A RECENT glance at the Low Countries revealed that, nearly three months after its latest general election, Belgium was still without a new government. It may have acquired one by now. But, if so, will anyone notice? And, if not, will anyone mind? Even the Belgians appear indifferent. And what they think of the government they may well think of the country. If Belgium did not already exist, would anyone nowadays take the trouble to invent it?
Such questions could be asked of many countries. Belgium's problem, if such it is, is that they are being asked by the inhabitants themselves. True, in opinion polls most Belgians say they want to keep the show on the road. But when they vote, as they did on June 10th, they do so along linguistic lines, the French-speaking Walloons in the south for French-speaking parties, the Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north for Dutch-speaking parties. The two groups do not get onhence the inability to form a government. They lead parallel lives, largely in ignorance of each other. They do, however, think they know themselves: when a French-language television programme was interrupted last December with a spoof news flash announcing that the Flemish parliament had declared independence, the king had fled and Belgium had dissolved, it was widely believed.
#2
But when they vote, as they did on June 10th, they do so along linguistic lines, the French-speaking Walloons in the south for French-speaking parties, the Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north for Dutch-speaking parties.
And the Umma in Brussels, capital of the new European caliphate.
#3
In the US the Federal Capital was specifically placed in a non-state. Perhaps that is the route for Belgium (or at least Brussells) if the EU experiment continues.
AKA french fries. Eaten with mayonnaise by the Walloons, and something else by the Flems, amd available at little roadside stands all over the country.
#1
OSC is a great sci fi writer. The questions still remains. Why can't they register and come across legally? Why do Mexicans think they're entitled to break our laws?
#2
This is really silly. If right of conquest doesn't exist, then Orson Scott Card really shouldn't be here. And Mexico shouldn't exist either, as a unified state.
#4
When Serbians ask why we bombed them for trying to expel native Albanians from Kosovo, when we're doing the exact same thing, we don't bother answering.
Usually Mr. Card thinks more clearly than this. Thanks for giving us the link, Aris, I shall have to write him a pointed letter. And me with two entire shelves of his books, including the pre-Ender's Game short stories. He used to be terribly macabre -- I still shudder when some of those images pass across my mind.
Nobody has so much as hinted that brown-skinned (or fair-skinned, for that matter; I had a Mexican girlfriend with naturally blond hair and blue eyes) Mexicans here legally be expelled. On the contrary, it's the ones here legally who cry the loudest for the illegals to be sent home. In contrast to the Serbs and Kosovars, both of whom are citizens of the country they live in, and legally tenant in their homes and communities when they were expelled.
Similarly, Mr. Card ignores the statistics which show that a significantly disproportionate number of crimes, and particularly horrific crimes, are committed by these illegals.
As for the claim that "they do the work Americans won't", that's downright silly. These are the kinds of jobs that used to be done by the unskilled and semi-skilled workers who now make up the majority of the long-term unemployed, and those high school and college kids who spend their free time volunteering for good works because they can't find part-time paid jobs. How many of our older Rantburgers earned money when they were young by picking in the fields, mowing lawns, cleaning houses? How many were once in the building trades but were forced into other occupations by the tide of illegals? Mr. Card ought to be ashamed of publicly displaying such shoddy thinking.
#5
How many of our older Rantburgers earned money when they were young by picking in the fields, mowing lawns, cleaning houses?
As an undergrad I had a campus job and cleaned houses and baby sat on weekends. Whatever it took to make tuition at that expensive school I really wanted to attend.
#6
I mowed lawns, weeded gardens, parked cars, made boxes, mopped floors, even dug a basement under a guy's house (that was hard!) You know, all those jobs Americans won't do now. All at minimum wage, give or take a quarter.
The Serbians keep asking: The Kosovars had a terrorist organization; where were the bombings and killings by illegal Mexican immigrants?
I believe that trailing wife already caught this one:
Similarly, Mr. Card ignores the statistics which show that a significantly disproportionate number of crimes, and particularly horrific crimes, are committed by these illegals.
Time for another classic bit of misdirection:
"Why do you think our father went north of the border in the first place?" asks a Mexican teenager, her words translated into English. "There were no jobs. There was not enough to eat. Now he's back, there's still no job, and no more money getting sent from the north. Instead of supporting his family, he's another hungry mouth in a house with no money."
How is it that we are supposed to answer for Mexico's corrupt government. It is their military and political elite that are drinking Mexico's blood. They have done so for centuries and need to die for it.
"America does not exist to be a safety valve for the failures of the Mexican economy."
See the previous comment.
Prices for migrant-picked foods skyrocket, even as surplus crops rot in the fields, unharvested.
Well, then, I suppose that the agricultural market was a false economy. Let me know when it's acceptable to submit a business plan with intentionally understated labor costs.
But it's not just agriculture that suffers. With so many workers stripped out of the American workforce, stores and service providers stay open only by working their employees in double shifts. Everybody's competing for workers in a labor-short market, and wages rise.
Total hysteria.
As the wages rise and rise, management moves all the jobs that can be moved ... to Mexico. After all, it's Mexico that has a sudden glut of six million extra workers, desperate for any kind of job.
Only now all the money those workers earn stays in Mexico. It used to be that at least part of it was spent in the U.S.
Again, total bullshit. Card says, "all the money those workers earn stays in Mexico" as if it would be the same amount of money. If it was, there would be no incentive to off-shore those jobs. There would be far less money being sent to Mexico precisely because the labor costs would be cheaper than here.
Send the illegals back and institute immigration statutes that permit speedy readmission of law-abiding individuals. Any sort of criminal past or activity excludes an applicant. Enough of these pachuco gangsters with their pit bulls and driveby shootings. With them gone the entire black-tar heroin supply chain would fold overnight.
#11
Orson, Aris - I give you Article 22 of the Mexican Constitution:
Article 33 - Foreigners are those who do not possess the qualities determined in Article 30. They have the right to the guarantees of Chapter I of the first title of this Constitution, but the Executive of the Union has the exclusive right to expel from the national territory, immediately and without necessity of judicial proceedings, all foreigners whose stay it judges inconvenient.Foreigners may not, in any manner, involve themselves in the political affairs of the country.
When you get them to change that, then come talk down to us.
#13
How do Mexicans treat vagrants? In the 'seventies I was in San Jose del Cabo, Baja, and saw some local police pull a drifter into the police station. Next, I heard a series of smacks and thuds, amid demands that he never come back there. Next, they pulled him into a police car with a sack over his head, and then they took him away.
Anybody else heard of this? They've got 110 colleges listed.
During the week of October 22-26, 2007, the nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses.
The purpose of this protest is as simple as it is crucial: to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat. Nothing could be more politically incorrect than to point this out. But nothing could be more important for American students to hear.
In the face of the greatest danger Americans have ever confronted, the academic left has mobilized to create sympathy for the enemy and to fight anyone who rallies Americans to defend themselves. According to the academic left, anyone who links Islamic radicalism to the war on terror is an "Islamophobe." According to the academic left, the Islamo-fascists hate us not because we are tolerant and free, but because we are "oppressors."
Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is a national effort to oppose these lies and to rally American students to defend their country.
#1
I'd seen a little something about this recently -- how hard it was to get permission from the university to hold the information week. I hope they include the Clare Short quote holding Israel responsible for the extinction of humanity.
According to the list at the link there is quite a variety of which have students involved in this thing, from two-year community colleges to Harvard.
#2
I love this kind of thing because of how it will get the elite professoriate's panties all twisted into a really tight knot as they come to the realization that they have become the dinosaurs against whom they rebelled when they joined the SDS.
#4
It is a great idea but why cloud the issue by bringing in Global Warming?
Just keep the message simple and direct - radical Islamists have been engaging in a struggle to damage our civilization for decades and we have just begun to fight back.
#5
Just keep the message simple and direct - radical Islamists have been engaging in a struggle to damage our civilization for decades and we have just begun to fight back.
Correctamundo. If global warming isn't a bigger threat, push it off the stage.
#7
It's early days yet, Glenmore. Forward the article to them and ask if they've heard anything -- it may not be fully organized. (OSU, one of trailing daughter #1's choices, is listed twice!)
The Indian army launched a three-pronged attack across a 50-mile wide front towards Lahore at 0530 hours on September 6, 1965. The Indian XI Corps, comprising the 7th and 15th Infantry Divisions and the 4th Mountain Division mounted the attack. Within a couple of days, the Indian army launched a full-scale attack with its 1st Corps directed towards Sialkot, in between Lahore and Kashmir.
The war, fought for only seventeen days, is often drummed up as a great victory compared with the debacle of 1971 when the country split into two, more because of internal factors, which are often ignored, than external factors.
Continued on Page 49
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#3
Ethnic regionalism within a federation makes sense.
However, common sense has no currency in the Middle East. But, I don't think that landlocked, Turk hating Kurds will seccede.
#4
Kurdistan needs to be ready for enlargement. If Iran and Syria fight the US, then their Kurdish territories may be forfeit to greater Kurdistan. In turn, this may make Kurdistan too large to remain in Iraq.
Fortunately, the Kurds and Arabs are pretty cleanly divided, so they might be able to split peacefully, much like the Czechs and the Slovaks.
#5
I'm a believer in the Federal German model. Create somewhat independent States that send representatives to the Federal Government. Each state also sends taxes depending upon their wealth so some states (like Bavaria in the German example) send more to help out the poorer states. You also leave the Constitution open so that new states can join in easily (as Western Germany did to accomidate the hopeful reuninion with the East), in case Jordan/Syria or Shia Arabs in what is now Iran think joining up might be a good idea once the idea has proven itself.
Another thing is the States should probably be larger than the provinces to keep things managable. I think five provinces: Baghdad, Sunni, Kurd, Shia Alpha and Shia Bravo. Yeah they'll have better names but everone on Rantburg can tell what I mean. Force the Shia into two so that they don't have an instant block.
#6
Anonymoose, the problem with your suggestion is Turkey. They'd freak at any Kurdish expansion. The solution is to encourage Kurds to migrate out of Turkey into Kurdistan but I'm not sure the Kurds would do that. Would they? Or do we just carve out a chunk of territory from Turkey and tell them to get bent since Turkey may be slipping away from the West anyway.
#7
Turkey may be slipping away from the West anyway. I think this is the case, RJS.
Barbara Lerner writes at NRO about the situation in Turkey and why we should not acknowledge the Armenian Genocide for geopolitical reasons. She basically denies that the genocide occurred. Judgement Time
I was a strong supporter of the pre-Carter, Teddy Roosevelt policy of supporting local "strong men" where same keeps down America's ideological enemies.
If you are advocating setting up Kurds as our Rooseveltian allies, that makes sense. Turkey is an artificial creation that should be broken up. Their membership in NATO can be terminated. We could hand them a strip in what is now the Syrian terrorist entity. When the landlocked status ends, then real nationhood would be at hand.
#9
I'm not sure Turkey is an artificial enemy, the bulk of Turkey is comprised of a single ethnic entity which is one of the tennents of a modern nation state. However, they do have Kurdish and Greek sections that they should not assume will remain under the Turkish boot if they continue to drift from the West.
Free Constantinople! Yeah the Greeks are pretty anti-American as well but I like the sound of it and in the global war on terror it might do good to push the Islamic conquest back a bit.
#11
The solution is to encourage Kurds to migrate out of Turkey into Kurdistan but I'm not sure the Kurds would do that.
Those mountains were occupied by Kurds long before the Turks settled down after riding in from Asia. I don't think the Kurds would be all that happy to give them up. Not without a lot in exchange, at any rate.
St Martyr's Square is empty and downtown Beirut is closed-up and silent as the tourist season that never came draws to a close. Armed policemen are positioned at every corner, soldiers waiting for violence chew gum behind roadblocks as the seat of government in the Grand Serail is encircled by the nine-month-old tent city, built by opposition protesters, that now festers in the summer heat.
The silence is filled with crackling tension as campaign posters and graffiti demand diametrically opposed realities for tomorrow, marking out the frontlines of the deepening struggle for Lebanon's political identity.
The lines of division
Nadim Shehadi, a senior advisor on Palestinian affairs to Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the British-based Chatham House's Lebanon Representative, spoke to ISN Security Watch at his Beirut office about the struggle. "Lebanon is a divided country, one bitterly at odds over the future of the state. The government, led by the Sunni Muslim Hariri Bloc and its Christian allies, espouse a Riviera vision for the country: One where a weak and independent central state at peace with its neighbors and open to the West returns to what the country was before the civil war," he said.
"The opposition, dominated by the Shia Muslim Hizbollah and Amal, sees Lebanon as a fortress on the frontline in the war with Israel and the United States, closed to the West. France and Saudi Arabia have been the chief investors in the Riviera, Iran and to a lesser extent Syria are the stakeholders in the Citadel."
#2
I was in Chile during the Dirty War period. Most Chileans blamed the retreat from civil justice, on the war against civil administration. I could have cared less about dead Commies then, and I don't give a rat's ass about the lives of jihadis. I value the life of a cockroach over theirs.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A RECENT glance at the Low Countries revealed that, nearly three months after its latest general election, Belgium was still without a new government. It may have acquired one by now. But, if so, will anyone notice? And, if not, will anyone mind? Even the Belgians appear indifferent. And what they think of the government they may well think of the country. If Belgium did not already exist, would anyone nowadays take the trouble to invent it?
St Martyr's Square is empty and downtown Beirut is closed-up and silent as the tourist season that never came draws to a close. Armed policemen are positioned at every corner, soldiers waiting for violence chew gum behind roadblocks as the seat of government in the Grand Serail is encircled by the nine-month-old tent city, built by opposition protesters, that now festers in the summer heat.
