A quote from the Texas chapter of the League of the South, 30 September 2007

Ironically, [the crisis in Belgium] rises in the news as the League of the South holds its National Meeting in Chattanooga to coincide the Secessionist Conference.  The people of Flanders should be able to decide whether or not they want to be included with Belgium. The government in Brussels has done little to insure the safety and community of its citizens. The League supports and applauds the sovereign people of Flanders in their efforts at attaining independence.

A quote from the BBC in The Daily Mail, 29 September 2007

Al Qaeda is unhappy with America and other countries getting involved in places like the Middle East. People linked to al Qaeda have used violence to make this point in the U.S.A, and in other countries.

A quote from Labour MP Frank Field in The Daily Telegraph, 29 September 2007

Yet it is not on Scotland that all eyes should be turned but on England itself. The few polls that have asked the same question of the English as well as the Scots show that English voters want greater independence from the Union than their counterparts north of the border.

A quote from the Huntsman on his blog, 29 September 2007

One important point that was made concerned the degree to which England has over the last one thousand years had so much to do with The Low Countries (a phrase that is now in desuetude but which I use here as neutral code for both Flanders and The Netherlands), often to the mutual commercial benefit of each party and often in ways which enriched us culturally as well as economically. […]

So the relationship of England and Flanders over the centuries seems to have been largely a good one, built on sound economic ties and not marred by the sorts of constant warfare which have characterised, before 1603, our relationship with Scotland (and the odd little blip since then) and, until the Great War, our relationship with France. […]

A quote from the leader of The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, 27 September 2007

[I]t matters less and less whether the European Union has 25 member nations, as is currently the case, or 26, or 30, in the same territory. Inside a single European entity there may be room for many splinters of former nations – including Flanders and Wallonia.

Aaron Timms of The Sydney Morning Herald loves Belgium. In a column this week, Mr. Timms writes

“Belgium long ago abandoned all hope of being a presence on the world stage and gave itself over to the pleasures of alcohol, chocolate, sex and seafood. To this day, it remains a nation untouched by nutrition. These are ideas worth fighting for. In its almost total lack of ambition, in its unrelenting sense of existential dread, in its drunkenness and in its gluttony, Belgium is the most inspiring of nations. If the Belgians have tired of being Belgian, it is up to us to take their place. If Belgium will not be Belgium, it is up to Australia to be Belgium.”

Below is a letter that has appeared on the internal Eurocrat letters forum. (My translation). In a follow up it is suggested that Shell is running a similar scheme.

On the way for Antwerp this Sunday morning, we stopped to fill the tank at the Total station in Kontich. Our vehicle is registered in the United Kingdom and inspires confidence. To our great amazement, we are forced to pay upfront, before taking the petrol, When we questioned this procedure and its inbuilt suspicion of us as customers the employee, (who was the only one there) told us that our "number plate" is not recognized by the "system". He explained to us that all cars stopping to fill up are filmed and that their number plates are immediately sent to the central control and information processing unit of Total which has the files of all registration numbers in Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany and Holland. If the car is not registered in one of these 5 countries or is not included in one of the 5 files, one must pay upfront. Therefore, a multinational (TOTAL) has information to which in theory, (obviously in theory), the national police force has access to!

A quote from Cal Thomas in The Daily Journal, 25 September 2007

Britons give many reasons for leaving, but their stories share one commonality: life in Britain has become unbearable. They fear lawlessness and the threat of more terrorism from a growing Muslim population and the loss of a sense of Britishness, exacerbated by the growing refusal of public schools to teach the history and culture of the nation. What it means to be British has been watered down in a plague of political correctness. […]

A quote from Patrick J. Buchanan on townhall.com, 28 September 2007

What enables Wallonia to block formation of a government is a parliamentary system where Flanders and Wallonia must each assent to any government. Which means that half of the Walloons, 20 percent of Belgium’s population, holds veto power over a national government.

A quote from Bruce Thornton at victorhanson.com, 26 September 2007

Across Europe the left has found in Islam a convenient ally, since both hate the core political goods of the West, liberal democracy and free-market economies, and both hate Christianity – the same mayor of Brussels who silenced European Christians greeted the death of Pope John Paul II with a call for champagne. Al Qaeda understands this Western self-hatred, which is why bin Laden speaks to us about economic oppression, colonialism, even environmentalism, issues about which he cares nothing but which create common cause with the anti-Western left.