EASTER HOLIDAY IN SOUTH ENGLAND PIC DUMP.

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

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


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




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




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




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




... and snapshot to the right...




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





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




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




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




A pic of the dining room...




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




Leonard's bust in the garden...




... which was lovely...




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




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




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




HMS Victory's poo, erm, stern:




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




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




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




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





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




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




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





That's all for today. Nite.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT TCHAIKOVSKY, STRAUSS.

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




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



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




Waltz in triple metre, composed in 1866.


Nite.



MFBB.

WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR HILLARY 2016!!!

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




Hat tip The Political Commentator.



MFBB.

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

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

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




The Jerusalem Post reports:

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

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


MFBB.


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

HAPPY EASTER 2015!

On Easter, Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.





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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us remember our brothers and sisters in our prayers:

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

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

God bless.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT THE SOUND, LEO SAYER.

The Sound with Unwritten Law. From the album Jeopardy (1980). I got to know the band via my good friend John D., and I actually bought the album from him. Utter fool that I am, somewhere in the mid-nineties I loaned it to some new wave bloke who never bothered to give it back and whose trace I lost subsequently.




The Sound formed in South London in 1979, and the original lineup consisted of (from left to right on the photo) Graham Bailey (bass guitar), Adrian Borland (vocals, guitar), Benita "Bi" Marshall (keyboard, saxophone, clarinet) and Mike Dudley (drums). This is actually the photo on Jeopardy's back cover:




You've got real successful bands which can regularly produce hits for two decades. You've got moderately successful bands - they may dominate for half a decade. You've got one hit wonders. And then there's bands like The Sound or Third Eye Blind. Very promising debuts, members who seem to have "it"... but after a couple of years they somehow fail to provide. They lack just that little bit that could propel them into stardom. It's probably this frustration at being stuck just an inch short of a breakthrough which caused The Sound's frontman to commit suicide in 1999. Adrian Borland, RIP.


Leo Sayer with Thunder in my Heart. From the 1977 album with the same name.




Quintessentially seventies music. One of the iconic sounds of that age.


Goede nacht.



MFBB.

GEERT WILDERS' SPEECH IN VIENNA, AUSTRIA.

Via our pals at Gates of Vienna, check out Geert Wilders' speech in Vienna at the end of March. The introduction is by Heinz-Christian Strache of the FPOe, the PVV's Austrian counterpart:





MFBB.

JE SUIS MEMORIES PIZZA OF WALKERTON, INDIANA.

No surprise there, Mark Steyn's take on the Memories Pizza affair is the best:


"I woke up this Maundy Thursday to breaking news from Kenya. Al-Shabaab "militants" have stormed Garissa University, killed at least 15 Christian students, wounded another 60, and taken more as hostages. [UPDATE: More than 70 dead.] [UPPERDATE: Just shy of 150 dead.]

Meanwhile, there's no pizza for Last Supper. Memories Pizza of Walkerton, Indiana has been forced to close following death threats received after its owners announced that they would not be catering gay weddings:

"We're in hiding basically," says co-owner Crystal O'Connor.

In Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, Christians are killed for their beliefs. In America, they're not (yet) being killed, just having their businesses destroyed. Be grateful for small mercies. But in both west and east the dominant ideology is not minded to brook dissent. Islam sells itself as a stern enforcer, and always has done. By contrast, the New Diversity enforcers intolerantly demand uniformity in the name of tolerance and diversity. In the audacity of their assault, they seek to undermine even the possibility of dissent: when words are conscripted to mean their precise opposite, how can you even mount a contrary argument?

~Eric Eckert writes:

*Mark,
- Judge Napolitano on Fox News thinks the Supreme Court will rule against the religious freedom law in Indiana, because it is discrimination. Shepard Smith is also upset with this law. If these people want to see real discrimination, that is ignored by judges, and politicians, just go to Dearborn, Michigan.

- I would like to see Smith, Napolitano, and the Supreme Court all wear a t-shirt with a crucifix on it, and attend some festival in this town. Maybe they could set up a gay pride booth at this festival, and hand out gay literature. If any of them attempted to do such a thing, they would need several marine divisions with them, it would be like taking Tikrit or Mosul back.

- You can bet that Islamic discrimination will be totally ignored by all the gutless judges, news people, lawyers, and Democrat politicians. Women are not allowed in certain Islamic coffee shops, and certain Islamic restaurants in this country right now, the discrimination is occurring in Islamic neighborhoods, and our courts allow Islamic religious freedom to discriminate against women, go figure. A black guy on YouTube said he is not allowed in Dearborn, and a Muslim said that the black guy is from the crim- filled city of Detroit, and that Dearborn has very little crime. Just let a white Christian say the same thing, and see if this is called discrimination, and racism.

Betrothed gays looking for wedding cakes and floral arrangements are not just carelessly stumbling into homophobic bakeries and florists. It's an organized campaign consciously targeting particular establishments. That's why no gay couples have wandered into a Muslim patisserie in Dearborn. As I said on The John Oakley Show, it's not about expanding "rights", it's about shifts in power - which is to say shifts in fashion. In Kenya and Indiana, the thugs know they can get away with targeting Christians and the world won't care - I mean, how often do you ever hear any of the timeserving hacks and panderers who head up America's "mainstream" churches ever say anything on either subject?






But the Big Gay enforcers know it would all get more complicated if they were to go after a Muslim pizzeria in Dearborn. And, if they did, they'd be the ones in hiding. Tim Cook, the Apple CEO who'll have no truck with hoosier homophobes, is happy to enrich Iran's mullahs so they can build fancier gay gallows on which to hang the sodomites. Muscle respects muscle.

Big Gay is on the ascendant in America. But in an Islamifying Amsterdam, once "the most tolerant city in Europe", gay-bashing is on the rise, and the gay moment is already passing.

~The aforementioned Judge Napolitano's argument is that the Supreme Court will strike down Indiana's law because of the 1964 Civil Rights Act's definition of "public accommodation". He's probably right about that. I'm less impressed by the First Amendment than I used to be, if only because I'm currently wasting half-a-decade of my life and a seven-figure sum in the DC courts to determine whether my 270-word blog post is permitted under said First Amendment. But there's not much point to freedom of speech if you don't have freedom of association. That's to say, it's not much consolation being able to say what you like if you can't use what you say to inform how you live - if you can talk the talk, but you can't walk the walk.

What we're seeing is a campaign to enforce ideological discipline and conformity in every area of daily life. Notwithstanding the LGBTQWERTY lobby's industrial promotion of ever more abstruse and reductive identity politics, such a society will be the very opposite of "tolerant" and "diverse" - and deeply unhappy..."

You can support Memories Pizza here.




Also, watch how Stephen Crowder exposes Big Gay's hypocrisy and ultimate .... cowardice:




The Big Gay bigots and leftist asshats behave in this affair like the drunk who in the dead of night is on all fours obviously searching for something under a lamppost. A passerby asks "What are you searching for?". Whereupon the drunk replies: "M..my...my...car...k_keyzzz". Says the other man: "Did you lose them here?". Answer: "N...no. No... twazn't here. Iz juzzz, it's juz dad da lite izz better here."


MFBB.

WILLENHALL, COVENTRY, UK: THE CHARMS OF MULTICULTURALISM: "WE ARE WATCHING YOU WHITE BITCH."

Great news from Small Britain, courtesy the Left and their Wonderful Multicultural Society. The Daily Mail reports:

"A young mother moved into her new home to find it daubed in racist graffiti and a threatening note put through to door saying the flat block was for 'black sisters and brothers'.
Sammie Sunter, 24, was taking her sons, aged two and five, to see their new home in Willenhall, Coventry, for the first time on Monday when they found the front door smeared in anti-vandal paint.

It was also covered in vile graffiti and faeces, while a racist note stating 'Willenhall is black so f*** off' was posted through the letterbox.

The note had been put inside an envelope marked 'Message inside oyinbo b****' - Nigerian slang for a white person, while another message inside read: 'Black power. Don't stay too long or else...'.

The hairdresser was handed the keys from housing association, Whitefriars, last Wednesday and spent the rest of the week decorating the boys' bedrooms.

She left the flat at 4pm on Sunday and returned with two-year-old Harvey and five-year-old Oscar, at 9am on Monday morning to see her house had been targeted.




Ms Sunter said: ' I had to explain racism to my five-year-old. It's just not acceptable. He didn't really understand. If we are equal what gives the person responsible the right to do that?

The door had been covered in black anti-vandal paint and smeared in faeces when Ms Sunter arrived at their new home with her two boys. 'I told him that whoever was responsible was going to get punished, but who knows if that will happen.'

The mother-of-two, who is due to be re-housed following the incident, has lived in Willenhall for 15 years and said she has never experienced anything like this before.
'These people make Willenhall out to be some sort of ghetto,' Sammie said. 'They say it's their area but it's really not - there's a little old white man living in the flat below.
'The whole point of this is that it's not right. I'm not going to sit there and take it.

'I had to have a police escort away from my property and I knew I was being watched. You hold your head up high but it's disgusting.' When she called the housing association she was told that there had been a 'previous incident' at the address."

Next time vote UKIP ma'am.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT PIXIES, LIVING COLOUR.

Pixies with Where is my mind.




From the 1988 album Surfer Rosa.



Living Colour with Glamour Boys.




From their 1988 debut album Vivid.


Sorry for the nonexistent blogging. I'm f*cked up, f*cked up, f*cked up, got simply no energy left. Company may be getting through though after three years of losses - we've been haemorrhaging money. We'll see soon enough - our fiscal year ends March 31.


Good night.



MFBB.

SANA'A, YEMEN: WIN-WIN SITUATION IN THE Al-HASHOUSH MOSQUE.

The shiite mosque of Al-Hashoush in the Al-Jaraf district of Sana'a, Yemen's capital, was blown up over the weekend, just as the faithful were chanting 'Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse Upon the Jews. Victory to Islam':




Basically it boils down to Sunni beasts butchering Shiite scum. Clearly a win/win situation.



MFBB.

DREAMING OF SUMMER....

If all goes well, it's gonna be the British Isles again for this year's summer holiday, more precisely one week Yorkshire Dales, and one week County Sligo in Ireland. I still want to do Grossglockner in Austria with a couple of buddies, but I fear we'll have to postpone that to 2016.

There's nothing higher than the Ben Nevis (1,344m) in the whole of Ireland and the UK, so for 2015 I'll have to stick with the following fells and hills, but man are they lovely:

When in Sligo County, I plan to leave wife and kids in our cottage for a day and head a little north to County Donegal to climb Errigal (751m), the highest peak of the Derryveagh Mountains. With its unmistakable, quartzite topped cone, it's the southernmost, steepest and highest of the mountain chain, which the locals call the "Seven Sisters". The other peaks are the Muckish, Crocknalaragagh, Aghla Beg, Ardloughnabrackbaddy, Aghla More and Mackoght (aka Little Errigal or Wee Errigal).




Check out this pleasant video which gives you an idea of what it's like to climb this Hewitt (hill over 2,000 feet in the UK and Ireland).




In County Sligo itself it would be a shame not to get on top of the iconic Ben Bulben, praised by Yeats:




Benbulbin, 526m, is part of the Dartry Mountains.


In 2013, we spent one week in the Lake District. With a rather full things-to-do list I managed to climb only one fell and that was Scafell Pike, England's highest. And this while the Old Man of Coniston (803m) was so to speak right behind our cottage. But this year he's not gonna escape me:




Photo courtesy of Sean McMahon. Of course we'll be staying in the Yorkshire Dales, but I figure I can get to Coniston in a little under two hours. If I leave early enough, there should be enough time to climb the Old Man at ease and be back before evening supper.


And finally there's Pen-y-Ghent, 694 of so meters and one of the Yorkshire Three Peaks (the other two being Ingleborough and Whernside).




Almost two years ago, while undergoing the last of the chemiotherapy, I put this video on DB literally from my sick bed. It features great footage of Pen-y-Ghent and male camaraderie, but I guess what I really liked was Foo Fighter's Come Alive:





Christ, I wanna to do those four this summer.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT STING, ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN.

Sting with Fortress Around Your Heart.




From the 1985 album The Dream of the Blue Turtles.



Echo and the Bunnymen with The Killing Moon.




First single drawn from Ocean Rain (1984).



Sorry for the light blogging, it's been a very rough week.



MFBB.

THE CHARMS OF MULTICULTURALISM: 25 TURKS FIGHT EACH OTHER IN GHENT WITH KNIVES, AXES AND HAMMERS.

A fascinating case of Cultural Enrichment in Ghent Saturday afternoon. Het Nieuwsblad Online succinctly reports:

"25 PEOPLE FIGHT EACH OTHER WITH KNIVES, AXES AND HAMMERS.

GHENT - at the Voormuide [a neighborhood in Ghent's north, not far from the harbor - MFBB] saturday afternoon some 25 Turks started fighting each other, reports the Ghent Police Department. The incident occurred around half past four saturday afternoon at the Voormuide. 'Around 25 people from the Turkish community started fighting each other with knives, axes and hammers', says police spokesman Manuel Mugica Gonzalez.

One person was wounded in the leg. Three persons were arrested. The cause for the massive brawl is unknown."

News today was that some Turkish bloke entered a cafe yesterday and got into an argument with patrons. They went outside to continue the argument and that's when it got out of hand, the conflict quickly attracting more participants.

The Spanish community in Belgium is much smaller than the Turkish one, but has apparently succeeded in spawning a police spokesman for the Police Department of a major city.

I suppose islam has nothing to do with it.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT THE STONE ROSES, ANYA MARINA.

The Stone Roses with I wanna be adored. From their 1989 album The Stone Roses.




Madchester frontrunners around Ian Brown.



Anya Marina with Satellite Heart. From the New Moon soundtrack, 2009.




New York singer/songwriter.


Nite.



MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: WALTER WILLIAMS ON CLIMATE CHANGE.

An excellent Walter Williams contribution over at Townhall:

"... GlobalChange.gov gives the definition of climate change: "Changes in average weather conditions that persist over multiple decades or longer. Climate change encompasses both increases and decreases in temperature, as well as shifts in precipitation, changing risk of certain types of severe weather events, and changes to other features of the climate system." That definition covers all weather phenomena throughout all 4.54 billion years of Earth's existence.
You say, "Williams, that's not what the warmers are talking about. It's the high CO2 levels caused by mankind's industrial activities that are causing the climate change!" There's a problem with that reasoning. Today CO2 concentrations worldwide average about 380 parts per million. This level of CO2 concentration is trivial compared with the concentrations during earlier geologic periods. For example, 460 million years ago, during the Ordovician Period, CO2 concentrations were 4,400 ppm, and temperatures then were about the same as they are today. With such high levels of CO2, at least according to the warmers, the Earth should have been boiling.

Then there are warmer predictions. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, warmers, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, made all manner of doomsday predictions about global warming and the increased frequency of hurricanes. According to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, "no Category 3-5 hurricane has struck the United States for a record nine years, and Earth's temperature has not budged for 18 years."

Climate change predictions have been wrong for decades. Let's look at some. At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and that "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people (would) starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989 and that by 1999, the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier. He said, "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."




To the right the last polar bears. Or so the warmists would want you to believe. In reality however...


In 1970, Harvard University biologist George Wald predicted, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." Sen. Gaylord Nelson, in Look magazine in April 1970, said that by 1995, "somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals (would) be extinct."

Climate change propaganda is simply a ruse for a socialist agenda. Consider the statements of some environmentalist leaders. Christiana Figueres, the U.N.'s chief climate change official, said that her unelected bureaucrats are undertaking "probably the most difficult task" they have ever given themselves, "which is to intentionally transform the (global) economic development model." In 2010, German economist and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change official Ottmar Edenhofer said, "One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy." The article in which that interview appeared summarized Edenhofer's views this way: "Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection. ... The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world's resources will be negotiated."

The most disgusting aspect of the climate change debate is the statements by many that it's settled science. There is nothing more anti-scientific than the idea that any science is settled. Very often we find that the half-life of many scientific ideas is about 50 years. For academics to not criticize their colleagues and politicians for suggesting that scientific ideas are not subject to challenge is the height of academic dishonesty."

Listen to Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC):




People like Figueres need to be stopped.


MFBB.

BEN SHAPIRO'S REALITY CHECK: HILLARY CLINTON IS A LIAR.

Via Theo Spark, Ben Shapiro's take on Serial Liar Hillary Clinton:



Echoes of Jerry Zeifman, lifelong Democrat:



What a gruesome woman. She would literally kill for her perverse ambitions.



MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: JOHN STOSSEL'S "WHAT'S FAIR?"

Nail on the head article by John Stossel over at Townhall:

"Donald Trump's kids and Paris Hilton's siblings were born rich. That gave them a big advantage in life. Unfair!

Inequality in wealth has grown. Today the richest 1 percent of Americans own a third of the assets. That's not fair!

But wherever people are free, that's what happens.

Some people are luckier, smarter or just better at making money. Often they marry other wealthy, well-connected people. Over time, these advantages compound. Globalization increases the effect. This month's issue of Forbes says the world now has 1,826 billionaires, and some struggle to find enough parking places for their jets.

President Obama calls inequality "the defining issue of our time." Really? Not our unsustainable debt? Not ISIS? The president also said, "No challenge? poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change!"

Politicians constantly find crises they will solve by increasing government power. But why is inequality a crisis?





Alexis Goldstein, of a group called The Other 98 percent, complains that corporations got richer but workers' wages "are lower than they've been in 65 years."

That's a common refrain, but it's wrong. Over the past 30 years, CBO data shows that the average income of the poorest fifth of Americans is up by 49 percent. That doesn't include all the innovations that have dramatically improved everyone's life. Today even the poorest Americans have comforts and lifespans that kings didn't have a century ago.

George Mason University economist Garett Jones says, "If I was going to be in the bottom fifth in the America of today versus the bottom fifth of America in 1970 or 1960, it's hard to imagine that anybody would take that time machine into the past."

And despite America's lousy government schools and regulations that make it tough to start a business, there is still economic mobility. Poor people don't have to stay poor. Sixty-four percent of those born in the poorest fifth of the U.S. population move out of that quintile. Eleven percent of them rise all the way to the top, according to economists at Harvard and Berkeley. Most of the billionaires atop the Forbes richest list weren't rich. They got rich by innovating.

Rich people aren't guaranteed their place at the top, either. Sixty-six percent fell from the top quintile, and eight percent fell all the way to the bottom.

That mobility is a reason most of us are better off than we would have been in a more rigid society, controlled by central economic planners.

Life will always be unfair. I want to play pro basketball. It's unfair that LeBron James is bigger and more talented! It's also unfair that George Clooney is better looking! It's unfair that my brother is smarter than me.

Jones points out, "I was born with an advantage, too. Being born in the United States ... totally unfair." He also has two married parents -- another huge advantage.

The question is not whether people start out life in homogeneous circumstances, he adds. "The question is whether government policies that try to fix this actually make things better or worse."

Worse, in most cases. Government "help" encourages poor people to be dependent and passive. Dependent, people stay poor. Also, most government handouts don't even go to the poor. They go to the middle class (college loans, big mortgage tax deductions, Medicare) and the rich (corporate welfare, bailouts to banks "too big to fail").

Instead of making government more powerful, let's get rid of those handouts. Left and right ought to agree on that.

America has prosperity and innovation because we have relatively free markets.





Progressives say, "Keep the innovation but have government make us more equal." But that doesn't work. It's been tried. Government-enforced equality -- socialism -- leaves everybody poor.

Equality is less important than opportunity. Opportunity requires allowing people to spend their own money and take their own risks.

Instead of talking about "fairness," it would be better to talk about justice: respecting other people, respecting their freedom and their property rights.

Real fairness requires limiting government power."

MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: MARK STEYN WITH MODS VS CHOPPERS.

Our MSM do their damnedest best to pretend Mark Steyn does in fact not exist, so here's Outlaw Mike helping them out of their dreams: Our Man From New Hampshire with Mods vs Choppers:

"Is it "racist" to impute to moderate Muslims the intimidatory character of that last sentence? Well, here's Douglas Murray at a post-Charlie demo in the UK:


*** Yesterday in London a crowd of more than a thousand British Muslims (carefully divided between males and females) gathered outside Downing Street. The rally – organised by something calling itself 'The Muslim Action Forum' – was a protest against freedom of speech, specifically to cartoons of Mohammed in the French publication Charlie Hebdo. Among the banners carried by protestors were ones that read, 'I am a servant of holy prophet Muhammad (pbuh)', the sinister 'We love prophet Muhammad (pbuh) more than our lives', 'Jesus and Moses were prophets of Islam' and the even more presumptuous 'Learn some manners'. Among those holding a banner reading 'Charlie and the abuse factory' was a little boy. Others bore banners with the fantastically awful words spoken by the Pope last month: 'Insult my mum and I will punch you (Pope Francis).' A large banner hung beneath the stage from which speakers addressed the crowd carried the barely concealed threat: 'Be careful with Muhammad.'

As I said, Islam itself has no feeling for free speech, and so the more Islamic a society gets the less free speech it will have. So all the above was to be expected. This, on the other hand, has an inspired audacious brio:


*** Charlie Hebdo has been named 2015 International Islamophobe of the year, despite many of its staff having been killed by Jihadists in January. The annual 'award' was given by Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a British group that claims to campaign against terrorism.

What did the late editor Stéphane Charbonnier and his deceased cartoonists and writers do to merit such an honor? Well, Charlie Hebdo won the Islamophobia Oscars for "its continual stoking of Islamophobic sentiment by caricaturing Muslims as terrorists".

So a group of Muslim terrorists killed them. Which you would think might lend sufficient credence to Charlie Hebdo's editorial line as to make the Islamic Human Rights Commission wary about giving them a posthumous award for their supposedly absurd, irrational phobia. If, say, I were to be killed by a deranged climate activist, I've no doubt Michael E Mann and his chums would be having a grand laugh about it, but I think a certain self-awareness would caution them from making me Climate Denier of the Year in absentia. So it's tempting to think that no one at the IHRC has sufficient sense of irony to understand what they're doing with their award to Charlie Hebdo. But I think, au contraire, they do understand - and they're dancing in the blood of the dead because, like those hundreds of thousands of British Muslims, they think those attacks were "justified". And they want you to know that.

What is the "Islamic Human Rights Commission"? Well, it has consultative status with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and it's given evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. Its supporters include Ilan Pappé, the Jewish "anti-Zionist" Exeter University professor. All very respectable, all very "moderate".

The problem is "moderate Islam" - because "moderate Islam" is largely indistinguishable from "radical Islam" in its views on free speech, Jews, the role of women, apostasy, and the special privilege that must be accorded to Islam by everybody else. The difference between the savages who murdered Charb and his colleagues and the "moderates" who pinned Islamophobe of the Year medals on their corpses is that the jihadists are killing a few individuals while the mods are killing the very spirit of a free society. If you believe in all the above, you can't be a citizen of a functioning pluralist western society, and, wittingly or otherwise, you're part of the campaign to replace that society with something else.

Former Labour man Leo McKinstry writes in The Daily Express:


*** When the bloodthirsty Islamist brute nicknamed "Jihadi John" was exposed as a London computer graduate and terror suspect called Mohammed Emwazi, the cry went up, "How was he allowed to slip through the net?"

*** But it was an absurd question.

*** There is no net.

Indeed. Unless "moderate Islam" can be prevailed upon to change its views on free speech, etc, it's part of the problem, and ensures that instead of a "net" there's a vast comfort zone for the likes of Mohammed Emwazi to roam and sport in."

This is such a "wonderful" pic from a Cultural Enricher at that demo that I just had to include it:



Photo courtesy The Spectator and Getty.

... but also because it contains the quote to the left.


Now, as a sidenote, I knew George Bernard Shaw was a disingenuous leftist idiot, but he wasn't as far gone as today's leftists. So, alas for the hatebeard in the picture above, but that quote about Shaw having proclaimed once that the prophet (Piss Be Upon Him By The Hectoliters) is the Saviour of Humanity is BOGUS. Check out The Australian in 2013:

"ANTI "Islamophobia" advertisements due to screen on major free-to-air channels from today rely on a fabricated quote from Irish playwright and avowed atheist George Bernard Shaw, from a book that does not exist, according to the International Shaw Society.

The 30-second ads have been funded by the Sydney-based Mypeace organisation, which says it hopes to "build bridges" between Muslims and other Australians.

Animated with voiceovers and with quotations displayed on the screen, they feature major historical figures including Mahatma Gandhi and Shaw praising the prophet Mohammed.

The advertisements quote Shaw proclaiming the prophet Mohammed was "the saviour of humanity" in a book he is supposed to have written entitled The Genuine Islam.

But International Shaw Society treasurer Richard F Dietrich said he had compiled a complete list of Shaw's works, which did not include the book.

"I think The Genuine Islam is bogus," he said. In his writings, Shaw described the religion in a 1933 letter to Rev Ensor Walters as "ferociously intolerant"."

That dork should grow a brain instead of a beard.



MFBB.

MONDAY NIGHT VICKERS VIMY VIDEO.

Via Theo Spark, this wonderful video of the Vickers Vimy in flight:




Designed by Reginald Kirshaw "Rex" Pierson, who was chief designer of Vickers Limited (Aviation Department) in Leighton Buzzard, the Vickers Vimy was a two-engined biplane bomber which came too late to play a role in WWI (three aircraft actually made it to France before the cessation of hostilities, but were never deployed in combat missions), but which equipped many RAF squadrons post-Great War and had a successful career in a civilian role. It is probably best remembered as the mount of Captain Alcock and Lieutenant Colonel Brown, pilot and navigator respectively, on their memorable transatlantic flight in 1919.



The rather uninspired Alcock and Brown Memorial near Clifden, in Galway, Ireland. If all goes well, we're spending our summer holiday this year in County Sligo. We might go a little south to visit the site. Photocredit Wikipedia.


The Vimy prototypes were equipped with a variety of engines, but the production aircraft the RAF received had the 360HP (270kW) Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII engines. Main characteristics:

Empty weight: 7,104 lb (3,222 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 10,884 lb (4,937 kg)
Maximum speed: 100 mph (161 km/h)
Range: 900 mi (1,448 km)
Service ceiling: 7,000 ft (2,134 m)

The armament consisted of two .303 in (7.7 mm) Lewis machineguns in Scarff rings, one in the nose and another one in mid-fuselage. Bombload was 2,476 lb (1,123 kg).

Cutaway drawing:


Magnificent huh? Such a wonderful piece of engineering, now almost a century old!

Some quick anecdotal facts before Outlaw Mike calls it quits. The Vimy was named for the Battle of Vimy Ridge, which took place from 9 to 12 April 1917, and in which the four division strong Canadian Corps and one British division, with overall commander the later Field Marshal Sir Julian Byng, were pitted against three German divisions of the German Sixth Army under Von Falkenhausen. It was an Allied victory.

Although Alcock and Brown's Vimy crashed in a bog near Clifden - it was a miracle they escaped unhurt - the plane was rebuilt and is now on display in the London Science Museum.

Vickers would merge with Armstrong-Whitworth in 1927, and the resulting company would ultimately become a part of BAC in 1960.

The brand name Vickers however would continue to be used until 1965. Perhaps the most inspiring Vickers creation would be the Vickers Valiant, the most conventional design among the three bomber types of Britain's airborne nuclear deterrent force. But even so, it's amazing that a mere 34 years separate the Vimy from the Valiant, which made its first flight in 1951.


MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: THE GREEN LEFT'S FASCIST ROOTS.

Do not miss this article by American Thinker's Mark Musser:

"The current presidential administration and State Department have been long touting that global warming/climate change are just as dangerous as Russian bears and Islamic terrorists. In February 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry addressed Asian leaders in Jakarta by informing them, “Climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” With such attitudes, is it any wonder the east-west divide all the way from the Middle East to Ukraine in the north is literally on fire with no promising solution or relief to be found anywhere on the horizon? While common sense cries out that the world is entering into very serious times not seen since perhaps World War II, America has a presidential administration and a State Department seemingly far more concerned about global warming/climate change than the cauldron that has erupted in the Middle East, and the seething geopolitical dangers that could easily blow up all of Europe itself.

Worse, leftist pressure has made the U.S. military go green over the last decade. The U.S. armed forces are now buying more and more energy from expensive renewable technology contractors. Presumably by 2025, the U.S. Army will become a virtual green model of sustainability for the entire country. In other words, the Left is using the Defense Department to keep renewable energy boondoggles afloat by wasting taxpayer dollars on green pipe dreams.

......


What many on the Left do not appreciate is that when they started to jump on the bandwagon of Nature and environmentalism, they began to drift more and more toward fascism and away from their original humanistic workingman class-warfare Marxian values. Fascism essentially means holism, which denies the otherness of the human being from nature. In fact, it was the father of German Social Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), who coined the term “ecology” in 1866.

In the early 1900s, Haeckel established the German Monist League, which was one of the first politically-active groups in both racial science and environmentalism. Monism means “one” and many Germans at the time believed that Darwinism established racism as a scientific fact. As such, eugenics became the scientific methodology that was to be used in order to restore humanity’s racial evolution that had been compromised by the Judeo-Christian worldview and her unnatural beliefs and practices. Allegedly promoted by Jews and Christians, humanism had led the modern world astray away from the scientific natural laws of evolutionary monism, i.e., racism, which needed to be recovered in order to save Aryan Europe from weakness, overpopulation, and inevitable decline. In those days, German Social Darwinism was called Monism, and many of Germany’s early greens were environmental racists and nationalists.




While there were some nuances that distinguished the Monist League from National Socialism, the Nazis drank deeply from Haeckel’s Social Darwinism. More than a few Nazis were very attracted to what has to be understood as an early form of environmentalism as well. With the exception of Martin Bormann, all the leading Nazis, including the Führer himself, had their fingers in a piece of the green pie that National Socialism offered to Germany -- everything from animal rights to green hunting laws, to environmental preservation and planning, to green building and a back-to-the-land farming campaign, organic farming, recycling, sustainable forestry, and even sustainable development. As early as 1935, Nazi Germany was far and above the greenest regime on the planet. Eco-fascism is thus no metaphor, but a historical fact.

.....


Closely related, one of the original gurus who championed the cause of environmentalism over national security concerns was German green activist Dr. Erich Hornsmann (1909-1999). In postwar West Germany, Hornsmann often complained that the destruction of Mother Nature was “Enemy Number One.” In 1947, Hornsmann became a founding member of the Protection of German Forests. In 1955, he wrote The Forest: The Foundation of our Existence. He warned of spreading desertification problems associated with the cutting down of trees and expanding ski resorts on mountain slopes. Dr. Hornsmann even led the postwar charge on promoting radical water conservation measures. Hornsmann also belonged to the Alliance for the Protection of German Waters and wrote extensively on how water was becoming an increasingly scarce commodity. Hornsmann applied Malthusian math to the waters of Germany as he was convinced water consumption would outstrip water supplies as personal usage of it skyrocketed with ever-increasing showers and baths. Industry itself wasted more water than entire cities combined.

Hornsmann also wrote an apocalyptic environmental book entitled, Otherwise Collapse: The Answer of the Earth to the Abuse of Her Laws. To counteract the green catastrophe looming just around the corner, Hornsmann was convinced that environmental land use planning was absolutely required to avoid doomsday. Much of the apocalyptic environmentalism so rampant in today’s political world goes back to Germany and rabid environmentalists like Dr. Hornsmann. After the war, the German greens became extremely vitriolic, since Germany had been bombed into oblivion with an industrial destruction never seen before in the history of the world. That the capitalistic Americans wound up with the nuclear bomb only made Germans more apocalyptic in fervor.

Dr. Hornsmann’s ahistorical environmental record from the 1930s and 40s is highly suspicious. Not much is known about his actions during the heyday of the green Nazi movement of the 1930s, but it is highly likely he was deeply involved in one way or another. Eco-fascist greens like Martin Heidegger, Guenther Schwab, and Alfred Toepfer have been already been caught in a web of lies, deceit, and denial. Whatever the exact case may be on how much of a Nazi was green Dr. Hornsmann, what is known is that he sent a postcard to a relative in Bloomington, New Jersey on Hitler’s 50th birthday stating, “We think of you sincerely on a great Day! We must pity, however, ‘God’s own country’ as long as it is ruled and exploited by Jews and their servants.”

Even the father of deep ecology, Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) complained of America’s ‘Abrahamic’ use of the land in his famous book called The Sand County Almanac written in 1947. Unbeknownst to many, Nazi Germany gave Leopold an all-expense-paid trip to the fatherland in 1935 so he that could observe the new environmental direction the Third Reich was implementing. Leopold was generally impressed with what the Nazis were doing. Not only did Leopold drag home the “Never Cry Wolf” cult from Nazi Germany, he also wrote the Germans, unlike the Americans, were actually doing something about environmental problems, not just talking about them. Nazi Germany was the first country in the world to protect wolves. The Führer fancied himself as “Uncle Wolf." "

While I generally agree with the author on Haeckel, I nevertheless think that, even though his influence on the racial aspects of the Nazi ideology cannot be underestimated - note that Alfred Rosenberg, top Nazi ideologue, was an admirer - humanity nevertheless owes Haeckel the discovery, naming, and description of thousands of new species.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT SNIFF 'N' THE TEARS, FRANK BOEIJEN.

Sniff 'n' the Tears with Driver's Seat (1979). British rockband around Paul Roberts.




That's a Moog synthesizer towards the end - you're listening to rock archeology.



Dutch singer/songwriter Frank Boeijen with Koud in mijn hart. That's Cold in my heart for you non Dutch/Flemish speaking bozos.




Told Isabelle over twenty years ago I liked it very much. God, she was gorgeous. Caught a brief glimpse of her couple of months back, still stunning, stunning. She nodded friendly, but couldn't get closer - we both had our spouses with us. Lump in throat, weight in stomach.


Nite.


MFBB.

BILL WHITTLE ON THE (REAL) LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD.

The indispensable Bill Whittle is contrasting Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu with the asshole currently in charge, alas, of the US of A.




MFBB.

BELGIAN AMONG DEAD IN MALI RESTAURANT: LOOK FOR THE JIM WORDS IN DE STANDAARD'S COVERAGE.

The JIM acronym stands for 'Jihad Islam Muslim', and the first one who spots one of these words in the coverage of De Standaard, Belgium's 'top' newspaper, gets a free.....


Oh, stop it altogether. Read and weep:

"Bij de aanval op een restaurant in Bamako (Mali) is een Belg doodgeschoten. Dat bevestigt Buitenlandse Zaken. Ook een Fransman en drie Malinezen kwamen om. De Belg werkte voor de veiligheidsdienst van de Europese delegatie in Mali.

‘Ik kan bevestigen dat er een Belg bij de slachtoffers van de aanval is’, zegt Michael Mareel, woordvoerder van Buitenlandse Zaken. Volgens hem is de familie van het slachtoffer al op de hoogte. Maar verdere details over de identiteit van het slachtoffer kan hij niet geven.

De man - volgens de VRT was de man een para die met loopbaanonderbreking - werkte al drie maanden als veiligheidsofficier voor de Europese delegatie in Mali.

Onderzoek

Ondertussen is het federaal parket een opsporingsonderzoek begonnen naar ‘het gewelddadig overlijden van een Belgische onderdaan’, die omkwam bij de aanslag in de Malinese hoofdstad Bamako.

‘Een federaal magistraat en twee politiemensen bevinden zich al in Mali in het kader van een werkbezoek aan de Belgische militaire troepen. Zij leggen op dit ogenblik contacten met de Malinese overheden om meer inlichtingen te verzamelen’, aldus het parket.

Rue Princesse

Volgens Radio France Internationale (RFI) begon de aanval vrijdagavond om iets na middernacht. Een man gooide granaten de Rue Princesse in het centrum van Bamako, de hoofdstad van Mali. Deze straat is bekend om haar vele bars en restaurants, die zeker op vrijdagavond druk bezocht worden door westerlingen.

Na de aanval met granaten drong de aanvaller het restaurant La Terrasse binnen. Op de eerste verdieping opende hij het vuur. Een Fransman kwam daarbij om. Daarop vluchtte de aanvaller in een voertuig dat beneden klaar stond. Bij het verlaten van het restaurant werd in het rond geschoten. Een Belg, een politieagent en een bewaker van een huis werden daarbij dodelijk getroffen. RFI meldt dat ook een niet-ontplofte granaat in de omgeving gevonden werd.



The Belgian Foreign Minister, Didier Reynders, and our PM, Charles Michel, are, as per usual, shocked shocked shocked and offer sincere condolences to the deceased......


‘Derde Europeaan’

‘Het gaat om een terroristische aanval, ook al wachten we op meer duidelijkheid’, zei een Malinese agent. Volgens hem vielen er vier dodelijke slachtoffers: een Belg, een Fransman en twee Malinezen. Een bron in het ziekenhuis Gabriel Toure maakte melding van een vijfde dode, een Europeaan van die de nationaliteit nog niet bekend is. Maar dat werd later zaterdagochtend tegengesproken.

Volgens de laatste berichten zouden bij de aanslag drie Malinezen, een Fransman en een Belg om het leven gekomen. Het aantal gewonden blijft behouden op acht. Onder hen zouden drie Zwitsers zijn, van wie een vrouw er erg aan toe zou zijn. Dat meldt het Franse persagentschap AFP op basis van bronnen in het ziekenhuis.

Twee verdachten

In een straat vlak bij het restaurant kon de Malinese politie twee verdachten oppakken. Van beiden werd identiteit noch nationaliteit meegedeeld. Maar volgens Malinese politiebronnen werden de twee al ondervraagd en heeft het verhoor al ‘interessante’ informatie opgeleverd.

De Franse president François Hollande heeft ondertussen bevestigd dat er waarschijnlijk een Fransman overleden is na de aanval. ‘Er is hoogst waarschijnlijk een Fransman onder de vijf slachtoffers die overleden zijn’, zegt hij in een perscommuniqué. Bij de gewonden zouden dan weer geen Fransen zijn.

‘Laffe aanslag’

Hollande veroordeelt ook ‘de laffe aanslag’ in Bamako. Ook de Belgische minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Didier Reynders (MR), zegt op twitter dat hij met de slachtoffers meeleeft."

De Standaard being a bunch of slimy and disingenuous PC cowards is one thing, but as you can see the crème de la crème of our political class - Didier Reynders, FM, and Charles Michel, PM, isn't any better.

Sorry I don't have the heart, nor the time, to provide a translation. But it don't matter anyway, for what these blunt fools are saying is utterly irrelevant, inconsequential, and on top of that an insult to the relatives of the dead. The important thing is that you know - that you are supposed to know after these idiots have had their say on the matter - is THAT ISLAM HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

THAT is their message.

The name Charles Michel may ring a bell because we sported him a couple of weeks back because of his excellent English. Didier Reynders however prolly sounds like a nobody to you.

In fact, he is. He is indeed. The following pic shows his preferred modus operandi in international affairs:




All show and moral grandstanding, no action that actually matters.

And in that affair too, islam had nothing to do with it.



MFBB.

ONLY IN AMERICA: HILLARY CLINTON EMAILED WITH MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, STILL TOP DEM CONTENDER FOR PRESIDENCY.

Via Katie Pavlich over at Townhall, news on the lawsuit by Judicial Watch against the State Department for the actually illegal email traffic between Hillary Clinton, her aide Huma Abedin, and the wife of MB leader Mohammed Morsi:

"After ignoring a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in August 2014, government watchdog Judicial Watch has issued a lawsuit against the State Department for all emails between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her top aide Huma Abedin and wife of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, Nagla Mahmoud, from January 2009 to January 2013. It was discovered earlier this week that both Clinton and Abedine used personal email accounts to conduct government business, potentially violating federal records laws.

The Judicial Watch lawsuit specifically seeks the following:

A. Any and all records of communication between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi, from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013; and
B. Any and all records of communication between former State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin and Nagla Mahmoud from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013.


“Now we know why the State Department didn’t want to respond to our specific request for Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s communications,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The State Department violated FOIA law rather than admit that it couldn’t and wouldn’t search the secret accounts that the agency has known about for years. This lawsuit shows how the latest Obama administration cover-up isn’t just about domestic politics but has significant foreign policy implications.” "

And for those who have been living on Mars for the entire duration of the 21st Century so far, Huma Abedin, top aide to Hilldabeast, is Anthony Weiner's wife, internet perv and only last year Dem hopeful for NY mayor:





I fail to understand how things like emailing Muslim Brotherhood chaps don't kill her candidacy for POTUS in a heartbeat.

But then this is the Obama Age:





MFBB.

BREMEN, GERMANY: SALAFIST THREAT CAUSES MASSIVE POLICE DEPLOYMENT.

Something is very, very fishy in Bremen, Germany. Via Focus Online, today:

The threat from violent islamists has caused a massive police deployment. Heavily armed officers patrolled through the inner city and guarded several public places. In the evening a couple of suspects were arrested.

* High danger from islamist terrorists in Bremen
* Heavily armed police on patrol
* Several suspects arrested

It gets better and better!

About one month ago, at the height of the Pegida demos, German Chancellor Angela Merkel found it necessary to not only denounce Pegida strongly, but to also state emphatically: "ISLAM IS PART OF GERMANY". Well, in a way, I cannot really contradict her, see photo below. Islam has certainly become a part of Germany:




Congratufuckinglations Frau Merkel. Thanks but no thanks to you and all the other multiculti IDIOTS for getting us in this mess. By the way CUNT - for quite some time I thought you weren't doing that bad. But you lost Outlaw Mike after that insane statement. And for good, I fear.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT A-HA, BILLY JOEL.

A-ha, Winner of the prestigious Outlaw Mike Award For Most Ludicrous Band Name, nevertheless produced over time a couple of decent tunes. I call your name, a single from the 1990 album East of the Sun, West of the Moon.




Norwegian blokes who formed in Oslo in 1982. Called it quits in 2011, if memory serves.



Billy Joel with Surprises, a song from the excellent album The Nylon Curtain (1982).




Beautiful and timeless ballad.



Goede nacht.



MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: CARL JACKSON'S "IT'S TIME TO SCRAP BLACK HISTORY MONTH."

Damn good article by Carl Jackson over at Townhall:

"As we draw near the end of Black History Month one thing is for certain, it's done more to suppress American History than tell her story.

According to history.com the origins of Black History Month begins in 1915 when Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson and minister Jesse E. Moorland founded the then Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), which is an organization dedicated to researching and promoting achievements of blacks and other peoples of African descent. In 1926, the group sponsored a national Negro History week, choosing the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Republicans Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

In the decades following, mayors across the country began issuing annual proclamations recognizing Negro History Week. As a result of the renewed Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and a growing awareness of black identity, Negro History Week evolved into Black History Month on many college campuses. Finally, in 1976 Republican President Gerald R. Ford officially recognized Black History Month and called upon Americans to "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."

Today in America Black History Month has become little more than a tool for liberal academics and the racial grievance industry to perpetuate revisionist history that suits their agenda to transform America. It has produced an entitlement mentality amongst blacks, perpetual victimhood in place of accomplishment in black communities, and racial strife directed at white Christian Republicans. Additionally, Black History Month has conceived an ire amongst illegal aliens and legal immigrant minorities alike who believe they deserve just as much prominence on America's calendar as blacks. In other words, it's causing more division than celebration of unity.

Consider some of America's forgotten history. William Ellison, a former slave turned brutal slave owner helped finance the Confederate Army. We're familiar with Republican President Abraham Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves, but did you know Hiram Rhodes Revels was America's first black senator (1870-1871) during Reconstruction? Blanche Bruce also served in the United States Senate from 1875-1881. There were twenty one black congressman that served in the House of Representatives during Reconstruction as well. Why aren't we taught about these civil rights heroes in our schools? I suspect it's because they were all Republican! William Ellison being the exception.



Hiram Rhodes Revels, first black US Senator. Also a Rightwinger, which is why you haven't heard of him yet.

It gets better! Despite what you've heard, the first civil rights legislation was passed in 1866 by the GOP. Not in 1964! In 1870 the Republican Congress passed and ratified the 15th Amendment, which gave blacks and former slaves the right to vote. In 1871, the Republican Congress passed the "Anti-KKK Act" to abolish the Democrats terrorist arm known as the Ku Klux Klan that was created to stop blacks and "nigger loving" whites, known as Republicans, from voting in the south.

In 1957 Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's civil rights bill was opposed by the likes of Democrat Senators John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In Anne Coulter's book "Mugged" she describes how LBJ stripped the 1957 bill of its enforcement provisions. Thank God Eisenhower introduced a stronger bill in 1960. Conveniently, Democrats changed their position on racism due to political expediency. Lyndon B. Johnson adopted Dwight Eisenhower's ideas on civil rights as his own, and in 1964 the Republican Congress helped him pass the signature legislation known as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

.....

If race relations in America are going to get better, if blacks are going to choose forgiveness over blame, if so called modern day "civil rights leaders" are sincere about being reconciled to their fellow man, if blacks are ever going to be integrated into American culture, it seems to me a good place to start the healing process would be to eradicate Black History Month."

Amen to that, Bro. Black History Month should be History. When I was an engineering student in Ghent in the mid-eighties, there was an African student in my class. He was best pals with a scion of the then famous Packo family, active in stainless steel containers for the milk industry - not that that matters. In Belgium at least, the mid-eighties was BEFORE the ascent of the Race Industry, and I remember very well how we barely noticed that Beda - his real first name - was actually Black. We couldn't care less, what mattered were the chicks. Beda was just 'one of the chaps'.

I want to go back to that time. That I don't even SEE that someone is black. Or yellow. Or red, or grey, or purple with pink bollekes for that matter.

But the race baiters won't make that happen. Fomenting division is GOOD for them.



MFBB.

DISASTER LOOMS FOR AUSTRIA: NEW ISLAM LAW LIKELY TO PASS IN AUSTRIAN PARLIAMENT.

In all likelihood, today, February 2015, the Austrian Parliament will pass the new Islamic Law, which will replace the existing law of 1912.

Via our brothers-in-arms at Gates of Vienna, Christian Zeitz of the Wiener Akademikerbund on Austria's new islamic law:




Exerpt:

"...But it is also a fact that the real Islamisation in Austria is not taking place in the legally recognised Religious Community [Religionsgemeinschaft], the so-called IGGiÖ (Islamic Faith Community in Austria, Die islamische Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich), but is happening currently in the 460 mosque associations, which are also frequently organised along ethnic lines and ordered in accordance with the provenance of the immigrants: there are Bosnian associations, there are Chechen associations, there are associations which come from the Arabian region, and Pakistan; — and of course they [the mosque associations] evade every state control. In addition, they are either connected with the Islamic faith Community [IGGiÖ] through a small formal relationship, or they are not connected at all with this official representative body of the Muslims in Austria.

The representative body for Muslims in Austria, (The Islamic Faith Community, [IGGiÖ]), assumes for Muslims no de facto responsibility for what transpires in these mosques, from the most wide-ranging forms of radical activity, to recruitment of ISIS fighters and jihadists; and it has been of concern to ensure that this Islam Act prevents the working of foreign influence which favours radicalisation.

For years, the Association of Vienna Academics [Wiener Akademikerbund ]has been publicly advocating for a law to be put in place here which secures religious peace in the country and which takes into account the interests of the autochthonous population. On the other hand, the Muslims, who meanwhile have very good political contacts at their disposal, have now been pushing to broaden the scope of their own privileges by means of the new Islam Act. At issue is their wish, at all costs, to have their own faculty at the university, where Islamic theology is taught; at issue is their wish to ensure that their devotees in prisons, hospitals and in schools are supported within the system, especially by way of religious officials whom they expect to be in the pay of the state; at issue is their wish to enforce halal food in public institutions, that is, food must be provided which from their perspective is pure, which corresponds to Koranic concepts and dietary prescriptions; putting it all together, what is at issue is their wish to secure for themselves a greater standing in the public sphere.

These privileges have been addressed by the Austrian Federal government in the draft [of the Islam Act]. The question of disclosure of basic faith tenets and the question of the prohibition of funding by foreign institutions have also been thoroughly accommodated in a formal sense. However, due to serious legislative weakness, an enforcement of these two requirements is impossible, since it is not feasible to compel associations, the mosque associations just mentioned, to disclose their basic tenets of faith or to ensure that they forego foreign financing. In other words, this law, if it is now enacted, will be a law of accommodation for the Islamic sector in Austria. In future, Islam’s capabilities will proliferate rampantly, and in a legal manner from within its associations..."

There are echoes of the situation in Belgium here, with the main difference that muslims here don't even have to push to be included in the educational system themselves - it is handed to them on a silver platter, see the recent lunatic statements made by Lieven Boeve, head honcho of catholic education in Belgium.

At some point, the quislings will have to pay - and pay dearly.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT SUE SAAD AND THE NEXT, RUSH.

Sue Saad and the Next with Young Girl. A 1980 hit from their debut album.




Man, I love the guitars. Quintessentially Americanese sounds.



Rush with Fly By Night. From the 1975 album of the same name.




First album with Neil Peart, the planet's best drummer, on board.



MFBB.

COPENHAGEN: 500 MUSLIM BEASTS TURN OUT FOR FUNERAL OMAR ABDEL HAMID EL-HUSSEIN.

A shocking - to you perhaps, but actually not to me - event in Copenhagen last week. Around 500 muslims turned out for the funeral of Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein, the murderer of the Bar Mitzvah guard, Dan Uzan, and of filmmaker Finn Norgaard. A screenshot from The Daily Mail:




Upon reading the article I noticed that Denmark has already a muslim-only cemetery. Good. So Mr. El-Hussein won't have to share Danish soil with unbelievers around him, like that hapless Muzaffar Khan in Burbage, Leicestershire.


Here sympathizers are laying flowers at the site where the subhuman was shot:


Muslims account for about 40 per cent of welfare check recipients in Denmark.

This is how they thank their host country.

Prepare to battle these beasts on your street.



MFBB.

NATO BALTIC AIR POLICING.

Since Russia's annexation of the Krim in March 2014, NATO has upgraded its Baltic Air Policing mission- essentially a QRA operation - to safeguard the airspace of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia from 4 jets to 16.

Currently, four Belgian F-16's are part of this force, admitted, still a meagre one. Personnel is drawn from both the 2nd Tactical Wing (Florennes AFB) and the 10th (Kleine Brogel AFB).

Our jets operate from the Polish AFB of Malbork, alongside Polish Mig-29s.




Sorry, no time for translations. Towards the end of the video a Polish pilot is interviewed, and he states a.o. that for long missions the F-16 is better suited, but that in combat situations the Mig-29 is preferable, given its greater strength and ability to take shorter turns. I have no way of verifying the validity of that argument. If there's someone who can, please step forward.


MFBB.

PRESIDENT SELFIE.

Watch the Leader of the Free World and shudder.




Video courtesy the indispensable Intellectual Froglegs.



MFBB.