Friday Afternoon Roundup - A Holiday in Brussels

Down a wooded stretch of road in Walla Walla, Inmate number 337762 sleeps the long nights away at Washington State Penitentiary. WSP offers educational programs in graphic design, bookkeeping and IT as well as a program to raise pheasants. The Eid feast took place in the dining hall and it’s likely that Inmate 337762 stopped by for a bite.

If some nights when the wind blows cold, Inmate 337762 dreams it is likely that he dreams of his day of glory when he shot six women at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle​.


 ... an excerpt from In the Face of Evil, my article on the Federation shootings.




A LITTLE REVOLUTION NEVER HURT ANYONE

Prime Minister Cameron firmly saying no to EU Zero took quite a few people by surprise, I didn't really think he had it in him. But Merkel and Sarkozy have gotten most of the EU on board. The Swedes and the Czechs (barring referendums) may be joining the UK in holding out, but for now long?

A change of government in the UK will put the Laborites squealing that Cameron has isolated them from the rest of Europe into power and how long will the resistance last then. Like all international orders, the EU has thrived by waiting around for governments decadent enough to join or fail to resist. Once you're in, getting out takes more guts than any government has shown so far.

Still it's a welcome note of defiance, even if it's a defiance from the same countries that weren't exactly on board with the Euro to begin with. But the left now has an endless talking point on which to blame any economic, political or social problems. "Cameron isolated us". And then when Labor gets in and ends the isolation, they will applaud their statesmanlike reversal of blah blah blah.

Some are holding out hope that referendums may scuttle the treaty, but the EUcrats will do everything possible to scuttle the referendums as democracy is not exactly on the agenda, except in the Muslim world.

The Eurozone crisis has managed to create a more oppressive EU monster, but that monster has the same core problems as the original creature. Much like growing federalism in the United States has contributed to the present economic crisis, increased federalism will do the same in Europe.

Neither of the two mainstays of the free world have learned anything from their defeat of the USSR and the failure of planned economies controlled by bureaucrats which lower productivity, amass debt and eventually become unsustainable.

The situation is more complicated when dealing with different nations, rather than 'states', where centralized control by the wealthiest nations stirs resentment by the poorer nations and spending by poor nations stirs resentment by the wealthier nations.

National class warfare nearly destroyed the EU just now and it will eventually bring it down, unfortunately demographics don't offer a better replacement. Eurabia is still the real crisis up ahead. Saying no the EU is a step in the right direction as far as saying no to Eurabia, but the word hasn't been said yet.





ANY REASON FOR A PARTY

You walk into a darkened theater, take your seat and wait for the movie to start. When it begins it's a confusing mess of clips that don't fit together or make much sense leaving you to wonder if the reels are out of order or the director was. That's how the country feels in the last several years.

Take the Obama early Chanukah. I'm not enough of a White House watcher to be able to say if this is a usual thing, but it doesn't seem like it is. So why do it?

It could be sheer incompetence. In the transcript Obama seems a little off giving the whole thing an impromptu feel. After a week where Clinton and Panetta took swipes at Israel and his ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, suggested that Jews were to blame for anti-semitism, throwing an early Chanukah might have seemed like a cheap way to get some good spin. But that's speculation, for all we know this was planned months in advance, because hey Chanukah isn't important enough like Ramadan to be commemorated on a specific date.

Boker Tov Boulder has suggested that a memo went out to bash Israel (by the way please hit her tip jar) and that's certainly not out of keeping with this administration's attitude. Panetta and Clinton were also at the Saban forum, and they were tossing out red meat to a lefty audience. Gutman was arrogant enough to speak his mind, particularly as he knew there would be no consequences.

Obama commemorating Chanukah is peculiar enough. This was a holiday marking the successful war against the Jewish puppets of the Syrian-Greek monarchy and their Syrian-Greek backers and mercenaries. At a time when the White House still dreams of booting out a marginally pro-Israel PM and replacing him with Livni or Barak, it's a little like Antiochus IV stopping by to light some candles and offer a few trite thoughts on faith and miracles.



THE RIGHT TO FLOG

"Maldives’ Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem reassured his fellow Muslims that the government was not about to do anything crazy like ending the flogging of women. “”What’s there to discuss about flogging? There is nothing to debate about in a matter clearly stated in the religion of Islam. No one can argue with Allah. Our foreign ministry will not allow that to happen.

See the whole story in my Front Page article, Maldives Muslims Fight for the Right to Flog




MORE HONEST HEADLINES

EPA Discovers All Possible Alternatives To Terror Oil May Pollute Something

Cameron Vote Leaves UK Entirely Isolates on Islands

Durban Unveils Roadmap to More Conferences

Big Corporation Honors Communist Icon on Increasingly Unusable Search Portal



THE EU IS FALLING

It's hard to find a more hysterical reaction to Cameron's veto than in Der Spiegel.

"Bye Bye" screams the headline. The theme is that the sky is falling. Hyperbole is the means.

"Europe on Friday awoke to a changed world. The European idea as we know it is in the process of dissolving into thin air. The monumental postwar project of a peacefully unified continent where all member states hold hands in friendship collapsed overnight."

"Europe, though, can work fine without the British. But what kind of future does Great Britain have without the Continent and without the euro? Will it, in the future, focus exclusively on its alliance with the United States? Will the Commonwealth become a greater priority? What is this small country's role in a world made up great powers such as China, Russia, Europe and the US?"

Is 62 million people small? It's about half the size of Russia. with 150 percent of its GDP. One might as well wonder what Russia can do without the USSR as what the UK can do without the EU.

The UK has wisely kept its options open between Europe and the US and maintained its own way in the world. It's a former empire that once had a grip on much of the world. I imagine it can manage.

What is the real logic of a continental union anyway? The UK and North America have more in common than the UK and Spain or Canada and Mexico do. Trade is about the only reason and the rhetoric of the EU has long ago gone well beyond trade.

If you're going to unite with other countries on a deeper level than free trade agreements then you should have something more in common with them than borders. But that assumes union is to be preferred to independence. What does union really offer besides a chance to spend more on government and a lot more wrangling-- and the illusion that federal regional authorities represent some sort of new plateau in human progress.




TRUMPING THE DEBATE

The hysteria over Trump and Newsmax hosting a debate has been a ridiculous show of outrage over nothing.

I am not a Trump fan but a debate moderated by him, instead of by mainstream media figures, might have actually addressed economic issues and gotten independent voters to watch. Instead conservative media figures sunk so low as to praise Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman for pulling out. (Seriously. Read that twice.)

So the debate will likely go the way of the dodo, and the next debate will go unwatched by the very voters who should be getting invested in the candidates, but will instead watch 30 second clips of one candidate or another screwing up.

What was the Trump panic about anyway? Fear that Trump will run as a third party candidate? He's never actually run for president despite pretending to on two occasions. I doubt he's about to spend money he doesn't have to finance a third party bid. Trump isn't Perot. He doesn't have those deep pockets and he's always pulled out before things got serious.

The other excuse was that Trump is a "clown". Whatever that means. He's a reasonably successful businessman with a toupee and a national profile. Clearly we must run in the other direction as fast as possible. We wouldn't want to be associated with someone who's interesting and can talk on camera without stumbling.

No, attacking the Trump debate was a power play and it came from somewhere in the establishment.

There is certainly a vibrant right of center media online, but unfortunately it often resembles the mainstream media's messaging. When the mainstream media begins pushing a meme and calling someone a clown, then you know that they have nothing fact based to say about a subject and are pushing an agenda. The same is unfortunately true of all those articles suddenly cheering the candidates who pulled out of the Trump debate.




WAR IN RUSSIA

The Russian elections are one of the most significant events of the new decade and have gotten only sparse coverage. For now the protests and reaction isn't on the Iranian scale, but the story is fairly similar.

The ruling party lost the vote and resorted to shameless voter fraud to salvage the situation and responded to protests by bringing in the troops. The protests aren't likely to topple Putin but much of the country is sick and tired of the flagrant criminality and abuses of power.

The same media which updated us on every Tweet from Tahrir Square is providing minimal coverage of political unrest in a superpower. Again I have to ask why.

The media promoted the Arab Spring but is keeping mum on the Russian Spring.




DON'T KILL AFRICA

That's the meme from Greenpeace, Avaaz and the rest of the enviro-crony capitalist gang. There's nothing funnier than watching a whole bunch of white people protest in Africa with signs reading, "Don't Kill Africa"

It's easy to mock but expect to see the "Don't Kill Africa" meme all over the place as the left merges its envirofraud together with racefail to create a whole new monster. Opposing climate change is now racism.

For added fun here's The Guardian's climate change map blaming THE END OF EVERYTHING on particular countries. Interestingly this may be the first time that The Guardian has not blamed Israel for something. Let's mark it on our calendars.

The United States is obviously the world's biggest offender. Europe on the other hand is practically squeaky clean, except for England and Germany.





DEATH OF THE WEST

People talk about the Death of the West, but then there's Emma West, mother of three, thrown in jail in the UK after a nationwide manhunt via Twitter after she was videotaped saying that Poles, Blacks and Latinos aren't British and should go home where they belong.

And there's four Muslim women who beat a white girl unconscious and taunted her with racial slurs were freed by the judge because as Muslims they clearly weren't used to drinking.

What more is there to say?




THE ROUNDUP

Feminists Back Women as Possessions in Supreme Court Case

 The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF)... argued... stating that forcing a Muslim woman to uncover her face while testifying “could very well be seen and experienced as an act of racial, religious and gendered domination.”

To state the painfully obvious isn't the veil an act of gendered domination?


Raymond Ibrahim's Testimony at the Human Rights Commission

Constitutional Carry Revolution Continues to Spread

Massad, Columbia's Favorite Professor, has Assad's Back

Will Freedom Drown in the Islamic Pool? Or should we Let the Syrians Deal With it Themselves?

50 percent of Blue Collar Dems Don't Want Obama

Color video of the Pearl Harbor attack

Terrorists Dead, Media Outraged

The Price of Freedom and Cultural Degradation

Getting Some of that Obamacare

Meet the CAIR Bears

Finally Mark Tapson on Hollywood's 9/11 Blind Spot

Hollywood has been afraid of offending sensibilities. Where it once led the propaganda charge against the Nazis and Japanese imperialists, Hollywood is now afraid of offending the very Islamists who have declared war on us, because it doesn’t want to incur their violent wrath. It’s even afraid of being called Islamophobic. Hollywood is much more comfortable clinging to the multiculturalist orthodoxy which faults the racist, imperialist, warmongering America and the West for all international conflict.