Tech Bros Not Thinking Things Through

Generally, when a story starts with, "A German court ruled," you should expect bad news.

Not this time.

This time, a court in Munich has ruled that Google can be held liable false AI generated summaries.

Potentially impacting all AI search engines and chatbots known to poorly paraphrase source links, a German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews.

The preliminary ruling came in a case flagged by The Decoder, where two publishers found that Google’s AI Overviews incorrectly linked them to scams and other sketchy business practices. After smearing publishers by making affirmative statements like “Yes, [it] is known for dubious business practices and is often perceived as a scam,” Google failed to correct the misleading output, even after the publishers sent a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year.

Google tried the usual arguments to shield itself from liability for false statements in AI Overviews, such as arguing that most users understand that AI outputs aren’t always accurate and must be verified.

But the court found that, unlike traditional search engines that merely present lists of links to third-party statements, Google’s tool made “independent, new, and substantive statements” based on its own misinterpretation of links on the Internet.

That’s a problem, the court said, because while publishers may have been able to sue to stop third parties from publishing defamatory statements appearing in Google search results, only Google can correct the underlying algorithm and outputs displayed in AI Overviews. And because, at least initially, the company did not, it therefore “must be held accountable,” the court ruled. Beyond that, Google’s argument was deemed particularly weak, since the AI overview in this case “contains statements that do not appear in the search results at all.”

Google's AI generated content is Google generated content, just the same as if one of their flesh and blood employees drafted and published this.

The ruling is sound, which makes it an outlier for a German court, and it is just, which also makes it an outlier for a German court.

Part of the allure of AI systems is the belief that they subvert accountability for the company that uses them. 

Not so much. 

Not This Sh%$ Again

It looks like Donald Trump is attempting to seize control of Greenland again. (archive.is link)

This time, it looks like Trump is trying to get something like the Platt Amendment, which left Cuba with sovereignty in name only for nearly 40 years.

To quote Howard Chaykin, "Damn, and a rerun too." 

 

Maybe the Problem is in Brussels

Days after voters in Hungary turfed out Euro-skeptic Russian friendly Viktor Orban, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/19/bulgaria-election-rumen-radev-boyko-borissov. 

I'm wondering (as I have many times in the past), if the problem is not an anti-democratic out of touch EU leadership, which foments instability and extremism.

Brussels' insistence of EU growth at all cost, austerity, and lap dog behavior with regard to the US seem to be a petri dish for instability. 

Bulgarian ex-president Rumen Radev – an EU critic who has called for renewing ties with Russia – on Sunday hailed a “victory of hope” after his formation topped the eighth parliamentary elections in five years.

Projections from polling agencies put his Progressive Bulgaria (PB) grouping at 44%, which would give him an absolute majority of at least 129 seats in the 240-seat parliament.


The European Union’s poorest member has seen successive governments since 2021, when anti-graft rallies brought down the conservative administration of pro-European leader Boyko Borissov.

Radev, 62, who resigned earlier this year after nine years as president, ran on a pledge to fight corruption.

PB came in well ahead of Borissov’s GERB party and the liberal PP-DB coalition, both of which stood at about 12%, according to the projections. Official final results are expected no earlier than Monday.

………

Radev, who has called for renewing ties with Russia and opposes military aid to Ukraine, was president for nine years before stepping down to lead the new centre-left Progressive Bulgaria group of parties.

The contradictions inherent in the EU structure are not likely to end well.

Remodeling Hell

In late February, construction finished on the tallest spire of the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona, Spain. 

It only took 144 years but construction is still not complete.

I know that Rome was not built in a day, but this is a bit much. 

The final piece of the central tower of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia has been laid in place, bringing the church to its maximum final height 144 years after work began.

After several days when it has been too windy to work, the upper section of the 17 metre-high four-sided steel and glass cross was winched into position at 11am on Friday, completing the tower dedicated to Jesus Christ. At 172.5 metres, the Sagrada Familia, to which the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí devoted the later part of his life, is Barcelona’s tallest building and the world’s tallest church.

It looks like another 10 years of construction hell for the Catalonian capitol. 

………

The end to the building at the church is expected in about a decade with the construction of a striking south-facing facade.

It was nevertheless a day full of emotion for a city that has lived with Gaudí’s unfinished work for generations and, although there remains much work to do, the temple now defines the Barcelona skyline as much as the Eiffel tower in Paris or the Empire State building in New York.

 

 

Kind of Like Captain America Winning an Election

Peter Magyar has defeated Victor Orban in parliamentary elections, which is arguably the first major defeat for right-wing populism in years, if not decades.

This is good news, since a descent into Fascism does not end well, particularly in Europe.

It's also interesting linguistically, as my son observed.

Magyar is the preferred term for ethnic Hungarians, so Peter Magyar is the equivalent of, "Peter Hungarian," so, yeah, a bit like Captain America being elected President.

On a rather more prosaic level, in terms of bread and butter issues for the average Hungarian, I would not expect much change.  Magyar is firmly right of center, and so things like years of under-investment in the social safety net and healthcare are likely to continue.

There is Hope for Justice After All

Of all the horrors of colonialism, the Belgian's behavior in the Congo was among the worst, from its initial days as the private property of king Leopold to its post-colonial actions, when Belgian authorities orchestrated the coup against and the subsequent murder of the duly elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

This happened 65 years ago, but finally, Étienne Davignon has been charged with murder and crimes against humanity.

Unfortunately, the 93 year old former diplomat is the only person still alive who can be charged.

A former Belgian diplomat, 93, should stand trial over alleged complicity in the 1961 murder of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of what was then the newly independent Congolese state, a Brussels court has ruled.

Étienne Davignon, the only person still alive among 10 Belgians the Lumumba family accuses of involvement in the killing, is charged with participation in war crimes.

The decision, which follows a surprise referral by the Brussels prosecutor last June, can be appealed against. Davignon, a former vice-president of the European Commission, has denied the charges.

In a statement the Lumumba family welcomed what they called a significant step: “For our family, this is not the end of a long

………

If the trial goes ahead, Davignon will be the first Belgian official to face justice over the assassination of Lumumba 65 years ago. In its decision, the court went beyond the prosecutor’s decision, extending the scope of the trial to cover Lumumba’s associates, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, who were murdered alongside him. 

Davignon is accused of participating in war crimes on three counts, according to information provided by the court of first nstance in Brussels:

• The illegal transfer of Lumumba and his associates from Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) to Katanga.
• The “humiliating and degrading treatment” of the men.
• Depriving them of a fair trial.

Maybe one day we'll see this in the United States.

Meanwhile, in Gorton and Denton

Labour has lost a by-election in the formerly secure constituency of Gorton and Denton.

Not only was it a blow-out, Labour came in 3rd place,behind the Green and the Reform Parties.

They won almost entirely disgust with the Conservative Party and the status quo from a profoundly disenchanted electorate.

One only has to look at the turnout.  Labour received ½ million fewer votes in 2024 than they had received in 2019 with total turnout falling by 3½ from the prior election. 

So Starmer's Tory-Lite policies, particularly when his government appears to be (at best) marginal improvement of Conservative incometence, look to be a recipe for failure.

Labour MPs have said for weeks that the outcome they most feared at the Gorton and Denton byelection was a Green party victory.

On Friday morning, those fears were realised.

The Greens’ convincing win in the Manchester seat gives the leftwing party its best byelection result and its first northern seat. More importantly, however, it gives progressive voters a clear signal that they do not have to vote Labour to beat Reform – a signal that could prove catastrophic for the government in some of its strongest heartlands over the next few years.

“What makes this loss so consequential to Labour is not just the scale of the defeat but the message it sends to voters about future contests,” said the pollster Luke Tryl. “One of Labour’s ace cards had been the hope that, however frustrated or disillusioned progressive voters might be with the Starmer government, the threat of Reform would be enough to bring them back into the fold and reunite the left – a similar approach to President Macron’s re-election against Marine Le Pen [in France].

“But that argument risks collapsing following last night’s result.”

Yes, the, "We're incompetent prats, but have you seen the other guy?"strategy.  

That has worked so well for the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in the United States.  Just ask President Kamala Harris

………

But for Starmer, Labour’s distant third place is likely to reignite questions about his leadership and renew the criticism of those on the left of the party that he has not done enough to impress its progressive base. It follows a similar result last year in the Welsh Senedd seat of Caerphilly, where Plaid Cymru topped the ballot, ending more than 100 years of Labour dominance in the region.

The prime minister’s decision to block Andy Burnham from running for the seat is likely to come under renewed scrutiny, given many voters said they would have been more likely to vote Labour if the Greater Manchester mayor had been the candidate.

Starmer kiboshed the Burnham because he is a (marginally) progressive politician and a potential rival to Starmer's position in the party.

This is what happens when you stand for nothing. 

This Is the Worst Idea Since

Rather unsurprisingly, it does not come from the Trump administration.

It comes from one Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, who advocates that the Nordic countries should develop a nuclear arsenal.

This is unbelievably fucking stupid.

Despite the withdrawal of Donald Trump’s military and economic threats against Greenland and EU members, the US government’s willingness to publicly contemplate territorial expansion at the expense of a Nordic NATO member raises profound questions for this region, which already borders Russia.

Partly shielded from full retaliation by its existing nuclear arsenal, Russia has launched a predatory war against its non-nuclear neighbour, Ukraine. Such behaviour by the existing nuclear monopolists fundamentally undermines the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) framework and it is now imperative that stable, responsible and capable Nordic democracies make clear – not least to the US Congress – what challenging the US security and nuclear guarantee in NATO could lead to, namely, reluctant nuclear proliferation in the Nordic region.

Nordic countries are wealthy, well-functioning democratic societies: They hence have a lot to protect and lose, which brings the accompanying political responsibility to publicly discuss also “nuclear what-ifs”. Nordic governments must have the courage for this public debate precisely because they can afford to develop and maintain the independent nuclear deterrence needed in today’s world in a manner threatening only to would-be aggressors. No one would seriously consider the Nordic region using a nuclear bomb capacity for anything other than deterrence purposes.

Yes, the descendants of the fucking Vikings are to fucking peace loving to fucking use fucking nuclear weapons as an instrument of geopolitical influence.

Just like the French, British, Chinese, Indians, and Pakistanis? 

……… 

Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden should similarly and immediately announce their intention to withdraw from the NPT, which must instead be replaced by a new international nuclear framework facilitating responsible self-insurance by transparent democracies. Here, the Nordic region should take the lead.  

This guy is too stupid for the Trump administration.

BTW, this is his biography:

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel and a on-resident Senior Fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). He has also worked with the Danish Ministry of Defence, the United Nations in Iraq, and in the private financial sector.

I would suggest that my readers be extremely skeptical of anything that comes from either Bruegel or  the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

They employ this guy. 

Gary Larson Was Right

Cows got tools!

More specifically, a cow in Switzerland (because, of course, Switzerland) has been documented using tools.

Scientists have been forced to rethink the intelligence of cattle after an Austrian cow named Veronika displayed an impressive – and until now undocumented – knack for tool use.

Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and baker from a small town in Carinthia near the Italian border, keeps Veronika as a pet and noticed that she occasionally played with sticks and used them to scratch her body.

………

Word soon got around and before long a video clip of the cow’s behaviour reached biologists in Vienna who specialise in animal intelligence. They immediately grasped the importance of the footage. “It was a cow using an actual tool,” said Dr Antonio Osuna Mascaró at the city’s University of Veterinary Medicine. “We got everything ready and jumped in the car to visit.” 

I have this image of one of the lab coated biologists running into the room shouting, "Road Trip!!!" 

………

Armed with a deck brush, Osuna Mascaró and his colleague Alice Auersperg set about testing Veronika’s skills. Through a series of field trials, the brown Swiss proved she could not only pick up the broom, but wield it according to the job at hand. If the broom was at an awkward angle, Veronika used her tongue to reposition it before clamping it in place with her teeth.

Veronika favoured the bristled end of the broom to scratch the tough skin on her back. But she switched to the smooth handle and scratched more gently when the itch was on more delicate, lower body areas such as her udders and belly, according to the study in Current Biology.

“At the beginning I thought this was the result of a mistake. Perhaps Veronika was not careful enough when selecting her tool for self-scratching,” Osuna Mascaró said. “But after a while we started to observe a pattern: Veronika indeed had a preference for using the broom end, but when she used the handle end she was doing so in a meaningful way.”

Tool use is well known in chimps, crows, dolphins and even octopuses. The latter have been filmed throwing shells at one another. But livestock have never been considered the sharpest of animals. Gary Larson’s 1982 Far Side cartoon, Cow Tools, shows a cow standing behind a table of oddly shaped objects. It confused scores of readers, including Larson’s mother, prompting him to explain: “While I have never met a cow who could make tools, I felt sure that if I did, they (the tools) would lack something in sophistication and resemble the sorry specimens shown.”

I, for one, welcome our new bovine overlords.

Signs of the Apocalypse

This was a documentary

Rampaging sheep in Germany.

About 50 wayward sheep broke off from their flock and stormed a discount supermarket in a German town, startling and delighting customers as the animals rushed to explore the aisles before being escorted from the premises.

The woolly incursion occurred on Monday during a routine seasonal migration of the sheep in the Bavarian municipality of Burgsinn. A few dozen of the sheep had other ideas about the route and made their way into a store of the Penny retail chain.

“It was impossible to tell whether the sheep were looking for something particular on offer or just wanted to warm up,” the company said in a statement, noting that the flock seemed particularly fond of the checkout area where shoppers and staff were present.

Witnesses said that while the animals resisted the urge to nibble their way through the fresh produce on display, their foray into the store left a path of destruction in the drinks section as their bustling knocked glass bottles and other products from the shelves.

This won't end well.

This is Literally Peak Cat

Domestic cats, the European Tour!

The Chinese TourThere is an article in Science where it is claimed that the genetic evidence shows that domestic cats did not make it to Europe until about 0 CE, about 7,000 years later previously believed.

There is archeological evidence that domestic cats, Felis catus, made it to Cyprus around 7000 BCE, but they never made the jump to Europe. 

While are references to cats in Greek and Roman documents before the common era, this now appears to be commensalism (basically hanging out) by local wild cat populations because of the large number of rodents and other prey animals near ancient granaries rather than domestication.

It appears that something very similar occurred in China, albeit at a later time. 

Around 730 CE, F. catus made it to China via the Silk Road. 

Before that, the Leopard Cat, Prionailurus bengalensis, hung out with the locals in the Far East as far back as 4000 BCE, as evidenced by archeological finds.

If you look closely, you will note that there is a 600 year gap, from about 150 CE to 730 CE where neither cat is present in the record:

………

Interestingly, the disappearance of leopard cats coincides with the turbulent era following the Han Dynasty’s collapse and preceding the Tang Dynasty’s rise. This period experienced colder, drier conditions, declining agricultural yields, social unrest, and a population contraction lasting 400 years. These factors likely disrupted the human niche that had supported leopard cats. A parallel can be seen in Europe, where black rat populations declined with the fall of the Roman Empire only to re-emerge with economic recovery. In both cases, the decline of major civilizations may have led to the disappearance of commensal animals dependent on human-driven ecosystems.

Six centuries after the disappearance of small felids, domestic cat remains began to appear in China and at another Silk Road trade hub in Central Asia.  The arrival of domestic cats may have hindered the re-establishment of leopard cats in human settlements, as both species occupy similar ecological niches. Additionally, the rise of poultry farming in ancient China after the Han Dynasty may have contributed to human-leopard cat conflict, given their tendency to prey on chickens, further preventing the return of leopard cats to anthropogenic environments.

The short version of this is:

• Human society develops agriculture in China.
• Large granaries lead to rodent heavy spaces, and P. bengalensis decides to hang out at the all you can eat rodent buffet.
• Social unrest in China leads to famine and population falling.
• Cats realize that the aforementioned buffet is over, and what's more the big dumb apes get upset when they eat the yummy birds.
• Cats decide, "Fuck this shit, I'm out of here."

That last bit is totally peak cat. 

It's Not What You Think (OK, it's not what I think)

It turns out that Zurich, Switzerland has established a beaver hotline.

I'm sure that most of my reader(s) are thinking, "They have a problem with the tree-felling rodents?" because they are perceptive, intelligent, and very attractive people.

I though it was something completely different when I first came across the headline, though.

Most of my readers were right, and I was wrong:

“I hate beavers,” a woman tells the beaver hotline. Forty years ago she planted an oak tree in a small town in southern Zurich – now at the frontier of beaver expansion – and it has just been felled: gnawed by the large, semi-aquatic rodents as they enter their seasonal home-improvement mode.

The caller is one of 10 new people getting in touch each week at this time of year. Beavers, nature’s great engineers, can unleash mayhem during winter as they renovate their lodges and build up their dams. For people, this can mean flooding, sinkholes appearing in roads and trees being felled. A single incident can clock up 70,000 Swiss francs (£65,000) in damages.

To cope, the beaver-rich canton of Zurich came up with the hotline. The local Beaver Advisory Centre is staffed by ecologists who give advice, assess damages and evaluate potential compensation (the oak tree-bereft woman is advised to wrap wire around the base of the other trees to stop the rodents’ chewing).

………

Some argue that this proves large beaver populations are not compatible with large human populations. In Bavaria, about 2,500 are shot a year, which is 10% of the population, but the number continues to grow. Poland issues permits to cull about 6% of its beaver population each year (about 8,300 individuals).

But the effectiveness of culling is questioned in Switzerland. If a river section is favourable for one beaver, it is likely to be favourable for others. “It’s efficient to shoot a beaver – but only until the next beaver comes along,” says Nienhuis. “Then the same conflicts arise.”

I, for one, am supporting the beavers.

I really hope that Beaver Hats don't come back. 

Not This Shit Again

Trump has appointed an envoy to Greenland with the goal of annexing the island.*

Needless to say, the Danes and Greenlanders are unamused.

There is a simple solution for this, all the Danes need to do is to declare Jeff Landry as persona non grata, which would forbid him from setting foot in any territory of Denmark.

The prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland have demanded respect for their borders after Donald Trump appointed a special envoy to the largely self-governing Danish territory, which he has said repeatedly should be under US control.

“We have said it very clearly before. Now we say it again. National borders and the sovereignty of states are rooted in international law … You cannot annex other countries,” Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a joint statement.

The two leaders added that “fundamental principles” were at stake. “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders, and the US should not take over Greenland,” they said. “We expect respect for our common territorial integrity.”

Trump on Sunday appointed the governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, as US special envoy to the vast, mineral-rich Arctic island. The US president has on several occasions said the US needs to acquire Greenland for security reasons, while refusing to rule out the use of force.

^*Best evidence is that Greenland is not AN island, but that it would be 2 or 3 major islands and a number of smaller ones should the ice melt.

And the French Polity Says, "Muck Facron."

François Bayrou, the French Prime Minister, has decisively lost a confidence vote in the National Assembly and must step down.

The vote was almost 2:1 against him. 

Given that he was appointed by Macron, who ignored the fact that the left wing parties won a plurality of the seats, this is a good thing.

Hopefully, this will put an end to Macron's bankster friendly dominance of French politics:

François Bayrou has been ousted in a confidence vote after only nine months as prime minister, collapsing his minority government and plunging France into a political crisis.

Bayrou, 74, will hand his resignation to Emmanuel Macron, his longterm centrist ally, on Tuesday morning.

The French president now faces the challenge of appointing his third prime minister in only one year, and the fifth since he began his second term of office in 2022. His office said he would make the decision “in the coming days”.

Bayrou was toppled when 364 deputies voted that they had no confidence in the government. Just 194 gave him their confidence. Bayrou had called the vote himself as a last-ditch gamble for support, saying he needed backing from parliament for austerity measures to reduce the public debt.

 France is already recession adjacent, if not in full recession.  Austerity is the last thing needed now.

If they are concerned about the deficit, raise taxes on the rich.

………

Politicians on the left, which won the most seats in last year’s election, but fell well short of an absolute majority, have said Macron should appoint a prime minister from their camp.

During Monday’s debate, Boris Vallaud called Macron “a defeated president” who he held responsible for “impoverishing the poor, enriching the rich and turning his back on the future”.

The Marine Le Pen, the right wing leader of RN is going to end up French President because of this.

And Now the Swiss

It looks like a move is afoot among the Swiss polity to cancel their F-35 order.

Once again, it's tariffs.

The F-35 never made sense for the Swiss:

• They do not need a long range aircraft.
• They do not need aggressive interoperability with NATO forces.
• They do not need stealth.
• They do not need a plane that large.  (They carved aircraft hangars into mountains in the 1960s to fit Mirage IIIs, and need to enlarge them to fit)
• They do not either a CATOBAR or STOBAR capabilities, because they have no aircraft carriers.
• There are significant concerns that the US can shut down the operations of the F-35 at the flip of a switch.
• The aircraft are expensive to operate, particularly since major maintenance has to be performed by Lockheed Martin.
• New weapon systems must be qualified through Lockheed Martin. 

Seriously, the Typhoon, Rafale, Gripen, J-10 all cost less to operate, and have architectures that allow the operator to develop their own systems.

They need a relatively inexpensive fighter, and lots of well trained pike-men.

Headline of the Day

Jeff Bezos Alters Venice Wedding Plans After Threat of Inflatable Crocodiles

—The Guardian on protests against the Amazon founder's wedding excesses.

This Bezos wanted to take over the famous Scuola Grande della Misericordia in the center of Venice for his wedding.

Protesters threatened to block the canals with their copious cache of crocodile toys to prevent guest access through the canals.

I am amused:

Campaigners in Venice have claimed victory after Jeff Bezos was reportedly forced to change the venue for his wedding celebrations in the city as his guests started arriving on Tuesday for the three-day jamboree.

The main reception for the wedding of Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a former TV journalist, was due to be held in the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, a majestic 16th-century building in the city centre.

But according to the No Space for Bezos group, the couple relented after activists threatened to fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles to block their celebrity guests from entering.

The event will instead take place in Arsenale, a historic complex of shipyards surrounded by fortified walls that will be much harder for the protesters to penetrate. 

 I am amused.

Bad Day at the Office

It's not Ramstein, thank God, but the Italian Air Force aerobatic demonstration team the Frecce Tricolori had another midair incident.

All of the aircraft landed, with nothing worse than a broken leg for one pilot, but this ain't good.

Gee, Here is a Surprise

With concerns growing among European nations that the United States might no longer be a reliable supplier of weapons systems, they are attempting to move their defense procurement from the US to European suppliers, and the Trump administration is having major butt hurt over this.

Personally, I'm Ike's (Eisenhower) side on all of this, and I think that the excessive presence of the military industrial complex in our economy is a bad thing, so this change in policy will ultimately be good for both America and Europe:

U.S. officials have told European allies they want them to keep buying American-made arms, amid recent moves by the European Union to limit U.S. manufacturers' participation in weapons tenders, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The messages delivered by Washington in recent weeks come as the EU takes steps to boost Europe's weapons industry, while potentially limiting purchases of certain types of U.S. arms.

………

Some of the proposed measures could mean a smaller role for non-EU companies, including those based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, experts say.

In a March 25 meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that the United States wants to continue participating in EU countries' defense procurements, the sources told Reuters.

According to two of the sources, Rubio said any exclusion of U.S. companies from European tenders would be seen negatively by Washington, which those two sources interpreted as a reference to the proposed EU rules.

I'm not surprised that the Europeans are considering this, both the current economic situation and the erratic nature of Trump foreign policy would tend to encourage such moves.

This is particularly true for some of the more sophisticated US weapons systems, (the F-35) require near real time support from US controlled entities to operate for more than about a week.

History Rhyming

The decline of the center in Germany, as evidenced by last week's German elections,  (paywall free story without all the graphs and charts here) sounds rather familiar.

Like 1932 elections similar.

The neo Nazi AfD and the Left Party both picked up seats, the rather eclectic BSW party under performed and failed to gain any seats, the center-left SPD collapsed, while the center right CDU had their 2nd worst electoral performance ever.

It's clear that German establishment are (IMNSHO correctly) being blamed for the current state of the German economy.

It's also clear that the CDU's attempt to pander on immigration did not help them against the AfD. 

Once again, the inability of the political mainstream to see that the old ways are no longer work is juxtaposed with a crisis to create political instability.

To quote someone, almost certainly not Mark Twain, "History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes"

Elon Musk tells far-right AfD rally to not be ashamed of their history - The Washington Post

Elon Musk: "race mixing is bad. Italy for Italians!" *woman next to him moves as far away as possible*

[image or embed]

— The Serfs (@theserfstv.bsky.social) January 26, 2025 at 5:38 PM

Her Reaction Peak Elon

Elon Musk, the child of Apartheid, and (as I have noted earlier) the grandchild of literal Nazis, just gave a speech to an Alternative für Deutschland rally stating that Germans should not be ashamed of the Holocaust.

From the ADL?  **crickets**

Greeted with loud cheers, Elon Musk virtually delivered a short speech Saturday at a rally for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, where he urged the crowd to not be ashamed of their country’s history.

Musk’s appearance comes amid debate over whether a gesture he made twice during an inauguration rally was a Nazi-style salute, which he denies. He was introduced by Alice Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor. At the rally in Halle, Musk encouraged the roughly 4,500 attendees to be proud of their German heritage.

“There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that. Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents,” Musk said, seeming to reference the country’s history when the Nazis rose to power.

AfD's goal, and Elon's, goal is to rehabilitate Hitler and Nazis, at least it is if you believe your own eyes.

Musk has always been a con-man.  He is now a clear and present danger to the world.