SATURDAY NIGHT THE VERVE, BLUR.

The Verve with The drugs don't work.




Blokes from Wigan near Manchester. Formed in 1990. Frontman is Richard Ashcroft.



Blur with Beetlebum.




From the 1997 album Blur.


Goede nacht.



MFBB.

BELGIAN F-16'S TO STAY OVER IRAQ TILL MID-2015; 50 TRAINERS TO ASSIST IRAQI ARMY.

The mission of the 6 Belgian F-16s operating against ISIS from a base in Jordan will be prolonged with another six months, till the end of June 2015. Additionally, the army will dispatch some 50 trainers to assist the Iraqi Army, within the framework of the coalition's Building Partner Capacity program.

It's been almost impossible to obtain hard info regarding the effect of the BAF's airstrikes against ISIS. Last thing I heard myself was when the tally was 18 targets hit (solely over Iraq, our jets don't operate over Syria), but that was two months ago. I suspect the sudden radio silence since then has everything to do with not causing grief to Belgium's sizeable muslim community. There is the fact that ISIS enjoys a tremendous lot of support from our, ahem, well-integrated muslim brethren, a fact easily verifiable online, plus of course Belgium is one of the top European countries per capita to dispatch would be ISIS rambos to Syria and Iraq. So news of our jets vaporizing some target of their champions might lead the more excitable among them to, say, plow a van into an infidel crowd gathered at some Chistmas Fair in one of our cities. Just guessing.

Anyway, I assume our pilots are still continuing the daily two-plane missions. Below you see a recent video shot from a French Armée de l'Air C-135FR tanker resupplying a BAF F-16AM somewhere over Iraq. The jet's ordnance consists of a GBU-12 Laser Guided Bomb and a GBU-38 JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition). There's also two AIM-120 AMRAAMs (Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles) and two AIM-9 Sidewinder IR-guided AA missiles, though I can't see the rationale for carrying such an impressive AA armament in a ground attack operation.

The video also shows a French E3-F AWACS being refueled by the same C-135FR. France's ageing fleet of these planes, which are used in the dual role of tanker plane/transport, will be replaced with Airbus A400M's and A330 MRTT's (Multi Role Tanker Transports).




Now for the bad news. Belgium's small but nevertheless not insignificant presence in international military operations hides an extremely unpleasant truth, namely the intention of the current supposedly center-right government to cut the Defense Budget even more to an appalling and totally irresponsible 0.5 per cent of GDP.


I wrote 'supposedly center-right' because that's what it is, the current government under PM Charles Michel (MR) is first and foremost center-right by perception only. It does indeed plan austerity measures but is not truly committed to reduce the country's core problem: the overwhelming size of the state. The government's approach to the crisis remains just as Keynesian as your run of the mill socialist counterpart. On a population of 11 million, about 1.1 million persons are on the government payroll in one capacity or another. Of every 100 EUR spent in Belgium, reportedly 54 or so are being spent via the State's channels. THIS, together with an insane immigration policy, is what is killing our country's economy. Belgium's entrepreneurs and a small intellectual elite of bright engineers and scientists, together with a by and large first-class but ageing workforce in the ever more shrinking private sector, keep the country from sinking. Every day they are succesfully waging their battles against an ever more usurping government, but all of them are like winning generals in a losing war. The only decent strategy to counter the country's demise would be for the state to completely stop hiring employees and not replacing them when they retire, until there are at least 300,000 less compared to the current level. Furthermore an immediate stop to immigration from muslim countries.

Neither will happen, which is why Belgium, like the rest of Europe, will slowly continue its inevitable decline. Despite the best efforts of the private sector, if nothing happens, our economy will share a fate comparable to that of cement and aggregate in a concrete mixer of which the revolving drum turns ever more slowly: ever more regulations and an ever growing state budget will finally cause the whole shebang to seize up.

Against this backdrop, our small military is setting an example of efficiency, virtually the sole one wherever an effort by the State is on display. Now operating on less than a shoestring budget and with the insane prospect of seeing its budget shrink to even less than the one provided for that old bottomless pit of Development Aid, small miracles are still being performed. Our jets are still capable of destroying islamic terrorists thousands of miles away from home, while others help providing aircover over the Baltic Republics; our frigates take part in successful anti-piracy operations off Somalia; and our troops are helping in peacekeeping operations throughout Africa, demining operations in Lebanon, and training missions as far apart as Congo, Benin, Iraq and Afghanistan.



The BNS Leopold I inspecting a suspicious vessel off the Somali coast during the so-called Operation Atalanta.

The irresponsibility and ignorance of the current crop of young Belgian ministers, in the federal as well as in the regional governments (Michel, De Croo, Schauvlieghe, Geens et al) is breathtaking. In an international geopolitical context that is literally screaming for normal nations to augment their defense budgets, this crew sees fit to instead lower its commitment to.... just 25 per cent of common NATO standard. By contrast, up north, in The Netherlands, they have seen the sign on the wall and the MoD's budget there will again be augmented to 2 per cent of GDP. Admittedly, this decision was possibly spurred by the downing of the Malaysia airliner over the Ukraine this summer by a missile delivered by Putin, a tragedy which cost the lives of some 200 Dutch citizens.

But then this appalling example should have been just as clear a message to our politicians: that the world has not become safer over the past years.

The Belgian government's nonsensical decision to decapitate its military is also a clear sign of the total absence of common sense with regards to the growing domestic threat to our native population. And by that I not only mean the danger from terrorist attacks. Any level-headed politican with a minimal grasp of history should be able to foresee the grave threat to the autochton population posed by Belgium's muslim community, with its runaway demographics. Like in every country where the muslim majority at some point reaches a critical treshold - and this treshold may be well below the 50 per cent mark - a civil war is practically a given.

Indeed, a responsible government should quietly prepare TODAY for the eventuality of 2040, to spare the native population as well as the productive part of our immigrants the fate that has befallen so many in countries where islam began roaring its ugly head. My mom's sister runs a B & B in Bruges, and last month there was an affluent Lebanese couple with children among their guests. The man, a maronite Christian, started to bemoan the fate of his beloved Lebanon, which in his young days, when the ratio Christians/Muslims was along 70/30 per cent lines, was rightly considered the Switzerland of the Middle East. These days, he told my mom's sister and her friend, the population ratios had reversed, "and look at what Lebanon has become". Had I been present, I would have pressed on with questions because, according to R. and B., the man was clearly in a talking mood. B. however, my aunt's friend, cut the communication short with a no-brainer like that 'he respected the guest's view but was in no place to take sides'... after which his Lebanese guest politely refrained from continuing.

Anyway, similar mechanisms as have played out in Lebanon and in Europe's own backyard in the nineties are right now on full display in yet other countries, most notably in western Africa. In Nigeria e.g., muslims have been outbreeding the Christians for decades. To be sure, Islam's ascent in this potentially very rich country has throughout history been borne just as well by several jihads, most notably the one against the Hausa rulers in the early nineteenth century. A further factor has ironically been colonialism, which allowed muslims in the north freedom of movement and religion, which they used to travel south and establish footholds there, while the very nature of islam itself prohibited any such development by Christians in the south vectored towards the north. Anyway, whatever factors have borne the rise of islam in Nigeria, the fact remains that muslims now outnumber Christians, with all the expected consequences.

The Nigerian government can perhaps be excused for not having the resources to protect its citizens against the beasts of Boko Haram, who are quite literally tearing the country, once one of the richest of the continent, apart.

The Belgian government has no such excuse.



MFBB.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

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




I hope most if not all of you were/are somehow able to spend the evening and night among your loved ones, be they family or friends.


Good night.


MFBB.

FRANCE: CASES OF MENTAL ILLNESS SKYROCKETING.

My oh my those poor Fwench, they seem to have a sudden bout of Funny In The Headism lately. A Frenchman attacked police officers in a precinct in Joue-les-Tours last Saturday with a knife and was subsequently shot down. On Sunday, another Frenchman rammed his car in groups of people in several locations in Dijon, ultimately wounding 13. Frenchman #3 on Monday plowed his van in a crowd of people on a Christmas Market in Nantes. And just today, Frenchman #4 was arrested as he approached Nice's Forville market, armed with, amongst others, two pump action shotguns.

BUT DO NOT WORRY, this has all nothing to do with terrorism, all these poor people are simply suffering from "mental illness", there's absolutely no reason to link this to terrorism, and certainly not to islamic terrorism, even though all these fine upstanding citizens were hollering "Allahu Akbar"!

Our bros in arms at Gates of Vienna supplied the following video:




And don't miss Mark Steyn's take on the story:

"~Is it relevant that Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley is a Muslim? Maybe not. But it isn't so irrelevant that every news outlet (including Fox) has to be quite so cautious about mentioning it at all. Newsday, one of the few papers that did, reported the view of Robert Boyce, the NYPD's Chief of Detectives:

Boyce said Brinsley had no gang affiliation or tattoos. His family is Muslim but the NYPD found no indication that he was religious or that the slaying was motivated by religion. He said the family said he never manifested "any radicalization."

So the preferred explanation is mental illness:

The shooter may have had an undiagnosed mental illness, according to his family, and may have been on medication "later on in life," Boyce said in a briefing in Manhattan. But he said he had no official reports of any mental illness.

Indeed. In fact, there's less hard evidence for any mental illness than there is for "radicalization", at least to the extent that Brinsley appears to have posted on his Facebook page the Koranic soundbite about "striking fear into the enemies of Allah". Nevertheless, the preferred explanation is that Brinsley was mentally ill, just like the guy who beheaded a coworker in Oklahoma was mentally ill, and the Sydney bloke who took those hostages at the coffee shop was mentally ill, and the son of the Canadian Refugee Board honcho who killed a soldier at the Canadian War Memorial was mentally ill. They were also all Muslim. Oh, and the fellow in France who ran down 11 people with his car while shouting "Allahu Akbar!" only yesterday has already been pronounced mentally ill. By sheer coincidence, he was Muslim, too.

Is this one of those parlor games - like "Dead or Canadian?" Or "Gay or European?" Don't forget, if you're playing in the western media's daily Nothing-to-See-Here quiz, in the "Crazy or Muslim?" round the correct answer is "Crazy", every time.

These are not mutually incompatible categories: There are dead Canadians, and gay Europeans, and crazy Muslims. To get people to march in the streets shouting "What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!" is relatively easy. To persuade Al Sharpton's swaggering halfwit goons to act on their slogans is another matter. A person has to be suggestible, and there's an accumulation of evidence that in today's world disaffected young Muslim men are the most easily suggestible of all. Whether they're suggestible because they're Muslim or they're Muslim because they're suggestible is one of those chicken-or-egg conundrums."

Happy thoughts to you, and remember, it's got nothing to do with islam. It's just "mental illness", sez Manuel Valls, Fwench PM. And to make sure the mental illnesses are kept under control, the Fwench Army will now deploy heavily armed soldiers in the streets. Thank you, politicians! Thank you thank you thank you!!!



MFBB.

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT PEGIDA YET?

France is toast.

Sweden is fucked.

The UK is somewhere in between.

But in Germany....

Outlaw Mike predicts that it is in Germany that Europes relentless islamization may encounter the greatest resistance yet.

Via The Telegraph:

"A record 17,000 anti-Islamic protesters rallied for their tenth demonstration in as many weeks Monday in eastern Germany, celebrating the rise of their far-right populist movement by singing Christmas carols.

Germany has for weeks grappled with the emergence of the "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident" or PEGIDA, whose ranks in the city of Dresden have swelled rapidly from just a few hundred in October.

About 4,500 counter-demonstrators marched through the city under the slogan "Dresden Nazi-free", warning that there was no space for racism and xenophobia in the country that perpetrated the Holocaust.

Most PEGIDA followers insist they are not Nazis but patriots who worry about the "watering down" of their Christian-rooted culture and traditions. They often accuse mainstream political parties of betraying them and the media of lying.

Braving cold and wet weather, they gathered outside the historic Semperoper concert hall for their pre-Christmas recital. Police put their numbers at about 17,500, up from the previous high of 15,000 a week earlier...."

There's something stirring in Germany, and it does not bode well for the followers of the prophet (piss, excrement and vomit be showered upon him in healthy doses).

That is not to say this is the end; nor the beginning of the end; nor even the end of the beginning. This because Europe is, I fear, already too far down the slippery demographic slope to turn this thing around peacefully. Demography is more difficult to turn around than a rudderless oil tanker, and 40 ~ 50 years of deliberate "people-changing" by the leftist and green lunatics has electrified a Frankenstein Monster of islamization that possibly cannot be eliminated anymore, except perhaps through civil war. Throughout history, EVERY host nation that has been so foolish to admit muslims has experienced either civil war or relentless submission to the parasite becoming the master.

Upon not even so close examination this harsh truth is so utterly irrefutable that it is unbelievable that politicians and media still get away with peddling the same old endless lies. The most prominent person in Germany to do so last week was Chancellor Angela Merkel, who "has cautioned Germans against falling prey to any form of xenophobic "rabble-rousing" - a statement for which she actually deserves to be slapped - mildly, but slapped anyway - across the face. The childless Frau Merkel, unwittingly the most prominent example on display of Germany's demographic deathride, is, besides Chancellor, also the face of German Christian Democrats, or should we rather make that "Christian" "Democrats". As such, she would do better to use her verbal power to denounce the gruesome prosecution of her "fellow" Christians the world over, who are suffering daily under the horrible yoke of islamic supremacism. Indeed, Christianity has replaced Judaism as the world's most persecuted religion, and the silence of German muslims vis-à-vis this horrible, undeniable fact is telling.

That silence is a foreboding of what awaits German Christians, and Germans as a whole, once the muslim minority becomes a majority.
.
It's not that there are no stern warnings given against just such a scenario, even by people who have firsthand info. In 2012 e.g., DowneastBlog sported a post featuring Anba Damian, General Bishop of the German Coptic Church, and if you follow this link, you can check out the video in which Bishop Damian warns Germans against precisely the fate that has befallen Egypts Copts.

But presumably, Frau Merkel categorizes Bishop Damian's warning also as "xenophobic rabble-rousing".

Let it be so then, I welcome the fact of PEGIDA's emergence.

And while I have no use for hooligans, I shall not deny that I welcome the arrival on the scene of yet another group, HogeSa, for Hooligans gegen Salafisten. They may not be cute, but the time for such considerations has come and gone. We have almost come to the point that every warm body that's opposed to the islamization of our lands is welcome - even if we have to cope with some unpleasant whiff.

PEGIDA, HogeSa, ProDeutschland, NPD, Die Freiheit.... it is no coincidence that Europes most powerful anti-muslim movements are German. At some point this political militancy may morph into a military stance - and I have a very, very healthy respect for German military prowess. Certainly, and very unfortunately, in the not so distant past a peculiar brand of German socialism recognized that power also, and abused it for their evil ends. But in the service of a noble ideal: the defense of the "Abendland" against a gruesome and treacherous desert cult, German military power may well be Europes last trump card.



MFBB.

SWEDISH TOP MINISTERS COURTING HAMAS.

A chilling article on recent developments in Sweden over at The Gatestone Institute, by Timon Dias.

"...Sweden, during its September 2014 parliamentary election, voted in a new government. But whom exactly did the people of Sweden elect to run their new government? In a recent (albeit un-sourced) blog, Ilya Meyer, the deputy chair of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Association, shed some light on the backgrounds and motivations of some of Sweden's new cabinet ministers. A few individuals stand out.

The Minister for Housing and Urban Development is the Turkish Swede Mehmet Kaplan, who was aboard the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara, of the Turkish extremist Humanitarian Relief Foundation, when it tried to break through the legal Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza coastline. Israel had established the naval blockade in 2007 in response to the smuggling of weapons into Gaza to arm the terrorist group Hamas, which is outspokenly dedicated to exterminating Israel.

Kaplan has also stated that young European Muslims who are joining the "Islamic State" [IS] in Syria and Iraq are nothing to worry about, and are just similar to Swedish fighters who joined the Finns in WW2 to fight the Soviet Union. He has also claimed at the same time that the main reason young European Muslims are joining the Islamic State is "Western Islamophobia."

Sweden's Minister of Education, Gustav Fridolin, was arrested in Israel in 2003 for allegedly blocking the construction of Israel's security barrier in the West Bank, where he has engaged in protests alongside the International Solidarity Movement – an organization that "recognizes armed struggle as the right of Palestinian Arabs."

Sweden's Minister of Interior, Ardalan Shekarabi, who is also responsible for Domestic Law and Order, is a former illegal immigrant from Iran who defied a Swedish deportation order in 1989 by going into hiding. Shekarabi is also known for embezzling state funds for an integration project to aid in his reelection as leader of the Social-Democratic Youth Party.

Sweden's Minister for Culture and Democracy, Alice Bah Kuhnke is a hard-line feminist known for threatening to cut off funds to organizations that oppose honor killings if any of those funds went to men working against honor killings. As a feminist, it seems as if she wants only women to receive these funds.

These are not merely parliamentarians, these are ministers.

Not surprisingly, one of the first actions of this new government was the recognition of the Palestinian State, a move considered as illegal as it was odd: the Palestinians do not yet meet the requirements for statehood, and seem not even to have agreed on even what the borders of their state should be...."

Let's take a closer look at just two of these Swedish "top" ministers:



Ardalan Shekarabi, Swedish Minister of Interior, responsible for Domestic Law and Order. Former illegal immigrant, embezzled state funds. The country of Sweden is in the best of hands!




Gustav Fridolin, hardcore leftist. Check out a 2008 post of Gates of Vienna on this creep. I would NOT entrust this asshat with teaching tricks to my dog, even if I had one. But in Sweden, he's Minister for Education. Poor, poor Swedish children.


As leftists all over the West are continuing to deliberately destroy our countries and our children's future, they...


... should be made aware that the price for collaboration with the enemy is...


... high.



MFBB.

FRENCH TOP POLITICIANS, AMONG THEM THREE FORMER OR CURRENT PRIME MINISTERS, OPENLY COURTING MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD.

Via the inimitable and indispensable site 'Observatoire de l'Islamisme', a video about the many French mayors openly courting islamic extremists. If you follow this link, the site offers you the possibility to buy the book 'Ces maires qui courtisent l'Islamisme':

"...Manuel Valls has inaugurated the Grand Mosque of Cergy, built on a piece of land owned by the socialist city council, and charging said mosque a ridiculous amount for it. The Cergy mosque's imam openly defends the Muslim Brotherhood....

....

...in Nantes, the [socialist] city council contributed in financing the Islamic Institute, French Branch, of the Muslim Brotherhood, the UOIF, tot the tune of 200,000 EUR in 2009. The mayor at the time was Jean-Marc Ayrault [note: Ayrault, of the Parti Socialiste, was French Prime Minister under Hollande until 31 March 2014].

Did not Manuel Valls [note: Manuel Valls, of the Parti Socialiste, is current French PM] speak out in favor of publicly financing mosques on several occasions?

Alain Juppé [former French PM, supposedly center-right] is telling everyone who wants to hear it "that he will do everything to offer muslims in Bordeaux a terrain for constructing Bordeaux' Grand Mosque. Imam Tareq Oubrou, a leading character among Bordeaux' muslims, is openly boasting of his membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which the Supreme Guide wishes "to control Europe".

Paris, struggling with a debt of 400 million EUR, nevertheless has found 16 million EUR for its Islamic Institute...."

I sincerely hope these traitors will one day meet their deserved fate.



MFBB.