DENNIS PRAGER: THE MIDDLE EAST PROBLEM IN SIX MINUTES.

Via Theo Spark. Dennis Prager explains a sixty-year old problem in a nutshell.






In this, like in every other Middle Eastern conflict, the real problem is not land, or water, or oil. It's islam.

The time has come that people start to acknowledge that islam is the deeper, underlying problem. Individuals who are raised in an islamic cultural environment are far more likely to develop pathologies of the mind and the soul. Islam turns people who would otherwise be fine, caring individuals into potential monsters. THAT is the problem. And what else would you expect from the teachings of an illiterate traitor, brute, sadist and pervert? How else can someone who cheated and murdered his way through life and who stomped his dick in a nine year old girl still be "The perfect Example" to 1.5 billion muslims?

There is your answer for why the so-called Middle Eastern Problem seems to last forever. In the movie The Beast of War, the Russian tank driver Konstantin Koverchenko says his commandant, Sgt. Daskal, that "you can't be a good soldier in a rotten war".

Likewise, you can't be a good human in a rotten religion.

Until the day that this scourge of the world, the muslim "religion", is totally eradicated, or at least rendered impotent or put somehow in quarantine, this world will not know real and lasting peace.



MFBB.

GOUDA, NETHERLANDS. EVEN A SOCIALIST MAYOR WANTS TO DEPORT PROBLEMATIC MOROCCAN FAMILIES FROM HIS CITY.

Largely unknown outside The Netherlands is the city of Gouda, home of famous cheeses. The outside world - at least in the blogosphere - has for a long time regularly heard of the appalling problems caused by "youths", read Moroccan youngsters, in cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam or Utrecht. But below the radar Gouda has had its share too, and over the past year the mayhem has gone crescendo. Police patrols and indigenous Dutchmen are regularly attacked by stone-throwing Moroccan teens (some as young as eight(!)), there are regular arson cases, people are harassed, robbed, scolded at, windows are thrown in, buses attacked, bus drivers molested etc etc etc. On November 5, 2010, The respected daily De Telegraaf ran an article with the telling header
"Street scum rules in Gouda".

And now even the socialist mayor, Wim Cornelis, begins to see the light. Sadly, as could be expected, his "solution" is essentially a non-solution, and amounts basically to shifting the problems elsewhere, in the best of leftist traditions. Indeed, Cornelis wants to... displace problematic Moroccan families elsewhere.





An interesting and often overlooked aspect of the troubles caused by the "youths" is that their parents are part of the problem. According to Cornelis "parents deny that there are problems" [with their children - MFBB], while outside their offspring is wreaking havoc, causing mayhem, and harassing autochton Dutchmen. "Then nothing else remains but to ban [deport - MFBB] them", or (what a howler), "trade them for other problem families from other cities". I kid you not. This is truly a typical socialist approach. Completely screw up a situation, then come up with the nuttiest of "solutions".

Cornelis admits he "cannot solve the problems Gouda has been facing for year. Do we perhaps have to execute the youths? Hack off hands? We do everything that's possible".

Wanna hear my opinion? First off, this blunt idiot should give his police the weapons and the mandate to shoot and kill, if necessary. If it goes on like this, an entire city will in the end be hijacked. Second, he might ventilate some sane ideas about restricting immigration upwards, to his socialist overlords. Said ladies and gentlemen see no problem whatsoever, keep the maghreb sluices wide open, and still think the biggest threat to Dutch society comes from Geert Wilders.

In times yet to come, the millions and millions of indigenous Dutchmen and -women who still did not vote for Wilders and his PVV will bitterly deplore that they kept believing in the left's fairytales and cast their vote with the man who might have changed it all, while there was still time. At some point in the not too distant future, the colossal STUPIDITY of deliberately importing endless hordes of islamic sand apes, out of an insane and grossly misplaced feeling of guilt for the west's colonial past, its "robbing" of earth's resources and what not, and an equally insane desire to create more 'diversity' in Dutch society, will become crystal clear. Even for socialists.

But by then it may be too late.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT NADA SURF, FAITH NO MORE.

Nada Surf. Popular. The only hit drawn from their debut album High/Low. It's 1996.





Bwahahahaaaaaaa!!!! Hilarious lyrics!!!!

Nada Surf's founding members, Matthew Caws and Daniel Lorca, spent some of their childhood in France and in Belgium, of all places. I must admit I lost track of them after High/Low. Was surprised they are still around.



Faith No More with Digging the grave. I think the album is King for a day, fool for a lifetime, but not sure of that. Correct me if I'm wrong, will you?





Heh. Kickass.



MFBB.

ANTWERP: MUSLIM-ORGANIZED MULTICULTURAL "CONFERENCE" TURNS INTO - WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK IT - WHINEFEST AGAINST ISRAEL.

Belgian top political blogger Luc Van Braekel had an excellent post up last week about a "multicultural conference" organised by muslims in Antwerp, which quickly turned out to be - surprise - a hatefest directed at Israel. It is actually baffling how a religious community of reportedly between 1.3 and 1.5 billion people JUST-CAN'T-STOP at playing victim vis-à-vis international Jewry - a paltry 20 million people - and its most visible representative the State of Israel.





Van Braekel's original entry on his own blog is in Flemish, but he was so kind to put up an English translation over at The Brussels Journal, where he's webmaster. Here are some exerpts:

A MULTICULTURAL CONFERENCE HIJACKED BY ISLAMISTS.

During the last weekend of October, a conference in Antwerp got a lot of resonance in the Arab world. The same conference was virtually ignored in Belgium, even within the local Muslim community. "The place of Islam in the new Europe" was the title of the conference which was widely reported on Al Jazeera (see video below this article) and the Moroccan newspaper Le Matin. In Belgium, only Gazet van Antwerpen published a short article on the local pages in three of its six regional editions. Make no mistake: this was a conference to promote multiculturalism en mutual understanding between the Islamic world and Europe. The conference was organized by the Institute for Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies of the University of Antwerp, abbreviated as "IMaMs".

CHAOTIC

The conference was announced as a big event, but its course was chaotic. Jacques Attali was announced as the keynote speaker, but he didn't come. The program and the panelists were very different from what was announced in the invitation, and a complete schedule was distributed on paper only halfway through the conference. What should have been a conference on an academic level, turned out to be an event with very few high-level scholars and with very few references to scientific studies, statistics or serious references.

REFERENCE TO NAZI SCIENTIST

Already at the opening session, the first blunder was heard, even though most of the audience never noticed it. Speaker Muhammad Bensalah highlighted the contribution of Islam to European civilization, and suggested that few Western scholars fully recognized the Islamic contribution without covering it up. He named three: the American John Esposito, the German Sigrid Hunke and the Belgian George Sarton. Now, Sigrid Hunke was an employee of the scientific department of the SS under the Nazi regime, where she was researching racial psychology. In that position she came in contact with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who openly advocated the extermination of the Jews. In her book "Allahs Sonne über dem Abendland" ("Allah's sun over the Occident") she asserted that the roots of European civilization were not Christian, but are a mix of Islamic, pagan-Celtic and Germanic elements. She illustrates this argument with now discredited theories like the sea map of Piri Reis allegedly used by Columbus, and the fact that in German and Dutch one does not say "twenty three" but "three twenty" (Dreiundzwanzig, drieëntwintig), because in Arabic, one reads from right to left.

RANTING AGAINST ISRAEL, INDIVIDUALISM AND THE HEADSCARF BAN

During the panel discussions, more than once some members of the audience started lengthy invectives against Israel. The moderators did not intervene to stop or shorten these rantings. Antwerp alderman Robert Voorhamme intervened firmly, stating that it was improper to import the conflict in the Middle East into our countries and into this conference.

It may surprise some that a conference that had the ambition to enhance the mutual understanding between Islam and Europe had invited people like Yacob Mahi, who literally states that "liberalism is the murderer of human freedom". Or imam Yussef Ibrams of Geneva, a member of the European Council of the Fatwa, who claimed in 2004 that "stoning, although not necessary in Switzerland, may absolutely not be brought in disrepute".

It became clear that, behind the scenes, some were pushing the conference towards a condemnation of the headscarf ban, when moderator Abdelhay Ben Abdellah started asking all the town councilors for their position on the ban. This Ben Abdellah is president of the "Expertise Center for Islamic Cultures in Flanders", which receives 200,000 euros of public funds each year, but whose functioning is unclear at present, lacking any reports or results...

One of the reasons that muslims piss me off so royally - apart from, of course, their mere "religion" - is their lack of work ethic. Their plebs lives to a great extent from government handouts, with the plethora of Mohammeds doubling or even tripling for someone else to pocket a second or even third entitlement at OCMW/CPAS guichets when it's dough collection time. As for their leaders and representatives, a favorite pastime is "conferences" like the described one, where they lose themselves complaining over the saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad situation of moooooooooooooooooooossslims in every corner of the world where their hateful prophet has gained a toehold.

Now, their religion is one thing.

The fact that they prefer to let the infidel pigs work their asses off in our welfare states, is another.

But what is REALLY starting to make my blood boil is the increasingly heard mantra of islam's contribution to western civilization, as if it has always had a place here and as if we have forever reaped the benefits of it.

Time is SO F*CKING SHORT again and I am a small biz owner who just stopped preparing invoices half an hour ago and who has to be up early again tomorrow so UNFORTUNATELY I can once again NOT flesh this post out with some examples of how the fucking, disgusting, EVIL politico-religious doctrine harrowing the planet for 1,400 years and known as "islam", has contributed to WESTERN CIVILIZATION but let me show you just ONE EXAMPLE of their glorious donations:







Italy's easternmost city is Otranto, in Apulia. Some thirty years after the fall of Constantinople, and right after the fall of Rhodes, in July 1480, yet another Ottoman fleet appeared before a christian port to wreak havoc. This time it was Otranto. 128 ships unloaded an Ottoman army which laid siege to the town. By early August its inhabitants had, together with the weak garrison, sought refuge in Otranto's citadel. Its walls could not withstand Ottoman cannonfire, and on 11 August it surrendered. The day after, 800 citizens who refused to forsake their christian belief to convert to islam were butchered. It's their remains which you can still see in Otranto's cathedral. Bishop Pendenelli and the garrison commander, Count Francesco Largo, were sawn in two alive.

THAT, meine Damen und Herren, is islam's contribution to western civilization. A neverending story of horror and bloodshed, deceit and betrayal, death and oppression. While we are at it, does the name Marco Antonio Bragadin ring a bell?

I hate islam. I spit on it. I shit on it. I piss on it. I empty a bucket of vomit on it. I call it excrement.

Rant/Off? Not so much. In Bagdad, the charred interior of the Sayidat al-Neyat cathedral is a silent testimony to the savagery of islamic terrorists who butchered tens of peaceful iraqi christians. When a 5-year old infant cried out loud at the sight of the shooting of his own father, and his mother tried to hush him to prevent worse, a terrorist said "We will make him keep quiet" and shot the toddler through the head.

THAT, meine Damen and Herren, is islam. And don't talk BULLSHIT to me. You allow islam in your communities, you end up at the end of a long sad road with things like this. I am convinced that even after the jolly news of the Capitol Hill hate preachers this week spasmic reactions to seek excuses for that famous elusive peace-loving law-abiding enormous majority of moooooooooooooslims are AGAIN the order of the day, but there comes a day... there comes a D-A-Y ... that you too ... will WAKE-UP.

Islam, the scourge of the world. One day, humanity will have to decide what to do with it.



MFBB.

ARMISTICE DAY. REMEMBERING THE FALLEN.

Armistice Day, November 11, is of course, as you should teach your children, meant to commemmorate the end of hostilities in the First World War, for at 11am on November 11th, the 11th month of the year, what came to be known as the Great War came to an end.

Personally, on this day I commemmorate all those who gave their lives for the Allied causes in both World Wars. That is not to say that I do not pity, nor pray for, the dead on "the other side". I do, for doubtlesly countless of the Kaiser's, the Duce's or Hitler's soldiers were sucked in bloody conflicts against their will, and would far more have preferred to live normal, decent, productive lives, caring for their loved ones and contributing for a good cause of their own.

But, living in a country that has seen the agressor's yoke removed not only once, but twice, by allied forces, most of them Anglosaxon, I have a natural inclination to reserve my thoughts and prayers on this day for the fallen on their side.

I took the pic below on a Commonwealth War Grave somewhere in Belgium. It stood in a row of perhaps fifteen humble, serene graves. In an impulse I photographed the last resting place of Flying Officer T.W. Taylor, an RCAF navigator killed on May 13, 1944.





The wonders of the Internet have permitted me to find out something more about the circumstances of this man's death. Below is a screenshot of the Lost Bombers website that has something more about the flight Mr. Taylor was part of:





The text erroneously identifies Mr. Taylor as an RAF airman, but otherwise the info seems correct, for I could check it out with a small volume written by a Flemish air enthusiast, Cynrik De Decker, who actually wrote a book about the allied bomber operations in the Leuven area. What is clear is that Mr. Taylor was a navigator on a Halifax heavy bomber (the sidekick, so to say, of the famous Lancaster), and that his plane took part in a bombing raid on the crucial railway yards at Leuven. Two planes got shot down - one of them being Halifax LW682, Taylor's bomber. A nightfigher piloted by Hauptmann Martin Drewes of NJG1 was responsible for the 'kill'. The Halifax crashed near the small village of Schendelbeke, in the provice of East Flanders. There were no survivors.

Of the crew of eight, only five men finally found a resting place on the cemetery of the nearby town of Geraardsbergen. Three men still remain unaccounted for.

Because of the sacrifice of men like T.W. Taylor, whose life was tragically cut short at a far too young age - his age is not indicated on the stone, but on several nearby stones it is, and they were all in their twenties - we, citizens of Belgium, were liberated from a horrendous tiranny that sought to reduce free humans to slaves of the mind and of the body. Terrible would our fate have been if Nazi Germany had won.

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.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.

May he and his comrades rest in peace. Thank... you.


MFBB.

PAT CONDELL BLASTS ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF AUSTRIA.

These days, no man, not even Mark Steyn, is more qualified than Pat Condell to deliver a damning indictment of the travesty that's going on all over Europe. The upcoming trial of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff before a kangaroo court in Austria, whereby a brave model citizen will be put on trial for the crime of pointing out that the koran condones violence vis-à-vis women (amongs others, as we all know), provides the perfect occasion for Mr Condell to blast Austria's morally deficient judicial system. It will blow you away:





We need more Condells, eh?

Hat tip our pals over at Gates of Vienna.



MFBB.

BRITISH ISLAMIC TV CHANNEL OPENLY ADVOCATES BEATING WIVES, GETS 'SLAPPED' ON WRIST.

From The Daily Mail Online, 9 November 2010:

"...A Muslim religious channel that allowed presenters to condone marital rape and call women who wear perfume in mosques 'prostitutes' has been censured by the TV watchdog.
In one programme, the host told viewers that it was 'not strange' and 'not such a big problem' for a man to force his wife to have sex.

Ofcom ruled the Islam Channel, which broadcasts on Sky, breached the broadcasting code in five programmes between May 2008 and October 2009. A phone-in show in May 2008, in which a female caller asked if she had the right to hit a violent husband back, was deemed in breach of the code.

The presenter at one point stated: 'In Islam we have no right to hit the woman in a way that damages her eye or damages her tooth or damages her face or makes her ugly.
'Maximum what you can do, you can see the pen over here, in my hand, this kind of stick can be used just to make her feel that you are not happy with her.'

Ofcom said it considered the presenter was clear some form of physical punishment was acceptable. A discussion programme in April 2009 on sexual relations within marriage was found to have breached guidelines, as was a programme in October 2009 in which it was said women who wore perfume outside the home could be declared 'a prostitute'.

In a submission to the report, the Islam Channel said it 'does not condone or encourage violence towards women under any circumstances' and 'does not condone or encourage marital rape'. Two further programmes in October 2009 relating to aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were found to have breached the code relating to impartiality in political matters.

Ofcom previously imposed a statutory sanction on the channel in 2007 for various breaches. The findings followed an inquiry begun after allegations were laid against the TV station by a moderate Islamic think tank, the Quilliam Foundation.

The Islam Channel, launched six years ago, has been accused in the past of giving airtime to extreme views, including those of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group that Tony Blair said he wanted to ban in the aftermath of the 2005 London transport bombings."

If your reaction is 'Phew, well, at least they got rapped. At least they got censored', I'd say, hold your horses. First off, no significant sanctions will follow - this is an islamic TV channel that condones beating your wife. Had it been a catholic channel, it would be taken off the air.

Second, now that the roaches feel they are under the spotlights they will lie low. But once the attention has ebbed away, they will start all over again. They know demographics are on their side. At some point, muslims will pour in whatever board that UK TV watchdog has, and slowly, its directives will reflect a more benign view on such excesses.

May this incident be a reminder, especially to our American readers who still have a chance to dodge the bullet, that one cannot take the threat of islamization too lightly.

Islam is like cancer. Not "islamism". Not "extreme, radical islam". That's baloney. Do away with the rose petals when describing our predicament. Islam is the problem. Islam is the cancer.

Once the host body is diagnosed with cancer, no time should be wasted to destroy it with chemiotherapy and/or to cut it away. If it is not burned or cut away...


... it will eventually kill the host.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT BILLY JOEL, LIVE, U2.

A lesser known and not very commercial number on Billy Joel's The Nylon Curtain album from 1982. Scandinavian Skies.




Kind of a concept album, a homage to John Lennon.



Not very commercial either but quite good - you only have to give it some time. Live with Lightning Crashes, from the album Throwing Copper (1994).





Underestimated band from York, PA. Frontman's Ed Kowalczyk (vocals plus guitar). In 95 I did a trip in a minibus with some ten other guys and gals, don't forget the gals, from San Francisco to Seattle. We played Throwing Copper quite often. Oh boy. Memories.


OK, and now sumpin that IS commercial. U2 with Beautiful Day. It's 2000.





Well, I hope it was one for you. Over here, biz started up again quite well, after a lame October. Wifey's buried in a book, son's sleeping, daughter's singing in bath. Good night.


MFBB.

MIDTERM ELECTIONS...

Thank you Traveller for da pic.



MFBB.

DOWNEASTBLOG SUPPORTS ELISABETH SABADITSCH-WOLFF.

I realize this may not be the best moment to come up with this post, as attention worldwide is turned to the US midterm elections.

I also realize I'm long overdue with it. 'It', being, coming out in support of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a brave Austrian mother who is being prosecuted in her native Austria for telling the truth.

That's why this post.

Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff will be prosecuted for 'hate speech' by an Austrian court. She gave several seminars in which she warned for the dangers of islam. She received notice of the probable case against her almost one year ago, in December 2009. Very soon now, on November 23, she must go to court.

This is Europe.

This is 2010.

What did she say? She will tell you in her own words. From a letter posted at the site of our Virginian friends, Gates of Vienna:

Dear Baron,

Today I have officially been informed that I will have to stand trial on November 23.

I have received the official charges, which are a sort of pick-and-choose of whatever I said during the first two (out of three) seminars. One paragraph consists of words that I never said, but rather those of one of the participants. But I am accused of having said them (they contain the damning words “Adolf Hitler”).

Here is a sample of my evil words: “We need public awareness of the danger posed by Islam. Education needs to be state of the art, eg biology. History. Students need to be taught facts. There was a Turkish siege [in 1683], and they were badly beaten. That must remain [in the history books]. No tolerance for the glorification of violence! And that means we have to get rid of most of the Quran. We must realize that the Muslim Brotherhood is a Trojan horse. Turkey is part of that.

“Sharia is an absolute no-no. We d not want any gender apartheid, no ghettos, no social and cultural discrimination, no polygamy, no theocracy, no hate...”

This is what I’m being tried for. This is what cannot be said aloud in Austria today.

— Elisabeth

Check out this video, link via GoV:





And here's Mark Steyn's take:





You can donate for Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff's defense fund here.



MFBB.

A DAY OUT IN THE ARDENNES (AGAIN).

The Belgian weather forecast sucked big time again today. Yesterday they predicted rain over the country all day. The following pics show how it really was.




Yes, was off to the Ardennes again. Panoramic view of the village of Dohan, in Belgium's south.




Dohan Church, dedicated to Sint-Florentius.




One klom or so out of Dohan, in the direction of Orval, where there's a famous monastery/brewery.




The Point de Vue de Saurpire. I've been searching for this particular viewpoint for a couple of years. Finally found it. The river below is the Semois.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT FISCHER Z, BOB SEGER.

New wave band Fischer Z with So Long. From the album Going Deaf for a living (1980). Fischer Z is a forgotten band now, and back in the day they never even broke really through in their homeland, the UK. But in western continental Europe there was a brief period in the early eighties when they were quite well known - they did have a string of hits there, a.o. The Worker, So Long, Marliese, You'll never find Brian here.




If singer and guitarist John Watts looks slightly weirdo to you, it may be because before he was a mental health care worker.


Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band with Main Street. From the album Night Moves (1976).





Golden Oldie, eh?


Sorry for the light blogging lately. Completely ruined when I get home. Others are doing real great jobs. Gates of Vienna. Pam Geller. Creeping Sharia. François Desouche. American Thinker. Townhall. The Brussels Journal. Het Vrije Volk. CDR Salamander. And so many, many others. Check 'em out.

But hey, don't let the islamonutters and crazy leftozoids steal the fun out of your life. Make sure to take a break now and then. Life's worth living. To the decent people among our readers: have a nice weekend.



MFBB.

LA PRIMAVERA (ANTONIO VIVALDI).

Never again say I'm a pessimist. It's the onset of winter, and this is La Primavera (Spring), the first of four violin concertos composed by Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (1678-1741). The four violin concertos, known as Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons) are among the most popular and well-known baroque compositions.





Why post this now? Because I can.



MFBB.

OUTRAGE AT SPEAKER'S CORNER.

From the 'This makes my blood boil' category. Last Sunday, October 24 2010, Gates of Vienna had the scoop of an appalling story:

BREAKING NEWS: RABBI UNABLE TO SPEAK AT SPEAKER'S CORNER

The American rabbi Nachum Shifren is visiting England to meet with members of the English Defence League and express his solidarity with the European resistance to Islamization. See this post at ICLA for a video of a BBC news report featuring Rabbi Shifren. The report describes (in that well-known snarky BBC tone) the growing transatlantic cooperation among groups opposing Islamization.

This afternoon Rabbi Shifren was scheduled to address the crowd at Speakers’ Corner in London. I’ve just received a phone call from an EDL member at the scene, who reports that the rabbi was prevented from speaking by a group of Muslims who effectively occupied Speakers’ Corner.

The rabbi moved to a location a short distance away to give his speech, but was unable to address supporters at Speakers’ Corner itself.

Speakers’ Corner is the epicenter of the tradition of free speech in England. Up until now it has stood as a sanctuary, a sacred place in the heart of English civil liberties.

If you can’t speak out at Speakers’ Corner, then free speech in England is dead.

Originally there were several Speaker's Corners throughout London, and there are some others, far less known, in other countries: Australia, Singapore, The Netherlands (where it is called De Spreeksteen [the Speaking Stone - MFBB], Canada. But when people mention Speaker's Corner then THE Speaker's Corner is meant, the archetypical forum for anyone wishing to address not matter what subject. It's in the northeastern corner of London's Hyde Park, and it was established in the latter half of the nineteenth century after several workers and middle class organizations had adapted the habit of airing their political discontent there. Since then, it has become a place where you can utter no matter what opinion on no matter what subject. Historically, the most notable political speakers have almost always been socialists of socialist theorists (as anyone knows, rightwingers are always working): Karl Marx, Ben Tillet (socialist and trade union leader), Kwame Nkrumah (postcolonial afrosocialist dictator of Ghana, a self-described scientific socialist who ruined his country), William Morris (designer, socialist theorist), Vladimir Lenin etc etc.

Either way, Speaker's Corner is an ICON of Freedom of Speech. Naturally, it attracts its fair number of nutters, and though on any given day you may get to hear some really sensible talk on a variety of subjects, you're just as likely to run into a speech by some colossal nutter. Unfortunately, such was the case with yours truly upon visiting London in 1992, where I took some pics of the raconteurs du jour:






But all that has come to an end now. As Gates of Vienna notes,

If you can’t speak out at Speakers’ Corner, then free speech in England is dead.

Upon reading the GOV entry I became so enraged that I posted a comment about it on Belgium's top political blog, run by Luc Van Braekel. There's a fella commenter there, a lefty commenter. Moniker is "Tjerk" (he might just as well have omitted the first character). This was his reaction:

"Secondly (category: a half-truth is worse than a full-blooded lie) you say that a jewish rabbi was prevented from speaking at Speaker's Corner by muslims, but what you do not say is that it was a Californian rabbi who intended to address a throng hooligans from the English Defense League."

So if you are a rabbi, from CA no less, and if you address EDL people, you have no right to speak. Hmmmm. This comment tells you in a heartbeat that The Netherlands, even though it has produced several contemporary Shining Knights in the defense of Freedom of Speech, is at the same time home to some of the worst politically correct apparatchicks, unfortunately often with far-reaching powers. Like I wrote a big higher up, The Netherlands has its own Speaker's Corner. It's called the Spreeksteen, and it's actually a monument commemorating the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was bestially murdered by a muslim. Check out this wiki entry:

In the Netherlands, there is a permanently designated speakers' corner called the Spreeksteen in Amsterdam. Lawfully, every person has the freedom of speech as a matter of right. In practice, there is considerable ambiguity which gives mayors and other authorities the semi-lawful powers to prevent or distort free speech. The 'Spreeksteen' is open for free speech 24-hours a day, and was established to allow complete free speech. The 'Spreeksteen' has been located in the Oosterpark in Amsterdam since May 5, 2005, and has been erected by a citizens action after the brutal murder of film-maker and columnist Theo van Gogh. Plans for bringing the Amsterdam Speakers' Corner online with a permanent camera and microphone are in a phase of installation. In the meantime the speakers are filmed with a hand-held camera.[8]

The Spreeksteen was involved in controversy when they allowed Michiel Smit, a extreme rightist, to speak on October 1, 2006. Antifascists used noise to prevent Smit from being heard (as is the longstanding tradition in the Netherlands when right wing people speak in public). René Danen, a former council member, threatened the Spreeksteen foundation with criminal prosecution if they let Smit speak again. Smit was scheduled to speak at the Spreeksteen again on November 5, 2006.

People ought to know that the REAL oppressors of Free Speech, the REAL tyrants... are basically always...


...LEFTISTS.


Americans should think about that come November 2.



MFBB.

PRESIDENT OBAMA, DIVIDER-IN-CHIEF.

There's a plethora of good subjects out there and actually I finally wanted to do some post about Europe's next big evolution, namely the ideological struggle that's getting almost imperceptible hotter by the day.

But with US Congressional elections now very close, I thought this one should be about some hateful comments made (again) by the US's president.

First of course, there was his address at a Boston fundraiser around October 18:

'And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared, and they have good reason to be.'

In other words, despite your many assurances and promises, you screwed up big time, as a result you have turned off an awful lot of people, but if subsequently they now seriously consider to vote Republican it's STILL because they do not understand your grandiose schemes. This in itself was almost a replay from the 2008 mantra about country idiots clinging to guns and religion. Yes, that's YOU, Joe in Austin, TX.


Then, in a radio interview aired last Monday, there was this:

In a radio interview that aired on Univision on Monday, Mr. Obama sought to assure Hispanics that he would push an immigration overhaul after the midterm elections, despite fierce Republican opposition.

“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s gonna be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.”

Referring specifically to Republicans such as Senator John McCain, who are stressing border security and supporting strict immigration laws like Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration measure, Mr. Obama said, “Those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values.”

Finally, this is what he said during a speech in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, also last Monday:

WOONSOCKET, R.I. – President Barack Obama attacked Republicans with gusto Monday as he plunged into a final week of midterm election campaigning, but his party's prognosis remained darkened by the feeble economy and his itinerary was designed largely to minimize losses.

...

In a little more than five hours in the state, Obama was booked for a factory tour and for a pair of fundraisers that party officials said would bring in $500,000.

He said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, "we can't have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back."

Republicans had driven the economy in a ditch huh? While they lost Congress, in, wait, was that in 06 already? And they 'gotta sit in the back'?

In short, we have here, in the space of one week, three separate occasions in which the President of the United States of America:

a.) willfully insults people who consider to vote for the other side as not being able to think straight
b.) tries to set up the US's Hispanics against white rightwing voting people - it's clear that he first and foremost means whites.
c.) tells those same people that, if he gets a chance to pursue his glorious career in remaking America, they can "sit in the back".

...And this from a guy who promised he would be a Uniter.

Like Bush or like him not, but have you ever, EVER, heard him use such derogatory terms about the people who opposed him? About that part of the US population that gave him the finger? EVER???


But here we have the self-proclaimed Agent of Change, who basically promised America the Garden of Eden, and who, with his cronies in charge in Congress for four years now, and he himself POTUS since almost two years, has nothing to show but 10% unemployment, a second trillion plus dollar budget deficit, a national debt soaring as never before, sluggish growth, and unseen poverty levels.


SHAME ON HIM. Either way, America's going to be stuck with Obama, alas, for yet another two years. But after that, I hope and pray this man of shadows, this basic Nonentity, spawn from a self-hating mother and a deluded marxist, and raised first in a madrassa and then in a culture of nepotism and irresponsibility, will disappear swiftly from the world stage, never to be heard of again.

I HOPE so.







MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT LEVEL 42, MANIC STREET PREACHERS.

I really liked Level 42. Carefree, unpretentious funk, easy listening. Children say, a hit from the 1987 album Running in the Family.





For me, these guys were cool. Or cool doesn't even describe it. In a music world with egos as big as skyscrapers, these guys were utterly normal. In the eighties, they produced a hit string of about fifteen memorable songs. Half that number would have turned many other pop musicians into superarrogant egosexuals. Not so Level 42. But they were never the same after the underestimated Gould Bros. left in the late eighties, although Boon Gould continued to write lyrics for his erstwhile colleagues. Together with Mark King with his very recognizable slap bass technique and tenor vocals, and Mike Lindup with his falsetto voice which somehow did not turn him into a wussie, they were the orginals. No bad word on their (series of) successors - but the hit machine stopped not long after the Goulds went their own way.


Manic Street Preachers with A Design for Life. It's 1996. Album's Everything must go.





Although I don't have the foggiest idea what it is they're singing about.

Hey, they are leftozoid nutters. Played for Castro or something. Yeah, that must be it.



MFBB.

CHIDIKE OKEEM ON BLACK INTELLECTUAL SERFDOM.

Over at The American Thinker, there's this gem of an article by Chidike Okeem, The Liberal Elite and Black Intellectual Serfdom:

"Recently, while campaigning for the upcoming midterm elections, President Obama engaged in classic liberal race-baiting by demagogically asserting that Republicans are counting on blacks not turning up to the polls. However, despite Obama's agenda in making that assertion, unfortunately, the underlying premise of his comment is accurate: the majority of blacks unthinkingly vote for Democrats in droves.

It is my contention that black people who diligently vote for Democrats are intellectual slaves to the liberal agenda, inasmuch as they, for the most part, are ignorant of the history of the Democratic Party and vote for policies that harm their communities. It is only a black intellectual slave who can observe the impact of liberal policies on the black community without having a scintilla of unease about pulling the lever for Democrats -- election after election.


Black liberals have been cleverly coaxed into believing that Democrats have their best interests at heart because these Democrats no longer don white pointed hoods, lynch people, and burn crosses. With more sophistication than the mass-murdering tactics they employed in the days of yore, Democrats continue to actively perpetuate insidious policies that keep blacks on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic totem pole.

...

It's been nearly fifty years of failed Democrat policies, and all black intellectual slaves have to show for their decades of cultish allegiance to liberals is worsened poverty, a broken family structure, failing schools, massive black genocide via abortion, run-down communities, perennial joblessness, and almost every other social malady that can be imagined. Yet with recent approval ratings for President Obama remaining steady at 91% among blacks, there is no sign of black devotion to their Democrat oppressors changing anytime soon. Black liberals are suffering from political Stockholm syndrome. These blacks are the Uncle Toms they accuse us freedom-loving black conservatives of being.


The need for Democrat cross-burning in order to keep blacks in the underclass is over. Democrats have succeeded in creating black intellectual serfs who are so swayed by the blandishments of Big Government and the empty anti-capitalist rhetoric of the left that they don't even realize they've been hoodwinked by some of the biggest beneficiaries of capitalism!


Unless black liberals realize they've been the victims of a decades-long election-buying rip-off perpetrated by the Democrats -- and advanced using the cat's-paws of the black faces in the leftist elite -- the black community will remain in the quagmire of despair it has been in since the Democrats started handing black people their scraps to live off....

...

Socialism is nothing more than a deceitful left-wing farce that inherently creates a super-exclusive oligarchy under the laughable guise of egalitarianism.


If the Republican message to blacks of "stand up on your own two feet, stop relying on government handouts and benefits, get a stellar education, hone your native skills and talents, and work incredibly hard to make a massive success of your life" is something so extraordinarily depraved, why is it that the elite black left invariably follow the Republican roadmap to success in their private lives while advocating failed socialist tripe for the liberal black intellectual serfs?


From rappers to athletes to academics, every single black person who has made it out of unfortunate circumstances, climbed, and sustained his or her place at the top has done so through hard work and taking advantage of the capitalistic meritocracy in America.


Only mass intellectual serfdom in the black community can present an adequate explanation as to why the myth of "Benevolent Big Government" continues to prevail -- and why the black vote is almost monolithically given to the Democrats.

And here it comes, the final quote:

The black community's allegiance to Democrats is among the most shameful political facts in American history -- and it can be ended only by the articulation of a true conservative message from passionate, intrepid, and ethnically diverse messengers.

Got that, brother and sister?


MFBB.


PS: read more from Mr. Okeem here.

SATURDAY NIGHT HOOVERPHONIC, ALANNAH MYLES.

Upbeat number from Belgian band Hooverphonic, The world is mine (album Jackie Cane, 2002).





Originally (for a couple of years following the formation of the band in 1995), these guys named themselves Hoover, but they were forced to add the suffix "phonic" to avoid legal issues with a US band of the same name. A number of their songs made it internationally, both as singles and as soundtrack numbers. The song 2Wicky e.g. was on the soundtrack of the first I know what you did last summer movie. The number above was used in the UK television series Mile High (2003-2005).

The singer, Geike Arnaert, unfortunately left the band in 2008, to pursue a solo career.


Canadian singer-songwriter Alannah Myles had a smash hit in 1990 with Black Velvet.





To underscore my point that artists are more often than not clueless nutters and/or brainless twats, let me add that she's a muslim, be it of the more harmless variety (sufism).



MFBB.

THE SAGA OF THE USS KIRK.

They told you that the US had no business in Vietnam, but never uttered a word about the involvement of the USSR and China. They told you about America violating Cambodia's airspace but never questioned the legitimacy of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They told you that a Third World country vanquished a superpower but never that the Thet Offensive was actually a complete disaster for the North Vietnamese. And they told you all about Agent Orange, rightly so for that matter...

... but then they'd never tell you anything about the USS Kirk's story.





You can read it here. Do so. Some exerpts:

"The Kirk steamed through the night to Con Son and reached the island just as the sun came up on May 1. There were 30 South Vietnamese navy ships, and dozens of fishing boats and cargo ships. All of them were packed with refugees, desperate to get out of Vietnam.

The ships "were crammed full of people," says Kent Chipman, who in 1975 was a 21-year-old machinist's mate in the ship's engine room and today works at a water purification plant in Texas. "I couldn't see below deck, but above deck the people were just as tight as you could get, side by side."

There was no exact count of how many people were on those ships. Some historical records say there were 20,000 people. Other records suggest it was as many as 30,000. Jan Herman, a historian with the U.S. Navy Medical Department, who is documenting the story of the Kirk, uses the higher number.

The Kirk sent its engineers to some of the boats to get them started.

....


After fixing what could be fixed on the seaworthy vessels and transferring people from the ships that would be left behind, the Kirk led the flotilla of naval ships, fishing boats and cargo ships toward the Philippines.

The USS Cook, another destroyer escort, like the Kirk, helped out as the ships were leaving Con Son. The Cook's crew provided rice, and its corpsman helped Burwinkel and his assistant from the Kirk attend to the sick and injured, too.

As the flotilla headed out to sea, on the way to the Philippines, other Navy ships came in and out of the escort, according to Herman. Among those other ships were the USS Mobile, USS Tuscaloosa, USS Barbour County, USS Deliver and USS Abnaki.

But it's clear from the daily logs from the Kirk and the other ships that the crew of the Kirk took the lead.

"For me, the Kirk was ideal," says Armitage, who moved from the Kirk to the Vietnamese navy's flagship. "It could communicate with the rest of the U.S. fleet. They would go with us across to the Philippines and would be able to rescue any of the folks who might be in harm's way. Some had been wounded. Some were pregnant. All were sick after a while. And we needed a way to take care of those folks."

The Kirk's sailors kept busy providing food, water and medicine to people on the South Vietnamese ships.

Burwinkel spent his time moving from ship to ship treating the sick and injured. With thousands of people — many of them babies and children — he had to work almost nonstop.

"When they gave me the meritorious service medal over all this, I quite frankly referred to it as my 'no-sleep' medal," says Burwinkel, who made a career in the Navy and is now retired and living in Pensacola, Fla. "I would go out there and do my thing and at dark we would come back to the Kirk and try to get a little bit to eat and make some rounds — gather my wits about me, resupply myself and get ready for the next day."

'Last Sovereign Territory Of The Republic Of Vietnam'

Of the some 30,000 refugees on vessels escorted by the Kirk over six days, only three died.

But as the flotilla approached the Philippines, the Kirk's captain got some bad news. The presence of South Vietnamese vessels in a Philippine port would present the government in Manila with a diplomatic predicament.

"The Philippine government wasn't going to allow us in, period, because these ships belonged to the North Vietnamese now and they didn't want to offend the new country," Jacobs, the captain, recalls.

The government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos was one of the first to recognize the Communist rulers now in control of a single Vietnam, and Jacobs was told the ships should go back.

Armitage and his South Vietnamese friend, Capt. Do, came up with a solution that Marcos had to accept.

Do recalls the plan: "We will raise the American flag and lower the Vietnamese flag as a sign of transfer [of] the ship back to the United States, because during the war those ships are given to the Vietnamese government as a loan, if you want, from the United States, to fight the Communists. Now the war is over, we turn them back to the United States."

There was a frantic search to find 30 American flags. Two officers from the Kirk were sent aboard each Vietnamese ship to take command after a formal flag ceremony.

Rick Sautter was one of the Kirk officers who took command of a Vietnamese ship.

"That was the last vestige of South Vietnam. And when those flags came down and the American flags went up, that was it. Because a Navy ship is sovereign territory and so that was the last sovereign territory of the Republic of Vietnam," he says.

"Thousands and thousands of people on the boats start to sing the [South Vietnamese] national anthem. When they lower the flag, they cry, cry, cry," Do remembers. "

Also, check out this video. How a young American woman of Vietnamese descent found out about the origins of her middle name.





A fine and proud ship, the USS Kirk:





Hat tip CDR Salamander.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT HUEY LEWIS AND THE NEWS, THE CLASH, GARY NUMAN.

In the mid-eighties, San Francisco based Huey Lewis and The News had a string of hits. Hip to be square comes to mind, but this wasn't bad either.





Heart and Soul from the 1983 LP Sports, which proved to be their breakthrough album (they still exist today, btw). But Jesus Christ Almighty, how
eighties videos suck.


The Clash with Rock the casbah. From the album Combat Rock (1982), a successfull but also rather commercial album.





Needless to say, my favorite line is 'Drop your bombs between the minarets'. Lead man Joe Strummer (vocals, guitar) died far too early in 2002 of a heart attack, aged 50. His band had already broken up in 1985, after only 9 years of existence. Even so, The Clash were a highly influential punk band.



1982. Londoner Gary Numan, for some time known as the King of Electronic Pop, with Music for Chameleons.





Dunno if you ever heard or saw Numan. Despite his somewhat ghey appearance, at least in his heyday, the man reportedly slept with 500 vhimen. At some point, he married a member of his fan club, a certain Gemma O'Neill, with whom he has three children. Also, he seems to be an accomplished stunt pilot.



That's all for today. Nite, and may the farce be with you.


MFBB.