ESA ALIVE AND KICKING.

Once upon a time there was a small, shy boy with far too big glasses who screwed up completely in sports, blew math and got scared shitless by females. By and large, it was books which got him through this quagmire, and one of the authors whose works he devoured was a noble French gentleman, alas long deceased. That boy was your servant, and that gentleman was Jules Gabriel Verne, the Father of Modern Science Fiction. Among the books that left the deepest impression on me were Michael Strogoff (1876), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), and especially From the Earth to the Moon (1865). Recalling how fascinating - and credible - Verne's fiction still was more than a century after it was written, one wonders how the sheer novelty of these fantastic stories must have been received, and perceived, in the author's days. And what made him do it? What inspired him? After all, this son to an attorney who was born in the busy western French port of Nantes in 1828, wrote about space exploration when the first flight of an aeroplane was still a half century away. He predicted gas-powered automobiles, skyscrapers built of glass and steel, high-speed trains, helicopters and even the Internet (a worldwide "telegraphic" communications network) while very little, if anything, hinted at the advent of these technological wonders. The accuracy of his predictions sometimes reached an uncanny level, such as when NASA chose to launch its rockets from Cape Canaveral, 130 miles from the supposed building site (Tampa Town)of the Supergun in Verne's lunar voyage novel. Not to mention that the Apollo 11 capsule came down only miles from where the manned bullet landed in the book. The power of Verne's imagination reverberates through the decades, leading to the US Navy baptising its first nuclear submarine after Captain Nemo's Nautilus from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, contemporary authors borrowing from his ideas (e.g. James Rollins in his novel Subterranean, 1999), providing inspiration for famous 20th-century explorers and scientists, like William Beebe, Admiral Byrd, Robert Goddard...

... and ESA, the European Space Agency, naming its first-ever genuine spacecraft the Jules Verne. Indeed, on March 9, 2008, a powerful Ariane V rocket lifted the 20.7 tonne ATV-001, as it has been coded (with ATV standing for Automated Transfer Vehicle), into space from ESA's launch base in Kourou, French Guyana, with a heavy payload of propellant, water, air and supplies for the ISS. To be sure, ATV's are unmanned cargo resupply spacecraft, but unlike lab modules like Columbus, which are incapable of independent movement, an ATV, once in orbit, can perform all the tasks - and more - of typical manned spacecraft. Given that it was the first of its series, the Jules Verne first underwent three weeks of testing before it began its rendezvous operations with the ISS, to which it finally docked on 3 April. The following video, albeit from the hacks over at the Biased Broadcasting Company, is well worth watching:





The ATVs, of which the development cost an estimated 1.35 billion EUR, are not only designed to supply the International Space Station (ISS). Another important feature is their ability to, if necessary, boost the station into a higher orbit. Four more have been ordered already, to be used until 2015, with an option for a further two. The small number implies that the ATV's are meant to complement, not subsitute, the existing Russian-made Progress spacecraft, of which it has three times the capacity. Like a Progress, an ATV carries both bulk liquids and relatively fragile freight, stored in a pressurized shirt sleeve environment in a cargo section so that astronauts can have access to it without having to put on a spacesuit. Docking to the ISS is done using two videometers and two telegoniometers built by Sodern, an EADS subsidiary. Additional (actually redundant) monitoring data is provided by a Russian-made antenna originaly designed for the Ukranian-built Kurs, an automatic docking system comparable to those used on the Progress ships and the Soyuz manned ferries. A camera mounted on the ISS's Zvezda module provides visual imagery.

Some more technical data about the ATV's: each one weighs 20.7 tonnes at launch, of which the cargo comprises 8 tonnes in various distribution schemes: up to 5.5 tonnes of dry goods like supplies, scientific payload etc), up to 840 kilograms (1,900 lb) of water, up to 100 kilograms (220 lb) of gas (nitrogen, oxygen, air) and up to 4.7 tonnes (10,000 lb) of propellant for re-boost manoeuvring and refueling the ISS. The propellant for re-boost is monomethylhydrazine (MMH, also used in the Space Shuttle) and N2O4 oxidizer. "Re-boost" in this context is the ATV's capacity to "push" the entire ISS to a higher orbit since its course gradually lowers because of atmospheric drag, even at such an altitude (!). Contrary to what one would generally assume, re-boosting is not really "pushing higher up" but an indirect process, by enhancing the ISS's speed. The resulting higher centrifugal force ensures that the orbital altitude enhances. Even when "getting higher up" is not immediately necessary to avoid "falling down", the feature enables the ISS to get out of the way of the orbital paths of space debris, of which there is more every year. On April 25, the Jules Verne pushed the 280-ton ISS 4.7 kilometers higher up in a re-boost maneuver that took 13 minutes. To this end the ATV accelerated the ISS's speed from 7,700 meters per second with just 2.67 meters per second... but it sufficed, and only two of the ATV's four main engines were needed. Re-boost manoeuvres have to be carried out periodically (about once a month) and until now this was done using that brave little workhorse of the Russians, the Progress. Actually a Progress M1, an update of the Progress M, which is in itself a descendant of the famous Soyuz spacecraft. Below you find a comparison between an ATV and the Apollo and Progress spaceships respectively.




And here is a magnificent pic (courtesy of Wikipedia, just like the drawing above) of the ISS. Visible "on top" is the ATV, coupled to Zvezda. Zvezda, meaning "star", was the first fully Russian ISS contribution, and an early "building block" (actually the third one, in July 2000). It houses some of the ISS's lifes support systems as well as living quarters for two crew members. Original Russian info on Zvezda here.





(to be continued)


MFBB

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, AUSSIE STYLE.

This is already a couple of years old, but it's still priceless. Save the planet, self-support!!!



Kevin Rudd , the blonde guy, is the fella who last year succeeded John Howard, Australia's Last Prime Minister With Balls. It is now clear to me why Australia withdrew its troops from Iraq, but at least you have to admit Butt, uh, Rudd has great hair (*). Hat tip Tizona's weblog.


MFBB.


(*) for a wussie

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH.

An excellent column by Ralph Peters. From The New York Post, May 20, 2008:

May 20, 2008 -- DO we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there? If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines. Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily.

You won't see that above the fold in The New York Times. And forget the Obama-intoxicated news networks - they've adopted his story line that the clock stopped back in 2003. To be fair to the quit-Iraq-and-save-the-terrorists media, they have covered a few recent stories from Iraq:

* When a rogue US soldier used a Koran for target practice, journalists pulled out all the stops to turn it into "Abu Ghraib, The Sequel."

Unforgivably, the Army handled the situation well. The "atrocity" didn't get the traction the whorespondents hoped for.

* When a battered, bleeding al Qaeda managed to set off a few bombs targeting Sunni Arabs who'd turned against terror, that, too, received delighted media play.

* As long as Baghdad-based journalists could hope that the joint US-Iraqi move into Sadr City would end disastrously, we were treated to a brief flurry of headlines.

* A few weeks back, we heard about another Iraqi company - 100 or so men - who declined to fight. The story was just delicious, as far as the media were concerned.

Then tragedy struck: As in Basra the month before, absent-without-leave (and hiding in Iran) Muqtada al Sadr quit under pressure from Iraqi and US troops. The missile and mortar attacks on the Green Zone stopped. There's peace in the streets....

...Remember the Kurds? Our allies in northern Iraq? When last sighted, they were living in peace and building a robust economy with regular elections, burgeoning universities and municipal services that worked. After Israel, the most livable, decent place in the greater Middle East is Iraqi Kurdistan. Wouldn't want that news getting out. If the Kurds would only start slaughtering their neighbors and bombing Coalition troops, they might get some attention. Unfortunately, there are no US or allied combat units in Kurdistan for Kurds to bomb. They weren't needed. And (benighted people that they are) the Kurds are pro-American - despite the virulent anti-Kurdish prejudices prevalent in our Saudi-smooching State Department.

Developments just keep getting grimmer for the MoveOn.org fan base in the media. Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who had supported al Qaeda and homegrown insurgents, now support their government and welcome US troops. And, in southern Iraq, the Iranians lost their bid for control to Iraq's government. Bury those stories on Page 36.

Our troops deserve better. The Iraqis deserve better. You deserve better. The forces of freedom are winning. Here in the Land of the Free, of course, freedom of the press means the freedom to boycott good news from Iraq. But the truth does have a way of coming out. The surge worked. Incontestably. Iraqis grew disenchanted with extremism. Our military performed magnificently. More and more Iraqis have stepped up to fight for their own country. The Iraqi economy's taking off. And, for all its faults, the Iraqi legislature has accomplished far more than our own lobbyist-run Congress over the last 18 months. When Iraq seemed destined to become a huge American embarrassment, our media couldn't get enough of it. Now that Iraq looks like a success in the making, there's a virtual news blackout. Of course, the front pages need copy. So you can read all you want about the heroic efforts of the Chinese People's Army in the wake of the earthquake.

Tells you all you really need to know about our media: American soldiers bad, Red Chinese troops good...

From The Washington Post, January 30, 2007:

WASHINGTON -- Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said Tuesday U.S. combat forces should be out of Iraq by spring 2008 to end "a foreign policy disaster" but he stopped short of endorsing a cutoff in funds.

Spring 2008 has come and gone. Just imagine that one year ago Senator Obama's plan would have been implemented and the combat forces would have been out of Iraq.


From Sen. Obama's website, June 6, 2008:

THE PROBLEM.
The Surge: The goal of the surge was to create space for Iraq's political leaders to reach an agreement to end Iraq's civil war. At great cost, our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006. Moreover, Iraq's political leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of their civil war.

PART 1 OF SEN. OBAMA'S PLAN: BRINGING OUR TROOPS HOME.
Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

Violence in Iraq has never been so low since 2004. Political reconciliation is a fact. Firebrand clerics are on the run. Al Qaeda has been defeated. The Iraqi Army is finally able to conduct operations without US backup.


Do you really want Barack Obama for President?

Really?


MFBB.

1001 STORIES OF NIGHT SETTING IN OVER EURABIA.

In early March 2008, Belgian newspapers broke the news that Abdelkader Belliraj (photo), a dangerous terrorist with dual Belgian/Moroccan citizenship, had been arrested in Morocco on February 18 on charges of involvement in an islamist terror circle. The group had links to other islamist and/or terrorist groups such as Moroccan Chabiba Islamiya (Islamic Youth), Moroccan Revolutionary Islamic Movement, the Mujahidine Movement in Morocco, Al Haraka Min Ajli Al Umma (Movement for the Ummah) etc etc. What has this all to do with Belgium? Simple. It appears that Belliraj had been on the payroll of the Belgian State Security for twenty years. In Morocco, Belliraj confessed to six murders he carried out in Belgium between 1986 and 1989. The first was a certain Raoul Schouppe, a grocer who held shop in the neighborhood of Brussels South Station. Belliraj, who frequented this shop, killed Schouppe "because he looked Jewish". Another victim was a 53-year old gay man, Marc Bille, who had apparently tried to proposition Belliraj. The victim's body, with a shot under the ear, was found in Braine-le-Chateau in Walloon Brabant. Then it was the turn of Abdullah al-Ahdal, the rector of the Grand Mosque in the Cinquantenaire Park in Brussels, and his secretary, Tunisian-born Salim el-Beher. They were considered too liberal for Belliraj since they had criticized the fatwa issued by Khomeini over Salman Rushdie, author of 'The Satanic Verses'. They were shot in the head on March 30, 1989. Later that year, on October 3, Belliraj murdered 48-year old Joseph Wybran, the president of the co-ordination committee of Jewish organisations in Belgium (CCOJB) and head of the immunology department at Erasme Hospital in Anderlecht, Brussels. Around the same time, Belliraj killed number 4, said to be the Egyptian chauffeur to the Saudi ambassador in Brussels. Belliraj's motif for the murder: the lukewarm reaction of Saudi Arabia to Khomeinis's Rushdie fatwa. Apparently Belliraj was already an informant of the Belgian State Security while he carried out some of these murders. Following Belliraj's arrest in Morocco, Belgian police interrogated his landlord, Brahim L. Brahim L. rented Belliraj a comfortable house (photo) in Evergem, in the province of East Flanders. The landlord, who is a koranic teacher in Ghent, denies any knowldge about Mr. Bellirajs activities. By contrast, Chakib Benmoussa, Moroccan Interior Minister, said that it was obvious that Belgian authorities "knew about" Abdelkader Belliraj and his activities. He claimed that Belliraj had resided in Afghanistan in 2001, where he would reportedly have met met Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy leader of Al Qaeda.




Anderlecht, Brussels, January 2, 2006. Willy Roobaert (52), having missed the last tram from the Hallepoort to the Beurs (Brussels Stock Exchange), asks and gets a lift from four youths in a black Opel Kadett. The "youths" are Khalid Hamui (23), Bilal Bouquersa (21), Ridouan Hmidou Lamarti (20) and Mohamed El Hakkouni (23), four Moroccans with Belgian passports. Great is Mr. Roobaert's surprise when the Opel doesn't stop at the Beurs, but instead continues towards an open field near the Navezstraat. There they take his money and his cell phone and ask for his credit card's pin code. When Mr. Roobaert refuses, blows start to fall. Mercilessly the four "youths" beat the man up. Already blind to one eye because of an accident with an air gun in his youth, a fatal blow to the other eye blinds the man completely - and for the rest of his life. After some time, he is left alone for dead, bathing in blood. After one hour in the winter cold, a police patrol luckily finds him. Somehow the four young criminals - not unknown to the police - are rounded up. In what is actually an enigma given the fact that most young Morroccan criminals are left free because of a shortage of cells, the four have to stand for trial. Then finally, two weeks ago the Brussels Assisenhof condems the four to 15 years imprisonment. This is actually far less severe than it appears. The Lejeune Law, named after the socialist MP who introduced it, provides for the early release of detainees after having served one third of their sentence, on condition of good behavior in prison. A famous personage who benefited from the Lejeune Law was Marc Dutroux, the serial rapist and killer who placed Belgium on the map in 1996. In the late eighties he had been convicted to a sentence of 13 years for the rape of six girls. After his early release he picked up his career again, which ended a.o. in the rape, and subsequent death in a horror room in the cave of his house, of the teenagers Julie Lejeune (!), Melissa Russo, An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks. Two other victims who had been abused in the dungeon were rescued, barely alive. But back to our Moroccan youths. When the judge read the verdict, the relatives of the perpetrators, massively present in the courtroom, started a brawl for so much injustice. The men blasted the Belgian judicial system, the women started to cry. A sister of Ridouan Lamarti fainted (or pretended to faint?) and was evacuated by ambulance. Insults were hurled at Mr. Roobaerts' lawyer, Meester Amaury De Craecker, of which really the nicest one was "Are you pleased with the result now? Are your proud of yourself???" Finally, security personnel had to intervene and evacuate the courtroom.



From the daily "Het Nieuwsblad", April 22, 2008. Two police vehicles on patrol in Anderlecht were shot at thursday evening with an air gun. This happened shortly before 7pm on the Bergensesteenweg. The patrolling cars just passed a group of around ten youths [The Nieuwsblad is so kind to not let us know the ethnicity of the youths, but - hint - quite a few of them were named after a certain 7th century guru from a region nowadays famous for exporting oil and pilots who can't land - note by MFBB], when the lead projectiles hit the cars. When the officers got out, they were surrounded and attacked and the group of youths quickly got bigger. Two 19-year olds were arrested because they behaved very aggressively and exhorted the rest. One of them had a pepperspray can. The two are known to the police. They were transferred to the precinct. Later that evening five youths arrived in the precinct to claim the release of their friends. A 21-year old attacked an officer and was arrested too.




On May 3, 2008, a heavy Volvo SUV rams the income doors of the CORA hypermarket in Châtelineau, near Charleroi, and penetrates one hundred meters inside the complex where it busts the central counter. Eyewitnesses see Kalashnikov-toting gunmen leave the vehicle, take whatever money they can carry, board an Audi A8 limousine which had followed the Volvo in its wake and leave with screeching tyres - after having set fire to the SUV, which explodes after a while. It's a small miracle no one gets hurt, although several witnesses have to be treated for shock, so violent was the assault.



On December 4, 2007, three criminals entered a house in Lot, a small community just southwest of Brussels, with the aim of obtaining the keys of a light lorry which they thought belonged to the proprietor of the house. The pepetrators gravely wounded the latter with two bullets in the stomach and one in the leg, but in the meantime an alert neighbour had alarmed the police. Just as a police vehicle stopped in front of the house, the gangsters burst in the street and emptied an AK47 Kalashnikov on the car - 20 rounds were later counted. One officer, 22-year old Kitty Van Nieuwenhuyzen, fresh from Police Academy, was hit in the head and killed instantly. Her 27-year old colleague was gravely wounded and barely survived. The perpetrators were able to flee before backup arrived (Officer Van Nieuwenhuzen was killed in the act of calling in reinforcements). Still, enough clues were found to identify them. They were two Moroccans, Nouredin Cheikni and Hassan Lasir, and a Turk, Galip Kurum, with homebase in Charleroi, a notorious crime-ridden city in Belgium's south. They were rounded up one and a half month later, upon returning in Belgium. They had simply fled to their respective home countries to lay low but had apparently judged the coast to be clear a bit too early. Anonymous sources at the Ministry of Justice confirmed that both Lasir and Kurum had been sentenced to ten years for other grave facts in 2002 but been let free in 2006, barely four years later, because of... the Lejeune Law. The perpetrators now risk a life sentence, but it should be noted that in Belgium, life sentences are automatically transformed in 30-year sentences, which means that, if the criminals show "good conduct" in prison, they can be released as early as after... 10 years, thanks to, you guess it, the Lejeune Law. Policewoman Kitty Van Neuwenhuyzen was just a few days shy of her 23rd birthday and an only daughter. In Belgium, it is well possible that her grieving parents may encounter her killers in just ten years as free men on the street.




Amsterdam, April 28, 2008. City Councilor for the PvdA (Partij van de Arbeid, one of the two socialist Dutch parties) Yman Mahrach, of Moroccan descent, publicly states that her party should not press too much for a "moderate" islam. "The Islam and the Koran are inalterable. You are muslim or not. Homosexual sex is forbidden, that is a rule in islam, just as you cannot lie." So what's the background to the story? Two indigenous socialist councillors had written an op-ed on the "artwork" (emphasis mine) of Sooreh Hera, an Iranian-born artist. In one of her recent works Muhammad and Ali were depicted as homosexuals. While I personally do not consider this as art, I don't think it should be forbidden. I loathe Serrano's Piss Christ, but if it turns him on to put a crucifix in a jar filled with his urine, let him. But back to Miss Mahrach, whose reaction to the op-ed of her party members was rather acid: "I agree with their claim that art must be judged using art's standards, BUT this photo is insulting and does not help the dialogue. You cannot depict the prophet, especially not as a homosexual or paedophile. Moreover, the PvdA has a large following among muslims. According to Mahrach, there are better ways to debate about homosexuality. "Because there is a lot of discussion already. For instance that you cannot use violence against gays. But that homosexuality is haram, is in the Koran. It's in the Bible too. It is not up to politics to disagree with that."

Got that? FYI, in lovely multicultural Amsterdam, Madam Mahrach is the vanguard of a whole new generation of young muslim socialist politicians. These guys and gals were elected with a mandate of their voters, were sworn in on the condition that they defend the Dutch constitution.... and then "Homosexuality is forbidden because it is in the Koran." In other words, the Koran is ABOVE Dutch Constitution. Several high-ranking indigenous Dutch socialists in Amsterdam were reportedly taken aback, but I'm not holding my breadth. These guys will be run over. Btw, did you check out Miss Mahrachs three photos? Back to the Middle Ages in five years! The first one shows her as a GroenLinks militant when she was 18 years. GroenLinks (GreenLeft) is the Dutch green party, a collection of econazi's and watermelon crackpots without equal. For unclear reasons, Miss Mahrachs stint at GroenLinks didn't last long. The second photo shows her when she came up for the PvdA in the Amsterdam municipal elections, two years ago. The third photo shows her as she is now, safely possessing her PvdA seat in the Amsterdam City Council. Draw your own conclusions.



From Expatica, May 28, 2008:

AMSTERDAM - Police officers in Amsterdam are to get a special deal if they buy Dutch writer Kader Abdolah's new translation of the Qur'an. The capital's police authority reckons that the new version, designed to be more accessible to the Dutch public, will give officers more insight into Islam. It is subsidising police purchases of the book by 50 percent. A police spokesman explained that while many officers have some knowledge of the Bible, the Qur'an is often unknown territory.

Right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV) MPs are outraged by the plan, with Sietse Fritsma calling it "Islamic propaganda" and saying that public money should not be spent on it.

On Tuesday, the PVV will demand the government intervene to scrap the plan.

Hat tip Atlas Shrugs.



The borough of Anderlecht in Brussels was the scene of a small-scale ethnic war last week. Last Friday evening (May 23) extremely violent riots broke out in the streets of Brussels between Moroccan youths and supporters of football (soccer) club RSC Anderlecht. The day before, Thursday May 22, an immigrant (Moroccan) blog had called for attacks on the "white" supporters of the club, and "to burn pubs, houses and cars." Enjoy the movie.



Moroccan youths and hooligans, but especially the former category, destroyed bus stalls, damaged cars and busted shop windows. There was a hail of stones, beer bottles and even fences. The police deployed watercannons, horse charges and even pepper spray. Filip Van Laenen from The Brussels Journal notes the following: "Another interesting aspect of the story is that there is no information about the author of the inciting blog. It seems remarkable that the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR, a government body) has not yet commented on the case yet since the posting clearly must have been in violation with the Belgian anti-discrimination laws. According to the press, the word "white" was specifically mentioned in the posting. One would expect that the CEOOR would leave no stone unturned to find out who the author is and bring him to court." Meanwhile, the CEOOR, led by extreme leftist Jozef De Witte, has expressed delight at the verdict of Bart Debie, formerly a very successful young Police Chief in Antwerp, who lost his civic rights last week for a five-year period and was sentenced to one year prison effectively. One of the charges was that although he had not used racist slurs himself, he was responsible for creating an atmosphere in which his men were apt to make such slurs. What slurs? Oh, like "Here we have five lambs, the Feast of Sacrifice can begin". This upon the arrest of five members of a Turkish criminal family. You will agree with me this case deserved in fact the ICC in The Hague. In the meantime, the CEOOR somehow thinks Moroccans who exhort other Moroccans to attack 'whites' and 'burn pubs, houses and cars' are okay-dokay.





From the Vlaams Belang online magazine, March 29, 2003: Colruyt goes halal.WTF is Colruyt? Colruyt is the prime Belgian distribution chain, kind of our own Wal-Mart. Very powerful, very rich. It seems they have discovered the special needs of a certain brand of customers. VB magazine:

"Following the release of the very debatable "islamophobia" report, yet another item surfaces confirming the stealth islamization and adaptation of the West. What have we had thus far? Apart swimming hours for muslim women. Removing the Christmas trees from the Palais de Justice in Brussels. Halal food for all Antwerp schools. Halal investment funds at Fortis Bank. And now grocery chain Colruyt is going 'halal' too. An ad for meat sausages loudly proclaims the fact. "Chatar, sausage with halal meat". "Boiled sausage on the basis of poultry, prepared with 100% halal meat". And, to remove all lingering doubt: "prepared according to muslim tradition." Lng live the holy diversity! Swell is different, but as long as they do not remove pork meat, we can lve with it. However, one never knows. Some want to go very far in their efforts not to insult their islamic co-citizens."

Sorry if you just ate.

Except when it was halal.

This was Outlaw Mike, reporting from the world's biggest open-air funny farm. Although it has also some streak of Orwell's Animal Farm. More and more so, it seems.


MFBB.

MEMORIAL DAY 2008.

May 25, 2008. Memorial Day ceremony at Flanders Field American Cemetery, Waregem, Belgium. This was my first visit to the cemetery, the final resting place of 368 servicemen who died in World War I, and the smallest US cemetery in Belgium (the other ones are the Ardennes America Cemetery in Neuville-en-Condroz and the Cemetery Henri-Chapelle in Hombourg). Flanders Field AMC is basically a rectangular field covering 6.2 acres, with the white stone chapel you see on the photo in the centre. A curtain of trees and shrubbery effectively shields the place from the traffic on the adjacent roads and the activities on the industrial estate lying no more than a few hundred yards away, and lends it a solemn, tranquil and graceful atmosphere. The graves are neatly arranged on four sides, with paths leading between them towards circular retreats with stone benches and urns at three of the corners of the cemetery. The following video presents a short tour of Flanders Field American Cemetery's landscaped grounds and the architecture and interior of the chapel: Flanders Field.wmv - windows media video ( 12 MB ). Courtesy of the video the American Battle Monuments Commission.





My friend Flemish American was there, together with his wife and kids. Of the VIP's present, the most notable were Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme and US Ambassador to Belgium Sam Fox. This is what the program looked like:




FLYOVER
INVOCATION Reverend Father Frans Verhelst Dean of Waregem
AMERICAN LEGION MEMORIAL PRAYER Mr. Paul Vande Walle Jr
TRIBUTE Mr. Kürt Vanryckeghem Mayor of Waregem
TRIBUTE General Hobbins, Commander USAFEUR
TRIBUTE The Honorable Sam Fox, Ambassador of the United States of America
PRESENTATION OF THE AMVETS
MEMORIAL CARILLON
Mr. Joseph T. Kolano President AMVETS National Service Foundation
ACCEPTANCE OF THE CARILLON
DEDICATION ADDRESS
Brigadier General John W. "Jack" Nicholson Secretary, A.B.M.C.
“THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER” Waregem School Children
LAYING OF FLORAL TRIBUTES U.S. Army Garrison BeNeLux Waregem Fire Brigade
FIRING OF VOLLEYS CC Sp. Mat & Prod., Ieper, West-Vlaanderen
TAPS AND RAISING OF THE COLORS Royal Band of the Belgian Navy
“IN FLANDERS FIELDS” Miss Brianna Fitch, Brussels American School
JEWISH PRAYER Rabbi Albert Dahan
BENEDICTION Chaplain (Major) Jeff Walden
USAG BeNeLux Family Life Chaplain
BELGIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM “De Brabançonne”
AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM
“The Star Spangled Banner”, Royal Band of the Belgian Navy
RETIREMENT OF THE COLORS
PATRIOTIC HYMNS Secretary, A.B.M.C. Royal Band of the Belgian Navy

Very unfortunately, while at first the weather seemed promising, halfway through the ceremony rain started to fall. A minor nuisance at first, it gradually developed into a embarrassment for all those present, rendering the last tribute and the dedication address inaudible. Still, a group of Waregem school children started to sing the American National Anthem, the "Star Spangled Banner", a tradition since 1923. I took pictures of that, and it was really moving how these small kids, all soaked to the bone by then (why didn't the organizers think of providing more umbrellas for them) managed to sing it in full. By the time they finished, the rainfall had become a tremendous torrent (I will try to provide photos of that tomorrow). It became so bad that the children had to be whisked away in order to not let them catch a cold. Luckily, after some ten minutes had elapsed, it became a minor dribble again, and by the time it was rabbi Dahan's turn, the sun was peeking through the clouds.

After the ceremony I took a stroll along the graves. A very sobering experience. It noticed quite some soldiers from 145th Regiment, 37th Division. They came from all over the States, but many seemd to come from the state of New York. Also a few pilots from the Air Corps.

By the time I'm typing this, it's twelve past midnight, and my final thoughts on the matter are that it's quite rich to use a catchphrase like "Freedom isn't free", as some important personage did, if you don't really let sink in the truthfulness of that saying. FREEDOM-ISN'T-FREE. It's not something you should say to score at some meeting or during a debate. It's something to say standing in front of hundreds of graves with countless names of Noonans, Grzyczaks, Johnsons, Bairds, Hoffmeisters and Leishs on them. Preferably, under a darkened sky heavy with rainclouds, and being cold and soaked wet to the bone. We live in freedom, because they died. At age 18, 19 or 22. Young lives tragically cut short.

May we never, never forget. To all members of the US military, past and present, and of those other armies which liberated us: thank you for your service.


MFBB.


UPDATE: photos from the ceremony yesteday, uploaded using Flickr.



Despite the rain, a group of Waregem school children sing "The Star Spangled Banner", a tradition which began in 1923.



When the song was completed, the rain developed into a veritable torrent. Everybody was soaked wet to the bone. It's all Bush's fault.



The final resting place of John Masterson, 27th Division. He fell in August 1918.


PS: this was the first time I used Flickr for uploading and posting photos. Until now, I have been using a personal site (little more than a virtual junkyard, actually) with a maximum of 50MB for photos and other material. That limit has now been reached (actually though it's amazing how I have somehow managed to cram so many photos in it - even though I have also been stealing quite some bandwidth elsewhere). Creating a Flickr account via Yahoo! is simple as pie and all seemed cream and butter until I saw my pics above... of very poor quality now. I took them with a Nikon Coolpix 4800, 4 megapixels effectively, and my photos usually comprise between 700 and 800 kilobytes, giving a very fair resolution. If I had had that resolution over here, you'd be able to see the raindrops falling between the kids, e.g.. Or you'd be able to appreciate their teacher, who was a pretty hot woman. Now however.... the three pics above are barely 27-30kB each. Which is kind of weird, since during the uploading I could see that for the three photos a total of 2.73 MB was transferred. Which, as we see, somehow got lost. So if there's someone out there who can offer some advice to keep the quality, please spill. Thanks in advance.

REDHUNTER'S JOURNEY TO ISRAEL.

One of the neighbours, Tom from over at The Redhunter, paid a weeklong visit to Israel starting on May 1. His account of the journey is a must read:

We visited the Mount of Beatitudes, watched Israeli F-15s and 16s fly in formation over Jerusalem, contemplated Jesus agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, saw one place where David hid from Saul, went to an Independence Day concert, spoke with Israeli soldiers, swam in the Dead Sea, peered into Syria from an old Israeli fort on the Golan, and stuffed ourselves with all manner of delicacies morning, noon, and night. Oh, and the weather was perfect.

It was a fantastic trip. Nothing I write here can do justice to all that we saw and experienced, and I can only post a few of the photos. Speaking of which I took 461 photos in 7 days of touring, more than on any other trip. Thank heavens for digital photography.

The photo shows a n Israeli town in the country's north (I'd be glad if Tom could identify this town). It's a good illustration of how crowded Israel actually is. With a land area of some 21,000km² and some 7,100,000 inhabitants it has a population density in excess of 300 per km², one of the highest in the world. If you take into account that the wedge-shaped Negev desert in the south is but very sparsely populated, then you realize that life in the center and north of Israel must be very crowded indeed - especially the center. Few people realize how precarious Israels strategic position is, with its core population and main industries sharing a narrow sliver of land barely 13-15 kilometers wide (!) between the Mediterranean and the West Bank. To say that there is no strategic depth is the Mother of all Euphemisms. People elsewhere who are irritated by Israels constant clinging to its settlements in the West Bank and its reluctance to give that area wholly to the PA would do well to ponder Israels vulnerable situation, surrounded as it has been now for sixty years by untrustworthy neighbors.

Tom's account offers an interesting mix of Jewish/Christian history, fair impressions of the geography and encounters with a variety of Israeli citizens. Of particular interest to me were some remarks about Pontius Pilate and the Fort of Masada:

We'll start with this; for almost 2,000 years the doubters said that Pontius Pilate was a myth, a legend invented by Christians. There being no records in the Roman archive referring to him, Christians could only defend themselves by referring to scripture. Then, in 1961, a block of limestone was uncovered in Caesarea that referred to him, and was dated to the 1st century A.D. Once again, the scriptures were confirmed. Known as the "Pilate Stone", the original is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

This controversy, which now belongs to the past, reminds me of the bigger controversy regarding Jesus' very existence. Mind you, I personally do not count myself to the doubters, but it would be nice if some similar artifact could be found. As for now, the "unbelievers", ha ha, essentially have had to make do with what is called the Testimonium Flavianum, an exerpt from an historic work (Antiquities of the Jews) by the famous Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who lived in the first century, and participated in the great Jewish revolt which started A.D. 66.

As for the Fort of Masada, if you ever wondered where the word "zealot" comes from, Tom has the story:

The mountaintop fort of Masada is not part of biblical history, but is such an important part of Jewish and Israelite history that no trip to Israel is complete without a visit. Overlooking the Dead Sea, it was the "last stand" of a Jewish group known as the Zealots after Rome destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and ended the existence of Israel until modern times. Long story short, the Zealots held out against a Roman siege for three years. Finally, when the Romans broke through and entered the fortress city, they found no one alive but two women and five children. Why were the rest all dead? The Roman seize machines hadn't killed that many.

The answer is that the Jews knew that rape, torture, and slavery awaited them if taken alive. But Jewish law forbade suicide. They way they got around it was the each man killed his family, then the men killed each other, until they were down to twelve. These then drew lots, with the loser killing his fellows, and finally falling on his sword, so that only he violated the law.

The story of Masada is not part of the Talmud, and was largely forgotten by Jews until the 1920s. That we know of it at all is only due to the writings of Flavius Josephus, who accompanied the Romans during their seige. Because of the situation of modern Israel, it is therefore natural that they look to Masada as Americans look at The Alamo; "never again". Indeed, all or some Israeli soldiers take their oath atop Masada and repeat the oath "Masada shall not fall again."

As an afterthought I might add that I thought I had read somewhere that only the tankers (troops in the armoured brigades) take their oath at Masada. Maybe someone can clarify this issue for us?

Tom apparently had ample occasion to see the IDF and meet with some of its members, see the picca (more here). The IDF is worth a post of its own. Suffice to say that it currently numbers some 168,000 active personnel. The basic operational unit of the land forces is the brigade, and not the division - possibly precisely because divisions prove to be too unwieldy units in the (very) limited landspace that is Israel's. There's five regular brigades, namely the Golani Brigade (Northern Command), the Paratroopers Brigade (Central Command), the Nahal Brigade (Central Command), the Kfir Brigade (Central Command) and the Givati Brigade (Southern Command). Especially the name Golani Brigade may ring a bell, it is one of Israels oldest fighting units with a hard-earned reputation for tenacious fighting and a tremendous esprit de corps. With close to 1,000 aircraft, the Israeli Air Force is the strongest in the Middle East. Linke here. Finally there's the Israeli Navy, a very fine branch which the Israelis themselves modestly call the Sea Corps.

One last note. Of course this and the previous post are quite gushing stories about Israel which can - will - be considered biased. That being true, we have never closed our eyes however for the darker side of Israeli policy throughout its existence. The Israeli-Arab conflict is not entirely a black and white story. Moshe Dayan himself, the legendary Israeli Defence Minister, openly regretted the expulsion of many Arabs from their villages during the early years - even if Arabs had provoked the conflicts themselves. There are black spots such as the gunning of the USS Liberty by the Israeli Air Force during the Six Day War. Then there's the regular stories about Israeli spies in the US. But taking it all together, one cannot but admire the brave stance this small nation has made throughout the past six decades, succeeding in establishing a strong, democratic and prosperous state in an area which was formerly arid and barren, facing not only agressive, uncompromising neighbours but also an increasingly hostile world opinion which, deceived as it is by the MSM, is always ready to believe the worst. In the words of Filip Dewinter, strongman of the Vlaams Belang, Israel "is the vanguard of the West in a feudal Middle East", and for that only this country deserves our unflinching support.


MFBB.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ISRAEL!!!

Jews have a 3,000 year history of being persecuted. This goes indeed back to Biblical times, when they were either enslaved by the Pharaohs, had their Kingdom of Israel (aka the Northern Kingdom) overrun by Assyria (720BC), or their Kingdom of Judah (the Southern Kingdom) destroyed by Babylonia (586BC). Roman times offered no respite. A revolt which started in 66 A.D. was utterly crushed by Titus Flavius, son of the emperor Vespasian, in 70 A.D. But it was the reaction of the Romans, under their Emperor Hadrian, to a second revolt led by a certain Simon Bar Kokhba, which started the Jewish diaspora in earnest around 135 A.D. Hadrian reportedly killed an estimated 500,000 Jews. It must be said that in this diaspora, at least during the early Middle Ages, Jews generally enjoyed a relatively good life in their newly established communities in the Middle East or Europe. Indeed, for awhile the roles were sometimes reversed, since Jews themselves persecuted the early Christians (one notorious, albeit isolated incident involved the murder in a fire pit of 20,000 Yemeni Christians by the Jew Dzu Nuwas in the sixth century). But around the time of the first crusades persecution began again in full force, and I am sorry to say that one of the key figures herein was the "Belgian" crusader, Godfrey of Bouillon, who vowed to either convert or kill all European Jews. Massacres soon followed, and the events in Germany (!) were notorious, with pogroms in Mainz, Trier, Worms, Xanten, Eller, Cologne and other places. And in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon, neither content with killing Jews in Europe nor Muslims in the Holy Land, forced thousands of Jerusalem's Jews into the synagogue and set it on fire. Curiously, throughout the second half of the Middle Ages, Muslims showed some leniency towards the Jews, who were generally able to live free and prosper (and perform great feats in arts and sciences) in the Iberian peninsula and later, when the Reconquista forced them too out of Spain, in the Ottoman Empire. Europes remaining hard-pressed Jewish communities suffered again after the Plague in the fourteenth century, which was blamed on them, and in the Inquisition. For the powerful Catholic Church it was payback time for the early Jewish discrimination, and throughout most of Europe Jews were severely restricted in professions they could exercise or land they could possess. The origins of the famous affiliation of Jews with finances can be traced back to these times, since banking was one of the few sectors they were allowed to make a living in. The seventeenth century was a relatively benign period, but the eighteenth century saw again widespread organized hatred against Jews, from Algiers over Germany to Sweden and Russia.

Then, in 1860, Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest. This writer, journalist and playwright was to become the father of Zionism, the movement that aimed at bringing the Jews back to The Promised Land, their old homeground in what had by then become known as Palestine. Faced with a 3,000 year long history of slavery, persecution, massacres or discrimination at best, Herzl concluded that Anti-Semitism was a force in human nature to stay, and proposed that Jews would only be able to live free if they had their own country instead of being forced to survive in ghettos the world over. A prominent Zionist and businessman, David Wolffsohn, presented the flag for the movement as well as for the future country as early as 1891: it consited of a blue Star of David on a white field piped with blue stripes. Five years later, Herzl's book Der Judenstaat provided a scheme for the return of Jewry to, and subsequent formation of an own Jewish state, in "Eretz Israel" , the area in Biblical times known as the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. As if to underscore Herzl's theories, widespread pogroms in Eastern Europe set in fact the first mass migrations (aliyah) towards the "old country" in motion. These early "waves" consisted mainly of orthodox jews, but already the second one contained a fair number of socialist pioneers who wanted to implement cooperative agricultural farming enterprises, to become known as kibbutzim. In those early days, idealistic fervor replaced the capitalist impulse, and the pioneering zealots literally brought whatever patch of land they acquired back to life. Indeed, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century most of Palestine was a barren, scorched place, the Arabs having been rather the fathers, and not the sons, of the desert.

From then on, developments followed quickly. In 1917 the Balfour Declaration, issued by then British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, stated that the British government "viewed favourably" the creation in Palestine of "a national home for the Jewish people" on the condition that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" or "the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." A few years later, after the Allied victory, Great Britain fittingly assumed responsibility for Palestine (formerly part of the Ottoman Empire) with a mandate from the League of Nations, and the Jewish National Home for the first time became an ever more realistic concept. Needless to say, the return of many mostly European Jews to their ancient homeland was not welcomed by the Arab tribes who had lived all those times in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan river. The interbellum saw several massacres against the Jews, and not just the newcomers. Few of those who claim that the immigrants took the land of the Arabs (in fact they paid for it - and some of it was even conquered by the Jewish Legion which assisted the British in World War I), do not acknowledge, willingly or unwillingly, that the infamous Hebron Massacre of 1929, which claimed the lives of 67 Jews and saw such horrible atrocities as the beheading of babies or the castration of old rabbis, was aimed at an existing Jewish community which had been there since before the birth of Christ. Other massacres took place in Safed, Tel Aviv, Motza and Kfar Uriyah. More Jewish lives still would be claimed in the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, which started in Jaffa and which would in fact boost the ranks of Jewish self-defense organizations such as the Haganah and Irgun. Still, ten years later, in 1948, Zionism would achieve its goal: the creation of an own Jewish State. As we all know however, the catalyst for this success was the most horrible atrocity inflicted upon a particular population group in all the history of mankind. It is best known as the Holocaust. The Jews themselves call it Shoah.

The industrial extermination of 6 million Jews was unprecedented and ignited in many survivors a feverish will to finally have an own state offering safety and prosperiy to all. A world deeply ashamed of the bestialities which were in fact the logical outcome of thousands of years of virulent Antisemitism was - generally - all too happy to assist, and on November 29, 1947 the young United Nations, the successor of the League of Nations, passed the famous Resolution 181, which provided in the partition of Palestine in a Jewish and an Arab part, with Jerusalem scheduled to become an international city (a corpus separatum, to be governed by the UN). Despite the original Jewish presence and the succession of immigration waves, the Arabs were still a majority in Palestine and the Partition Plan reflected this reality. The left side of the map to the right shows the areas allocated to the Jews in purple, and those of the Arabs in green. Notice that most of the Jewish part was the barren Negev desert, and that the parts reserved for the Arabs were far larger than today's equivalents the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The 1947 "Gaza Strip" was thrice as large and L-shaped, and its counterpart the "West Bank" was twice as big as today. The key region for the Jews was a narrow slice of land, barely 15 kilometers wide and containing Tel Aviv and Haifa, along the Mediterranean.

The Jews accepted. The Arabs did not.

The scale of Arab hatred, colossal egoism, inhumanity and total lack of empathy vis-à-vis a population that had just gone through the most abominable tragedy that had ever visited humanity, becomes even more appalling upon learning that this was not even the first time Arabs rejected a plan - but then the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had been an ally of Hitler. In his book "Six Days of War" (Oxford University Press, 2002), renowned author on Middle Eastern history Michael B. Oren writes:

The Zionists approved of the plan but the Arabs, having already rejected an earlier, more favorable (for them) partition offer from Britain, stood firm in their demand for sovereignty over Palestine in full.

Fed up with so much bad will, the State of Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, proclaimed Israeli Independence on May 14, 1948. That embryonal state, with a population of 650,000 on a parcel of land measuring perhaps 10,000 square kilometers, was attacked twelve hours later by the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, and the 1948/1949 Arab-Israeli War was a fact.





In Cairo, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League (and great-uncle of a certain Ayman al-Zawahiri) boasted:

"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."

One year later five oh so heroic Arab armies lay in ruins and a tiny Jewish force had not only secured its own UN-allocated area, but also taken hold of half the Arab area. Arabs call this al-naqba (the disaster), a term which these days seems to have gained a certain sympathy and credibility among those western academic and media folk which are curiously called "intelligentsia". A more appropriate denomination than al-naqba would however be, in proper Flemish:

"Hij die zijn gat verbrandt moet op de blaren zitten."

Which, translated in the King's English, sounds somewhat like:

"He who burns his butt must sit on the blisters."

(to be continued)


MFBB.

BLACK ALLIES.

While making a nuisance of myself over at Atlas Shrugs I stumbled on a great photo over there.




But first...


I was wrong. Five months ago, I predicted that Barack Obama "would be toast in three months". Well, I think we can all agree that was not exactly my smartest remark on these pages. As a matter of fact, while I claim to have, over the past five years, provided fairly good political forecasts with regards to "my native Europe", I must admit that all my predictions regarding the US Presidential elections could not have been farther from the truth. I was sure McCain was a spent force - he's the one who months ago already secured the Republican nomination. I was sure Romney would be the Republican frontrunner - despite a promising start, he dropped out early. And I was sure Obama would be a doner by now - but it looks more and more as if he will become the Democratic nominee.

While my predictions regarding the fight leading up to the 2008 elections may have been dead wrong, I still stand by my assessment of the democratic party's black candidate. An assessment I almost instantly formed back in 2004, when I first heard of the man - more precisely, after that "famous" Audacity of Hope speech. And an assessment which has not been altered since, to the contrary. Senator Barack Obama is, in my view, not only an airhead - he's a dangerous airhead. I am by far not the only one who thinks so, but I was surprised to read a piece last week in which the author, black himself, explains his likewise unfavorable view far more clearer than I could ever have done. Regular reader and commenter Mark/TC linked to a great piece by that grand seigneur of the Black Intellectual Right, Dr. Thomas Sowell. Here is a guy who will probably not see an endorsement from the NAACP anytime soon:

Many years ago, a great hitter named Paul Waner was nearing the end of his long career. He entered a ballgame with 2,999 hits — one hit away from the 3,000-hit landmark — which so many hitters want to reach, but which relatively few actually do reach.

Waner hit a ball that the fielder did not handle cleanly but the official scorer called it a hit, making it Waner’s 3,000th. Paul Waner then sent word to the official scorer that he did not want that questionable hit to be the one that put him over the top. The official scorer reversed himself and called it an error. Later Paul Waner got a clean hit for number 3,000.

What reminded me of this is the great fervor that many seem to feel over the prospect of the first black president of the United States.

No doubt it is only a matter of time before there is a black president, just as it was only a matter of time before Paul Waner got his 3,000th hit. The issue is whether we want to reach that landmark so badly that we are willing to overlook how questionably that landmark is reached. Paul Waner had too much pride to accept a scratch hit. Choosing a president of the United States is a lot more momentous than a baseball record. We the voters need to have far more concern about who we put in that office that holds the destiny of a nation and of generations yet unborn.

There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever, and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president — especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.

Barack Obama has already indicated that he wants judges who make social policy instead of just applying the law. He has already tried to stop young violent criminals from being tried as adults.

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things — using the mantra of “change” endlessly — the cold fact is that virtually everything he says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s. Protecting criminals, attacking business, increasing government spending, promoting a sense of envy and grievance, raising taxes on people who are productive, and subsidizing those who are not — all this is a re-run of the 1960s. We paid a terrible price for such 1960s notions in the years that followed, in the form of soaring crime rates, double-digit inflation, and double-digit unemployment. During the 1960s, ghettoes across the countries were ravaged by riots from which many have not fully recovered to this day.

The violence and destruction were concentrated not where there was the greatest poverty or injustice but where there were the most liberal politicians, promoting grievances, and hamstringing the police. Internationally, the approach that Senator Obama proposes — including the media magic of meetings between heads of state — was tried during the 1930s. That approach, in the name of peace, is what led to the most catastrophic war in human history. Everything seems new to those too young to remember the old and too ignorant of history to have heard about it...

As I have stated on these pages before, this is not a racist site. We do not oppose a Black becoming President of the United States. But when that day comes, it should be someone of great intellectual and moral stature, someone who is steadfast in his opinions and cautious but decisive in his actions, and someone who is a great manager of people. Plus, it wouldn't hurt if he had a certain gravitas and an aura of statemanship around him. In my opinion, Senator Obama has nothing of this all. And the environment in which he was bred - which produced him, so to say, is the one of the endlessly repeated lies in spite of all the evidence. Back in the sixties or even the seventies, less critical people could still be forgiven for buying the self-flagellating, self-marginalizing rhetoric of the Left. Today, there is no excuse anymore to offer the wrong reasons for the obvious problems of the black community, which deserves far better than the condescending, quintessentially racist-in-itself attitudes of liberals. No more affirmative action, but Self-Empowerment. No more blaming on the others, but introspection. No more lax or autodestructive lifestyles, but sound conservative family values. No more teen pregnancies, but math courses. And no more being content with the crumbles of welfare agencies, but making big money with your own business. THAT is the path the Black Community should follow, and not the dead ender of a spoiled brat groomed to be a poster boy for an ideology which failed decades ago.

Dr. Thomas Sowell's landmark will be reached some day. Some day, possibly (probably?) not too far in the future, that hit will be achieved. But only a hit coming from this direction will make it an event worth to be remembered. The National Black Republican Association. In the other case, "a scratch hit" will probably prove to be the nicest of euphemisms.


MFBB.

BELGIAN NAVY 101.

On April 2, 2008 the Belgian Navy officially acquired a new frigate, which it purchased from the Dutch Navy. The latter, for a small country like The Netherlands actually a very fine force, is currently building some smaller corvettes to replace several of the (relatively) unwieldy vessels. The frigate, formerly Hr.Ms. Willem Van Der Zaan (Hr.Ms. = Hare Majesteit, Her Majesty, the Dutch have a Queen. Note by MFBB), was christened F931 Louise Marie, after the first Belgian Queen. It sister ship, the F930 Leopold I, named after Belgium's first king, was commissioned in 2007 already. Both frigates belong to the so-called Karel Doorman Class, named after Dutch Rear Admiral Karel Doorman who died in the Battle of the Java Sea, February 27, 1942, one of those early naval battles which went so disastrously wrong for the Allies. Although he could have saved himself Doorman preferred to go down with his flagship, the light cruiser Hr.Ms. De Ruyter. Rear Admiral Shoji Nishimura's fleet suffered only negligible losses, the combined American-British-Dutch-Australian force was about decimated. Among the victims was the British heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, veteran of the 1939 Battle of the Rio de la Plata.

Both the Leopold I and the Louise-Marie (I know, especially the latter name sucks, but unlike the Dutch we Belgians are a bit short on famous admirals) are so-called M (Multipurpose) frigates, which means that they were specifically designed to deal with a variety of combat situations, be it surface warfare, aerial defense, or fighting submarines. To some degree stealth techniques were used in the design, and a great deal of the machinery is fully automated, e.g. under normal circumstances the engine room is unmanned, with only one technician monitoring everything via a number of displays.




Never having had a great naval tradition, Belgium's Navy has always been a neglected service. The heaviest "fighting" vessels Belgium had were an old cruiser bought from the French, the D'Entrecasteaux, which saw briefly service in the interbellum, and the gunboat Artevelde, which the Kriegsmarine actually equipped as such when the almost completed ship was captured in 1940 on the Cockerill shipyard in Antwerp. After literally decades of negligence, the commissioning of today's frigates is therefore something of an anticlimax since we never had anything remotely comparable. Overall measures are still modest, with a total length of 123.72 metres and a width of 14.37 meters. The draught is 6.2 meters, and water displacement is 3.328 tonnes. But it's the armament which is pretty impressive. Surface targets are engaged with RGM-84 Harpoon missiles, torpedoes, or the OTO Melara fast-firing 76mm gun. Aerial targets are dealt with using NATO Sea Sparrow missiles or also the OTO Melara gun. The machinery consists of two Stork-Werkspoor diesels developing 9.790 HP together, and two Rolls Royce Spey 1A gas turbines of 33.800 HP (also combined). Maximum speed is 30 knots, using the turbines. When the diesels are engaged, speed is limited to 21 knots. The F-930 and F-931 each have a crew of 145, consisting of 15 officers, 70 NCO's and 60 sailors.




The Leopold I and the Louise-Marie replace the last two remaining Wielingen class frigates, designed and built (with Dutch advice) at the Boelwerf in Temse, now defunct, and the Cockerill shipyard in Antwerp. At the height of the Cold War the Belgian Navy had four of them, namely the F-910 Wielingen, the F-911 Westdiep, the F-912 Wandelaar and the F-913 Westhinder. The latter was scrapped in 1993 following defense cuts. The remaining three were one after another sold to Bulgaria, which in this manner acquired its first NATO compliant warships. The F-912 in 2004, and the F-910 and F-911 last year (naval buffs may be interested to know that the Bulgarian Navy is the in the process of modernization, and will rely both on our secondhand frigates as on newly to be built state of the art French Gowind corvettes, for which Bulgaria cut a deal with France last fall). Somehow I will miss the old ships, which I had the occasion to view in person on a naval show in Zeebrugge some years back. Despite their size they packed a respectable firepower. The gun up front, a 100mm Creusot-Loire, was actually heavier than the gun equipping the new frigates. Instead of Harpoons they relied on MM38 Exocets, which the Argentine Air Force used in its air-to-surface variant to such devastating effects in the 1982 Falklands War.



Below yet another pic of a Wielingen class frigate, the F-910. It's kind of an historical photo since taken during the Gulf War, either in the fall of 1990 or the spring of 1991. Belgium had dispatched a minesweeper flotilla escorted first by the F-912, then by the F-910. Just behind the gun turret, you see the six-barreled 375mm rocket launcher for use against submarines. The Exocet missiles for defense against enemy ships are on the aft deck. At the extreme end, barely visible, are the Sea Sparrows. Full armament details here.




The mainstay of the small Belgian Navy are its minehunters/minesweepers, however. Ever since World War II, when an all-Belgian minehunter flotilla, the 118th, operated within the British Royal Navy, this particular branch of service has received most attention. However, defense cuts have now cut down the force to just six minehunters, of which the M915 Aster is shown below. It's a so-called tripartite mine hunter, with a glass reinforced polyester (GRP) hull because of the low magnetic signature. This kind of vessels acquitted itself fairly well during the Gulf War: in 1990-1991 the Belgian minesweeper/hunter flotilla accounted for just under one third of the close to 1,000 destroyed mines in the Persian Gulf. Vessels like this, also in use in the Dutch and French navies, use remotely operated vehicles to eliminate mines if the risks for divers are too great. The two types ROV in use are the so-called PAP (Poisson Auto-Propulsé) and the Seafox. The finer techniques are taught in EGUERMIN, the Naval Mine Warfare School in Oostende which Belgium and The Netherlands operate together.





To conclude, below a picture from the old box: the troop transport ship AP957 Kamina en route for Korea with on board the Belgian contribution to the fighting there, one infantry battalion (one platoon came from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg). In Korea, the battalion was subordinated to various British and American units, namely the British 29th Infantry Brigade (during the Battle of the Imjin River) and the US 3rd Infantry Division "Rock of the Marne".



Photos via the Belgian Navy site.


MFBB.

IN MEMORIAM 1st LT. DENNIS VAN UHM, PFC MARK SCHOUWINK

General Peter Van Uhm, newly appointed Dutch Commander Armed Forces, did not keep his son out of harm's way. Last Thursday, April 18, 1st Lieutenant Dennis Van Uhm (23) and Private 1st Class Mark Schouwink (22) lost their lives in Afghanistan when an IED exploded near their open-topped Mercedes scout car. Two other troopers on board, Cpl. Roger Hack (25) and Pvt. Toninho Norden (20) were gravely wounded, the latter critical.



1st Lt. Dennis Van Uhm, Private 1st Class Mark Schouwink, 45ste Pantserinfanteriebataljon

Lt. Van Uhm commanded a platoon of the 45th Armoured Infantry Battalion (Ermelo) as part of a local operation in the west of the Deh Reshan region, Uruzgan Province, primarily aimed at reconnoitring the area. In one particular village there, Khorma, the Dutch troops often face ambushes and IED attacks. The operation involved around hundred Dutch and Afghan troops. With the manoeuver completed after a few days, the Dutch returned to their base in Camp Holland, the main Dutch base (at the same time the main ISAF base, which the Dutch share with the Australians) in Uruzgan Province near a locality named Tarin Kowt (the other Dutch base is Camp Hadrian at Deh Rawod). On the road back, at twelve kilometers northwest of Camp Holland at 5 o'clock Dutch time, an IED ripped through the fourth vehicle, in which Van Uhm, Schouwink, Hack and Norden drove. Van Uhm and Schouwink were killed instantly, bringing the total number of Dutch deaths in Afghanistan to sixteen.

In a tragic twist of fate, just the day before, Dennis Van Uhm's father, Peter Van Uhm (52), formerly a Lieutenant General commanding the Dutch land forces, had assumed overall command of the Dutch Armed Forces, succeeding Gen. Dick Berlijn, and been promoted four-star general. The Van Uhms are a military family. A brother of the general, Marc Van Uhm, is a brigadier general commanding 11th Air Mobile Brigade. And young Petrus, born in 1955, decided to join the Armed Forces after becoming captivated with the feats of arms of the 82nd "All American" US Airborne division which liberated his birthplace of Nijmegen. Probably the operation which made the greatest impression on him was the crossing of the Waal river to capture a critical bridge by 3rd Battalion, 504th Regiment of the 82nd Division in 26 small unprotected rowboats, under heavy fire from the crack 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg - one of the most heroic operations of the war. If so, I can't help but having a feeling of history coming full circle... The sacrifice of US soldiers and Dutch resistance fighters (remember Jan Van Hoof!) against a common enemy, setting a young Dutchman on a path which would lead to his son... fighting alongside US soldiers against a common enemy some sixty-four years later.




If there is one important lesson to be learned from Lt. Van Uhm's death, it's that the Dutch should phase out their open-topped Mercedes scout cars ASAP and use vehicles which offer better protection. Patrolling in SUV's, even if they are khaki-clad, is suicidal. They are now learning the hard way what their American brothers-in-arms learned four years ago in Iraq - and these used Humvees, of which even the non-uparmoured ones offered better protection than the Dutch vehicles.

Regardless from that... we salute these Heroes and Warriors, who fell in the same conflict which started in earnest on that fateful day in september , almost seven years ago. A conflict against an evil radical islamic ideology which wants to cast back humanity to the 7th century, a goal which is as insane as it is unlikely. Because of humanity's progress which is ultimately forward, no matter the setbacks. And because of men like Lieutenant Van Uhm and Trooper Schouwink. Their cause is a just one, and their sacrifice will not be in vain. May they rest in peace. If you are a religious person and a caring human, you might want to pray for them - and for all the other ones whose names evade us.


MFBB.

DOWNEASTBLOGS ARTSY FARTSY CORNER.

And now for something completely different. With all those Allahu Hackbars around a man would forget the things which make life worthwile. Art, for instance. How about this?



John William Waterhouse's painting 'The Lady of Shalott'. Actually the most famous of the three versions he crafted. It's a work inspired by Alfred Tennyson's poem of the same name, which recounts the story, based on Arthurian material, of a noble lady living under a curse in an island castle upstream from Camelot. The curse is that she is not allowed to look directly outside at the world, and can only see what happens there by looking in a mirror. She spends her days weaving a magic web. One day, the mirror shows her a handsome knight in shining armour passing by. It's Lancelot, King Arthur's most famous and trusted Knight (who at some point nevertheless frolicked with Arthur's spouse, Queen Guinevere). Tennyson:

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.

Immediately the Lady of Shalott is under the spell of the dashing knight and she rushes to the window for a better view. Behind her, the mirror cracks and she knows the curse's doom will come upon her. She has time to leave her castle and board a small boat upon which she writes her name as 'The Lady of Shalott' and which she then sends downstream towards Camelot, but before she arrives there she dies. When the boat comes to a halt near Camelot, Arthur's Court wonders who this beautiful dead lady may be. In Tennyson's poem, Lancelot exclaims:

"Who is this? And what is here?"
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."

John William Waterhouse (April 6, 1849 – February 10, 1917) was born in Rome to a couple of artists, William and Isabela Waterhouse, who moved to South Kensington, London, when he was five. Before he entered the Royal Academy in 1870, his father had already honed his natural painting skills. His early works depicted classical themes, in the style of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Frederic Leighton, and one, the 1874 Sleep and his Half-Brother Death was exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Society of British Artists and the Dudley Gallery. In 1883 he married Esther Kenworthy, an Ealing art schoolmaster's daughter who was herself an artist who had exhibited at the Royal Academy. They would have two children, who both tragically died in childhood. His greatest fame Waterhouse would win as a member of the Pre-Raphaelites, a school which for some reason rejected the classical themes and elegant compositions of the High Renaissance Italian artist and architect Raphael Sanzio and those who were influenced by him. Not surprisingly, Waterhouse exchanged his classical themes for mythological ones, drawing heavily on English and Italian literature. He developed a keen interest for strong female characters, not to say femme fatales.



In 1895 Waterhouse was elected a full Academician at the Royal Academy, and taught at the St. John's Wood Art School. One of his most famous paintings is the one above, The Lady of Shalott, a study of Elaine of Astolat, a figure of an Arthurian legend. This character was the inspiration for Tennyson's poem and, hence, for Waterhouses painting. The reproduction shown does not do right to the sheer beauty of the original, which includes also a very fine study of a waterfall. And the meagre number pixels does not allow to grasp the shock of bright colors nor the abundance of details. But if you find yourself in London one day, you might want to check out the Tate Gallery, where it - this version at least - is exhibited.

A recurring theme in Waterhouses subjects is the character of Ophelia, a Danish noblewoman who figures in Shakespeares famous play Hamlet. The most famous version depicts her just before her death, sitting on a tree branch over a lake, putting flowers in her hair. And just like The Lady of Shalott (and even other Waterhouse paintings), it's about a woman dying in or near water. This work was actually submitted by Waterhouse to obtain his Royal Academy diploma. Curiously, the painting got lost thereafter, only to be found later on in the twentieth century. It is now part of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's collection. It would be followed by versions in 1894 and 1909, and the latter is my personal favorite, see the pic to the left. Just look how that robe is draped, wow!!! Other favorites of mine are "My Sweet Rose" and "La Belle Dame sans merci", the latter based on John Keats' poem of the same name. Belle dame my sorry ass, but look how the light shines on the knight's armour and be stunned! Waterhouse planned another painting in the Ophelia series, to be called "Ophelia in the Churchyard.", but unfortunately he could never finish it because of cancer. He died in 1917, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.




Beyond the ordinary pleasures, the false pretensions and the foul developments of today's world, there's an ancient wealth waiting to be discovered. Not to seek for it is a shame.


MFBB.

HOLLAND FIT? NAH. AS GOOD AS DEAD.

As you can see from the last but one post, LiveLeak pulled "Fitna" again. So we had to look for another source, see below. All over Europe and indeed, all over the western world, politicians, opinion makers, editors, directors of governments-sponsored "diversity organizations" and "organizations against racism" and "organizations for social cohesion" and what not, are almost literally tripping over each other in a rush to condemn it. A leading editorialist of "top" Belgian newspaper De Standaard, a leftozoid scumbag with acute brain haemorrhage called Bart Sturtewagen, wrote a scandalously disgusting piece anticipating a Great Muslim Induced Debate In Which They Will Prove that Islam And Western Values Can Coexist Peacefully. Which is a rather optimistic thought, given the fact that:

a.) just the other day, for the debate in the plenary hall of Dutch Parliament (in which, btw, ALL parliamentarians excelled in Wilders bashing) EXTRA security measures were taken

b.) An exposition about discrimination in Nijmegen had to be called off because Moroccan youths tore down cartoons they deemed offensive and threatened violence

c.) The spokesman for Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Netherlands branch, a certain Okay Pala, recently declared that "they do not agree with freedom of expression, because they denounce democracy"

Mr. Sturtewagen ended his essay with the slogan "If Wilders wins, we all lose". Which is rather weird, given the fact that the man for the past three years has had to live in hiding in his own country and moves from secret location to secret location surrounded by bodyguards.

The sight of so many of our moral betters almost dying to grovel in the dirt for their de facto muslim overlords at home and abroad, is one of the most shameful things I have ever witnessed in my life. Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhaegen went out of his way to humiliate himself, first inviting more than twenty muslim ambassadors to his cabinet to beg for protection of Dutch citizens in their countries, then writing an opinion piece in arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat in which he, on behalf of the Dutch government, explicitly distanced himself from Wilders and his film. And believe it or not, but there's now a site online, sorryvoordefilm.nl, for Dutchmen who feel the need to apologize and promote nuance of the opinion muslims form themselves about The Netherlands. Look at it here and feel your toes curl. The opening page states "We are ashamed of this man. Don't judge us." Sensitive wooden shoe makers can leave a message of hope, peace and understanding and upload their photo. Compared to that, Neville Chamberlain is Rambo on steroids.

Over here at DowneastBlog, Your Personal Euro/American Rightwing Rock in a Red Sea, we keep proudly featuring Fitna and honoring that lone brave Dutchman, who for some reason still has the blood of Tromp and De Ruyter running undiluted through his veins:




Now, give credit where credit is due. This fella does a far better job than your servant chronicling the Death of Free Speech in Europe. Pat Condell on the Fitna aftermath:



And I say that as a christian, be it not such a good one. My God, what a fucked up world.


MFBB.