The Zaventem-Maelbeek bombings are the new normal.
22 March 2016 was a turning point in history. Nothing will ever be the same again, and not just in Belgium.
Two explosions ripped through the check-in area of the Brussels airport. Another blast hit the Maelbeek metro station.
We are 6 June 2016. There is absolutely no valid response possible to the events.
What happened?
On 18 March 2016, Belgian police had arrested Salah Abdelslam. He had participated in the Paris suicide bombings in November 2015, but ultimately decided that he would not carry out his part in the suicide bombing.
For four months, Abdelslam had been hiding in plain sight in Molenbeek. All the time, the entire neighbourhood knew where he lived. He even regularly walked past the police station. For four months, the police in another city, Mechelen, kept a formal file on his whereabouts. They were simply not going to arrest him.
Unfortunately, the negotiations with French president, François Hollande, went in the wrong direction. France kept demanding that Belgium would arrest Abdelslam. Belgium kept refusing. This would not just mean the end of the Belgian state. Ultimately, it would mean the end of any state apparatus, anywhere in the world.
Somalia was unpoliceable.
Iraq was unpoliceable.
Afghanistan was unpoliceable.
Arresting Abdelslam would open the eyes to the whole world that Belgium is in reality also unpoliceable. In fact, not one single state is still policeable.
What is going on?
You have that system that was mostly designed in the 19th century, where the central state apparatus would appoint a policeman in each neighbourhood to keep an eye on what was going on.
The local policeman had to be someone from the village, someone mostly trusted by the other villagers, someone who would know pretty much everything about what was going on in the village. In order to maintain trust, he would almost never intervene. He would just walk around there, and watch.
Later on, they began to forget why the system actually worked.
They appointed people who were not from the neighbourhood at all. Increasingly, they knew pretty much nothing about what was going on.
Furthermore, in the new Muslim neighbourhoods, working as as policeman for the pagans is not compatible with being friends with the people in the neighbourhood. The Islamic religion itself emphasizes that Muslims should never trust the pagans or their stooges.
The 19th-century mechanism started failing.
The central state simply does not know what is going on in the immigrant neighbourhoods. The problem gets exacerbated by the internet. You cannot see people meeting physically while they are exchanging information on the internet. You would have to spy on them online, and that is another impossible can of worms.
Furthermore, this is the 21st century. Acetone-peroxide, the mother of Satan, is a technologically-trivial product. It is not hard to acquire it. There are so many similar products, which are equally dangerous, and equally easy to obtain or produce. A failing 19th-century security system is simply no match for that.
Between the arrest on 18 March and the explosions on 22 March, the Belgian media sounded victorious.
The politicians were posturing and grand-standing.
They would resume their policies, in full force, of trying to forcibly “integrate” the Muslim community, and force them to adopt views that are more submissive to the pagan Belgian state.
Everybody with even just half a brain knew that there would be a reaction.
It is built into the Islamic creed itself that it will vigorously defend itself. You cannot reasonably convince Muslims to leave Islam. Furthermore, they will not hesitate to attack their attackers.
So, the suicide bombers thoroughly Zaventem-Maelbeeked the newly-found confidence of the Belgian state apparatus. They completely obliterated the state’s credibility.
What did the Belgian state apparatus do, as a reaction to the bombings?
Nothing, up till now, simply because there is nothing that they can do.
If they do anything, they will just be Zaventem-Maelbeeked again. They are completely powerless, and at the mercy of whoever is willing to prove that he is willing to risk his life and die for what he believes in.
The only thing that the Belgian state can do, is to beg such people not to Zaventem-Maelbeek them again.
The native Belgian population had always said to the Muslim population of immigrants, even fourth generation ones: “If you do not cave in, go back to your own country.”
The natives slowly but surely begin to understand that not one single building or house will still be left standing if they embark on that adventure. There will also be no economy left, so to speak of. They are facing the prospect of turning Belgium into some kind of Somalia on the North Sea.
Zaventem-Maelbeek was not even a collective reaction. I seriously doubt that it represents more than a few hundreds, at best, a few thousand people.
If they provoke the entire Islamic community in Belgium, we are talking about almost half a million people who would be up in arms. The police apparatus would be gone entirely before the end of the week, and all police officers would be dead.
Zaventem-Maelbeek also means that all existing, contentious negotiations between the Belgian state and the Muslim community must urgently be reviewed. These negotiations no longer reflect the real situation, nor the real balance of power.
Two issues come to mind.
Muslim girls have only a few years ago been banned from wearing headscarves in state schools. They must now find a way to quietly lift the ban before it is too late.
A second issue is that the Belgian state threatens to use force in order to prevent Muslims from slaughtering sheep naturally, instead of using electricity, for the Islamic Festival of the Sacrifice. They must now find a way to quietly drop the subject before it is too late.
The position of the Belgian state has clearly become untenable.
They are no credible counter-Zaventem-Maelbeek strategies or instruments available whatsoever.
They cannot threaten the use of force, because they will simply find themselves at the receiving end of it. They cannot try to police this. If they could, they would have done that already by now.
We will just have to concede that Islam is simply the superior ideology. It will win the conflict just on those grounds. You may not be willing to risk your life and die for what you believe in, but they consistently prove that they are. Furthermore, they do not listen to you. They dictate only.
Therefore, the only remaining option for the Belgian state apparatus is that they cave in, and go on their knees, or else be made to cave in, and be made to go on their knees anyway.
It is not just Belgium that has become a “failed state”.
All states everywhere are failed now.
The 19th century “police force” system has simply outlived its usefulness, and can no longer be used to achieve anything anywhere.
The time has come now to proclaim the bankruptcy of an 18th century voting circus trying to legitimize a 19th century police bullyfest.