SATURDAY NIGHT LOONY TUNES.

At the height of their career, Coldplay produced two excellent albums, A rush of blood to the head (2002) and X&Y (2005). As far as I'm concerned, there's seven hits on the former and some five or six on the latter. There are those that are convinced that Viva La Vida or Death and all His Friends (2007) is just as good but I beg to disagree. If you reckon that "A rush..." boasts jewels such as "Politik", "Clocks", "Daylight", "Green Eyes", and good songs as "In My Place", "God Put a Smile upon Your Face" and "The Scientist" and that half of these received a lot of airplay over the course of just one year upon release, while "Viva..." has until now, after almost two years, just the title song that rings a bell with most people, you know it's over. If you disagree, name me a song the equal of "Politik" and other than "Viva" (which I consider far worse than "Politik") and we will talk again. "Viva la Vida" is to Coldplay what "Be here now" was for Oasis, whereby the title song "Viva..." stands for the Gallagher's "D'you know what I mean". And when I heard "Stand by me" from the Gallagher's Bros., I knew they were definitely doners. It's the same when you listen to the rest of Colplay's work on their last album.

That said, and keeping in mind that Chris Martin is a half-baked clueless drooling new age idiot, enjoy Politik:





Further proof that you don't have to be mentally sane to produce excellent music is amply provided by Moby. The following hit, "In this world", is from his 2002 album 18. Two years later, Moby worked extensively with moveon.org, backing John Kerry's presidential campaign. Nuff said.





MFBB.

A LEFTIST PLAYWRIGHT SEES THE LIGHT.

Benno Barnard is a leftist Dutch essayist, playwright and poet who has been living in Belgium for thirty-three years now and who has over the years gained quite a reputation for his oeuvre. As such, when he produces an essay or even a column, people pay attention. For a very long time, Mr. Barnard too was convinced the VB was the Big Foe, and its leaders dangerous populists secretly yearning for the time brownshirts ruled on the streets.

Apparently, Mr. Barnard is now beginning to think otherwise.

The following is a translation from Dutch provided by the elusive commenter VH over at Gates of Vienna of a Barnard column, which was - oh the irony - posted on the website of Filip Dewinter. It is well worth a read - and it reads easily:

LEFTIST LEMMINGS

By Benno Barnard

My annoyance with the left is steadily increasing. All those theses about society are nothing but barren leaves in a herbarium.

Many people demand my head since I wrote in a newspaper that “Inch’Allah?” by Filip Dewinter demonstrates a reasonable understanding of our multicultural mirth.

Please pray for me, I said — but the scope of Dewinter’s book does not differ significantly from the scope of documents and manifestoes that Salman Rushdie, Bernard-Henri Lévy, and Ian McEwan have published and signed, not to mention the warning words of intellectuals who have fled the Muslim world — and we feel rather let down because their message makes us far too nervous. This inclination is that Islam as a political ideology is a big black block of male aggression, pitch-dark obscurantism, and profound backwardness, aimed against everything we hold — or should hold — dear.

In the large cities of Western Europe, gays are bullied away by their Muslim neighbors, and teachers in secondary education are terrorized by Muslim boys, while girls demonstrate for headscarves, like chicken for battery cages. And these are only two examples of the increasing terror of Islam, fueled by sermons of imams and the waste that is imported via satellite dishes from the many Muslim dictatorships. Nevertheless, there are still intellectuals who insist that we must have confidence in the emancipatory strength of Islam.

But the emancipatory strength of that belief is rather limited. Intellectuals, in following Hegel, often detest facts, but the truth (the uncomfortable side effect of their library) that there is not any one country in the world with a Muslim majority where the minority may enjoy de facto equal rights — on the contrary, they are usually harassed, discriminated against, or even murdered.
- - - - - - - - -

The insane situation has arisen, however, in which nasty accusations are hurled at you as an Islam-critic only because you warn that the salon, where our ancestors displayed the treasures of our liberal civilization threatens to go up in smoke; yes, the carpet is already smoldering… You are a suspect because you think it is a wise idea to call the fire fighters when it burns.

Meanwhile the gauchists [leftists] talk about Muslims in the way nannies talk about the children whose care they are entrusted with.

A certain Marc Botenga states on a leftist website the following about Ahmadinejad’s intentions regarding Israel:


As for Israel I can be quite clear: he always has compared the disappearance of Israel with the disappearance of South Africa. He says: “The Apartheid regime is gone, so why would the regime in Israel not disappear?” This is very different from wiping the country off the map.

Of course, you might also quote Ahmadinejad as an authority on gay rights.

Ah, you leftist lemmings! What self-hatred is it that makes your brains continuously produce Manichean schematics with on the one side depraved Westerners — Americans, Zionists, Islam-critics — and on the other people who are suitable because they are poor and pitiful?

A short while ago, Ella Vogelaar, a wonderfully vulgar-sounding Dutch socialist, invoked once again the fatal parallel: Geert Wilders was a Nazi, and the Moroccans of the fourth generation were similar to the Jewish refugees in the thirties.

The truth is that the Nazis hate Wilders. Last year the National Socialist Action/Autonomous National Socialists (NSA/ANS) organized a demonstration against Wilders on the Binnenhof in The Hague. In their eyes he is nothing but a “dirty Zionist”. And the Dutch People’s Union (NVU) accuses Wilders of being bent on a civil war between Muslims and Christians, while those groups according to the NVU should precisely form a united front against Zionism, Capitalism, and American Imperialism, for those are the enemies the extreme right…

Wilders and Dewinter: I believe that you cannot blame the alarm clock for ringing loudly.

At the time I write this, over the past couple of days there has been a prisoner revolt in Sint-Gillis (the overwhelming majority of inmates are muslims), riots by tens of young Moroccans in Anderlecht whereby the police basically had to flee to save their asses, and an even larger riot in Molenbeek, where the scene developed in a veritable street war with cars torched, public property smashed, autochton locals beaten terrorized with pepperspray, and police and firefighters pelted with a hail of stones and other projectiles. Sint-Gillis, Molenbeek and Anderlecht are all three suburbs of Brussels with a muslim majority. It's always bad, but I wonder if this sudden outburst of violence has something to do with that yearly feast of hypocrisy called ramafuckingdam.

Prepare for civil war. And Americans, or, for that matter, any nation that risks to see its muslim minority in time morph into a majority, better pay attention.


MFBB.

ANTWERP IMAM THREATENS MASS INSUBORDINATION OF ALL MUSLIM SCHOOLCHILDREN IN FLANDERS.

It's almost September 1st and then the measure announced by the Koninklijk Atheneum, a high school in Antwerp now almost exclusively for muslim children, will go into effect. That measure forbids girls from wearing the veil inside the school's premises and was invoked because of the undeniable social pressure from veil-wearers onto non-veil-wearers to follow suit; in other words, to counter islamic radicalization.

There was a major uproar among the schoolchildren, and imam Nordine Taouil joined in and exhorted not only them but also all muslim children in Flanders to stay away from school come September 1st if the girls were not allowed to wear the veil.

The following shows the fanatic, who is actually the former imam of the El Mouslimin mosque in Antwerp. I have tried to find decent software that allows you to add subtitles of your own, but found none. The most promising, Subyo, claimed to have sent me an email with an activation link but so far nada. If somebody out there has a hint to a good subtitle inserting programme, I'd be very grateful.





Here is an exerpt from the islamic terrorism report currently on Filip Dewinter's website that deals with Taouil and the El Mouslimin mosque. At the moment I do not have the time to translate, will try this night.

b) Moskee El Mouslimin

Enkele Marokkaanse moskeeën in het Antwerpse prediken eveneens haat en onverdraagzaamheid. Jongeren worden er aangespoord om te gaan studeren op madrassa’s in o.a. Pakistan, Jordanië en Syrië. Via deze islamitische scholen worden ze in contact gebracht met fundamentalisten die hen proberen te overtuigen om nog een intensere geestelijke en bijkomende fysieke training te ondergaan. Zo komen de jongeren uiteindelijk terecht in opleidingskampen van terreurorganisaties zoals Al Qaeda. Ongeveer 50% van hen wordt doorgestuurd naar Afghanistan, Kashmir, Irak of Tsjetsjenië om te strijden in het belang van de jihad. De overige 50% keert terug naar België … Er lopen dus jongeren in de Antwerpse straten rond die een intensieve jihadopleiding hebben gekregen. Beangstigend toch!

Een van deze Marokkaanse moskeeën is El Mouslimin in de Jan Palfijnstraat. Dit is dé moskee waar de terreurgroep ‘Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain’ aanwezig is. Het is een zéér groot gebedshuis waarin fundamentalisten zich thuis voelen.

De vroegere imam, Nordin Taouil, was een echte voorvechter van de gewapende jihad tegen de westerlingen en joden. Zijn agressief denken en handelen heeft er toe geleid dat 90% van de jongeren in deze moskee zich geroepen voelt om hun leven te geven voor de gewapende strijd. Hij is ook dé persoon die je moet contacteren als je een fysieke opleiding wenst te volgen in het buitenland (voornamelijk Pakistan en Algerije). Vandaar dat de Marokkaanse inlichtingendienst in deze moskee is geïnfiltreerd. Terroristen van ‘Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain’ vinden in deze Antwerpse moskee een veilig onderkomen. Velen van hen worden in Marokko gezocht voor het plegen of voorbereiden van aanslagen.

Our friends over at Gates of Vienna are on this topic too, as well as the notable blogger Vladtepes, who - shame on me - provided the translation. Here's an exerpt from GoV:

“The aggressive manner in which the radical Muslims responded, convinced me that the headscarf ban was the right decision,” said Karin Heremans, director of the Royal Athenaeum of Antwerp, where all political and religious symbols — including the headscarf — are now banned.

How the Imam, with whom she just had a constructive conversation, could turn 180 degrees in a second like that she still does not understand. “But we stick to our position,” she declares. “We wanted to avoid all this fuss by communicating it only after the exams.” She sighs.

The director mentions (in the Flemish newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen) that there was an increasing radicalization noticeable within the school walls. Several girls were being put under pressure to wear a headscarf. “The presence of these radical Muslims during the protests confirmed my suspicion that this effect had been slumbering for a while and even enormously increasing. The politicians should most urgently consider how to deal with this group. These radical Muslims systematically, under the guise of religious freedom, reject all democratic principles. They reject any compromise. They have the right to profess their faith, but not to impose it on others,” Karin Heremans said, who herself in the meanwhile was threatened by certain Muslims: “Those men told me that I should be whipped and must be hanged”…

This is no exxageration, I can testify that Belgian press deemed newsworthy at least THAT tidbit, that Mrs. Heremans was stopped on the streets of Borgerhout (Antwerp suburb) by three muslim fanatics with long beards, djellabas and skullcaps, and told that she would be hanged if she did not revoke the measure.

So far, Mrs. Heremans is not giving in. It will be an interesting September 1st.



MFBB.

OUTLAW MIKE EXTENDS HIS RAMADAN GREETINGS TO MUSLIMS WORLDWIDE...

And if non-muslims think that's over the top and not very conciliatory, you might want to consider the ummah's gazillion of friendly gestures towards us the past week, of which the hero's welcome in Tripoli for a Lockerbie terrorist is but one example.

If you are incurable, you might want to look into the case of Riqfa Bary, a muslim girl who converted to Christianity and who risks being murdered by her father because of that. Pamela Geller is on top of this story and does a heck of a job of it. You may or may not like her style, but if it wasn't for her the girl might well be on her way to a rendezvous with her killer.




There will of course be the inevitable moral equalizers who will say this girl just swapped one ludicrous sect for another - well, screw you. I am a christian myself, although admittedly, not a very good one, and if you think the murder of Tiller the Killer somehow puts christianity on the same par with a heinous political-religious ideology in the name of which an estimated 13,000 terror attacks have been carried out since 9/11, you're mentally deranged.


MFBB.