Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED:

TRANSLATION, which for some stupid reason doesn’t embed:

MEGA-SCANDAL: The winner of the BERLIN elections, from the far-left party Die Linke, accidentally confesses that Hamas controls her party and fears for her lifešŸ’£

A mistake has just triggered an astonishing security crisis. The magazine Der Spiegel—a media outlet, it must be noted, with a marked leftist slant—has brought to light an internal document proving how Die Linke has been hijacked by Islamism.

Its candidate to govern Berlin, Elif Eralp, accidentally sent the newsroom her private notes from an interview where she confesses to being coerced and terrified by Hamas operatives within her own party.

It turns out that after an interview, the candidate’s team reviewed the transcript. During this process, Eralp made internal comments that were meant to remain in the strictest confidentiality. However, the document with the un-erased annotations was sent back to the journalists.

The content of those notes is dynamite. When Der Spiegel asked her about Ibrahim Ibrahim—a pro-Palestinian Hamas sympathizer who celebrated the October 7 massacre—the public response was going to be evasive. But in the margin of the leaked document, Eralp wrote the truth: “There is a PROBLEM. […] my husband no, and neither do I, want to name specific names, he is afraid of these people and so am I.”

The leak exposes the raw reality of Islamo-leftism in Germany: Eralp even went so far as to compare the threat level of these pro-Palestinian militants to that of Organized Crime and implores to abort the publication: “I can’t put myself and my family in danger for Der SPIEGEL. What do we do now? Do we scrap the whole interview?”

The biggest joke of the entire situation, however, was captured in one of the phrases that Eralp did want to publish. In a display of utter disconnection, the candidate states in the interview: “What I can say with total clarity is that, as governing mayor, I will ensure the safety of all Berlin women and all Berlin men.” A promise that rings utterly ridiculous coming from a leader who, in the same document, secretly admits that she can’t even protect her own family from the rank-and-file of her party.

In the wake of the scandal, Eralp has announced that she will take legal action against Der Spiegel and file a formal complaint with the Press Council for having quoted her internal annotations. This judicial maneuver immediately reveals just how sensitive and utterly overwhelmed these leadership cadres really are when faced with crisis situations.

Berlin’s radical left believed it could politically capitalize on Islamic extremism; today, the documents prove that it’s the extremism holding them hostage.

We all saw this coming.

ELON SHOULD DO GOOD THINGS HERE ON EARTH! OH, WAIT:

JOEL KOTKIN: BEGUN, THE GENERATIONAL WAR HAS.

Although conditions differ by country, the spark behind these protests lies in both the real and the fitfully imagined: high housing prices, food inflation, lack of good jobs and failing education systems are not figments of their imaginations. At the same time, cries of poverty seem a bit overwrought for a generation that enjoys the most wealth in history and, in the West at least, their protest seems to stem from being raised to think they were special, only to find out that the world is not such a welcoming place.

The new generational war is fueled by a deep pessimism among those under 40 about the future. This, noted a 2022 Pew study, is particularly marked in Japan, France and Italy, with majorities of adult parents seeing a bleaker future for the next generation by more than three to one. The United States also does poorly with 72 per cent, while Canada does even worse, clocking in at 75 per cent.

People have been telling young people their future was going to suck since I was a kid, even as society has gotten steadily richer, healthier, and safer. And rioting is unlikely to make a better future. But the people encouraging the rioting are mostly old, and do not have young people’s interests at heart.

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.