of hostility to the California HSR. In a 2013 paper, Musk proposed hyperloop as a faster, lower-cost alternative to HSR, asking:
How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL — doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars — would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world?
Although hyperloop has yet to be successfully commercialized (and may never be), Musk remains skeptical of California HSR. As recently as this September, he was still taking swipes at the project on X. If Musk takes the helm of a "Department of Government Efficiency" in the next Trump administration, high-speed rail funding in California and elsewhere would likely be high among the targets for cost savings.
The expected California response to a federal funding freeze will be to keep HSR going with state funds until a more friendly administration takes over. The first opportunity for a more receptive executive branch will come in 2029, shortly before the currently projected service inception date in the early 2030s, and the results of the 2028 election are by no means assured. Even if Democrats regain the White House, they may be operating in a fiscally constrained environment not conducive to major investments like renewed high-speed rail support.
A better alternative for California is to scale back this project, so that something useful can be completed with existing resources. One alternative would be to finish the 119 miles of track now under construction and connect it to existing track now used by the Amtrak San Joaquins service. This should provide travel time savings between Merced and Bakersfield even though the new track would not reach either terminus.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2024 08:48 ||
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[11148 views]
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#1
Silly me. I voted for high-speed rail when it was first proposed back when Jerry Brown was governor. I trusted those bastards, those crooks, those grifters. Now the money's all gone and we still don't have a train.
I figured if the Japanese could do it, we could too. Civilized nations have trains that work. Cars are good to have. They give you freedom to go where you want, when you want. But driving a car every day to work, paying for gas and maintenance of the car while watching it depreciate and fall apart is for the birds. Slogging through the southern California freeway traffic is an exercise in frustration. Trains would be the obvious answer except for the criminals who run California.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/09/2024 12:07 Comments ||
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#2
I wouldn't mind giving them more money if they hadn't already proven themselves to be crooked morons.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/09/2024 12:19 Comments ||
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#3
Ridership was supposed to pay for Ops and bond repayment with no subsidies. Instead, costs are 8x original bonds and it goes nowhere in the Central Valley. It was all lies from the start.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2024 12:51 Comments ||
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This year’s election exposed the relative insignificance of two of the main pillars of the Democratic Party: money and control over the press. Thirty or forty years ago, it might have been impossible to overcome a much better-funded opponent who was supported by virtually 100% of what then constituted the press. In 2024, Donald Trump was able to blow past those once-formidable obstacles.
First, money. Financial resources are obviously significant. A candidate in any race needs enough money to get his messages out. But there is considerable evidence that in today’s world, a point of diminishing returns is often reached.
It is hard to reconstruct all of the dollars that are spent on a presidential race, because there are so many different sources of funds. But I don’t think there is any doubt that Kamala Harris vastly outspent Donald Trump: Read the rest at the link
#1
...And I suspect Elon Musk is now Democrat Public Enemy #2. Had he not been in charge at TwiX, I think Kamala Harris would now be measuring the drapes in the Oval Office.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[TheFreePress] Israeli soccer fans were ambushed, beaten, and pleaded with their assailants: “not Jewish, not Jewish.” I grew up in the Netherlands. I wasn’t surprised.
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
[SDUT] 
