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“They placed explosives on a six-year-old boy and told him to walk up to the Afghan police or army and push the button,” said Captain Michael Cormier, the company commander who intercepted the child, in a statement. “Fortunately, the boy did not understand and asked patrolling officers why he had this vest on.” Lieutenant Colonel David Accetta, ISAF eastern regional command spokesman, told the Guardian: “In the past we have not seen the Taliban sink that low, to use children as suicide bombers. The personnel secured the vest to make sure the child was safe.” [bron]

Je zou dus kunnen zeggen: hoe bloter de mens, hoe groter de zelfbeheersing en acceptatie. Of andersom. Die zelfbeheersing en tolerantie is juist minder naarmate de kleding bedekkender is. Laten we daar dus alsjeblieft niet aan meedoen. [bron]

Nederland is definitief een bananenrepubliek: onze MP is blij als een kind met zijn veroverde spiegels en kraaltjes. [zie]

Toen werd ik wakker. [bron]

After all, Muslims can see in European Christianity an example of what happens when the light of reason and historical criticism is allowed into the purlieus of religious doctrine: it falls apart. Since Islam is so much a part of the identity of people wherever it has predominated, an attack on Islam, even or especially in the form of rational criticism, provokes an existential crisis. Laqueur is neither apocalyptic nor optimistic but measured and open-minded about the future. Yet given the earnest frivolity of the European political classes, who face up to and legislate for every problem except the serious ones, it is likely that his prediction for Europe is accurate: it will sink into insignificance, more important, it is true, than Africa but no more important than Latin America. [bron]