NEW CENTER-RIGHT MINORITY GOVERNMENT IN THE NETHERLANDS: A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

Circumstances and lack of time prevented me from ever putting up a decent post about this years' parliamentary elections in The Netherlands, which took place on June 9th, and resulted in a clear shift to the right. The big winners of these elections were the VVD [the liberal party, but note that in Europe 'liberal' is considered center-right - MFBB] and the PVV, Geert Wilders' Party For Freedom [Partij voor de Vrijheid - MFBB]. For a host of reasons the clear outcome did not immediatey result in a government, not least because of the machinations of the leftist parties which were understandably totally upset because of the PVV's ascendance. All through summer and early fall the negotiations dragged on. But yesterday, Thursday September 30, the soon-to-be Dutch PM Mark Rutte (VVD), announced the formation of a minority government consisting of VVD and the christian-democrat CDA, with, and this is important, gedoogsteun (conditional support) from the PVV. In short, Wilders' PVV is not part of the new government. He will however support it as long as it implements the far-reaching measures the PVV has been asking for for years. The formula is not new, and has been tried succesfully in Denmark, where Pia Kjaersaard's Dansk Folkeparti (DF) has in the same manner supported Anders Fogh Rasmussen's center-right minority government for years. As a result, Denmark is now far, far better off than most European countries.




The Danish Option. "Rechtsaf" means "to the Right". From left to right: Maxime Verhagen (CDA, a former Foreign Secretary), Mark Rutte (VVD, the future PM) and Geert Wilders (PVV, he will offer support for the minority government VVD-CDA).


The guidelines Rutte wants to follow are:

a.) Cutting government spending
b.) Cutting the number of government employees
c.) Reducing the size of House and Senate, which in The Netherlands are called the Eerste en Tweede Kamer.
d.) Reducing the EU contribution
e.) Slashing expenses in child allowances, the public broadcasters and the army (the latter point is a bummer of course)
f.) Implementing a more severe immigration and asylum policy.
g.) General prohibition of the burqa
h.) More means for domestic security
i.) Raisin the retirement age to 66, with an option of raising it further in the future if life expectancy allows it

The motto of the new government is "Freedom and responsibility".

Geert Wilders, PVV chairman, is pleased with the accord. In an interview yesterday he was quoted as saying 'Your voice has made that a new wind will be blowing. The country becomes safer, the number of asylum seekers will drop, and there will be investments for elderly care'.

It is indeed true that one of the focal points of Wilders' campaign is enhanced portfolios for taking care of the elderly. This is not so strange as it may seem. Due to The Netherlands' catastrophic demography 'dynamic', which it shares with basically all western countries, it will be confronted, two decades hence, with an enormous block of 65+ voters. Wilders' emphasis on more means for them is meant to placate them and avoid a Catch 22 scenario, in which disgruntled retirees would block necessary reforms, thus making future reforms ever more necessary. How this is all going to pan out is still unknown, but it seems to me the PVV's preoccupance with the elderly is more about psychology than actual welfare.

Wilders also claimed that if the proposed measures to cut down immigration are applied in full, they will result in a reduction of 50% in the number of non-western immigrants.

All in all, I think there is cautious reason for optimism, but this should only be a beginning. I do not want to sound like an incurable pessimist, but I see nowhere concrete measures to stop islamization. Nevertheless, this new Dutch center-right minority government is a step in the right direction, and further confirmation of what I have been predicting for years, namely Europes shift to the right - even though 'right' in Europe obviously still means something quite different from what it means in the States.



MFBB.


P.S.: See also this excellent post over at Gates of Vienna.

AMERICA, WAKE UP.

Yet another mob of muslims aggressively taking possession of the streets. Only this time it's not in Paris' Barbès neighborhood, nor before a Milan church, nor the Groenplaats in Antwerpen.

It's Madison Avenue, NYC.





You allow islam to gain a foothold, you'll end up with this:

"... Sardar Israullah Zehri, a tribal leader and senator from Balochistan and a member of the PPP, took to the floor of parliament this past August to defend violence against women. Five women in his province had been buried alive for staining their family’s honor. (Reports from various human-rights groups indicate the number of women buried may actually be as high as ten.) No one knows who the women were; we have snippets—a first name here, a date of birth there—but they’ve been murdered terribly well, erased from public record.

In parliament, a month after the women were buried alive, Zehri defended the killings as “part of our traditional customs.” Three months after his atrocious declaration, he was appointed the Federal Minister of Postal Services (see?) and made an adviser to the prime minister’s cabinet. When criticized for his statements, Zehri shrugged off his critics—five women died and the sky didn’t fall, the charming minister is reputed to have said.

Then, in November, the PPP and its president, Benazir Bhutto’s widower Asif Zardari, appointed Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani as Federal Minister of Education (a cabinet post with actual heft to it). Any Pakistani with a memory should have alarm bells ringing in his head at the mention of Bijarani’s name. In 2007, the chief justice of Pakistan ordered his arrest after he decreed that five girls be handed over, like currency, to the family of a murdered man to settle a feud between their two families. Bijarani was acting as head of a local tribal council similar to the one that had Mukhtaran Mai gang raped. The eldest of the girls was age six, and the youngest were only two years old...."

Article by Fatima Bhutto. Hat tip The Daily Beast.


ISLAM IS CANCER. Live with it. Or rather, live with that statement. You know how it goes with cancer. You either destroy it with chemiotherapy, or you cut it away. If you don't, or you don't do it in time, you die from it.

America better wake up.



MFBB.

BILDERBERG GROUP DISCUSSES... WAIT FOR IT... GLOBAL COOLING!

Over the course of the past two years I have come to appreciate the UK's The Telegraph very much, and especially several of its young unapologetic columnists. One among them is James Delingpole, who last week had the following interesting column:

"Bilderberg. Whether you believe it’s part of a sinister conspiracy which will lead inexorably to one world government or whether you think it’s just an innocent high-level talking shop, there’s one thing that can’t be denied: it knows which way the wind is blowing. (Hat tips: Will/NoIdea/Ozboy)

At its June meeting in Sitges, Spain (unreported and held in camera, as is Bilderberg’s way), some of the world’s most powerful CEOs rubbed shoulders with notable academics and leading politicians. They included: the chairman of Fiat, the Irish Attorney General Paul Gallagher, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Bill Gates, Dick Perle, the Queen of the Netherlands, the editor of the Economist…. Definitely not Z-list, in other words.

Which is what makes one particular item on the group’s discussion agenda so tremendously significant. See if you can spot the one I mean:

The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 – 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations.

Yep, that’s right. Global Cooling.

Which means one of two things.

Either it was a printing error.

Or the global elite is perfectly well aware that global cooling represents a far more serious and imminent threat to the world than global warming, but is so far unwilling to admit it except behind closed doors.

Let me explain briefly why this is a bombshell waiting to explode.

Almost every government in the Western world from the USA to Britain to all the other EU states to Australia and New Zealand is currently committed to a policy of “decarbonisation.” This in turn is justified to (increasingly sceptical) electorates on the grounds that man-made CO2 is a prime driver of dangerous global warming and must therefore be reduced drastically, at no matter what social, economic and environmental cost. In the Eighties and Nineties, the global elite had a nice run of hot weather to support their (scientifically dubious) claims. But now they don’t. Winters are getting colder. Fuel bills are rising (in the name of combating climate change, natch). The wheels are starting to come off the AGW bandwagon. Ordinary people, resisting two decades of concerted brainwashing, are starting to notice.

All this, of course, spells big trouble for the global power elite. As well as leading to food shortages (as, for example, it becomes harder to grow wheat in northerly latitudes; adding, of course, to such already-present disasters as biofuels and the rejection of GM), global cooling is going to find electorates increasingly angry that they have been sold a pup.

Our fuel bills have risen inexorably; our countryside, our views and our property values have been ravaged by hideous wind farms; our holidays have been made more expensive; our cost of living has been driven up by green taxes; our freedoms have been curtailed in any number of pettily irritating ways from what kind of light bulbs we are permitted to use to how we dispose of our rubbish. And to what end? If man-made global warming was really happening and really a problem we might possibly have carried on putting up with all these constraints on our liberty and assaults on our income. But if it turns out to have been a myth……"

A couple of years ago we had a lefty contributor here, at least in the comments section, and if I were a mean character it would please me to no end to conclude, anno 2010, that all his predictions and estimates have by now proven to be a steaming pile of shit. Man Made Global Warming or even Global Warming in se? Sorry, sooooooooo nineties. And I'm not even elaborating on his other claims.

By contrast, I think we over here at DowneastBlog have a habit of being continually right, whether it's on islamization, Europes rightward shift (no matter how much that shift leaves to be desired), Iraq, the Surge, Obama's disastrous tenure or The Jam. Actually, a man'd get tired of being right so often. And now the steady unraveling of the MMGW/GW hoax. Btw, d'you know how many months I was able to switch off central heating in my house this year so far?

One. One month.

July that was.



MFBB.

POWERFUL AD.

Hat tip the inimitable Theo Spark. Also check out this article, full of Hope.


MFBB.

DUTCH AIRLINE COMPANY KLM FLYING GAYS TOWARDS SOUND BEATING UP.

Via Dutch online daily Algemeen Dagblad - Economie, September 13, 2010:

"AMSTERDAM - by means of a quiz about gay capitals, the national Dutch airline company KLM tries to appeal to British gays, writes the Algemeen Dagblad today. The campaign, which runs till the end of the month, aims to convince the target group of the gay-friendliness of the Koninklijke Luchtvaartmaatschappij.

'How hot are you on gay capitals?' begins the quiz on the site klmgaygetaway.co.uk. Visitors only have to guess the destinations on ten photos they see, fill in the multiple choice questions and leave their personal data. Thereafter they stand a chance to win a flight to one of the 'Top Gay Capitals' KLM is serving.

KLM finds it 'dead normal' that it aims at a specific target group. 'That's a bit business as usual for us', says spokeswoman Joyce Veekman. KLM regularly runs targeted campaings at, for instance, businessmen and golfers.

The quiz is part of a broader campaign for gays in general (CN/BVDL)."

Future historians, standing on the ashes of western civilization, will wonder how entire societies so willingly marched towards self-destruction. The fertility rate among your average autochton Europeans is now at a moribund 1.3 children per couple, although I suspect that number may still be too high. Yet KLM sees no problem presenting a lifestyle that does not result in that most precious of assets - customers - as utterly normal.

Apart from the fact that KLM chooses for short-term financial gains without having a clear strategy for the nearby future, which will be determined not only by the massive disappearance of customers with purchasing power, but also by terrifying problems in finding competent technical personnel (keep in mind that the output in terms of technicians and engineers of the muslim community is pathetically small), you have to wonder whether the company's top brass sits in some ivory control tower.

The autochton Dutchmen and -women take presumably pride in Amsterdam as one of the top gay capitals in the world. However, if you avoid rosy MSM accounts you discover an entirely different reality. Amsterdam, which, like Rotterdam, is undergoing a stealth ethnic cleansing at the hands of mainly muslim immigrants, is actually getting quite dangerous for gays. Via Big Peace, September 2010:

GAYS HARASSED DURING DEMONSTRATION

AMSTERDAM — A demonstration of two thousand gay and lesbians against anti-gay violence Sunday was ruined by a series of incidents. In one of them a demonstrator[1] was injured at the hands of two women of 18 and 19 years. Afterwards the demonstrator reported the perpetrators to the police. They were both subsequently detained, but set free on Monday.

The two women wanted to get through a group of demonstrators on the Westermarkt with their bikes, shortly after the march had ended. When the man said something about it, they shouted insulting remarks at him. This resulted in a fight in which the man was hit by the two women. When one of the woman hit him with a bag, he was wounded in the head. The man and bystanders managed to hold the girls until the police arrived.

[Note: Shortly after the demonstration against anti-gay violence a boy was beaten up by two Moroccan girls. This was reported by eyewitnesses who were present. (source) — VH]

But there were more incidents. On Monday, the reports poured in to a gay-rights organization, the foundation “Right to Feel Safe”, as spokesman Fya Hopelezz said.

For example, there were boys on scooters [see article below; these may have been Moroccans] who repeatedly drove onto the protesters. A group of lesbians was threatened, verbally abused and pelted with beer cans [see also the article below], and several fights had to be calmed down.

“This makes me very sad. It shows how rock-hard the situation is now in Amsterdam,” says Hopelezz. “The anger sits deep in the gay community. Anger over the violence, but also because everyone keeps saying that anti-gay violence is not that bad within the city.”

This is no recent phenomenon, of course. Five years ago already, The Times ran the following article:

"WHEN the editor of one of America’s leading gay magazines visited the world’s gay capital a fortnight ago, he assumed that he would be safe.

But as Chris Crain, editor of the Washington Blade, was walking hand in hand with his boyfriend near one of the gay districts in Amsterdam, two men standing on a street corner spat at his face. He stopped to ask why, was called a “fag” and suddenly the two youths turned into seven.

Surrounded, Mr Crain was kicked to the ground by the gang and ended up in hospital with a broken nose and badly bruised face.

His attackers were Moroccan youths, blamed by Dutch gay rights groups for a disturbing rise of gay-bashing, as conservative Islamic culture clashes with Dutch liberalism.

For the first time, the Amsterdam Tourist Board has issued a warning to gay visitors to be careful in the city. In the first country to legalise homosexual marriage, gays are increasingly fearful of holding hands in public. Some have been chased out of their houses and middle-class gays are moving to rural areas for safety.

“I was really surprised. I felt comfortable, because it is San Francisco times ten. But I didn’t appreciate the depth of hostility between different groups there, and we walked right into the middle of it,” Mr Crain said from his home in Washington.

In the city where six months ago Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker, was killed by an Islamic extremist, the tourist authorities felt compelled to issue a warning.

Herman Terbalkt, of the Amsterdam Tourist Board, said: “Gay visitors should be careful and alert. Some people in Amsterdam are not tolerant of other people. It is a social problem.”

A social problem huh. I suppose KLM's Board of Directors and marketing boys are too high on cannabis to be aware of Amsterdam's 'social problems'.

Fucking fools. I am surrounded by fucking fools. They are all over the place.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT THE JAM, WIM DE CRAENE, PREFAB SPROUT, REM.

The Jam with Start! It's 1980 and actually The Punk Age, but Paul Weller & Co wear tailored suits and really are cool. Another big band of the age that's outside the Punk movement, and which is often named in one breath with The Jam, is The Clash.






Belgian/Flemish singer/songwriter Wim De Craene, unfortunately deceased in 1990, with Tim (1975), a beautiful ballad about a father letting his son free to find his way in life.






Prefab Sprout with Hey Manhattan! Cheesy video, but easy listening. From one of their best albums, From Langley Park to Memphis (1988).





For some reason, these guys, Brits who formed in Newcastle in 78, never topped in the States. I guess it'd have to be an American to explain us why, although I do have some idea.



We end with What's the frequency, Kenneth? The first single taken from the 1994 album Monster.





Nite.



MFBB.

FRENCH MUSLIMS DESTROYING HOST COUNTRY FROM WITHIN.

Via Galliawatch:

"(...) In Limoges, there was on Friday an almost unbelievable spectacle in the downtown area between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. A man, with a megaphone, called for a civil war, a jihad. He cited Christine Tasin, declared that there were between 10 and 15 million Muslims in France, incited them to rise up against the French whom he called "scum", blamed September 11 on the Jews, called the law banning the burka racist, affirmed that he did not recognize our criminal code, incited Muslims to burn it, etc... a speech, heard by several dozen disciples, that must have terrified the peaceful residents of this city. And as if that weren't enough, they had to suffer through a demonstration with slogans demanding the right to wear the scarf and the burka."





Meanwhile, French muslims continue their two-pronged attack to turn France into an islamic country within two decades. On the one hand, muslim youth gangs torch cars in each and every French city every night, with the aim of terrorizing the authochton Frenchmen and creating no-go zones for the police. Below is just a daily tidbit from the city of Alençon, 26 september:

"C’est finalement dix véhicules, et non sept, qui ont été la proie des flammes dans la nuit de vendredi à samedi, à Alençon. Six ont brûlé place Marguerite de Lorraine, face à l’hôpital. Et trois autres, ainsi qu’un partiellement, rue Victor Hugo, au cœur du quartier populaire de Perseigne. L’enquête a été confiée à la police judiciaire, qui va tenter d’exploiter les traces retrouvées sur place.

(Translation)

"Finally 10 cars, and not seven, have fallen prey to flames in the night of Friday to Saturday in Alençon. Six were torched on the Place Marguerite de Lorrains, in front of the hospital. And three others (plus one partially) in the rue Victor Hugo, in the heart of Perseigne neighborhood. The investigation has been trusted to the judicial police, which will try to exploit traces found on the spot."

In the two-pronged muslim attack to destroy France, the youths constitute the hammer. But the anvil is the relentless pressure applied by the so-called "moderate" muslims. The youths are keeping the pressure on the lid. But the "moderates" are letting demographics and leftist collaboration do the work, then claim they need extra space for the faithful. If permission and government money to construct new mosques is not forthcoming quick enough, they hold prayer sit-ins in the streets.

This is from the same city of Alençon:

Les quatre lieux de culte alençonnais sont tous régulièrement saturés lors de la prière du vendredi. L'Amar vient de faire refaire, cet été, une partie des peintures et de l'électricité des salles de prières et d'ablutions de la mosquée de l'ouverture, qui laissaient à désirer. Et d'y installer une cuisine aménagée, pour des festivités comme le Ramadan.

Des travaux nécessaires, pour le secrétaire de l'association Amar. « Mais on continue à chercher un terrain constructible pour une future mosquée. On en avait trouvé un, il y a un an, mais le propriétaire a fini par refuser de peur de ne pas vendre les terrains voisins à cause de la proximité de la mosquée ». Du côté de la mairie, on est favorable au projet, « sur le principe. Mais la difficulté est de trouver le terrain », reconnaît Ahamada Dibo, adjoint à l'urbanisme et à la politique de la ville.

(Translation)

The four prayer facilities in Alençon are all choke-full during friday prayers. Last summer, the Amar organization conducted some refurbisment, namely painting jobs and electricity in the prayer rooms and ablutions, which left to be desired. The kitchen also needed an update, with a view on ramadan.

Necessary works, for Amar's secretary. "But we continue to look out for a building spot for a future mosque. We had found one one year ago, but the proprietor finished by refusing, out of fear of not being able to sell the adjacent grounds because of the proximity of the mosque." The city council has a favorable view on the project, "but the difficulty is finding a suitable spot", says Ahamada Dibo, deputy for urbanism of Alençon.

Ahamada Dibo huh? I s'ppose Jean-Luc Dupont is gone fishing? Or has he perhaps croaked already in his Maison de Repos?


Alençon is a study in microcosm of what islam is doing in the whole of France. Since 2005, muslim mobs have destroyed an estimated 280,000 cars, apart from countless shops, schools, buses, and public infrastructure. On the other hand, very assertive, or rather aggressive behaviour from the "elders" has resulted in a record number of mosques built. The inauguration is often done in the presence of a beaming autochton official, often, but not always, a socialist. Recall that the French PM, François Fillon, from Sarkozy's supposedly "rightwing" party UMP, is making it a sport these days to inaugurate important mosques personally.


France is dying before the world's eyes. If you want to see the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre yet, do it soon.



MFBB.

MARK STEYN RECEIVES THE SAPPHO AWARD 2010.

Sappho is the magazine of the Free Press Society and as such Denmark's 'most outspoken magazine on free speech, radical islam, culture and politics.' Their yearly award goes to 'an opinion leader who has shown remarkable courage and persistence in his defence of free speech.' Past recipients include Melanie Phillips in 2009, the British journalist and commentator. Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was 2008's recipient in 2008, and in 2007 Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten´s cultural editor, received it. This year, the Sappho Award went to Mark Steyn, the 'Global Content Provider' and merciless chronicler of the West's self-chosen decline. At the event, in a Copenhagen hotel, Mr. Steyn was apparently in good company.




Holy cow! Why wasn't I invited????



Check out the opening address by Sappho's Eva Agnete Selsing:

"... This year the award goes to an outstanding person, whose courage, wit, incomparable journalistic talent and, not least, characteristic sense of humor, has brought him much – and well-deserved – acclaim.

His books are international bestsellers, his columns in various prestigious newspapers and magazines are highly popular and read all over the world. They deal with a variety of topics. From islamofascism to popular culture.

He has given interviews, participated in panel debates, hosted radio and television shows and appeared on the Rush Limbaugh Show and with Sean Hannity on FOX News, just to name a few.

He is, indeed, as stated on his homepage: A one-man global content provider.

It is, of course, Mark Steyn who is this year’s recipient.

Not only as a consequence of his ample contributions as a cultural critic, but also for his success in influencing the debate on Islam, the disastrous ideology of multiculturalism and the crisis of the Western civilization.

His most famous book, America Alone – The end of the world as we know it, is among the most influential writings on those topics.

In it, he argues that when Europe falls due to heavy welfare statism, declining fertility rates and mass immigration, America will lose its continental ally. As a consequence, the prevalence of Western civilization and the freedom it has secured, will soon be history.

Those are harsh predictions. His critics say they are exaggerated and alarmist. But are they?

The European welfare states are real enough. The declining fertility rates are just as real. With its low fertility rate, the Spanish population will halve in a generation’s time, and it doesn’t look much better in Italy, Greece or Germany. On top of this, mass immigration from the third world has effectively begun the alteration of the European populations.

As Christopher Caldwell has put it: Can Europe be the same with different people in it?

This is the question which many of our fellow Westeners refuse to ask, let alone answer.

But what Steyn points to are facts. Facts. Not guesses or wild speculations. They are facts, and the mainstream media supported by the elitist intellectuals refuse to acknowledge or even discuss them.

And they, the intellectuals of the West, are another primary topic in the book.

Under the guise of human rights, the monstrous programme of multiculturalism has prevailed. Claiming that no culture is better than another – except for Christians and jews, who are, of course, always evil and oppressive – multiculturalism has succeeded in undermining the identity of the Westerners.

With the constant accusations of imperialism, slavery, colonialism, male chauvinism and racism, the people of the West have been taught to hate their own history. And a civilization that rejects its heritage is a civilization on the verge of death.

It might be that the islamofascicts who wish to exterminate us are our prime enemy, but our Western elites seem to do the job quite well by themselves.

And this cultural suicide is, as Steyn describes, enhanced by the demographic changes in Europe. As he writes in the book:

“A people that won’t multiply can’t go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in. Because, when history comes a-calling, it starts with the most basic question of all: Knock-knock. Who’s there?”...

I was unable to find a decent transcript of Steyn's speech, but I think this article dealing with freedom of speech, written immediately upon return, is a good substitute:

"... Too many people in the free world have internalized Islam’s view of them. A couple of years ago, I visited Guantanamo and subsequently wrote that, if I had to summon up Gitmo in a single image, it would be the brand-new copy of the Koran in each cell: To reassure incoming prisoners that the filthy infidels haven't touched the sacred book with their unclean hands, the Korans are hung from the walls in pristine, sterilized surgical masks. It's one thing for Muslims to regard infidels as unclean, but it's hard to see why it's in the interests of us infidels to string along with it and thereby validate their bigotry. What does that degree of prostration before their prejudices tell them about us? It’s a problem that Muslims think we’re unclean. It’s a far worse problem that we go along with it.

Take this no-name pastor from an obscure church who was threatening to burn the Koran. He didn’t burn any buildings or women and children. He didn’t even burn a book. He hadn’t actually laid a finger on a Koran, and yet the mere suggestion that he might do so prompted the President of the United States to denounce him, and the Secretary of State, and the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, various G7 leaders, and golly, even Angelina Jolie. President Obama has never said a word about honor killings of Muslim women. Secretary Clinton has never said a word about female genital mutilation. General Petraeus has never said a word about the rampant buggery of pre-pubescent boys by Pushtun men in Kandahar. But let an obscure man in Florida so much as raise the possibility that he might disrespect a book – an inanimate object – and the most powerful figures in the western world feel they have to weigh in.

Aside from all that, this obscure church’s website has been shut down, its insurance policy has been canceled, its mortgage has been called in by its bankers. Why? As Diana West wrote, why was it necessary or even seemly to make this pastor a non-person? Another one of Obama's famous "teaching moments"? In this case teaching us that Islamic law now applies to all? Only a couple of weeks ago, the President, at his most condescendingly ineffectual, presumed to lecture his moronic subjects about the First Amendment rights of Imam Rauf. Where's the condescending lecture on Pastor Jones' First Amendment rights?

When someone destroys a bible, US government officials don’t line up to attack him. President Obama bowed lower than a fawning maitre d’ before the King of Saudi Arabia, a man whose regime destroys bibles as a matter of state policy, and a man whose depraved religious police forces schoolgirls fleeing from a burning building back into the flames to die because they’d committed the sin of trying to escape without wearing their head scarves. If you show a representation of Mohammed, European commissioners and foreign ministers line up to denounce you. If you show a representation of Jesus Christ immersed in your own urine, you get a government grant for producing a widely admired work of art. Likewise, if you write a play about Jesus having gay sex with Judas Iscariot.

...

But forget about notorious rightwing hatemongers like me. Look at how liberal progressives protect their own. Do you remember a lady called Molly Norris? She's the dopey Seattle cartoonist who cooked up "Everybody Draws Mohammed" Day, and then, when she realized what she'd stumbled into, tried to back out of it. I regard Miss Norris as (to rewrite Stalin) a useless idiot, and she wrote to Mark's Mailbox to object. I stand by what I wrote then, especially the bit about her crappy peace-sign T-shirt. Now The Seattle Weekly informs us:

You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly.

On the advice of the FBI, she's been forced to go into hiding. If you want to measure the decline in western civilization's sense of self-preservation, go back to Valentine's Day 1989, get out the Fleet Street reports on the Salman Rushdie fatwa, and read the outrage of his fellow London literati at what was being done to one of the mainstays of the Hampstead dinner-party circuit. Then compare it with the feeble passivity of Molly Norris' own colleagues at an American cartoonist being forced to abandon her life: "There is no more Molly"? That's all the gutless pussies of The Seattle Weekly can say? As James Taranto notes in The Wall Street Journal, even much sought-after Ramadan-banquet constitutional scholar Barack Obama is remarkably silent:

Now Molly Norris, an American citizen, is forced into hiding because she exercised her right to free speech. Will President Obama say a word on her behalf? Does he believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?

Who knows? Given his highly selective enthusiasms, you can hardly blame a third of Americans for figuring their president must be Muslim. In a way, that's the least pathetic explanation: The alternative is that he's just a craven squish. Which is an odd considering he is, supposedly, the most powerful man in the world.

Listen to what President Obama, Justice Breyer, General Petraeus, The Seattle Weekly and Bluehost internet services are telling us about where we're headed. As I said in America Alone, multiculturalism seems to operate to the same even-handedness as the old Cold War joke in which the American tells the Soviet guy that "in my country everyone is free to criticize the President", and the Soviet guy replies, "Same here. In my country everyone is free to criticize your President." Under one-way multiculturalism, the Muslim world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west's inheritance, and, likewise, the western world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west’s inheritance. If one has to choose, on balance Islam’s loathing of other cultures seems psychologically less damaging than western liberals' loathing of their own..."

Damn right.





Huh??? Was she there too???? I GOT to get nominated for the Sappho 2011!!!



MFBB.

A DAY OUT AT LEEUWERGEM CASTLE.

My wife is rather fond of gardening and me myself and I are rather fond of castles, so when we got the news there was a gardening fair on the grounds of Leeuwergem Castle (Kasteel van Leeuwergem), in the province of East Flanders, we off to the event.


It's a rather small chateau, not far from the town of Zottegem, and it was built between 1762 and 1764 by Ghent nobility, more precisely Pieter Emmanuel d'Hane (1726-1786). What is now Belgium was then a part of the so-called Austrian Netherlands, and run from Vienna. Before that, we were the Spanish Netherlands, but we came to the Austrian Emperor at the end of the Spanish Succession War in 1713. This Austrian rule would last until 1795, when French revolutionary armies invaded the Low Countries.

In any case, when the chateau was built, it was done so in Louis XV style, or rococo if you want. That late Baroque movement in the arts and architecture, characterised by less stringent adherence to classical lines and decidedly more ornate, florid and frivolous, originated at the French court. A common recurrence is the shell motif, and indeed it can be found both on the inside and the outside of this little palace.

On the first floor there's a small charming chapel, dedicated to the four evangelists. It hasn't changed in appearance since it was inaugurated in 1764.








Initially the garden was designed as a rococo garden too, but not for long. Already in 1785 work was begun on a typical English landscape garden. Of course - I have visited English landscape gardens - the original ones are far, far bigger. Leeuwergem's is cosy and its major lanes can be walked in less than an hour.





Unique is the so-called "Looftheater", a "natural theatre" so to say, formed entirely by clever planting of hedge beech (carpinus betulus). It's formed by an oval archway (completely sheltering people passing through it with its leaves) encompassing a "natural" stage on a slightly lower level, with smartly cut beech outcroppings forming the suites protruding from the archway. On the pic below is the small rectangular inside field serving as the "stage"...





... while this photo provides a good view of some of the "suites". All in all, the whole "Looftheater" isn't that big. Still the chateau's website claims 800 spectators can attend an event.






MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT THE SHADOWS, THE OFFSPRING, FOO FIGHTERS.

The Shadows with the immortal Wonderful Land. This single is from 1962, can you believe it? Almost half a century old and still, well, wonderful.





I picked this youtube audio still 1° because sound quality is real good and 2° because of the sketch, which intrigued me. When I saw it I wanted to bet it was an artist's impression of a scene in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, and 'lo and behold, that turned out to be true. The artist in question is Ted Nasmith, a Canadian and like me a Tolkien aficionade, although through his art he takes his fondness for that Englishman's masterpieces to an entirely higher level. The white city on that hill in the middle of the plain is Gondolin. The character looking out over it Tuor. I thank God on my bare knees for letting me discover Tolkien. A long time ago that was. Fall 1982. Started by devouring The Lord of The Rings. Discovered The Silmarillion, which actually treats Middle Earth history thousands of years placed back in time vis-à-vis LOTR, in the early spring of the following year.


The Offspring with Self esteem, a smash hit from the aptly named album Smash (1994).




Foo Fighters with the excellent single Everlong.





Must be one of the nuttiest videos ever.




MFBB.

RAMADAN IN MOSCOW.

Ramadan scenes from Moscow.








Check out these videos:








More here.


If there is anyone who still thinks that in-your-face prayer sit-ins like these ones, the ones in France, in Milan, or in NYC of all places, are just a koinsidens, I have a bridge across the Dniepr to sell you. Islam is going right now through some major transformation, but a renaissance it ain't. It's more like a schoolyard bully waking up from dozing at his desk in the back of class and deciding to wreak havoc during playtime. Indeed, all across the planet muslims are behaving more assertively at the expense of their surrounding population, be it Jews in Malmo, Christians in the Philippines, or Moscow commuters finding their way to office blocked by hordes of paedophile worshippers.

Assertivity can be understood, if not condoned, when the mechanism behind it grants it a certain raison d'etre. Germany woke up in the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century to claim its place at a European table long dominated by France and England, because it had something to show for being braggard: its own Industrielle Revolution, Krupp steel, talented chemists, amazing engines developed by messrs Benz and Diesel.

Islam has no such thing, yet it too claims a place at the global table, what do I say, at the head of the global table. Islam is like Mike Tyson storming in at a congress of astrophysicists and demanding he be given his rightful place. As the most recent UN Arab Development Report shows, the quintessential muslim nations keep lagging behind in just about everything except the production of oil and terrorists, and even those not spending their black gold revenues on madrassas on the other side of the planet have to rely on western and Asian engineers, architects and builders to construct their desert phantasmagorias. As for non-arab muslim nations, when was the last time you bought a car made in Pakistan? Any Nobel Prize winner in sight to succeed Ahmed Zewail?

In short, muslims have NOTHING to justify their increasing presence on our TV screens. I don't want them. You shouldn't want them. Every goddam fucking day there's a steady drip drip drip, although I suspect it's already become a torrent, of news stories about the horrible treatment of non-muslims in archetypical muslim nations. If they want to show us that's where they intend to take us, by taking ungranted possession of Madison Square Garden or the Place de la Concorde, it's time we wake up and tell them that they too can get their own private Srebrenica if they just keep pestering us for too long.



MFBB.

VLAAMS BELANG/CITIES AGAINST ISLAMIZATION DEMO AND 9-11 COMMEMMORATION FORBIDDEN BY BRUSSELS MAYOR FREDDY THIELEMANS - AGAIN.

I realize I'm a bit late with the news, but the demo a delegation of Vlaams Belang and Cities Against Islamization intended to hold in front of the US Embassy on September 11, to commemorate the 9/11 victims, protest against the Ground Zero mosque, and warn against Europes ongoing islamization, was forbidden at the last moment by the Brussels mayor, Freddy Thielemans.

Filip Dewinter, the VB's most recognizable face although he is "only" its fraction leader in the Flemish Parliament, then staged a short, "illegal" demo in front of the VB offices in central Brussels on the Madouplein/Square Madou:





On DowneastBlog, we have already shed some light on the sad personage of Freddy Thielemans, a disgusting Parti Socialiste pork barrel spender and archetypical dhimmi.





It was this scumbag who in 2007 forbade the VB to stage a 9/11 commemmoration (while a few days earlier allowing a muslim demo which had not even been officially requested), and who orchestrated the violent arrest of several VB MP's who were not even demonstrating, but talking to reporters. Most internet aficionados, at least the ones interested in politics, will remember a photo like this all too well:





In 2006, Thielemans also managed to appoint a muslim woman as acting mayor of Brussels for a couple of months. This woman was Faouzia Hariche, like Thielemans a heavyweight, be it not in the literal sense like Fat Freddy, in the Brussels chapter of the Parti Socialiste (PS). When Thielemans, on account of health problems due to his lavish lifestyle, had to be hospitalized in December in 2006, he appointed Hariche in direct violation of the official procedure, which would have seen his first deputy as temporary mayor. As it was, the Brussels Parti Socialiste was all too eager to opt for Hariche, even though she was only the 7th in line. Her first act as Brussels mayor was to land her husband, Mohamed Laghmiche, in the well-paid director's seat of one of Brussels' numerous subsidy sponges, a "youth organization" of which, surprise surprise, she herself was the Chairwoman. But I digress.


The scandalous prohibition of what was never intended to be more than a peaceful demo and commemmoration, on very dubious grounds, is once again a stark reminder of what a Europe dominated by the Left and Islam will look like. At first glance, Brussels is a gleaming and prosperous metropolis - and to be sure, that impression would not exist if it weren't true to a large extent.

But already the rot has set in and is reaching a dangerous treshold. For the moment, Brussels is a city with a Janus Head. On the one hand it is the capital of the European Union and it boasts a plethora of international institutions, the headquarters of numerous corporations big and small, the second largest number in the world of accredited journalists and so on.

On the other hand, its population counts already 25% muslims, and that number will do nothing but rise in the future. With it, the levels of unemployment and criminality.

Itself thoroughly in the grip of socialist rule, Brussels is currently the hottest dossier in the Belgian governmental crisis, which revolves around the aspirations of most Flemings to have more say about their own money and safeguarding their cultural and territorial presence in and around Brussels, and the anachronistic desire of most Walloon parties to keep their lavish socialist system afloat and even enhance it (a key demand is even more "federal" money, read Flemish, for francophone-dominated Brussels).

What we are witnessing is that after hundred years of misbegotten socialist experiments in the economy, the Walloon negotiators, who are the socialists since they got a staggering 36% of the vote in this year's parliamentary elections, want... more of the same. And this after anno 2010 the 800 pound gorilla in the Room of Economic Understanding is the conclusion that socialism, redistribution, heavy taxes, and excessive government regulation simply DO-NOT-WORK. The historic body of evidence that socalism destroys a country's economy is now so overwhelming, from the USSR over Argentina, afrosocialism and Cuba to present-day predictables like Venezuela, Spain and the US, that it is simply and truly amazing, what do I say baffling, that hard earned lessons are forgotten the moment they are being taught.

But not only does the leftist/islamic alliance, so clear to see now, present a grave warning to Europes future with regards to economic matters.

On the political level too, the emergence of this incongruous axis will also introduce a sweeping change compared to the past. Europe, though envious of the US, mocking it simultaneously, and often offering a lukewarm response when asked for help from across the ocean, was and still is the US's "best friend". European leaders may harp about American jingoism, but have sent their armies to Afghanistan, even though often hamstrung by ridiculous caveats.

A future Europe, dominated by islamosocialism, will not even do that. As a fine study in microcosm of this inevitable reality, one of the other demands of the Socialistische Partij/Parti Socialiste in the current negociations to form a new Belgian government, was that Belgium withdraw its military as soon as possible from AF. Small wonder, when both parties have now reached a stage by which they cannot even exist in any meaningful way without the muslim vote.

I see hopeful signs across the Atlantic that America may not be ready yet to follow Europe's path. But if it manages to get past what I hope was but a short lived and foolish love affair with EUtopianism, it should prepare for the eventuality that in decades to come, it may find it is alone.



MFBB.



P.S.: apparently, in the current US Administration, there IS interest in the matter of Europes relation to its Atlantic neighbour a few decades hence. Although the current Administration being what it is, the interest described does not exactly offer a hopeful perspective.

Which is why US voters should kick the crooks out in November.

THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN, SEVENTY YEARS ON...

You'd almost forget it, but seventy years ago the then fiercest air battle ever was fought over the British Channel between the RAF and the Luftwaffe. I wonder what happened on September 13, 1940?

ENEMY ACTION BY DAY

Enemy activity was on a light scale, but during the morning small raids were continuously active over Kent and the London area. Bad visibility hindered interception by our fighters, but one enemy aircraft was destroyed and three others were damaged.

East

As a result of an SOS a fighter sweep was carried out 20 miles North-east of Kinnairds Head, but no reports of interception have been received.

South East

From 0730 hours, a number of raids, mostly by single aircraft, crossed the Coast between Hastings and Beachy Head and penetrated to the Thames Estuary and London area. Up to 0930 hours some six such raids were reported, but thereafter a steady stream of raids developed, most of which originated from the Dieppe area. It was reported that enemy aircraft crossed the Coast at the rate of one about every 8 minutes. One raid penetrated to Chelmsford, but practically all the others proceeded to the South London area, returning to Dieppe.

Between 1300 and 1500 hours, these scattered raids continued and appeared to have as their objectives, Biggin Hill and targets in mid Kent. One raid was plotted towards Rochford, and one raid, reported to be a long-nosed Blenheim, attacked Dover Harbour.

From 1500 hours until night operations began, enemy activity consisted chiefly of reconnaissance flights between North Foreland and Beachy Head.

South and South West

In the early morning, one raid flew parallel to the Coast from 15 miles South of Selsey Bill, westwards into Lyme Bay.

Between 1300 and 1500 hours, three raids were active from Selsey Bill to Tangmere, and there were three reconnaissances in the Straits between Dungeness and Foreness.

At 1800 hours, one reconnaissance was made from Boulogne along the Coast to the Isle of Wight.

West

A vessel was attacked off Copeland Light (Near Belfast) at 0650 hours, by an aircraft reported to be a four-engined bomber.

Check out this fragment from the movie Battle of Britain, 1970. The making of this famous film lies now further behind us than did the actual battle at the time this movie was shot.







Te "Heinkels" you see here are actually Spanish CASA 2.111's, a Spanish version built under license by Construcciones Aeronauticas S.A.. After the Second World War, getting to Junkers engines naturally became a huge problem, and a solution was found - oh the irony! - by installing British Rolls Royce Merlin 500's. The Spanish Air Force used these obsolete planes till the early seventies.



MFBB.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2010.

Today, on September 11, 2010, the Vlaams Belang and the Belgian chapter of Cities Against Islamization will organize a demonstration in Brussels in front of the US Embassy to protest the plans of the closet islamic radical Imam Rauf to build a mosque near Ground Zero. VB fraction leader in the Flemish Parliament Filip Dewinter will personally hand a protest letter to the American ambassador.





In spite of the many stark warnings about the dangers of islamization on these pages over the past years - as I gradually came to realize the vast, intrinsically evil scope of the politico-religious ideology of islam - I do not believe that in the end, it will really dominate the world.

The story of humanity's journey through the ages is one of a slow but ultimately steady progress. Despite all the bad omens, and the frightening news coming to us from all corners of the world... it is safe to say that never before so many people were so rich or had it so good. True, every now and then disasters strike, affecting the lives of millions of people. Hundreds of millions still live in extreme poverty, with only scant access to food, water, and medical assistance. It is however an inescapable fact that many more have aforementioned items in abundance, whereas this was not the case in, say, 1745, let alone 100, 500 or 15,000 BC, when being miserable was an almost universal condition, and life expectancy a fraction of what it is today. Humanity has through the milennia experienced severe setbacks at worst, and long indeterminate periods of an apparent status quo at best. But at long last, in this time and age, we can say that it has always vanquished the plagues, and continued its upward movement.

This is why I do not doubt for a second that islam is doomed to fail. For islam is too, like the plagues from medieval times, an instrument of destruction and decay, and at some point the majority of humanity which has not yet come to live under islam's dreadful shadow, will see it for what it is and bundle forces to defeat it. And when that day breaks, it will really be a Doomsday for that ugly ideology crafted by an insane, bloodthirsty, paedophile massmurderer named mohammed.

It may be that the price for humanity to realize islam's true nature will be the loss of Magnificent Europe. It may even be, God forbid, that the price will be the loss of the entire western world. These potential losses are facilitated by the existence of a certain heinous, self-hating and perverted breed of "intelligentsia" and their omnipresence in our political, educational and cultural halls of power. The power this vile class wields should never be underestimated, and it should be realized that their dirty work has been going on for decades and thus cannot be undone in a short span of time.

When the VB opposition in Antwerp asked the socialist alderman for education Robert Voorhamme about the degree to which Antwerps public schools had already introduced halal meat in school lunches, his answer boiled down the conclusion that it was a moot point anyway, since so many authochton Antwerpians were already eating meat that came from cattle butchered in a halal manner. In other words, bend over and accept it already. The same shrug-yours-shoulders-and-accept-the-fait-accompli attitude can be overheard time and again not only in talks among politicians, but on the street itself, among the ordinary citizenry. "In twenty years we will all be living under islam". "In fifteen years they are gonna call the shots here". "There's nothing to be done about it anymore."

He who reads history however knows that thoughout the ages, islam's strength has almost always been the weakness of its enemies. Even in periods when islam seemed strong and invincible and did not have the current, very clear disadvantage of being hopelessly retarded technologically, it always needed tremendous manpower resources to defeat far smaller "infidel" contingents. Today, when the Voorhammes of this world want us to believe that islam is here to stay and that we better prepare for a life accentuated no longer by ringing church bells but screaming muezzins, he only believes this himself because his vantage point is that of a worm squirming in the sand, fearfully looking up.

Islam is, in se, far weaker than the grand majority of us realize.


I hear that Terry Jones has postponed, or even cancelled, his plans to burn a Quran.

So let's do it here at DowneastBlog instead.

"The New York Times counted 50 different jumpers in a review of photographs and videotapes. USA TODAY's estimate attempts to include people whose falls were not documented. Nearly all photos were of the north tower's north and east faces, which were more accessible to photographers coming from uptown Manhattan. But witnesses reported that numerous people leapt from the north tower's south and west sides as well.

On the south side, firefighters reported 30 to 40 bodies on the roof of the 22-floor Marriott Hotel, adjacent to the north tower.

On the west side, falling bodies crashed onto the awning covering the circular VIP driveway. The thudding of bodies at this entrance can be heard on a video taken near there by French cameraman Jules Naudet, whose footage was broadcast on CBS on March 11.

On the east side, people plummeted into the plaza, best known for its globe sculpture. Blood covered the glass walls and revolving doors that led to the plaza from the second-floor mezzanine in the north tower. People evacuating the north tower walked by this horrible sight.

"The windows were red ... and bits of bodies were outside. We were stunned and amazed," says Richard Moller, who escaped from the 78th floor.

After the first jet crash, Port Authority police Officer David Lim took an escalator from the lobby of the north tower to the plaza level, one floor above. He saw a disfigured body near a stage where musical groups performed on the plaza. "I said, oh my God! I've got to call this in. 'I've got a DOA on the plaza.' The desk officer said, 'Are you sure he's dead?' As I'm retransmitting, another body falls."

To be sure, some who fell didn't jump. Witnesses say a few people seemed to have stumbled out of broken windows obscured by smoke. But most say those jumping appeared to make a conscious choice to die by falling rather than from smoke, heat or fire."

MFBB.

LAST SUMMER PICS.

Hereafter a collection of pics I took during summer. Tank nutter that I am, I start with a not too good photo of a British WWI tank in the, cough, Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History, Brussels. I have forever had problems with distinguishing between the Marks I and IX, them looking basically all the same: designed to cross trenches. As I swept past it - my mother-in-law might have been waiting for yours truly in the nearby Museum for Egyptology - I failed to have a good look at the identification plaque. I suspect however this is a Mark V because of the unditching beam and the rails on top of the vehicle. In any case, it's a "male" one, since it's main armament consists of two 6-pounder guns. Female landships had four Vickers .303 machineguns for main armament and also weighed about a ton less (typically 28 vs 29 tonnes). If it's a Mark V, power must have been provided by a 19 litres Ricardo petrol engine developing 150HP. You can imagine that with such a weight, speed cannot have been more than a crawl, and indeed, on good, hard, level going top speed was about 5mph.





In the same museum there's an aeronautics hall, and this is an imho reasonably good pic of a good old Auntie Ju, a Junkers Ju-52, the mainstay of the German Air Transport Arm during World War II.





Very sturdy planes. IIRC, three still served with the Swiss Air Force in the early eighties. Of course, they come nowhere near the record of the Dakota/C47/DC3, of which there's still even piston versions in use. I write "even piston versions" because the Basler company (Basler Turbo Conversions of Oshkosh, Wisconsin) has developed a successful turboprop variant, the Basler BT-67. It's two Pratt and Whitney turboprops develop 1,624 HP each giving the plane a top speed of 403km/h.


View of the Flemish town of Ronse, from the hills surrounding it in the south, more precisely in a hamlet called Hauts Sarts. This is the border region between Flanders and Wallonia.





It had been some time since my wife and I visited the famous classical music festival La Nuit Musicale de Beloeil. It is held every year some weekend in August, in the huge park of the Chateau de Beloeil, in southwest Wallonia. Beloeil Castle has been the residence of the Princes of Ligne since the fourteenth century. Here's an aerial view (not my photo - stole it from GlobalView or something):





But this is a pic of mine. Throughout the evening, they put all kinds of spotlights on the chateau's façade, which makes for spectacular effects.





Actually, this time round, I wasn't that much impressed by the répertoire. The motto this year was "Nature and composers" and the logo a piano with its wing represented by a tree lead. Jesus H. Christ, wherever you look these days econutters seem to be trying to slap you half dead with green themes. I like it more when La Nuit Musicale focused on the oeuvre of one composer in particular. There were however a few good acts around, most notably the top act which as usual took place on the opposite side (to the chateau) of the large water basin, which is called the Bassin de Neptune. There, the Chamber Orchestra "Ars Viva - Camerata del Monte" and the Clerlande Choir performed fragments from Franz Joseph Haydn's famous Die Schoepfung (The Creation). Indeed, the oratorio The Creation, considered by many to be Haydn's masterpiece, is written to be performed by a large classical orchestra, a four part chorus, and three vocal soloists. The soloists were Jasmine Daoud for soprano, Patrick Kabongo for the tenor, and Charles Dekeyser for bass. I am sorry for the absolutely lousy quality of the following video. Next time I'll try to do more my best, even when Sean Connery in The Rock said that losers always do their best and that winners go home and f*ck the Beauty Queen.





Luckily, the booklet guiding us through the park's performances was accompanied by a CD, which contained amongst others the beautiful Vltava part of Bedrich Smetana's Ma Vlast ('My Fatherland').








Vltava (German: Die Moldau, which is the river running through Prague) is the best known composition of Ma Vlast, with which Smetana made his fame. Smetana was an early advocate of Czech(oslovakian) independence. He has gotten somewhat forgotten now - most foreign commentators now judging Antonin Dvorak the most famous Czech composer.


Nice view of the town of Lobbes in the Walloon province of Hainaut. Lobbes grew around its abbey, which was for some time, around 1000 AD, of great importance for the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, like medieval Flanders one of the proto-elements of what became Belgium in 1830.





These are the so-called "Jardins suspendus the Thuin" (the hanging gardens of Thuin), a nice town built on a crest overlooking the Sambre river in central Wallonia.





At the end of August, we spent an afternoon in the historical village of Aubechies. There's well built replicas of Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age houses there as well as several Roman buildings - a villa, a temple, a hospital. I'm a bit puzzled here. As we went there, there was a demo going on of guys re-enacting Roman legionnaires, more precisely chaps from the 10th Legion "Gemina". On one of the pics their shields sport the inscription "Leg X Gemina Belgae". But to the best of my knowledge, 10th Legion was not permanently garrisoned in Old Belgium. Check out the 10th's history here.





Anyways, here's a video, again a rather lousy one, of Gemina Belgae's re-enactors. Hold out till the end, you'll see the quite impressive reconstruction of a Gallo-Roman temple or fanum.







Tryout pic which turned out to be relatively good. A shot over a field of the tiny village of Bassilly, western Wallonia. Bassilly is part of a larger municipality named - I kid you not - Silly.





Well, it's not so bad as the Austrian village of Fucking, isn't it?

And a photo of the ruins of the old Abbey of Aulne, a Cistercian monastery burned by French revolutionary troops at the end of the 18th century. It is beautifully situated in a lush green valley of the Sambre river, central Wallonia.





Nite.



MFBB.

WATCH AND WEEP.

CBN on the islamization of France.




Pat Condell on the Ground Zero mosque.





MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT SAVAGE GARDEN, ROXY MUSIC.

In 1996, Aussie soft rock band Savage Garden had a hit with To the Moon and Back.






Roxy Music with Still falls the rain. I first learned to know this beautiful number upon listening to the 1983 collection album The Atlantic Years 1973-1980.





Whoever uploaded this film saw fit to paste a fragment from the 1946 flick Dragonwyck as entry. Fail to understand why.




MFBB.

HOLIDAY PICS WALES/IRELAND (3).

I don't like to do it this way, but I feel I have to post something. If it's just photos plus some scant info, so be it. Ideally, I'd like to flesh this post out thoroughly, since there's a lot to tell - especially with regards to the little monument somewhere down below. But... time. Back in business for only four weeks, and again completely worn out by the time I get home. Anyway, here's:


.... this lovely beach along the N70 between Glanbeg and Brackaharagh, Iveragh Peninsula, County Kerry. Yes, this too is Ireland. The kids had a great time. In the distance, you can see Beara Peninsula, which is partly County Kerry and partly County Cork.





... in Portmagee, only twenty-five or so kloms further north, the weather had turned slightly - it was overcast but still dry - and we crossed the bridge linking Iveragh Peninsula with the small island of Valentia. And there, not far beyond the bridge, stood this humble monument. It commemmorates the departure from exactly this spot, in 1866, of the then greatest ship of its time, the Great Eastern, as it started out on its epic voyage across the Atlantic to lay the first truly successful transatlantic telegraph cable. If you enlarge the picture, you may see what the cross sections of the different cables looked like.





Now, the amazing story of the first transatlantic telegraph connection is also the story of two exceptional men, namely an American, Cyrus W. Field, and a Brit, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Cyrus Field became active in a New York paper factory at the very young age of fifteen. Barely five years later he's shareholder. At thirty-three he's rich enough to pull out of management of the company and focus on a thrilling project: laying the first Transatlantic telegraph cable. Since neither Washington nor London come forward with money - despite the fact that they full well acknowledge the tremendous benefits of a telegraphic connection between the Old and New World - Field founds a risk capital fund himself. Samuel Morse and Werner Siemens provide technical assistance for the concept and the fabrication of the cable, which is is ready in 1857. One problem though: at 2,500 tons it's too heavy even for the biggest freighters. By then however, both the UK and US governments are willing enough to provide warships, and since neither navy possesses a big enough vessel either, a solution iss found whereby the cable is spooled over several drums stored on two vessels, HMS Agamemnon and USS Niagara. Don't ask me how this worked out in practice, I suppose the cable was partitioned over two drums, interconnected, one for each warship, and it first began to roll of one of the ships. I reckon further that when the drum on that ship was spooled off, the drum on the other one started to feed.

Anyway, it was all to no avail. Starting out from Ireland over the so-called "Telegraphic Plateau" (it got its name, rather optimistically, from US Navy Lt. Matthew F. Maury who first charted the elevated seaback running from southwest Ireland to Newfoundland), the ships come in bad weather after a short time, and a human error causes the cable to break.

In summer 1858 Field launches another attempt, but this time the Agamemnon and Niagara, each with a drum with half of the cable, meet in the middle of the Atlantic. The crews' plan is to connect two ends, and start from there in opposite directions. Bad weather postpones the start till June 26, then both vessels set off. Technicians regularly exchange messages to test the connection. No superfluous luxury, for no less than three times there is a rupture and they have to get back and reconnect. Finally, on August 7, the task seems to have been accomplished. However, signals get through so weak that it takes decoders 16 hours to decipher the Morse of Queen Victoria's 103 words long message to the US President. The chief electrician thinks stepping up the voltage from 600 Volts to 2,000 is a swell idea: the copper wires immediately burn through and this first unsatisfying connection is history, after three months and 732 messages.

I don't know how Cyrus Field did not become a mental wreck, but that did indeed not happen. To the contrary, barely had his bankrupt Atlantic Telegraph Company been buried or he had already another one in the scaffolds. His paper factory, the foundation of his private fortune, burns off. It does not stop him. In 1864 the British company Glass Elliott has a new cable ready, 4,760 kloms long and 4,000 tonnes heavy on three gigantic drums. And finally too, there's the ship that can take that cable: the Great Eastern.





The Great Eastern being built on the launch ramp in Millwall, near London:





The man behind the Great Eastern: Father of All Engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel.





Fleshing out tomorrow, God willing. Ireland's highest mountain, the Carrauntoohil (1,038 meters). Mind you, NOT my photo, plucked it from the net somewhere. I have photos of course but on them the top was always in clouds.





AFAIK most approaches start from a place called Cronin's Yard, about fifteen kloms from Killarney. There's a memorial plaque there commemmorating the victims of a 1943 plane crash. A USAAF C-47 flew into the flank of, I think, a mountain right near Carrauntoohil, killing all on board. These are their names. God bless. May these men rest in peace.





When gathering info at Killarney's Tourist Office, the guy dealing with me recommended another route to get to the top, since the most common approach climbing up the so-called Devil's Ladder, was considered unsafe due to erosion and a landslide. I should take "Brother O'Shea's Gully" instead. Now I thought, if they recommend this to dumb tourists it can't be bad. Duh. Well, can certainly not say it was very difficult, but it was at times a little tricky. This photo shows you a view staring up the Brother's Gully, about two hours after leaving Cronin's Yard, and having passed Lake Cummeenoughter, which at 707 meters is Ireland's highest lake, although it is rather a pool, actually. If you look closely in the upper right corner, you will see some specks: these were fellow climbers most of whom belonged to the Irish Kidney Association.





Nearing the top. In mist, dammit.





After a short break, back down but now on the other side. Halfway the saddle between Carrauntoohil and the adjacent mountain, Cnoc na Toinne (845 meters) I came across the top of the Devil's Ladder:





... and decided not to descend it. It did look f*cking steep, and with damn loose stones. Better to continue up the Cnoc, since from there there was a narrow but otherwise easy path zigzagging down. The lake you see down below is Lough Callee.


... And this is a photo taken from that path. You now also see Lough Callee's neighbor, Lough Gouragh.





Enjoy the pics and my meagre story. Like I said, will try to flesh it out. I hate posting things half-ready like this, but I felt that this was one way to pushing it - in previous years, I ended up leaving good photographic material unposted because I did not get the accompanying text up to my standards.

If you know this region and climbed here too, feel free to share your thoughts.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT THE FOUR TOPS, 808 STATE, DON HENLEY.

The Four Tops with Bernadette, a marvellous number from 1967.






808 State with first hit Pacific State (1989). They were a house/techno band from Radcliffe, UK.






Don Henley , ex-Eagles, with The boys of summer. From the album Building the perfect Beast (1984).





Goedenacht.


MFBB.

OMEN OF THINGS TO COME: HALAL TRAINING FOR BELGIAN PRISON PERSONNEL; FRANCE, SWEDEN: MUSLIMS ASSAULTING INDIGENOUS POPULATION.

Via Belgian daily Het Laatste Nieuws, August 26, 2010:

"Belgium's Ministry of Justice will soon organize training sessions to make prison personnel familiar with 'halal' issues. It's a pilot project, writes the journal La Libre Belgique.

According to La Libre Belgique inmates sometimes refuse to take certain medication because they would contain animal fats or because they wouldn't be halal. The training sessions are first and foremost meant for medical personnel such as doctors, nurses and kinesitherapists. It is envisaged that in a later stage they would also be given to the guards and cooks.

For the training sessions the Ministry of Justice has acquired the services of two specialists, the Belgian Bruno Bernard and the Française Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, who have together published a guide with the title 'Comprendre le halal' (Understanding Halal).

In a first phase, training will only be give in the Andenne and Ittre prisons (belga/adb)."

Well of course prisons need halal sensitivity training. After all, around 60%, if not more, of Belgian prison inmates are muslims.



Then, via Galliawatch: "Observe ramadan, or else..."

"... He was having lunch on the terrace of a restaurant in downtown Lyons, during the weekend of August 15, when three young persons assaulted him because he was not respecting the Ramadan fast. This man, a father, of Senegalese origin now residing in Vénissieux, was struck on the head with a glass bottle, then with a chair. Rushed to the hospital, with a skull fracture, he had to undergo surgery. The assault was filmed by a surveillance camera, but the poor quality of the images did not allow for an identification of the assailants. The prosecution has opened a preliminary inquiry. (...)

Three days later, a young Jewish woman filed a complaint after being assaulted in a supermarket in Toulouse. The victim declared that she was attacked by two adolescents who reproached her for buying food during the fast. The young woman then revealed that she was Jewish, which only increased the anger of her attackers who called her "dirty Jew", struck her on the head, causing her to fall heavily to the ground. A guard witnessed the scene without intervening. Questioned by the investigators on the reasons for his passiveness, the man explained that he was respecting Ramadan and that he was in a hurry to leave so that he could eat at sundown...."

François Desouche too reports on the story.


From Sweden reaches us the news that never before so many cars were torched by muslim mobs. Via Swedish daily Friatider and the French blog Bivouac-ID:





Sweden, at least that part of the country where muslims are conducting a very efficient ethnic cleansing, is rapidly becoming a France v2.0. The night of July 8 was particularly hot: more than a hundred cars were torched in Malmö, Helsingborg, Bågfilsgatan, Halmstad... several buildings were set on fire too, plus a waste deposit complex, litter boxes, a container, a hangar...


A gruesome nightmare is descending over Europe. That nightmare is called islam.



MFBB.