You will find the unemployed are a prime target for scammers/grifters.

Targeting the desperate is profitable.

Frankly, I take a perverse delight in going backwards and forwards, slowly taking off my belt, keys, watch, small change and finally, steel toe boots.

> terrorists have used fake bomb threats to achieve some other goal

That 'other goal' being to cause disruption. Which this did.

Now we all know how to disrupt a flight anonymously. Grudge against <airline>? Fill your boots!

I mean something like taking control of the plane or else they blow it up

> Are you suggesting opening every package to check for a CE?

In the old days, when an importer purchased Chinese goods in bulk and resold them, import checks were commonplace.... AND the importer was legally responsible for paying import duties and selling goods to the public that were legal and met safety standards.

Now that any individual can order direct from China (with cheap subsidised postage!), the floodgates of untaxed and dangerous shite are open.

One solution is to address the subsidised postage that makes this state of affairs possible.

That’s unworkable: asking a recipient unfamiliar with producers to know whether producer is reputable or not in advance and if the producer is unscrupulous you expect every affected buyer to follow up or be in violation of importation laws?

If you are not sure, buy from within the EU from an importer who deals with this.

The old system of spot inspections worked because most import volume was from known, repeat importers.

So consumers should just pay for a random import company to ”pinky promise” that it is safe? It is well known that most of the crap that is CE hasn’t actually gone through a million euro testing program. It’s just a stamp. And if something happens then well that LLC goes bankrupt (but odds are low)

License importers? Have them audited, post a bond, etc?

CE is self certification for most part. It’s just the seller saying ”yea, I promise it is safe”.

Should consumers have to post a bond to receive a package from abroad?

I think thats asking much from people some of whom easily get scammed by phone banks in Eastern Europe, India etc. many people will not put in that effort.

So hold the consumer liable for laws meant to protect the consumer?

Holding a consumer liable for the broken crap they order would be just, but political infeasible as long as there is someone else to blame.

Why even have consumer laws then if consumers are punished if their Samsung phone explodes?

It depends if Samsung is imported by a consumer or a company that takes liability

So pretty much just pay for the stamp from a shell company that will shield the legal risk? So just more expensive for consumers and more profit for lawyers that can just set up single purpose shell companies to sign off on the import?

> How much more is the US supposed to do in Ukraine beyond the $60-70 billion in weapons and supplies?

sigh

800 Patriot missiles were used within the first 3 days in the Iran war. This is greater than the total number of Patriot missiles received by Ukraine during the entire war with Russia.

Your orange president is displaying some funny priorities.

> People outside the US understand that Trump is a temporary phenomenon

Oh god no. How wrong can you be.

The world is now well aware what the American people have voted for (twice!) and may well vote for again. We don't want that risk thanks.

Your comment can be summed up by appearing to know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

> America did spend resources on defense of gulf states.

No offence mate, but did you miss the bit about the USA starting the war?

Considering the last sentence in the comment you are replying to, i doubt they missed it...

Their use of the word "probably" rather suggests they did miss it. By a country mile.

No, I think you missed it by a country mile. “Probably” was meant in the sense of “out of all the things the gulf states have reason to be mad at the US about, starting the conflict is ‘probably’ (obviously, lol) the thing they’re most unhappy with”. They weren’t saying the US “probably” started the conflict.

>‘probably’ (obviously, lol)

My point precisely.

Here is some hard data to back that up; the Country Perceptions Index.

https://www.niradata.com/country-perceptions

This was interesting but it seems that it requires me to access to properly see the data of all countries (which requires me to contact them basically and perhaps be a business, not sure)

I would find it interesting if you can share with me hopefully a less restrictive chart than this. The data does seem interesting to me.

Here you go.

https://www.niradata.com/global-country-perceptions-2026

(From the above, following the link to free sample for USA data is very revealing. )

Thanks the data is interesting.

The net perception of US among its top trading partners being all negative seems a clear indicator.

Sad that niradata has paywalled rest of the data because I was interested in the rabbit hole of comparing different countries. From the data:

Across the 84 countries that evaluated the United States, 22 had a net positive perception, while 62 had a net negative perception. The average net perception of the United States is negative (-16), ranking #128 out of 132 countries.

> Trump's DOJ has a track record of prosecuting Trump's vocal critics.

And many Americans claim they have freedom of speech!

(Of course the little guys speech is "free", they aren't important. But the moment the little guy critical of Trump is in a position of power or influence, watch how quickly he is silenced.)