GET OUT THE TRUTH. THEN GET OUT THE VOTE.

Excellent post over at Roger's Rules. Hat tip fcal.

Packaging the American Dream.

A home of your own. It’s part of the American dream. Work hard, save up for a down payment, pay your bills on time and, presto, you, too, can buy a home.

For decades the government has done things to help Americans to realize the dream, e.g., graciously allowing citizens to keep some of their own money to help pay for the interest on a mortgage (the official term for this is a “tax deduction,” but I prefer my locution since it emphasizes the fact that it is YOUR MONEY we are talking about).

But what about people who do not work hard (if they work at all)? What about people who have not saved up for a down payment? What about people who do not pay their bills on time (if they pay them at all)? Why shouldn’t they get to live the American dream?

That was the question that led to

“The Community Reinvestment Act” (see here for more).

* The original Community Reinvestment Act was signed into law in 1977 by Jimmy Carter. Its purpose, in a nutshell, was to require banks to provide credit to “under-served populations,” i.e., those with poor credit.

The buzz word was “affordable mortgages,” e.g., mortgages with low teaser-rates, which required the borrower to put no money down, which required the borrower to pay only the interest for a set number of years, etc.

* In 1995, Bill Clinton’s administration made various changes to the CRA, increasing “access to mortgage credit for inner city and distressed rural communities,” i.e., it provided for the securitization, i.e. public underwriting, of what everyone now calls “sub-prime mortgages.”

Bottom line? It forced banks to issue $1 trillion in sub-prime mortgages.

$1 trillion, i.e., a thousand billion dollars in sub-prime,i.e., risky, mortgages, in order to push this latest example of social engineering.

But wait: how did it force banks to do this? Easy. Introduce a federal requirement that banks make the loans or face penalties. As Howard Husock, writing in City Journal way back in 2000 observed: “Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race, to rate banks on performance. There would be no more A’s for effort. Only results—specific loans, specific levels of service—would count.” Way back in 1994, for example, Barack Obama sued Citibank on behalf of a client who charged that the bank “systematically denied mortgages to African-American applicants and others from minority neighborhoods.”...

I have one small caveat to make. The flurry of links to the CRA the internet offers these days focuses too much, imho, on the impact the granting of loans to "risky minority borrowers" has had, by which obviously the African-American community is meant. While I wholeheartedly agree that a disproportionate percentage of that community indeed consists of people not worth a credit, because whatever passes for their "street culture" (rap, gangs, generally f*cking around) stands in the way of a proper education, strong traditional families, and ultimately success in life, I would wager that by numbers alone bad African-American credit takers can never had such a disastrous impact. AFAIK African Americans make up some 11 per cent of the US population. Make that 10% for easy calculating. I have no stats as to what percentage of these would pose a risk when being handed a loan they possibly can't pay back. But let's assume it's 50% - I guess there's also plenty of African Americans who walk the line and are decent contributing citizens. That would mean a monstrosity like the CRA ultimately only enabled half of one tenth of the US population to get a loan while they were not really creditworthy. I refuse to believe that that small percentage can have gotten the US financial sector in the mess it is now in.

What I DO believe is that the Democrats, by sluicing the CRA through Congress (and amending it to disastrous effect during the Clinton years) they also enabled, apart from "risky" minorities, all kinds of other risky borrowers - be they white, yellow, light brown, red, purple or whatever - to get mortgages they were in fact not entitled to.


Furthermore, don't miss this film:





Hat tip CDR Salamander.


And one final note: a couple of days back, regular reader (if not regular commenter) Adriane linked to this. It is well worth a read. If you are an intelligent person, you will soak it in, appreciate its logic and wonder why the hell it doesn't get the attention it clearly deserves. If you are a blunt IDIOT, you will rather believe a schtoopid cunt like Nancy Pelosi when she shrieks that the current crisis is just another result of George Bush's disastrous economic policy.

As a European who struggles to keep his small company afloat in a toxic environment and who knows that the fruits of his labor are used to import the left's next electorate, I have but one advice to sane, self-respecting and decent Americans:

KEEP BARACK OBAMA OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE.


MFBB.

A DAY OUT IN THE ARDENNES.

It was lovely weather today and I had been promising my daughter for some time to go visit a well-known theme park in Coo, a village in the northern Ardennes, so today we packed and left for Belgium's east, in the footsteps of generations of Belgians. Because a day out for Belgians has for aeons been usually either to the coast or to the Ardennes. For those unfamiliar with Belgium's geography, despite the fact that it's a very small country (some 340 kloms across at its greatest length) there's several distinctive geographical regions. One can debate about how far one can go in subdividing the landscapes, but basically it's everything that lies between two "extremes", the 65 kilometer "long" Belgian coast with, true to say, fine beaches, and the Ardennes, which is an old massif nowhere higher than 700 meters. The coast is entirely in Flanders, the Ardennes are entirely in Wallonia, so to paraphrase Billy Joel, the Flemings hold the coastline and the Walloons the highlands, hehehe. We had a great day, especially the kiddos in that theme park, and when they are happy we are (more than) happy. So even when I couldn't do what I really like to do when in the Belgian Alps - hiking on my own with sturdy mountain shoes on, map at hand, rucksack well stocked - I had a field day, and a great view like the one below is just a bonus.





Most readers will know by now I am a World War II buffoon, and while I swear I took the kids to this place only for their pleasure, I couldn't resist the temptation of taking, on the way home, a shortcut through La Gleize, which is a village some 5 kloms west of Coo. La Gleize is one of those places you wouldn't otherwise have heard of in a million years, were it not that 64 years ago - damn, how time flies - it was the scene of a tenacious fight between a German Kampfgruppe and elements of the US 30th Infantry Division and 82nd Airborne Division during the Ardennes Offensive, which in the US is known as the Battle of the Bulge. History has been a bit unkind to those US troops not fighting in Bastogne, because to many Americans the Battle in the Bulge is Bastogne. Few know that very heavy fighting took place in other sectors of the "bulge", and one of those sectors was the northern front, where the 6th Waffen SS Panzer Army (the 6th, led by Sepp Dietrich) attacked in the early morning hours of December 16, 1944. That Panzer Army's backbone was formed by four crack SS Panzer divisions, the 1st (Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler), the 2nd (Das Reich), the 9th (Hohenstaufen) and the 12th (Hitlerjugend). 2nd SS and 9th SS were deployed only later on, the initial moves were by 1st SS and 12th SS. Of the former, the main element was the so-called Kampfgruppe Peiper (Battle Group Peiper), and ad hoc formation comprising the bulk of 1st SS's armour. Its commander was Obersturmbannfuehrer (Lieutenant Colonel) Jochen Peiper, an able and battle hardened veteran from the Eastern Front. His name would gain a notorious reputation, for on the second day of the offensive, when Peiper had effectively broken through the American lines, elements of his battle group overwhelmed the lightly armed Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion near Baugnez, a hamlet near the town of Malmédy, in German-speaking Belgium. Those who survived were driven together in a meadow. What happened next has been the subject of countless reconstructions and investigations, but at some point Germans started machinegunning the American POW's. About 90 men perished. Peiper himself was not directly involved, although at a post-war trial he was held accountable for orders he should have given stipulating that no prisoners were to be taken.

After this infamous episode which became known as the Malmédy Massacre, the whole of the Kampfgruppe move further along the narrow roads of the northern Ardennes, and in Trois Ponts point US engineers blew up a bridge right before his nose, denying Peiper a smoother ride to the crucial Meuse river and forcing him to move his troops even further down the tortuous Amblève valley in search for a bridge. This proved to be his swan song, because he got stuck in... La Gleize, and even though a forward party made it a bit further still, to Stoumont, ultimately the bulk of Peipers men and most of his armour, perhaps 2,000 men and 70 tanks, plus numerous other vehicles, found themselves surrounded in the tiny village, for behind their back the road to Trois Ponts had been cut off by 82nd Airborne. After six days, Peiper had run out of fuel and ammo and with a Luftwaffe unable to drop supplies, he asked for, and finally got, permission to break out. This he managed to do, and on the 25th Peiper was able to report to 1st SS Panzer Corps that he had extricated 770 of his men from the La Gleize pocket. He left behind all of his matériel, and since Kampfgruppe Peiper had been allocated a disproportionate amount of 1st SS's armour, it meant that the division had lost most of its teeth. This event would herald the eventual failure of "Wacht am Rhein", which waas the German codename for the whole Ardennes operation. A lot has been said and written about the causes and the reasons of that failure, but in Peipers case, I would wager that the man, although an able tactician on the regimental level, was given command of a formation that was too big for him. As mentioned before, his battlegroup not only counted the bulk of the parent division's armour, but also the schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 501 (Heavy SS Tank Battalion 501), normally an independent formation. From the accounts that I have read, I would wager that Kampfgruppe Peiper wasted away because its commander could not hold it together (nor use it properly in such a confined theatre). Anno 2008, there's still one tank from Kampfgruppe Peiper standing in La Gleize. It's the Koenigstiger (King Tiger) once commanded by Obersturmfuehrer Dollinger of the sSSPzAbt. 501. In almost mint condition it stands near the small museum "December 1944" in La Gleize's center. Which is where I landed this very evening after the kids had enjoyed their day out.

A Koenigstiger was the final development of the heavy Tiger tank, and weighing close to 70 tons (far more than an M1-Abrams) it was the heaviest MBT to enter service by either party in World War II.

And another pic up front. Notice the sheer menacing bulk of the beast. The gun is an 88mm L71, probably the best anti-tank gun of the war.

Standing next to the Koenigstiger this evening, it again struck me how massive this machine is. It was powered by a 700 HP engine, the same as the one used in the far lighter Panther tank. In the 45-ton chassis of this vehicle the Maybach performed very well (there were also MAN versions), but to propel a Koenigstiger properly was asked too much, and much has been said about the tank bogging down in rough terrain. A 1,000 HP engine was what was needed for this tank, but anno 1944 the German war industry, overwhelmed with hyperpressing demands from all sides, was unable to yet produce such a motor. Still, it is said that on good hard level going a Koenigstiger could reach a top speed of 38 kloms per hour. The following YouTube film of tanks of sSSPzAbt 501 passing through the German village of Tondorf prior to the Ardennes Offensive gives you an idea of their dynamics.





Shit. There I went again. Starting out with Plopsaland Coo and ending with a frigging Nazi tank. That can only be me. I really am a World War II nutter.


MFBB.

OKTOBERFEST 2008.

It's Oktoberfest baby!!!



Girls can't drink beer.

However ladies: what dirndl type are you? (Sorry, but it's in Krautspeak. Type away though. Follow your intuition).


MFBB.

FILIP DEWINTER AWARDED THE ORIANA FALLACI PRIZE.

Last week, an anti-islamization conference was held in Florence, Italy with the theme “Islamophobia and Freedom of Speech”. Responsible for the organization was the “Associazione Una Via Per Oriana”, Oriana of course being the famous progressive Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci who died two years ago of cancer. In her heyday Mrs. Fallaci had decidely leftist inclinations but not unlike quite a few intellectual giants, at some point reality struck home. Mrs. Fallaci spent the last years of her life writing fierce critiques of the monstrous politico-religious ideology currently assaulting Europe, The Force of Reason and The Rage and the Pride. Indeed, as we speak and write, Hamas flags fly over the Rhine river at Mulhouse, France; more and more cities in The Netherlands experience a homegrown intifada - the latest hotspot is Gouda; and to top it all off, last week it transpired that Gordon Brown's Labour government has secretly sanctioned powers for sharia courts in the UK. It is against this terrifying backdrop that we must see last weeks' conference, where many leading authors of works warning of islam were present, like Bat Ye’or, David Littman and others.

Among the invitees at the Oriana Fallaci Commemmoration was Filip Dewinter, fraction leader for the Vlaams Belang in the Flemish Parliament. Following the event, Mr. Dewinter was honoured with the Prize bearing the name of the deceased journalist, which he received from the President of Una Via Per Oriana, Armando Manocchia. In his speech, Mr. Manocchia stressed that Mr. Dewinter was awarded the prize “because of the courage he has, rowing upstream against the flood wave of political correctness. With ‘Cities Against Islamisation’ Filip Dewinter has funded a democratic movement of resistance that will protect our European identity and Western civilisation against the Islamic religion of conquest”.




Dewinter gave a speech himself. A stellar one, if I may say so. Here are some key excerpts:

Ladies and gentlemen,

Don’t be mislead, there's no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’. I give you a recent quote from the Turkish premier Erdogan: “There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” Let’s cut he crap, Islam is bound for world dominance. Islam is an imperialist religion who forces their rights with violence. It’s an historical evidence that Europe is the first and most important enemy of Islam. Almost fourteen centuries Europe is resisting the islamisation of its continent. The first Islamic invasion of Europe was halted at Poitiers in 732 a.D. The second Islamic invasion was stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683.The matter is now to halt the currently ongoing third Islamic invasion, and to push Islam back to where it belongs: to the other side of the Mediterranean.

Radical islam is nowadays fighting with other means than before: The scimitar has been replaced by the terrorists’ bomb, but apart from that less has changed. The only fundamental change is that Europe no longer dares to resist Islamic aggression and we tend to behave more and more as dhimmi’s.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Islam does not belong in Europe, not yesterday, neither today, and certainly not
tomorrow. Islam is diametrically opposed to our European morals and values. Islam is but way much more than a religion, it is in fact a political ideology, a social order and a jurisdictional system. Islam is a political ideology, a social order and a jurisdictional system that has undergone hardly any change since Medieval times. To tolerate, acknowledge and fund islam in Europe, is to throw away all European acquirements and freedoms, and return to the darkest days of Middle Ages. There are many ways in which the ongoing islamisation of Europe reveals itself. Not only do we have to give in on fundamental principles of European society, but we are also confronted with a demographic time bomb.

It was the Algerian president Boumédienne who said: "One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory." Indeed, Europe nowadays counts up to 50 million Muslims while only 50.000 lived here a century ago. Islam has grown to be the second largest religion in Europe and in twenty years cities as for example Marseilles, Malmö, Brussels and Birmingham will know a majority of Muslim inhabitants. Muslim women on average give birth to 3 to 4 children, whereas native European women barely reach an average of
one point thirty seven children. The power of the numbers is in advantage of Islam.

The European population is aware of this, and is able to observe it on daily basis.
Europeans have had enough of burqas, of chadors, of hijabs and kaftans, Europeans have had enough of the “ritual” slaughter of animals, of the boundless popping up of mosques, Quran schools, and minarets, of the Arab and Turkish writings on bus and tram, enough of halal food at the butchers and stores, of the never ending flow of sighs and demands made by Islam on behalf of “multicultural tolerance” and so called “freedom of religion”. If we want to save Europe, than we will have to push back the islamisation and end the green fascism of radical, totalitarian Islam!

Ladies and gentlemen,

If one would ask me if I’m xenophobic, than I answer: no, I do not object immigrants under condition that they behave, adapt and submit to our morals and values. If one would ask me if I’m islamofobic, than I firmly answer: “yes” since I’m worried by Islam. The biggest mistake we can make in Europe is to picture Islam – for reasons of political correctness – as a religion of peace and tolerance. Islam is indeed a religion of peace and tolerance, but unfortunately only for those Muslims who are willing to submit to Allahs’ will as written down in the Quran.

For dhimmi’s – the unbelievers – Islam is a religion of hatred, of violence and intolerance. Islamophobia is not merely a phenomena of unparalleled fear, but it is the duty of every one who wants to safeguard Europe’s future. Europe means Rome, Greece, Enlightenment and judeo-christian roots. Europe is a continent of castles and cathedrals, not of mosques and minarets. Oriana Fallaci showed us the way in her books “Rage and pride” and “The force of reason”. Therefore I wish to conclude by quoting her in “The force of reason”:

“Islam is like a pool, and a pool is a puddle of water standing still. Water that does not flow away, does not move, and thereby is never purified. The West is like a river nourishing life. It’s like water that flows on, that’s purified and renewed in it’s course, that absorbs other water and finally reaches the vast sea. Thanks to the force of reason we’ll eventually prevail. But hence we must continuously renew, continuously absorb other water and prevent any dam against he flow of the water current.”


-Filip Dewinter

Hat tip Gates of Vienna and Tundra Tabloids.



MFBB.

BRUSSELS SOCIALIST MAYOR HAS VLAAMS BELANG MEMBERS ARRESTED FOR COMMEMMORATING 9/11.

On Thursday, 9 September 2008, three Vlaams Belang members were arrested by the Brussels Police because they were commemmorating 9/11. The arrests took place at the end of a peaceful ceremony organized by Vlaams Belang at the Brussels WTC-tower. The ceremony comprised the laying of one rose per participant at the foot of the tower.


Earlier, the Brussels mayor, Freddy Thielemans of the Parti Socialiste, had written a letter to Filip Dewinter (not the VB chairman, but certainly the party's most enigmatic personage) that the ceremony would be regarded as a demonstration and that he would not allow it, given, I quote:

"the very delicate theme of the manifestation, the proximity of the [offices of the] Immigration Service, the proximity of sensitive neighborhoods and the period of Ramadan."... "[the manifestation's message] is of a hateful and provocative nature which greatly enhances the possibility of counter demonstrations and violent outbursts."

The Vlaams Belang lodged an appeal against the ban imposed by Thielemans but it was rejected by the Council of State, Belgium’s highest administrative court. Nevertheless, the ceremony went ahead. Also present was a small delegation from the STI initiative (Steden tegen Islamisering, Cities Against Islamization). I borrowed most of the photos below from their site, the composed photo to the left is from the VB site though. Readers will recall that last year, a similar peaceful gathering organized by the VB was savagely beaten up by the Brussels Police. This time, perhaps wary of the negative publicity, the police initially kept its most zealous officers in check.

The man with the beard, walking stiff upright with a rose in his hand, is another VB heavyweight, Gerolf Annemans, VB fraction leader in Belgium's federal parliament. Annemans is known for his fierce pro-Americanism, even more so than Dewinter himself, and he is especially fond of President Bush. At the time of the 2004 elections, when asked by a Belgian daily who he would vote for were he an American, he answered: "I certainly choose for Bush. He has introduced a neoconservative reveil in the States so that the country is now ten years ahead of Europe." Needless to say, Annemans too has been attacked fiercely for this unashamed show of support, and he is a favorite target of extreme leftwing bloggers like Yelloman. Yelloman is, as some attentive readers may recall, one of the main sources providing LGF's Charles Johnson with bogus material claiming the VB is a nazi party.






Filip Dewinter managed to stage a short speech, in which he denounced, in the strongest terms, PS-mayor Thielemans which he called an islamosocialist and a collaborator with radical islam. Some key quotes from Dewinter's address:

"The ban is the most eloquent proof of the islamization of our country", dixit the VB frontman. He added that "9/11 was not simply a terror attack, but also a declaration of war of radical islam to the free West. Islam legitimizes via the Quran the use of violence against infidels to obtain its goals. Islam has to denounce every form of violence and distance itself from Quran passages wich exhort to violence against infidels, otherwise islam can never be tolerated on European territory."

Here are two stills from the 9/11 ceremony in Brussels:





Then, right after Dewinter had laid flowers at the foot of the WTC building, the Brussels Police intervened and stopped the ceremony. Two female VB secretaries and one VB member who still tried to lay their flowers down were arrested and locked up in a cell for the rest of the day (the secretaries later lodged a complaint against the police for sexual harassment). Was NOT arrested: Italian MEP (Member of the European Parliament) Mario Borghezio, of the Italian rightwing party Lega Nord. Last year, during the previous 9/11 commemmoration, Borghezio was roughly handled and arrested, an act so outrageous much that the Italian government officially complained to the Belgian government. I guess this time the officers had received strict instructions not to stir up diplomatic trouble again.


The efforts by the Brussels Police clearly paid off. The only retaliation for daring to commemmorate 9/11 and humiliate muslims in the process, especially during ramadan, came in the evening, when those famous "youths" attacked buses from the public transport company "De Lijn" in Kuregem, an immigrant neighbourhood of Brussels. Spokeswoman for "De Lijn" Karen Vandenplas confirmed that the youths were - gasp! - angry because earlier in the day Flemish politicians had tried to hold a vigil for the victims of the 2001 9/11 attacks in Manhattan, so Mr. Thielemans was indeed right to fear for his constituency. Another bus was attacked in Molenbeek, as readers may recall the Brussels commune where the socialist mayor Philippe Moureaux has forbidden his police officers to eat sandwiches and drink coffee on the street during ramadan. Both in Molenbeek and in Kuregem the passengers on the bus escaped unhurt and the only damage was some bumps in the chassis and windows shattered. So it was not as bad as in March, when a general strike paralyzed the "De Lijn" network because bus drivers were fed up with their buses being shot at and pelted with stones and molotov cocktails, courtesy of the "youths".


But does the banning frenzy of the Brussels mayor now mean the end of free speech in the greater Brussels neighborhood (25% muslims)????? Luckily not, many groups still receive permission to hold demonstrations. Take the following demo e.g. On Sunday, 9 September, some 400 truth activists demonstrated in Brussels to demand an international independent investigation into what really happened on 9 september 2001 in New York. They gathered at the Berlaymont Building (the seat of the European Commission) and headed from there to the American Embassy. Luckily, there were no riots from "youths", I guess that ramadan fasting takes its toll. All demonstrators are equal, but naturally, those from the diversity and equality side are more equal than others. Being the vilain that I am, I simply stole this account from their website. Take especially notice of the last sentence: "Er waren geen incidenten, en de organisatoren waren opnieuw uitgesproken positief over de samenwerking met de Brusselse Politie."





Oooooooh you can't read it??? Oooooooh it's in that pesky peasant's language Flemish??? Let me help you:

"There were no incidents, and the organizers were again explicitly positive about the cooperation with the Brussels Police".

Now isn't life WONDERFUL, after all?


MFBB.

IN MEMORIAM MICHELE COYLE-EULAU (1963-2001).

* Married to Dennis Eulau, devoted mother of Matthew, Mark and Eric,
* IT professional, management consultant at Marsh & McLennan, 96th Floor, North Tower
* working mom, soccer mom, career woman, sportswoman, still finding time to organize the family's outdoor trips

A Maximum Mom.

Brutally murdered by islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001.


MFBB.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER (PART 2)

On September 2, 2008, four Belgian F-16 fighter bombers which departed the day before from Melsbroek AFB near Brussels, arrived on Kandahar Airfield (KAF), in Afghanistan's volatile south. It was a two-legged journey, with a stop on the Greek island of Crete and in-air refuelling probably somewhere over the Caspian sea from a French KC-135 tanker, see above. This is relatively standard practice since there is some sort of an operational agreement between the French and Belgian air forces whereby our jets always train with their tankers, I suppose because it is the most common type throughout NATO. Our northern neighbors, the Dutch, also have tanker capacity but consisting of two modified KDC-10's, originally civilian planes (unlike the KC-10 Extenders used by USAF), and AFAIK the only ones in Europe.

The mission of the F-16's in southern Afghanistan will last 6 months. Unlike in 2006, this will be a fighting mission whereby, apart from shows of force, the guarding communication lines, and reconnaissance, they will also be deployed actively to strafe and bomb Taliban targets. This represents a sea change in Belgian ISAF participation, since, although Belgian ground troops have been in Afghanistan since 2002, guarding Kabul Airport and demining in Kunduz, they were never allowed to engage terrorists unless attacked directly. Though the operation, dubbed "Guardian Falcon" is essentially a part of ISAF, the jets may also, if required, operate within the framework of "Enduring Freedom". The F-16's will operate in an international squadron together with four Dutch F-16s, some six French Super-Etendards and/or Mirage 2000s and several US jets. They will be equipped with a novelty, the sniper pod, a brand new electronic gondola carried under the fuselage allowing surveillance, detection and identification of a target, this in tandem with ground controllers who pinpoint the targets with a laser beam.

The four F-16s and roughly one hundred personnel will be based at Kandahar Airfield (KAF), an international base populated by more than 13,000 troops from 17 different nations. KAF, autonomous in terms of electricity and water, has to be supplied regularly by transport aircraft, since it is located in a remote area away from Kandahar City. The plus of this is that the airfield is less prone to attacks by land or air. Our government is still cautious, since ground personnel cannot not leave the KAF perimeter during our presence. Two F-16 missions, each comprising two planes, are planned daily. All in all an amazing feat for a country like Belgium. The current Belgian government, the Christian-Democrat dominated Leterme 1 administration, is unpopular, ineffective and moribund, but in its short existence it has accomplished what was impossible during eight years of socialist rule: active participation in the War On Terror.


MFBB.


PS: YouTube video of F-16 refuelling over AF (2006 video)
Some info on the Belgian F-16s

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS OBAMAS.

First off, I think US Weekly is tring to tell us something.




Second, I think quite a lot of people are wetting their pants.

Third, how low do you have to be to drag a baby with Down syndrome into a vicious political hatefest?

Fourth, they clearly photoshopped Mrs. Palin. Not exactly to make her more beautiful than she already is. Someone over at US Weekly is very, very, very, very pissed.

You just go ahead punks. Make our day!



MFBB.

A DAY OUT IN BRUSSELS.

Leopold II may have been a bastard but he was our bastard. This is one of the things he gave us:



The triumphal arch of the Cinquantenaire Park, east Brussels. Pic taken on August 17 when I took my mother-in-law for a sightseeing tour of Brussels. "Cinquantenaire" is difficult to translate, "fiftyish" comes maybe closest. In 1880 Belgium was 50 years independent and Leopold II, yes, he of the Congo atrocities, was King. He organized a world exhibition in Brussels and for its location chose a former military exercising ground. To impress the European "established states" and to show off Belgium's growing prosperity, he ordered the arc and its adjacent palaces built. Unfortunately, the complex was not ready for the 1880 exhibition, and once this had taken place, the King got into a clinch with the Belgian government for funding of the project, which the government saw as unneccessary. It would take more than a decade before the project got back on its tracks again and then only because by then the King was flush with money from his Congolese adventure and decided to spend his personal fortune on it. And so it was that by 1905 the arch was finally ready, just in time for the celebration of... 75 years of Belgian independence. I don't want to brag, but it's really an impressive monument, crowned by a quadriga, an allegoric ensemble of horses and a battlecart symbolizing the key province of Belgium, Brabant, wherein Brussels lies (the colors of the Belgian flag are originally Brabantine, btw). The other 8 provinces are symbolized by allegoric statues of single persons at the foot of the columns.

Say about Leopold II what you will, and again, he may have been an atrocious man and a pervert, but if Brussels today has just enough grandeur and gravitas to be European capital it is because of him. That is not to say it has those qualities in abundance, because several large parts of Brussels are unimpressive and/or neglected, and after all Brussels is, with 1 million inhabitants, still a rather small city. But in many respects our capital is indeed a small version of Paris. Btw, now that I am talking about Leopold's Congolese endeavours, that deserves an elaborate post of its own. One very important thing to know, and which I see constantly overlooked by non-Belgian observers, is that the atrocities against the Congolese population took place during the period that the so-called Congo Free State was Leopold's personal fiefdom. By 1908, international pressure had rendered the King's holding onto his very own colony impossible, and Congo became a colony of the Belgian state, after which conditions for the local population improved dramatically. We do have a historical guilt towards the Congolese for the deprivations and the massive death toll - although demographic evidence strongly suggests that Adam Hochschild's 15 million victims are impossible - but on the other hand, I'd wager we paid at least part of that back. We paid it back because when we Belgians left the Congo in 1960, we left them also a modern infrastructure: good roads, hospitals, a decent educational system, a railway network, a well-equipped port, airfields, industry and mines etc. etc. etc... second perhaps only to South Africa's. And... the Congolese screwed it all. What followed after the independence practically reversed the clock to pre-1908 days, and if we are to believe the reports coming from Congo's eastern jungle, a genocide is taking place there of at least the magnitude of the one during Leopold's days. But I don't see Hochschild write a book about that soon. Still, I do think we have some kind of moral obligation to support the Congolese nation and by and large, I think we took/take our responsibility. But more about that later. Hopefully.


MFBB.

FINALLY, CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.

Yes, we can. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can.




The GOP, that is.


MFBB.

BELGIAN "TOP" NEWSPAPER "DE STANDAARD" WRITES THAT MARGARET THATCHER STARTED FALKLANDS WAR.

The Belgian newspaper "De Standaard" is for Belgium what "Le Monde" is for France or the NYT for the US. It pretends to take a neutral stance in politics, but with every passing year this claim is becoming more laughable. Today, Monday 25 August 2008, "De Standaard" hit a new low with an article on Mrs. Thatcher's declining mental capabilities. The former "Iron Lady" increasingly suffers from dementia and has to be reminded every day of the death of her husband Dennis, deceased now already five years ago. By contrast, she remembers every detail about her eleven-year long tenure as PM of the United Kingdom. A lot has been said about Mrs. Thatcher's successful economic record, but the single most important feat which marked her early years was unquestionably the 1982s Falklands War, which shook the British out of the dreadful lethargy in which they had sunk after the Suez Crisis. Take a close look at the bottom paragraph of the "De Standaard" article:

De IJzeren Dame is een door dementie aangetaste, verwarde vrouw geworden. Maar over de elf jaar dat ze op compromisloze wijze haar land leidde, de steenkoolmijnen sloot, de Falklandoorlog begon met Argentinië en een bomaanslag van het Iers Republikeins Leger (IRA) overleefde, weet de eerste en voorlopig enige vrouwelijke premier van het Verenigd Koninkrijk nog alles.

Translation:

The Iron Lady has become a confused, demented woman. But on those eleven years during which she held the reins in her country, shut the coal mines, began the Falklands War with Argentina, and survived an IRA bomb attack, the only female PM of the UK still knows all.

Time for a reality check. Two excerpts from the book "Forgotten Voices of the Falklands" by Hugh McManners, Ebury Press, 2007.

- John Pole Evans, Falkland Islander:

"Whilst the shooting was going on, we lay on the floor in the centre of the house, the safest place. Tanks came in along the road at the back of the town. We were in the second row of houses back down the hill from the road. Some of them fired into the town through the houses, and pieces of house landed on our roof. We could hear helicopters and planes overhead, but didn't get up to look out the windows.....
The first lot of Argentines came banging on our house door and my dad got up and opened it. They only came into the back porch and didn't search the house at that stage, but wanted to know who we were and what we were doing."

- Commander Robert Denton Green, Intelligence Staff Officer to CINC, Fleet HQ, Northwood:

"I didn't sleep for thirty-six hours after the Argentine invasion. We were really struggling. There was a complete panic. I was briefing the Admiral, plus we had to keep the Soviet threat monitoring going as well. We asked all the companies who'd supplied the Argentines with ships and weapon systems to come clean on exactly what they'd provided, which versions and modifications. Our dossier on their order of battle started with data from the publication Jane's Fighting Ships, and all the aviation weeklies and magazines."

April 2, 1982. Argentinian Amtraks in the streets of Port Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands. The small garrison of some forty-plus Royal Marines of Naval Party 8901 never stood a chance against the overwhelming military might of the Argentinians. Yet De Standaard wants its readers to believe that Margaret Thatcher, an unashamedly rightwing Head of State, began the war. Deliberate misinformation by the left. Ponder that.

At 43, I have seen, heard and read it so many, many times. Like poison which is secretly administerd in small doses to a person to lethal effect much later on, downright lies and dubious assumptions are cleverly hidden in the fabric of seemingly neutral stories, as part of a process that spans decades. In the end, you get a readership that subconsciously has soaked in over the years a multitude of untruths, and has as a result formed itself a worldview that fits the agenda of our moral betters: The Left, which in Belgium, like in other western countries, is disproportionally overrepresented in television, radio and the written press. Their perfidious lies are enthusistically echoed by their idiotic lackeys from the entertainment industry. "De Standaard" may claim it is neutral, but that is a flat lie just like the ones their stories abound with. It is a leftist rag through and through, and with this latest blatant example of rewriting history they confirm the credo of that famous socialist now long deceased, Dr. Joseph Goebbels: "A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the thruth". Somewhere, everywhere, young naive people, not very critical, read "that Margaret Thatcher began the Falklands War". They will take it for granted. In the same breath, "De Standaard" will remind them that Margaret Thatcher was also an evil rightwinger, because she took the jobs of poor miners. This is how the notions warmonger/inhuman/conservative are blended together, in a stealthy way like here, or in a vulgar, crude in-you-face way like with that performance by the world's biggest SLUT Madonna, who freely links images of McCain, Mugabe and Hitler. And you wonder why young people vote leftwing?

The above example is but one item in a long list of deliberate lies, and as we have seen the tactic used is slipping it in between statements which are otherwise true - Thatcher did crack down on Arthur Scargill's miners' union, and she was the target of a dramatic IRA bomb attack in Brighton - therefore the reader assumes what is in between those statements must also be true. This is an old trick, and one which was indeed used by the Nazis also. Sometimes however the hatred is such that there is no time nor willingness to apply literary multicam and the editors in question are almost tripping over their own words to get their message across. The ensuing results, detectable by repeated and/or attentive reading, would even be funny, were they not so quintessentially tragic. One such event was the publication of two columns in De Standaard, one by Ine Roox and the other by an editor using the initials "esn" (probably Evita Neefs), in the days following the July 7 bombings of the London underground. As some readers may recall, on July 8, 2005 De Standaard first published the following report by Roox, the newspaper's UK correspondent at the time:




I encircled in red first the correspondent's name, and then the paragraph wherein she introduces a certain "Norma":

Norma from Leicestershire would remain only one day in London. It panned out differently. Yesterday evening she didn't get out of the city anymore. "Never again I set a foot in London", she says flabbergasted. "I am still shivering all over." When she arrived in Kings Cross station yesterday morning, twenty minutes earlier a bomb had exploded there. "They were cordoning off the station. Everyone was evacuated." recalls Norma.

And so on. Norma is then allowed to describe how she saw aid workers help out people with blackened faces, how whe heard that many victims lost arms and legs etc. Then a businessman has his say, and then it's Norma again:

Norma shakes her head. "This could be expected. Nobody likes that rotten war in Iraq. Nobody likes Blair. We did not support that war! In my eyes Blair is the biggest terrorist in this country."

Whereupon that last citation is repeated again, printed in a bigger type as if to emphasize something really, really important. However, in her haste to convey Norma's message to the world, Roox, intentionally or not (in which case it's a Freudian slip), writes "Voor mij is Blair de grootste terrorist in dit land" - "For me Blair is the biggest terrorist in this country" instead of "In mijn ogen" - "In my eyes" - the words used by the woman from Leicestershire. Above you see just the clip, courtesy of Luc Van Braekel, and you can make out the key phrase in the upper right corner of the bigger photo preceding the clip. It is placed there prominently - no reader may miss it.


Now enter De Standaard editor "esn", probably, as we have already said, Evita Neefs, a woman frothing at the mouth whenever she hears a word commencing with "A" and ending on "merica". The day after Roox' piece, the following profile of the British PM appeared:




The two focal points in this article are the header "De grootste terrorist" - "The biggest terrorist" and a photo of a grim looking Tony Blair, conveniently placed immediately to the right of the word "terrorist" - thou shalt not miss the connection. And then it comes, see the text encircled in red:

"Een woedende man in het zwaar getroffen Kings Cross Station noemde hem gisteren in een gesprek met deze krant al "de grootste terrorist van allemaal"."

Translation:

"An angry man in the heavily hit Kings Cross Station called him [Tony Blair - MFBB] yesterday in an interview with this newspaper already "the biggest terrorist of them all"."

There you have it. It is not difficult to imagine "esn" frothing at the mouth when she entrusted this crap to the paper, for he or she must have been so elated by hearing some dumb cunt call the PM a "terrorist" that, not getting enough of using the word again and again, she forgot Norma's gender. But then of course, De Standaard being made up of progressive, enlightened and sophisticated individuals, swapping genders is probably not frowned upon so much as by us stupid, uncouth, archaic and definitely unintelligent rednecks.


The issue that deserves our immediate attention is, I would wager, an immediate and forceful rebuke of such outrageous statements and insinuations. But perhaps the bigger issue at hand is a broad and thorough investigation into "the nature and the causes" of such and inherently sick intellectual attitude. Compare it to first tackle the symptoms, but then try to root out the origin of the mal. Take this into account. For good or bad, a country participates in a war meant to oust a tyrannical regime and exclude the possibility that this regime develops WMD and/or harbors islamic terrorists willing to use them. As a citizen of that country, you can agree or disagree with the stance of your government, and, you can even decry or protest the fact that the terrorist attacks are indeed the result of the intervention of your country. In se, this is true of course - if Britain had not participated in the liberation of Iraq the bombs would most certainly have exploded in another country which did. Of course, a reasoning like that is either an exercise in futility or an act of cowardice, because in a world in which the biggest global threat is islamic terrorism, ultimately no one is safe, whether you stand in the front row or not. But we may even forgive our less gung-ho citizens this Chamberlainian attitude.

However, once we have gotten there, the ways of the Chamberlains and the Churchills among us should converge. Once that you are in it, you are in it, and under normal circumstances even the biggest coward should have no problem to discern who the bad boys are, and who the guys around which to gather for the retaliation, even if it is from the rear, even if it is to come up with an alternative strategy.

Here is where we can detect what is totally fucked up - excuse me for the mot - in our present postmodern, post christian, post everything societies.

We have in our midst, and not just in our midst, but in all kinds of important posts and functions and channels, a certain influential kind of people who are unable to identify evil, even when they trot in the guts of a dismembered person who the moment before was sitting next to them. Rescue personnel scrape the blackened remains of commuters from underground walls, and instead of at once recognizing the heinous, unbelievably evil nature of the enemy we are facing... those petty "intellectuals" trip over their words in their haste to call their own leader.... the biggest terrorist!!! This is not normal anymore , and apart from protesting the outrageous lies and accusations, we - the normal ones - must address this very, very serious, and apparently deeply rooted major malfunction. There is something rotten, not just in the State of Denmark, but in all western states, and it bears serious scrutiny. As we approach a pivotal election in the leading nation of the West, indeed in the leading nation on the planet, it is more important than ever that the voices among us who basically advocate self-destruction, are answered. I do not say silenced, because to do so would mean to compromise a key western value. Silencing opponents is something for leftists, and we can never allow ourselves to stoop to that level. We must simply trust that if we bring on the basic, honest arguments and tell our children the West's stories and histories, not just the highlights, but also the things we can't indeed be too proud of, they will be able to see that in spite of the warts, there's more than enough to be immensely proud of.

Hat tip for the article with the Thatcher allegation Luc Van Braekel.


MFBB.

FRANCE SLIPPING INTO THE DAR-ES-SALAAM.

French Car-B-Q update, via the blog Le Salon Beige:

"Le nombre de « violences urbaines » commises en 2007 en France a été discrètement publié par le ministère de l’Intérieur. Il s’élève à 93 016, dont 37 359 incendies de véhicules, soit 102 par jour ! Le reste se répartit entre 26 217 incendies de poubelles, 7 955 dégradations de mobilier urbain (recensées dans la même catégorie, que celui-ci soit juste endommagé ou totalement détruit), 6 856 jets de projectile (les destinataires étant principalement les policiers et les pompiers), 5 658 rodéos automobiles et 4 101 « violences collectives à l’encontre des forces de sécurité, de secours et de santé », à distinguer des « jets de projectile » qui sont des actes individuels…"

I won't bother you with a translation of the whole text, just the first two sentences will do: "The number of "urban violence incidents" committed in 2007 in France has been discreetly publicized by the Interior Ministry. It amounts to 93,016, of which 37,359 car torchings, or 102 per day!"

Being a European, and a citizen of a neighbouring country at that, I have been following the phenomenon of French car torchings with a keen eye over the past three years, and posted now and then some updates when violence flared up exceptionally. From the information I was able to gather, it would transpire that over the two-year period spanning 2005 and 2006 alone, roughly 60,000 vehicles, almost exclusively cars but also buses, vans etc... were torched by "youths". Given the fact that these figures, even when obtained from reliable, sober French online magazines like Figaro, seem so fantastic one would be tempted to catalogize them as gross exxagerations, it is easy to put them aside and soothe the mind into assuming that it can't impossibly be that bad. An attitude in no small part helped by the scarce, and if forthcoming very discreet, down to earth, matter-of-factly and above all scant coverage by mainstream French media channels. "Surely, if really 30,000 cars were torched in a country like France, it would be on TV and in the newspapers all day, but it's not, so it can't be true, right?"

Wrong, apparently.

The French news blog Rue89 which, as far as I could discern, takes no particular political stance, comes up with an account of some newsgathering at the French Interior Ministry, see below. Those who read the comments section, may recall that I provided some links at the occasion of the 600 cars torched on the night of 13 to 14 July and the subsequent night as well (July 14 is the French National Holiday). A Rue89 editor, Zineb Dryef, recounts how his efforts to obtain meaningful stats from the Ministry met with an undeniable unwillingness to share information to which each and every (decent) French citizen should have access (the translation is of the cadre to the right):

On July 15, I contact the Ministry to try to get some information. I get some very courteous answers, I obtain some weird ciphres. After this phone call, I called several times more, sent a couple of emails, and pressed on before finally getting an evading [?] answer: "But what do you want with these numbers? We already made them public. Those of July 2007 and those of December 2007. So then, there is no reason to compare these very different events. We are not going to give you stats that you cannot analyze." Las [can't translate that]. I say that I'd really like them to process them by a qualified person. The morning after, I get a harsh reply from the ministry: "We have communicated on the matter already thoroughly. We will say nothing".

Mesdames et messieurs, there you have it. Am I preposterous to state there is an official taboo on the subject? I don't think so. How else would you explain the eardeafening silence surrounding the colossal, horrifying fact of CLOSE TO 100,000 CARS TORCHED IN FRANCE BY "YOUTHS" IN THE SPACE OF THREE YEARS?????? Extrapolate this to the United States, which has 300 million inhabitants compared to France's 60 million. It would mean that in the States, over 2005, 2006 and 2007 5 x 100,000 or 500,000, HALF-A-MILLION, vehicles had been set alight!!!

And it's not only cars. Take a close look again at the screenshot I took from Rue89, the paragraph to the left below: "In Gonesse (Val d'Oise), a gymnasium has been set on fire. In the town hall, one deplores the destruction of this 3,500 square meters space destined for the town's youths [what a howler! MFBB] "The demolition has now been completed, works [on reconstruction] are to commence in September. The criminal nature of the arson has been confirmed by the police."

We all know that the perpetrators of these crimes are France's famous "youths". As Mark Steyn once aptly remarked: "Youths, huh? Like Francois, Jean-Marie or Philippe?" The truth of the matter is of course that the "youths" in question are Alis, Saids, Zyads and, in more than one case, Mohammeds. I don't buy all that crap anymore about islam having nothing to do with it, the youths not being from madrassas, them being secular and listening to rap and using drugs and being simply unemployed and generally bored. If that is so, then why are the authorities enlisting the help of imams to calm those bozos down? The "youths" act like they do because they are raised in an environment where hatred of the infidel is cultivated and because they are taught to laugh at our laws. In 2006, in Clichy-sous-Bois, the locality where a year before Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore foolishly electrocuted themselves in a power station while hiding for the police, a monument was erected to commemmorate them. I suppose that the fella in the djellaba and the skullcap on the photo is a rocket technician.

The truth is as simple as it is inevitable. Islam has EVERYTHING to do with France's Car-B-Que plague. As of today, 10% of France's population is muslim already, and the riots and the violence we see, well, that's simply a dynamic that has always been there once muslims started to reach that peculiar treshold. A while back, Pamela Geller from Atlas Shrugs linked to a most interesting graph, see her post Islam: what it is, what it shall be:

As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:

United States -- Muslim 1.0%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1%-2%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:

Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.

They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. ( United States ).

France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad &Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions ( Paris --car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats ( Amsterdam - Mohammed cartoons).

Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%

At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:

Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:

Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:

Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam' -- the Islamic House of Peace -- there's supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:

Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 99.9%

Of course, that's not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons.

We are in the middle of a massive, global ideological contest, whereby one part of the West, the most vigorous one, the United States, embarked on a quest of trying to implement democracy in the heart of the muslim countries. The ever bolder influx of muslims in western countries and their very obvious efforts to impose their inhumane sharia law in them constitute the muslim world's answer. In this scheme, the other part of the West, Europe but also Canada and Australia, is totally clueless as to the nature of the cancer eating them away from within. It is possible that even America does not understand yet that the strategic weapon which it wields, implentation by force of western values, is the West's main tool to try to bring some sorely needed human decency to islamic countries, and thereby dry up the influx of muslim immigrants. But when it does, it will appreciate it HAS at least a tool in its hands. Clueless Europe on the other hand more and more resembles a flock of sheep heading straight into the flesh mill. Even as a fool can see the islamic nature of the grave internal threat the French nation is facing, French President Sarkozy is embarking on a plan of creating some sort of Mediterranean Union between Europes southern countries and... Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. More immigrants, of which the majority will be inevitably be muslims, must enter France even as their co-religionists already on the spot openly challenge the French State.

At this crucial point in time, I cannot but feel elated about the emergence of more and more groups of concerned indigenous European citizenry, no racists as the idiotic and intellectually dishonest liars and self-haters of the left want us to believe, but decent, informed people who appreciate the tremendous western heritage of which we are the custodians, and are not prepared to waste it all without a fight. Their case is gaining attention, and I am pleased that influential American intellectuals and commentators are beginning to pay attention - some intensely so, and Diana West, who even undertook some "field research" here, comes to mind. They are right. They realize that America, and by extension every self-respecting civilized nation, may in time face the same predicament which now rages in Europe. There was a time France had the same percentage of muslims as the US has now, 1%. As the graph above shows, a seemingly peace-loving minority. I can only hope the States won't wait till that peace-loving minority has grown to a level where it has the clout to torch half a million Chryslers, Buicks, Dodges and Cadillacs in the space of three years.


MFBB.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

Last Friday, August 8, a 40-strong detachment of pioneers drawn from a Bevekom-based Field Accomodation Unit (a Flemish unit) and Amay-based 4th Pioneer Battalion (a Walloon unit) departed for Kandahar in South Afghanistan. They are to prepare accommodation and infrastructure for a wing of four F-16 fighter bombers plus their ground personnel, which will be actively engaged in fighting missions in Afghanistan. Although a 300-600 strong Belgian contingent has been in Afghanistan since 2002, guarding Kabul International Airport (KAIA), and a small demining detachment is active in Kunduz, North Afghanistan, with German forces, the current operation will be the very first fighting mission for Belgium in the WOT... almost seven years after 9/11. In 2006, Belgian F-16 jets were already in Afghanistan but under the then Secretary of Defense André Flahaut anything beyond patrol flights was out of the question. Small as the contribution may be, the current mission marks a sea change compared to the Flahaut era, and that is largely the work of one man, Pieter De Crem, the new SecDef (CD/V, the Flemish Christian Democrats). Indeed, the four F-16 fighter-bombers will be heavily armed and paricipate in ground attacks against Taliban forces. This basically on the request of ISAF troops, but even in the event of an Enduring Freedom operation, the deployment of the fighters is possible.





Currently, our own C-130 transport planes and hired Antonovs are airlifting basic matériel to Kandahar. Material which is too heavy left from the port of Antwerp on board a Karachi-bound containership on August 9. From Karachi, Pakistan, this material will be transported over land to Afghanistan. During the last days of August, the F-16's will fly to Afghanistan, probably refuelling somewhere over the Caspian Sea like in 2006. They should be operational in the first days of September. The operation, dubbed "Guardian Falcon", will last at least six months, but can be prolonged if necessary. The cost of the operation for the rest of 2008 is budgeted at 14.31 million EUR, or some 23 million US$.


It was about time.


MFBB.

PICTURES OF THE LEFT. PLUS SOME THOUGHTS.

A.) 2002. PRIOR TO THE US LIBERATION OF IRAQ.





B.) 2008. AFTER THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF GEORGIA.






To be sure, I am not particularly enamored with Georgia's President, Mikhail Saakashvili. There's a couple of good observations over at The Brussels Journal, and I would wager they pretty well hit the mark. Most of the articles come to the same basic conclusions. Yes, Saakashvili has himself to blame for Russian retaliation. Yes, Saakashivili is a bad gambler and an even worse strategist. Yes, several hundred people may have died in the initial attack by Georgian forces on South Ossetia's capital Tshkinvali - and these people are dead because of Saakashvili. Yes, despite his charm and good looks the Georgian president was unable to hide his dictatorial traits, notably last fall. All that is true.

Another good observation is that Georgia would have done far better to concentrate on attracting foreign investments and creating a favorable environment for companies, using whatever financial means it had to that purpose. If the Georgians had really wanted South Ossetia back, which is a dirt poor 3,600 square kloms "big" stretch of land draped on the southern side of the Caucasus, inhabitated by perhaps 70,000 people - then they would have stood a far better chance to get their house in order and wait for the South Ossetians to come begging to join them again. Douglas Muir of A Fistful of Euros gives a very apt description of the breakaway republic's economy: it’s populated by peasants who drive sheep uphill in summer, and downhill in winter. But instead Georgia raised its military expenses from 30 million US$ yearly to 1 billion (more than a thirtyfold increase) for... what? To end up with a military that is STILL by no means a match for the Red Army. A leader of a country with 5 million people should have known better. So far, it is safe to say that Saakashvili does actually not deserve to be supported - were it not for his people and for the West's strategical interests.

But no matter the many faults and shortcomings of Georgia and its government, it is clear that none of that takes away the quintessential guilt of Russia and the Medvedev/Putin government. If you take into account the massive scale of the Russian response, it is clear that they actually wanted Georgia to try to take back South Ossetia by force - and Saakashvili stepped into the trap. Saakashvili may, apart from his looks, not be your ideal son-in-law. He may even be an operette dictator. But compared to the Kremlin tandem he's a choirboy. One should not forget that in Putin, Russia's "new" Prime Minister who used a trick so obvious that we all have to call ourselves fools to once believe he'd really disappear from the political scene, Russia has an evil, megalomaniac head of state who is prepared to literally go over the dead bodies of thousands of his compatriots to bring back USSR "glory". Putin's Russia is not interested in a handkerchief of land inhabitated by a handful of goat herders. It wants Georgia to become a docile satellite republic again - at least. And at the same time it wants to send a stark message to other NATO flirters that playing time is over. This scenario means regime change in Tbilisi. Saakashvili must hang, and if that is not possible, make him wet his pants so much that for the rest of his tenure he will limit himself to cutting ribbons and frolicking with his Dutch wife. And that is why we are currently witnessing a show of force not seen since Afghanistan. TBJ's Joshua Trevino nails it when he writes:

Still, the ultimate responsibility is Russia’s, which is now a plainly and violently revisionist power. No amount of Western naivete, ignorance and self-regard, nor Georgian blundering, could create this war without Russia’s will to strife. That will springs from multiple causes, some rooted in the nature of autocracy, and some rooted in the nature of the Russian national character; and it is directed toward the overturning of what is, for Russia, the central strategic outcome of the Cold War’s end.

It would be tempting to limit this post to the subject of the Left's abysmal hypocrisy. But that would be too much honour for leftozoid loons. Is it better then to ask oneself how the West should react to the looming crisis? I don't know. The picture is so chaotic that it makes as much sense to assess the situation by reading "informed men" as by trying to gauge the outcome by upturning coffee puss. We have already seen and heard the answer from the Left. A big fat ZERO. That is not to say that any force, party or personality on the Right has the correct answer or attitude - so fraught with uncertainty and dangers is the Georgia conundrum. But at least we rightwingers have the satisfaction to once again being able to conclude that it's OUR SIDE coming up for Freedom. One sign among many? Poland's President, Lech Kaczynski, lent his own personal website to the Georgian government to bring the world news and photos of Russia's latest invasion - after Russia blocked Georgia's online portals. Kaczynski is of the Polish conservative party Law and Justice. When it comes to your freedom, always trust a rightwinger. Americans should think about that in November.


MFBB.

NEOLITHIC SETTLEMENTS, VIKINGS, THE KAISER'S FLEET AND U-BOATS.

Sorry for the long hiatus.

You are looking at the island of Hoy across Hoy Sound, one of the main entrances to the inner sea surrounded by the Mainland and the southern islands of the Orkney archipelago. Oh yeah, speaking of which, the Orkneys, covering 974 square kloms, are not 25 kloms north of Scotland, as I pretended in the previous post, but a mere 11, the body of water between called the Pentland Firth. Also, population is not 24,000 but rather 20,000 (2006 census). Basically, the Orkneys are a group of southern isles (Hoy, Flotta, Burray, South Ronaldsay, Lamb Holm, Graemsay and others) separated from a group of northern isles (Rousay, North Ronaldsay, Westray, Shapinsay, Gairsay, Sanday etc.) by the main island aptly called "Mainland". Now, the hills you see on that pic are a geographically oddity for they are the highest features in all of the Orkneys, only to be found on Hoy. From a geological POV, they are the remnants of old layers of Old Red Sandstone, a stone deposited in the late Silurian. For some reason, on all but Hoy these layers were wasted away. Hoy is higher than you think, with Ward Hill (photo here, not mine) peaking at 481m (1577ft). Perhaps the best illustration of the relentless erosion eating away over the aeons at these remote northern isles is proffered by a spectaculare 137 m high sea stack on Hoy's western coast called the Old Man of Hoy. If you take the ferry from Scrabster to Stromness, the second biggest locality on the Orkneys, you can see it fairly well although some trompe l'oeil makes it look far less impressive than it actually is. It was only climbed in 1966 by Chris Bonington. In 2006 some nutters base jumped from the ole man, film here.

What amazed us if that these isles, which before never aroused our interest very much, appear to have been, since time immemorial, fairly attractive ground for the human species. On the west coast of Mainland there's a roughly 5,000 years old neolithic settlement known as Skara Brae. Of course it's not inhabited anymore, we deducted that immediately from the fact that the roofs were missing. The Skara Brae dwellings appear to be buried in the ground, and they are interconnected by narrow alleways. Had it not been for a fierce 1850 storm which stripped the place from a grassy dune covering it, it might as well have been undetected till this day. As it was, the nearby landowner, something of an important personage since bearing the title of Laird of Skaill, woke up the morning after the storm and then waited 18 years to explore it. Digging continued sporadically thereafter, if at all, and only from 1925 a more scientific approach took place. This led to the conclusions that Skara Brae, which flourished 5,000 years ago, is a.) one of the first known farming villages in Britain and, b.) with its layout suggesting a close-knit community life, marked a departure from previous ways of living.



Pica shows the dwelling catalogued as "House 1", which is probably the best example of interior architecture at the time. The focal point is the central hearth, which heated the houses and provided a cooking facility and lighting as well - nothing resembling lamps was found. The roofs may have been made from turf laid on a network of heather, although whalebones have been found too, suggesting tentlike structures shielding the "pits" from the elements. Apart from the hearth, the object which naturally draws your attention is the impressive dresser which puts Fred Flintstone's furniture to shame. Between the hearth and the dresser is a stone seat where one could contemplate why one was not born during, say, the Clinton years. As for the dresser, given its location immediately opposite the entrance "door" it may have rather been a showcase piece of furniture (for prized objects, hunting trophys perhaps) than a storage space for mundane chow like burritos or peanut butter. Smartasses will naturally point to the large grinding stone immediately to the right of the dresser, but it's the alcoves located inside the walls which in all likelihood were used to store foodstuff and other things, besides what fool would grind burritos and peanut butter. To the left and right of the essentially one-room house (on average the houses' floor area is some 36 square meters) you can make out a boxbed. As for living conditions, by contemporary standards they can hardly have been comfortable, with ventilation e.g. in all likelihood having been a serious problem, what with constantly burning stuff in the middle of the place (breathing problems, lung diseases etc). Still, it must have related to a smelly humid cave like a chique Kensington flat to an Eastender shack.

At some point in time, Skara Brae died out. The PC tourist brochure carefully gives as an explanation the emergence of the "regional group". This "regional group" came in place of the proto-kolchoz which this neolithic place basically was, see Skara Brae's layout itself which suggests very little privacy and a high degree of collectivization. The "regional group", composed of supposedly more individualistic personages, upset "the balance between the needs of the single family unit and collective village purpose" and thus led to Skara Brae slowly sliding into disuse. Blah blah blah blah blah blah regional group. Imho, far simpler it is to say that the Orcadians already 4,500 years ago found out that socialism does not work.
MFBB.


(to be continued)

JOURNEY TO THE ORKNEYS.

The Orkney Islands, roughly twenty-five kilometers north of the Scottish coast between Thurso and John O'Groats, are a nice enough place in summer, especially when the weather is real good - like it was when we were there. The small archipel counts some 70 islands, of which 30 are inhabited, but the grand majority of the 24,000 plus Orcadians live on the biggest island, rather prosaically called Mainland. The photo shows Marwick Head, almost on Mainland's northwesternly corner. Almost, because that spot is taken in by a small islet with a heavy past, Brough of Birsay. I like to think of the Orkneys as a place with two faces, because as lovely as it is in summer, as rough and hard it seems to be in winter. And had I been able to take an aerial photograph of the scene, that duality would have been far better illustrated, because immediately behind the cruel beauty of the steep cliffs lie wide pastoral meadows, gently sloping downwards to a broad, fertile albeit treeless valley.

The strange 30 feet high structure on top of Marwick Head is the Kitchener Memorial. Lord Kitchener of Khartoum,
the UK's senior soldier in the first half of World War I, was a national hero, victor of the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 and other imperial conflicts. Therafter he showed himself to be a capable administrator of Sudan and Egypt, and in a later phase of India. In 1902 Kitchener succesfully terminated the Boer War in South Africa, and twelve years later his heavily mustachioed face became an icon because of the thousands of early-war recruiting posters exhorting the British to enlist. On June 5th, 1916 Kitchener departed from Scapa Flow, the UK's big naval base on the Orkneys, on board the cruiser HMS Hampshire. In a mission best described as a forerunner to WWII's Lend-Lease Act, his task was to look with the Czar and his staff into how Russia could best be helped against the Germans. The Hampshire set off for Russia in a heavy storm, rounding the Orkney's western coast because it was considered safer against U-boat attacks. The gales were so terrible that two accompanying destroyers quickly had to give up and return to base. Between Marwick Head and Brough of Birsay, barely a mile off the coast, the HMS Hampshire suddenly blew up, a fact witnessed by the Fraser family living at Birsay. In fifteen minutes the cruiser went under, and although an estimated 200 men were able to board three life-rafts, no more than twelve made it to the coast. They were the sole survivors of the 655 men on board the ship. Later it was determined that the cruiser in all likelihood had struck a contact mine laid days earlier by the U-75.

The islands abound with war stories, but their historical past is rife with enigmas from a far earlier era, for I have never before in my life come across a place with so many neolithic settlements, of which the ones on display possibly constitute but a small part. But more about that later.


MFBB.

ISLAM IS CANCER.

In summer 2007, there was some bruhaha (but really not that much) in Belgian press about a muslim of Jordanian descent in a hospital in Bree, in the eastern Belgian province of Limburg, who adamantly refused to allow a male anaesthetist, Dr. Philippe Becx, in the room where the muslim's wife urgently needed a Caesarean:

"However, her husband blocked the door and demanded a female anesthetist. The latter was unavailable. After a two-hour discussion proved fruitless, an imam was summoned. The imam permitted the doctor to apply an epidural injection, but only if the woman was fully covered with only a small area of skin showing. During the surgery itself, performed by a female gynecologist, the anesthetist was to remain in the hallway. Through a door that was slightly ajar, he shouted instructions to a nurse who was monitoring the anesthesia. Despite all this, the Caesarean was succesful."

The usual quislings are always at the ready with smooth talk to downplay these bad omen incidents, and it was no different in the case of the good Dr. Becx. I thought it was time to do some field research, and coincidentally one of my clients back then was a nurse in the hospital of my hometown, which, alas, has in recent years suffered too of an influx of followers of you-know-who. I asked this nurse what were his experiences with muslims on the job and, sure enough, it was no different from Bree. To my dismay he recounted how he and the rest of the hospital staff basically always give in to muslims in these cases since medical code requires that the patient be helped no matter what. My client then said something very peculiar:

"They use our laws against us."

I was reminded of that statement again when I read a post by Natalie of the blog Birdbrain on the case of Harry's Place, a UK blog currently being sued by the President of the British Muslim Initiative, a certain Mohammed Sawalha. Natalie linked to the blog NeoConstant, which is currently organizing support for Harry's Place:

Harry’s Place, a UK blog dedicated to promoting the ideals of freedom and democracy, is being sued by Mohammed Sawalha, the President of the British Muslim Initiative, which has been linked to Hamas and the Islamic Brotherhood, both terrorist organizations. The blog reports that Mr. Sawalha, according to the BBC…

“master minded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy” and in London “is alleged to have directed funds, both for Hamas’ armed wing, and for spreading its missionary dawah”.

In their revelation of the impending lawsuit against them leveled by Mohammed Sawalha, they write:

Mr Sawalha claims that we have “chosen a malevolent interpretation of a meaningless word”. In fact, we did no more than translate a phrase which appeared in an Al Jazeera report of Mr Sawalha’s speech. When Al Jazeera changed that phrase from “Evil Jew” to “Jewish Lobby”, we reported that fact, along with the statement that it had been a typographical error.

Mr Sawalha has been the prime mover in a number of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood associated projects. He is President of the British Muslim Initiative. He is the past President of the Muslim Association of Britain. He was the founder of IslamExpo, and is registered as the holder of the IslamExpo domain name. He is also a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque….

…Mr Sawalha says that the attribution of the phrase “Evil Jew” to him implies that he is “anti-semitic and hateful”. Notably, he does not take issue with our reporting of the revelation, made in a Panorama documentary in 2006, that he is a senior activist in the clerical fascist terrorist organisation, Hamas.

It looks like Harry’s Place is going up against some pretty top-notch lawyers on this one, and they’ve got guts, but as the post goes on to say:

If Mr Sawalha persists in attempting to silence us with this desperate legal suit, we will need your help.

We won’t be able to stand up to them alone.

This is why we’ve started this blogburst, to get the word out that we won’t let members of Hamas or any radical terrorist group censor us or any of our fellow bloggers.

If you’d like to add your site to the blogroll, simply email us at admin@neoconstant.com, and include your site’s URL.

Then copy and paste this (or write your own) entry into one of your posts. Future posts will be emailed to you. Thanks, and don’t forget to head over to Harry’s Place to show your support of their freedom of speech!

Okay-dokay? Just remember, this is no isolated case. They use our laws against us, and in this case no Oath of Hippocrates but "anti-racist laws" drafted by our moral betters, the left. Mark Steyn is being prosecuted by the Canadian Islamic Congress and their pals of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, Ezra Levant too, in the UK Paul Ray from Lionheart risks being arrested for telling the truth about Luton muslims, in The Netherlands the most popular blog, GeenStijl, is "invited" to the police etc etc etc... So come on, if you got a blog, email your URL to admin@neoconstant.com!

Oh yeah, before I forget it, July 14th was the French National Holiday aka Bastille Day. 297 cars torched during the night of 13-14 July, to prevent being sued by the Belgian Muslim Congress or whatever I will just say that it was not done by Hmong immigrants from Laos. In 2002 it was 90. I think I see a trend here.


MFBB.