SATURDAY NIGHT THE SMITHS, OASIS.

First The Smiths with There is a light that never goes out. From their third album The Queen is dead (1986).




I really liked The Smiths' music. Make that 'like'. Guess I wasn't alone here in Belgium in their heyday. I always mused however how they were perceived in the UK itself. 'Cause with us non-native English speakers, it's the music first that we notice, the lyrics only afterwards. Whereas with Anglosaxons it's prolly the other way round, and The Smiths' lyrics, and especially Morrisey's voice, seem to be a like it or hate it thing. I vividly recall a conversation in autumn 87 in Paris between me and my longtime pal Michaël B. and two English girls whom we had met in, of all places, Notre Dame Cathedral. Upon telling them I liked The Smiths they both expressed instant disgust!


Then Oasis with Whatever. A 1994 single.




Never had much use for the arrogant Gallagher brothers, but they did make some good music.



Nite.


MFBB.

BILL WHITTLE ON CHINA "SURPASSING" THE US ECONOMY.

I wrote "surpassing" because that's only if you adjust for purchasing power in both countries, using the so-called PPP metric (Purchasing Power Parity). In that case, according to the IMF, China will have a PPP-relative GDP of 17.632 Trillion dollars, whereas the US's will be 17.416 trillion. Not adjusted for PPP, there's still a big chasm between the two countries, as all people with a healthy, no-nonsense gut feeling about economy will suspect. But still, the evolution is undeniable...




... as well as unavoidable, since China's economy is becoming more free market, more capitalistic by the day, whereas the US economy is becoming ever more regulatory, more socialistic.

The goon in the WH promised change, and Americans are getting change indeed.


MFBB.

MEET RAYMONDE LE LEPVRIER, SOCIALIST UNION THUG.

We're talking about a woman here, no less. Or at least a creature that came on this world equipped as such. Since that fateful day, she's morphed into this:




So what's this about? I'll try to keep it succinct and to the point.


Three years ago, after the longest government formation in Belgium ever - probably in the entire world - two young supposedly centrist and/or center-right assholes, Wouter Beke from the "Christian" "Democrats" and Alexander De Croo, from the "Flemish" "Liberals", were instrumental in installing Elio Di Rupo, the Parti Socialiste's bigshot, on the seat of Belgian Prime Minister. This to the detriment of the N-VA and its leader Bart De Wever, supposedly also center-right, but regarded by our moral superiors as a Vlaams Belang Lite variant. Which it is not, but more about that later.

The tenure of Mr Di Rupo and his socialist-infested government predictably turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, with a.o. catastrophic job losses.

So the May 2014 elections resulted in a Big Win for the N-VA.

De Wever, a skilled strategist, pulled the strings and managed to fabricate an N-VA - Open VLD - MR coalition. Open VLD are the "Flemish" "Liberals", MR the Walloon "Liberals".

In Belgium, no other party than the Vlaams Belang is truly rightwing, but the PC crowd and their lackeys in the media and the educational system have done a good job at convincing the Great Unwashed that this government, this NVA_OpenVLD_MR coalition, is rightwing.

Even so, we have been having a soi-disant center-right government for the last couple of months, entirely WITHOUT SOCIALISTS. No Flemish socialists, no Walloon socialists. And this is a fairly unique situation in Belgium.

The will of the people you know. It's something called 'democracy'.

But BOY, them socialists DON'T LIKE IT.

So they've been organizing strikes for three weeks now. First at the provincial level, and last Monday nationwide.

It has become clear they've got actually rather little leverage in the private sector.

But UNFORTUNATELY, they do have serious leverage in public transport, in the ports, in the educational system.

Their efforts to paralyze the country should not be seen as a serious attempt to negotiate with the government about the austerity measures, but as a childish act of vengeance for not being part of the government.

Yes, basically that's what they are most angry about. Sad losers that they are, the leftists are NOT AMUSED at having been shoved aside in the most recent election.

That's why everybody has to feel it.

That's why on quite a lot of industrial estates, they have been setting up roadblocks at the entrances, not manned with people who actually worked there, but by Union goons.

That's why, while for themselves they claim the right to go on strike - which is okay for me - THEY DENY OTHERS THE RIGHT TO WORK.

And that's why a Union Troll like Madame Raymonde Le Lepvrier, secretary of a Namur chapter of the socialist union SETCa, part of the larger FGTB organisation, last Monday stormed in a fashion mall and started throwing expensive clothing around in the presence of the shop owner and her personnel, who had been willing to show up.

And that's why "Madame" Le Lepvrier threatened the shopkeeper that if she did not close the shop, she would turn the entire business in a ruin.

Her idea being that if THEY, the Socialists, decide not to work (which is an oxymoron since not working is basically their modus operandi under all circumstances), THEN NOBODY WILL WORK.

Tolerant Socialism at its finest!


If you want to sign a petition to have this CUNT removed from her plush "job" as Regional Union secretary, feel free to join Outlaw Mike.

All of this may seem small beer to the terrible turmoil everywhere in the world - and it is - but all the same, it's the same destructive force that is to blame for a large part, perhaps the largest part, of the world's ills that is on display here - Socialism. The "philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, with as its inherent virtue the equal sharing of misery."

Dixit Winston The Great.



MFBB.

FREE FIRE ZONE: KNOWN WOLF APOLOGISTS.

Check out Free Fire Zone with the Center for Security Policy's Jim Hanson:




On the CSP's site there's also a good piece by Kyle Shideler.


MFBB.

BILL WHITTLE ON THE NEW BARBARISM.

A smack in your face video by Bill Whittle that teaches us a thing or two about how leftists are prepared to lie, cheat, and ruin normal citizens' lives in order to further their 'progressive' agenda.




.... and one of those things is indeed the Tawana Bradley Case, which was a hoax set up in 1987 by this at the time 15-year old African-American girl who, in order to escape punishment from her mother and stepfather, faked a rape at the hands of six white males, one of them a police officer, of which she had supposedly been a victim.

Sure, what catches your eyes immediately is that already back then, this hideous creature of an Al Sharpton was at the forefront of efforts to turn this into a nationwide hatefest.

But apart from that wholly expected fact, take Tawana Bradley herself.

A closer look at her background and surroundings reveals how utterly familiar the story of her life sounds for those aware of the massive problem that is the Destruction of the Black Family. Even at a younger age (than 15) she had been spending 'nights with boys'. She 'ran away from home sometimes'. She had been arrested for shoplifting. She was beaten not only by her mother, Glenda, but also by her stepfather, notice that, her STEPfather, a Ralph King (one would start to wonder if there are any normal black households left in the United States). That stepfather had a violent past which included stabbing his first wife 14 (fourteen) times, and later shooting and killing her. At one point he was also overheard talking about his stepdaughter 'in a sexualised manner'. To top it all off, earlier on the day Tawana Bradley went missing, she had skipped school to visit her boyfriend, Todd Buxton. This character was at the time serving a six-month jail sentence! And so on, and so on, and so on.

Is it any wonder that young black people remain stuck in the gutter when they have to grow up in such hellish surroundings?

But do we get to know all this? Of course not! It's all whitey's fault!!!


While Bill Whittle makes a convincing case for the New Barbarians, Mark Steyn does a similar exercise, partly using the same evidence, for what I would call the New Victimhood:

"...If you're not fortunate enough to have a great-great-great-grandmother who's listed as Cherokee in the online transcription of an 1894 marriage application, what do you do? Lena Dunham is an upper-middle-class child of white privilege who's had a charmed life, but she's a victim, too. According to her new memoir, she was raped by "Barry", the token conservative at Oberlin. The real-life Barry the Conservative denies raping her, and Random House has been forced to issue a statement "regretting the confusion" and to cover his legal bills, which he'd been paying for by "crowd-funding". The publisher couldn't resist a parting sneer:

* We are offering to pay the fees Mr. Minc has billed his client to date. Our offer will allow Mr. Minc and his client to donate all of the crowd-funding raised to not-for-profit organizations assisting survivors of rape and sexual assault.

Because even if Barry the Conservative never raped Lena Dunham, odds are he's raped someone else, right? As Ann Coulter put it:

How about donating it to organizations that assist survivors of false rape accusations?

Rather than an epidemic of campus rape, there seems to be some sort of psychological inversion of "white flight", in which untold numbers feel the need to flee their bland middle-class suburbs and pitch up in edgier ghettos. You'll have noticed the recent uptick in news of the transgendered - indeed, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, author of the now discredited University of Virginia gang-rape story, was previously reporting on the epidemic of trans rape (Ms Erdely appears to be the Rape Correspondent of Rolling Stone). I note there are some three times as many male-to-female transgenders as there are female-to-male. So all that "gender fluidity" is a vast net transfer from the male brutalizer sector to the female victim sector. At some point it would seem likely to become a flood. After all, it's not so difficult to imagine, a fake gang-rape story or three down the line, elite universities requiring gender reassignment as a condition of continued male admission. In some sense, the swollen ranks of the transgendered seem to have intuited that the jig is up for guys. Might as well check out of the guy business entirely. I'm thinking of pitching Marvel Comics a new superhero group featuring a transwoman, an ambigender, a pangender, an intergender, a bigender and a 2-spirited called Ex-Men.

We are all ex-men now. The sadly misnamed Cavalier Daily of Charlottesville has a highly non-cavalier story about how "Jackie", the "victim" of the University of Virginia "gang" "rape", is owed a debt of gratitude for "pulling back the curtain on rape":

* Jackie, a University student, told Rolling Stone magazine seven men — one of whom she worked with as a lifeguard at the Aquatic and Fitness Center — raped her at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party on September 28, 2012.

The fraternity has since disputed Jackie's story, claiming there was no party on that particular date and that no Phi Kappa Psi brother worked at the Aquatic and Fitness Center at that time. The conflicting accounts have stirred controversy on Grounds and in the national media.

"I felt people were fixating on the details and quality of Rolling Stone reporting, and the fact is, whatever happened, something happened to Jackie," Mirza said. "And even if she made up the story, things like this do happen, and there are sexual assaults that don't get reported, so I meant to bring the focus back to Jackie. Whatever comes of this, we're still behind her and we still think she did something brave by coming forward."

"Even if she made up the story", she "pulled back the curtain on rape". And even if there was no rape going on behind the curtain she raised awareness of how rape culture is so prevalent that women are being traumatized into making up stories that they've been gang-raped by seven Phi Kappa Psi men even when they haven't been. The blogger Oliver Willis thinks it's "super dangerous" that the right is seizing on the implosion of Rolling Stone's story to insist that "all rape allegations can be ignored". But isn't it the left that's trivializing real rape by according fake rape the same protected status? After all, if Jackie is incredibly "brave" for "coming forward" to "pull back the curtain" on something that never happened, if "gang rape" no longer requires either rape or a gang, if it is not necessary to have actually been attacked, brutalized and sexually violated in order to be a rape victim, then what's the big deal if one has been?

My old Spectator comrade Theodore Dalrymple once observed:

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

The less it corresponds to reality the better - if the purpose is to humiliate, and force you to acquiesce in the lies. As Virginia's Professor James W Ceaser wrote:

Anyone who expressed reserve about the article or who dared to apply the adjective "alleged" to the acts described faced the charge of being indifferent to sexual violence and rape. The penalty was to be written out of the community. Best, one observer cautioned, not to poke the beast... The president of the university, Teresa Sullivan, made clear where the initiative lay: "I want you to know that I have heard you, and that your words have enkindled this message."

What she and they are, in fact, enkindling is reality: They are setting fire to truth, and justice, and civilization. There are plenty of real rape victims out there - the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the sex slaves of ISIS, the children of Rotherham - but they're useless to the lynch mob in advancing its goals and so nothing can "enkindle" their stories. But don't worry, the next pseudo-victim will be along any moment:

Then flash'd the living Lightnings from her Eyes,
And Screams of Horror rend th' affrighted Skies.
Not louder Shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast,
When Husbands, or when Lapdogs breathe their last.

Ah, Lena Dunham! Last week I wrote about how this leftist cunt had overnight become De Standaard's new progressive heroine! Well, it appears De Standaard is a l'il backtracking! Suddenly Lena the Edgy Girl, 'loved by everyone in Antwerp', ain't that edgy anymore, and prolly a few of the 600,000 or so Antwerpians have gone AWOL when it comes to loving her. Check out their 'story':




Translation:

"EXCERPT IN LENA DUNHAM'S BOOK BEING REDACTED.

Lena Dunham's debut keeps causing mayhem. A paragraph in 'Not that kind of girl', in which she's writing about indecent sexual behaviour of a co-student, caused trouble for a person of the same name. This error is being redacted in future prints, published Random House communicated to the American website The Wrap..."

My oh my, what polished bullshit! 'Indecent sexual behaviour of a co-student'. The Belgian peasants obviously should remain unaware that Miz Dunham specifically mentioned a 'mustachioed Republican by the name of Barry', the 'resident Conservative at Oberlin'. In other words, it was a deliberate attempt to discredit rightwingers. Now, you can AB-SO-LU-TE-LY be sure that De Standaard's editors know this. They know that the person Lena Dunham winked at was a rightwinger. But that's a crucial fact they omit. Oh, it was just a 'person of the same name'. That said person, 'Barry One', a family man with kids, risked grave personal and professional damage because of Dunham's false accusations - don't matter. Doesn't matter to De Standaard. Their message has been delivered. Next fake story that confirms Rightwingers are eeeeeeeevil, racist, nasty people if you please.


Whittle with the New Barbarism, Steyn with the New Professional Victimhood, that cunt Lena Dunham, where was I?


Oh yes! Leftism is a Mental Disease.


MFBB.


PS: memo to De Standaard 'journalists': YOU SUCK.