Belgium – The Burning Platform

100 Riot In Migrant Reception Centre, Triggered By Woman’s Refusal To Wear A Head Scarf

riot

Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images

11 people were arrested yesterday following a riot involving Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis which broke out over a dispute involving a Syrian woman refusing to wear a head scarf.

Those arrested following the riot at a migrant reception centre in Moorslede quarter of Leopoldsburg, Belgium, have now been removed, reports Het Laatste Nieuws. Red Cross spokeswoman, An Luyten, confirmed: “The four that were part of the core portion have been transferred to a detention centre. The seven others are individually housed and distributed in other reception centres in Flanders.”

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The trigger for the riot, which saw the migrants using chairs, broomsticks and rubbish bins on each other, was a dispute over a Syrian woman’s refusal to wear a headscarf, reports Flanders News.

“Two or three Afghans had been targeting a young girl from Syria for a couple of days because she was not covering her head,” explained Ms. Luyten, “which is weird, because several other girls were also not wearing a headscarf. It is not clear why they were after this girl in particular.”

Whatever the reason was for her being singled out for attention, she tired of the situation. The argument ended up creating two groups among the migrants, with Syrian and Iraqi residents defending the girl on the one side, and Afghan refugees on the other.

“We are shocked by this massive brawl,” added Ms. Luyten, “it is also traumatic for the other asylum seekers, women and children. We honestly did not see this fight coming, although the arguments had apparently been going on for a few days.”

As a result of the riot between the two groups yesterday afternoon seven people were injured, one seriously enough to be taken to hospital.

Secretary of State for Asylum, Migration and Administrative Simplification, Theo Francken, has spoken out about the riot, saying:

“I find it totally unacceptable that some young Afghans find it necessary to tell Syrian girls to wear a headscarf and that they should not dress like western girls.

“They come here, they are guests here. We are not theirs. They have to adapt to our rules.”

Belgium Is The EU ‘Capital’ For Foreign Fighters

In the wake of Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, police arrested seven suspects in the Molenbeek district of Brussels. According to data compiled by RFE/RL, Belgium has contributed the most fighters to the so-called Islamic State of any EU nation on a per capita basis. RFE/RL estimate that there are 40 fighters per million Belgian inhabitants present in Syria and Iraq. Jordan, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia are the top three nations worldwide for supplying the so-called Islamic State with foreign fighters, contributing 315, 280 and 107 per million people respectively.

You will find more statistics at Statista

Amazingly Deceptive Headlines, Part 1

I couldn’t agree more with John Rubino and his assessment of the captured propaganda spewing corporate media. They are nothing but mouthpieces for the establishment. Their headline is designed to make the reader think that foreign countries continue to desire U.S. debt and are buying it with abandon. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Russia dumps Treasuries, with China and Japan selling too. Only Zero Hedge questioned the storyline.

Russia Dumps 20% Of Its Treasury Holdings As Mystery “Belgium” Buyer Adds Another Whopping $40 Billion

Belgium is a tiny, barely solvent country, with a GDP of $420 billion. This country has supposedly bought $200 billion of US Treasuries in the last few months and now owns $381 billion of our debt. That is a laughable statistic. This country is clearly being used as a conduit for an unnamed entity to buy our debt, because the Fed is tapering and the rest of the world knows that buying our debt at 2.50% is a guaranteed losing proposition.

The headlines in the MSM should be SCREAMING about the fact that Belgium could not possibly be buying this much debt. But no, that isn’t their job. They are supposed to keep the sheeple sedated and calm. Deception is the name of the game.

Guest Post by John Rubino at Dollar Collapse

Reporters and their editors (and the corporations that employ them) have the power to shape readers’ perceptions by, for instance, choosing what fact to put first in a story or which expert to quote in what context. But the most powerful tool is the simplest: the headline. Because many people read only that, and many others have their perception of an article shaped by the first words they see, this sentence fragment is frequently as important as everything that comes after.

Consider this, from the Associated Press:

Foreign Holdings of US Treasury Debt Hits Record

Foreign buyers of U.S. Treasury securities increased their holdings in March to a record high.

The Treasury Department said Thursday that total foreign holdings rose 1 percent to $5.95 trillion from $5.89 trillion in February.

China, the largest foreign buyer of Treasury debt, reduced its holdings by less than 0.01 percent to $1.27 trillion. Japan, the second-largest buyer, cut its holdings 0.8 percent to $1.2 trillion.

Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, major oil exporting nations and Caribbean countries involved in banking all increased their holdings. Meanwhile, Russia shed almost 21 percent of its holdings in March following international tensions over its move to annex part of Ukraine.

Russia controls $100.4 billion worth of U.S. Treasury securities, or just 1.7 percent of all foreign holdings. The United States and Russia have imposed sanctions on each other after parts of the Crimean Peninsula with ethnic and political ties to Russia began an attempt to secede from Ukraine in late February.

Foreign demand for U.S. Treasury securities is expected to remain strong this year, aided by more borrowing certainty with a congressional agreement to suspend the debt limit until March 2015.

Now, let’s tease out a few facts:

Trading powers China and Japan cut their Treasury holdings, while superpower wannabe Russia dumped fully one-fifth of its dollar-denominated debt. Meanwhile, Belgium and Luxembourg and a few others more than made up the slack, enabling the Associated Press to open with a glowingly-positive message (foreign investors love dollars!).

The truth appears to be something else entirely. How could Belgium and Luxembourg (total combined population 12 million) buy enough US debt to offset Russia dumping 21% of its Treasuries? The answer is that it’s highly unlikely they would do this in a single month unless they’re part of an under-the-table deal through which Western powers are hiding the fact that major holders of dollars appear to be losing faith in the currency and/or bridling at US foreign policy arrogance.

So the cover-up is the real story, and a more honest headline would feature Belgium’s purchases and the reasons for this shift in dollar ownership. “Russia sells Treasuries while Belgium buys; analysts wonder why” would be both more honest and more provocative without being sensationalistic.

But of course it would also pose a difficult question, which is apparently no longer the corporate media’s job.