Scrapbook for October

11.10.2026 – Another circuit round the drain in Germany

The AfD's spectacular gains in the recent state election in Sachsen-Anhalt took them within a few seats of getting an absolute majority.

The leadership of the CDU stuck their heads deeper in the sand of their 'firewall', but Sahra Wagenknecht's mini-party, the BSW, agreed to support the AfD in parliament. In a triumph for Realpoltik, four members of the CDU broke ranks and pledged their support, thus giving the AfD in the state parliament a working majority. Not perfect, but it works and it's a lot better than the multicoloured mishmash coalitions of mutual loathing in recent decades.

AfD's Tobias Rausch, a bright young spark, was selected as the President of the state parliament. It looks as though the attractive AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund will become the new Minister-President of the state. So far so good.

The NZZ brings us some interesting news from Sachsen-Anhalt. It appears that BMW has withdrawn its leasing offer to provide the President of the parliament with an official limousine. It gave no reason for this strange decision, but the silence strikes one as an act of sly cowardice.

Milan Nedeljković, the Serbian/German who is the Chairman of the BMW board, spoke out during the election campaign on the damage that electing the AfD would do to the image of Germany as an industrial location:

To the question whether the AfD would damage the economic location of Germany, Nedeljković replied that right-wing populism and nationalism are 'poison for a world-open business location which lives from worldwide trade'.

Auf die Frage, ob die AfD dem Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland schade, antwortete Nedeljković, Rechtspopulismus und Nationalismus seien «Gift für einen weltoffenen Wirtschaftsstandort, der vom Welthandel lebt». [NZZ]

Nedeljković is currently presiding over around 8'000 job-cuts worldwide following a massive profit collapse at BMW, with probably more to come. BMW asserts that the job losses are mainly office jobs – which leads us to ask why BMW are employing so many useless and disposable mouse-botherers.

The Chinese are currently wiping the floor with the German car industry. The dire outlook for the German industrial base and its car makers in particular shows that Nedeljković and his fellow managers are quite capable of driving German industry to extinction without any help from the 'right wing populists'.

Just to show Nedeljković what a chump he is, the redoubtable AfD MP in the Federal Parliament and noted free speech fighter, Beatrix von Storch has asked her good friend Elon Musk on X to magic up a Tesla for Rausch – and probably Siegmund, too. Hey, business is business! That's what happens in a 'world-open business location'.

10.10.2026 – Bad idea, Donald!

In 2009, Major Nidal Malik Hasan walked into a medical building in Fort Worth, Texas, shouted 'Allahu akbar' and opened fire on his comrades with a handgun. He killed 13 and wounded 32 of them. Unsurprisingly, he was convicted of murder (13x) and attempted murder (32x).

This month President Trump approved his execution by firing squad, which is scheduled for 3 December. So far, so understandable, though a justice system that takes seventeen years to get from then to now is not really fit for purpose.

But 2026 has been Trump's year of missteps. Deciding to livestream Hasan's execution will be one of the most consequential:

• The ethical feelings in modern societies that have recoiled from treating executions as a public spectacle will be violated. This is not simply a wuzzy objection about decorum: when an Islamic state takes videos of its public executions, when jihadist groups film their spontaneous head-hackings and their lunatics wear bodycams as they did in the attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, when a member of the US forces – a downed pilot, say – is publicly murdered by his captors, the USA will no longer have any grounds to object to such public barbarism.
• If Trump, Hegseth and Co. think that this spectacle will act as a deterrent for Islamist terrorists, they should rethink this decision and fast. There's a queue stretching round the block at Islamist recruiting offices around the world of young men (and women) who long to die in jihad. The filmed execution will show them how painful to the USA the wound was that Hasan's attack left behind – well, let's have more of that, they will think. The livestreamed execution will become a recruiting video.
• Hasan will become an Islamic martyr anyway, but livestreaming his execution will make him a famous martyr – there will be terrorist brigades named after him. Traditionally, the condemned man lets out a spirited shout for something or other. What will Hasan shout: 'Allahu akbar'? Or will the executioner tape his mouth closed, thus making everything much worse?
• The Goya painting is here to show that, whatever the backstory is, the viewer's initial and instinctive empathy is always with the person being shot.
• If he bears himself well during the execution he will become a super-martyr: the video of the execution will be used for propaganda and training of the new crop of crazies. Livestreaming implies not just a short clip of the bullets striking him, but quite a bit of the ritual that proceeds and follows the execution itself.
• Vice-President J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert, has gone no farther than to say he won't be watching the live streaming. He added that the livestream probably won't happen anyway. He may be right in that: a lot of courts will have their say and who knows what the situation will be after the upcoming mid-term elections. But if it does, Jesuitical triangulation will not rescue his position. Donald doesn't like his myrmidons to be half-hearted.

So, Trump and Hegseth have managed to turn the execution of a jihadist – an execution that would only worry the most principled person – into an ethical and PR disaster. Calling it a misstep is much too mild.