Tag: Foreigners

Say What?

Terrorism

Lemme see if I got this right: U.S. forces capture two ISIS terrorist assholes — Brits — who have perpetrated all kinds of atrocities in Syria and Iraq:

Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, who were part of the execution cell that included Jihadi John, were detained by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in January.

….but the UK has stripped them of their UK citizenship. So, as they’re stateless assholes, we’re kinda free to do with them what we want (e.g. Guantanamo, execution, etc.)?

One would think so, but:

The British government also wants the US to provide assurances American prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against Kotey and Elsheikh.
It is threatening to hold back important evidence about them as leverage.

Excuse me, morons, but as you’ve stripped these two bastards of their British citizenship, you’ve lost all say as to what happens to them… right?

Frankly, I’m hoping for a “shot while trying to escape” scenario, because that would end the whole sorry episode on a satisfactory note (absent a little vigorous interim scourging, that is). As it is, however, it’s going to be a cluster-fuck, and no doubt these terrorist scumbags will probably end up living in the Bronx on public welfare.

American public welfare.

Me, I’d just hand them over to the Russians to let them deal with the problem. No doubt the Brits would have a problem with this idea, too.

No Surprise

Politics, Two-Minute Hate

So it turns out that a current Brit politician, the scumbag socialist Jeremy Corbyn, was once in the pay of the Communists. As a member of Parliament, the traitorous bastard is supposed to have passed on State secrets to the Commies in exchange for cash, according to the Commie spy who enlisted and paid him (as well as a couple other Labour MPs, by the way).

Needless to say, this revelation has been met with indifference and silence by his fellow-travelers in the BBC.

Both the above, of course, would be familiar to Older Readers who will recall that we had the same situation Over Here when it came to light that Sen. Ted “Swimmer & Traitor” Kennedy had actively been in contact with the Soviets, working to undermine then-President Reagan’s policies — a revelation that was largely ignored by his Commie fellow-travelers in the mainstream media as well.

Were it to be discovered that Republican Senator Bob Dole (for example) had been in similar cahoots with, oh, say ChilePres Pinochet, our ears would still be ringing from the screaming from the Left and Dole would no doubt have been imprisoned.

But selling out to the Commies? Yawn.

As always, my suggestion is simple. In the good old days, traitors were hanged, drawn and quartered. As we now live in a (supposedly) more civilized age, I’ll agree to forego the drawing and quartering, with regret, and just go with the hanging, thus:

Mind The Gap

Travels

…or rather, mind the passengers on the Paris Metro:

A man was stabbed to death on the Paris metro as witnesses filmed and posted photographs on social media instead of helping, it has been claimed.
Andy Brigitte, from Martinique, was knifed in an attack at the Châtelet-Les Halles RER station in Paris after a row with another passenger.

Just so we’re clear on this: Châtelet-Les Halles is not some little craphole in the northeast (see below); it’s the Parisian equivalent to London’s King’s Cross or New York’s Times Square stations. (It’s also a rabbit warren if you don’t know where you’re going; a buddy once spent two hours down there trying to change trains.)

But that’s not the point. As one commenter acidly noted: “Oh ok. In 2018, we die in front of a camera without any help.”

Disgusting. I can understand (a little) why people wouldn’t want to get involved in a knifing, because that’s how you become a co-stabbee. But just to take happy snaps of the occasion?

Still in Paris, the linked article has some more cheery news:

Paris metro drivers are refusing to stop at some stations in the capital amid fears over crack-fuelled violence, it has emerged.
A number of train operators have opted not to stop at stations in the city’s north east in order to ‘protect passengers’, according to union bosses.
Some stops are increasingly being used as places of business by crack dealers with Marx Dormoy on line 12 and Marcadet-Poissonniers on lines 12 and 4 said to be among the worst hit.

So if you’re going to Gay Paree in the near future, you’ll want to avoid those two stations, at least.

Unfortunately, there’s no way of avoiding Châtelet-Les Halles because it’s so central a hub. Be careful out there.

It sucks, because the Paris Metro is one of the best subway systems anywhere, and I love using it.

Gold Standard?

Health, Politics

The next time some liberal fool tries to convince you that a “single-payer” healthcare system is the bee’s knees and holds up Britain’s NHS as an example of “free” medical care, feel free to point him to this little snippet:

The NHS is struggling with its worst winter ever as A&E waiting times hit their highest on record, damning figures released today reveal.

New data from NHS England shows the health service is operating at a poorer level than at the same point in 2016, which was branded a ‘humanitarian crisis’ and saw the British Red Cross drafted in to help.

The alarming statistics, collected from between New Year’s Day and January 7, show:

  • One in five patients at major casualty units waited longer than four hours – the safe limit set by the Government – to be seen in December
  • The statistics showed that for all A&E units, 85.1 per cent of patients were seen within the four-hour period – equaling last January’s record low.
  • More than 300,000 patients were forced to wait for at least four hours in all A&E units – the highest amount since figures began in 2010.
  • Ambulance delays have also risen to record proportions, with more than 5,000 patients left stuck in the back of the vehicles waiting to be transferred to A&E.
  • While bed occupancy levels have hit their worst point yet this winter, with 24 trusts declaring they had no free beds at some point last week, the figures show.

With government, when there is over-demand there will always be under-supply, and rationing.

“Take Away Their Guns”

Bad News, Numbers & Statistics

…and they’ll just use something else. Such as knives:

London saw four fatal stabbings on New Year’s Eve, taking the total of such knifings in the capital to 80 for the whole of 2017.
And the use of knives in general is now a serious problem all over the country. In June 2017, the Office for National Statistics listed thousands of ‘blade offences’ in the previous 12 months, including 214 killings, 391 attempted murders, 438 rapes, 182 other sexual assaults, and 14,429 robberies.
There were also more than 18,500 assaults involving an injury or intent to inflict harm with a blade and 2,816 threats to kill with a knife.

So much for taking away guns to reduce crime. But that’s not the worst part of the linked article. This is:

I have long known that crimes which would once have been classified as murders are often now downgraded to ‘manslaughter’. This is done to save money and time, and to make it easier to release the culprits early to stop the prisons from bursting. But in most cases it is legally difficult to point this out.
The Johnson case is different. He is a murderer, but people who should be alive are now dead because he was wrongly convicted of a lesser crime.
In 1981, Johnson pushed his wife Yvonne off the balcony of their ninth-floor flat, after first hitting her with a vase and an ashtray. He was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of ‘provocation’. She had, he said, been arguing with him.
She was, of course, not there to give her own version of who did the provoking. He was sentenced in 1982 to three years in prison. That’s right. Three years, though in those days it really meant three years. He was out by 1985.
In 1992 Johnson strangled another woman, Yvonne Bennett, with a belt. She had annoyed him by refusing to accept a box of chocolates which he had bought her to try to win back her affections.
He tried to hang himself from a tree, but the string snapped. String? Yes, string. He was much better at killing others than at killing himself. Doctors decided he was suffering from a ‘depressive illness’ and he was sent ‘indefinitely’ to a secure hospital.
Not indefinitely enough. He was out and under ‘psychiatric care’ after two years. He went on to kill a third woman, Angela Best, by beating her with a claw hammer and throttling her with a dressing-gown cord.
As after his second killing, he tried and failed to commit suicide afterwards, this time by jumping in front of a train.Now, having first tried the manslaughter plea again, on the grounds of ‘diminished responsibility’, he has pleaded guilty to murdering Angela Best.
His injuries from the attempted suicide have left him in a wheelchair, though I wouldn’t like to guarantee that he is harmless even now. Far too late, the courts have sentenced him to 26 years, which might just be enough.
Once, I would have said this was all evidence of a system which had lost all force since it stopped treating murder as a specially hideous crime. So it is. Once, I would have said that we should restore the death penalty for heinous murder. Now, I know this cause is lost. So I can only urge you to take care.
The law refuses to protect you. Those in charge of it lack the courage or the resolve to do so. Get used to it.

The next time some idiot tells you that the death penalty doesn’t prevent murders, feel free to use the above example to show that the death penalty applied to this asshole after his first murder would indeed have prevented two more.

Fortunately, we in the United States don’t have to “get used to it”; it’s our criminals who have to get used to the fact that a career of crime might be deadly — to themselves.

Carry a gun, and make sure you know how to use it. The life you save might well be your own, or of your loved ones. The life you take will be of no consequence to anyone except the goblin’s future victims.

Remember: when anyone asks you if your wallet is worth a life, remind them that that decision was not yours, but your assailant’s. He made the decision that your wallet was worth taking a life (yours), and all you did was go along with his decision, simply substituting his life for yours.

And be glad that you live in the U.S. and not in Britain, where you would face imprisonment for self-defense, instead of congratulations.

Reverse Psychology, Or Something

Politics

I tend to look at things in a fairly simplistic manner: if what we in the U.S. are doing is pissing off the EU, then we’re doing the right thing.

I’m just pleased to see that I’m not the only one who thinks this way, at least in the case of the new law which lowers corporate tax rates, and which has caused the EU to whine:

The GOP tax plan will cause companies to flee Europe and return to the US.
The plan will cause companies to move operations to the US, creating jobs for American workers, creating more demand for American labor. And in increase in demand invariably (this is really basic economics here) drives up the price meaning American workers, on balance, can be expected to be paid more.
…
More companies doing their business in the US rather than overseas is almost by definition growth in the US economy. And economic growth means a larger base for the taxation that remains which offsets the reduced rate.
In short, what Europe is complaining about is that the tax reform will do exactly what the GOP promised for it. The Democrats can scream about “the one percent” and “tax breaks for the rich” (tax break, as a percentage is actually mostly on the middle class, but they never let truth stop them, neither the Democrat politicians nor their cheering section in the major media). Meanwhile finance ministers in Europe fear not the claims of the Democrats, but that it will actually do what the GOP promised.

So there ya go. Trump/Republican tax plan 1, EU 0.