SATURDAY NIGHT REM, JOHN MURPHY.

REM with All the way to Reno.





John Murphy's Surface of the Sun, from the Sunshine soundtrack.






Sorry for the light blogging. It's not because of a lack of topics, to the contrary. It's just that, well, things just aren't the same anymore after dad's death. Dad was a giant in his own way and yes, I do feel somewhat disconnected. Plus, the workload is as always, even more, crushing. Biz is quite good, even so that I'm engaging more personnel. I'm not the only one. Belgium goes thru something like a minor boom, with an economy that grew 2.2% over the past year, in any case a lot better than most of our neighbors including Germany (O.4%!).

The fact that this happened under the watch of a caretaker government - more than one year after the 2010 elections, Belgium still hasn't formed a government that reflects the voters' preference - is one more illustration of the obvious fact that countries need less government, not more. This caretaker government can basically take no important decisions - the fact that it declared war on Gaddafi is the obvious exception, and a baffling one at that - and yet the economy is humming fine. When some politican says to you, 'My plans are going to create so and so many tens of thousands of jobs', treat that personage with the utmost suspicion. Politicians can't create jobs, apart from the ones they need to fill their administrations. They can great an environment that may encourage entrepreneurs to create jobs though. This is what's happening right now in Belgium, only our politicians never meant it to go it this way.


Anyway... nite.



MFBB.

MARK STEYN RIPS ONE MORE LIBERAL OBSESSION.

We have all come to know this nubile young lady, huh? Did you visit her website?





I never did. It's not that I don't care about the plight of gay people, but I now suspect that from the beginning I knew in the back of my head that we were being licked. The photo of her homepage was, well, it just looked too polished for me.

But liberals, do-gooderers, socialists and world improvers wearing woollen socks, my oh my, they flocked to A Gay Girl in Damascus. Tens of Copts may be killed on any given day in Egypt, hundreds of Pakistani Christians may see their housed burnt by "offended" muslim mobs, and we may be treated on a weekly basis with reports like this (that is, if you have a real good radar):





... but all of that don't matter.

It all don't matter. On the other hand, when you're supposedly a gay girl in Damascus and you have suddenly vanished, then LGBT organizations across the globe suddenly snap wide awake, every liberal newspaper suddenly has a new Heroine, and Peter Beinart, the airhead who was one of the reasons I dumped Time Magazine, twats, er, tweets that 'This woman is a hero'.

As we all know by now, that heroine was a 40 year old US student (!) living in Scotland, a certain Tom McMaster. Reportedly straight, but you never know. Also, check out his T-shirt and notice that Mr McMaster during the first Gulf War went to the region to protest US "interventionism" and you see that all the ingredients are there to not be a sane badass rightwing individual spending his time in a useful way:






McMaster' alter ego was not real, but here's a Real Master who will put it any time better than I will ever be able to: Mark Steyn in the Orange County Register, June 17:

"... Now consider it from Assad's point of view. Unlike "Amina," "Rania" and the "three armed men in their early 20s" who "hustled Amina into a red Dacia Logan," you have the disadvantage of actually existing. You're the dictator of Syria. You've killed more demonstrators than those losers Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gadhafi combined, and the Americans have barely uttered a peep. Suddenly Hillary Clinton, who was hailing you as a "reformer" only 20 minutes ago, wants to give you a hard time over some lesbian blogger. Any moment now Sarkozy or Cameron or some other Europoseur will demand anti-homophobic NATO bombing missions over your presidential palace. On CNN Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper will be interviewing each other back and forth all day long about the Gay Spring sweeping the Arab world. You'll be the first Middle East strongman brought down by lesbianism. You'll be a laughingstock at Arab League Where-Are-They-Now? nights. Who needs it?

"Release the lesbian bloggers!" commands Assad.

"Er, what lesbian bloggers?" says his vizier. "This is Damascus, remember?"

"Oh, yeah." And he spends another sleepless night wondering if this is the most devilish CIA dirty trick of all, or if one of their satellite drones merely misinterpreted the grainy footage from the Col. Gadhafi Lookalike round of "Syrian Idol."

The pretty young lesbian Muslim was exposed as a portly 40-year-old male infidel at the University of Edinburgh with the help of "Paula Brooks," shortly before "Paula" was exposed as a 58-year-old male construction worker from Ohio. "He would have got away with it if I hadn't been such a stand-up guy," the second phony lesbian said of the first phony lesbian. As to why stand-up guys are posing as sit-down lesbians, "Paula" told the Associated Press that "he felt he would not be taken seriously as a straight man."

"He got that one right," sneered the Toronto gay magazine Xtra.

Indeed. A century ago, a British Army officer went to the Levant and reinvented himself as Lawrence of Arabia. Now a middle-aged American male college student goes to the Internet and reinvents himself as Florence of Arabia. We have become familiar in recent years with the booming literary genre of the fake memoir, to which Oprah's late Book Club was distressingly partial. Greg Mortensen's now-discredited "Three Cups Of Tea" took it to the next level, not just near mandatory in the usual circles (grade schools and sentimental punditry) but also compulsory in the Pentagon for commanders en route to Afghanistan. After centuries of disdain for the preferred beverage of imperialists, American officers in the Hindu Kush now drink more tea than the Brits, and they don't even like it. But a charlatan told them to do it, so the tea allowance now consumes 23 percent of the Pentagon budget.

Yet Tom MacMaster topped even that. He took an actual, live, mass popular uprising and made an entirely unrepresentative and, indeed, nonexistent person its poster-"girl." From CNN to The Guardian to Bianca Jagger to legions of Tweeters, Western liberalism fell for a ludicrous hoax.

Why?

Because they wanted to. It would be nice if "Amina Arraf" existed. As niche constituencies go, we could use more hijab-wearing Muslim lesbian militants and fewer fortysomething male Western deadbeat college students. But the latter is a real and pathetically numerous demographic, and the former is a fiction – a fantasy for Western liberals, who think that in the multicultural society the nice gay couple at 27 Rainbow Avenue can live next door to the big bearded imam with four child brides at No. 29 and gambol and frolic in admiration of each other's diversity. They will proffer cheery greetings over the picket fence, the one admiring the other's attractive buttock-hugging leather shorts for that day's Gay Pride parade as he prepares to take his daughter to the clitoridectomy clinic.

Yes, yes, I stereotype. But stereotypes become stereotypes because they're grounded in observable reality. "Amina Arraf" is grounded in nothing more than a fetish fantasy as preposterous as those lipstick lesbians in porn movies who can't wait for some hot straight guy to jump in and make it a threesome.

It would be statistically improbable for there to be no women attracted to other women in Damascus. But "Amina Arraf" is nothing more than the projection of parochial obsessions on to distant lands Western liberals are too lazy to try to figure out. In 2007 in The Atlantic Monthly, Andrew Sullivan, not yet mired up Sarah Palin's birth canal without a paddle peddling bizarre conspiracy theories about the maternity of her youngest child, announced that, never mind his policies, Barack Obama's visage alone would be "the most effective potential rebranding of the United States since Reagan." As he explained:

"It's November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees this man – Barack Hussein Obama – is the new face of America. In one simple image, America's soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. ... If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama's face gets close."

For crying out loud. The assumption that "a young Pakistani Muslim" in Lahore or Peshawar shares your peculiar preoccupations is the most feeble kind of projection even by the standards of Western liberal navel-gazing. If doting progressives stopped gazing longingly into "Obama's face" for just a moment, they might notice that in Benghazi "democracy activists" have been rounding up Libyan blacks and immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. In Bahrain "democracy activists" have attacked hundreds of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, ripping the tongue out of one muezzin and leaving him brain damaged. What's so "multicultural" about the pampered middle-aged narcissists of the West's leisurely "activist" varsity pretending that the entire planet is just like them?

You can learn a lot from the deceptions a society chooses to swallow. "Amina Arraf" was a fiction who fit the liberal worldview. That's because the liberal worldview is a fiction."

©MARK STEYN


Like I said, a Real Master. Night.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT KAISER CHIEFS, ROBERT PALMER.

Kaiser Chiefs with Ruby.





Guys hail from Leeds, UK. This single is from their second album, Yours Truly, Angry Mob (2007).


Robert Palmer with Every Kinda People.





Palmer, the Gentleman Rocker. Deceased far, far too soon. What a waste.



MFBB.

BRUSSELS BASED COMPANY FORCED TO OFFER FEMALE EMPLOYEES PARKING SLOTS SURROUNDED BY BARBED WIRE TO FEND OFF MUSLIM ATTACKS.

Belgian daily Het Laatste Nieuws is astounded that "it could come this far".

I am not.

Female employees of advertising company BBDO based in Molenbeek, in Brussels West, now have to use a parking lot exclusively for women, surrounded by high fences topped with barbed wire and monitored all day by cameras.

The reason? Upon arriving at work and, later, when returning to their car at the end of the day, they are continually harassed by moroccan youths.







It's intimidation, and it's working. This company stays for the moment, but feels compelled to take drastic measures like this to allow their female employees to get in and out of their cars - the moments they are most vulnerable - while not having to fend off attacks by young muslim stinkers, and also to prevent the total demolition of the women's cars in their absence.

This is not "simple" vandalism. The muslim youths are on a mission, endorsed by the elders, to make it clear to women that their place is at home. Islam is a culture of mysogyny. A woman is worth half a man, at the (very) best, and women who want to walk freely on the streets and earn themselves a living are sluts and whores.

I'm sorry, but I don't have the time to offer a translation. The guy's saying that it's become very, very bad, the woman that she's trying not to make eye contact. The perps are "allochtons" - codespeak for genetically degenerated muslim scum of moroccan descent with IQ's of around 70.

The irony of the whole affair is that BBDO is a "cool" progressive company which counts among its clients the... SP.a, the Flemish Socialist Party, and that it was responsible for the ads of the SP.a's last election campaign, trumpeting the blessings of the multicultural society. Even so, with his female employees being harassed on a daily basis, BBDO's CEO Johan Van De Poel can't pull his head out of his ass since he doesn't get beyond calling the perps "youngsters" who "harass" the females, "steal handbags, laptops, whatever" and "yell things after them".

I, on the other hand, must admit that I'm beginning to understand some of General Mladic's motives.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT ABSYNTHE MINDED, URIAH HEEP, FAITH NO MORE.

Belgian band Absynthe Minded with Envoi.





They are multiculti bozos and their lyrics are from a F(!%çXè!&!!!!g leftozoid playwright and author, but it's an easy hear song if you try not to pay too much attention to what they are actually singing.



Uriah Heep with Easy Livin':





I think it was 1972 or something.



Faith No More with the Midnight Cowboy theme.





Yea I know. We've had it before on this blog. So what.



MFBB.

BRIGETTE DEPAPE IS A SCHTOOPID CUNT.

No, I won't mince my words. At age 45, watching the 2011 twentysomethings commit the same mistakes the 2010, 2009, 2008 etc twentysomethings committed can get SO boring.





Read it over at Small Dead Animals:

...

The Canadian Senate Page Program: Each year, fifteen university students from across Canada are selected to participate in the program - one of the most sought-after privileges available to university students. "Under the direction of the Usher of the Black Rod, these leaders of tomorrow are given a remarkable opportunity to be leaders of today."

Brigette DePape: The 21-year-old graduate from the University of Ottawa made headlines for holding up a protest sign that read 'Stop Harper' at the start of the Throne Speech: "This country needs a Canadian version of an Arab Spring." DePape has since received several job offers and is considering taking a position with the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

Hamza Ali al-Khateeb: A 13-year-old Syrian boy who tagged along at an antigovernment protest in the town of Saida a few weeks ago, was arrested, was burned, beaten, lacerated and given electroshocks. His jaw and kneecaps were shattered. He was shot in both arms. When his father saw the state of Hamza’s body, he passed out...


But Harper must be stopped....

When I was twenty, I was rightwing, and without the tons of info that is now freely available.

So why can't they?

In this era, there is NO excuse anymore to be stupid and ignorant.



MFBB.

MUSLIM INVASION OF SWEDEN IN FULL SWING.

Adjo, in Sweden.





Our politicians, who are making all this possible, should keep the ultimate fate of collaborators in mind.


Hat tip Moonbattery.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT MUSE, HOT CHOCOLATE.

Muse with Knights of Cydonia. From the 2006 album Black Holes and Revelations.





No, I never saw the movie, nor do I intend to. I think it's rather schtoopid.


Back from the days when black artists made genial music. Hot Chocolate with Emma.





What have they got now? Apes like Chris Brown and Rihanna.



MFBB.

MEMORIAL DAY 2011.

By far the best Memorial Day tribute I read was that of Judge Patrick Dugan on Fox News, yesterday:

"... Memorial Day is not about politics. Whatever your feelings about current or former wars, remember this: All military personnel take an oath. The fallen swore and gave their lives honoring a promise:

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the uniform code of military justice. So help me God."

The soldiers who gave Uncle Sam a blank check with their lives offered to answer our nation's call to arms. The military does not decide to go to war; it just answers the call of our nation. And the numbers of those who have died answering that call continue to rise: 4,454 and counting in Iraq; 1,586 and counting in Afghanistan; 58,220 in Vietnam; 36,574 in Korea; 405,399 in World War II. Since 1775, in fact, more than 1.3 million military personnel (and counting) have given their lives for this nation.

It's a huge number, but, then, Memorial Day is not about the numbers. It's about the individual human being: the American, the man, the woman, the father, the brother, the spouse, the friend, the son, the uncle and the daughter who answered the call of our nation to deploy into violence, into war.

It's about people such as Upper Darby High School graduate Lt. Col. Mark Patrick Phelan, 47, from Pennsylvania, a father, uncle, husband and brother who went to Iraq with the 416th Civil Affairs Battalion (Norristown) to win the "hearts and minds" of Iraqis. His remains now lie in Arlington National Cemetery, with fellow heroes, such as Cpl. Michael Crescenz, of Philadelphia, a Vietnam veteran who received the Medal of Honor. Lt. Col. Phelan was an Army reservist killed by a "homicide bomber" who rammed his explosives-filled car into the Humvee in which Phelan was riding.

Memorial Day is about Americans like infantry paratrooper Robert Dembowski Jr., 20, a graduate of Pennsylvania's Council Rock High, who was killed in Baghdad in a small-arms attack. It's about Roger Haller, 49, a Maryland National Guard command sergeant-major, whose helicopter was shot down in Iraq and who now rests in Arlington. It's about Nicole Frye, 19, a Civil Affairs soldier from Wisconsin, who was killed in Iraq by an IED as she drove an unarmored Humvee that had a plastic tarp for a door.

Memorial Day is for Bradli Coleman, 19, of Ford City, Pa., who was killed by a mortar as he slept on his bunk in Mosul, Iraq, after working the night shift in Task Force Olympia headquarters. Memorial Day is about Marine Maj. John Spahr, 42, a former Philadelphia All-Catholic quarterback at Saint Joseph's Prep, whose F18 went down in Iraq. Memorial Day is about Marine John Basilone, killed in the Pacific during World War II. Memorial Day is to remember the sacrifice of Lee Hartel, killed in Korea. It is about Patrick Ward, 21, a helicopter machine-gunner from Fairmount who did not return from Vietnam.

Every day is Memorial Day for the fallen's families, friends and comrades-in-arms. Look into the eyes of Robert Dembowski Sr., or those of a Gold Star Mother, and you will see the immeasurable price that some pay for our freedoms.

Memorial Day is about the infinite void that each deceased hero leaves. It's about the families and friends of Phelan, Crescenz, Dembowski, Frye, Spahr, Haller, Coleman, Basilone, Hartel, Ward and countless others, about their everyday pain as they continue through life even as their loved ones become names on marble monuments.

As you enjoy your federal holiday, I urge you to include in your festivities a time to remember what Memorial Day truly means: a time to stop, put down your barbecue tongs and join the families and comrades-in-arms, and think, if even just for a short time, about the sacrifice signified by the numbers on the walls.

I urge you to take your children to a ceremony honoring those who have fallen. Take them to a Memorial Day parade. Put a flag on your lawn. Help a veterans' group. Better yet, help a "survivors' group." Attend one of the many services throughout the region honoring our war dead.

The Vietnam memorial honors the fallen. The Korean memorial also honors who fell. But, remember, these are not just numbers or names on a wall. They are your fellow citizens, who died in your name. Keep their memory alive."

- Judge Patrick Dugan



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT BILLY JOEL, ZUCCHERO + ERIC CLAPTON.

Billy Joel with Surprises.







Zucchero and Eric Clapton with Wonderful World.







Good night.



MFBB.

COURAGE AND DEDICATION.

Dad in my grandfather's joinery, circa 1953. He had started helping my grandfather, Remi, at age fourteen, probably even earlier.





Dad, aged 76, repairing a foothpath along the parking lot, late autumn 2010 as evidenced by the warm clothing he's wearing. He is removing old grout with a grinding disc. This very last stretch of one meter is the last part of a job that had cost him the better part of summer. Ten years earlier the entrepreneur had applied grout with far too much sand in it, with the result that much of it had given way to weeds. Dad was about to put better grout on the very spot you see here when severe cold and wetness set in. He put away his tools, deciding to finish the job in Spring 2011.

He never got that far.

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

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

Michael

BURIAL.

Today, May 10th, at about 1pm, my father was buried on the cemetery of his hometown. In the morning, a funeral Mass was given in the Saint Aldegondis church.

We will never forget him. We must now support our dear mother.

I have, after all, decided not to publish any kind of essay or short story on my father's life since I've come to consider it a private matter. Suffice to say... that he was an exceptional man.

In his honor, I will refrain from blogging for two weeks more.

Farewell father. Until we meet again.



Michael

IN MEMORIAM MY FATHER.

On Monday, May 2nd, at about 22.05, my father passed away after almost one month on Intensive Care.

He was 77. He had some little troubles typically connected with his age, but was otherwise a healthy person. Four days before he was admitted to the hospital, he participated in the annual dinner event of his 'copains' at the Institut Technique in Ath, and was by all accounts the healthiest and most able of the group. Four days later he was on Intensive Care, only to leave it when he was not among the living anymore.

A complicated pattern of bladder and lung infections hinted at a possibly false lead to leukemia. On top of that, stomach bleedings, swallow problems and low blood pressure led to his gradual weakening. Perhaps too much attention went to the false lead, and the load his heart was subjected to was maybe given insufficient attention. If so, I think I cannot blame the doctors. I guess it was a very complicated pattern.

As it was, for one month, his heart tried to cope with the implications, often hovering around 140.

In the end it gave up the unequal battle.

There is a fine book to write about the tremendous personality of my father, but I just don't have the heart to write even a short essay. My mother, three sisters and I are devastated. I am devastated. Papa leaves a gaping hole in our lives, and I am frightful of my mother, his wife for 49 years, having to walk alone through that great house with all those memories assaulting her.

As gruesome as the experience is - this is actually the first huge personal loss I experience in my life - I can now better comprehend the pain and suffering of people losing loved ones not only to sickness or age but also in great natural disasters, blind terrorist attacks, or war.

I, who have always endorsed the current war, and will continue to do so, am now feeling the pain of families losing service members in battle. It brings once again home how precious life is.

My sisters and I owe my parents enormously. My mother and father litterally started from scratch and were able to give us uncomplicated and comfortable youths with the best education we could get.

I hope that in the coming days I may be able to put down at least a small testimony to my father's love for his family and offspring, his labour ethic and his dedication to his work, his general principles in life which were conservative, though he never used that term.

My father Herman was my Great Example. It is my task to continue to live cherishing the same values he, in fact, embodied.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me."
~ Psalm 23:4 ~

Rest in peace, dear papa. Your son.

SATURDAY NIGHT THE CHILLS, CROWDED HOUSE.

The Chills with Come Home.





From the 1996 album Sunburnt.


Crowded House with Into Temptation.





Cheesy enough for ya?



MFBB.

FRANZ PETER SCHUBERT: ELLENS DRITTER GESANG.

In 1825 Franz Schubert wrote his Opus 52, which contains seven songs inspired by Walter Scott's epic poem The Lady of the Lake, and which was translated into German by Adam Storck. Over time, the popular misconception has arisen that this is a purely religious song, and as such it has become known as Schubert's Ave Maria. In reality he labeled it Ellens dritter Gesang, Ellen's third song, and although it indeed begins with Ave Maria, and is dedicated to the Holy Virgin, its context is more worldly, describing the 'Lady of the Lake', Ellen Douglas, calling from a cave in the Scottish Highlands upon the Virgin Mary to help her and her exiled father.





In 1999, my wife and I asked the priest to play this during our Wedding Mass.


Read more about Schubert here.





Dead White Male.


MFBB.

MUSLIM PRESENCE IN EUROPE BECOMING A NIGHTMARE.

Via Observatoire de l'islamisation, April 25, 2011:

MILAN, ITALY: MUEZZIN CALLS MUSLIMS TO PRAYER FROM MINARET OF MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD MOSQUE.

"The muezzin's voice, in arab, is exhorting muslims via a loudspeaker placed on the minaret [of the mosque at] Via Padova 366 at 13:09 this Friday, April 2011. It's an historical day because for the first time in Italy a mosque has launched a call to prayer. This is the most serious challenge posed by muslim radicals to the Italian state since the illegal occupation of the Dom Square on January 3rd, 2009 by about 2,000 muslims, which amounted to a collective provocation right in front of a symbol of Christianity.

....

In the two cases, we are treated as if our land is conquered territory like an arid desert. Milan is still the Italian capital of allah's fanatics. Situated in Jenner Street, the mosque is currently under investigation for its links to international muslim terrorism. Its imam, Abu Imad, nom de guerre Arman Ahmed El Helmy Hissini, is in prison right now doing a sentence of three years and eight months for a "complot with terrorist ends".

So this happened on April 22nd, Good Friday. You think that's a coincidence?


On the same day, in Rome, instead of praying in their immense mosque, muslims took to the streets en masse, and illegally occupied the square in front of the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II, the National Monument to Vittorio Emmanuel II.





I copied the following photo from Bivouac-ID, an indispensable French site in the battle against islam:





The importance of this act of defiance cannot be underestimated. The National Monument is the symbol par excellence for the Italian State, dedicated as it is to the first king of a unified Italy.

I know that this sounds insane, but the purpose of the public prayer, for which, I repeat, no authorization had been given, was to DEMAND that the City of Rome pay for the mosque congregation's bills for gas, water and electricity. Also that the City Council recognizes muslim marriage and the right to separate cemeteries.

This illegal occupation of a square in front of an Italian national symbol of paramount importance, happened too on Good Friday. You still think that is a coincidence?


This was two weeks ago, an illegal demo on the Place de la Nation in Paris. April 13. I assume this demo was meant against the burka ban.





Muslims will turn Europe in a dirt poor third world hellhole. They will take away our freedom, and much more. Be prepared to USE DEADLY FORCE AGAINST MUSLIMS when the time is there.



MFBB.

HAVE A BLESSED EASTER.

Attended Easter Mass this morning. When it was over, the bells in the clock tower started to chime. For some reason I felt I had to record it. Sorry for the mediocre quality.





You also might want to check out Father West's Catholic Blog.

In the meantime... my best wishes for peace, prosperity, good health and happiness for all people of good will.


MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT CAT STEVENS, ERIC CLAPTON, JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.

Back in the days before Cat Stevens saw the darkness and turned into a raving lunatic, he produced several jewels. All that came to an end with his conversion, which is once more proof of the wicked, destructive character of the death cult known as 'islam'. Ironically, Morning has broken is actually a christian hymn dating back to 1931, when a British author of children's books, Eleanor Farjeon, set its lyrics to a Gaelic tune known as Bunessan (Bunessan is also a village on the southern shore of the Scottish Island of Mull). Stevens did popularize it though when he included a version on his 1971 album Teaser and the Firecat.





Let it grow. From Eric Clapton's second studio album 461 Ocean Boulevard.





July 1974.


The first half of the following video contains an electronic adaptation by the Russian composer of electronic music Eduard Artemyev of Bach's memorable chorale prelude for organ, Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (BWV 639). BWV stands for Bach Werke Verzeichnis, Bach Works Catalogue.





You can listen to a classic form here. As you may be beginning to suspect, I am rather fond of baroque music.

The film fragment above is from the second adaptation of Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem's famous novel Solaris (1961), more precisely Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 version. There was a 1968 movie adaptation for Soviet TV, and then there's of course the 2002 Steven Soderbergh version with George Looney. The latter certainly has its merits plus the advantage of a big budget and and an arsenal of special effects; however, personally I prefer the Tarkovsky film. Somewhere in the late eighties, as an engineering student in Ghent, during the yearly International Film Festival in that city, I unsuspectingly walked into a movie theater - IIRC Sphinx, on the Sint-Michielshelling - where they happened to play Solaris. Ghent's International Film Festival offers the possibility to see rare material. Two hours later, I was sold. I did have some trouble with the slow pace, the psychological drama and the obvious paucity on the set, which shows almost exclusively the interior of a decrepit space station that has been orbiting the planet of Solaris for many years. Mind you, this was supposed to be Tarkovsky's answer to Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey.

I can say that as far as I'm concerned, I consider Tarkovsky's movie altogether a far more satisfying movie experience than 2001. 2001 is great, absolutely, and its special effects were groundbreaking - if you check it out even now, more than forty years after its release, the depiction of spacecraft still doesn't look outdated. But... 2001 has forever left me with a feeling of having been fooled. I'm still clueless about it, and I'm sure gazillions of people are. Kubrick hasn't connected with his audience.

How different is Solaris. Frankly, I was baffled at its end. I just hope that I don't spoil it for you, if after this post you intend to see it.

The Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis, whom you see in the fragment above, is a perfect cast for the novel's main characther Kris Kelvin. His neutrino 'wife' is Natalya Bondarchuk, Hari in the movie, a very beautiful woman.


MFBB.

TAUGHT AT A GERMAN HIGH SCHOOL NEAR YOU...

In 2006, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble was the initiator of the so-called Deutsche Islam Konferenz (DIK), simply "German Islam Conference", of which one of the aims was to introduce islamic lessons in German high schools to inform muslim pupils "correctly" about their religion and to enhance a dialogue with non-muslim pupils. At the time, according to Schauble, this was THE tactic par excellence to enter into a competition with radical islam.

"We all agree that this is the way that should now be followed," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble, who hosted the conference, told journalists.

It was an unexpectedly long and heated debate. But after four hours of discussion, the 30 participants of DIK, a round- table launched by Schauble in 2006, announced their support for introducing classes on Islam at public schools in Germany. Participants also agreed to support the construction of more mosques in Germany and fight against Islamic radicalism.

"In the not too far future, we - where there is a wish and a need for it - will have Islam religion classes at German schools," Schauble said. Classes are to be held in German.

There are approximately 800,000 Muslim children in Germany, but only 12 percent are taught about their religion at school. So far it has been difficult to organize Islam lessons at German schools because Germany's Muslims do not have a central institution to represent them. Education regulations in Germany are decided according to each state. Muslim associations are expected to provide the content of the classes while the state is responsible for organizing and financing the teaching.

In the past, most federal governments have had no contact points among the Muslim community. "There is little unity among Muslims," said Manfred Schreiner from the Nuremberg education department. Schauble appealed to Muslims in Germany to form major associations in each federal state which can represent the many scattered Islamic groups.

"It is a huge step toward integration," said Remzi Guneysu, a Turkish-German engineer and founder and chairman of the Islamic Religious Community Erlangen (IRE). The Bavaria-based IRE is one of very few examples where Muslims in Germany set up an association to cooperate with the state. Six years ago, the IRE was thus able to introduce Islam classes at a German school. "Our teachers have build bridges of integration between the religions," said Guneysu in an interview with the Turkish Daily News. "The classes help to abolish prejudices." Guneysu added that the behavior of children changed after religion classes were introduced. "They treat each other with more respect. And they are able to discuss Islam and other religious issues with their school friends in German."

A model project at a school in Lower Saxony showed that there were less fights between students of Turkish and Arabic origins in school yards after Islam lessons in German were introduced. Also, parents felt more encouraged to participate at meetings or events held at their children's schools.

"After only a few years of experience in Erlangen we can already say that Islam lessons do not block the integration of Muslims into our society but instead foster tolerance and an understanding of each other," said Guneysu. "The overall positive effects cannot be overlooked."

Let us now have a look at such a lesson.





Europe will die because of clueless IDIOTS like Schauble.

MFBB.

ANGELICA KAUFFMANN, NEOCLASSICIST PAINTER (1741-1807).

As a young boy I recall looking eagerly forward every week to my dad's monthly Reader's Digest issue, which in the Low Countries is called Het Beste. One month, there was an article about Angelica Kauffmann, and I've never forgotten that name.

She was a neoclassical painter of Swiss origin (born in Chur, Graubuenden, in 1741). At a very young age, she learned the craft of painting from her father, Johann Joseph Kauffmann. The Kauffmanns seem to have moved around quite a lot, and so it was that young Angelica, who showed marked talent already in her twelfth year, came to the attention of the Bishop of Como, the Duke of Modena and the Governor of Milan, respectively, who all requested her to paint their portraits.





The sorrow of Telemachus


Further honing her talents in Parma, Florence, Rome and Venice, in the latter place she made the acquaintance of English noblemen, who persuaded her to take up residence in London. This was in 1766. Notable works she crafted there are "The Mother of the Gracchi", "The Legend of Cupid and Psyche", "The Sacrifice of Messalina" and the "Meeting of Edgar and Elfrida". In 1767 she rather foolishly married a Swiss crook by the name of Brandt who pretended to be Count Frederick de Horn. One year later, after discovering the imposture, a separation followed. The times being what they were, a divorce was not possible. It was not until the impostor died in 1781 that she was able to marry again, this time to Antonio Zucchi, a Venetian painter, who persuaded her to return to Italy. In the intervening years however Kauffmann had made quite a name for herself in Great Britain, to the extent that the Royal Academy of London elected her as one of its original members.




The Legend of Cupid and Psyche


While in Venice, she painted "Leonardo da Vinci dying in the arms of Francis I", then it was off to Naples, and finally the couple established themselves permanently in Rome, where she opened a salon for the arts. There she opened a salon, where notable visitors included Giovanni Bernardo de Rossi, a Christian Hebraist, Jean-Baptiste Seroux d'Agincourt, a French archaeologist and historian, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the famous German playwright, scientist, author, philosopher and statesman, of which she made a portrait.





Hector calls Paris to the Battle


The Austrian Emperor Joseph II, upon a journey in Italy, became a client also, and for him she crafted "The Return of Arminius victorious over the legions of Varus" and "Æneas celebrating the Funeral Rites of Pallas". Despite her talent and prodigious labor the couple seem to have spent their later years in poverty, and for Angelica this was especially so after the death of her husband in 1795. To an intimate friend she confided that "the poverty does not terrify me, but the loneliness kills me."






Children with a bird's nest and flowers


Denied, as a woman, to attend drawing courses of nudes, Angelica Kauffmann had forever difficulties with anatomical postures which is why her historical and mythical compositions, inevitably figuring personages in full length, display a certain stiffness. It followed that portrait painting became the craft with which she really made her name. In this genre, the one of the Duchess of Brunswick, George III's sister, is considered her masterpiece. My personal favorite is her portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds however.




Sir Joshua Reynolds. The guy had a crush on her. Who wouldn't?


She died November 5th, 1807 in Rome, and was given a splendid funeral. The entire Academy of Saint-Luke followed her to her last resting place in the Sant'Andrea Delle Fratte church, and in the procession, two of her finest works were carried along - just as in Rafael's.





Self-portrait. In her heyday, apparently. Oil on canvas, 1780-1785. This painting is in the renowned Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.


Dead White Female.



MFBB.