Pointless death and worthless Bills. These are the way forward for our planet.
The Borussia Dortmund attack turns out to have had nothing to do with terrorism….but was rather, gambling used as a means of exploiting terrorism. Think of it as the Mob meets Wall Street in pretend-Aleppo. Anyone trying to limbo under that one in search of lower evils just better be small, lithe and double-jointed.
When I got the original news of the attack, the entire media set seemed to assume terrorism. Most Islamic terrorism I’d summarise as ‘pointless death’, but this one was different in two ways: nobody blew himself up or got shot. So it was minus the death dimension, and thus I had doubts. I also had a hundred other things on my mind, and moved swiftly on.
Now that the allegation appears to be that a market trader footie fan planned the attack in order to make the Borussia share price plummet – so he could buy lots of shares on the cheap – I can honestly say that, had this been put forward as a conspiracy theory at the time, I’d have struck the promoter of it from my Twitter follows. As it seems to be real, however, the mind boggles at what one could do with the next attack in terms of some deeper motivation behind it….beyond, that is, lots of lithe female limbs in Heaven, and the diabolical decadence of men showing their legs during a football match.
Last night over here, we had an attack in Paris. It’s not funny, because a cop is dead and two others look to be very badly injured. But it took place outside Marks & Spencer. Maybe the perpetrator was an Académie Française fanatic made incandescent with rage about the idea of British food and clothes being acceptable to the French. Or – as M&S is a Jewish concern – maybe it was Palestinian peace flotilla organiser looking to diversify the mystery in his life.
All we’ve been told by the Sureté is that the bloke was aged 39, had a long criminal record, and as a result of his actions “a series of police raids are being carried out”. A ‘top official’ who addressed the media this morning told them that the authorities “are convinced there is a terrorist element” to the attack. There’s good reason for this: a bus full of defenceless people was involved (as in Dortmund); but unlike there, people are dead because they were unlucky enough to be around when Allah told his peace-loving follower to attack.
So that’s my top tip for security forces at work today: when assessing motive, look for the presence of pointless death. And don’t send John McCain to Iraq for talks with moderate Islamic rebels: he works for the arms industry, and they aren’t moderate.
Yesterday, President Trump signed a Steel Protection Act designed to, effectively, cancel NAFTA – and undo “the disgraceful damage Canadians have done to the US Steel business”. Unquote.
A lot of trade agreements benefit one side more than the other. This is true of the EU’s trade with Britain (it benefits the Eunatics to the tune of €81 billion) but throughout the lowest points of “debate” during the Brexit referendum, I don’t recall any Leave leaders specifically saying stuff like “French cheating has bankrupted the UK farming community”.
But that’s yer Donald. It always was yer Donald, but the bloke is beginning to look desperate by saying such things from the Oval Office. He is desperate to make something he signs both sound important and pass through the Congress.
It is only a short step from here to anything he signs. And while I’m not expecting him to sign a young, dark-skinned female fan’s autograph book and then declare it to represent “a giant leap forward in the struggle against Islamic feminist terrorism”, it’s quite likely that we’ll see him big up future Bills he deems likely to pass into Law.
So that’s my grudging tip for US liberals going forward: give Trump lots of stuff to sign with cameras around. That, you see, will allow the unelected Alternative State to carry on doing what they would always have done anyway.
Someone, somehow, has cut Trump’s balls off. And like or loathe the guy, that has to be bad news for elective democracy everywhere.
The Slog 