Author: Mélencron

Update: Macron wins. 

It hangs in the balance, if we’re to believe media reports. Even if the outcome is not that portentous, the showdown between Macron and Le Pen is pivotal to the future of France itself. Apparently, turnout has decreased dramatically, with supporters of defeated candidates Melenchon and Fillon abstaining from voting. Follow the results as they come in.

Author: Graeme Maclean

Update: Mayor Khan speaks out. 

Tommy Robinson explains what makes London such a terrific terror target for Islamists. 

Ben Shapiro takes the media to task. 

Multiple fatalities. Over 20 casualties. 

Could the timing of this attack be symbolic? 

The Guardian is live-blogging the terrorist assault upon the UK’s seat of power.

-We begin today’s rattle with an interesting story about an Indian-or Muslim, depending upon PR needs of the open borders squad-athlete who was ushered into this country by our very own Senator Chuck Schumer. Unfortunately, this gifted sportsman is also a sex offender. Perhaps this isn’t quite as bad as having an alien interning for your office who is also a registered sex offender, but it does make you question the collective wisdom of our Democratic friends in Congress. Maybe we shouldn’t be taking their advice, vis-a-vis, controversial immigration decisions made by the Executive branch.

-In a reminder that there are actually rational people living in The People’s Republic of Vermont, the voters of Rutland have just turned out their incumbent mayor, Chris Louras, after he attempted to deluge their town with Muslim refugees from Syria and Iraq. While ignoring the public’s deep discontent with our government’s refugee resettlement programs-when not imputing racism and bigotry to Americans who express reservations about these schemes-is the norm, even the alternative weekly was forced to concede the enormous political consequences of this decision.

-For those of you who were wondering whatever happened to the thousands of unaccompanied minors who were allowed to enter into this country, wonder no more. According to an in-depth backgrounder from the Center for Immigration Studies, our government has absolutely no clue what it’s doing. While over 80 percent of their sponsors are illegal aliens, 44 percent of the UACs in question were ordered deported. Have the vast majority of these children been deported? Of course not, silly!

-You may ask yourself, “Why is this important?” It’s a good question. After all, it’s not as if these individuals will bring brutal Central American inter-gang warfare to the placidity of our nation’s suburbs, right? Well, I have some bad news for you on that score. It turns out that Latin American gangs, including MS-13, one of the most prolific and ruthless criminal networks in the Western Hemisphere, has actually established a pretty firm beachhead in our own backyard. Naturally, almost all of these gangbangers are criminal aliens. In an ironic twist, the moniker of the man who made an abortive attempt to unify the Mara Salvatrucha within the United States is, you guessed it, Dreamer.

-For those of you who think Europe’s approach to immigration is any less self-defeating and preposterous than the United States, I give you France. A nation where municipal authorities in Calais are attempting to prevent thousands of migrants from recreating the notorious refugee camp known as The Jungle. The biggest proponents of turning The Camp of the Saints into reality are, of course, other Europeans who believe Western civilization is uniquely evil. The ostensible plight of migrants from the third world is simply a cudgel with which the Gramscian left-with the help of corporate bean counters-can beat native Europeans into submission.

-After all, what are a few dozen, or a few hundred, honor killings in the grand scheme of things? Is the systemic dehumanization and murder of girls in nations which were responsible for the idea of religious toleration and freedom of conscience too high a price to pay for erecting the beautiful mosaic? When bad whites are saying intemperate, obnoxious things about people who are off-white, doesn’t that negate their entire philosophical worldview?  Even if that perspective is confirmed multiple times every single day?

-Everyone knows that the real reason millions of Muslims across the world support ISIS, Al Qaeda, and similar jihadist networks is because there isn’t enough inclusion in Hollywood casting decisions. See, the real villain isn’t Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It’s those bastards who refused to green light an all-Muslim reboot of Star Trek!

-The cognitive dissonance at work in the mind of an an open borders leftist must be overpowering. They want to live in a high-trust, quasi-collectivist techno-utopia-along the lines of something created by Gene Roddenberry-yet simultaneously support policies which make this already far-fetched goal virtually impossible. The mentality of a social justice warrior in high dudgeon can be found in this VICE piece, which laments the role homeless shelters have been playing in the deportation of migrants. The traditional liberal concern for the working class and the poor is discarded when it conflicts with the categorical imperative, i.e. preserving diversity. The spiritual hollowness and intellectual vapidity of this type of leftist ‘thinking’ was brilliantly and caustically skewered by George Orwell nearly a century ago. It’s good to know that some things haven’t changed all that much.

-I’d like to leave you on a good note, so here’s some refreshing news to come out of Austria. 8 Iraqi men have been convicted of the gang rape of a tourist. Unlike the Middle Eastern cab driver in Halifax who was, to all intents and purposes, high-fived by a Nova Scotia judge for raping an unconscious passenger, these rapists were actually given (relatively) stiff prison sentences. What’s more, we’ve discovered that these horrific incidents actually constitute an anomaly within the Islamic immigrant community.

Migrants and refugees from other countries expressed concern that the crime will make Austrians hostile toward all newcomers.

“Eight people raping a woman — that’s honor-less! Such a thing doesn’t exist in our religion,” Burhan Akbas, a migrant from Turkey, said.

“When such people come here and screw up like that, then everybody will think that Chechens, Afghans, all refugees from war areas are all the same,” Mansur Salamou, an asylum-seeker from Chechnya, said. “But it’s not like that. For example, the majority of us — we also cause problems, commit crimes. But no rape! Only criminal assaults and robberies.”

See, Europeans?! You only have to worry about being assaulted and robbed by the millions of North African and Middle Eastern refugees and migrants making their way towards Europe. What a relief.

With Marine Le Pen’s formal declaration, it’s fitting that we reflect upon how Europe arrived at this point. BPS vividly describes how the tyranny of the European Union-with its commitment to coercive multiculturalism, open borders, and erasure of sovereignty-has led to the popularity of Le Pen, Wilders, and the like. It’s worth watching this video in its entirety, especially for those of you who are curious where the nationalist backlash to Europe’s ruling class comes from and where it’s headed.

Update: CIS has published a backgrounder on this agreement. 

Whatever adjectives can be used to describe our new President, ‘diplomatic’ is not one which springs readily to mind. His phone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull merely serves to reinforce a reputation for bluntness that was already solidified within the public imagination. In this case, however, I think his impolitic speech is actually beneficial for American citizens. For the refugee resettlement swap cooked up by his predecessor, which involves the exchange of non-Muslim Central American refugees for Muslim boat people currently being detained at the behest of the Australian government, is another disastrous scheme to further erase our borders.

The ordinary refugee resettlement process is almost completely insulated from the democratic process. Seemingly benefiting everyone from United Nations functionaries, to bureaucrats in the federal government, but especially VOLAGs whose survival depends upon a constant stream of clients, refugee resettlement takes no account of the feelings of ordinary American citizens. The people whose lives could be ruined by the decisions made hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away by unelected officials.

The last-minute decision of President Obama to craft a backroom deal with his Australian counterpart, in large part as a means of papering over his own catastrophic failure to enforce this nation’s immigration laws, merely highlights the lack of accountability and fundamentally anti-democratic nature of this entire process. Naturally, open borders fanatics are using this incident to parade their virtue before the benighted American public, condemning the philistinism of the Australian and American governments, as well as the people who insist that their representatives protect the internal security of their nations.

Nevertheless, this is a reminder that who lives in our country is not a matter for international plebiscites or social justice campaigns. Thousands of Muslim foreigners being transferred to the heart of this country as part of a sleazy quid pro quo is not what what Americans voted for in November, and simply because it has the stamp of approval from our outgoing President and Australia’s current Prime Minister-the sixth in less than a decade-doesn’t mean the American public should sit back and accept it. It is the current year, and the powers that be should get used to it.

Update: I’m not saying it’s an inside job, but…

Erdogan reaches out. 

The assassin was a member of the riot police, according to Turkey’s interior minister. 

Syrian opposition celebrates the assassination. 

The assailant-now deceased-appears to have been a Turkish policeman. Heckuva job, Erdogan! 

Footage of what appears to be the assassination. 

As if we needed another reason to halt our country’s disastrous involvement in Syria, the Russian ambassador to Turkey was just shot and killed in that nation’s capital. Syria, like Lebanon from 1975-1990, is an irresolvable tinderbox with too many warring factions to enumerate, all of whom-even the Kurds-are committing atrocities. Instead of sending more troops to this charnel house, we should be withdrawing every soldier on the ground and cutting off all military supplies to the jihadist rebels. Instead of following this sensible policy, the lunatics serving in Congress have decided that it would be a swell idea to arm these same Sunni terrorists with weaponry capable of downing civilian aircraft.

Just like in Star Wars, there are no good guys in this conflict. Whether it’s the Russian air force indiscriminately bombing Syrian cities and towns, Iranian proxy Hezbollah attempting to ethnically cleanse Sunni villages, American-backed moderate rebels beheading children, or Syrian Christians facing complete extinction at the hands of emboldened Sunnis, there are no parties to this conflict with clean hands. This country has no strategic interests in Syria, other than thwarting the spread of ISIS-which humanitarian, liberal interventionists have facilitated-and preventing jihadist sleeper cells from establishing roots in American soil through refugee resettlement.

This past month has been filled with such a glut of information that it’s no surprise some items slipped past  an already news-saturated public. Unfortunately, one event which deserves more scrutiny is the United Kingdom’s decision to enact one of the most draconian invasions of privacy and restrictions of personal liberty in recent memory. The Investigatory Powers Act has a plethora of horrible features, including but not limited to a ban on end-to-end encryption technology, the creation of a criminal offense for unlawfully accessing Internet data, and investing numerous intelligence, police, and government bureaucracies with the ability to see Internet connection records without a warrant.

The video produced by Black Pigeon Speaks is a good primer on this abominable piece of legislation, and I recommend watching it to get a better idea of what awaits the people of the United Kingdom. A nation where you can already be arrested for thought crime. Prepare for the Panopticon. Coming to a nation near you.

Update: A thoughtful leftist analyzes the 1st round of France’s election. 

The first round of primary voting for Les Républicains is complete and it looks like Nicolas Sarkozy’s bid to return to the Élysée Palace is over. For those of you who are Marine Le Pen fans, this might appear to be bad news, although the coronation of her presumptive opponent by European media seems a bit premature. The truth is that this result makes her path to victory more difficult, since it eliminates a scenario which diversity-enamored, Islam-friendly socialists would have found untenable. Namely, allow someone who promises to take a sledgehammer to their multiculturalist paradise to become president of France, or vote for a man whom the left has spent the past decade demonizing, despite his French-like qualities.

The prospect of facing a socially conservative, economically liberal opponent with none of the political baggage of the former president, nor the anchor of paternalistic Europhile liberalism, is a daunting prospect for Le Pen. Whether or not she’ll be able to overcome the obstacles in her path-should she face Fillon later this year, remains to be seen. What is beyond dispute, however, is that France-like much of Europe and North America-has grown tired of the left’s solutions to problems that it had a hand in creating.

Germany recently marked an ignominious anniversary, one which future generations of Germans-assuming there are any-will look back upon with shame and regret. I’m speaking, of course, about Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome over a million settlers from the Islamic world into the bosom of her country. The horrific consequences of this monumental decision have been documented on an hourly basis for those who care to look. The fact that a majority of the German population no longer believes she’s fit to serve as Chancellor, and that over two-thirds believe her decision to deconstruct their nation was a bad idea is not nearly as shocking as the significant minority of Germans who still want to proceed along this suicidal path.

Fortunately, there are rumblings of an internal rift within the party she relies upon to maintain power. Whether or not this amounts to anything, the need to dethrone Angela Merkel is clear to anyone who cares about the future of Western civilization. Even if Germany retook control of its borders tomorrow, a pre-existing demographic tidal wave threatens to permanently efface German culture as we’ve known it for millennia. However, if nothing is done to reverse the catastrophic policies pursued by current European leaders, Europe as a continent is going to collapse. The fact that Mama Merkel herself is complaining about the reluctance her Czech, Hungarian, and Polish counterparts have shown in embracing vibrant diversity is telling.

If these migrants, i.e. invaders, are so wonderful, then why would the Mother of Refugees want to “redistribute” them? Think about this for a minute. If the CEO of an extremely lucrative firm were to offer you thousands of stock options in his or her thriving company, would you be filled with resentment? Would you avail yourself of every opportunity to unload those stocks on neighbors and friends? Why is the woman who is singularly responsible for the disaster unfolding across the European continent reluctant to accept more of the men who she has repeatedly assured us constitute an unparalleled boon for the Germany economy and culture? Could it be that she has been deceiving the German public all this time? Might there be some very legitimate reasons why ordinary Germans don’t desire millions more unskilled, virtually unemployable refugees who are responsible for an unprecedented increase in criminal activity? Might vetting future army recruits for ISIS membership not be the most efficacious use of state resources?

These are all rhetorical questions, but they point to the necessity of politically removing the main source of Germany’s-and to a lesser extent, Europe’s-current misery. Regardless of who replaces Merkel, the fact that she needs to go is beyond dispute to any rational observer who wants to prevent Europe from descending into yet another Dark Age. Germany might not survive another year of their Chancellor’s glorious experiment.

Update: Yes, I realize that this image macro has a typo, but there’s only so much proper grammar you can expect from people on the Internet. 

One of the more  arresting scenes in Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s memoir takes place when she visits her dying father in a London hospital. A man that despised the West, who tried to force his daughter into an arranged marriage which would have enslaved her to purdah for the rest of her natural life, yet exploited its generosity and technological prowess in order to prolong his existence, the dialogue between father and daughter vividly illustrates the problem of Muslim integration.

An even starker, more immediate contrast between these two irreconcilable civilizations occurred earlier in that chapter, when Ayaan was walking towards her father’s deathbed and came across a group of women-presumably-enshrouded in niqabs. Women who proudly  embraced a symbol of 7th century Arab-Muslim hegemony and hatred of Western values were now defiantly walking through Europe’s commercial capital. The shock evinced by Ayaan, who was born into the Hawiye tribe in the Horn of Africa, merely served to demonstrate the journey-not only in distance, but in mentality-which she had made over the 4 decades of her life, and the emotional and intellectual stagnancy so many others who came there remain mired in.

I was reminded of these scenes while reading about the latest atrocity perpetrated by a Somali refugee, or a Norwegian-Somali, in the bizarre parlance of the UK press, on the streets of London. It’s difficult to say whether the political leaders who have brought this dystopian hell-scape to our shores fully understand the implications of what they’re doing, or if they even care. As others have pointed out, the woman who once (correctly) branded multiculturalism a failure has now come around to the conclusion that the people who she rules need to fuck off. It’s entirely possible that our current political class simply believes that the periodic bloodlettings of infidels, systemic rape and sexual dehumanization of Western women, and psychic terror inflicted upon the indigenous population is the cost for vibrant diversity. The enormous powers they’ve accumulated in the process, including encroachments upon the speech and free assembly of their most prominent critics, simply being a fringe benefit.

However, it’s worth contemplating what the end game of these catastrophically stupid politicians looks like. After all, it’s hard to see how you preserve your cherished modern nostrums of LGBTQ rights whilst importing millions of people who would like nothing more than to throw gay men and gender non-conformists off of the highest rooftop. Just ask the residents of Europe’s former gay Mecca, Amsterdam, if  you can catch them when they’re not fleeing from their country’s newest additions. Enlightened liberals rightly condemn the shameful treatment of scientific visionary Alan Turing, yet the fact is that he would have probably been hung from a crane if he lived in a nation whose cultural peculiarities these same progressives demand we understand and even accept.

But what if the nastier byproducts of Islamic, third world immigration, e.g. honor killings, Taharrush, and attempting to assassinate people who draw things, could be magically eliminated before these folks crossed customs? Wouldn’t the ineluctable pull of diversity convince you to embrace the importation of millions from Somalia, Bangladesh, and the like? Well, no, I don’t think it would. Even if I were to accept the somewhat implausible story that the latest murder spree in the heart of Europe had nothing to do with Islamic dogma, I’m still not certain how this is a justification for completely effacing the historic American nation and European continent.

Perhaps this truly was an instance of a mentally unstable young man going postal, and not a carefully plotted jihadist plot. But even if that’s the case, I fail to find that reassuring. As numerous international bodies have documented over the past 3 decades, the rate of untreated mental illness in Somalia is astronomical. I described a case of one such disturbed young woman several years ago, but that portrait is by no means an aberration. The idea that we’re helping mentally unbalanced individuals by transporting them into a wholly alien culture, putting them on the dole, and asking them to integrate-much less enhancing the quality of life in our nations-is so absurd as a proposition that it could only be accepted by someone completely divorced from reality.

We’re being asked to accept the notion that the deracination of millions from the third world, who have a completely different value system and religious ethic than the people they’ll be forced to interact with for the rest of their lives, is somehow a brilliant idea. This is why cultural Marxism is a mental illness.