RICHARD WAGNER: PRELUDE TO ACT 1 OF PARSIFAL.

Richard Wagner worked intermittently on his famous opera Parsifal, from its first conception in 1857 to its final draft in 1877. The opera is loosely based on a famous thirteenth century poem by Wolfram von Eschenbach, about Parzival, a Knight of King Arthur's Round Table. But there are also elements from Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the story of the Holy Grail. Wagner's Parsifal consists of three acts, and this is the Prelude to the first act.





I find the music simply overwhelming. Of course, you may need a few listens, as did I when I discovered this jewel. Naturally, the tunes must have lingered in my head for about twenty-five years, since there's a whiff of the Prelude in Boorman's movie Excalibur, more precisely when Arthur kneels at dusk between the menhirs and calls out for Merlin.

Anyway - breathtaking beauty. Like if your ears thought that you had died and gone to heaven. At least for me.



MFBB.

BELGIAN 'TOP' NEWSPAPER 'DE STANDAARD' SHILLS FOR BRADLEY MANNING.

It is crystal clear that the 'prime' Belgian newspaper, De Standaard


The Belgian journal De Standaard seems rather sympathetic towards private Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked thousands of classified documents to Assange's Wikileaks:

'THE REVENGE OF THE LONELY SOLDIER BRADLEY MANNING.

....

But why would Menning have done it?

The chat sessions he held with Lamo [a hacker who once broke into the NYT's computers, befriended Manning online, but finally fingerpointed him - MFBB] and which served as material for The Washington Post in June already, give a beginning of the answer. In any case, they sketch a desillusioned soldier who looks down at the army with contempt.

Military intelligence is an oxymoron, he writes on his Facebook page. The diplomatic telexes he sees, 'are for him proof how the First World exploits the Third World'. It is also clear that Manning feels totally isolated. 'I am a wreck' he tells Lamo. 'I look for escape routes to survive. I am smart enough to realize what's going on, but helpless to do something about it.'

I wonder how sensitive, caring and smart nerd Bradley Manning would have reacted if he had been a military intelligence analyst in the army of Sudan. Or in that of Myanmar. Or in that of Iran. "Dispatch three gunships tomorrow to wipe out villages north of Kabkabiya". "Top KNLA commander lifted off his bed in the Myawaddy District, executed the day after". " 'Zahra Kazemi beaten to death in Evin Prison. Good riddance!!!'

Just why is it that all these econutters - woollen sock wearers - leftozoid LBGT aficionados are always prepared to see and believe the worst of the western society that has sheltered them and provided them with a lifestyle to be encountered nowhere else, while they curiously remain deaf and blind to the havoc that so many regimes out there inflict on their own people and their neighbors, while more often than not absolutely and unapologetically ruining their ecology?


Apart from Manning, there is of course Assange. Fellow commenter on LVB had the following link from American Thinker. It's an interesting POV:

Ask yourself this: Who is the greater threat to America? Is it an Australian programmer or Barack Obama? Assange is merely a website operator. He has no backing or powers to inflict harm on this country. Obama, on the other hand, has been using the powers of his office to systematically destroy the American economy, the dollar, our standard of living, and our standing in the world. He has been stoking racial tensions. He has been taking private property of American citizens and giving it to his friends. He and his people have been destroying the values and fabric of American society faster than you can say "bam."

In reality, it is this regime that is a menace to America. What Julian Assange is doing is merely helping to reveal the duplicity and incompetence. And it could not be more ironic that he is doing so with documents which have been forwarded to him by leakers who themselves are part of the Obama administration.

I tend to agree with the author, Vasko Kohlmayer. Assange merely published the information that was made available to him. Since he is in no way involved with the US or its institutions, it seems hard to charge him for what he did. I therefore think that the outburst from Republican lawmakers to designate WikiLeaks a terrorist organization is not one, but two bridges too far. If any lesson should be drawn from it, it is that the information now made public should be made less available, and less visible.

With Manning it's another matter though. Manning was a soldier of the US Army and therefore sworn to loyalty to that institution. When he signed up, he also signed up to oblige to its professional and ethics standards. Assange in all likelihood is just a narcissist, eager to be in the spotlights. He is also a self-hating narcissist, because he is a Westerner, and somewhere in the back of my mind I know with mathematical certainty that we will not hear anything soon from WikiLeaks with regards to human rights violations in Tibet, although you can bet your sweet ass that there are Chinese government cables about that and that he could lay his hands on 'em if he wanted.

But Manning.... Manning leaked info that could endanger, and in all likelihood has endangered, the lives of American and allied soldiers. Not soldiers sitting on their safe warm asses like Manning. But soldiers out there in the field. In AF's Korengal valley, or in a dangerous Bagdad suburb.

I wrote I tended to agree with Mr. Kohlamyer on Assange.

And I found another author I agree with on Manning:

First of all, the soldier as the source should be given to the military to take care of. The Army needs its best prosecution team on him and should punish him as much as possible in a very public way. Make an example of him. He is and will be drenched in blood. No quarter or mercy should be given to him. Whatever the max is; make is so.

CDR Salamander.

De Standaard will shed crocodile tears for their darling when the verdict comes. I couldn't care less.


MFBB.

RARE VIDEO FOOTAGE FROM INSIDE NORTH KOREA.

Via The Telegraph, in my opinion the best UK journal:





I am currently reading David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter, on the origins of the Korean conflict. It's extremely good and, following a lengthy introductory phase presenting the grounds of the conflict and the key players on both sides, deals primarily with military operations in the first year, summer 1950 to summer 1951. The war would last two more years but after July 1951 warfare on the Korean peninsula eerily began to resemble World War I trench warfare.

The involvement of the US military and the troops provided by a number of UN countries was more often than not received not very well by the citizenry back at home. People simply did not understand what the sacrifices their loved ones brought in an unknown country far, far away were for. This was especially true for the American troops since they bore the brunt of the fighting. The sentiment was not confined to civilians alone, for among the enlisted men too there was great scepticism as to the meaning of their engagement. Few things illustrate this better than a quote by the actor William Holden, playing Harry Brubaker, a US Navy F9F fighter bomber pilot in the 1954 movie The bridges at Toko-Ri. Towards the end, when he has been forced to crash-land his jet and is in a doomed firefight with North Korean or Chinese infantry, he is asked by a rescuing helicopter pilot who himself is now grounded (played by Mickey Rooney) "what the hell he's doing in a smelly ditch in Korea". To which Brubaker responds: "yeah, I'm asking myself that question too". A few moments later both are dead.

It is damn easy for armchair generals - to which I have to count myself too, I fear - to say that today it's clear what US and UN troops were doing in smelly ditches in Korea. Nevertheless, the fact that I can state it from the warmth and safety of my house does not detract from the truthfulness of it. In 1953, at least South Korea was free from the horrors of communism. From there it would go on to become, in time, a model democracy with one of the highest standards of living in the whole of Asia, with a proud and well equipped workforce that would give the world the products of Daewoo, Kia, Ssangyong and Hyundai, to name but a few. Tens of millions of South Koreans have had the opportunity, or are taking that opportunity each and every day - to live happy and healthy lives. There are no young women there eating grass.

There are in North Korea though - and I'm pretty sure the truth is even far more uglier than what can be seen in that Telegraph video.

The war in Korea is sometimes called The Forgotten War. It shouldn't be forgotten, and it's a good thing that currently there seem finally to be a couple of decent volumes around dealing with the war. I hope they find their way to the broader public - people will understand better then that the evil regime which unleashed terror and sowed misery and death on that fateful June day in 1950 - is still there, essentially unaltered. Still as evil as it was then, and not caring a jolt for its own people - the late nineties famine in NK possibly claimed a million lives.

Only now do they have nukes.




MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT TOM PETTY, BROKEN BELLS, THE DOOBIE BROTHERS.

Tom Petty, without the Heartbreakers, in 1994 with You wreck me, from the album Wildflowers.




Because a.) I am SUCH a nice, deeply caring personality and b.) to stifle rumours that I am some kind of dinosaur who still hasn't gotten the news I should be dead 65 million years, here's Broken Balls with The High Road, from their 2009 debut album. To be honest, I liked Danger Mouse more in a previous career.





The Doobie Brothers with China Grove.





Goedenacht.


MFBB.

A BELATED HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

It is now official, Outlaw Mike just participated in his very first Thanksgiving Dinner.





Blurred but atmospheric snapshot of people helping themselves - or getting helped to - abundant decent food. Location: a "parochiaal centrum" in Gentbrugge, a suburb of Ghent. Just like idiots call Xmas "Winterval" nowadays, they would call a "parochiaal centrum" a "community center". Not bibi of course.


The guy with the blue sweater on the left, between the woman and the bearded guy serving food, was the fella who was nuts enough to invite me. Craig B. has been organizing Thanksgiving in Gentbrugge for eleven years. In a grey past, he was a sailor on the USS Mahan (guided missile destroyer DDG 42). Thanks to his efforts, and the efforts of a few acolytes - around 50 people had a very enjoyable evening. The food was ab-so-lu-te-ly delicious and if I say there was plenty of it, it's the understatement of the year.






Shot taken just before the attack. Guaranteed haram. Yum.


Hopping in at such an event often leads to interesting encounters. I happened to sit across an ex-Marine (1st Division, recon), who ended up in the Magical Kingdom of Belgium and now has his own welding enterprise here. Wish we had more immigrants like that.

I was a good boy. I did not once talk about politics. Or religion. Nor did I burp.

Nite all.



MFBB.

THE PRACTICE OF STONING IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN.

Via Dutch website GeenStijl, infosheets from an Amnesty International Report (from time to time, AI does something good still) on stoning in Iran.








It is true that Iran was just recently rebuffed when it tried to secure itself a seat on the executive board of (yet another) UN superagency, UN Women. But it should be remembered that Saudi Arabia, a big funder of UN Women, but barely more women-friendly than Iran, does have a seat. As a sidenote, Saudi Arabia's interest in this proliferation of UN agencies is probably yet one more sign that muslim countries seek to dominate the UN, which they do already to a large extent through the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

Be that as it may, even if Iran is not represented in the Board of UN Women, it does have a seat in the Commission on the Status of Women - it obtained it in rather murky circumstances in April of this year, and it will retain this seat till 2014.

If you check out the website of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, you will find that its homepage boasts that it is "dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women."

Nice. Not. What a hoot.

We truly live in a mad world.


MFBB.

SINT-NIKLAAS, BELGIUM. SYRIAN REFUSES TO LISTEN TO FEMALE COP, BLOCKS ENTIRE TOWN CENTER AS A RESULT.

From the You GOT To Be Kidding Me Department: Syrian refuses to obey female police officer.

"Syrian ignores female agent's orders
Saturday 20 November 2010

On Thursday Mahmoud D. (40) from Sint-Niklaas had to give way on the busy crossroads of Bread Street and Van Britsomstreet in Sint-Niklaas to another car and this he refused. He drove onto the crossroads and stopped his car there. It was quarter past four: soon not only the crossroads was completely jammed, but also the entire town center.

'Because we did not even manage to get there with a patrol car, we sent an officer on foot' says Corps Chief Jack Van Peer. 'To be clear, that was a male officer, followed by a female one. The man [Mahmoud D. - MFBB] made it then abundantly clear that he did not follow instructions issued by females.'

For the police nothing else remained but to haul away the car, with Mahmoud D. still in it. 'But a truck too did not get to the crossroads' [of course you idiots, if even the smaller patrol car couldn't make it - MFBB]. 'So we sent backup to pull the man out of his car.'

The police busted a sidewindow, whereupon Mahmoud D. jumped out of the car and immediately wounded a female officer. The other officers overpowered the man and brought him, handcuffed, to the police precinct. 'Suddenly he had forgotten how to speak Flemish and he demanded an interpreter', says Jack Van Peer. He got one [! - MFBB] but that turned out to be a woman, 'against whom he refused to talk too.'

Mahmoud D. had a bad luck day. Police briefed the serving prosecutor of the Dendermonde Court. This turned out to be Marianne Bovyn, a woman, whom he refused to talk to just as well. She decided to confront the Syrian right away with an investigator and ordered his arrest. And so Mahmoud D. appeared before investigator Sabine De Leenheer, again a woman he deemed not worthy to look at. Madam De Leenheer applied Lady Justice's Law and had the Syrian locked up in Dendermonde jail."

Prepare for civil war.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT MULU, PORNO FOR PYROS, SIMPLE MINDS.

Mulu with Pussycat.





From the album Smiles like a shark, 1997. Singer's Laura Campbell.


Porno for Pyros. 100 Ways.




I know, Perry Farrell is a...

... oh, never mind.


Simple Minds. Theme for Great Cities.





1981, would you believe it?


Nite.


MFBB.

THE SAD FATE OF CHRISTIANS IN EGYPT (UPDATE).

Regular reader and commenter Joanne linked to this appalling story of the burning alive of a Coptic man at the hands of muslim thugs in Egypt:

"... Muslim Burns a Young Copt Alive and Murders His Father Because of a Rumor Voice of the Copts

A Muslim man set fire to a Coptic young man, murdered his father and wounded his younger brother, after it was rumored that the young Copt allegedly had a relationship with the Muslim man's sister!!

The events took place in the small village of "Dmas" Meet-Ghamr, after a rumor spread around of a relationship between the 25-year-old Copt Shihata Sabri, and the sister of a Muslim man named Yasser Ahmed Qasim.





Yasser went to Coptic Shehata, holding a gasoline canister, poured it over him and set him on fire, as bystanders looked on in horror. The young Copt threw himself into the adjacent canal to try to put out the flames from his burning body. The fire left burns all over his body, leading to his death.

Following this incident, people in the village rallied and when the 60-years-old Sabri Shehata, father of the Coptic victim arrived, he was attacked by a group of Muslims stabbing him with knives and daggers; one stab penetrated his back to come out of his abdomen below the rib cage, resulting in his death, after being transferred to hospital.

A Coptic witness said that Yasser Ahmed, who is reputed to be a thug, and others have also beaten the Coptic victim's younger brother, 22-year old Rami Sabri Shehata, causing a deep injury to his head.

The security forces moved into the village of Dmas, which has a population of 60,000 people, including over 1000 Copts, surrounded the victims' house and deployed extra forces throughout the village.

The offenders were arrested together with the accused Yasser Ahmed Kassem and his friend, as well as the Copt Shehata Sabry who was held in custody in Dmas Hospital. The offenders were charged with deliberate homicide.

The body of Coptic victim Sabri Shehata was released for burial after prayers took place at the Church of Our Lady in the village of Dakados, which lies 20 kilometers from Dmas, amid a tight security siege."

The photo I used to illustrate this umpteenth article on the subject of rising violence against Egypt's Christians, is not of Mr. Sabri Shehata. It being quite obvious that there's, in all likelihood, no photographic evidence of the incident, since it all happened so quickly, I had to resort to using this photograph. And why? Because it will all the better make people realize that this is a COMMON OCCURENCE to non-muslims living in muslim-dominated countries.

A couple of weeks ago there was an outrage - AN OUTRAGE! - in Belgian newspapers about Israeli soldiers teasing and humiliating Paleostinians. In one case an Israeli trooper was dancing around a Pali prisoner, in another they rummage around in an Pali house and harass the inhabitants:




"Israeli soldiers tease Palestinians." Now THAT is worth covering for Belgian MSM!!!


These ridiculous non-items made the news.

What do you think the chances are the burning alive of Mr Shehata and the stabbing to death of his father will make it to Belgium's "top" newspapers?

To ask the question is to answer it.

On the other hand, try to imagine what the reaction would be if the boot were on the other foot.

Pray for these poor sods.

(update ends here)

---------------------------

If you thought Egypt was a liberal muslim country, think again. From our pals at Gates of Vienna.





Link to this video as much as possible. Post it on your blog. GET-THE-WORD-OUT.


Islam is CANCER.



MFBB.

DENNIS PRAGER: THE MIDDLE EAST PROBLEM IN SIX MINUTES.

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






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

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

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

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

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



MFBB.

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

But by then it may be too late.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT NADA SURF, FAITH NO MORE.

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





Bwahahahaaaaaaa!!!! Hilarious lyrics!!!!

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



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





Heh. Kickass.



MFBB.

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

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





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

A MULTICULTURAL CONFERENCE HIJACKED BY ISLAMISTS.

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

CHAOTIC

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

REFERENCE TO NAZI SCIENTIST

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

RANTING AGAINST ISRAEL, INDIVIDUALISM AND THE HEADSCARF BAN

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

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

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

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

Now, their religion is one thing.

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

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

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







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

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

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

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

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

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



MFBB.

ARMISTICE DAY. REMEMBERING THE FALLEN.

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

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

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

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





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





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

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

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

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

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


MFBB.

PAT CONDELL BLASTS ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF AUSTRIA.

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





We need more Condells, eh?

Hat tip our pals over at Gates of Vienna.



MFBB.

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

From The Daily Mail Online, 9 November 2010:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


... it will eventually kill the host.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT BILLY JOEL, LIVE, U2.

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




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



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





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


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





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


MFBB.

MIDTERM ELECTIONS...

Thank you Traveller for da pic.



MFBB.

DOWNEASTBLOG SUPPORTS ELISABETH SABADITSCH-WOLFF.

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

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

That's why this post.

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

This is Europe.

This is 2010.

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

Dear Baron,

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

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

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

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

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

— Elisabeth

Check out this video, link via GoV:





And here's Mark Steyn's take:





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



MFBB.

A DAY OUT IN THE ARDENNES (AGAIN).

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




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




Dohan Church, dedicated to Sint-Florentius.




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




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


MFBB.