In the early nineties, The Charlatans, a key group of the so-called Madchester scene, had a smash hit, in my opinion at least, with The Only One I Know. Other notable Madchester groups were The Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, The Stone Roses, 808 State etc. They essentially combined psychedelic and indie rock with dance. A good example is e.g. The Happy Mondays' Step On (which is actually a John Kongos cover).
Quite good material from The Pursuit of Happiness, a now forgotten Canadian rock/indie band. Imnsho, this hit, She's So Young, is far, far better than the song with which they made their debut, I'm an adult now. Even though that one was apparently a smash hit in Canada. She's so young is from the album Love Junk, 1989. Singer's Moe Berg. I hope he's been to the hairdresser by now, that long hippie hair sucks as bad as a Christmas tree on a pyramid.
Good night tonight. This was Outlaw Mike from between rolling fields in Belgium.
UNIT 731 was one of around 26 biological warfare and medical experimentation organizations set up by Japans government before and during World War II. Of those 26, Unit 731 reportedly was the worst, but that may only seem so because most info obtained about Japans gruseome experiments on humans comes from scientists from Pinfan, where the unit was set up. Pingfan is an area south of Harbin in Manchuria where the notorious four-square mile compound of the grisly organisation was built.
Japanese "scientists" carried out the most gruseome experiments on humans imaginable, including vivisecting live people (sometimes pregnant women), exploding hand grenades at various distances to tied up children to test their effects, flamethrowing people, cooking them alive, injecting them with deadly germs, freezing and starving them to death, and exposing them to X-rays. Not that you will hear anything from that among the handwringing crocdile tear shedders in Hiroshima.
There's a ton of information about Unit 731 on the Internet, but check each one and sooner or later you will come across the inevitable paragraphs dealing with the near amnesty the US gave postwar to 731's top scientists, most notably to its head, Lieutenant General Ishii.
From a moral point of view, there is indeed little to be brought in against the charge that the US used a double standard, rightly prosecuting nazis but then giving protection to the most abominable war criminals - worse than their worst German counterparts - in exchange for "precious" information on biological warfare (8,000 vials with human tissues of the unit's victims were handed over).
Politics is not about morals alone however, although in a normal civilized state it should be the rockbed of it. Already in 1945, it was becoming clear that the next war would be fought with the USSR. Manchuria had a land border with the Soviet Union, and there was a serious possibility that Stalin's scientists had had themselves access to 731's files on biological warfare, possibly giving the country a lead on the US in that domain so that it would have a stick with which to retaliate in case of nuclear threat from the US.
And if you are fighting a war, you should fight to win it.
But yes, General Mac Arthur himself ensured that Ishii and his staff went free.
All of which does not explain why the spirit emanating from the articles on Unit 731 seems to imply that the US, in trying to obtain horrific data indeed, data which it could itself not gain, is on a moral par with the Pingfan monsters. When I first read about Unit 731, some 25 years ago in a Dutch popular scientific magazine called Kijk, the article ended with the telling line "The Devil had found an ally".
Such is the nature of Anti-Americanism.
Over here at DowneastBlog, we know better of course. While the whole world is shedding crocodile tears over Hiroshima and Nagasaki and secretly - or not so secretly - enjoying another opportunity to bash America, I have decided to dedicate a post to the tens of thousands - some say hundreds of thousands - who died in the most unimaginable agony, whether in Pingfan or deeper in China itself - as a result of Japanese horror that makes Auschwitz seem bearable by comparison.
"...A jovial old Japanese farmer who in the war had been a medical assistant in a Japanese army unit in China described to a U.S. reporter recently what it was like to dissect a Chinese prisoner who was still alive.
Munching rice cakes, he reminisced: "The fellow knew it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. "He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped.
"This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time." The man could not be sedated, added the farmer, because it might have distorted the experiment.
...
Most of these facilities were combined at Unit 731 so that Ishii could play with his box of horrors. His word was law. When he wanted a human brain to experiment on, guards grabbed a prisoner and held him down while one of them cleaved open his skull with an axe. The brain was removed and rushed to Ishii's laboratory. Human beings used for experiments were nicknamed "maruta" or "logs" because the cover story given to the local authorities was that Unit 731 was a lumber mill. Logs were inert matter, a form of plant life, and that was how the Japanese regarded the Chinese "bandits", "criminals" and "suspicious persons" brought in from the surrounding countryside.
Shackled hand and foot, they were fed well and exercised regularly. "Unless you work with a healthy body you can't get results," recalled a member of the Unit. But the torture inflicted upon them is unimaginable: they were exposed to phosgene gas to discover the effect on their lungs, or given electrical charges which slowly roasted them. Prisoners were decapitated in order for Japanese soldiers to test the sharpness of their swords.
Others had limbs amputated to study blood loss - limbs that were sometimes stitched back on the opposite sides of the body. Other victims had various parts of their brains, lungs or liver removed, or their stomach removed and their oesophagus reattached to their intestines.
Kamada, one of several veterans who felt able to speak out after the death of Emperor Hirohito, remembered extracting the plague-infested organs of a fully conscious "log" with a scalpel.
"I inserted the scalpel directly into the log's neck and opened the chest," he said. "At first there was a terrible scream, but the voice soon fell silent." Other experiments involved hanging prisoners upside down to discover how long it took for them to choke to death, and injecting air into their arteries to test for the onset of embolisms. Some appear to have had no medical purpose except the administering of indescribable pain, such as injecting horse urine into prisoners' kidneys...."
One bombardment you will never be reminded of on an August 6: seventy years after Japanese bomber struck the village of this man's parents with germ bombs, he still suffers from the consequences: the "rotten leg disease".
"...Jiang is one of 15 elderly Chinese men and women whom Zhu is treating in his simple village clinic for what locals label “rotten leg disease.” A definitive diagnosis is no longer possible so many decades after the initial exposure and secondary infections. But Chinese, American, and other Western physicians who have examined the survivors, documented their histories, and photographed their wounds claim that they are victims of the most gruesome biological warfare attacks in modern history.
These attacks, orchestrated by Japan’s infamous Unit 731 between 1932 and 1945, are the only documented mass use of germ weapons in modern times. Scholars say that we will never know exactly how many were killed. Sheldon H. Harris, the late American historian, estimated in a pioneering work that between 10,000 and 12,000 Chinese prisoners perished in the bloodcurdling experiments that Unit 731 performed in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Another 300,000 to 500,000 civilians died, he wrote, as a result of Japan’s massive germ assaults on more than 70 Chinese cities and towns. China itself has disclosed no official tally. In fact, for many years, Japan’s use of biological weapons in China was largely forgotten. Only recently has a resurgent China begun to remind Japan—and the world—of the atrocities...."
If you have still the stomach for it, watch this video:
Unit 731 was active since before the outbreak of the war in the Pacific. Ever after the 1931 Mukden Incident, used by Japan to annex Manchuria (it made a puppet state of it, named Manchukwo), countless Chinese suffered under the gruesome excesses of Japanese imperialism and militarism. Not even counting the horrors of Unit 731 and its 25 sister organizations (including a poison gas factory near... Hiroshima), China paid a terrible price in lives and property. Hundreds of thousands perished in 1937 in the infamous Nanking Massacre, for instance.
If you have a quiet moment today, please pray for these utterly hapless souls. Pray. for. them.
Now, at the occasion of the 65th birtday of the bombing of Hiroshima, I therefore want to extend my heartfelt THANKS to the country that ENDED a horrible agony that had been going on since the early thirties.
"... The inauguration of a new mosque has become an everyday event in France, but when the Prime Minister is the one doing the inaugurating, it is news. On June 28, François Fillon inaugurated the great mosque of Argenteuil, called the Al-Ihsan mosque. In nº 88 of his weekly newsletter (available through subscription), Yves Daoudal reviews the event in an article entitled "The French Islamic Republic", a title that summarizes in few words the institutionalized dhimmitude of the current French government:
On Monday, Prime Minister François Fillon inaugurated the great Al-Ihsan mosque of Argenteuil. It is the second mosque for Argenteuil, that has, in addition, eight prayer rooms.
It was the first time that a Prime Minister of the Republic inaugurated a mosque. When Sarkozy created the French Council of the Muslim Religion (CFCM), Cardinal Lustiger had noted that Islam was becoming the State religion. By inaugurating the Al-Ihsan mosque, François Fillon confirmed and illustrated that Islam IS the religion of the French State..."
A good two weeks ago, the eastern city of Grenoble was the scene of violent riots instigated by muslims. A young scoundrel, a certain 27-year old Karim Boudouda who had just robbed a casino near Grenoble and who had already an impressive record for felony and armed robbery, was shot dead by the police. Now, among white autochtons, the tale that a white bandit got felled by police bullets, is generally greeted with satisfaction. Not so with muslims. No matter how serious the criminal facts, a muslim who commits a crime against non-muslims is a hero and must be feted. If he is killed, he immediately becomes a martyr and his death must be avenged.
"...The rioting started after a memorial service for 27-year-old Karim Boudouda, who had died 24 hours earlier in a shootout with police after allegedly holding up the Uriage-les-Bains casino near Grenoble.
Shortly before midnight, a group of about 30 youths armed with baseball bats and iron bars attacked a tram in Boudouda's La Villeneuve district and forced the passengers out.
Police intervened and the youths began torching vehicles and attacking police who responded with tear gas.
About 2.30am local time, a youth emerged at the front of the rioters and fired a shot at police, who returned fire, police spokeswoman Brigette Jullien told AFP.
Nobody was injured in the riots, said police, who arrested two men aged 18 and 20 for setting fire to vehicles and three more for attempted looting of shops.
Hortefeux, with a horde of media in tow, made a lightning 15-minute tour of La Villeneuve in the afternoon and promised quick action by the authorities...."
Brice Hortefeux is, apart from a roaring fool, a 200 per cent incompetent, a despicable dhimmi and avid mosque-inaugurator, and a ball-less and spineless creep, also France's Interior Minister. On the last National Holiday, July 14, he refused to make public, for the first time, the numbers of cars torched by muslims in their war to create sole-muslim enclaves in the French Republic, saying that instead those numbers would be included in the yearly total.
As things stand now, by year's end an estimated 300,000 cars will have been destroyed by muslim mobs since 2005...
... and nobody seems to give a damn, and everyone's pretending that Lindsay Lohan in rehab is news far more important.
Autochton Europeans or law-abiding immigrants, no matter their race or religious beliefs - with the exception of islam itself of course - must prepare themselves for open war with muslims on European soil.
To those persons of authority in the militaries of European countries, if you cherish the rights and privileges that our peoples have gained over the centuries, very often at an extremely heavy cost in blood and treasure...
... if you do not want to go down in history as persons who did not take their responsibility...
... then it is your DUTY to plan for using our armed forces in open conflict with the muslim communities on our soil.
This potential future conflict may involve, if necessary, the use of heavy artillery, tanks, and ground attack aircraft. It would be therefore foolish to follow the idiot politicians' lead and cave in to their demands to neutralize - actually rather neuter - your units and materiel, as is currently happening in virtually every western country. You must SPEAK OUT AGAINST THAT.
Lessons should be drawn from the nineties conflicts in the Balkans, and I mean not only from a "technical" viewpoint. It means first and foremost, recognizing the REAL enemy. The catastrophic error of backing the wrong warring party may NEVER AGAIN be repeated.
Over at The Brussels Journal, the splendidly lucid and eloquent Takuan Seiyo has his next installment in the inimitable From Meccania to Atlantis series up - his seventeenth, in the meantime.
It should be noted that personally, I do not entirely subscribe to Seiyo's views, in particular where he denounces the West's efforts to install manu militari functioning democracies in the appalling hellhole that is the muslim world. It should equally be noted that I do not consider these efforts as a magic cure-for-all. It is simply that, unlike Seiyo, I view operations like OIF and OEF/ISAF as the only strategic game that the West has - apart from transforming Mecca in a desolate plain of black glass and obliterating perhaps a dozen muslim key cities.
That said, I have the highest regard for the rest of Seiyo's theses, and I sincerely hope that one day, saner generations, perhaps mulling over his manuscripts on the ashes of our civilization, will give him the recognition he so manifestly deserves.
Exerpt:
"... As the prevailing social fairytales and phantom finance dominoes topple sequentially, the ruling elites that constructed that particular train of hollow pieces engage in increasingly frantic actions to disguise and postpone the effects of the staggered downfall. To paper-over gaping craters in the founding concepts and subsequent applications of the global economy and financial capitalism, they blow up sovereign debts to levels that will cause either sovereign defaults or currency cave-ins in the future. Lipstick no longer adhering to the Muslim jihad and Mexican reconquista hemlock they have planted in the West, they switched from their transparently ludicrous Beautiful Diversity propaganda to totalitarian controls like the Patriot Act in the United States, the Equality Act in Great Britain, Hate Speech laws and Snatcher-orchestrated denunciations of fictive “racism.” They are destroying their peoples in punishment for their own treason and stupidity – and nothing seems able to stop them.
This type of mega-scam that transfers the consequences of foolishness and evil by the few onto the many or by Group A onto Group B has become the main defining feature of Western democracies, as it has always been of banana republics and socialist utopias.
Instead of allowing crooked, incompetent and bankrupt TBTF (“too-big-to-fail”) enterprises to fail, elected oligarchs have socialized the Crooks’ losses by buying their garbage book assets with the people’s money at fictitious face values.
Instead of leaving Greece & Co. to eat the consequences of swindle and socialism, the EU is spending Germans’ and Americans’ (through the IMF) money in a futile attempt to bail out the bail-unworthy.
Instead of leaving spenders and speculators to learn Reality’s lesson, the rulers’ fiat saves the spenders at the expense of the savers and the speculators at the expense of the investors.
Instead of making amends for the myopic madness of exporting the West’s industrial base to China, the captains of everyone’s fate raid everyone’s pocket to support and morally incapacitate the multitudes that have been idled for life by that export.
Instead of properly controlling the criminally violent and insane, the Masters-of-Destiny have disarmed – everywhere but in America (and not for lack of trying) – the law-abiding, peaceful and sane.
Instead of allowing the best to rise to the top, they push to the top the possessors of magic skin tones and preferred orificial parameters. This cuts down the future of the West at the knees.
Instead of dressing the critical wounds they have inflicted on their peoples by seeding among them imported Muslims, the reigning Loons engage in the futile madness of trying to convert imported Muslims into postmodern Westerners and the Muslims’ 7th-century home countries into pluralistic democracies.
First they brought in the Muslims, the Aztecs and the Bantu under the pretext that we are all the same. When the imports turned out not to be the same, they invented Multiculti Diversity. Then the imports started acting out their diversity by destroying the West wholesale by PETN or drunken driving, gang rape or gangster crime, street warfare or endless welfare. So the ruling savants reinvented the Police State, crushing the West’s 800-years of struggle toward natural inalienable right and freedom from state tyranny.
Instead of profiling and discouraging easily identifiable colonizers, the Loons have turned major features of modern life into a nightmare for everyone. Air travel is now a slow and humiliating torture for a billion people who wouldn’t know Allahu Akbar from a name for a new cocktail. Wiring money to your daughter in another country rings investigative bells in three snooping centers around the world. Your face, your car and home are on Big Brother cameras always, but hostile Muslims who live off public welfare demand and get exemptions from the snooping that only Muslim terrorism can even try to justify.
Instead of begging the public’s pardon for their importation of 35 million low-skill soldiers of Allah to Europe, they plan to import 50 million more. Instead of atoning for the incalculable damage to the U.S. wrought by their importation of 35 million low-skill rejects from Mexico et al., they pull out all stops –and that’s the first stage only -- to plant another 20 million on American soil. Including the soil that was once Mexico.
Instead of disowning their Wilsonian madness after the Vietnam fiasco, America’s rulers (at times with NATO’s help) have waged a succession of foolish wars on distant, backward peoples, prosecuted with their unhappy subjects’ blood and money. The wars, the lost lives and limbs, the incinerated trillions in taxpayers’ money are all a monstrous stupidity, for it all unfolds with an eye on CNN, and not on Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. The strategic objective is inherently lunatic too, for you cannot change alien peoples that do not want and cannot change.
Reckoning that autochthons are increasingly bitter about the witches’ brew rising all around them, the rulers have doubled their efforts at population replacement so that the new colonizers -- unskilled, uneducated and poor -- augment the Looters’ Coalition in the 50-50 Neosocialist state on the welfare receiving side. In America in particular, half-suitable foreign colonizers or indigenous minorities are recruited to acquire a quasi-education in dumbed-down colleges, and then offered choice government positions. This streams more “minorities” into the Looters’ Coalition, but on the paycheck receiving side. Furthermore, such positions give them the power that their strong tribal instincts skew toward a further containment and dispossession of the beleaguered founding populations.
America, falling into a Cloward-Piven black hole, deserves a chapter all its own. But in Europe, a former leader of the Communist Party of the Portuguese Workers/Revolutionary Movement of the Portuguese Proletariat is President of the European Commission. Norway’s government offsets its inexcusable Whiteness by its 50% balance of estrogen. Sweden does Norway one better by not only having a Ministry for Integration and Gender Equality, but putting an African woman in charge. Germany, not to be upstaged in virtue, declares via its Green Party, “You are not born a man, you are turned into one."
In Australia, the country’s major newspaper writes approvingly about “The Australian Face of Islam” while exhorting, “Together under the minarets” . In Great Britain, miracles of Loon transfiguration cast rough and stupid socialist women in comedic parts as Cabinet Ministers and ethnocentric Pakistani Muslims in the robes of Peers of the Realm. The assiduous planting of inassimilable Muslims has increased the crop 30-fold in the last 30 years, to 2.5 million now.
White man’s world has gone crazy. Any play written by the Marquis de Sade and directed by him with a cast of fellow inmates at the Asylum at Charenton could not have been more grotesque.
People have had enough. But to return a Western democracy to its rightful owners requires a majority of votes. Such a majority can no longer obtain for any political platform that would tackle even the top three major problems that bedevil the West: bankrupting socialism, nonwhite immigration, and implanted Islam. Not to mention the next dozen grave problems: irredeemable debt, the tyranny of the metastized State, the Looters’ coalition’s chokehold, sham global economy, fraudulent financial capitalism, minoritarian tyranny, shattered social capital, barbaric mass culture, nihilism, democracy turned idiocracy, breakdown of sexual norms and results (i.e. no babies), and falsehoods and self-hate careening through the land like a band of headless horsemen..."
Other concerned westerners often say that we need a new Charles Martel.
A Flemish saying goes "we reizen om te leren" (we travel to learn) and I've always taken that folksy lesson of wisdom to heart.
Pic one is a shot of the GPS display when we were inside the huge Channel Tunnel complex near Coquelles/Calais, northern France. From my neck of the woods there's several ways to get to Wales and from there to Ireland, but I'd never taken "Le Shuttle" before, so I thought this was a perfect occasion. "Le Shuttle" is marketingese for the train concept involving a locomotive pulling a series of containerlike doubledeck waggons through the Channel Tunnel and inside the terminal perimeters on either side of the Channel. I write "uniquely" because the track gauge is wider than the normal European railways gauge. Unlike the Eurostar train which takes you from Brussels to London and vice versa, Shuttle wagons are thus confined to the fifty kilometers between Coquelles and its English counterpart, Cheriton near Folkestone. Don't ask me how Eurostar and Shuttle use the same route then. I suspect the less wide Eurostar rails have simply been laid between the Shuttle rails. As I was unable to get out of the car before entering the shuttle, and neither after getting out of it, I couldn't check it out for myself.
Pic 2 shows yours truly preparing to ride inside a wagon. They are interlinked and act like a gigantic moving tunnel of their own. You drive in (in my case, I immediately went up a ramp to the second level) and proceed through the series of wagons until you can get no further. Just before departure "sluices" close each wagon off, so you cannot park your car right on a junction. You wouldn't be allowed to anyway, there's loadmasters telling you what to do.
Once outside the tunnel on the English side, we first spent some time with the kiddos on the (stony) beach in Hythe, just west of Folkestone, and then it was off to Stratford-Upon-Avon, where we had planned to spend the night and do some sightseeing the morning after before moving on to Snowdonia, Wales. Pic 3 is a photo I took of a gentleman who made Stratford famous. The grave is inside the Holy Trinity Church. Stratfordians can thank the bard on their bare knees. Yearly, about three million people (120 times the town's population) visit Stratford-Upon_Avon and spend about 100 million pounds.
Sometimes I wonder whether ole William would be so enamored with the tourist circus that has been set up around him.
On the way to Wales we halted in Ironbridge, a village near Telford, and the site of the world's first, you guess it, iron bridge. It was built between 1779 and 1781 by Abraham Darby III, whose grandfather perfected the technique of smelting iron using coke. This was the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The bridge, which is of cast iron and about thirty meters long, spans the river Severn. It is not used anymore for rolling transport, but tourists are free to walk over it. This place is now an UNESCO World Heritage site.
A little bit further we stopped in Wroxeter, a tiny village near Shrewsbury (birthplace of Charles Darwin). Wroxeter is special because almost 2,000 years ago it was known as Viroconium, a major Roman city. What you see are the remnants of the basilica, at least that's what the guides here call the complex the Roman bathing house.
If only I had more time, then I'd have marked on the photo below the small area that the bathing complex constituted in Viroconium. I'll give it a try. You see that white building in the centre of the town, just to the left of the main road axis? That's it. That's what my pic show. You now have an idea of how big it was back then. Once, this was the fourth largest Roman city in Britain. More info here. Viroconium Corniovorum (its full name) was excavated in the late nineteenth century by Francis Bedford, who was actually a renowned photographer.
Last pic for today taken when ascending the Snowdon, at 1,085 metres Wales' highest mountain. In Welsh, it's called Yr Wyddfa, meaning "The Tomb". I used the so-called PYG track, the origins of that name are unclear.
Don't want to brag, but it was a piece of cake. I was up in barely two hours. Wanna do it yourself, just be fit and wear good shoes.
Nite. Sorry for the scant info, back to work again tomorrow.
Hi there. Sorry for the hiatus, but I - we - have been on holiday to Wales and Ireland, more precisely in Snowdonia and Ireland's southwest, and though I did intend to post some stuff now and then, technical problems made that impossible. Well - it was great, absolutely. Saw a lot, learned a lot, did a lot. Brought home a stack of books, amongst others biographies from Eamonn De Valera and Michael Collins and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Climbed the Snowdon (a piece of cake) and the Carrauntohil (a tougher nut to crack). Observed quite a lot in the English, Welsh and Irish societies, and there is much to ponder. If I find the time, will do a couple of posts about it.
But now it's time for Lou Reed with Satellite of Love:
Then the New Radicals with You get what you give:
Good night from Outlaw Mike, back in Belgium. Thank you for tuning in.
There's been a steady drumbeat of appalling news last week, all of it signalling that Europe is steamrollering towards disaster.
I'm short on time, so just two tidbits. The first one is from Galliawatch, on the riots in Grenoble, where muslim mobs are firing automatic weapons at the police:
When I read this travesty I first had to rob my eyes, refusing to acknowledge that they conveyed the printed message correctly to my eyes.
And yet it was true. Again, this is what she said. Mind you, not a Labor Minister. A Tory Minister:
“I don't, living in this country as a woman, want to be told what I can and can't wear. I've been out to Afghanistan and I think I understand much better as a result of actually visiting why a lot of Muslim women want to wear the burka. ”
I have never been to Afghanistan, and I definitely never want to, but I do know for sure that Afghan women have just as much choice to wear or not to wear the burqa as the sun has seawater has choice to rise with the tide or not. To publicly state such blatant nonsense is an insult to the British people's intelligence. Attitudes like that are going to cost us our continent.
This was their only international single, although they seem to have had a degree of success in their native Canada. Actually, they still exist (uninterrupted since 1977). Martha is Martha Johnson, the first Martha to join the band. She was recruited as a keyboardist, but soon did vocals too.
Grant Lee Buffalo with Fuzzy. 1993, from the album (their first) with the same name. Video quality is atrocious, sound's okay.
I spotted this about one week ago on Call of the Patriot. I think it is well worth a read. I am talking about Obama's recess appointment of Donald Berwick to oversee Medicare and Medicaid. Berwick, who is advocating strict rationing of healthcare, to be determined by "boards of experts", has been named a "One Man Death Panel":
Yet another czar who, uncontrolled by Congress, will decide what is good for you. Cryptocommunist and Health Care Redistributor Donald Berwick. What a creep.
Americans should be very well aware where you're headed once you let a guy like Berwick decide who "deserves" what treatment. Read this Wesley J. Smith article, Continent Death: Euthanasia in Europe.
The recess appointment of Berwick to head Medicare/Medicaid encompasses of course far more than the possible falldown from "health care rationing" and the introduction of European euthanasia "mores" in the USA. Nevertheless, in this post I focused on euthanasia in particular because the topic struck a chord with me. In Belgium and Europe, we have seen this before, with the abortion debate.
It starts with "cases". And it ends up with wholesale murder.
It will be JUST THE SAME WITH EUTHANASIA. It is absolutely not that difficult to envisage a society in, say, thirty years time, where death panels, ruling that you can no longer contribute to society, will just get rid of you. Even if you are otherwise perfectly healthy. In Europe, in excess of 3,000 perfectly healthy human beings are murdered daily in the womb. Now these could have been productive citizens. And yet they went thru the meatmill. How much credit do you think you will be given when you're 75, shuffling along and no good for either working and/or paying taxes?
As per usual, news of the Belgian operations in AF is scarce, and this situation has in fact not very much improved since the introduction, about one year ago, of weekly overviews by the Belgian MoD, available in pdf on the Belgian Army site. Still, it's better than nothing. These are some nuggets found on the report issued on July 2nd, which covers the week starting on June 24th. I omitted paragraph 1, which dealt with the 300-strong contingent securing KAIA.
In short, for the PRT Kunduz, working closely together with the Germans in that region, there's amongst others talk about the EOD unit destroying and neutralizing ammo and two IED's on June 26th-27th. On the 30th the EOD personnel supported a German field unit.
The first photo shows a soldier from the PRT's EOD team neutralizing what seems to be an RPG round. The second one, an EOD member with one of our new Dingo's. When you look at these vehicles, it seems completely irresponsible ISAF soldiers were issued light Bombardier jeeps and landrovers for patrolling in the early years. Even so, I suspect Dingo's are not immune. I have been wondering whether an armored car with a V-shaped belly, not unlike the WWII-era German Sdkfz 222, would not be better suited to withstand IED's exploding right under the vehicle, since the blast would be deflected sideways under a certain ange. Check out the photos on that last link and you'll see what I mean.
As for the OMLT teams, between the 24th and 30th one was mentoring the activities of the staff of an ANA brigade. The other one was supporting a kandak, I assume that's an ANA infantry battalion. From the text, it would appear that the OMLT troop was assigned between the 24th and the 30th a new kandak to monitor ("eerste contacten met het toegewezen Afghaanse bataljon").
Soldiers from an OMLT team somewhere in Afghanistan's north. The Afghan to the right is possibly not an ANA soldier but someone from a village militia - at least that's what his outfit and headgear suggest. Notice the gun of the soldier on the left: it's an FN F2000 assault rifle, the version with the 40mm FN EGLM grenade launcher. The other trooper has the standard issue FNC assault rifle. Would love to have one of those.
To be sure, I have already read at least one complaint of an OMLT trooper suggesting the Afghans are rather lukewarm to ask for advice. Nuggets of info like that jibe with the not exactly flattering news we have received so far of ANA progress. In fact, a disturbingly high number of reports talk about general inefficiency at best, and outright hostility at worst. It is also quite certain the taleban have infiltrated the ANA, a given underscored today, alas, by the murder of three British troops by a rogue ANA soldier.
Most of the action however clearly was with the six F-16 fighter bombers operating from Kandahar Airfield. The overview reads:
(4) F-16 detachment in Kandahar (OGF):
June 25th: two planned missions, no weapons systems engaged · June 26th: two planned missions of which one was retasked to support ground troops in contact with the enemy. Two bombs were dropped [GBU-12's - MFBB]. No collateral damage.
June 27th: two planned missions, no weapons systems engaged. Also on June 27th: two quick intervention missions in support of ground troops in contact with the enemy. A "show of force" sufficed to end the skirmish.
June 28th: two planned missions of which one was retasked to support ground troops in contact with the enemy. No weapons systems engaged.
June 29th: two planned missions of which one was retasked to support ground troops in contact with the enemy. Strafing with Vulcan cannon. No collateral damage.
June 30th: two planned missions, no weapons systems engaged Also on June 30th: three rocket attacks on KAF. No Belgian wounded nor damage.
Here's a magnificent shot of one of our F-16's over Afghanistan. This time the PANTERA ('sniper') pod is clearly visible. It represents a sea change compared to the 'old' LANTIRN pod. The armament is standard - I actually do not think the Belgian Air Force in AF uses other bombs than the GBU-12. Apart from that, the imho useless Sidewinders.
This is actually a USAF photo, taken in December 2008, by Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon. Possibly from a KC-135 tanker.
Belgium has currently some 600 personnel in Afghanistan. While the F-16's have a combat mission, and the EOD unit (often embedded in German columns) and the OMLT teams regularly come under fire, no Belgian unit has as yet seen action or experienced the shock of ground combat like the Brits, Dutch, Danes or Canadians did. The cowardness of Belgian politicians who are otherwise very eager to have the new NATO HQ in Brussels, is appalling. It can even get worse. Negotiations for a new government are currently in a stalemate but there remains a solid chance that the next PM will be Elio di Rupo, chairman of the Parti Socialiste. Would this man make it Belgian PM, the Belgian mission in AF would very likely come in jeopardy, or otherwise reduced to a canteen commando.
"Suspected Islamic militants have chopped off a Catholic professor’s hand in Kerala for allegedly insulting Islam in an exam question paper.
Professor T.J. Joseph was attacked on July 4 in while returning home from Sunday mass with his mother and sister, a Catholic nun.
Kochi inspector-general of police, B. Sandya, told ucanews.com that an Islamic extremist group is suspected of the crime and have arrested four people and impounded a vehicle.
She said the attackers used the vehicle to block Joseph’s car before dragging the professor from his vehicle and chopping off his right hand. The attackers then threw the hand away before fleeing.
Church-managed Newman College in Thodupuzha had suspended Joseph, its Malayalam professor, on March 25 for allegedly preparing a question paper with insulting references to the Prophet Muhammad.
St. Joseph Sister Mary Stella said the assailants attacked her brother with an axe and swords.
“They also attacked our elderly mother,” before fleeing, she said.
Her brother had been threatened three times following the question paper row, she added...."
This paragraph was of particular interest to me:
"... Police say officials suspect the Popular Front of India, an extremist group and its political wing the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) for being behind the attack.
Thodupuzha, the commercial center of Idukki district, saw angry protests by various Muslim organizations in March when the question paper outcry first broke and several people were injured in clashes with police..."
It seems the lefist/islamic alliance is not merely a European and American phenomenon.
Alexandra Colen is a Belgian MP for the Vlaams Belang. She is married to the renowned conservative author Paul Belien, who is Chief Editor of The Brussels Journal. In TBJ, Mrs. Colen wrote a couple of weeks ago a damning indictment of the liberal Belgian Church, which until recently was ruled by Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who is, or was, somewhat the religious equivalent of a May 68'er. Mrs. Colen:
"... In Belgium, today, police searched the residence of the Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels and the crypt of the Archbishop’s cathedral in Mechelen. They were looking for evidence of cover-ups in the ongoing investigation into widespread pedophilia practices within the Belgian church in the decades during which Cardinal Godfried Danneels was Archbishop. Danneels retired in January of this year.
Police also confiscated 450 files containing reports of pedophile offences by members of the clergy, that had been submitted to an investigation committee which was established within the church to deal with pedophilia cases.
Since the revelation in April that Cardinal Danneels’s close friend and collaborator, Mgr Roger Vangheluwe, the Bishop of Bruges, had been a practicing pedophile throughout, and even before, his career as a bishop, victims have gained confidence that they will be taken seriously, and complaints have been pouring in, both to the courts and to the extra-judicial investigation committee of the archdiocese. The new archbishop Mgr. André-Joseph Léonard, has urged victims to take their case to the courts.
His predecessor, the liberal Cardinal Danneels, who was very popular with the press in Belgium and abroad, was Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels and Primate of Belgium from 1979 until 2010. The sympathy for pedophile attitudes and arguments among the Belgian bishops during this period was no secret, especially since 1997 when the fierce controversy about the catechism textbook Roeach made the headlines. The editors of Roeach were Prof. Jef Bulckens of the Catholic University of Leuven and Prof. Frans Lefevre of the Seminary of Bruges. The textbook contained a drawing which showed a naked baby girl saying: “Stroking my pussy makes me feel groovy,” “I like to take my knickers off with friends,” “I want to be in the room when mum and dad have sex.” The drawing also shows a naked little boy and girl that are “playing doctor” and the little boy says: “Look, my willy is big.”
....
The drawing also showed three pairs of parents. Those with the “correct” attitude reply: “Yes, feeling and stroking those little places is good fun.” This “catechism textbook” was used in the catechism lessons in the catholic schools, until one day I discovered it among the schoolbooks of my eldest daughter, then 13 years old. On 3 September 1997 I wrote a letter to Cardinal Danneels, saying:
“When I see this drawing and its message, I get the distinct impression that this catechism textbook is designed intentionally to make 13 and 14 year olds believe that toddlers enjoy genital stimulation. In this way one breeds pedophiles that sincerely believe that children actually think that what they are doing to them is ‘groovy’, while the opposite is the case.”
I told Cardinal Danneels that, although I was a member of Parliament for the Flemish-secessionist party Vlaams Blok, I was addressing him as a Catholic parent “who wishes to remain faithful to the papal authority and also wishes to educate her children this way.” I insisted that he forbid the use of this book in the catechism lessons: “This is why I insist – yes, the days of meekly asking are over – that you forbid the use of this ‘catechism book’ in our children’s classrooms.”
Today this case, that dates from 12 years ago, assumes a new and ominous significance. Especially now that I know that Mgr Roger Vangheluwe, the pedophile child molesting Bishop of Bruges, was the supervising bishop of both institutions – the Catholic University of Leuven and the Seminary of Bruges – whence came the editors in chief of this perverted “catechism” textbook.
Monsignor Vangheluwe not only entertained pedophile ideas, but also practiced them on his 11-year old nephew. Hundreds of children who were not raped physically were molested spiritually during the catechism lessons.
After I started my campaign against the Roeach textbook, many parents contacted me to voice their concerns. Stories of other practices in the Catholic education system poured in. There were schools where children were taught to put condoms over artificial penises and where they had to watch videos showing techniques of masturbation and copulation..."
A couple of months ago, Danneels was succeeded by Mgr. André-Joseph Léonard. You should have read or listened to Belgian press and TV - the new man was all but crucified. Demos against his appointment were staged, the newspapers talked of an inexplicable step back.
The reason? Léonard is a CONSERVATIVE Archbishop.
No, not one of those who'd like to reintroduce Latin during Mass.
But a man of common sense who would not have stood idly by, as his liberal predecessor Danneels did, when Belgium's major parties were, say, happily destroying the institution of marriage. A marriage between a man and woman, to be precisely. Léonard was, and is, a man who would FIGHT for his church, and defend it in the war that is being waged against it for decades now.
Danneels, by contrast, really was the darling of the whorenalists at De Standaard and on the extreme leftist Belgian state-funded TV. Why wouldn't he be? He was happily presiding over the demise of Belgian catholicism, a faith that is totally and completely haram for our moral betters. Small wonder Danneels was their pal.
Former Head of the Belgian Church, Cardinal Godfried Danneels. A weakling who willingly presided over the demise of what was entrusted to him. A man who, in our sad present times, rather take up the defense of the perpetrators than of the victims.
Today, Cardinal Godfried Danneels is himself under suspicion in the plethora of paedophilia-related scandals that are rocking the Belgian church. Today's newspapers, not without glee, wrote that the judiciary found (slightly) incriminating material on his PC.
I hasten myself to add that the way he is being treated himself now is disgusting. But how ironic is it that the same extreme leftist media which for twenty years were on such good terms with Danneels because of his "progressive" stance, now let him fall like a brick, I would even say descend on him like vultures.
Aside from all the turmoil stands, aloof, the commanding personality of Archbishop Léonard, the despised conservative. Just two or three months back, upon being named the new head of the Belgian Church, he was treated like filth. Today, he seems to be the only major personality NOT among the Belgian clergy which was involved, either in direct paedophilia acts or in machinations to sweep the scandals under the carpet and make the victims shut up.
The new Head of the Belgian Church, Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard. He may very well be the man to put it back on track. His former diocese, Namur, was only one tenth of Belgium. But it contained half of the country's vocations.
This man has got my support... AS LONG as he keeps true to Christian principles and values, and stands up for them. That does not mean that Belgium's catholics can now go on as if nothing happened. The bitter goblet needs to be drunk in full, and everything must come out. Where modernization is needed it should be debated, worked out, and implemented.
But finally, at least here seems to be a man who is not ashamed to be leading the Church of Christ.
I guess you can't say I have the scoop - it's been in and on every self-respecting news outlets - but still I feel I have to pay some attention to it.
NASA Chief Charles Bolden in an interview with al Jazeera, via FOX News, July 5, 2010:
"...When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview..."
Reach out to the muslim world and help them feel good about their historic contribution to science...
That's it? No HLV, no in-orbit refueling? And making muslims feel good about their historic achievements in science, those are the "new game-changing technologies"?
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
Some sound advice for Americans.
You better do your DAMNEDEST BEST to reconquer the House AND the Senate from the democratic loons this fall, or by the timeframe 2020-2030 NASA will be producing fireworks.
Muse with New Born. Single drawn from the 2001 album Origin of Symmetry.
Singer's Matthew Bellamy.
Vangelis with the theme from Blade Runner. 1982.
Relatively impressive cast in that movie, which is loosely based on a Philip K. Dick novel, although I didn't know at the time who that was. There's Harrison Ford, Sean Young, and Rutger Hauer. Daryl Hannah. The movie wasn't too bad. After all, Ridley Scott directed.
I had actually wanted to have the original by Bob Dylan but helaas plattekaas, no such luck. You'll have to do it with a 1995 Duran Duran cover. Lay Lady Lay. Shoot me.
We end this wonderful night with Bjork's Isobel. Good song, and interesting video btw. Isobel's from the 1995 album Post.
Bjork is actually a quarterwit or worse. What do you want, her dad is a union leader. Well, general nuttiness has never stopped people from making good music.
Being very much an aviation fan and one of those tens of millions of boys who never saw their youth dreams come true, I was surprised pleasantly by an article by that erudite The Brussels Journal contributor, Thomas Bertonneau, who is a visiting Professor of English at the State University of New York College, Oswego, New York, and who holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.
Upon reading this part of Bertonneau's column, I was reminded of that famous late nineteenth century aviator pioneer, Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896), of whom I read a lot as a boy. The name suggests he was a German, and indeed he became one, but he was actually born a Prussian in Anklam, a town in Pomerania, a region close to the Baltic. German he only became after that other Otto, the Bismarck one, unified Germany.
Lilienthal was a necessary link in the chain of aviation pioneers that led to the Wilbur brothers' succes in 1903. Indeed, Wilbur and Orville Wright considered him their most significant predecessor. Lilienthal, who was himself indebted much to Sir George Cayley, devised many gliders and made numerous flights. Perhaps it was the fact that Pomerania is part of the Great European Lowland that forced him to erect his own artificial hill whence he made his gliding sorties:
How goes the saying? Faith moves mountains? Lilienthal did it. Try to explain that to today's ecowussies, sensitivity managers and political correctness apparatchiks.
Otto Lilienthal was killed when the top wing of a novel biplane glider design broke off. He fell from a height of 17 meters. His last words were "Kleine Opfer muessen gebracht werden" ("Small sacrifices must be made"). Hello again, androgynous wimps?
Now on to one of my early jet age favorites. The Hawker Hunter. Designed by that magnificent character Sydney Camm, who was also the father of the Hawker Hurricane.
Back to Bertonneau, more precisely to a money quote at the end of his article:
"...I also owe a good deal of what I know about flight and airplanes to my older brother, Dan (born 1936) – an aerospace engineer with stints at Lockheed, where he redesigned the ejection seat of the F-104, and at North American, where he worked on the J-5 engine of the Saturn V Moon Rocket at the managerial level.
My male students at SUNY Oswego, where I teach in the English Department, know almost nothing about flight or airplanes. They have never read Pylon (1935) by William Faulkner or Pilote de Guerre (1942) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and they have never heard of Flying Aces or the Supermarine Swift or the Sabre Jet. This deficiency belongs to their general spiritual emasculation in a world dominated by sensitivity, emotions, free-association, “smiley faces,” “fairness,” “comfort food,” soccer leagues for girls, “women’s studies,” “bad hair days,” “offense” and other specifically female institutions, conspiracies, and phenomena. In a Spenglerian mood, I say that fathers should instill in their sons careful appreciation for powerful, dangerous, and extravagant machines..."
DAMN. RIGHT. If you are so lucky to be the father of a young son, and you catch him watching crap from James Cameron with blue apes in it, switch off the dvd player. Make him see something like...
... like...
... well, this may be a good start:
You might then try to make him watch The Bridges at Toko-Ri, with William Holden:
I can't say it's a thousand times better than Avatar, because when I was wearing short pants they taught me mathematics instead of cultural awareness, and one of the things we learned was that 1,000 times zero is still zero.
Now, to wisen your son up completely, and make him foster REAL AND DESERVED RESPECT, not the "respect" they teach us we should have for an insane paedophile worshipper cult which instills into its followers the desire to fly beautiful planes in skyscrapers...
... let him read, as soon as his reading skills allow it, Such Men as These, by David Sears.
Ignore Outlaw Mike's good advice at your own peril.
Last Saturday, in Anderlecht, one of Brussels' 19 communes, the mayor Of Molenbeek, Philippe Moureaux, married his moroccan sweetheart Latifa Benaicha. Moureaux is a prominent member of the Parti Socialiste (he's chairman of the Brussels Federation). His bride "works" in the cabinet of Brussels Minister-President Charles Picqué (Parti Socialiste).
Moureaux is a notorious socialist cretin and dhimmi, who forbids the Molenbeek Police to eat sandwiches and/or drink coffee in the streets during Ramadan. He has also ordered them not to patrol anymore in the no-go areas, which has resulted in the effective establishment of a mini islamic republic in his commune.
This man is one of the architects of Belgium's "anti-racism" laws, which were primarily tailor-made to harass the Vlaams Belang. In an earlier post I explained that Moureaux is actually a racist himself - never in my life have I heard this scumbag utter one word in Flemish (though it is Flemish money that keeps his fiefdom financially afloat) - but he did follow arabic lessons to be able to converse with his wife and her family. According to moroccan law - and Morocco is actively infiltrating in Belgium and enforcing its laws on Belgium's moroccan community - Moureaux now has to submit a testimony of his conversion to islam, to make the marriage in the bride's country of origin legal. Of course, the scoundrel denies this. However, article 39 of the moudwana (the moroccan marriage legislation) is very clear: a marriage of a muslim woman with a muslim man is not authorised otherwise the marriage will not be recognized.
Philippe Moureaux, traitor, dhimmi, socialist parasite.
It is common "wisdom" to state that the Vlaams Belang is a divisive party since it insists so vehemently on the abolition of the Belgian state and on Flemish independence. However, in my opinion the REAL divisive factor is the Parti Socialiste, which over the course of seventy years has impoverished Wallonia and Brussels. The economic trainwreck that is Belgium's south today is entirely the result of socialist policies, which have pushed probably one and a half million Walloons in a state of permanent state dependency. The money needed for their welfare checks comes for the most part from productive Flanders, via a federal redistribution scheme that ensures that statistically speaking, every Fleming, from the newborn to the centenarian, pays in excess of 2,000 EUR a year to finance the south's social "security".
Mark Steyn not so long ago famously wrote that socialism changes the people themselves. He is right. If you are too long on the government teat, after some time you are effectively unable to fend for yourself. With financial dependence comes moral decadence. This explains why during the recent parliamentary elections, a staggering total of 36% of Walloons voted for the Parti Socialiste - even though that party is so corrupt that if a brief summary of a table of contents of their scandals over the last decade would fall on your foot, you would be incapacitated for six weeks.
The socialists have ruined the states finances, passed legislation that destroys the family (while facilitating forms of marriage that are a travesty of what that institution should be), enabled abortion, and set the doors wide open for uncontrolled mass immigration from (mostly) muslim countries.
Perhaps nothing illustrates the latter point so good as the following video of a moroccan festival in Molenbeek. You do recognize the mustachioed guy on on the posters, right?
Just remember. These images were shot in Brussels, the Capital of Europe.
Via Galliawatch, June 21, 2010. If you thought muslim "youths" - or make it muslims by extension since the "elders" don't give a flying shit about what their degenerated offspring is doing in the streets - well, if you thought muslims in Europe only harass indigenous Europeans, you are mistaken. Literally everywhere on the planet the adherents of this criminally insane, cruel, isgusting, inhuman and utterly contemptible "religion" are a royal pain in the *ss for decent, productive and law-abiding non-muslims, and it is no different in Europe, host to a plethora of ethnic minorities.
Southeast and east Asians are a hardworking class with close to nil criminality among them. They work (very) hard, respect the law, pay taxes, and their personal behavior vis-à-vis indigenous Europeans is almost unanimously very decent and courteous. They are your dream immigrants.
Alas, for the paedophile worshippers that does not make any difference at all. Like their indigenous French co-citizens, Chinese immigrants in France are legitimate targets too.
But the small Chinese community in Paris managed to produce a demo numbering more than ten times that number:
"The Chinese residents of Paris demonstrated on Sunday against acts of violence by Arabs. There was a huge turnout - 8500 people according to the police, (over 10,000 according to Novopress), in the neighborhood of Belleville, in East Paris, the largest demonstration by Asians ever organized in France. The organizers of the demonstration spoke of a "growing climate of insecurity". Included among the demonstrators was the adopted daughter of Jacques Chirac - Anh, Dao Traxel of Vietnamese origin. There are an estimated 600,000 - 700,000 Asian residents in France, most of them in Paris and its suburbs.
However, the rally turned violent when, according to one demonstrator:
"Someone stole a Chinese lady's purse. The Chinese caught him, and alerted the police, who let him go. We are not violent, but it was too much."
At 7:30 p.m. young Chinese were still throwing glass bottles at the mobile gendarmes, lined up with their shields, who threw tear gas in turn. Earlier, the gendarmes had been targets of the demonstrators, some of whom threw tables and chairs taken from the La Vielleuse Bar.
Another report adds these details:
"Stop the violence, We want to live in security. We've had enough of these attacks. Respect for all." These words were written on tee-shirts, caps, and banners.
"There are too many people attacked by Arabs. They grab purses, they break shop windows, we no longer feel safe," cried out a young demonstrator as gongs and drums sounded.
According to Philippe Costa, president of the France-China Club, elected officials have demonstrated their inability to deal with crime in this multicultural neighborhood. "Many people won't come into Belleville from fear of attacks. Those who live there and work there are easy targets, because a lot of money circulates. We are asking for surveillance cameras. We do not want any more thugs in Belleville."
A spokesman for the Chinese associations says that the Chinese community can no longer keep silent. "It is not usual for Asians to demonstrate, but this has been going on for 20 years. Everybody passes the buck. This is a neighborhood that borders on four arrondissements."
Note: Paris seems to be dividing up, fragmenting into livable and non livable areas, with the livable areas slowly but surely giving way..."
It takes a village of Chinese to come up for the rights of Jean-Claude and Jacqueline.
If France is to survive in any meaningful way, it will probably depend just as well on non-muslim foreign ethnicities as on autochton Frenchmen and -women. Probably more so. What to think, e.g., of French Prime Minister François Fillon, a multiculti lunatic, of Sarkozy's party no less, who is hellbent on issuing 170,000 visas a year to Algerians (a trebling compared to 1997's 57,000) and who will inaugurate on Monay June 28 yet another new mosque, at Argenteuil. Via Observatoire de l'Islamisation:
Meanwhile, the "bleus", the French soccer team, has become so overwhelmingly islamic that it demands a halal meal whenever it is invited somewhere:
France will be the first European country to go down in flames. May it be a final wake up call for the rest of Europe to arm itself and use, if necessary, Deadly Force against the muslim cancer destroying the continent from within.
