SATURDAY NIGHT PETER GABRIEL, PETER BJORN AND JOHN.

Peter Gabriel first, with Games without frontiers.



From his third solo album, Peter Gabriel (1980). Gabriel was always some kind of a nutter. You should have seen the costumes he wore in his Genesis period. I also have the Genesis concept album The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Its music is 'interesting' - but the lyrics, which were AFAIK mostly written by Gabriel, make you think they originated from a mind high on LSD. At best.

On a lighter note, the poppy sound of Peter Bjorn and John with Young Folks.



Swedish blokes. This is from their third album, Writer's Block (2006). My 5-year old son, who's sitting on my lap as I write this, likes it. Just asked me to play it again. If it's good enough for OutlawSon, then it's good enough for you.

Good night.

MFBB.

UK MET OFFICE: GLOBAL WARMING STOPPED 16 YEARS AGO.

A while back we had us this sometimes annoying, sometimes funny lefty commenter here, who posted under the genial moniker anon.

anon dismissed the islamic threat to the civilized world, but pooped in his pants over the GW issue, excuse me, the MAN-MADE GW issue.

anon went south sometime in 2007 or so.

We're 2012 now, and us nasty rightwingers, forever warning of the muzzies and downplaying the birds falling fried from the air, well...

Well, in the meantime we've evolved to a point where Brussels is 25% muslim and Somalis are starting to make a nuisance of themselves in Maine, yes MAINE; half of the world is on fire wherever muslim countries border non-muslim ones, a US ambassador's corpse was dragged to the streets of a Libyan shithole, half a USMC squadron was destroyed in AF by Taliban, and yet another Mohammad wanted to blow up the NY Federal Reserve with a 453-kg bomb. That's one side of the picture.

And here's the other one. You wouldn't have noticed it if you get your news from MSNBC, Le Monde or De Volkskrant, but.... the UK's Met Office has concluded that the world stopped getting warmer in... 1996.



From Mail Online:

FLAWED SCIENCE COSTS US DEARLY "Here are three not-so trivial questions you probably won’t find in your next pub quiz. First, how much warmer has the world become since a) 1880 and b) the beginning of 1997? And what has this got to do with your ever-increasing energy bill? You may find the answers to the first two surprising. Since 1880, when reliable temperature records began to be kept across most of the globe, the world has warmed by about 0.75 degrees Celsius.
From the start of 1997 until August 2012, however, figures released last week show the answer is zero: the trend, derived from the aggregate data collected from more than 3,000 worldwide measuring points, has been flat.

Not that there has been any coverage in the media, which usually reports climate issues assiduously, since the figures were quietly release online with no accompanying press release – unlike six months ago when they showed a slight warming trend.

The answer to the third question is perhaps the most familiar. Your bills are going up, at least in part, because of the array of ‘green’ subsidies being provided to the renewable energy industry, chiefly wind.

They will cost the average household about £100 this year. This is set to rise steadily higher – yet it is being imposed for only one reason: the widespread conviction, which is shared by politicians of all stripes and drilled into children at primary schools, that, without drastic action to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, global warming is certain soon to accelerate, with truly catastrophic consequences by the end of the century – when temperatures could be up to five degrees higher. Hence the significance of those first two answers. Global industrialisation over the past 130 years has made relatively little difference.

And with the country committed by Act of Parliament to reducing CO2 by 80 per cent by 2050, a project that will cost hundreds of billions, the news that the world has got no warmer for the past 16 years comes as something of a shock. It poses a fundamental challenge to the assumptions underlying every aspect of energy and climate change policy. This ‘plateau’ in rising temperatures does not mean that global warming won’t at some point resume.

But according to increasing numbers of serious climate scientists, it does suggest that the computer models that have for years been predicting imminent doom, such as those used by the Met Office and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are flawed, and that the climate is far more complex than the models assert. ‘The new data confirms the existence of a pause in global warming,’ Professor Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Science at America’s Georgia Tech university, told me yesterday.

‘Climate models are very complex, but they are imperfect and incomplete. Natural variability [the impact of factors such as long-term temperature cycles in the oceans and the output of the sun] has been shown over the past two decades to have a magnitude that dominates the greenhouse warming effect. ‘It is becoming increasingly apparent that our attribution of warming since 1980 and future projections of climate change needs to consider natural internal variability as a factor of fundamental importance.’

Uh, anon?

MFBB.

A STORY OF DANIEL AND JOSEPH.

In the previous post I mentioned that the new confederalist party, the N-VA (new Flemish Alliance), something like a Vlaams Belang Lite, and its leader, Bart Dewever, will discover soon enough what it means to out yourself as being to the right of Erich Honecker. Mind you, on a personal level I am not at all in favor of Dewever, given his irrational hostility to what should be a natural partner, the VB. But the following examples are striking.

So once again a Flemish rightist party (they are rather center-right, but whatever) captures around 40% of the vote, the single biggest piece of the electorate. HORROR!!! Can't be. Time for some machiavellist poker playing between leftist bigshots and the thoroughly red media. Daniel Termont, socialist mayor of Ghent, was offered a nice big window in HLN (Het Laatste Nieuws) to offer his erudite view on De Wever's astounding succes:

"LANGUAGE DE WEVER REMINDS ME OF THE THIRTIES".
In an interview with VPRO [Dutch leftist media channel - MFBB] Ghent mayor Daniel Termont (SP.a) says that De Wever's style and the content of his speech 'look very much extreme right'. Certain parts of Dewever's victory speech remind Termont of a language I heard in the thirties and which SCARES ME'.

Bad luck Dewever. You pay homage to Burke and want to stop feeding the socialist welfare machinery in Wallonia - there's no other explanation than that you are a (not so distant) cousin to Heinrich Himmler. Well, for our bien pensant Mr Daniel Termont anyway.

Actually, I think someone should tell Mr Termont that once upon a time right after the Great War a nitwit who flunked just about everything joined the DAP, an insignificant Munich party, led by a certain Anton Drexler. DAP stood for Deutsche Arbeiter Partei, or German Worker's Party. Soon thereafter Drexler added the prefix 'NS' to DAP, which then meant Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP), or National Socialist German Workers Party. It was to be Drexler's last important act, since in 1921 already the nitwit became undisputed leader of the NSDAP. That fella's name was Hitler, Adolph, and if I would take the NSDAP's programme, and I'd keep it next to the SP.a's programme, I'm pretty certain I'd find similarities that would SCARE ME. Now i don't want to exaggerate - I don't think there's anything in the SP.a programme that hints at exterminating Jews (although the party's attitude towards the State of Israel sometimes also SCARES ME in that regard). On the other hand, with regards to silencing your political opponents through lies one can certainly discern parallels between the Drexler and Termont blueprints.

Over now to HLN's buddies at De Standaard, all the news that's shit to print. In another case of ubiquitous incestual crossreporting so typical of Europes strikingly un-diverse media landscape, De Standaard is anxious to let us know that the Dutch brethren of De Volkskrant, yet another leftist rag, sees 'Doom scenarios for Belgium with De Wever's sudden rise to prominence'. And De Standaard is so kind to provide the following photo to illustrate De Volkskrant's anxiety:



Tell me honestly, what would the Belgian peasant population be without such a paradigm of fair and balanced reporting like De Standaard??? Very helpfully, they found and added just the perfect snapshot of Dewever to fit right under the caption 'DE VOLKSKRANT SEES DOOM SCENARIOS FOR BELGIUM'. At the last moment a De Standaard editor must have clipped De Wever's right hand off - even De Standaard is aware of a concept like overkill.

Now that we are talking about the wonderfully politically diverse media landscape in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics of Belgistan, how 'bout this one? Last week the last two 'somewhat center-right' contributors to the well-known weekly Knack, Director Strategy Rik Van Cauwelaert and satirical writer Koen Meulenaere, left the weekly because they disagreed with Knack naming Jorgen Oosterwaal as new Editor-in-Chief:



Many years ago I suspended my subscription to Knack since I could not stand anymore the nauseating leftist bias and the incessant anti-Americanism. Now, Van Cauwelaert and Meulenaere were about the only people left at Knack with their heads screwed on 'right'. They are goners now, because of the new Editor-in-Chief Oosterwaal.

Who the f*ck is Oosterwaal?

Oh, he just so happens to be a former Humo-journalist (Humo is yet another leftist, 'progressive' weekly). And, only just a couple of weeks back Mr Oosterwaal was the producer of a narcissist folder named 'Patrick', distributed during the municipal elections to support the campaign of the... socialist hopeful for the post of mayor of Antwerp, Patrick Janssens. The pic shows you Janssens with Oosterwaal's brainchild:



Isn't it sweet? Socialist candidate for the post of Antwerp's mayor Patrick Janssens with Joergen Oosterwaal's magazine in the runup to the municipal elections.

And that same Joergen Oosterwaal is now going to be... Editor in Chief of Flander's most important weekly Knack. Oh, and Van Cauwelaert and Meulenaere, the last two 'somewhat center rightwingers' have just left the building!

Isn't it amazing how the guys and gals hollering all the time 'bout diversity here diversity there are so absolutely averse of... political diversity???

Over and out or I'm gonna puke. Hey Termont, regarding your fear of the thirties when you hear Dewever... a fella of yours, political fella, (in)famous socialist fella, he made it propaganda minister or something. Yeah, in those thirties you so dread. He once said that a lie repeated a hundredfold becomes a truth.

Fella's name Mr Termont - can I say Daniel?? - fella's name, it escapes me Daniel...

Got it! Fella's name was Joseph Goebbels!!! Yea, that was it!

MFBB.

A MAIL EXCHANGE WITH THE COMMANDER.

Our good friend CDR Salamander mailed me the day before yesterday with the following question: 'Did you vote twice or something?'

First the background. On October 14, last Sunday, municipal elections were held in Belgium. While they did not promise surprises in Wallonia, Belgium's overwhelmingly socialist ergo dirt poor French-speaking part, they were expected to cause quite an earthquake in Flanders, Belgium's rich, Dutch-speaking northern half.

And they did.

A 'secessionist', 'conservative' party that has almost litterally sprung up from nowhere, N-VA, for Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie [New-Flemish Alliance] mad major inroads everywhere in Flanders, in the process cannibalizing its nearest neighbor, the truly conservative Vlaams Belang, and pushing the socialists from the throne in Flanders' biggest city, Antwerp.




Initially not intending to do a post about it since rather affected by the terrible losses my party, the Vlaams Belang, suffered, the CDR's mail spurred me into writing a response, and it sort of morphed into something sufficient for a decent post. You'll find it below, but first of all two remarks:

a.) In choosing to label his mail 'Did you vote twice or something' he seems to assume I contributed to the N-VA's success, ergo he thinks I'm an N-VA supporter. I am not, since I consider them CINO's (conservatives in name only). Still, the very perception that the N-VA is rightist can be a burden in Belgium, as the N-VA will very soon find out.

b.) The N-VA is not secessionist per se. It's confederalist.

OK. Now for my reply to the CDR:

"Op 15/10/2012 1:26, CDR Phibian Salamander schreef: > > http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/70477188-1636-11e2-b6f1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz29JpkGZAt > > Cheers, > Sal > > - http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com > - http://www.blogtalkradio.com/midrats > Contributor to: > - http://blog.usni.org > - http://bigpeace.com

CDR, baloney. Mark my words and you'll remember them when you have the fortune to reach the ripe old age of 90, Belgium ain't no artificial nation. Among the average Fleming there is no desire to split up the country and indeed, the guy in the article, Bart De Wever, leader of the N-VA, something like a Vlaams Belang Lite, is no secessionist. He is a confederalist, wanting to transfer certain fiscal responsibilities to the regions while keeping key ministries like defense or foreign affairs at the federal level. He DOES want still greater autonomy for Flanders and Wallonia, true.

But I think he's smart enough to understand that there are strong supranational forces at play (the EU itself foremost) which will NEVER allow that one of the six founding members of the EU, indeed, a mini EU in itself and its very political laboratory, will call its splitsville thereby calling in question the viability of the greater EU itself.

In that respect NV-A is a bit more realist than the VB, which btw is rapidly hrinking as a result of N-VA cannibalizing it. They understand that here in ole Belgium we aren't doing anymore what we'd like to do without Big Brother EU looking over our shoulder ready to intervene at a moment's notice.

Also, there's the problem of Brussels. You simply cannot make a clean cut in Belgium, it's not Czechoslowakia where both parties had clearly defined and mature administrative centers: Prague for the Czechs and Bratislava for the Slovaks.

Belgium falling apart? Forget it.

I think the VB made a grievous political error in not acknowledging that the average Fleming DOES-NOT-WANT-A- BREAKUP. They (the VB) have been hammering on independence for aeons, it can't be done. And now they are stuck in a corner with their main programme point and can't call it quits without losing face even more. Of course, the VB programma is more than that. Other main points are:

* strong identity politics (Western in general, Flemish in particular)
* strongly opposed to islamization
* zero tolerance for criminality
* defense of traditional values (the traditional family with man, woman, preferably married, and a couple of kids
* against gay marriage, against gay adoption
* on the economical level, pro free market with social corrections, from a technical POV pro supply side economics


All good points, which is why I am still a VB member. But I couldn't even vote for the VB since privately I live in Wallonia. I HAD to vote, for that reason, for Walloon parties - and with pain in my heart give my vote for the least worst.

You won't find (m)any of those VB hallmarks in the N-VA programme. Like I said, their signature claim is for confederalism, as they see it as the only means to stem the flow of Flemish money to the dilapidated socialist structure in the south - Wallonia.

Bottom line: the VB has a string of good, honest conservative points but one demand that cannot realistically be met - Flemish independence tout court. The N-VA, soi-disant VB Lite, lacks the real conservative stuff, indeed, is ambiguous in quite a few matters, but has one realistic proposal for stopping Walloon profiteering on Flemish backs - confederalism.

Inexplicably, the leader of the NVA, Bart De Wever, does not let an occasion pass to spit in the VB's face. I can understand that for pragmatic reasons it would be preferable not to 'burn' itself in an alliance with the VB (that there would be 'burning' is in itself a disgrace since the VB has long since come clean with its past). There's however no excuse for displaying genuine physical contempt.

What will the future bring? The VB has so hammered on the unreachable goal of indepence that they've cornered themselves. Voter fatigue with a party that is at the same time constrained in the infamous 'cordon sanitaire' has depleted its ranks. Unless a miracle happens, I see no immediate solution for the stalemate the party finds itself in.

The N-VA will discover soon enough that even the whiff of faux conservatism suffices to brand it as 'extreme right' in a country where leftist ideologies have so been spoonfed to the population that they have become mainstream. Sure enough, already Daniel Termont, the socialist mayor of Ghent, a major Flemish town and one where the reds and greens were able to stay in power, said to the Dutch press that Bart De Wever made him think of the thirties. That a proponent of mere confederalism can be branded as a closet nazi by a socialist asshole pur sang who GETS AWAY WITH SUCH A RIDICULOUS ACCUSATION speaks bookmarks of the level of political correctyism that has so much become the norm that anything that's not in line with it is suspect.

Add to that the imho volatile nature of the N-VA 'show of strength', based as it is one nothing more than a one man cult - for some reason Bart De Wever 'ticks', at least for now, and you have the promise of an N-VA implosion a couple of years hence.

In short - I'm desperate for conservatism in Belgium (AND in Europe), which would be the ONLY thing that can put us back on the tracks.

Personally, I will stay a VB member. Apart from its striving for independence, it's sufficiently conservative for me. If the conservative ship must go down in a world full of political lies, media distortions and educational brainwashing, then I prefer to go down with it instead of going with the flow.

Nite - Michael

PS gonna read some more pages of The Killer Angels, almost at the end now. Mighty good book!"

Indien VB-leden die deelnamen aan de verkiezingen dit lezen, proficiat met jullie inzet. Doorvechten!