ONE YEAR AGO... OPERATION PHANTOM FURY

One year ago, on November 20, 2005, Operation Phantom Fury(or Dawn) to clear the city of Fallujah from terrorists, was concluded.

In May of that year there had been an earlier attempt to flush them out, but the (very modest) Marine units involved then were prematurely ordered to a stop on the insistence of high-ranking Iraqi GC officials, a.o. al-Jaafari, so as not to stir up the mood of Iraqs Sunni population. It was a bad move, as soon became apparent. The so-called "Fallujah Brigade", initially a 1,600 strong force commanded by Muhammed Latif, a former general of Saddam Hussein’s Army, and intended to restore order in the restive city, was quickly joined by the very insurgents the 1st Marine division had been fighting. By June it was apparent that the brigade was part of the problem rather than of the solution, to put it mildly, and so by August it was disbanded.

The city then sunk further and further into chaos and became a hotbed for insurgents and al-Zarqawi linked terrorist groups, prompting precision airstrikes which gradually turned Fallujah into a combat zone and ultimately forced at least 90% of the citizens out.

By October it was obvious that a Fallujah left undisturbed would prove a possibly fatal impediment to the upcoming January elections. So an operation to clear the city once and for all was scheduled, its codename being originally Phantom Fury, later changed to al-Fajr (Dawn) on the request of Iraqi generals.

Given the size of Fallujah, essentially a 3km wide on 3.5km long rectangle, with an estimated prewar population of 250,000, the forces assembled to take it seemed oddly insufficient, give and take 10,000 USMC and Army troops, plus another 2,000 Iraqi security forces. Anyone familiar with World War 2 literature will recall that if the battles fought in cities like Stalingrad, Berlin, Arnhem, Warsaw etc. proved one thing, it’s that in street fighting the attacking force can litterally bleed white even when opposed by a numerically far weaker adversary. In Stalingrad during the fall of 1942, the Germans deployed almost an entire 250,000-strong army, the 6th under Von Paulus, against the Russian 62nd Army under Chujkow, which numbered at some point not more combat troops than a weak division (10,000). Yet it took them two months (and tens of thousands of casualties) to occupy 9/10 of the city. In Arnhem in September 1944, the fresh British 1st Airborne division, 10,000 strong, melted away in the space of a week against a veritable hodgepodge of ad hoc German units still shattered by the Normandy campaign. It never saw combat as a unit anymore for the duration of the war.

To military historians Fallujah November 2004 may therefore be treated not as a typical example of urban warfare but rather as the exception which proves the rule. The roughly 80 US and Iraqi soldiers which gave their lives for an operation which very likely saved Iraq’s first true parliamentary elections are bad enough – but the focus of future investigations will rather be on why there were not 800 – or 8,000 for that matter. For opposing the US and Iraqi troops was a determined force of between 2,000 and 3,000 insurgents, and for those who think that the Marines had a distinct numerical advantage, see the number of 12,000 US/Iraqi troops mentioned above, it may come as a surprise that as for the number of fighting men involved the discrepancy was far less obvious. The best way to explain this is to keep a knife in mind: the cutting edge itself represents only a tiny fraction of the knife’s mass, while it is the blade which provides the main weight. In the same manner the guys seeing the "white in the enemy’s eyes" are always far outnumbered by the ones in the rear providing supplies, medical services, artillery fire, communications, transport and what not. Thus it was that in fact only 6 US combat battalions, numbering together perhaps 4,200 troops, took on Fallujah’s main defenses in a broad sweep from north to south (the Iraqi units were engaged mostly to the west of the city, with a noted commando action to take control of the city’s hospital). These six battalions, arranged to the north of the city, were, from west to east:

a.) the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Regiment (3/1) of the 1st Marine Division (the "Guadalcanal" division)
b.) the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Regiment (3/5) of the 1st Marine Division
c.) the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry Regiment (2/7) of the 1st Cavalry Division
d.) the 1st Battalion of the 8th Marine Regiment (1/8) of the 2nd Marine Division (the "Tarawa" division)
e.) the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment (1/3) of the 3rd Marine Division
f.) the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment (2/2)of the 1st Infantry Division ("The Big Red One")

Phantom Fury/al-Fajr started with a night attack on November 7 at 7pm local time, with Iraqi commandos seezing the main hospital in the west, on a peninsula in the Euphrates, and Marines taking the two nearby key bridges across the river. The aim was to prevent fleeing insurgents from turning the hospital into a stronghold and/or using the bridges as an escape route.

On November 8 the main assault started, but not before massive aerial and artillery bombardment lasting 12 hours had saturated the zone of attack. It was again 7pm in the evening before the attack got under way, with 3/5 in the west immediately seizing a huge apartment block, giving their machinegun teams and artillery observers an excellent overview of the battle area. The most significant gain in the centre was the railway station, which was seized by 2/7.

November 9 saw 3/1, 3/5 and 2/7 joining forces to focus on conquering the Jolan District in the northwest (on the map this effort is dubbed "The Wedge" - it seems in Jolan the toughest resistance was met), 1/8, 1/3 advancing towards the center and 2/2 consolidating its hold over the Askari District in the northeast. When you look at the map to the right, basically one sees the 3-battalion "Wedge" group focussing southwest and 2/2 focussing, with a bit of imagination, to the southeast. It appears that in doing so, the two Marine battalions and the cavalry battalion in the west, and the Big Red One battalion in the east, wanted to seize both ends of Highway 10 on the outskirts of the city. Highway 10, the dotted yellow line on the photo, is the main traffic artery of Fallujah, running from a huge traffic exchanger in the east to a Euphrates bridge in the west. Possession of both ends of Highway 10 gives one virtual control over who enters and leaves the city.

On November 10, 2/2 indeed secured the eastern approaches to the huge clover leaf traffic exchanger, thus allowing supplies coming from the Baghdad direction to flow in. This day was to prove the toughest day of the fighting yet, with key battles erupting around some mosques which were used as enemy strongholds, ammo dumps and IED factories. Among the captured mosques were Al Tawfiq, Hydra and Muhammadia, the latter one being the site of one of the largest battles of the assault, and actually taken by Iraqi Security Forces. By the end of the day, US and Iraqi forces controlled 70pct. Of the city. Since the lead elements of the six battalions had by then crossed Highway 10, the stage was set for taking the southern half of the city, even as mopping up operations behind them were still taking place.

On November 11, US forces turned control of the Jolan district over to the Iraqi Army. By evening, the northern half of Fallujah was generally under US/Iraqi control. Unfortunately and inevitably, a price was paid for the success, with American troops losing 18 KIA and Iraqi troops reportedly 4. There were at least 164 wounded. Remember them all. Unknown to the general public though, was that Phantom Fury/Dawn thus far had proven to be an astonishing feat of arms,with half of a large city subdued in the space of a mere four days. One could argue that US troops enjoyed the advantage of tanks and artillery, and so it was. But the same could be said of the Germans in the Stalingrad operation, where they regularly conducted 1,000 sorties a day (on one day even 2,000), often with Stuka divebombers, the then-equivalent of A-10s performing precision strikes. All across the world, people gazed at TV screens and thought not much of it. In Fallujah, history had been written and rags like The Guardian and The Independent utterly and shamefully ridiculed.

(to be continued)

MFBB


NB: credits to most of the info and all of the pictures go to www.talkingproud.us.

AFGHANISTAN UPDATE

The Belgian ISAF detachment responsible for security at Kabul International Airport (KAIA), composed of soldiers drawn from the 1st Regiment Jagers te Paard (a recce unit) and the 12th/13th Line Regiment Prince Leopold (an infantry unit) has taken in fresh troops from the 1st Regiment Chasseurs Ardennais, an infantry unit with a long tradition going back to 1830. It is a fine unit, for 103 years known as the 10th Line Regiment, and renamed the Régiment de Chasseurs Ardennais on March 10, 1933. Common non-combat headgear is a large green beret with a golden wild boar head insignia, the wild boar being a typical Ardennes animal. At the outbreak of WWII, the regiment served as the nucleus for two divisions of Chasseurs Ardennais, which distinguished themselves admirably during May 1940, notably at Vinkt during the four-day battle (May 25-May 28) along the Leie River (Lys in English).



The first photo shows the arrival on KAIA of some platoons of Chasseurs Ardennais on or around October 29. The second one shows a patrol of Pandur APCs in or near Kabul. As you can see, the streets don’t exactly look kosher. It is also looking rather cold and wet, a reminder that the severe Afghan winter is coming. The Belgian detachment has not suffered casualties yet despite being in Afghanistan since March 2003 – Kabul is relatively calm and far away from the hotspots in the southwest where the US Army is operating. Nevertheless the area is not entirely free from danger. Today the Afghan government let know that in Kabul two German ISAF soldiers were killed and three wounded by a suicide bomber. There seems to be some confusion, since the BBC says one German soldier was killed.

Btw, say what you will about the Germans, but in Afghanistan, esepcially in the northwest, where most are deployed, they certainly make a difference. Recently, on 28 September, the Bundestag decided to enhance the German strength from 2,500 to 3,000. There’s all kinds of troops, but the infantry component is mainly made up of Fallschirmjaeger (paratroops) and Gebirgsjaeger (mountain troops). The Germans did pay a price already - if I’m not mistaken they unfortunately lost some 20 KIA till now.


As for the Belgian F-16 section on KAIA, together with four Dutch F-16s providing air support for ISAF ground troops, here too has there been a change of the guard since the fighter-bombers, mainly F-16AM’s, are now manned by crews from the 10th Tactical Wing from Kleine Brogel AFB, province of Limburg. Until now the crews were from 2nd TW at Florennes, province of Namur. The recently taken photo shows two planes ready for takeoff, equipped with the standard armament of two AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles and two GBU-12 laser-guided bombs. Plus the 500-round 20mm Vulcan cannon of course. Until now, the crews have had a fairly uneventful stay in AF, mostly doing their regular patrol flights. AFAIK, only once, on October 5, did a Dutch Marines detachment (the Dutch have about 800 ground troops in Afghanistan) call for air support and then they only asked for "scare" flights at very low level to chase some suspicious looking gunmen away. Interesting to note is that the four Dutch F-16s can be called upon by the US within the framework of Operation Enduring Freedom, while the Belgian planes are supposed to be working only within the ISAF framework. A political decision of course. Typical.


As for the Afghan election results, only now the final outcome, after much recounting and investigations into voter fraud, has been publicized. Not surprisingly, the result looks like a kaleidoscope of tall-standing charismatic public figures, quite a few of them former (?) warlords, rather than a clear-cut division into political groups. What is clear though is that President Karzai is still widely regarded as an acceptable leader for all the different factions, enjoying more than 50% support among the 249-member Lower House or Wolesi Jirga. It is obvious that tribal and ethnic divides rather than party programmes are defining Afghanistans political arena, since the large support is explained rather by the ethnic dominant group in Afghanistan, the Pashtuns, to which Karzai belongs. The Pashtuns are also likely to dominate the 102-seat upper house or Meshrano Jirga when that is formed. A very positive development is that 68 of the 249 seats went to women, all in all an astounding feat in a country where they are still too often regarded as worth only half a man, if they are lucky.


MFBB

N.B.: all photos from the Belgian Armed Forces website

11 NOVEMBER - ARMISTICE DAY

On November 11, 1918, World War I ended. The most horrendous theatres of operations were in Belgium and France, where the trench warfare and successive offensives by the warring parties against well dug in adversaries, as well as the use of new cruel weapons (gas, flamethrowers, aeroplanes) and methods (massive indirect artillery fire) caused the loss of millions of men on both sides. The British lost 700,000 men, the better part of a generation, in West Flanders (battles around Ypres) and on the Somme river in North France. We Belgians owe them eternal debt.

The famous war poem "In Flanders Fields" was written by the Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. He wrote it on the back step of an ambulance, particularly affected by the death of a fellow offiver a short while earlier. "In Flanders Fields" is therefore unique, since born directly out of pain and sorrow.

By 1917 a stalemate existed along the Western Front, with on one side the combined British, French and Belgian armies, and on the other side the Imperial German Army. Neither side was able to end the status quo, and prospects for a peace looked very bleak. Then came President Woodrow Wilson's address to Congress where he declared war on Germany. Soon General "Black Jack" Pershing was on his way to Europe, and many 20,000 strong infantry divisions would follow him. The American engagement on the Western front essentially ended the bloody impasse, and by fall 1918 Germany was forced to surrender.

US Forces lost about 117,000 men KIA in liberating France and Belgium. But not only owe we western Europeans the US for this bloody sacrifice, but also for the massive relief operation set up by President Wilson, who already during the war sent Herbert Hoover to the Continent to assess the needs and set up organizations for distributing food and aid packages. Since the country most affected was my own, the first organization to see the light was the CRB, or Commission for the Relief of Belgium:

Trapped between German bayonets and a British blockade, Belgium in the fall of 1914 faced imminent starvation. Hoover was asked to undertake an unprecedented relief effort for the tiny kingdom dependent on imports for 80 percent of its food. This would mean abandoning his successful career as the world's foremost mining engineer. For several days he pondered the request, finally telling a friend, "Let the fortune go to hell." He would assume the immense task on two conditions-- that he receive no salary, and that he be given a free hand in organizing and administering what became known as the Commission for the Relief of Belgium.

The CRB became, in effect, an independent republic of relief, with its own flag, navy, factories, mills and railroads. Its $12 million a month budget was supplied by voluntary donations and government grants. More than once Hoover made personal pledges far in excess of his total worth. In an early form of shuttle diplomacy he crossed the North Sea 40 times seeking to persuade the enemies in London and Berlin to allow food to reach the war's victims. He also taught the Belgians, who regarded cornmeal as cattle feed, to eat cornmeal. In all, the CRB saved ten million people from starvation.

87 years have passed since the end of the conflict, and that is a long time. In my country, there are those who therefore even openly state that we should not feel perennially indebted towards those who once freed us of brutal oppression. Let them go to hell.

For what it's worth: THANKS.


MFBB

WHEN IT RAINS IN PARIS, IT DRIPS IN BRUSSELS...

I once commented that all Smurfs are Belgians, but that not all Belgians are Smurfs. While I consider myself the one and only author of this jewel of perennial wisdom, unfortunately the same cannot be said of the one contained in the title above. It’s a saying generations of Belgians, be it Flemings or Walloons or indeed the "Brusseleirs" themselves, have grown up with, and this catchy phrase is in fact an astute observation of the fact that virtually every major occurrence in the French capital produces a watered-down resonance in Brussels.

Alas, so it was over the past days, although by and large I consider myself lucky that after all Brussels got the dripping part. The by now nationwide riots in France, begun in Paris, have indeed led to some amok in Brussels and a couple of other cities, but as yet nothing comparable to the proto-civil war currently raging in our southern neighbor. Here is a quick overview:


a.) Sunday evening on November 6, five cars were torched near South Station in Sint-Gillis, a Brussels community. Perpetrators unknown, no clashes.

b.) Monday evening there was again torching in Sint-Gillis, of three cars this time, plus a sofa (!) in Vorst, another one of Brussels 19 communities. Furthermore some stoning of police vehicles and a car turned upside down in Anderlecht. According to the Mayor of Anderlecht, Mr. Simonet, the situation was under control.

c.) That same evening, a car was set alight in Dilbeek, just west of Brussels. Of the perpetrators no trace.

d.) Tuesday morning at around 4am a car was burned in Sint-Niklaas, a town in the Northwest of Flanders. The perpetrators seem to have been two teenagers.

e.) This very evening, Tuesday 8 November, two cars were torched in Ghent, plus one van in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek (yet another Brussels community), as well as one in Antwerp. In the centre of Brussels a molotovcocktail was thrown towards a car but if failed to set it alight. There are also some scattered reports on attempts to burn cars.


Now, while at first glance this looks like an escalation in the making, I am still moderately optimistic about the situation not getting out of hand. In virtually all the cases, the cars set alight were standing at remore places out of sight, with no sign of the perpetrators. No mobs were seen either. In the words of Fernand Koekelberg, spokesman for the Crisis Center:

Every time it's about isolated cases. There were no injuries and no mobs. The perpetrators could not be found.

To me it all looks like some cells or individuals are trying to set the fuse alight but are failing so far. While nationwide the situation is certainly tense, due to some incidents over the weekend, and possibly also because there’s a major trial going on against thirteen alleged terrorists of the GICM (Groupe Islamique Combatant Marocain), I have the impression that Belgian youths are less savvy for car-B-Q than their French counterparts. If the powderkeg was just waiting for a spark it would have gone up over the weekend already. What we have now are a dozen of doused fuses. Part of the explanation may be simply numbers. After all, nowhere in Belgium, pop. 10,350,000, are there such dense concentrations of impoverished immigrants as in Frances banlieues. Another part of the explanation may be that in "our" ghettos the living situation is still far better than in France, with housing projects kept modest and maintainable – and unemployment rates still below the appalling figures in Clichy-sous-Bois or Aulnay-sous-Bois (up to 40%). What we have seen thus far in France is only the culmination of a process that has been in the making for a long time, and that was kept smartly hidden by French media. While 2,700 cars burned over the weekend is a gigantic figure, what to make of the grand total of 29,000 since January???

Currently we seem to see the beginning of a stabilisation of the violence in France, and I hope – I expect - over here it won’t develop beyond the sporadic incidents noted so far. I guess in three weeks the hotheads will be writing their memoirs, pleasantly musing how they were able to make France tremble on its feet, a country that until now acted as if it were still a superpower. Already one can see that the ruling elites have learned nothing from the disaster. And a disaster it is, with uncounted billions of euros of damage in three hundred cities and towns.

French PM De Villepin spoke before the National Assembly today, announcing what sounds like just more of the same. Thirty billion euros will be spent in the banlieues on programs intended to "help young people" (these "reach-out" programs have existed for thirty years and have helped jack shit). The French Employment Agency will focus on 239 hot zones to help provide jobs for 1.5 million people (a government can’t provide jobs other than the ones needed for its administration). Yet another agency for "social cohesion" will be created which will go into the riot zones, be in direct contact with mayors and officials, and provide programs to deal with hot-button issues like joblessness and discrimination. Hallelujah! That means thousand more of so-called "straathoekwerkers" - litterally street corner workers - i.e. guys paid by the gumint to hang out on the streets and talk, say "maintain contact" with the disgruntled. In practice these street corner workers are social aberrations themselves, more often than not spouting nonsense that the youths' misery is the fault of society and thus neatly offering them an alibi to certainly not look for the faults by themselves.

In other words, it’s the just more of the crap that produced all the stink. The only measures I deem useful are extra money for apprenticeships for students leaving school at 14 and funds for 100,000 scholarships.

But overall, this stinks of Fallujah in April 2004. Plus, it produces a sinister precedent. Essentially the thugs are rewarded for having caused trouble. They have broken the law and yet they will be showered with more State Manna. Sooner or later the riots will start again, only requiring then possibly 95,000 security personnel rather than 9,500. Mark my words, the problems won’t be solved – because the core problem isn’t addressed: accountability of the immigrants themselves. E.g., no one dares speak of the responsibility of the parents of the hooligans. When as a father you allow your 8-year old offspring to roam the streets at 3am in the morning, YOU ARE A DISGRACE. When your teenager has just busted a bus stop and as a mom you go out on the streets yelling and cursing at the police officer who has reprimanded the little bugger, YOU ARE A DISGRACE. When as a 14-year old you decide to leave school, after having wreaked havoc in the classrooms for 6 years and generally having tortured your (white) teachers, YOU ARE A DISGRACE. Don’t come complaining at 20 that society treats you unfair because you are a miserable wreck unable to find a job requiring more qualifications than broomhandling.


MFBB

PRESIDENT CHIRAC MISSES A GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK OUT...

At the moment I'm typing this, French Muslim youths are partying like it's 742. Just consider, over the past 24 hours:


* an estimated total of 897 vehicles nationwide on the night of Friday to Saturday was torched (500 the night before), bringing the tally to an estimated 1,260 by Saturday morning
* paramedics who were evacuating a sick person from a housing project in Meaux were stoned, and the awaiting ambulance was set on fire
* a nursery school in Acheres, west of Paris was completely destroyed by fire
* cars were burnt in Lille, in the northwest of France (on average three a day)
* police counted some 20 torched cars in Tourcoing, Roubaix en Mons-en-Baroeul, places near the Belgian border. So that's where that smell comes from.
* a bus depot to the west of Paris was set alight and twenty buses were completely destroyed
* in Rennes and Nantes, cities in Brittany, 45 cars were destroyed
* violent riots were reported in Dijon, a large city in east central Francd, and Marseille, on the Mediterranean coast
* there was arson in Rouen (Normandy) and Toulouse (south west France)
* in Suresnes, normally a quite town west of Paris, 44 cars were burned
* 258 thugs were detained overnight
* in Torcy, to the east of Paris, looters set fire to a youth center and a police station
* in Aubervilliers, to the north of Paris, a carpet warehouse was set alight
* in Percan there was arson in an underground garage
* gunshots were fired in Sarcelles, north of Paris
* in Pierrefitte, to the northwest of Paris, an attempt was made to burn a synagogue using an incendiary device
* in Essonne, police already documented 23 cars destroyed by fire before 21h00 Saturday evening
* in the commune of Grigny, two schools were burnt. Five classerooms of the "Sleeping Beauty" nursery school were destroyed and two in "Ecole Triolet". A large fire also devastated a paper recycling plant.
* in Vigneux, another school was set alight, and police reported that 35 vehicles had been set on fire throughout the department not long before 22h.
* in Seine-Saint-Denis, police reported many burnt vehicles. A significant fire was also announced in a gymnasium of Noisy-le-Grand.
* in Seine-et-Marne, weight-heavy was on fire opposite the professional college of Savigny-le-Temple, where the firemen were taken for targets by stone launchers.
* in the Quartier des Musiciens in Mureaux (Yvelines) approximately 50km to the west of Paris, a car was set ablaze requiring the intervention of firemen.
* in the Quartier de la République in Paris, three cars were damaged by Molotov cocktails near the police station.
* from other parts of the country, multiple incidents were reported from towns and cities that were relatively calm until now. Mainly cars set alight using Molotov cocktails by gangs of young people, as in Avignon (Vaucluse), Saint-Dizier (Haute-Marne), Soissons (Aisne), Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), Montauban (the Tarn-and-Garonne) or in Loir-et-Cher.
* fire officials reported a tractor-trailer set on fire in Lille and a bus burned in Auby.
* in the south, in Marseilles (Bouches-du-Rhone) police reported three fires of cars by 21h00.
* in the Alpes-Maritimes region, several vehicles were also set on fire in the cities of Cannes and in Nice, where firemen were pelted with rocks while trying to extinguish the blaze.
* in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) a half-dozen cars had already been set alight not long before 21h00.



However, French citizenry responded in force: e.g. on Saturday morning, more than 1,000 people took part in a silent march in Aulnay-sous-Bois, filing past burned-out cars to demand calm. Banners read: "No to violence". And from his part, PM Dominique de Villepin did not sit still himself: on Saturday he met with community leaders and members of his Cabinet Saturday to address the situation.


This rather uncompromising French reaction was not entirely approved by Mr. Dalil Boubakeur, Head of the Paris Mosque and of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, and so, after the meeting, Mr Boubakeur urged a change in tone from the government:

"What I want from the authorities, from Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, the prime minister and senior officials are words of peace,"

After coming across some of the numerous tawdry French blogs such as No Pasaran, I tend to lean over to Mr. Boubakeurs viewpoint. E.g., just read the following tasteless diatribe and judge for yourself (excerpt from abovementioned blog):

Dalil Boubakeur, Head of the Paris mosque and of the ineffective joke known as the French Council of the Muslim Faith, has called on French authorities to use respectful words of peace so as not to rile up hair trigger sensibilities. Mr. Boubakeur needs to be reminded that when Interior Minister Sarkozy called suburban youth riffraff and thugs, it was following the murder of a 10 year old child. Punks who kick a father to death in front of his family are scum. Rioters who douse handicapped people with gasoline before setting them alight are animals. And now that I think of it, Mr. Boubakeur can go straight to Hell.

You will agree that the Blogosphere can be a very nasty place indeed. Now let us cut the crap and proceed to MFBB's expedient solution to solve the crisis:




MFBB

Superpundit

Look who's got an article up at NRO.


Way to go Kerry!

ALL RIOT ON THE PARISIAN FRONT.

For the fifth consecutive night, violent riots have taken place in Clichy-sous-Bois. There was also a rather underreported riot in Utrecht, The Netherlands, where a large group of Moroccan youths attacked police, but hey, after all it's the peaceful season of Ramadan dontcha know.

A Le Monde snippet:


Le ministre de l'intérieur, Nicolas Sarkozy, devait recevoir, place Beauvau, lundi 31 octobre dans l'après-midi, les parents des deux adolescents morts électrocutés dans un transformateur EDF, à Clichy-sous-Bois. Mais ceux-ci ont refusé de rencontrer le ministre de l'intérieur. Au cours d'une conférence de presse à la mosquée de Clichy-sous-Bois, Siyakah Traore, frère du jeune Bouna décédé, a déclaré : "En aucun cas, nous n'irons voir Sarkozy qui, pour nous, est incompétent, comme l'ont montré son discours à la télé (sur TF1 dimanche soir) et la manière dont est menée l'enquête". "Nous demandons le calme, nous demandons que justice soit faite, nous demandons que les CRS partent et nous demandons à être reçus par M. de Villepin". De son côté, Amor Benna, le père du jeune Ziad, le deuxième mineur, décédé jeudi 27 octobre, a également annoncé qu'il n'irait pas voir le ministre de l'intérieur.

In short, on Monday 31 October, a meeting was scheduled between Nicolas Sarkozy, French Interior Minister, and the parents of Ziad and Banou, the two electrocuted guys. During a press conference in the Clichy mosque however, Siyakah Traore, brother of Banou, said:

Under no circumstances will we meet with Sarkozy who for us is incompetent, as he has shown on television (on TF1 sunday evening). We ask for calm, we ask justice be done, and we ask that the CRS leave and that we are received by Mr. De Villepin.

Amor Benna, father of Ziad, also said he would not meet with Mr. Sarkozy. If you think that ain't arrogant, then you probably also think Alito has great hair.

There's also been quite some fuss about French Police allegedly firing a tear gas grenade into the Clichy mosque:

From CNN:

"I am, of course, available to the imam of the Clichy mosque to let him have all the details in order to understand how and why a tear gas bomb was sent into this mosque," he (Sarkozy) told about 170 police officers at the prefecture.

From Le Monde:

Une grenade lacrymogène a été tirée, dimanche vers 21 heures, contre la mosquée. Peu avant de se rendre à la préfecture de Bobigny, M. Sarkozy a confirmé l'incident. Il a dit que l'engin "est en dotation des compagnies d'intervention (CRS) qui étaient sur place en Seine-Saint-Denis". Mais le ministre de l'intérieur a précisé que cela ne voulait "pas dire que c'est un tir fait par un policier, c'est l'enquête qui le déterminera". "Je rencontrerai l'imam de cette mosquée pour en parler avec lui", a-t-il ajouté. Peu après les faits, une source policière avait affirmé que la grenade lancée sur la mosquée de Clichy-sous-Bois n'appartenait pas à la police, voyant dans cet incident "une provocation".

In short, Sarkozy acknowledged that there had been an incident in which the tear gas grenade was fired at the mosque. No doubt realizing how foolish that would be from French police given the tense situation, he nevertheless pointed out that he wanted to wait for the results of an inquiry. And 'lo and behold, a little while after a police source confirmed that the grenade type was not on the French police inventory, suggesting it had been "a provocation".


But the best is yet to come:

Via LGF I linked to an International Herald Tribune column and this is the paragraph that struck me most:

Since the start of the year, 9,000 police cars have been stoned and, each night, 20 to 40 cars are torched, Sarkozy said in an interview last week with the newspaper Le Monde.

I checked out Le Monde online and found that the article had already been shelved in the paying section. However, the window did provide the releveant quote:


Extrait : LES VIOLENTES émeutes de Clichy-sous-Bois, dans la nuit du jeudi 27 au vendredi 28 octobre, à la suite de la mort de deux jeunes, réfugiés dans un transformateur EDF pour échapper à la police, posent la question des « violences urbaines » qui éclatent dans les banlieues. Dans l'entretien qu'il a accordé au Monde, le 25 octobre, le ministre de l'intérieur, Nicolas Sarkozy, avait évoqué ce sujet, et singulièrement celui des incendies de voitures, en hausse ces derniers mois. « Certains caïds se comportent comme les propriétaires d'un territoire, avait-il déploré. Depuis le début de l'année, 9 000 voitures de police ont été caillassées. Chaque nuit, il y a entre 20 et 40 véhicules brûlés."

Key quote is of course the last sentence:

Certain caïds behave like local overlords, he (Sarkozy) deplored. Since the start of the year, 9,000 police vehicles have been stoned. Every night, been between 20 and 40 cars were put on fire.

Stop the world, I want to get off it.


MFBB

THIS AND THAT...

A.) SULAWESI, INDONESIA

Three girls have been beheaded and another badly injured as they walked to a Christian school in Indonesia. They were walking through a cocoa plantation near the city of Poso in central Sulawesi province when they were attacked. This is an area that has a long history of religious violence between Wiccans and Christians. A government-brokered truce has only partially succeeded in reducing the number of incidents in recent years. Police say the heads were found some distance from the bodies.


B.) BIRMINGHAM, UK.

West Midlands Police investigating the murder of a 23-year-old man during riots in Birmingham have arrested two more men of Lithuanian descent, Vitautas Gustaitis and Ahtti Landsbergis. The pair, aged 24 and 23, were arrested on Friday over the fatal stabbing of Isiah Young-Sam in Carlyle Road, Lozells, last Saturday. Three others suspects - two aged 22 and one 25 - are still being questioned.


C.) CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, FRANCE

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- Hundreds of French youths fought with police and set cars ablaze in a suburb of Paris early Saturday in a second night of rioting which media said was triggered when two teenagers died fleeing police. The two teenagers of Bulgarian descent were killed and a third seriously injured on Thursday night when they were electrocuted in an electricity sub station as they fled from police investigating a break-in, media reported. Firefighters intervened around 40 times on Friday night in the northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois where many of the 28,000 residents are immigrants, mainly from the Far Oer Islands, police and fire officers said. Unidentified youths fired a shot at police but no one was hurt, police said.

"There's a civil war underway in Clichy-Sous-Bois at the moment," Michel Thooris, an official of police trade union Action Police CFTC, said . "We can no longer withstand this situation on our own. My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical or theoretical training for street fighting," he said.

Twenty-three cars were also burned.


D.) COPENHAGEN, DENMARK.

Four men have been arrested in the Danish capital Copenhagen on suspicion of planning a suicide attack in Europe. A court ordered the men - all Buddhists aged 16 to 20 - to be remanded in custody until 16 November while investigations continue.

"We suspect the four young men of being participants in preparation of terrorist acts somewhere in Europe," said police spokesman Joern Bro. "One of them has Danish nationality and the three others grew up in Denmark, but we do not yet know for sure whether they are naturalised Danes. They are all of Greenlandian origin," Mr Bro said. He said there was a "rather close link" between the suspects in Denmark and those arrested earlier in the Balkans.

E.) NEW DELHI, INDIA.

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- Explosions ripped through three places in New Delhi on Saturday evening within minutes of each other, killing at least 55 people -- most of them at a marketplace crowded with thousands of people getting ready for India's festival of lights, the state of Delhi's chief minister Sheila Dikshit told CNN.


F.) BAGHDAD, IRAQ.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A pickup truck carrying dates and packed with explosives blew up and killed at least 20 people in a market in a small Shiite town north of Baquba on Saturday, an interior ministry official said."


G.) PARIS, FRANCE.

Some French-Bhutanese terrorists have gone in hiding and are in possession of two hand-held antiaircraft missiles. They would want to use them to shoot down airliners over Europe.

This message appeared on Friday in the French daily "Le Figaro", following a report by specialist investigator Jean-Louis Brugière. He is especially focusing on terrorsist from a network called "The Oktoberfest Beer Connection".


H.) NARATHIWAT, THAILAND.

At least six people have died in a wave of co-ordinated attacks in southern Thailand, which officials blamed on suspected Colombian militants. The attackers took dozens of weapons from the homes of village chiefs and defence volunteers in the provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani.

...........

Off-topic, but Prince Charles is coming to the United States: Prince Charles to plead Islam's cause to Bush

"The Prince of Wales will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam this week because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11. The Prince, who leaves on Tuesday for an eight-day tour of the US, has voiced private concerns over America's "confrontational" approach to Muslim countries and its failure to appreciate Islam's strengths."

"A year earlier Prince Charles made a speech, acclaimed throughout the Arab world, on relations between Islam and the West. He urged the West to overcome its "unthinkable prejudices" about Islam and its customs and laws."

"He spoke warmly of the West's debt to the culture of Islam and distanced moderate Muslims from misguided militants. "Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity," he said."


MFBB


UPDATE:

Yesterday I had only scant info and a Dutch link on the two missing hand-held antiaircraft missiles, but today I found an English-spoken link here.

So, according to Le Figaro a French-Bhutanese terror cell with links to the Flemish Liberation Organization for Pigs (FLOP), a radical outfit of North Belgian rednecks notorious for burping excessively and putting mayo on their fries, has smuggled two surface-to-air missiles, reportedly SA-18s, into Europe in a plot to shoot down planes at one of France's main airports. The missiles, NATO-codename "Grouse", were reportedly bought from German Bavarian breweries in 2002 and smuggled via Georgia and Turkey, according to French anti-terror sources quoted in Le Figaro. Both missiles and several of the extremists are reportedly still at large.


Then there's still the very violent riots in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. Good overview by Filip Van Laenen in TBJ.

What has been going on in Clichy-sous-Bois can best be described as an urban guerilla. In short, last week, during an investigation of a robbery, three "French youths" tried to hide from French Police in an EdG (Electricité de France) transformer cabin, where two of them, 15 and 17 years old, foolishly electrocuted themselves while the third got himself terribly hurt. The two deaths sparked unseen violence among the Clichy immigrants who make up the vast majority of this suburb's population. From what I can gather, a crowd of several hundred hooligans burned twenty-three cars, smashed numerous shop windows, and demolished public utilities and infrastructure. Mr. Van Lanen is his usual acerbic self when he continues:

The two "French youths" who died did not have typically French names such as Pierre or Louis but were called Ziad and Banou. Their relatives maintain that their deaths are the authorities’ fault. The police should leave underaged "French youths" such as Ziad and Banou alone when these are roaming the streets late at night while other teenagers with ordinary French names such as Pierre and Louis are in their beds. To express their anger friends of the dead boys ATTACKED THE FIREFIGHTERS AND THE POLICE OFFICERS WHO HAD RUSHED TO THE ELECTRICAL TRANSFORMER TO RESCUE THE BOYS. Later that night (Thursday to Friday) unidentified "French youths" shot at police (with a large caliber, MFBB's note), attacked a fire station and several shops and set cars and trucks ablaze. The "French youths" continued to vent their "protest" the following night (Friday to Saturday) in similar fashion, with the fire brigade having to intervene 40 times and 15 policemen and one journalist getting wounded.

More on this fine Franco-American blog, "Enough".

TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO...

A.) NEVER FORGET...

Twenty-two years ago, on October 23, 1983, a large truck drove into the lobby of the USMC Barracks on the grounds of Beirut International Airport, Lebanon. It carried a deadly load equivalent to 12,000 ton TNT. The four-story building nearly evaporated, killing in their sleep 241 American servicemen of whom 220 were Marines. Not for the first time was the Marine Force in Lebanon to help secure the peace and keep the warring parties – Christian maronite, Shiite, and Druze militias - apart, who since 1976 had transformed the former "Switzerland of the Middle East" into a near-moonscape. The attack was ordered and organized by the Hezbollah, a Shiite terrorist organization. It was the bloodiest day in the Corps' history since Iwo Jima. A simultaneous attack on the French compound in Beirut killed 58 French service members.

You can find the names of the cowardly murdered US servicemen here. Print this list out. Next time a loonylefty tells you it's all about the oil, or better, that Bush has ignited the Middle East by deposing a murderous regime, slap the list in his/her face.


B.) LECH KACZYNSKI NEW POLISH PRESIDENT.


My wife called my mother-in-law and one of the topics was the final run of the presidential elections between the two main candidates. As you may remember, 14 days ago 12 candidates came up for the Presidency of the Polish Republic (parliamentary elections took place two weeks before that, resulting in a big win for both Rightwing parties, PO and PiS). Since no contender managed to secure 50% of the vote necessary to make it in the first run, a final run was scheduled today and the candidate with the most votes would replace current president Kwasniewski.

It is now certain that the successor will be Lech Kaczynski, mayor of Warsaw and PiS strongman. He got somewhere near 53.5% of the vote while Donald Tusk of the PO got around 46.5%. Both men are right of center, but Tusk is more the free market man, advocating a 15% flat tax. Kaczynski does want tax cuts, but prefers the system under which high earners pay more and proposes tax breaks for those with large families. On the other hand, he is more rightwing than Tusk on the ethical chapter, claiming he wants to root out corruption and restore morality. Either way, like I said before, it's a big win for Rightwing Europe.


C.) RIOTS IN BIRMINGHAM, UK.

Some 35 people, including a police officer, were taken to hospital after ethnic clashes in Lozells, Birmingham on Saturday evening. One black man was stabbed to death and 80 offences committed. Five people were arrested. During the hour-long violence, a number of petrol bombs were thrown, and at least 12 gun shots were reported, officers said. The riots followed a week of mounting tensions between the large black and Eskimo Inuit communities in Birmingham. It appears 14 Inuit Eskimos gangraped a 14-year old Jamaican girl.


MFBB

TRINIDAD BLUES...

The bombs was described as being of ‘low density’, however it was reported that 7 people were injured due to the explosion outside the popular nightspot, ‘Smokey and Bunty.’ The frequently attended nightspot was literally yards away from the St. James Police station.

The casualty’s were admitted into the Port of Spain general hospital, however there were no fatalities. The scene was described as extremely chaotic and spills of human blood were reportedly seen.

There have now been five arrests in connection with Friday’s bombing, one of whom is affiliated with the local militant Muslim group, otherwise known as Jaamat-al Muslimeen.

There have been a series of bomb attacks on Trinidad. The 11th July on Frederick Street, Port of Spain saw 15 causalities, 10th August on George Street showed no casualties, and 10th September only one person suffered minor injuries.

Trinidad Police has arrested a six-foot tall Christian citizen with blue eyes and blonde hair of Swedish descent, named Leif Olaf Johannson.

Must be those itsy pitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikinis on Trinidads beaches two Trinidadian panzer divisions in al-Anbar province. It's their own fault.


MFBB

Wow.

I really hope this comes to fruition and Chertoff doesn't get his pee-pee slapped for saying it.

CAUGHT MY EYE THIS WEEK...

A.) DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON YOUR WAY OUT, GERD!!!

Gerhard Schroeder, September 17, 2005:

"Those who wanted change in the office of chancellor have failed grandly. ... Over the next four years there will be a stable government under my leadership."

Not!!!!!



(To the left, Chancellor-elect Angela Merkel. To the right, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder)

In your face, dude. Angie it’s gonna be for us, Viktoria it's gonna be for you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of the Schroeder Era. The fella who made a career out of USA bashing has left the Reichstag Building. In his place comes a lady who just might make transatlantic relations look more like the ole Ronnie/Maggie thing than the Jerry Springer show. It now appears that MFBB was not completely on dope, at least not all of the time, when he time and again claimed there was a rightwing shift in Eurawp.


B.) FREE PIGLET? WUSSIES.

Hey c’mon! Two weeks now since Piglet had to go, and the whole West is still sleepin? Free Piglet, my *ss. Thought you americanos were so gung ho in defending the poor wretched oppressed of this earth??? My 4 year old is constantly asking me "Daddy, when will those good soldiers you always talk about bring Piglet back????" They have other piglets to wash first honey, they have other piglets to wash first, I says then for lack of something better.



(a sad looking Piglet after the ban)


C.) HEY, AREN'T YOU EXAGGERATING A LITTLE????


Smurfette is left for dead. Baby Smurf is left crying and orphaned as the Smurf's village is carpet bombed by warplanes a horrific scene and imagery not normally associated with the lovable blue-skinned cartoon characters. These are the scenes being shown as part of a new UNICEF ad-campaign on Belgian television.

"It's working. We are getting a lot of reactions and people are logging on to our Web site," UNICEF Belgium spokesman Philippe Henon said Tuesday. The Belgian office of the U.N. children's fund said it has decided to use the creations of late Belgian artist Peyo to shock a complacent public into backing its fund-raising efforts for ex-child soldiers in Africa. The 20-second video commercial clip now being shown on Belgian TV aims to show that war can happen in the most innocent of places, Henon said.


You don’t bullshit me americanos. That UNICEF Belgium dude is only being vague out of PC towards Uncle Sam, or possibly he's one of those guys who can't find their own *ss with both hands and a flashlight. The Burundese Air Force, give me a break! BUT YOU DON'T FOOL ME FOLKS. I know you been pissed off the past years with Belgium, with us suing Daddy Bush and Powell, providing passports for Massoud’s killers, holding the Praline Summit, being a pain in the WOT's ass and all that. No matter what MFBB sez or does, a certain feeling of resentment is understandable. I know that. But did you really have to obliterate one of these l’il blue buggers communes? I KNOW IT WAS YOU!!! In Belgium there’s only three parties capable of carnage on such a scale. Can’t be our air force. It’s in Afghanistan bombing, uh, Afghan villages. Can’t be the al-Qaeda boyz next to NATO in Brussels: these blokes can only fly planes which are already airborne. Tell me, WHO uses GBUs and JDAMS and clusterbombs huh??? Puh-leeeeze, give good ole MFBB and cronies just a little more time to set things strait again here, okay? Have some patience yet. Comprendo??? Sheesh.

D.) HAROLD PINTER GETS THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE...

The Nobel Prize for Literature 2005 goes to Mr. Harold Pinter, Britain's most distinguished playwright. In case you don't know Mr. Pinter yet, MFBB provides some representative samples of this illustrious gentleman's prose:







...on US Forces liberating Kuwait in 1991:

Hallelujah!
It works.
We blew the shit right out of them
We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.
It works.

...on the US, after 9/11:

"The U.S. is now a highly dangerous force, totally out of control".

...on Operation Iraqi Freedom:

"But people don't forget," roared Mr Pinter. "The seven Iraqi children not yet killed by America and Britain jumping up and down in the street shouting, 'Death to the Great Santa', they don't forget. They don't forget the torture and mutilation of the Tooth Fairy. When they wake up one morning and find Frosty the Snowman standing in the front garden, they know it's Dick Cheney, watching them. Things like that don't just happen in Holland Park."

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose," he continued, "and, if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows. You know why that is? Depleted uranium. Oh, yes, don't worry, he can still guide your sleigh tonight. It's not hard to follow a reindeer whose rectum is leaking radioactive blood across the sky, is it?"

...on US Foreign Policy:

"Kiss my arse or I’ll kick your head in."

Well, after Wangari Maathai, who says AIDS was brewed up in western labs, Analfart and Jimmah, Dario Fo and the highly efficient El Baradei getting Nobel prizes one has to admit the choices of the Nobel Committee in handing out the coveted prizes are logical and consistent.


E.) ZAWAHIRI TEAMBUILDING UPDATE...


Anyway, I call the wives on my cell and tell them to cancel the room reservations, and you can just imagine how big that shit went over. "You know the kids were really looking forward to the rides at Assadland," "it’d be nice if you could occassionally be home to read them a bedtime surah," "you know that roof is not going to thatch itself," blah blah fucking blah. Then the wives start in on that suspicious "if we didn’t know better, we’d think you were seeing another harem" crap, like I got enough energy to go fornicating after a week of occupier missile strikes and filling out the Q1 school bomb progress reports.

But hey, Zarkman's a team player. So I'm out on the curb with everybody else late Friday, piling into the courtesy van headed to the Ramadi Inn conference center, and guess what? I have to sit next to that new French intern Ali the entire trip. Holy frickin’ Prophet, what a weasely little brown-noser. "Oh Monsieur Zarqawi, it is the great pleasure to be working for the jihad with you!" while I’m just trying to get some peace and quiet and work on my Times crossword. I swear I’d shitcan that little suckup tomorrow if the martyr recruiting market wasn’t so damn tight. About an hour into the trip we took a few rounds from the Iraqi collaborators, which thankfully shut him up, but then I had to deal with his shitstank the rest of the way.


One of these days that Iowahawk guy is gonna totally crack me up.


MFBB

Look what the cat dragged in from the Information Superhighway...

Someday I've got to hook up with this chick. I bet she's hot.

EURO SANITY AND EURO INSANITY.

Let’s start with the latter.

In The Netherlands, the first "marriage" between three people is a fact. OK, it ain’t really a "legal" marriage. It’s a civil union. But don't forget that gay marriage, now possible in some four enlightened nations (among which, uh, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics of Belgistan) came about once civil unions were an established fact. I vaguely remember Mark from CO once saying something to the effect that once gay marriages were allowed, why stop at that and not allow marriages of three, four or more people? Naïve as I was, I dismissed the thought as utterly ridiculous. And this evening, smack, I got the facts on my plate. From the Dutch of course. Anyway, the newly"weds" are Victor de Bruijn (46) and Bianca (31) and Mirjam (35). Check out The Brussels Journal.

"I love both Bianca and Mirjam, so I am marrying them both," Victor said. He had previously been married to Bianca. Two and a half years ago they met Mirjam Geven through an internet chatbox. Eight weeks later Mirjam deserted her husband and came to live with Victor and Bianca. After Mirjam’s divorce the threesome decided to marry. Victor: "A marriage between three persons is not possible in the Netherlands, but a civil union is. We went to the notary in our marriage costume and exchanged rings. We consider this to be just an ordinary marriage."

Riiiiiiight.

Asked by journalists to tell the secret of their peculiar relationship, Victor explained that there is no jealousy between them. "But this is because Mirjam and Bianca are bisexual. I think that with two heterosexual women it would be more difficult." Victor stressed, however, that he is "a one hundred per cent heterosexual" and that a fourth person will not be allowed into the "marriage." They want to take their marriage obligations seriously: "to be honest and open with each other and not philander."

Let’s proceed with the former. While I was in Poland, parliamentary elctions took place, on Sunday 25 September. The left got whacked in the gutter, from 41% of the vote the previous time, to just 11% now. Winners were two center rightwing parties, the Civic Platform (PO – Platforma Obywatelska) and Law and Justice (PiS - Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc).

The 460 seats of the Sejm, the House of Representatives of the Polish parliament, got divided as follows:

Law and Justice (PiS) - 155
Civic Platform (PO) - 133
Self-defence (Samoobrona) - 56
Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) - 55
League of Polish Families (LPR) - 34
Polish Peasant Party (PSL) - 25
The German minority - 2

From the onset it was clear that the government would be a coalition of PO and PiS. Now, the 25 Sept elections were for the legislative body. Today, October 9, presidential elections were held.


Of the two main candidates PO's Donald Tusk, a selfmade pro free market advocate, won the most votes, with until now (midnight) 38% of the total. The other rightwing contender, PiS strongman Lech Kaczynski, won 32%. Since a 50% majority is required for becoming president, it is possible that in two weeks time a second round will be necessary. Interesting detail: Leck Kaczynski has a twin brother, Jaroslaw (with whom he once starred in a movie for children) who is also strongly in politics. Theoretically, after the September 25 elections, it was not even thought impossible that one of them would become president and the other PM. However, in order to not appear too dominant (and to better Lechs chances for the presidency), the PiS has now proposed Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz as its candidate for the premiership.


Both men are pro free market, but Tusk more so than Kaczynski, who is more inclined towards a strong state and its role in welfare provisions. Also, it is Tusk who is a great advocate of a flat tax. On the other hand, Kaczynski is outspokenly Catholic and puts a lot of stress on family values. I would say that Tusks PO is more "right" on economic issues, while Kaczynski's PiS is more "right" on ethical questions. Anyway, it's going to become a coaltion of these two parties so no matter the actual outfilling of the key posts I think we got a big winner for Rightwing Europe in Poland.



With regards to the recent elections in Germany, I'd like to point out the obvious differences between the elections in both countries. Germany's federal government has for fifteen years, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990, been pouring gazillions of Marks and Euros in East germany, the former DDR. Yet it was in exactly this part of Germany that a powerful extreme leftwing party emerged, Die Linke under commie fossil Oskar Lafontaine. See the map to the right, from Davids Medienkritik:

Two thirds of the red on the map is in the former DDR. And in Europe, unlike in the States, red means, well, red. Those East Germans have been showered for 15 years with federal government money and STILL German unemployment is staggeringly high, especially in their neck of the woods. Yet they keep voting for the left. Now take Poland. Unemployment is damn high too, between 17 and 20%. The four years of socialist rule are not the only explanation for that. Poland has as yet still very much an agrarical economy, with (I think) something in the neighborhood of 25% of the workforce still in farms. With Poland now being in the EU, a dramatic rationalization of Polish agriculture is necessary, so even with sound governance I don't expect the number of unemployed to drop sharply in the coming years. And yet, Poland thrives. Since the beginning of the year, some 180,000 jobs have been created (Poland has a population of 39 million). There's massive infrastructure works everywhere, especially on new highways. In Zakopane, the Polish Aspen, where we stayed during our holiday, we witnessed a construction boom as never seen.

In short: Germans get so pampered that their asscheeks turn the colour of Code Pink slogans. When it is cautiously explained to them that they will have to work a bit longer for the same money, they protest vehemently and keep voting for the asshats that brought them in the shit they are in in the first place. Poles, on the other hand, have very little to expect from their gumint in terms of welfare provisions. My mother in law can tell you. Yet they work their asses off - with result - and vote right.

I am reminded here of a famous slogan on a Polish WWII poster. Polish infantrymen, pilots and sailors had been forced out of their country in 1939 and throughout the war kept dying in the thousands on other peoples soil - Italy, France, The Netherlands. That slogan said: "We don't beg for freedom - We fight for it".

Today, that slogan could read: "We don't beg for a good life - we work for it."


MFBB

Piglet Banned

Bosses at Dudley Council in London have banned Piglet in order to not offend Muslim staff members.

Piglet has issued a formal response:

An incomplete list of people I have no time for:


People who are ashamed/ embarrassed to be white

People who are ashamed/ embarrassed to be American

People who are offended by the American flag

People who are offended by the Pledge of Allegiance

People who hate corporations regardless of the situation

People who think US public schools started sucking when Bush was elected

People who get their ass up in the air over issues they know nothing about

People who think that everything would be swell if we'd just let women run everything

Anyone who accuses anyone else of being racist

Anyone who accuses anyone else of not caring about "the poor."


I'm sure there will be more. Thanks for listening.

WHY MFBB WAS WRONG ABOUT THE RIGHTWING SHIFT IN GERMANY.

We have already had Boob Man…














…and faithful readers no doubt will remember our Fwench fwiend:








but nothing beats the Germans. Compared to this level of sophisitication, the Downeast Crew, at least the male part, is but a bunch of smelly Neanderthals. A new breed has arisen: PANTYMAN!!!

Vergessen Sie veraltete Ansichten,
seien Sie Mann genug,
neue Welten zu erkunden,
Bekleidung als Genuß zu erleben.

Wir haben die NEUEN
Strumpfhosen für den Mann!

(Forget the old customs,
Be man enough,
to explore new worlds,
and to experience clothing as something to savor.

We have the NEW
panties for the Man!)

Personally, I favor the Aurel 70Den version. Because, you see, this classic opaque men’s pantyhose is made of cotton and polyamide for a very soft and warm feeling. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and it guarantees superb comfort especially in the (wink! wink!) area huhuhuhuhu!!!!! This particular pantyhose has no open fly but a specially designed front panel for the anatomy of a men, and I can really, really recommend it.



......................( )




Hey, wait a minute! Did I just say that out loud?


MFBB

LUC VAN BRAEKEL ON THE DENNIS PRAGER SHOW.

You might want to check this out. Belgian/Flemish top blogger Luc Van Braekel, who is also a successful Internet Entrepreneur, will be interviewed live by phone on The Dennis Prager Show on Wednesday September 21 between 9am and 10pm Pacific Time. This on account of the release of the newest turd hit by Flemish May 68 fossil Raymond Van het Groenewoud, titled "Weg met Amerika" (Down with America), on which topic Mr. Van Braekel will shed some light from a Flemish point of view.

Oh please, I know it's been on The Brussels Journal and even on LGF, but it really wasn't that important. After all, this dork's career was at its zenith when POTUS was a Pinda Farmer, and then only with two or three "hits". For those of you who still want to know who RvhG is, click here. See? It really ain't important, besides, just lookit the guy. Either he died when Pinda Potus had to yield to Ronnie and they reanimated him just for the cover photo, or he's terminally suffering from a big disease with a little name.

No, I just mention this because you know, I've come across this Prager's name on the net for some time and I have the impression he's a talkshow icon in the States, and when a fella like that interviews LVB, well, that just ought to be interesting. Over here, Luc has become somewhat the blogging reference, with even main newspapers referring to his site lvb.net, which also has an english chapter. I would situate Luc right of center, in that he is still a member of my old party, the center-right VLD. But if I'm not mistaken, he's also got libertarian traits and, being an entrepreneur himself, he's unapologetic pro free market. And he's a GREAT friend of America!!!





To prove my point, I included the pic to the right, showing Luc draped in a Stars and Stripes. This being a wholly owned Nazi White Supremacy KKK blog subSSidiary, our readers will be pleased to note that Mr. Van Braekel is of true Aryan descent, see also the piercing blue lookers. As a final token of his unflinching support for the American Empire, note also his battle cry "Weg met het Arabisch Schiereiland", which translates as Down with the Arabic Peninsula.

Readers should be aware that as a result of this bluntness all across the Islamic World fatwas were pronounced calling for the death of our hero. A.o. from KSA, where a certain Imam A'Big Ass'hole called upon the faithful to bring him Mr. Van Braekels head, or from Islamsterdam where a certain Ayatollah F'kin' D'umb'Ass exhorted a hysterical crowd to do a Theo Van Gogh to that infidel upstart from the restive southern provinces.

Anyway, if you got the time here is some data to follow the interview. For those regulars I know the approximate location of, see this brief overview:


*Florence, Alabama: WBCF-AM, freq. 1240, Weekend Best of Prager Show
*Denver-Boulder, Colorado: KNUS-AM, freq. 710, 10 AM - 1 PM - Live
*Bangor, Maine: WWNZ-AM, freq. 1400, Weekend Best of Prager Show
*Boston, Massachusetts: WTTT-AM, freq. 1150, 12 PM - 3 PM - Live
*Blacksburg-Christiansburg-Radford-Pulaski, Virginia: WPIN-AM, freq. 810, 12 PM - 2 PM - Live
*Richmond, Virginia: WTOX-AM, freq. 1480, 2 PM - 3 PM


Tell me how you liked it.


MFBB


UPDATE:

You can find the conversation between Dennis and Luc on Lucs podcast channel. I think it's quite good, but then of course I'm a Fleming. There are many important excerpts, one that stuck with me is when Luc is talking about the plethora of social security institutions (the unions, the "mutualities" - horrible word, huh?) in the Old Europe and that the Leftist Establishment is actually frightened of the pressure from the newly EU-admitted countries which increasingly seem to choose for the Anglosaxon model voor social services. I was pleasantly surprised that Dennis at once exclaimed "Estonia! Poland!" etc... so I guess he's aware of the flat tax revolution in the former Eastern Bloc. As an aside, there's upcoming elections in Poland too, and one of the presidential candidates, Tusk, is advocating a 15% flat tax. But enough of that, if you got the time, check out the interview! Skip the weather and traffic info.

Nice that Dennis said "Dank u" (Thank you) at the end of the interview, and fairly good, but he seems to have big problems pronouncing "Braekel". Hey, for Anglosaxons trying to speak Dutch, I can symphatize! Nite all.

COLUMBUS'S EGG: THE JAMAICA OPTION!!!

Okay, guess you got wind of it already.

The German Christian-Democrats made a piss-poor performance. True, they scored biggest... with 35% of the vote or so. Schroeder's SPD made a dramatic comeback and stranded on 34.1% or something. Predictions were that the CDU/CSU would get 41% of the vote, so the mood at CDU/CSU HQ was pretty downcast. There was a blame game.

Other developments were:

* the pro business FDP of Guido Westerwelle got 10%, which in itself is very good, but it is assumed that somehow Merkel did not appeal/convince enough and that part of the vote which would otherwise have gone to Merkel now landed at the FDP.

* The Greens under Joschka Fischer stayed at around 7-8%.

* the newly raised extreme leftwing party Die Linke (The Left) under commie fossil Oskar Lafontaine also got some 8%. But since their rambling leftist discourse is as out of date as MFBB showing up in graying ponytail and loudly singing Europes "The Final Countdown" at an East Coast Spring Break Party, no one, not even Schroeder, wants to form a coalition with them.

Merkel made a weak claim that in the event of a "grand coalition" CDU/CSU with SPD, she ought to be Chancellor. And here it gets interesting. A jubilant Schroeder apparently went throught the roof. At press conferences yesterday he boasted that Germany "would be reigned another four years by Gerd Schroeder". Info here.

For a couple of hours, it had indeed sounded like it would be just that: a CDU/CSU forced to co-habitate with the SPD, effectively rendering political decisionmaking a lame duck. A nightmare scenario for German industry. But Schroeders claim that he would lead the coalition was so utterly arrogant that, well, that something clicked in the German political scene.


And now, and now, it's just that, I just read this over at David's Medienkritik... I can't believe it, it just seems too good to be true. Oh, of course, this is the correct way!!! A coalition CDU/CSU with the pro free market FDP was always the most favoured outcome. But with the Christian Democrat's poor performance unfortunately no longer feasible. But, if you add in the Greens, it again becomes possible!!!! And that's why there's now talk of the so-called "Jamaica Option", a coalition of CDU/CSU (black), FDP (yellow) and Die Gruene (green). Which are, as you understand by now, the colours of the Jamaican flag.

OK, let Ray D. of David's Medienkritik do the talking:

Most people, including myself, late last night forecasted a grand coalition of the conservative CDU/CSU and the left-wing SPD. Taken together, they would hold a large majority of the seats in Germany's new parliament. Then came chancellor Schroeder's freaky performance at elections eve's tv discussion (video) with other political leaders... and suddenly a coalition of CDU/CSU, the pro-business FDP and (hold your breath) the green party of foreign minister Fischer seems possible.

A "Jamaica coalition" of CDU/CSU (black),
FDP (yellow) and green party...

All parties involved would find it difficult to form a Jamaica coalition, but given the alternative of a grand coalition, the Jamaica option looks increasingly attractive. Especially the green party would face a grim fate as the smallest opposition party in case of a grand coalition. Even Jürgen Trittin, environmental minister under Schroeder and a prominent member of the green's left wing, made some encouraging remarks about the Jamaica option...

Juergen Trittin is the dork who made fun of the American response to Katrina. He's the kind of dudes who think that Katrinas are the result of GWB not signing the Kyoto Protocol. Oh, I know, the Greens are mostly loons. But the important thing is to get CDU/CSU and FDP together in one dish. If it takes the Greens to make that scenario possible, so be it. And their leader Joschka Fischer is more reasonable and more pro-US than you'd think. Some may remember how he got eggs thrown at him by pary members when he defended the US's intervention in the Balkans in the late nineties.

Dammit, yesterday I felt so down that I couldn't write. But if this thing could get through... Remember, with the Christian Democrats at the helm the relationship with the US will improve significantly. Plus, of course, in such an event the ambitious tax and economic reforms may still be implemented to a considerable extent. Thus, with good prospects for the German economy. And the German economy is the locomotive of Europe... Developing....


MFBB

If you've got some spare time, this is worth watching.

Victor Davis Hanson administers a first class thrashing to Arianna Huffington in a recent debate.

For our next act, the New England Patriots will take on my daughter's kindergarten class in a tug of war.

GERMAN ELECTION FEVER

For over a year now I have been talking about the re-emergence of the Right in Europe. Well, Sunday 18 September’s elections are going to be the lithmus test for that claim. For then the Germans choose a new Bundestag – the lower house of the German Parliament – and the outcome will determine which Chancellor will be leading Germany in the crucial years ahead. I suppose most of you have by now heard of Angela Merkel, leading lady of the Christlich-Demokratische Union, or CDU. She’s a physicist by formation and from the former GDR – the German "Democratic" Republic.


All through summer, conventional wisdom had it that Merkel would win the elections hands down. The CDU’s drive started back in May, when the local SPD lost big in the important state North Rhine-Westfalia, with only 37.1% of the vote. By contrast, NRW’s CDU obtained a staggering 44.8%. Such was the SPD’s debacle that when Schroeder surprisingly called for early elections, many declared him mad.







However, the prospects for Gerhard Schroeders SPD have gotten remarkably better over the past weeks. Some time elapsed before Merkel got her act together while campaigning, and as such she was put on the defense by Schroeder who is a born showman, appearing at rallies with much bravado, sleeves rolled up, cheering, joking, and beaming with self-confidence. Then there was The Economist’s favourable reporting on German export booming again. Also, it should not be forgotten that one year ago Schroeder DID implement some drastic cuts in lavish social security provisions for the longtime unemployed, the so-called Hartz IV measures, and the past weeks it looked like these started to bear some fruit.


Last but not least, Schroeder, unlike Merkel, is never too shy to resort to flat populism to boost his poll numbers. For instance, about one month ago Merkel hailed her Minister of Finance candidate Paul Kirchhof, an outspoken advocate of a flat tax of 25% as well as of the abolition of no less than 481 tax subsidies and special write-offs. Schroeder, wisely reluctant to aim his arrows on a woman, quickly realized here was the cheap victim he needed to discredit the CDU. Since Kirchhofs appearance he has been ridiculing the former Federal Constitutional Court Justice, at best telling "the good Prof to stay in Heidelberg", at worst claming that his flat tax would favor the rich and that his elimination of write-offs would result in a social bloodbath. He even implied that his flat tax proposal was a nebulous theory… nowhere applied successfully yet. All this while until now ELEVEN mostly East-European countries have already adopted it, most of them with great success, like e.g. Estonia:

When Laar became Prime Minister, inflation in Estonia was over 1,000%, the economy was falling at a rate of 30%, unemployment was over 30%, 95% of the economy was state-owned and 92% of Estonian trade was dependent on Russia. Today, inflation is 2.5%, economic growth is between 6 and 7%, unemployment is low, the government budget is balanced and there is a high level of investment. Moreover, Estonia is leading the world in the field of e-government.

...or read this article from The Telegraph instead:

A flat tax regime has been adopted in 11 countries and counting. As each citadel falls, another is forced to respond to the new-found vigour of its neighbour. Next up is Greece, where the prime minister could announce one in a few weeks' time. Greece has unbelievably rickety public finances and the hope is that a flat tax rate of 25 per cent will revive the moribund economy, reduce evasion, attract high earners and send revenues pouring into the coffers of Athens.

Don’t exactly sound like a nebulous theory to me. But who am I to question someone who flirted with DDR dictators.

However, Schroeder and cronies not only resorted to bragging and spreading lies about political opponents. Just lately, he has been using the old anti-American trump-card again, and his example has inspired followers. See for example the vile use one of his senior ministers, Rolf Schwanitz, has been making of a photo showing coffins with killed US troops being flown back to the States. The caption reads: She (Merkel) would have sent soldiers.


From David's Medienkritik: "We have learned that one of Gerhard Schroeder's senior ministers and a top SPD man in eastern Germany, Rolf Schwanitz, is using the following poster in an attempt to win votes:..."


To aggravate the problem, Merkel not only faces Schroeders social democrats but also a newly emerged extreme left political formation led by former SPD Chairman and SPD Minister of Finance Oskar Lafontaine. Lafontaine is a loon who, after all the evidence to the contrary, still believes in the makeability of society through centralist control. Unbelievably enough, he has his power base in former GDR territory, where it appears a large segment of the population, dissatisfied with the difficult and slow gearing up of the east’s economy with the rest of Germany, long for the old "certainties" of the communist era.Lafontaines new party is simply called "Die Linke" (the Left) and together with the PDS of former GDR apparatchik Gregor Gysi, another communist era remnant, is said to count for 12% of the vote!









Now, while it is true that Merkel has had a bumpy road over the past weeks, almost all political analysts predict a sufficient win for her party and an almost mathematical certaintiy that she will become Germany’s first female Chancellor. After all, the legacy of the Schroeder era is 4,76 million jobless, which stands for an unemployment rate of 11,7%. But it has also become clear that a coalition of the CDU with the small pro free market party FDP is a very unlikely scenario. Instead, the CDU may have to form a coalition with the SPD again, severely inhibiting any chances for implementing Kirchofs grand tax reform schemes.

September 18’s parliamentary elections in Germany will remain thrilling to the last minute. While polls show that Merkels CDU is still the biggest party, the SPD has significantly closed the gap. With 25% of the voters still undecided as late as last Friday, the outcome still is very much in doubt. Let us hope that this time sufficient Germans come in time to their senses. A few years back, they elected Schroeder again over then CDU strongman Stoiber, who had managed to turn his native Bavaria into an economic powerhouse. That decision cost the Germans 1,5 million unemployed more. While one cannot underestimate human collective stupidity, let us nevertheless remain hopeful that at least we will see the end of the Schroeder era. Go Angie, Go!!!


MFBB

Can you say blowtard?

Does the news have you depressed? Check out the latest from John Stossel. You'll feel better.

Check out this garbage. (Hat tip LGF)

This shouldn't surprise anyone. I graduated from an Art school, and have always found it highly amusing that these institutions that supposedly pride themselves in inspiring individual expression and free thinking all crank out the same leftist party line. This is how a friend of mine summed up the leftist art scene:

Piss Christ good, Piss Koran bad.

That pretty much sums it up.

There is very little good political art going on in my opinion. Good political art stands the chance of changing minds. This childish drivel on display in Manhattan is simplistic preaching to the choir. It requires no original thought and doesn't push any boundaries whatsoever. It is the repetition of dogma, nothing more. Throw it in the same rubbish pile with all the other "Bush with Hitler Mustache" masterpieces cranked out by the lemmings produced by our nation's art institutions.

THOU SHALT NEVER FORGET...

Via PajamasMedia.





























LET'S ROLL.



















MFBB