HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

DowneastBlog wishes all its readers of good will a Happy, Healthy and Successful 2009!!!


MFBB.

ISRAEL HAS THE DUTY TO RETALIATE.

In 2005, the Israeli Army left the Gaza Strip after 38 years of military rule in an unprecendented move masterminded by then Israeli PM Ariel Sharon. For a hawkish person like Sharon the "disengagement" was a totally uncharacteristic operation with which he apparently hoped to finally end the stalemate that Israeli/Palestinian negotiations had ended in. The IDF pullout was globally described as the thing that Israel should have done decades before. A more sober IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Dan Halutz said:

"This is their true test. We will not tolerate their ineptitude, turn a blind eye to their failures or ignore acts of terror. They will not be able to shirk their responsibility," he said.

In Israel itself, a country like any other democracy not short of leftist airheads, many heralded Sharon's decision as the dawn of a new era in which Israel would finally live in peace with its neighbors. Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh e.g. said that the unexpected about-face by the former Israel Defense Forces general was a pivotal moment and could have been the catalyst for peace with the Palestinians.

Barely two years later the Gaza Strip had become yet another islamic terrorist state:

... Hamas gunmen broke through Fatah defenses at the compound in Gaza City on Thursday morning. They fired rocket-propelled grenades at the compound, provoking return fire from Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' presidential guard.

The rival factions have been engaged in bloody battles since Sunday, resulting in the deaths of at least 70 people. By noon Thursday, at least eight people had been killed. Al-Jazeera TV reported early Thursday afternoon that the death toll had climbed to at least 16.

Fatah officials said seven of their fighters were shot dead in the street outside Preventive Security building. A witness, Jihad Abu Ayad, said the men were being killed before their wives and children. "They are executing them one by one," Abu Ayad said. "They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting."

State building didn't go too well for the Paleostinians. Before the pullout, dim-witted mostly western philanthropists had bought the 8,500 Jewish settler's famous greenhouse facilities in order to present the Palestinians with a hot start for exporting agricultural produce. Among the naives were, apart from Bill Gates, quite a lot of Jewish Americans. Today, with the greenhouses in ruins, the 14 million dollars wasted on the endeavour is the price for the lesson that exporting an entitlement culture to another continent does not make it work there either. I doubt however that the lesson has been learned.

The only thing Gazans have had a degree of success in, is developing their own missiles. Instead of improving their agriculture, infrastructure, education, health care system and whatever passed for an industrial basis, they put all their effort in developing homemade rockets. Crown on the work of Hamas's rocket scientists is now something comparable to what Sir William Congreve had in the nineteenth century. The Qassam 3 is 2 meters long, reaches 10 kilometers far and carries an explosive charge of a couple of kilograms. Needless to say, the military value of this thingy lies far more in its psychological effect than in its destructive power.



With Qassams, they can reach cities like Ashkelon and Sderod. The human loss caused by the 3100 or so Qassams fired since 2001 is 15. By disrupting normal life there, they of course cause great economic harm. But... while I do absolutely not want to belittle the fifteen dead Israelis, it is clear that if Hamas wants to reach its goal, the destruction of the Israeli state, in this way, they have a long way to go still. Just think of it... the Israeli so-called occupation gone now for three years. Massive financial injections from all over the world AND from the Israeli state. And ALL that these fuckfaces have been able to come up with is... scores of Qassam rockets. So, while I deplore the innocent victims made during Israels recent bomb runs, I have zero sympathy left for sheer idiots who simply DON'T want to take matters in their own hands and work on a better life for themselves and their families. In addition, you might want to give the graph above a closer look. See when the missile launching took a spike, correction, several spikes? That's right, AFTER 2005. For those do-gooders in the west and elsewhere lamenting the plight of pathetic Paleostinian losers and watching scores of staged handwringing scenes by wailing martyr mothers, the truth is simply that the idiots fired one petard too many and Israel, which has actually shown far too much restraint, finally hit back hard. It has every right to do so, it even has the DUTY. To me, the most sad thing of it all is that it took America one month to lose the "global sympathy" it had after 9/11 for rightfully hitting back, and Israel lost its in, oh, 1947 or so, Gaza islamonutters can for sixty years and longer prove to the world what incurable, impossible to live with bastards they are... and yet count on uninterrupted goodwill from LA to Stockholm. Pathetic. IAF...

... hit them HARD.


MFBB.

SUNDAY BEAUTIES.

I actually wanted to do a post about why Israel has every right - what do I say, the goddam duty - to blast these Hamas m*therfuckers to hell, but I was a bit bored.


MFBB.

DESMOND TUTU IS A FOOKING SCHTOOPID IDIOT.

Some exerpts from an November WaPo article by South Africa's mentally/dentally challenged Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the occasion of Obama's victory:

When war began, first in Afghanistan and not long after in Iraq, we read allegations of prisoner abuse at Bagram air base in Afghanistan and of rendition to countries notorious for practicing torture. We saw the horrific images from Abu Ghraib and learned of gruesome acts performed in the name of gathering information. Sometimes the torture itself was couched in the government's euphemisms -- calling waterboarding an "interrogation technique."... To the outgoing administration's record on torture we must add a string of other policies that have damaged the standing of the United States in the world: its hostility to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases; its refusal to assent to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing the ICC's role in prosecuting war crimes; its restrictions on the use of U.S. funding to fight AIDS; and the arrogant unilateralism it has employed in declaring to be enemies any countries it deemed "against us" because they were not "for us."

Oh yeah f*cking *sshole? Sorry you blistering old fool. The war did not begin in Afghanistan nor in Iraq. It began in New York, on 9/11. May I also draw your attention to the fact that your revered Kyoto Protocol is a sham and that over the period 1990-2004 greenshouse gas emission by China and India - signatories to the Protocol - actually rose by 47 and 55% respectively (compared to the US's 15.8%)? As for "the horrific images from Abu Ghraib", how about this?





One of the 1,600 murder victims, the overwhelming majority of them white, in over 10,700 attacks by blacks on white-owned South African farms since 1994. Now, one has to be very cautious by suggesting a link between these horrible murders (plaasmoorde in Afrikaans) and the ANC-dominated government, but it is a fact that the sheer brutality aimed specifically at white farmers is starkly reminiscent of the Zimbabwean example whereby the government, with disastrous results, deliberately let loose gangs of thugs on its white farmers as part of its "land reform programme". The official aim of the SA government is to transfer one third of white-owned farmland to black farmers by 2014. The friendly ties between the Zimbabwean and South African governments are well known, and the ANC has always been a hotbed of radical murderous terrorists. Isn't it entirely plausible that radical ANC elements in the SA government, with the silent approval of the "decent" cadres, have been simply applying Mugabes tactics to scare and chase away the Boers in order to facilitate South African "redistribution"? A telling ANC slogan was "Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer" by Peter Mokaba, an ANC youth leader later turned Deputy Minister for Environmentalism and Tourism (he was also an AIDS denialist, ironically he died a couple of years back from that same disease). And then there is of course the example set by that old commie hag of a Nelson Mandela himself, caught here on tape advocating the murder of whites:





There's a gigantic body of evidence there hinting very strongly at involvement of ANC elements and even South African Police in the "plaasmoorde". Tutu must be aware of this.

But even the scandalous dismissal of the horrible murders on white farmers as random acts of murder by the SA government and important black personages like Tutu is trumped by the sheer negligence and denial with which that government treats the country's greatest peril: the AIDS endemic. Here are some conservative (?) estimates on the prevalence of HIV in the New South Africa:

National estimates based on all surveys

Based on a wide range of data, including the household and antenatal studies, UNAIDS/WHO in July 2008 published an estimate of 18.1% prevalence in those aged 15-49 years old at the end of 2007. Their high and low estimates are 15.4% and 20.9% respectively. According to their own estimate of total population (which is another contentious issue), this implies that around 5.7 million South Africans were living with HIV at the end of 2007, including 280,000 children under 15 years old.

The ASSA2003 model produces a similar estimate of 5.4 million people living with HIV in mid-2006, or around 11% of the total population. It predicts that the number will exceed 6 million by 2015, by which time around 5.4 million South Africans will have died of AIDS.

Of course, the picture is no different in the rest of black Africa, but South Africa presents an especially grave case, even more so in light of the position of relative prosperity vis-à-vis other African countries that white rule has given the nation. But of course, what can you expect if for years on end ANC thugs can produce no one better than a Manto Tshabalala-Msimang for Health Minister, whose recipe in 2006 against AIDS was... eating garlic and beetroot. It took the departure of Thabo Mbeki as SA President for Tshabalala-Msimang to disappear from the scene... in September 2008.

Along the way of Africa's plight something happened though, in 2003. That was the year PEPFAR was launched. PEPFAR stands for the "President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief" and involved a $15 billion commitment over five years (2003–2008) from President Bush to fight the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, with an almost exclusive focus on African countries. PEPFAR initially aimed to give antiretroviral treatment (ART) to 2 million HIV-infected people in the worst affected areas, to prevent 7 million new cases, and to provide care for 10 million people (the "2-7-10 goals") by 2010. PEPFAR was a very effective initiative, increasing the number of Africans receiving ART from 50,000 in 2003 to 1.1 million by March 2007 and an estimated 1.4 million by early 2008, at about the time that Michelle Obama deemed this accomplishment as yet another US feat she, as a African American, could not be proud of. Even though 1.4 million is still small compared to the roughly 33 million HIV/AIDS sufferers worldwide, it's not exaggerated to state that PEPFAR is one of the most successful medical/humanitarian programs of the past decades.




Actually, by early 2008 he money spent was rather 18 billion dollars, 3 billion up from the original goal of 15. But you wouldn't know that from the MSM. Nor would you know from them that, as PEPFAR I expired earlier this year, President Bush had a PEPFAR II in the scaffolds:

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - WASHINGTON - AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), hailed President Bush for signing legislation to re-authorize PEPFAR (the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). The measure, which was signed in a formal signing ceremony earlier today in Washington, increases funding for the successful global AIDS program from $15 billion up to $48 billion over the next five years. As a result, PEPFAR, which is likely to be among the President’s most successful and lasting legacies, will save five to seven million lives over the next five years.

“Passage of this historic legislation is a crucial turning point in the battle to control AIDS around the world,” said Michael Weinstein, President, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which provides medical care and services to more than 79,000 individuals in 20 countries worldwide. ”Over the past several months, AHF worked diligently to persuade legislators to restore PEPFAR’s priority on treatment. We take our hats off to everyone who helped ensure that this lifesaving global AIDS bill became a reality.”

It was all to no avail.

On November 9, 2008, Desmond Tutu was allowed to write in the Washington Post:

Today Africans walk taller than they did a week ago -- just as they did when Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president in 1994. Not only Africans, but people everywhere who have been the victims of discrimination at the hands of white Westerners, have a new pride in who they are. If a dark-skinned person can become the leader of the world's most powerful nation, what is to stop children everywhere from aiming for the stars? The fact that Obama's Kenyan grandfather was a convert to Islam may -- shamefully -- have been controversial in parts of the United States, but elsewhere in the world, Obama's multi-faith heritage is an inspiration.

And the president-elect has one additional key quality: He is not George W. Bush.

Someone tell this... f*cking fool, asshat superdeluxe, ignorant dimwit, overrated fourteenth rank "bishop", blistering idiot with long overdue porridge for brains... THAT IF MILLIONS OF AFRICANS ARE TODAY WALKING TALLER THAN THEY DID FIVE YEARS AGO... IT IS BECAUSE OF GEORGE W. BUSH!!!





In Flanders, we have a saying: "Ondank is 's werelds loon" - Ingratitude is the world's reward.

It most certainly is.


MFBB.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The Nativity by Federico Barocci (1597). Currently on display in the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.

DowneastBlog wishes all its readers of good will a Merry Christmas!!!


MFBB.

THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY: CHRONICLE OF A DEPRESSION FORETOLD.

Regular reader and commenter Mark, who is no longer from Colorado and now prefers to go by the moniker of Spiral, tirelessly provides us with excellent, insightful links. One of the latest caught my eye. It's a WSJ article by Andrew Wilson, titled "Thatcher wouldn't have gone wobbly on Detroit." Especially at a time when the Messiah seems to succeed in selling everyone the phantasmagoria pipe dream of the benefits of a trillion dollar injection to ward off the US's economic woes, I thought I might just share it. Thanks Mark!

The incoming administration is talking about spending hundreds of billions on public works with the hope of creating some jobs, but remember: 93.3% of Americans, though shaken, already have jobs. So what to do?

The government must do something, and something fairly big, to jump-start the economy, an economist friend told me. His point was that the private sector is too shell-shocked to climb out of the hole it is now in, and government needs to take the lead. He also quoted the old shibboleth among economists -- the "fallacy of composition" -- which argues that what might be a good course of action for an individual can lead to disaster if widely adopted by members of the larger group. In this case, disaster could be the result if there was too strong a preference for savings over consumption.

I disagree with this whole line of thought. It reminds me of the open letter that 364 economists addressed to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1981, condemning her for daring to cut public borrowing in the midst of a recession, which was contrary to the Keynesian orthodoxy at the time. They did not accept Mrs. Thatcher's reasoning that too much public-sector borrowing and government-directed investment could only crowd out private-sector borrowing and risk-taking.

They also implicitly rejected Mrs. Thatcher's strongly held belief that both governments and individuals must be guided by fundamental rules of common sense and frugality, in good times and bad. The economists described her thinking on this score as naive. Mrs. Thatcher spurned the collective wisdom of the 364 economists, seeing their advice as just more of the same failed interventionist policy prescriptions which the country had followed for over three decades. When she came to power in May 1979, the British economy, by every measure, was in worse shape than the U.S. economy is today. Inflation was out of control. Unemployment was high and rising rapidly. Job creation had been at a total standstill for almost a decade and a half...

... President-elect Barack Obama has said that he expects things to get worse before they get better. If the experience of the first Thatcher administration is anything to go by, that will certainly be the case. For one thing, some "hidden unemployment," as Mrs. Thatcher called it, will be flushed out into the open. This will be the case with the expected closure of the Big Three's "job banks," which pay almost full wages and benefits to several thousand auto workers for doing nothing.

With the elimination of much higher levels of "over-manning" in parts of British industry that were heavily unionized and subsidized, unemployment doubled to 12% in Mrs. Thatcher's first three years in office. Yet by sticking to her policies of lightened regulation, reduced trade barriers, privatization of a raft of publicly owned companies, reduced taxation, and the adoption of laws to prevent abuses of union power, Mrs. Thatcher achieved something few if any of today's economists have begun to consider. She achieved a genuine, productivity-led recovery that transformed Britain from perennial basket case into the Europe's most improved and vibrant economy.

U.S. policy makers and professional economists should study her example in order to turn this time of crisis into useful and enduring change. As she herself said, "Economics is too important just to be left to the economists."

I seem to detect an imho rather illogical line of thought there where Mr. Wilson writes: "President-elect Barack Obama has said that he expects things to get worse before they get better. If the experience of the first Thatcher administration is anything to go by, that will certainly be the case.", because it implies that Mr. Obama is going to do what Mrs. Thatcher did. This, of course, he won't do, since it is clear for everyone but the deaf and blind that the president-elect is hell bent on treating the US to a New Deal v2.0. Because Mr. Wilson rightly concludes by pointing out the merits of the Thatcher method, I assume it was just a lapsus of his. Let us sum up Thatcher's key measures, as noted by Wilson:

* lightened regulation
* reduced trade barriers
* privatization of a raft of publicly owned companies
* reduced taxation
* the adoption of laws to prevent abuses of union power

Let us now see how Obama's proposals measure up to Thatcher's success recipe

* Obama has promised more regulation
* Obama stance on NAFTA varies between lukewarm enthusiasm and closet hostility
* Obama's plans for "federal oversight" of the Big Three reeks almost like a desire to nationalize an important part of US carmakers
* Under Obama, the Bush tax cuts will expire, and the top two tax rates will likely to return to 36 and 39.6 percent. That's just for starters
* Obama wants to make the "Employee Free Choice Act" the "Law of the Land".

Don't know how it is with you, but I can't find anything Thatcherite in Obama's to do list. To top it all off, he has promised to embark on a public infrastructure project "unseen since the fifties". Good luck with that. He should know that keynesianism does not work, but I'm not making myself any illusions anymore. During a 60 Minutes appearance in November, Obama heaped praise on a book dealing with FDR. Over at Instapundit, a commenter named Greg Gransden wrote:

I watched it, too. I would have been more reassured if the FDR book Obama says he’s been reading was Amity Shlaes’ “The Forgotten Man,” which painstakingly demonstrates how Roosevelt’s economic policies helped to prolong and worsen the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, the book Obama’s been reading actually lavishes praise on FDR’s economic management in the early months of his presidency - which seems to me precisely the wrong lesson to take away from that period.

With Glenn Reynolds, I might say: "Indeed".




Barack Hussein Obama. Machinist of the Perfect Economic Trainwreck, barreling toward you. Don't say you haven't been warned.


MFBB.

BELGIAN MINISTER OF DEFENSE TELLS SOCIALIST MP HE'S "IN THE CAMP OF USAMA BIN LADEN AND HIS FRIENDS BOMBLAYERS AND RAPISTS."

Oh the irony! At the moment the USA seems to make a sharp leftward bend, Belgium more or less emerges from the stagnation of eight years of leftist rule. A simple scene like below could never have happened even one year ago:





I don't blame nobody for not understanding Dutch/Flemish, a language spoken by, give and take, 23 million people worldwide (without counting Afrikaans). Here's what's being said in that video:

(voice of news anchor): Groen! [the Flemish greens - MFBB] and SP.a [the Flemish socialists - MFBB] doubt whether the army has the financial clout to send more troops to Afghanistan and claim that NATO is "doing things the wrong way there".

Wouter De Vriendt (MP, Flemish greens): "I think that the Leterme governmnet is making a clear ideological choice here, an idelogical choice whereby one follows the American war logic."

Dirk Van Der Maelen (MP, Flemish Socialists): "This minister, followed by this government, is dragging our country into a hopeless and illegal war in Afghanistan."

[Reply by] Pieter De Crem (Belgian Minister of Defense, Christian Democrats): "You are, Mr. Van Der Maelen, completely isolated. You find yourself in the camp of Osama Bin Laden and his friends bomblayers and rapists. You are an objective partner of the bomblayers and of those who cut off the ears of girls when they attend school."

So what we have here is a November 5, 2008 meeting in the House Committee for Defense whereby the Belgian Minister of Defense, Pieter de Crem (Christian Democrats), has to field questions by the opposition, mainly the Flemish greens (Groen!) and the Flemish socialists. De Crem is the man who, immediately upon formation of the Leterme government in Spring 2008, took the necessary steps to send at least a token contribution to the real fight in Afghanistan. While it is true that on average some 300 Belgian troops have been guarding Kabul International Airport (KAIA) since 2002 (and been doing a fairly good job of it), it is also commonly known throughout NATO that this assignment is one of the safest in the whole country. Apart from that, for several years now a small demining detachment is active in the north around Kunduz, embedded with German troops. While both assignments are not completely without risk it is clear that the Belgian ISAF committment is a far cry from the active involvement in combat operations by, e.g., the Dutch. The most visible change since De Crem took the helm at Defense is that since mid-September, four F-16 MLU5 fighter bombers are actively participating in CAS (Close Air Support) operations, together with Dutch and French planes, from the southern Kandahar Airport. According to the Belgian Air Force website, on average every other day the missions involve bombing and strafing of Taliban positions. As small as this contribution may be, given the political climate in Belgium this is something of a small miracle. It's not that the will to fight has left the military itself - in early September, possibly encouraged by now having a normal Secdef after eight catastrophic years under the Walloon socialist André Flahaut, Major General Testelmans, Chief of the Belgian Ground Forces, hinted that the Army could do more than humanitarian operations and even stated that Belgian troops were ready for the fight in Afghanistan's south. He, and his Minister, were immediately treated like reckless anachronistic Rambos on steroids not only by the opposition but even by some MP's from the Liberal Party. A case like this shows once again how difficult it has become to project a credible defense in European countries. Leftist and center-left politicians have evolved into actual adversaries of the military - a very dangerous development and one which is actually completely in line with their policy of weakening our states from within. In Germany, the greens objected to the sending of a mere six Tornado fighter bombers to AF on the grounds that... they would unnecessarily contribute to the greenhouse effect (I kid you not). In Spain, the socialist Minister of Defense, Carmen Chacon, has more or less vowed that she wants to strip the Spanish Armed Forces of every armed component (again, I kid you not). How else would you explain her quote: "I am a pacifist, as are the armies of the 21st Century." At the same time however, Madama Pacifist is not shy of signing huge arms contracts with Hugo Chavez. Logic and leftism, the two don't go together. As for Sweden, at the time of this writing it seems that the Swedish military has been more or less castrated and would now number around... 20,000.

An interesting photo. Belgian groundcrew tend to an F-16 on Kandahar Airport. Clearly visible is the brand new sniper pod, the successor to the LANTIRN, offering such razorsharp images that the risk of confusing Taliban with ordinary afghans citizens is greatly reduced.

Recent data and pics of the Belgian fighter bombers in Kandahar are hard to come by, especially news of operations. I highly suspect that the MoD has ordered a complete radio silence, since, socialists being what they are, the news of a Taliban terrorist with a broken toenail as a result of a confrontation with the Belgian Air Force might provoke such spasms among our moral betters that they might get in a position to force the redeployment of our F-16's to, say, the Ursel airstrip near Bruges. So Minister De Crem is probably being just wise. Which means that, to get some idea of Belgium's very first real involvement in the WOIT after more than seven years, I have to make do with this short 2006 video, taken during the F-16's first stint in AF, during which they were limited to recce missions. Either way, the crews and ground personnel are competent, and the planes, although old, have been kept up to date. I'm pretty sure they're pulling off a good job. Better late than never. Hat tip for the video of the meeting Luc Van Braekel.





MFBB.

THE TODD BEAMERS OF 1941.

December 7 1941, Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii Islands. Early in the morning...

...."Here, too, most people were still in bed. Two exceptions - Lieutenants George Welch and Ken Taylor, a couple of pilots stationed at the small Haleiwa air strip on the west coast of the island. Welch and Taylor had come over for the weekly Saturday dance. Then they got involved in an all-night poker game. Now Welch was arguing that they should forget all about bed and drive back to Haleiwa for an early-morning swim. This debate was perhaps the liveliest thing happening at Wheeler..."

(from Day of Infamy, by Walter Lord, pages 59-60).


At 8:02 am, the first Japanese dive bomber peeled off over Wheeler AFB. Bullets tore through men's lockers, bombs smashed hangars and planes. Zero fighters strafed everything that moved...

"... In the officer's club, Lieutenants Welch and Taylor stopped debating whether to go swimming. Welch grabbed the phone and called Haleiwa, where their P-40's were kept. Yes, the planes were all right... yes, they would be gassed up and loaded right away. Welch slammed down the receiver, hopped into Taylor's car, and the two careened off to Haleiwa, prodded along by a strafing Zero...."

(from Day of Infamy, by Walter Lord, page 81).


As bombs rained down on the Arizona, Nevada, Maryland, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Downes, Cassin and so many others...

..."It's hard to say how many planes really did get up from Wheeler. General Howard Davidson, commanding all the fighters, thought about 14. Air Force records indicate no P-40s and only a handful of worthless P-36s. Perhaps the general was counting in Welch and Taylor, who landed three different times and then took off again. These two were having a busy morning. After reaching Haleiwa, they had rushed straight for their planes. No briefing or checking out - Major Austin, the squadron commander, was off deerhunting, and they didn't bother with Lieutenant Rogers, the acting CO. They just took off. First they flew down to Barber Point, where the Japanese were said to be rendezvousing. Nobody there. Just as well - there hadn't beent time to belt up enough ammunition. So they dropped by Wheeler to get some more. By nine o'clock they were almost ready to take off again when seven Japanese planes swept in from Hickam for one last strafing run. Welch and Taylor gunned their P-40s and flew straight at them. Both men were up and away before the Japanese could give chase. Instead, the P-40s managed to get into the Japanese flight pattern and shot two down-one was the plane that grazed the eucalyptus tree behind Mr. Young's laundry. Then Welch and Taylor headed for Ewa, where they had seen some dive bombers at work. It was a picnic. Between them, they got four more before Taylor had to land with a wounded arm. Welch stayed on and picked off another...."

(from Day of Infamy, by Walter Lord, pages 151-152).

"Let's roll." Lieutenants Kenneth Taylor (left) and George Welch (right) bagged seven of the eleven planes shot down by Army pilots.

Tell your kids. It's important.


MFBB.

SIGN OF THE TIMES.

December 6 is Santa Claus Day. I do not know how exactly Santa Claus is celebrated in Anglosaxon countries, or even other European countries for that matter, but in the Low Countries, it's a kid's event with the impact of Halloween. First off, we call Santa Claus "Sinterklaas". In the days and even weeks prior to December 6, he, that is to say one of his numerous Doppelgaengers, can be seen in the streets distributing candy. In The Netherlands more often than in Belgium on his white horse, see pic, but in both countries he is invariably accompanied by several helpers commonly referred to as "Zwarte Pieten" ("Black Peters"). In our postchristian societies where political correctness has gone criminally insane, the role pattern of White Saint/Black aides has come under heavy fire recently, but that is not the topic I want to talk about tonight. Anyway, apart from the appearance of your instant "Sinterklaas" in the streets - often hired by toy shops to foster in the kiddos an appetite for presents - gazillions of Belgian families with young children have, throughout the ages, staged the arrival of the Good White Saint with his trademark white beard, red cloak and high mitre emblazoned with a golden cross in the homely circle, to shower the kids with toys and candy. For those parents wishing to add that extra touch, they encouraged their young offspring to write a letter with a wishing list to Sinterklaas on December 5, put it in a shoe under the chimney (the supposed entrance of the Toy Saint) and hope for the best come the next day. Depending on the degree they had been good kids throughout the previous year, they could expect to see all or part of their wishes fulfilled.

So, that should do for the introduction of what is one of those ever returning Icons of our popular culture.

I have the good fortune of having a sister who is so kind hearted towards children (perhaps because she hasn't them of her own) that she organizes a Santa Claus evening every year for the extended family on which she hires the services of a "professional" Sinterklaas together with one Zwarte Piet. There's a number of couples among us with children still small enough to believe in the Holy Man descending from chimneys and handing out the rewards for not having been (too) naughty. So this evening, we off to my sister's home somewhere in Belgium's northwest.

I took the following pic when it was my daughter's turn to listen to Sinterklaas's lecturing on her behaviour throughout 08.

Something was different on his mitre. Something that was not there during the same celebration one year ago, or in the preceding years.

Look at his mitre.




The cross was gone.

When the "performance" was over, Sinterklaas quickly disappeared, together with his Zwarte Piet, before I had the occasion to ask him some questions about his wardrobe dysfunction. However, he did exchange some words with my brother-in-law, who had hired him in the first place, and afterwards the latter told me the "Sint" (abbreviation) had confided to him that the organization which dispatches the Santa Clauses (remember, these are "professionals") had received instructions to remove the crosses from their mitres in order "to be less offensive". Which institution had given the instructions my brother-in-law could not tell me. However, even more frightening was the news that at least in certain neighborhoods of Antwerp the ceremony had been forbidden altogether in several schools.

In Antwerp, one third of pupils is muslim already. During Spring, the decision of the Antwerp Town Selectman for Education, the socialist Robert Voorhamme, to allow only halal meat for lunch packages on school trips, including for non-muslim kids, caused some uproar (but not that much, many indigenous people seem resigned to their fate of becoming dhimmis). I haven't had the occasion to check out personally to what extent the passing of Santa Claus has been forbidden in Antwerp schools, but given the recent developments I have every reason to believe it's at least true for several ones. Those would be the ones where almost all indigenous kids have been replaced with Moroccan kids. After a couple of years, the results of the soft ethnic cleansing which is relentlessly taking place can be shocking indeed.

Sharia law which is now de facto operating parallel alongside British law in the UK; the white uniforms the Brussels Police is considering to appear less aggressive when confronting scores of young Moroccans (they will however presumably keep the black ones to harass VB personages), two hundred mosques set to be built in France the next few years, Moroccan Secret Service agents monitoring everything that happens in The Netherlands, the Turkish President exhorting Turks living in Germany to certaily NOT assimilate and remain Turkish, the Syrian Grand Mufti blasting European MP's personally for "allowing" the Danish cartoons, the exponential rise of the number of no-go zones, the French and Dutch Intifadas....

... when I set off this evening with my wife and my kids to participate in an innocent age old tradition in which I myself was brought up (and enjoyed tremendously), I thought I could forget about all that for a couple of hours...

...I was wrong.


MFBB.

MAKES SENSE AFTER MUMBAI. NOT.

From the NYT, Dec. 4, 2008:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s aides say he is considering making a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office.

So where should he do it? The list of Islamic world capitals is long, and includes the obvious —Riyadh, Kuwait City, Islamabad — and the not-so-obvious — Male (the Maldives), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Some wise-guys have even suggested Dearborn, Mich., as a possibility.

....

But Jakarta’s too easy. Mr. Asali thought so too: “Jakarta? People would yawn about that.” Sure, Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country — some 177 million Muslims live there — but the very fact that Mr. Obama once lived and went to school there would make choosing it seem like cheating.

Baghdad? Definitely out-of-the-box, but it could appear to validate the Iraq war, which Mr. Obama opposed. Beirut? Too many Hezbollah members — Secret Service would flip its collective lid — and anyway, the Lebanese president has always been a Christian.

Tehran? Too soon for that. Amman? Been there, done that. Islamabad? Too dangerous. Ankara? Too safe. Plus the Turks aren’t going to be too crazy about being used for outreach to the Muslim world when they’re trying to join the European Union.

I asked a senior Turkish diplomat what he thought. He immediately started acting, well, diplomatic. “We don’t have a problem with our Islamic identity,” he said. “But our system is secular.”

Riyadh? Mr. Obama’s national security aides say no.

Kuwait City? Abu Dhabi? Doha? “I don’t think it will be in the Gulf,” one foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama said.

See? It’s got to be Cairo. Egypt is perfect. It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but there are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there. It has got the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that has been embraced by a wide spectrum of the Islamic world, including the disenfranchised and the disaffected.

The Secret Service won’t like it one bit, but Cairo is no Islamabad. I called the Egyptian Embassy in Washington to ask officials there what they thought. Someone from Mr. Obama’s team had already mentioned the possibility, although embassy officials said Egypt has not been approached about a possible presidential trip to Cairo.

Did you notice that? "Teheran? Too soon for that." Which means that at some point Teheran might be kosher to give an Outreach Speech. Some points to consider:

* President elect B. Hussein has said he would favor unconditional talks with the Iranian regime
* Ahmadinejad congratulated President elect B. Hussein with his victory
* Just last week, Ahmadinejad threatened again with the destruction of the Jewish state.


Am I awake or am I dreaming?


MFBB.

ISLAMIC CANCER EATING AWAY INDIA (2).

It's not that I'm a sensation junkie, but just watch this:

Clutching a toy basketball, his face contorted by tears, this is Moshe Holtzberg at today's memorial service for his parents. The two-year-old orphan's rabbi father and mother were murdered in Mumbai's Jewish centre...

So, this 2-year old boy, the son of rabbi Gavriel Holzberg and his wife Rivka, 29 and 28 years old at the time of their death, is now an orphan. Rivka was pregnant. It didn't stop her muslim murderers from killing her, quite the contrary. Muslim terrorists stormed the small Jewish centre in Mumbai where the couple were helping out the poor and sick, and murdered them in cold blood.

I don't know how it is with you, but it is with mounting anger that I have been watching and reading news coverage of the Mumbai massacre. Whorenalists the world over have been going out of their way of not invoking the M- and I-words. One exception, the WSJ's Tom Gross asks: If this isn't terrorism, what is?

...We have started seeing this already on the BBC -- the world's largest TV and radio network, which broadcasts in dozens of different languages around the world and is lavishly funded by the British taxpayer.

You would be hard pressed to find any talk of radical Islam on the BBC in recent days, or mention of the fact that Islamists think India should be a Muslim country. Instead the BBC continues to try to persuade its massive global audience that "it is a local Indian problem," that "the subcontinent has a history of unrest," and so on.

Even the Pakistani angle has been presented as some kind of local Pakistan-India dispute rather than as a problem with radical Islam -- this despite the fact that according to numerous reports the Mumbai terrorists themselves were screaming "Allah Akbar" (Allah is the Greatest) as they murdered "the Jews and the infidels" in line with bin Ladenist ideology.

For some time, many have argued that an element of anti-Semitism has distorted the way the BBC covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But now, following the Mumbai events, we can perhaps see that anti-Semitism may even be at work in the way the BBC covers foreign news in general. For much of the Mumbai siege, the BBC went out of its way to avoid reporting that the Jewish community center was one of the seven targets. At one point viewers were told that "an office building" had been targeted (referring to the Jewish center as such).

Then on Friday morning, TV pictures of Indian commandos storming the besieged Jewish center were broadcast by networks around the world. Heavily armed commandos, their faces covered by balaclavas, rappelled from helicopters onto the roof while Indian sharpshooters in buildings opposite opened fire and a helicopter circled overhead. Huge crowds of onlookers could be seen looking aghast as they watched from nearby streets. While Sky News and other channels were gripped by these dramatic pictures, BBC World was not, almost pretending there was no siege at the Jewish center -- even though by then it was one of only two sites that remained under attack in Mumbai. Had the terrorists chosen to besiege a church or mosque instead, can you imagine the BBC ignoring it this way?

Meanwhile -- perhaps even more disgracefully -- a New York Times report on the last day of the siege stated: "It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."

Has the New York Times learned anything since the Holocaust, when, even after the war ended in the spring of 1945, the paper infamously refused to report that the Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans and so on killed in the camps had been Jews, and killed as Jews?

Dozens of eyewitness accounts by local Indians said the gunmen shouted "Allah Akbar" from the Jewish center. It is housed in a nondescript block and is not obviously marked from the outside as a Jewish center. It is the one Jewish building in a densely crowded city of millions. And the Times, the self-proclaimed paper of record, wants to let readers think it might have been an accidental target?

But Gross is but one voice in a global cacophony of lying cowards. Once again, it's up to citizen journalists to call a spade a spade. Over at Atlas Shrugs, Pamela Geller does a magnificent job of it.

But for every Pamela Geller there seem to be a hundred Paul Cornishes. Who the hell is "Dr." Paul Cornish??? He's the Head of the International Security Programme and Carrington Chair in International Security, Chatham House. Read this swine's drivel and be shocked. The conclusion of this monster's diatribe is that the Mumbai terrorists were... looking for the spotlights!

Perhaps we have come to the point where casually self-radicalised, sociopathic individuals can form a loose organisation, acquire sufficient weapons and equipment for a few thousand dollars, make a basic plan of action and indulge in a violent expression of their generalised disaffection and anomie. These individuals indulge in terrorism simply because they can, while their audience concocts a rationale on their behalf.

Welcome to the age of celebrity terrorism.

The invitation to the world's D-list malcontents reads as follows: No matter how corrupt your moral sense, how contorted your view of the world, how vapid and inarticulate your ideas, how talentless you are and how exaggerated your grievance, an obsessive audience will watch your every move and turn you into what you most want to be, just before your death.

I lifted "Dr." Cornish's column from the BBC Online, but I guess that don't surprise anyone anymore. Over at CDR Salamander, you and I, the dumb common folk, can read for ourselves what has eluded the all seing eye of the great doctor:

"Restaurant workers there ushered guests closest to the kitchen inside. The assailants jumped in front of another group that tried to run out the door. "Stop," they shouted in Hindi. They corralled 16 diners and led them up to the 20th floor. One man in the group dialed his wife in London and told her he'd been taken hostage but was OK. "Everybody drop your phones," one of the assailants shouted, apparently overhearing. Phones clattered to the floor as the three women and 13 men dug through their purses and pockets and obeyed.

On the 20th floor, the gunmen shoved the group out of the stairwell. They lined up the 13 men and three women and lifted their weapons. "Why are you doing this to us?" a man called out. "We haven't done anything to you."

"Remember Babri Masjid?" one of the gunmen shouted, referring to a 16th-century mosque built by India's first Mughal Muslim emperor and destroyed by Hindu radicals in 1992.

"Remember Godhra?" the second attacker asked, a reference to the town in the Indian state of Gujarat where religious rioting that evolved into an anti-Muslim pogrom began in 2002.

"We are Turkish. We are Muslim," someone in the group screamed. One of the gunmen motioned for two Turks in the group to step aside.

Then they pointed their weapons at the rest and squeezed the triggers."

Notice that the Turkish couple apparently understood very well the little thingy that could mean the difference between life and death.

Meanwhile, in Europe....

ITALIAN POLICE ARREST SUSPECTS FOR ALLEGED TERROR PLOT

ROME, Italy (CNN) -- Italian police Tuesday arrested two Moroccans suspected of preparing a series of terrorist attacks near Milan in northern Italy, the police announced.

Officials say the two were recruiting men and planning attacks against military and civilian targets, including the immigration office of a police station, a barracks for the Carabinieri -- or special paramilitary units -- and a shopping center. All presumed targets are located in the vicinity of Milan, Italy's financial hub.

Police named the two suspects as Rachid Ilhami, a 31-year-old preacher, and Gafir Abdelkader, 42. Both are accused of "international terrorism," a crime introduced in Italy after the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States.

And also in Europe, in that lovely country of wooden shoes and windmills (for the time being at least), more precisely in Rotterdam-South, the Essalam mosque is scheduled to be ready by the end of 2009.




Rotterdam is Europes biggest port. In October, Ahmed Aboutaleb, a muslim of Moroccan descent and the son of an imam, was appointed Mayor of Rotterdam by the PvdA-dominated City Council. The PvdA is one of the two main Dutch socialist parties. Wouter Bos, a PvdA Chairman and now Dutch Minister of Finance, was the one who steered Aboutaleb into Dutch politics.

A nightmare is descending over Europe.



MFBB.

TAKUAN SEIYO NAILS IT.

This evening, over at The Brussels Journal, I read yet another magnificent column from that most talented editor Takuan Seiyo (a pseudonym) who, as no other, can paint the not so pretty picture of the West's demise. A demise that should not have to be were it not for those among us almost "dying" to commit cultural suicide. Compared to Takuan Seiyo, I am but a worm. Here it is:

From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 3: From Encirclement to Breakout
From the desk of Takuan Seiyo on Thu, 2008-11-27 10:22


The night that changed the world

This serial essay started with the assumption that Barack Hussein Obama’s election as the 44th President of the United States would accelerate the creation of a multicultural supra-state encompassing all the countries founded and developed by whites. This entity, that I called Meccania, would be an ideological extension of the European Union, suppressing and diluting its white majority, its original civilization and its civic freedoms while force-flooding its territories with ever more black, brown and Muslim minorities, and increasing state control over all areas of life.

A week after Mr. Obama’s election, it was impossible to exaggerate its impact on the world. That oxen had been slain for feasts in Kenya, and black Americans had cried for joy is fair and normal. But what the descendants of Europa were doing was unique, fascinating and terrible. They were dancing on their own grave in euphoric rapture, by the hundred millions, celebrating their own demise.

There were the leading airheads. For Gordon Brown, “America stands at its own dawn of hope” and St. Obama is about to usher a new age of “progressive multilateralism.” For Madame Sarkozy, the election of Obama was a fount of "immense joy" and hope that the "Obama effect" would reshape French society. For America’s “conservative” President Bush, Obama's win was 'good for our country'.

Journalists, those custodians of facts who are supposed to inform the public, were writing about Mr. Obama, “Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope.”

Norway's Aftenposten wrote, "We have great hopes that we are standing at the dawn of a new era." Dominique Moïsi, a senior adviser to the French Institute for International Relations, crowed, “And now we have to think, too, about our identity in France. We realize we are late, and America has regained the torch of a moral revolution.” And Germany upped the ante by electing a Turk as leader of the Green Party, with the MSM hailing it as a “major turning point”.

What is going on here? For the record, I do not believe that there is anything intrinsically wrong with electing a black president in a country whose blacks have a longer tenure on its soil than perhaps 80% of its white population. It depends on who is the black person being elected.

In the case of Barack Obama, from university through election to the US presidency, every step of his career was either arranged for him by, or served to further the cause of, black ultra-racists, black racial shakedown thugs, terrorists, felons, scam-artists, blackmail and economic mayhem organizations (e.g. ACORN), and communists. Just a sample of the names linked irrefutably to the 44th U.S. President includes Saul Alinsky, Frank Marshall Davis, Khalid al-Mansoor, Antoine Rezko, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Nadhmi Auchi, Louis Farrakhan, Franklin Raines, and Raila Odinga.

A link to any two such malefactors would have sunk any white presidential candidate in a matter of days. Yet Mr. Obama, coasting on a silver tongue and his blackness, and aided by the imbecility of the opposition party and its candidate, has won the ultimate prize.

Young Americans, says American college professor Paul Kengor, don't care about Obama's radical past, because of the failure of the American educational system to teach the lessons of the Cold War and horrors of communism. “This is especially true of higher education,” writes Kengor, “where the leftist worldview is so extreme and so upside down that America's professors share a hearty contempt not for communism but for anti-communism.”

It’s the rare semi-conservative journalist, Peter Hitchens, who read Obama’s election accurately: “The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth”. Walking in a Washington suburb on election night, he observed:

“There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy. They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.”

That “standing against” is now passé. From now on, the U.S. will be adopting such ruinous European mistakes as socialism, witch-hunts for “racists,” full retreat before militant domestic Islam, and vilification of the political right at double speed.

But Europe will be adopting those American diseases that it has so far managed to avoid, starting with the dumbing down of its university education system, coupled with Affirmative Action. Already the burning question on the minds of Europe’s cultural pashas is, Can Europe produce an Obama? Racial minorities that have so far only diluted Europe culturally and financially will now be pushed to dumbed down universities and from there to positions of power from which they will be able to accelerate the decomposition.

The viral global infection has even adopted a slogan from subliterate, irredentist Mexican border jumpers. What began as ‘Si, se puede’ was transformed by Obama’s handlers into ‘Yes, we can,’ and has spread into every European language as 'Oui, nous pouvons' ‘Ja, wir können,’ ‘Ja, we kunnen het,’ etc.

In a recent BJ post about the Belgian establishment’s enthusiasm for Obama, Alexandra Colen wondered whether America’s future will resemble that of Belgium. This is to assert that it will, and that the way to refuse that future is similar as well.

The great asymmetry

95% of America’s black and 90% of America’s Muslim votes went to Obama, and there was never any doubt that they would. Predictably, 67% of Hispanic votes did so as well. But what defies understanding is that 43% of white votes went to Obama. And one subset of the latter – the 78% of Jewish votes cast for their latest Messiah – is so extremely suicidal that it has to be addressed as a separate issue.

It’s the same issue, however, as the support of the European secular left for an invasion of Muslims that will lead to sharia rule; or the support of the majority of Western women for Muslim immigration from which issues an unprecedented wave of murder, rape, and oppression of women; or the support of labor unions for a flood of lower-wage immigrants who displace indigenous workers.

When former US Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president, he averred that he was not supporting Mr. Obama because of his race but because he was “transformational.” The conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh retorted that he could not think of inexperienced, white extreme liberals Mr. Powell had endorsed in the past...

...American blacks act in their racial group’s interest, nullify what they consider white people’ laws when serving in juries, and vote for black candidates, including convicted felons, irrespective of their merit. They have no compunction about using Pod (1) society’s soft social policies to live at the expense of the white taxpayer, nor to engage in electoral fraud in order to gain more power.

During the 2008 election, stories about black electoral fraud were a daily feature in the few media that are still not sworn tools of the left. That ranged from bums registered by ACORN each 72 times as voters, to Helen Jones-Kelley, a black lawyer and high Ohio government official who misused the state’s computer system to find sensitive information about a famous McCain supporter and to mobilize potential donors to the Obama campaign.

Mario Obledo, who was a high California official under Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown and who founded MALDEF, once said, "California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn't like it should leave. Every constitutional office in California is going to be held by Hispanics in the next 20 years. People who don't like such demographic changes should go back to Europe."

Actually, if there still were a Europe, this might be an attractive proposition, preferable to sharing a country with Mr. Obledo and his Body Snatcher vanguard, let alone being ruled by their kind. But in the not-too-distant future, the Muslim phalanx in the Netherlands or in Sweden may say to the indigenous people, if they don’t like sharia to go back to…. where?

For America’s black supremacists and brown irredentists are not alone in treating their adoptive country as a rich imbecile heiress, fit only for a fiscal or physical mugging. Bosnian Muslims in Bern are a conquering tribe. Somalis in Malmö are a predatory tribe. Pakistanis in Birmingham are a tribe with an Islamic conquest agenda. Lebanese thugs in Sydney have already taught Australian women how a tribal group practices “love Leb-style.”

Only Western Europeans and their genetic footprint in the Anglosphere have ceased being tribal. They have foresworn all salient features of tribalism such as group solidarity, group evolutionary strategy, endogamy, ethnocentrism, cultural fealty, not to speak of such salient Third World (and in the past, First World) tribal custom as imposition of the tribal interest over the individual one, physical intimidation and domination of other tribes, different moral codes on the inside and outside of the group, etc.

To the contrary, practically 99.5% of the millions who constitute the West’s ruling class, plus the hundreds of millions they have turned into true believers, hold these truths to be evident that tolerance and non-discrimination of alien tribes and customs within Western society is something so devoutly to be wished that it justifies a gigantic funding of such entities in matters ranging from subprime mortgages for illegal aliens to subsidized mosques for invited jihadis, to the changing of the Western way of life — from textbooks to to animal slaughter practices.

Barack and Mrs. Obama’s deep commitment to their black racial and ethnic heritage has been in much evidence since their student days and during the presidential campaign. But the white men who were the putative leaders of the counter-Obama forces — John McCain, President Bush and the latter’s grey eminence, Karl Rove — had repeatedly proclaimed the glories of multiculturalism, “diversity” and belief in universal equality as the glue that holds America together, rather than a culture, a language, a history, a body of customs and attitudes, attachment to a particular land and to the ancestors buried there — all of which would have borne the predominant stamp of their race and their ancestral culture.

Western blacks vote black, western Muslims vote Muslim, and American Hispanics vote Hispanic. Once in office, “minority” mayors, parliamentarians, cabinet ministers work to further the interests of their respective tribes and their “rainbow coalition,” at the expense of the white majority. They seek to profit by the insanity and weakness of the formerly-white countries in which they live.

But the white majority goes on voting black, Muslim and Hispanic, as though such distinctions didn’t matter. The whites will learn otherwise, and they will learn too late.

If you are a white westerner and still somewhere feel righteous pride for everything we have given the world, check out what your children are being taught. Correct your children's teachers if necessary. Start teaching your children a tiny pearl of our culture every day. For some reason I think it's appropriate to begin with the above picture, originally a magnificent engraving by Albrecht Duerer (your teen kid should know who Duerer was!), of a knight in full armor. I am not a fan of Evola but I do like his (idealistic) description of what a medieval knight embodied: to do what must be done without looking for compensation.

Curiously, or perhaps not so curiously, Takuan Seiyo ends his narrative with the following anecdote:

But during the “coldest winter” of the Korean War, exactly 58 years ago, General Oliver P. Smith, the commander of the 1st Marine Division (USMC) directed the breakout of his forces from their encirclement at the Chosin Reservoir. It took a 70-mile fighting march in subzero weather through enemy lines to the seaport of Hungnam.

When asked if the Marines were retreating, Gen. Smith responded, "Retreat? Hell, we're attacking in a different direction!" During that encirclement, one of Smith’s officers, Colonel and later legendary USMC general himself, Lewis Puller, said to his soldiers, “Remember, you are the 1st Marines! Not all the Communists in Hell can overrun you!"

American knights in Korea. As I write this, an onslaught is coming, especially here in Europe. We need Smith's and Puller's spirit.


MFBB.

CURRENTLY ON MFBB'S BOOKSHELF....

Some important works I'm currently reading.




Today UPS delivered my copy of Fjordman's book "Defeating Eurabia" (BJ Books, via www.lulu.com), which I ordered online barely one week ago. What can I say? It blows you away. Unfortunately, due to a hectic work schedule, this evening I was only able to quickly glance in it, but a look at the Table of Contents to get a grasp of how it's structured, plus some random snippets I picked up here and there throughout its 328 pages, convinced me I had to let our readers know of the birth of a Magnum Opus. Although I am pretty sure Fjordman himself, modest as he is, wouldn't call it like that.

I would wager it was about time Fjordman's numerous essays, written in meticulous English and bursting at the seams with details, were bundled together in a comprehensive volume in print, so that they can be consulted even when you don't have an internet connection or else when there's a power cut. In years to come, this work may increasingly be referred if not as a turning point, then by any means as a marker, a signal that in the years when a turnaround was still possible, not all of Europe was swallowing the mindless nonsense of the multicultural dogmas and offering no resistance either to the cancer of encroaching islam or the betrayal of Europes self-proclaimed elites. Fjordman Rocks, and in a grandiose way. A short post like this one is wholly inadeaquate to bestow "Defeating Eurabia" with the praise it deserves, which, btw, Fjordman does not seek. He looks neither for glory nor for the spotlights. He "just" wishes we become aware of the mortal peril in which Europe currently finds itself - a peril brought about greatly by its own. Here are just a few of a myriad of key quotes:


a.) The Beginning (Chapter "The Eurabia Code", page 9).

"During a November 27, 1967 press conference, Charles de Gaulle stated openly that French cooperation with the Arab world had become "the fundamental basis of our foreign policy." By January 1969, the Second International Conference in support of the Arab Peoples, held in Cairo, in its resolution 15, decided "... to form special parliamentary groups, where they did not exist, and to use the parliamentary platform support of the Arab people and the Palestinian resistance." Five years later in Paris, July 1974, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation was created, under the Euro-Arab Dialogue rubric."

b.) Enemy inside the gates (Chapter "The Muslim Brotherhood's Infiltration of the West", page 57).

"Danish theologian Kirsten Sarauw writes in her article A Declaration of War Against the People of Europe that in 2007 in Vienna, Austria, a conference was held about so-called Euro-Islam. Prominent muslim delegates formulated a strategic vision of a Europe dominated by Islam. Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia, envisioned an "upcoming Islamic era." The conference was in agreement about the first and foremost goal, namely the introduction of religious Islamic jurisprudence (sharia) in Europe, "in the beginning at least as a parallel system alongside national laws in European states." As to the real meaning of sharia, they all agreed to avoid publicity as far as possible. According to Sarauw, Tariq Ramadan proclaimed that the real intentions of this work must be concealed from the general public."

c.) How far the islamic cancer has spread (Chapter "France: can a wounded nation heal itself", page 201).

"In France, muslims already have many smaller states within the state. Criminologist Lucienne Bui Trong wrote that: "From 106 hot points in 1991, we went to 818 sensitive areas in 1999." The term she used, "sensitive areas", was used to describe muslim no-go zones where anything representing a Western institution (post office truck, firemen, even mail order delivery firms) was routinely ambushed with Molotov cocktails. The number was 818 in 2002, when the French government deided to stop collecting the statistics."

d.) How to defeat islam (Chapter "Suggestions for the Future", pages 320 and 322).

"Right now, muslims can enjoy the best of both worlds, and follow primitive religious laws while enjoying the fruits of 21st century civilization. We need to drive home the utter failure of the Islamic model by making sure that muslims should no longer be able to count on permanent Western or infidel aid in their overpopulated, self-primitivized states, whose very unviability they are prevented from recognizing by this constant infusion of aid."

"We should implement a policy of containment of the islamic world, but for this to work we will sometimes have to take military action to crush muslim pretensions to grandeur. The Buddhists of Central Asia undoubtedly held the "moral high ground" in relations to muslims. They are all dead now. At the very least, we must be prepared to back up our ideological defenses with force on certain occasions."

"I'm advocating isolation of the islamic world, not of the West. Even if we cannot allow all non-muslims to freely settle in our lands, this does not mean that they have to be our enemies. Jihad is being waged against the entire non-muslim world, not just the West. We should stop trying to "win the hearts and minds" of muslims instead cooperate with non-muslims. It is important to stress here, however, that this cooperation should be based on mutually shared strategic interests, not on a Western mission to "save the world".

Buy your copy of Fjordman's Defeating Eurabia HERE.


MFBB.

SUNDAY BEAUTIES.

Adriana Lima. American Muslim, this one's for you. Last time I checked, she was still a virgin. Well, what are you waiting for?


MFBB.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. 22 NOVEMBER 2008, VICTORY IN IRAQ DAY.

The war in Iraq is over. The US won. The Intrepid Reporter has an amazing firsthand account:

"Jesus wept. You go to sleep on an airplane that stated the destination as "Baghdad" and you wake up somewhere over the fucking rainbow...

Yepper dear readers, the Intrepid Reporter is back in Baghdad... formerly known as the "Club Saddam-A-Go-Go" and it being the favorite third world shooting gallery for Al Queda and the other refuse from the Slums of Syria and Pitfalls of Palestine... well let me tell you... things changed

A LOT.

Got me a hunch that the current IR Reports are going to be a hell of a lot more boring than my writings of yesteryear in '04 and '05. Hell, even '06 with the "Today I washed my sox and my ass during a rocket attack." being the highlights are going to seem positively electric compared to this snoozefest.

INSANELY changed doesn’t begin to describe this place. I’ve landing in Baghdad under fire before and watched random acts of anti-aircraft fire overhead as the locals would try and unsuccessfully utilize old triple a flak guns… I’ve seen Baghdad under lock and key so to speak throughout 04 and 05. NUTHIN and I do mean NUTHIN can begin to describe the change. Quick observations included the fact that the city was all lit up where it had never been before. Try standing on the runway and not having to worry about random acts of rockets, mortars and suchlike. Try no body armor seen on anyone anywhere since I’ve been here… This place is so laid back its stupid... Hell the place I'm currently dossing used to be considered "Indian Country" back in '04... as in the insurgents used to infiltrate through this very area that I'm staying in and try to ambush mo'fo's as they tooled down the hardball..."

What a difference one year makes. The following video shows you shots taken in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood on April 29, 2007 by a reporter embedded with 1/4 Cav., 4th IBCT. Then follow images taken in the same area on October 26, 2008 by someone with 7/10 Cav. 1st IBCT. Hat tip Outsidethewire.



More interesting analysis and commentary over at zombietime.

This victory has of course come at the terrible cost of now close to 4,100 fatalities among US troops, thus not even counting the also not to be underestimated, though of course far smaller, number of casualties among coalition troops. Thousands more have been wounded and maimed. Of those who came out without physical harm, some suffer from PTSD. The human cost also involves broken families, friendships and relations with parents and siblings severed. Taken those 4,100 dead, I don't feel like I should point out that it's "far less" than WWII, Korea, Vietnam or the Civil War. Doing so would make me feel like a douchebag. Every death is a tragedy and as I am typing this, somewhere out there thousands are grieving and hurting and facing shattered lives. So no, I am NOT going to belittle the human sacrifice...

.. but neither am I going to let the Left get away with their blatant hypocrisy and alleged sympathy for the troops. During the five and a half years that the Left was crying crocodile teears over the now 4,100 American servicemen and -women who paid the ultimate price, their legislation facilitated the murder of an estimated six million Americans in the womb of their mother through induced abortions. For those needing even more perspective, consider the following statistic. Over the past summer, an estimated 125 people were shot and killed in Chicago, nearly the double of US military deaths in Iraq during the same period:





Apart from taking out a strategic enemy, the liberation of Iraq was also, and perhaps foremost, about implementing a Battle of Ideas in what is essentially a conflict between two civilizations - the civilized western world vs. the barbaric islamic world. The festering conflict between Israel and the arab world is but the most visible symptom of the major disease of the ummah sphere, namely its unwillingness to live in peace with other peoples and cultures. By 2003, the West, and in particular the US, had been trying to treat that symptom for far too long, using the worn out tactic of endless negotiations. Some would say that the Israeli-Arab conflict is but a sideshow in the whole spectacular dysfunctional show that islam is presenting literally everywhere it gets a foothold. One would be mistaken. Let us not forget that it was because of the 1973 victory of Israel over the arabs that the latter deemed it "right" that the West was punished with higher oil prices, thus causing a severe worldwide recession. Add to that the numerous incursions in the West of islamic terrorists from even before Muenchen to this very day, and it's hard to escape the conclusion that over the pas six decades, the islamic world, and more specifically the Middle East, has been a pain in the ass because of its two major export products, oil and islamic extremism. Anno 2008 I am glad to have witnessed, five years ago, that the West, and in particular the United States, still could spawn a leader like George W. Bush. He had the guts and the character to leave the safe but utterly useless path of smooth talking to muslim barbarians and try instead the radical tactic of forcing democracy upon them. His endeavour was never an easy one, and even though Iraq is now stablised, Al Qaeda defeated, the insurgencies quelled and the Iraqis themselves now seeming to be solving their disputes via parliamentarian votes instead of AK-47's, the ultimate result of the whole undertaking still remains to be seen. However, I WILL gladly put the jubilant "Victory in Iraq Day" banner on this blog, for the troops who made this tactical victory possible deserve it. The larger, strategic victory will be celebrated when one day, non-muslims will be able to walk freely in Mecca and muslim fathers will not kill their daughters, with the support of their wives, because those daughters are dating christians. Is it foolish to even expect such things ever to happen? Perhaps it is. But IF the Bush Administration's Grand Strategy ever fails, it won't be its fault. It handed democracy, rule of law and the tools for constructing a modern, wealthy society to the Iraqis on a silver plate, be it splattered with the blood of thousands of its soldiers. It is now for Iraqis to PROVE that they are worth the American sacrifice. Will they be? It remains to be seen. Just recently, in an ominous development the Iraqi parliament scrapped a provision in the country's electoral law that guaranteed seats for Iraqi Christians. One priest at Baghdad's Sacred Heart Church, Thair al-Sheekh, was quoted as saying "They told us we don't have a place in our government, and we don't know why"...

... so IF, at the end of this all, perhaps decades in the future, the non-muslim part of humanity decides it really has had enough of the followers of an inhumane, intolerant, xenophobic, mysoginic and utterly incurable religion called islam and sees no other way than to turn Mecca in a smoldering radioactive sea of black glass, it won't be because no other things have been tried first.

It is now up to Iraqis. It is up to muslims. The rest of the world is waiting. For the moment, let the troops celebrate their rightful victory, just like British troops celebrated theirs at El Alamein in 1942, when, too, a positive outcome was also by no means certain, but cheers were nevertheless well deserved.





MFBB.

CHURCHILL WOULD NOD.

Winston Churchill once famously said: "The best argument against democracy is a five minutes conversation with the average voter."

Indeed.





Mind you, I don't think the picture is that different on the Republican side. It's just that apparently the clueless people on the left far outnumbered their counterparts on the right. Being somewhat of a political junkie myself, upon seeing this video I had a sense of déjà vu. Basically it's the same over here, with people being completely unable to answer even the simplest questions. They may know the Prime Minister but once you start asking what exactly the difference between executive and legislative power is, you get blank stares most if not all of the time. As society evolves and becomes more complex, as the whole world in all its facets, from the technology that surrounds us to the legislation that governs our life to the infrastructure that is being raised around us... becomes more complex.... isn't it appropriate that people should at least be able to present a basic understanding of how the political system works, the issues politicians stand for, and the way their votes can make a difference? Years ago I toyed with the idea that in order to be able to cast a vote, people should first be required to submit a test consisting of a limited set of questions proving that at least they understand what is at stake. I don't think such a test would be undemocratic. It's not undemocratic that you are required to have a driver's license before you are allowed on the street in a vehicle weighing a ton and capable of reaching 130 miles an hour. Not requiring a license would lead to a plethora of grave accidents and great loss of life.

Likewise, letting clueless people decide the fate of a nation - people who cast a vote based on a fluffy warm feeling rather than on solid, rational, verifiable facts - strikes me as an act of folly just as crazy, only of a millionfold magnitude. Hey, like I said, society evolves. Why shouldn't the electoral process? Why shouldn't tests be in order?

Hat tip Quid Nimis.



MFBB.

ISLAMIC CANCER EATING AWAY INDIA.

For a vast country and emerging superpower as India, it sure gets little attention. I was reminded of that upon reading the entry "The muslim insurgency in India" in today's Gates of Vienna. Baron Bodissey has some astute remarks:

"India is the single largest theater of conflict in the Counterjihad. There are about 140 million Muslims in India — roughly equivalent to half the population of Western Europe — and they comprise more than 13% of the nation’s population. Since the Partition of 1947, which separated India from Pakistan (and what is now Bangladesh), the percentage of Muslims in India has increased significantly, while the Hindus and Sikhs of Bangladesh and Pakistan have all but disappeared.

India is subjected to frequent and horrendous terrorist attacks committed by Muslim extremists. If the amount of death and suffering caused by the average Muslim terrorist attack in India were experienced in the West, it would be a crisis of unprecedented magnitude. But such things happen in India all the time.

According to the few contacts I have in India, the political culture on the subcontinent is as much in thrall to the madness of political correctness as is the United States or Europe. Well-meaning people want to believe that Muslims in India are just like anybody else, and that any problems with them are due to a lack of understanding or a failure of outreach."

For those offended by the provocative title of this post, read again the first paragraph of the Baron's post. Indeed, despite the fact in 1947 vast migrations took place between what was then West and East Pakistan and India - muslims moving from India to the Pakistans and Hindus into the opposite direction - large numbers of muslims and hindus remained in both countries (it should be recalled that in 1971 East Pakistan became Bangladesh). And yet, sixty years later, both Pakistan and Bangladesh are practically Hindu-free (or shall we say Hindurein), while in India, majority Hindu to begin with, tens of millions of muslims have apparently, if not thrived, then at least lived good enough to prefer to continue live in the world's largest democracy.

It is precisely this observation, which for some reason until now eluded me, that caused me to put the above title in place instead of the more politically correct "Islamic extremism eating away India".

Why is that in EVERY country where a large muslim body becomes majority, the tipping point heralds an accelerated religious cleansing of non-muslim minorities thereafter?

India's The Sunday Pioneer has a compelling article, by Chandan Mitra:

"It's 63 and counting. That's the number of bomb blasts that have happened in India over the last six months. This works out to an average of one every three days! Of course, blasts usually don't happen singly. Most of the time, they are serial in nature for jihadis have perfected the art of creating a cascade of terror, be it in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi or Guwahati.

The Government will not admit this, but the jihadis have succeeded in their diabolical aim of creating an atmosphere of insecurity and fear across the country. No city, no State is immune to this. Even if explosions haven't happened in Kerala yet, it doesn't mean that terror merchants don't have the State on their radar.

...

The terrorists' strategy is two-pronged. First, they wish to destabilise the economy and cripple visible symbols of India's success -- the Bombay Stock Exchange building, Indian Institute of Science and offices of IT giants in Bangalore, to name just two. Alongside, they seek to knock the bottom out of Narendra Modi's Vibrant Gujarat, paralyse Rajasthan's tourism-driven economy, and spread panic through Delhi since events in the national Capital have a multiplier effect on publicity.

Their second, but parallel, strategy is to create pockets of Muslim dominance to serve as recruiting grounds through exploitation of the community's perceived sense of victimhood. That explains the concerted manner in which liberal and "secular" opinion was mobilised in defence of the Batla House terrorists in Delhi and the selective targeting of Bodo people in the Assam blasts -- a transparent bid to coerce indigenous populations of the North-Eastern States into submission...."

I'm sorry to spoil the happy multiculti dreams of a bunch of naives out there, but as time goes by, the evidence becomes undeniable. Islam is Cancer.


MFBB.

UPCOMING: VALKYRIE.

Here's one movie you don't want to miss. Even if you're not a World War Two nutjob like me.



Numerous attempts took place to assassinating Adolf Hitler. None came as close as the one staged by Count Colonel Klaus Schenk Von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944. The fascinating story of that long ago endeavour was just begging to be filmed. Say about Tom Cruise what you will, but over the years I have grudglingly come to respect him as an actor. There was a time in my student's years when he did not seem all that indistinguishable from the Brat Pack, you know, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, Matthew Broderick etc etc. After all these years, there's basically only one still standing - and standing tall: Cruise. I'm sure there are other great actors out there able to play the charismatic Colonel - I think Clive Owen might have pulled off a good job too - but with Cruise I'm sure it's going to be a failsafe shot. The time for release seems incongruous - near year's end and Christmas. But then this is a timeless story. Don't miss it.


MFBB.