Mid-Week Post

The time draws nigh....

While the world proceeds with its usual shallow displays of sympathy, self-flagellations and pronounced refusals to get medieval on a barbaric culture in its midst, the manhunt for terrorists who killed thirty-one people in Belgium goes on:

Long before blowing themselves up in crowds of innocent people, suicide bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui and his brother Khalid lived the lives of the classic Brussels hoodlum.

Carjackings, robberies and shoot-outs with police were just some of the convictions collected by the Belgian brothers who took part in the metro and airport assaults in Brussels claimed by the Islamic State group.

Both were said to have links with top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, while the third identified Brussels attacker, Najim Laachraoui, was the suspected bomb-maker for the November rampage in the French capital.

Baby-faced Ibrahim, 29, who blew himself up at the airport on Tuesday along with Laachraoui, had been given a nine-year sentence in 2010 after a gunfight with police, according to local media.

He took part in a bungled robbery at a Western Union office in which a police officer was injured in the leg.

Turkey said it had detained Ibrahim in June last year as a "foreign terrorist fighter" and then deported him to the Netherlands.

President Recept Tayyip Erdogan said the Belgian authorities had failed to confirm his links to terrorism "despite our warnings" and had later released him, although it is not immediately clear when he crossed to Belgium from the Netherlands.

A familiar pattern of known links to terrorism, crime, anti-social behaviour and then completely disregarding these things once again emerges.

Get used to to these attacks, Westerners. Blame whomever you wish but the truth is the fault lies with you and not in the way you think. You've been soft all of your lives. You've never defended your culture and now you won't defend your lives. It's not "xenophobic" or "Islamophobic" or any -phobic to merely suggest that a seventh-century culture revisit its aspects or that newcomers assimilate, pull themselves up from their bootstraps and dispense with the ridiculous notion that wilful murder merits heavenly rewards or that any other religion likewise behaves that way except for the one religion that isn't violent until it is.



Because Mark Steyn:

This time round the government official with direct responsibility for dealing with today's slaughter, a slice of ham with the absurdly Tintinesque name of Jan Jambon, issued the usual halfwit apologia the day before the atrocity. As M Jambon, the Belgian Interior Minister, told CNN on Monday:

Jambon says the majority of young Muslims are well integrated into Belgian society, but admits his government has more to do to make some feel "at home" in their own country, given that a sense of alienation can leave them open to the threat of radicalization.

"We're talking about third- and fourth-generation [immigrants]; these youngsters are born in Belgium, even their fathers and mothers are born in Belgium, and still they are open for these kind of messages. This is not normal -- in the U.S., the second generation was the President; here, the fourth generation is an IS fighter -- so that is really something we have to work on."

As I said, he gave that interview on Monday - the day before the attacks. So "British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing" is now joined by "Belgian Cabinet Minister Says Tomorrow's Train Bombing Is All Our Fault".

So "we" have to work on it. That means you, the Flemish frequent flyer poking your head up from the rubble at the airport concourse. And you, the Walloon strap-hanger blinking into the dust and chaos and wondering where the lower part of your left leg went. You are going to "have to work on" it, harder and harder and harder.

Yep.



Also:

The Newfoundland reverend who persuaded officials to fly a Christian flag that drew outrage as a perceived anti-gay symbol says he's sad to see it come down from government buildings.

"It has been a real storm of controversy," Rev. Howard Hynes of St. Stephen the Martyr Anglican Church said Wednesday as the flag was removed from the provincial legislature and St. John's City Hall.

"I didn't expect it to be so prolific, but there it is," he said in an interview.

He was among other church leaders who hoped the flag would be flown during the holy week of Easter to recognize Christians persecuted for their faith around the world, Hynes said.

(Sidebar: insert own First-World selfishness and wilful ignorance comment here.)

 Do you know what else is an "anti-gay" flag?

This:

I'm waiting for Big Gay's statement on this:

Fresh from mourning the late Rob Ford, MP Jim Hillyer has also passed away:

A day that normally would have seen parliamentarians pulling out their sharpest partisan darts was instead replaced Wednesday by a rare coming-together of MPs after the sudden death of Alberta Conservative MP Jim Hillyer.

The 41-year-old died in his office after returning to Ottawa this week following surgery to treat an infection in his leg.

It doesn't matter that veterans have no pensions:

The Liberal government’s $1.9-billion investment in Canadian arts and culture over the next five years as outlined in the federal budget signals a commitment to maintaining the sector, the head of the Canada Council for the Arts says.

You voted for it, Canada.

 

And now, a dog and a duck in perfect harmony: