Category: Behind Enemy Lines

The Empire Strikes Back

Behind Enemy Lines, Terrorism

That would be the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of course, or rather its modern-day major components.  Fresh on the heels of Hungary’s Viktor Orban causing trouble with the Muzzies in Budapest comes this news from just over the border:

Austria’s right-wing government plans to shut down seven mosques and expel up to 40 foreign-funded imams in crackdown against Islamist ideology

Austria said today it could expel up to 60 Turkish-funded imams and their families and would shut down seven mosques as part of a crackdown on ‘political Islam’ that was described as ‘just the beginning’, triggering fury in Ankara.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the government is shutting a hardline Turkish nationalist mosque in Vienna and dissolving a group called the Arab Religious Community that runs six mosques.
His coalition government, an alliance of conservatives and the far right, came to power soon after Europe’s migration crisis on promises to prevent another influx and clamp down on benefits for new immigrants and refugees.
In a previous job as minister in charge of integration, Chancellor Kurz oversaw the passing of a tough ‘law on Islam’ in 2015, which banned foreign funding of religious groups and created a duty for Muslim societies to have ‘a positive fundamental view towards (Austria’s) state and society’.
‘Parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation have no place in our country,’ Kurz told a news conference outlining the government’s decisions, which were based on that law.
‘This is just the beginning,’ far-right Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache added.

I love that the Austria’s (democratically-elected) government is branded “far-right”, when a cursory examination of the parts of their platform not to do with immigration reveals that they’re about equivalent to centrist Democrats (if any such thing still exists) — i.e. closer to the sainted John F. Kennedy’s political philosophy than to anything truly rightwing.

And incidentally, please note the recent electoral victory by an anti-immigrant party in Slovenia (also once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire).

Anyway, needless to say that this attitude is pissing off the Muzzies, especially the Turks, who’ve been sponsoring these Islamist Fifth Columnist mullahs for decades.  Too bad, fuck ’em.  You’d think the “Gates Of Vienna” would have warned them, but they’re idiots.

Somebody pass the popcorn…

P.S.  If any person of the Disney-lawyerly-persuasion wants to take issue with the title of this post:  fuck you.  The expression predates Star Wars — and for that matter the entire Disney corporation — by over a thousand years (check Cicero’s writings), so if you think you have a copyright beef with me:  you don’t.

Assault Weapons

Behind Enemy Lines, Crime

Wow… even I’m impressed by the weapons being used by the criminals in London as the crime (tidal) wave continues:

      

Clearly, banning the things won’t do any good, just as banning guns hasn’t worked too well. 

And the violence is no longer confined to the scuzzy areas of London and the other cities;  I saw from a pic in another article that one of the attacks took place where I took a stroll in London just a few months ago.

I’ve been racking my brain for some kind of solution to this — seriously, I have — and the more I look at it, there are only a few solutions:

  • Flood the streets with cops —  but the Brits don’t have enough cops.
  • Allow the citizens to arm themselves — like that’s going to happen.
  • Reinstate the death penalty (especially for scum who do things like this) and get serious about executing dangerous / murderous criminals — that ain’t gonna happen either.
  • When (if) they catch the criminals, deport them to a penal colony (like France’s old Devil’s Island of Papillon fame) — wait a minute, that has promise, because if any country in the world owns a bunch of uninhabited, remote islands, it would be the Brits.  Granted, it would take a few years to build the accommodations, but we’re talking concrete cellblocks, not the Ritz.  And it’s not like they haven’t done it before (hello, Australia!) so there is precedent. (Escape from New York is starting to look less like a dystopian fantasy and more like a blueprint, isn’t it?)

Sadly, though, the Brits don’t seem to have the balls to do any of the above.  Utter chaos is coming, if it isn’t there already.  What a mess.  (Although the Britcops seem to have no difficulty in dealing with hardened criminals like this bad boy…)

If anyone has any bright ideas different to mine, feel free to share them — and I’m not talking fantasies (I can assemble a few of those all by myself);  I need workable solutions, because the Brits seem to be at a loss.

Anarchy In Britishland

Behind Enemy Lines, Gummint

Why do I giggle like a little girl when I read stories like this one?

Villagers are praising a fire that destroyed an ‘archaic’ toll booth that charged drivers 12p in cash only to cross the Manchester Ship Canal and caused frustratingly long traffic queues. Warburton bridge toll booth is suspected to have been reduced to ash by an arsonist who became fed up of waiting waiting to cross the bridge.

But wait!  The powers-that-be are not taking this lying down:

The booth’s owners, Peel Ports, are planning to replace the destroyed structure with a more modern toll.

…and I hope this one gets torched as well, especially if it’s an expensive modern one.  For a 12p (50c) toll?  FFS.

Anyone remember the spate of vandalism directed at speed cameras in Britishland a couple years back?  I do:

When Gummint has to put up cameras to catch the people who are vandalizing cameras, that’s when we’ll know we’re winning.

In the meantime back here in Murka, we can just fall back on the old (hypothetical, that is) question of whether one should use a rifle or shotgun instead of playing with matches;  and if a rifle, what caliber?  Myself, I tend to favor the .45-70 Government, but I’m prepared to listen to other suggestions.

…And Louder Still

Behind Enemy Lines, Two-Minute Hate

Here’s another little snippet which caused me to go cross-eyed momentarily:

The number of coffee shops in Britain is set to overtake pubs by the year 2030, according to industry research.
Some three coffee shops are opening every day adding an extra 21 a week serving up lattes and cappuccinos.
By contrast between 21 and 25 pubs are closing every week, with many turned into homes and convenience stores.
Fhe switch from lager to latte means that the number of UK coffee shops has increased from 10,000 in 2007 to 24,000 today.
At the same time, the traditional pub is suffering with the total down from around 75,000 in the 1970s to around 47,000 today.

Oy. It’s enough to make me want to crawl into a corner and whimper like a little girl. Then again, there may still be a little of the bulldog spirit left:

I mean, I love coffee. But it’s a morning drink — or at least, an after-dinner choice. But nothing beats a good pub. Here’s one that I visited with The Englishman, because the King’s Arms was just too far away for our thirst, and it was a case of “Stand aside, Coffee; this is a job for BEER.”

No doubt it will be gone by the time I get back Over There.

Somebody hide the pills.

 

 

Scandal

Behind Enemy Lines, Food & Drink

File this under “There ought to be a law”:

UK McDonald’s Run Out Of Bacon
Furious fast food lovers went into meltdown this morning after dozens of McDonald’s restaurants in the UK ran out of bacon.
Customers were unable to purchase popular breakfast items from the menu, including bacon rolls, bacon and egg McMuffins and bacon and egg bagels.
Restaurants in Devon, Essex, West Sussex and Greater Manchester have run out of pork and customers took to Twitter to vent their anger.

As well they should. I think it actually IS a law in parts of the U.S.:

Section 2 Part I:
No restaurant should ever run out of bacon, under penalty of imprisonment for the manager thereof.

I saw it on the Internet; it must be true.

New Jersey Bastardy

Advice, Behind Enemy Lines, The Gun Thing, Travels

From Reader Mark D in Comments yesterday:

On the topic of suppressors, I’ve been saying for a while that I want to move from New Jersey to America, but I NEVER thought America would be found in Great Britain…

Don’t even get me started. On Saturday last, we got a text from Doc Russia in Newark Airport, while he was flying Edinburgh – Newark – DFW:

Fun fact: going through Newark with a federally-licensed suppressor will end up with you face-down on the ground, handcuffed.

Here’s the deal. Doc has a legal suppressor for his Remington, all the paperwork done, tax paid, blessed by the Pope, yadda yadda yadda. He was about to pack it in his rifle case to bring home, when both Combat Controller and I suggested that he shouldn’t, because New Jersey. He laughed it off, saying his luggage was checked through to DFW — but agreed that discretion was called for, and that he could bring it back another time when flying direct from Britishland to Dallas.

It’s a good thing he did. Here’s why.

As we all know, when arriving in a foreign country, you have to go through Customs and Immigration in your arrival “port”, even if you’re connecting to go further. Now, if your connecting flight is from the same terminal, you’re good to go. If you have to go to another terminal for your connecting flight, things might get more tricky.

As is the case here. Suppressors are completely banned in New Jersey — no federal blessing counts, no paperwork is acceptable. Set foot in the state of New Jersey with a suppressor, no matter how legal, and you will end up face-down on the ground, handcuffed.

So had Doc arrived in Newark with his suppressor and left the international terminal, the NJ State Police would have arrested him, even though he was simply in transit — going from one jurisdiction where suppressors are legal to another where it’s also legal — the very fact that he was in New Jersey at all with his suppressor, albeit only for a few minutes, would have made him an instant felon.

And we know all this because Doc happened to ask a member of New Jersey’s Staatspolizei what their policy is. Apparently the offizier got instantly aggro, and insisted on checking Doc’s luggage for himself — just asking the question is grounds for suspicion in the New Jersey Reich.

I’m curious as to how many other states would behave the same way. I can see New York and California doing likewise, but if anyone can shed light on this topic, I’d like to know.

In the interim, all New Jersey People Of Our Sort should make preparations to leave that shitty place and move to the United States as soon as it’s practically feasible. Like I once did.