Today, Easter Sunday, those of us who are Christian celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who died at the cross for our sins on Good Friday.
DowneastBlog wishes all its readers of good will a Happy Easter:
Special prayers are asked for all those suffering physically and mentally from the horrible assaults on humanity so omnipresent today in this troubled world, but especially for...
* the people killed and wounded during the callous islamic terror attacks on Zaventem International Airport earlier this week. As I'm typing this... there's without a doubt people wide awake out there, not even very far away, either hurting like hell and completely emotionally overwhelmed by the loss of limbs or disfigurement. There's people out there who lost loved ones, fathers, mothers, children, and whose minds are screaming right now with agony and sheer and utter desperation.
* the Iraqi soccer-playing boys whose lives were either brutally cut short, or who were wounded and/or maimed for life when on Friday an islamic state suicide bomber detonated his charge just as the trophies were about to be handed out. 26 were killed and 71 wounded in Iskandariya, a town just south of Baghdad.
* Mr Asad Shah, a shopkeeper in Glasgow, Scotland, by all accounts a very decent and friendly man who operated a shop on Minard Road. On Thursday, he wished his followers/customers on Facebook a Happy Easter. He was murdered four hours later by two muslim savages, one of them stabbing Mr Shah, the other one stomping on his head. Mr Shah was an Ahmadiyya muslim, a member of a small sect founded in the late nineteenth century by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Ahmadiyya muslims, who worldwide number only about 10 million or so, are an extremely rare non-violent muslim branch who reject jihad. Generally, muslims regard Ahmadiyyans as heretics.
I... think that one look into the calm brown eyes of Mr Shah suffices to conclude that this man was a very kind and gentle soul:
I think that it is appropriate that I post here again Mr Shah's Happy Easter wishes. May they inspire.
Prayers.
Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Yesterday special police units tried to arrest a suspect waiting at a tram station in the borough of Schaarbeek, northern Brussels. The suspect immediately grabbed a woman and a child to use as a human shield. [UPDATE: they might have been his wife and daughter]. Still, police were able to neutralize him with a shot in the leg, whereupon both hostages could apparently wrestle themselves free. A unmanned DOVO (the Belgian Army's Ordnance Disposal service) vehicle checked the man's rucksack and blew it up, but it's not clear whether it indeed contained explosives.
A screenshot from The National dealing with the event:
The world has suddenly discovered Molenbeek, but Schaarbeek is another Parti Socialiste bulwark, and as a result also a hotbed for radicalism.
New info has emerged about Saleh Abdeslam's capture in Molenbeek last week. It's quite shocking:
"When Salah Abdeslam was arrested Friday afternoon in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, he just got home from a stroll. He was shot in the knee and wrestled to the ground in the house's entrance hall, together with companion Amine Choukri...
...
... after the house searches in a dwelling in Vorst, where he could escape because a companion opened fire on the police, Abdeslam did not care much to hide anymore. He called his friend Abid Aberkan who gave him shelter in his mother's house in Molenbeek's Vierwindenstraat...
... Police became convinced that he was hiding there, when suddenly a great quantity of pizzas were delivered. Not by the pizzaman himself, but by a neighbor who had ordered them.
... he had just been walking trough the neighborhood, with his hoodie up, but his face bare and only sporting a ringbeard, and was perfectly recognizable from the police photographs..."
But of course, the whole neighborhood is to-tal-ly innocent. Abdeslam's friend had spent the past decade on Antarctica, where he had unsuccessfuly been trying to set up a business as a marital counselor for pinguins, and he really didn't know how his buddy had fared in the meantime. The friend's mother lives in a parallel universe where all the jews are dead and all the infidels are dogs and, there being no need anymore for heroes of Saleh's calibre, she therefore did not recognize him. As for the neighbor who ordered the pizzas, he believed that they were for Snow White and the Seven Smurfs. Also, islam is a Religion of Peace. Take it from moi, I read it in the Fabeltjeskrant:
The photo shows the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Yassir Arafat's uncle, who during World War II lived in Berlin (he left it in February 1945 when he saw the sign on the wall), reviewing soldiers of the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar. A lot has been written about this division, but what is less well known is that there was actually a second Waffen SS division composed of muslims, the 23rd Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Kama.
Yassir Arafat's uncle inspecting the troops. Nothing new under the sun.
Muslims in the Waffen SS.
Unlike the 13th, the 23rd Kama never attained full divisional strength. It's combat performance was even poorer, and after large parts mutinied in October 1944, it was disbanded.
Like islamic "warriors" the world over and throughout history, the men of the 13th and 23rd were very brave and efficient when engaging unarmed civilians, especially women and children. Against well-armed and determined adversaries like e.g. the Red Army, not so much.
By now, the identity of the kamikaze jihadists wreaking havoc on Zaventem International Airport and in the Brussels underground is known. Interesting to note is that, like in Paris, there were two brothers among them: Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui.
On the photo below, Ibrahim is the one in the middle. His brother Khalid blew himself up in the Maalbeek metro station.
But now for some interesting background, and I'm just quoting Dutch daily De Volkskrant, because in only two paragraphs it contains some key info AND at the same time posits an interesting question:
"In January 2010 Ibrahim was involved in a robbery of an exchange office in Brussels. When chased by police he opened fire on them with a Kalashnikov [one officer got shot in the leg - MFBB]. The affair got a lot of coverage in the Belgian press because then mayor of Brussels Freddy Thielemans called the shooting a 'fait divers', for which he was criticized roundly.
The oldest of the El Bakraoui brothers was sentenced to 9 years prison for the robbery. His brother Khalid got five years in 2011 for a series of carjackings. Why the brothers were set free despite their long-term (sic) convictions is not clear."
I will tell you why they were set free. They were released from jail on the basis of the notorious Lejeune Law, which stipulates that "if a convict shows exemplary behaviour in jail, he may be released after one third of the original sentence."
Which is exactly what happened. Of Khalid's date of release I know nothing, but Ibrahim, apparently having behaved exemplary, left jail in 2014. With deadly results.
But let us go back to Mayor Thielemans, of the Parti Socialiste, he who called Ibrahim El Bakraoui robbing an exchange office and wounding a police officer with an AK47 a 'fait divers'!
Among longtime readers, the name Freddy Thielemans may ring a bell. He was a former Mayor of Brussels and prominent member of the PS, "the party of 1,000,000 scandals".
Like all socialists, Mr Thielemans is deeply in love with the followers of the Religion of Peace aka "islam", but not so much with people somewhat to the right of Stalin, e.g. Vlaams Belang members. In 2007, smack in the middle of Thielemans' tenure as Mayor, the VB wanted to commemmorate 9/11 AND warn against the dangers of islamic terrorism in a demo in the center of Brussels.
"... On September 11, 2007, the SIOE organization [Stop The Islamization of Europe - MFBB] intended to organize a demo in Brussels, in front of the European Parliament, to protest against what they call the "invasion of muslim customs". In particular, SIOE protests against the encroaching influence of islamic sharia law on relations within Europes muslim communities - and, by extension, to the relations of muslims with indigenous Europeans. Societal trends and separate cases give indeed ample reason for concern, and to name but a few we cite the results of a 2006 UK poll, which revealed that 40% of British muslims wanted sharia law to be introduced in parts of the country; the purposeful "soft" expulsion and discreet intimidation of indigenous shop owners by their moroccan counterparts in Borgerhout, Antwerp; the steeply rising number of honor revenge cases, e.g. in Rotterdam; the molestation of gays and muslim apostates in Amsterdam, the continentwide building of highly visible mosques, funded with money from the Gulf region and under the auspices of Milli Gorus, the Muslim Brotherhood etc etc etc...
...
And so it was that three apolitical European organizations, concerned about the growing influence of Islam, decided to bundle their forces and hold a peaceful demonstration against the Islamization of Europe in Brussels. The event was scheduled for the 11th of September, the West's most symbolic date in its conflict with political islam, and indeed SIOE planned to hold a 1-minute silence to commemmorate the victims of 9/11. SIOE groups the UK's No Sharia Here, led by Stephen Gash, the Danish SIAD (Stop Islamiseringen af Danmark) from Anders Gravers, and last but not least the German Pax Europa, under the chairmanship of Dr. Udo Ulfkotte.
...
Well then, as late as Tuesday 7 August, SIOE's Ulfkotte and co-organizers had a meeting with some fifteen Brussels police officials and according to Ulfkotte "there were no problems whatsoever". Two days later, on 9 August, the demonstration had been forbidden by Brussels' Mayor, Freddy Thielemans. According to press reports, he did so after conferring with police and "other services", and he "feared that there would be incidents between demonstrators and immigrants who live in the neighborhood." His spokesman Nicolas Dassonville added:
"The danger for public order is too great. There is an important immigrant community nearby which might react. Moreover, the organization uses islamophobic language."
As if to provoke, Thielemans and Dassonville hastened to declare that every year, they receive between five and six hundred requests for demonstrations, and that over the past five years they only forbade five or six. So there you have it. An apolitical organization asks for permission to stage a demonstration to highlight a very obvious and worrisome development, and is denied the right to protest. By contrast, last year muslim organizations staged a demonstration in Brussels against the headscarf ban, WITHOUT EVEN HAVING ASKED PERMISSION, and... were given a free hand. The news of Thielemans' capitulation to islamic radicals, since that is what it is, caused quite some uproar in the Belgium. In response to this, Thielemans declared "that it was not so much violence from islamic immigrants he feared, but rather from rightwing extremists"."
Here's a video of the events on 9/11 2007:
And here are some notorious stills from what was basically a shameful episode for, and a stain on, the Brussels PD. Actually, not only the Brussels Police Department however, because, just to make sure he would get the upper hand against those "rightwing extremists", Freddy Thielemans had also enlisted the services of the Liège PD, Liège being some 100 kilometers to the east of Brussels. If you'd ask yourselves how that's possible, it may help to know that Liège is a veritable Parti Socialiste bulwark, surpassed possibly only by Charleroi, the "Chicago on the Sambre":
Filip Dewinter, thrown to the ground for commemmorating 9/11 without a permit from His Socialist Majesty F. Thielemans...
Thielemans' buddies among the muslim populace, who protested against the headscarf ban somewhat earlier, and who had no permit either, were by contrast handled with kid gloves and could hold their demo...
Frank Van Hecke, the then Chairman of Vlaams Belang, getting the same treatment...
The money quote is, of course, Thielemans' immortal wisdom "THAT IT WAS NOT SO MUCH VIOLENCE FROM ISLAMIC IMMIGRANTS THAT HE FEARED, BUT RATHER FROM RIGHTWING EXTREMISTS."
On Tuesday morning, March 22, 2016, the ghastly consequences of that insane worldview were plain to see for everyone.
One among many is a three year old kid, right now fighting for his life. Courtesy Thielemans, Moureaux and Company.
Of the 32 dead, only four have been identified - you don't want to know how their bodies have been mauled.
From September 2014 till summer 2015, a small detachment of six F-16 fighter bombers operated from a Jordanian AFB, conducting some 700 airstrikes with in excess of 100 IS targets destroyed. The detachment was then withdrawn, a move for which budget reasons were cited.
Belgium and The Netherlands being neighboring countries with a high degree of cooperation in numerous fields including defense, will from this summer on switch roles in the bombing campaigns.
For the Belgian component, the key difference may well be that this time, airstrikes on IS targets in Syria are not excluded:
Belgium is considering extending its F-16 airstrikes against Islamic State jihadis in Iraq into Syria as part of stepped up efforts by the US-led anti-IS coalition, Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Wednesday.
"I think you cannot just limit your actions to Iraq without pursuing these actions across the border when these terrorist groups cross the border" into Syria, Reynders told Bel-RTL radio.
"The Netherlands has come to the same conclusion and the Danes, and I think we are in the same position," he said.
Belgium launched its first attacks against Islamic State (IS) targets in Iraq in late 2014 but, like several other countries in the coalition, it decided against extending the air campaign into war-torn Syria amid public fears over getting dragged into a wider conflict.
However the bloody Paris attacks in November, which were claimed by IS, radically changed sentiment in favour of strikes in Syria.
As well as the Netherlands and Denmark, Britain has also changed tack and launched its first sorties against IS targets in Syria in December.
Reynders said that against this backdrop, the government would take the matter to parliament where many MPs want to go further, perhaps even to involve Libya where IS has made recent inroads.
He gave no timetable.
Washington has pushed its allies hard to step up the campaign against IS. The Belga news agency said US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter had written to his Belgian counterpart Steven Vandeput urging him to support airstrikes in Syria."
I offer my heartfelt condolences to the relatives of the deceased today, victims of callous islamic terrorism.
I encourage all the people of good will to pray for the dead, the wounded and their families, at this very moment undoubtedly torn with grief.
Just think about it. Imagine you're a White Christian expat in a mostly white expat community living in, say, Amman, Jordan. White fundamentalist Christians have been committing acts of terrorism aimed at islamic countries for at least 15 years. A gang of White fundamentalist Christians slaughter 130 muslims in neighboring Saudi Arabia during the hajj.
One fundamentalist Christian is known to have fled the carnage, not having found the courage to self-detonate among the followers of the prophet.
He is also suspected of hiding out in the enclave of White expats in Amman.
Four months later Jordanian police do find him, and arrest him.
What are you going to do when Jordanian police are suddenly omnipresent in your l'il White neighborhood?
Would you hurl insults at them? Throw stones at their vans, perhaps?
I suspect there's not a hair on your head that would think of doing that.
Well...
... in Molenbeek, just that happened.
Happens.
Meanwhile, in The Netherlands, Peter Vandermeersch, the editor-in-chief of daily NRC Handelsblad, the Dutch counterpart to Belgium's De Standaard, who is a Flemish Belgian himself and lo' and behold, a FORMER editor-in-chief of De Standaard (!) was invited to the studios of DWDD, for De Wereld Draait Door, a Dutch talk show sh(r)edding light on political and societal events:
Dixit Vandermeersch:
"DESPERATION IS THE BREEDING GROUND FOR THIS TERRORISM."
Because unemployment, raaaaaaaacist Belgians, lack of opportunities etc etc etc yada yada yada dontcha know.
In other words, ISLAM HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.
The sight of this loosely coiffed, intentionally badly shaven "sophisticate", with a - so he kids himself - carefully cultivated image of mature wisdom, is almost sufficient to make me puke.
The fact that his "class" of utterly clueless, soi-disant intellectuals, who fancy defecating on their own culture for a sport, is still given ample occasions to spout their ridiculous nonsense, makes me despair for humanity.
At the occasion of the National Holiday of 15 March, one of three national holidays in Hungary and the one commemmorating the beginning of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, PM Viktor Orban delivered a powerful speech without mincing his words. It stands in stark contrast to the dishonest, weak and foul language we are used to from the EU's corrupt (morally and otherwise) "leadership". Via Gates of Vienna:
Some key exerpts:
"Ladies and Gentlemen,
Europe is not free. Because freedom begins with speaking the truth. Today in Europe it is forbidden to speak the truth. Even if it is made of silk, a muzzle is a muzzle. It is forbidden to say that those arriving are not refugees, but that Europe is threatened by migration. It is forbidden to say that tens of millions are ready to set out in our direction. It is forbidden to say that immigration brings crime and terror to our countries. It is forbidden to point out that the masses arriving from other civilizations endanger our way of life, our culture, our customs and our Christian traditions. It is forbidden to point out that those who arrived earlier have have already built up their own new, separate world for themselves, with its own laws and ideals, which is forcing apart the thousand-year-old structure of Europe. It is forbidden to point out that this is not an accidental and unintentional chain of consequences, but a preplanned and orchestrated operation; a mass of people directed towards us. It is forbidden to say that in Brussels they are concocting schemes to transport foreigners here as quickly as possible and to settle them here among us. It is forbidden to point out that the purpose of settling people here is to reshape the religious and cultural landscape of Europe, and to reengineer its ethnic foundations. — thereby eliminating the last barrier to internationalism: the nation-states. It is forbidden to say that Brussels is now stealthily devouring more and more slices of our national sovereignty, and that in Brussels many are now making a plan for a United States of Europe — for which no one has ever given authorisation.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today’s enemies of freedom are cut from a different cloth than the royal and imperial rulers of old, or those who ran the Soviet system; they use a different set of tools to force us into submission. Today they do not imprison us, they do not transport us to concentration camps, and they do not send in tanks to occupy countries loyal to freedom. Today the international media’s artillery bombardments, denunciations, threats and blackmail are enough — or rather, have been enough so far. The peoples of Europe are slowly awakening, they are regrouping, and will soon regain ground. Europe’s beams that rest on the suppression of truth are creaking and cracking. The peoples of Europe may have finally understood that their future is at stake: Now not only are their prosperity, cosy lives, jobs at stake, but our very security and the peaceful order of our lives are menaced as well. At last, the peoples of Europe, who have been slumbering in abundance and prosperity, have understood that the principles of life that Europe has been built on are in mortal danger. Europe is the community of Christian, free, and independent nations; equality of men and women; fair competition and solidarity; pride and humility; justice and mercy.
This time the danger is not attacking us the way wars and natural disasters do, suddenly pulling the rug from under our feet. Mass migration is a slow stream of water persistently eroding the shores. It is masquerading as a humanitarian cause, but its true nature is the occupation of territory. And what is gaining territory for them is losing territory for us. Flocks of obsessed human rights defenders feel the overwhelming urge to reprimand us and to make allegations against us. Allegedly we are hostile xenophobes, but the truth is that the history of our nation is also one of inclusion. and the history of intertwining of cultures. Those who have sought to come here as new family members, as allies, or as displaced persons fearing for their lives have been let in to make a new home for themselves. But those who have come here with the intention of changing our country, shaping our nation in their own image, those who have come with violence and against our will, — have always been met with resistance.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
At first, they talk about only a few hundred, a thousand or two thousand relocated people. But not a single responsible European leader would dare to swear under oath that this couple of thousand will not eventually increase to tens or hundreds of thousands. If we want to halt this mass migration, first we must curb Brussels. The main danger to Europe’s future does not come from those who want to come here, but from Brussels’ fanatical internationalism. We should not allow Brussels to place itself above the law. We shall not allow it to force upon us the bitter fruit of its cosmopolitan immigration policy. We shall not import to Hungary crime, terrorism, homophobia and synagogue-burning anti-Semitism. There shall be no urban districts beyond the reach of the law, there shall be no mass disorder, No immigrant riots here, and there shall be no gangs hunting down our women and daughters. We shall not allow others to tell us whom we can let into our home and country, whom we will live alongside, and with whom we will share our country. We know how these things go. First we allow them to tell us whom we must take in, then they force us to serve foreigners in our own country. In the end we find ourselves being told to pack up and leave our own land. Therefore we reject the forced resettlement scheme, and we shall tolerate neither blackmail, nor threats.
The time has come to ring the warning bell. The time has come for opposition and resistance. The time has come to gather allies to us. The time has come to raise the flag of proud nations. The time has come to prevent the destruction of Europe, and to save the future of Europe. To this end, regardless of party affiliation, we call on every citizen of Hungary to unite, and we call on every European nation to unite. The leaders and citizens of Europe must no longer live in two separate worlds. We must restore the unity of Europe. We the peoples of Europe cannot be free individually if we are not free together. If we unite our forces, we shall succeed; if we pull in different directions, we shall fail. Together we are strength, disunited we are weakness. Either together, or not at all — today this is the law.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In 1848 it was written in the book of fate that nothing could be done against the Habsburg Empire. If we had then resigned ourselves to that outcome, our fate would have been sealed, and the German sea would have swallowed up the Hungarians. In 1956 it was written in the book of fate that we were to remain an occupied and sovietised country, until patriotism was extinguished in the very last Hungarian. If then we had resigned ourselves to that outcome, our fate would have been sealed, and the Soviet sea would have swallowed up the Hungarians. Today it is written in the book of fate that hidden, faceless world powers will eliminate everything that is unique, autonomous, age-old and national. They will blend cultures, religions and populations, until our many-faceted and proud Europe will finally become bloodless and docile. And if we resign ourselves to this outcome, our fate will be sealed, and we will be swallowed up in the enormous belly of the United States of Europe. The task which awaits the Hungarian people, the nations of Central Europe and the other European nations which have not yet lost all common sense is to defeat, rewrite and transform the fate intended for us. We Hungarians and Poles know how to do this. We have been taught that one can only look danger in the face if one is brave enough. We must therefore drag the ancient virtue of courage out from under the silt of oblivion. First of all we must put steel in our spines, and we must answer clearly, with a voice loud enough to be heard far and wide, the foremost, the single most important question determining our fate: The question upon which the future of Europe stands or falls is this: “Shall we be slaves or men set free — That is the question, answer me!”
