Category: You Can’t Make This Up

“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.”
—Thomas Sowell.

Remember what I said about the experience of others being the best teacher? Well, someone in the future is probably going to internalize this lesson and simply claim the person is a burglar and exercise the right to defend themselves. Of course, around my neck of the woods we don’t here of this sort of idiocy. Could be there’s a good reason why…….

Upside Down World: Police Arrest Homeowner for Evicting Squatter

One of the main rights for which the Founding Fathers fought the Revolution was the right to private property. But in woke jurisdictions, homeowners can find themselves treated as criminals for trying to kick invading squatters out of their homes.

If someone invades another person‘s home without permission and is told to leave but refuses to do so, that individual is breaking the law and violating a sacred American right. There should be no argument whatsoever about this. But a Georgia woman insanely was arrested and charged with multiple crimes after she tried to evict an aggressive squatter who locked her out of her own home. The police sided with the victimizer instead of the victim.

“I spent the night on a mat on a concrete floor in deplorable conditions. While this woman, this squatter slept in my home,” Loletha Hale explained in frustration to Channel 2 Atlanta. A deputy condescendingly lectured Hale, “Just think of it from this perspective, though. Everybody isn’t as fortunate as you to have a bed. All the little things, a bed in their house, food in the kitchen.”

The Georgia Squatter Reform Act has apparently not been enforced in Hale’s case, as she has been in a legal battle since August, when the squatter first showed up in her home. Clayton County Magistrate Court Judge Latrevia Lates-Johnson, per Channel 2, issued the insane ruling that “Sakemeyia Johnson is not a squatter” because she is — wait for it — a relative of the partner of a previously evicted tenant. If someone wrote a fiction story this wild, he would be laughed at.

So on December 9, Johnson brazenly told officers that she was not a squatter because a judge had ruled in her favor. Hale challenged, “How can she not be squatting when I’ve never had any type of contract relationship with this person?” How indeed?

[There’s been] a multi-month court battle with multiple filings, hearings and appeals. Johnson even filed for bankruptcy, listing Hale as her only creditor.

But on Nov. 18, a magistrate judge issued a final judgment in Hale’s favor.

Hale said she thought Johnson had moved out of the home and came over the weekend to start cleaning up the home.

Hale explained, “I returned on Monday to start painting and she had broken the locks at my property.” Johnson had the chutzpah to lock Hale out and act as if her rights and safety were being violated because Hale broke into … her own home. “She just caught up out of nowhere. She had this guy with [her], and I locked the door. I locked the screen door, and he forced himself in telling us to get out,” Johnson whined to the police.

The police incident report made the outrageous assertion that Hale “executed an illegal eviction and forcibly removed Ms. Johnson’s belongings.” Hale grew so desperate in dealing with Johnson that she threatened to get her gun, which unfortunately has been used against her by the thoroughly despicable police.

Officers on the scene confirmed with court staff that Hale has not obtained a signed writ of possession in order to legally evict a tenant. [Remember Hale said Johnson never had a contract with her.]

Hale admits that, saying she has been waiting for weeks for the document to be signed by a magistrate judge… Hale has been charged with criminal trespassing and a misdemeanor count of terroristic threats.

In case you were wondering, Johnson hasn’t been charged with any crimes. It is so sickening that this could happen in America. As Hale so truly said, “To see that woman walk into my mom’s house while I was in the police car, something is wrong with this picture. Something is inherently wrong with this picture.”

Saudi Suspect Plows Car Into German Christmas Market; U.S. Media Blames [Checks Notes] the Car

An attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, has left at least two people dead and 60-80 injured. According to Die Welt:

A driver drove into a group of people at the Christmas market in Magdeburg. Government spokesman Matthias Schuppe confirmed to WELT that it was an attack. City spokesman Michael Reif also said that the initial report was an “attack on the Christmas market”. The suspected perpetrator is in police custody. WELT learned from security sources that he is a man from Saudi Arabia who was born in 1974.

The Saudi national, who had reportedly been in Germany illegally since 2006, allegedly rented a car and headed to the market two hours west of Berlin, which was teeming with visitors enjoying the Christmas festivities. A suitcase was found on the passenger seat of the vehicle, according to Die Welt, and authorities are currently trying to ascertain whether it contains an explosive device. The terrorist was taken into custody, and it’s not known whether he acted alone.

A police spokesman said the suspect drove “at least 400 meters across the Christmas market.” A witness said the attack occurred in the market’s fairy tale section.

Police have secured the area and are asking people to avoid the city center.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on X, “My thoughts are with the victims and their families. We stand by their side and by the side of the people of Magdeburg. My thanks go to the dedicated rescue workers in these anxious hours.”

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser recently called for vigilance at Christmas markets. “Federal security authorities do not currently have any concrete indications of danger,” she told reporters. “But in view of the high threat situation at an abstract level we still have reason to be very vigilant and to take effective action for our security.”

Deutsche Welle reported in November on Germany’s new knife ban:

the German government passed new security legislation in October in response to a deadly knife attack in the western city of Solingen in August. The suspected Islamist attacker killed three people and injured eight more.

The new security package tightened rules on the carrying of weapons in public spaces in Germany and explicitly banned the carrying of knives at festivals, sporting events, markets, fairs and other large events.

“The police will be present in many locations to ensure security,” said Faeser.

The attack in Magdeburg comes eight years, almost to the day after Muslim extremist Anis Amri hijacked a truck and plowed into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and wounding 56 others. According to the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, Amri was in Germany illegally and was well known to authorities both for his radicalism and his crime sprees:

When Amri entered the European Union on April 4, 2011, via the Italian island of Lampedusa, he claimed to be 16 years old. After his arrival, he was placed in a refugee shelter for minors in Belpasso, Sicily. The Italian authorities asked Tunisia for travel documents in order to return Amri to his home country, but the request went unanswered. In October 2011, Amri and four other Tunisian refugees attacked a staff member at the shelter and started a fire. Amri was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison. It was during his incarceration in different Italian jails that Amri became radicalized. A report for the Italian Committee for Strategic Anti-Terrorism Analysis (CASA) stated that Amri was considered a “dangerous person” and a “leader of the Islamists in prison” and that he was “transferred due to severe security concerns.” Amri had threatened and attacked staff and reportedly threatened to decapitate a Christian inmate.

On June 17, 2015, Italy was legally required to release Amri from a deportation facility because Tunisian authorities had not responded to its request to send travel documents for him.  After his release, Amri traveled to Switzerland, where he stayed for around two weeks before traveling to Germany. In early July 2015, German police in the city of Freiburg, near the Swiss border, registered Amri for “unlawful entry” under the name Anis Amir and took his fingerprints and photo. [Emphasis added]

U.S. media outlets were quick to blame the car for today’s attack:

Trump Assassination Attempt Task Force Determines ‘Failures’ with Secret Service Leadership

On Tuesday, the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump released its final official report, determining that there were “failures in the planning, execution, and leadership” of the United States Secret Service (USSS) leading up to both attempts on the President-elect’s life.

As reported by Breitbart, the task force’s five-month investigation focused on both the attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13th and the second attempt in West Palm Beach, Florida on September 15th. In the former attempt, President-elect Trump was wounded by gunfire in his right ear, while one rallygoer was killed and two others were critically injured, before the gunman was killed by the Secret Service. In the second attempt, the gunman was spotted by Secret Service and fled before firing a shot, and was arrested later the same day.

“The report text, unanimously approved by the Task Force on December 5, highlights significant failures in the planning, execution, and leadership of the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners,” the task force declared in a press release summarizing its findings. “The Task Force-approved report also proposes 37 actionable recommendations related both to the security failures on July 13 and to overarching structural changes that the Secret Service and Congress must consider to strengthen security measures and prevent similar security failures in the future.”

With regards to the July 13th attempt, the task force’s report noted that, rather than any one singular moment that allowed the gunman to nearly assassinate the then-former president, there had instead been “various failures in planning, execution, and leadership” which created “an environment in which the former President” and the audience at the rally were “exposed to grave danger.”

Almost immediately after the first attempt, the Secret Service faced widespread and bipartisan condemnation for the obvious security failures that allowed the 22-year-old gunman to gain access to a nearby rooftop with an entire rifle in hand. Multiple civilians spotted the armed and suspicious-looking man and tried to point him out to law enforcement, who apparently did nothing in response to these warnings. His motives remain unknown.

By contrast, the response to the second attempt in Florida was much swifter. An agent noticed the barrel of the gunman’s rifle protruding from the bushes at the Trump International Golf Course, where then-candidate Trump was playing a round of golf. The Secret Service opened fire, scaring the gunman away, before he was apprehended later by local law enforcement. The second would-be assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh, had become a fanatical supporter of Ukraine since the start of their war against Russia, and was apparently motivated by what he perceived as insufficient support for Ukraine by former President Trump.

In Germany, A Man Who Was Stabbed by a Jihadi Has Been Fined for Criticizing Islam.

Here is a story that neatly encapsulates the threat that the West faces, and the weakness of its response to that threat. In Germany, a vociferous critic of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others, Michael Stürzenberger, was stabbed several months ago by a jihadi precisely because of his opposition to those evils. Now, a German court has added insult to injury, convicting Stürzenberger of “incitement to hatred” and fining him €3,600 ($3,800). So it has come to this: what the jihadi began, the German government is now continuing. What will be the effects of this on the freedom of speech in Germany? That’s obvious: if this continues, Germany is dead as a free society.

In Spiked Wednesday, the publication’s Germany correspondent Sabine Beppler-Spahl was generally sympathetic to Stürzenberger, but added a significant and telling caveat. She asserted that “there’s little doubt that Stürzenberger can be offensive. He claims that his criticism only applies to ‘political Islam’, calling it a threat to democracy and an ideology that oppresses women. But he has also compared parts of the Koran with Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and – while saying that not all Muslims are rapists – has talked of ‘thousands of women’ who have been sexually assaulted by Muslims from Northern Africa and Arabia.”

Here yet again we see how unpopular and unwelcome truths are stigmatized as “offensive” even among people who should know better; but does that make them any less true? Sabine Beppler-Spahl appears to be unaware of the fact that the Qur’an contains numerous passages (not just one or two) that are profoundly and disturbingly antisemitic.

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