Quotulatiousness

November 14, 2024

Germans are perfectly free to post anything to the internet as long as it doesn’t criticize politicians

Once again, eugyppius helpfully illustrates the broad range of freedoms German citizens enjoy in their online activities and the totally reasonable and not-at-all-insane restrictions to those rights:

“German flag” by fdecomite is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

It’s been a while since I last wrote about the highly advanced democratic freedoms that we enjoy in Germany. Here in the Federal Republic, the police will never fine you or harass you or raid your house for criticising the government – except, of course, when they do all of these things, because you happened not even to tweet, but merely to retweet, the wrong image.

Stefan Niehoff is a 64 year-old retiree who lives in the small town of Burgpreppach in Lower Franconia. He runs an X account with 1,200 followers, where he occasionally expresses his dissatisfaction with the present state of German politics and with the Greens in particular.

In June 2024, he retweeted this image …

… which appropriates the logo of a popular cosmetic brand to suggest that Robert Habeck, our Green Minister of Economic Affairs, might be a “professional moron”.

Habeck and his associates are notorious for pursuing internet users who share highly illegal content of this nature. They brought Niehoff’s retweet to the attention of authorities, and the Bamberg public prosecutor’s office decided that Niehoff was indeed guilty of a criminal speech offence. The Bamberg District Court then issued an order permitting the police to search Niehoff’s residence and confiscate his electronic devices.

In this order, reproduced by NiUS, the judges explained their rationale as follows:

    On the basis of the investigations to date – in particular the screenshots of the posts and the investigations into the user of the X-account “IchbinFeinet” – there exists the following suspicion of a criminal offence:

    The accused is the user of the account “IchbinFeinet” on the internet platform X with approx. 901 followers.

    At a time that cannot now be determined more precisely, in the days or weeks before 20 June 2024, the accused published an image file using his account that showed a portrait of the Federal Minister of Economic Affairs with the words “professional moron” … in order to defame Robert Habeck in general and to make his work as a member of the federal government more difficult.

    The public prosecutor’s office affirms the public interest in criminal prosecution.

    This is punishable as defamation directed against persons of political life in accordance with §§ 185, 188 para. 1, 194 StGB. …

    The measures ordered are proportionate to the severity of the offence and the strength of the suspicion and are necessary for the investigation …

Armed with this document, Schweinfurt police showed up at Niehoff’s house at 6:14am yesterday morning and took his tablet. Police later told the press that the raid was one in a series of enforcement actions – part of something called “an action day against cybercrime”. By harassing a lot of cybercriminals all at once, police and prosecutors hope to send a message to the people of Germany that they cannot just retweet anything, and that they may only retweet the right things.

Trump’s position and likely options on Ukraine

Filed under: Europe, Military, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In his weekly commentary, Niccolo Soldo considers what the incoming Trump administration might do about the war in Ukraine:

The situation in Ukraine as of 8 November, 2024.
Map from the UK Ministry of Defence via X.

… Ukraine is losing the war, and is losing it at a faster pace than before. Time is not on Kiev’s side, and there is no magic wand that anyone can wave to turn the tide in its favour. The question is: how much is Kiev willing to give up in order to save as much as it can?

The foreign policy blob is on tenterhooks, waiting to see what Trump will do regarding this conflict:

    Like in Trump’s first term, different factions are set to compete to influence the Republican’s foreign policy. More traditionally minded allies such as Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state now in contention to lead the Pentagon, are likely to push for a settlement that doesn’t appear to give a major win to Moscow. Other advisers, particularly Richard Grenell, a top candidate to lead the State Department or serve as national-security adviser, could give priority to Trump’s desire to end the war as soon as possible, even if it means forcing Kyiv into significant concessions.

Pompeo is out, but that doesn’t mean that those like him are entirely out either, as he has DoD officials sharing his views. No doubt that there are certain elements in the State Department, CIA, and in Congress as well who take the same position.

    The proposals all break from Biden’s approach of letting Kyiv dictate when peace talks should begin. Instead, they uniformly recommend freezing the war in place — cementing Russia’s seizure of roughly 20% of Ukraine — and forcing Ukraine to temporarily suspend its quest to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

    One idea proposed inside Trump’s transition office, detailed by three people close to the president-elect and not previously reported, would involve Kyiv promising not to join NATO for at least 20 years. In exchange, the U.S. would continue to pump Ukraine full of weapons to deter a future Russian attack.

    Under that plan, the front line would essentially lock in place and both sides would agree to an 800-mile demilitarized zone. Who would police that territory remains unclear, but one adviser said the peacekeeping force wouldn’t involve American troops, nor come from a U.S.-funded international body, such as the United Nations.

    “We can do training and other support but the barrel of the gun is going to be European,” a member of Trump’s team said. “We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine. And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it.”

“Pumping” Ukraine full of weapons would be attractive to Trump, as it means steady cash flow. He is a businessman after all.

The last bit is the most important, as it conforms to US policy trends in which the dumpster fire that they started is left to the Europeans to extinguish while the Americans go deal with the Chinese.

    That proposal in some respects echoes comments made by Vice President-elect JD Vance during a September interview, when he suggested a final agreement between Ukraine and Russia could involve a demilitarized zone “heavily fortified so the Russians don’t invade again.” Russia, Vance continued, would get to keep the land it has taken and be assured of Ukraine’s neutrality.

    “It doesn’t join NATO, it doesn’t join some of these sort of allied institutions,” he said on “The Shawn Ryan Show,” a podcast.

“No NATO, no stealth NATO”, is music to Moscow’s ears. The problem here is that the Russians do not trust the Americans to keep up their end of any deal. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has famously described the Americans as “agreement non-capable”.

Also, why would the Russians even agree to negotiate at this point?

    For one, Ukraine and Russia still have vastly differing war aims and little desire to alter them. With Russian troops advancing slowly but steadily in Ukraine, the Kremlin has shown little inclination to negotiate, and has shown its willingness to escalate the conflict with hybrid attacks outside its borders, such as sabotage operations in Europe.

    “The objectives of the special military operation remain unchanged and will be achieved,” Dmitry Medvedev, a top Russian official, posted Wednesday to X after learning of Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Zelensky is over a barrel:

    Zelensky, whose country is heavily dependent on the U.S. for military and financial assistance, could — more easily than Putin — be forced by Trump to negotiate, but the Ukrainian leader would have to contend with a public that views ceding territory as capitulation to Moscow.

    Trump has said that Ukraine’s survival is important to the U.S., but has repeatedly criticized Zelensky, calling him the “greatest salesman”, a stance that has worried some officials in Kyiv that a Trump-led U.S. might push for a settlement that favors Russia.

    Zelensky on Wednesday congratulated the president-elect on his victory, appealing to their September meeting in New York and praising his “‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs”.

Forcing Zelensky to concede land would open up the possibility of a coup d’etat in Kiev, and even civil war. Even if a deal were hammered out, Zelensky would be forced to try to sell it at home. There are may factions in Ukraine that have no desire to budge even one inch, and would happily take his head off of the rest of his body to make sure that no one signs away any Ukrainian land.

Early Christianity – from ~1,000 to 40 million believers in the Roman Empire

Filed under: Books, Europe, History, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The latest book review at Astral Codex Ten is Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity:

The rise of Christianity is a great puzzle. In 40 AD, there were maybe a thousand Christians. Their Messiah had just been executed, and they were on the wrong side of an intercontinental empire that had crushed all previous foes. By 400, there were forty million, and they were set to dominate the next millennium of Western history.

Imagine taking a time machine to the year 2300 AD, and everyone is Scientologist. The United States is >99% Scientologist. So is Latin America and most of Europe. The Middle East follows some heretical pseudo-Scientology that thinks L Ron Hubbard was a great prophet, but maybe not the greatest prophet.

This can only begin to capture how surprised the early Imperial Romans would be to learn of the triumph of Christianity. At least Scientology has a lot of money and a cut-throat recruitment arm! At least they fight back when you persecute them! At least they seem to be in the game!

Rodney Stark was a sociologist of religion. He started off studying cults, and got his big break when the first missionaries of the Unification Church (“Moonies”) in the US let him tag along and observe their activities. After a long and successful career in academia, he turned his attention to the greatest cult of all and wrote The Rise Of Christianity. He spends much of it apologizing for not being a classical historian, but it’s fine — he’s obviously done his homework, and he hopes to bring a new, modern-religion-informed perspective to the ancient question.

So: how did early Christianity win?

Following the Longest Roman Aqueduct

Filed under: Africa, Architecture, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Scenic Routes to the Past
Published Jul 19, 2024

Tunisia’s Zaghouan Aqueduct, built to serve Carthage in the second century, is among the longest and most impressive of all Roman aqueducts. This video follows the aqueduct from the monumental fountain at its source to the grandiose baths at its terminus.

Historic tours with toldinstone: https://toldinstone.com/trips/

Check out my other channels, ‪@toldinstone‬ and ‪@toldinstonefootnotes‬

QotD: The tragedy of the commons in North London

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Despite this being North London we’re not talking about common people here and the tragedy of their entering the precincts of the progressives. Rather, the tragedy of common resources.

One fact about those bathing ponds on the Heath:

    Honesty boxes for bathers to pay to swim were introduced in 2005. There were plans for a compulsory charge in 2012, but they came to nothing.

We have open access to a resource, Marxian access. We also have one other fact:

    It was once a well-kept secret. Now the bathing ponds on Hampstead Heath are among the most crowded parts of London on a hot summer’s day.

We have – by one measure at least – excessive use of that resource, use that needs to be limited in some manner.

This is a problem that has been noted before, it’s called the Tragedy of the Commons. As Garrett Hardin points out there are only two ways of restricting such access, capitalist – charge for it – or socialist – regulate.

The third option, Elinor Ostrom’s, does not work with this number of people. That communal agreement tops out at about 3,000 peeps, not 10 million.

Which of the two solutions works depends upon the specific circumstance and isn’t the point to be made here. Rather, the lesson to learn is that Marxian access just doesn’t work when demand is at or above capacity. A useful thing to think about when contemplating other areas of the economy.

Tim Worstall, “Hampstead Heath Ponds And The Tragedy Of The Commons”, Continental Telegraph, 2020-01-19.

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