Open Thread

Some of the shit I read coming from the UK is just…it’s hard to believe it can be true, it’s so retarded. Britain is truly a shining example to the world of exactly how NOT to run a country, a benchmark in deindustrialization and how to drive a society to ruin while turning it into a Gestapo fun house at the same time on behalf of a genocidal foreign country. It takes true talent to make that possible.

https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/news/quakers-condemn-police-raid-on-westminster-meeting-house

Just before 7.15pm more than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with tasers, forced their way into Westminster Meeting House. They broke open the front door without warning or ringing the bell first, searching the whole building and arresting six women attending the meeting in a hired room.

– Imagine arresting Quakers on behalf of a foreign genocidal state! Kier “Stormer” keeping Britain safe (for Israel).

Our next thought crime concerns parents complaining about their kids schooling: https://freespeechunion.org/police-arrest-parents-who-complained-in-school-whatsapp-group/

A couple who’d had a little too much to think were detained in front of their nine year-old daughter and kept in a cell for eight hours over “disparaging” messages in a school WhatsApp and follow-up emails raising concerns with school leadership.
Six uniformed officers from Hertfordshire Police were sent to arrest Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine after their child’s school objected to a series of emails and “disparaging” comments in a parents’ WhatsApp group.
They had questioned the recruitment process for a new headteacher and were accused of “casting aspersions” on the chair of governors, which the school claimed had become “upsetting” for staff, parents, and governors….After a five-week investigation, police concluded there was insufficient evidence and took no further action – though by then, the knock at the door, the squad cars, and the spectacle of arrest by half a dozen officers would already have done the damage in the eyes of their local community.

Just think of the amount of police resources wasted on this. You would think British police have better shit to do what with all by now infamous knife attacks and pakistani rape gangs. Well, let’s see how the British court system is doing shall we?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14536929/Paedophile-migrant-attacked-teenage-girl-allowed-stay-UK.html

A paedophile who assaulted a teenage girl has been permitted to remain in Britain after a court ruled his deportation would violate his human rights. The Pakistani man was behind bars after being convicted of multiple sex crimes and then, after being released from prison, he attacked the teenager…During the appeal, the convicted offender, who has been granted anonymity for his protection, argued that he could face ‘inhuman or degrading treatment’ if deported to Pakistan because of his alcoholism.

But wait, there’s more!

This comes after a spate of similar cases including one in February this year when an unnamed judge let a paedophile who messaged ‘barely pubescent girls’ stay in the UK to protect him from his family’s disapproval of his actions back home.
The man – granted anonymity for his protection – was caught messaging paedophile hunters, disguised using decoy child profiles, online in August 2022.
Horrifyingly, the Pakistani father-of-two had believed he was really speaking to ‘barely pubescent girls’.
…
He had started grooming young girls long before this in March 2021.
But an unnamed judge ruled removing him from the UK would be ‘unduly harsh’, a tribunal heard.

The judge explained the paedophile would have ‘significant difficulties’ in Pakistan because his family there have a ‘dim view’ of his crimes – and stopped the man from being deported.

You don’t fu***ng say? The British ‘justice’ system sure seems to love their pedos.

And the NHS? https://freespeechunion.org/nhs-nurse-punished-for-calling-transgender-paedophile-mr/

An NHS nurse was disciplined after accidentally addressing a transgender paedophile as “Mr”.
The nurse, Jennifer Melle, 40, was treating the patient—who was from a high-security men’s prison—at St Helier Hospital in Carshalton, Surrey. During an aggressive tirade, the patient called Ms Melle a “n—–” three times.
But in October 2024, it was Ms Melle who was investigated and formally disciplined by the hospital. She was issued a final written warning and referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

Amazing.

Last one because this is comment is already overly long and one could really go all day with articles from MadHouse Britain. https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2025-03-27/2700-jobs-at-risk-at-british-steel-plant

Up to 2,700 jobs are under threat after British Steel announced plans to close down its blast furnaces in Scunthorpe.
The company said operating the two blast furnaces was “no longer financially sustainable due to highly challenging market conditions”.

Keep in mind that this is the last blast furnace, and hence the last steelmaking facility left in Britain, that is set to be closed. The country that kickstarted the industrial revolution, the birthplace of the modern steel industry, will now be incapable of turning iron ore into steel! This is a framed picture of the incredible decline of the UK since the end of WW2.

It’s amazing to me to see how fast a country can be run into the ground, and also at just how utterly delusional British elites seem to be about their own power or importance. These are the same people sabre-rattling the Russians that they are ready to go toe to toe with them in Ukraine “boots on the ground, planes in the air”, and pointing their blood-soaked fingers at China, wailing about genocide while assisting this century’s holocaust; all by a country that soon won’t be able to make steel and is furiously arresting Quakers.

Make it make sense.

It looks like a Canadian Russia-analyst named Patrick Armstrong who had been silenced for a while has back in business for a more recent while. I found this out at Naked Capitalism, which goes to show that Naked Capitalism still has value.

Here is the link to Patrick Armstrong’s current site.
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/about/

A quiet Saturday here . . . when I left the Bay Area, CA, I subscribed to the best local area newspaper I knew of, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, a Lefty paper run by some seniors (most of the core staff is over 70, a few in their 60s) with front p. mottoes like “Peace to the Cottages!” and (in the past) “War on the Palaces!!”

So I pulled out a mid-Feb. 2022 issue today (got bored and dropped reading it within 6 months of moving here) to see Biden was “promising to halve cancer rates within 25 years”!! How? Just subsidies to an already profligate, rip-off Health Harm (not Health Care) Industry. Clearly this over-the-top Con Job, impossible on its face, was only to distract from the facts that he wouldn’t raise the federal minimum wage, would only bail out a very few burdened with decades of student debt, would shift to a massive failed war in the Slavic lands in the insane hope to “Break up Russia”, would let inflation run rampant and in late 2023 join in a massive genocide in Palestine, both Gaza and then the West Bank.

Repeating myself, but I much appreciate one thing about Mafia Don– he tears the friendly Fascist face off the Empire and (to quote William S. Burroughs) “lets the Lies shine right through!” So some of you probably saw when a Tribal group in Yemen had a big meet-up to discuss local matters, in a circle in open country. For NO reason (except posturing that they’re destroying the “Evil Doers” who at this moment are ALONE in enforcing international law and blocking Israel’s access to WMDs, etc. from the Red Sea route) Donald posted on Lies Social an “Oops!” video of US planes flying over and randomly annihilating all human and animal life where these people were meeting.

I guess just like the Israelis, “We” are now proudly posting our mindless murder and War Crimes? Awesome.

Appalled but not surprised of what Failed Scholar and Oakchair share above. The Brits are, alongside the Nazis and now the Zionist Entity (& we can’t forget the U$A) one of the most violent, psychopathic Settler-Colonialist Death & Control Cultures that has ever existed in Human history. Of course they are bringing the Hate and Violence home and brutalizing . . . Quaker women!! How dare they try to make things better and not worse– that example can’t be allowed!!

The thing about an “Honor Culture” like the Old Confederate South and the UK is that no compassion, kindness or empathy can be allowed. I recall that in one of his failed runs for the Presidency Newt Gingrich had a central plank that “Empathy is bad” and should be prevented.

The Dimmies and the entire political class are now on board*. Truly inspiring to every cannibal and serial killer out there who can only destroy and kill extra-legally and in secret.

* Thomas Massie excepted, one honorable man among a plethora of Monsters– he opposed the “CARES” Act, which of course was another Biden monstrosity, described by many as “the greatest upward redistribution of income” since Covid and the Trump tax cuts. So of course Trump threatens to primary him. They are eating the seed corn and tilling up the fertile land remaining. I guess not only is every American a killer (unsure but I think Frederick Turner said this first, DH Lawrence expanded on it), but now the Death Instinct is so huge the Elites are applying it to their own societies as much as to the “Other.” Just brilliant, in a truly sick way.

What is Trump’s End Game?

What is he really working toward?

I’ve seen a lot of speculation on this matter, as most folks are starting to realize that nothing that the Trump Regime is doing is actually working toward the goals that they claim they are working toward.

Nothing they are doing is, in fact, working toward “Making America Great Again,” not even in the antiquated pre-Civil Rights, pre-New Deal, Antebellum way that the various Trumpist factions believe are when America was “Great.”

A lot of folks are starting to wake up to the reality that the Trump Regime’s actions, which might be considered “creative destruction” by some, are merely “destructive” and not in any way “creative.”

As I’ve mentioned before, each of the proper Trumpist factions with real power — Christofascist Nationalist, Tech-Bro, and Oligarchs, not the actual mass of MAGAts — each has their own long-term goal.

What all three of them require before reaching that goal is the utter destruction of democracy — Big D and little d — in the United States.

They need the mass of USians to be reduced to be utterly immiserated in poverty, leaving all wealth and power in a handful of already wealthy and powerful hands (and not all of these the same, so there is some infighting).

They need to destroy the entire existing socio-political structure that holds the US together, in order to rebuild it from the ground up.

The only way to really do this is via Civil War, turning a third of the country against another third of the country, while another third looks on in a mix of horror and fear.

Once the Civil War is over, once the two sides have destroyed each other, and the survivors are utterly shell-shocked, then and only then will they sweep in and rescue a grateful populace, who will do whatever is required to regain a sense of stability, as well as regular food, shelter, and safety.

So, that is where things are heading now.

Musk has been ably working away at the existing Federal government systems that support the whole structure. DOGE has been put to use ripping out the throat of the Federal system, especially the remnant of the safety net, leaving it to bleed to death.

Elsewhere, in addition to the destruction of the Department of Education (along with the student loan program that enables higher education), Trump’s people have been directly destroying the higher education system by targeting big-name, influential liberal arts colleges one by one, slowly destroying the system that feeds into both lower-education and the Federal bureaucracy.

ICE and the other enforcement branches of the Executive are being used to show people what happens when you speak out. Right now, it is being used on non-citizens, but they are already showing their complete willingness to use it all on dissenting citizens.

Finally, (though there are more factors, these are the big three), Trump is destroying the economy. Between tariffs and the destruction of the Federal bureaucracy, we are looking at a depression that will make all other depressions seem like good times by comparison.

With the destruction of the bureaucracy (except for the military, which he has purged); the destruction of anyone who opposes his systemic changes in the bureaucracy and education; and his purging and redeployment of the enforcement and military branches, he is ready for the massive riots that will start when the economy completely and utterly tanks and people start starving in the streets.

That’s when the Civil War starts — his forces crush political opposition, round up those merely rioting because they are hungry, and install his police state.

The oligarchs get all the wealth (with Trump getting a taste of everything) and cheap labor with tens of millions of new convict slaves; the Christofascists are allowed to install their “Christian Nationalist” society that maintains the middle class that the oligarchs need to maintain their lifestyle; and the tech-bros are allowed to have a few city-states on the west coast to experiment with further levels of control via use of advanced technology.

Of course, this is not Trump’s plan. This is the work of his people, his Regime.

They are all working together at this point. The opportunities to end their rule will come when they decide to try to make the grab for ALL the power and get rid of each other; they are all narcissistic psychopaths and will not tolerate anyone else having any of the power.

The problem will be, will there be anyone left at that point who will be able to take advantage of their moments of weakness?

I doubt it.

Note — there is no one who can save us this time, if we do not do it ourselves. The US was the “cavalry” in WWII against the bigger, nastier fascists.

Now, the US IS the bigger, nastier fascist. China will not care what happens to the US, they will be happy to see it collapse into itself, preferably into chaos and anarchy.

There is no “Left” left here; there is no real Center, as the Democrats have been “Republicans Lite” since the days of the New Democrats. They are deluded, thinking that the Trumpists will allow them to retire with their ill-gotten gains, rather than have them first up against the wall…

Hopefully the broccoli-face opossum gives us the energy to face darker unfunny things.
Here is an article from the guardian about how the DOGE attack on Social Security “seems” designed on purpose to destroy the agency from existing, in order to soften up the victim-public into resigning itself into total and utter privatization of the system and all its ( our) money.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/06/musk-doge-social-security

” Electoral politics” is irrelevant in stopping any of this in mid burndown. The Democrats want to let things get even worse so that they can exhort citizens to “flip the House” in 2028. But a “flipped House” won’t matter by then because there will be nothing left to save and no way to restore what has been vaporised.

The only way to save what we still have is to topple the Trump Regime within the next couple of months. Any thoughts on how to do that?

About how to topple the Trump Regime . . . . I suppose we should get the ‘magical thinking’ alternatives out of the way first.

Magical think #1: All the Progressive Forces of the world join in a United Vanguard Front . . . all the Trots, Sparts, Maoies, Anarchies, even Bob Avakian . . . and lead the World Proletariat in a Glorious Socialist Revolution which smashes all Capitalism everywhere, including the Trump Regime in the general social class cleansing.

Magical think #2: We all light candles to Saint Luigi of the Adjustication and pray that God smiteth down Trump, Musk, Vance and Speaker of the House Johnson. That would leave Rubio next in line-of-succession to become President. He would be a drab lost little place-holder while all the power-operators think about what comes next.

Once we are all done revelling in the thought of those possibilities, and then crying over their unlikelihood, we can then start thinking about whether there is any actual something which numbers of people could actually do over the next 2-3 months which would result in a toppling or at least a partial toppling of the Trump Regime.

@GrimJim,

I have offered several randomly-encountered BlackTwitter entries which all share the theme: ” We did what we could, we’re sitting this out.” If you look at their comment sections, the reasons for sitting this out touch on 2 basic themes . . . .

Theme 1: White America always expects us to be the Soul of the Nation and to Save Democracy and so forth. We’re tired and we need to rest.

Theme 2: The TrumpAdmin has a particular plan to try baiting Black America into protesting, which they plan to call Rioting and Insurrecting. They will then invoke the Insurrection Act to conduct repression, mass killing, etc. against Black America. Well . . . Black America will not rise to the bait.

I re-offer a BlackTwitter item I offered which I suspect is itself basically grouped around Theme 2:
https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/1jp6wzs/the_ancestors_have_spoken/

Back to Theme 1: I am reminded of a 2-second isolated gag from a Bugs Bunny cartoon about Bugs Bunny being on Christopher Columbus’s ship. I tried finding the actual segment but I can’t. The best I could find was a list of famous Bugs Bunny quotes of which that particular quote was one.

Bugs is dining with the Captain in the Captain’s Mess. Waves rock the ship. A bowl of soup flies off the table onto the floor. Bugs Bunny looks at the soup on the floor, looks at the Captain, and says: ” If it’s the Captain’s Mess, let him clean it up.”
A number of Black commenters on those various postings say, in effect: ” If it’s the White man’s mess, let him clean it up.”

Grim Jim and Different Clue,
I heard a guy, a Lutheran minister as I recall, in Brunssum Neatherlands NATO Headquarters (AFNORTH) during a sermon say back in the early 2000s that this is a white man’s mess and white men need to clean it up. Unfortunately things did not develop properly because the the mess was to well entrenched for a few honest people to clean it up.
This mad mad world is never going to get any saner. Well at least not those parts that those of us in the US or Canada or Germany will be able to see. I guess that the Iron Heel slipped on a banana peel. And if that banana peel was not there it would not have made any difference. Humanity had a very small window of opportunity to avoid extinction before 1939. Now it is Que sera sera.