TINGBJERG: ONE NEIGHBORHOOD'S NIGHTMARE
26.10.09: One of the big news stories in Denmark in recent weeks has centered on a small Copenhagen neighborhood called Tingbjerg. Over the years it has been turning gradually into a Muslim enclave in which non-Muslims have been increasingly subjected to harassment and criminality. Among these victims has been the openly gay pastor of Tingbjerg Church, who earlier this month, after several years of being persecuted by local Muslim youths, quit his post and fled the neighborhood, thereby making headlines around the country and sparking widespread discussion and debate about a very widespread phenomenon - namely, the ongoing Islamization of urban areas across Western Europe.
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Published: 26.10.2009 Last saved: 26.10.2009
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By Bruce Bawer, HRS
"Few people outside of Denmark have heard of Tingbjerg. It’s a residential neighborhood in northwestern Copenhagen. About 6500 people live there, down from about 10,000 in the 1970s. Today the great majority of those residents are Muslims. As the neighborhood has become increasingly Muslim, it’s also been increasingly plagued by gang violence, burglaries, car-burnings, vandalism, and other offenses. Over the years, the members of Tingbjerg’s non-Muslim minority have come to feel increasingly vulnerable and ill at ease in their community. Many have moved out.
Among the latter is Ulrich Vogel. He is German and gay – and until recently he also happened to be the pastor at Tingbjerg Church. But now, after seventeen years in that position, he’s fled – moved out of the church residence, gone underground, taken sick leave, and begun psychological treatment.
Why? Because in recent years Vogel has been the repeated target of crime and harassment by local Muslims. Vogel refused to discuss his situation with Uwe Max Jensen, who reported on the story for sappho.dk on October 6. But Jensen found police reports in local newspapers that describe acts of vandalism at the church on March 26 and August 5 of this year and a break-in at the church residence on August 16. The latter crime involved the destruction and robbery of much of Vogel’s personal property, including his computer. And this is apparently only the tip of the iceberg: a member of the church congregation told Jensen that the residence has been broken into “countless” times.
In any case, Vogel has given up. And so, apparently, has the church council: instead of opening up a search for a substitute pastor who’s willing to live in the church residence at Tingbjerg, they’ve decided to sell it.
For days, the rumor circulated that Vogel was tormented by the young Muslims because he’s gay. Then, on October 17, Lea Holtze and Jannie Iwankow Søgaard of Kristeligt Dagblad reported that Vogel had broken his silence in order to deny that rumor. No, he insisted: he was tormented not because he’s gay but because he’s a pastor, and thus “a picture of an institution and a normality that is not welcomed by this group of young people.” Vogel also noted, truthfully enough, that he was hardly the only person in the neighborhood who had been victimized by local youth.
“It’s a whole neighborhood that’s been taken hostage,” Vogel said of Tingbjerg, complaining that “one is left to fend for oneself” there because “the police don’t do enough.” The problems, he said, can’t be dismissed as ordinary teenage hijinks: “It feels like pure malice.” The pastor recalled that last March, after local youths threw rocks at buses, resulting in a disruption of the public transport system, he spoke out in a local newspaper and on the TV news about the neighborhood’s ordeal – an action which, he suggests, may help explain why he appears to have been singled out for repeated victimization.
Yet if Vogel thinks his sexual orientation has nothing to do with the harassment he’s suffered, he’s apparently mistaken. As Anders Raahauge noted in Saturday’s Jyllands-Posten (no link), local youths themselves have acknowledged – or, more accurately, bragged – to reporters that the pastor’s sexual orientation was indeed a motivating factor for those who targeted him. This should not surprise anyone who knows what Islam says about homosexuality.
The truth about life in Tingbjerg was vividly underscored on October 14, when two journalists for Denmark’s TV2 drove to Tingbjerg Church to get some footage of it for a report on the Vogel story. While they were filming outside the church, two young Muslim men rode up to them on motorbikes. The second of the three videos posted here shows what happened next. In an aggressive, threatening voice, one of the youths ordered the TV2 team to “erase those fucking pictures now, ’cause you’ve taken pictures of us,” then added, apropos of the Vogel story: “It’s lies. I’ve read in BT. It’s not worth shit….It’s propaganda.” The boys then drove over to the TV2 team’s van and proceeded to smash its windows. (The results of their efforts can be seen on the first of the three posted videos on the same page.)..."
"If there is to be any hope for Europe, the truth about the continent’s Tingbjergs must be addressed honestly. Yet it’s precisely this that the great majority of Europeans in positions of political and cultural power refuse to do. Pittelkow notes that while young Muslim predators themselves routinely admit that their actions are connected to “their ethnic and Muslim identity” and represent “a struggle for power and honor,” politicians, journalists, and academic “experts” routinely reject any such analysis. So, far too often, do people in official positions who are close enough to the situation on the ground to know better. For example, Pittelkow cites a “well-meaning” woman who holds a local post in Tingbjerg and who, he writes, has warned that discussions of the Vogel case had better be free of any mention of “ethnic and religious factors.” This woman, Pittelkow observes, “apparently hasn’t got the foggiest idea of what is going on in the real world, but just wants to show that she is a good person. But kind words won’t make real problems go away.” Alas, this woman’s numbers are legion in Western Europe, where all too many public officials at every level see it as their primary responsibility not to preserve liberal civilization, social order, and public safety but to serve as exemplars of multicultural virtue – a role that compels them to avert their eyes meekly from the systematic barbarism that is destroying the lives of more and more innocent Europeans like Ulrich Vogel."
OBAMA A TOUGH GUY, AT LEAST WITH FOX NEWS.
October 23, 2009
"At a superficial level, this looks tough. A famously fair-minded centrist told me the other day that he'd been taken aback by some of the near parodic examples of Leftie radicalism discovered in the White House in recent weeks. I don't know why he'd be surprised. When a man has spent his entire adult life in the "community organized" precincts of Chicago, it should hardly be news that much of his Rolodex is made up of either loons or thugs. The trick is identifying who falls into which category. Anita Dunn, the Communications Director commending Mao Zedong as a role model to graduating high school students, would seem an obvious loon. But the point about Mao, as Charles Krauthammer noted, is that he was the most ruthless imposer of mass conformity in modern history:In Mao's China, everyone wore the same clothes. So when Communications Commissar Mao Ze Dunn starts berating Fox News for not getting into the same Maosketeer costumes as the rest of the press corps, you begin to see why the Chairman might appeal to her as a favorite "political philosopher".
So the troika of Dunn, Emanuel and Axelrod were dispatched to the Sunday talk shows to lay down the law. We all know the lines from "The Untouchables" – "the Chicago way," don't bring a knife to a gunfight – and, given the pay czar's instant contract-gutting of executive compensation and the demonization of the health insurers and much else, it's easy to look on the 44th president as an old-style Cook County operator: You wanna do business in this town, you gotta do it through me. You can take the community organizer out of Chicago, but you can't take the Chicago out of the community organizer.
The trouble is it isn't tough, not where toughness counts. Who are the real "Untouchables" here? In Moscow, it's Putin and his gang, contemptuously mocking U.S. officials even when (as with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) they're still on Russian soil. In Tehran, it's Ahmadinejad and the mullahs openly nuclearizing as ever feebler warnings and woozier deadlines from the Great Powers come and go. Even Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle. We were told that Obama would use "soft power" and "smart diplomacy" to get his way. Russia and Iran are big players with global ambitions, but Obama's soft power is so soft it doesn't even work its magic on a client regime in Kabul whose leaders' very lives are dependent on Western troops. If Obama's "smart diplomacy" is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention? ..."
DISMANTLING OF AMERICA.
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Posted: October 27, 2009
1:00 am Eastern
Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the president, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?
Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers – that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get lifesaving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.
How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.
....
Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year – each bill more than a thousand pages long – too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question – and the biggest question for this generation.
..."So in 2060 we will have a France of 108 million inhabitants, composed of 55 million persons (24 + 31) belonging to black, Arab and Asian ethnicities and 53 million Europeans. Yes, 2060 may appear far off, but well before this date Europeans under the age of 40 will be a minority in relation to the Third Worlders of the same age group.
These results belie the affirmations of those who claim France is not a country of massive immigration. In fact, our "thought police" now acknowledge that the face of France is going to be transformed very soon and adhere, in substance, to the following line: "You were deceived for thirty years with bogus statistics. Now, the situation is irreversible. In the name of anti-racism and obligatory 'métissage', you ought to be happy to have become a minority in your own country!"
Now imagine that the Algerian government announces that soon Europeans will be in the majority in Algeria! There would be a general insurrection. That means that this "post racial" doctrine, which claims to be universal, only applies in reality to the Western populations who are told to dissolve themselves as rapidly as possible. Alas, the majority of Frenchmen are resigned to this evolution that seems inevitable..."
THE DANGEROUS RETURN OF UTOPIAN SOCIALISM.
From the desk of Martin De Vlieghere on Thu, 2009-10-22 17:17
"Jeffrey Sachs is senior economist at the UN and author of the bestseller "Common Wealth" and the controversial Time essay "The Case for Bigger Government". In a recent interview for the Belgian Journal ‘De Tijd” Jeffrey Sachs blames “unbridled American market capitalism” for the financial crisis and pleads in favor of the Swedish social model as an alternative. His ideological argument is revealing for the dominant utopian-socialist mind at the top of the UN.
The fact is that the Swedish social model, which Sachs would like to introduce, has not the only the largest Size of Government of Western World, but also the weakest economic performance of the OECD. In 1970, Sweden still was the fourth wealthiest nation in the world. Thirty years later, Sweden had fallen to rank 17 with catastrophic social consequences. In the meantime the U.S. consistently managed to remain the second or third for more than half a century. So there is not much socio-economic wisdom to be learned from the Swedish Social Model.
Sachs also argues that "unbridled capitalism" is the cause of the current crisis. The reality is that during the last twenty years central planning progressively intruded Western economies who now bear the burden of governments spending 40% to 55% of GDP. Entrepreneurs face ever more crippling restrictions, licensing schemes, quotas and price and quality controls. Businessmen endure tens of thousands of pages of new rules and regulations each year, all written in a lawyers slangy that totally undermines the legal certainty of the free market and which transformed business into a gamble on the next political caprice and on judicial interpretations of the legal jargon. Size of government, computerized control and dirigisme has now reached a level plan economists of the Soviet Union could only dream of. Not the capitalistic system failed, but excessive dirigisme is to blame for the crisis."
....
"Sachs also belongs to the side of the climate fixers who take the controversy over the global warming trend for a "global consensus" and continue to believe that human action caused the trend and may even reverse it. According to Sachs Southern Europe will soon dry out and cause a massive flow of refugees to the north. The bombastic climate alarmism in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference next month must be understood as an ultimate attempt to convince conference goers to step into the global emissions bureaucracy.
CO2 Emission rights are a totally fictitious but legally indispensable commodity for most production processes. Politics will determine its degree of scarcity and the regional allocation, thereby disconnecting production costs from market reality and cause massive distortions. The global ETS scheme is not only fraud sensitive. Scarcity and allocation being the result of political decisions, inside knowledge are likely turn the ETS scheme into one big swindle with grave counter-productive effects. The Soviet debacle learned to what systemic waste the falsification of competition and the elimination of market forces can lead. High subsidies for extremely low productive windmills and solar panels in the Western World for example are causing awfully suboptimal use of scarce resources worldwide. Under free market conditions much more productive use would be found in developing countries. "
"White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Tuesday pointed to two top-rated opinion shows on Fox News as the reason why the Obama administration has castigated the network as an illegitimate news organization.
Gibbs weighed in on the controversy after several top White House advisers have gone on other channels to criticize Fox News' coverage of the administration, dismiss the network as the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and urge other news organizations not to treat Fox News as a legitimate news station.
Gibbs said White House officials "render (that) opinion based on some their coverage and the fairness of that coverage."
But asked how Fox News was different from other news organizations, Gibbs mentioned the channel's 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. shows, in an explicit reference to "Beck" and "Hannity" -- even though those two shows represent opinion programming.
Informed that those hours are for opinion programming, Gibbs said: "That is our opinion."
....The White House also appeared to stand by its effort to urge other networks to isolate and alienate the channel. Gibbs said Tuesday that it's up to the White House Correspondents Association to decide whether Fox News should continue to be part of the White House pool which covers President Obama.
"I'm not going to delineate for the White House Correspondents Association how the pool is conducted. That's not my job," he said.
The pool, the rotation through which the networks share the costs and duties of White House coverage, represents the most significant interaction among the news channels. Despite the Obama administration's guidance to other channels to disregard Fox News, there are no indications so far from the other networks that the pool relationship will change.
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod on Sunday called on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox News is "not a news organization."
"Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way."
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world (to) basically be led in following Fox."
Paris, le 19 octobre 2009
Ambassade d’Italie à Paris
51, rue de Varenne
75343 PARIS CEDEX 07
Lettre ouverte à Giovanni Caracciolo di Vietri et Roberto Maroni, Ambassadeur et Ministre de l’Intérieur de la République italienne.
« C’est Rome qu’ils menacent depuis la France !»
Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, Monsieur le Ministre.
Nous vous adressons ce courrier afin de vous signifier que votre pays fait l’objet de menaces caractérisées émanant d’une institution musulmane française, l’Union des organisations islamiques de France (UOIF), composante du Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM).
En effet, lors de la 26ème Rencontre des musulmans de France, qui a eu lieu des 10 au 13 avril 2009, au Bourget, le « docteur » Tareq Suwaidan, invité à donner une conférence sur Le Prophète Mohamed : un modèle pour l’humanité, a expressément enjoint la nombreuse assistance à ne pas oublier une prophétie de Mahomet, fondateur de l’islam.
Il s’agit d’un propos[1] du dit prophète rapporté par ses compagnons dans le Hadîth (Tradition islamique ou Sunna), source majeure, après le Coran, de la Charia (Loi islamique). Mahomet aurait en effet annoncé que la conquête de Rome suivrait celle de Constantinople, première prophétie déjà réalisée en 1453 dans un bain de sang comme vous le savez.
Lors de cette rencontre au Bourget, évènement majeur pour la communauté musulmane établie en France, Tareq Suwaidan a déclenché des applaudissements nourris quand il a appelé les dizaines de milliers de musulmans présents à ne pas cacher cette prophétie, et donc à la faire vivre. Venant de ce « docteur » soutenant ouvertement le Hamas et appelant à supprimer Israël, il y a de quoi s’inquiéter...
“What I think is fair to say about Fox — and certainly it’s the way we view it — is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party,” said Anita Dunn, White House communications director, on CNN. “They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”
"GERMANY: ANGER AGAINST MINARET'S LOUDSPEAKERS:
One party thinks their goodwill has been abused, the other party thinks they did nothing wrong. Since about three weeks, the Turkish muslim community of Rheinfelden has installed three loudspeakers on the minaret of the Alperenler mosque for the call to prayer.
The muslim community had however engaged itself to never install loudspeakers when in February 2002, the city of Rheinfelden had given permission to build a minaret..."
CHRISTIAN TOMBS DESECRATED IN AN HISTORIC ISTANBUL CEMETERY
by NAT da Polis
"About 90 tombstones are broken. Incidents of this nature are not rate in the city but the local press failed to report it. Only recently and through a movie, have young Turks begun to learn about past anti-Christian pogroms. Ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew visits the cemetery in question.
Istanbul (AsiaNews) – A Christian cemetery was desecrated in Istanbul. Unknown person or persons broke 90 tombstones that bore the sign of the cross and the name of the deceased. The incident occurred a few days ago in the historic cemetery of Valukli near the ancient Valukli Monastery, the only monastery dedicated to Our Lady still open in Istanbul, located outside the ancient walls of Theodosius, and which five non-resident nuns care for.
Istanbul’s Christian cemeteries have been desecrated on a number of occasions in the past 20 years. The latest outrage brought back memories of the tragic events of September 1955 when churches, cemeteries and properties owned by Istanbul’s Orthodox community were desecrated and destroyed in a pogrom. Eventually dubbed the September pogrom, the event was the brainchild of Turkey’s political-bureaucratic-military establishment, known here as Derin Devlet or ‘deep state’..."
A German book publisher has canceled a novel about Islamic "honor killings," fearing that the book would offend the Muslim community and put him in danger. Critics of the decision call it a cowardly move, but others say the publisher is simply being responsible.
The publisher of the book, which was to have been titled "To Whom Honor is Due," has indicated that he withdrew the book after an expert on Islam warned that some of the passages could spark violent retaliation from Muslims.
"After the Muhammad cartoons, one knows that one can't publish sentences or drawings that defame Islam without expecting a security risk," Felix Droste, of Droste Verlag publishing, told the German newspaper Der Spiegel last week. He referred to a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were published in Denmark in 2005 and sparked deadly violence across the Muslim world.
French Police Arrest Hadron Collider Physicist for Suspected Link to Al Qaeda
Friday, October 09, 2009
GENEVA — A nuclear physicist working at the world's largest atom smasher has been arrested on suspicion of links to the Algerian branch of Al Qaeda, another blow to a project that has been plagued by glitches and was shut down after a massive electrical failure a year ago.
The scientist, arrested in France, is suspected of having links to Al Qaeda's North African offshoot, which has carried out a deadly campaign against security forces in recent months, a French official said Friday...
September 11 Memorial Speech by Howard W. Gutman, US Ambassador to Belgium
"Most days are solely about what we are doing.
They are meant to be lived in the present.
A busy day at work . . . picking up the kids at school . . .
But September 11 is differentIt is not about what we are doing . . . but about who we are . . . and what kind of planet we live on.
It is meant to be lived not simply in the present, but in the past and even more so in the future.
In the past, as it is about memories and honor.
We of course remember and honor all who died that day.
People whose only fault was that they were Americans who happened to work in a particular office .
And people like Patrice Braut, a 31 year old Belgian, whose only fault was that he was a Belgian who loved America enough that he chose to work at Marsh & McLennon on Wall Street rather than remain in Anderlecht.
People whose only fault was that they were Americans or visitors to America who chose to board a particular flight.
We honor them all.
We honor their parents who lost children.
We honor their children who lost parents.
We honor them all, including victims of terror anywhere in the world, including right here in Europe.
And on September 11, we also so dearly honor those who lost their lives because they chose to serve.
Men and women whose office building was not a tower of trade . . .
But a Pentagon of protection for us all.
As to them, I can think of no better description of why we honor them than the lesson I recently learned from one of the heads of our American Battlefield cemeteries right here in Belgium;
He noted to me on a recent visit
That for those buried in his cemetery
They remain each day on active duty. . .
And on each day that we fail to remember them . . . that we fail to honor them . . they have served a day without a mission.
Every soldier is entitled to his mission.
We are that mission.
September 11 is indeed about the past.
But September 11 is even moreso about the future.
It is about not simply the planet that we live on,
But the one we will leave to our children.
For on September 11, the only thing more disturbing than thinking about those murdered . . .
Is thinking about those who did the murderers . . . Those who do acts of terrorism anywhere on this planet.
And that is why we are here.
That is what we are doing in Embassy Belgium.
That is what you have given your career to.
Because September 11 is first and foremost about you. . . and about all of the colleagues in the State Department.
When you are asked what you do for a career.
Don’t say that you work in a consular section, or in buildings and maintenance or in an economic section of the Embassy.
Tell them that you are preventing tomorrow’s September 11.
That you are making the planet safer for our children.
Because that is our mission daily. That is our duty.
Those who were buried this day deserve nothing less.
I now would ask you to observe a moment of silence."
Officials Criticize Clinton's Pardon of an Ex-Terrorist
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: Monday, January 22, 2001
An unusual combination of New York political and law enforcement leaders have condemned former President Bill Clinton's pardon of Susan L. Rosenberg, a one-time member of the Weather Underground terrorist group who was charged in the notorious 1981 Brink's robbery in Rockland County that left a guard and two police officers dead.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, and United States Senator Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat, were among those who criticized the pardon, as did Bernard B. Kerik, New York City's police commissioner, and David Trois, a Rockland County police union official.
''It sickened me,'' Mr. Kerik said yesterday of the pardon, one of 140 granted Saturday, the final day of Mr. Clinton's tenure.
"Rosenberg Served 16 Years In Jail After She Was Caught Unloading 740 Pounds Of Dynamite And Weapons In New Jersey And Admitted That She Had Planned To Supply Others For “Politically Motivated Bombings.” “Ms. Rosenberg served 16 years in jail after she was found with a companion in New Jersey in 1984 unloading 740 pounds of dynamite and weapons, including a submachine gun, from a car. She admitted her role in the New Jersey case, in which she had planned to supply others with explosives for politically motivated bombings.” (Eric Lipton, “Officials Criticize Clinton’s Pardon Of An Ex-Terrorist,” The New York Times, 1/22/01)"
"...It demeans the office," said GOP consultant Brad Blakeman, a former Bush administration official. "For the president to be reduced to the effect of the Billy Mays pitchman for the United States to get the Olympics for his home city of Chicago is just not something that presidents do."
Blakeman said Obama spent more time wooing International Olympic Committee officials than he did in his meeting with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, before returning to Washington.
"His priorities are screwed up and the American people are seeing that this president just doesn't get the effects and importance of governing," Blakeman told FOX News...."
10. Dead people can't vote at IOC meetings
9. Obama distracted by 25 min meeting with Gen. McChrystal
8. Who cares if Obama couldn't talk the IOC into Chicago? He'll be able to talk Iran out of nukes.
7. The impediment is Israel still building settlements.
6. Obviously no president would have been able to acomplish it.
5. We've been quite clear and said all along that we didn't want the Olympics.
4. This isn't about the number of Olympics "lost", it's about the number of Olympics "saved" or "created".
3. Clearly not enough wise Latina judges on the committee
2. Because the IOC is racist.
1. It's George Bush's fault.
"DO WE DO HAVE BE FRIGHTENED TO FORCE OUR VALUES ON THEM? - LUCKAS VANDER TAELEN is tired to live near a ghetto where Moroccan youths treat him as if he's on their private property. 'Why dare we not come up for what in fact is essential: respect for the laws and the values of the country in which we live?' I live near a neighborhood in Vorst, from Merode street to Brussels South Station, which you cannot define, even with the most ardent multicultural mindset, as anything else than a ghetto. My daughter has long since given up entering that district. For that she has been gravely insulted too many times. I myself cycle through it each day and every time it's another adventure. Cars parked illegally in double lanes, drivers blocking a crossroads to talk with each other, youths hanging around that regard you as if you're trespassing on their private property. Keep your mouth shut, especially when you're almost ridden in the gutter: the last time I nevertheless protested, a sixteen year old scolded me as I have never been scolded before, and concluded his tirade with a message which I do not translate: 'Nique ta mère.' [yes, that's 'F$ck your mother - MFBB]. That was however still less bad than the previous time, when another maghrebin youth [meant is a Moroccan youngster - MFBB] felt offended by my behaviour when I had the audacity to take my primacy [meant is probably that he had priority on entering a roundabout - MFBB]. His honour had been so besmirched that he felt obliged to spit in my face… Therefore, by all means: keep silent. Because if you try to tell someone that doing 70km per hour is way too fast in an area with speed limit 30, then you are entitled to a confrontation with a young new Belgian who can't stand someone telling him to do this or that and is prepared to ram you in a hospital for that. Twenty years ago I was convinced that assimilating the young new Belgians would be a quick business. But now in Brussels a generation of rebels without a cause has grown up which is never pleased, always feels treated unfair, and is never responsible for anything. When something goes wrong, it's always the fault of the government or the racist Belgians. Within their own families, young maghrebin men remain untouchable too. When police rounded up a young suspect in Molenbeek, the father immediately organized a demonstration because his son 'wouldn't even steal an apple.' The efforts of the government in the problem districts have actually ensured that young people do not feel the need to leave them, a ULB-study demonstrated last year [in non-greenie speech this means that the Beljun gubbermint's woolly multiculti reach out efforts have ensconced the cretins in a local welfare environment to such an extent they certainly won't leave - MFBB]. In this manner, what was created were actually navel-staring village-like communities in the middle of a large city. A daughter of Moroccan friends has a Belgian boyfriend. She never goes out with him in the district, because she is called names instantly. Despite the fact that the young immigrants have Belgian nationality, they do not feel any affinity with this country. On the contrary: 'Belge' is a hateful insult... You almost never see young women in the district. And certainly not in the bars: there they are not even tolerated. When a female official of the municipality asked for a coffee there, it was quickly made obvious to her she wouldn't be served anything. When I cycle through the Merode quarter, I know that I won't spot a single female on a terrace until far beyond Brussels South Station. And then I'm not even talking about the troubling double sexual morality which expects that young immigrant women prove they are still virgins during the wedding night, while everyone knows that the hospitals of Brussels restore virgin membranes with a simple operation... A well-known French-Moroccan artist organized an exhibition in Brussels last week: a series of prayer mats with shoes, of which one pair, a high-heeled one, was placed in the spotlights. The art gallery immediately received threatening phone calls, the windows were damaged and spit on. The commotion apparently resulted from the artist's wish to indicate that women's status in the islamic world needed to be elevated. Apparently this is no longer possile in Brussels. After a couple of days the artwork was removed. Perhaps we must ask ourselves how it has come thus far: that we have accepted that principles like an artist's artistical freedom and equal rights for men and women are no longer guaranteed in this country. Why dare we not rise up for what is in fact essential: respect for the laws and the values of the country in which we live? A headscarf ban is no solution. But perhaps we must reflect nevertheless profoundly on how we can, in an assertive manner, make it clear that we are willing to defend what we find important. It is the merit of the left to have asked for more awareness of discrimination and dire social situations. The problem lies unfortunately deeper: we are frightened to force our values onto immigrants. Those values are however too dear to lose them."
"... It was in Jerusalem that the legend of Godfrey of Bouillon was born. The army reached the city in June 1099 and built wooden ladders to climb over the walls. The major attack took place on July 14 and 15, 1099. Godfrey and some of his knights were the first to get over the walls and enter the city. Once inside, the Crusaders killed many of the city's inhabitants. It was an end to three years of fighting by the Crusaders, but they had finally done what they had set out to do in 1096—namely, to recapture the Holy Land and, in particular, the city of Jerusalem and its holy sites, such as the Holy Sepulchre, the tomb of Jesus Christ.
Once the city was captured, some form of government had to be set up. On July 22, a council was held in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Raymond of Toulouse at first refused to become king, perhaps attempting to show his piety but probably hoping that the other nobles would insist upon his election anyway. Godfrey, who had become the more popular of the two after Raymond's actions at the siege of Antioch, did no damage to his own piety by accepting a position as secular leader, but with an unknown or ill-defined title (advocatus sancti sepulchri). Raymond was incensed at this development and took his army out into the countryside.
However, perhaps considering the controversy which had surrounded Tancred's seizure of Bethlehem, Godfrey refused to be crowned king in the city where Christ had died. The exact nature and meaning of his title is thus somewhat of a controversy. Although it is widely claimed that he took the title Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ("advocate" or "defender" of the Holy Sepulchre), this title is only used in a letter which was not written by Godfrey. Instead, Godfrey himself seems to have used the more ambiguous term Princeps, or simply retained his title of dux from back home in Lower Lorraine. Robert the Monk is the only chronicler of the crusade to report that Godfrey took the title "king".[3] During his short reign, Godfrey had to defend the new Kingdom of Jerusalem against Fatimids of Egypt, who were defeated at the Battle of Ascalon in August. He also faced opposition from Dagobert of Pisa, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who was allied with Tancred. Although the Latins came close to capturing Ascalon, Godfrey's attempts to prevent Raymond of St. Gilles from securing the city for himself meant that the town remained in Muslim hands, destined to be a thorn in the new kingdom's side for years to come..."
The White House also appeared to stand by its effort to urge other networks to isolate and alienate the channel. Gibbs said Tuesday that it's up to the White House Correspondents Association to decide whether Fox News should continue to be part of the White House pool which covers President Obama.
It is not about what we are doing . . . but about who we are . . . and what kind of planet we live on.