In 2014, when waves of refugees began flooding into western Europe, citizens and officials alike responded with generosity and openness. Exhausted refugees spilled out of trains and buses to be met by crowds bearing gifts of clothing and food, and holding up placards that read “Welcome Refugees.”This was a honeymoon that could not last. Some of the upcoming difficulties had been anticipated: that the newcomers did not speak the local languages, might be traumatized, would probably take a long time to find their footing, and had brought their ethnic, religious and sectarian conflicts with them, causing them to get into battles with each other. All of these things happened but—as Angela Merkel promised - were manageable.“Wir schaffen das.” . . .But there was one development that had not been expected, and was not tolerable: the large and growing incidence of sexual assaults committed by refugees against local women. These were not of the cultural-misunderstanding-date-rape sort, but were vicious, no-preamble attacks on random girls and women, often committed by gangs or packs of young men. At first, the incidents were downplayed or hushed up—no one wanted to provide the right wing with fodder for nationalist agitation, and the hope was that these were isolated instances caused by a small problem group of outliers. As the incidents increased, and because many of them took place in public or because the public became involved either in stopping the attack or in aiding the victim afterwards, and because the courts began issuing sentences as the cases came to trial, the matter could no longer be swept under the carpet of political correctness. And with the official acknowledgment and public reporting, a weird and puzzling footnote emerged. Most of the assaults were being committed by refugees of one particular nationality: by Afghans. . .On the basis of his hundreds of interactions with these young men in his professional capacity over the past several years, he believes to have discovered that they are motivated by a deep and abiding contempt for Western civilization. To them, Europeans are the enemy, and their women are legitimate spoils, as are all the other things one can take from them: housing, money, passports. Their laws don’t matter, their culture is uninteresting and, ultimately, their civilization is going to fall anyway to the horde of which one is the spearhead. No need to assimilate, or work hard, or try to build a decent life here for yourself—these Europeans are too soft to seriously punish you for a transgression, and their days are numbered.And it’s not just the sex crimes, my friend notes. Those may agitate public sentiment the most, but the deliberate, insidious abuse of the welfare system is just as consequential. Afghan refugees, he says, have a particular proclivity to play the system: to lie about their age, to lie about their circumstances, to pretend to be younger, to be handicapped, to belong to an ethnic minority when even the tired eye of an Austrian judge can distinguish the delicate features of a Hazara from those of a Pashtun . . .[T]he relevance to U.S. refugee policy is sadly obvious. It will require rigorous vetting indeed to weed out such deeply disturbed, degenerate young males whose willingness to be deceptive is so pronounced and whose motives are so irrational.Which brings me to a final theory being vented in Austria: that these destructive, crazed young men are being intentionally infiltrated into western Europe to wreak havoc: to take away the freedom and security of women; change patterns of behavior; deepen the rifts between liberals, who continue to defend and find excuses, and a right wing that calls for harsh measures and violent responses; to inflict high costs and aggravation on courts and judicial systems and generally make a mess of things.
ArticleWhen Worlds Collide: Unassimilable Muslim Migrants Crash Europe’s Fantasy Islam
What happens when the West’s fantasy Islam collides with the reality of an imported critical mass of unassimilated — and defiantly unassimilable — Muslims?Cologne happens.Nor is it only Cologne. That was just Ground Zero of the New Year’s Eve rape jihad in Germany. As National Review’s Ian Tuttle notes in an alarming column about the predictable — and, if I may say, predicted — surge of sexual assault in a Europe overrun by “migrants,” the jihad included similar episodes, albeit on a smaller scale, in Stuttgart, Hamburg, and even astride the Brandenburg gate in Berlin.We are finally learning about the magnitude and harrowing details of the attack after days of Stasi-like information suppression. Chancellor Angela Merkel may not be big on German security, but she is a bulwark when it comes to fantasy Islam.First there was no news; then, a few disturbing hints of gropings and robberies by gangs of “Middle Eastern or North African” men. Now, we know it was a mass atrocity — the only remaining question being: How massive?Upward of a thousand men, overwhelmingly Muslim, executed a coordinated series of attacks on an obvious target of opportunity: street celebrations in the major cities of a reviled Western state, where they were certain to find throngs of young women and a police presence grossly inadequate to provide security — certainly not against a critical mass of Islamic supremacists.
Dilbert BlogIn the year 2017, most of our national problems are information problems. And by that I mean having the right information would allow us to solve most problems.Consider the nuclear threat from North Korea. That’s an information problem disguised as a military problem.I hope that statement seems wrong to you, so you will be extra-impressed when I change your mind in the next hundred seconds.If the U.S. government tries to strongarm China to control North Korea’s nuclear program, that might cause more problems than it solves. No one likes a government-to-government confrontation of that type. China would have to push back. It could get ugly fast.But imagine what would happen if American consumers knew which American companies were doing the most business with China.And imagine American consumers understanding that China can turn off the economy of North Korea, like a switch, any time it wants, thus controlling North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.Now connect the dots.If you treat the North Korean nuclear threat as a military problem, it becomes one. If you treat it as an information problem, with an economic variable, it becomes that instead.I’m in favor of my government trying to negotiate an agreement with China, Russia, and North Korea. But if our leaders can’t get it done, I ask the government to get out of the way. Citizens can take care of this one directly.All we need is some information.
Interview videoIt is like we have this giant Rorschach test and people see whatever they want to.The criminal code has defined elements to it. You just don’t find these ambiguous crimes. Some people have said this could be treason. For the love of God, treason is defined in the Constitution. This is not treason. Other people have said this could be a Logan Act violation. Well, Logan Act has been used once in 200 years and is facially unconstitutional. One said, well, if you take things of tangible value under the campaign laws and treat information like that, then maybe you have a campaign contribution violation. Well, yeah, but we haven’t seen that done. You could also treat it like a panda and say it’s an endangered species violation, but courts haven’t done that. So, I think that people need to take a breath…What I’ve said to a lot of my friends who do legal analysis is, is this really the world you want to live in, where we broaden the definition of crimes so far that most any conversation could be a criminal act?That’s a very dangerous world to live in, but more importantly, if information is now a thing of tangible value under federal campaign laws, then the Clinton campaign could be charged with the same type of offense, and a wide variety of other campaigns could be charged.
To feel at home in opportunity-rich areas, you’ve got to understand the right barre techniques, sport the right baby carrier, have the right podcast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to mention possess the right attitudes about David Foster Wallace, child-rearing, gender norms and intersectionality.The educated class has built an ever more intricate net to cradle us in and ease everyone else out. It’s not really the prices that ensure 80 percent of your co-shoppers at Whole Foods are, comfortingly, also college grads; it’s the cultural codes.Status rules are partly about collusion, about attracting educated people to your circle, tightening the bonds between you and erecting shields against everybody else. We in the educated class have created barriers to mobility that are more devastating for being invisible. The rest of America can’t name them, can’t understand them. They just know they’re there.
...(W)hen the seven memos Comey wrote regarding his nine conversations with Trump about Russia earlier this year were shown to Congress in recent days, the FBI claimed all were, in fact, deemed to be government documents.While the Comey memos have been previously reported, this is the first time there has been a number connected to the amount of the memos the ex-FBI chief wrote.Four of the memos had markings making clear they contained information classified at the “secret” or “confidential” level, according to officials directly familiar with the matter.A spokesman for the FBI on Sunday declined to comment.FBI policy forbids any agent from releasing classified information or any information from ongoing investigations or sensitive operations without prior written permission, and mandates that all records created during official duties are considered to be government property.
WaPo…But in Portugal, the numbers paint a different story. The prevalence of past-year and past-month drug use among young adults has fallen since 2001, according to statistics compiled by the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which advocates on behalf of ending the war on drugs. Overall adult use is down slightly too. And new HIV cases among drug users are way down…Among Portuguese adults, there are 3 drug overdose deaths for every 1,000,000 citizens. Comparable numbers in other countries range from 10.2 per million in the Netherlands to 44.6 per million in the U.K., all the way up to 126.8 per million in Estonia. The E.U. average is 17.3 per million.Perhaps more significantly, the report notes that the use of "legal highs" -- like so-called "synthetic" marijuana, "bath salts" and the like -- is lower in Portugal than in any of the other countries for which reliable data exists. This makes a lot of intuitive sense: why bother with fake weed or dangerous designer drugs when you can get the real stuff? This is arguably a positive development for public health in the sense that many of the designer drugs that people develop to skirt existing drug laws have terrible and often deadly side effects.
Video at linkFrench President Emmanuel Macron goes way out of his way, jostling past numerous world leaders to get to stand next to Donald Trump. Angela Merkel, planted in the center front row, actively reaches out to him, but he's dead set on task and makes it to the extreme right, where Donald Trump had positioned himself.
But look how Newsweek presents the same photo op: "IN G20 PHOTO, TRUMP COULDN’T SHOVE HIS WAY TO THE FRONT AND CENTER OF WORLD LEADERS." The video there shows an earlier point in the assembling on the risers, but it's easy to see that Trump makes no attempt to get to the front and center position. He steps calmly to the end position and casually speaks to a few people. He does nothing that makes it seem as though he wants to be in the center, and he certain doesn't engage in any shoving. It's Macron that actively moves through the crowd (and "shove" would be the wrong word even for what Macron is doing).
I'm imagining how Newsweek would defend itself against the charge that this is fake news: Trump didn't shove his way to the front and center, because he couldn't. He would've if he could've. Since he didn't, that means he couldn't, so we reported that he couldn't.
That's not a logical defense, of course. It contains a glaring false premise. But it might work for hardcore Trump haters, who are deranged into thinking they are seeing the deranged mind of Donald Trump. Oh, man, he so needs to be in the center of everything, him with his narcissistic personality disorder. We need to move on him with the 25th Amendment before the world explodes.
