No Government -- No Prob!

[flacaltenn]

Fahreed Zahkaria did a segment on his Sunday Show that just blew my mind. Particularly because the "mainstream" has managed to ignore this story for this long.

Cultural divisions and basic political indecision has held Belgium "headless" for 8 months. No central govt has been seated since the election. Life goes on almost perfectly.. Maybe we wouldn't miss Congress as much as they think...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...t-2213128.html

Eight months after national elections, the country's "caretaker" Prime Minister is still Yves Leterme, the man whom Belgium, or at least the northern part of Belgium, rejected last June.

The protests are significant, if vague, straws in the wind. The demonstrators, from both sides of the linguo-cultural divide, are calling for the recognition of some form of core Belgian identity. They have not offered any detailed suggestions on how to resolve any of the political, or economic or cultural tensions that seem to be tearing Belgium apart. After eight months, not even the glimmering of an agreement is in sight. There may have to be new national elections, even though new elections are unlikely to change very much.

Because so many everyday functions of state have already been ceded over the years to regional and community governments, the absence of an agreed federal coalition matters very little. The national budget deficit was less than predicted last year, partly because there was no national government to spend new money.

Dan Alexe, a Romanian-born Belgian film-maker said: "The trains and buses still run. The police are still operating. The post is late, but then it always was late. Maybe having 'no government' is preferable to having governments which collapse all the time."

Thomas Tindemans runs EU relations for Hill & Knowlton, the international PR firm, and is the son of the former Belgian prime minister Leo Tindemans. He said: "Most Belgians are like me, despairing but relaxed. It is foreigners who tend to get excited by the crisis. But, in truth, we can't go on without a national government for ever. There are strategic decisions, international and European decisions that have been on hold for too long."

The problem (one of many problems) is that, after 40 years of tinkering with the constitution and moving responsibility for many everyday decisions to the three "regions" or two language "communities" (plus a small German minority), it has become difficult to say what the Belgian state should continue to do. Or even, some Flemings argue, whether it has any sensible role at all.

Gee.. Maybe we SHOULD BE more like Europe after all...

They are having PARTIES and camp-outs instead of freakin out. Even with serious talk of dividing the country along French/Dutch lines.. Here's a cute byproduct of the stand-off -- a website created especially for the crisis..

http://belgiq.eu/

[noonereal]

Originally Posted by flacaltenn

Fahreed Zahkaria did a segment on his Sunday Show that just blew my mind. Particularly because the "mainstream" has managed to ignore this story for this long.

Cultural divisions and basic political indecision has held Belgium "headless" for 8 months. No central govt has been seated since the election. Life goes on almost perfectly.. Maybe we wouldn't miss Congress as much as they think...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...t-2213128.html



Gee.. Maybe we SHOULD BE more like Europe after all...

They are having PARTIES and camp-outs instead of freakin out. Even with serious talk of dividing the country along French/Dutch lines.. Here's a cute byproduct of the stand-off -- a website created especially for the crisis..

http://belgiq.eu/

Two things,

If congress went away we would indeed be better off and this country is headed for a social divide and English should become the national language to help forestall this.

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by noonereal

Two things,

If congress went away we would indeed be better off and this country is headed for a social divide and English should become the national language to help forestall this.

That would put the majority of Americans at a disadvantage;

"The Americans and the British, two friendly peoples separated by a common language" Winston Spencer Churchill.

[BlueStreak]

If you're saying no government would mean no more Republicans.................I could go for that.

BTW. I saw that segment and I knew it wouldn't take long before we heard from you.
All I can say, and I think what Fareed was pointing out, is that it wasn't long before the country started disintegrating, and I wonder how long it would be before they start fighting over territory.

What is it with you guys and your desire to divide? To split people up and pigeonhole them in their proper ethnic slots? So happy about the whole French section, Flemish section, German section............Does it really f**k with your brain that bad when people of different backgrounds share the same space?

Dave

[flacaltenn]

Nein, Non, NO! You're reading me all wrong on this one.. I'm just fascinated by the stability and resilience of their system. It's truly a political science thing. Evidently, they are so close to autonomy in the different regions, that they can still function without the Central Govt. Kinda like the original reason for the internet. Distributed routing and resources able to survive major outages and damage. We are so much more fragile than that because Washington is such a huge money launderer.

I'm a HUGE fan of multiculturalism. More so than the phoney bumper sticker kind. I loved the diversity in Cali. Chinatown, Little Juarez, my Indian neighbors with their colored lights up in July. I used to defend what the Hispanics did to improve the "bad sections" of town.. Up until the point where their NEW immigrants changed class and behaviour.. THen we had roving bands of kids walking down the middle of busy streets keying cars and gang-banging and spray-painting. That's when we started planning an escape..

That and the way the govt responded to the challenge of multiculturism with teaching Chemistry/Physics/WorldHistory in Spanish and English because they wanted to pad the teaching ranks and make EnglishSecondLanguage a perpetual employment generator. Was never about dual language proficiency. And the sanctuary city crap that ended up filling the Cali jails with illegals that should have been sent home.

In the case of Belgium, it's not a war -- they want choices.. And I'm all for that. But the realization is that it creates severe inefficiencies in govt that maybe SHOULD be solved with partitions.

[finnbow]

Having just spent the past 3-4 days in Belgium, a couple of days each in Wallonia (French) and Flanders (Dutch speaking), I can certainly attest to the fact that the 2 sections of the country couldn't be more different in terms of not only language, but culture. It's truly like being one day in France and the other day in Holland. The Flemish people, being culturally Dutch, are as accommodating and pleasant as humanly imaginable, whereas the Wallonians are, well, French. Better food and beverages to be sure, but that French "je ne sais quoi" attitude is very apparent.

I could easily imagine that the cultural/political divide between Flanders and Wallonia is far greater than our Left/Right divide, and with that the case, the desire to split pretty high. As to the point made in the OP, nobody seemed to care one way or the other about any lack of governance.

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Having just spent the past 3-4 days in Belgium, a couple of days each in Wallonia (French) and Flanders (Dutch speaking), I can certainly attest to the fact that the 2 sections of the country couldn't be more different in terms of not only language, but culture. It's truly like being one day in France and the other day in Holland. The Flemish people, being culturally Dutch, are as accommodating and pleasant as humanly imaginable, whereas the Wallonians are, well, French. Better food and beverages to be sure, but that French "je ne sais quoi" attitude is very apparent.

Ah, you noticed that too.

[piece-itpete]

Originally Posted by BlueStreak

...

What is it with you guys and your desire to divide? To split people up and pigeonhole them in their proper ethnic slots? So happy about the whole French section, Flemish section, German section............Does it really f**k with your brain that bad when people of different backgrounds share the same space?

Dave

We just want people in their proper place.

Originally Posted by finnbow

....whereas the Wallonians are, well, French...

LMAO!!

The Belgians are just skipping the middle step to no government utopia

Pete

[flacaltenn]

FinnBow:

You don't get the impression that the Belgique split is due to animosity or hate do you?

It just seems that the desire to fashion a comfortable local culture MAY BE in conflict with an "activist" Central Govt.

It took a dictator like Tito to hold together the Balkans under strong central govt. And we all know what happened when Communism died there. THAT was NOT a rugged robust system of governance.

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

We just want people in their proper place.

Shouted, with a lisp;

"PLACES, EVERYONE! PLACES!!!"

Dave