Did You Know...

I mentioned the “Stop the Islamisation of Europe” protest in my main 9/11 commemoration post. It deserves stand-alone coverage. The demonstrators are putting the “I will not submit” rallying cry into action, and the dhimmis are cracking down on them. Baron Bodissey continues his wall-to-wall coverage.

A reader sends this video from the scene:

The ever-vigilant Brussels Journal has eyewitness reports.

Jim Hoft is tracking the beatdown.

Here’s the BBC report:

Police in the Belgian capital, Brussels, have arrested two far-right political leaders at a protest against the “Islamisation of Europe”.

Police clashed with some of the 200 demonstrators and dozens more people were reported to have been arrested.

The mayor of Brussels had banned the protest, held on the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the US.

Frank Vanhecke and Filip Dewinter of the Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party were arrested.

Vlaams Belang has been critical of Muslim immigration to Belgium.

The mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, banned the protest last month for fear it would cause problems with the city’s immigrant population.

More here.

Where are all the free-speech zealots when you need them?

Marisol at Jihad Watch shreds the mayor’s fear card:

Are they more afraid of the protest, or that certain offended members of the populace might use it as a pretext to stage an attack?

“We support the goals of the demonstration to protest against the lack of freedom of expression in this country,” said Frank Vanhecke, the head of the Flemish Interest Party, before he was bundled off to the police station. “And we also we fully agree that the rise of Islam in Europe poses a risk to our values.”

You’ll note, by the way, that almost every MSM article refers to Vlaams Belang as “far right.”

The open-borders European press and politicians use the same demonization tactics against immigration enforcement proponents abroad as they do here…even as they watch their nations’ sovereignty crumble before their eyes.

Like Toynbee said: “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”

***

More blog coverage:

More pics at this Flickr page via The Center for Vigilant Freedom.

Brian Ledbetter ruminates on the degeneration of the West:

There is absolutely no way we will win the war against militant Islam if we continue to believe in nothing. Take Vlaams Belang’s latest outburst in Brussels, for instance:—A political party in Belgium wished to express their deep dissatisfaction with the European Union’s coddling policy towards militant Muslims, in the form of an organised protest in the streets of Belgium, the capital of Brussels.

Following the laws of the West, the jurisdiction of which have been relentlessly extended as a result of our continuing and foolish reliance on “Progressivism,” they applied for a permit to exercise their right to assemble.

Their permit was denied by the mayor, who felt it would be too “inflammatory” to allow them to speak. And, when a handful of Belang supporters tried to do so anyway, they were summarily rounded up and arrested.

So there you have it:—in the heart of the European Union, which is in theory a group of federated nations that believe in the “freedoms” of the West (heck, Christian Europe is the very origination of these freedoms), we are denying our own freedoms—wantonly stifling the debate of our own native citizens, whilst formally resisting any attempt to suppress murderous speech which is spoken against us.

A nation that believes in nothing will always lose to an enemy that believes in something.

Always.