Obama Will Be Forced to Resign If He is Forced to Renege on KSM Trial in NYC

First, I’d like to wish everyone a happy Guantanamo Bay Closure Day!

Sec. 3. Closure of Detention Facilities at Guantánamo. The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order. …

BARACK OBAMA

THE WHITE HOUSE,

January 22, 2009.

Now, although some may think the heading for this post is overblown, it must be recognized that there is a crisis brewing in Washington over Obama’s treatment of the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and there are signals that his decision to hold the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York City is in peril.

If the crisis over treating the Detroit terrorist Abdulmutallab as a criminal continues to brew, and the Congress is able to sideline the New York trial of KSM, I predict that credible calls for Obama to resign the presidency will begin to be heard.

These two missteps, if widely disseminated, should be the final straws that break Obama and from which he will never be able to recover politically. No matter which direction Obama pivots after the devastating election in Massachusetts, these two national security missteps show that he has become an ineffective and incompetent leader. And with his incompetence fully exposed- especially on foreign policy and national security issues- he has become a dangerous liability not only for the Democratic Party, but more importantly, for the country as well. This should be unacceptable to a country trying to recover from economic crisis, that is in a war with extremists, and which is being challenged internationally on a every level.

The crisis over giving Abdulmutallab civilian legal rights was exacerbated Wednesday by the congressional testimony of Dennis Blair, the  Director of National Intelligence. In that testimony, Blair said that it was a mistake that Abdulmutallah was not held for interrogation by the High Value Interrogation Group, of HIG, an agency created for the express purpose of making decisions about terrorist interrogations. Blair  explained  that even though the FBI was able to question Abdulmutallah briefly before his surgery on Christmas Day and that it revealed a “a treasure trove of intelligence,” shortly after his surgery, Abdulmutallah was read his Miranda rights and clammed up.

It was also revealed at the same hearing that Blair,  FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael E. Leiter, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano-the four most important counter-terrorism officials in the country- were not consulted about the charging decision. Essentially the decision to treat Abdulmutallah as a civilian with full legal rights  was made on the ground, and many questions have been raised about the Administration’s preparedness on domestic terrorism.

Also, in a Newsweek blog, Michael Isikoff reveals that there is growing consensus in Congress that locating the trial in New York City was a really, really bad idea. Isikoff reports that Republican Senator Lindsay Graham will soon force another vote on his previously failed amendment to strip funding for the trial. Isikoff reports that there is renewed support for the measure in Congress:

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says he will force another vote on his amendment to stop the trial (which was defeated 54-45 in November) once Congress reconvenes. “With Detroit and everything else going on, we’ve got a pretty good chance of winning this thing,” says Graham, adding that he’s privately heard from a number of Democrats, saying “they’re with me.” GOP Rep. Frank Wolf says he plans a similar move in the House. “I’m afraid it’s probably going to pass,” says Democratic Rep. Jim Moran, who has strongly backed the administration on the issue.

These are epic failures by Obama and his Administration. Add this to his clearly inept handling of Iran, his admitted failure on Middle East peace, and not to mention his falling popularity and stalled domestic agenda, and it is very conceivable that even people within his own party will begin calling for his resignation.

No matter which direction Obama pivots now, I think it is almost impossible for him to reclaim any political ground. If he moves to the center, he loses the far-Left. Why would they support this move before he gets health care? Why should they put their issues on hold in an attempt to save Obama’s presdency and a possible second term? They have the political clout now and can’t get things done.

No, unless they believe him blindly, the Left must  demand that Obama moves to the left now, and if he pivots to the center, they will move against him and start clamoring for a third party or support a more progressive candidate in 2012.

Consequently, if Obama moves to the Left, there is a good chance he will be finished altogther. While this may inspire his far-left base to get out in the streets again, it will alienate the moderates and resurgent conservatives even more. They will not give him the cover he sorely needs on his foreign policy and national security incompetence, and he will then appear to be  flailing and ineffective on that front.

So, his best move is probably going to the center. Once there, he must hope that his administration’s repeated attacks on Bush and conservatives in order to decimate them are forgotten. He must hope the Tea Party Movement goes away (and it isn’t), and that the electorate forgets his massive failures and lies to date. If “moderates” and conservatives are unwilling to support  Obama’s move to the center and he simultaneously loses the far-left, what will be the point of him serving out the next four years? (He is already in danger of losing the far-left anyway, given that he has not repealed some of the most hated of Bush’s anti-terror policies. Discarding the radical domestic agenda now, I think, will put them over the edge.) He will then be unable to garner support for anything he does, and the country will enter a protracted stage of political crisis as its leader will be powerless. And political crises are consistently resolved throughout the world by the main perpetrators of the crisis being forced to step down. Here and now, that would be Barack Obama.

_____

Incidentally, I found a video that sends chills down my spine. And in accordance with my series on the crisis in Honduras, I made a connection that is very unpleasant.

Watch the video below, especially the first 2:20 (especially 1:50-2:18) minutes and you’ll see what I mean. See if you make the same connection I do. Don’t believe you are just paranoid if you do, this documentary was produced by the CBC in the 1980s, and was not funded by the Birchers or any anti-Communist group in America.

Perhaps protracted political crisis in the United States is what Obama wants. If it is, we’re in for a bumpy ride in the coming year.

Success at Copenhagen. Pointing the way to Kyoto II was not a fool’s supper.

ORIGINAL REPORT from CONSERVATIVE POLICY NEWS

The general narrative that has emerged from the Copenhagen  Climate Change Conference is that it was a failure because no binding agreement on carbon reduction goals was signed. But, despite the predictable assertions by developing and poorer countries, and environmental NGO that the summit was “farcical,” the critique conceals the successful nature of the Accord for climate change activists.

While many of the developing countries did not get the deep emission cuts they sought from the industrialized world, what was agreed to in no way defeats the push for an international policy architecture that advantages developing nations, nor does it curtail the notion that vigorous redistributive efforts, through cap-and-trade, will be employed in the future.

On the contrary, the resulting document, the Copenhagen Accord,  marks the first time that the United States has signed on to the idea that a “climate debt” is somehow owed to developing countries by advanced, industrialized ones. This is a remarkable precedent and probably what Obama meant when he said the Accord was “an important first step” before he left the Conference.

View this document on Scribd

Through the Copenhagen Accord, a goal that would redistribute $100 billion a year by 2020 was agreed to by the developing countries. The U.S., the European Union, and Japan  also agreed to  provide $30 billion in financing to developing countries between 2010 and 2012. In addition the signatories have obligated themselves to  “pursue opportunities to use markets to achieve cost-effective mitigation actions.”  This is an important development for the United States as the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Bill  was passed in U.S. Congress in 2009 and there is a possibility that it may  pass the United States Senate in early 2010. In fact, at least one commentator has suggested that the outcome of the so-called “shameful” Copenhagen Accord could be that it boosts the odds for the U.S. Senate to pass a bipartisan cap-and-trade bill.

The passage of cap-and-trade in the United States would be the beginning of a truly global redistributive scheme, that would effectively take money from the American energy consumer and put it in the hands of foreign governments or foreign investors. With cap-and-trade, American consumers may possibly be taxed (through additional costs) every time they turn up the heat, use their air conditioning, drive a car and take a plane. Though China and India would be the main beneficiaries of this policy, anti-American countries in Latin America, notably Lula Da Silva’s Brazil and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, also stand to benefit from this transfer. Is there any wonder that Chavez railed against the United States and insulted Obama at Copenhagen-he was amongst Marxist friends who believe the West owes them a climate debt.

So, it is important to understand that  the narrative of Copenhagen’s “failure” comes from the Left and is diversionary. For, the Copenhagen Accord was really just a patchwork agreement that was meant to ameliorate and gauge the present political environment on climate change and also supplement treaty provisions before the renegotiation of the Kyoto Protocol that expires at the end of 2012. The outlines of Kyoto II has already been agreed to at the Washington summit in 2007 by the way.

For his part, Obama has been given credit for bringing  China to heel, and this, it is hoped, will also allow him to effectively advocate for passage of cap-and-trade in the U.S. Senate before 2012. But, the much reported spat between the U.S. and China at Copenhagen, was, in fact pure theatre. For one thing, the U.S. and China had already made an agreement in November that essentially mirrors in full the outcome achieved by the Copenhagen Accord. In a joint statement issued by  President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao on November 17 in Beijing, the two leaders agreed on a common approach and a successful outcome in international climate agreements. The joint statement expressly stated:

Regarding the upcoming Copenhagen Conference, both sides agree on the importance of actively furthering the full, effective and sustained implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in accordance with the Bali Action Plan. The United States and China, consistent with their national circumstances, resolve to take significant mitigation actions and recognize the important role that their countries play in promoting a sustainable outcome that will strengthen the world’s ability to combat climate change. The two sides resolve to stand behind these commitments.

In this context both sides believe that, while striving for final legal agreement, an agreed outcome at Copenhagen should, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, include emission reduction targets of developed countries and nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing countries. The outcome should also substantially scale up financial assistance to developing countries, promote technology development, dissemination and transfer, pay particular attention to the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable to adapt to climate change, promote steps to preserve and enhance forests, and provide for full transparency with respect to the implementation of mitigation measures and provision of financial, technology and capacity building support.

Although we were told that the rift between the U.S. and China was about transparency, it was not a rift at all, but was an expected application of diplomatic pressure by China and other “emerging economies’” ( India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, and Korea) that would enable them  to emit  greenhouse gases and continue as a non-annex I countries well beyond Kyoto II.  Staying in the classification reserved for developing nations, China and the other “emerging economies” understand that they could then continue to grow their industry  while being allowed to apply less stringent reporting on their emissions. While the Copenhagen Accord sets up a framework for these “emerging economies” to report their mitigation efforts to the U.N., it also significant that the three-tiered Kyoto system apparently has remained intact.

Consequently, two significant details in the Accord seem designed to give China and others some wiggle room. Contained in the second annex, it is clearly stated that  emission goals for “developing” countries are voluntary. This means that unlike developing countries who can be punished for over-emitting, developing countries will be allowed to stay in Kyoto II even if they fail to meet their goals.

Second, the langauge in the section concerning reporting and mitigation is weak as it allows “international consultations and analysis,” which would help keep track of whether the country is meeting its goals, but is not really an enforcement provision. There is also an escape clause in the agreement  that provides the international consultations be designed “to ensure that national sovereignty is respected.” If  “domestic imperative”  provisions are carried over to Kyoto II, it is difficult to fathom that there will be any rigid international checks on the carbon emissions of  countries with “emerging economies.”

However, there is another reason why the developing countries see it as beneficial to keep emitting with operational impunity but remain in the Kyoto regime: Carbon credits.

Essentially, China and India stand to make windfall profits if they are allowed to keep their emissions at or close to present levels. This is because those countries are the main beneficiaries of UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).This mechanism was formally created in 1997 by the Kyoto climate treaty and started operation in 1998. It began with 78 million “credits” (or Certified Emission Reductions, CER, as they are formally known) and grew to 333 million this year with a projection of 1.7 billion by the end of 2012.

Additionally, the global carbon market is one of the hottest items in town. In 2004, it was valued at less than $300 million. But in 2005, the trade really started to soar, ending the year with $10.8 billion-worth of transactions. A year later, in 2006, the “carbon” market had grown to $31 billion. In 2007, again it more than doubled its turnover, to $64 billion. Last year, it did it again, reaching a colossal $126 billion. By 2020, some estimates suggest the annual value of the market will reach $2 trillion.

This is why the renegotiation of Kyoto is a major milestone because at that time, there must be considerable will amongst policy-makers to  commit their countries to long-range integration of parts of their national energy economies to a global cap-and-trade system. Although the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme accounts for 73 percent of the market at present, the whole enterprise is underpinned by “project based transactions” comprised mainly of the CDM generated carbon credits.  The better positioned a nation is to benefit from the emerging global carbon market at the end of 2012, the more money they can make through the global carbon trading scheme. And presently, China, India and Brazil are positioned to do that in a big way. The chart below shows what countries own the most carbon credits under CDM:

This also explains why governments and investors from the West are chomping at the bit to establish a functioning system of carbon trading: Untold gobs of money  can be had from the  guilty, browbeaten citizenry of Western nations when prices are increased throughout the system by the taxation and regulation of carbon emissions. If you can pervert the mind of the energy consumer into accepting that they have a “climate debt” you no longer have to guarantee efficient and low-cost energy to them. Instead, if you have a population that believes it does not deserve to be warm in the winter and cool in summer and accepts higher energy prices as they support “development” in poorer countries, you have pulled off the greatest political rip-off of all times.

This is why Christopher Booker has said:

The only really concrete achievement of Copenhagen was to win agreement to the perpetuating of those Kyoto rules that have created this vast industry, which has two main beneficiaries. On one hand are that small number of people in China and India who have learnt how to work this system to their huge advantage. On the other are all those Western entrepreneurs who have piled into what has become the fastest‑growing commodity market in the world…The only tree they were concerned with hugging was the money tree and all the vast political apparatus that now supports it, allowing governments to tax and regulate us into handing over ever more of our money…

Another Liberal Democrat Principality Called a “National Disgrace.”

I posted this article from a few days ago which reported that test scores from a huge majority of the students in the Detroit Public Schools were  essentially the worst in the history of such testing. The article documents the disbelief by some educators that the scores were what could be expected if students had merely guessed at most of the answers.

Although I did not make the connection overtly in the post, my intention was to show that areas suffering under the  control of liberal Democrats- and that have been for years in many cases- are utterly dysfunctional in almost every aspect.

In the urban areas of America-and I live in one-the Democratic Party has ruled pretty much unopposed for a long time. Since many of those places have been in a seemingly unstoppable death spiral since the 1960s, perhaps it is time that these people-the Democrats- take some responsibility for the consequences of the bad ideas they like to impose on the rest of us.

Yeah. I know. I’m dreaming.

But, there is cause and effect. And one of the purposes of this blog is to document the effects of bad, left-wing ideas and the nature  of their fallout.

It happens all the time, but the liberal advocacy media (LAME, or the entity that used be known as the mainstream press) is incapable of noticing these things for what they are.

Once in a while though, things get so bad that even the LAME has to look into the affairs of the local Democratic Party junta and write what it sees.

It appears that this is happening in Philadelphia, as the Philadelphia Inquirer has had enough of the crime rate there and did some good ol’ fashion gumshoeing about it.

The result is a four-part series that looks into the reasons why “Killadelphia” which has  one of the highest violent crime rates in the country,  also has one of the worst conviction rates.

The Inquirer inaugurates its series with an editorial called  A National Disgrace. It begins:

Often after a heinous murder or a police shooting in Philadelphia, the suspect is found to have a lengthy criminal record or an outstanding warrant for another crime. That prompts many to ask: “Why wasn’t this creep in jail?”

A four-part series that begins in The Inquirer today answers that question. It details a criminal justice system practically built to perpetuate crime, rather than stop it. Thugs go on committing crimes until they escalate into murder.

Police may do a good job of capturing suspects, but after that comes the revolving door. Various breakdowns in the legal system enable thousands of suspects to go free.

What is incredible about this editorial is that the Inquirer not only dismisses the excuses of the City’ s ineffectual liberal Democrat District Attorney, Lynn Abraham, they lay much of the blame at her doorstep. The paper found that the conviction rate for violent crimes in the city was a meager 20 percent. Abraham, who has been the D.A. for eighteen years disputes those numbers. The Inquirer responds:

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham disputes The Inquirer’s findings regarding the low conviction rate compared with that in other cities. However, Abraham – who has been the DA for 18 years – has failed to keep her own records that could benchmark the office’s results.

Then after listing the many ways that the city’s criminal justice system is failing, the paper finishes by revealing its relief that Abraham’s tenure as  D.A. has come to an end.

An overhaul of the court system isn’t easy, since there are so many disconnected parts. But much of the burden for leading the reform could come from the DA’s office.

It’s good for the city that Abraham did not run for reelection and will leave office next month. It will be up to incoming DA Seth Williams to bring real change.

A fresh approach to managing and tracking cases could boost convictions and reduce the number of cases that get dismissed. But broader reforms are also needed to fix a broken system.

A quick review of Abraham’s biography reveals that she is part of a gun regulation group, that she criticized the Catholic Church about the molestation scandals long after they were over, and she was a Pennsylvania delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, where she cast her vote for Kerry, and in 2008  casting her vote for Obama. I would have thought that a person with those kind of  progressive credentials would have made her untouchable to the LAME.

Maybe the LAME will start waking up to the fact that most of America’s problems are within its urban areas where the Democratic Party has ruled for a long time. You wonder, though, if they’ll ever get around to asking the obvious questions, like we do here at the intrepid Conservativepolicynews blog.

Some of the comments left by online readers  of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial are priceless by the way. I reproduce some of my favorites below for your entertainment.

bill at

This was all brought to you by the Philadelphia Democrat party. People, by the way, who have been endorsed endlessly by the same editorial board who just now is seeing a problem that has been obvious for decades. Hope. Change.

joedog

Philadelphia is not unlike many a Third World city with a small, well protected and relatively safe Center City area protected by a ring of security for the affluent surrounded by neighborhoods that are filled with violent criminals run amok. Why?

BurbGuy

A once great city has been destroyed by Democrats, Liberals and scum of the earth violent animals. The only difference between Philadelphia and Detroit is that Philly only gets half as much snow.

bobg1812

Just another symptom of the disease killing the city since the 1950s we will never get the world class city we deserve with third rate politicians running the city

lem127

Call me naive, but this story is shocking. These are hard facts that show beyond any doubt that the Philadelphia government is truly broken.

Wassup!

Societal decay. Acts that people used to be ashamed of, are now celebrated. Kids out of wedlock with multiple fathers seems common and ok today. 14-year old mothers pushing baby carriages is commonplace and not given a second glance. Being a single mothers is normal and bragged about like it should be rewarded. Going to jail seems to be a badge of honor. Having warrants is the norm for some people. Bad credit seems to be acceptable. Drug addiction is a “disease” and is accepted as easily as the common cold. Boys walking around with their butts hanging out of their pants is now normal. Unemployeed men being taken care of by a bevy of naive women is the norm. It just never ends. This once great country, like the Roman Empire eventually did, is falling, and it will be a Third World

RBA

This is the result of one-party rule where the “good government” crowd is nonexistent. It’s all a cesspool of political subgroups (blacks, asians, jews, unions, etc.) all slicing up their pieces of the pie for their constituencies. It’s been this way for so long people don’t realize it’s not that way everywhere else. I’m not saying Philadelphia’s Republicans would be any better. They operate in the same system and wrote the book on this kind of corruption when they ran the Philly machine in the first half of the 20th Century.

Ben Dover

get a gun, its the only real protection you have in philadelphia

.

Merry Christmas From The Shadowlands

(from Breitbart)

Fetus found in gift box,Texas couple charged

SAN JUAN, Texas (AP) – Authorities allege a south Texas couple put an aborted 7-month-old fetus in a gift box under a Christmas tree after trying to flush the remains down a toilet.

Thirty-one-year-old Ruby Lee Medina and 37-year-old Javier Gonzalez are jailed on abuse of corpse and tampering with evidence charges. Bond is set at $20,000 each.

A woman at the San Juan city jail says she can’t say whether either has retained an attorney.

San Juan Police Chief Juan Gonzalez says police found the fetus inside the woman’s trailer home Thursday after an anonymous tip.

Gonzalez says police believe the woman used pills to induce an abortion, then called an ambulance and said she didn’t know where the fetus was.

Gonzalez says the couple first tried to flush the fetus, then cleaned it up and put in the gift box.

Himalayan glaciers melting deadline ‘a mistake’

Look for more and more articles like this in the future.

(from the BBC)

The UN panel on climate change warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035 is wildly inaccurate, an academic says.

J Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University, says he believes the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

He is astonished they “misread 2350 as 2035″. The authors deny the claims.

Leading glaciologists say the report has caused confusion and “a catalogue of errors in Himalayan glaciology”.

The Himalayas hold the planet’s largest body of ice outside the polar caps – an estimated 12,000 cubic kilometres of water.

They feed many of the world’s great rivers – the Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra – on which hundreds of millions of people depend.

‘Catastrophic rate’

In its 2007 report, the Nobel Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said: “Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.

It is not plausible that Himalayan glaciers are disappearing completely within the next few decades Michael Zemp, World Glacier Monitoring Service Himalayan glaciers’ ‘mixed picture’

“Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometres by the year 2035,” the report said.

It suggested three quarters of a billion people who depend on glacier melt for water supplies in Asia could be affected.

But Professor Cogley has found a 1996 document by a leading hydrologist, VM Kotlyakov, that mentions 2350 as the year by which there will be massive and precipitate melting of glaciers.

“The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates – its total area will shrink from 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometres by the year 2350,” Mr Kotlyakov’s report said.

Mr Cogley says it is astonishing that none of the 10 authors of the 2007 IPCC report could spot the error and “misread 2350 as 2035″.

“I do suggest that the glaciological community might consider advising the IPCC about ways to avoid such egregious errors as the 2035 versus 2350 confusion in the future,” says Mr Cogley.

He said the error might also have its origins in a 1999 news report on retreating glaciers in the New Scientist magazine.

The article quoted Syed I Hasnain, the then chairman of the International Commission for Snow and Ice’s (ICSI) Working group on Himalayan glaciology, as saying that most glaciers in the Himalayan region “will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming”.

Scientists say Himalayan glaciers need more study

When asked how this “error” could have happened, RK Pachauri, the Indian scientist who heads the IPCC, said: “I don’t have anything to add on glaciers.”

The IPCC relied on three documents to arrive at 2035 as the “outer year” for shrinkage of glaciers.

They are: a 2005 World Wide Fund for Nature report on glaciers; a 1996 Unesco document on hydrology; and a 1999 news report in New Scientist.

Incidentally, none of these documents have been reviewed by peer professionals, which is what the IPCC is mandated to be doing.

Murari Lal, a climate expert who was one of the leading authors of the 2007 IPCC report, denied it had its facts wrong about melting Himalayan glaciers.

But he admitted the report relied on non-peer reviewed – or ‘unpublished’ – documents when assessing the status of the glaciers.

‘Alarmist’

Recently India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh released a study on Himalayan glaciers that suggested that they may be not melting as much due to global warming as it is widely feared.

He accused the IPCC of being “alarmist”.

India says the rate of retreat in many glaciers has decreased in recent years

Mr Pachauri dismissed the study as “voodoo science” and said the IPCC was a “sober body” whose work was verified by governments.

But in a joint statement some the world’s leading glaciologists who are also participants to the IPCC have said: “This catalogue of errors in Himalayan glaciology… has caused much confusion that could have been avoided had the norms of scientific publication, including peer review and concentration upon peer-reviewed work, been respected.”

Michael Zemp from the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich also said the IPCC statement on Himalayan glaciers had caused “some major confusion in the media”.

“Under strict consideration of the IPCC rules, it should actually not have been published as it is not based on a sound scientific reference.

“From a present state of knowledge it is not plausible that Himalayan glaciers are disappearing completely within the next few decades. I do not know of any scientific study that does support a complete vanishing of glaciers in the Himalayas within this century.”

Pallava Bagla is science editor for New Delhi Television (NDTV) and author of Destination Moon – India’s quest for Moon, Mars and Beyond.

Did Obama Check with Joe Biden about 1991 Persian Gulf War “Consensus?”

The Powerline blog reveals that Obama has had to revise  history for his Nobel Prize speech. In the speech Obama says:

Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait – a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.

Powerline then points out that there was no such consenus about the exigencies of thwarting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in the United States Congress in 1991. Vice-President Joe Biden was one of 47 Democrats in the U.S. Senate who voted against sending this “clear message about the cost of aggression.”

The vote in the Senate on the authorization of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, which took place on January 12, 1991, was 52-47. The Democrats controlled the Senate at the time; they voted 45-10 against the “consensus” on “the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait.” John Kerry, Joe Biden and 43 other Democrats voted to let Saddam Hussein keep Kuwait and expand his control over Middle Eastern oil from there, while continuing to develop nuclear weapons–which, we later learned, he would have had by 1992 or 1993, at the latest.

In the House, the story was similar. The vote was 250-183, with a large majority of Democrats voting with Saddam Hussein. Sure, it would be possible to be more pathetic on national security than the Democratic Party, but it wouldn’t be easy. What is interesting about all of this is the Democrats’ need to rewrite history. Can anyone doubt that if Barack Obama had been in the Senate in 1991, he would have joined 45 of his Democratic colleagues in voting for Saddam Hussein’s control over the Middle East? Of course not. Yet today, Obama is forced to pretend that ousting Saddam was a “consensus” decision taken by “the world.” Thus does truth force itself on even the most unwilling auditors.

Oh yeah. And there’s this pleasant little story at Newsreal about the White House serving ACORN cookies to guests at the December 7, 2009 White House Christmas Party.

Do you like ACORN? We like ACORN.

Newsreal writes:

At the Dec. 7 White House Christmas Party attendees were treated with acorn-shaped chocolate cookies, rubbing the President’s affiliation with the controversial group ACORN in everyone’s faces as though they were punishing a puppy by rubbing its nose in their sh*&.

Sweet.

Source of Progressive Enlightenment Revealed.

Now I see where all my confusion comes from. I am trapped in the denial of “the collective pain body” that Oprah and Eckart Tolle explain in the  video.

What a fool I have been.

(from Washington Examiner)

New study: More Democrats than Republicans believe in ghosts, talking with the dead, fortunetellers

No wonder I never got it. And the cool people never invited me to their really serious, cool and slutty Halloween parties.

A new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals some startling differences between Republicans and Democrats on issues of spirituality and supernatural phenomenon.

The study, “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths,” reports that a significant number of Americans practice a mixture of religious beliefs, and “many also blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects.” The report is not specifically about partisan differences, but the results of the study are broken down by party affiliation, among many other categories. And the news on that front is that Democrats are far more likely to believe in supernatural phenomenon than Republicans.

“Conservatives and Republicans report fewer experiences than liberals or Democrats communicating with the dead, seeing ghosts and consulting fortunetellers or psychics,” the Pew study says. For example, 21 percent of Republicans report that they have been in touch with someone who is dead, while 36 percent of Democrats say they have done so. Eleven percent of Republicans say they have seen a ghost, while 21 percent of Democrats say so. And nine percent of Republicans say they have consulted a fortuneteller, while 22 percent of Democrats have.

There’s more. Seventeen percent of Republicans say they believe in reincarnation, while 30 percent of Democrats do. Fourteen percent of Republicans say they believe in astrology, while 31 percent of Democrats do. Fifteen percent of Republicans say they view yoga as a spiritual practice, while 31 percent of Democrats do. Seventeen percent of Republicans say they believe in spiritual energy, while 30 percent of Democrats do.

(Click here for more)

And you thought the History Channel was going to stick to documentaries about UFOs, Bigfoot, the Hellfire Club. Well…

Tonight the History Channel will be airing the documentary The People Speak starring Matt Damon and Josh Brolin. The film is based on probably the worst history book you’ll ever read, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. The book, which I personally purchased and tried to read  some years ago when I was a committed leftist graduate student in history, is pure drek and even back when I was looking for ideological purity and Marxist political guidance, I couldn’t take it seriously.

Perhaps this should be an alternative title to "The People Speak"?

But, I guess for Hollywood types like Matt Damon-who grew up next door to Zinn in Boston-and Brolin and the rest of the celebutards that have been employed to pitch this drivel, it is considered high scholarship.  Unfortunately, A People’s History is one of the best-selling histories of all time and is still taught in high schools and colleges across the country, despite its lack of footnotes and other scholarly apparatus.

A nation of starf#*!ers and celebutards

To read A People’s History is  an act of masochism, for Zinn casts American history in the worst and most cliched Marxist light imaginable. (And did I mention it has very little source material-I did. Just wanted to make that clear.) The book claims to present American history “through the eyes of workers, American Indians, slaves, women, blacks and populists” and  Zinn has made no apologies for the  overtly left-wing agenda in the book. In the 1995 edition of A People’s History he wrote:

I wanted my writing of history and my teaching of history to be a part of social struggle. I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.

Ok. But that doesn’t make Zinn a historian. In fact, proclaiming to  have an overtly political agenda before doing your research should pretty much destroy your credibility as a serious historian and mark your work as a poltical manifesto, not history. Not having sources for your screed should also undermine the notion that your work is “history.” (OK, we’ve been there already. Just making sure you’re awake.)

Oh. I see,  Zinn is not a historian, but professor of Political Science.

Alright, then.

(Excuse me while I vomit!)

Monster Quest! Yes!

Perhaps it is worth mentioning, as it is the purpose of this blog, that The People’s History was not taken  seriously as a definitive work of history about the United States and was lambasted when it first came out in a critical review by Oscar Handlin, the Harvard historian.  As the New Criterion explained in a 2008 article, Howard Zinn’s Fairy Tale, Handlin’s criticism should  have been enough. A People’s History’s flaws were  pointed out [by Handlin] with devastating precision. Handlin’s brief is-or should have been-fatal. Writing in the The American Scholar in 1980, he noted:

It simply is not true that “what Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortez did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots.” It simply is not true that the farmers of the Chesapeake colonies in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries avidly desired the importation of black slaves, or that the gap between rich and poor widened in the eighteenth-century colonies. Zinn gulps down as literally true the proven hoax of Polly Baker and the improbable Plough Jogger, and he repeats uncritically the old charge that President Lincoln altered his views to suit his audience. The Geneva assembly of 1954 did not agree on elections in a unified Vietnam; that was simply the hope expressed by the British chairman when the parties concerned could not agree. The United States did not back Batista in 1959; it had ended aid to Cuba and washed its hands of him well before then. “Tet” was not evidence of the unpopularity of the Saigon government, but a resounding rejection of the northern invaders.

Oh sure, you say. Handlin was a typical bourgeois historian and besides there is no objectivity anyway, so why is  his work better than Zinn’s ?  Decide for yourself. In Handlin’s book The Distortion of America (1996) he discusses at length the distortions of history engaged in by Marxist intellectuals and their sympathizers until the fall of the Soviets in 90s:

The dismal record of falsification-sometimes naive, sometimes sinister- reached back to the 1920s. Although honest radical visitors like Alexander Berkman and  Emma Goldman perceived the repressive nature of the Soviet regime, other Americans launched blindly into a long, tortuous, course of self-deception, eagerly gulping down the fatuous account of the New Soviet civilization by Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1936)… The illusion about the benign Soviets survived after the war’s end and also after the appeasement that began at Yalta and called for the sacrifice of Eastern Europe. Cheerfully in 1971 the officers of the National Education Association concluded a two-week visit by blithely announcing that the Soviet Union had eliminated poverty within its borders.

The hapless sympathizers who ruled the media and the academic and entertainment worlds were not all stupid and ill-informed, but deliberately blinded themselves to the reality…Drawing upon a long tradition of intellectual anti-Americanism, fashionable journalists and academics from Madison Avenue to Hollywood and Ivy League Universities, who had learned to sneer at the Main Street “booboisie” slipped readily into the habit of denouncing their country’s greed, intolerance, racism, and general backwardness that would shortly lead to the total collapse of capitalism. Their distorted vision obscured what actually transpired both within the United States and in the world outside its borders. The tragic outcome-myopia about the Red threats to peace and freedom everywhere, along with failure to understand the underlying strength of the United States and its relevance to the world’s future.

(And he forgot to mention ignorance and/or complicity in the  “Red Genocide” of almost 200 million people.)

Do you think Zinn figures into this lot? Yeah. I think so too.

And the people who admire Zinn’s work and A People’s History are  part and parcel  of the same Left that Handlin so skewers in his The Distortion of America. They are now engaged in a furious attempt to recapture political power and cultural prestige so that they can go on insulating  themselves from the utter historical fact that socialism, their God, has failed. This is why there is so much pressure for radical social change and global governance schemes today. Any faith, when its light is about to be extinguished from the world, creates a vacuum amongst its true believers. It would be foolish to underestimate the lengths to which these people will go to hold onto their absurdities.

The best we can do here is quote Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek episode The Apple:

Native Man: But it was Val who put the fruit on the trees; caused the rain to fall. Val, cared for us.

Kirk: You’ll learn to care for yourself! And there’s no trick to putting fruit on trees; you might even enjoy it. You’ll learn to build for yourselves, think for yourselves, work for yourselves-and what you create is yours! That’s what we call freedom.

Indeed!

(the relevant dialogue begins at 7:11)

Shadowlands: Subprime mortgage crimes and murder mysteries.

While I was in law school I started a now defunct blog that I called Shadowlands. The purpose of the blog was to reveal the larger philosophical and political implications of everyday news and current events . Like I try to do with this blog, Shadowlands made an attempt to take unknown but nonetheless dramatic stories which make a larger point about the culture and the sometimes mad, corrupt reality of the age of decline in which we live.

In an introduction to the blog I wrote the following:

Why did I choose this name for the new Shadowlands Blog I have created? One could say it is an obvious reference to C.S. Lewis and the movie made about his life, Shadowlands. In the movie, C.S. Lewis is questioning the meaning of the grief he suffers after the death of his wife, Joy Gresham Lewis, and he asks:

“Why am I so afraid? I never knew her love could hurt so much, and I love you and all I want is to love you. Beyond every door I hear your voice saying to me, ‘This is only the land of shadows. Real life hasn’t begun yet.’”

As the movie shows, C.S. Lewis’ life was outwardly very quiet and conservative and yet he possessed a great spiritual inner life, making him one of the most popular apologists for Christianity in the 20th Century. His literary output is striking and documents the incredibly humble, yet ultimately reasonable journey of a modern Christian pilgrim confronted with the erosion and denunciation of faith everywhere in the modern world.

This was not only conveyed through his more philosophical tracts, but through his  popular fiction, like The Chronicles of Narnia series. In that work, four children found that they could pass from the everyday world, where their lives were filled with unhappiness and dread, through to a different, more interesting land. This new land, Narnia, while in the throes of a dark age, was one that immediately offered a lot more to the children than the world they had left behind.

After various trials and realizations they found that Narnia’s Dark Age was not that at all. Rather, Narnia was waiting for them to accept its reality, which was a magic that the world they left behind had blinded them to.  Thus, the real world, or the world we know, was considered the Shadowlands; a place where we exist incomplete and depthless, unaware of the deep strains of meaning and reality that lie just beyond our perception.

Although I do not pretend to be so ambitious on this blog as to be able to reveal deep inner civilizational truths,  I do realize that there are many things that happen in the world that are not inherently political or necessarily ideological, but may have ties to larger political trends.  I do believe that if one has the courage to see, that it can be proven that civilization is in a state of utter decline and has left many people more depressed and dispirited than they realize.

While this may be an economic and spiritual reality, it is also a political one, for it is only through politics and the struggle for survival that the future of man is formed. When one sees through the broad yet tragic eyes of conservatism, it is very difficult not to see a world that is heading towards a future of massive Soviet-style enforced poverty and authoritarianism. For as Edmund Burke proclaimed in his letter to William Elliot in 1795 on the French Revolution, a centralizing government dedicated to behavioral reform falsely believes it can control both the population and command its passionate allegiance. With the experience of the violent corruption of the early French Revolution, Burke concludes this only leads to tyranny:

But now the veil was torn, and to keep off sacrilegious intrusion, it was necessary that in the sanctuary of government something should be disclosed not only venerable, but dreadful. Government was at once to shew itself full of virtue and full of force. It was to invite partizans by making it appear to the world that a generous cause was to be asserted; one fit for a generous people to engage in. From passive submission was it to expect resolute defence? No! It must have warm advocates and passionate defenders, which an heavy, discontented acquiescence never could produce. What a base and foolish thing is it for any consolidated body of authority to say, or to act as if it said, “I will put my trust not in my own virtue, but in your patience; I will indulge in effeminacy, in indolence, in corruption; I will give way to all my perverse and vitious humours, because you cannot punish me without the hazard of ruining yourselves?”

So, if  massive failure is on the horizon, there must be something evident in the present state of affairs that portends this breakdown. That is where the idea of the Shadowlands comes in.  I believe, through that sick feeling I’ve been having in my gut for the past few years, that evidence of massive failure is all around us, we need only have the courage to look. Evil, often to be an outmoded concept is the best explanation for those things threaten the ordering of society. Out on the fringes of culture in the little stories of  of human debasement, incredible ineptitude and callousness civilizational decline is quite evident.

And it is necessary at this point is to document it.

Conservative blogger Steve Sailer has started on this grim task. At his blog, he has been documenting the stories of odd crimes related to the subprime mortgage crisis. He has posted this eerie story about prominent Los Angeles attorney Jeffrey Tidus, who was shot in the head last week in his own driveway after going out to his car to retrieve a laptop.

According to LA Weekly, there were rumors inside the legal community about the nature of Tidus’ death. The newspaper reported that “he was killed just hours after top executives at a firm Tidus represented, New Century Financial, were accused of fraud by federal regulators.”

On December 11, 2009 the Los Angeles declared that the Tidus case was indeed ruled a homicide.

Sailer has also posted this tale emanating from California as well, about a thwarted break-in by four armed men at the home of a sub-prime mortgage lender. The lender, Daniel Sadek  was a used car salesman with a 3rd grade education, turned subprime mortgage lender, turned Hollywood producer. The men were caught, but the Sadek’s story raises further suspicions about the crime.

According to the Orange County Register, Daniel Sadek made and lost a fortune in the subprime mortgage industry.  He apparently wrote almost $4billion in loans before his company went bust in 2007.  Sadek was a high roller in Vegas while he was doing well and even produced the film  Redline starring his girlfriend at the time, Nadia Borjin, and his friend, comedian Eddie Griffin.

In May 2007,  Sadek’s company, Quick Loan, had been accused of predatory lending, deceptive underwriting and fraud in at least eight lawsuits. In September, 2009, Vanity Fair ranked Sadek No. 86 on a list of institutions and people most to blame for the nation’s economic problems. The magazine called him “Predator Zero in the subprime-mortgage game,” and quoted a competitor saying he “would have written a loan to ‘an insolvent arsonist.’”

According to documents filed in July 2009  by his attorney,  Sadek has been under medical care for an “extreme panic disorder” and has been regularly taking “substantial doses” of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax.

Of course, I know you  want me to close with some Rod Serling type “moral of the story” Twilight Zone comment.  But this post has been long and all I have to say is that our Shadowlands are not the distant places of  the imagination and the purview only of the disaffected, isolated, paranoid and criminal. They are closing in around us and threaten to engulf our sanity and the public life.

Events of the last year have made these appear the most insane of times in recent memory. Only by traveling through the Shadowlands and embracing the fact of inevitable decline can we even begin to have any hope in reversing it. When the public resists the attempts by statist saviors and elitist social revolutionaries to infantilize it, and becomes a body politic of adults, it is embracing the  magic of democracy and the promise of liberty. If it accepts that reversing decline will involve some pain and sacrifice it will preserve for itself a heroic mantle in the lore of history.

Much like the children who found Narnia oppressed by a dark age, this ennobled public will find that the Republic they save was only declining because they neglected it or because they did not know such vistas of democracy existed.

Their country  has always been waiting for them to wake up and decide it was worth the effort. And once awakened and energized, they will find that they have it within them to produce a new golden age.

Federal complaint expected on school violence

(from Philly.com)

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund said yesterday that it would file a federal civil rights complaint accusing the Philadelphia School District of failing to address violence against Asian immigrant students at South Philadelphia High School.

The complaint will claim that the district violated the students’ right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment, said Cecilia Chen, a staff attorney with the organization.

Chen said the complaint would be filed with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

The news came on a day when the city schools chief and South Philadelphia High principal spoke out publicly for the first time since the Dec. 3 attacks on about 30 Asian students by large groups of students, most African American. They announced new security measures and diversity programs.

Superintendent Arlene Ackerman also said she would not agree to a demand from the Asian community that she meet with students and parents at a neutral location, and with activists present.

Instead, she said, the students should return to school, and she will meet with only them and their parents.

“I will be here to have private conversations with the students and their families,” Ackerman said. “I do not intend to have conversations with community leaders.”

She said she would meet with the leaders separately, but not just with leaders of Asian communities.

“We’re not going to continue to make this an Asian vs. African American thing,” said Ackerman. “This is not just about demands of one racial group. It is about the needs of everyone.”

Wei Chen, an 18-year-old senior who is president of the Chinese American Student Association, said students were not willing to meet with Ackerman at the high school because “we think it is not safe for us to go back.” The students have not yet decided whether to return to school on Monday.

(for more click here)

New European Union foreign minister faces questions over pro-Soviet sympathies

As the Lisbon Treaty, ostensibly the new constitution of Europe, is put into place, the newly appointed foreign minister-a position with vastly more powers than any EU foreign policy body has had in the past-faces questions about possible connections to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Baroness Cathy Ashton, the newly appointed EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs was the treasurer of the  anti-nuke group the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the early 1980s. Members of the British Independence Party have sent a letter to EU Commission President, Manuel Barrosso, asking him to investigate whether Baroness Ashton ever was party to  payments from Moscow via the CND.

More here.

Also, for a comprehensive report of Soviet influence on the early 1980s anti-nuke movement, read here.

It is also  interesting that Ashton was chosen by the “inner machinations of the Brussels elite” after a “byzantine” process of leader selection. Interesting.

Important Finding from Al Gore’s Global Warming NGO: Propoganda, the cult of personality, and single-minded devotion by membership works to spread climate alarmism.

Al Gore’s global warming NGO, The Climate Project (TCP), recently released a study it did on the impact that the organziation was having on the global warming debate. The study commissioned by TCP was conducted by Milepost Consulting in collaboration with Stork Marketing and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The report concludes that TCP is having marked effects on public attitudes towards climate change. The report finds that:

those who previously did not identify as “environmentalists” underwent the greatest mental shift, becoming more likely to support emissions reduction and to reduce their carbon footprint. Moreover, the evaluation suggests that TCP, an international non-profit founded by former Vice President Al Gore, has created a new, unique environmental movement by customizing its message by region and community.

Other key finding from the report’s Executive Summary include:

• Approximately 34,000 presentations have been delivered to nearly 3.4 million audience members spanning the political and social spectrum throughout the U.S.

• Many of those who participated in TCP trainings during 2006 and 2007 were already very concerned about climate change, but lacked a specific mechanism for acting on that concern. TCP training, personal encouragement from Vice President Al Gore and participation in a community of individuals with a shared goal, worked to give these motivated individuals the skills and emotional encouragement they needed to take effective action.

• TCP training increased presenters’ awareness and understanding of climate science and the key issues of the climate change problem—and their ability to convey that information to others.

• By devoting hundreds of hours to research, preparation and delivery of presentations; speaking out to family and friends; and creating change within their professional networks, presenters made climate change work an important part of their lives.

According to TCP’s website, thousands of  volunteers  have been trained to  “present a version of the slide show featured in the Academy Award-winning film An Inconvenient Truth.” One wonders if those trained by the TCP and/or their apparently malleable audiences have been given any information about the fallacies a British Court ruled were contained in Al Gore’s movie, or if the fallacies are simply left unaddressed?

For those of you not familiar with the story (easy to imagine if you rely on the mainstream press for important news), in 2007, British truck driver Stewart Dimmock challenged An Inconvenient Truth from being shown to British schoolchildren. His claim was based on the theory that the movie was not settled science, but rather a work of political indoctrination, which violated section 406(1)(b) of the Education Act 1996 which prohibits “promotion of partisan views in the teaching of any subject in schools.”

The Court ruled in favor of Dimmock and determined that:

1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument.

2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination.

3.) Nine inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

These inaccuracies are:

• The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming.  The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.

• The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years.  The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.

• The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming.  The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
• The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming.  The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.

• The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice.  It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.

• The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

• The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching.  The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

• The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

• The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand.  The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

During the trial, the defense’s expert witnesss, Professor Robert Merlin Carter testified that that An Inconvenient Truth actually contained 20 verifibale errors (“20 separate departures from the scientific consensus”). It makes for interesting reading and I include the testimony below:

View this document on Scribd

If, in fact, the climate change alarmists have not addressed the findings in this decision, hoping it just goes away,  I wonder what their  tactics will be in addressing ClimateGate,  recent revelations that some of the lead alarmist scientists were willing to ignore important data in order to maintain an illusion of consensus about global warming.

For an overview of ClimateGate I recommend these links:

The Sound of All Hell Breaking Loose

Statements by University of Colorado climatologist  Roger Pielke Sr.

And for a good quick rundown of the scandal: Christopher Booker’s Telegraph blog.

Serial Hate Crimes in Denver; But Where are the Progressives?

Denver Police arrest 32 in series of downtown assaults

(from the Denver Post)

The Denver Police Department arrested 32 men and juvenile boys after a months-long undercover investigation into what police said were racially motivated assaults and robberies in downtown Denver, including the LoDo entertainment district.

A task force composed of Denver police, the FBI and the Denver district attorney’s office investigated 26 incidents in which groups of black males verbally harassed, assaulted and at times robbed white or Latino males, according to Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman.

All of the suspects are young black males, most of whom told police they were associated with either the Rollin’ 60s Crips gang or the Black Gangster Disciples gang.

They are charged with varying counts of bias-motivated assault and, in some cases, robbery — all felony crimes.

(for more click here and here.)

The progressives? They’re too busy lecturing all the “right-wing extremists” about this guy!

His story here.

Brussels, The Capital of Crime

As Mark Steyn would say in his usual descriptions of the fall of Western civilization: “Nothing to see here. Let’s move on.” Also notice the typical “leftist” understanding of the problem of crime in the capital of the EU: unemployment, bored youths, and gentrification. Sad, blinkered, and quite ironic.  -Jason

(From Deutschewelle English)

Brussels is not just the capital of the European Union — it’s also a center for crime. Officials and members of parliament alike have been robbed and beaten in the middle of the city’s European quarter. Criminals know that many people here carry a laptop, a pricey cell-phone and a full wallet. Often, the lawbreakers hail from the city’s immigrant neighborhoods, home to 40 percent of the population in Brussels. One out of every two young people here is unemployed. The police here are poorly equipped and poorly paid — and feel they’re fighting a losing battle.