Quote of the Day:

Belgian financial investigators looking into recent terror plots have discovered a disturbing trend: Some of the suspects were collecting welfare benefits until shortly before they carried out their attacks.

–Wall Street Journal

At least five of the terrorists in the Paris and Brussels attacks didn't have to plot terrorist attacks around inconvenient job schedules–they were receiving generous social welfare payments from the Belgian government, according to a front-page story in today's Wall Street Journal. They received what amounts to about $56,000 a year.

Salah Abdeslam, the sole terrorist survivor of the Paris attack, was getting unemployment benefits until three weeks before the attack, according to sources quoted in the story. He was also working part-time at a bar that he partly owned. This should have made him ineligible for benefits. Others in a disrupted attack were also receiving benefits, according to the Wall Street Journal. The story observes:

The revelations raise a difficult conundrum for Europe.

Ya think?

The story goes on:

On one hand, the modern welfare state is a primary tool for combating poverty as well as integrating immigrants. On the other, officials are working hard to find and stop potential sources of revenue for those bent on committing terrorist atrocities.

Read that sentence again: Public assistance is used to "integrate" immigrants. What ever happened to the concept of immigrants taking the first available job and working to assimilate and become proud citizens of their adopted nation?  And some job of "integrating" those terrorists into Belgian society!

And now read this:

Fred Cauderlier, the Belgian prime minister’s spokesman, said a law was changed following the Paris attacks to prevent people convicted of terrorism from receiving benefits while in jail.

Call me cold-hearted, but why is anybody receiving benefits while in jail?

The U.K. also has a habit of making generous welfare payments to people such as Abu Hamza al-Masri who preached jihad in the heart of London.

Before you shake your heads and sigh at the idea of degenerate European countries financing their own destruction, let me just recall for the record Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlane Tsarnaeve was the recipient of welfare payments.

Tamerlane and his wife and their three-year-old son were receiving benefits and both Boston bomber brothers as children received benefits through their parents.

Hey, Western countries, we are financing our own destruction.