THE FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN FOR THE CLIMATE ALARMISTS?

First there was Climategate.


Then there was the hoax of the Himalayan glaciers, predicted by the IPCC to be molten away to one fifth of their current level by 2035. It appeared that the IPCC had based that allegation on a study by a Russian hydrologist who had calculated the glaciers would be gone by... 2350.


Then there was the US version of Climategate: as The Telegraph's James Delingpole explains:

"... What it shows is that, just like in Britain at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) temperature data records have been grotesquely distorted by activist scientists in order to exaggerate the appearance of late 20th century global warming. They achieved this – with an insouciant disregard for scientific integrity which quite beggars belief – through the simple expedient of ignoring most of those weather station sited in higher, colder places and using mainly ones in warmer spots. Then, they averaged out the temperature readings given by the warmer stations to give a global average. Et voila: exactly the scary “climate change” they needed to persuade bodies like the IPCC that AGW was a clear and present danger requiring urgent pan-governmental action.

The man who spotted all this is a computer programmer called EM Smith – aka the Chiefio. You can read the full report at his excellent blog. In the 70s, the Chiefio discovered, GISS and NOAA took their temperature data from 6,000 weather stations around the world. By 1990, though, this figure had mysteriously dropped to 1500. Even more mysteriously this 75 per cent reduction in the number of stations used had a clear bias against those at higher latitudes and elevations...."

Then there has just been the revelation that of the 110-strong team of expert reviewers The Netherlands delegated to the UN to contribute to the 2007 IPCC report.... 109 came from the alarmist camp.


And now Phil Jones, who had to resign because of Climategate as Head of the CRU [the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, the prime institution that provided the IPCC with "scientific proof" of climate change - MFBB]... himself admits that there has been no global warming since... 1995. From The Daily Mail:

"...He [Phil Jones, ex-Director CRU - MFBB] also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend. And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.
But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world. Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions. ‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now."

First off, I am not going to let myself go into a rant against the alarmists. Personally, given the fact that the winters my parents recount of were apparently far more severe than even the one we are currently experiencing, I would counsel ... I would simply counsel... serious, competent and steady research without interference from leftist scumbags wanting to politicize it all. Oh, and neither from fossil energy tycoons, for that matter. If, and that's a big IF, there would really be some kind of global warming, and if, and that's even a far bigger IF, man would somehow be somewhat responsible for this, then the most sensible thing to do would be rather to PREPARE for climate change rather than try to reverse the trend by going back to the Stone Age. In the meantime, it doesn't hurt to care for the environment.

But that's not all.

We should not make the same mistake as in 1990.

In 1990, the Wall came down. And we, evil rightwingers, greedy capitalists and backward conservatives, OUR worldview had won. The Left stood there with bleeding noses and...

... we let them get away with it.

We were rewarded for our fair play with anti racism laws, borderless immigration, indoctrination of our children, the brainwashing of the greater part of the population via the overwhelmingly leftist controlled news outlets, and mass abortion, gay marriages, gay adoption and active assistance of leftists in the islamization of our countries.

The whole climate change hoax is now blowing up in the Left's faces.

THIS TIME ROUND, WE SHOULD NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT LOVE SONGS.

1968. Herb Alpert with This Guy's in love with you, a timeless classic. Alpert had already made a name for himself as frontman of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. This number, imho one of the best love songs ever - if not the best - was a solo thing though. Also, it was originally written by Burt Bacharach, another music legend.






1978. Dean Friedman with Lydia, tremendously beautiful ballad that flopped for some reason. Popular perception has it that Ariel is Friedman's No. 1 hit. Can't figure out why.





1990. 'Falling', sung by Julee Cruise. The theme was the intro on the soundtrack of the quasi mythical series Twin Peaks. My wife and I requested this number - okay, actually it was just me - for our opening dance on our wedding ceremony in summer 1999.






1995. Adam Ant began his career as the lead man of the English postpunk/New Wave band Adam & The Ants, but this number was made a long time after the group's demise. It's called Wonderful, and it is from his last album to date. Probably the very last, since the fella has since, on more than one occasion, seen the interior of psychiatric wards. Not as a personnel member, mind you. Anyway, Wonderful is, well, wonderful.






Make it a nice Valentine's Day for your sweetheart.



MFBB.

GERMANY: MUEZZIN CALL TO PRAYER FROM MINARET BECOMING MORE AND MORE COMMON.

Via François Desouche, February 3, 2010:

The German town of Rendsburg [in northern Schleswig-Holstein, on the Kiel Canal - MFBB] has authorised the call to prayer via loudspeaker of a muezzin from a minaret of Rendsburgs mosque, despite the protests of a part of the population, thus announced on Tuesday Rendsburgs Social Democrat mayor, Andreas Breitner.

The project, defended by the Islamic Centre, which is running the mosque, had provoked lively protests from part of the population, which focused on the nuisance caused by the call to prayer, launched five times a day to invite the faithful to prayer. A petition of the group "No Public Call to Prayer" had gathered 800 signatures.

However, according to the mayor, a study on the limits beyond which noise levels would become troublesome had shown that the public calls to prayer would not exceed 40 decibels, which corresponds with a radio or bird cries [said the mayor].

"Skin color, one's origin, gender or different religions do not play a role (in this kind of decisions). And it's good like that", explained the mayor.

The mosque of this town of more than 28,000 inhabitants, situated 100 kilometers from Hamburg, is the biggest one in Schleswig-Holstein, with two 26m high minarets. It was inuagurated in the fall of 2009."

More here.


And here's a short video:





One party which absolutely welcomed the decision to allow the muezzin's call were the Rendsburger Gruene, the Greens. While it is certainly true that all over Europe, the greatest facilitators of islamization are socialists, the greens show barely less enthusiasm - perhaps they are so enamored with islam because they share with it the same color. It is no coincidence that the National Chairman of the German Greens is... a Turk and self-described "secular muslim", Cem Ozdemir. But perhaps the most striking case in point of the affiliation between greens and muslims remains a 2008 incident involving a Green Party spokesperson in Hause, a district of Frankfurt, central Germany. The district there was already home to two mosques, and yet another muslim association wanted to erect a third one, including a muslim community center... this within a 400-meter radius of the other two. Estimated cost: €3 million. When indigenous Germans protested at a meeting concerning the building plans that "It wouldn't feel like home anymore if more come here", the Green Party spokeswoman AND Frankurts Integration Official (!!!), Nargess Eskandari-Gruenberg, blasted back that:

"40 percent of the city's population are immigrants. "If that doesn't suit you," she said, "then you need to move somewhere else."

Oh yeah, never mind her liberal western looks. It's all taqiyyah you know.


Sadly, these are no isolated cases. Currently, 184 new mosques are being built and/or planned throughout Germany. That's basically, all of a sudden, a 115% increase over the existing 163 mosques [apart from that, there are also an estimated 2,600 prayer rooms - MFBB].

Powerful organizations behind this sudden building frenzy are DITIB and Ahmadiyya. DITIB is actually a branch of the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs, and is on its maps already dividing up Germany in religious entities not unlike Christian dioceses. Ahmadiyya is an organization totally apart from DITIB, but no less ambitious, since it has introduced a "100 Mosque Plan" - of which 25% has already been completed!

But back to our Rendsburger muezzin. If the gullible mayor thinks that the call to prayer won't exceed 40 decibels, I have another bridge across the Kiel Canal to sell him. The naivete of those people is really striking, especially in light of the undisputable fact that muslims don't give a jolt about kafir laws. Time and again, muslims do not honor their part of the bargain. Building perscriptions are violated, payment deadlines aren't met, and agreed on transparancy is not provided. Some examples:

"Under the pretext of religious privilege, the DITIB strategists in Cologne have in truth claimed the rights to a commercial center that also happens to include the opportunity to pray. A Muslim community in Berlin's Neukölln district also wanted to take its cue from Cologne and construct an immense commercial and cultural center. But at least the planners there, as the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recognized, only described the structure as being a "semi-mosque."

That plan, however, failed in the face of the strong opposition of Deputy Mayor and District Councilwoman Stefanie Vogelsang of the conservative Christian Democrats. Her awareness of the issue had been heightened by a conflict with DITIB a few years earlier, when the organization deliberately violated its building permits during the construction of a new mosque in the same neighborhood.

By the time construction had been completed, the mosque's two minarets rose 37 meters into the Berlin skyline rather than the approved 28 meters and the dome measured around 22 meters instead of the permitted 18. For Vogelsang that was cause enough to slap the Muslim congregation with the highest fine ever imposed in her district, €100,000. "Whoever lives here, whoever builds here, needs to follow our laws," she said"...."

And so on and so on and so on...

So, if you think this guy, Hasan Unsal, the muezzin of the Rendsburg mosque...




... will stick to the 40 decibel limit when trying to wake up his co-religionists at five in the morning... you're probably one of those people who are still convinced the Himalaya's glaciers will all be gone by 2035. Meanwhile...




Mosque in Duisburg, in the Ruhr area





The "Tabakmoschee" in Dresden





The planned Sendlinger mosque in Muenchen

"The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers..." - Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish PM

And so in Germany an army of 4 million mainly Turkish muslims, up from a couple of tens of thousands one hundred years ago, is building their barracks, with domes like helmets and minarets like bayonets, although they rather strike me as somewhat more modern weaponry. Meanwhile, the pathetic remnant of 200,000 Christians in Turkey itself, down from several million one hundred years ago, is not allowed to build churches. A telling statistic is provided by the Churches of the Byzantine rite, of which there were twenty-nine. Their current state: 4 are in ruins, 3 have been converted into museums, 15 have been converted into a mosques, one has been completely demolished and a new mosque has been built on top. In six of them, Christian Mass is still being held. But for how long?

One more thing.

The mayor of Rendsburg, Andreas Breitner, is a member of the SPD, the German socialists.

But. I suspect. That you suspected that already.



MFBB.

MUSLIM CANCER DESTROYING FRANCE.

Via Galliawatch, a January 29, 2010 exerpt from an utterly sad article by Mireille Popelin, first published at Riposte Laïque:

"There are 12 million of them. French salaried workers. And everything is being done to make them disappear. No one even talks about them anymore! The radical chic ("bobo") Left even says they no longer exist. They endure discrimination. The workers at Conti, at Caterpillar, etc... who fight against the relocation of their companies, who fight against so-called social plans, i.e., unemployment, have to wage their battles alone. They are the people who live in low-income housing and who are subject to the laws of the fanatics and the mafiosi.

Many left the suburbs that had become unlivable. But not those who did not have the means to buy or rent elsewhere. Old retired people who were not able to leave are insulted: "dirty French, old whores, and 4 square meters." You don't know what "4 square meters" refers to? It's the grave. They reduce these older workers to the grave! With targeted spitting, near their shoes. With seats in the bus offered to a veiled Muslim woman apparently younger than they are. At the marketplace it is the Muslim woman who is served first, ostensibly, while the French woman has to wait. The merchants are Arabs. The butcher shops are almost all halal and the retirees have to take a bus or subway to stock up on meat that is not halal. I know them, I listen to them in their retirement clubs.

What of the schools? Islamists are at the door and put pressure on the poor teachers... no swimming pool for girls, no "sex" ed. (We have religion, they say, we don't need that. We don't talk about that.) Biology, history... the teachers often break down, torn between fear and the desire to "pull" these kids towards emancipation and knowledge. I know this well, because it has happened in my family, and it ends with depression and heart attacks.

I'm tired of reading everywhere about the great fears of Muslims who are discriminated against, when fanatics and mafiosi force their "law" in the "lost territories of the Republic".

Note: The Lost Territories of the Republic is the title of a book by Emmanuel Brenner (a pseudonym) that came out in 2002. It describes the breakdown of law and order in large areas of France where even the police dare not go. The following is drawn from a review of the book at JCPA:

The testimonies indicate the serious plight of French democracy. Many teachers close their eyes to the violence, intimidation, and racism. Others describe the perpetrators as "hooligans" or "hoodlums," in denial of the fact that there are elements in the French Muslim community as well as foreign television stations that systematically incite against others. Other teachers try to maintain "social peace" by appeasing the bullies and withholding sympathy from their victims.

The schools' attitudes broadly reflect those of the left-wing government and the previous political position of President Jacques Chirac. During three years of major anti-Semitic incidents, he denied that there was anti-Semitism in France. Only after yet another arson attempt against a Jewish institution in November 2003 did Chirac decide to change his stance.

The cases described are not limited to Jewish victims. Some Christian pupils are so intimidated by the Muslim majority in their classes that they have considered converting to Islam. Teachers are harassed as well. Some Muslim pupils expressed their joy about 11 September, and Bin Laden is a hero to them. It would be a mistake to think that the hatred focuses exclusively on Jews and Americans; the Muslims' main disgust is for the French and French society."

Meanwhile, French officials have far more pressing matters at hand and events to attend which are a gazillion times more important than the stupid pathetic lives of Jean-Claude, Marie-Claire, Sébastien and Sandrine. François Desouche follows Mr. Brice Hortefeux, French Interior Minister, at the occasion of the inauguration of the Grand Mosque of Clermont-Ferrand, central France:

"The Grand Mosque of Clermont-Ferrand, expected since more than ten years by the about 35,000 muslims of Auvergne, was inaugurated this evening by the Interior Minister, Brice Hortefeux.

Integrally financed with 1.2 million EUR by faithful French and foreigners, the mosque, which boasts a dome and soon a minaret, covers a surface of more than 1,000 sq. meters and can accommodate 1,500 people.

"My presence here, as Minister of Interior responsible for religion, is meant as a sign of the will to dialogue which unites the Republic with France's muslims", declared Hortefeux, who was accompanied by the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, the chairman of the National Muslim Council, Mohammed Moussaoui, diplomats and religious and political personalities.

"This mosque is the hallmark of an islam of peace, moderate, far from the radical sermons that may poison the life of France's muslims, Hortefeux added. Boubakeur said that as far as he is concerned, the mosque is "a historical work", "a place of love, peace and spirituality for all the faithful of the region".

Hortefeux, at the same time Regional Councillor of Auvergne, then donned a burnous, a traditional muslim garb presented to authorities, offered by the mosque's imam Hocine Mahdjoub."

You may remember the name Hortefeux. He is the lunatic who insisted, on January 1, 2010, that things had been quite calm the previous night and that a turning point in the Carbeques phenomenon had been reached because "only" 1,137 cars had been torched, as opposed to 1,147 the year before. What he apparently failed to notice was that in order to get the tally down a paltry 10 (ten) cars, 10,000 more riot police had been deployed.

Here's a short video of this dhimmi scoundrel and traitor:





Meanwhile, construction of mosques all over France continues like a whirlwind. Below you see a photo of the building site of the Grand Mosque of Strasbourg, in France's east.





And this is the projected Grand Mosque of Marseille, construction of which saw the green light in January:





Sweden is bad. The UK is bad. Germany is bad. The Netherlands is very bad. Belgium is bad. But I am pretty certain the first country to go down in flames will be France.

Let no one say there were no warnings.


Outlaw Mike, the mean Belgian/Flemish Capitalist, Conservative and Christian follower of Hayek, Von Mises and Friedman salutes you.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT SUICIDE MATERIAL.

Lucky is from Radiohead's third album OK Computer, released in 1997.




Then Massive Attack's Man next Door, which is set to fragments of a 1965 film by Alan Schneider, based on a script, or what passes for it, by Samuel Beckett, the Irish avant garde writer and poet. The title of that film is simply "Film", it lasts 22 minutes, the main character is Buster Keaton, there's no dialogue at all, and it's about a guy wanting to escape being perceived. Beckett is of course most famous for his play Waiting for Godot, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting for a guy, Godot, who never comes. Kind of like waiting for a leftist to grow a brain, quoi. The price for most unintellectual quote of the day goes to me, for "Samuel Beckett was a nutter".





Hey, I'm fine and dandy. No suicide plans, not at all. It's just that I don't think that just because a song is dark, it automatically cannot be good. In fact, imho both Lucky and Man Next Door are brilliant.


Nite.


MFBB.

WHY DADT SHOULD NOT BE REPEALED.

A US Admiral made it to Belgian MSM. Below is a screenshot from Belgian daily HLN (Het Laatste Nieuws), 2 February 2010.



Naturally, US admirals are only presented to the Belgian population if they announce either surrender or something related to our whorenalists' eternal dada, gay issues. In this case, it's the latter. We are, of course, talking about Joint Chief Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen, and his plea before a Senate panel last Tuesday, presented as a personal POV, to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy (DADT) introduced by President Clinton in 1993. Mullen expressed his view as "a matter of integrity" and said that it is wrong to force people to "lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens."

First off, I think "wrong" is a bit too stark an expression. I might agree with his using the word "fair" however. To which I would reply immediately: whoever said that life is always fair? And whoever claimed that life in the military is always fair?

I am but a simple citizen and I never even served, but to me the prime issue for an Army, like it is to so many other things - my company e.g. - is first and foremost about efficiency. Opening up a debate that

a.) will in itself consume precious resources,
b.) will invariably create divisiveness within the military, and
c.) of which an outcome repealing DADT will undermine combat effectiveness...

... is, in my opinion, a very stupid thing to do when you are at war with a mortal foe. To top it all off, can you imagine the rolling laughter among a group of taleban in some dank cave in Waziristan when they hear on the shortwave that, while their archenemies have not yet managed to get the AF surge underway, they have at least made progress on the gay front?

Over at our friend CDR Salamander's site, there've been some good posts on the issue, and I'd wager his comments section continues at least as much, if not more, good reading material as the posts themselves. A couple of the comments in his February 3 post stood out, in my opinion, and with or without kind permission of the authors, I will repeat them here.

First, here's a comment by Mr. X. He's in favor of repealing DADT:

"There's a popular misconception that the "don't ask" part of DADT means we are forbidden from asking, but that's not true. Shipmates casually ask one another all the time. "Hey, what did you do this weekend?" "Who was that I saw you having dinner with?" "So, are you seeing anyone?" An honest answer to those questions from a homosexual is grounds for discharge, regardless of the fact that they were "asked" by someone within DoD. There is also no penalty in the law for those who ask, and nothing that prevents the information from being used if someone does ask. Because the law is written this way, homosexuals frequently find themselves in situations where they are asked questions they may not answer truthfully. I think that's was Admiral Mullen was talking about when he raised the issue of integrity."

Fair enough, but like I said, life's not enough fair. I realize there's probably a great deal of injustice and suffering involved for gay people serving under DADT. But the question you have to ask yourself is, what are the pros and cons of scrapping a policy that, despite its flaws, was better than nothing? If the cons outweigh the pros, just stop whining and leave the policy in place. And I would wager the cons FAR outweigh the pros. We'll come immediately to that, but before we do, here's a column by a certain Claude Berube, a fequent contributor to Proceedings and Naval History on the USNI website. Some exerpts:

"Second, Didn’t Know Don’t Care would be based on individual competency. It would not be about special privileges for any one group. Rather, it is about the freedom of individuals to serve. There are standards in the Navy as reflected by fitness reports or other assessments. The one question we should ask is: Can this individual do the job? After the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, he was wheeled into the emergency room and jokingly said “I hope you’re all Republicans!” If a qualified health care professional said they were a Democrat, he wouldn’t have waited until a Republican showed up. The same philosophy of competence should apply in the Navy.

Third, character counts. Character is not an exclusive trait of any race, gender, or sexual preference; character is demonstrated by individuals. Once a person is deemed qualified to serve, then openly serving homosexuals must be held to the same standards and adhere to regulations as heterosexuals. If they cannot follow regulations, then they must be as accountable as anyone else regardless of race, gender or sexual preference."

The column goes on like that, and it seems Mr. Berube is proposing a policy he labels "DKDC", for Didn't Know, Don' Care. Now, is it just me or am I the only one who fails to see substance in this proposal? Because Mr. Berube never seems to explain how such a policy, letting gay people out themselves and simply judging them by their competencies, should be implemented in practice.

No, I suppose I sound hopelessly archaic, but in the end I'll just stick with the opinions of two commenters on the CDR's thread, "Old NFO" (a male) and "DeltaBravo" (a female). Both served, I assume, with the US Navy. I... told you I was archaic, that's why I'll let the Lady speak first. DeltaBravo:

"You know, since most of the posters here are men I've seen an aspect of this debate that has fallen by the wayside. I don't want to bring an avalanche of accusations and anger and... well, who cares. I'll wade in anyways....

The following is very non-PC. Read at your own risk. I'm just making comments from the point of view of a woman who has watched things for years, has female relatives and friends who serve and have served, and who knows the female mind.

Forget the jokes about DADT and hot lesbians.

There are lots of women in the military. DADT isn't just about the Navy and a few women on ships. It's about other branches that have higher percentages of women clustered in some specialties. How to say this nicely... not a few lesbians among them. Right now they have to keep a lid on things.

YOU.DO.NOT.WANT.TO.TAKE.THE.LID.OFF.THAT.POT.

Women deal with each other differently than they deal with men. In the grand scheme of things I'd rather have 10 male bosses than one average female one. Women are not nice to each other. I have watched people who were suspected of being lesbians target women in the workplace who did not accept their vague advances. It's not pretty. Women can be brutal with each other and very spiteful. Career-killing spiteful. Now put a bunch of them in a command and have love affairs going on semi-openly with people now allowed to publicly proclaim their love that can now speak its name. Girlfriends pairing up, new young recruits coming in and all the drama. Oh, the drama! (Picture what you know of male/female triangles and fraternization. Rejections. Accusations. Now double the estrogen involved.) You do not want to be the COs who have to wade into that minefield. Ever watch a show on women's prisons? Try that in a military division. It will destroy all semblance of unit cohesion.

This isn't just about guys in showers feeling gazed upon. This is about the emotionality and attachments that women can foist on each other that will give many DIVOs excedrin headaches.

At least before, there was doubt maybe whether someone was lesbian and their advances were misread. But bring that whole woman scorned thing out into the open.... it makes what you men navigate look like a cakewalk.

I've seen it in action. NOT FUN. "

Then Old NFO:

"I'm looking forward to the excuses when this blows up. Eighteen year old kids in boot camp with proselytizing gay activists as drill instructors. 56 man berthing compartments and open showers all shared with a few open homosexuals. Shop supervisors and division chiefs being threatened with harassment charges if they try to get any work out of a self described gay. Take all the problems of putting women on ships and multiply them several fold.

As for Admiral Mullen and his ilk. I wonder if there is a point where political correctness would become too much even for them. They still can't admit the Fort Hood massacre was done by an Islamic Terrorist. And now they think allowing open homosexuals into the high pressure close quarters of shipboard life is a great idea.

Earth to Admiral Mullen and Obama. The military is not an office. You don't go home at the end of the day. You live in close contact with your shipmates 24 hours a day for months on end. Every little personal habit is inflicted on everyone else, especially in the lower enlisted ranks . I expect homosexuals will become the new protected class in the military. Good luck meeting your enlistment goals."

I suppose it will sound terribly unintellectual when I say I far prefer the points of view expressed by Old NFO and DeltaBravo over anything else. Repealing DADT will result in lower combat effectiveness. Lower combat effectiveness means, a.o., higher casualties. WE CANNOT HAVE THAT. There's a war going on...





... and it has to be won. I am sympathetic to the plight of gay members of our western armed forces, but I suspect the decent individuals among them - quite a few, I would wager - will understand that while DADT may not be perfect, it is the best system so far.

One last thing.

Since Europeans are so much more sophisticated than crude Americans, it should come as no surprise that in our enlightened continent we not only do not have such a retarded policy like DADT... but our homosexual and lesbian service members even participate in Gay Parades! Don't believe me, check out these photos and you will see a few jolly good fellows proudly serving in the Royal Navy.

Now, I am not only archaic... But I am also mean-spirited. Why else would I suspect a correlation between an RN Gay Parade... and a RN Parade on Iranian TV? Look for yourself! First, the former.




Royal Navy members participating in EuroPride, a Gay Parade held on July 1, 2006 in London.


Then, the latter:



Royal Navy members from the frigate HMS Cornwall. One year after the RN Gay Parade they encountered Iranian sailors in the Gulf who said 'BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!', they shat their pants full, surrendered and afterwards learned their lesson well.


In March 2006, Second Sea Lord Vice Admiral Adrian Johns revealed that he planned to set up therapy lessons to learn hetero RN members to change their old-fashioned perceptions of gay people. Vice Admiral Johns said "his staff were investigating drama-based training resources" as a means to achieve that lofty goal.

I'm sure those drama-based training resources were of great help when a smelly brown liquid flowed down Lt. Felix Carman's pants. Not. Bloody fooking idiots. Oh yeah, did I mention DADT should not be repealed? Good night.



MFBB.

PAT CONDELL ON THE CROOKED JUDGES OF AMSTERDAM.

Kind of blows you away huh?

If you do not want your children to grow up in a totalitarian society,


DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.


I am pissed off as hell lately, and I'm beginning to think... that it is time... for a Conservative Revolution. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. From open leftist collaboration with the islamization of our societies and the Global Warming hoax, over mind-numbing taxation, the showering of welfare checks over illegals being groomed for voting cattle, and insane hyperspending... to a skyrocketing abortion toll, gay adoption and giving pregnancy tests and fucking contraceptives to 11-YEAR OLD GIRLS....


I have had ENOUGH. I'm seething.



MFBB.

TAKUAN SEIYO'S 14TH INSTALLMENT IN THE "FROM MECCANIA TO ATLANTIS" SERIES.

The Right is lucky to have in The Brussels Journal's Takuan Seiyo such a gifted and merciless chronicler of the West's decline into an ageing continent trading its once vibrant economy for sclerotic impotent dhimmisocialism, and paralyzed by bogus guilt over the GW hoax and an allegedly murky past as a colonizer of supposedly noble, peaceful civilizations elsewhere. Last week, Seiyo published his 14th installment in the groundbreaking "From Meccania to Atlantis" series, and, although I actually loathe to use the phrase... it is a must-read. The elusive TBJ contributor focuses mainly on the horrific travesty that is the Wilders Trial currently taking place in Amsterdam. But before linking to a couple of exerpts from his brilliant post, I'd like you to meet a trio of very, very nasty people. On the photo below, actually a screenshot from the extreme leftist daily De Volkskrant, you see from left to right "Professor in Counterterrorism" Bob De Graaff, "Radicalization Expert" Hans Moors, and "Extreme Right Expert" Jaap Van Donselaar. They are the authors of a "scientific study" of which the predetermined conclusion was that "Geert Wilders is a danger for democracy". This "study", ordered by Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst, coincidentally a socialist, is, in a slightly polished form, one of the elements "à charge" used against Wilders in this political trial.




The Real Fascists: from left to right Professor in Counterterrorism Bob De Graaff, who would make better use of taxpayer money if he studied the likes of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab rather than Geert Wilders, "Radicalization Expert" Hans Moors, a pseudoscientist whose smug face could be a hallmark of that disgusting class of self-congratulatory elitist euroleftists, and "Extreme Right Expert" Jaap Van Donselaar, dedicated to investigating those darn dangerous extreme rightwing terrorists but for some reason seemingly completely unaware of the very real (islamo)leftist track record in that domain (Duyvendak, icon of the "Dutch WU", the Hofstadgroep etc).


Below you see a screenshot of the leftist daily De Volkskrant, October 2009, when news of the "scientific study" had just come out.




Translation:

'GEERT WILDERS UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY.' Amsterdam - "Geert Wilders' PVV Party is an extreme rightwing party which mobilizes islamophobia and system hatred against the authorities. Thus the party undermines social cohesion and democracy in this country. That is the conclusion of three scientists in a report on radicalization to the House, as ordered by the Interior Ministry."

Now that you have gotten one more whiff of the stench of the real forces behind the stifling of freedom of speech in Europe, I'd like you to read a coupl of exerpts from Seiyo's excellent column:

Now, 29 months later, the next stage of the toxic toads’ assault on the peoples of the West is taking place in Amsterdam. Geert Wilders is standing before a kangaroo court on charges of, mirabile dictu, “incitement to discrimination and hatred.” An old trick of any dark oligarchy with respect to extirpating inconvenient ideas. Already used against Socrates and seen in the West more recently in the 1945 Nazi trial and execution of the nonviolent resister and bearer of a distinguished German surname, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke.

But there is more to Geert Wilders’s trial. The chicaneries that preceded it, the 70-page rap sheet, the bizarre comments by the Pharisees in charge, the disproportionality between the offense and the prescribed penalty, connote in one’s mind the prosecution’s charges in the most famous trial of them all. Those were charges of blasphemy.

The blasphemy on trial in Amsterdam is not against Allah, though if Eurabia proceeds on course such blasphemy and whatever else the Organization of The Islamic Conference dictates will be proscribed at Dutch law within years, if not months (4). Rather, it’s blasphemy against the religion of multiculturalism, diversity, appeasement, cowardice, treason and vain hopes of 30 shekels of perpetual profit from the Islamglobal economy of The New World Order.

Numerous well-informed observers have noticed the demonstrable truthfulness of Mr. Wilders’s statements for which the Netherlands justice system proposes to fine and jail him for two years, presumably stripping him of his parliamentary immunity first. Wilders’s opening statement in court was itself predicated on the question, “If something is true, how can it be punishable?”

But truth, empirical evidence, justice or the public good have nothing to do with it. This is lawfare – an asymmetrical war by the racially and culturally Europhobic neosocialist oligarchy on the people it governs. A war to squash ideas and the political parties that embody them and therefore jeopardize the oligarchy’s hold on power and the perks of power.

The depths of obscenity

“It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct”, stated the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie). “What’s relevant is that his observations are illegal”.

The four paragraphs of the Dutch Penal code under which Geert Wilders is being tried may be found here, but a writer interested in the marrow of things would condense them as follows:

He who publicly, verbally or in writing or image, deliberately expresses himself in a way insulting of, or incites hatred or discrimination or violent behavior against, person or a group of people or their property because of their race, their religion or belief, their gender or hetero-or- homosexual nature or their physical, mental, or intellectual disabilities, will be punished with a prison sentence of up to one year or a big fine, except if he does so in his professional (i.e. Geert Wilders) or avocational (i.e. bloggers, freedom activists) or group (i.e. organized nonviolent resistance) capablity, he will get up to two years in prison and a bigger fine.

In the symposium The Trial of Geert Wilders, the American attorney David Yerushalmi found that this law he calls “fascist” contains a prepackaged guilty verdict against Wilders. What’s most telling to me is that that the law does not discriminate between insulting and advocating violence. Moreover, it expresses the fatwa of the West’s ruling elite against discrimination. That is a death sentence -- for Western civilization.

Without discrimination, neither physical existence nor a moral or intellectual system can obtain, except as miasmatic pap. Without wise discrimination between the inside and the outside, any society is destined for the flush hole of history.

The writer Nidra Poller [ibid.] quotes the Dutch Law Professor Fokko Oldenhuis:

“…the statements of Wilders are un-Dutch, they don’t belong to our Christian-Judaic culture…. He discriminates Moroccans because of their race and causes hate against them…. His desire to ban the Koran brings fear and terror into peoples homes… The laws against hate crimes were made in 1934, to protect the Jews in a reaction to what was happening in Germany.”


Poller asks, “What could be more obscene than enrolling 6 million exterminated Jews in a battle to deprive one honest upstanding legitimate popular Dutch MP of the freedom to oppose the spread of an ideology [i.e. Islam] that blatantly plans the extermination of the remaining Jewish population of the world?”

Time to enter a peculiar character, another lackey of the politically correct regime and a man who would have been perfectly at ease in the ranks of the Stasi. Meet Paul Velleman, prosecutor in the Wilders trial.




A Real Fascist: Velleman was the prosecutor who ordered the arrest, in the middle of the night and by a ten-strong squad of black-clad policemen, of cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot. This ball-less, slimy but all in all dangerous creep (at least for indigenous Dutchmen) shows far less bravado when confronted with offensive cartoons from radical muslim organizations.

"Alas, inconceivably, the persecution of Geert Wilders is more obscene even than that. Two additional participants in the symposium, the Canadian lawyer David B. Harris, and Mark Steyn, pointed out that despite the manifest risks to Wilders’s life, the Dutch government is refusing to hold the trial in a secure courtroom, even though it provided one for the trial of the Dutch-born Muslim murderer of Theo van Gogh. Steyn remarked further that in the Low Countries politicians who challenge the Eurabian arrangement are either banned (Belgium’s Vlaams Blok), forced into exile (Aayan Hirsi Ali) or killed (Pym Fortuyn) – and that the authorities are indifferent as to which of these fates befalls Geert Wilders [ibid.].

But that too does not exhaust the depth of the obscenity. The two prosecutors in the Wilders trial, Paul Velleman and Birgit van Roessel, also work for the Dutch National Discrimination Expertise Center [LECD]. Velleman is the head of LECD. As Gates of Vienna has reported, “Paul Velleman was the prosecutor who had the [offensive to Muslims and anonymous] cartoonist Nekschot picked up in a raid by ten police officers in the middle of the night, and kept him locked up for more than two days. Quote from H. Numan: ‘After release, he was told: You can forget about anonymity now. They know who you are.’“

Alias Gregorius Nekschot is a regular citizen. He cannot afford the security arrangements that the Dutch state must provide for Geert Wilders – one surmises, reluctantly -- due to his parliamentary status. So the declared purpose of Nekschot’s arrest and “outing” was, first, to silence him or get him killed, and second, to send a message to all dhimmitude resisters: Mütze ab! Ve know vho you are, and ve know vere you are too. Therefore, they know it too. Shut up or be killed. Mütze auf!

The Dutch National Discrimination “Expertise” Center has finally bagged the big fish. Everyone knows who he is. But now everyone also knows where he is. And once he is jailed, his parliamentary immunity and security detail stripped, they can finally do the work the dhimmofascist regime would like to do itself."

Seiyo concludes:

"The well-oiled machinery of repression is vast and global. The working of the interlinking cogs may be glimpsed in any “news” (i.e. agitprop) item, e.g. like this report that appeared in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir on the day when 57.5% of directly polled citizens of a sovereign country, Switzerland, decided to prohibit the construction of further Islamic minarets:

“Switzerland votes massively [for] the prohibition of minarets”, reads the headline (in French), under which almost every sentence includes words indicating disappointment, disapproval and condemnation or a negative opinion about the legitimacy of the Swiss people’s sovereign voice.

One is informed that the Green Party plans an appeal before the European Court of Human Rights, for violation of religious freedom. Likewise, the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CECLR) – the Orwellian name alone merits a short pause -- in Belgium, naturally, opines that the victory of 57.5% of the Swiss citizenry is not a victory for democracy. The lawfare of progressive dhimmitude is trotted out too:

“A prohibition that has no effect but on a single religion is contrary to the Belgian Constitution, to the European Treaty of Human Rights, and to different declarations of the United Nations.” [ibid., my translation]


One would wait in vain for the pompous neosocialist frauds running either Le Soir or CECLR or the UN or EU or Switzerland’s Body Snatcher government or the Barko regime in the United States to express equally strong or any opinions concerning the treatment of Christians and Christianity (11) in every Muslim country in the world, or the treatment of whites in South Africa, Zimbabwe and much of the rest of Africa."

If you truly value Freedom, you should with all your might denounce the conclusions of this disgusting Kangaroo Court. Follow this link and write an email to a Dutch embassy and/or consulate wherein you express a.) your support for the brave Dutchman that is Wilders and b.) your disgust for the travesty that this "trial" makes of the Dutch judicial system.

Thank you.



MFBB.

MULTICULTURAL ENRICHMENT IN BERLIN.

Now and then we have referred to certain muslim-infested areas in Berlin, amongst others Neukoelln. Some may remember how police officers upon rounding up petty criminals had to flee for suddenly appearing muslim mobs lest they not be lynched. Here is another illustration of what life in those neighborhoods has in store for non-muslims. From the Polish site Polskaweb, German edition, January 2010:

"Veiled muslim girls suddenly attacked other, preferably blonde girls. School authorities and the Senate Administration for Schools are deeply concerned.

It happened on the street: "Two times already girls with headscarf beat with their fists on blonde girls without headscarf, pushed them to the ground, and kicked them with their feet" says Volker Steffens, Principal of Thomas More High School in Neukoelln. The number of foreigners among the about 500 pupils is more than 80 per cent from 41 nations....

Rita Herrmanns of the Senate Admininstration for Schools: "Fundamentalistic tendencies are on the rise in Berlin's schools over the past years. More and more muslim girls are wearing headscarves. More and more muslim parents forbid their daughters schooltrips, swimming lessons, sexual education". School Principal Volker Steffens is sitting in the front seat to witness the conssequences: "The islamic tendencies and straight racist attacks by [muslim] girls are remarkable."

The victims are the blonde Polish girls, because they are catholic and at the same time very liberal and therefore embody everything, what the veiled girls hate. The reason for the conflicts is most often envy. Steffens: "In religiously very tight households much is forbidden. The girls see in school other girls, who are allowed far more. They become pissed off, and harass the children of liberal families."

Volker Steffens draws the line: "Cases are talked through with the girls and warnings issued [my translation sucks - dunno what 'geahndet' means. Is there a German in zhe Room? - MFBB]. That goes from a warning over a negative reference to exclusion from school meetings and even the school itself".

Rita Hermanns: "It's good that way, because one thing shouldn't happen at all: look away! This violence must be exposed."

Good luck with that. Better oil up, lock and load grandpa's Schmeisser Madam Hermanns. Better, uncle Willi's Sturmgewehr. A few Panzerfausts might come in handy too.



MFBB.

BUTTGET PROPOSAL.

Just one article among many: Peter Morici on FOXNews.com. Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, as well as a former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Obama's Budget -- Straight From La La Land
By Peter Morici
- FOXNews.com

Today, President Obama released his proposed 2011 budget, which forecasts the federal deficit will fall to $706 billion by 2014 or just 3.9 percent of GDP before rising again in 2015.

To accomplish this feat, he proposes letting the Bush tax cuts expire and other spending cuts the Congress has rejected in the past. More extraordinary, though, the document assumes that real GDP grows at better than 4 percent a year over the four years from 2011 to 2014, and the economy does not encounter a serious recession.

If your staff economist tells you that is realistic, fire him.

Rosie Scenario wrote this budget.

The United States is facing deficits greater than one trillion dollars for the foreseeable future, and investing in long-term U.S. government bonds is a very risky proposition. It is not that Washington won't pay, but longer term, an international run on the dollar and inflation are real risks.

Investing in U.S. bonds now entails considerable political risk. A populist government, similar to those that drove Latin American republics into bankruptcy during the 1970s is in charge.

Obama's strategy: low growth policies and assume away the consequences.

This Mark Steyn article's scope is somewhat broader than the "mere" acknowledgement of a budget, and a budget deficit, and a national debt, never before seen in human history, but I thought I'd pass it on just as well:

...That's why Obama is such a job-killer. Why would a small business take on a new employee? The president's proposing a soak-the-banks tax that could impact your access to credit. The House has passed a cap-and-trade bill that could impose potentially unlimited regulatory costs. The Senate is in favor of "health" "care" "reform" that will allow the IRS to seize your assets if you and your employees' health arrangements do not meet the approval of the federal government. Some of these things will pass into law, some of them won't. But all of them send a consistent, cumulative message: that there are no rules, that they're being made up as they go along – and that some of them might even be retroactive, as happened this week with Oregon's new corporate tax.

In such an environment, would you hire anyone? Or would you hunker down and sit things out? Obama can bury it in half a ton of leaden telepromptered sludge but the world has got the message: More Washington, more microregulation of every aspect of your life, more multi-trillion-dollar spending, and no agreed rules in a game ever more rigged against you.

Obama and the Democrats have decided, in the current cliché, to "double down." That hardly does justice to what the president's doing. In effect, he's told embattled congressmen and senators to strap on the old suicide-bomber belt and self-detonate for the team this November.

That's a lot of virgins to pass out, but, with this administration, budget restraints aren't exactly a problem: Untold pleasures will await every sacrificial incumbent in paradise, or at any rate the coming liberal utopia.

What's the end game here? President Obama gave it away in his student-loan "reform" proposals: If you choose to go into "public service," any college-loan debts will be forgiven after 10 years.

Because "public service" is more noble than the selfish, money-grubbing private sector. C'mon, everybody knows that. So we need to encourage more people to go into "public service."

Why?

In the past 60 years, the size of America's state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it's still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine.

Like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured or marketed any product other than himself. So, quite reasonably, he sees government dependency as the natural order of things.

And in his college-loan plan he's explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you're a schmuck and a loser. In the America he's building, you'll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swollen bureaucracy that takes six weeks off a year and retires at 53 on a pension you could never dream of. Obama's proposals are bold only insofar as few men would offer such a transparent guarantee of disaster: It's the audacity of hopelessness...

You bet.

Jesus Christ. If I ran my family's financial matters like Obama does the US's, my wife would file for divorce. I am NOT KIDDING.


MFBB.

TAKUAN SEIYO: FROM MECCANIA TO ATLANTIS (13/2).

Over at The Brussels Journal, the elusive contributor Takuan Seiyo (a pseudonym) is up to his 14th installment in the breathtaking "From Meccania to Atlantis" series, but before I link to that one, I'd like to call your attention (overdue, admitted) to the previous one, which appeared more than one month ago, on December 18, 2009. For some reason I never found an adequate opportunity to refer to it earlier.

Here it is. This man deserves a readership of tens of millions.

The Left’s strategy has not changed much since the 1930s. They push government spending ever higher, and then define budget deficits as the problem. When fiscal conservatives point out that the overspending causes the deficits, the Left labels that as extremist, supporting slavery and homicidal. When in power, the Left ratchets up the spending on its clients and picks the pockets of the productive citizens out of a faked concern for the “deficit gap.”

The one rule is that expenditures are never reduced, except as a strategic ploy. If an emergency forces a reduction, what’s reduced is the police, the garbage pick-up, the libraries, but never the budget-busting public workers’ pension programs, or the legions of $150,000-a-year deputies of bureaucrat deputies, hired and retained through thick and thin to fulfill the Holy Grail of Body Snatcher creed: “balance” between competent straight white males and quadriplegic black Muslim lesbians.

But there comes a time when the spending is no longer an exercise in cynical egotism or delusional ‘social justice,’ but a deliberate battering ram with which to fell a nation and steal its future. There is no precedent in history to the reckless magnitude and speed of the Obama–Pelosi regime’s spending. It’s impossible to capture concisely all the details of the confetti curtain of $100 bills streaming day and night from ten million Bernanke helicopters, but a few mileposts are worth mentioning:

The Senate of the most indebted nation in history, a country staggering under mountains of debt that it has no viable way of repaying, continues to pass Titanic spending bills that just in the first nine months of 2009 included:

$350 billion Wall Street bailout extension

$787 billion “stimulus” package

$400 billion, earmark-infested omnibus spending bill

$6 billion to federalize charities and pay volunteers

$109 billion loan to the International Monetary Fund

$3 billion for “Cash for Clunkers”

$400 million in corporate welfare to the tourism industry

$4 billion bailout of the Postal Service





In what the New York Post called “a stimulus without the stim", the federal government has spent a half-billion dollars on ten large government stimulus contracts in New York City and Long Island that created 54 jobs. That comes to $9 million per job.

Overall, the government has spent $246,436 per each of the 640,329 jobs it claims to have saved or created so far. That's a pretty costly stimulus, a government Ponzi scheme of printing money and so robbing those who hold previously printed money, then flinging the new money about in order to cover up the sorry effects of the government’s own prior malfeasance and stupidity.

Each buyer of the 690,000 vehicles that were sold during the “Cash for Clunkers program” (gov. propaganda here) received a government subsidy of $3,500 - $4,500, at a total cost to the taxpayer of $3 billion. But since the majority of these beneficiaries would have bought their cars anyway, the 125,000 who were actually induced by the government to buy cost the taxpayer $24,000 each.

Fraud in the “$8000 ‘stimulus’ to each new home buyer” program is currently assessed at $500 million. Thousands of such $8,000 tax credits have been issued to illegal aliens, children, and people who had not bought a house – the latter including at least 53 IRS [Income Tax Bureau] employees. That’s what happens when a government rather than the free market mechanism dispenses money.

Obama has announced a plan to send 78 million American seniors a check for $250 each. That’s a paltry 19.5 billion dollars. In Detroit, thousands line up for “Obama money,” that they believe is a personal gift from The One. In Tampa Bay, millions are wasted to subsidize beauty school tuition for beauticians for whom there are no jobs. Maybe that’s the ultimate Monkey Business haircut.

As if this weren’t enough, the lunatics in the House of Representatives write a 2000+ page bill that nobody has read and pass it at 23:00 on a Saturday night. They propose to spend another $1.2 trillion on health care for the 12.5% of Mexico’s population (3) that prefers free American doctors, in a reform that would actually worsen everything that’s already bad in the American healthcare system (4), explode U.S. debt, increases taxes, and kill jobs. Two Saturdays later, the Senate gives its stamp of approval, in a wheeling-dealing process that involves buying one senator’s vote with a $300 million bribe to Louisiana, twenty times the amount of the original Louisiana Purchase.

I have only one advice for Americans. Get rid of this Fraud and his cronies ASAP. They are destroying your country. But do it in a legal way, of course. Make it a Victory not only of Democracy but also for the commonest of common sense.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT KULA SHAKER, THE SOUND.

Imho Kula Shaker stood somewhat apart from the whole Britpop phenomenon because of its weirdness, with singer/guitarist Crispian Mills singing top numbers such as Tattva in Sanskrit (!), and the band introducing traditional Indian instruments like a tamboura and sitar. What hits I know of them are highly kinetic, and for a while in the mid-nineties they were really cool. They split up in 99, only to reform again in 2004, but I haven't heard much pottenbrekerij [literally 'breaking pots', Flemish expression for leaving an impression - MFBB] from their reincarnation yet. Trivia fact: frontman Mills is the grandson of the famous actor Sir John Mills, best known for his role in the wartime drama In which we serve (1942, directed by Noel Coward) and the Captain Scott tribute Scott of the Antarctic (1948).





I could smash my head against a wall for ever lending The Sound's debut album, Jeopardy, to a fella whom I even suspected never to give it back to me. The Sound's probably the coolest eighties post punk band you have never heard of. Centered around singer and guitarist Adrian Borland, the original lineup for that essential album was further Graham Bailey on bass, Mike Dudley on drums and Bi Marshall on keyboards. Those were the eighties, in the middle of the Cold War, and it was cool to think in end of the world terms. Both the album's outlook (in austere black and white) and content (with songs like Missiles) reflect that. I suppose the consensus among band members to do other cool things like eschewing making big fat capitalistic profit was big enough to not follow the path of making commercial numbers. IIRC, their third album was even deliberately made to not sound commercial at all. Surprise surprise, The Sound petered away, signing up with insignificant label after even more insignificant label and ingloriously splitting up in 1988. Borland himself, who had been showing signs of depression since the mid-eighties, committed suicide by throwing himself under an express train in Wimbledon station in 1999. As for me... I am glad I knew them. Jeopardy was, and is, okay. Not top material, but... okay. Essential eighties album. RIP Adrian. I pray I will once get your debut LP back.





Nite ladies and gentlemen.


MFBB.

THE ECONOMIST ON BIG GOVERNMENT.

All week long I've been wanting to do a small post regarding an article regular reader Mark formerly from Colorado (and before that from California) linked to in the comments section. Well, it's half past midnight here, it's snowing, my latest Koontz book (The Darkest Evening Of The Year) is out, lovemaking Demand and Supply Economics was yesterday, and tomorrow night is Saturday Music Night so if there's got to be a time to do that post it's now.

Would it be asked too much - providing you have time, of course - to read the article first? It's from The Economist and it deals with the ever growing role of the state. I do not agree with everything, and I have my issues with The Economist (they backed Obama for God's sake, which makes me smarter than them) but all in all it's a good read.

When I still have your attention we could walk quickly back over it, and I got a few quick points to make. Your remarks are welcome. Here goes:

"...IN THE aftermath of the Senate election in Massachusetts, the focus of attention is inevitably on what it means for Barack Obama. The impact on the Democratic president of the loss of the late Ted Kennedy’s seat to the Republicans will, no doubt, be significant (see article). Yet the result could be remembered as a message more profound than the disparate mutterings of a grumpy electorate that has lost faith in its leader—as a growl of hostility to the rising power of the state. America’s most vibrant political force at the moment is the anti-tax tea-party movement. Even in leftish Massachusetts people are worried that Mr Obama’s spending splurge, notably his still-unpassed health-care bill, will send the deficit soaring."

I tend to agree. I must say that I was actually flabbergasted at the Tea Party phenomenon, the motivation of which seems to be a genuinely intellectual one, a deliberate rejection of too much state power. Why do I use the word intellectual? Because , judging by the boards and slogans carried, the mere emergence of the tea parties nationwide was an ideological mass statement, and something ideological is in se intellectual. When people take to the streets in Europe, they do so either for very emotional reasons (e.g. they hold pathetic silent marches to condemn this or that heinous crime committed against children) or they do it for jobs, wages and pensions, in other words for simple basic things. There's of course nothing wrong with that, but in essence it's something on the intellectual level of a toddler: me hungry, must have food. How one achieves what they want, whether it's safe jobs, raised wages, or secure pensions, Europeans don't bother about. And they wouldn't understand it either. Now, you can argue that ultimately the Tea Partiers also want those same things, and that's only normal. But there's a reasoning behind their demands: they send the message they want job security and decent health care but NOT with more state. They not only demand something, they ask it be not done in this or that particular way.

I must say I was very, very impressed by this outburst of concerned, intellectually committed citizenship. Here is a people that recognizes bullshit when it smells it. Not so in Europe, where, oh irony! far too many people [not a majority, thank God] call Americans dumb!

The immediate reason for the rise of the state is the financial crisis. Governments have spent trillions propping up banks and staving off depression. In some countries they now play a large role in the financial sector; and thanks to bail-outs, stimulus and recession, the proportion of GDP made up by state spending and public deficits has rocketed. But the rise of Leviathan is a much longer and broader story (see article). Long before AIG and Northern Rock ended up in state custody, government had been growing rapidly. That was especially true in Britain and America, the two countries in which “the end of big government” had been declared in the 1990s. George Bush pushed up spending more than any president since Lyndon Johnson. Britain’s initially frugal Labour government went on a splurge: the state’s share of GDP has risen from 37% in 2000 to 48% in 2008 to 52% now. In swathes of northern Britain the state now accounts for a bigger share of the economy than it did in communist countries in the old eastern bloc.

Apart from saying again that I tend to agree, I have little to add. The statement about Bush may or may not be true. If a reader can come up with material backing that claim up, that would be very appreciated.

"Demography is set to push state spending up further. Ageing populations will consume ever more public health care and ever bigger pensions. Unless somebody takes an axe to them, entitlements will consume a fifth of America’s GDP in 15 years, compared with 9% now."

Again, a correct assessment. Paradoxically, democracies are at greater risk of becoming unmanageable because there is a very real danger that simply because it has become the biggest voting bloc, pensioners will find themselves in a position, in the foreseeable future, where they might veto any measure the state deems necessary to survive financially. It's a Catch 22 situation. Put in simple terms, a state might be forced to contemplate cutting pensions to be able to keep working the state machinery, including its many and various responsibilities that are not directly related to the elderly (education e.g.). But the Grey Panthers might, twenty years from now, be in a position to block such a move. The end result will of course be that the state will head for financial ruin, after which it will not be able to ... pay pensions at all. It's a conundrum, and one that can possibly only be avoided by adapting different pension systems, e.g. the Pinera system born in Pinochet's Chile, and/or spurring people to take more care of themselves with fiscally attractive pension saving schemes.

"Rising government spending is not the only manifestation of growing state power. The spread of regulation is another. Conservatives tend to blame the growing thicket of rules on unwanted supranational bodies, such as the European Union, and on the ever growing industry of public-sector busybodies who supervise matters like diversity and health and safety. They have a point. But voters, including right-wing ones, often demand more state intrusion: witness the “wars” on terror and drugs, or the spread of CCTV cameras."

Okay for the CCTV cameras, which are an intrusion in our private lives straight out of 1984. Not okay for the War On Terror or the War On Drugs. A state should, and must, have the monopoly for the use of violence. When the state is attacked militarily, it must respond in force. Defeating the enemy is the prime objective. Winning World War II placed the US in a budgetary nightmare of unfathomable proportions. But in a losing situation, I assume that few would have consoled themselves by arguing that at least they had adhered to a sound principle like staying out of the red.

"A further danger consists in equating “smaller” with “better”. As the horrors in Haiti demonstrate, countries need a state of a certain size to work at all; and more government can be good."

Agree. A well-functioning state IS a necessity. If that implies a relatively impressive size, so be it. However sympathetic I might be, intellectually, vis-à-vis libertarianism, I often consider it as a concept that's as outworldish as communism. I do not believe in a skeleton state. Sanitary conditions in seventeenth century London only improved when the town authorities levied taxes, giving them the financial means to process human waste in a hygienic and healthy way. And as appalling as Saddam Hussein's state was, its dissolution in 2003 led to an unforeseen chaos. In my own country, the state has created financial backup organizations that have effectively helped key industries to grow. A state is not inefficient per se. There's got to be a state of a certain size. What size? I don't know. You might want to study Dick Armey's findings.

"In these circumstances, hard rules make little sense. But prejudices are still useful—and this newspaper’s prejudice is to look for ways to make the state smaller. That is partly for philosophical reasons: we prefer to give power to individuals, rather than to governments. But pragmatism also comes into it: there is so much pressure on the state to grow (bureaucrats building empires, politicians buying votes, public-sector workers voting for governments that promise bigger budgets for the public sector) that merely limiting the state to its current size means finding cuts."

What else can I say than that I agree?

"And cuts can be found. In the corporate world, slimming a workforce by a tenth is standard fare. There’s no reason why governments should not do that too, when it’s needed. Sweden and Canada managed it, and remained pleasant countries with effective public services. Public-sector pay can be cut, given how secure jobs are: in both America and Britain public-sector workers are on average now paid more than private-sector ones. Public-sector pensions are far too generous, in comparison with shrunken private-sector ones. Entitlements can be cut back, most obviously by raising pensionable ages. And the world might well be a greener, more prosperous place if the West’s various agricultural departments disappeared."

Ditto.


Nite, thank you for your attention. Tomorrow some lighter stuff.



MFBB.

MULTICULTURAL ENRICHMENT IN THE NETHERLANDS.

Basically every former colonial power has a segment of the population that's composed of natives from those colonies, or descendants thereof. Belgium has its Congolese, Britain its Pakistanis and Indians, France its Algerians. And the Dutch have, amongst others, Moluccans, from the island group the Moluccas in the east of the Indonesian archipelago. They are the descendants of about 4,000 Moluccan troopers of the KNIL, the Koninklijk Nederlands-Indisch Leger (or Royal Dutch East Indies Army), and 7,500 of their family members. They came to the Netherlands after 1950 when the whole of Indonesia became one nation, fearing reprisals since they had been some kind of KNIL elite corps, not unlike the Gurkhas in the British Army. Anno 2010 the Moluccans are an accepted and totally integrated part of Dutch society (despite troubles in the seventies), a fact that in large part can be contributed to the Christian beliefs many hold (the Portuguese introduced Christianity on the Moluccas during their short rule before the Dutch arrival in 1599).

Muslims would not be muslims if on the Moluccan home-islands they would not have tried to impose their rule too. Between 1999 and 2002 the muslim terrorist organization Laskar Jihad unleashed a terrible war on the Moluccas against the Christian half of the population whereby thousands were killed and 500,000 were forced to flee their houses. Naturally, this conflict led to tensions between muslims and Moluccans in the Netherlands too. To cut a long story short, in Holland the two communities are not exactly on best terms.

Around New Years Eve, news leaked out that terrible riots between the two communities had been taking place for a prolonged time already in the town of Culemborg, in the centre of The Netherlands. Things got really nasty when Moroccans in a car deliberately tried to overrun Moluccan youths. From NRC Handelsblad, January 5 2010:

Race riots lead to emergency measures in Culemborg
Published: 5 January 2010 17:16 Changed: 6 January 2010 13:24

Two nights of riots between youths of Moroccan and Moluccan background have led to a police lock-down in the Terweijde neighbourhood. It’s typical of ‘young male syndrome’ says a riot-expert with 25 years experience. New Year’s Eve is a time for feasting and fighting.

Race rioting has led to emergency measures in the Dutch city of Culemborg. The Terweijde district is on police lock-down after two episodes of violence between youths of Moroccan origin and others of Moluccan (Indonesian) background. Yesterday, Terweijde was cordoned off by police and strict security measures installed. A hundred officers are preventing outsiders from entering, gatherings of over three people are banned, and CCTV cameras are monitoring all movements. The measures will stay in place for at least two weeks, officials have announced.

The riots began on New Years Eve when a car drove into a group of Moluccans in the front garden of a house in Terweijde. Several of them were hurt. Two of the five men in the car, all between 18 and 21 years old, were attacked by bystanders. In the rioting that followed, windows were smashed and several people wounded. One girl, the daughter of a Moluccan mother and Dutch father, ended up in hospital with concussion when a stone entered their home.

Police say about a hundred youngsters, fifty of them Moroccan and fifty Moluccan, were involved. Five young men were arrested, four Moroccans and one Moluccan, including the driver of the car, who was charged with attempted manslaughter. On Saturday, a 43-year old man was also arrested on suspicion of involvement. According to a police spokesman, two of the suspects were from other parts of The Netherlands.

The following video shows a Dutch-Moluccan neighborhood that got a visit by Moroccans:





Why is it that muslims cannot live in peace with literally anybody, not even with themselves?


Another topic at random. The mayor of the small town of Zaltbommel, in the East Netherlands, needs polic protection round the clock. The reason? He's been receiving threats from Moroccan youths.

From the Dutch satirical website GeenStijl:

And amidst all the mess a police van stands in front of Mayor Albert Van den Bosch (VVD). Since police earlier this week lifted two Moroccan shoplifters (17 and 18) from class, it's Alarm Phase 1 in Zaltbommel. The duo fled with their booty in the Philips School, whereupon the premises were evacuated on orders of the mayor. The reason? An overwhelmingly Moroccan gang, friends of the two, attacked the police. There was some scolding. A couple of persons were threatened off. Here and there a car window and/or mirror was smashed. Reason enough for Van Den Bosch to sweep the school's premises clean and issue a letter calling the Moroccans' behaviour "totally unacceptable". But the neighborhood knows since long that Moroccan youths are misbehaving systematically in Zaltbommel. Criminals, loverboys and other scum. Even GreenLeft in Zaltbommel is currently worrying. And thus police officers patrol 24/7 in front of the mayor's house. As a precaution. You never know.

Schiphol, near Amsterdam, is The Netherlands' prime International Airport. The fella you see on that still is, of course, the Xmasbomber, Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was able to board a KLM/Air France flight on Schiphol while possessing 80 grams of high explosive (pentaerythritol tetranitrate). Security scanners would have detected the package containing the PETN, but of the 17 installed at Schiphol, none was operational.





Well, what do you want. Dutch terrorism experts are too busy writing scientific reports telling those dumb Dutch citizens, of which you see a fine collection below:





... that the REAL DANGER is a weirdly coiffed ashblonde guy who for some reason needs to walk around with a squad of bodyguards, has to sleep at different locations, and can see his wife only once a week.

As fate would have it, the guy who overpowered Abdulmutallab was just such a dumb Dutch citizen: 32-year old filmmaker Jasper Schuringa, a white heterosexual male. He's probably a rightwing extremist.

Well, maybe all's not that bad. It looks like the Wilders trial may turn out to become something altogether different from what Hollands PC cabal intended it to be.



MFBB.

CAREFUL WITH THAT PANDA EUGENE.

We are all coping on a daily basis with Al Qaeda terrorists, melting glaciers and anti-racism laws, but 87-year old Eugène Breynaert from Liedekerke, a small town in the province of East Flanders, Belgium, faces his own challenges: his Fiat Panda is 149cm wide; his garage's interior 155cm.





Better not buy a Humvee for his next. Besides, too much CO2 from that one.



MFBB.

"JUSTICE" IN THE NETHERLANDS, USSR STYLE.

First there was Pim Fortuyn, the charismatic and flamboyant sociologist, author and politician who warned as early as 1997 in his book Tegen de islamisering van onze cultuur [Against the islamization of our culture - MFBB] against the rise of islam, actively supported by the left, in western societies. On May 6, 2002, nine days prior to the Dutch parliamentary elections in which his party, the LPF (Lijst Pim Fortuyn) stood to win big, he was assassinated by a Green Left animal rights activist, Volkert Van Der Graaf, who shot several bullets in Fortuyn's head. Van der Graaf was arrested immediately therafter. He had the names and addresses of three other LPF candidates with him, and in his house bomb-making materials were found.





Then there was Theo Van Gogh, a controversial filmmaker, actor and columnist, the grandson of the brother of the famous post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh. A flamboyant character like Fortuyn, his criticism spared no one, but unlike Holland's catholics, protestants and jews, its muslims took that criticism a tad too serious. In 2003, together with the Somali refugee Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he made the film Submission, in which the plight of women under islamic rule is highlighted. For using fragments of the koran in it, he was assassinated in 2004 by Dutch-born Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri, who emptied a gun in him (eight cartridges), slit his throat (almost decapitating him), stabbed his corpse with a knife on which a letter threatening Hirsi Ali was pinned, and pushed another, very long knife through him which almost reached the spine.





A third Dutchman who refused to swallow the multiculti lunacy emerged shortly therafter, the liberal politician Geert Wilders (keep in mind that in Europe the word liberal is still being used to describe a center-right political inclination that favors free markets, but holds progressive views on ethical questions). In the late nineties, as an MP for the liberal VVD, he began to profile himself as a critic of The Netherlands' lavish welfare support for people allegedly unfit for work and, simultaneously, as a sceptic of the multiculti walhalla as propagated by the left and centrists. It should be noted that Wilders as early as 1998 warned in the Tweede Kamer [the House - MFBB] against islamic fundamentalism, and called muslim fundamentalism, in a remarkable session in December 1999, "one of the biggest threats of the coming decade".

As post 9/11 the increasing islamization of The Netherlands became all the more visible, and especially Moroccan youths were, and are, instrumental in the skyrocketing criminality phenomenon in Dutch society, Wilders quickly gained notoriety with his crass viewpoints. In September 2004, after yet another conflict with the weak VVD leadership, he decided to start with his own party in Dutch politics, Groep Wilders. Shortly thereafter a first islamic video threatening his assassination 'because of mocking islam' was issued, and from October 2004 on, PRIOR to Van Gogh's murder, he is being protected by a six-man strong bodyguard and sleeps at a different location every night. Despite the serious limitations on his mobility, Wilders has managed to build his initial one-man fraction into a well-oiled political party, the PVV [Partij Voor Vrijheid, Party for Freedom - MFBB]. In between, he made a short (15 minutes) film named Fitna, which, using koranic verses, explores the inherent inhumanity and backwardness in the muslims' holy book. January 2009 brought the ruling of a kangaroo court which ordered prosecutors to try Wilders "for insulting muslim worshippers because of comparisons between islam and nazism". In November 2009, Dutch Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst demanded, and got, a "scientific" report "providing scientific basis that Wilders was undermining social cohesion". And on December 4, 2009, Wilders was ordered to appear before the court on January 20, 2010, on charges of "fomenting to hate and discrimination against muslims because of their religion and fomenting to hate and discrimination against non-western foreigners and/or Moroccans because of their race".

And thus happened. That trial... is now going on, as we speak.



In the country that once prided itself for its freedom of speech, a rightwing politican is now ON TRIAL for nothing else than making anti-islamic statements.


(to be continued)



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT SNOW PATROL, THE CALL, SUZANNE VEGA (UPDATE).

Looks like these guys have found the way to fame. I had a post about them a couple of weeks back with their 2007 hit Shut your eyes. This one, Just say yes, is some light stuff from their most recent album, Up to Now, which was first released in the States in October 2009 - I hope that's recent enough for Mr Ghost.





Then a now forgotten 1986 hit from San Francisco quintet The Call. "I still believe", from the album Reconciled. In the mid-eighties, Peter Gabriel was quite wild over this band. The following song was used in, amongst others, the soundtrack of the movie The Lost Boys (1987). Frontman is Michael Been (vocals, guitar).





Hey, nite all. Except YOU Al Zawahiri, Bert Anciaux, David Miliband, KSM & affiliates.



MFBB.

UPDATE: SUZANNE VEGA

Hey Al, Bert, David and Khalid, you arseholes you, just for now I take that back because I am SUCH a Good Person. Listen to this and try to get your miserable pathetic lives back on track. Suzanne Vega with In Liverpool.





She looks very, very much like my very first girlfriend, Nancy. God, what a beauty she was. Alas, it was not to be. Ahh, memories....

WEDNESDAY NIGHT OPEN THREAD... (UPDATE)

Things are looking okay, since some people just make a career of being clueless.


UPDATE: ADOLF LEARNS BROWN BEAT CROAKLEY.





MFBB.