THE GUARDIAN REGRETS THE DEMISE OF THE GDR.

At the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Wall, The Guardian openly regrets the demise of the cruel dictatorship that the GDR was:





Quick reality check. The Boston Globe, May 2006:

"Matthias Melster, 40, says he still suffers nightmares from his time at Hohenschoenhausen, a notorious Stasi prison that today serves as a museum. He was inmate number 312. As with all Stasi prisoners, his guards and interrogators addressed him only by the number of his solitary confinement cell. Melster was more fortunate than most inmates -- he at least knew why he was shoved into a windowless van in 1987 and hauled away to prison. He and his girlfriend had plotted an escape to West Germany, a major offense.

``I liked the idea of freedom, and that made me an it antisocial element," Melster recalled as he led visitors along the same dimly lit corridors through which he was frog-marched as a terrified teenager. He passed rows of solid cell doors to the monotone chamber -- looking like the lair of the blandest of bureaucrats, with its wooden-veneer desk, clunky telephone, and metal file cabinet -- where he was grilled 10 hours a day for five months before being sent to another prison.

``At first you think, `I'll tell them nothing,' " Melster said. ``In the end, you tell them everything. Whatever they want to know, you tell."

Melster's life has never quite gotten back on track. He's nervous. He chain-smokes. His voice is flat, affectless. ``Was I beaten? No, I was never beaten. I have no scars to show," Melster said.

``Stasi torture was psychological. It was sleep deprivation and disorientation," he said. ``It was intimidation through insinuation -- the guard who would start screaming and touching his weapon, as if you were just seconds away from a bullet. The interrogator whose hints of `worse to come' were somehow more terrible than an actual fist to the face.

``It was months of never seeing another human, except for guards and interrogators. It was never hearing your own name, only your cell number," he said. ``It was being stripped of your humanity, layer by layer."

Sleep deprivation, intimidation through insinuation, months of never seeing another human, except for guards and interrogators. Hmmmm. Where have we heard that before? It's on the tip of my tongue...

... got it! The Guardian!




Hey, if there happens to be a The Guardian sonofabitch out there reading this, I just want you to know that I consider you a piece of shit and that I'd like to kick you in the balls!

That's all. good night!


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT TEXAS, THOMAS TALLIS

Inner smile, a hit by UK band Texas, which formed in Glasgow in 1986. And if Mr Ghost thinks it's Old Fogey Night again, the second clip takes thou back to 1580 or so. Texas prolly sounds like an incongruous name for a Scottish band but they took it reportedly from the 1984 Wim Wenders movie 'Paris, Texas'. Wenders is an artsy fartsy German film director, emphasis on f.a.r.t., and also a f*cking leftist asshat, and it's always pretty cool to hang round these guys or connect in one way or another when you're in zhe muzik biznes. FYI, another Scottish band, Travis, featured here before, are named after the lead character in Paris, Texas; yet other Scots, Primal Scream, sampled actress Natassja Kinski on one of their albums; the movie reportedly inspired the U2 album The Joshua Tree; for Kurt Cobain it was the best movie he'd ever seen... so,...

... where was I? Oh yeah, artsy movies by leftozoid directors attract cool people in the music industry. Either way, I've always liked Texas (the band). It's not that I'm that greatly impressed, but they have a string of reasonable hits. As for singer Sharleen Spiteri, it's one of those women I've been asking myself my entire life whether they're hot or not. I'm still not decided, maybe someone out there can help me with it.





Then the movie adaptation of Fantasia, an orchestral piece dating from 1910 by British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). For the movie it was cut short to about five minutes, but normally it lasts about thrice as long. Fantasia is itself an adaptation if you want from a much earlier work, a theme by Thomas Tallis (1505-1585), an acclaimed church composer and organist in 16th century England. Tallis' talent was such that not only was he sought after by high-ranking employers, from famous abbeys and cathedrals to a series of Kings and Queens, but also that it let him survive the religious strife between catholics and protestans (from founder of the Anglican Church Henry VIII over the Catholic Queen Mary to Queen Elizabeth again). Having written music solely for churches and royal chapels, it should come as no surprise that Vaughan Williams' adaptation is 'made' to resemble church music and indeed, Fantasia, though it is to be performed by a string orchestra, 'sounds' like an organ. The string orchestra is to be divided in three parts: one a full sized string orchestra (the 'great division'), the second a single desk from each section (the 'choir division'), and the third a string quartet (the 'swell division').




As for the movie, it was quite good. Russel Crowe convinces as the tough captain who outsmarts the enemy, courageously leads his men into battle, and in a heavy storm does not hesitate to cut off rigging keeping a broken mast tied behind the ship, threatening to sink it - but in doing so he dooms a sailor thrown overboard who's still clinging to the rigging. Fantasia plays during this scene.



MFBB.

IN MEMORIAM FORT HOOD VICTIMS.

Unfortunately, I do not have all the names of the deadly victims of the shooting rampage. These are the ones I found:

Michael Pearson, 21
Amy Krueger, 29
Jason Dean Hunt, 22
John Gaffaney, 56
Kham Xiong, 23
Aaron Thomas Nemelka,19 Russel Seager, 51
Francheska Velez, 21, and unborn child


What I found especially heartbreaking was that Ms. Velez was pregnant and that her unborn child... is yet another terrible loss.

Please save a prayer for all those people and their loved ones, as well as for the wounded. This tragedy also reminds us that our countries lose brave soldiers and civilians EVERY DAY in a fight with a monstrous foe. It's not that their deaths are overlooked on this blog or forgotten, but such is the power of names and identities when that foe strikes so close that the victims suddenly get a name and a face.

MFBB.

FRANCE COMMITTING SUICIDE.

Just a street in Puteaux, west of Paris, on a Friday afternoon...





Via François Desouche, we learn that the mayor actually gave permission for this blocking of the street. Believe it or not, this is the genuine wording of the permission:

"Nous vous informons que la prière dans la rue est possible avec l’aimable autorisation de la mairie de Puteaux, ainsi que la collaboration de la police municipale qui ferme la rue tous les vendredis pendant toute la durée de la prière. »

Translation:

"We inform you that prayer in the street is possible with the kind authorization of the municipal authorities, as well as with the cooperation of the police which will close off the street all fridays for the entire duration of the prayer."

Readers will recall that in certain neighborhoods in Paris itself, muslims did not wait for "kind authorization" and blocked the streets themselves. Either way, the result is the same. I don't know how it is with you, but upon seeing this I have a terrible case of déjà vu. It's Vichy all over again.

Most muslims you see on the photo are Algerians or of Algerian descent. While the mairie is happily granting permission to block an entire street for muslim purposes (and greatly annoy its indigenous inhabitants in the process)...

... Algeria is happily closing Christian churches, and severely prosecuting the pathetically small Christian minority there.

When you look at the following video, do this thought exercise. Imagine that Christians block an entire street in Algiers like that, and high-volume broadcast the priest's sermon and Gregorian songs via loudspeakers. Even assuming they would be able to get set up at all, in no time there would be a terrible riot, they would be viciously attacked by a muslim mob, and Algerian police would, instead of helping and protecting them, partake in the beatings and arrest as many as possible.

But in Puteaux, the reverse situation is not only permitted, but actively facilitated at the expense of genuine, native French:





The French are pathetic. Speaking of French, you don't hear it much, huh?


MFBB.

SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD (1823-1880).

Today there was such a fucking shitload of depressing news again, a.o. the European Court of Human Rights ordering Italian schools to remove crucifixes, Russia and White Russia doing live exercises simulating an attack on Poland (included in the scenario were nukes), and the goddam scumbag of the mayor of Marseille wanting to grant a building permit to yet another giant mosque...

... that I decided to post something different lest I don't get completely nuts of it all.

The two plates below depict well-known works by American painter Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823 – 1880), a landscape painter of the so-called Luminist school. Luminism, is actually an offshoot of the Hudson River school. It is characterized by its emphasis on light effects in landscapes, and often breathe an aura of tranquility, an effect in many a case attained by depicting calm, still waters under soft, hazy skies.

Gifford traveled extensively to find scenic landscapes, both in the US's northeast and in Europe. During the Civil War, he was a Union soldier, serving as a Corporal in the 7th Regiment of the New York militia. New York City's Seventh Regiment is actually still the proud proprietor of several of Gifford's canvases. It was in New York also that this painter who was as gifted as he was prolific (he painted over 700 works) died in 1880 of malarial fever.




Kauterskill Clove (1862)



The Wilderness


Nite. Let's hope the very best for Christie and McDonnell.


MFBB.

BRITS COMPLETELY LOSING IT.

Cambridge University is going to allow burkas at graduation. Via The Sun, November 3:

"Cambridge University issued a clarification to say certain items of national dress, military uniform and religious garments — including the burka — were allowed. Yesterday a spokesman confirmed burkas could be worn under mortar boards but no one had requested it yet. He said: "Religious dress and cultural observations are allowed at graduation. "If a student has a religious or cultural obligation to wear something then we absolutely respect that." Ahsan Mohammed, chairman of the Newmarket mosque committee, praised the decision as "very sensible".

We saw this coming, of course. All through 2009, the British, with the exception of BNP and EDL and a few hapless Tory outcasts, seem to be tripping over each other to transform the UK into Al-bion. A short recap, starting with an article in The Daily Mail, March 31:


A.) MARCH: FEMALE MUSLIM FIREFIGHTERS ISSUED HIJABS:

"... with the fire service anxious to attract recruits of all sexes and backgrounds, it was decided that something had to be done. So yesterday the results were uneveiled, including full-length skirts, hijab headscarfs and long- sleeved shirts for Muslim women recruits. The hope is that the uniforms, designed for wearing round the station and for outings such as school trips, will be smarter and better fitting for every firefighter - even the men.

Fire minister Sadiq Khan added: 'We want the widest range of applicants to apply to join the fire and rescue service. 'To achieve this, it is important that all applicants - men and women - know that the uniform and clothing they will be issued with will not only protect them but will also fit properly and be comfortable.
'The introduction of more appropriately fitted clothing is just one initiative to help to both retain female firefighters and encourage others to consider a fire service career.' 'The uniform now available shows that cultural beliefs are being recognised, as we seek to increase the representation of ethnic minorities within service.'

... Jagtar Singh, spokesman for the Asian Fire Service Association, said: 'We are pleased to note that the fire service is now taking seriously the issues of culture and religious belief when purchasing corporate and protective clothing for fireighters.'

Note that the UK's Fire (and Transport) Minister is a Sadiq Khan, a sunni muslim born and raised in London. He coincidentally belongs to the Labour Party. He is friends with terrorism suspect Babar Ahmad, but that too must be a coincidence.



B.) JULY: AVON AND SOMERSET POLICE ISSUE VEILS FOR NON-MUSLIM FEMALE POLICE OFFICERS;

Britain's Muslims welcome coverings for female police (Al-Arabiya).

The United Kingdom’s female police force will soon have to don the Muslim headscarf if they enter mosques or places of worship while on the job in the force’s latest efforts to respect the religious practices of the country’s religious communities. Avon and Somerset Police has issued two types of head coverings to its female officers so they can enter mosques while on duty. Embroidered with the West Country force's name and logo, the scarves come in to colors to match two types of uniforms.The blue is designed for the Police community Support Officer uniform while the black headscarf matches the uniform of the standard police officer.

“This is a very positive addition to the Avon and Somerset uniform and one which I'm sure will be a welcome item for many of our officers," Jackie Roberts, Assistant chief Constable for Avon and Somerset, said told the Times online.

The Metropolitan police, the largest and most diverse U.K. force, said the new uniform addition was adopted after consultations with the British Muslim community in a joint project with the Aklima and Mosque Initiatives, which focus on working Muslim women. Rashad Azami, imam of Bath Islamic Society, was pleased with the move, saying it was the right step towards building trust between British Muslims and the U.K. law enforcement establishment.

Assistant Chief Constable Jackie 'This is a very positive addition to the Avon and Somerset uniform' Roberts.


C.) AUGUST: THREE NON-MUSLIM FEMALE OFFICERS PATROL IN SHEFFIELD DRESSED IN NIQABS AND HIJABS.


A Jew with a View writes:

"Two of the policewomen covered their faces completely hijab headscarves and niqab veils, leaving only narrow slits to see through. The third opted for Muslim dress and a headscarf showing her face."

The officers who took part in this madness, Sergeant Deb Leonard, Sergeant Deb Pickering and Police Community Support Officer Helen Turner, all from Sheffield, were accompanied by four Muslim women to help them learn more about the Islamic faith on a tour of the city. In return, the Muslim women were shown around South Yorkshire Police’s custody suite and CCTV office and learned about the day-to-day duties of a police officer. A spokesman for the force said the exercise, called ‘In Your Shoes Day’, was designed to help officers interact better with the Muslim community across Sheffield. But she was also forced to acknowledge that there are no plans for police officers to spend the day dressing up as Hindus, or Sikhs, or Jews, or Catholics or indeed any other faith."

D.) SEPTEMBER: CONSERVATIVE MAYOR URGES NON-MUSLIM BRITISH TO FAST A DAY DURING RAMADAN

Everyone should fast for a day ‘to understand Muslims’, says Boris Johnson
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:07 PM on 04th September 2009
London Mayor Boris Johnson today encouraged people to undergo a day of fasting to help understand their ‘Muslim neighbour’.

He said Muslims in the capital were ‘challenging traditional stereotypes’ to show they wanted to be part of the mainstream during a visit to the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre. Mr Johnson’s visit coincided with the holy period of Ramadan in which participating Muslims fast from dawn until sunset. Boris Johnson arrives at the East London Mosque with his Director of Communication Guto Harri this afternoon where he talked about the need for greater understanding of Muslims
He said: ‘Whether it’s in theatre, comedy, sports, music or politics, Muslims are challenging the traditional stereotypes and showing that they are, and want to be, a part of the mainstream community. '

The howler is that Boris Johnson... is a Conservative.


Jesus Christ.



MFBB.

ANTWERP: KORANIC READER ARRESTED FOLLOWING BURNING ALIVE OF MUSLIM GIRL.

From Belgian daily Het Laatste Nieuws, October 28:





A Moroccan koranic reader, a certain O.G., has been arrested for the murder of 18-year old Layla Hachichi. Three weeks ago the girl's severely burnt body was found in her parents' house in Antwerps Dam neighborhood. Neighbors say the girl, who was lesbian, was the victim of a ritual murder.

According to O.G.'s lawyer however, NOTHING is wrong:

"Koranic reader O.G. services had been sought by Layla's parents to help her with her psychological problems. He has several times read exerpts from the Koran at the girl's home, but never performed any ritual purification. The man has nothing to hide. Besides, he reported himself at the police precinct."

The name of the lawyer? Abderrahim Lahlali. Koinsidens of course.

And what is the explanation of the parents for the gruesome death of their daughter?

That she had burned herself accidently while showering. In the bathroom an electric waterboiler was found.

Yeah right.



MFBB.

PS: pray for this girl, one of hundreds of millions of victims of muslim barbary throughout the ages.

SATURDAY NIGHT OLD FOGEY MUSIC.

Nice ballad from Editors, a UK indie group formed in Birmingham in 2002.





The Uprising, a Muse hit aired first in August of last summer. From the album The Resistance. Muse is an alternative UK band from Devon, which formed already in 1994 but only now begin to reach a wider audience.





That recent enough for ya, Mr. Ghost?


MFBB.

MUSLIM THUGS TERRORIZE COPENHAGEN/TINGBJERG NEIGHBORHOOD.

Via the Dutch website Het Vrije Volk:




A school in the Tingbjerg neighborhood in Copenhagen, set alight by young muslims in 2008.

TINGBJERG: ONE NEIGHBORHOOD'S NIGHTMARE

26.10.09: One of the big news stories in Denmark in recent weeks has centered on a small Copenhagen neighborhood called Tingbjerg. Over the years it has been turning gradually into a Muslim enclave in which non-Muslims have been increasingly subjected to harassment and criminality. Among these victims has been the openly gay pastor of Tingbjerg Church, who earlier this month, after several years of being persecuted by local Muslim youths, quit his post and fled the neighborhood, thereby making headlines around the country and sparking widespread discussion and debate about a very widespread phenomenon - namely, the ongoing Islamization of urban areas across Western Europe.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published: 26.10.2009 Last saved: 26.10.2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Bruce Bawer, HRS

"Few people outside of Denmark have heard of Tingbjerg. It’s a residential neighborhood in northwestern Copenhagen. About 6500 people live there, down from about 10,000 in the 1970s. Today the great majority of those residents are Muslims. As the neighborhood has become increasingly Muslim, it’s also been increasingly plagued by gang violence, burglaries, car-burnings, vandalism, and other offenses. Over the years, the members of Tingbjerg’s non-Muslim minority have come to feel increasingly vulnerable and ill at ease in their community. Many have moved out.

Among the latter is Ulrich Vogel. He is German and gay – and until recently he also happened to be the pastor at Tingbjerg Church. But now, after seventeen years in that position, he’s fled – moved out of the church residence, gone underground, taken sick leave, and begun psychological treatment.

Why? Because in recent years Vogel has been the repeated target of crime and harassment by local Muslims. Vogel refused to discuss his situation with Uwe Max Jensen, who reported on the story for sappho.dk on October 6. But Jensen found police reports in local newspapers that describe acts of vandalism at the church on March 26 and August 5 of this year and a break-in at the church residence on August 16. The latter crime involved the destruction and robbery of much of Vogel’s personal property, including his computer. And this is apparently only the tip of the iceberg: a member of the church congregation told Jensen that the residence has been broken into “countless” times.

In any case, Vogel has given up. And so, apparently, has the church council: instead of opening up a search for a substitute pastor who’s willing to live in the church residence at Tingbjerg, they’ve decided to sell it.

For days, the rumor circulated that Vogel was tormented by the young Muslims because he’s gay. Then, on October 17, Lea Holtze and Jannie Iwankow Søgaard of Kristeligt Dagblad reported that Vogel had broken his silence in order to deny that rumor. No, he insisted: he was tormented not because he’s gay but because he’s a pastor, and thus “a picture of an institution and a normality that is not welcomed by this group of young people.” Vogel also noted, truthfully enough, that he was hardly the only person in the neighborhood who had been victimized by local youth.

“It’s a whole neighborhood that’s been taken hostage,” Vogel said of Tingbjerg, complaining that “one is left to fend for oneself” there because “the police don’t do enough.” The problems, he said, can’t be dismissed as ordinary teenage hijinks: “It feels like pure malice.” The pastor recalled that last March, after local youths threw rocks at buses, resulting in a disruption of the public transport system, he spoke out in a local newspaper and on the TV news about the neighborhood’s ordeal – an action which, he suggests, may help explain why he appears to have been singled out for repeated victimization.

Yet if Vogel thinks his sexual orientation has nothing to do with the harassment he’s suffered, he’s apparently mistaken. As Anders Raahauge noted in Saturday’s Jyllands-Posten (no link), local youths themselves have acknowledged – or, more accurately, bragged – to reporters that the pastor’s sexual orientation was indeed a motivating factor for those who targeted him. This should not surprise anyone who knows what Islam says about homosexuality.

The truth about life in Tingbjerg was vividly underscored on October 14, when two journalists for Denmark’s TV2 drove to Tingbjerg Church to get some footage of it for a report on the Vogel story. While they were filming outside the church, two young Muslim men rode up to them on motorbikes. The second of the three videos posted here shows what happened next. In an aggressive, threatening voice, one of the youths ordered the TV2 team to “erase those fucking pictures now, ’cause you’ve taken pictures of us,” then added, apropos of the Vogel story: “It’s lies. I’ve read in BT. It’s not worth shit….It’s propaganda.” The boys then drove over to the TV2 team’s van and proceeded to smash its windows. (The results of their efforts can be seen on the first of the three posted videos on the same page.)..."

Bawer then concludes:

"If there is to be any hope for Europe, the truth about the continent’s Tingbjergs must be addressed honestly. Yet it’s precisely this that the great majority of Europeans in positions of political and cultural power refuse to do. Pittelkow notes that while young Muslim predators themselves routinely admit that their actions are connected to “their ethnic and Muslim identity” and represent “a struggle for power and honor,” politicians, journalists, and academic “experts” routinely reject any such analysis. So, far too often, do people in official positions who are close enough to the situation on the ground to know better. For example, Pittelkow cites a “well-meaning” woman who holds a local post in Tingbjerg and who, he writes, has warned that discussions of the Vogel case had better be free of any mention of “ethnic and religious factors.” This woman, Pittelkow observes, “apparently hasn’t got the foggiest idea of what is going on in the real world, but just wants to show that she is a good person. But kind words won’t make real problems go away.” Alas, this woman’s numbers are legion in Western Europe, where all too many public officials at every level see it as their primary responsibility not to preserve liberal civilization, social order, and public safety but to serve as exemplars of multicultural virtue – a role that compels them to avert their eyes meekly from the systematic barbarism that is destroying the lives of more and more innocent Europeans like Ulrich Vogel."

I have said it here before: when the proverbial shit hits the fan and our once magnificent continent goes to the dogs, I hope there will be enough time left to pay a little visit to the ones responsible for our downfall. It would only be just that they pay "their fair share" for the doom they brought over us.


MFBB.

TUESDAY NIGHT WARNINGS.

Longtime reader Mark posted in the comments section of the last but one post to this very spot on Orange County Steyn column:

OBAMA A TOUGH GUY, AT LEAST WITH FOX NEWS.

October 23, 2009


"At a superficial level, this looks tough. A famously fair-minded centrist told me the other day that he'd been taken aback by some of the near parodic examples of Leftie radicalism discovered in the White House in recent weeks. I don't know why he'd be surprised. When a man has spent his entire adult life in the "community organized" precincts of Chicago, it should hardly be news that much of his Rolodex is made up of either loons or thugs. The trick is identifying who falls into which category. Anita Dunn, the Communications Director commending Mao Zedong as a role model to graduating high school students, would seem an obvious loon. But the point about Mao, as Charles Krauthammer noted, is that he was the most ruthless imposer of mass conformity in modern history: In Mao's China, everyone wore the same clothes. So when Communications Commissar Mao Ze Dunn starts berating Fox News for not getting into the same Maosketeer costumes as the rest of the press corps, you begin to see why the Chairman might appeal to her as a favorite "political philosopher".

So the troika of Dunn, Emanuel and Axelrod were dispatched to the Sunday talk shows to lay down the law. We all know the lines from "The Untouchables" – "the Chicago way," don't bring a knife to a gunfight – and, given the pay czar's instant contract-gutting of executive compensation and the demonization of the health insurers and much else, it's easy to look on the 44th president as an old-style Cook County operator: You wanna do business in this town, you gotta do it through me. You can take the community organizer out of Chicago, but you can't take the Chicago out of the community organizer.

The trouble is it isn't tough, not where toughness counts. Who are the real "Untouchables" here? In Moscow, it's Putin and his gang, contemptuously mocking U.S. officials even when (as with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) they're still on Russian soil. In Tehran, it's Ahmadinejad and the mullahs openly nuclearizing as ever feebler warnings and woozier deadlines from the Great Powers come and go. Even Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle. We were told that Obama would use "soft power" and "smart diplomacy" to get his way. Russia and Iran are big players with global ambitions, but Obama's soft power is so soft it doesn't even work its magic on a client regime in Kabul whose leaders' very lives are dependent on Western troops. If Obama's "smart diplomacy" is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention? ..."

If Steyn's pieces have one disadvantage, it's that they get you into a fold to such an extent that there's a genuine danger of forgetting the very message. There's no danger of that with this guy. Regular reader Joanne linked to this powerful article by Thomas Sowell:

DISMANTLING OF AMERICA.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: October 27, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the president, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers – that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get lifesaving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

....

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year – each bill more than a thousand pages long – too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question – and the biggest question for this generation.

MFBB.

FRENCH SOCIETY DISINTEGRATING.

French society is disintegrating. The number of no-go areas for the police, euphemisitically called ZUS, or Zones Urbaines Sensibles (sensitive urban zones) is rising steadily, not only for the police, but more and more also for the indigenous population. The following video comes from Atlas Shrugs. Do not miss the "youths" toting and firing automatic weapons:




Pamela Geller also linked to a telling piece, almost forgotten, by Hugh Fitzgerald, titled "Douce France". It's from 2004. You don't want to know how much worse it has become since then:

"... Imagine that you are a cosseted member of the French elite. One child is doing the khâgne, aiming for rue d’Ulm. Another is now a politechnicien. You are very comfortable, working for the state. You and your spouse are journalists, or writers, or one of that vast tribe of people conducting “recherches” and life is comfortable, good, the way it should be. Yes, you do notice more and more Muslims about you as you walk, no longer in the banlieues, but in the center of Paris, or Toulouse, or Lyon. And you remember how uneasy you felt, four years ago, when you happened to be walking on the Cannebière in Marseille. You decided, then and there, that you would not return.
And you have friends who live in the south. And they tell you that the beurs – some call them maghrébins -- make life hell for everyone. They attack French children on the way to school. They vandalize cars. They threaten, and do more than threaten, anyone who is still foolish enough to walk out wearing a kippah or a cross. Whole areas of cities in the south, as in the north, and east, and west, have become off-limits to non-Muslims. In the schools, the teachers have lost authority. They cannot even cover the subjects of World War II, the Resistance, and the murders of the Jews as the state prescribes; they fear, with reason, the violent reaction of the Muslim students.

And as the schools become more and more dangerous for non-Muslim students and teachers, with more time and resources devoted to discipline rather than to learning, French parents and would-be parents are now silently factoring into their childbearing plans the present value of the future cost of what, they see, will now have to be added: private school tuition. And that means, of course, that those French people will plan on smaller families. And they will also be factoring in the growing cost, paid by them, those French taxpayers, for the whole expanding edifice of security, the guards in the schools, the guards at the train stations and métro stations and airports and at government buildings everywhere, the costs of keeping the gravestones from being vandalized, the costs of protecting the synagogues and the churches, the costs for all those tapped phones and agents in mosques, and subsidies to lawyers and judges to hear charges and try cases against Muslims, and the costs of monitoring da'wa in the prisons (more than 50% Muslim)...

France finds itself in the middle of a serious identity crisis, with prominent public figures like Jean-François Copé, leader of the UMP group in French Parliament, openly calling for a "total renewal and reworking of French identity": "La France est diverse. Il faut le vivre comme une chance." ("French society is diverse. You have to live it like a chance.") Copé, of the supposedly "rightwing" UMP party (Sarozy's party) stated literally that "one should stop teaching our children that our ancestors were all Gauls". Everything that made France what it is, or rather was before the emergence of parallel societies in the land of Le Roy Soleil, Chateau Margaux and Camembert, has to be scrutinized whether it is still relevant today, and preferably supplemented or rather exchanged for exotic surrogates from places like Marrakesh and Timbuktu. Like hedonistic effeminate Romans who chose to party when Rome was already ransacked by Vandals, young French "intellectuals" have declared an open war on what remains of the Catholic Church, by striving for what is called "débaptisation" - debaptising. Once, Catholicism was a great uniting force for the French, now many of them watn to cut all ties with the Church as definite as possible. The fight for debaptising is led by the anticlerical group "Libre Pensée" (Free thinking), which is close to the masonic lodge Grand Orient de France and lambertist networks. Libre Pensée prefers the hamfisted approach when dealing with Catholics. When confronted with matters islamic however, it changes its tune: it was NOT in favor of Sarkozy's burqa ban.

The following video shows you a dumb chick of Libre Pensée explaining that it is unthinkable that the Catholic Church has RECORDS of them (meant are of course baptising records), and that this grave intrusion of their private lives must immediately come to an end:





It's cunts like these who might, a few years hence, upon realizing their lives are utterly empty and hollow, find solace in the household of a muslim husband. As his third or fourth wife.


While native French thus still see great dangers emanating from the Catholic Church, another religion is taking possession of the streets. Video via Galliawatch:





Galliawatch also links to a post by Gérard Pince, who is an Economics Professor at the University of Paris. Mr. Pince recently had some sobering statistics on demographic developments in France:

..."So in 2060 we will have a France of 108 million inhabitants, composed of 55 million persons (24 + 31) belonging to black, Arab and Asian ethnicities and 53 million Europeans. Yes, 2060 may appear far off, but well before this date Europeans under the age of 40 will be a minority in relation to the Third Worlders of the same age group.

These results belie the affirmations of those who claim France is not a country of massive immigration. In fact, our "thought police" now acknowledge that the face of France is going to be transformed very soon and adhere, in substance, to the following line: "You were deceived for thirty years with bogus statistics. Now, the situation is irreversible. In the name of anti-racism and obligatory 'métissage', you ought to be happy to have become a minority in your own country!"

Now imagine that the Algerian government announces that soon Europeans will be in the majority in Algeria! There would be a general insurrection. That means that this "post racial" doctrine, which claims to be universal, only applies in reality to the Western populations who are told to dissolve themselves as rapidly as possible. Alas, the majority of Frenchmen are resigned to this evolution that seems inevitable..."

This was Outlaw Mike from the decks of the Titanic, and the orchestra is currently playing... wait for it, it's hard to hear with all that stuff crashing down at this angle... it's playing Ludwig van Beethoven's Ode to Joy!!!



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT ECHOBELLY, MOBY.

Great Things, good and upbeat 1995 single from Britpop band Echobelly. Picked from the album On it reached #13 in the UK singles chart that year. The most prominent character is the singer, Sonya Madan, of Indian extraction. Quite an impressive voice for someone with such a frail frame. Since embedding the excellent studio version was disabled by request I had to make do with the live video below:





I thought Echobelly was dead and buried since 2004, but it seems Madan and Glenn Johannson, a Swedish guitarist and early Echobelly member, gave a concert featuring a.o. old material as late as July 2009 in Manchester.


Seems I can't get enough of Moby, despite his being an ass. "Why does my heart feel so bad" from the 1999 album Play. Whoever thought of using this song in the trailer for Black Hawk Down had a good idea:





Somalia was another of those places where an asshole population with ditto culture thought they'd be much better off running things their own way. I wonder if in the meantime, evolution in that hellhole has proceeded so far there that it has produced a single individual who has come to the conclusion that it would have been better for Somalia had they not taken potshots at Rangers and Deltas back in 93.

If you want my honest opinion, I don't think so.


MFBB.

MARTIN DE VLIEGHERE ON THE RE-EMERGENCE OF UTOPIAN SOCIALISM.

Over at The Brussels Journal, Belgian philosopher/economist Martin de Vlieghere, of the Belgian/Flemish pro free market think tank WorkforAll, published a very good article about the re-emergence of utopian socialism, which he co-wrote with businessman Paul Vreymans. Some exerpts:

THE DANGEROUS RETURN OF UTOPIAN SOCIALISM.

From the desk of Martin De Vlieghere on Thu, 2009-10-22 17:17

"Jeffrey Sachs is senior economist at the UN and author of the bestseller "Common Wealth" and the controversial Time essay "The Case for Bigger Government". In a recent interview for the Belgian Journal ‘De Tijd” Jeffrey Sachs blames “unbridled American market capitalism” for the financial crisis and pleads in favor of the Swedish social model as an alternative. His ideological argument is revealing for the dominant utopian-socialist mind at the top of the UN.

The fact is that the Swedish social model, which Sachs would like to introduce, has not the only the largest Size of Government of Western World, but also the weakest economic performance of the OECD. In 1970, Sweden still was the fourth wealthiest nation in the world. Thirty years later, Sweden had fallen to rank 17 with catastrophic social consequences. In the meantime the U.S. consistently managed to remain the second or third for more than half a century. So there is not much socio-economic wisdom to be learned from the Swedish Social Model.



Sachs also argues that "unbridled capitalism" is the cause of the current crisis. The reality is that during the last twenty years central planning progressively intruded Western economies who now bear the burden of governments spending 40% to 55% of GDP. Entrepreneurs face ever more crippling restrictions, licensing schemes, quotas and price and quality controls. Businessmen endure tens of thousands of pages of new rules and regulations each year, all written in a lawyers slangy that totally undermines the legal certainty of the free market and which transformed business into a gamble on the next political caprice and on judicial interpretations of the legal jargon. Size of government, computerized control and dirigisme has now reached a level plan economists of the Soviet Union could only dream of. Not the capitalistic system failed, but excessive dirigisme is to blame for the crisis."


....


"Sachs also belongs to the side of the climate fixers who take the controversy over the global warming trend for a "global consensus" and continue to believe that human action caused the trend and may even reverse it. According to Sachs Southern Europe will soon dry out and cause a massive flow of refugees to the north. The bombastic climate alarmism in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference next month must be understood as an ultimate attempt to convince conference goers to step into the global emissions bureaucracy.

CO2 Emission rights are a totally fictitious but legally indispensable commodity for most production processes. Politics will determine its degree of scarcity and the regional allocation, thereby disconnecting production costs from market reality and cause massive distortions. The global ETS scheme is not only fraud sensitive. Scarcity and allocation being the result of political decisions, inside knowledge are likely turn the ETS scheme into one big swindle with grave counter-productive effects. The Soviet debacle learned to what systemic waste the falsification of competition and the elimination of market forces can lead. High subsidies for extremely low productive windmills and solar panels in the Western World for example are causing awfully suboptimal use of scarce resources worldwide. Under free market conditions much more productive use would be found in developing countries. "

A long time ago already I dismissed Sachs as a serious economist. That this man enjoys the standing that he has, that he can advocate seventy-year old mechanisms that have proven not to work, that he emphatically maintains that the only way for poor countries out of what he dubs the 'poverty trap' is.... even more massive aid by rich countries... speaks bookmarks of the West's intellectual crisis. An he indeed made a strong case for bigger government in TIME - I was very glad that by that time (early 2008), I had already ended my subscription to that leftist rag. Sachs is a classical example of an ivory tower wackademic totally disconnected from reality. And speaking of the 'poverty gap': no matter how many titles he has and no matter how senior his position as economy czar at the UN, I'll take Dambisa Moyo's "Dead Aid" over "Common Wealth" any time.


MFBB.

THE CURRENT US ADMINISTRATION: A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER FOR AMERICA.

This is just another week with such a torrent of ominous news that once again, I can't get rid of that gathering storm feeling. But one news item struck me in particular. From FOX News:

"White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Tuesday pointed to two top-rated opinion shows on Fox News as the reason why the Obama administration has castigated the network as an illegitimate news organization.

Gibbs weighed in on the controversy after several top White House advisers have gone on other channels to criticize Fox News' coverage of the administration, dismiss the network as the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and urge other news organizations not to treat Fox News as a legitimate news station.

Gibbs said White House officials "render (that) opinion based on some their coverage and the fairness of that coverage."

But asked how Fox News was different from other news organizations, Gibbs mentioned the channel's 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. shows, in an explicit reference to "Beck" and "Hannity" -- even though those two shows represent opinion programming.

Informed that those hours are for opinion programming, Gibbs said: "That is our opinion."

....

The White House also appeared to stand by its effort to urge other networks to isolate and alienate the channel. Gibbs said Tuesday that it's up to the White House Correspondents Association to decide whether Fox News should continue to be part of the White House pool which covers President Obama.

"I'm not going to delineate for the White House Correspondents Association how the pool is conducted. That's not my job," he said.

The pool, the rotation through which the networks share the costs and duties of White House coverage, represents the most significant interaction among the news channels. Despite the Obama administration's guidance to other channels to disregard Fox News, there are no indications so far from the other networks that the pool relationship will change.

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod on Sunday called on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox News is "not a news organization."

"Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way."

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world (to) basically be led in following Fox."

I want to warn Americans that when governments go after news outlets, you're already way down a slippery slope towards a totalitarian state. Have we forgotten how during eight Bush years, basically all mainstream media, Fox excluded, mercilessly pounded President Bush and his administration? Have we forgotten how he was ridiculed, deliberately misinterpreted, made a laughing stock when the slightest occasion presented itself? Have we forgotten how MSNBC, CNN, PBS, the LA Times, the New York Times and a gazillion of other news outlets constantly focused on alleged screwups and squarely omitted things that put the Bush Administration in a good daylight?

Then I ask you: have we ever heard something, anything, about that same Bush Administration going after the media? Threatening it? The answer is NO. To the contrary, the meekness with which Bush's White House let itself often be slaughtered, even when it had plenty of arguments to defend itself, has often baffled me.

Yet now we DO watch such a scenario. It is plain for everyone to see. I just wonder... have we lost our capacity to become enraged upon reading:

... Gibbs weighed in on the controversy after several top White House advisers have gone on other channels to criticize Fox News' coverage of the administration, dismiss the network as the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and urge other news organizations not to treat Fox News as a legitimate news station...

Hello??? Do I read that right??? The White House spokesman "URGES NEWS ORGANIZATIONS NOT TO TREAT FOX NEWS AS A LEGITIMATE NEWS STATION"?????? What's next? The National Guard being ordered to bust inside FNC HQ in New York City's Sixth Avenue?

This is it for me. I have long refrained from using that Obama/Socialism poster you see now on the upper right, since I still consider myself a guestwriter on this blog, and since he is not my president (thank God). And when the founders of this blog ask me to remove it, I will do so. Hell, they can do it themselves if they like. But as far as I'm concerned, viewing that joker image each time helps to remind you the current White House occupant is a very, very dangerous guy. And this is not about Gibbs or Dunn overplaying their hand. These are not isolated remarks. When you have a president who happens to have a frightening phalanx of ultraradicals as his 'czars', they aren't all ultraradicals because of a coincidence. They are on their posts BECAUSE they are ultraradicals. They are Obama's czars BECAUSE they hold extremely radical views. They are Obama's czars BECAUSE he himself holds the same extremely radical views. Likewise, when a White House spokesman or a White House Communications Director issues threats THAT ARE NOT EVEN VEILED ANYMORE...

... you can be damn sure that the man behind the desk in the Oval Office...

... completely approves of treatening an independent news organization.

We have seen that before.

In EVERY totalitarian state.

Americans should be very cautious of their current government. Extremely cautious. Not one year has elapsed yet since Baraka Hussein Mohbama took office. But at the current rate of events, I am really dreading what America will look like after four years.



MFBB.

MUSLIMS SCHOLAR EXHORTS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MUSLIMS TO RECALL MUHAMMAD PROPHECY THAT ISLAM WILL CONQUER ROME. CROWD CHEERS.

Seven prominent French islamologues have written a letter to messrs. Caracciolo and Maroni, Italian ambassador to France and Italian Interior Minister respectively:

Paris, le 19 octobre 2009


Ambassade d’Italie à Paris

51, rue de Varenne

75343 PARIS CEDEX 07


Lettre ouverte à Giovanni Caracciolo di Vietri et Roberto Maroni, Ambassadeur et Ministre de l’Intérieur de la République italienne.


« C’est Rome qu’ils menacent depuis la France !»



Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, Monsieur le Ministre.



Nous vous adressons ce courrier afin de vous signifier que votre pays fait l’objet de menaces caractérisées émanant d’une institution musulmane française, l’Union des organisations islamiques de France (UOIF), composante du Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM).

En effet, lors de la 26ème Rencontre des musulmans de France, qui a eu lieu des 10 au 13 avril 2009, au Bourget, le « docteur » Tareq Suwaidan, invité à donner une conférence sur Le Prophète Mohamed : un modèle pour l’humanité, a expressément enjoint la nombreuse assistance à ne pas oublier une prophétie de Mahomet, fondateur de l’islam.

Il s’agit d’un propos[1] du dit prophète rapporté par ses compagnons dans le Hadîth (Tradition islamique ou Sunna), source majeure, après le Coran, de la Charia (Loi islamique). Mahomet aurait en effet annoncé que la conquête de Rome suivrait celle de Constantinople, première prophétie déjà réalisée en 1453 dans un bain de sang comme vous le savez.

Lors de cette rencontre au Bourget, évènement majeur pour la communauté musulmane établie en France, Tareq Suwaidan a déclenché des applaudissements nourris quand il a appelé les dizaines de milliers de musulmans présents à ne pas cacher cette prophétie, et donc à la faire vivre. Venant de ce « docteur » soutenant ouvertement le Hamas et appelant à supprimer Israël, il y a de quoi s’inquiéter...

I don't have time to translate it all because I'm cracking under the workload, but the letter says in essence that in Bourget, France, A prominent muslim scholar, Tareq Suwaidan, addressed a meeting of ten thousands of muslims organized by the UOIF, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, in which he exhorted the crowd never to forget a phrophecy by muhammad, namely that the conquest of Constantinople would be followed by the conquest of Rome.

Now, Constantinople has of course been conquered and pillaged in 1453, after which the islamic world without success tried to advance further in the Mediterranean. That did not go too well, as we all know, and islam's advance stopped at around the end of the sixteenth century.

Anno 2009, islam is on the rise again, as always because its adversaries are too weak.

We should not be fooled. A drooling idiot muslim "scholar" is sweeping up tens of thousands of muslims in Paris with the promise that Rome will be conquered, he is feted as a hero, and... THEY ALL MEAN IT.

Under our noses.

I hope that Italian ambassador and that Interior Minister pay attention to the letter. Hat tip the website Islamisation. Photo comes from there too.


MFBB.

JUST A STREET IN PARIS. MUSLIMS BLOCK IT AND OCCUPY IT FOR TWO HOURS FOR FRIDAY PRAYERS. WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION.

Scene: Paris, Quartier barbès, Rue Myrha. A Friday in October.

Suddenly the street is blocked, just like that, WITHOUT permission from the authorities. Prayer mats are rolled over the entire street's length. Friday prayers begin, the loud ramblings of the imam are heard even beyond the street. Police does not intervene. A hapless native française, on of the last indigenous French who live in rue Myrha, tries to reenter her house after shopping. She is punched, almost thrown to the ground and can only make it inside her house with the greatest difficulty. She was an unveiled infidel whore, you see.





Of course, situations like this are used by socialists to demand building permission AND funding for mosques, given the obvious need.

A nightmare is engulfing Europe.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT BISHOP + BEETHOVEN

I actually was on the verge of posting L7's Pretend we're dead when, upon researching their career a bit, I found out they were the founders of a pro-abortion outfit called Rock for Choice or sumpin. That pissed me off so much I decided it was gonna be someone else for tonight. It don't mean Pretend... won't show up some time - it's not because your brains are screwed up that you can't make good, ballsy rock - just not now.

And then I was thinking for some reason of Elvin Bishop's "Fooled around and fell in love" and that sounded okay. At least for me:





Quintessential American music. If Mr. Ghost is around, he'll say it's Old Fogey again here but I don't frikkin care. Fooled around... is the most memorable single by Bishop, a Glendale, CA native (1942). Kind of ironic too, if irony is the correct word in connection with Bishop's personal tragedy, that the song is actually a tribute to one of his love interests, a certain Jenny Villarin, who became the mother of his daughter Selena. In 2000 Jenny, by then separated from Bishop, and Selena were brutally murdered. It took the artist 5 years to recover somewhat.

Bishop has been active for almost five decades now, releasing his latest CD in 2008. Over here in Europe, Fooled around... is basically the only single that's known of him, but then - correct me if I'm wrong - it's not his usual line of work, since he's basically a blues artist, a genre that's never been popular over here.


Then Ludwig Van Beethoven, and mind you, it's "van", not "von". That is because Beethoven's grandfather, Michiel Van Beethoven, was from Mechelen, a town roughly between Brussels and Antwerp. At some point Michiel left Mechelen for lack of money to Bonn in Germany, to try his luck there. As for today's music piece, I chose a well-known theme from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. There's a couple of good performances around, and I couldn't decide between the one by Herbert Von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker, and Charles Latshaw. In the end I took the latter. It seems to me Latshaw's performance is the most convincing one.



This is a piece that was premiered in Vienna on December 8, 1813 at a charity concert for soldiers wounded in the Battle of Hanau, which was fought on 30 - 31 October 1813 between Karl Philipp von Wrede’s Austro-Bavarian corps and Napoleon's retreating army during the War of the Sixth Coalition. This battle came itself on the heels of the infamous Battle of Leipzig earlier in October, in which Napoleon was defeated, but at Hanau he won again. True, compared to Leipzig, of which the strategical implications were crystal-clear (the end of Napoleon's hegemony on the European battlefields) Hanau was but a small tactical victory for l'Empereur. But it probably greatly affected Beethoven who, though a German native (born in Bonn in 1770) had settled in Vienna, Austria already two decades before. Very likely willing to do something significant for "his" wounded compatriots, he conducted the piece himself.



MFBB.

WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR IS COMMUNIST AND MASS MURDERER SYMPATHIZER.

From the 'you got to be kidding me' department.

Or, rather not, since the US now has a president who has appointed the likes of Cass Sunstein, Janet Napolitano, Van Jones, John Holdren, Eric Holder, Kathleen Sebelius. Or, for that matter, an ambassador to Belgium who succesfully managed to get Clinton to pardon a WU terrorist who was unloading 740 pounds of dynamite to kill and maim US citizens.

It all perfectly makes sense, actually. One of these days I'm GONNA put up that Obama - Socialist poster.

How about this? One of the great examples of Anita Dunn, WH Communis, erm, Communications Director is a loveable Chinese fella (unfortunately deceased for Mrs. Dunn), by the name of Mao Tse Tung:





Americans are by now possibly bored to hear it, but I suspect that many people outside the US do not know yet that just recently, Dunn called FOX news a "wing of the Republican Party". Via Michelle Malkin:

“What I think is fair to say about Fox — and certainly it’s the way we view it — is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party,” said Anita Dunn, White House communications director, on CNN. “They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”

Yeah right F*CKING C*NT. Let us certainly not pretend you are a sympathizer of a commie who killed 70 million Chinese but that you are a White House spokesperson the way Tony Snow was.



MFBB.

YEAH, LET THEM JOIN THE EU.

A.) TURKS ALREADY INSIDE THE EU:

Scene: "Friendly" interland soccer match Belgium-Turkey. Place: King Baudoin Stadium, Brussels. Date: October 10, 2009.

The Belgian national football team the "Rode Duivels" (Red Devils) won with 2-0 from the Turks. The Turkish supporters did not exactly like it. The video shows how the Turks demolish the stadium:



Oh yeah... Miss Belgium 2009, Zeynep Sever, is of Turkish descent (how lovely multicutlural). You may guess three times where exactly she was in the stadium during the match:

a.) among the Turkish supporters wreaking havoc.
b.) among the Turkish supporters wreaking havoc.
c.) among the Turkish supporters wreaking havoc.

Simply a matter of having your loyalties, erm, priorities right, huh?


Small beer you say? Okay. How about this? Via François Desouche:

"GERMANY: ANGER AGAINST MINARET'S LOUDSPEAKERS:

One party thinks their goodwill has been abused, the other party thinks they did nothing wrong. Since about three weeks, the Turkish muslim community of Rheinfelden has installed three loudspeakers on the minaret of the Alperenler mosque for the call to prayer.

The muslim community had however engaged itself to never install loudspeakers when in February 2002, the city of Rheinfelden had given permission to build a minaret..."

You give these traitors a finger, they take a hand. Meanwhile the pitiful remnants of christian communities in Turkey and every other muslim country are harassed day and night, and their churches demolished.

Now that we are at it, some news from Turks outside the EU.


B.) TURKS OUTSIDE THE EU:

CHRISTIAN TOMBS DESECRATED IN AN HISTORIC ISTANBUL CEMETERY

by NAT da Polis

"About 90 tombstones are broken. Incidents of this nature are not rate in the city but the local press failed to report it. Only recently and through a movie, have young Turks begun to learn about past anti-Christian pogroms. Ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew visits the cemetery in question.

Istanbul (AsiaNews) – A Christian cemetery was desecrated in Istanbul. Unknown person or persons broke 90 tombstones that bore the sign of the cross and the name of the deceased. The incident occurred a few days ago in the historic cemetery of Valukli near the ancient Valukli Monastery, the only monastery dedicated to Our Lady still open in Istanbul, located outside the ancient walls of Theodosius, and which five non-resident nuns care for.

Istanbul’s Christian cemeteries have been desecrated on a number of occasions in the past 20 years. The latest outrage brought back memories of the tragic events of September 1955 when churches, cemeteries and properties owned by Istanbul’s Orthodox community were desecrated and destroyed in a pogrom. Eventually dubbed the September pogrom, the event was the brainchild of Turkey’s political-bureaucratic-military establishment, known here as Derin Devlet or ‘deep state’..."

Poor patriarch. Poor, wretched community of Turkish Christians.



Well.

You would perhaps think, when there is such a MASSIVE BODY of evidence around (the topics above are but the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg), that no sensible EU politician would advocate Turkey's entry in the EU, right?

Wrong.

When Turkish PM Abdullah Gul visited France on October 7 at the occasion of the exhibition "Istanbul through the Ages" in Paris, he must have been pleasantly surprised to see the Eiffel Tower lit up in the colours of the Turkish flag. it would be one thing (but still too much) if the Eiffel Tower was lit up only with regards to that exhibition. Alas. The Eiffel Tower bathes in red and white light FOR AN ENTIRE MONTH.





And all over Europe, major politicians are simply proceeding with Turkey's EU admission preparations.... while Turkey is turning more islamist day after day. In Belgium, a once visionary political talent, Guy Verhofstadt, who TWENTY YEARS AGO warned against the dangers of rising islamic extremism... is now a strong advocate of Turkey's entry in the EU.


Apparently, many want to get f*cked hard in the ass these days.

As for me, reading the news has become utterly depressing.

We are being betrayed by our own politicians. A nightmare is engulfing us.


MFBB.

GHENT, PROVINCE OF EAST FLANDERS, BELGIUM.

A quick snapshot I thought I'd just share. Mind you, I didn't take it. I'm not that good a photographer. The fella who did is a certain Philippe Coppen and I found it on this site. It's a photo in Ghent's centre of two famous "leien", or "quaysides" on either side of the river Lieve, namely the Graslei (to the left) and the Korenlei (to the right, but actually not visible). Indeed, Ghent's centre was a port in medieval times. "Gras" means, you get it, "grass", and that quayside was used to unload herbs. "Koren" is wheat, and on that side barges arrived with wheat. Those days are long gone now, but Ghent is still a port of significance - just north of the city is a huge seagoing harbor, the Port of Ghent, where last years transhipment of cargo amounted to 47 million tonnes.





Notice the church to the right: that is Saint Michael's Church. It is a small church in late gothic style, which for financial reasons was never finished as intended, and which troughout its history was repeatedly looted and damaged. Even so, it is one of Ghent's quintessential churches, and its neogothic interior contains also rococo, neoclassic and baroque artworks, a.o. a genuine Anthony Van Dyck, Christ dying on the Cross. Twenty-five years ago I studied in Ghent, and the opening mass at the beginning of the academic year in early October 1985 took place in this very place:





Nite all, except you-know-who.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT COPE, WAGNER

Brilliant poppy hit from Julian Cope, Try try try (1995).




Of course, the guy is as mad as a hatter.


Now for some Wagner, more precisely Siegfried's Funeral March. Although for the accompanying video I did not choose this televised orchestra performance conducted by Klaus Tennstedt, but rather the final scenes of the 1981 movie Excalibur.

That is, you'll first have to endure a little gore when King Arthur's son, Mordred, impales his father and the latter subsequently buries the sword Excalibur in his son's chest... but at about 1.30 minutes into the clip, the March begins. Say what you will, I think it's breathtaking (you may need a few listens though).



I have always liked both Excalibur's visual elements AND its soundtrack. Though almost forgotten now - the film dates from 1981, and people's memories seem to stretch back barely five years these days - for film connoisseurs (not that I count myself one, far from) Excalibur firmly remains on its pedestal as a groundbreaking adventure/fantasy monument of the eighties. Cinematography and costumes are exquisite, winning it a nomination for a 1982 cinematography Academy Award (which it however lost to Reds - bad choice!) and a Palme d'Or (the real thing, not just a nomination) at the Cannes Film Festival of that year. The director, John Boorman, is perhaps best known for Deliverance, but as for me, I will always feel, well, dare I say indebted (?)... for his classy adaptation of Arthurian legends. Excalibur often strikes to me like a rapid succession of artsy photographs. Btw, brilliant acting too - Nigel Terry had the role of his life as King Arthur, which he played both as a young man and as an aged monarch.

Boorman's choice for the then unknown South African composer Trevor Jones was also spot on. Jones, whose career was effectively launched by Boorman's film, produced a soundtrack rife with Orff and Wagner as well as original compositions, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. From Orff he took 'O Fortuna' from his Carmina Burana cantate, and from Wagner, the Siegfried, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal themes.


MFBB.


P.S.: a cantate is simply a composition containing vocals and an instrumental accompaniment, often containing more than one movement.

CANCER OF EUROPES ISLAMIZATION IS METASTIZING.

No, I will not elaborate on the Nobel Peace Prize for Hussein. First, others do that for me. Second, it makes me sick. If anything, it shows the now near total bankruptcy of that once great and admirable institution. Nuff said.

Instead, I think I'd do better to quickly shed some light on the now daily deteriorating situation of Europes islamization, and this by means of just three topics randomly picked from a couple of newssites.

1°) I have briefly touched upon the subject of violent behaviour of primarily young muslims in Europes cities during the so-called "peaceful" season of ramadan. While the ramadan season is indeed getting more violent with every passing year, the turmoil is certainly not limited to that particular timeframe. Here's some German footage of what is happening in Berlin neighborhoods such as Wedding on a daily basis. Oh, and if you needed still further proof that the islamization of Europe is facilitated by the left, notice that the young Turks operate often together with extreme leftist Antifa thugs.





And even in light of the appalling situation, you still find the lucicrous fools, as evidenced by the video above, who want to solve the problem with even more "social workers".


2°) Then there is this topic here, a German publisher, Felix Droste, refrains from publishing a book dealing with the ever increasing problem of honour killings... out of fear for retaliations from muslims:

A German book publisher has canceled a novel about Islamic "honor killings," fearing that the book would offend the Muslim community and put him in danger. Critics of the decision call it a cowardly move, but others say the publisher is simply being responsible.

The publisher of the book, which was to have been titled "To Whom Honor is Due," has indicated that he withdrew the book after an expert on Islam warned that some of the passages could spark violent retaliation from Muslims.

"After the Muhammad cartoons, one knows that one can't publish sentences or drawings that defame Islam without expecting a security risk," Felix Droste, of Droste Verlag publishing, told the German newspaper Der Spiegel last week. He referred to a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were published in Denmark in 2005 and sparked deadly violence across the Muslim world.

What a fucking PANSY...


3°) Finally there's this:

French Police Arrest Hadron Collider Physicist for Suspected Link to Al Qaeda
Friday, October 09, 2009

GENEVA — A nuclear physicist working at the world's largest atom smasher has been arrested on suspicion of links to the Algerian branch of Al Qaeda, another blow to a project that has been plagued by glitches and was shut down after a massive electrical failure a year ago.

The scientist, arrested in France, is suspected of having links to Al Qaeda's North African offshoot, which has carried out a deadly campaign against security forces in recent months, a French official said Friday...

My God, what a madhouse.

Good night.


MFBB.

AFTER EIGHT YEARS, BELGIAN TV SUDDENLY REMEMBERS THERE'S A US AMBASSADOR IN BELGIUM.

During the Bush years, Belgium has had three ambassadors, namely Stephen Brauer (2001-2003), a man who made it CEO of Hunter Engineering Company, Tom Korologos (2004-2007), prominent businessman, impeccable US diplomat and former senior counselor for the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) in Iraq, and Sam Fox, CEO of Harbour Group Ltd. (2007-2009).

With the changing of the guard in Washington, the US Embassy in Belgium is now headed by yet another Ambassador, Howard W. Gutman, handpicked by Obama and in function since about one month.

And suddenly, Belgian TV notices there's something like a US Ambassador. Below you see a video of the popular late-night talk show De Laatste Show (The Last Show), with anchor Michel de Vliegher, on the Eén network. Hat tip for the video Luc Van Braekel.




The contrast with his predecessors, men who made it in business, couldn't be greater. Yet where Brauer, Korologos and Fox were persona non grata in the through and through red Belgian TV, Gutman, a Washingon attorney, Obama campaign financier AND actor, is suddenly hot property. I didn't need Belgian TV to hear of Gutman's appearance on our magical kingdom's soil, since I receive montly news emails from the US Embassy. In this manner, I was able to lay my hands on Gutman's 9/11 remembrance speech.

Here... it is:

September 11 Memorial Speech by Howard W. Gutman, US Ambassador to Belgium

"Most days are solely about what we are doing.
They are meant to be lived in the present.
A busy day at work . . . picking up the kids at school . . .
But September 11 is different

It is not about what we are doing . . . but about who we are . . . and what kind of planet we live on.

It is meant to be lived not simply in the present, but in the past and even more so in the future.

In the past, as it is about memories and honor.

We of course remember and honor all who died that day.

People whose only fault was that they were Americans who happened to work in a particular office .

And people like Patrice Braut, a 31 year old Belgian, whose only fault was that he was a Belgian who loved America enough that he chose to work at Marsh & McLennon on Wall Street rather than remain in Anderlecht.

People whose only fault was that they were Americans or visitors to America who chose to board a particular flight.

We honor them all.

We honor their parents who lost children.

We honor their children who lost parents.

We honor them all, including victims of terror anywhere in the world, including right here in Europe.

And on September 11, we also so dearly honor those who lost their lives because they chose to serve.

Men and women whose office building was not a tower of trade . . .

But a Pentagon of protection for us all.

As to them, I can think of no better description of why we honor them than the lesson I recently learned from one of the heads of our American Battlefield cemeteries right here in Belgium;

He noted to me on a recent visit

That for those buried in his cemetery
They remain each day on active duty. . .
And on each day that we fail to remember them . . . that we fail to honor them . . they have served a day without a mission.

Every soldier is entitled to his mission.

We are that mission.

September 11 is indeed about the past.

But September 11 is even moreso about the future.

It is about not simply the planet that we live on,

But the one we will leave to our children.

For on September 11, the only thing more disturbing than thinking about those murdered . . .

Is thinking about those who did the murderers . . . Those who do acts of terrorism anywhere on this planet.

And that is why we are here.

That is what we are doing in Embassy Belgium.

That is what you have given your career to.

Because September 11 is first and foremost about you. . . and about all of the colleagues in the State Department.

When you are asked what you do for a career.

Don’t say that you work in a consular section, or in buildings and maintenance or in an economic section of the Embassy.

Tell them that you are preventing tomorrow’s September 11.

That you are making the planet safer for our children.

Because that is our mission daily. That is our duty.

Those who were buried this day deserve nothing less.

I now would ask you to observe a moment of silence."

Holy crapola. Have-you-ever-read-such-a-busload-of-boolshit-in-so-short-a-time??? One of the things any sensible person instinctively knows when dealing with problems, enemies, any dire situation... is to IDENTIFY your problem. To put a fitting NAME on your enemy. Since this dude clearly fails to IDENTIFY the problem, I must conclude he's no sensible person at all. 9/11 was an ISLAMIC terrorist act... the terrorists the US faces in Afghanistan and Iraq in particular, and all over the globe in the broader sense, are ISLAMIC terrorists. The scheming jihadis rounded up in Queens and the Rockies are ISLAMIC terrorists. The 14,200 or so terror attacks worldwide committed since 9/11 are ISLAMIC terrorist acts.

Lesson from OutlawMike to Howard Gutless: Not once mentioning those dreaded M- and I-words when lamenting the terrible calamity that struck your country on 9/11 and plunged it into a war lasting till now, dear embarrassment, makes as much sense as trying to get rid of that cancer that's eating you up by insisting it's something along the lines of a flu or arthritis.


But of course, that's not the whole story. Mr. Gutman, in interviews with Belgian PC magazines, newspapers, and now on TV, has really profiled himself as Mr. Nice Guy. Posing as someone who actually works, unlike "the old ambassadors who are in 4 country clubs" (his own words); comparing the high class Belgian sea resort Knokke to France's Saint-Tropez, claiming the mayor of the town of Bree is the most talented politician on the face of the earth (Bree is the birthplace of Belgian tennis wonder Kim Clijsters) etc etc etc...

And for our MSM idiots it's of course all wonderful. The result is that the gullible Belgian TV viewer and reader of De Standaard, HLN or Het Nieuwsblad... shuts off the TV or puts away his newspaper with a warm and fluffy feeling about the new ambassador.

There are, however, some key aspects of Mr. Gutmans career that for some reason totally eluded that ordinary Belgian TV viewer and newspaper reader. From the NYT, no less:

Officials Criticize Clinton's Pardon of an Ex-Terrorist
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: Monday, January 22, 2001

An unusual combination of New York political and law enforcement leaders have condemned former President Bill Clinton's pardon of Susan L. Rosenberg, a one-time member of the Weather Underground terrorist group who was charged in the notorious 1981 Brink's robbery in Rockland County that left a guard and two police officers dead.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, and United States Senator Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat, were among those who criticized the pardon, as did Bernard B. Kerik, New York City's police commissioner, and David Trois, a Rockland County police union official.

''It sickened me,'' Mr. Kerik said yesterday of the pardon, one of 140 granted Saturday, the final day of Mr. Clinton's tenure.

And:

"Rosenberg Served 16 Years In Jail After She Was Caught Unloading 740 Pounds Of Dynamite And Weapons In New Jersey And Admitted That She Had Planned To Supply Others For “Politically Motivated Bombings.” “Ms. Rosenberg served 16 years in jail after she was found with a companion in New Jersey in 1984 unloading 740 pounds of dynamite and weapons, including a submachine gun, from a car. She admitted her role in the New Jersey case, in which she had planned to supply others with explosives for politically motivated bombings.” (Eric Lipton, “Officials Criticize Clinton’s Pardon Of An Ex-Terrorist,” The New York Times, 1/22/01)"

Just let us be clear about this: this cunt Rosenberg was caught unloading small arms and 740 pounds of dynamite, meant to KILL AND MAIM US civil servants and citizens, and her lawyer, the fella who managed to get Clinton so far as TO PARDON HER... a guy who thinks that commemmorating 9/11 "... is not about what we are doing . . . but about who we are . . . and what kind of planet we live on..."

... that kind of fella...



... is Harold W. Gutman, newly appointed US Ambassador to Belgium.


Will you excuse me now, I have to puke.


MFBB.