A Modest Proposal For Spain

So Spain is facing an invasion of 60,000 Islamic migrants from Morocco into their enclave in Ceruta (and Europe is kinda freaking out about it),  and likely moving on from there onto mainland Spain itself.

Luckily, the Spanish have a solution to this problem. 

Indeed, since they've been demanding this solution on another country, I'd daresay they should boldly move forward and progressively adopt the following proposal:

 

There's a ready made slogan for it too: “From the Mountains to the Sea, Al-Andalus will be free".

Well, fair is fair, and all that. Good luck senors, you'll need it.

Iran Lied Yet Again

Remember how Obama giving Iran billions under a deal that specifically not limit Iran's ballistic missile development? 

Remember how in addition to claiming they weren't developing nuclear weapons they swore their ballistic missile program was restricted to a  range of 2,000 km?  

Good times, those. 

Anyone actually believed them was a credulous idiot, because yet again, not surprising anyone who knows about the Iranian regime, they lied. 

They just launched two missiles at Diego Garcia, 4,000 km away.

While the two missiles failed to hit their targets, this is a their revealing a capability they had sworn they were not devleoping. 

Fox News: Trump proven right on Iran's long-range missile capability as regime targets US-UK base, experts say

This officially puts Iran into the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile Club, and they now have missiles that can reach Paris, London and Berlin.  Hopefully that is a wake up call to European powers, and yet another reaosn to ensure the Mullahs do not remain in power.

Hindsight Is 2022

Ah,  the good old days when Europeans laughed at Trump and America's simplisme. Watch them smirk at the clearly horridly gauche demand that Europe increase military speeding to be able to meaningfully contribute to their own defense, and quit their reliance on Russian gas as they let their Greenies eliminate other sources of energy.

Ript: 2018: GERMANY AT UN LAUGHED AT WARNINGS OF RUSSIAN GAS RELIANCE

That attitude really didn't age well,  now did it?  Yet again Trump was right and the bien pensants were rather badly wrong.  

But hey, no mean tweets, amirite?

Prediction on The Ukraine Crisis

Failing any miscalculation or an over-enthusiastic underling somewhere messing things up, here's how I expect the Ukraine crisis to resolve.

1.  Russia gets dominion, whether by formal annexation or by influence/ volunteer occupation, over the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which is likely all that Putin wanted this round anyways as well as sending a message that Ukraine was not to join NATO.

This was just affirmed by the Biden administration as it immediately announced sanctions over these two regions - before they have actually separated from Ukraine. That's a rather tacit recognition of the breakaway - you don't sanction a part of Ukraine that is still a part of Ukraine, especially when Ukraine is your putative ally.

There will be some noise, the announced sanctions will not actually prevent Russian hegemony over the region, and the sanctions themselves will be easily routed around by Russia. 

2.  Putin gets to shore up his support in Russia by appearing to be a strongman and looking after the Russians in the regions he just separated from Ukraine - not to mention the resources of the regions. He also made Western Europe very aware of his hand on their energy spigot.

3.  Biden gets the media to trumpet his foreign policy victory of preventing war in Europe by his "tough" imposition of sanctions on the region and threats of economic sanctions on Russia after he beat the drums on the crisis by repeatedly claiming Russia had decided to invade and he'll now claim his toughness stopped it.  He gets a foreign policy distraction from the mess he's made domestically and the media can showcase his  "success" in stopping a war in Europe.

4.  The media uses this to rehabilitate Kamala Harris's image a bit as she was sent there by Biden to represent him on the situation.  Even as she gave a ridiculous, pablum-filled,  and self-contradictory speech  ("We will deter an invasion because we will impose severe sanctions if Putin does anything" and "Putin has already decided to invade" - in the same speech) she will get lots of positive coverage.  The buffing of her image is already occurring.

5.  Western Europe, after reducing their own energy generation, now remains assured of a continued flow of their needed natural gas from Russia that they depend on, so long as they don't actually do anything against Russia's territorial ambitions. All it cost was a few regions of a country they don't care much about anyways and can't do much for in any case.

In short, everybody involved wins a nice victory for domestic consumption and distraction.  Everyone, that is, except Ukraine, and the Eastern European independent states that are going to be even more nervous of being left to twist in the wind after this crisis.

Decline Is A Choice

An awful lot of the convenience and benefits of living in modern western civilization is predicated on having cheap, reliable, energy.

A lack of cheap energy can result in a loss of jobs, as factories decided to go where electricity is available at better rates, as is the case with Ford's decision not to build its new plants in Michigan:

 The Detroit News: Whitmer: Michigan lacked 'real opportunity' to compete for Ford plants

Perhaps if our energy policy at the state level wasn't hell bent on reliance on unreliable renewables and shutting down reliable energy sources, we might have had that opportunity dear governor.  The demonstrated inability of our state power grid to weather storms this summer likely didn't help either.  That's 11,000 jobs going elsewhere. 

Among the reasons stated for this decision: 

Michigan's electricity prices are one factor that puts the state at a disadvantage for such projects. In July, the average industrial price of electricity per kilowatt-hour in Michigan was 8 cents compared with the national average of 7.53 cents, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Tennessee's price was 5.85 cents, Kentucky's was 6.06 cents and nearby Ohio's was 6.63 cents.

Those rates are caused by deliberate choices made at the state level to make energy more expensive here than elsewhere. such as shutting down our state's coal and nuclear plants and not building more, while overly subsidizing wind and solar in our cloudy state

The environmental movement along with its fellow travelers is hell-bent on  reducing the West's competitive advantages and standard of living, purportedly in the name of stopping climate change.  A lot of Europeans may either pay sky-high energy prices if available or may well freeze to death this winter in pursuit of that quixotic goal.

Forbes: Winter Is Coming: Can Energy Catastrophe Be Averted?

Why a catastrophe?  The switch away from reliable baseline power from coal and nuclear to unreliable wind and solar has put them in quite a pickle, with supply unable to meet the demand, and the Biden Administration and fellow Democrats at the national and state level wish to follow suit with a similar policy which will lead to the same results.

The energy crisis in Western Europe this summer has been brought on by premature retirements of hundreds of coal and natural gas power plants in favor of massive over-reliance on wind power and, to a lesser extent, solar. Ironically, this crisis is taking place just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats attempt to ram through their massive $3.5 “budget reconciliation” bill that is in large part designed to recreate the European model in the United States.

Decline in our quality of life and economies is a choice being deliberately made by our "leaders" today.  Of course, they wont take responsibility for the consequences of these choice.  They also won't suffer from such shortages and can afford increased costs - the average American or European, not so much.

A Piece Of History Now In Hand

A delivery from across the Atlantic washed up on my door last night:

The Brexit 50 pence coin, dated the day of Brexit had arrived.

Peace, Prosperity and Friendship with All Nations.

A fitting proclamation for the restoration of British sovereignty.

This Latest European Idea Makes The Children's Crusade Seem Like An Act of Strategic Brilliance

Breitbart: European Lefties Plan to March on ISIS While Waving White Flags

Someone tell me this is a bit of satire gone off, but it seems to actually be real.

Of course, it's going to end in tears as these Euro-idealists with zero real-world experience encounter reality head-on, assuming they even get past a couple initial steps or deal with the logistics of the task. Verily the idealistic organizer of this insanity expects the march to be well received:

But she was unconcerned about the prospect of being bombed, saying: “People like me think that if five or ten thousand people are marching and getting everyone’s attention, then it’s impossible that they would bomb you,” she said.

Yeah, keep thinking those happy thoughts there sunshine - the civil war in Syria has killed Hundreds of Thousands. Your few thousand empty-headed marchers would be a rounding error to the combatants at most and a tasty snack on arrival to ISIS at the very least.

It seems that at least on a subconscious level she understands the insanity of the idea:

The precise route the march will take is yet to be finalised, but the group will leave Germany via the Czech Republic, then head through Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey before finally entering Syria.

Lawyers in each of the countries en route are preparing paperwork to ease the crossing of borders along the way. “If no-one will stop us, we will go all the way,” Alboth said.

That sounds an awful lot like this:

My bet is they'll be blocked from their journey and turned around by the first European government that bans assisted suicide along the route. Once that occurs they'll declare they've sufficiently raised awareness and declare a moral victory because of their good intentions and go home.

Talk About Taking One For The (Progressive) Team

Chalk this one up to all-encompassing ideology winning out over bodily integrity, and progressive insanity winning out over rationality. This one really is both sickening and mind-boggling.

From Instapundit: OUT: STOCKHOLM SYNDROME. IN: MANNHEIM SYNDROME. Left-wing German politician who was raped by migrants admits she LIED to police about her attackers’ nationality because she did not want to encourage racism, and from Legal Insurrection: German Activist Lied About Rapists to Avoid Fueling Racism.

Yes, really.

As seen at the link, Selin Gören reported to the police that she had been robbed not raped and that it was done by German-speakers rather than Arabic-speakers because she would have hated for the attack to be used to point out that there's an issue with this batch of immigrants sexually assaulting people, because that would be, after all, racist.

She then accused another victim of being racist for daring to point out the identity of the attacker on a different occasion for a similar sexual assault at the same location, and it may very well have been the same attacker.

It used to be said a conservative was a liberal who had been mugged. In Europe that's no longer the case.

The European liberal now denies the mugging even took place and doubles down on the liberalism.

It's clear the left's hierarchy clearly has put feminism and indeed women's rights below that of Islamists and their rights to do as they wish, for it to be otherwise would be racist and not respecting the "immigrants" kultur, nicht wahr?.

Excusing and covering up a rape on the basis of the ethnic and religious background of an attacker (or any other basis for that matter) is inexcusable. For the victim of the rape to do so herself is unfathomable and a victory of the politically correct narrative over reality. I'm only halfway surprised that she didn't state that she herself had it coming to make the insanity complete.

It's a horrible but sadly not surprising to see the left, once proponents of feminism, excusing and covering up rapes as women are now ranked second class in the leftist hierarchy behind the Islamists.

Europe Is In Deep Trouble

Newsweek: 16% of French Citizens Support ISIS, Poll Finds, while only 18% support Hollande. The poll doesn't seem to include the non-citizen Islamist immigrants, so it's quite likely that more people in France do back ISIS than Hollande.

And in Britain, the same article notes that 1,500 British Muslims have gone off to fight for ISIS - twice the number of Muslims in the British armed forces. To put this in perspective, the estimated number of full-time, active IRA terrorists at full strength was all of 200 - and they tied the United Kingdom's security forces in knots for decades.

Well, Europe's leaders now have the Eurabia they have arranged for, but they are unlikely to enjoy that which they have wrought.

Beware Of Greeks Bearing Debts

Whether you are an individual or a nation, you can only go on borrowing and spending above your means for so long. - and it looks like Greece, failing a further bailout, just hit the so long point.

The Detroit News: Greece to miss IMF debt payment and bailout to expire

USAF Exercises With Romanian MIG-21s

An interesting article over at Foxtrot Alpha about The USAF's 480th Fighter Squadron with F-16CJs participating in Exercise Dacian Warhawk and engaging in dissimilar ACM against Romanian MIG-21 Lancers.

The Romanians have certainly gotten their money's worth out of their MIG-21s. A write-up of the upgrades performed by Israel in 2002 on 102 of Romania's MIGs, giving the MIGs all-weather capability and upgraded avionics and weapons systems can be found at Defense Update.

The upgrades included 25 aircraft configured as an air interceptor variant and 85 configured as a ground attack variant. According to the Foxtrot Alpha article, 36 of the 108 remain flying.

Not bad for fifty-year-old aircraft still flying today. Romania is moving to replace their MIG-21s with F-16AM MLU Vipers coming from Portugal. The MIG-21 will still continue to fly in other nation's air forces including India and Croatia.

Perhaps the Romanians will surplus out their MIG-21s and hopefully they'll wind up on the market in the US for sale. A MIG-21 Lancer would be quite an upgrade for Murphy's Law.

Europe Wants To Dip Into Gaza - What Could Go Wrong?

Well, lots of things.

Trying to avoid being seen as irrelevant, Europe was to dip into the mess that is Gaza. The Detroit News: Europe seeks role in postwar Gaza

When UN peacekeepers can be detained by Islamic terrorists, its not hard to imagine the same occurring to the European monitors.

Or even worse, considering the historical and current pro-Arab bias of the Europeans, having them "monitoring" the situation raises concerns as to how even handed they will be, if at all.

One can also see the monitors being used as a defensive buffer to prevent Israeli responses to Hamas attacks just as UNIFIL has been used by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In short, European monitors are just not a good idea, and not a solution to the problem.

Anarcho-Tyranny Swedish Style

Borepatch has a good post on the meaning of Anarcho-Tyranny. In short its when the government doesn't enforce important laws against criminals but instead cracks down on law-abiding citizens for petty matters.

Sweden it seems is busy living it: Borepatch notes that while the police have a publicly announced policy of non-interference witht he rioters, owners of cars torched by the rioters are receiving parking tickets.

To add further insult to injury, while having a hands off approach to rioters, the Swedish police are apparently not hesitating to use force, including tear gas, to make Swedish citizens and property owners disperse and prevent them from defending their property from the rampaging "youthful immigrants".

From Gateway Pundit:

Faced by another night of terror at the hands of predominantly immigrant rioters, Swedes grown tired of the police’s inability to put an end to the unrest took to the streets Friday night to defend their neighborhoods.

. . .

In the Stockholm suburb of Tumba the police decided to abandon their earlier non-intervention policy as a large group of police officers rounded up and dispersed a group of vigilantes trying to fend off rioters.

The decision to round up vigilantes while, according to Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Löfving, ”doing as little as possible” to stop rioters, met with a wave of protests in various social media and on the Internet.

That's anarcho-tyranny for you all right, European-style.

Oh, and still not a word of it in either the Detroit Free Press nor the Detroit News websites in the world news section.

All The News That's Not Fit To Get Some Print

Tam at VFTP posts that Reuters reports on riots in Stockholm, Sweden where Muslims, cutely and euphemistically called "youths", have been setting fire to cars and rioting for three days. The Reuters report neither menitons the "M" word nor the "I" word to identify these "disaffected youths".

Unsurprisingly, the Swedish left is blaming itself for the riots rather than the wrongdoers.

Our Left Says: "Why do they hate us?", and the Swedish Left says: "Why do they burn our cars?"

The left-leaning tabloid Aftonbladet said the riots represented a "gigantic failure" of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs.

"We have failed to give many of the people in the suburbs a hope for the future," Anna-Margrethe Livh of the opposition Left Party wrote in the daily Svenska Dagbladet.

Interestingly enough, neither the Detroit Free Press nor the Detroit News deign to mention this rather news-worthy, multi-day riot.

Funny how they've wholly failed to cover it while instead giving the lead in their compilation of World/Nation news such stories as "McDonald's CEO bawled-out by 9-year-old" (The Free Press) and Report: Nation’s kids need to get more physical (The Detroit News). Note the resuklts of searches for "Sweden": The Freepand The News - not a single mention of any riots at all.

Given our large Muslim population here in the Detroit area, it's hard to tell if this media blackout is meant to kowtow to them or instead is to prevent inspiration of some spontaneous youth riots here.

Remember, its not news until they decide to cover it.

Dutch Terrorism Threat Level Raised to "Not Gouda"

The Detroit News: Dutch government raises terror threat level to 'substantial'

The push for Eurabia and open-ended immigration of assimilating Muslim radicals into Europe has consequences:

The Dutch government raised its terror threat level Wednesday from "limited" to "substantial," saying Dutch citizens are traveling to Syria to fight in the civil war and could return battle-hardened, traumatized and further radicalized.

"The chance of an attack in the Netherlands or against Dutch interests abroad has risen," the country's National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism said in a statement.

Who could ever have predicted this? Who knew that radical Muslims when faced with an open multicultural society and granted European citizenship would then instead of adopting European enlightenment ideals turn and pose a threat to that society?

Substantially not Gouda indeed.

Brussels Sprouts A Gigantic Hole In Airport Security

European Airport Security at its finest - as gang masked and armed men cut a hole in a security fence, drive two vehicles onto the tarmac and proceed to enter the cargo hold of a plane and make a clean getaway with $50 million in diamonds.

Imagine what would have happened if they had had terrorist rather than criminal financial motivations.

Apparently that European sophistication doesn't quite extend to securing the airfield or having a rapid and effective reaction plan in place for an incursion.

Detroit Free Press: Swiss airline targeted in "gigantic" diamond heist

Thought Exercise For The Morning

Democrats wish to make us more like Europe - socialized medicine; a cradle-to-grave welfare state; no nasty guns; high taxes; a 30 hour work weeks with jobs for life; a SWPL hipster culture everywhere; a small limited military good for peacekeeping and disaster relief incapable of much more; and a state run with an ever-present and all-powerful civil service staffed with the bien pensants and their scions.

Europe can run this way (all butter, low to no guns) as it has America to act as its defensive shield, supplier of military force and support for operations that Europe can't pull off on its own, and guarantor of Europe's oil supplies and sea lanes for trade

The question is: Should the Democrats succeed in reshaping America in Europe's image, what country is going to be the next America to willingly foot the bill and secure it?

Definition of Baroque: When You're Out Of Monet

Picasso, 2 Monets among works stolen at Dutch museum

The Detroit Free Press:

Thieves who broke into a Dutch museum during the night made off with 7 paintings, including a Picasso, a Matisse, and 2 Monets worth "considerable value."

The paintings were taken from Rotterdam's Kunsthal Museum, which is showing its own works as well as paintings from the Triton Foundation collection of avant-garde art.

The performance may have been captured on videotape but the thieves are currently on the loose. The paintings are worth millions of dollars and it appears to be a major failure of the museum's security.

Believe in anything, those who believe in nothing will. Yes, hmmm.

Jedi knights top 15,000 in Czech census

More than 15,000 Czechs follow the faith of the Star Wars movies' Jedi knights, official census data showed Thursday, while half of the country's 10.5 million people declined to list any religion.
"Many people adhered to the moral values of Jedi knights from the Star Wars saga," the Czech Statistical Office said in a statement, noting that the invented faith also had a strong following in countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Britain.

No word yet as to whether there's now an open schism among the Czechs between the Old-Line Jedi who believe in the Force as advanced in the Original Trilogy, and those buying the midi-chlorian theory of the Force from the Phantom Menace on, not to mention the acceptability of Jar-Jar Binks as a companion ("Splitters!").

EU bureaucrats ban businesses from stating water is wet

Instapundit reports that the EU is banning claims that ingesting water can prevent dehydration.

Yes, really.

Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.

This is perhaps the ultimate bureaucratic realization of Ayn Rand's admonition:

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Making it a crime to impart the information that drinking water can prevent dehydration certainly fits the bill.

After all, once you have banned people from being able to state obvious truths like that, you've got no limit to your potential regulatory control.