Posts Tagged ‘Brussels’

LinkSwarm for July 3, 2026

Friday, July 3rd, 2026

Happy Independence Day Eve! We plan to celebrate America’s 250th Birthday tomorrow in the time-honored tradition: Blowing things up.

More Democrat welfare state fraud, dispatches from the Democrat Civil War, another very bad week for Russian logistics (and aircraft, and any Russians trying to buy fuel), Eurocrats want lowly peons to die of heatstroke rather than use the air conditioning enjoyed by their betters…

…a followup to the weird Plano ISD booster club story, plus Mexican Batman. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Finally: “DOJ Grand Jury Probes Neville Roy Singham’s Marxist NGO Empire.”

    Fox News’ Asra Nomani reports that on Monday, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York, authorized by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is examining whether Singham, NGOs he funded, or their leaders committed wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, or other financial crimes.

    Prosecutors have issued subpoenas seeking bank records and other financial documents, according to Nomani’s sources.

    Nomani’s team recently reported that Singham pumped $285 million through a Goldman Sachs donor-advised philanthropy fund and shell entities before it flowed into US nonprofits, while a broader review showed that $591 million flowed across five continents from 2017 through 2025.

    More color from the report:

    Of that money, Fox News Digital established a documented $278 million flowed directly from Singham into organizations that “sow discord” in the U.S., as House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith put it earlier this year at a hearing a dynamics called “foreign malign influence.”

    Singham, who resides in China, has a long track record of assisting far-left entities, such as Code Pink and the Party for Socialism and other socialist NGOs, that oppose U.S. interests and support U.S. adversaries.

    According to investigative reports (e.g., New York Times, 2023), Singham has worked closely with pro-CCP propaganda networks targeting the US.

    Any Democrat or NGO staffers who knowingly accepted communist Chinese money need to go to prison.

  • “RFK Jr. Says 1 Million Obamacare Enrollees Lacked Social Security Numbers. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said 1 million people were enrolled in Obamacare health plans without Social Security numbers, as the Trump administration pledged to intensify efforts to combat fraud in federal health care programs.” Was ObamaCare designed from the ground up to provide taxpayer-funded medical care for illegal aliens, or did Democrats just see the opportunity along the way?
  • Finally Redux: “Supreme Court: States Can Ban Trans Athletes From Girls’ Sports.”

    The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that states can block biological transgender males from competing in girls’ sports. In a 6-3 ruling, the court gave an iron-clad answer to the question.

    Writing for the majority in West Virginia v. B.P.J. (consolidated with Little v. Hecox), Justice Brett Kavanaugh held that neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause requires schools to carve out an exception for transgender athletes who’ve undergone hormone therapy or never experienced male puberty. States can draw the line at biological sex, full stop – no judge-administered athlete-by-athlete fairness hearings required. The ruling reverses both the Fourth Circuit (which sided with West Virginia’s B.P.J.) and the Ninth Circuit (which sided with Idaho’s Lindsay Hecox), and lands squarely in the wake of last year’s Skrmetti decision, extending its “this is a sex classification, not a transgender classification” framework from medical care straight into the locker room.

    The transsexual madness gripping the left deserves its own chapter in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

  • “DOJ Sues States Over Alleged Failure To Turn Over Food Stamp Data. The Trump administration has sued four states, accusing them of withholding crucial data on food stamp applicants.” The only surprise is that California is not among them.

    Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania refused to turn over information to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that would let federal officials identify fraud, Trump administration lawyers said in lawsuits filed on June 26 against the states.

    Officials are asking judges to enter injunctions that would force state authorities to hand over the last five years of applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the food stamp program known as SNAP.

    The USDA requested the SNAP data in 2025, citing an executive order from President Donald Trump that directed agencies to stop waste, fraud, and abuse, and many states complied with the request.

    Data from those states showed that states had enrolled some 186,000 people in SNAP despite those people being deceased, among the discrepancies that added up to $3 billion in wasteful spending, the department said in a report.

    We known Minnesota isn’t turning it over due to the massive fraud lining Democrat pockets, and the same is probably true in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Kentucky is pretty red, but Democrat Governor Andy Beshear must be doing his best to gear up the fraud there.

  • “The Democratic Civil War: the Organized Crime Democrats are Losing to the Bolsheviks.”

    The Democratic Party has two main factions right now, which can conveniently be described as the Organized Crime Democrats, who view the government as primarily a vehicle to distribute resources and power to friends, allies, and clients who can be counted on to return their largesse with reliable votes, and the Bolsheviks, who want to do all those things as well, but whose overriding goal is the destruction of the United States and Western Civilization and replace it with Third World communism.

    For decades, at least, the Organized Crime Democrats have dominated the party, but they have tolerated and even fostered the growth of the Bolsheviks with the mistaken belief that no group of clients can ever be more reliable than those who could not in a million years vote for the Republicans.

    Snip.

    The OCDs’ alliance with and fostering of the radical left has come back to bite them in the nether regions now. As their resources have become constrained, the Bolsheviks have become ever more powerful, and as is always the case, the revolutionaries despise their allies as much as their ideological opponents, and now feel ready to take them out.

    And, so far, their putsch is working, and the OCDs are rightfully frightened.

    I had previously reported on this civil war much earlier, but I used the terms “insane wing” and “corrupt wing.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • More chickens come home to roost: “Moscow Region Attacked by Missile! Big Blast.”
  • “Ukraine Destroys Two More Key Bridges: On the Mariupol-Donetsk Highway and the E58 Road.”
  • “Ukraine Destroys Three More Key Bridges: Road Bridge Falls on Railroad Track.”
  • Russian Oil Refinery Hit By Reported Flamingo Missile: Slavyansk-na-Kubani Refinery.”
  • “Flamingo Missiles Hit Iskander Missile Launcher Factory in Volgograd.”
  • “Missile/Drone Strike on Major Electronics Factory in Penza: Makes Sensors for Su-34 and Su-57.”
  • “Ukrainian Drones Hit Multiple Fuel Trains and Tankers in Crimea!”
  • Here’s a follow-up to yesterday’s post on Russian full shortages. “4km Line for Fuel in Russia’s Zabaykalsky Krai Region: 28 Hour Wait!” That’s all the way out east near Mongolia.
  • “Ukraine Claims SEVEN Russian Aircraft Destroyed/Damaged At Saky Air Base in Crimea.” Including Su-30 fighters and Su-24 bombers.
  • “One, Possibly TWO Su-35 Fighters Shot Down!”
  • Missed this earlier: Russian covert unit exposed.

    A JOINT PROJECT BY the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel and the investigative website The Insider has uncovered the existence and inner workings of a previously unknown Russian intelligence and cover action unit. The unit’s formal name is Military Unit 75127, but it is known within Russia’s intelligence establishment as Center 795. The Russian government reportedly created the unit in December 2022—less than a year following the Kremlin’s full military invasion of Ukraine.

    Snip.

    Notably, unlike other special activities units in Russia’s intelligence arsenal, Center 795 does not appear to reside within the GRU. Instead, it appears to operate independently of military intelligence oversight and to report directly to General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff of and First Deputy Minister of Defense, or to one of his subordinate deputy defense ministers.

    According to the investigative reports, the existence of Center 795 was revealed when one of its officers, Denis Alimov, used Google to translate a message sent to him by a Serbian operative living in the United States. This allowed the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation to use a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrant and access the Google Translate transcripts. Alimov was eventually arrested in Bogotá, Colombia, on February 24, 2026, after arriving there on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul, Turkey. He is currently awaiting extradition to New York.

  • “Minnesota Gov Walz Pardons Convicted Child-Molester, Blocking Deportation.”

    A Minnesota pardon board that includes Gov Tim Walz among its three members has issued a full pardon to a convicted Laotian child-molester, torpedoing Homeland Security’s effort to deport him. The 42-year-old convict, Tou Lue Vang, submitted a letter to the board saying he regretted what he did — and just like that, his criminal record is now clean as a whistle via unanimous decision.

    “Governor Tim Walz’s decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting,” said DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis. “These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting. Tou Lue Vang lost his legal status following his conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.”

    Find someone who loves you as much as Democrats love illegal alien child molesters…

  • “EU headquarters shuts off AC to save energy…but only on the lower floors where the peons work.”

    The European Commission’s headquarters was forced to shut down its air-conditioning system on Friday due to the heat wave.

    Staff working at the Berlaymont building received a text at midday, reading: ‘BERL — URGENT — Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day.’

    The 13-story building is home to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, her 26 commissioners, and about 3,000 staff. Von der Leyen works on the 13th floor, and most of her commissioners’ offices are housed on floors eight or above.

  • Also mandating the lowly peons to die of heat stroke: “UK orders homeowners to remove AC units during heatwave due to concerns about climate change.”

    Britons have been ordered to remove air conditioning from their homes – despite the country baking in up to 40C heat this week – under a fresh Net Zero crackdown.

    Planning officials at councils have told residents to take down their cooling units over concerns about carbon dioxide emissions.

    They say AC, despite the heat, should serve only as a ‘last resort’.

    Know your place, peasant…

  • SCOTUS Declines To Hear Challenge to Texas Election Security Law. The Fifth Circuit’s decision upholding Texas’ vote harvesting law remains in place.”

    The U.S. Supreme Court declined to disturb the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding a sweeping Texas election security law banning paid vote harvesting.

    Senate Bill 1, passed in 2021, aimed to extensively reform election security and eliminate paid vote harvesting with increased criminal penalties for offenses.

    Vote harvesting is the practice of collecting and returning completed ballots, which can be used as a cover for voter fraud and voter coercion. Paid harvesters are often intent on delivering results for a specific candidate or measure.

  • “The DOJ has launched an investigation into Sen. Ruben Gallego’s (D-AZ) campaign spending, according to Axios and The Washington Examiner.

    A source told Axios the DOJ started the investigation after a “whistleblower complaint” in Southern California.

    Gallego’s problems began after numerous women came forward accusing his bestie, former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), of sexual misconduct.

    In April, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) claimed, “There is a woman that allegedly is coming forward with attorneys, wants to go on-record about an incident that occurred between the two of them at the same time, and the event was sexual in nature, allegedly.

    Last week, I wrote about how Politico scrutinized Gallego’s financial records and discovered he used leadership PAC campaign cash to fund luxury outings with his family since he launched his Senate campaign in 2023.

    The Senate Ethics Committee dismissed an inquiry into those allegations against Gallego on Monday.

  • “AG Paxton Joins Legal Challenge to California Plastics Act. A coalition of 17 states says the law would raise prices and burden interstate commerce.”

    Attorney General Ken Paxton is challenging California’s Plastics Act, arguing it imposes burdensome regulations on companies doing business with California and will increase the cost of everyday American products.

    The lawsuit, which Paxton joined alongside the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and 16 additional attorneys general, calls the California law a “blatant and unprecedented attempt to impose its own policy preferences on the entire nation” and argues that it infringes on the sovereignty of other states.

    Implemented May 1, “the Plastics Act” places new requirements on goods containing plastic shipped into and out of California, affecting both producers and consumers nationwide.

    The act forces companies that sell products in the state to reduce single‑use plastic packaging, make it recyclable or compostable, and help pay for recycling and cleanup. It does this through strict reduction and recycling targets by 2032 and an extended producer responsibility program that shifts costs from taxpayers to packaging producers.

    Paxton’s office expressed alarm that the regulations and fees will drive up prices for everyday goods and discriminate against out-of-state businesses.

    “I am challenging California’s Plastics Act to protect businesses from unnecessary regulations and Texans from higher costs on the products they use every day,” said Paxton. “Texas has always been a place where businesses can thrive, and I will ensure it remains that way. I will not allow California lawmakers to harm Texas businesses.”

    The lawsuit further challenges California’s decision to place the private organization Circular Action Alliance in charge of implementing the law.

    According to the complaint, the CAA would collect roughly $500 million annually from businesses while operating with little public oversight or transparency.

    So a left-wing, radical environmental NGO gets to benefit directly by running left-wing, radical environmental program. What are the odds?

  • “Texas Supreme Court Rules ‘Detransitioner’ May Proceed in Suing Her Gender Modification Providers. SCOTX stated that the two-year statute of limitations clock began when Soren Aldaco’s surgery occurred, not when it was recommended.”

    The Supreme Court of Texas (SCOTX) determined on Friday that a woman who regretted her gender modification surgery did not file her claims too late to take her providers to court, in a case centered on the state’s statute of limitations in medical malpractice cases.

    Soren Aldaco of Tarrant County sued her healthcare providers and counselors for fraud and negligence over their roles in obtaining gender modification procedures for her, including a double mastectomy at age 19 — a procedure she later came to regret.

    After the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth rejected Aldaco’s appeal in November 2024 on the basis that her medical claim had expired, affirming the Tarrant County district court’s prior summary judgement, SCOTX accepted her petition for review and scheduled the case for oral arguments on February 11, 2026.

    A SCOTX opinion was then issued by Justice James P. Sullivan four months later on Friday morning, reversing the finding that her claims had expired on the basis that the clock began ticking once the injury occurred, not when her therapist recommended her for the procedure.

    Aldaco’s therapist, Barbara Rose Wood of the Three Oaks Counseling Group, wrote her a letter of recommendation for a double mastectomy after the Crane Clinic advised her that she would need one in order to move forward with the procedure.

    Those who inflicted radical surgery on teenagers in the name of social justice deserve to lose every dime they own.

  • Now we know what’s driving that push for a Permian Basin high voltage line: WInd and solar power interests.

    In response to lawmakers’ request for a pause on extra-high-voltage transmission lines, transmission service providers admitted reliance on wind and solar power, along with government intervention, is driving Permian Basin energy issues. This aligns with a third-party report that the lines are primarily built to support wind and solar, while local reliable generation alternatives were never fully examined.

    Providers argued that public utility commissioners do not have the power to grant lawmakers’ request to pause the project. The next day, state senators announced they would hold a hearing on the proposed lines in late July.

    This centers on ERCOT’s 765-kilovolt Strategic Transmission Expansion Plan (STEP), a key part of the Permian Basin Reliability Plan (PBRP). STEP proposes three transmission lines spanning over 1,200 miles to move power from East Texas into the natural-gas-rich Permian Basin, with routes crossing North Texas, Central Texas, and South Texas.

    The three lines are split into five interconnected segments for Phase 1. Phase 2 would build 765-kV lines from Northeast-East Texas southward through Central and South Texas. This eastern portion would tie into the lines leading into the Permian Basin.

    On June 24, in a joint filing, Transmission Service Providers (TSPs) Oncor, Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Service Corporation, AEP Texas, and City of San Antonio-owned CPS Energy admitted that the risk to sustained electrical supply in West Texas is “greatest during low-wind, no-solar conditions, when the Permian Basin relies heavily on imports” from the lower voltage 345-kV network.

    The TSPs’ filing was in response to a June 15 brief by more than 40 state lawmakers asking PUCT to pause the project. They filed it in support of pro-landowner American Stewards of Liberty’s motion to defer deciding the need for the first four segments.

    The lawmakers cited Dr. Brent Bennett, who wrote the May 2026 study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). Bennett warned that the “main effect of the 765-kV lines is to integrate more wind and solar into the ERCOT grid,” and that helping ERCOT “manage [such] a future system … to meet growing industrial demand” is the “primary rationale” for the lines.

    This comes roughly five years after the 2021 winter blackouts. Two failures that energy specialist Jason Isaac said contributed to the problem are overreliance on “unreliable” wind and solar and market-distorting subsidies for wind and solar.

    Bennett wrote that more transmission “does not ensure that enough new reliable generation will be built to meet demand and could even discourage such generation if the transmission provides wind and solar favorable market access.”

    Bennett and ASL believe that building new dispatchable power generation, such as natural gas, in the Permian Basin was not fully examined as an alternative. The TSPs wrote they “do not dispute” that more such generation would benefit the Permian Basin.

  • Former Tomball ISD Tax Assessor Charged with Wire Fraud
. Kristi Williams is accused of stealing $1 million and disguising the theft by altering information in the tax office’s collection software system.”

    When local taxpayers used cash, a tax office employee would put the cash in an envelope and record the payment as part of a “batch” of payments in the office’s tax collection software, Spindlemedia.

    After reaching between $15,000 to $20,000, an employee would close that batch of payments in the software. At this point, Williams was responsible for depositing the cash from the envelopes into the district’s bank accounts.

    Williams’ indictment alleges that she stole $996,174 in cash and disguised the theft by reversing payments recorded in certain batches, recorded those payments in new batches, and kept the new batches open for long periods in the Spindlemedia software.

  • “The company formerly known as Dominion Voting Systems is ending its $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against MyPillow and its CEO, Mike Lindell. The voting machine company, which was sold last year to a former GOP election official and is now called Liberty Vote, agreed to dismiss the long-running lawsuit in a federal court filing this week.”
  • “Pete Buttigieg says his children were temporarily taken by CPS after he was accused of ‘unspeakable violent crimes.'” Falsely calling CPS on anyone is wrong and evil. However, gay men have been convicted of raping their adopted children before, so the charge is not beyond the realm of possibility.
  • Crazy Transtifa mass shooting thwarted.

    Las Vegas cops busted a transgender gunman who allegedly planned a casino massacre using a huge cache of weapons.

    Allison Howlett, 36, who was born a man but lives as a woman, was arrested Saturday on charges of making terroristic threats, assault with a deadly weapon, auto theft, gun theft and other offenses.

    The wild story unfolded shortly after 9:30 a.m. Saturday when Howlett’s former spouse, who is female, called police to report Howlett had stolen her car and the vehicle held numerous firearms, Henderson Police Chief Reggie Rader said.

    You know how the MSM always report “arsenals” that seem like fairly puny gun collections? That isn’t the case this time.

    The officers were shocked to see that Howlett had been sitting on a handgun and had an MP5 submachine gun sitting on the back seat.

    When cops searched Howlett’s car, they recovered 22 other guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

    Cops who searched the suspect’s home in Henderson found 30 more firearms, including automatic rifles, plus ammo, grenade launcher attachments and silencers.

    Officers said Howlett made several threats going back years, a including a 2024 call where Howlett threatened a mass shooting.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Here’s a weird follow-up to a weird story. “Plano ISD Sued Over Arrests of High School Booster Club Mothers.”

    Mothers from a Jasper High School choir booster club filed a lawsuit claiming Plano Independent School District (ISD) participated in civil conspiracy and had them falsely arrested.

    The lawsuit, which names Laura Cervantes and the Jasper High School Choir Booster Club as the plaintiffs, describes the series of events that led to the filing.

    Cervantes was elected as president of the booster club in 2019, and in June 2022 the club was filed as an incorporated nonprofit organization. The club utilized a Prosperity Bank account, and three directors, Cervantes, Krisinda Lingenfelter, and Maria King, assumed oversight.

    Cervantes’ lawsuit states, “Neither Plano ISD, nor any of its employees, were members, officers, or employees of the organization” at that time.

    The directors reportedly sought funding from Plano ISD for repairs in the theater, but allege that the district then flipped the script, asking the booster club to instead fund improvements. When they responded that repairs were not in the description of the club’s functions, Plano ISD claimed that the booster club was no longer acting in compliance with district guidelines and staged a coup, according to Cervantes.

    The district disavowed the club and elected new leadership, despite the club operating as a legally separate entity from the district. The lawsuit claims that during that time, “Defendants continued to divert the Booster Club’s mail, kept it, opened it, and used its contents (namely bank statements).”

    The lawsuit also claims that the newly elected booster club directors, along with the school’s fine arts director, subsequently went to Prosperity Bank in order to replace the original club directors as authorized signers on the account.

    The lawsuit states, “These Defendants’ conduct likely constituted the crime of forgery under [the Texas Penal Code], because they intentionally presented documents intended to defraud the bank and harm the Booster Club by taking over its funds.”

    Eventually, the bank notified the three moms that it would be closing the account, and they proceeded to take the check and deposit that money into another bank account at Vantage Bank in the name of the booster club. The check bounced.

    In August 2024, a Plano Police Department detective executed a probable cause affidavit — which Cervantes claims was “based entirely off the knowingly false statements of each Defendant” — and obtained warrants for the arrests of Cervantes, Lingenfelter, and King “for the felony offense of theft over $2,500 but less than $30,000.”

    They were booked into the Collin County Jail with their bonds set at $25,000 each.

    A Collin County grand jury declined to indict the women “for any crime for want of probable cause, and the prosecution was terminated in Cervantes’s favor.”

    Plano ISD released a statement about the legal drama, arguing that school-affiliated organizations, including booster clubs, “must follow established guidelines for financial accountability, annual audits and open communication with district leaders.”

    The statement did not address the termination of the prosecution, or the district-led formation of the new booster club, but maintained, “Plano ISD did not file any suit against the former booster club- these proceedings were strictly between the current booster organization and the previously disbanded group.”

    The statement by Plano ISD also detailed that they gave the $4,437.39 recovered from the old booster club’s account to the new club.

    On May 27, the federal lawsuit was filed with Cervantes at the helm. Allegations cover 11 items, from false arrest and unreasonable seizure of property to violations of the rights to free association, free speech, petition.

    The lawsuit alleges, “Plano Independent School District and its employees conspir[ed] with private citizens to assume control over a private non-profit organization, take control of its property and monies, and eventually, have the directors of that organization falsely arrested and publicly humiliated – all because the officers of a high school choir booster club would not bend the knee to an out-of-control public school district.”

    It seems inexplicable that Plano ISD threw three booster club members in jail in order to steal their $4,437.39…

  • MS-NOW, AKA The Failing Network Formerly Known As MSNBC, has decided to fill its weekend slots with podcast reruns.
  • Do you have a permit to worship while Jewish, comrade?
  • Nuclear power is heating up again (literally). “Three Reactors Achieved Criticality Before July 4th.”
  • “Peppa Pig backlash as US company Hasbro requires child actors to sign voices over to AI.”
  • Reminder, yet again, that when you “buy” digital goods with DRM like movies, you don’t actually “own” them.
  • Mel Brooks turned 100. Happy birthday to the man who brought us Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles.

  • Supergirl pitch meeting.
  • Saul Goodman celebrates 250 years of American constitutional rights.
  • Sleep Tricks That Sound Wrong But Work Instantly.” I’m definitely nottrying that lettuce water thing…
  • Hoovie takes over the Car Wizard’s shop.
  • BeardMeatsFood tackles a medieval banquet challenge…for two. Himself.
  • New York business that makes columns and decorative architectural elements shutting down after 110 years.
  • Not The Bee: “‘Mexican Batman’ Keeps Gift-Wrapping Bad Guys And Leaving Them For The Cops.”
  • “Democrats Furious Trump Would Make Haitians Leave Most Racist Country On Earth.”
  • “Terrorist Torn Between Going On Violent Jihad Or Getting Elected As Democratic Senator.”
  • “American Missionaries Dispatched To Europe To Spread The Good News About Air Conditioning.”
  • “Rape Gang Busted In The UK For Illegal Air Conditioner Use.
  • “Heat Wave So Intense The French Are Considering Wearing Deodorant.”
  • A dog and her squirrel:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Paris Attack Suspect Given 20 Years (And The MSM Still Can’t Say “Jihad”)

    Monday, April 23rd, 2018

    Let’s take a look at this BBC story:

    Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving suspect from the 2015 Paris attacks, has been jailed for 20 years in Belgium over a gunfight that led to his arrest.

    Abdeslam, 28, and co-defendant Sofien Ayari were both convicted of terror-related charges of attempted murder.

    Ayari, 24, was also given a 20-year sentence. Both fired on officers who raided a flat in Brussels in 2016.

    Abdeslam is being held in a jail in France and is due to face trial there over the Paris attacks themselves.

    He had refused to answer questions from the judge in the trial in Brussels, and eventually refused to attend the hearings.

    Neither he nor Ayari, a 24-year-old Tunisian national, was in court as the verdict was read out on Monday. Both received the maximum 20-year term requested by prosecutors.

    The judge, Marie France Keutgen, said that “there can be no doubt” about the two men’s involvement with “radicalism”.

    “Radicalism.” No mention of what kind of “radicalism” yet…

    She added: “Their intention is clear from the nature of the weapons they used, the number of bullets they fired and the nature of the police officers’ wounds. Only the officers’ professional response prevented it being worse.”

    On 15 March 2016, Belgian police hunting Abdeslam carried out a raid in the Forest area of Brussels.

    They targeted a flat believing that the suspect – who by then had been on the run for four months – had been there.

    When they moved in they exchanged fire with the three occupants. One of the three was killed and three officers were wounded.

    Abdeslam and Ayari managed to escape, but Abdeslam’s fingerprints were found in the flat, confirming his presence there.

    He was picked up days later in a raid in the nearby Molenbeek area, and later transferred to France.

    He is a French national who was born in Brussels to French-Moroccan parents.

    He was involved in petty crime in Belgium as a youth, and is believed to have become radicalised along with his brother Salim around 2014.

    There’s that “radicalism” again.

    Both then reportedly joined a French-Belgian network linked with the Islamic State group (IS), which later claimed the Paris attacks.

    And there it is! Some 16 paragraphs into the story, the BBC finally deigns to tell us what these “attacks” and “radicalism” were all about: Islamic terrorism. But it only get mentioned because it’s in the name of the Islamic terrorist entity Abdeslam is affiliated with.

    The network was involved in both the Paris attacks and bombings that struck the Brussels metro and airport on 22 March 2016, just days after Abdeslam’s arrest, killing 35 people.

    In Monday’s ruling, the court denied a request by victims from those attacks that they be regarded as a civil party to the case, saying no link had been established with Abdeslam and Ayari.

    He is believed to have played a key role on 13 November 2015 – when militants targeted a concert hall, stadium, restaurants and bars, killing 130 people and injuring hundreds more.

    “Militants.”

    It’s been nearly two decades since 9/11, and mainstream western media outlets still insist in speaking in code-words when it comes to Islamic terrorism.

    Bomb Explodes in Brussels, 30+ Dead

    Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016

    At least 31 people have been killed and dozens injured in attacks at Brussels international airport and a city metro station.

    Twin blasts hit Zaventem airport at about 07:00 GMT, killing 11 people.

    Another explosion struck Maelbeek metro station near the EU’s headquarters an hour later, leaving a further 20 people dead.

    The Islamic State (IS) group said it was behind the attacks in a statement issued on the IS-linked Amaq agency.

    An Islamic group responsible for a terrorist bombing? Inconceivable! Quick, someone Photoshop Brussels with a peace symbol! It’s vital Western Europe continue its Sacred Meaningless Gesture Rituals!

    The New York Times has put the current death toll at 34. So in one day, Islamic terrorists have killed as many people as the Baader-Meinhof Gang/red Army faction killed in three decades.

    One wonders if a bombing on its doorstep will finally shock the EU out of its complacency and denial regarding both the current wave of unchecked Islamic immigration and its refusal to deal systematically with the threat of jihad.

    This Week in Jihad: Post-Paris Attacks Edition

    Monday, November 23rd, 2015

    I stopped doing the regular This Week in Jihad update because: A.) It took a lot of damn time, and B.) Sites like JihadWatch were doing it better.

    But since the Paris attacks, a metric ton of Jihad-related links have come streaming out of the firehose, so here’s a new This Week In Jihad just so a I have a place to put them all:

  • Mark Steyn, as always, is on point:

    When the Allahu Akbar boys opened fire, Paris was talking about the climate-change conference due to start later this month, when the world’s leaders will fly in to “solve” a “problem” that doesn’t exist rather than to address the one that does. But don’t worry: we already have a hashtag (#PrayForParis) and doubtless there’ll be another candlelight vigil of weepy tilty-headed wankers. Because as long as we all advertise how sad and sorrowful we are, who needs to do anything?

    Snip.

    What it is is an attack on the west, on the civilization that built the modern world – an attack on one portion of “humanity” by those who claim to speak for another portion of “humanity”. And these are not “universal values” but values that spring from a relatively narrow segment of humanity. They were kinda sorta “universal” when the great powers were willing to enforce them around the world and the colonial subjects of ramshackle backwaters such as Aden, Sudan and the North-West Frontier Province were at least obliged to pay lip service to them. But the European empires retreated from the world, and those “universal values” are utterly alien to large parts of the map today.

    And then Europe decided to invite millions of Muslims to settle in their countries. Most of those people don’t want to participate actively in bringing about the death of diners and concertgoers and soccer fans, but at a certain level most of them either wish or are indifferent to the death of the societies in which they live – modern, pluralist, western societies and those “universal values” of which Barack Obama bleats. So, if you are either an active ISIS recruit or just a guy who’s been fired up by social media, you have a very large comfort zone in which to swim, and which the authorities find almost impossible to penetrate.

  • A staggering 92% of all voters now regard radical Islamic terrorism as a serious threat to the United States. This includes 73% who say it is a Very Serious one, up 23 points from 50% in October of last year.” Your move, Democrats…
  • What it’s like to live in a neighborhood that’s being islamicized into a no-go zone. The author starts out as a standard fuzzy-headed liberal “thrilled” by his neighborhood’s “multiculturalism.” Then reality sets in:

    Over nine years, as I witnessed the neighborhood become increasingly intolerant. Alcohol became unavailable in most shops and supermarkets; I heard stories of fanatics at the Comte des Flandres metro station who pressured women to wear the veil; Islamic bookshops proliferated, and it became impossible to buy a decent newspaper. With an unemployment rate of 30 percent, the streets were eerily empty until late in the morning. Nowhere was there a bar or café where white, black and brown people would mingle. Instead, I witnessed petty crime, aggression, and frustrated youths who spat at our girlfriends and called them “filthy whores.” If you made a remark, you were inevitably scolded and called a racist. There used to be Jewish shops on Chaussée de Gand, but these were terrorized by gangs of young kids and most closed their doors around 2008. Openly gay people were routinely intimidated, and also packed up their bags.

  • Cracked writer reads every issue of the Islamic State’s full-color magazine Dabiq. On the one hand, there’s some useful information here. (“Attention Internet: People who celebrate pictures of civilians they’ve killed as well as pictures of their own friend’s murdered corpses don’t give a shit what you call them.”) On the other, the writer seemed to go into the assignment painfully ignorant of some of the most basic facts about the Islamic State (like their radical hatred of Shiites).
  • Dear everybody comparing Syrian “refugees” to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany: Your analogy is bad and you should feel bad:

    The first, and most obvious, difference: There was no international conspiracy of German Jews in the 1930s attempting to carry out daily attacks on civilians on several continents. No self-identifying Jews in the early 20th century were randomly massacring European citizens in magazine offices and concert halls, and there was no “Jewish State” establishing sovereignty over tens of thousands of square miles of territory, and publicly slaughtering anyone who opposed its advance. Among Syrian Muslims, there is.

  • “Ending a fight means our will must be stronger than our enemies’ – and I’m not convinced that right now, we as a nation are up to it. ISIS isn’t convinced either, and until we convince them by killing them, this will not end well for us.”
  • More mass graves of elderly women in the Islamic State.
  • Daniel Pipes says that don’t expect the Paris attacks to significantly change European opinions on Jihad. Europe is far too committed to continuing to hit the snooze button.
  • More than 90 percent of recent refugees from Middle Eastern nations are on food stamps and nearly 70 percent receive cash assistance, according to government data.” No wonder Democrats love them so much…
  • “I would be darned to listen to all three of those candidates to discern a clear Democratic line of how you’re actually going to fight terrorism. They were very vague, very non-specific, and I think they have a lot of work to do.” Hard to fight radical Islam if you’re unwilling to even speak its name…
  • Questions the Obama Administration won’t let immigration officials ask Syrian “refugees“: “Are you a member or supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood or Tablighi Jamaat?”
  • Gunmen attack hotel in Mali shouting “Allah Akbar.” Obviously those vicious Amish terrorists are at it again…
  • British General: “We need to approach this issue of Muslim extremism as we might approach World War Two.”
  • A total of 13 Syrians have been stopped at the Texas border in the last week.
  • Via Louder With Crowder comes this video of a woman who speaks Arabic hearing what these “refugees” say amongst themselves:

  • And after all that, I probably have another boatload of Jihad links to put up…

    Socialism Works Its Usual Magic In Spain

    Sunday, February 21st, 2010

    You may have heard about how Greece is fuxored thanks to a combination of high taxes, stagnant economy, restrictive job rules, and widespread tax evasion. Indeed, the sins of the Greeks may be enough to bring the Euro crashing down. It may come down to that, or else getting a bailout from an already-resentful Germany.

    Somewhat less reported is the fact that the other members of Europe’s PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) aren’t doing a whole lot better.

    In particular, Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero seems to have worked socialism’s usual magic on Spain’s economy:

    Spain now has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union. Nearly 20 percent of working-age Spaniards (or 4.5 million people) were without a job at the beginning of 2010. That compares with an average rate of 10 percent among the 16 countries that use the euro currency.

    Spain is also facing an exploding budget deficit. The collapse of the labor market, which has resulted in a steep drop in tax collections, and the Zapatero government’s haphazard (and spendthrift) policy response of increasing unproductive public sector spending skyrocketed the deficit to nearly 12 percent of GDP in 2009 (or five times higher than in 2008).

    The combination of negative GDP growth, rising unemployment, and a high deficit has raised concerns about the sustainability of Spain’s finances.

    Hmmm: High unemployment, out-of-control spending, a huge budget deficit. Where have I heard that before?

    In response to Spain’s economic crises, Zapatero has admitted that his socialist policies were a mistake, and set out a platform for lowering taxes, cutting the budget, an monetary reform.

    Ha! Just kidding! He’s ordered Spain’s secret service to hunt for “Anglo-Saxon conspirators” as the cause of Spain’s problems. It’s always easier to scapegoat America than make hard choices, or face the consequences of your own failure.

    At this point, I don’t it’s a question of if the Euro will crack, but rather when. Despite Obama’s mismanagement, the basic U.S. economy is still a lot more resilient and flexible than Europe’s. Europe has huge demographic problems combined with an unsustainable welfare state. Combine that with the the anti-democratic elites in Brussels, plus the fact that certain number of nations (the PIGS, certainly, but not limited to them) that are playing fast a loose with the EU’s deficit guidelines, and the chances are good that the Euro will crack sooner rather than later.

    And the fallout from that isn’t going to be pretty for the U.S. economy either.