Wie dacht dat heel Vlaanderen het in Keulen hoorde donderen toen bleek dat Mariusz O., de moordenaar van Joe van Holsbeeck, wegens «voorbeeldig gedrag» beloond was met een ticket voor de internationale «topper» België–Kazachstan, is eraan voor de moeite. Tom Naegels reageert in ieder geval met ongeloof op het Vlaamse ongeloof.

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Yves Leterme gooide een steen in de zomerse kikkerpoel toen hij aan Humo verklapte dat hij in een aantal gemeenten al geheime voorakkoorden had gesloten voor de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen. Of het strategisch slim is dat openlijk te vertellen is één zaak, maar anderzijds droop de hypocrisie van de reacties af, en dat niet alleen bij de andere politieke partijen.

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Kort nadat Yves Leterme in een interview met de Franse krant Libération ironiserend had gezegd dat de Franstaligen in de Rand blijkbaar intellectueel niet in staat zijn om Nederlands te leren, protesteerde de Brusselse krant Le Soir hiertegen met een oproep die op een advertentie leek. Over een volle pagina uitgesmeerd luidde het: "Pour le respect mutuel, Le Soir se lève - Le Soir komt op voor wederzijds respect" (PDF).

Deze tweetalige slogan was slechts een ondertitel. De ééntalige titel luidde: "Leterme était mal choisi". Een woordspeling: Libération had een slechte keuze gemaakt door Leterme te interviewen, of de term "intellectueel niet in staat" was eeen slechte keuze. Ook het "respect" in de ondertitel is naar verluidt een speelse verwijzing naar de campagneslogan van de CD&V. De eigenlijke boodschap was ook ééntalig Frans, en ik vertaal hem hier:

Er zijn Franstaligen die diepe intellectuele wil hebben om Vlamingen te ontmoeten. Er zijn Vlamingen die een grote intellectuele nieuwsgierigheid hebben naar de Franstalige verwezenlijkingen. Er zijn veel Franstaligen die zich intellectueel onderdompelen in het aanleren van het Nederlands. Er zijn Vlamingen die hun intellect in dienst willen stellen van een open en vranke dialoog met Wallonië. Er zijn Franstaligen en Vlamingen die intellectueel en emotioneel in staat zijn om diepe banden te smeden. Misschien niet met de juiste woorden, maar door de nadruk te leggen op het respect voor de andere en op de wil om zich open te stellen naar hem, zonder vooroordelen, zonder karikatuur, zonder diabolisering. Wij zijn niet perfect, maar onze vaste wil om te begrijpen, te spreken en de ander te ontmoeten is geen ongelukje van de geschiedenis.

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Waarschijnlijk hebt u een maand geleden alweer de nodige herdenkingsverklaringen gelezen, gekruid met veel krokodillentranen, over de Amerikaanse ‘oorlogsmisdaad’ in Hiroshima op 6 augustus 1945. Uiteraard ontbreekt ook de referentie niet naar 9 augustus, de dag van Nagasaki. Impliciet is natuurlijk de boodschap dat de Amerikanen per definitie schurken zijn die zich later niet veel beter hebben gedragen in Vietnam of Irak. Wel waren het vooral Amerikaanse historici die vanaf de jaren 70 die Amerikaanse massamoord op onschuldige Japanners aan de kaak hebben gesteld.

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The world’s bureaucratic elites, including the United Nations, are demanding that the rich nations spend 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product on development aid. This is more than $300 billion a year, or well over $3 trillion over the next decade. The demand for such huge funds is given as the main rationale for global taxes to be levied on the world’s taxpayers, outside the control of and accountability to national governments.

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The French response to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has been characteristic: to condemn Israel’s attempts to defend its borders, and to propose a multi-national force, under the command of the UN, instead. This solution has been adopted. But when it came to offering the necessary  troops, France backed off, promising 200 at most, while Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh each offered 1,000 men. The latter are Islamic states which, like Hezbollah, wish to abolish the old Lebanon, with its Christian ascendancy and its belief in the European idea, and which, moreover, refuse to recognize Israel, and concur in the view that it should be wiped from the map. France’s recourse to the UN seemed like another gesture in its long-drawn out suicide, another way of siding with the Islamists against the West.

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We, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are generally happier making grand gestures than applying ourselves to issues that are actually within our gift. We spend days haggling over the precise wording of our Declaration on the Anniversary of the End of World War Two. We work ourselves into a lather of indignation about the use of the death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago. But on the question which most immediately affects our work — the duplication of all our facilities in Brussels and Strasburg — we seem paralysed.

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Is about the size of a book(let!) handed out by the Directorate General for Justice, Freedom and Security (don't laugh!) entitled, "My fundamental rights in the European Union".

The EU "citizens" on the front cover are even smaller than their rights. Midgets in the EU's scheme of things.

The ruler is Made in Great Britain and is a Royal Sovereign Product! Unlike a tape measure which I own, it does not need European certification to prove that it accurately measures length.

Hieronder een lang citaat uit een rapport van de Senaat van 4 mei jl.

Mijn vrouw maakte mij er enige tijd geleden op attent. Ik heb lang gewacht met erover te schrijven omdat ik dacht dat de Vlaamse media er wel aandacht voor zouden hebben. Intussen gingen bijna vier maanden voorbij. Geen letter in onze dag- en weekbladen. Geen woord op VRT of VTM. Waarom toch? Is deze zaak niet interessant genoeg? Is dit schandaal niet groot genoeg? Of past het niet in the opzet om vooral de Vlamingen, en in het bijzonder de Antwerpenaars, als racisten en anti-semieten voor te stellen?

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The Belgian authorities have destroyed archives and records relating to the persecution and deportation of Jews in Belgium in the 1930s and 1940s. Some of this happened as recently as the late 1990s. This was revealed during hearings in the Belgian Senate last Spring. Though the Senate report dates from 4 May the Belgian press has not yet mentioned the affair. [update 3 Sept.: The Brussels Dutch-language newspaper De Morgen published an article on page 6 of its 14 Dec. 2005 edition, under the title: Archives about Persecution of Jews were Intentionally Destroyed] The Senate report says that “documents about the period 1930-1950 have been destroyed on a massive scale.”

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This is my first posting since the Conservative Party shelved its plans to withdraw from the federalist European People’s Party (EPP). Like many of you, I am disappointed by the climb-down. David Cameron now says that the break will come in 2009, adding in a Daily Telegraph article of 14 July that his commitment “is not an aspiration, it is a guarantee — and it will be delivered.”

Put like that, it would be churlish not to believe him. None the less, the delay seems to me unnecessary and damaging. By postponing the decision over the past nine months, we created a good deal of harmful bickering, as opponents of David Cameron’s promise sought — successfully, as it turned out — to push him into a U-turn. We now risk three more years of the same.

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Last Monday the European Commission reported that cosmetics manufacturers selling their products within the EU have agreed that they will provide consumers with more information about potential side effects of the products, as well as more detailed descriptions of what the products contain.

Here is the catch. The cosmetics industry agreed to provide customers with on-request information about their products, which means that concerned customers have to actively seek out the information. There is of course nothing wrong with this. However the cosmetics industry agreed to this move because it was better than the alternative, which was to print costly leaflets similar to those included with pharmaceutical products. So basically the European Commission had given the cosmetics industry an offer they could not refuse. This seems to have become the norm in the European Union.

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The European Commission is considering granting up to €5 million a year to news channel Euronews to broadcast in Arabic. EU communication commissioner Margot Wallstrom told Euobserver: “In the climate we have had this is absolutely the right idea.” Euronews currently broadcasts in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Meanwhile, the EU Presidency, chaired by Finland, publishes a weekly summary of Euronews in Latin, the Conspectus Rerum Latinus. Classical Latin is the sixth language of the Presidency web site in addition to modern English, Finnish, Swedish, French and German. According to the Presidency the weekly EU review in Latin “keeps Professor Pekkanen and Docent Pitkäranta busy rendering 20th century terms into the Latin idiom.”

Latin and Arabic: Europe’s past and Europe’s future?

Would a quote from The Brussels Journal stand a chance of appearing on Amnesty International's irrepressible.info website one day?

Readers of The Brussels Journal already know that the Belgian government has been harassing Paul Belien for quite a while now, first in a direct way through the CEOOR (Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition against Racism), and later in an indirect way in connection with home schooling. One certainly gets the impression that the goal seems to be to shut down The Brussels Journal one way or another, and recently both The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal have reported about this in an editorial and an article respectively.

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Kari Vogt, historian of religion at the University of Oslo, has stated that Ibn Warraq’s book “Why I am Not a Muslim” is just as irrelevant to the study of Islam as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are to the study of Judaism. She is widely considered as one of the leading expert on Islam in Norway, and is frequently quoted in national media on matters related to Islam and Muslim immigration. People who get most of their information from the mainstream media, which goes for the majority of the population, will thus be systematically fed biased information and half-truths about Islam from our universities, which have largely failed to uphold the ideal of free inquiry. Unfortunately, this situation is pretty similar at universities and colleges throughout the West.

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