MAY 2ND.

On May 2nd, 2011, my father died.





His passing left a yawning gap in our family that cannot be filled anymore.


God bless.


MFBB.

THE FIREWALL WITH BILL WHITTLE: EMPIRE OF LIES.

As per usual with Bill Whittle, a rebuttal of "progressivism" that's as eloquent as it is true:




MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: DEREK HUNTER'S "THE REAL LESSON FROM THE LIFE AND DEATH OF FREDDIE GRAY".

Townhall's Derek Hunter on the death of Freddie Gray:

"... A who’s who of Maryland Democratic Party politics turned out for the funeral of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old Baltimore man who died from a severed spinal cord injury that apparently occurred while in police custody. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was there, as was the woman she succeeded, Sheila Dixon. Congressmen Elijah Cummings and John Sarbanes were there, as was former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a former president of the NAACP. The Obama administration even sent two representatives. While all in attendance mourned the loss of Gray, none were willing to address the real problem his short life exposes.

The death of Freddie Gray is a sad end to a sad life that involved everything you’d expect from a life lived in poverty in a major urban area. But his death, and his life, were the result of what far too many big cities are doing to (not for) their residents.

Freddie Gray was raised in poverty, educated in failing schools, thrust out into an economy choked by regulation and taxes, and offered only drugs as a way to earn money.

Baltimore has been controlled by Democrats since the 1960s. The economy, the education system, the business environment and climate of criminality are all pieces of what they built – a machine that churns out Freddie Grays en masse on an annual basis.

Freddie Gray was pushed through the failed Baltimore education system, learning nothing of practical use and not being prepared for college or a trade. He was thrown into an economy hemorrhaging jobs and businesses because taxes and regulations disincentivize the retention and creation of businesses. The only growth industry hiring was drugs.

Freddie Gray made his choices, but the progressive big government machine he was born into limited those choices.

That machine has churned out many of the people who took to the streets of Baltimore to riot on Monday. Many of them will suffer the same fate as Freddie Gray, though at the hands of their peers, not the police.

The answer pushed by progressives, all the way up to President Obama, is to make the machine bigger.

These areas are represented almost exclusively by Democrats and have been for generations. Tax money is collected at whatever rate Democrats want to collect it, spent however Democrats want to spend it, and the rules governing people and businesses are whatever Democrats want them to be. “Business as usual,” as it is, is exactly what Democrats have made it. A bigger government boot on the neck of economic opportunity won’t solve the problem; it is the problem.

We’ve spent $20 trillion in the “war on poverty,” and we still have the same rate of poverty. Because that money was not spent to help those in poverty; it was spent on government bureaucrats to administer “benefits” to those in poverty.





Don’t get me wrong: Cutting a check would have been destructive too, but it is in the administering of those programs that we find the chains that hold people in poverty.

Like the tax code for taxpayers, if you live how the government approves, your “benefits” will continue. Stray from the approved life and they will be cut off. Get a job and you risk losing money you’ve been conditioned to rely on. Get married, forget it.

The president remains a dedicated ideologue to the progressive welfare state. He said, “And there’s a bunch of my agenda that would make a difference right now in that.” He listed early education for children in poverty as one of his “solutions.”

Additional years in the machine would not have saved Freddie Gray, and it will not save any child grinding through its gears. Liberation from that machine is the only hope.

Even if the machine freed kids from the education system and offered school choice, without wholesale dismantling of the progressive machine there will be no jobs awaiting even qualified and well-educated graduates.

In short, without an across-the-board rejection of the hollow promises of progressivism, Freddie Gray’s death will mean nothing. Electing new people to do the same things will yield the same results. It isn’t just the people, the politicians and their false promises of change, it’s the ideology they swear allegiance to.

The worst school districts in the country are controlled by teachers unions and overseen by progressive Democrats. They are also among the most expensive school districts in the country. More money would only make them more expensive, not better. Yet that is the “solution” being offered by progressive Democrats. That’s like the captain of the Titanic ordering his ship to speed up and hit the iceberg faster and thinking that would make it better...."

Amen to that, Mr Hunter.


MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: MARK STEYN'S "URANIUM ONE, AMERICA ZIP".

An account that is so sobering you don't even smirk or laugh anymore, even though it's from Mark Steyn's desk:

"... In return for facilitating the transfer to Putin of one-fifth of US uranium, the Clintons were given tens of millions of dollars by Vancouver businessman Frank Giustra (the founder of "Uranium One" in its pre-Putin days) and various of his associates. In 2006, Mr Giustra told The New Yorker:

"All of my chips, almost, are on Bill Clinton," he said. "He's a brand, a worldwide brand, and he can do things and ask for things that no one else can."

Ah.

Oh, my mistake. When I said Giustra and his pals had given over $100 million to "the Clintons", I meant they gave it to "The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation" - or its Canadian subsidiary, established after Hillary had signed a disclosure agreement for the US foundation with the Obama Administration and, being Canadian, thus exempt from the disclosure agreement. At least as Bill and Hillary's lawyers read it.





I said to Hugh Hewitt on the radio last week:

Well wait, but just a minute, Hugh, there is no 'Clinton Foundation'... The only purpose of this foundation is to enable this family to lead the lifestyle of a head of state after it has ceased to be head of state.

Today The New York Post reports:


The Clinton Foundation's finances are so messy that the nation's most influential charity watchdog put it on its "watch list" of problematic nonprofits last month.

The Clinton family's mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.

The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends.



For example, Chelsea's chum Eric Braverman was paid $275,000 for five months' work. In Clintonworld, charity begins at home. So, if, like all these big-hearted Saudi princes and Canuck uranium execs, you give money to the Clinton Foundation because you care about starving Third World urchins, for every million bucks you hand over, a full 64 grand goes to the Third World urchins and the remaining $936,000 is the processing fee. Paul Mirengoff cautions:


It's important to note that the Clinton Foundation's status as a problematic charity is distinct from the "Clinton cash" issue that Peter Schweizer and others have highlighted. "Clinton cash" focuses on the fundraising methods used by the Clintons. Specifically, there are substantial allegations that they raise money in part because nations and wealthy individuals hope to influence U.S. policy through their donations, and very possibly have succeeded in doing so.

The problem flagged by Charity Navigator and other watchdogs focuses on what the Clinton Foundation does with the money it raises (whether ethically or not). The Foundation's profligacy and failure to spend a significant percentage of its funds on its alleged mission would be of concern even if there were no ethical problems associated with the Clintons' fundraising.


That's true. But it does undermine the Clinton courties' defense for all the funny money that's rolled in - that all these Saudis are ponying up for Bill and Hill because they want to improve women's rights in Africa; that Kazakh oligarchs are so generous because they want to reduce diarrhea outbreaks in Africa. Which is why Chelsea gets 75 grand a pop to give dull speeches about diarrhea. But, assuming for the purposes of argument that the House of Saud really did want to promote women's rights in the Third World, why would they do it through the Clintons and see 94 per cent of it get sluiced off before it got anywhere near Africa?

What Charity Navigator calls the Clinton Foundation's "atypical business model" is, in fact, the point of the operation. The Saudis, Kazakhs, Canucks et al are giving to the Clintons - and that six per cent to emaciated Africans is merely the equivalent of that moment at the supermarket checkout when the clerk tallies up your $150 of groceries and asks if you'd like to give a buck to Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

But, as I said, let's keep it simple: As Sergei Kiriyenko told the Russian Duma, Tsar Putin now owns a fifth of US uranium - in return for Bill and Hill's slush fund getting a hundred million bucks.

To modify Lady Macbeth, not all the diarrhea in Africa can wash away the stench of the Clinton Foundation.

Pundits often talk about "clothespin" elections, where the voters are obliged to hold their nose in the polling booth and select a malodorous candidate. But never on this scale. If the Clintons are returned to the White House, you'll be holding your nose for the next eight years."

There's the scandals, and there's the incompetence. Forty years present at the pinnacle of US politics, and what has she got to show for it?

Zilch. Zero. Nada. Name one accomplishment that has actually benefited the American nation, the American people. One. I ask you, just one. What - has - she - ever - accomplished?

NOTHING.

Despite that, there's the arrogance. Don't forget the arrogance. Bill Whittle:




Memo to Americans still willing to vote for this gruesome, horrible "woman": YOU - ARE - INSANE.



MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: GUY BENSON ON "THE WEEK IN TOLERANCE".

Chilling article, actually, by Guy Benson over at Townhall:

"The coercive Left's End of Discussion mob is emboldened and on the march. Four vignettes from around the country: (1) In New York, a pair gay hoteliers are facing angry boycotts because they dared to dine and chat with Ted Cruz. These men are successful businessmen, they're pro-gay marriage, and their political donations through the years have slanted heavily toward Democrats. But fraternizing with the enemy is now a punishable offense:


The two gay hoteliers whose duplex on Central Park was the site of a small dinner this week with Senator Ted Cruz are facing boycott threats to their properties. Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass own the apartment where the gathering for Mr. Cruz, who has been vociferously opposed to same-sex marriage, was the featured attraction on Monday night. The event focused primarily on foreign policy, but the topic of same-sex marriage came up, and during his appearance Mr. Cruz called it an issue best left to the states...Both men, in an apparent effort to play down any outrage in the gay community, put out statements making clear they disagree with the Republican senator from Texas on gay rights. “I was given the opportunity to have a candid conversation with Senator Ted Cruz on where he stood on all issues, foreign and domestic,” Mr. Reisner said. “It was just three months ago that I hosted a ‘Ready for Hillary’ event for a record turnout of 900 people at the Out Hotel.” He added: “Senator Ted Cruz and I disagree strongly on the issue of gay marriage, but having an open dialogue with those who have differing political opinions is a part of what this country was founded on. My tireless support of the gay community and its causes worldwide hasn’t changed and will not change.” Mr. Weiderpass said: “People on both sides of the aisle need to be able to communicate with one another even when they ideologically disagree. I worked tirelessly for the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ as a member of the board of directors for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and needed to reach across the aisle to make that happen. The fact that Senator Cruz accepted the invitation to my home was a step in the right direction toward him having a better understanding of who I am and what I believe in.”


Hey guys, we're gay, we're longtime and generous supporters of gay rights, and we hosted a Hillary event recently -- but we also believe in open dialogue with people who hold differing opinions, because that's what America is all about. Not good enough. Breaking bread with Cruz is a sin, and the impure must be purged. Over to you, courageously anonymous organizer of the boycott campaign:

...

"Shut the place down." For tolerance. The boycott has resulted in the cancelation of a charity event to fight AIDS. Think about that. Because the owners of a venue had dinner with Ted Cruz, an AIDS charity axed an entire event in a fit of pique. Sorry, AIDS patients -- priorities are priorities. One of the hoteliers has now backed away from his initial, laudable defense of free inquiry and exchange, caving to pressure with an abject apology for a "terrible mistake."





(2) A panel of bureaucrats has recommended a fine of $135,000 (!) against a Christian-owned bakery in Oregon for declining to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. Here are the supposed damages claimed by the "victims:"

Oh, give it a break already. HERE.


(3) The student government body at Johns Hopkins University struck a blow for progress, or whatever, by banning Chick-fil-A from campus. Keep in mind that the construction of a Chick-fil-A had not even been proposed, so this was a pre-emptive strike against hypothetical future "microaggressions:"


Johns Hopkins University has banned Chick-fil-A from its campus saying that the restaurant is a “microaggression” against its students. In an 18-8 vote, the Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins voted not to “support the proposal of a Chick-fil-A, in a current or future sense, particularly on any location that is central to student life.” The anti-Chick-fil-A bill listed seven main reasons why the restaurant should be banned from campus. The first is that “the Student Government Association of Johns Hopkins University aims to provide a safe, supportive environment for all university affiliates now and in the future.” The fourth is that “visiting prospective and current students, staff, faculty, and other visitors who are members of the LGBTQ+ community or are allies would be subjected to the microaggression of supporting current or future Chick-fil-A development plans.”


(4) Elsewhere in Maryland, another institution is covering itself in glory, taking (later-reversed) totalitarian cues from their counterparts at the University of Michigan:

University of Maryland College Park student group pulled "American Sniper" from its spring movie lineup following complaints from a Muslim student group. The group, Student Entertainment Events, announced on its web site Wednesday that it had canceled the May showings of the film...SEE said it was contemplating "an event where students can engage in constructive and moderated dialogues about the controversial topics proposed in the film." "SEE supports freedom of expression and hopes to create space for the airing of opposing viewpoints and differing perceptions," the group wrote. "While not easy, we want to start having these hard conversations." More than 300 people signed a petition started by the Muslim Student Association that describes the film as "war propaganda guised as art reveals a not-so-discreet Islamaphobic, violent, and racist nationalist ideology." "This movie dehumanizes Muslim individuals, promotes the idea of senseless mass murder, and portrays negative and inaccurate stereotypes," the creators of the petition wrote. "This movie serves to do nothing but make a mockery out of such immense pain."

Just remember. They call US fascists.


MFBB.

BELGIAN F-16'S OVER IRAQ: 600 MISSIONS, 107 ISIS TARGETS DESTROYED.

The Belgian Air Force released several videos documenting the strikes:




Via the Belgian Armed Forces site:

"To date, the Belgian F-16 detachment in Iraq has destroyed 107 [ISIS] ground targets. The missions are carried out together with an international coalition in the fight against Islamic State, as requested by the Iraqi Army", says Major General Frederik Vansina, BAF commander. "No collateral damage was inflicted while taking out the ground targets".

The Belgian F-16's operate only over Iraq, not over Syria. In the course of six months, they carried out 600 missions, good for about 5 per cent of the total flown by the entire coalition.

Our country still has about thirty military advisors who are training Iraqi soldiers for the fight against IS. According to Belgian Army commander Major General Jean-Paul Deconinck, those Belgian soldiers work in a "highly secure" location near Baghdad's airport."

Some stills of the strikes:





Now for the bad news. While the Iraq mission, following a nine-year BAF presence in Afghanistan and several hundred successful missions against the Qaddafi regime three years back, prove that the small Belgian Air Force can still pull its weight, it should not be forgotten that in the long term its future - indeed, the future of the entire Belgian military apparatus, looks rather bleak. This is what retired Defense Chief of Staff General Delcour had to say last November:

FORMER DEFENCE CHIEF OF STAFF LASHES OUT AT GOVERNMENT'S AUSTERITY MEASURES.

"Belgium has lost all credibility"

"It has become impossible to efficiently run the MoD", General Delcour claims in an open letter. "What strikes me is that only two months ago, during the NATO summit in Wales, Belgium promised to not further reduce its defense budget, while the government's recently taken austerity measures show the exact opposite. This is incoherent and will have serious consequences for the credibility of Belgium and its defense policy."


"Freeloader on the NATO train"

General Delcour sees several dangers in the new defense cuts. "Absolutely necessary investment programmes threaten to be frozen perpetually, merely functioning on a daily basis and training of personnel will suffer. Moreover, Belgium has now for a long time been a freeloader on the NATO train". "Strong international pressure seems inevitable if the budget will be reduced even more.


"The situation is serious."

"The new government would do well to seriously ponder the Belgian defense policy", says General Delcour. "Because we - Belgium, Europe and NATO - have made very serious errors with regards to the evolution of the [European] security situation", referring to the Russian coup in the Crimea and the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. "That Belgium, given the circumstances, should not further hollow out its defense budget seems to me to put it too mildly. The situation is serious."

General Delcour's warning must be seen against the backdrop of the measures taken by the new "center-right" government which was installed in Belgium last autumn (under PM Charles Michel, of the Walloon Liberals). A center left government, a center right one, a centrist one... whatever its leaning, a Belgian government actually conducting a responsible defense policy has throughout history been rather the exception than the rule. Sadly this has been a given practically all the time since the country's Independence in 1830. Only at the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), when the Belgian Army was one fifth the size of the French Army, or just prior to WWII, when the Armed Forces fielded 650,000 men, and for some time during the Cold War, could defense policy be considered realistic.

The current predicament of the Belgian Armed Forces goes back to the late nineties, when basically all politicians, of all stripes, seem to have read Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, and taken its message for granted. The collapse of the USSR and the neutralization of the Saddam regime, brought about by two Republican presidents (Reagan and Bush, although few Belgian politicians will ever admit this), seemed to herald a new era in which armies would, in time, become something of the past. This notion was not significantly disturbed by the events in the Balkans or the war in Chechnya, and during the nineties leftist "intellectuals" openly questioned NATO's raison d'être. With Russia's transition to a free-market democracy seemingly mired in endless convulsions, and both its economy and military in tatters, there seemed to be no need anymore for robust defense spending, and especially since 2000, the Belgian defense budget, which during the Cold War had still been over 4 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product, shrank yearly, until by 2009 it represented but a mere 1.2 per cent of GDP anymore.

This was an evolution in fact welcomed by socialists and greens, who never made it a secret that they actually wanted to swap the budgets scheduled for Development Aid (under 0.7 per cent of GDP) and Defense.

Anno 2015 the sad truth is - and this has literally been claimed by General Delcour - that the decade-long deployment of small numbers of fighter-bombers (over Afghanistan, against Gaddafi's regime, and now over Iraq) actually serves as a smokescreen to fool our allies that Belgium still maintains a responsible defense policy. It's quite obvious why F-16's are chosen time and again to participate in the War on Terror - chances of personnel being killed are minimal. I know how the mind of your typical Belgian politician works - he or she is a total military ignoramus and a coward, always whoring for votes. This is of course true for politicians the world over, but even under socialist governments France, The Netherlands and Denmark were willing to send ground troops in harm's way to Iraq and/or Afghanistan, with after some time the inevitable fatalities. In Afghanistan e.g., The Netherlands lost perhaps 20+ KIA. Likewise, Norway, Denmark, and France lost several tens of soldiers killed, and scores more wounded and maimed. Great Britain and Germany took heavier losses. Yet in none of those countries there was a significant outcry "to get the troops back". A single fatality involving a Belgian soldier however would have led to socialist and green bigwigs like a Dirk Van Der Maelen (SP.a) or a Wouter De Vriendt (Groen) hysterically screaming blue murder in Parliament - and I'm not exxagerating.

I do not want to imply that I would have liked the Belgian Army to send a brigade to Afghanistan and would have been happy with body bags returning for the good of our reputation. No, what I want to imply is that these are very serious, even very dangerous times, that, like it or not, the West is at war, and that it has been totally unfair to let our allies pay the blood toll in the theatres in which the War on Terror is fought.

Well... here we are then, with a Belgian Army, Navy and Air Force almost literally starved to death. With less than a shoestring budget, our Armed Forces have done, and are doing, wonders. Ground troops and paras train soldiers in hotspots in Africa; Special Forces have come under fire from Sudanese attack helicopters while protecting refugees in Chad; countless minefields and ordnance have been cleared/neutralized by deminers in Lebanon and Afghanistan. Belgian frigates have done their part in securing naval routes from pirates off Africa's East Coast. As for the Air Force, it has been the only component firing its guns in anger at islamic terrorists from Libya over Iraq to Afghanistan.

The next budget cuts, which will lower the GDP percentage spent on defense even under 1 per cent, may well constitute the final straw. It is highly unlikely that with such meager resources, the means will be found to replace our old F-16 fleet, now down to a mere 60 units (if even that). Gone are the times when the Belgian Air Force fielded over 130 of these sound machines - all of them built under licence in our own country at the SABCA factories in Haren and Gosselies. The most optimistic scenario plans for a successor fleet of 35 jets, and you can bet that socialists and greens will do everything in their might to have the MoD buy the worst candidate.

The world has become a very dangerous place, not in the least because the current US Administration has basically opted for it. In eschewing and even denouncing its own exceptionalism, the US has deliberately created a leadership vacuum - and the natural result is that this vacuum is being filled, though by countries which are far from the benign behemoth that the US basically is. The Russian incursions in the Crimea and Ukraine and the brazen Chinese sabre-rattling in the South Chinese Sea, not to mention a suicidal nuclear deal with Iran are the logical result of America folding back on itself. The world has perhaps become more of a powder keg than we realize, and there's not one, but several fuses smouldering.

Against this backdrop, some European countries do see the sign on the wall: the Baltic Republics, The Netherlands, Germany... All of them have recently boosted their defense budget. The Netherlands intend to pump up the defense budget to at least 2 per cent of GDP, and only weeks ago the German military decided to add some 100-odd mothballed Leopard II tanks to its tank fleet. Both significant measures seem to be to-tal-ly lost on Belgium's political class.

As an example of how deluded the usual suspects among this class are, how about this? Last autumn, the merest mention that a few sane heads in the new government were somehow trying, within extremely tight fiscal constraints, to find a successor for the F-16, evoked shameless demagoguery from seedy characters like the Green's Kristof Calvo:

"AUSTERITY MEASURES FOR FAMILIES, WHILE THE CHEQUE FOR EXPENSIVE JETS IS READY"

Opposition party Groen reacts furiously following the news that federal government negotiators want to invest in a successor for the Air Force's F-16s. "While severe cuts harm families and the man in the street, the cheque for expensive as hell jets has already been signed", says fraction leader Kristof Calvo.

Such shameless demagoguery and utter intellectual dishonesty is common among our moral betters - for the acquisition of new jets (the candidates are the Saab Gripen, the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Dassault Rafale, the F-18, and the F-35) is still meant to somehow being realized without exceeding the paltry 1 per cent or so of GDP. In other words, Calvo is lying. Not more money would be spent, specialists are only looking at means to shifting or postponing certain expenses within the existing budget, in order to at least address the now very urgent need to replace a fighter bomber force of which the youngest planes left the assembly lines around thirty years ago.

Heck, you could abolish the ENTIRE Belgian Army, Navy and Air Force - send all the troops home, sell what few armoured cars, choppers, or minesweepers are left...

.... and you would only end up with a few more bread crumbs more for, say, Social Security - while the country would be defenseless.

The mind of leftists is weird.

I have to end on a positive note - can't allow those bastards to get me depressed. KUDOS for our flyboys!


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT COLDPLAY, HEART.

Coldplay with Square One. From the 2005 album X&Y.




Ten years ago already. Frikkin' unbelievable.



Heart with Barracuda.




The Wilson sisters are blistering idiots but they did produce some good material.


Slaap wel.



MFBB.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE STARTED...

A chilling video, courtesy our friends at Gates of Vienna:






Of course, that was "only" the main event. Decades before 1915, there had already been severe pogroms against Turkish Armenians. And between 1913 and 1922-1923, an estimated 350,000 Greeks lost their lives too at the hands of Turkish henchmen, an episode which culminated in the sack of Smyrna:



But the world doesn't learn. As if to emphasize this point, the "president" of the supposedly mightiest nation on Earth just caved in to Sultan Erdogan in refusing to label the massacre of around 1,5 million Armenians what it is... a full-fledged genocide.


MFBB.

BELGIUM: "CHRISTIAN" YOUTH ORGANIZATION HIRES STAFFERS (MALE/FEMALE/X).

From the I want to emigrate to the Ross Ice Shelf Department:



A screenshot from Het Laatste Nieuws Online, Monday, April 20,2015.

Chiro is the biggest youth movement in Flanders and Brussels, with around 100,000 members. The name Chiro simply combines the Greek characters chi (χ) and rho (ρ), being the first characters of Christos, the Greek form of Christ.

Somewhere in the mid-seventies, as a ten-year old, I was briefly a member.

Ten years later, I was a chiro leader myself, again for a short time span - only two years. The 'squad' entrusted to me accounted for about fifteen boys aged between 8 and 12 - boys in that timeframe were/are called 'Rakkers'.

Well - in the Year of Our Lord 2015, it has come to this [translation of the above article]:

Chiro Flanders from now on publishes its hiring ads stipulating they are open for men (m), women (v) and persons not counting themselves to one of these sexes (x). "A conscious and logical choice", says Chiro Flanders.

Chiro is currently looking for an educational staffer (m/v/x) in Antwerp. It's a conscious and logical choice to also mention the 'x', says Merijn Van de Gehuchte of Chiro Flanders to VRT News.

"We see that gender roles in society change: it's not anymore solely about man or woman. As Chiro we would like to reach out to everybody and thus we find it only normal that we also mention the 'x' ".

For crying out loud!!! Back in Outlaw's days we only knew two species! That was, a.) them MALES. They have Balls. Used to, anyway:





and b.) Them FEMALES. They have bigger, um, you see what I mean:




Mr Van de Gehuchte, ANYONE who cannot identify as either a.) or b.) has NO BUSINESS in a youth movement in the first place. I have young children myself, and if they were Chiro members, they'd go to camp during summer. I would definitely NOT want them to sleep under one and the same canvas with a being who's got trouble to identify his or her sex. And having read your nonsensical drivel, I'm certainly not going to encourage them to join this year.





This was Outlaw Mike, reporting from the Biggest Open Air Funny Farm in the Solar System, aka Europe.



MFBB.

PS: okay ladies, if you think Outlaw's second pic is not representative enough, how about this? Conservative sweetie Katie Pavlich:




Better?

A DAY OUT IN THE ARDENNES.

Actually, that day was Sunday, April 12, but posting our England pics came first. Well, Spring has definitely arrived, and as per usual I answer the call of the Ardennes.

Julien Van Remoortere has written a gazillion of walking guides covering the entire country, and I've got several. For this walk, I picked a simple, not very demanding one around an area covering the village of Beausaint and the town of La Roche. I started in Beausaint. The village doesn't offer that much, but upon letting the last houses behind me, I thought this panorama was worth a pic. I suppose the gash in the hills over there is a quarry.





If memory serves, if I'd keep walking this track I would arrive after some four or five kloms in the village of Halleux - walked there two years ago. However - I'm actually at a crossroads here - I took a track to the left.




Coming across a small stream, the Ri de Bronze. View downstream...




And upstream...




Walking further down a wooded valley which would eventually lead me to the centre of La Roche. The cyclists in the distance are but two of around five I saw during the walk. What the heck are people doing these days when the weather is glorious?




The centre of La Roche, with the ruins of its feudal castle:



And if you want to know what the area looks like from its ramparts, follow this link.


After climbing Corumont, a 390 m high hill/ridge outside La Roche, I came upon this nice view. The village over there is Cielle. Pic taken from a spot where parapentes launch.




View of the same valley a little bit further. If you follow this valley you arrive in the village of Marcourt, where, if you climb the hill flank opposite the village, you are rewarded with a magnificent view from the Saint Thibaut Chapel.




Almost back in Beausaint. In that copse of wood over there, there's a cross on a concrete pedestal.




Nite.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT HENRY MANCINI, THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS.

Henry Mancini with Nadia's Theme.






The Righteous Brothers with Unchained Melody.





Good night.



MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: MARK STEYN ON GARRY TRUDEAU, WORLD CLASS ASSHOLE.

Mark Steyn rips Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, a new one, and rightly so:

".... The Polk Award is named after a journalist shot dead at point-blank range in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war. So you might have thought it would be in ever so mildly bad taste to use the opportunity of a Polk acceptance speech to piss on the graves of a group of journalists similarly murdered. Nevertheless, that's what Mr Trudeau did:


* [Trudeau:] Charlie Hebdo, which always maintained it was attacking Islamic fanatics, not the general population, has succeeded in provoking many Muslims throughout France to make common cause with its most violent outliers. This is a bitter harvest.


Ah, so Charlie Hebdo is to blame for provoking ordinary, peaceful, moderate Muslims into supporting the Allahu Akbar guys who killed them.


* [Trudeau:] Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny—it's just mean.By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech.



Is Islam, which will be the world's largest religion by mid-century and already controls a 58-member voting bloc at the UN attempting to impose a global blasphemy law, really "a powerless, disenfranchised minority"? Does even someone as blinkered and parochial as Garry Trudeau think Charlie Hebdo was "punching down"?

Apparently so. At The Atlantic, David Frum has done a very thorough examination of the matter, and includes this example of what Mr Trudeau regards as "punching up":


* [Frum on Trudeau:] In 2012, Garry Trudeau drew a series of strips about a Texas law requiring an ultrasound before an abortion. Trudeau's point of view was ferocious: He had one of his characters pronounce, "By the authority invested in me by the GOP base, I thee rape."


Ah, the deft satirical jest for which "Doonesbury" is renowned! But, as I've been saying for over a decade now, if you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked. Whether or not targeting the GOP base is "punching up", they're not going to punch Garry Trudeau up, assuming he ever runs into any of them. "I thee rape" is pretty funny, huh? In Sweden, and the Netherlands, and Rotherham and Rochdale and other unlovely towns of northern England, the fellows doing the raping, and the grooming, and the sex slavery, are young Muslim men. But, if you were to essay "I thee rape" gags about them, they'd kill you.

Best to stick to that GOP base, don't you think? Garry Trudeau doesn't "afflict the comfortable". The preening twerp is "the comfortable", and he's careful to afflict only those who won't discomfort his comfort.

Still, I'm grateful to David Frum's column for drawing my attention to this passage in Trudeau's remarks:


* [Trudeau:] As you know, the Muhammad cartoon controversy began eight years ago in Denmark, as a protest against "self-censorship," one editor's call to arms against what she felt was a suffocating political correctness. The idea behind the original drawings was not to entertain or to enlighten or to challenge authority—her charge to the cartoonists was specifically to provoke, and in that they were exceedingly successful. Not only was one cartoonist gunned down, but riots erupted around the world, resulting in the deaths of scores.


Aside from the other errors in that paragraph, I found myself wondering: Who is this "she" who gave "her charge" to those cartoonists? In the ten years since the cartoons were published, I've met most of the Jyllands-Posten staff involved, and I've been interviewed by the newspaper twice, first in London and then in Copenhagen. The journalist who proposed the idea was Stig Olesen, which even Garry Trudeau must recognize as a male name. The editor-in-chief at the time was Carsten Juste: Did Mr Trudeau think "Carsten" is a bit girly like "Kirsten"? The culture editor, in whose section the Motoons appeared, was Flemming Rose: Did Trudeau accidentally invert the name and think it was Miss Rose Flemming?

Or is it just that a comfortable non-afflicted American celebrity couldn't be arsed even to look up the names of fellow artists and writers living under constant death threats for a decade? It's not just locally resident fanatics: an extraordinarily wide range of persons from Chicago, Illinois to Waterford, Ireland have been arrested for plotting to kill those cartoonists and their editors. While I was in Copenhagen for that second interview with Jyllands-Posten, a one-legged Chechen jihadist prematurely self-detonated in his hotel room while en route to blow up the paper.

A "one-legged Chechen jihadist" sounds pretty funny, right? Maybe Trudeau could put one in "Doonesbury". Oh, no, wait: he's not capable of drawing a one-legged Chechen jihadist, is he? Still, you gotta admit, every one-legged Chechen is pretty much surefire comedy gold ...until one of them gets through. At which point, even as you're lying on the floor in a pool of blood, Garry Trudeau will "punch up" at you, and flatter himself that he's brave to do so.

After my battles with Canada's "human rights" commissions, I wrote a book on free speech (personally autographed copies of which, etc, etc) and its remorseless retreat across the western world. And as a result I get asked from time to time to give speeches in various parts of the Continent. After accepting one such engagement for later this year, it occurred to me upon rereading the invitation that perhaps I was not the event organizers' first choice. But that's because Charb and his Charlie Hebdo colleagues are dead. And the Swedish artist Lars Vilks is living in hiding after the most recent attempt on his life a few weeks ago. And pretty soon the Rolodex is emptying out so fast there's no one to book but some obscure Canadian...

Lars Hedegaard, my host in Copenhagen, was shot at point-blank range, but fortunately by someone far more incompetent than George Polk's killer. My friend the Norwegian comedienne Shabana Rehman had her family restaurant firebombed by pals of some dimestore imam. The Dutch cartoonist Nekschot, who could only appear with me on stage disguised in a burqa lest anybody see his face, has been forced into "retirement". The American cartoonist Molly Norris has vanished from the face of the earth. I write about her in my latest book, but I doubt Garry Trudeau even knows her name. She was a by-the-book Cascadian liberal who discovered that, when you accidentally cross Islam, Trudeau and all the other bigshot "progressives" won't be there for you.

Charlie Hebdo dead, Vilks in hiding, Hedegaard shot, Rehman firebombed, Nekschot vanished, Molly Norris fled, Kurt Westergaard attacked by an Islamic axeman... But Garry Trudeau is on stage congratulating himself on "afflicting the comfortable". You can't "punch down" much lower than sneering at the dead and those no longer able to speak, can you?

It's not often that I find myself too angry to write. But, if Trudeau were to hand, I might be minded to try a little punching up myself. But that's the point, isn't it? When you say to people you can't write, you can't draw, you can't raise certain subjects, what forms of expression are left other than physical violence?

~If Garry Trudeau wants to "afflict the comfortable", the generation that's followed him doesn't want to afflict anybody. At Cracked - which, God help us, is the American answer to Charlie Hebdo - J F Sargent tries to write about why these days everybody seems to get so offended so easily:


* [Sargent:] Now, I'm not saying that offensive jokes are okay or that we shouldn't call them out -- they're not okay and they should be called out when we hear them. Because that's how comedians learn and that's how society stays healthy.


For cryin' out loud: what kind of supposedly funny writer at an alleged humor magazine could type with a straight face such portentous tosspottery? Granted this is the age of what Kathy Shaidle calls millennial beta male faggotry, wouldn't it be quicker just to slice off your bollocks and serve them with spaghetti sauce to the first passing social justice warrior?"

Is there anyone who can actually explain why this pompous ass, sitting in an airconditioned office on his warm, well, ass, has any right to the George Polk Award in the first place? Why didn't the murdered Charlie Hebdo cartoonists get it posthumously?


MFBB.

EASTER HOLIDAY IN SOUTH ENGLAND PIC DUMP.

I suppose the following photos will make up for the less than prosaic title of this post. My wife and I being anglophiles, and her mom now having found the love of her life in Lodz, which is too far for a short spring break, it was quickly decided where to spend a meagre 4 days in the week following Easter. Especially since the Eurotunnel shuttles zip you under the Channel between Calais and Folkestone in a mere 35 minutes.

As per usual, not much time to flesh out this post, so the skimpiest text to accompany the pics will have to do.


History nut that I am, we paid a visit to Battle Abbey north of Hastings. It was here, in Battle, NOT in Hastings, that the famous battle between William The Conqueror from Normandy and the Anglosaxon king Harold was fought, if memory serves on October 14, 1066. Mind you, this is only the entrance gate to the Abbey, which the pope ordered William, who emerged as the victor, to build as a penance for the bloodshed.




This is the battlefield, which presumably hasn't changed much since thaet fateful day. The English had the advantage of a higher up position, and at some point the Normans more than panicked. The plaque below explains how they tried to lure the English into descending the slope - with some success. But it wasn't until Harold was gravely wounded by an arrow in the eye that the English gave way. It's curious how we keep referring to the UK and the US as Anglosaxon countries, whereas it was the infusion of Norman culture and warrior ethos, itself having its roots in the Viking world, which gave birth to "the English-speaking peoples" as we know them.




Then it was off to Berwick Church, which we missed last year.




Berwick Church is special because Berwick parish asked the famous Bloomsbury artists, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, to decorate its interior, this during the war years no less. World War II to be sure. Snapshot to the left...




... and snapshot to the right...




A celtic cross erected on a mound near the church commemmorates men of the parish who fell in the Great War.





Outside the Church, I took a photo of this typical South Downs landscape...




The next day, April 8, we walked on Brighton's beach, having booked a hotel in that still pleasant city. Brighton had two famous piers, but only the Palace Pier is still alive and kicking. West Pier, see pic, is nothing but a remnant of the structure anymore.




After that, it was off to Monk's House, which was the country retreat of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, writers belonging to the Bloomsbury Group. It's a very modest dwelling, and it has been turned into a small museum. Inside, basically everything is as it was when Leonard Woolf died in 1969. Virginia Woolf, who was Vanessa Bell's sister, and who suffered from mental illnesses and bouts of heavy depressions, had committed suicide by drowning herself in nearby river Ouse in 1941 already.




A pic of the dining room...




... and of Virginia's sleeping room, which is in the extension you see to the extreme right of the house.




Leonard's bust in the garden...




... which was lovely...




Leaving Monk's House at about 3 pm, I figured there was more than enough time to check out Chanctonbury Ring, the remnants of an earthen ring fort, later Roman stronghold, on top of a hill 40 kloms or so distant and near the village of Washington. Legend has it that if you walk seven times counterclockwise around the Ring, you will summon the Devil, who will offer you a bowl of soup in exchange for your soul. Nope, I didn't try.




On Thursday, April 9, we visited Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. So much to see, so little time. Of all the things to pick from, I chose HMS Victory:




Victory's bow. See those anchors! Oldest commissioned warship in the world by the way!




HMS Victory's poo, erm, stern:




The "sick bay". It was not exactly clear to me where those happening to be there in case a fight broke out were moved - notice the guns below the berths!




The place where Admiral Nelson was mortally hit by a sharpshooter sitting in some mast of the Redoutable (commanded by Captain Jean-Jacques Etienne Lucas).




HMS Warrior. Together with her sister ship HMS Black Prince the Royal Navy's first armour-plated, ironclad warships. Commissioned in 1861.




Spinnaker Tower, Portsmouth's 170-meter high landmark. Yup, those specks are people cleaning the thing.





On Friday, April 10, we vistited the Royal Pavilion, George IV's outrageous but inimitable folly in Brighton.




When we left Brighton towards noon, I figured there was still time, before we boarded Le Shuttle in Folkestone for continental Europe, to visit Bateman's, Rudyard Kipling's house in Burwash in The Weald. It's a sturdy Jacobean mansion dating from 1634, and the National Trust keeps it in excellent condition.




And again back to Belgium, sad to say goodbye to the UK and Full British Breakfast. Unlike the Eurostar which carries passengers between Brussels/Paris and London through the same Channel Tunnel, "Le Shuttle" travels only between Cheriton near Folkestone, UK, and Coquelles, near Calais, France. This because its loading gauge, so large because of necessity, is bigger than either "ordinary" French or British railway gauges.





That's all for today. Nite.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT TCHAIKOVSKY, STRAUSS.

First the first movement of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake Suite, Opus 20.




A ballet more exactly, in its broader meaning of a choreography/music ensemble. From 1876. First performed one year later by the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.



Then Johan Strauss II's An der schönen blauen Donau, Op. 314, brilliantly married to Stanley Kubricks late sixties' vision of spacecraft and space stations orbiting the Earth, in 2001 A Space Odyssey.




Waltz in triple metre, composed in 1866.


Nite.



MFBB.

WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR HILLARY 2016!!!

If you are totally, completely, criminally INSANE, that is!




Hat tip The Political Commentator.



MFBB.

VIENNA, AUSTRIA. BOSNIAN SOCCER FANS SING "KILL THE JEWS".

On Good Friday, Bosnian soccer fans who were in Vienna, Austria's captial, for a match between Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina, chanted “Kill the Jews” alongside pro-Palestinian demonstrators Vienna's central Stephanplatz. An omen of things to come.

Check out the video, via Townhall and The Jerusalem Post:




The Jerusalem Post reports:

At first they stood calmly and shouted "Free Palestine" back and forth. Then, one can hear a single voice among the protestors shout out "Kill the Jews." The calls to violence swelled as the other protestors joined. In a swarm of rage, they began to jump up and down shouting "Ubij, ubij Židove," which means "Kill, kill the Jews."

Twenty years ago, NATO and, in fact, the entire West, wrongly identified Serbia as the main culprit in the Balkan conflict. NATO should have bombed Bosnia, not Serbia.


MFBB.


PS: only last year, Israel sent massive humanitarian aid to Bosnia, when great floods threatened entire communities there.

HAPPY EASTER 2015!

On Easter, Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.





In Belgium, there was the traditional High Mass in Saint Michael Cathedral by the highest representative of the Church, currently Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard. Monseigneur Léonard used the occasion to commemmorate Belgium's Abortion Law, which was last Friday 25 years old. He literally called it a drama. Look at the way Het Laatste Nieuws reported on it:


Het Laatste Nieuws uses scare quotes: "Drama". According to them, the around 300,000 children killed in the mother's womb in Belgium since 1990, and of which the overwhelming majority were perfectly normal, is apparently not a drama.

Archbishop Léonard actually first started asking for attention for the violence against Christians in the Middle East. This is not the first time. He did so previously at year's end 2013 (His call for attention then was massively ignored by our leftist media, who are basically hating Christianity).

He then continued by asking to commemorate another drama: "The day before yesterdag it was the 25th birthday of Belgium's Abortion Law"... "It's always about victims unable to defende themselves. We should never forget that all of us once were like that tiny embryo, that foetus in the mother's womb. And we are only here because we were respected when we found ourselves in that most vulnerable stage of our life".

Being a Christian myself (although admitted, not a particularly good one), I put up an Easter post every year. Usually I keep it low profile, i.e. just wishing well to all people of good will.

But with Christianity under ever fiercer attacks both at home and abroad I thought I'd flesh out this post some more.

As much as I agree with Archbishop Léonard about the criminal nature of Belgium's Abortion Law, I'd like nevertheless to put the emphasis in this post on the escalating violence against my fellow Christians, of whom the overwhelming majority of victims can be situated in muslim countries, or countries where islam is making inroads. One of the latter countries is Kenya, and to me it seems that the fact that the murder of almost 150 Christian students in Garissa University took place on the eve of Good Friday is not a coincidence.

Let us remember our brothers and sisters in our prayers:

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Our Father,
Who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

God bless.



MFBB.