IT WAS A POLE!!!

IT WAS A POLE, CAPICE??? He was POLISH!!!! He came from POLAND!!! Got that? PO-LAND!!!! The country between Germany and Belarus, OK? North of Slovakia, south of the Baltic! POLISH. He was P-O-L-I-S-H. MFBB was WRONG!

What the heck am I talking about? You may recall that, just prior to leaving for Poland (of all places), in my April 14 post, I briefly mentioned the murder of 17-year old Joe Van Holsbeeck:... And, a tipsy more south, in my own beloved Belgium's Brussels Central Station, 17-year old Joe Van Holsbeeck was stabbed to death by a Moroccan teenager because he did not want to give the young fuckface his mp3-player....

These were my words. I don't think the brutal stabbing of a 17-year old boy scout during rush hour in Brussel Central made headlines on the other side of the pond, but here it did - and not only in Belgium. The BBC was on it too, certainly when an 80,000-strong silent protest march was held in Brussels on April 23. Well, it didn't turn out to be a young Moroccan. It was a Pole. MFBB was wrong. Why was MFBB wrong? Because Joe's friend himself, standing next to the victim thought the murderers were North Africans. Because every witness on that day in Brussels Central thought they were North Africans. Because the office of the public prosecutor in Brussels, already the day after, officially accused two North Africans. Because because because... because North Africans make up around 60% of detainees in Belgian prisons. Because criminality in all Belgian cities with significant North African minorities is rampant.

But, in this case, it turns out the murderers were Poles. Now, look at that pic. It's a scan from the first page of the leading Belgian daily "De Standaard", April 25 edition. Now, what struck me is that you really can't miss it was a Pole, huh? The only thing that lacks is a big fluorescent red arrow pointing to "Pool" and a map of the country. Btw, the photo to the right of the article in question is NOT Joe's murderer, it's another one, the crazy fuck who said that Israël will be wiped off the map and was rewarded for that by an invitation from German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble for the FIFA 2006 World Cup. The big caption underneath that photo is a quote by the man: "No Worries, nothing will happen." - referring to the Iranian president's estimation of how serious he sees the threat of UN sanctions. I suppose "De Standaard" wanted to reassure its readers. But I digress.

Anyway, take my word for it: if, in reporting criminal actions in Beljun, "De Standaard" does not mention any nationalities involved and the perps are "youths", consider it a 90% certainty they were Moroccans certain people from the-northern-part-of-an-unspecified-continent-south-of-Europe. That's just how it is. If, on the other hand, the nationality involved is from a western country, be sure your average De Standaard reader on the Fiji Islands will know it.

Now, while all Belgian media a couple of days after the crime reluctantly began to hint the perps were indeed "North Africans" - though without splashing it all over the front page like above - once it came out it was Poles all the politically correct elites, hitherto rather silent - suddenly came out of the woodwork with fiery sermons against the Belgians' prejudices:

"We are much less critical than we think" - Bart Dobbelaere, De Standaard editor
"A number of people has stigmatised a certain community. They are now confronted with their conscience" - Laurette Onkelinckx, Belgian Justice Minister
"Is asking excuses too much?" - Walter Zinzen, former VRT journalist
"We have let us seen from our weakest side and masks have fallen" - Patrick Loobuyck, philosopher, University of Ghent
"Stigmatising is tempting" - Abdelhay ben Abdellah, Muslim Executive member

Harumph. Time for some MFBB reality check. Just picking up, at random, some chips from De Standaard from the same period, April 24 and April 25. Not on the front page, mind you. Somewhere buried between a Club Med ad and the many advantages of using broccoli in your daily dish.



The snippet to the left speaks of a petition organised by Borgerhout citizens (Borgerhout, more commonly known as "Borgerokko", is a suburb of Antwerp, and as the nick suggests has a fairly large number of people of Sri Lankan origin). The petition aims at asking police to take measures against a gang of (very) young criminals, suspected of eighty robberies, a great deal of them over last Christmas time, and apparently active in Borgerhout again. During the Easter weekend gang members would have attacked people.

Snippet to the right "Jongeren slaags met politie" reports about violent riots during the weekend of 22/23 April in the city of Ronse, whereby some fifty "youths" attacked police and threw beer glasses, bottles, stones and other projectiles, wounding two officers. Btw, Ronse is the place where there are - according to a client of mine who lives nearby - secret arms stacks, and not from the local pigeon milker's club.



Just an unimportant item, to fill up some corner you know, "Congolese victim of blind agression at tanking station". In late April, in Zellik near Brussels, a Mr. Constant Bwanassani, after having filled up his tank and having paid in the adjacent shop, quickly wanted to wipe something from his windshield first. Thereupon the driver behind him immediately started honking and hurling racist remarks at him. When Mr. Bwanassani got in, the driver suddenly came over, administered twenty beatings and threw his car door closed with the victm's leg still outside the car. The hothead was arrested by police, and after coffee and tea released. He was from Schaarbeek.

What do these three pissy-patoot news items have in common? The naughty guys come from Borgerhout, Ronse and Schaarbeek. All three localities house large numbes of North African immigrants. Borgerhout - I told you how it is better known. Ronse - I'm sometimes wondering if it is still a Flemish town. And Schaarbeek, well, that's actually become Schaarbeekistan, a bit like that other mini Islamic republic Molenbeek. Furthermore, in none of the three articles, any nationality is mentioned. Hey, but I'm not suggesting anything.


Those who know me from up close, know I'm not a racist. Hell, I'm doing business with Moroccans. But it's one thing being a real racist, and another one not being shy to point out some nasty facts about certain communities. Let's for a moment not debate about the causes of these nasty facts - subject for another post. But shuffling them under the carpet DOES-NOT-HELP. What we have seen with the aftermath of the Joe Van Holsbeeck tragedy is an exercise in bad policy. Even though The Brussels Journal's Paul Beliën, a known conservative editor who reported on the story early on, and the Vlaams Belang party which kept a surprisingly low profile during the whole affair, were by far not the only ones who thought the crime had been committed by North Africans - in fact, everybody assumed it was so, the North African community itself included - and were quick with correcting themselves, it was them who had to bear the brunt of the PC barrage once it became known the gangsters were Poles, not Moroccans. The result? Any debate about the very serious issue of rampant criminality among North African youngsters is now immediatly brandished a disgusting xenophobic hatemongering racist even more.

It all reminds me very much of an incident which took place in early 2004 in France, whereby a young woman sparked nationwide outrage because she accused six North Africans of tearing up her clothes, drawing swastikas all over her and tipping her 13-month old baby from its pram. The case led to widespread condemnation, including from Chirac himself, amid concern over the growing number of racist and anti-Semitic attacks in France. Shortly thereafter, it appeared it was all a hoax. She admitted having drawn the swastikas with the help of her boyfriend. What on earth made her doing it is unclear to this day. What's sure is that any debate about criminality among maghrébiens was no longer bon ton.

We will now even skip what happened in France during last fall.

On New Year's Day 2006, a train en route in the Nice/Cannes area in southern France was hijacked by tweny North Africans. What followed for the 600 passengers was an hourlong nightmare during which the "youths" systematically terrorised them, stole wallets, nank cards, jewelry, cell phones, hurled insults, administered beatings, sexually assaulted young females, damaged the train's interior etc etc.

As the excellent French blog No Pasaran! dryly remarks:

Never mind the "droit de retrait" of the guards, and the cops waiting inside the station while the girl being molested, think about it: 20 aggressors, 600 passengers. That's 1:30. But I bet the passengers made use of their national right to surrender.

The gang of 20 got away with it. Somewhere between stations, they pulled the emergency stop. French police kept sleeping on. And the victims? Well, they could go fuck help themselves. So: do keep shuffling away news that is not to the taste of certain cabals of godforsaken ivory tower "academics", snug "elite intellectuals" and a leftist establishment desperately trying to lure immigrant votes to make up for the ones they lost to parties who DO have the guts to call a spade a spade.

When I look at the pitiful conglomeration of hypocrites who time and again get a forum in our hyper PC'd media outlets, it doesn't surprise me a bit that sane voices of reason start to come from concerned North Africans themselves. Said Fouad Ahidar, a Flemish MP of Moroccan origin who also was the driving force behind the 80,000 strong Brussels march:

"I am relieved that it's two Poles, because I think the Vlaams Belang will now capitalize less. But we must not pretend as if there is no problem with agression and criminality among young immigrant youths in the cities."

For showing more courage than the whole spineless native PC crowd taken together, I will forgive Mr. Ahidar his smearing remark about my party.


MFBB.


N.B.: and if someone has news from Dutch Disease Report, still dead, let me know. And, if out there there is any relative or acquaintance of poor Joe Van Holsbeeck who feels that I have not treated his tragic story in a respectful manner, I will be glad to offer my apologies. But only to relatives and acquaintances.

SHE USED TO BE NINA, NOW THIS IS SUHAILAH AND OTHER STORIES.

A.) SHE USED TO BE NINA, NOW THIS IS SUHAILAH.

From the online edition of NRC Handelsblad, a leading Dutch newspaper:

The number of native young women converting to Islam is growing. The tight living rules offer "peace and certainty".

By Juliette Vasterman

Mariska becomes a muslima this evening. That is fairly simple, she only has to recite the shahada (religious testimony). In a living room in Eindhoven sit eighteen muslimas in pajamas around her, on cushions and air beds. Most women have blond hair and blue eyes. They are native Dutchwomen who have converted to Islam. Over the past years a growing number of women in Holland become muslim. On the moslima.nl website more than one hundred converts recall their story. And in tens of msn talking groups ("ben-op-zoek", "Islam voor jou", "Al Mutaqqun", "bekeerde Moslima's") converts search for each other. The Al Nisa organization for converted muslim women signalled an increasing interest already right after the attacks of 2001 in the United States. "Negative attention is apparently also attention" says a spokeswoman. There are no official numbers.

In the living room Mariska first speaks out the shahada in Arabic: "Asjhadoe an la ilaha ilallah wa asjhadoe ana Mohammadan abdoehoe wa rasoeloehoe." The text is on the Internet. There you learn to pronounce the arabic scripture in phonetics. In Dutch she repeats: "I testify that there is no God but Allah and I testify that Muhammad is his servant and messenger". The women kiss and hug her. Mariska: "I have wanted to be a real muslima for so long." The women have met each other earlier that day in the al-Furqaan mosque in Eindhoven. In this mosque the yearly Dutch-Islamic conference is held. Three days long men with beards and in long djellaba's talk to the gathered crowd. The veiled women sit separated from the men, they follow the speeches via a video screen. Of the two hundred muslimas, a quarter is native Dutch. This is the meeting point par excellence for new muslimas. After the conference they stay with each other.

Why do western women feel attracted to Islam? According to experts there are numerous individual motives. But what counts for almost everybody, according to Fred Leemhuis, Professor Koran sciences at the State University of Groningen, is that they want to belong to a group. "There they feel love and solidarity." The stringent religious rules appeal to the women, he argues. "It gives structure and hold in life". From American investigations we know that people who convert tot Islam don't do this in an emotional impulse, says Jacques Janssen, religion psychologist at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. "That's nearly impossible anyway, because you're jumping to another culture."

...

Rabia (a girl from mixed Catholic/Jewish parents, formerly known as Rebecca) gets a lot of angry glances on the street. She wears a hidjab (long gown), a niqaab (veil before the face) and a gimaar (a cloth over the head and tight under the chin and hanging till the hips). At home, young muslimas have to fight for their faith too. In a small house in Blaricum Suhailas father says that he thinks the headscarf is worse than the faith. "I don't like the idea that a woman has to cover herself". Suhailahs mother thinks that a small colored headscarf is still acceptabel. First her parents thought that this was a whim. But their daughter is now losing herself in Islam for two years, prays five times a day and learns arabic. "I do not do this to confront my parents or society", emphasizes the vwo-schoolgirl. "This is just my life".


If the Dutch really want to reintroduce nucular energy, I hope they won't let Suhailah sit on the control panels.



B.) EXPLOSIVES FOUND IN ROTTERDAM.

From the Brabants Dagblad, a regional Dutch newspaper:

Monday May 1, 2006. Rotterdam.

"Inhabitants of the Franselaan in Rotterdam-West are used to quite a lot. A cannabis farm is nothing special. But explosives, that's new. "It was really scary to have to sit inside, while outside men put on protective clothing and the police itself is withdrawing", says a man who lives under the floor where police found a large party of explosives during the weekend. The raid in the dwelling in question took place in the night from Friday to Saturday. The explosives, partly packed in yellow bars, appeared to be too dangerous to transport them. Military personnel of the Explosieven Opruimings Dienst (EOD) therefore ignited them on a small nearby field. Because of the large quantities and to keep the danger for the neighborhood as small as possible, this happened in four sessions. Ambulances and the Fire Department were at the ready.


Officers woke up fifteen inhabitants early in the morning and hosted them in a nearby police station. At the end of the afternoon they could go back home. When the second party of explosives was found, the neighbours were only told to stay inside. As for what kind of ordnance the explosives were, police didn't want to say anything yesterday evening. During the raid three men and a woman were arrested, but police refuses to give details about their identity. According to neighbours it's a Turkish man, his younger brother and a friend of the brother. The woman should be the Turkish man's partner. It is not known what the four of them wanted to do with the explosives. Police excludes however that they had terrorist plans."


Yup. Bet they wanted to blast some hole in the ground to look for gold.


C.) DUTCH URUZGAN TROOPS MAY BE PULLED BACK IN CASE OF RAIN.

The rain in Uruzgan falls mainly on the Dutchman.

"If it is impossible for the Dutch mission in the Afghan province of Uruzgan to substantially contribue to safety and reconstruction, it can be decided to withdraw them, said Defense Minister Kamp this weekend in the TV-program Buitenhof. Kamp did not say what criteria would be taken into account for such a decision. But he said that there is no relation with a possible numner of casualties among Dutch troops. "You constantly have to look at what you're confronted with and whether you can still succeed. [...] If we would not succeed than the negative effects for the world would be so great, we can't take the responsibility for that."


In May 1940, the Dutchies collapsed after 4 days against the Nazis. In May 2006, one cannot even be sure whether they would last 4 hours against Taliban goatfuckers taking potshots at them.



D.) DUTCH WORRY ABOUT RADICAL MUSLIMS IN THE MILITARY.

From The Brussels Journal:

"The Dutch secret services AIVD (state intelligence) and MIVD (military intelligence) are investigating an unknown number of Muslims within the Dutch army. Last Saturday, the Dutch newspaper Het Parool reported that a growing number of Dutch soldiers sympathizes with radical Islamists. The paper refers to the annual report of the MIVD, which states that it conducted a number of investigations into “alleged radicalisation of military personnel” as “there are signs that indicate a possible radicalisation of Muslim individuals or groups within the armed forces.”"


Ooops, turns out I was a bit too quick to blame it on the rain! The good Secretary of Defense Mr. Kamp may have had other reasons to consider withdrawing the Dutch Army.


E.) THE CURIOUS CASE OF DUTCH DISEASE REPORT.

These days, "Leveller", the fella behind Dutch Disease Report, looks like the only Dutchman with balls left. "Sorry, this website is temporarily closed". Don't want to jump to conclusions, but there is a GEDAPO in the Low Countries ya know.


MFBB.


N.B.: "GEDAPO" = GEDAchtenPOlitie = Thought Police. Happy thoughts to you out there in the wonderful but oh so distant Land Of The Free, Because Of The Brave. You there, across the Atlantic - never let it come as far in your country as over here.

IN MEMORIAM JEAN-FRANCOIS REVEL (1924-2006).

"Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

- Jean-François Revel (1924-2006)

Jean-François Revel is dead. This eminent French rightwing philosopher, writer and journalist was born on January 19, 1924 in Marseille. During World War II he was a member of the Résistance, which he joined under the pseudonym Ferral. Revel had something with pseudonyms, his own name being one - he was born a Ricard and, for some reason, adopted "Revel" as his name after a restaurant he frequently visited. He was married to Claude Sarraute, daughter of the writer Nathalie Sarraute. After a career as a teacher which brought him to such places as Algeria, Mexico and Italy, he came back to France where, from 1963 on, he concentrated on his work as a journalist. In 1978 he became director of the weekly L'Express, of which he had been an editor since 1966. Furthermore, from 1982 onwards he a chronicler for Le Point. As an editor, he also collaborated with two radio stations, Europe No. 1 (1989-1992) and RTL (1995-1998). In 1997, he was elected a member of the prestigious Académie Française, on the seat of Etienne Wolff (24th place). Revel died on April 30, 2006, in the Kremlin-Bicêtre Hôpital in Val-de-Marne, 82 years old. His widow Claude said he was "très fatigué, malade" - very tired, sick. Although commonly described as an atheist, I tend to think he was rather an agnost. May he rest in peace.

Notwithstanding his prodigious career as an editor and journalist, Revel will be best remembered for his books, of which the most prominent are:

· Without Marx or Jesus (1972)
· The Totalitarian Temptation (1976)
· How Democracies Perish (1983)
· The Flight from Truth : The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information (1992)
· Democracy Against Itself: The Future of the Democratic Impulse/Regain démocratique (1993)
· Anti-Americanism/La obsesión antiamericana (2003)
· The Monk and the Philosopher : A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life (1999)

One of Winston Churchill's most memorable quotes (although some attribute it to George Bernard Shaw) is that if you are not a socialist at 20 you have no heart, and if you are still a socialist at 40 you have no brain. Which, btw, would mean that MFBB has been a heartless albeit superintelligent sob ever since he became part, on a longago rainy summer day in 1965, of Belgium's wonderfully diverse multicultural society - but I'm digressing here. The fact is, Mr. Revel remained inclined to the left until 1970, and in his 1972 work Ni Marx ni Jésus he radically broke with socialism. It was his first truly successful political essay, and the beginning of a string of other well-received works, among them La Tentation Totalitaire (1976) and La Nouvelle Censure (1977).

By this time it was clear that Revel had morphed into a systematic anticommunist, a fact for which he naturally, in a country like France, was greatly denounced by the overwhelmingly leftist "intellectual" scene. Worse still, he started to develop liberal (economic) ideas (remember that "liberal" in Europe has another connotation than it has in America) and became a member of the New Atlantic Initiative together with prominent American rightwing personalities as well as a few likeminded French (they exist), such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (another disillusioned ex-leftwinger), Alain Madelin (highly recommended link, in Fwench though) and Alain Besançon. A telling illustration of this intellectual drive to the right is his patronage of the l’Universidad Latinoamericana de la Libertad Friedrich von Hayek, a private free market university in Florida, presided by the theologian Michael Novak, which educates exiled Cubans in free market economics, democracy and judeo-christian values. In short, an outfit which would really come in handy here were it not in Florida but in, say, Frankfurt. Frankfurt in Germany of course, not the one in Kentucky.

But the work which really made Jean-François Revel's name, if only in the Anglosaxon world, was his 2000 oeuvre "L'obsession anti-américaine", translated in English in 2003 as Anti-Americanism - and which btw was kindly sent to me as a present by one of our regular readers, Mark from Colorado. It is a damning indictment against the hypocritical attitudes of the global left in general and the snug incestuous European leftist "intelligentsia" in particular. In "Anti-Americanism", Jean-François Revel forcefully comes to the defense of the United States, exposing Europes indignation over America's "unilateralism", "imperalism" and "merciless capitalism" as the product of envy and despair over its own lost status. Revel also points to Europes obvious betrayal of democratic traditions since it was Europe, and European politicans, which accepted the status quo of the Cold War and decided to deal with dictatorial communist regimes as if they were equals. By contrast, that simpleton Ronald Reagan saw the Iron Curtain for what it was: the wall of the Greatest Jail in Mankind. The following quote of "Anti-Americanism" - btw, you can order it here - comes from National Review:

"Revel has had enough. Long an admirer of our nation, he offers a ringing defense of the United States in this hard-hitting book. He shows that much anti-Americanism is simply anti-capitalism in disguise - coming from Europeans and others who still cherish the totalitarian ideals that most Americans consider to have died with the Soviet Union."

The European media scene being what it is, it is not surprising that the news of the death of Mr. Revel gets similar coverage as, say, positive developments in Iraq. Nevertheless, a few colleagues and admirers of the great writer and philosopher have contributed some fitting words on his passing. Among them e.g. the writer and journalist Pierre Assouline, who on his blog La République des Livres (The Republic of Books - MFBB) said a.o. the following:

"...Certainly this was a free man, whose independence and courage distinguished him from his colleagues. Gifted with a delicate and cultivated spirit, possessed by an encyclopaedic curiosity which encouraged his venturing to other countries and his knowledge of several languages. An [important] personage of journalistic, political and editorial life who, together with Raymond Aron and a few others, with his whole work denied common wisdom as though anyone of intellectual stature in this country should be from the left..."

In my opinion, another fitting tribute to Mr. Revel immediately follows Mr. Assouline's epitaph, namely in his blog's comments section - all the more since it is the very first comment! Enjoy it (directly translated from French):

Really, you wasted no time coming out with your love letter. I won't hide it from you that its title "Death of a humanist layman" is irritating me a little. Furthermore, apart from the interest I take in your correspondence with him, as well as some irrelevant aspects which you recall and which were not commonly known, it's good that somebody else commemmorates this evening [the night during which Revel died - MFBB] and it will be me, with evidence he was a member of the board of the New Atlantic Initiative, a cabal of Pinochet admirers which counts among its emient seminarists one of the greatest criminals against humanity, namely henry Kissinger. I will spare you the link [he can't link - MFBB] but a simple Google inquiry will allow you to fill out the complete roll of members of this outfit (among them Margaret Thatcher, Colin Powell, William Kristol, or else the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel)...

The author of this excellent prose is a commenter posting under the moniker "Etredegauche", literally "Beingfromtheleft". While I don't think Pinochet is your ideal father-in-law and while I am glad justice will be served before he dies, it is clear to me that Pinochet was a far better deal to Chili than Allende would have been. Pinochet lifted Chili from poverty and is simply further proof that rightwing dictatorships are self-neutralizing and in time lead to prosperous liberal democracies (see also South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Greece...) while leftwing dictatorships are bound to ruin their human and economic capital perpetually - or until they are overthrown. Lately I've been reading Mao - The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. William Kristol may be one thing - but Mao Zedong another. 70 million Chinese dead, the lives of hundreds of millions of others redued to a wretched existence devoid of decent food, medical care, joy, hope, culture, dignity... chilling. Etredegauche must have missed that. For some reason, these people have a tendency to miss certain events while noticing certain others. You know the kind: they see an invasion of Iraq in 2003 but not a liberation of Afghanistan in 1979. They see a Darfur Genocide in 2006 but fail to see China and arab countries preventing the UN to call it a genocide back in 2004. Clooney tunes kind of people you know.

Anyway, Etredegauches epitaph proves that Jean-François Revel's literary oeuvre did get in some people's heads and did cause quite a bit of irritation. Good so. Mr. Revel will be greatly missed. May others take up his torch.


MFBB.

BACK FROM POLAND.

Came back from Poland last Monday, April 25. We travel to this eastern European country twice a year, primarily to visit my mom-in-law and brother-in-law. Because MFBB has been dating, engaging and marrying this Polish gal since late 1997 that means his paths have led him eastwards some 16 times, oh yes. And I can assure you that in that short time span I have witnessed quite some change for the good.

Now, the following pics may not seem to be such a big deal. Excavating machinery, highways, bridges built etc etc. Yet these are common scenes everywhere in Poland. The whole country is in a building frenzy. The first photo shows work on new street pavements in my wife's birthplace. The next two ones, road infrastructure works between Cracow (the ancient capital) and Zakopane (the Polish Aspen, CO so to say). The last two ones show the highway, facing west, near Katowice, a key city in Poland's industrial south. This highway was only refurbished a couple of years ago, and one key section was brand new - when we travelled to Zakopane in early fall 2005, we still had to go through Bytom at some point. I an tell you that the new Polish highways are a dream to ride on: smooth as a billiard-table, clear and state-of-the-art roadsigns, easygoing turnpikes, well-spaced parking lots on regular intevals. The only things that are still lacking somewhat are gas stops with fancy road restos but I'm sure they are on their way.

It wasn't like that even four years ago. When crossing the German-Polish border I could technically stay on the E40, one of Europes main east-west highways, sort of the Euro equivalent of the US's Interstates. But since the polished German Autobahn suddenly transformed in a endless row of raw concrete slabs spaced inches apart and almost overlapping each other, I always preferred to take the secondary roads. Driving 80kloms an hour on a Polish "highway" in 2002 was about the fastest I dared, and left me with a numb butt after 10 minutes. Not so last week: I regularly did 160 kloms an hour and thought I was surfing.












Downeast being a bastion of Haynekian wackos, these pics would seem odd here since appearing to illustrate the Keynesian approach: huge public works to boost the economy. The point is, I simply didn't have time to peek around and take shots at one of the many new industrial estates, also buzzing with activity. Anyway, take my word for it: from east to west and north to south the Polish are working their asses off to shape their future. Still, unemployment is high: it stands at 18% nationwide, only 1.5% or so down from last year, and this positive development is helped to a great extent by Polish workers earning their bread elsewhere in Europe. If I'd have to believe my brother-in-law, there's a million Poles working either black or white in the UK and Ireland. Now, while I'm willing to take that number with a grain of salt, I'm sure there's at least several hundreds of thousands of them across the Channel. And in my own country, it is commonly accepted that there's some 100,000 Polish expats, half of them in construction. When Poland and other former Eastern Bloc countries joined the EU in 2004, the "old" member states imposed temporary restrictions on the influx of (cheap) eastern european workers so as dampen the shock of legions of work-savvy immigrants to an already strained labor market. But right now, in Belgium e.g., the need for skilled labour in construction is so desperate that the government, or rather the more free market VLD, not the socialists, is actually trying to undo some of the restricting measures to attract tens of thousands more of Poles.

Anyway, even with lots working abroad and the Polish economy itself in full swing, it is clear that Polish unemployment is bound to stay high for some time. After all, until a decade ago the agricultreal sector accounted for some 30% of employment, and the necessary scaling down of that number, due to EU-imposed rationalization, is not yet matched by sufficient job creation in industry and services. But, unlike their French counterparts, the Polish unemployed do not riot. They stubbornly keep looking for a job, bad paid or not, at home or abroad... and find it in due time.


MFBB.

MOVE ON PEOPLE, NOTHING TO BE SEEN HERE!...

...it's just a demo, you know.



"...I find religious behaviour endlessly fascinating in its multi-faceted cultural manifestations..." - Professor Ron Geaves, University of Chester


Hey, I didn't say it was a demo, it was Prof Geaves! Don't believe me? Said the prof during a University lecture, the first week of April:

"I have included, rather controversially, the events in London as primarily an extreme form of demonstration and assess what these events actually mean in terms of their significance in the Muslim community. The word terrorism is a political word which always seems to be used to demonise people."

UK Blogger Scott Burgess just recently had a post on the good man, and was himself encouraged to save Mr. Geaves from anonymity by another blogger, Oliver Kamm. After all, while the icCheshireOnline apparently attracts Daily Kos types, as yet it does not attract Daily Kos numbers - although that may change soon. Professor Geaves, working at Chester University since 2001, teaches Study of Religion including Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Sociology as well as Anthropology of Religion. The academic's bio states that he "concentrates on field work, and enjoys meeting religions in the flesh and the embodied spirit rather than in texts". Too bad then the prof didn't happen to be on board of that 7/7 bus on Tavistock Square because he would have had the research opportunity of his lifetime. Now, about that lecture he gave: it was titled "Twenty years of fieldwork: reflections on "reflexivity" in the study of British Muslims". It was attended by a.o. local dignitaries and representatives from muslim organizations from England's north-west. According to Mr. Geaves, "The title refers to the personal transformation that has taken place over the last two decades in which I have moved from a position of academic neutrality to one of active engagement with the Muslim community in Britain."

Leaving academic neutrality huh? Yes indeed, Mr. Geaves thinks that one way in which demonstrations such as the 7/7 one should absolutely not be described is as "terrorist acts", because, according to Prof Geaves, "The word terrorism is a political word which always seems to be used to demonise people." In the words of the Honourable Airhead, Shehzad Tanweer & Co. were simply carrying out "an extreme form of demonstration". And the attacks that killed 52 people and threw the country into shock last July were simply "part of a long history of demonstrations sparked by British Muslims." I suppose 9/11 was just an airborne demonstration, then.

Btw, Prof Geaves is also pioneering the UK's first ever Muslim Youth Work degree programme. From 2007, Muslim students can gain professional youth work credentials at the only course of its kind. I bet twenty years of field work has taught the Prof that it's ECONOMIC MISERY that inspires young muslims to demonstrate. See, he goes on: "Youth work has a part to play in terms of making sure youths don't become despondent, particularly in areas of low unemployment and bad housing."

Well, I am just a nutty Beljun and not an enlightened Prof on some Cheddar Cheese University, nor did I do twenty years of field work on Islamic communities, but I did pick up somewhere that Shehzad Tanweer was the son of a local businessman, had a Sports Science Degree, lived in a fancy villa and drove around in a shiny Red Mercedes. Possibly Professor Geaves during his research stumbled over some caliph's rusty sword, landed face down in a stinky pool and had too much kaka in his eyes to notice articles like that.


OK, maybe you think Geaves is just one lonely nutter. One drooling idiot among the legions of respectable academics populating Europes fine centuries-old universities and scientific institutions.

NOT! How about this? In The Netherlands, there's an outfit called the WRR, I guess that's an acronym for Wetenschappelijke Raad voor Regeringsadvies, somewhat loosely translated as Scientific Council for Government Policy. It's meant as an independent think tank studying socio-economic developments, the labour market, infrastructure, climate policy, the future of the welfare state etc etc. Its task is to thereupon advise the government on its policy in these matters.

Dutch blogger in Canada Peaktalk points to the latest WRR-issued report, "Dynamiek in Islamitisch Activisme" (Dynamics in Islamic Activism), which came out on Wednesday April 12th of this year. If you click on this link, there's a summary, plus at the bottom another link to a pdf-file with the report.

One of the key authors, a certain fella by the name of drs. Jan Schoonenboom, was kind enough to talk to the press just before the report's release. Mind you, Schoonenboom is not just a humble staff member. He's one of the 8 Council Members in the WRR's executive committee. Below are some key excerpts:

"...we should not be so spastic about the Sharia...We must support the moderate Islamic powers much more, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon..." - drs. Jan Schoonenboom, WRR

"An unjustified fear of and aversion to Islam exists in the Netherlands. Instead of continuing to drag the name of that faith through the mud, there should be far more criticism of friendly countries such as the US, Israel and Russia, the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) concludes."

...

(according to Schoonenboom) "we should not be so spastic about the Sharia." It may be that the system leads to corporal punishment in countries like Saudi Arabia and Sudan, "but under the Sharia in Morocco, family law has been reformed, very much to the advantage of women's rights." The Sharia for Muslims is comparable to the Ten Commandments for Christians, in the researcher's view. "It is God's plan for human nature."

The WRR researcher accuses Islam critics such as MPs Hirsi Ali, Wilders and Verhagen, law philosopher Afshin Ellian and Rotterdam politician Marco Pastors, of playing "on gut feelings in the debate. On fear of Islam and of Muslims. You also see that in the debate on the accession of Turkey to the EU, this country is made out to be much more Islamic than it is, and Europe much more Christian that it really is."

So, according to the good doctorandus there exists "an unjustified fear of and aversion to Islam in The Netherlands". Funny, I just had a glimpse of an article about a hell of a fight between some 30 native Dutchmen and Moroccans last Friday in a MacDonald's restaurant in Tilburg, south Holland (hat tip: Dutch Disease Report). And, a tipsy more south, in my own beloved Belgium's Brussels Central Station, 17-year old Joe Van Holsbeeck was stabbed to death by a Moroccan teenager because he did not want to give the young fuckface his mp3-player. Hold your fire, you may ask what Moroccan nationality has to do with Islam. Well, I suppose the teenage killer is not (yet) whacking his forehead five times a day in the direction of Mecca. But what I am certain of is that utter disrespect of filthy kafirs - like the native Dutchies in the Tilburg McDonalds, and like poor Joe Van Holsbeeck - is one of the basic tenets of what passes for Islamic "Culture". Furthermore, Dutch MP Geert Wilders , to name but one, is living round the clock under police protection and travelling around in an armoured car since receiving gazilions of death threats. S'ppose Wilders too is having "unjustified fears of Islam".

But I digress. Mr. Van Schoonenboom would say I'm playing on people's guts here. Possibly. Meanwhile, Moroccan 15-year old creeps are stabbing in people's guts. Or slitting throats. Whatever.

OK, on to the following revelation from Dynamics in Islamic Activism. More precisely, drs. Van Schoonenboom has some sound advice for Dutch foreign policy. In the words of Peaktalk, hold on to your jaws for this one:

Schoonenboom advises "an adventurous foreign policy" for the Dutch government. "We must support the moderate Islamic powers much more, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon, instead of secular movements without prospects in Muslim countries. We must talk to the Palestinian regime of Hamas. Dare the adventure! They are democratically elected. It is a terrorist movement, but so was Arafat's PLO. And the IRA in Ireland."

AFAIK it was Sinn Fein which was talked to. And the least one can say about the west's talks with the PLO is that they at least yielded fascinating results. I don't know on what planet Jan lives, but judging from his labeling the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah "moderate Islamic powers" I don't think it's one in this solar system. Schoonenboom is translated literally as "Beautifultree" in English. From the onset I knew it was a tree hugger.


MFBB.

THE STORY OF THE CRICKET AND THE ANT

A.) THE FACTS.

That was then:



June 1940. France is beaten in six weeks by the Nazis. German soldiers march on the Champs Elysées. The French government, headed by PM Paul Reynaud, surrenders.

This is now:



April 2006. France is beaten in six weeks by spoiled schoolkids, dumbass "students" and communist unions. Hordes of nitwit lazybones march on the Champs Elysées. The French government, headed by PM Dominique de Villepin, surrenders.


Mind you, the CPE Bill had already passed through parliament and was by the laws and mores of democratic countires an established fact. If you ever wondered how deep De Villepin and Chirac could sink, here's another low. From The Brussels Journal:

France is beyond remedy. The country is heading for collapse, and its fate will be well deserved. As expected the French trade unions and the rioting leftwing vandals (aka “students”) in the streets won the fight for political supremacy over parliament and the government. Yesterday the French president Jack Chirac withdrew the French youth labour bill (CPE), approved earlier by a parliamentary majority, while the man he stabbed in the back by doing so, Chirac’s former dauphin and France’s Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, announced that he will not stand for the presidential elections next year.

B.) SOCIO-ECONOMIC ANALYSIS.

a.) Classical Version - by Jean de La Fontaine.

The ant works all summer long, building his house and stocking food for winter. The cricket thinks the ant is stupid, and laughs and plays all through summer. Once winter arrives, the ant is safely in the warmth and well fed. The cricket is shivering in the cold without food and shelter, and dies.


b.) Modern Approach - by Bruno Julliard.

The ant works all summer long, building his house and stocking food for winter. The cricket thinks the ant is stupid, and laughs and plays all through summer. Once winter arrives, the ant is safely in the warmth and well fed. The cricket is shivering in the cold without food and shelter, and organizes a press conference demanding why the ant has the right to be safely in the warmth and well fed, while others, less lucky, are cold and hungry. French TV broadcasts live coverage of the cricket, teeth chattering, as well as video footage of the ant safely in its comfy warm house sitting at a rich table. The French are shocked that in a country that rich one leaves the poor cricket suffer while others live in abundance. NGO's against poverty are demonstrating in front of the ant's house. Journalists organize interviews where it is debated how the ant could grow so rich on the back of the cricket and ask the government to raise the ant's taxes so that it will finally pay "its just part". Following the TV broadcasts, government drafts a law on economic inequality and another (retroactive to the past summer) on anti-discrimination. The ant's taxes are raised and it is also fined because it has not hired the cricket as an aide. The ant's house is confiscated by the government because it hasn't sufficiennt money to pay the fine and the new taxes. The ant leaves France and installs itself successfully in Switzerland. French TV makes a documentary about the cricket, now obese even though spring is still far away. The old ant's house, which has become a social dwelling for the cricket, is fast deteriorating because the cricket does nothing to maintain it. Reproaches are directed to the government for lack of maintenance funds. A commission costing 10 million euros is installed with the goal to investigate the lack of funds. The cricket dies of an overdose of crack. The newspapers Libération et l'Humanité publish columns discussing the governments' failure to tackle the problem of social inequalities. The house is broken down by a gang of immigrant spiders and the government congratulates itself on it successful policy of multicultural diversity. The spiders organize a marijuana traffic and terrorize the neighbourhood.


C.) CONCLUSION.

Trash the left wherever you can. (P.S.: advice for North American citizens only, Europe being one big snafu already).


MFBB.

PISS ON SOCIALISM.

Lots to talk about. Italian parliamentary elections developing in a neck-to-neck race between Prodi and Berlusconi. The French government surrendering to spoiled brats and overripe union commies. Germany inviting Mahmoud "Israel must be wiped off the map" Ahmadinejad to the 2006 FIFA World Cup. But the one item that finally made me open the DowneastBlog Dashboard is the following.

You can't make this up. You can't make this up. The Flemish Socialist Party SP.a has a youth chapter which recently renamed itself "animo", from "anemia" (note by MFBB). Animo has illustrious members such as Laurent Winnock, the bloke who during his "working" hours on a socialist cabinet produced Bush Piss Stickers, which, to mark the visit of the Prez to Belgium early last year, were distributed by the thousands to Belgian cafes to be placed in urinals.


Last week I picked up some news about Animo retards sending Bush Piss Stickers to Venezuela's Chavez, and so I thought I'd take a peek at their site. I did find a related item, all right. But I also found the foin poster to the right. It's accompanying a contest among the young morally superior fuckwads to elect the "First May Man/Woman 2006". If you click on the item's permalink, you'll find the newsflash ends with "Beide winnaars worden op echte Maoistische wijze meegezeuld in de 1 mei optochten." Transation: "Both Winners will be paraded around in the May 1st demonstrations in true Maoist Fashion".


Time for some MFBB Reality Check. Much like Stalin was the USSR's Red Czar, Mao Zedong was Communist China's Red Emperor. Unlike Stalin's Russia however, Mao's realm had no significant industrial history nor capacity, and this fact caused him serious concerns after emerging victoriously from the civil war with the Guomindang and somewhat less victoriously from the Korean War. In the late fifties, he thought up an insane plan supposedly along the lines of the Soviet Five Year Plans, only much more radical, to bring China in one gigantic step on a par with the great industrial powers of the time, the USA in particular. Mao thought that a massively enhanced steel production was the key to achieving that goal. The "plan", heralded in 1958, came to be known as the Great Leap Forward, and it provided for a massive steel turnout by forcing tens of millions of dirt poor farmers to abandon their crops and produce steel in tiny furnaces in their backyards. Millions and millions of families had to provide pots, cans, tablewear, bicycles, you name it, in order to have it molten and "transformed" in raw steel. Needless to say, what came out was "pig iron" at best and not worth a nail to scratch your ass with, as we say over here. The Great Leap Forward was the Industrial Mother of Disasters from the output POV. Worse still, the millions that had vainly tried to outperform modern steel facilities in the US and the UK had been forced to neglect their lands. And uncounted hectares of woodland had been destroyed to provide wood for the furnaces.

The result was a famine as never seen.

From 1958 to 1961, an estimated 30 million Chinese died of famine.

Probably the best book to get acquainted with the subject is Jasper Becker's Hungry Ghosts: Mao's secret famine. Some excerpts:

All the time, the peasants were in fact starving — in the millions. In their dreadful state, the peasants sank to the lowest form of human survival — they resorted to cannibalism. They dug up the bodies of the recently dead. They hid the fact that family members had died: first, to continue to obtain an extra food ration from the party distributors; and second, to hide the fact that the deceased had been eaten. Then, finally, at the lowest level of an instinct for survival, adults began to kill and eat their own children, usually trading their living child for that of a neighbor's, so they would not have to literally murder and eat their own son or daughter. Children would beg their parents not to let them be eaten.

.....

While one brutal disaster after another was imposed on the Chinese people in the name of socialism, Mao remained secluded most of the time in his private residence in Beijing. He would lie in bed all day. His teeth were green from never being brushed. He refused to bathe, so instead orderlies-in-waiting would sponge-wash his corpulent structure. Young virgin peasant girls would be brought to him from the countryside for his carnal pleasures, often for group encounters. He gave no thought to his having long been diagnosed with a venereal disease.

As you can see, Mao Zedong surely was a nice chap. So nice that in 2006 the fancy dashing boyz & girlz of Animo promise the May 1st Man/Woman 2006 will be put in the spotlights and paraded around in True Maoist Fashion.

And I'm not even talking about the Cultural Revolution.

Where was I? Oh yes, Bush Piss Stickers sent to Hugo Chavez. Well, it seems His Venezuelan Nutiness did not deem the Animorons worthy of a written response. However, his ambassador in Brussels did them the honour of inviting them to coffee. Their website is bragging so anyway:

Op donderdag 23 maart werd animo uitgenodigd op de koffie bij de ambassasdeur van Venezuela. De aanleiding was het artikel in het laatste nieuws van een dag eerder, waarin we Hugo Chavez - bij wijze van suggestie in zijn strijd tegen Dubya Bush - onze anti-bush-sticker aanraadden. Vorig jaar verspreidde animo meer dan 15.000 urinoir stickers, naar aanleiding van het bezoek van Bush aan ons land.

In short, on Thursday, March 23 an Animo delegation was invited for a coffee drink by the Venezuelan ambassador. Judging by the board behind the good man, I think both parties agreed on the core issues.

Just think about it. Mao = Good. Bush = Bad. Me = Feeling Lonely Among Nutters.


MFBB.

BATTLE OF THE SEXIEST.

In a poll the readers of FHM Magazine have chosen Scarlett Johansson as the sexiest actress in the vhurld. Angelina Jolie comes in second, Jessica Alba third. Then follow Keira Knightley, Halle Berry, Jenny McCarthy, Maria Sharapova, Carmen Electra and Teri Hatcher. From the For Him US site:

"Never have words sounded so right as when spoken with Scarlett's two-packs-and-a-fifth-o'-whiskey rasp. Somehow, she has achieved the voice, a successful acting career and heart-stopping beauty by the age of 21. That accounts for how, in only her second year on this list, Scarlett has landed at the top."

Oh please. Give me a break. Guy probably drank two whiskeys and snorted a fifth-o'-pack. Who says so anyway? Josh Hartnett? If so, next week you may well sing another tune dude, I just heard your fiancé said she does not believe in monogamy. Anyway, for all their merits, Anglosaxon males just don't know how to appreciate REAL beauty. Miserable Fat Belgian Bastards do, however. True, Miss Johansson does not exactly look like the girl next door. But to every man with his head battle-ready and his equipment scr*wed on right, it is crystal-clear that Miss Alba should be in the top spot. I mean, just lookit her here, here here and if that still does not convince you, here.






Of course, barely had FHM made public the choice of its readers or there you had the Cosmotaliban Iranian edition coming up with their selection of hottest females. I don't know what has come over the Iranijuns these days. Especially not since they elected that halo surrounded nutter for president. Why, all of a sudden they seem to be in a competing frenzy with the Great Satan. The US has nukes, they want 'em too. The US has a space program, Iran wants one too. The US is in Iraq, Iran is in Iraq too. The US has stealth planes, Iran announces it has them too. And now FHM US nominates the world's sexiest women, and guess what? There you have the world's hotties according to Mahmoud. Anyway, here goes:

Scarlett Johansson gets stiff competence from Shabina Begum, photo below left, the now 17-year old "British" schoolgirl of Bengali origin who in 2002 refused to don the proscribed uniform at Denbigh High School in Luton, north of London, and insisted on wearing the traditional jilbab, a full-lenght dress showing only face and hands. Since Denbigh High School did not budge, Miss Begum then stayed off school for two years. She took her case to court and was, surprise surprise, represented by the No. 2 on the Cosmotaliban's list, Mrs. Cherie Blair, the wife of PM Tony Blair. Mrs. Blair lost the original case in 2004 but went further, taking it to the Court of Appeal, which ruled in March 2005 that Miss Begum had been denied the right to manifest her religion and ordered Denbigh High School to pay the legal costs of the organization representing Begum's case, the Childrens's Legal Centre at Essex University.



All sanity still not having left the UK, this ruling luckily was in turn overruled on March 22, 2006, by Britain's Highest Judicial Authority, the House of Lord's (Britain's "Senate", so to say) Law Lords, which declared "that the school was fully justified in acting as it did when it sent Shabina Begum, then 14, home for refusing to adhere to the school uniform policy."

As the excellent UK blogger Scott Burgess from The Daily Ablution pointily notes,

"the young lady will now have to decide to either take the case to a judicial authority far more powerful than the highest in this country (namely, the EU European Court on Human Rights*), or simply drop matters and continue her education."

Legal costs for this all in all utterly silly affair have cost the British taxpayer thus far in excess of 70,000£. It's probably what Miss Begum has in mind when she thinks of the West as a "free" society.

About Mrs. Blair, the Cosmo's rival for Angelina Jolie, we can be short. Her hubby is a good fella - euroweenie attitudes on social security notwithstanding - but Cherie is another matter. The PM's wife is known to have delivered scathing attacks at President Bush, still thinks he stole the 2000 elections, picked a fierce argument with him during a private meal over the death penalty in Texas, has heavily criticized the Gitmo resorts, and is of the opinion that the US Constitution is anachronistic, calling American legal code a "grandfather clock among 21st Century timepieces." Hallelujah. Oh well. Maybe her aversy for (Republican) US presidents is in the genes you know. Cherie Blair, née Booth, has a rather infamous relative who lived in the States in the mid-19th century.

In short, Mrs. Blair undoubtedly thinks of herself as a highly intelligent and sophisticated world citizen, infinitely more in the know than those blunt Americans. Too bad some important things escape even her attention. With regards to the Shabina Begum case e.g. that in the course of the first trial against Denbigh High School's dress code it was disclosed that Shabina Begum was initially influenced by her brother, Shuweb Rahman, to don the jilbab. Indeed, as The Telegraph notes in its March 23, 2006 issue:

This case wasn't even about religion, or conscience, or the dictates of faith. At least it wasn't primarily about those things. It was about power. It was about who really runs the schools in this country, and about how far militant Islam could go in bullying the poor, cowed, gelatinous and mentally spongiform apparatus of the British state.

Until yesterday, it seemed that there was nothing to stand in the Islamists' way, from the moment on September 3, 2002, when Shabina's brother and another man turned up at her school, and told a harassed maths teacher called Mr Moore that their Shabina was going to wear the full jilbab in the name of her "modesty", and that, if they didn't jump to it, the school would be sued.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is an extremist Muslim group banned in Germany and even in most of the Middle East. In western press, its name really started to resonate after it was discovered that Dilpazier Aslam, a The Guardian trainee journalist, was a Hizb-ut-Tahrir member. You may recall that Mr. Aslam in an op-ed piece in the Guardian defended the perpetrators of the July 7 London bombings, calling today's young muslim males "much more sassy with their opinions and actions" - at a moment when rescue crews were still scraping charred Londoner's remains off Underground tube walls.

I just want to say, in the course of a case a lawyer is supposed to be documented about every aspect of it, right? So somewhere along the line it must have been brought to Mrs. Blair's attention that the ball started to roll with Shabina's brother, member of a dangerous radical muslim organization, coercing his sister to don a jilbab? No problem for Cherie. On the contrary, as Mark Steyn wrote on her successful March 2005 case:

Ms Booth hailed this as "a victory for all Muslims who wish to preserve their identity and values despite prejudice and bigotry."

Over to Mrs. Antje Vollmer, no. 3 on the list. Under the Schroeder government, she was the highest female member of the Bundestag, the German Parliament. Actually, she was Vice President of it. Vize-Praesidentin der Deutschen Bundestag, jawohl! Mrs. Vollmer, of the Green Party, often has outspoken opinions. Her hour of glory came last year after Pope John Paul II's death, when she suggested that...

...the US government set the Catholic pedophilia scandal in motion because it wanted to weaken an already frail pope. That's also why it made Poland its chief partner in the Iraq war: to make the Vatican look bad.

Apart from that, you have to admit she looks better with that Islamic dress over her, don't you think? The photo was taken early last year when Herr Schroeder was on a trade mission to our pals the Saudis. Unlike Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Mrs. Vollmer knows how to dress decently in the Middle East. Over and out.


MFBB.

OH NO. THE M-WORD AGAIN.

From Expatica, March 31, 2006:

POLICE BROUGHT IN AS TEACHERS LOSE CONTROL AT BERLIN SCHOOL.

BERLIN - Violence at a Berlin school dominated by Arab and Turkish youths and the nearby slaying of police officer, shot in the head while trying to arrest muggers, has fuelled alarm that troubled parts of the German capital are lurching out of control. Police have now been brought in to help control the situation at the Ruetli school in the immigrant-dominated Neukoelln district, with six officers checking students for weapons.

Teachers at the school published a letter this week widely interpreted as saying conditions at their school had become so bad that it should be closed down.
The letter said teachers had lost all authority and were now so afraid that they only entered classrooms with a mobile phone so they could call for help in an emergency.

When reporters went to school on Thursday they were pelted with paving stones by masked youths from the schoolyard as the district's mayor stood helplessly at the entrance of the building.

Meanwhile, the funeral took place Friday of a police office whose brutal slaying earlier this month in Neukoelln shocked the city. Uwe Lieschied was shot in the head at close range after he tried to arrest two men who had been involved in a street robbery. Declared brain-dead by doctors, he died after being in a coma for several days. Lieschied, aged 42, was well-known officer in the district who was involved in efforts to clean up the notorious drug-dealing scene in Neukoelln's Hasenheide Park.
Police have arrested two unemployed men of Turkish origin in connection with the killing and officials say one of them has confessed to shooting the officer.

Even Der Spiegel, Germany's anti-American rag par excellence, normally busy documenting Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and Katrina "snafus" and blaming Dubya for 'em, is getting nervous:

An der Berliner Rütli-Hauptschule kapitulieren verzweifelte Lehrer vor der Eskalation der Gewalt. Kein Einzelfall, sagt die Polizeigewerkschaft: An mindestens 30 Schulen der Hauptstadt sei die Lage außer Kontrolle.

Translation: "At the Berlin Ruetli High School desperate teachers capitulate for the escalating violence. Police says it's not an isolated case: in at least 30 Berlin schools the situation is out of control."

The Brussels Journal has more:

The teachers of a German college, the Rütli-Hauptschule in the Berlin borough of Neukölln, have asked the authorities to close down their school. Last Thursday the school called in the police to protect the few native German students remaining in the predominantly immigrant school, where over 80% of the students are not of German origin. The German students and the teachers say that they are being terrorised by armed and violent thugs, who call them “racists” and treat Western girls and women as if they are “whores” and “sluts.” Last week, after several serious incidents, the teachers wrote an open letter asking the Berlin authorities to close down the college and distribute the students among other schools.

Cool poster huh? Substitute "Danmark" for "Europe". And:

STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES.


MFBB.

Outrage

This makes me want to administer a beat down.

I realize these are just ignorant high school pukes, but they're getting this mindset from somewhere. The symbolism here is telling. Sure, we're all racists and alarmists to "fear" illegal immigration. It sure warms the heart to see all these "Americans" embracing their "homeland."

Here's an idea: If you like Mexico so much and you are so proud of Mexican culture, how about moving south of the border and doing something to make your homeland something other than a filthy, corrupt parasite to the United States? Nah, better to just suckle the teat and then complain that somehow you are being oppressed by the man because real Americans with legal citizenship don't care to be your financial benefactors.

It used to be that this sort of thing would have fallen under the realm of common sense and dismissed off hand as madness; of course illegals should be treated as criminals; THEY ARE BREAKING THE LAW!!! But we have softened socially to the point where political correctness and fear of insulting anyone other than white men is going to make us flush the whole thing down the toilet.

We owe illegal immigrants nothing other than a free trip back over the border. I know too many good, hard working legal immigrants who played by the rules and paid their dues to get here to even consider giving any kind of amnesty or "guest worker" bullshit free ride to any of these people. Just imagine the gall of illegally entering another country and then demanding largesse from that country's people. I wonder if Mexico's government would be willing to pay for my family's health care if I moved to Cancun?

And George Bush is part of the problem. I'll say it again: Beyond most of what he's done with the WOT and tax cuts, I don't see much to be impressed with.

VIVE, ERM, LEAVE LA FRANCE!!!

From the March 27, 2006 issue of TIME Europe:

"Ah, to breathe the fine air of France!" As he spoke in mock-heroic tones last week, Sayed Diakite, 19, a student from the southern subrurbs of Paris, was smiling gleefully, and weeping at the same time. Like hundreds of other young people boxed in by riot police between the Bon Marché department store and the Hotel Lutetia in the heart of the Left Bank, his eyes were running in reaction to pungent gas and smoke from a burning newspaper kiosk. Amid the uproar, Diakite and his fellow students felt a budding sense of empowerment. Up to half a million young people had gone, some riotously, to the streets throughout France on Thursday. Then, joined by union members and sympathizers, as many as 1.5 million joined marches on Saturday, some of which ended in violent clashes with riot police. Would this show of force bring a government that seems ever more out of touch to its knees?

Dixit Time Europe’s James Graff, reporting from Paris. Two things struck me while reading this excerpt. The first is that Sayed Diakite does not immediately sound like Jean-Pierre Lagrange to me. The second is that Mr. Graff thinks that the government is "ever more out of touch".

Let us skip Sayed, we all know he don’t sound like a Lithuanian or a Bhutanese. But as far as the French gumint is concerned, well, I gather that in this issue they are much more "in touch" than Mr. Graff would possibly want to admit. E.g., I guess they are aware that youth employment is at a staggering 22% throughout France, even topping 40%-50% in the banlieues. And I guess they are also aware that French patrons are very reluctant to hire young people in the first place. The reason? Not only is entrance onto the labor market damn difficult – both from the employee and the employer’s point of view. But for a boss to actually fire employees it’s even much tougher. It is final realization of this conundrum that ultimately made the French government do something to address the problem.

France is an étatist, half-communist, hopelessly overtaxed and insanely overregulated society. It's no coincidence that AFAIK it's the only West European country where a communist party, the PCF, or Parti Communiste Français, has always played, and continues to play to this date, a considerable role. The French State is to a large extent involved in the economy, being shareholder in a plethora of large companies. And it is proud of it too: see e.g. this site, where an amiable fella by the name of Jean-Louis Girodolle, Vice Director of the French Government Shareholding Agency, is boasting about the State’s Role as an Owner. Now, while over the past years the French State did indeed sell many shares it held in strategic sectors ranging from the automotive industry (Renault - 15%) over energy (Gaz de France - 34%) to defense (EADS-Aérospatiale) and electronics (Thomson), it is still to an extent unthinkable in the States co-owner in these fields. Then there is the fact that in excess of one in every three “active” persons is on the state’s payroll – either in a governmental, regional, departmental, communal, you-name-it-al - service. Thus, as Larry Kudlow from National Review notes:

France’s public government sector, for instance, accounts for more than 50 percent of GDP. In other words, private business in France is in the minority.

It's only natural that in a labor market where l'Etat is so omnipresent, virtually anyone looking for a job will run into state regulation determining the conditions for his or her entrance into the labor "market". And so it can happen that if you are looking for a job as a cleaner, you may have to submit a written mémoire first in order to get a diploma certifying you are capable of cleaning! Don't worry, it can always be worse. You may have to do a two-year internship first before you can become a hotel housemaid!

So, getting a job is tough. Now, how about losing it? Well, it's tough too. Once a young person is on a company’s payroll and screws up, and the boss wants to fire him/her, he has to submit detailed descriptions of the reason(s) why to the Union the person in question is (undoubtedly) a member of. Moreover, his/her wages are to continue to be paid over a period of time stretching over several months. Now, I live in Belgium, where a white collar worker who has, e.g., been 15 years on the job and who is laid off due to, say, restructuring, is to be paid some fourteen months after having left the company. Scratching your head?

It’s worse in France.

In short, flexibility in the French labor market is something as elusive as a Jon Stewart joke that actually does crack you up. Or, to paraphrase un certain fameux Ministre de Défense, going to work within France is like duck hunting with your accordeon.

And here is where Dominique de Villepin, French PM and Proud Possessor of the most gorgeous cheveux this side of l'Atlantique, comes into the picture. On the one to the right, unfortunately with his trademark obscured by a German WWII steel helmet: I have it from good source that Mr. De Villepin - the guy carrying the other - is actually a sneaky but ardent re-enactor of certain calamitous events which occurred in France in June 1940, but don't tell anyone I told you because the walls have ears and Amerikkka kkkontrols the Internet. Anyway, it was De Villepin who, without consulting the French unions first - the horror - rammed the now (in)famous CPE Bill through Parliament, whereby CPE stands for Contrat Première Embauche, or First Job Contract (it must be said though that French President Jacques Chirac, ever so clever, has not signed the bill into effect yet). The First Job Contract (CPE) bill is meant to encourage firms to hire more young people by lowering their job protection. Essentially it:

* allows employers to fire new worker under 26 years within the first two years on the job without giving any reason
* provides those who stay for two years with a long-term contract with much stronger protection against firing.
* provides for "only" eight percent of the salary earned since the beginning of the contract if a person is fired within that two-year period.
* obliges companies to contribute another two percent of that salary to organisations that will help workers find new jobs.

Let us now proceed to the reactions of French youths to Mr. De Villepin's CPE Bill.



Feel the love. They were not amused. Apprarently it doesn't cross their little minds why on earth their boss would fire them in the first place IF ONLY they would perform well in their job. They want job assurance before assuring their boss of a good job. Superspoiled insane critters.

Now, that was in February. We are end of March now, and there have been nationwide manifestations against the CPE on February 7, March 7, March 16, March 23, and March 28. While they were "peaceful" at first, they gradually grew more violent. By March 16, there were rallies in 80 cities nationwide. In the student's quarter of the famous Parisian Sorbonne University, a bookshop was set alight, rioters smashed up a cafe and used chairs, street signs and rocks as missiles against the police. And as the protest movement picked up pace, other groups joined in: first the hooligan "casseurs" (literally "breakers"). We already know them: the French "youths" from last fall. FYI, there are 500 wounded police officers thus far:

A sudden downpour failed to quell the protesters' spirits as they marched, chanting slogans against the government and its new jobs contract. But once they reached their destination in the eastern city centre, most student demonstrators - and the workers who came out in support of them - quickly left as more youths descended on the square, with the sole aim of picking a fight with the riot police. These youngsters - aged between 15 and 25 - were wearing hooded tops that obscured their features. Many wore masks, so they could not be identified. Some had soaked scarves in lemon juice to wrap around their mouths before they came, to counteract the effects of the tear gas they knew would be unleashed by police. According to the riot police, many of these youths had come in from the suburbs outside Paris looking for trouble: this violence seen by some as a continuation in Paris city centre of what began in November's riots in the suburbs.

Indeed. But of a perhaps still more troubling nature is the fact that as March drew on, the unions first started to endorse the protest movements, then joined in the protests and finally called for strikes. Yesterday, on March 29, this resulted not only in nationwide protests with, according to the police, 1,055,000 demonstrators in 250 cities, but also in general strikes reducing train, plane, subway andbus services to a fraction of normal operation. The Eiffel Tower was closed, national newspapers were not on sale, many elementary and high schools were closed and even radio and TV limited their broadcasts.

I don't know anymore WHAT THE FUCK is happening in France. I'm flabbergasted. I was struck today by a quote from an American reader over at The Brussels Journal which sums it up nicely:

“The new serfs have sold their freedom and futures for a guaranteed bowl of porridge from the State. This is how far these young intellectuals can see – to the end of their spoons and no farther. They will take their paychecks by force, even if their economy dies.”

Even as it is clear that this insanity is now carried by a much larger segment of French population than the student movement, I think a fitting end to this post is to highlight the fella who carried the "banner" until the unions picked up, for he is, despite his young age, truly the iconic image of a dying nation: Bruno Julliard, Chairman of the National Student Federation UNEF. Born in 1981, mom the socialist mayor of Puy-en-Velay, dad a writer and journalist for the leftwing weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. A koinsidens I suppose. Also, fifth year student Corporate Law at the Université de Lyon. Frances prime leftist rag Le Monde would not be Le Monde if it didn't depict this young loser as a hero: "an increasingly embarrassing stone in the shoes of the government... Herald of the battle against the CPE... the young man has succeeded in gathering under one banner youth as well as the working class..." and blah blah blah frikkin blah...

When both youth and working class have been on the government teat for decades to the extent that the jobless don't want to work a paltry 35 hours a week anymore because they would actually touch less if they found themselves on some payroll, it is easy to be a hero of malcontents. When a hitherto all too lenient daddy can't meet the demands of his spoiled to the bone offspring no more and starts to impose rules, it's easy to be the loudmouth bully stamping with his feet and crying for everything to stay as it was. But the world is rapidly changing, and Julliard & Co. refuse to acknowledge it. Well, they can beat the French government. If I have to believe the latest news, Ole Playboy De Villepin hangs already in the ropes. But they won't be able to beat the Chinese or Indian government. Playing time is over, the seventies are gone forever and nothing will ever be the same. Bruno Julliard has been on God's Green Earth for only 25 years. But already he's the world's youngest Man of the Past.

Fuck-ing LOSER. Get a job.


MFBB.

DUMB AND DONNER.

On Tuesday, February 28, Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner, the guy on the photo smack in the middle with black suit and glasses, had his signature chiseled in a granite commemmoration plaque destined to mark the beginning of the construction of, in Donner’s words, “Holland’s most beautiful mosque”. Scene of the action: the "De Baarsjes" neighborhood, an Amsterdam west of center "Stadsdeel" (literally City Part) with some 34,000 inhabitants. Subject of the festivities: the newly to be built Westermoskee (Western Mosque - MFBB), a huge mosque which will also be the center of an entirely new building habitat comprising 111 apartments, some 2000m2 office space and an underground parking lot for 238 cars.

Participating in the ceremony were Stadsdeel chairman (some kind of subaltern mayor) Van Waveren , Mr. F. Bijdendijk, president of the building corporation "Het Oosten" and Mr. Kabaktebe, an official of the Turkish socio-religious organization Milli Görüs. It's probably that mean disposition of mine again, but I suppose that no alcohol was served. Nevertheless Mr. Donner was quoted as saying:

It is a symbolic mixture of cultures, of Turkish Dutchmen in a jacket of the Amsterdamse School (an architectural movement - MFBB), the Westermoskee cannot be without the efforts of building corporation Het Oosten, the name refers to the Westerkerk (Western Church - MFBB), once the biggest protestant church of Amsterdam. Once church towers were the symbol of the wealth of the city. They pointed the way through the landscape. While they still mark a rich past, the religious aspect has all too easily vanished from the city. The 43m high minaret is seen through that prism as an enrichment of the neighborhood".

Keep in mind that Donner is an important member of the Dutch Christian Democratic party CDA. Here is a maquette of the mosque as it will look like upon completion:



The mosque is going to be built on the former RIVA industrial site, which was bought in 1994 by Milli Görüs. For those who have never before heard of this organization: although it pretends to denounce radical islamism, it has a dubious history and is said to pose liberally outwards while preaching radically inside the hundreds of mosques under its patronage. Its very name, meaning "National Vision" is taken from a book by former Turkish PM and islamic strongman Necmettin Erbakan, who in 1996-1997 was the leader of a coalition government between his own Welfare Party (Refah) and the True Path Party. Erbakan was one of the funders of Refah, and as such had a leading hand in the 1980 pro-Islamic protests, which resulted in one of those typically Turkish military coups. Refah was banned and Erbakan closed out from politics for 7 years.

While Milli Görüs is not considered a radical islamist organization in The Netherlands, the Germans, always lesser airheads, do monitor it closely, and with reason, for its islamist agenda. E.g., the Bundesverfassungsschutz, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, has repeatedly warned about Milli Görüs' activities and described the group in its annual reports as a "foreign extremist organization". The agency has:

...also reported that "although Milli Görüs, in public statements, pretends to adhere to the basic principles of Western democracies, abolition of the laicist government system in Turkey and the establishment of an Islamic state and social system are, as before, among its goals."

In short, this is the organization whose Dutch branch is building the new Westermoskee. Head of Milli Görüs Holland is a certain Hadi Karacaer, a so-called moderate Muslim who last year had the misfortune to be spotted rather dramatically when he let slip down his guard for a brief moment. Dutch Disease Report linked to the following revealing article (translation from Dutch by Jihadwatch):

Cid Martel of the Dutch Disease blog has kindly sent along this revealing translation of a Dutch story from Trouw. Cid explains: "A small Dutch Christian party called ChristenUnie (ChristianUnion) is trying to figure out how to deal with Muslims. Some feel Muslims are a threat, others think that Christians need to be open to people from other cultures. There was a debate recently between the party leader and the director of Milli Gorus. It started out fine but suddenly Haci Karacear, the director, dropped his mask. This is from a column which appeared in today’s Trouw newspaper by the excellent French-Dutch publicist Sylvain Ephimenco: "Haci Karacaer was rather provocative. He hammered home that Europe has its roots in Islam. “Europe does not have Judeo-Christian roots. We gave them to you!” When they talked about religious education things got even more heated. “André, try to keep up with the facts. Demographics tell you that a school board can’t continue to proselytize. I’ll go as far as to say that the Christian identity of these schools doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

Also sprach Haci Karacaer, Fuehrer of Milli Görüs Woodenshoeland. Just remember, this fella has gotten a clown like Donner, who is supposed to represent Dutch Christians, so far as to officially start the building of a gigantic mosque smack in the middle of Amsterdam, openly declare that Christendom is dead, and that a 43-meter high minaret where soon muezzins will wake up Jan Klaas at 5 o'clock in the morning is "an enrichment of the neighborhood". Duh.

From a purely financial view he may be right however, as the sad pointe of this story proves. At one of the entrances of the De Baarsjes neighborhood, at the spot where during WWII a father and his son were murdered by the German occupiers, has stood for decades a small humble monument in the form of a white cross, bearing the very neutral inscription "Aan hen die vielen" (to those who fell - MFBB). It has now been removed, and tens of thousands of euros have already been collected by the various local animist bridge clubs (ok, I made that last one up) to pay for a monument more in line with the new ethnic composition of the neigborhood. As The Brussels Journal reports:

The effects of the immigrant vote will soon be visible. The Amsterdam borough of De Baarsjes has already decided to remove a white cross which serves as a memorial to the Second World War. The cross is situated not far from the place where a mosque is being built. According to the authorities “Muslims and Jews” take offense at the cross as a war memorial. “We told them that it is a Dutch tradition to refer to the dead with a cross. However, the cross is seen as a reference to Christianity. I can understand this,” the local (Christian-Democrat) councillor, Jan Voetberg, said.

Yeahyeahyeahyeah... you read me well. So another christian democratic zealot, local CDA councilor Jan Voetberg, has agreed to remove a white cross because it is a reference to Christianity (wow!) on the insistence of "Muslims and Jews". As soon as I read that Muslims AND Jews had asked to remove a small monument in the form of a cross I knew that something was stinkin' here like the Mother of All Brontosaurus Kakas. Voetberg indeed at one point said that first the Pakistani, then the Turkish, then the Moroccan mosques AND finally the local synagogue had asked to remove the cross. As soon as this flat lie got out, the local Jewish community, spearheaded by a very upset Auchwitz-survivor Bloeme Evers denied this vehemently. Adding the alleged synagogue protest was just another perverse attempt to apologize the outrageous demands of the islamic community which apparently uses a different vocabulaire when it comes to enjoying the enrichment of the neighborhood.

Anyway, it appears that not all Dutchmen have been neutered yet since this outrageous decision led to a plethora of angry protest letters from all over the country. On March 11, the good De Baarsjes councillors were prompted to issue a communique promising that the monument, at this moment in storage at the communal cleaning facilities, will be placed back on its original location as soon as the mosque is ready. That would be then, uh, let's say in 2008, right? So you all hear me folks, rendezvous in 2008 at the entrance of the al-Baarsjes kasbah for the official re-inauguration of a WWII monument in the form of a white cross!!! Don't forget your hijabs ladies!

Give me a break. On second thought, no, give me a Prozac.


MFBB.