Belgian Big Bang???

[Videoskooter]

Like I already predicted some months ago: Belgium is in a big political crisis. The elections were 10th of June and we still don't have a government.

Flemish and Walloons are even refusing to talk to each other right now and the King is doing auditions with "Wise" men to try and get the parties on speaking terms again.

The following weeks will be decisive on the fact if our country still has a future or will break apart!

EXTRA EXTRA



FLANDERS:



WALLONIA:

[Videoskooter]

Help our country, learn Flemish or French and play this game (the game is witty-the real situation is explosive though).

LETERMINATEUR

[Bernie]

Johan,

For such a small country you guys love to stir it up don't you?! I say blame it on France

Seriously, how far back does this disagreement go. Is this generations old or something that came about after WW1 and II?

[Videoskooter]

Bernie, this goes up to 1830 when we kicked the Dutch out. The current Belgian state was a part of the Netherlands back then. After a stageplay, the people went on the streets and attacked the Dutch troops and drove them out of the country.

Then a german Prince was imported to become our first King Leopold I.

Here's something to keep you busy 2nite

History of Belgium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[paul]

Are politicians just exploiting this or are the Belgian people so divided that the nation could split apart?

[dfc99bb]

Will Belgian Waffles then be known as Waloon Waffles? Still no coverage of the Belgian political crisis in the US media.

[Videoskooter]

Originally Posted by paul

Are politicians just exploiting this or are the Belgian people so divided that the nation could split apart?

Politicians (Flemish and Walloon) are following the people here. Over the past weeks there has been an immense radicalisation in Flanders and the number of Flemish citizens that wants to drop the Walloons is growing daily.

Don't forget that the Flanders region is the majority (60/40) and when they should declare independence (and it is in the works), the Walloons can't do anything to prevent it.

So, a split? Maybe? If not, the country will be reformed German style. Then the Belgian government will stay on but with very limited powers. All the important stuff will be decided by the regions.

A split? What are we going to do with our capital Brussels who is one of the 4 regions but hosts the European parliament and Nato-headquarters? Votes go up to reform it in a administrative district, Washington DC style.

A split? What am I gonna do? My house is in Flanders but the companies are located in Wallonia

Originally Posted by dfc99bb

Will Belgian Waffles then be known as Waloon Waffles?

This is funny! Only Americans talk about Belgian waffles. We don't! We talk about

Brussel Waffles



Waffles from Liège



Mother Ciska Waffles

Originally Posted by dfc99bb

Still no coverage of the Belgian political crisis in the US media.

Yes there is but no headline news. The occasional minute.

[paul]

Hmm, that looks yummy. Is that vanilla ice cream over a hot waffle?

[Nano]

Hey Johan, the impossible has been achieved: our local papers publishing news about Belgium!

One title reads: "Flanders prosperous region want independence"

The people of Flanders win the streets:

[Videoskooter]

Nano, so we are famous now???? We finally made the headlines! Nobody speaks about Belgium unless we blow up the country?

Still doesn't look good! Even a part of the Walloons want independence now!

How dare they

Off-topic: I'm 100% honest here! I never ever saw 1 episode of the Simpsons! Am I the only person in the world who never saw the yellow toons???

Paul, yes, that's vanilla icecream on top of the Brussel waffle. I don't like 'em that way. I like 'em with whipped cream and flowersugar.

I don't like the combination hot/cold. Okay, I dig ice cubes on ... [censored by the Administrator, all the moderators, Karl Rove, Lee Iacocca and Paul Anka]

[dfc99bb]

This is the first serious mention I've seen about the Belgian situation in any NYC newspaper. And the Sun has a small readership at that.


New York Sun Staff Editorial
September 11, 2007

Who needs Belgium? Not, apparently, the Belgians, who have had no government since elections on June 10, in which voters split on ethno-linguistic lines between French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemings. The Belgians do not seem to care that their state is falling apart before their eyes. Even in a Europe riven by secessionist movements, Belgium takes the prize for the most fissiparous country of them all.

Last week the Economist magazine opined that "Belgium has served its purpose." It was a purpose defined by the grand diplomacy of 19th-century Europe, not by the wishes of the disparate peoples who inhabited the once-prosperous region over which for centuries the houses of Habsburg and Orange, Catholics and Protestants, revolutionaries and legitimists had fought themselves to a standstill.

When the Napoleonic wars ended at Waterloo, now in Belgium, the United Netherlands emerged still ruling over the entire Low Countries. The Dutch kings preached religious freedom, but practiced discrimination against the Catholic Flemings and Walloons. In 1830 the July revolution in France spread to Brussels, where the French tricolors were raised, independence declared, and French troops intervened. The British Foreign Secretary, Palmerston, decided both to prevent a new European conflagration and to stop France from annexing the southern half of the Netherlands.

A century before Wilsonian liberal internationalism, Palmerston supported self-determination. He proposed to recognize Belgium as a separate kingdom. In 1831 the great powers adopted the usual solution: a minor German princely dynasty, the Saxe-Coburgs, was enlisted to provide a symbol of unity, under a name resurrected from the ancient tribe, the Belgae, that inhabited the region under the Roman Empire.

Leopold I was no stranger to such anachronisms. He had just turned down an offer to be King of Greece. The title of the new monarch, "King of the Belgians," recognized the fact that the new dynasty had no other claim to rule than the will of the people. His son, Leopold II, is remembered as the most brutal of all the colonial rulers of Africa. It was the Belgian Congo that Joseph Conrad depicted in "Heart of Darkness," the text that — more than any other — has become emblematic of the evils of imperialism.

If the purpose of Belgium, as a buffer state between France and Germany, was to prevent wars, it was not what one would want to call successful. World War I began with a German invasion of "brave little Belgium" in 1914. In 1940, the Germans did it again — only this time, the Belgians were not so brave. Not only did Belgian fascists collaborate with the Nazis but so did the Social and Christian democrats who would resume power after 1945.

The "national socialism" of Hendrik de Man, the most influential Belgian politician of the 1930s and 1940s, became one of the blueprints for the postwar European community, of which De Man's disciple Paul-Henri Spaak was one of the founding fathers. De Man wanted Belgium to be "the vanguard of the European Revolution; the principle on which the new European Order hinges."

In the post-war world, Belgium did indeed capitalize on these ideals. Both NATO and what later became the European Union were based at Brussels. There was always a tension between the two, because the aims of the Atlantic alliance and the new Europe were irreconcilable. Having failed to thwart the creation of NATO, Spaak became its secretary-general and did his best to stop it from opposing Soviet designs to encroach on Western interests.

While NATO perpetuated the American military presence in Europe, which kept the peace throughout the Cold War, the E.U. was intended to create a rival superpower and was always ambivalent toward America. Belgians benefited from both, but it was the E.U. that created so many jobs for officials that Belgium became Europe's District of Columbia.

Today, Belgium is a microcosm of the E.U.: bureaucratic, undemocratic, corporatist. As the author Paul Belien argued in his book "A Throne in Brussels," the "Belgianisation of Europe" is already far advanced. If the European Union is to be given back to its constituent peoples, Belgium might be a good place to start.

The break-up of Belgium need not create instability: 2007 is not 1831. Europe has nothing to fear from a free vote of the Walloons and Flemings, both of whom might choose to accede to France and the Netherlands respectively. Wiser counsel would no doubt urge the Walloons and Flemings to prefer the protection of some kind of arrangement with either the British or the Americans and their freedoms. In any event, democracy — not realpolitik — should decide Belgium's destiny. Let us hope that Europe, too, has an opportunity to vote before its future is determined from above.

Goodbye, Belgium? - September 11, 2007 - The New York Sun

[Videoskooter]

Originally Posted by dfc99bb

a name resurrected from the ancient tribe, the Belgae, that inhabited the region under the Roman Empire

dfc99bb, thank you for posting this article. Very accurate description of the Belgian past and present.

As today, the forming of the government is still on hold while Christian-democrat Herman Van Rompuy is negotiating with both ethnic groups as a special envoyee of King Albert.

There are 4 key problems:
-Flanders wants more power for itself and wants to go to a confederation with only a small Belgian government with limited powers so that the 4 regions (Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels and the small German region) can decide almost everything.
-Brussels that is in fact a Flemish town but over the years has become a European district with a very small Flemish minority. What to do with it?
-The power of the Walloon Socialist party. Despite scandal after scandal and their convictions for corruption, they still are the second party in Wallonia and are playing a very suspicious role in this stageplay (like always).
-The blatant arrogance of the Walloons who are the ethnic minority in Belgium but simply refuse to learn and speak Flemish when they are visiting/living in Flanders. Can you imagine that the people from Québec would demand that the whole of Canada would become French speaking?

What will happen next? Nobody knows really. The demand for a referendum by the fascist Flemish party Vlaams Belang was denied yesterday but things are going far from good.

To be continued....

[dfc99bb]

"Europe has nothing to fear from a free vote of the Walloons and Flemings, both of whom might choose to accede to France and the Netherlands respectively."

What if France doesn't want the Walloons and the Netherlands doesn't want the Flemings? Can the Walloons and Flemings create viable states of their own? Does Belgian law permit the disintegration of it's own nation? This is all very strange. Is a civil war possible, a shooting war?

[Videoskooter]

Ehmmm, last week they did a poll in Holland where they were asking if the Flemisch would be welcomed as a part of their country! The overwhelming reaction was: YES!

The immediate reaction of the Flemish: joining the Netherlands would be the last thing we would do if we would become an independent state In fact we told the Dutch to GET LOST!!!! We are not interested. The funny thing: the Dutch like the Flemish very much but the love isn't mutual! We don't like 'em that much LOL

As for the Walloons, in the 70's there was a movement to be a part of France but that political party hardly gets any votes so.....

If the Big Bang comes, Flanders would become a new independent nation and , yes, it would be very viable. As for Wallonia, I doubt it, their economy is vastly supported by Flemish taxmoney so the only way they will survive is to team up with the Brussels region (which would probably happen).

[remicks]

*****
This is all most fascinating.
All countries are "fake" in that their boundaries are contrived by man and are pliable and often arbitrary ... but in reading this article's concise history of Belgium .... would it be accurate to say that Belgium 's placement on the world atlas is as artificial as Iraq's??? ..... And the glue that holds each together equally as weak?



*****