THE GREATEST BELGIAN EVER...

Believe it or not, but one of the more charming competitions among European nations lately was to choose their greatest national ever. The Brits evidently chose Winston Churchill, a sane choice if ever there was one, the Germans a certain Austrian corporal Konrad Adenauer, successful post WWII Chancellor, the French somewhat mysteriously elected an airport (it's called CDG! Bwahahahahahaaaaa, those funny Fwench!!!), the Dutch, in another embarrassing sign of having-lost-the pedals, chose Pim Fortuyn (the man’s merits as whistleblower notwithstanding), the Finns Marshal Mannerheim, their strong but controversial WWII-leader, and the Belgians...

… well, not surprisingly, the Belgians couldn’t decide on their greatest one so they chose two of them!

How come? Well… in 1913 already, Jules Destrée, a forceful advocate of an independenent Wallonia famously remarked to King Albert I:

"Your Highness, there are no Belgians. There are only Flemings and Walloons."

and the chemistry apparently not having changed that much over 90 years we ended up in 2005 with Father Damien for the Flemings and Jacques Brel for the Walloons. We leave aside the small German-speaking part of the Belgian population in the eastern border region of the realm since there are so few of them (70,000) and because they are Krauts anyway.

Since the Flemings constitute the majority in our country, I think it’s only appropriate to first shed some light on the figure of Father Damien. He was born on January 3, 1840 as Jozef De Veuster in the small town of Tremelo, between Antwerp and Brussels. Destined to take over his father’s grain business, he nevertheless succeeded in forcing his will to become a priest through, and became a brother in the Congregation of the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Maria in Leuven, where he chose the name of Broeder Damiaan – Father Damien. In 1863 he fulfils the dream of his sick brother Pamphile to become a missionary and arrives in Honolulu in 1864, where, for sheer lack of priests, he is immediately ordained one. In 1873 Bishop Maigret decides to send a priest to the leper colony of Molokai for a period of three months. It is Damien, who will remain there for the rest of his life. Shocked by the horrifying circumstances in the colony, he goes to work with enormous will and courage to lessen their suffering, acting not only as a priest but also as a doctor, building his own church but also roads, making coffins and digging graves, and generally becoming a nuisance for his superiors with his incessant pleas for support. His efforts were not fruitless: soon there came decent housing for the patients as well as a school. His fame quickly spread, and while he himself was a Catholic, most financial support came from American protestants, while the Church of England also made substantial contributions. In 1884 he was diagnosed with leprosy himself - he had been lax about hygiene. He nevertheless continued to work with the help of four others until two weeks before his death on April 15th 1889. He was 49 years old. In 1936 his remains were brought back to Belgium by the naval schoolship the Mercator, and was buried in Leuven. In 1999, a movie was made with Australian born actor David Wenham in the lead role.

Now Jacques Brel. Brel, born in Schaarbeek, Brussels in 1929, was simultaneously poet, performer, musician, actor and director. As a kid he displayed not so much an affinity with music as rather with poetry, and indeed, even when he was a successful singer-songwriter, for him the words were always more important than the music. In 1953 he recorded his first two songs. After an unsuccessful session attempt in the studios of Belgian Radio and TV (BRT), he decided to try his luck in Paris. There, in 1957, discovered by Parisian talent scout Jacques Canetti, he achieved his breakthrough with "Quand on n'a que l'amour". It is the beginning of the great era of the French chansonniers, and the sole little Belgian soon competes on his own with big names like Jacques Dutronc, Georges Brassens, Charles Trenet, Gilbert Bécaud and Julien Clerc. In the next ten years, he achieved worldwide fame, with lyrics that radically broke with the sentimental post WWII-songs but focused instead on social satire (mocking the church, the bourgeoisie and, alas, Flemish nationalists) and universal emotions such as loneliness, friendship, despair, lost love, failure. His musical oeuvre comprises some 100 songs, including numbers like "Marieke", "Le Plat Pays", "Les bourgeois", "Ne me quite pas" and "Le Moribond". Brel greatly inspired other singer-songwriters, and he is surely one of the most covered artists around, with Neil Diamond, Petula Clark, Shirley Bassey, Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, Ray Charles, David Bowie (Amsterdam!), Mark Almond and many others performing one or some of his songs. His many concerts (up to 300 a year!) always had an electrifying effect on the audience, with Brel and his public joining in an emotional embrace which left no one untouched. At the same time, his performances were so fiery and dramatic that in the course of one show he could lose 800 grams of bodyweight! A life like that took its toll on his health, an the fact that Brel smoked four packs of Gitanes a day did not help either. In 1967 already he bade the podium farewell with a last dramatic concert at the Parisian Olympia concert hall. After he finished, he got a 20-minute ovation, capture a glimpse of that moment here. Brel essentially made his name with that sole decade between 1957-1967. After that, he had a brief career in the movie business, acting in some ten films and directing two. It was no success. In the early seventies, lung cancer was discovered. A 1974 an operation deprived him of one lung, yet he manages to occasionally record a song. He died in 1978, and is buried on the cemetery of Atuone on the island of Hiva-Oa, Tahiti.

I will very likely never become as famous as Brel, yet we may have one thing in common. Like me, he seems to have had a love/hate relationship with his country. He never denied his Belgian roots. Me, although I'm immensely proud to be a Fleming, will do so neither. A number of his songs were recorded both in Dutch and in French, e.g. the legendary "Mijn vlakke land - Le plat pays" (My flat land - Belgium and The Netherlands aren't called The Low Countries for nothing). I fear that sound excerpt, when heard for the first time, won't impress much, but you gotta hear it whole, and be in the mood for it. Insert a mental picture of dramatic skies heavy with clouds over a flat green country interspersed with woods and waterways, with stately cathedrals here and there towering over medieval towns. Brel sings about stone devils - the gargouilles (rain water dispensers) - on those cathedrals. He sings about the dunes holding back the waves of the North Sea, about skies so low canals seem hung up to them, about rainy roads and the northern wind. He sings about "Le Plat Pays qui est le mien". He sings about my country, Belgium, 175 years young in 2005. Brel was, I guess, torn about it - like me. He once said:

"If I were king, I would send all the Flemings to Wallonia and all the Walloons to Flanders for six months. Like military service. They would live with a family and that would solve all our ethnic and linguistic problems very fast. Because everybody's tooth aches in the same way, everybody loves their mother, everybody loves or hates spinach. And those are the things that really count."

If only it were that simple.


MFBB


UPDATE: MFBB's CHOICE FOR GREATEST BELGIAN EVER


Personally, I can find myself neither in the Flemish nor the Wallonian choice. My "greatest Belgian" is King Albert I (1875-1934), who ruled from 1909, when he succeeded his (in)famous predecessor Leopold II, to 1934, when he died in a mountaineering accident. Albert Leopold Clément Marie Meinrad was not Leopolds son, but Prince Philip’s, the Count of Flanders, Leopold’s brother. Albert had German blood running through his veins, since his mother was Princess Maria of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and was thus a full nephew to the German Emperor Wilhelm II! There was another German connection: in 1900 he married Elisabeth, a Bavarian duchess with whom he had three children, one of them to become his successor Leopold III.

When Albert became King in 1909, he inherited a country which under the forceful aegis of his uncle Leopold II had developed into a prosperous and industrious nation. Indeed, by the turn of the century Belgium was the fifth industrial power in the world, a fact which was helped greatly by the cheap import of precious ores and minerals from its Central African colony the Congo (with regards to the treatment of the natives we Belgians have unpleasant thruths to face, but that will be the scope of some future post. I hope).

In the decades of building up its industrial potential however, Belgium had dangerously neglected its defenses, falsely assuming that its neutral status, granted in 1830 by the then Superpowers, would forever protect it from invasion. The result was that when World War I broke out in summer 1914 and Germany sought to advance into France over Belgian soil (as required by the Schlieffen Plan), Belgium, when suddenly faced with an invading army of 800,000, could only rely on a field army of 60,000 and some 130,000 fortress troops. Despite that, King Albert flatly rejected the German August 2 ultimatum for a free pass-through, and thus established himself as our national hero. On August 3, after a nightly meeting with the Cabinet, he sent out a telegram in response saying that Belgium would with all her might resist the violation of her neutral status and territory. On August 4, the Germans invasion began.

The Germans soon found the ring of forts around Liège a tough nut to crack. It took them almost two weeks, with heavy losses, to neutralize them. A cavalry probe by two Uhlan divisions in the province of Limburg was soundly defeated by General De Witte at Halen. However, there was no stopping the German juggernaut, which by the end of August had basically swept the Belgian Army to the northwest, where it consolidated its hold around Antwerp with its ring of forts – Belgium’s "National Redoubt", so to say. It was from Antwerp that King Albert personally conducted two counterattacks in Von Kluck’s rear, as the latter's armies advanced towards Paris.

Precisely these attacks made the Germans decide they’d better finish off what was left of our troops, and so they set on besieging Antwerp, which finally fell by October 10. However, the bulk of the army had managed to slip away to the West at the last moment, ready to fight another day. King Albert and his troops were relentlessly pushed further to the southwest, until they ended up by the end of October behind the river Yser in the westernmost corner of Belgium. An ingenious flooding of the lowlands along the river made for a near impenetrable barrier and thus it was that the King, with his exhausted troops, finally managed to put an end to the retreat and hold the line, with his HQ in Veurne, almost within German artillery range, and his back on the French border.

Then trench warfare set in. Throughout the war, the Belgian sector of the front would not change much, not only because the flooded areas severely hampered large troop movements but especially because Albert refused to put the Belgian troops under allied command, still insisting on keeping his neutral status. Albert received a lot of scorn for this, for it meant that Belgian divisions could not be deployed in the great offensives as waged by Joffre, Foch, French and Haig. It is certainly true that the British troops, who defended the other small part of non-occupied Belgium around Ypres, paid a far higher blood price for the liberation of our country. But the point can also be made that Albert understood much better than Foch and Haig that massed offensives against well dug in machinegun positions and artillery were pointless and a scandalous waste of lives, unless some novel tactic was introduced which would effectively break the enemy line. There is something else: both Foch and Haig could rely on the near complete manpower resources of their respective nations to fill up the ranks. Albert however, who perhaps held a mere 5% of Belgian soil, had to sit out the war with whatever troops he had left, plus perhaps 100,000 men whom he could draft from among the Belgian refugees in France and Britain. The participation of the Belgian Field Army in a "typical" allied offensive, say, the Somme 1916, would have bled it white in the course of several days, never to recover again for the remainder of the war. What he did do, as a gesture of military cooperation within the allied framework, was send an armoured car battalion to the eastern front to fight with the Russians against the Austrians, there being no use for them behind the Yser, given the static nature of the front.

And so the years went by, with the front lines not changing except for isolated outposts overrun and retaken. There is a very good 1915 account of what life for the troops in the flooded land was from the hand of an American female reporter, Mary Roberts Rinehart. From time to time, King Albert would visit the trenches or fly over the Yser front in his Spad, which on such occasions was always accompanied by four fighters. He kept receiving heads of state and generals, e.g. the French President Poincare and the generals Haig and Foch, all insisting -to no avail - that Belgium should abandon its neutral status. It is true that in the years 1915-1917 Albert was often very pessimistic on the outcome of the war, and had an outspoken respect for German combat power. I would however dare to challenge any present day politican to keep his head as cool as Albert, having lost 95% of your country in a cataclysmic event with your population suffering from a cruel occupation. As it was, Albert simply kept his front for four years with the least possible losses. Given that the allied generals basically "kept" unaltered fronts too, although at the cost of several million men, King Albert’s stance was probably not so opportunistic as it seemed at the time. Only in 1918, after the last German offensives had petered out and fresh 20,000 strong American divisions under General Pershing changed the stalemate in favor of the allies, did Albert agree to place his troops under allied control. In September 1918, as a reward, Foch appointed him overall commander of the new Army Group Flanders, comprising Belgian, French, British and American troops. In reality however, command of the army group lay in the hands of the experienced French general Jean-Marie Degoutte, a situation which can very well be compared with the first Gulf War, where the Saudi Prince Khalid bin Sultan was nominally the Coalition’s Supreme Commander but the day-to-day decisions were taken by General Schwarzkopf. By the time the Germans decided to surrender, on November 11, 1918, the offensive had liberated the provinces of East and West Flanders.

From before the outbreak of the Great War, Albert understood that the growing importance of the Socialist Party might one day undermine his position. In studying his relationship with socialist prominents and with the Social Party itself (BWP – Belgische Werklieden Partij – Belgian Workers Party) from the end of the 19th century till his death in 1934 – once cannot escape the conclusion that Albert I was a shrewd pragmatist, as he managed to buy off the BWP’s goodwill with – necessary – social reforms, while at the same time firmly keeping the reins of monarchical rule over Belgium. A monarchy which in prewar years was generally considered by socialists as out of date at best and a tyranny at worst. As it was, Albert, before and after the war, managed to steer clear of the waves of militant socialism and communism which either severely shook the estabishment, like in France, or overthrew it, like in Germany or Russia. Indeed, only 11 days after the November 11 1918 armistice, Albert held a King’s Speech in which he promised general singular suffrage, recognition of syndical liberties (a.o. the right to strike) and extension of social legislation. In recognition of the rightful demands of the Flemish community, Albert I also promised the University of Ghent be made Flemish and full equality would exist between Flemish and French. And sure enough, by keeping his promises Albert effectively neutralized the threat of revolution and basically "incorporated" the socialist movement in the establishment, in the process nevertheless managing to keep the monarchy intact. By the time the social and consitutional reforms were finished (in 1921) Albert felt strong enough again to resist the socialists when these came with new demands, like 6-month (!) military service and new social laws. Like in World War I, Albert had cleverly sat out the storm to emerge from it in a stronger position.

A final word should be said about the high esteem Albert had for the sciences. In 1928 he founded the National Fund for Scientific Research. Its principal purpose was to finance research at Belgian universities. It started with assets of 110 million Belgian francs from private funds and a complementary donation from the Belgian government. The NFSR supported a great number of major research projects, some of which had a significant international impact. E.g., it supported Professor Picard's 1931 atmospheric balloon experiment to measure and analyse cosmic radiation.

Not only the industry benefited from the NFSR’s financial support of research. Its funds enabled the setting up of numerous expeditions which brought home a wealth of archeological, anthropological and biological data. One of the most noteworthy expeditions is the 1934 Franco-Belgian Easter Island Expedition, during which the naval schoolship Mercator transported two moais back to Belgium, one of which is now in the Parisian Musée de l’Homme, and the other one in the Brussels Royal Museum for Arts and History.

Albert I died on February 17, 1934, in a mountaineering accident in Marche-les-Dames in the Ardennes, under circumstances which to this day remain unclear. There has been heavy specualtion as to likely causes for murder, with theories ranging from jealous husbands to elimination by the French Secret Service (because Albert wanted to leave the military partnership with France and return to neutral status). These and other theories have flourished because Albert was an able alpinist and in excellent health. Whatever the exact reasons for his death, he was greatly mourned by the population and received worldwide recognition. His widow, Queen Elisabeth, would survice him for 24 years.

King Albert I was a man with flaws and opportunistic when it suited him, or the complicated nation he was king of. At times he seemed to falter - e.g., at the end of the Siege of Antwerp he considered surrendering to the Germans. However: the man was a War Hero who foiled the Sclieffen Plan, a social and constitutional reformer, a man who finally granted elementary rights to the majority in his country, a promotor of sciences, and a great athlete. Compared to today's spineless European elites he stands like a Giant. To me, King Albert I is the Greatest Belgian Ever.

But that is just my opinion, of course.

MFBB

WHY ISLAM WILL REMAIN CONFINED TO PLANET EARTH... (THANK GOD)

A.) SCENE 1: A PRESTIGIOUS, WELL RESPECTED AND AUTHORATIVE UNIVERSITY IN EGYPT.

At the prestigious, well respected and authorative al-Azhar University in Cairo an Egyptian theologian, former Rector of the Sharia Faculty (Islamic Right) has issued a fatwa forbidding married people to undress completely when making love. "Complete nudity while having sex renders marriage invalid", declared the drooling islamonutter prestigious, well respected and authoritive university prof, Rashar Hassan Khalil. However, another islamoloon gone bonkers prestigious, well respected and authorative university prof, Abdallah Megawer, Head of the Fatwa Committee of al-Azhar, replied that "the lovers do have the right to see each other naked, but that they should not stare at each others genitals". And yet another rambling owner of a 1-digit IQ prestigious, well respected and authorative university figure, Mrs. Soad Saleh, Director of the Woman Branch for Islamic Studies at al-Azhar, is a great advocate of "everything which brings the married ones closer to each other and enhances their love". Mrs. Saleh however "advizes couples however not to undress completely, taking into account the decency and example of the prophet". Right. How old was his last wife exactly?

I must admit that the level of scientific discourse at the prestigious, well respected and authorative al-Azhar University is breathtaking.


B.) SCENE 2: A PRESTIGIOUS, WELL RESPECTED AND AUTHORATIVE UNIVERSITY IN MASSACHEWSITTS.

At the prestigious, well respected and authorative Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, a Masters Candidate for Aerospace Engineering/Propulsion Systems, an unknown fella by the name of Michael Tsay, is developing a numerical model for describing the inductively coupled plasma (ICP) discharge of a miniature Radio Frequency ion thruster. His approach is to assume uniform electron density and temperature except in the sheath region, to solve electron temperature by balancing ionization and diffusion loss, to transform the model for calculating coupled magnetic induction, to balance the deposited RF power and the plasma power, to study the induced electrical field and calculate the skin effect, and to predict thruster performance. His motivation is: "Ion engines have been extensively studied since 1960s and it is also the type of electric propulsion device that has the most experience in space operation. The characteristics of high specific impulse (Isp) and adequate efficiency make ion engines a good candidate for high _V missions (i.e. deep space or interplanetary missions). However, the service life of ion engines is hindered by the limited operation of its internal hot cathode. Germans first came up with the solution by utilizing microwave ionization instead of traditional DC discharge for an ion engine. The German RIT-series ion engines proved to be a success but without much explanation on the physical nature of microwave discharge. My study aims to model the microwave discharge of a 30 mm miniature radio-frequency (RF) ion thruster, which is currently researched and developed by Busek, Co. The experimental results obtained from Busek, Co. will be used to validate my microwave discharge model."

I must admit that the level of scientific discourse at the prestigious, well respected and authorative Massachusetts Institute of Technology is also breathtaking.


MFBB

MFBB AWARD 2005: AND THE WINNER IS...

...the American Soldier.

Sorry Navy. Sorry Air Force. To me the Most Outstanding Person Of 2005 is still The American Soldier, whether Army or USMC. I don’t doubt the professionalism and courage of airmen and sailors alike, but I think it is clear that in this conflict the foot soldier bears the brunt of the fighting.


After the initial elation about the Iraqi elections, the news about the enormous gains made by the religious parties came as an anticlimax, and I suppose that many of those who supported OIF with heart and soul, myself included, may have felt at least momentarily fooled. Basically, it seems to have turned out that offering a population which has never really known democracy, not necessarily leads to that population making the right choice when given the chance to elect its leaders. By which we assume that the right choice would have been the secular parties. And why not? We westerners, thanks to our unrestricted access to online and printed data, and flooded with visual and audio information, are in a better position than Ahmed Q in, say, Yemen, to understand what a godforsaken fucked up region the Middle East is. We rightly lay the blame for that at the feet of the region’s dominant politico-religious ideology, Islam, which indeed is fast becoming a burden to humanity’s progress.

In the particular case of Iraq however some caveat concerning the wits of the average Iraqi voter may be justified. After all, Iraq just emerges from fifty years of secular regime, and the average Iraqi’s experience under it may in fact have been the strongest argument against secular rule. It is the religious parties which for the greater part had to lay low during Saddam’s rule, and so their ascent during the December elections is not illogical per se. In Iran, where mullahs have ruled for 25 years, the people, when given a fair chance to cast their vote, would in all likelihood have elected secular leaders.

Therefore I would urge our American readers, who are all too aware of the blood, sweat and tears shed by your troops and their relatives, not to lose heart. For rule of law and democratic representation to take hold and blossom is in fact a very quaint and tough, if not unlikely event. Russia e.g. is a country which throughout the ages has produced countless eminent leaders, statesmen, artists, scientists, engineers, writers, poets and architects. Regardless its troubles, regardless the horrendous crimes against humanity committed on its soil, when speaking of Russia, we do not mentally connect it with backwardness like we do with the Middle East. And yet in Russia, an educated and gifted population lets its right to democratic rule slip away towards some de facto tyranny under a former KGB agent who literally said that the demise of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest geopolitical disasters of the 20th Century. By which I mean to say: the path to democratic rule is long and hard and by no means evident.

The task facing America is enormous, and great perils lie ahead. Even after all the suffering, success, even in the long term, is not guaranteed. But you have been down this road before. I remember seeing a short film taken just before the end of World War II, about the liberation of a concentration camp by GI’s. If there were still soldiers among them who, before entering the camp, doubted deep in their hearts why they had fought so long and so hard, I guess that after going through the gates that feeling was gone. At one point, the camera zoomed in on the still face of a US soldier, kaki clad, steel helmet on. He was dead pale and his black eyes, twitching so it seemed, tried to cope with the horrendous scene in front of him: piles and piles and piles of half-skeletons in grotesque bearings, mouths disfigured in painful snarls, hollow eyesockets looking up to a sky they would never walk under anymore. In Spring 45 the full horror of Nazi Germany finally came to light, against which even the most vile crimes of Saddam Husseins regime pale in comparison. In Spring 45, "Germany" was a filthy word. People of the free world did not look upon Germans the way they do today. Here was a country which in the span of a mere 70 years thrice had invaded the west, and caused havoc and loss of life on a scale not seen before in history. In Spring 45, and in the immediate years afterward, people, when taking the word "German" in the mouth, subconsciously connected it with untold evil and barbarism.

Yet Americans believed. With what now seems sheer improbable good will and vast amounts of that unique American "can-do" spirit, they took to the task of implementing democratic rule in Germany, when in 1946 nearby Czechoslowakia passed the so-called Benes-Decree, named after its president, which effectively ruled the deportation of a couple of million ethnic Germans, and which was thought of by the free world as a non-issue, or rather as something deserved.

Yet Americans believed.

That is why, despite the hardships and the setbacks, and plans not seeming to unfold the way we would like to, I think America should carry on in Iraq. For you have done this before, and a positive outcome was much more unlikely than it is today. For there is no other way, since quitting will make look the Vietnam aftermath like a fait-divers. And last but not least, for you have the most magnificent armed forces the planet has ever seen, and militarily you are simply – INVINCIBLE.


MFBB


PS: speaking of your fine military, find a good sample over at CDR Salamander. He has an amazing story about a Staff Sergeant James Gilliland, who from his Ramadi sniper nest called "Hotel" killed a terrorist at a distance of 4,100 ft.

An interesting article by Mark Steyn.

Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands--probably--just as in Istanbul there's still a building called St. Sophia's Cathedral.

WHERE THE F*CK IS THE GLOBAL WARMING CROWD WHEN YOU NEED ‘EM?????

Yesterday my ass froze off.

Okay, almost. Still, it was so god-dam-COLD that either W must be held responsible, or else I have become a pussy those Kyoto folks are completely nuts. We spent a couple of hours in Gent, the capital of the province of East Flanders, for some end-of-the-year-bookshopping. Gent, in Anglosaxon literature referred to as Ghent, is one of the core historical cities of Flanders. Archeological finds demonstrate that the place, at the confluence of the Schelde (Scheldt) and Leie (Lys) rivers, was already inhabited during the Stone Age. In Roman Times it was an important agricultural settlement. But its Golden Age really was in medieval times between 1100 and 1500. Ironically, its historical demise began with the birth within its walls of that pivotal political figure of the Renaissance, Charles V, the Habsburg Emperor, and indeed, the square where he was born is called to this day the Prinsenhof, or Prince's Court.

Gent, or Ghent if you like that better, has also an American link! Indeed, it was here that the Treaty of Ghent was signed, which concluded the 1812-1814 War between the young United States of America and Great Britain. The leader of the American delegation was the later President John Quincy Adams, who while on the spot seems to have had other interests beyond burying the battleaxe with the Brits. Unlike Jefferson in Paris however, Adams seems to have been a good boy. He was a great aficionado of plants and flowers and frequently visited the Plantentuin, the city’s botanic garden. Once or twice a week he accompanied the friends he had made here to theatre plays by the Rhetorica society. On mondays, the plays in the Hall at the Parnassusberg were performed in Flemish (keep in mind that the bourgeois language in Ghent was French, Flemish was for peasants - note by MFBB), and Adams somehow bungled in on one occasion. It was no success. He wrote to is wife: "I did not understand anything and fell asleep. Thereafter I withdrew." Sigh, us Flemings have always had a hard time finding appreciation for our mother tongue, fighting the Frogs since well before 1302 and the Krauts already prior to 1288 and so on. Well, at least Adams did not withdraw from the negotiations.

The American delegation stayed at Hotel Lovendeghem in the Veldstraat, the British one in a Carthusian monastery on Meerghem. It was also in this monastery that on Christmas Eve 1814, after nearly four months of negotiations, the treaty was finally signed. There are identical commemoration plaques on the façades of both buildings. I will be glad to show them to you should you ever happen to be in Ghent for touristic purposes or for signing a treaty of your own. Anyway, the hotel is a shop now, the monastery a funny farm (Psychiatric Institution Sint Jan de Deo). It’s a mad, mad world.

Please allow me to ramble on before you fall asleep. Below you see some photos I had the occasion to shoot despite continued tugging from two females intent on spending money. Mine of course, Mu Ha Ha Ha.

The row of houses on the pic below is arguably Gent's most famous street: the Graslei. The slumped forward building in roman style, the third from the right, is called "Het Spijker", literally The Nail. It dates from 1200 and was used to stock grains which were transported through Ghent (via the Leie River, Lys in English). Its façade with the brick stairs is the oldest one of its kind in the world. For a very brief period the building was even a Calvinist University! The central building, seemingly just below the clock tower, is the Guild House of the Free Masons, mind you, the fellas who put bricks on each other, not the ones you first thought of. The building looks old but isn’t. It is a reconstruction from 1912 in Brabantine Gothic. Virtually every building along the Graslei is noteworthy, you will find a brief description here.



Another famous sight in Ghent: below, to the left, you see the old Postal Office(now a shopping mall), in the centre the Sint-Niklaaskerk (Saint Nicholas Church), built, from the beginning of the 13th century on, in so-called Scheldt Gothic. Interesting to note is that from the very beginning this church suffered from stability problems due to architectural or construction faults. Throughout its history it was the subject of renovations, a series of important ones starting in late 19th century when the situation had become critical, not to say dangerous. The current renovation effort was started in 1960 (!) and was only in full swing by the time yours truly in vain tried to impress hot females in Ghent student clubs. In the mid-eighties, that was. In 1992 transept and choir were made accessible to the public, right now the ship is being renovated. More pics and info here.




And another must-see when passing through Ghent: the Gravensteen, a medieval water castle smack in the middle of the Old City. Originally built by Philip from Alsace, Count of Flanders, in 1180. Residence of the Counts of Flanders until the fourteenth century, after which it was first used for making coins and then, more notorious, as a prison. Don’t miss the torture chamber!!! OK, I know the fancy tools on display there will be regarded by your average Gitmo Guard specialized in Eminem and Christina Aguilera tapes with some degree of disdain, but still it is worth a peek. Visit the armory too.

When I started this post it was 2005. And I am finishing it now after watching Wedding Crashers with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson on dvd, all the while quietly slipping into 2006. I'd say the first 3/4 were quite entertaining, but the last quarter sucked. I am talking about the movie, with the year it was rather the other way round. Oh well. I can imagine there are worse means to say a year goodbye. An especially vile year at that, imho.

Anyway, I'd like to wish the readers of DowneastBlog - those of good will, mind you - and their loved ones a HEARTFELT HAPPY AND SUCCESSFUL 2006!!!


MFBB

MUDWRESTLING OVER EUROS...

In Europe, there was quite some fuss the last two weeks concerning the planning of the EU Budget for the period 2007-2013. Basically, the debate got the UK pitted against, well, virtually against all the other 24 member states. To understand what was going on, understanding two buzzwords might be helpful: "EU Presidency" and "UK rebate".


A.) The EU Presidency.

First, the EU Presidency. Currently, Britain holds it. What does that mean? Well, if you think of the EU as one country, does right now the UK, personified by Blair, fulfil the role of EU President then? Somewhat simplified, yes, but not completely. There is also the EU Commission, headed by Barroso. Now hold it, I realize it’s real tough for non-Europeans to grasp Euro leadership, but basically, EU Presidency and EU Commission combined, equal the EU’s "Executive Body". The two are supposed to act as the EU "government" so to say. One could liken the EU Commission to a company’s Board of Directors, responsible for the day-to-day business. And the EU Presidency – to be correct, we speak of a Council of Ministers of which the presidency rotates among the EU member states – would then be the Executive Committee, responsible for the strategic decisions.

Now, while Barroso serves a four-year term, EU Presidencies only last six months. In other words, EU Commission chiefs typically see eight EU Presidencies come and go. Luxembourg had it from January till July, after which Britain took over, and as we are rapidly approaching the end of the year, it soon will hand over the torch to Austria. But I said EU presidencies do the "strategic decisions", and indeed, the UK’s last important task was to establish a sound budget plan for the period spanning 2007 till 2013. To give you an idea of the kind of budget we are talking about, this year it was 106.3 billion EUR, or 1% of the combined gross national income of the 25. In US dollars, that's give and take a 128 billion US$ budget - roughly what the Danish government spends yearly! So for those of you who in the back of their minds nurture an atavistic fear that one day Uncle Sam will be challenged by, uh, Uncle Jean, fear not!!! That day is apparently still far off!



B.) The UK Rebate.

Most of you will recall Margaret Thatcher’s famous 1984 quote "I want my money back". What was that quote about? In the early eighties, 80% of the EU’s budget went to the CAP, or Common Agricultural Policy.

The CAP provided farmers throughout the EU – or EEC, as it was then known – with guaranteed minimum prices for their products. This was by means of subsidies, which were also paid for planting certain crops – or planting no crops at all! All EEC member countries contributed to a common pot, which was then essentially re-distributed with the more agricultural countries receiving the bulk of the subsidies. Now Britain paid disproportionately much, due to its relatively small agricultural sector. At the time, as the EEC was joined by precisely those countries with weak industry but strong agriculture – Portugal, Spain, Greece – the EU budget and thus the CAP subsidies – was set to expand further, thus likely to strain the UK’s precarious financial situation even more. Do not forget that Britain was then the third poorest EEC member, and that in 1982 it had fought an expensive war with Argentina over the Falklands! That is why, in 1984, Mrs. Thatcher negotiated a rebate, or a payback of funds, in order to redress the imbalance between what the UK put into the EEC and what it got back out from it. The method of calculating the rebate is complex, but as a rule of fist one can assume that it amounts to 2/3 of the amount by which the UK contribution exceeds EU expenditure returning to Britain.

So Mrs. Thatcher got part of her money back in 1984 – a unique accomplishment, because the UK is the only EU member that got a discount on its Euro membership fee, so to say. That of course left the proposed EU budget with a gap, which subsequently had to filled up somehow. And here’s the angle: all other EU members are supposed to make good the lost British contribution, and France finances roughly 31 per cent plus of it. You understand why France is so eager to scrap the rebate, and from the French viewpoint a reduction is reasonable: after all, nowadays agricultural subsidies "only" account for some 42 % of the EU budget. Keep in mind that an EU budget consisting of not much more than agricultural subsidies was precisely the reason why Britain got its rebate. Plus, over the past two decades Britain has gotten rich - it can no longer claim it is the sick man of Europe as it was in 1984.


Now, the EU budget 2007-2013. In short, the following were the main bargaining positions at the opening of the budget talks, now some two weeks ago:

* Most if not all EU members with France up front wanted the UK rebate to be reduced, if not scrapped, and changes to the CAP postponed till 2014.

* Britain wanted the CAP – the agricultural subsidies – toned down by 2010 and, you guess it, keep its rebate. In fact Britain, never suspected of Europhilism, also wanted a smaller and poorer EU, and proposed an EU budget of only 1.03% of the combined gross national income of the member states.

This was the UK’s last important task before handing over the torch to Austria come January 1st, and its last occasion to rescue what is generally regarded as a very weak and uninspired EU Presidency. Indeed: putting African debt relief on the G8 agenda, establishing new emission targets for when Kyoto expires, a failed Hampton Court Summit on economic reform, a moderate success in organizing Europes first cohesive antiterror strategy, and starting EU membership talks with Turkey… it reads like a lame list of non-issues, and while Blair and Straw regard the Turkey admission talks as a "success", fewer and fewer across the Channel think in their adjectives. Anyway, reaching a solid budget deal was the only way to "sex up" the UK EU Presidency.

Well, my take is that most Brits are none too fond of Blairs deal, while the rest of Europe is. The deal is:

*During the period 2007-2013, the UK agrees to a cutback of 10.5bn euros (£7bn) of its rebate, some 20%, while the EU budget grows to 862.4bn euros, helping to fund the development of new member states. The budget is scheduled to be 1.045% of the composed gross national income of the member states.

*In return, Britain obtained an agreement that in 2008-2009 there will be a wide-ranging budget review, and not only on the CAP. From the beginning Blair stressed that reviewing European spending was of major concern to him.

*There were a lot of sweeteners for the new member states, paid for with the cutbacks on the rebate - a.o. 100 million EUR for Poland (a Merkel feat, Angela Merkel was also the one who apprently got the budget talks moving again)

These are really the most important headlines. To most observers, it looks like the UK yielded a lot and France very little. Blair took quite some heat at home, The Daily Telegraph even labelling the Brussels Summit a "surrender" and William Hague, foreign affairs spokesman for the Tories (the British Conservatives) smartly paraphrizing Winston Churchill with "Seldom in the course of European negotiations has so much been surrendered for so little". To be honest, France did not get all it wanted either. E.g., it opposed giving Macedonia EU candidate status next year - Macedonia got it. It wanted the EU to impose lower VAT rules for its restaurants - it did not get it. And while the promise to review the CAP in 2008-2009 is a thing that blows in the wind, Romania and Bulgaria, set to join the EU in 2007 and 2008 respectively, were told they can expect no agricultural subsidies. Which means that the same CAP pie by that time will have to be divided over more countries, thus effectively reducing CAP subsidies at least proportionately. But all in all, to me too it looks like the UK indeed yielded the most. Paul Beliën over at The Brussels Journal thinks so too, although he puts it in starker terms:

How the French are gloating, to be able to present themselves as the champions of the "poorer member states" while not contributing a single extra cent, and lecture Britain on its duties to the new member states while France has always opposed enlargement.

Some fleshing out yet tomorrow, God willing. Europe here, over and out.



MFBB.

LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW...

Alas, again no white Christmas in BelgoSmurfLand^TM this year. Prospects for it had been better though ever since I was a kid, for we had our first snowfall halfway November, an absolute rarity ever since Bush screwed the climate.

Nevertheless, I'd like to share these pics with you, taken yesterday, December 24, at around 9pm on or around my hometown's market square. I really love this place. Although I live now in Wallonia, I can nor will ever forget I'm a (censured) at heart. Every year a beautiful Christmas Tree adorns the square, as well as a large Christmas stable right in front of the Saint-Bartholomew Church.






The photo to the left shows the same market square taken from the opposite side. The beautifully lit building between the Tree and the church is the old Town Hall, now used for touristic purposes only. My hometown was officially declared a town in 1068 by Boudewijn VI, Count of Flanders, and IIRC the building in the photo is built on the same location where the original townhouse, built in the twelfth century, stood. Time and again it was destroyed and rebuilt, the last time, roughly one hundred years ago, in neogothic style.

Anyway, White Christmas or not, I'd like to wish the readers of DowneastBlog - those of good will - a heartfelt MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!


MFBB

Hollywood's plan to break the slump

'APE WITH A HEART MAKES GROWN MEN CRY'

King Kong review

"Grown men around me were crying," says one Hollywood insider. "

Ok, I haven't seen the movie yet, and it looks like it's going to be great, but any grown man who weeps at this film is a sitzpinkler.

GENTLEMEN, GIRD YOUR SWORDS.

I guess most of you learned this week that Belgium finally sent fighters to Iraq. One of them was 38-year old Muriel Degauque, a Wallonian woman from Monceau-sur-Sambre near Charleroi. On November 9 she blew herself up near a US convoy in Baquba, Iraq, thus becoming the first European woman suicide bomber, at least for Allah’s cause. Fortunately, she was the only one killed. Zeg niet te gauw ‘t is weer een vrouw, like we say over here, a tad unrespectfully translated Don’t say too quick it’s again a chick. Paul Beliën of The Brussels Journal offers some perspective. Anyway, about one year ago I posted on these pages that in the West we should focus on Islamic converts and dang, there it is. Dutch daily De Telegraaf writes that police increasingly gets info on converts radicalising. Closer to home, one of the five or six schtoopid cunts wo whore, wooooooooooops sorry, who wore, burqas in Maaseik, is a Flemish woman, a certain Maureen R. For the record, Maaseik, eastern Belgium, is where Khalid Bouloudou is from, one of the thirteen suspected GICM members in Belgiums fourth terror trial currently going on in Brussels. The GICM, or Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain, is one of the outfits responsible for the Madrid bombings. But back to Our Lady of the Exploding Hollowness.

Muriel Degauque had always been the trouble child in Jean Degauque’s family. As a teenager, she drank, smoked and used drugs. She was unable to find a steady job and had relationships with a Turk and an Algerian, whom she married in her early thirties. She herself asked her husband to teach her Arabic so that she could read the Quran. She also started to wear a headscarf. The marriage was short-lived, for in 2000 the couple divorced. Muriel’s parents Jean, a retired steelworker, and Liliane, a medical secretary, were flabbergasted when a couple of months later she married again to a certain Hicham Goris, a Moroccan of mixed parents (in some publicatins he is referred to as Aissan). To her parents she explained that "marrying so soon after divorce was easy in Islam". Her new husband had the most radical influence on her, since from then on she appeared in burqa with only a slit letting the eyes free. She even wore gloves so that the skin of her hands would not be visible anymore.

After a while Hicham started to demand that father Degauque quit drinking beer and that men and women ate separately. This finally led to a breech in the relation with her parents and the radical couple moved from Charleroi to Sint-Gillis, Brussels, where they learned suicide methods. I am told it's one of the very few courses Methodist Vanuatuans truly excel in there, apart from, under certain circumstances, farting in the general direction of Reykjavik. A couple of months ago, they travelled to the Middle East and the Degauques got a last telephone call from their daughter from - but what a coincidence!!!! - Syria. The next and final stop was Baquba, Iraq. As for the woman, my greatest concern is that she damaged the precious paint, dutifully paid for by American taxpayers, on the trucks in that convoy. As for the man, he was shot dead by US forces. Thanks for cleaning up our garbage America!

Don’t you now think too bad of Belgian women. Mark Steyn’s mother is Belgian.


MFBB


UPDATE:

Belgium is a federal state with both Flanders and Wallonia having their own regional governments. Little known is the fact that Belgium’s capital, Brussels, is a separate region of its own, since neither Flemings nor Walloons would ever accept Brussels being an administrative part of either region. So in the Belgian federal framework Brussels is technically the Brussels Capital Region, with its own (small) government as well as a parliament. One of the "ministers" in this government is Brigitte Grouwels, from the Christian democratic party CD&V. Her official title is State Secretary for Equal Opportunities. This is what she had to say last Friday:

"In large parts of Brussels women are called names and reproached of being whores by young immigrants, often of Moroccan origin. It suffices that they are fashionably dressed with tight skirts and a flash of a bare belly. Some native women don something on their heads, because then they are not troubled anymore."

Mrs. Grouwels has her own site, where you can read the interview she gave with the daily Het Laatste Nieuws in full:


Q: "Have you been harassed yourself?"

A: "Yes, and my daughter repeatedly, just like her friends. These are young women aware of fashion, with sometimes tight skirts and a glimpse of a bare belly. Immigrant girls are reprimanded if they don't wear a headscarf, but also just because they walk on the streets, or if they dare to laugh among each other. Take the Zuidlaan across the Zuidstation. It used to be a very mixed neighborhood, where many Belgians had shops. Now it is a quarter where immigrant shops dominate, which are controlled by a certain type of men. They watch from cafes who passes and intimidate women. Gradually these disappear from the street. There is an atmosphere of intolerance. Women can't dress the way they would like to. Well, we are fed up being called whores because we are not dressed the way certain men would like us to be. It is an offensive and disrespectful attitude towards women."

Q: "What do these men say then?"

A: "Remarks like you don't belong here, how are you dressed, you are a prostitute. It is no longer only along the Zuidlaan, but there it strikes that less and less women walk on the streets. It just as well happens in Sint-Joost, in Molenbeek, in Schaarbeek, when they shop along the Louizalaan (Avenue Sainte-Louise) and very frequently on the tram. Respect is extremely important in those men's culture. Well, we demand respect for ALL women. It is a form of verbal violence, which is very annoying. There are women who say that if we don a headscarf, we are no longer called names. Well, that's a step too far."

Q: "It's the Belgians who have to adapt to the immigrants?"

A: "That's it yes. Women must be able to walk day and night on the street in safety. We have not fought 50 years for our emancipation just to be beaten back in time. We don't want that in a single quarter of Brussels."

Q: "Who are those men?"

A: "They are mainly Moroccan youths, who think that they have the right to impose their rules on girls. With Turks it's similar, especially in their own commmunities, but it is just as well unacceptable. They must also have the right to dress the way they like."


Look, it's not that I like to post those things. In fact I hate it. I have a company to run and I had better spent the last hour on doing some necessary paperwork. But I think it's of paramount importance that everyone who cherishes freedom ought to know what is happening in Europe. Because it's not in Brussels alone. If the usual multiculti dorks show up, throw them stories like these in their faces. These assholes are going to let it come to the point of no return, and then it's too late.

Mind you, Mrs. Grouwels is not someone whom you would categorize in the Belgian rightwing political sphere, certainly not the quarter occupied by the Vlaams Belang. In fact, the remedy she proposes: an action plan with a sensitive approach costing 670,000 EUR to make people aware and "reach out" to immigrants, is purely socialist by nature: throwing money away while avoiding to step on sore toes. So when a lady like her bluntly says this like "Gradually these (women) disappear from the street" and "but there it strikes that less and less women walk on the streets", bells ought to ring.

The economy is kicking ass

Ok, let's make a pact: Everyone has to agree to not let any liberal in their presence get away with any "the economy is bad" BS.

Here's an article if you need one to forward, although since the evidence is completely overwhelming it's not hard to find others.

I can understand people being against the Iraq invasion or any number of other Bush policies, but if you think we're in the middle of a struggling economy you're just ideologically blind or just plain stupid.

Michael Barone on Unions

Barone lays out in plain English what a disaster labor unions have been for the US. And forget about all the "unions brought us the weekend" crap. The sooner we get rid of these parasitic organizations the better it will be for everyone, including union members.

PARTNERS IN CRIME?

1939. Commies ally themselves with Nazis… The photo shows a jovial Stalin addressing Nazi Germany’s Foreign Minister, Von Ribbentrop, on August 23, at the signing of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or Nazi-Soviet Non-Agression Pact. The guy scribbling his name onto the rag is the USSR’s Foreign Minister Molotov and in case you wonder, yes, that’s the fella the French youths’ drink of choice is called after. I am not going to elaborate on this document, ain’t the place nor the time, suffice to say that Article 1 stated that:

"Both High Contracting Parties obligate themselves to desist from any act of violence, any aggressive action, and any attack on each other, either individually or jointly with other Powers."

and it must be said that Both High Contracting Parties behaved themselves admirably till, duh, June 22, 1941.

Article 2 furthermore stated that:

"Should one of the High Contracting Parties become the object of belligerent action by a third Power, the other High Contracting Party shall in no manner lend its support to this third Power."

And indeed, when the Polish Army fought back when the Nizis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, that could be interpreted as Nazi Germany becoming the object of belligerent action by a Third Power, subsequently Uncle Joe in no manner lent his support for the Polish but rather chose to stab them in the back.

…………………xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo……………

2005. Maybe it’s just MFBB’s mean f*cking bad behaviour, but as I learn these days of certain suspicious alliances I can’t resist musing about that 1939 gentleman’s agreement.

Take Copenhagen, Denmark for example. There a Muslim immigrant and city counsellor by the name of Wallait Khan participated in the November 15 municipal elections as a Venstre candidate (Venstre = center-rightwing party; it is also the party of Denmark’s courageous PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen - MFBB). A political scandal of the first order developed when Mr. Khan, immediately after a poor showing, decided to defect to to the city council’s left wing when promised the post of 2nd deputy mayor along with some other functions. Now, if gaining a post cheaply was the only issue, Khan’s treason would be mere political backstabbery. However, it has also emerged that he supports two radical Islamist organizations, Minhaj-ul-Quran and Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Moreover, undoubtedly as a sign of his near perfect assimilation in Danish society, he simultaneously ran for elections in his native Pakistan, and I bet it wasn’t for the Pakistani Christian Democrats. Danish daily Weekendavisen has the story (translation by Viking Observer):

In the November-issue 2005 of the urdu-language monthly Sahil, that is distributed in Copenhagen, it says in reference to Wallait Khans own campaign materials: "There has been this whole campaign against Minhaj ul-Quran and Hizb ut-Tahrir, Wallait Khan has always supported these organisations and schools and institutions all that he could."

If a Hizb-ut-Tahrir supporter isn't a good candidate for deputy mayor of a Eurabian capital then I don't know what is, don't you agree. Note also that Wallait Khan does NOT have Danish citizenship. So with only slight exaggeration you basically have here a Pakistani who gets to decide whether he will spend public money for fixing the potholes in the street in front of Lars Q’s house or funding Copenhagen’s mosques. Some of you may recall that this whole travesty of allowing non-residents of a country to participate in local elections, a pet idea of the despicable European Left, is precisely the reason why I joined the Vlaams Belang.

An even more striking example of Islamic radicals joining up with the Danish Left is offered in the city of Odense, where the Islamic convert Anna Rytter of the Communist Party Enhedslisten (Unity List), was elected to the city council. Que???? So here we have someone who is supposed to be a Sophisticated God Bashing Vatican Spitting Post Modernist Quintessential Atheist Non Believer, and yet she has submitted herself to the will of Allah???? Things are getting goddam f*ckin' weird in the Leftist Brainhole-O-Sphere you know. In October Wouter Bos, Chairman of the PVDA, the Dutch Social-Democrats, announced that he would join the Muslims in the Netherlands in a day of fasting during Ramadan. Bos’s day of fasting like a devout Muslim was recorded and aired on television. Now you have to understand that this is the same Mr. Bos who recently insisted that the traditional "Bede", the Prayer in the Dutch Queen's annual speech in Parliament, was abolished. I get it Wouter. I am not that dumb! Christianity is makroob, and Islam is halal!!! And anyone who suggests that your Ramadan fasting had sumpin to do with the municipal elections in Holland on 7 March, well, that is just a mean racist xenophobic Flemish redneck!

Back to Copenhagen. Where we also have the case of a certain Sikandar Siddique who was the Social Democrat’s candidate for mayoral post in Copenhagen. Danish blogger Sappho reports that Mr. Siddique may be a member of the radical Islamist organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir:

Today Sappho can reveal, that a vote for Siddique in all likelyhood also is a vote for the radical moslem organisation Hizb-ut-Tahrir, that advocates the establishement of a caliphate run along 1400-year-old principles, where there is neither freedom of speech, democracy, freedom of the courts nor rights for women and non-believers. So far, Hizb ut-Tahrir has always claimed, that these conditions would not be introduced in Denmark, but that they exclusively had far-off Oriental regions in mind. Danes thus had no reason to be nervous about the organisations agitation and big influence on especially the moslem youths in Nørrebro in Copenhagen.

Something indicates, that Hizb ut-Tahrir now also is seeking direct influence on Danish politics - and that Sikandar Malik Siddique has been chosen as the spearhead of these aspirations.

Duh. MFBB's simple brain draws some conclusions from this. First, the Danish, and by extension the European Left is clearly whoring for votes among its Muslim communities whom they have given in most European countries the right to vote in municipal elections (for starters). Given their very high fertility rates as compared to the natives' catastrophically low ones, one could argue that from the Leftist POV this is a smart move to stay in power. Of course, what these doofuses don't seem to foresee is that once Islam is in power there will be precious little love left for fancy lefty issues such as gay marriage and/or adoption, your right to grow cannabis in your backyard or get stone drunk while enjoying that new sex-inciting drug I heard about. Well, in 1939 Uncle Joe too thought he was being smart.

Second, if you want to see that famous braless li'l mermaid in Copenhagen's port, you might want to book a ticket to Denmark presto, since I can't guarantee for how long these famous Danish boobies will remain halal.


MFBB

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