A TEXT FORBIDDEN AND CARTOONS ALLOWED PLUS OTHER STORIES.

GIVE US WEAPONS.

From the desk of Paul Belien

(Friday, 21 April 2006)

On the videofootage you see them standing like predators alongside the wall at Brussels Central Station, scrutinizing the passersby for an easy prey they can finish off. Joe Van Holsbeeck turned out to be the victim, but it could just as well have been (fill in your own name here), or (the name of your children). He who has the misfortune to be selected, stands no chance. The predators have teeth and claws. The predators have knives. As children, they have learned at the yearly sacrificial feast how to cut the throat of warmblooded animals. We get sick when we see blood, but they don't. They are trained, they are armed. We cannot even possess pepperspray. They have butchery knives and know how to use them. We are the herd-animals, they are the beasts of prey. The herd-animals themselves have allowed the beasts of prey in their biotope. Our political, spiritual and intellectual herdsmen have led us to believe that this would be an enrichment for our society. Indeed, by allowing predators among herd-animals our herdsmen would be able to realize the heavenly Utopia on earth, the multicultural welfare state wherein, as the Bible says, the lion would peacefully lie down alongside the lamb. That is why we have cherished the vipers on our chest, trusting that if we would nurture them peacefully, they would not bite us, grateful for the milk that we would serve for free. But they interpreted our kindness as weakness. The scoundrels, who have gotten everything in our society: free education, child allowances, social security, murder today our children for an mp3-player.

According to Cardinal Danneels this is our fault, because we are indifferent, because in a Western, materialistic society an mp3-player is worth more than a human life. When Joe Van Holsbeeck was murdered and again: we are all Joes, because it could have happened to all of us, no one from the thousands of commuters, the herd-animals passing daily through Central Station, intervened to protect Joe, thus the flaming indictment of our herd-cardinal. That is why he thinks we are indifferent. We are indeed indifferent, but for another reason than Danneels, this false shepherd, this grave-digger of Catholic Flanders, thinks. Our indifference is apparent from the fact that for so many years already we keep submitting to the yoke of the criminal predators and the brainwashing of their accomplices, our political, intellectual and spiritual false shepherds. It is time that we lay down our indifference, that we kick the predators out and choose other shepherds. When suicide terrorists commit an attack in Israel, the Israelis take on their parents. With bulldozers they flatten the houses of their families.

Maybe our indifference is most characterized by the fact that we let the parents of the underage, murdering criminals alone, that we continue to let them benefit from our social security, that we do not destroy their houses and do not deport them as a punishment for the criminal offspring they have planted in our midst. Probably our indifference appears from the fact that the "xenophobic" Vlaams Belang gets only a quarter of Flemish votes and not 75 per cent, because this means that only one in four Flemings wants to stop the predators lurking around the Flemish herd, while three quarters remains indifferent. Most certainly our indifference appears from the fact that we allow ourselves to be led like a patient herd towards the slaughtering-table, while after Joes murder and the scandalous sermon of our shepherd we neither stormed the Central Station, nor Danneels' Palace. We stay honest and indifferent. For 17-year old Joe is not the first victim. Towards the end of January, in the Heyvaertstraat in Molenbeek a 16-year old black boy was stabbed down. Five Moroccans let him bleed to death because he refused to pay them 30 euros for a cell phone these predators had earlier stolen elsewhere. The murderers were never arrested, they walk freely through Brussels, just like the killer of Patrick Mombaerts. Shepherd Danneels did not open his mouth for this black boy, he has not preached against the "indifference" of the authorities who do not even search for these murderers, nor has he preached against the town council of Molenbeek which for days neglected to clean up the huge dried-up bloodstain in the Heyvaertstraat. What is a life worth (and certainly the life of a black boy killed by Moroccans) in the multicultural Utopia of Guy Verhofstadt and Godfried Danneels, where the lambs who object to lions lying down near them, are scolded for racists? Not we are indifferent. The authorities are, and the police, the government and the church. What we see today is betrayal of the people by state and church. Once Wilfried Martens shouted: "Give us weapons!" In a democratic state the government must protect the citizens against the predators. If the state cannot or will not carry out this function, the citizens have the right to arm themselves. He who goes to Brussels without pepperspray is a fool. He who counts on politicians for his protection is as good as dead.

The above text, written by Paul Belien, appeared on The Brussels Journal's website on April 21, 2006, at which time it was still unknown that the perpetrators of the murder of Joe Van Holsbeeck were not Moroccans, but Poles. You can agree or disagree with Mr. Belien, but fact is that there have been a number of gruesome killings by Moroccan teenagers, that "small" criminality among Moroccan youth is rampant and that in the immediate aftermath of the killing Mr. Belien apparently reacted in a very emotional (and for him unusual) tone. Personally, I think that his column risks to stigmatise the whole Moroccan community, which still counts, I assume, a solid number of decent individuals. That said, I do think Moroccan parents need to show (much) more responsibility in raising their (male) offspring. Too many criminal young brats roam the streets at night unchecked, where they do no good, to use an understated understatement.


Two weeks ago, the CEOOR, the Belgian Government's Thought Police, sometimes referred to as Center for Equal Opportunities and Oppositon to Racism, and led by Lavrenti Beria lookalike Jozef De Witte, demanded Mr. Belien remove the article in question from The Brussels Journal. If you click on this link, you will see the header "Artikel verwijderd" - Article removed - with a brief explanation from the hand of Mr. Belien. It appears the CEOOR threatened to prosecute Mr. Belien on the basis of article 1 paragraph 3 of the Anti-Racism Law of 30 July 1981, "inciting hatred against a group on grounds of nationality or ethnicity".

Thus Mr. Belien, married and having five children to feed, complied; and he requests the readers of TBJ not to quote or reprint his column, "so as not to infringe on his author's rights and not to expose themselves too to prosecution by the CEOOR."

Outlaw Mike, declared an outlaw by the Belgian State in 2004, has chosen not to heed his call and give the Downeast readership a sample of the (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) state Belgium has become. If Beliens writings are outlawed only the outlawed can publish Beliens writings.


For good measure, I will now include two cartoons which appeared this spring on the website of the Antwerp-based AEL, or Arab European League, a radical muslim youth movement led by former (?) Hezbollah terrorist Dyab Abu Jahjah, a Lebanese extremist who was able to enter Belgium in the nineties through a phoney marriage with a poor sod of a girl from Bruges, Peggy Paternoster. While the Club of Lunatics currently in charge of the USSB is in a permanent delirium about how wonderful multicutlural diversity is, Mr. Jahjah holds a slightly different view. Among other things he is of the opinion that assimilation is "cultural rape". Also, he would like Arabic to become the fourth official language of Belgium. But I'm digressing here; the cartoons shown below are a (belated) reaction of the AEL to those lame Danish watercolors, you'll remember. Enjoy 'em:



Reaction from Jozef De Witte and his GEDAPO CEOOR:


(...f-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-r-t-t-t...)


You get the picture. It's a wonderful world over here in the Ole Europe. Oh, and btw, did you know that Hugo Chavez visited Londonistan? He was hosted a lunch by the socialist Londonistan mayor Ken Livingstone, you know, the fella who asked Jewish reporter Oliver Feingold whether he was a German war criminal or a concentration camp guard, and who thinks Bush is "the most corrupt American president since Harding in the Twenties". Cut Red Ken some slack here people: I bet that when he accused Chimpy McBushHitler of corruption, Hugo hadn't informed him yet about the escapades of his compadre Lula's government, back in Brazil. Uh, Lula leads a socialist government, but that must be a koinsidens. While I am at it, Mr. Livingstoned also thinks that the Communist dictator Mao Zedong's bloody regime was justified because it ended the ancient Chinese practice of binding women's feet. Mao Zedong, you remember, was the chap who killed 70 million of his subordinates and wretched the lives of, duh, 600 (?), 700 (?) million more. Oh man, I'm digressing again. Where was I? Right, Hugo in London. Hugo and Ken got on very well together!!! Hugo may not know about Mao yet, but it seems he knows that much more about Bush's dirty laundry list, hmmmmmmm? Why, he called for your genocidal president to be imprisoned. Also, he thinks you should not worry too much about 9/11, since "the twin towers of the World Trade Center consumed more energy than do some entire countries in Africa", dixit the Venezuelan President. I suppose he means the ones with a socialist government. Btw, did you know that the Spanish Socialist Party, the PSOE, just recently introduced a bill in the Congress of Deputies calling for “the immediate inclusion of simian apes in the category of persons, and that they be given the moral and legal protection that currently are only enjoyed by human beings." The PSOE's justification is that humans share 98.4% of their genes with chimpanzees, 97.7% with gorillas, and 96.4% with orangutans.

Actually, the Spanish Socialists aren't that dumb you know. Consider it a strategic move to counter the catastrophic demographic evolution in Spain, where the spermatozoid falls mainly in the abysmalvoid. After granting chimpanzees, gorillas et al human rights, why not grant 'em voting rights and make them full citizens of Espana to neutralize the senoritas' somewhat off-kilter fertility rate of 1.1 kiddie per lifetime? Actually, when I look at some members of Zapaterlains gumint, to say nothing of Bambi himself, I wonder whether those sneaky bastards aren't trying to get their bill passed post factum.



This is MFBB reporting for DowneastBlog in Europe, the biggest Open Air Funny Farm in the Vhurld. Only the lunatics are in charge and the sane ones get locked up.



MFBB.


P.S.: credits for the photos: the one of Mr. Belien as well as the one of Jozef De Witte is from Luc Van Braekel's website, LVB.net. Luc is, as you may know, TBJ's webmaster. By coincidence he has a post right now about the CEOOR and its latest campaign, "Dirty Hetero". The pic with the gorilla and the bonobo in front of The Tower Bridge I got via LGF, and the Zapatero photo below is from Barcepundit.

THE INQUISITION AND PAUL BELIEN.

Brussels Central Station is, as its name implies, a busy node in Belgium’s railway network. On working days, some 140,000 plus government employees, businessmen, EU cadres, tourists et al pass through its Central Hall, and at any given time there’s easily hundreds of people present. On April 12, 2006 one of them was 17-year old Joe Van Holsbeeck, who, together with a friend and while listening to his mp3-player, was waiting for a girlfriend. At some point two young males approached them. After some chit-chat one of them grabbed Joe’s mp3-player, which Joe instantly tried to take back. Thereupon the thief suddenly pulled out a knife and violently stabbed the young man five times, after which he and his accomplice disappeared in the crowd. Young Joe Van Holsbeeck, who received one stab just near the heart, died at 21.00h in the Saint-Peter Hospital. Even though I feel that highlighting this murder is necessary in order to explain some of what is going on in Belgium, I can't get rid myself of the feeling that I am not honoring Joe's remembrance in the appropriate way. Forgive me for that.

Vicious crimes like that are – luckily – still relatively rare in Belgium. But theft, robbery, rape, damaging property, carjacking, steaming, you name it, is rampant. Unfortunately, the majority of these crimes are committed by young North African second- or third-generation immigrants. In Belgium, that means Moroccan youths. It should come as no surprise then that around 60% of inmates in Belgian prisons are not from native Belgian origin, the majority of them from the so-called Maghreb countries - Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia. In order to keep the multicultural dream alive, Belgian MSM tries very hard to shuffle this unpleasant reality under the carpet, and if any ethnicity of the perpetators does come out, there’s always a heir of psychologists and university profs at the ready to be interviewed to explain that the main cause of the higher criminality rates is “kansarmoede” – literally “chance poverty", or lack of possibilities [to succeed in our society]. Personally, I would certainly not dismiss the race factor, and I even think that latent racism in Europe is (much) bigger than in the States.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that in my opinion, the root cause for social exclusion among young North Africans lies in their own culture. While a lot can be said about European racism vs (especially) muslim immigrants, the topic of the very real reciproke racism is taboo. Young arab males in, say, Amsterdam, consider themselves some kind of Herrenvolk vis-à-vis the native youths, whom they regard not only as kafirs, but also as weak and decadent. And while a lot can be said about a lack of job opportunities for immigrants, why is it that mentioning the lack of work ethics among immigrants is not done? Listen, it is an established fact that tax controllers in Brussels are threatened when they put their nose too deep in the books of (bleep) shops. It is a sorry truth that the notorious VAT carrousels are most often found in (bleep) businesses. Hey, I meet employers who complain about shaky absent minded workers of (bleep) ethnicity during Ramadan. I am very sorry, but I MUST mention that the value of a handshake to seal a deal means jack shit in (bleep) communities. Likewise, it IS true that appointments are not kept and bills not paid the way they should when Belgians do commerce with certain (bleep) nationalities. I DO regret to mention, but I feel I MUST, that teachers in schools with a lot of adolescents of (bleep) origin, burn out in a couple of years. And so on and so on and so on, ad nauseum. I hear and see too much to not suspect some real Big Kernel of Truth in certain allegations. I wish it were different, I truly do. But I have to conclude it is not. Period.

To cut a long story short, when the news of Joe Van Holsbeeck's murder broke, the ethnicity of the perpetrators was not only on everyone's lips, this view was initially enhanced by a number of factors: Joe's friend thought they were North Africans; everyone who had witnessed the murder thought they were North Africans; the grainy video images released one week later showed young males apparently of North African complexity; the office of the Brussels public prosecutor accused two North Africans etc. etc. etc. Even the muslim community itself assumed they were, which says a lot about how they view themselves.

This is when Paul Belien, The Brussels Journal Chief Editor, wrote an op-ed on his site, which was subsequently copied and printed in several leading Belgian newspapers. Those of you familiar with Mr. Beliens work know that his writings are sober, well thought-out and easily readable. They also put Mr. Belien firmly in the conservative camp, something quite inappropriate in "Old" Europe and also the reason why he is not on the payroll of any of Belgium's newspapers and/or magazines. He is, after all, that fascist from the Wall Street Journal, you know. It also doesn't help that Mr. Belien is the only Belgian journalist to have acquired name and reputation on yonder side of the Atlantic, and it certainly doesn't help either that he is married, has five (yes, FIVE) children and - the horror - has the audacity to call himself a Christian.

Mr. Beliens op-ed was titled "Gives us weapons" and for once, presumably because of the gruesome murder, unusually emotional. The Belgian Thought Police has now forced him to remove it, but MFBB has the key excerpts for you:

... The predators have teeth and claws. The predators have knives. As children, they have learned at the yearly sacrificial feast how to cut the throat of warmblooded animals. We get sick when we see blood, but they don't. They are trained, they are armed. [...] We are the herd-animals, they are the beasts of prey. The herd-animals themselves have allowed the beasts of prey in their biotope. [...] Maybe our indifference is most characterized by the fact that we let the parents of the underage, murdering criminals alone, that we continue to let them benefit from our social security, that we do not destroy their houses and do not deport them as a punishment for the criminal offspring they have planted in our midst.... It is [also] the authorities, the police, the government, the church which is indifferent... [...] In a democratic state the government must protect the citizens against the predators. If the state cannot or will not carry out this function, the citizens have the right to arm themselves. Whe who goes to Brussels without pepperspray is a fool. [...] He who counts on politics for his protection is as good as dead.

I have decided to post as many excerpts from Mr. Beliens column as I could still gather left and right, with the inevitable result that I dishonour the author's flowing prose. A collection like above sounds somewhat like a rambling hatefest, but I can assure you that in its complete original form it was a powerful piece of prose. Now, those of you familiar with Mr. Beliens work will conclude that it was a very emotional post, and if you are unaware of certain aspects of Belgium's wonderfully multicultural diversity you may think it's on the brink of a hatefest. But keep in mind that at the time it was written the author was still assuming - like everyone else - that the perpetrators were North Africans and that the majority of crimes in Belgium is committed by people from that community - it's a naked fact.


But there is more. See e.g. how he emphasizes the muslim religious ritual of slaughtering "warm blooded animals" - sheep. Well, I don't know if you got these chaps in the States too, but over here we have this outfit which calls itself GAIA and which is an organization coming up for animal's rights. Now hold it, you can be absolutely sure the guys and gals flocking to such organizations stand a much better chance to belong to the Lefto Fruitcake Department than to appear on The Weekly Standard's subscription list. And I would rate chances that they are Bush aficionados about as likely as McCain becoming POTUS in 2008. But when it comes to stop unnecessary suffering of animals, I'm quite sympathetic. I'm not a vegetarian - guess I'll never be, since nature obviously mades us omnivores and I'm not contemplating to go against that. But I fully agree that when animals have to be slaughtered for human consumption, precautions should be taken that they die without suffering.

Well, guess what? On January 10, 2006 GAIA demonstrated in front of the office of the Muslim Executive, the organization supposed to perform a liasion function between the Belgian government and the Muslim community here. A club of jolly good fellows, btw. The reason? Every year the Muslim slaughterfest turns out to be a horrific bloodbath. Belgian law forbids illegal slaughtering, and every year provides for several large-scale facilities where muslims can legally cut sheep throats. Belgian natives breaking the law face severe penalties. Not so the Belgian Muslim community however: the notorious Brussels Parti Socialiste bigshot Emir Kir estimates that only one in ten of the sheep slaughtered during Ramadan meet their end in one of the fancy Belgian State compounds. Oh, and Belgian law dictates too that the animals have to be anaesthetized - too bad for our foor-footed friends when they meet their ends at the hands of true fidels. Likewise, Belgian law forbids that the sheep's paws are tied. Funny, I read about a GAIA guy who witnessed the arrival of a bunch of paw-tied wool suppliers in Ronse, objected to it and was threatened physically. Yeeeeeeeaaaaah, tell me all about it.

Where was I? Oh yeah, GAIA protesting in front of the Muslim Executive's HQ. It was a nice show, see pic. Several of the placards read: "Muslim Executive, Respect The law". On others was written: "Illegal slaughterings - the Muslim Executive is responsible". Reaction of the Muslim Executive: the week later they sued GAIA for "inciting to racial hatred and religious uproar". Now is it just me or are there elsewhere people who have noticed that when muslims in western countries are demanded they respect the laws and customs of the country involved, increasingly turn to using that country's legal apparatus to silence the objectors?

Are you still following? Amazing. So, Mr. Belien was apparently very pissed off by yet another perceived act of criminality from the (bleep) corner and blew off some steam via his keyboard. The way I see it, what really pissed of the PC crowd over here, is that he dared to say that if the state cannot protect its citizens, they have the right to defend themselves. In EUtopia, where the State officially replaces God that is BLASPHEMY!!!

Shocker, one week later.

The perps were not North Africans.

They were Poles.

Stormclouds gathering over Paul Belien. Oh yes, over that evil collection of Vlaams Belang Nazi stormtroopers too, but we'll come to that later.

Yet another shocker.

On May 11, almost exactly one month after the gruseome Joe Van Holsbeeck killing, 18-year old Hans Van Themsche shaved his head bald, bought a gun, ventured on Antwerps streets, shot and gravely injured a woman of Turkish descent and killed a two-year old white toddler and her 24-year old nanny from Mali. It was a horrible crime which shocked the entire country. Very soon the press found out that Hans Van Themsche's father helped fund the Vlaams Blok and that he had an aunt who is an MP for the Vlaams Blok's successor, the Vlaams Belang. And all hell broke loose. It did not help that the perpetrator himself was not a member and did not even attend VB meetings. The Vlaams Belang was the culprit and the origin of a climate of hate which made young men like Van Themsche act against foreigners in such callous ways.

There is a lot to be told about this story and I will try to elaborate on it later, but one thing at a time. Suffice to say that right now the Vlaams Belang is under attack from all directions, and the authorities have finally found a big stick to clobber it to death. Last Friday, the Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht even went as far as to say that those who voted for Vlaams Belang bear responsibility too for the murder in Antwerp. Personally, despite the fact that the madman shot a white baby too, I would indeed describe the crime as a racist act. Is the VB responsible? In my opinion, no. The party's discourse is polite. To claim that it calls for murdering foreigners, as many in Belgium now do, is insane. What it does do, is point to really grave problems caused by immigrants and denounce that nothing is done about it. But are racists inside the VB responsible? I would answer that a "possible" or "yes". Remember, I have never denied that the VB has murky origins. Even though I would describe the party today as "clean" and its leadership as decent I will not be so foolish as to claim that there are no white supremacists with evil views. Young Hans van Themsche may have been influenced by these people. But I will never, NEVER accept that the party itself is responsible, and intend to provide solid proof on this blog that their discourse does NOT exhort to violence against foreigners.

But back to Paul Belien. How the VB is now beleagured from all sides would be a bridge too far within the context of this post, how Mr. Belien is prosecuted may just seem doable yet at the end of a long story. As I wrote earlier, Mr. Belien has been forced to remove his post, see quotes above, from The Brussels Journal. A number of good posts circulate in te blogosphere about this scandalous event, amongst others one from fellow Belgian blogger Maarten Schenk over at Live from Brussels, but a real good short and telling one can be found at the excellent French blog No Pasaran:

Paul Belien, social and polical commentator and blogger is being attacked for his opinions and analysis. Today Father Johan Leman, a Catholic priest of the Order of Saint Dominic (the inquisition order) and a professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, has joined the chorus. Father Leman is the previous president of the CEOOR (Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism), the inquisition center of the Belgian government. In today’s news broadcast on the national radio he says that the CEOOR has been negligent because it has not already started prosecutions against me.

Mr. Belien is being threatened with prosecution under the law for supposedly being part of a neo-con conspiracy, led by Daniel Pipes (whom until then he had no contact with) and the Danish journalist Flemming Rose who became known for publishing the Muhammad cartoons. They are accused of wanting “to anger radical but also moderate Muslims into violent action.”

In short non-conformity is attracting what amounts to offending the thought police. It is Cuba with crappy weather along with a priest - a sort of liberation theology type - who has no problem taking orders from a rather more earthly accomodation to human failings rather than taking wrong to be wrong, and right to be right. All drawn through a non-moral process motivated entirely by turning the other cheek, without it ever becoming an example of resolution or an demonstration of grace. The don't want to reason with anyone - they want him in the dock for not thinking like they do.

In other words, the law is being used to silence speech, and to promote the narrowing of the parameters of discussion as it relates to any notion the left backs.

In 1567, Philip II, son of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V, who was a zealous prosecutor of Protestants, sent the notorious Duke of Alva into the Netherlands at the head of a 10,000 strong army, with unlimited powers for the extirpation of heretics. Upon arrival he instantly erected a tribunal which soon became known to its victims as the Blood Council, to try all persons deemed as such. During the six years of his reign, between 6,000 and 18,000 people were executed for the mere fact of dissenting with his Uebercatholic Majesty Philip II. Alva imprisoned the counts Egmont and Hoorn, the two popular leaders of the dissatisfied Dutch nobles, and had them decapitated even though they were opposed to the Protestants.

450 years later, we have luckily not yet returned to the point where those who dare to oppose the True Faith are beheaded - if you exclude certain theaters in the Middle East and the occasional slaughtering of Dutch dissenters. But it is certain we are already down a very slippery road to such an extent that those who dare to contradict the dogmas of the Politically Correct cabals are silenced. Today, a man is forced to remove his opinion under threat of prosecution so that others cannot take notice of it anymore. Think about that opinion and its wording what you want, but the author does have points. Is it too premature to assume that in 10 years, one gets imprisoned for the same facts? And is it too premature to assume that when Europe will indeed have become Eurabia - God forbid - that person will be brought to death?

Given the fact that even church authorities in Europe are now pandering to the demands of islam, and an overwhelmingly leftist establishment almost happy to fulfill the dhimmi role, one can only hope that the West's only strategic game to avert the global danger of militant islam - the US led enterprise to install democracy by force in the muslim world - will succeed. Don't count on the UN. Much less the EU. Count on the GI.


MFBB.

HAPPY ARMED FORCES DAY!!!

To everybody who is serving, or has served, in whatever branch of the US Armed Forces, be it Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force or God knows what: thank you, and congratulations with your outstanding accomplishments! I sleep better because I know you are out there.




Your sacrifices are not in vain, nor will they be forgotten. God bless America.


MFBB

PRELUDE

Some background and some facts.

Belgium will have municipal elections in October 2006. All through fall 2005 and spring 2006, polls showed a consistent surge in the support for the Vlaams Belang, Flanders (and Belgium’s) biggest party. Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), founded in 1977 as Vlaams Blok (Flemish Bloc), is only kept from power through a colourful but increasingly ineffective hodgepodge coalition of all other parties, a shaky construction dubbed the cordon sanitaire. That does not mean that the VB is the sole opposition and all other parties are in government. It does mean, however, that government and opposition parties alike have agreed among each other never to cooperate with Vlaams Belang, this on the grounds that the VB is a racist, xenophobic and hatemongering party. The hidden, bigger truth is that the VB is to be kept from power because one of its goals is an independent Flanders – which is the real explanation why the most ardent adversaries of the VB are the Wallonian parties, especially the Parti Socialiste (statistically, every last one of Flanders 6 million inhabitants yearly pays some 2,000 EUR – roughly 2,200 US$ - to keep the Wallonian semi-communist state afloat) and, naturally, the Belgian royals – for obvious reasons! To explain why the VB is indigestible for the Flemish socialists is that it is pro-family, pro-life, anti-gay marriage, anti-gay adoption, anti-immigration AND that it has a relatively strong Catholic wing, counting a.o. party heavyweights like MP’s Gerolf Annemans and Irish born Alexandra Colen – the journalist Paul Belien's wife.

It is true, as I have said before on this blog, that the origins of the VB are murky. It saw the light in 1977 as a house of malcontents leaving another, now defunct Flemish nationalist party, the Volksunie (People's Union). One cannot deny that those were the streetfighting days, nor that Flemings sympathetic to Nazism found shelter in it. How did this come about? Within the Belgian federal framework, right up to this very day, Flemings have ALWAYS been second-rate citizens – even though rich Flanders, now with a GDP almost as big as Sweden’s – provides the real horsepower for the Belgian economy. Not without some justification, one might joke that the Flemings were/are Belgium’s Shiites, while the Walloons were/are Belgium’s Sunnis. The struggle for recognition of the rich culture of Flanders and its language, Flemish (which relates to Dutch like American English relates to British English) inside a francophone Belgique has been long and hard, and on two occasions important organizations of Flemish activists have, in vain hopes of getting from under the Wallonian yoke, sided with a party they should have avoided: the German invader, both in World War I and in World War II. In 1914-1918 the German occupier had his Flamenpolitik, promising a degree of Flemish independence and a.o. a Flemish University in Gent. In 1940-1944 the Germans went further and extracted apart from political cooperation military cooperation: enough Flemings were drafted to finally form a Waffen SS infantry division, the 27th Waffen Grenadier “Langemarck”. In both conflicts, opportunistic Flemish populists got themselves used for unsavoury purposes for a bait, Flemish self-rule, which all to soon proved illusory – the German yoke simply replaced the Wallonian, and it was much worse. The awakening after the armistices in 1918 and 1945 was hard, and left the country with a body of embittered Flemish nationalist outcasts.

In the seventies, such various groups of Flemish Eastern Front veterans – tough men who had seen the endless steppes and proudly worn the typical shoulder patches with the Flemish Lion on a Feldgrau sleeve, almost inevitably flocked to the new political formation promising once more glory for Flanders: the Vlaams Blok, as it was called then and until 2004, when the party was banned by Belgium's politically correct establishment and it quickly had to take another identity as the Vlaams Belang.

But whether they went to Russia to fight Bolshevism or not, whether they were proud Flemings or not, I am sorry to say that among these men were convinced Nazis too, and they left their mark on the young formation. They were not in a majority position, but they were unmistakably there. And so nazi rhetoric from time to time surfaced, as well as references to white supremacy and contempt if not hatred of other races. Needless to say, back in those days I would never have joined the VB. But as time went by and problems caused by immigration could no longer be ignored nor explained by native racism – in other words, those problems also had, and have, their origin in a deliberate refusal of (part of) the immigrant community to assimilate – the VB gained credibility. And while it was long really only a two-theme party – Flemish Independence and anti-immigration – it gradually acquired enough political maturity to have a say in other socio-economic matters. Figures of much greater intellectual and moral standing, sick and tired of the left’s self-deprecating discourse packed in woolly messages, gravitated to the party. At the turn of the millennium, the VB had in the eyes of many, certainly Joe Average in the street, gained sufficient decency and credibility to partake in Belgium’s political life. Which is why polls reveal time and again that the average Fleming, even though he keeps voting for other parties such as the VLD or the Christian Democratic CD & V, has no objection to VB co-governance in some federal or regional coalition. It’s the leaders of those and other parties, self-declared True Democrats, who stubbornly keep ignoring "the will of the people".

I have long been a member of the once center-right liberal party VLD, pro free market, but with a rather loose attitude on ethical matters. When in 2004 this party not really objected to granting non-Belgian citizens the right to vote in municipal elections I broke with it, and joined the VB - the vets here may remember that. In The Netherlands too, the Lunatic Left granted this right to people who do not even WANT to acquire Dutch citizenship, and the result is that the ever shrinking native Dutch populations in Hollands big cities – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, now find themselves de facto under foreign rule. In Belgium, with 10.3 million people vs Hollands 16 million, we do not have such powerful concentrations in the cities yet – but the critical treshold is approaching and islands of Islamic self-rule, like Molenbeek, are an established fact. Everybody knows the tipping point is approaching – the Socialists know it, and actually they count on the immigrant vote to replace the lost votes of native working-class Belgians, their traditional electoral base, whose votes went either to the VB in Flanders or to the Front National in Wallonia. The VB knows it too, which makes it literally a race against time for the party to become strong enough to force the other parties to abandon the Cordon Sanitaire and weigh on decisionmaking, e.g. by reversing the municipal voting rights.



Not only has the VB profiled itself over the years as pro-family and pro-life – its ads frequently show families consisting of married moms and dads (wedding rings!) plus a few kids, it is also a strong proponent of a Flemish Leitkultur. Put simply, the VB is very hunky dory with immigrants preferring, say, couscous over Belgian fries at home – but the Flemish National Anthem, Vlaanderen de Leeuw, will always be sung in Flemish, NOT in Moroccan. This too, this flat rejection of multiculturalism, has earned the VB the hatred of not only the leftist parties and the centrist parties who have more or less submitted to the false mantra of multiculturalism, but also of the media, the unions, and the gazillion of socio-economic government-installed organizations meant to “reach out” to the poor oppressed categories of unwilling-to-learn-Flemish-even-though-living-here-for-forty-years immigrants.

To cut a long story short, for the truly overwhelmingly leftist Belgian political, cultural, and educational scene the Vlaams Belang is THE DEVIL INCARNATED. State-owned television regularly offers “enlightened” profs and various “intellectuals” forums to explain to the brave but oh-so-dumb Belgian why this party should be abolished. The written media have over the decades become leftist bulwarks to the extent that even business publications like the once renowned Financieel-Economische Tijd are now infested with anti-globalization aficionados and overripe May 68-ers.

It’s against this backdrop that you have to understand the mood among these groups as the prospects for yet another brilliant VB victory in the fall elections seemed excellent. In early April 2006, all parties other than the VB began to seriously feel the heat, and here and there mayors, fearing unworkable town and city councils, began to speak out against the cordon sanitaire, only to be rebuffed violently by their party chiefs. With mounting anger and frustration, the Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, whose coalition of liberals and socialists accumulated scandals upon blunders took notice of the ever stronger showing of the VB in regular polls.

Then came, in mid-April 2006, the Joe Van Holsbeeck murder.



MFBB

STATE OF THE UNION.

Just a quick post. I'm sorry, but I just don't feel in the mood for an elaborate one.

a.) NORWAY:

Previous center-right government shoved aside. Now being run by an insane collection of Leftists, Greens and extreme leftists under PM Jens Stoltenberg. Openly anti-Israel, openly submitting to radical islam inside Norway itself.

b.) FRANCE:

Crumbling. Current government racked by scandals and impotence.

c.) THE NETHERLANDS:

Unbelievable, but turning even more to the left. Of course, this move is to a large extent explained by the immigrant votes, which go overwhelmingly to leftist parties. They just managed to chase Ayaan Hirsi Ali away, in September she comes your way. Islamist organisations and leftist parties are trumpeting this as a victory.

d.) SPAIN:

Socialist government trying to pass a bill that will give human rights to apes. On the brink of regularizing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. Fertility down to 1.1 child per woman.

e.) DENMARK:
Bastion of sanity. Unfortunately, Denmark is but a small country.

f.) ITALY:

Now under an (ex?) communist PM, Romano Prodi. Senate Chairman is a communist. President is an (ex?) communist.

g.) GERMANY:

Shaky center-right government. Delicate balance between socialists and centrist christian democrats.

h.) BELGIUM:

Now rapidly turning into a DDR-state. Currently a witch hunt against the Vlaams Belang party is in full swing. Serious attempts to cut off its finances, it is even considered by some parties to outlaw the party altogether. A gruseome double murder case by a skinhead is used in a grisly way to put the blame on the VB. I have never, NEVER before witnessed such a level of vile machiavellism. Not feeling sure for my safety myself.

i.) THE UK:

Tony Blair under great pressure even from within his own party. In the lcal elections the conservative party under new leader David Cameron scored quite well, but the guy is a closet greenie. If Blair quits next year, forget your ally. All over the UK, hundreds of AQ individuals and cells are waiting to come into action.


All over Europe, the alliance between the left and Islam becomes ever more clear. In my own country I am dumbstruck that high church officials have opened the churches to mainly muslim asylum seekers, who promptly turn the churches into mosques. Necessary reforms in Social Security to make the industry competitive again are thwarted by the all-powerful unions. Population aging dramatically, never before has fertility been so low. Faith has gone. Unassimilating muslim masses gaining control of the streets.

For God's sake, keep America strong. Don't let the left win. Support your president.

KEEP THE LEFT FROM POWER!



MFBB

I'm sorry, but the events in Europe as a whole and in my own country in particular are extremely depressing.

HEY CHIVERS, HAVEN'T YOU FORGOTTEN SOMETHING?

This is again a couple of days old, learned about it via LGF naturellement, and it blew me such that I felt I had to spill some words on it. I'm talking about that Zarqawi blooper video, which most of us have seen, isn't it? If you haven't yet, here is the link. Zarkman being unable to operate a SAW is one thing. But reading how a NYT correspondent, C.J. Chivers, runs to his defense is another. I couldn't believe it. And the guy - Chivers - is even a former Marine! The following is an excerpt from hisarticle in the New York Times:

Not All See Video Mockery of Zarqawi as Good Strategy

By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: May 6, 2006

An effort by the American military to discredit the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by showing video outtakes of him fumbling with a machine gun — suggesting that he lacks real fighting skill — was questioned yesterday by retired and active American military officers.
...
The American military, which said it captured the videotapes in a recent raid, released selected outtakes in an effort to undermine MISTER Zarqawi’s image as leader of the Council of Holy Warriors, formerly Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and suggested that his fighting talents and experience were less than his propaganda portrays. But several veterans of wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, as well as active-duty officers, said in telephone interviews yesterday that the clips of MISTER Zarqawi’s supposed martial incompetence were unconvincing.
The weapon in question is complicated to master, and American soldiers and marines undergo many days of training to achieve the most basic competence with it. Moreover, the weapon in MISTER Zarqawi’s hands was an older variant, which makes its malfunctioning unsurprising. The veterans said MISTER Zarqawi, who had spent his years as a terrorist surrounded by simpler weapons of Soviet design, could hardly have been expected to know how to handle it.
...

Golly yeah, MISTER Zarqawi. Good God. The way that Chivers guy is talking about Al Qaeda in Iraq's ceo makes you wonder what they put in the coffee machines over at the New York Times. Now, I ain't a Marine and I never operated a SAW, or, I'm sorry to say, whatever gun anyway - although that may change soon. But what I do know is that Z-Man is the guy who ordered his creeps to blow themselves up among schoolchildren - amongst others - and Jesus, when it comes to using the prefix "Mr." for adressing members of that motley crew of Baathists, Sadrists, Badrists, al Qaedists and other sadists, Mr. Baghdad Bob is about the sole individual I'm willing to bestow the honor. Well guess what Mr. Chivers? Luckily for MISTER Zarqawi there are other weapons which are less complicated to master, and even though they are old, when they malfunction it's actually surprising. I'm talking about rusty scimitars e.g.. Like the one a compatriot of yours, Mr. Nick Berg from Philadelphia, was beheaded with. Guess you had forgotten about that when you talked about Zarkman the way you'd talk about your son-in-law.


MFBB.

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.