Organizers cancel Sunday's Brussels attacks ‘March Against Fear’
BRUSSELS, Belgium - The organizers of a "March Against Fear" planned for Sunday to mark the Brussels terror attacks said they had canceled the event after the authorities asked them to do so because of security fears. "We understand this request. The security of our citizens is an absolute priority. We join the authorities in proposing a delay and ask people not to come this Sunday," the organizers said in a statement on Saturday. The authorities earlier asked for the march to be put off, perhaps for several weeks, to allow the police to concentrate their resources on the investigation into the attacks which left 31 dead and 300 wounded. "We invite the citizens tomorrow to not have this manifestation," Interior Minister Jan Jambon said, speaking in English. In an earlier statement, the organizers said the march planned for Sunday was meant to show that Brussels and the country at large refused to be intimidated by terrorism and that everyone stood together. "This week, we, Belgian citizens have been attacked, in how we live, our customs, our rights, our liberty," they said. "The first reaction in such events is to withdraw but on reflection, fear must give way to hope and the defense of our values." The march was due to begin at 2:00 pm (1300 GMT) at the central Place de La Bourse which, carpeted with flowers and tributes, has turned into a shrine to the victims. Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur said he recognized and shared the feelings of those who wanted to participate but given the absolute need for the police to focus on the attacks, it was best to delay the march. "Let us allow the security services to do their work and that the march, which we too want to take part in, be delayed for several weeks."
Madrid (AFP) - An animal rights activist was beaten with a duck by a Spanish woman defending one of the country's most bizarre and controversial festival traditions.
The man was whacked with the bird while he filmed the annual "duck chase" in the Catalonian seaside town of Roses, where every August ducks are thrown into the Mediterranean and then caught and brought back to the shore by swimmers.
"Continue, continue. Continue to abuse, I am filming you. A little bit of empathy for the animals. They also have a life, like your children or your family," the man who was filming can be heard saying in a video of the incident released by animal rights group Animal Rescue Espana.
The footage shows a young woman wearing a white bathing suit attack the man with a duck -- holding it by the legs as she repeatedly lashes him with it.
As the attack goes on, animal rights activists gathered on the shore can be heard chanting, "You would not do that to your dog," before they were removed by police.
Every year since 1918 about 50 ducks are thrown into the sea in the town north of Barcelona, with swimmers then racing in to catch them and bringing them ashore however they can.
But after Sunday's incident, the town's mayor is mulling putting an end to the "duck chase".
Interviewed by local online news site Emporda, the mayor of Roses, Montse Mindan, prosposed "holding a referendum next year on what residents think, if they want to keep this festival, a tradition that will celebrate its centenary in two years."
- 'Pain, fear and suffering' -
While the ducks are not killed, Animal Rescue Espana said they suffer "stress, internal hemorrhaging, pain, fear and suffering."
The group launched a petition on the Change.org website demanding that Roses ban the "duck chase" as well as bull runs.
The petition has received over 10,000 signatures since it was launched on August 14.
Bill and Hillary are laying in bed and she looks over at Bill and asks him: Bill..have you ever cheated on me? He confesses that he has on a few occasions but that when he did, he put a beer can in a shoe box under the bed. She reaches under the bed and pulls out the shoe box. In the box are three beer cans and $1200 in cash. She seems overjoyed that he has only cheated on her three times in all of the years they've been together. Then she asks him why the cash is in the box. I couldn't fit all those beer cans under the bed, so I recycled them!
Obama, Hillary and Trump are walking down the beach when they stumble upon a magic genie lamp. Obama rubs the lamp and a genie pops out. The genie grants them each a wish...
Obama thinks for a minute and says: " I want all my Communist, Democrat friends to go with me back to our homeland of Cuba" and POOF...he's gone!
Hillary thinks for a minute and says: "I want all of my Socialist friends and the rest of the Democrats to go back to our homeland of Russia" and POOF...she's gone.
Trump looks at the genie and says, "You mean ALL of the liberals are gone?"
1. Which 1st lady do you want to see making cookies? 2. Trump has Chuck Norris as an endorsement. 3. We would finally get to nuke something besides Japan. 4. Trump's hair is way cooler. 5. Trump can pee standing up. So can Hillary... 6. Trump rhymes with hump. Clintoris is pretty cool but... 7. Hillary has Cankles. 8. Trump as huge hands! 9. Trump has his name on his plane. 10. Trump loves America...Hillary loves Hillary.
This Kid just survived his third terror attack. My advice...stay away from this dude.
While the family can rest assured that Mason is alive and well, this is a situation they're all too familiar with. In a separate interview with ABC, Chad revealed that this isn't his son's first brush with terrorism.
As he told the network that his son was present during both the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and last year's Paris attacks that killed 129 and injured 352, Kymberly added Mason had been "calm and composed" in the past.
"This is his third terrorist attack," Chad continued. "This is the third time that sadly in our society that we have a connection to a bomb blast. We live in a dangerous world and not everyone is kind and loving."
Mason, who is a Mormon missionary from Utah, was at the airport along with two other men – Richard Norby, 66, and Josephy Empey, 20 – to send off their fellow missionary Sister Fanny Rachel Clain, 20, from France, who was departing for an assignment in Ohio. She was not injured.
I think the government agencies have this all wrong. Look at the picture:
The two suspects on the left are dead. The one on the right is still being pursued. They will never catch him because I theorize that HE is a SHE. Notice the obvious disguise. Small hands...even smaller than Marco Rubio's hands. Multiple layers of clothing to hide the breasts. Now look at the picture in a bigger size:
She looks like Bert from Sesame Street. Might even be Casey Affleck. Are is it Marco Rubio? Not even a hipster would look this douchey on purpose.
Molenbeek, the working-class Brussels district where several of the Paris attackers lived. Donald J. Trump’s characterization of Belgium’s capital as a “hellhole” has upset Belgians.Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times
LONDON — He incensed Paris and London by saying that some of their neighborhoods were so overrun with radicals that the police were too scared to enter.
He raised Scottish tempers by threatening to pull the plug on his investments there, including his luxury golf courses, if British politicians barred him from entering Britain.
Now Donald J. Trump has upset the already beleaguered people of Belgium, calling its capital, Brussels, “a hellhole.”
Asked by the Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo about the feasibility of his proposal to bar foreign Muslims from entering the United States, Mr. Trump argued that Belgium and France had been blighted by the failure of Muslims in these countries to integrate.
“There is something going on, Maria,” he said. “Go to Brussels. Go to Paris. Go to different places. There is something going on and it’s not good, where they want Shariah law, where they want this, where they want things that — you know, there has to be some assimilation. There is no assimilation. There is something bad going on.”
Warming to his theme, he added that Brussels was in a particularly dire state. “You go to Brussels — I was in Brussels a long time ago, 20 years ago, so beautiful, everything is so beautiful — it’s like living in a hellhole right now,” Mr. Trump continued.
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For Belgians, already reeling from recent terrorist plots and a chronically dysfunctional government, Mr. Trump’s words were enough to induce a fit of pique worthy, in some cases, of Mr. Trump himself.Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
For Belgians, already reeling from recent terrorist plots and a chronically dysfunctional government, Mr. Trump’s words were enough to induce a fit of pique worthy, in some cases, of Mr. Trump himself.
Before long, the hashtag #hellhole was gaining traction on Twitter as Belgians lashed out at Mr. Trump, deploying an arsenal of insults, irony and humor, including images of Belgium’s beloved beer and chocolate.
One Twitter user posted a picture of Mr. Trump with what appeared to be a Belgian waffle stuffed in his mouth.
“This is my hellhole,” Joseph Lemaire, a Brussels-based public relations consultant, posted on Twitter, along with several photos, including one showing the capital’s central square, the Grand Place or Grote Markt, which is flanked by stately 17th-century buildings from the city’s prosperous mercantile days.
Another Twitter user, called BerlayCat, posted an image of a gang of cats playing the drums in the Grand Place. “This is not Brussels hellhole,” the user wrote — a reference to “This Is Not a Pipe,” the title of a painting by the Belgian Surrealist master René Magritte.
A Twitter user using the name Berlaymonster (Berlaymont is the headquarters complex of the European Commission in Brussels) posted what appeared to be a modified version of the Wikipedia entry for Dante’s “Inferno.” The list of chapters showed Limbo, Lust and Gluttony. The fourth chapter? Brussels.
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The hashtag #hellhole quickly gained traction on Twitter as Belgians responded with insults, irony and humor, including images of Belgium’s beloved beer, chocolate and french fries.Credit Frederik Buyckx for The New York Times
Belgium has come under scrutiny for failing to tame growing radicalization. Éric Zemmour, a French writer, recently suggested in an interview that rather than bombing the Islamic State’s self-declared capital of Raqqa, Syria, France should bomb Molenbeek, the working-class district in Brussels where several of the Paris attackers lived.
