SATURDAY NIGHT XTC, THE WATERBOYS.

Possibly one of the dumbest questions ever brought up by a rock journalist was, when sometime in the nineties a Japanese reporter asked XTC's Andy Partridge why they had named their band after a drug. XTC had actually been around since 1976 - long before 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine started killing off around 30 suckers yearly in the UK alone. Between that year and 05, just missing their thirtieth birthday, XTC produced a small number of reasonable hits, of which imho Making Plans for Nigel is their best, and then (in that order) Dear God, Senses Working Overtime, and The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead. But that's just my opinion. Oh well. Generals and Majors and The Mayor of Simpleton aren't bad either.






In 1988 the song Fisherman's Blues and the album with the same name kicked off the start of the second phase of Scottish-Irish-English band The Waterboys' long life, which was formed in 1983 around Mike Scott and continues to this day. Fisherman's Blues explored folk and country songs. Before that, The Waterboys produced a run of the mill rock sound which included a couple of good solid hits (A Girl called Johnny, The Whole of the Moon). After that, that is past 2000 - the band was actually on hiatus between 1996 and 2000 - came a mix of alternative rock and acoustic folk.




That's. all. Good night.



MFBB.

DUTCH CUT AND RUN IN AFGHANISTAN; TALIBAN CHEER.

That didn't take long. As anyone who follows the international news even remotely knows, the Dutch Cabinet, a coalition of Christian Democrats (CDA - ChristenUnie) and Socialists (PvdA), has fallen over the question whether or not to prolong the Dutch NATO mission in Afghanistan. Over the past few years, the Netherlands has had some 2,000 military personnel in that country, of which the ground arm - some infantry battalions, mechanized howitzers, mortar units and several Apache helicopters - was engaged in Uruzgan province, and the air arm - first six, then four F-16 fighter bombers - in Kandahar. Unlike the bulk of NATO members, the Dutch had no caveats regarding the deployment of their troops, were often in the thick of the fight, and suffered accordingly: at least 21 dead so far and scores of wounded, many of them maimed for life. NATO and the US wanted the Netherlands to prolong the Dutch mission beyond August 2010 - a departure date the Dutch had been predicting for some time. The Christian Democrats under PM Jan-Peter Balkenende viewed the request favorably. The socialists of the PvdA, under the leadership of Wouter Bos, also the country's Finance Minister, were adamant and did not want to stay in the government if Balkenende insisted on staying the course in Afghanistan. Thus happened. So last Saturday, Balkenende had no choice but to offer Queen Beatrix the resignation of his cabinet.


Guess who's glad?




Translation:

TALIBAN: DUTCH DEPARTURE IS VERY GOOD DECISION.

Rotterdam, February 24. The Dutch withdrawal from Uruzgan is "a very good decision".

It is "just and truthful that the Dutch people understand that they don't need to give their lives for America's goals", says Qari Yuousef Ahmadi, spokesman for the Taliban for South Afghanistan", in a telephonic conversation with this newspaper [NRC Handelsblad - MFBB].

The Afghan Taliban have two 'official' spokespersons, who claim attacks and provide the media with commentary on the NATO mission and the Afghan government. It is unclear how they keep contact with the Quetta-shura, the Taliban leadership allegedly having its headquarters in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

Ahmadi calls on "other countries that lose lives for American purposes" in Afghanistan to "follow the way of the Dutch". The Netherlands is the first of the 43 countries participating in NATO's mission in Afghanistan to withdraw. "The Dutch have realised: we have no profit here, our objectives do not lie in this country, so why would we sacrifice ourselves?" says the spokesperson.

Guess who's sad?

Asadullah Hamdam, the governor of the Afghan province of Uruzgan, where the Dutch mission is based, told the BBC that peace and reconstruction efforts would suffer a setback if the Dutch troops left.

"They help our security forces a great deal in security matters here," said Mr Hamdam told the BBC. "In many districts they work together with the Afghan National Army, and they help in developmental projects.

"They are constructing bridges, schools, roads and assisting in many other educational projects."

As I have often ascertained on these pages, in the struggle between the west and the islamic world, there are but two options. The first is that the west tries to implement the values and mechanisms in the hellhole and sub-standard-everything-humanly-worthwhile that is the muslim world. We should not hope for them to become like us, but if we can steer them to some semblance of economic prosperity and can convince them to solve their problems in what passes for parliaments there, instead of caving each other's heads in, I would consider that a HUGE victory. If anything, better economic prospects may make it less attractive for their 18-40 years old to self-detonate. And maybe, just maybe, a daily life less desperate may encourage 'enlightened' (read less fanatic) scholars to define a less bloodthirsty version of their moon cult.

The second option is an all-out war between the muslim world and the rest of humanity, lest the latter be not infected over time with the cancer that constitutes the former.

In my not so humble opinion, the first option is the best. There is no guarantee it will work out, since islam is "the strongest retrograde force in the world", as a famous British politican once remarked. But because the alternative is so terrible, option 1 should at least be tried. In Iraq, it worked, or, at least, we did our part of the bargain. A strong indigenous military apparatus guards the young republic. Democratic principles leave an awful lot to be desired, the christian population has rarely had it worse, but personally, I'd counsel some years of patience yet to let them sort their things out. If the sane part of humanity comes to an inevitable conclusion a few years hence, no one can blame us for not having tried to hammer sense in islamic heads.


The Dutch now running away in Afghanistan, at this stage, nullifies all the good that came from their involvement. Nursing generations of muslim girls to school for example, with hopefully bening effects on Afghan policy in years to come, is now being flushed through the toilet. And because of who and what?

Why, because of the socialists of course. Had it not been for the man below, Wouter Bos, Uruzgan would continue to receive Dutch support and protection. Dutch soldiers would have kept islamic fanatics at bay.





Instead, Bos is pandering to the islamic fanatics at home. You see him here with a thoroughly brainwashed young muslim girl, Azeza Morcy, on a PvdA congress a couple of months back.

Dutch socialists should pursue a policy that keeps a battle involving howitzers and Apaches 8,000 kloms away from their mills and canals... simultaneously, on the homefront, they should stand up for everything that we hold so dear, especially our freedom... Instead, they cut and run in Afghanistan, and pander to the fanatics at home. Below Lodewijk Asscher, a prominent socialist in Amsterdam. As you can conclude from Mr. Asscher's campaign poster, his integration efforts in Turkistan on the North Sea proceed very well.




Campaign poster exclusively in Turkish. Gee, are Piet and Klaas and Johanna not interesting anymore Lodewijk?




Campaigning for the upcoming elections with a trusted aide and/or mentor, one of his New Adopted People.




Congratulations asshole! You have made it to the pages of Hurriyet, the no.1 Turkish Newspaper! You succeed summa cum laude for the Dhimmi Integration Test!



And so The Netherlands sink away in the multicultural quagmare. In Afghanistan the Dutch cut and run in the face of bearded medieval wifebeaters and headchoppers who couldn't possibly imagine what a toilet pot is for except for washing papaver poppies. At home they slither in the mud and whore for votes to please their future muslim overlords, who shit on everything the socialists have been so gung ho about for decades.

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -- Winston Churchill

My condolences to the relatives of the Dutch soldiers who fell in Afghanistan, and my heartfelt wishes for the best for those wounded there.



MFBB.

AD.

Via Theo Spark:





They are backtracking now, but only because there has been stiff opposition from saner minds. The real travesty is of course that a courtroom next to Ground Zero was scheduled in the first place.

But what could you expect from an Attorney General with NINE AIDES defending muslim terrorists?



MFBB.

KEEP YOUR F*CKING CLAWS OFF MY 401(k)'S.

I am NOT thinking of my retirement, hell no. I hope I will still be working when I'm 70. However, when the day comes I will finally have some more time for the wifey, let's just hope there's sufficient dough for maintaining the same living standard. Since I do not really count on the Belgian State anymore to provide me with a decent pension by 2040, what with importing bazillions of welfare consumers and paedophile worshipping wifebeaters while indigenous Belgians seem to have forgotten how to procreate and all that... I've been taking my precautions since a couple of years. My company pays for a so-called Group Insurance, as well as for an IPT (Individuele Pensioen Toezegging, litterally translated Individual Pension Allowance). Personally, I have, apart from my savings and stocks, a VAPZ (Vrij Aanvullend Pensioen voor Zelfstandigen, meaning Voluntary Additional Pension for Independents), and, in addition, I participate in the popular 'pensioensparen' (Pension savings), in simple terms setting apart your own future pension with montly payments, tax deductible so that you may get up to 40% back annually, i.e. taxed less, depending on your income.

I understand the US has something similar in the form of those famous 401(k)'s, be it that apparently this form of retirement savings seem to be mostly employer sponsored plans, whereas our 'pensioensparen' is a wholly individual undertaking.

Well... for the time being the money hungry Belgian State seems happy to let us take care of ourselves. In the US however...

Yesterday I stumbled, via Protein Wisdom, on a very interesting column by Newt Gingrich and Peter Ferrara in Investors.com, titled

CLASS WARFARE'S NEXT TARGET: 401(k) SAVINGS
By Newt Gingrich and Peter Ferrara
Posted 02/17/2010 06:52 PM ET


"You did the responsible thing. You saved in your IRA or 401(k) to support your retirement, when you could have spent that money on another vacation, or an upscale car, or fancier clothes and jewelry. But now Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings.

BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are asking for public comment on "the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams."

In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years.

They will tell you that you are "investing" your money in U.S. Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds. This "conversion" may start out as an optional choice, though you are already free to buy Treasury bonds whenever you want. But as Karl Denninger of the Market Ticker Web site reports: "'Choices' have a funny way of turning into mandates, and this looks to me like a raw admission that Treasury knows it will not be able to sell its debt in the open market — so they will effectively tax you by forcing your 'retirement' money to buy them."

Moreover, benefits based on Treasury bond interest rates may be woefully inadequate compensation for your years of savings. As Denninger adds, "What's even worse is that the government has intentionally suppressed Treasury yields during this crisis (and will keep doing so by various means, including manipulating the CPI inflation index) so as to guarantee that you lose over time compared to actual purchasing power."

This proposal follows hearings held last fall by House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., of the Ways and Means Committee focusing on "redirecting (IRA and 401k) tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute," as reported by InvestmentNews.com..."

Powerline Blog has some very sound remarks too:

"In other words, the government will allow you the "opportunity" to give Washington your savings, in return for which the government will give you unmarketable T-bills or other unreliable promises to pay some minimal rate of return. The program likely will be "voluntary" to begin with, but that makes no sense--you can buy T-bills in your retirement account any time you want. So the only possible point is to make the exchange mandatory. The government steals your savings in exchange for an IOU.

Will it happen? Clearly the Obama administration, inspired by Argentina, is exploring the option. Today, we have the first administration in American history that aspires to be a banana republic. But can they get away with confiscating millions of Americans' savings? I doubt it. Because first on the list of those who have accumulated wealth in reliance on the laws governing private savings accounts are lawyers. Most people don't realize it, but even lawyers of modest ability typically have, after three or four decades of diligent savings, seven-figure retirement accounts. (This is one reason why influential Democrats don't care whether Social Security goes bust. They wouldn't dream of depending on it.) Lawyers are the heart and soul of the Democratic Party; public employee unions are more important in some ways, but they are junior partners in the Dems' coalition.

If the Obama administration were to announce an intent to confiscate Americans' retirement savings, the howls that would arise from lawyers (and others, too, of course) would be deafening. I don't think the administration could get away with it. Which doesn't mean they won't try, as the current efforts by the Departments of the Treasury and Labor indicate.

Still, others disagree. Earlier today I learned that a relative on Wall Street has stopped accumulating funds in his retirement accounts precisely because he thinks they may be confiscated by the Obama administration. Instead, he is acquiring untraceable, tangible assets--gold and silver--that the government won't be able to steal without a physical search of his property..."

Over here in the United Socialist Repooplicks of Belgistan we have enough to be wary of, but I think I can manage some li'l advice to Americanos. It's a Flemish saying: "Als de vos de passie preekt, boer pas op je hennen." Translation: "When the fox preaches compassion, farmer watch your hens".

Don't let these crooks and thieves put their claws on your retirement savings. Let them find other ways to fill their bottomless pits.



MFBB.

WHOA!!!! SEVEN YEARS ALREADY????

We are actually past the birthday party, since DowneastBlog's very first post came up on February 11, 2003, but hey, February ain't over yet. Let it thus be known that this month, DowneastBlog has been around in the blogosphere for seven years.





For those of the readership who joined past 2005 or so, here's a revelation: DowneastBlog is not my project. The blog started in early 03 as an initiative of three Maine people, Tom and Kerry D. and Scott F. In November 2003 Kerry, who had spotted me in the comments sections of several Iraqi blogs, invited me to join. My first post dates from December 22 of 03, a piece about the European Union. I started reluctantly, certainly not suspecting that seven years on I would still be on the team. Well, team. That word has become a bit awkward actually, since unfortunately, both Tom and Kerry disappeared along the road, IIRC somewhere in early 2005. Only Scott's still around, and his last post dates from mid-09 or so. Here's the weird thing: Tom and Kerry must still be paying for DB. Thus, either they have plenty of money so that they can't be bothered by a couple of bucks every year for keeping the thing up... or they still peek in from time to time and approve. Or, both. Whatever. Anyway, as I have repeatedly stated on these pages, if they ever decide to throw me out it's their right: even after seven years and after having become the most, ahem, regular contributor, I still consider myself a guestwriter. However, should they decide to kick me out, or stop with DB altogether, I'd very much appreciate it if they allowed me to save my material first.

That said, I realize full well I may have chased them away - as I have probably chased away a lot of people. I do not bring a happy message, at least not most of the time. Also, the package of the message - writing style, power words - must definitely not be to everyone's liking and is probably one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that our readership is still modest, give and take 70-80 visitors a day.

As long as I can however, I will continue in the same manner. This is how I am, and I'll stick with it. I am a westerner, more precisely a European. Even more precisely a Belgian, and if you got to know even more, a Fleming, i.e. a Dutch-speaking Belgian. I am also a conservative, a small business owner, an engineer by formation, a family man with a married partner and two great kids, and 44 years old. My experiences in life have taught, or rather convinced me, that generally, the best way to cope with the challenges of life for the majority of people is offered by a stout conservative mindset and ditto behaviour. I expressly added the 'for the majority of people' because naturally, if you smoke pot and screw around and beat your parents BUT you're otherwise a genius with, say, rock music, you can obviously still belong to the 'some guys have all the luck' category.

The thing is, most of us do not have the benefit of an exceptional talent that allows us to do a lot of stupid things and still end up with Talking Heads' proverbial beautiful house, and a beautiful wife, and a beautiful car. As for me, I do not have special talents either, or it would have to be a certain stubbornness when faced with challenges.

But even if personally, I would be blessed with some magnificent knack for doing this or that and making big bucks of it, I think I would still be a conservative. Because I would still appreciate the inherent nobleness of working hard, respecting your past, and loving and caring for your family. At the age of 44 I have also seen far too many young people end up in the gutter because, well, precisely because they didn't deem a conservative lifestyle a cool thing. Not only that - having read quite a lot of history, I have become convinced that if enough citizens of any society choose for 'the cooler things', the whole shazam ends up in the gutter. I recall here an anecdote in which a teacher of mine in the fourth year of High School read out some text that seemed to have come straight out a contemporary issue of Kerk en Leven (a Christian conservative magazine, and we're talking 1982 here). The exerpt my teacher was reading out aloud was in essence a rant by some elders on the laziness of slacking youngsters, it boiling down to that they couldn't even be brought to cut off the rope of the noose they were hung with even if someone handed them a knife.

My teacher, a dedicated lefty who, btw and perhaps a bit surprisingly I am still very fond of, then enlightened us as to date and author of that exerpt.

Turned out it was some Greek philosopher 2,200 years or so dead and complaining of the punks and hippies of Ancient Greece. My teacher's intention was clearly to neutralize the conservative talk which was doing the rounds among our parents' generation, who had seen the war and built Belgium back up in the fifties and sixties - I told you he was a lefty.

Toooooooo bad, in retrospect, that I have never been a quick-mouthed smartass, nor, at the time, all too familiar with the story of Greece post Alexander the Great. Because I would then have been able to point out to my teacher that not long after that Greek philosopher, Ancient Greece with its dandy Athenian pederasty was pocketed by the Romans.

To cut a long story short, as far as I am concerned, it's going to be more of the same here in times to come, interspersed with a few bikinis and decent songs to make sure people don't drop dead from boredom. It's going to be MORE of the blessings of unapologetical conservative behaviour, the lovely monocultural society, the enormous achievements of western civilization and christianity, and the genius of the supply side economists. It's also going to be more of the clear and present danger presented by socialism and islamization.

Because being aware of those plagues is a necessity, if you value your life and freedom and the life and freedom of your offspring.

Good night, and thank you for your attention. You can stay tuned if you want.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT THE CULT, DEFINITION OF SOUND.

Throughout their career, which lasts to this day, The Cult has very much remained, well, a cult group. A UK postpunk and gothic rock band, their biggest hit was She sells sanctuary, from the 1985 album Love. In the late eighties they made their presence in the US known by evolving towards a more hardrock sound (album Electric, 1987). Since 1983, when they formed in Bradford, Yorkshire, till today, The Cult has had a veritable plethora of members. Singer Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy have remained constants though.





In 1995 London based dance group Definition of Sound had a commendable hit with Pass the Vibes.





Nite.



MFBB.

RONSE, BELGIUM: MUSLIM SWINE ABDULLAH A. HANDICAPPING SPORTS TEACHER FOR LIFE BECAUSE DAUGHTER HAD TO WEAR SPORTS UNIFORM DEEMED TOO REVEALING.

Just one article among a bazillion ones. From Belgian daily Het Laatste Nieuws, February 16, 2010:





Translation:

"AGRESSIVE FATHER NO LONGER ALLOWED TO ENTER SCHOOL IN RONSE. An Omani man has been forbidden on court order to set foot in the Saint-Anthony College in Ronse. Two years ago he molested sports teacher Patrick Vanden Broucke (43) so badly that the man is handicapped for the rest of his life. Only after nine months and extensive surgery could he go back to work [however, not in his former capacity - MFBB]. He [the muslim father - MFBB] did not accept that school regulations proscribed that his daughter had to participate in gym sessions with short pants. Abdullah A. (46) was also convicted to a two year postponed jailtime and a fine of 2,200 EUR if he dares once again to enter school. He also has to pay a fine of 6,500 EUR" (belga/adv).

A fleshed out version of this short article can be found here, where we learn, a.o., that two years ago the ten year old daughter of the Omani man refused to put on the school sports attire consisting of short pants, a T-shirt, and white stockings. Only when the school Director showed up did she dress in the regulatory uniform. One week later, Abdullah A. showed up during sports hour. Teacher Vandenbroucke recognized him since only a short time before, the man had verbally assaulted a female teacher. Abdullah A., a giant of a man, dislodged with tremendous force the teacher's shoulder. X-rays later revealed that tendons and muscles had been torn apart. Patrick Vanden Broucke recalls how after nine months and extensive surgery, upon entering the school's premises again, he found himself face to face again with... Abdullah A., who mocked him....


I came home at quarter to midnight about one hour ago, after yet another hard day's work. Which means I have to limit myself to this short post. This one topic absolutely does not mean I'm short on topics. I could have posted the story of Moroccan gangsters spraying helpless police patrols in certain Brussels neighborhoods with Kalashnikovs, or Moroccan parents (yes, the mother too) who beat two teachers in an Antwerp school into hospital because they deemed a reprimand their kid had gotten in school offensive.

But in the end the conclusion is the same.

I'm sick and tired of all the PC bullcrap about how that grand elusive majority of muslims are peace-loving and law-abiding citizens. They are not. And if you come up with that age-old story about that good decent muslim neighbour you have, I dare you to put him to the test and ask him if he will allow his children to convert to hinduism or christianity or whatever.

The truth is harsh and bleak. The problem is islam. That scumbag handicapped a decent citizen just doing his job FOR LIFE... because he is a muslim. Because he adheres to an insane backward mysogynistic paedophile worshipper cult. THAT, people, is the problem.

Get to terms with it, and learn to handle a weapon. They can already.


MFBB.

DUTCH ELECTION POSTERS...

In all likelihood there's gonna be elections this fall in Holland, and it's clear that The Netherlands' extremely well integrated immigrant minorities will play an important part in the outcome. To make sure they don't encounter too much resistance from undemocratic racist xenophobe whiteys the Dutch gubbermint has ensured that one such a firebrand, a fella with the unsavoury initials G.W., will be tied up in court at that time.

















The first and second posters are from the PvdA, the most important Dutch socialist party (the second most important one is the SP, for Socialistische Partij). The third poster is of the Liberal Left party D66. The last one of the GroenLinks (litterally GreenLeft) party.

But, I suspect you suspected that already.



MFBB.

THE FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN FOR THE CLIMATE ALARMISTS?

First there was Climategate.


Then there was the hoax of the Himalayan glaciers, predicted by the IPCC to be molten away to one fifth of their current level by 2035. It appeared that the IPCC had based that allegation on a study by a Russian hydrologist who had calculated the glaciers would be gone by... 2350.


Then there was the US version of Climategate: as The Telegraph's James Delingpole explains:

"... What it shows is that, just like in Britain at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) temperature data records have been grotesquely distorted by activist scientists in order to exaggerate the appearance of late 20th century global warming. They achieved this – with an insouciant disregard for scientific integrity which quite beggars belief – through the simple expedient of ignoring most of those weather station sited in higher, colder places and using mainly ones in warmer spots. Then, they averaged out the temperature readings given by the warmer stations to give a global average. Et voila: exactly the scary “climate change” they needed to persuade bodies like the IPCC that AGW was a clear and present danger requiring urgent pan-governmental action.

The man who spotted all this is a computer programmer called EM Smith – aka the Chiefio. You can read the full report at his excellent blog. In the 70s, the Chiefio discovered, GISS and NOAA took their temperature data from 6,000 weather stations around the world. By 1990, though, this figure had mysteriously dropped to 1500. Even more mysteriously this 75 per cent reduction in the number of stations used had a clear bias against those at higher latitudes and elevations...."

Then there has just been the revelation that of the 110-strong team of expert reviewers The Netherlands delegated to the UN to contribute to the 2007 IPCC report.... 109 came from the alarmist camp.


And now Phil Jones, who had to resign because of Climategate as Head of the CRU [the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, the prime institution that provided the IPCC with "scientific proof" of climate change - MFBB]... himself admits that there has been no global warming since... 1995. From The Daily Mail:

"...He [Phil Jones, ex-Director CRU - MFBB] also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend. And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.
But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world. Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions. ‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now."

First off, I am not going to let myself go into a rant against the alarmists. Personally, given the fact that the winters my parents recount of were apparently far more severe than even the one we are currently experiencing, I would counsel ... I would simply counsel... serious, competent and steady research without interference from leftist scumbags wanting to politicize it all. Oh, and neither from fossil energy tycoons, for that matter. If, and that's a big IF, there would really be some kind of global warming, and if, and that's even a far bigger IF, man would somehow be somewhat responsible for this, then the most sensible thing to do would be rather to PREPARE for climate change rather than try to reverse the trend by going back to the Stone Age. In the meantime, it doesn't hurt to care for the environment.

But that's not all.

We should not make the same mistake as in 1990.

In 1990, the Wall came down. And we, evil rightwingers, greedy capitalists and backward conservatives, OUR worldview had won. The Left stood there with bleeding noses and...

... we let them get away with it.

We were rewarded for our fair play with anti racism laws, borderless immigration, indoctrination of our children, the brainwashing of the greater part of the population via the overwhelmingly leftist controlled news outlets, and mass abortion, gay marriages, gay adoption and active assistance of leftists in the islamization of our countries.

The whole climate change hoax is now blowing up in the Left's faces.

THIS TIME ROUND, WE SHOULD NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT LOVE SONGS.

1968. Herb Alpert with This Guy's in love with you, a timeless classic. Alpert had already made a name for himself as frontman of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. This number, imho one of the best love songs ever - if not the best - was a solo thing though. Also, it was originally written by Burt Bacharach, another music legend.






1978. Dean Friedman with Lydia, tremendously beautiful ballad that flopped for some reason. Popular perception has it that Ariel is Friedman's No. 1 hit. Can't figure out why.





1990. 'Falling', sung by Julee Cruise. The theme was the intro on the soundtrack of the quasi mythical series Twin Peaks. My wife and I requested this number - okay, actually it was just me - for our opening dance on our wedding ceremony in summer 1999.






1995. Adam Ant began his career as the lead man of the English postpunk/New Wave band Adam & The Ants, but this number was made a long time after the group's demise. It's called Wonderful, and it is from his last album to date. Probably the very last, since the fella has since, on more than one occasion, seen the interior of psychiatric wards. Not as a personnel member, mind you. Anyway, Wonderful is, well, wonderful.






Make it a nice Valentine's Day for your sweetheart.



MFBB.

GERMANY: MUEZZIN CALL TO PRAYER FROM MINARET BECOMING MORE AND MORE COMMON.

Via François Desouche, February 3, 2010:

The German town of Rendsburg [in northern Schleswig-Holstein, on the Kiel Canal - MFBB] has authorised the call to prayer via loudspeaker of a muezzin from a minaret of Rendsburgs mosque, despite the protests of a part of the population, thus announced on Tuesday Rendsburgs Social Democrat mayor, Andreas Breitner.

The project, defended by the Islamic Centre, which is running the mosque, had provoked lively protests from part of the population, which focused on the nuisance caused by the call to prayer, launched five times a day to invite the faithful to prayer. A petition of the group "No Public Call to Prayer" had gathered 800 signatures.

However, according to the mayor, a study on the limits beyond which noise levels would become troublesome had shown that the public calls to prayer would not exceed 40 decibels, which corresponds with a radio or bird cries [said the mayor].

"Skin color, one's origin, gender or different religions do not play a role (in this kind of decisions). And it's good like that", explained the mayor.

The mosque of this town of more than 28,000 inhabitants, situated 100 kilometers from Hamburg, is the biggest one in Schleswig-Holstein, with two 26m high minarets. It was inuagurated in the fall of 2009."

More here.


And here's a short video:





One party which absolutely welcomed the decision to allow the muezzin's call were the Rendsburger Gruene, the Greens. While it is certainly true that all over Europe, the greatest facilitators of islamization are socialists, the greens show barely less enthusiasm - perhaps they are so enamored with islam because they share with it the same color. It is no coincidence that the National Chairman of the German Greens is... a Turk and self-described "secular muslim", Cem Ozdemir. But perhaps the most striking case in point of the affiliation between greens and muslims remains a 2008 incident involving a Green Party spokesperson in Hause, a district of Frankfurt, central Germany. The district there was already home to two mosques, and yet another muslim association wanted to erect a third one, including a muslim community center... this within a 400-meter radius of the other two. Estimated cost: €3 million. When indigenous Germans protested at a meeting concerning the building plans that "It wouldn't feel like home anymore if more come here", the Green Party spokeswoman AND Frankurts Integration Official (!!!), Nargess Eskandari-Gruenberg, blasted back that:

"40 percent of the city's population are immigrants. "If that doesn't suit you," she said, "then you need to move somewhere else."

Oh yeah, never mind her liberal western looks. It's all taqiyyah you know.


Sadly, these are no isolated cases. Currently, 184 new mosques are being built and/or planned throughout Germany. That's basically, all of a sudden, a 115% increase over the existing 163 mosques [apart from that, there are also an estimated 2,600 prayer rooms - MFBB].

Powerful organizations behind this sudden building frenzy are DITIB and Ahmadiyya. DITIB is actually a branch of the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs, and is on its maps already dividing up Germany in religious entities not unlike Christian dioceses. Ahmadiyya is an organization totally apart from DITIB, but no less ambitious, since it has introduced a "100 Mosque Plan" - of which 25% has already been completed!

But back to our Rendsburger muezzin. If the gullible mayor thinks that the call to prayer won't exceed 40 decibels, I have another bridge across the Kiel Canal to sell him. The naivete of those people is really striking, especially in light of the undisputable fact that muslims don't give a jolt about kafir laws. Time and again, muslims do not honor their part of the bargain. Building perscriptions are violated, payment deadlines aren't met, and agreed on transparancy is not provided. Some examples:

"Under the pretext of religious privilege, the DITIB strategists in Cologne have in truth claimed the rights to a commercial center that also happens to include the opportunity to pray. A Muslim community in Berlin's Neukölln district also wanted to take its cue from Cologne and construct an immense commercial and cultural center. But at least the planners there, as the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recognized, only described the structure as being a "semi-mosque."

That plan, however, failed in the face of the strong opposition of Deputy Mayor and District Councilwoman Stefanie Vogelsang of the conservative Christian Democrats. Her awareness of the issue had been heightened by a conflict with DITIB a few years earlier, when the organization deliberately violated its building permits during the construction of a new mosque in the same neighborhood.

By the time construction had been completed, the mosque's two minarets rose 37 meters into the Berlin skyline rather than the approved 28 meters and the dome measured around 22 meters instead of the permitted 18. For Vogelsang that was cause enough to slap the Muslim congregation with the highest fine ever imposed in her district, €100,000. "Whoever lives here, whoever builds here, needs to follow our laws," she said"...."

And so on and so on and so on...

So, if you think this guy, Hasan Unsal, the muezzin of the Rendsburg mosque...




... will stick to the 40 decibel limit when trying to wake up his co-religionists at five in the morning... you're probably one of those people who are still convinced the Himalaya's glaciers will all be gone by 2035. Meanwhile...




Mosque in Duisburg, in the Ruhr area





The "Tabakmoschee" in Dresden





The planned Sendlinger mosque in Muenchen

"The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers..." - Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish PM

And so in Germany an army of 4 million mainly Turkish muslims, up from a couple of tens of thousands one hundred years ago, is building their barracks, with domes like helmets and minarets like bayonets, although they rather strike me as somewhat more modern weaponry. Meanwhile, the pathetic remnant of 200,000 Christians in Turkey itself, down from several million one hundred years ago, is not allowed to build churches. A telling statistic is provided by the Churches of the Byzantine rite, of which there were twenty-nine. Their current state: 4 are in ruins, 3 have been converted into museums, 15 have been converted into a mosques, one has been completely demolished and a new mosque has been built on top. In six of them, Christian Mass is still being held. But for how long?

One more thing.

The mayor of Rendsburg, Andreas Breitner, is a member of the SPD, the German socialists.

But. I suspect. That you suspected that already.



MFBB.

MUSLIM CANCER DESTROYING FRANCE.

Via Galliawatch, a January 29, 2010 exerpt from an utterly sad article by Mireille Popelin, first published at Riposte Laïque:

"There are 12 million of them. French salaried workers. And everything is being done to make them disappear. No one even talks about them anymore! The radical chic ("bobo") Left even says they no longer exist. They endure discrimination. The workers at Conti, at Caterpillar, etc... who fight against the relocation of their companies, who fight against so-called social plans, i.e., unemployment, have to wage their battles alone. They are the people who live in low-income housing and who are subject to the laws of the fanatics and the mafiosi.

Many left the suburbs that had become unlivable. But not those who did not have the means to buy or rent elsewhere. Old retired people who were not able to leave are insulted: "dirty French, old whores, and 4 square meters." You don't know what "4 square meters" refers to? It's the grave. They reduce these older workers to the grave! With targeted spitting, near their shoes. With seats in the bus offered to a veiled Muslim woman apparently younger than they are. At the marketplace it is the Muslim woman who is served first, ostensibly, while the French woman has to wait. The merchants are Arabs. The butcher shops are almost all halal and the retirees have to take a bus or subway to stock up on meat that is not halal. I know them, I listen to them in their retirement clubs.

What of the schools? Islamists are at the door and put pressure on the poor teachers... no swimming pool for girls, no "sex" ed. (We have religion, they say, we don't need that. We don't talk about that.) Biology, history... the teachers often break down, torn between fear and the desire to "pull" these kids towards emancipation and knowledge. I know this well, because it has happened in my family, and it ends with depression and heart attacks.

I'm tired of reading everywhere about the great fears of Muslims who are discriminated against, when fanatics and mafiosi force their "law" in the "lost territories of the Republic".

Note: The Lost Territories of the Republic is the title of a book by Emmanuel Brenner (a pseudonym) that came out in 2002. It describes the breakdown of law and order in large areas of France where even the police dare not go. The following is drawn from a review of the book at JCPA:

The testimonies indicate the serious plight of French democracy. Many teachers close their eyes to the violence, intimidation, and racism. Others describe the perpetrators as "hooligans" or "hoodlums," in denial of the fact that there are elements in the French Muslim community as well as foreign television stations that systematically incite against others. Other teachers try to maintain "social peace" by appeasing the bullies and withholding sympathy from their victims.

The schools' attitudes broadly reflect those of the left-wing government and the previous political position of President Jacques Chirac. During three years of major anti-Semitic incidents, he denied that there was anti-Semitism in France. Only after yet another arson attempt against a Jewish institution in November 2003 did Chirac decide to change his stance.

The cases described are not limited to Jewish victims. Some Christian pupils are so intimidated by the Muslim majority in their classes that they have considered converting to Islam. Teachers are harassed as well. Some Muslim pupils expressed their joy about 11 September, and Bin Laden is a hero to them. It would be a mistake to think that the hatred focuses exclusively on Jews and Americans; the Muslims' main disgust is for the French and French society."

Meanwhile, French officials have far more pressing matters at hand and events to attend which are a gazillion times more important than the stupid pathetic lives of Jean-Claude, Marie-Claire, Sébastien and Sandrine. François Desouche follows Mr. Brice Hortefeux, French Interior Minister, at the occasion of the inauguration of the Grand Mosque of Clermont-Ferrand, central France:

"The Grand Mosque of Clermont-Ferrand, expected since more than ten years by the about 35,000 muslims of Auvergne, was inaugurated this evening by the Interior Minister, Brice Hortefeux.

Integrally financed with 1.2 million EUR by faithful French and foreigners, the mosque, which boasts a dome and soon a minaret, covers a surface of more than 1,000 sq. meters and can accommodate 1,500 people.

"My presence here, as Minister of Interior responsible for religion, is meant as a sign of the will to dialogue which unites the Republic with France's muslims", declared Hortefeux, who was accompanied by the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, the chairman of the National Muslim Council, Mohammed Moussaoui, diplomats and religious and political personalities.

"This mosque is the hallmark of an islam of peace, moderate, far from the radical sermons that may poison the life of France's muslims, Hortefeux added. Boubakeur said that as far as he is concerned, the mosque is "a historical work", "a place of love, peace and spirituality for all the faithful of the region".

Hortefeux, at the same time Regional Councillor of Auvergne, then donned a burnous, a traditional muslim garb presented to authorities, offered by the mosque's imam Hocine Mahdjoub."

You may remember the name Hortefeux. He is the lunatic who insisted, on January 1, 2010, that things had been quite calm the previous night and that a turning point in the Carbeques phenomenon had been reached because "only" 1,137 cars had been torched, as opposed to 1,147 the year before. What he apparently failed to notice was that in order to get the tally down a paltry 10 (ten) cars, 10,000 more riot police had been deployed.

Here's a short video of this dhimmi scoundrel and traitor:





Meanwhile, construction of mosques all over France continues like a whirlwind. Below you see a photo of the building site of the Grand Mosque of Strasbourg, in France's east.





And this is the projected Grand Mosque of Marseille, construction of which saw the green light in January:





Sweden is bad. The UK is bad. Germany is bad. The Netherlands is very bad. Belgium is bad. But I am pretty certain the first country to go down in flames will be France.

Let no one say there were no warnings.


Outlaw Mike, the mean Belgian/Flemish Capitalist, Conservative and Christian follower of Hayek, Von Mises and Friedman salutes you.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT SUICIDE MATERIAL.

Lucky is from Radiohead's third album OK Computer, released in 1997.




Then Massive Attack's Man next Door, which is set to fragments of a 1965 film by Alan Schneider, based on a script, or what passes for it, by Samuel Beckett, the Irish avant garde writer and poet. The title of that film is simply "Film", it lasts 22 minutes, the main character is Buster Keaton, there's no dialogue at all, and it's about a guy wanting to escape being perceived. Beckett is of course most famous for his play Waiting for Godot, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting for a guy, Godot, who never comes. Kind of like waiting for a leftist to grow a brain, quoi. The price for most unintellectual quote of the day goes to me, for "Samuel Beckett was a nutter".





Hey, I'm fine and dandy. No suicide plans, not at all. It's just that I don't think that just because a song is dark, it automatically cannot be good. In fact, imho both Lucky and Man Next Door are brilliant.


Nite.


MFBB.

WHY DADT SHOULD NOT BE REPEALED.

A US Admiral made it to Belgian MSM. Below is a screenshot from Belgian daily HLN (Het Laatste Nieuws), 2 February 2010.



Naturally, US admirals are only presented to the Belgian population if they announce either surrender or something related to our whorenalists' eternal dada, gay issues. In this case, it's the latter. We are, of course, talking about Joint Chief Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen, and his plea before a Senate panel last Tuesday, presented as a personal POV, to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy (DADT) introduced by President Clinton in 1993. Mullen expressed his view as "a matter of integrity" and said that it is wrong to force people to "lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens."

First off, I think "wrong" is a bit too stark an expression. I might agree with his using the word "fair" however. To which I would reply immediately: whoever said that life is always fair? And whoever claimed that life in the military is always fair?

I am but a simple citizen and I never even served, but to me the prime issue for an Army, like it is to so many other things - my company e.g. - is first and foremost about efficiency. Opening up a debate that

a.) will in itself consume precious resources,
b.) will invariably create divisiveness within the military, and
c.) of which an outcome repealing DADT will undermine combat effectiveness...

... is, in my opinion, a very stupid thing to do when you are at war with a mortal foe. To top it all off, can you imagine the rolling laughter among a group of taleban in some dank cave in Waziristan when they hear on the shortwave that, while their archenemies have not yet managed to get the AF surge underway, they have at least made progress on the gay front?

Over at our friend CDR Salamander's site, there've been some good posts on the issue, and I'd wager his comments section continues at least as much, if not more, good reading material as the posts themselves. A couple of the comments in his February 3 post stood out, in my opinion, and with or without kind permission of the authors, I will repeat them here.

First, here's a comment by Mr. X. He's in favor of repealing DADT:

"There's a popular misconception that the "don't ask" part of DADT means we are forbidden from asking, but that's not true. Shipmates casually ask one another all the time. "Hey, what did you do this weekend?" "Who was that I saw you having dinner with?" "So, are you seeing anyone?" An honest answer to those questions from a homosexual is grounds for discharge, regardless of the fact that they were "asked" by someone within DoD. There is also no penalty in the law for those who ask, and nothing that prevents the information from being used if someone does ask. Because the law is written this way, homosexuals frequently find themselves in situations where they are asked questions they may not answer truthfully. I think that's was Admiral Mullen was talking about when he raised the issue of integrity."

Fair enough, but like I said, life's not enough fair. I realize there's probably a great deal of injustice and suffering involved for gay people serving under DADT. But the question you have to ask yourself is, what are the pros and cons of scrapping a policy that, despite its flaws, was better than nothing? If the cons outweigh the pros, just stop whining and leave the policy in place. And I would wager the cons FAR outweigh the pros. We'll come immediately to that, but before we do, here's a column by a certain Claude Berube, a fequent contributor to Proceedings and Naval History on the USNI website. Some exerpts:

"Second, Didn’t Know Don’t Care would be based on individual competency. It would not be about special privileges for any one group. Rather, it is about the freedom of individuals to serve. There are standards in the Navy as reflected by fitness reports or other assessments. The one question we should ask is: Can this individual do the job? After the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, he was wheeled into the emergency room and jokingly said “I hope you’re all Republicans!” If a qualified health care professional said they were a Democrat, he wouldn’t have waited until a Republican showed up. The same philosophy of competence should apply in the Navy.

Third, character counts. Character is not an exclusive trait of any race, gender, or sexual preference; character is demonstrated by individuals. Once a person is deemed qualified to serve, then openly serving homosexuals must be held to the same standards and adhere to regulations as heterosexuals. If they cannot follow regulations, then they must be as accountable as anyone else regardless of race, gender or sexual preference."

The column goes on like that, and it seems Mr. Berube is proposing a policy he labels "DKDC", for Didn't Know, Don' Care. Now, is it just me or am I the only one who fails to see substance in this proposal? Because Mr. Berube never seems to explain how such a policy, letting gay people out themselves and simply judging them by their competencies, should be implemented in practice.

No, I suppose I sound hopelessly archaic, but in the end I'll just stick with the opinions of two commenters on the CDR's thread, "Old NFO" (a male) and "DeltaBravo" (a female). Both served, I assume, with the US Navy. I... told you I was archaic, that's why I'll let the Lady speak first. DeltaBravo:

"You know, since most of the posters here are men I've seen an aspect of this debate that has fallen by the wayside. I don't want to bring an avalanche of accusations and anger and... well, who cares. I'll wade in anyways....

The following is very non-PC. Read at your own risk. I'm just making comments from the point of view of a woman who has watched things for years, has female relatives and friends who serve and have served, and who knows the female mind.

Forget the jokes about DADT and hot lesbians.

There are lots of women in the military. DADT isn't just about the Navy and a few women on ships. It's about other branches that have higher percentages of women clustered in some specialties. How to say this nicely... not a few lesbians among them. Right now they have to keep a lid on things.

YOU.DO.NOT.WANT.TO.TAKE.THE.LID.OFF.THAT.POT.

Women deal with each other differently than they deal with men. In the grand scheme of things I'd rather have 10 male bosses than one average female one. Women are not nice to each other. I have watched people who were suspected of being lesbians target women in the workplace who did not accept their vague advances. It's not pretty. Women can be brutal with each other and very spiteful. Career-killing spiteful. Now put a bunch of them in a command and have love affairs going on semi-openly with people now allowed to publicly proclaim their love that can now speak its name. Girlfriends pairing up, new young recruits coming in and all the drama. Oh, the drama! (Picture what you know of male/female triangles and fraternization. Rejections. Accusations. Now double the estrogen involved.) You do not want to be the COs who have to wade into that minefield. Ever watch a show on women's prisons? Try that in a military division. It will destroy all semblance of unit cohesion.

This isn't just about guys in showers feeling gazed upon. This is about the emotionality and attachments that women can foist on each other that will give many DIVOs excedrin headaches.

At least before, there was doubt maybe whether someone was lesbian and their advances were misread. But bring that whole woman scorned thing out into the open.... it makes what you men navigate look like a cakewalk.

I've seen it in action. NOT FUN. "

Then Old NFO:

"I'm looking forward to the excuses when this blows up. Eighteen year old kids in boot camp with proselytizing gay activists as drill instructors. 56 man berthing compartments and open showers all shared with a few open homosexuals. Shop supervisors and division chiefs being threatened with harassment charges if they try to get any work out of a self described gay. Take all the problems of putting women on ships and multiply them several fold.

As for Admiral Mullen and his ilk. I wonder if there is a point where political correctness would become too much even for them. They still can't admit the Fort Hood massacre was done by an Islamic Terrorist. And now they think allowing open homosexuals into the high pressure close quarters of shipboard life is a great idea.

Earth to Admiral Mullen and Obama. The military is not an office. You don't go home at the end of the day. You live in close contact with your shipmates 24 hours a day for months on end. Every little personal habit is inflicted on everyone else, especially in the lower enlisted ranks . I expect homosexuals will become the new protected class in the military. Good luck meeting your enlistment goals."

I suppose it will sound terribly unintellectual when I say I far prefer the points of view expressed by Old NFO and DeltaBravo over anything else. Repealing DADT will result in lower combat effectiveness. Lower combat effectiveness means, a.o., higher casualties. WE CANNOT HAVE THAT. There's a war going on...





... and it has to be won. I am sympathetic to the plight of gay members of our western armed forces, but I suspect the decent individuals among them - quite a few, I would wager - will understand that while DADT may not be perfect, it is the best system so far.

One last thing.

Since Europeans are so much more sophisticated than crude Americans, it should come as no surprise that in our enlightened continent we not only do not have such a retarded policy like DADT... but our homosexual and lesbian service members even participate in Gay Parades! Don't believe me, check out these photos and you will see a few jolly good fellows proudly serving in the Royal Navy.

Now, I am not only archaic... But I am also mean-spirited. Why else would I suspect a correlation between an RN Gay Parade... and a RN Parade on Iranian TV? Look for yourself! First, the former.




Royal Navy members participating in EuroPride, a Gay Parade held on July 1, 2006 in London.


Then, the latter:



Royal Navy members from the frigate HMS Cornwall. One year after the RN Gay Parade they encountered Iranian sailors in the Gulf who said 'BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!', they shat their pants full, surrendered and afterwards learned their lesson well.


In March 2006, Second Sea Lord Vice Admiral Adrian Johns revealed that he planned to set up therapy lessons to learn hetero RN members to change their old-fashioned perceptions of gay people. Vice Admiral Johns said "his staff were investigating drama-based training resources" as a means to achieve that lofty goal.

I'm sure those drama-based training resources were of great help when a smelly brown liquid flowed down Lt. Felix Carman's pants. Not. Bloody fooking idiots. Oh yeah, did I mention DADT should not be repealed? Good night.



MFBB.

PAT CONDELL ON THE CROOKED JUDGES OF AMSTERDAM.

Kind of blows you away huh?

If you do not want your children to grow up in a totalitarian society,


DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.


I am pissed off as hell lately, and I'm beginning to think... that it is time... for a Conservative Revolution. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. From open leftist collaboration with the islamization of our societies and the Global Warming hoax, over mind-numbing taxation, the showering of welfare checks over illegals being groomed for voting cattle, and insane hyperspending... to a skyrocketing abortion toll, gay adoption and giving pregnancy tests and fucking contraceptives to 11-YEAR OLD GIRLS....


I have had ENOUGH. I'm seething.



MFBB.

TAKUAN SEIYO'S 14TH INSTALLMENT IN THE "FROM MECCANIA TO ATLANTIS" SERIES.

The Right is lucky to have in The Brussels Journal's Takuan Seiyo such a gifted and merciless chronicler of the West's decline into an ageing continent trading its once vibrant economy for sclerotic impotent dhimmisocialism, and paralyzed by bogus guilt over the GW hoax and an allegedly murky past as a colonizer of supposedly noble, peaceful civilizations elsewhere. Last week, Seiyo published his 14th installment in the groundbreaking "From Meccania to Atlantis" series, and, although I actually loathe to use the phrase... it is a must-read. The elusive TBJ contributor focuses mainly on the horrific travesty that is the Wilders Trial currently taking place in Amsterdam. But before linking to a couple of exerpts from his brilliant post, I'd like you to meet a trio of very, very nasty people. On the photo below, actually a screenshot from the extreme leftist daily De Volkskrant, you see from left to right "Professor in Counterterrorism" Bob De Graaff, "Radicalization Expert" Hans Moors, and "Extreme Right Expert" Jaap Van Donselaar. They are the authors of a "scientific study" of which the predetermined conclusion was that "Geert Wilders is a danger for democracy". This "study", ordered by Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst, coincidentally a socialist, is, in a slightly polished form, one of the elements "à charge" used against Wilders in this political trial.




The Real Fascists: from left to right Professor in Counterterrorism Bob De Graaff, who would make better use of taxpayer money if he studied the likes of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab rather than Geert Wilders, "Radicalization Expert" Hans Moors, a pseudoscientist whose smug face could be a hallmark of that disgusting class of self-congratulatory elitist euroleftists, and "Extreme Right Expert" Jaap Van Donselaar, dedicated to investigating those darn dangerous extreme rightwing terrorists but for some reason seemingly completely unaware of the very real (islamo)leftist track record in that domain (Duyvendak, icon of the "Dutch WU", the Hofstadgroep etc).


Below you see a screenshot of the leftist daily De Volkskrant, October 2009, when news of the "scientific study" had just come out.




Translation:

'GEERT WILDERS UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY.' Amsterdam - "Geert Wilders' PVV Party is an extreme rightwing party which mobilizes islamophobia and system hatred against the authorities. Thus the party undermines social cohesion and democracy in this country. That is the conclusion of three scientists in a report on radicalization to the House, as ordered by the Interior Ministry."

Now that you have gotten one more whiff of the stench of the real forces behind the stifling of freedom of speech in Europe, I'd like you to read a coupl of exerpts from Seiyo's excellent column:

Now, 29 months later, the next stage of the toxic toads’ assault on the peoples of the West is taking place in Amsterdam. Geert Wilders is standing before a kangaroo court on charges of, mirabile dictu, “incitement to discrimination and hatred.” An old trick of any dark oligarchy with respect to extirpating inconvenient ideas. Already used against Socrates and seen in the West more recently in the 1945 Nazi trial and execution of the nonviolent resister and bearer of a distinguished German surname, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke.

But there is more to Geert Wilders’s trial. The chicaneries that preceded it, the 70-page rap sheet, the bizarre comments by the Pharisees in charge, the disproportionality between the offense and the prescribed penalty, connote in one’s mind the prosecution’s charges in the most famous trial of them all. Those were charges of blasphemy.

The blasphemy on trial in Amsterdam is not against Allah, though if Eurabia proceeds on course such blasphemy and whatever else the Organization of The Islamic Conference dictates will be proscribed at Dutch law within years, if not months (4). Rather, it’s blasphemy against the religion of multiculturalism, diversity, appeasement, cowardice, treason and vain hopes of 30 shekels of perpetual profit from the Islamglobal economy of The New World Order.

Numerous well-informed observers have noticed the demonstrable truthfulness of Mr. Wilders’s statements for which the Netherlands justice system proposes to fine and jail him for two years, presumably stripping him of his parliamentary immunity first. Wilders’s opening statement in court was itself predicated on the question, “If something is true, how can it be punishable?”

But truth, empirical evidence, justice or the public good have nothing to do with it. This is lawfare – an asymmetrical war by the racially and culturally Europhobic neosocialist oligarchy on the people it governs. A war to squash ideas and the political parties that embody them and therefore jeopardize the oligarchy’s hold on power and the perks of power.

The depths of obscenity

“It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct”, stated the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie). “What’s relevant is that his observations are illegal”.

The four paragraphs of the Dutch Penal code under which Geert Wilders is being tried may be found here, but a writer interested in the marrow of things would condense them as follows:

He who publicly, verbally or in writing or image, deliberately expresses himself in a way insulting of, or incites hatred or discrimination or violent behavior against, person or a group of people or their property because of their race, their religion or belief, their gender or hetero-or- homosexual nature or their physical, mental, or intellectual disabilities, will be punished with a prison sentence of up to one year or a big fine, except if he does so in his professional (i.e. Geert Wilders) or avocational (i.e. bloggers, freedom activists) or group (i.e. organized nonviolent resistance) capablity, he will get up to two years in prison and a bigger fine.

In the symposium The Trial of Geert Wilders, the American attorney David Yerushalmi found that this law he calls “fascist” contains a prepackaged guilty verdict against Wilders. What’s most telling to me is that that the law does not discriminate between insulting and advocating violence. Moreover, it expresses the fatwa of the West’s ruling elite against discrimination. That is a death sentence -- for Western civilization.

Without discrimination, neither physical existence nor a moral or intellectual system can obtain, except as miasmatic pap. Without wise discrimination between the inside and the outside, any society is destined for the flush hole of history.

The writer Nidra Poller [ibid.] quotes the Dutch Law Professor Fokko Oldenhuis:

“…the statements of Wilders are un-Dutch, they don’t belong to our Christian-Judaic culture…. He discriminates Moroccans because of their race and causes hate against them…. His desire to ban the Koran brings fear and terror into peoples homes… The laws against hate crimes were made in 1934, to protect the Jews in a reaction to what was happening in Germany.”


Poller asks, “What could be more obscene than enrolling 6 million exterminated Jews in a battle to deprive one honest upstanding legitimate popular Dutch MP of the freedom to oppose the spread of an ideology [i.e. Islam] that blatantly plans the extermination of the remaining Jewish population of the world?”

Time to enter a peculiar character, another lackey of the politically correct regime and a man who would have been perfectly at ease in the ranks of the Stasi. Meet Paul Velleman, prosecutor in the Wilders trial.




A Real Fascist: Velleman was the prosecutor who ordered the arrest, in the middle of the night and by a ten-strong squad of black-clad policemen, of cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot. This ball-less, slimy but all in all dangerous creep (at least for indigenous Dutchmen) shows far less bravado when confronted with offensive cartoons from radical muslim organizations.

"Alas, inconceivably, the persecution of Geert Wilders is more obscene even than that. Two additional participants in the symposium, the Canadian lawyer David B. Harris, and Mark Steyn, pointed out that despite the manifest risks to Wilders’s life, the Dutch government is refusing to hold the trial in a secure courtroom, even though it provided one for the trial of the Dutch-born Muslim murderer of Theo van Gogh. Steyn remarked further that in the Low Countries politicians who challenge the Eurabian arrangement are either banned (Belgium’s Vlaams Blok), forced into exile (Aayan Hirsi Ali) or killed (Pym Fortuyn) – and that the authorities are indifferent as to which of these fates befalls Geert Wilders [ibid.].

But that too does not exhaust the depth of the obscenity. The two prosecutors in the Wilders trial, Paul Velleman and Birgit van Roessel, also work for the Dutch National Discrimination Expertise Center [LECD]. Velleman is the head of LECD. As Gates of Vienna has reported, “Paul Velleman was the prosecutor who had the [offensive to Muslims and anonymous] cartoonist Nekschot picked up in a raid by ten police officers in the middle of the night, and kept him locked up for more than two days. Quote from H. Numan: ‘After release, he was told: You can forget about anonymity now. They know who you are.’“

Alias Gregorius Nekschot is a regular citizen. He cannot afford the security arrangements that the Dutch state must provide for Geert Wilders – one surmises, reluctantly -- due to his parliamentary status. So the declared purpose of Nekschot’s arrest and “outing” was, first, to silence him or get him killed, and second, to send a message to all dhimmitude resisters: Mütze ab! Ve know vho you are, and ve know vere you are too. Therefore, they know it too. Shut up or be killed. Mütze auf!

The Dutch National Discrimination “Expertise” Center has finally bagged the big fish. Everyone knows who he is. But now everyone also knows where he is. And once he is jailed, his parliamentary immunity and security detail stripped, they can finally do the work the dhimmofascist regime would like to do itself."

Seiyo concludes:

"The well-oiled machinery of repression is vast and global. The working of the interlinking cogs may be glimpsed in any “news” (i.e. agitprop) item, e.g. like this report that appeared in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir on the day when 57.5% of directly polled citizens of a sovereign country, Switzerland, decided to prohibit the construction of further Islamic minarets:

“Switzerland votes massively [for] the prohibition of minarets”, reads the headline (in French), under which almost every sentence includes words indicating disappointment, disapproval and condemnation or a negative opinion about the legitimacy of the Swiss people’s sovereign voice.

One is informed that the Green Party plans an appeal before the European Court of Human Rights, for violation of religious freedom. Likewise, the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CECLR) – the Orwellian name alone merits a short pause -- in Belgium, naturally, opines that the victory of 57.5% of the Swiss citizenry is not a victory for democracy. The lawfare of progressive dhimmitude is trotted out too:

“A prohibition that has no effect but on a single religion is contrary to the Belgian Constitution, to the European Treaty of Human Rights, and to different declarations of the United Nations.” [ibid., my translation]


One would wait in vain for the pompous neosocialist frauds running either Le Soir or CECLR or the UN or EU or Switzerland’s Body Snatcher government or the Barko regime in the United States to express equally strong or any opinions concerning the treatment of Christians and Christianity (11) in every Muslim country in the world, or the treatment of whites in South Africa, Zimbabwe and much of the rest of Africa."

If you truly value Freedom, you should with all your might denounce the conclusions of this disgusting Kangaroo Court. Follow this link and write an email to a Dutch embassy and/or consulate wherein you express a.) your support for the brave Dutchman that is Wilders and b.) your disgust for the travesty that this "trial" makes of the Dutch judicial system.

Thank you.



MFBB.

MULTICULTURAL ENRICHMENT IN BERLIN.

Now and then we have referred to certain muslim-infested areas in Berlin, amongst others Neukoelln. Some may remember how police officers upon rounding up petty criminals had to flee for suddenly appearing muslim mobs lest they not be lynched. Here is another illustration of what life in those neighborhoods has in store for non-muslims. From the Polish site Polskaweb, German edition, January 2010:

"Veiled muslim girls suddenly attacked other, preferably blonde girls. School authorities and the Senate Administration for Schools are deeply concerned.

It happened on the street: "Two times already girls with headscarf beat with their fists on blonde girls without headscarf, pushed them to the ground, and kicked them with their feet" says Volker Steffens, Principal of Thomas More High School in Neukoelln. The number of foreigners among the about 500 pupils is more than 80 per cent from 41 nations....

Rita Herrmanns of the Senate Admininstration for Schools: "Fundamentalistic tendencies are on the rise in Berlin's schools over the past years. More and more muslim girls are wearing headscarves. More and more muslim parents forbid their daughters schooltrips, swimming lessons, sexual education". School Principal Volker Steffens is sitting in the front seat to witness the conssequences: "The islamic tendencies and straight racist attacks by [muslim] girls are remarkable."

The victims are the blonde Polish girls, because they are catholic and at the same time very liberal and therefore embody everything, what the veiled girls hate. The reason for the conflicts is most often envy. Steffens: "In religiously very tight households much is forbidden. The girls see in school other girls, who are allowed far more. They become pissed off, and harass the children of liberal families."

Volker Steffens draws the line: "Cases are talked through with the girls and warnings issued [my translation sucks - dunno what 'geahndet' means. Is there a German in zhe Room? - MFBB]. That goes from a warning over a negative reference to exclusion from school meetings and even the school itself".

Rita Hermanns: "It's good that way, because one thing shouldn't happen at all: look away! This violence must be exposed."

Good luck with that. Better oil up, lock and load grandpa's Schmeisser Madam Hermanns. Better, uncle Willi's Sturmgewehr. A few Panzerfausts might come in handy too.



MFBB.

BUTTGET PROPOSAL.

Just one article among many: Peter Morici on FOXNews.com. Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, as well as a former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Obama's Budget -- Straight From La La Land
By Peter Morici
- FOXNews.com

Today, President Obama released his proposed 2011 budget, which forecasts the federal deficit will fall to $706 billion by 2014 or just 3.9 percent of GDP before rising again in 2015.

To accomplish this feat, he proposes letting the Bush tax cuts expire and other spending cuts the Congress has rejected in the past. More extraordinary, though, the document assumes that real GDP grows at better than 4 percent a year over the four years from 2011 to 2014, and the economy does not encounter a serious recession.

If your staff economist tells you that is realistic, fire him.

Rosie Scenario wrote this budget.

The United States is facing deficits greater than one trillion dollars for the foreseeable future, and investing in long-term U.S. government bonds is a very risky proposition. It is not that Washington won't pay, but longer term, an international run on the dollar and inflation are real risks.

Investing in U.S. bonds now entails considerable political risk. A populist government, similar to those that drove Latin American republics into bankruptcy during the 1970s is in charge.

Obama's strategy: low growth policies and assume away the consequences.

This Mark Steyn article's scope is somewhat broader than the "mere" acknowledgement of a budget, and a budget deficit, and a national debt, never before seen in human history, but I thought I'd pass it on just as well:

...That's why Obama is such a job-killer. Why would a small business take on a new employee? The president's proposing a soak-the-banks tax that could impact your access to credit. The House has passed a cap-and-trade bill that could impose potentially unlimited regulatory costs. The Senate is in favor of "health" "care" "reform" that will allow the IRS to seize your assets if you and your employees' health arrangements do not meet the approval of the federal government. Some of these things will pass into law, some of them won't. But all of them send a consistent, cumulative message: that there are no rules, that they're being made up as they go along – and that some of them might even be retroactive, as happened this week with Oregon's new corporate tax.

In such an environment, would you hire anyone? Or would you hunker down and sit things out? Obama can bury it in half a ton of leaden telepromptered sludge but the world has got the message: More Washington, more microregulation of every aspect of your life, more multi-trillion-dollar spending, and no agreed rules in a game ever more rigged against you.

Obama and the Democrats have decided, in the current cliché, to "double down." That hardly does justice to what the president's doing. In effect, he's told embattled congressmen and senators to strap on the old suicide-bomber belt and self-detonate for the team this November.

That's a lot of virgins to pass out, but, with this administration, budget restraints aren't exactly a problem: Untold pleasures will await every sacrificial incumbent in paradise, or at any rate the coming liberal utopia.

What's the end game here? President Obama gave it away in his student-loan "reform" proposals: If you choose to go into "public service," any college-loan debts will be forgiven after 10 years.

Because "public service" is more noble than the selfish, money-grubbing private sector. C'mon, everybody knows that. So we need to encourage more people to go into "public service."

Why?

In the past 60 years, the size of America's state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it's still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine.

Like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured or marketed any product other than himself. So, quite reasonably, he sees government dependency as the natural order of things.

And in his college-loan plan he's explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you're a schmuck and a loser. In the America he's building, you'll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swollen bureaucracy that takes six weeks off a year and retires at 53 on a pension you could never dream of. Obama's proposals are bold only insofar as few men would offer such a transparent guarantee of disaster: It's the audacity of hopelessness...

You bet.

Jesus Christ. If I ran my family's financial matters like Obama does the US's, my wife would file for divorce. I am NOT KIDDING.


MFBB.