BETTER LATE THAN NEVER (5)

For the first time since 2002, Belgian ground troops participated in an operation against the Taliban in Afghanistan's north. Around 50 paratroopers of Tielen-based 3 Para Battalion, the Paracommando Brigade, together with an ANA (Afghan National Army) battalion, cleansed an area of Taliban fighers. The para unit is part of a so-called OMLT team (Operational Mentoring and Liaison), and its principal task is training ANA units. In this operation however the paras patrolled alongside the Afghan soldiers in a war zone. In the week between April 21 and April 28, 50 suspected Taliban fighters were rounded up. Small in scale though this operation is, it is unique in the sense that this is the first time that Belgian troops are getting engaged in ground combat. A small battalion-sized unit has been guarding Kabul airport since 2002, and a demining squad has been active in Kunduz embedded with the Germans there for almost as long, but both missions take place under so many caveats - "thanks" to our former Minister of Defense, André Flahaut, that they cannot be called combat missions. No sooner had the news of this operation leaked out, or the socialist and green opposition lashed out against Belgium "getting sucked into a lost conflict". Check out this video.

You see the socialist Dirk Vander Maelen and the greenie Wouter De Vriendt, both of them scared shitless that taliban terrorists might actually get hurt as a result of Belgian involvement in Afghanistan. Their efforts to grill the current Belgian Defense Minister Pieter De Crem in parliament on the matter proved fruitless however - De Crem nicely warded off whatever objections they made, and angry as they might be, both SP.a and Groen! are in the opposition now. I have been a keen follower of domestic politics since age 16 or so, and I am now 43, and it strikes me what suddenly becomes possible when socialists and greens are out of power. And I'm not only talking defense matters.


MFBB.

STUPID NEWS OF THE DAY.

A recent article in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf:




Translation:

"MUSLIM SCRATCHES NAKED WOMAN OFF BILLBOARD.

From one of our correspondents.

AMSTERDAM- Amsterdam Police has recently had troubles with a pious muslim who scratches with his bare nails lingerie ads off billboards.

On the billboards, sexy ladies advertise for lingerie brand Sapph. The man, Tarix Abdullah, says that he acts "out of respect for God". He says he normally bears no grudges against women, but does indeed if they wear nothing more than a slip and bra. "I do it to protect the women and children who cross the street here. Soon women will think they have to dress like that to please men. If they follow God's way, more precisely the way of Islam, we can steer clear of the danger", Mr. Abdullah was quoted as saying.

Amsterdam police is aware of the action, but hasn't intervened yet. Sapph's ceo is "shocked"."

Duh. Steering women clear of danger huh. Another explanation might be that Mr. Abdullah wondered if, by scratching away certain items, he might not unearth the real thing. Anyway, over here at DowneastBlog, we absolutely have no problem whatsoever with women wearing only slips and bras. And to prove it we post the following pic:





THERE Mr. Tarix Abdullah!!! That will TEACH YOU!!!!!. Try to scratch that away!!!


MFBB.


P.S.: Downeastblog suggest Sapph for its female leadershi, uh, readership. Vandevelde is okay too.

THE BRUSSELS JOURNAL'S FJORDMAN ON WHY WE NEED GERMANY...

And yet again a brilliant article from The Brussels Journal's Fjordman...

"I’m tired of people who are busy losing this world war because they are still obsessed with the previous one, which ended generations ago. Anti-Nazism has mutated into a permanent witch-hunt on an imaginary enemy. The notion that “neo-Nazis” constitute a prominent group today is nonsense. The most dangerous people by far are those running the European Union, who are busy dismantling European civilization and enlarging the borders of the EU to include the Middle East and North Africa, those flooding their own countries with tens of millions of Muslims and other hostile aliens without consulting the native population. This makes the EU the largest criminal entity on the planet, preoccupied with destroying an entire continent, dismantling the greatest civilization that has ever existed and replacing the native population with others. I have described this in my book Defeating Eurabia, which is available online.

The French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut thinks that “Europe does not love itself.” He says that it's not forces from outside that are threatening Europe as much as the voluntary renunciation of European identity, its wish of freeing itself from its own history and traditions, only replaced by human rights. The EU isn’t just post-national; it’s post-European.

Next to the EU, the most dangerous people are the Leftists all over the Western world who are waging a Jihad to destroy their own civilization and have teamed up with Muslims to achieve this goal. Unlike neo-Nazis, these people are not only far more numerous but socially accepted and disproportionately represented in the media and the education system, where they systematically silence “racist” dissenters by destroying their livelihoods and reputations. They use an imaginary “far-Right” threat to crush people they don’t like.

According to Dr Aidan Rankin, “anti-Fascism” is the new Fascism. The so-called anti-racists and Multiculturalists are aggressors with totalitarian leanings; the people they unfairly attack are victims of a failed social experiment and one of the greatest betrayals in history:


“Progressives (as they invariably call themselves) use accusations of racism and fascism as excuses to bully and oppress impoverished white communities and isolate them in racially based ghettos. For white liberals, anti-racism becomes a form of auto-racism, directed at members of their own race who are deemed to be socially inferior. It is, in other words, a new type of snobbery and social exclusion […]. Their ideology allows for no concern for individuals, except for attack or denunciation. This contempt for the individual, the white, male worker in particular, allows the anti-fascist to reconcile two contradictory demands - for civil disobedience (including violence) and for the massive extension of state power […]. [They operate] by appealing to more basic psychological impulses of fear, envy and hatred. Anti-fascism shares with its alleged opposite a belief in the cleansing or redemptive power of violence. They share as well an obsessive preoccupation with race.”


A supposedly “tolerant” nation such as Britain is becoming more and more totalitarian the more “diverse” it gets, and I sometimes suspect that was the whole point. The fact that prominent groups can despise Christianity, destroy free speech, practice widespread censorship and ideological indoctrination, hate capitalism, promote the concept of the all-encompassing state and support other known Nazi policies while denouncing their opponents as “Nazis” only demonstrates that most people no longer understand the real nature of Nazism. “Discrimination” doesn’t necessarily lead to gas chambers. We discriminated quite sensibly in the past against allowing Muslims and other obviously hostile groups to settle in our lands. I would feel quite comfortable with re-instituting that kind of “discrimination.”

In the United States, the host D.L. Hughley at TV channel CNN stated that the Republican Party looked like “Nazi Germany” because a majority of their members are white. Being a “Nazi” today means “being born white and standing up for yourself,” nothing more and nothing less. In fact, you don’t even need to stand up for yourself; merely being white and still breathing is sufficient for some...."

To think that TBJ has such brilliant minds like Takuan Seiyo, Tiberge, Belien, Bertonneau, Millar, Handlery, Landen, Van Laenen, Fjordman and so many others working together, striving together, producing compelling essays, defending what must be defended, giving their utmost best...

... and knowing that over there in La La Land, a pompous egotistic narcissistic idiot called Charles Johnson is pulling all the strings he can find to smear these brave and decent European flag-bearers...

... that hurts.

But I'm glad I'm on the Right Side.


MFBB.

NO, IT ISN'T JUST YOU.

Regular reader Joanne provided us with a link to a damn good article by Gerald Warner in The Daily Telegraph. I don't know if I would have used the "damn good" qualification if there had "only" been the 100-day avalanche of bad to mediocre measures taken by America's Apologizer-in-Chief. But now that, in recent weeks, the nuttiness has gone crescendo and indeed, is morphing into downright scary stuff, I think "damn good" is nothing short of the truth.

"If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.

That is why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley, Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda.

"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers.

Obama promised his CIA audience that nobody would be prosecuted for past actions. That has already been contradicted by leftist groups with a revanchist ambition to put Republicans, headed if possible by Condoleezza Rice, in the dock. Talk about playing party politics with national security. Martin Scheinin, the United Nations special investigator for human rights, claims that senior figures, including former vice president Dick Cheney, could face prosecution overseas. Ponder that - once you have got over the difficulty of locating the United Nations and human rights within the same dimension.

President Pantywaist Obama should have thought twice before sitting down to play poker with Dick Cheney. The former vice president believes documents have been selectively published and that releasing more will prove how effective the interrogation techniques were. Under Dubya's administration, there was no further atrocity on American soil after 9/11.

President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cosying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners. His only enemies are fellow Americans. Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?"

You betcha.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT THREE LETTER WORD BANDS.

Epic. 1989 hit by Faith No More. Faith No More originated in 1982 in San Francisco and mixed heavy metal, funk, progressive rock, hip hop, hardcore punk, thrash metal and more. Call me a nutter, but the band has always been sympathetic to me because of the lead singer's name, Mike Patton. As a matter of fact, it wasn't until Patton joined in the late eighties that the band gained prominence. Epic and its success was the first sign of his influence, but personally, FNM only registered on my radar after the album Angel Dust, which featured such hits as Midlife Crisis and A Small Victory. For some reason always liked the cover of Angel Dust.





FNM disbanded in 1998 or so, but they recently reunited and are currently even touring Europe.


The following song, "The official ironmen rally song", is from the Guided by Voices album Under the bushes under the stars" (1996). GBV was a US indie rock band formed in Dayton, Ohio in 1983. Its extremely volatile crew revolved around five core members, that is to say singer/songwriter Robert Pollard, guitarists Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell, bassist Dan Toohey and drummer Kevin Fennell. What makes GBV so special is not their hits - they had few - but their sheer number of albums and songs, the fact that most songs are in the two-minute range even contributing to the proliferation of material. Having started in the early eighties, it's not surprising GBV sported influences from prog rock, psychedelic rock, punk and postpunk (although I would be hard pressed to tell you the difference between the latter two). Guided by Voices disbanded in 2004.




The video is cool.


MFBB.

PERSONS OF TOLERANCE AND DIVERSITY COME ACROSS VLAAMS BELANG ADS.

All across the European Union, elections for the European Parliament will be held between 4 and 7 June. About 375 million European citizens in the 27 member states will elect 736 MEP's for a five-year term. And slowly, billboards for advertising parties or candidates begin to appear in the streets.

Last Monday, I noticed a Vlaams Belang billboard in front of a house that always sports VB posters throughout the years, thus you can be sure the people living there are true members or sympathizers of my party.

The posters were left untouched for a staggering two days.

Then, this very morning, I noticed the champions of tolerance and diversity must have come across the VB ads:








The Vlaams Belang is unashamedly pro free market, pro life, anti gay marriage, anti gay adoption, pro family values, pro respect for our culture and judeo-christian heritage, and pro US.

In Europe, there are those for whom these are deadly sins. Herbert Marcuse would smirk.


MFBB.

THE BRUSSELS JOURNAL'S THOMAS LANDEN: "THE PURPOSE OF NATO IS TO PREPARE FOR WAR".

Over at The Brussels Journal, Thomas Landen had an excellent column last week regarding NATO's future. Some exerpts:

"... The new enemy of the West is ideological Islam. If NATO wants to be a useful instrument in defending the West against this enemy it needs to accept a new member state – Israel – and stop groveling to Turkey.

Last week, Bernard Kouchner, the powerful Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, announced that he is no longer in favor of admitting Turkey to the European Union. Mr. Kouchner changed his mind, he said, at the recent NATO summit in Strasbourg on April 4th. There, Ankara threatened to veto the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, as NATO’s new Secretary-General. The Turks objected to Mr. Rasmussen because in 2005 he defended the freedom of expression of Danish cartoonists who had depicted the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

Turkey is governed by the AKP, a very popular Islamic party in Central and Eastern Anatolia. The AKP’s voters feel more strongly about the Islamic law which prohibits depicting the Muslim prophet than about basic Western values such as freedom of expression. These voters already feel “hurt” by the simple depiction of their prophet, which in Islam is blasphemy. The Turkish threats in Strasbourg jolted Mr. Kouchner into realizing what the future has in store for the European Union if Turkey becomes a member. “I was very shocked by the pressure that was brought on us,” Mr. Kouchner said. “Turkey’s evolution in, let’s say, a more religious direction, towards a less robust secularism, worries me.”

The bruhaha concerning Turkey's opposition to Mr. Rasmussen's candidacy for NATO Secretary General was "resolved" after a personal intervention by president Hussein. The president, on the photo seen during his recent visit to the Middle East, gave the Turks watertight guarantees that Mr. Rasmussen, should Turkey agree with him heading the alliance, would have a Turkish deputy. The significance of this compromise "brokered" by Hussein should not be underestimated. We have here an unwilling NATO member, shying away from its responsibilities in Afghanistan through God knows how many caveats, and which has threatened to block the alliance's functioning because.... Mr. Rasmussen refused to forbid the publication in Danish newspapers in 2005 of some stupid cartoons depicting the prophet muhammad. Hussein's demeanor was none other but appeasement in its worst form. Instead of backing up the Prime Minister of a sovereign democracy who a.) had at the time merely stated that Denmark had freedom of press, that b.) he was not in a position, even as PM, to forbid such publications, and that c.) if they wanted them removed they should take their actions to a Danish court... Hussein let Rasmussen stand in the cold and caved in to the Turks. Nor was that all. He downright advised the EU to accept Turkey as a member state, and furthermore proclaimed (Thomas Landen continues)...

"...in Istanbul that “The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans,” Europeans, who have seen a massive flow of Muslim immigration to their continent in the past decades, take an entirely different view. The Pew Center’s Global Attitude Polls indicate that citizens in EU countries with high percentages of Muslim immigrants adopt negative attitudes towards Muslims. These Europeans have noticed how their neighborhoods, cities and countries are losing their traditional European identity following the erosion of European values owing to the immigration of large numbers of Muslims with entirely different views of how people should behave and what liberties they should have.

“We are not at war with Islam,” Mr. Obama said in Istanbul. He seems to have forgotten that Europe and America were never at war with the Soviet Union either. Indeed, the purpose of NATO was to ensure peace and stability in Europe by maintaining a level of deterrent which refrained the Soviet Union from attacking NATO or one of its member states. NATO ensured that we were never at war with the Soviets by preparing itself for war against the Soviets. In doing so, NATO successfully preserved the freedoms of the West."

Taking into account the severe liability that an islamist-led Turkey has become for NATO, Landen then proceeds to some interesting conclusions:

"Today, ideological Islam has replaced Marxism as the main threat to the freedoms of the West. If sixty years after its foundation NATO wants to continue serving its purpose it needs to transform itself into an organization which can ensure that we will never be at war with Islam. NATO’s successful past shows that it can only serve this goal by preparing itself for war against Islam.

If NATO wants to continue serving its goal it should stand strong against every attempt at intimidation by ideological Islam. Instead of giving in to AKP threats it should forcefully reject them. If this means that Turkey leaves the organization, so be it. NATO should have shown Turkey the door in Strasbourg instead of giving in to the whims of the AKP."

To make up for the loss of an unreliable partner, Filip Dewinter, the most visible Vlaams Belang personality, has a very sound idea imho:

"As far as a membership of NATO is concerned, I have no problem at all with that, and I think it might even be very good when Israel joins NATO, because NATO defends freedoms and democratic values, characteristic of European civilization, and I have always said so and will repeat it again, that Israel is an outpost of the free West in Islamic-occupied territory."

Can't agree more.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT ALTERNATIVE ROCK.

Actually Sunday Afternoon Alternative Rock Before I Mow The Grass, but then my Option 3G Broadband modem sucked AGAIN big time yesterday in Germany. Back home now. First "Summer", good hit drawn from Buffalo Tom's 1995 album "Sleepy Eyed".



Guys are from Boston, MA. I seem to have the impression that after Taillights Fade in 1999, I saw their, well, taillights fade.


And we stay in the nineties with Filter's "Take a picture". I HATE live performances but was unable to find a studio version.



Seems to me, in real this guy can't sing. The guy in quesion is Richard Patrick (formerly Nine Inch Nails), lead vocals and guitar. One of Filter's founding members. Together with guitarist/programmer Brian Liesegang, Patrick founded Filter in 1993 in Cleveland, Ohio.


MFBB.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER (4)

Belgium will send an additional two F-16 fighter bombers to Afghanistan. They will complement the four planes already there, which operate from Kandahar airfield alongside their Dutch and French colleagues. An extra 25 ground personnel will accompany them. Plus, another 35 trainers will go to Afghanistan's north to train an ANA (Afghan National Army) battalion. It should be noted that this decision was taken on April 1, 2009, that it is NOT a joke, and that it came just two days before the Strasbourg/Kehl NATO summit two days later. Probably the Belgian government wanted to make a good impression. Still, I am 100% certain that a thing like this would not have been possible two years ago, when the SP.a, the socialist party, still filled several minister posts.



The decision will bring the total number of Belgian troops in Afghanistan to 560, of which the bulk is still guarding KAIA, Kabul International Airport. Of the four committments in Afghanistan, the operation from Kandahar involving the six fighter bombers is the sole combat mission, with the F-16's flying in a CAS role every day.


Theoretically the Belgian F-16's are old, but it would be totally wrong to assume they are therefore lacking in operational capabilities. Belgium purchased 116 of them in the late seventies, however, the contract, referred to here at the time as the "contract of the century" stipulated that the planes would be licence-built by SABCA in Gosselies (near Charleroi) and Haren (near Brussels). Together with Fokker in the Netherlands, SABCA was responsible for final assembly in Europe of all "European-purchased" F-16's. The early F-16 production was really a Belgian/Dutch enterprise, with Fokker, apart from its final assembly work, also buiding a.o. fuselage center sections, leading edge flaps etc., and Belgium's SONACA building the aft fuselage, MBLE the APG66 radar, and SABCA again the wing structure box and the complete wings. I remember a visit from my student days, now twenty years ago, when we visited the Haren SABCA plant and watched with astonishment how the thin, frail F-16 wings were entirely milled from thick, massive aluminium slabs rather than formed otherwise in order to eliminate tensions. FN (Fabrique National, more known for its small arms) in Herstal, near Liege, constructed the F100 engines for all four initial European customers, i.e. The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway.

The first "European" F-16 left the assembly line at SABCA's Gosselies plant in late 1978, and was accepted by the Belgian Air Force in January 1979 - thirty years ago. Since then, the planes have constantly undergone updates, the most significant series of them starting in the nineties. Most Belgian F-16's are now at Mid-Life Update Tape M4 (MLU-M4) software and hardware standard. This means that they are among the most modern and most capable combat jets of the world today. As for the airframes themselves, two years back I had the occasion to talk to an accomplished F-16 pilot himself, a certain Peter C., also author of several aviation books, who claimed that in our current F-16's perhaps only 5% of the original components was left.

Still, while hailing the technological prowess of our companies and the Air Force for hammering the best compromises out with regards to keeping the planes up to date - despite being hamstrung in the tightest of budgets - Belgium Air Fighter arm is missing its rendezvous with the future. Absolutely no debate is taking place regarding the F-16's reeplacement, and vicious resistance from Belgium's socialists blocked our entrance in the F35-project, here in Europe more commonly referred to as the JSF - the Joint Strike Fighter. Our northern neighbors, The Netherlands, showed more sanity in that regard and will possibly purchase the F-35 in 2011 or 2012. Still, there too, it's always the socialists obstructing the necessary course to take.

Now, back to the Kandahar detachment. While during the earlier 2006 mission the planes were still equipped with the LANTIRN pod, they now sport its successor, the AN/AAQ-33 PANTERA (Precision Attack Navigation and Targeting with Extended Range Acquisition), procured in 2006.





The PANTERA, actually the export version of Lockheed Martin's so-called sniper pod, is an advanced targeting pod that will complement, not replace, our existing AN/AAQ-14 LANTIRN (Low-Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infra-Red for Night) pods, which the Belgian Air Force purchased in 1997, even though it performs substantially better. The PANTERA's third generation high-resolution FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) and daylight CCD-TV camera, combined with an almost rock-steady stabilisation system, give the pod an unparalleled long-range target detection, identification and designation accuracy from altitudes of up to 40,000 feet (3 to 5 times better than a LANTIRN!). As a result, the pod can be operated from distances outside the firing cones of most ground-based air defence systems, as well as outside jet noise ranges for urban counter-insurgency operations. Also, its built-in digital data recorder allows saving images and for further analysis, an absoulte plus in a combat environment where identifying the foe has become an order of a magnitude more difficult when compared to any Cold War situation.

And so, ironically, in the eighth year of the War on Islamic Terror, Belgium's contribution to that conflict is finally becoming somewhat substantial. I would even wager that if the goverment can stay steady for a couple of years, limited participation of combat troops on the ground should not be ruled out. The moodswing regarding military committment has everything to do with the absence of the Flemish socialist party, the SP.a, in the Belgian government. I say Flemish, because the unbelievably chaotic political situation that begun in spring 2007, finally spawned a hybrid government that contained Flemish Christian Democrats, Flemish liberals, Walloon liberals, Walloon Christian Democrats... and Walloon socialists. Curiously though, the Parti Socialiste, the "Party of 1,000,000 scandals", seems paralyzed and does not offer any real opposition to the government's Afghanistan-related decisions. That government is currently headed by the Flemish Christian Democrat Herman Van Rompuy, who took over after his predecessor, Yves Leterme, also a Flemish Christian Democrat, had to step back in the wake of the so-called Fortisgate scandal. By doing so new elections could be avoided, and one of the good things that came out of this course of events, is that the Minister of Defense, the Flemish Christian Democrat Pieter De Crem, is still on his post.

The Belgian scenario actually offers a perfect study in microcosm of what happens when the left is forced from power, even if only partly or temporarily. Not only is it suddenly possible to employ six combat aircraft dropping real bombs on islamofascists 8,000 kilometers away, but on the domestic front too, benefits are tangible. Like every other western industrialiwed nation, Belgium, too, has felt the effects of the financial turmoil which started with the subprime crisis in the States. Some things will never be the same. And in a development not directly linked to Lehman Brothers & Co., Belgian steel manufacturers and car makers feel the bite - seriously so. But the locomotive behind the Belgian economy has for a very long time been constructon, and to tackle the crisis, the Belgian government passed a bill in February that temporarily (during 2009) lowered VAT on construction of new houses from 21% to... 6%. To be sure, only for an envelope of 50,000 EUR VAT excluded. But the reaction was overwhelming! Last March, one third more building requests were noted than a year previously. As a result, for the time being, the Belgian economy is chugging along relatively well. A small business owner in construction myself, I can testify that, since my order book is full till half November (knocking on wood here, of course). It is striking what a difference the presence in the government of people, who are not ideologically opposed to corporations, can make. That is of course not to say that those in charge are all free market zealots, far from. But having ministers in charge who harbor not per se hostile feelings towards companies guarantees a sea change compared to the nineteenth and twentieth century rhetoric and methods offered by Labor, the Socialisische Partij, the PvdA and whatever name the leftist scum prefers to march under. As a sad reminder, the Spanish example is now plain for everyone to see. There, the Spanish traded a successful rightwing government for a near communist collection of ecobozos in 2004... and are now facing a terrible crisis with unemployment skyrocketing towards 20%. The Spanish got themselves lured in 2008 again when a last-minute 600 EUR "tax break" - actually a check to buy votes - sufficed to keep Zapatero in power for another four years. But these checks are nothing but volatile sweets which evaporate after satisfying a simple need and leave nothing but yet another gaping hole in the government budget - as America will find out soon...


MFBB.

P.S.: Photos via the BAHA website.

TAKUAN SEIYO'S TENTH INSTALLMENT "FROM MECCANIA TO ATLANTIS."

Over at The Brussels Journal, the incomparable Takuan Seiyo has had his tenth installment in the From Meccania to Atlantis series up for more than a week now, but I feel I still just have to link to him. As per usual, his deep insight in Europes pathology and his eloquence in diagnosing the cancer raging throught the old continent blows you away:

...The problem is that they have the rest of Western society in tow. And the proof of how close this society has been towed to the edge is that ethnoconservative parties like Geert Wilders’s PVV, the Flemish VB, the Swiss SVP and FPS, and civic associations like Pro-Köln and Cities Against Islamization have been waging a valiant and often-losing fight for every inch of ground for over 20 years now, and still suffer stones and brickbats from the very people they are trying to save. In addition, Western patriots have spent millions of uncompensated man-hours pro bono to enlighten their peoples about the folly of suicide-by-Muslim-immigration. They run webzines and conferences and write for blogs like Brussels Journal, Gates of Vienna, Jihad Watch, Atlas Shrugs, View from the Right, or burn midnight oil to write books. This can even take the form of desperate appeals like this. All to little effect, so far.

Why is all this necessary? How could massive Muslim colonization have happened on the continent where monumental battles –-Toulouse (721), Tours (732), 750 years of the Iberian Reconquista, Manzikert (1071), Kosovo (1389 and 1448), Lepanto (1571), Chocim (1621 and 1673) and Vienna (1683) – had been fought for 1000 years to halt Muslim colonization? How can this be when there have been hundreds of additional such battles, and heroes such as Marco Antonio Bragadin whose name once every European schoolboy knew?

A case of collective amnesia so profound that it would allow for the influx of tens of millions of Muslims and the rise of Islam on this continent, that would lead to planned political unions with Turkey and the Maghreb, is no trifling matter.

Jihad is not the cause. It’s a symptom. Aggressively separatist Muslim communities in the West are not the cause. They are a symptom.

The symptom, in the West, is as old as the Goths and the Huns. But the disease is as old as the end of the Roman Empire, and before that, the Babylonian one. Flowering followed by decadence, followed by a partial population replacement with imported barbarians, followed by chaos, internal war, and wilting.

Addressing the solipsistic degeneracy of the American Empire and the despairing self-asphyxiation of post-national Europe are a precondition for disposing of the symptom. Fighting the symptom as if it were disembodied cannot bring cure, since the body’s maimed autoimmune system recognizes Islam and Muslims as its own, and its own – the anti-Islamization dissident – as the invading disease.

It should be none of our business whether Muhammad was a pedophile, nor should we be digging for damning quotes in the Koran or making damning movies about Islam. That we do so is the normal and spontaneous reaction of the scant remains of Western society’s nearly atrophied autoimmune system. It’s the autoimmune rejection of a foreign and deeply incompatible substance, forcibly injected into the West’s body as though phenol into a vein by the West’s insane ruling shamans.

Islam is everything bad its critics say it is. But one who has visited extensively in Muslim countries – and I have – returns home from some of them wishing he’d been able to import some of their features. Consider this:

- Which Muslim country is sick enough to encourage immigration by Christians, let alone welfare-consuming Christians, subsidize Christian churches, cower before Christian dissidents who despise their host society and its religion?

- Which Muslim head of state or potentate is so gelded as to state that if enough of his state’s subjects want to institute Christian (or just Western) jurisprudence instead of the law of the land, he sees no reason to object?

- Which Muslim country is lunatic enough to adopt on a wide scale the prima facie madness of denying the most obvious truths about racial, gender and cultural differences – and spending trillions (in euros, dollars, anything) to build a sham palace of cards in public education, employment and immigration based on those mad presuppositions?

- Which Muslim society is stupid enough to fail to understand how profoundly it differs from the West and from the West’s “infidel?” Which is ravaged by the Western virus to such an extent it fails to understand that its identity, its soul, depends on a vigilant rejection of the West’s culture and values, while recognizing that its economic wellbeing depends on playing a game of cooperation?

- Find a single Muslim head of state who goes out of his way to explain that Christianity is the religion of peace, and that Crusader really means someone who likes to cruise.

- Show me a Muslim country crazy enough to place its foreign relations, security and military matters in the hands of women, or to put women in the combat units of its military.

- Take a walk on the beach in Qatar or Abu Dhabi at 2 AM, and observe how a crowd of families with little children picnics happily and safely under the open skies. Then go back to Marseille or Rotterdam, Coney Island or Santa Monica, bring your wife and kids and two sets of old parents for a 2 AM picnic on the beach, and see what happens.

This does not imply that Islam is the cure for the West’s ills. The West has its own nonpareil system of recognizing and acknowledging reality. It’s called empiricism. The West had its own immune mechanism, its own unequalled culture, its own historical laboratory where the tried turned true. And all these were better than what Islam offers.

But we have allowed our own ruling elites to destroy these mechanisms here, whereas the Muslims preserved theirs. Some measure of respect is called for, concomitant with recognizing how indispensable it is that the West shake off its entire Mad Legume top layer...

So... I apologize for posting yet another story warning of the deadly muslim danger invading my continent, but I feel I have to. There are LOTS of interesting stories out there and I would love to comment on them... there are hot topics on politics, economy, history, culture ans what not... but in the absence of time, forced to a paucity of subjects, I feel I must just concentrate on what is essential.

Europes politicans are DESTROYING our continent. Through insane immigration and so-called integration policies, the "intellectual" justification of which is rooted in a morbid and intellectually dishonest ideology of perceived guilt over what the white race has done to the planet and its other occupants, they are literally replacing the indigenous population with barbarian newcomers, while encouraging the natives to stop procreating. Immigration ministers KEEP insisting we need to allow more muslim immigrants while anyone with half a brain realizes that importing more unqualified welfare recipients will not answer the industry's, let alone society's, manpower needs. Simultaneously, after having put into place legislation allowing the murder of tens of millions of European babies and non-offspring producing forms of relationships, the newest dada among Europes mostly leftist elites (and many if not most centrists and "rightwingers" have unfortunatley swallowed a larger part of the leftist phantasmagoria than they would ever want to admit) is that couples should limit having children because of the burden put on our planet.

We have to STOP THEM.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT DUTCH ROCK.

Dutch band "Earth and Fire". 1972. Memories.





Shocking Blue. 1970. Never marry a railroad man.





Sadly, the singer, Mariska Veres, recently died.

Nite.


MFBB.

THE BRAVE BATTLE OF THE PRO KOELN MOVEMENT.

Our friends over at Gates of Vienna posted a telling - and touching - video made by the German Pro Koeln movement [Pro Cologne - MFBB], an organization of brave, utterly decent, concerned German citizens who are opposing the shameless islamization and unbridled immigration in their beautiful ancient city by peaceful, democratic means. This video is so good I just felt I had to post it here too. Not for nothing is it sometimes referred to as the German "Fitna", although its full title is "Hat Pro Koeln doch Recht?" [Is not For Cologne Right? - MFBB]. This is part one:





And here is part two. Don't miss it either, these videos are very, very good:





At the time I failed to report on it, what with the frantic presidential campaigning in the States, but... on September 20th, 2008, in a move not unlike the harassment of a peaceful gathering by Vlaams Belang representatives in 2007 in Brussels - a harassment on the orders of the socialist mayor of Brussels Freddy Thielemans - the mayor of Cologne, Fritz Schramma, did his utmost "best", too, to stop decent, contributing, caring and law-abiding people from exercising their democratic right to hold a protest march. What they got was official sabotage, physical violence at the hands of antifa thugs, dirty smears and deceitful coverage by the mainstream media and a scandalous, indifferent non-performance by the Cologne police. I would therefore like people to get acquainted with the face of this scoundrel - a scumbag like Schramma has to know he's being watched:




Fritz Schramma, mayor of Cologne
SCHWEINHUND


In case you think Outlaw Mike is overreacting (again), you should know a thing or two about Schramma. Not only has his tenure been characterized by numerous scandals, abuse of power, and gross incompetence, this man, of all people, labored heavily to get a Grand Mosque to Koeln... an endeavour ultimately "crowned" with the granting of a building licence to DITIB, the overseeing muslim organization and PART OF THE TURKISH MINISTRY OF RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS!!! Yes indeed, contrary to what you would think, Schramma is NOT a socialist, at least not officially. No, he's a Christian Democrat, or let's just say he claims to be. In light of his overfriendly and zealous cooperation with DITIB (go ahead, check out that sign and how they proudly display a succession of minaret-crowned mosques thoughout Germany), the fact that he is a member of the CDU - the Christlich-Demokratische Union - is all the more painful. For most muslims in Germany are TURKS, and the prosecution of Christians in Turkey is an appalling, merciless phenomenon that has resulted in that country's Christian community to shrink from 22 percent of the population in 1900... to under 0.3% TODAY. And even this pitiful remnant is subject to severe attacks. Check out this video:



Taking this terrible reciprocity into account - DITIB orchestrating the building of tens of high profile mosques in Germany against the demolishing of churches and tortuous death of Christianity in Turkey - can you imagine, can you just imagine, that a prominent "Christian Democrat" like Fritz Schramma.... has been cooperating intensively with a branch of the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs... to get this megamosque in Cologne built??? After all that has been done, and is still being done on a daily basis, to batter the last remaining Turkish christians into oblivion???

Back in September 2008, this dog had the nerve to call the members of the Pro Koeln movement "a dirty clique of euro fascists". Yet it was they who were subject to fascist tactics: physical violence, vicious attacks in regime friendly media outlets, even refusal in hotels and conference centers...

...and yet Pro Koeln carried on. Carries on. Because on May 9th already, a second Anti-Islamization Congress will take place in Cologne. Preceded by a protest march which will take place already this weekend, on April 11. And as you can see from the poster, pro Koeln's chairman, Markus Beisicht, is candidate for Cologne's mayoral seat:



Dare I say that oh so slowly, all across Europe, people are waking up? I dare not say it yet. Ignorance is still bliss among the masses who are deliberately spoonfed a mixture of stupid "reality" show, ridiculous soaps, and outright false news reports. Media and politicians alike are doing everything in their might to hide the spreading cancer from view as best as they can. When I (half)jokingly remarked to a bright young staff member in my bank that I would depart their bank as soon as I found out they were offering sharia banking, she looked at me with a blank stare and asked what "sharia" was! However, among those in the know - and their numbers are slowly increasing - something is stirring. You can feel it in The Netherlands, where a popular rightwing TV station - a first in Holland - is about to get on the air. You can feel it in Great Britain, that suddenly seems to have spawned a promising conservative icon, Daniel Hannan, whose scathing Gordon Brown-demolishing speech has become an internet sensation overnight. You can feel it in Austria, were a newly to be built mosque in Nenzing, Vorarlberg, cannot have a dome or minaret. And you can certainly sense it in Cologne, Germany, where Pro Koeln is slowly gaining strength. With a 1,000 year history of succesfully resisting the muslim onslaught and an unimaginable heritage to protect, Europe simply cannot afford to fail where our ancestor succeeded. In the words of Filip Dewinter:

"Europe is a continent of belfrys and cathedrals, not of mosques and minarets!"

Indeed. The picture above shows the Koelner Dom - Cologne Cathedral, Germany's largest cathedral, a dazzling poem in stone, described by UNESCO as an "exceptional work of human creative genius".

What amazing treasures do we have.

Do we have to protect.


MFBB.

A DAY OUT IN THE ARDENNES.

Could not hold out any longer and went hiking in the Ardennes for the first time this year. Below you see the Ourthe river flowing through a narrow valley near the village of Nadrin, central Ardennes. Not visible on the left is a cragged rock formation, part of a 1,400m long crest of ancient rock, called Le Hérou (the heron), which is what got this place its name but of which I failed to make a decent pic. Throughout the aeons, "Le Hérou" forced the Ourthe river to make a wide detour to the southeast and up northwest again before it could go further, and indeed the river makes a 180° U-turn further downstream.



Today, much of the Ardennes is still covered in dense forests. In foreign press I sometimes read it's being described as a mountain range but that's really exxagerated. Generally, the Ardennes average around 350-500 m (1,148-1,640 ft). Only in the northeast does it rise to over 650 m (2,132 ft) in an desolate plateau called the Hautes Fagnes and covered with boggy moors. It is there that you find Belgium's highest point, the Signal de Botrange (694m). But apart from this very distinctive area - possibly the last one in Belgium where you can still really get lost - much of the region is typified by steep-sided valleys carved by fast-flowing rivers, the most prominent being the Meuse which flows through France, Belgium and The Netherlands before ending in the North Sea. The fact that the Ardennes are nowhere near really high could mean they're old, and you bet they are. They were formed during what geologists call the Hercynian orogeny, which makes the Ardennes as old as, say, the Massif Central and the Vosges in France. The Hercynian (or Variscan) orogeny is a geologic mountain-building era caused by the continental collision in the Late Paleozoicum between the supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana, which formed the hypercontinent of Pangea. Late Paleozoicum means 250-300 million years old, but in the Ardennes you do find rocks that are even older, easily 500 million years. Interesting to know for North Americans is that "simultaneously" with the Hercynian orogeny in "our" neck of the woods, the Acadian and Alleghenian orogeny took place in the area which would later become the United States, forming the Ouachita and Appalachian Mountains. So that would make the Appalachian Mountains about as old as our Ardennes, although - correct me if I'm wrong - I suspect the Appalachians are higher still.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT MISHMASH.

The Police contemporaries "UK" were a, you guess it, UK group who disappeared from the scene even a few years earlier than their illustrious countrymen. UK was formed in September 1976 by John Wetton (vocals/bass guitar) and Bill Bruford (drummer). For a short while Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman joined, until he was called back by his label, A&M Records, who did not like Wakeman's side project. Bruford and Wetton then had quite some difficulty to find stable musicians, first unsuccesfully trying to draw in Robert Fripp (from King Crimson), then succeeding to bring in Allan Holdsworth (Soft Machine, Gong) - and losing him after a US tour in 78. Another member was Eddie Jobson, a violinist/keyboardist who had worked with Roxy Music and Frank Zappa. In the meantime, they had released their nameless debut album, but it wasn't until 1979, when Bruford himself had already left, that UK finally scored a first hit. This was Rendez-Vous 6:02, from the album Danger Money. I instantly liked it, or perhaps "like" is not the correct word. I found it interesting at first, began to like it only after. It's some kind of light, ethereal rock - they called it progressive rock back then - and I guess it requires most people a few hears before it ticks. Or does not. Here it is.





In 1980, UK disbanded because Jobson and Wetton could not agree on the line to follow. Either way, during its short and tumultuous existence, UK's distincitive sound was the product of skilled musicians, who blended together a curious mix of jazzy harmonies, electric violins, close harmony vocals, odd time signatures, and a variety of synthesizer sonorities. At any time the band had great potential, yet for some reason its members could never find the chemistry that sticks together a truly successful group. Regular reader Mark may be interested to know that they worked together with Jethro Tull and even performed as their opening act on a US tour.


Fast forward to 2002. Moby. Extreme Ways. Moby is an asshat. So is Matt Damon. Yet I like the music from the former and (most) movies from the latter. As Mark said on a previous thread, you "don't have to agree with a music artist's politics to enjoy their music." Likewise, while I consider Damon an absolute scumbag for his political stance, I have no trouble admitting he was a perfect cast for the great Jason Bourne series.




Interesting to know from the wikipedia entry is that from 1982 to 1985 Moby was in a hardcore punk band called the Vatican Commandos (bwahahahahahaaaaa!!!!), who "released an EP called Hit Squad for God." And reading that he was also in a Joy Division-inspired post-punk group called AWOL, brought back sound memories from the punk age (Joy Division was quite good in my book). Oh yeah. If you liked Extreme Ways, you might also want to listen to Lift me Up. And if you are a sensitive, caring character, like American Muslim, I can counsel Slipping Away. Both songs are from the album Hotel (2005). Just a hint.

Some trivia you can score with. Moby's real name is Richard Melville Hall, and he allegedly got his nickname from his parents because of an ancestral relationship to Moby Dick author Herman Melville, who supposedly was his great-great-great-granduncle!

Good night.


MFBB.

EUROPE FINANCES MOSQUES. MUSLIM WORLD CLOSES CHURCHES. NO PROBLEM FOR OUR TRAITOR POLITICIANS.

A report from the Vlaams Belang website. On March 31, a VB delegation demonstrated against the recognition of yet another mosque by the Ministry of Interior Affairs. Recognition means a.o. that the imams are paid by the Belgian State. In case of financial shortages, the Province will make good the deficit. I am not kidding.

KORTRIJK 31.03.2009 13.07h Around 350 Flemish-nationalists gathered yesterday in Kortrijk to protest the Attakwa mosque's recognition. The mosque's chairman, who has been living in Flanders for 35 years, only speaks arabic and French. The biggest prayer house [in the provinces of East and West Flanders - MFBB] can accomodate 1,500 people and is led by an imam who only speaks arabic. As if that is not enough already, the people of Kortrijk will in addition shortly receive a minaret.

This affair was reason enough for Vlaams Belang to peacefully demonstrate against the increasing islamization of our cities. A short demonstration illustrated our party's demands. Immigrant rioters threw stones and sticks to our demonstrators. They were backed up by MP's Philippe De Coene (Socialist Party) and Bart Caron (ex-Spirit, now Groen!]

It is obvious that in West Flanders too, it's five to twelve. After Kortrijk, Waregem and Ostend will, too, shortly have an official mosque - thus financed with your taxpayer money. All traditional parties AND Lijst Dedecker voted FOR the Ostend mosque. Who stops the madness?

Thus, by beginning to finance mosques on a grand scale, Belgium follows the lead of France, Sweden, The Netherlands etc etc etc. In an age when Christians and people of other religious beliefs in muslim lands are increasingly persecuted, this development is nothing short of insanity. Sometimes, reality even beats fiction. In Tours, France e.g., recently the first stonelaying of the city's mosque took place. Present was, a.o., the Algerian Minister of Religious Affairs, Bouabdallah Ghlamallah. From The Brussels Journal:

Two French websites – Islamisation, administered by Joachim Véliocas, and Bivouac-Id – have posted reports on the laying of the first stone of the new Grand Mosque of Tours. Notable among the dignitaries present were the Algerian Minister of Religion, the Socialist mayor of Tours, Jean Germain, and… the archbishop of Tours, Monsignor Aubertin.

Tours will have its Grand Mosque when the 5 million euros necessary for its financing have been found – in 3 years, at the earliest. A quarter of the sum has already been collected. The land was purchased by the Paris Mosque, subsidized by Algeria. On November 29, 2008, amidst great ceremony, the first stone was laid. In 732, a Muslim army was defeated outside the city of Tours by Charles Martel and the Franks. The Battle of Tours was one of the most decisive battles in history since it stopped the Islamization of Europe (at least for 13 centuries). Adolf Hitler bitterly regretted that the Muslims had not won in Tours.

The Algerian Minister of Religion, Bouabdallah Ghlamallah made a stopover in Tours to attend the laying of the first stone of the Grand Mosque of Tours, before taking off for Saudi Arabia... a land where the practice of Christianity is forbidden, as in Algeria where spreading it is punishable by heavy fines and prison sentences! But Algeria will contribute up to 490,000 euros towards financing the mosque.

Bouabdallah Ghlamallah distinguished himself earlier in the year through his sense of inter-religious dialogue, so dear to the hearts of French bishops. He closed 10 churches, justifying his actions by saying: “I associate evangelization with terrorism.”

On June 24, 2004, Bouabdallah Ghlamallah denounced the evangelization of Kabyles (Berbers) in Algeria during a press conference in Algiers. He repeated that Islam was the “religion of the State and of all Algerians”, then warned that preaching Christianity would result inevitably in a confrontation: “There will be bloodshed.”

In Europe, ministers are tripping over each other to get mosques where hatred of the West is preached, financed. In the muslim world, churches are being closed on a daily basis. Future historians will have a hard time explaining the collective madness ruling from the North Cape to Gibraltar and from Eire to Budapest.

You may have noted that the mayor of Tours, Jean Germain, is a member of the French Parti Socialiste. But, I suspect you suspected that already.



MFBB.

ISLAMIC CANCER SPREADING FAST THROUGH EUROPE (4).

Over at The Brussels Journal, contributor Tiberge has a post dealing with a recent article by René Servoise, former French ambassador to Indonesia:

A mutation of our nation is in progress. It is growing, it is profound but uncontrolled. In all likelihood, the immense majority of Frenchmen are unaware of it.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim families, from North Africa, the Middle East and black Africa - whose religion, aspirations and mores are radically different from ours - now live on our soil. Their birth rate is higher than that of European families. What is the consequence? Within 30 years the population of Islamist culture could be in the majority among those 40 years old or younger. "In France, we will have between 6 and 8 million Arabs by the years 2005 - 2010," said Edgar Pisani, honorary president of the Arab World Institute. We have been duly warned: this is a radical transformation (political, economic, cultural and social) of our society.

This mutation is in progress at the very moment when, to use Toynbee's expression, "an external proletariat" is forming on the southern and western shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This army of reservists came about as a result of the birth rate of these peoples, and the absence of an economic policy capable of guaranteeing them a decent life in their homeland. In front of them lie France, Italy, Spain and Germany, lands of mirage, highly developed, with guaranteed employment, free social protection and education. Who could resist the call of this "promised land"?

At the same time, all over the world, roused by immense hopes, Islam is enjoying an unprecedented revival. It is awakening after a long night. It has renewed vigor, pugnacity and ambitions. From Morocco to Indonesia, from the Muslim States of Central Asia to black Africa, more than one billion two hundred million men - young compared to the aging populations of Europe - constitute a "community" (Umma).

It is transnational, motivated by spiritual aspirations, material demands and political ambitions, and (here and there) financed by revenue from oil.

In France, the successive waves of Italians, Poles, central European Jews, Spaniards and Portuguese, had never posed comparable problems of integration. Why? Because they belonged to the European branch. Their religious traditions and their ambition to acquire more individual freedoms facilitated their assimilation. Finally - and this is far from the least important reason - these immigrants expressed a desire to share the destiny of the French nation. To meld into it. Integration cannot be decreed. In order for it to materialize it must be desired by two, this is obvious. And the two must converge. Today, the situation is different, radically different. An active and determined minority among the Islamists refuses integration. Deliberately.

In close communion with Islam (its matrix), it is receptive to orders from abroad, to spiritual counsel, ideology and financial support. And much more. Not only does it intend to keep its identity, but to re-Islamize the non-practicing, if not convert the natives of the host country to the true faith. Islam has never conceived of itself as a minority in a secular State, but necessarily as the majority religion. (...) Exalted by its renewal, propelled both by its demography and its absence of economic development, infiltrating wherever there is no resistance, Islam is advancing like a wave.

The French people can measure its vitality by the number of mosques multiplying on their territory (sometimes with the help of Catholic and lay leaders), mosques run by imams 96% of whom are from foreign countries. Also by the prospect of seeing - in the second half of the 21st century - the fall of Catholicism in France to second rank, leaving first place to Islam.

Thus two dynamics are developing: one inside our borders (...); the other outside (...) Concomitant and convergent, these changes are determining factors for Europe and for the French nation where the demographic stagnation is alarming.

Every nation expresses itself through a subtle, delicate and secret balance between dreams, ambitions and strengths, sometimes contradictory, transcended by a common aspiration to live together and to do great things together. This national identity is for some its soul; for others its genius. Each nation is a plant nourished by a land and a History, pride in its past. "Immediate to the heart of God," it is unique and therefore justified.

How many centuries, wars, concessions, sacrifices and omissions were necessary for France, England, Spain and Germany to overcome - finally - their internal divisions and to become what they are!

If it is fitting - as Montesquieu recommends - to only touch institutions with a trembling hand, what can one say about the respect due the profound harmony of our nation, its internal composition - the measure of its permanence and of its performance?


To the lessons drawn from our past, the present adds new warnings about the future on a daily basis. How can we allow ourselves to be blinded to the point of not seeing the proliferation and the exasperation of ethnic and religious conflicts all around us, since the same causes produce the same effects?

............

The mayor of Reims, Adeline Hazan, inaugurates the new Reims mosque. Mrs. Hazan, wearing a red coat, is a member of the French Socialist Party. I suppose however that you suspected that already.


Mr. Servoise continues...

Are we Frenchmen, after having overcome so many rebellions, insurrections and revolutions, after having liquidated our quarrels between Catholics, Protestants, Israelites and Free Thinkers; between nobles, bourgeois and proletariat, about to allow conditions that foster disintegration to take hold?

Warning. If native Frenchmen fail to be the most numerous, we will see that our days are numbered. If we fail to limit the number of immigrants, we will be judged as wanting in the scales of History. If we fail to affirm our national ambition, we will set the stage for the bursting apart of our nation.

Remember. One day, in Babylon, on the wall of his palace, Belshazzar saw letters written in fire, three warnings: MENE MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN. The prophet Daniel translated them thus:

"God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end."

"You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting."

"Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians."

For us today the warnings come daily on our TV screens. But no prophet dares translate them.

What kind of France, dear reader, do you hope to bequeath to your children?

The growth of the number of mosques in France since 1985. Dark green areas indicate more than thirty mosques.


Europe is committing suicide.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT MUSIC CLUB.

I'm playing on safe here. Run baby run. Can't imagine somebody not liking this classic Sheryl Crow hit from 1995. Or perhaps not so classic, since it took three release attempts to finally launch it for good - the first attempt dating from 1993. Run baby run was taken from her debut album Tuesday Night Music Club. How well do I remember watching the MTV clip of the very first hit drawn from that album, All I wanna do. Ah... time.




Waterfall. Nice 1987 hit by Wendy and Lisa.





Yes. 22 years already.


MFBB.

FILIP DEWINTER ON FOX NEWS.

Weird coincidence. Barely had I posted the previous installment dealing with Filip Dewinter's new book, "Inch Allah", about the islamization of Europe, or there's FOX News with a report on how Brussels, now 25% muslim, is rapidly becoming the capital of "Eurabia". I put that dreadful word between brackets, because at this stage the horrible trend is still reversible - and one must always hope.

Anyway, I'm glad that across the pond, finally, some MSM channel picks up the disturbing static emanating from the old continent. Check out the following video from FOX's Bret Baier:





I must admit that the scarce exerpts from FOX's interview with Dewinter do not do right to his oratory gifts. He's not exactly coming over as stuttering, but the vigor and eloquency are clearly lacking. That said, the message Mr. Dewinter brings is clear. Brussels, the Capital of Europe, is in the process of being taken over by muslims. In three of its nineteen communes, they form now the majority, and when that is a fact, the disconcerting dynamic of the rest of the indiginous Belgians leaving is plain to see for those who WANT to see it. The process is always the same. Muslim families, far more numerous than "old" Belgians through their higher fertility, "softly push" the originals out by societal pressure consisting of:

a.) deliberate mayhem in the neighborhoods (by youngsters, but not entirely by that age class)

b.) creation of an alien atmosphere (soukh-like shopping neighborhoods, noisy prayer houses)

c.) intimidation of police (an arrest of a petty criminal invariably leads to the officers suddenly being surrounded by tens of muslims seemingly coming from everywhere)

d.) intimidation of indigenous women (girls and women whose clothing is deemed "offensive" are invariably harassed)

e.) rampant criminality. This is not really a deliberate phenomenon, but given the inevitable lack of parental control, many young (and unemployed) muslims turn to criminal activities.

f.) general dilapidation of the neighborhood (it is a sad but inescapable fact that muslim neighborhoods dilapidate, given their apparent lack of western style labor ethic)

All these factors lead to house prices gradually dropping as more muslims move into a neighborhood. The indigenous couples who stay longest see the value of their habitat drop like a stone and are at the end forced to sell it for a bargain price to... you guess it, after which the process accelerates even more.

It is this perverse dynamic that has created the three muslim-majority communes of Brussels, with more to follow. In these communities, there are now several no-go zones where the police don't dare to patrol anymore. An exerpt from the FOX article is telling:

Yet Molenbeek remains disconcerting. Belgian police assigned three plainclothes officers to watch over a FOX News team shooting street scenes one morning in Molenbeek. When FOX News returned in the afternoon as more people were out and about, the police said it would be safer not to get out of the car. It wasn't even dark yet.

Molenbeek is one of the three muslim-majority Brussels communes. Its mayor is Philippe Moureaux, a stereotypical Parti Socialiste scoundrel. The Parti Socialiste, nicknamed "The Party of 1,000,000 scandals", is so through and through rotten that if I were to write a table of contents of a brief summary of its scandals over the past three decades and I would drop it on your foot, you'd be in hospital for a couple of weeks. I remember a day when Mr. Moureaux gave unwillingly testimony of that sad situation himself when he once came on TV hinting that he knew the murderers of his old compadre, André Cools, a Parti Socialiste strongman from Liège who was assassinated in 1991. Too bad for Mr. Moureaux, in the Parti Socialiste, like in the mafia, there's something like an omerta.



Philippe Moureaux in the company of his new people.

Either way, Philippe Moureaux, mayor of Molenbeekistan, is the living embodiment of Berthold Brechts 1953 model politician following the "Wenn das Volk mit der Regierung nicht einverstanden ist, muss sich die Regierung ein anderes Volk suchen." adage. If your German is not that strong, know that Brecht was a communist German playwright who infamously wrote:

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had thrown away the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

The June 17, 1953 uprising was a popular revolt, begun by East berlin construction workers, against the stalinist Eastern German republic [the "DDR" or Deutsche Demokratische Republik - MFBB]. In 1966, the West German Ministry for Inter-German affairs estimated that 383 people were killed in the revolt itself and that a further 106 were executed under martial law or later condemned to death. 1,838 would have been injured as well as 5,100 arrested.

Luckily, to date we have been spared the bloodshed. But then we have not seen yet an uprising among Belgium's native population of the scope and character of the June 17 Uprising. We are however able to observe Brechts recipe in practice. Mr. Moureaux did elect himself another people.

One last tidbit.

In one of the other muslim-majority Brussels communes, Sint-Joost-Ten-Node, a certain Emir Kir, is about to become Belgium's first muslim mayor.





Mr. Kir, who is of Turkish descent, denies that the Armenian genocide has taken place.


Mr. Kir is a member of the Parti Socialiste.


But, I suspect you suspected that already.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT BACK TO THE NINETIES.

After Kurt Cobain's death in 1994 I thought Nirvana would simply evaporate and never leave a trace. I was not a little surprised to see its drummer, Dave Grohl, take off a little while later on a very successful career with his own band, Foo Fighters. Reading about Grohls lifepath is a fascinating journey into the world of hardcore punk and grunge, although also involved are sidesteps with exotic bands such as Killing Joke, Tom Petty and the Heartbrakers and The Prodigy. Along the way, he performed with Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails, and even covered a dark Gary Numan number, Down in the Park (still love the original far better, though). For this "Saturday Night" I wanted to post the single Everlong, from their second album The Coulour and the Shape. However, since I only found acoustic/live versions, and I hate both acoustic and live versions, I settled for "I'll stick around", from their nameless 1995 debut album:





The Folk Implosion was a US indie rock band founded by Lou Barlow and John Davis in the early nineties in Boston, MA. For a couple of years they led a rather obscure existence, until the (disastrous) movie Kids came out, and a Folk Implosion song was lifted from its soundtrack. The year was 95, and the song, "Natural One", peaked at 26 on the Billboard Hot 100. Basically, it simultaneously proved to be their swan song, rendering TFI yet another one hit wonder. Still, to me it's one of those sounds inextricably linked to the 90s, that dull era when life seemed to hold no challenges any more, a bestselling author claimed history had come to an end, and the single most defining act of the decade was a blowjob in the White House. Despite what we find ourselves in these days, I can't say I'm longing back for the time.





MFBB.

CECI N'EST PAS UN COMBATTANT ENNEMI.

from MSNBC, March 13, 2009:

"WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Friday that it is abandoning one of President George W. Bush's key phrases in the war on terrorism: enemy combatant. The Justice Department said in legal filings that it will no longer use the term to justify holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay."

Prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.

From Wikipedia:

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, although he lived in Kuwait rather than Afghanistan, heading al-Qaeda's propaganda operations from sometime around 1999. According to the 9/11 Commission Report he was "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks". He is also thought to have had, or has confessed to, a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, including the World Trade Center 1993 bombings, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the Millennium Plot, and the murder of Daniel Pearl."

Always nice to know that President Hussein does not consider the fella who orchestrated the slaughter of 3,000 innocent Americans, amongst others, an "enemy combatant".

Not.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT FILTHY INFIDEL MUSIC.

Pixies. Ana.



The Pixies, Forefathers of Grunge, were one of those things that helped me through the last two excruciating years of my student career. I first got to know them by watching MTV where - IIRC - the first hit to make it on my radar was Here comes your man, from the album Doolittle. It was an easy listen but made no big impression on me. Only about one year later I got to know how much potential this Massachusetts-born band had (it originated in Boston in 1986), since I found myself with a roommate, a guy from Antwerp, who was an early Pixies aficionado. Via him I got to know the albums Come on Pilgrim, Surfer Rosa and especially Bossanova, imho their best album. Perhaps not surprisingly, Bossanova was the album in which frontman Black Francis assumed almost total control. From it I drew Ana, for its sheer textual simplicity and crystalline sound, but there are several other darn good songs. I'm told that Pixies reunited again in 2004, even with the original crew - Black Francis, Joey Santiago, Kim Deal and David Lovering. If so, I'm sorry to have failed to notice any new material. Ana's video is amazingly good, and you know how that comes - George Bush the First was POTUS.


Great music from a weird, short lived UK band, The Babys. What one could call a three hit wonder. I suppose Mark formerly from Colorado would label Everytime I think of you and Isn't it time as cheesy songs, possibly stinky cheesy songs (although I can stomach them), but Piece of the Action might find mercy even with our number crunching man who programs in Microsoft Access for Databases for fun and for free.



Yes I know, singer John Waite looks like an androgynous wimp. Live with it.

Time for an great musician, the film and theater music composer Philip Glass. Perhaps what mostly rings a bell are the themes he wrote for Koyaanisqatsi and Powwaqatsi, and more recently for The Hours. He also performs with his own group, the Philip Glass Ensemble. For this "Saturday Nights..." I chose a little known theme from the war movie Hamburger Hill, honoring the sacrifices of a battalion of the 101st Airborne during the assault on Hill 937 in the Ashau Valley in Vietnam, in 1969. The video shows the first eight minutes of that film. When the theme's gone, skip the rest. Or not. Whatever. Hamburger Hill wasn't too bad, at least less melodramatic than Platoon.




MFBB.