The truth about Belgium
Belgium is what was formerly known as the Southern Netherlands. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands has only existed for 15 years, from 1815 to 1830. Centuries before that, the Netherlands had always been one country, comprising the territory of the present-day Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg). It consisted of a number of free provinces, also French-speaking ones, but there never were ethnic tensions because the provinces disposed of a generous amount of autonomy, so they could arrange their own affairs. There was no reason to assume the Netherlands would have been different this time. Yet there were some frictions because King William wanted to impose his linguistic laws in the South. A handful of French revolutionaries, who were eager to annex the Southern Netherlands to France, abused these anti-Dutch sentiments and started a (modest) revolution. King William made a terrible mistake by sending his treacherous francophile son, Prince William, to suppress the insurrection. Prince William had ambitions to become the King of France, and the French had promised him this would happen if he could help them conquer the Southern Netherlands. Prince William never got to be King of France, but the South was separated from the North. The UK prevented it from being annexed by France, and thus a useless state was born.
Financial transfers: solidarity or theft?
Belgium is a socialist welfare state. Socialism is a synonym for an intrusive government that wants to interfere with all aspects of life. The welfare state is a very expensive system that always turns out to be detrimental to the honest, hard-working man in the street and profitable to those who don't work and those who don't need the money, but know how to take advantage of the system. Its noble design was to help the poor and the sick by taking a part of the wealth generated by the rich and the healthy and give it to them. If all people were honest and willing to work, this would be a great system. However, unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world, and in practice we see that the welfare system doen't really help the poor but rather the dishonest people. In Belgium this system forces workers to give in almost half of the money they make. Nowhere in Europe income taxes are as high as in Belgium (except maybe in Sweden, but that country gives much more in return to the tax payers). Since Flanders is the most productive part of Belgium, most taxes are levied over there, whereas the money mostly ends up in Wallonia, where it is wasted on useless projects, used to finance the extremely expensive Walloon health care system or simply disappears in the pockets of Walloon politicians. 40 percent of the Walloon active population has a job in a public service and is paid by the government. Unemployment is Wallonia's national desease and is passed on from father to son because, unlike in Flanders, they don't get punished for not searching a job. The total sum of money that annually flows from the north to the south of Belgium amounts to € 11.3 billion ($ 14.6 billion). Considering the fact that there are only about 6 million Flemings, this is an incredibly awful lot of money, which cannot be justified in any way. Relatively spoken, it is a lot more than what West-Germany has been paying to East-Germany after the fall of Communism. It is explained as "solidarity", but real solidarity is voluntary, transparent, and objective. None of these three conditions apply to the Belgian situation, which means the Flemish are being robbed on a massive scale. What's even more shocking is the fact that these transfers have always run from Flanders to Wallonia, and never in the opposite direction, not even in the 19th century when Flanders was so poor people were starving and Wallonia was at the top of its success.
Frenchifying Flanders
Belgium is France's satellite state. As the saying goes, "When it's raining in Paris, drops of rain are falling in Brussels". France has always tried to control the entire area between the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Rhine, and Belgium lies on the "French" side of the Rhine. Some people think France is only interested in French-speaking Wallonia, and at first sight this makes perfect sense. In reality however, France doesn't care about Wallonia; it is Flanders it's after! This is because a large part of Wallonia (the Ardens) consists of woods with some small villages in it and the other part is made of bankrupt, drab cities bearing the scars of outdated, 19th century coalmine industry. Flanders, on the other hand, isn't just a well-organised, modern nation with a fine economy, it is also of great geostrategic importance. Brussels, the capital of Flanders, is also the capital of the European Union. Unlike Wallonia, Flanders has access to the sea. And, least but not least, Flanders has Antwerp, the city once described by Napoleon as "a loaded gun aimed at England's heart", since it is the only port from which an entire war fleet could be sent to London in just one night. France wants to possess Flanders, and it has some basic imperialist strategies to slowly appropriate our country. One of them is Frenchifying it. During the French occupation (1795-1815) Napoleon's troops didn't only destroy our traditional legal system, they also abolished Dutch as the official language in schools, tribunals and administration. The entire upper class had to start speaking French, and was thoroughly Frenchified by the time the Netherlands got reunited. By choosing Brussels as the capital of the new Belgian state, the Fenchifyers turned this Flemish city into their headquarters. Today about 85 percent of its population speaks French, and the city itself has expanded and "infected" several municipalities around it (because many rich people moved from the crowded city to the quiet Flemish outskirts). These towns have been recognised as "facility municipalities", granting their francophone inhabitants the prerogative to use French when communicating with the authorities. The intention of this measure was to give these people some time to learn Dutch and adapt themselves to the Flemish nature of their new hometowns, but they didn't deem it necessary to stop speaking French; instead, they wanted "their" towns to be annexed to Brussels. Now that imperialist francophone Belgium is aware of the fact that Belgium will soon cease to exist, it is trying to annex Brussels to Wallonia, so it will be able to claim the city and steal it from Flanders. This must be prevented from happening. Flanders is already a small country; it can't afford to lose its largest city!
Why Belgium is not a real democracy
Belgium calls itself a "parliamentary democracy", but is this really the case? I think not. It systematically suppresses the will of the majority of its population - the Flemings. Throughout its history, as the Belgian state's structure was repetedly reorganised, it has developed various, often cunning, methods to do so. In the Belgian Parliament the Flemish members have less seats than they should have. In the Chamber of Deputies, for instance, a Flemish deputy needs 47.200 votes to be elected, whereas a francophone deputy only needs 35.800 votes. This means that hundreds of thousands of Flemish voters are simply ignored. Their vote doesn't count. In Belgium, a francophone vote is worth more than a Flemish one. The members of government are "equally" divided among Flemish and Francophones, resulting in a very unequal government with more francophone ministers than would be reasonable. Since the Flemish and the Francophones each have their own parties, the Flemish have to obey a government that only halfly represents them. The other half consists of ministers they did not vote for, they could not vote for and they cannot send home. Half democracy, half dictatorship. To compensate this situation, the Flemish have often demanded the introduction of the referendum. The Francophones have always refused this, since the referendum is too democratic in nature: it would allow the Flemish people to exercise the power it deserves. That could damage the unfair Belgian construction, which is funded on the silent oppression of the Flemish. The Belgian chief of state is the King, who was of course not elected by the people, but only born out of the right parents. In "normal" monarchies (can a monarchy still be considered normal in the 21st century?) the King or Queen represents his/her country in a symbolic way, without having any real power, but not so in Belgium, where the King even gets the full command of his troops in times of war. The Belgian King has never really been the "King of all Belgians". He has always represented the francophone part of his country and shown very little sympathy towards the Flemings.
Belgium is a country where the largest francophone party (PS) is almighty and the largest Flemish party (Vlaams Blok) is boycotted and convicted in court. The Vlaams Blok, which had to change its name to Vlaams Belang (VB), has always been more or less openly persecuted by the establisment because it is a "dangerous" (Flemish nationalist) party. People who don't believe this and who think the VB was actually convicted because it was a "racist" party, should think about the amazing "coincidence" that when a new, small secessionist party (N-VA) was born, the election legislation suddenly changed to make it impossible for parties with less than 5% of the votes to enter Parliament, and a law was adopted to cancel the subsidies of any party without at least one member in each of the Parliament's two Chambers. Those people should also wonder why the Vlaams Belang is still being boycotted with all means, even now that it has a completely normal conservative program and can impossibly be accused of racist views...
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