"That's a lengthy explanation for denying something that's painfully obvious: There is a Flemish identity today. And it's no longer compatible with a belgian state. "

Yet, it's still a minority.

"Actually the invented 19th century national identity is the Belgian one, as artificial as the country itself. The Flemish one, with cultural, economical and linguistical aspects is real, and obvious when you put them opposite the walloon counterparts."

I disagree. There's defenatly a cultural and historical Belgian identity (is there a better sign than the cultural sector's unrest against N-VA's "cultural flemish unity" and against the problematic negociations? I think not). Linguistics are, at least in my opinion, irrelevant as there's hardly any historical identity of that in "Flanders" either. That one originates from the first half of this century. Even in 19th century France almost the entire population spoke a language as different from french as West Low German to Dutch. The Roman-Germanic languages schism exists, but the gap is far smaller than one thinks. Economical, there's no Flemish identity either. A largely rural place like the Westhoek has nothing to do with the "industrial triangle". The Flemish identity only holds when you put it in a competitive perspective.

And ZoZ, you compare our situation with something completely different. There's a working "marshall-plan" for Wallonia, and it seems to work. In the newspaper of today was an article about Wallonia being one of the best european regions to start a succesful KMO. There's a drain to the south, but it pays. And in a historical perspective, it can be justified. "Flanders" picks the fruits of largely Walloon infrastructural investments of the 19th century.

As for the mass-invasion of the Walloons in Brussels, there's another myth to dispell. A key aspect in the process of Brussels becoming largely french-talking is reserved for the West Flemish immigrants. The dutch-talking inhabitants of Brussels simply couldn't understand their local dialect, so they communicated with what was the lingua franca in both their timeframe and region: french.

The "Vlaamse Leeuw" should be abondoned. The anthem is stained by the fascist-like parties in the interbellum and WWII. If the Flemish want to be taken seriously in Belgium, they have to change the perception of it, and that can only be achieved by purging itself from that horrible past. You'll say that those were only a part of the movement, and I agree, but the perception of the Flemish movement is that it's a strongly conservative movement and that it's linked to said past. If the "Flemish idea" wishes to survive, it has to reinvent itself to a movement in wich all parties and people can believe in. The leftist field in politics doesn't feel much allegiance to it anyway.

That said, I don't like anything about the Flemish movement. I don't understand why we want to become an independent region at all. Sure there's money flowing to Wallonia, but we're also donating loads of money to regions in Limburg and West-Vlaanderen. It all comes down to this: "Flanders" is even more artificial as you claim Belgium is. Flanders as a region today is a result of 19th century intelectuals but mostly by unions, who sought to unite people under a single banner. Deans is a perfect example of this. The dutch speaking abused proletariat vs. the french speaking upper class. French has always been an element of the county Flanders in the past (the financial control organ was in Reisel, wich was always French). No one bothered about that, at all. In the 19th century, however, it was a smart mechanism to make it a dutch vs. french battle, and it has been portraited like that ever since. It looks appealing though, and it makes it easy, but that doesn't make it true.
In Wallonia, there are regions who are doing well too, but that's always muffled as media - like polling stations and others alike - generalize it to "walloons" and "flemish". Of course we do better in that perspective, all the large harbours are in Flanders (apart from Brussels).

"And yeah, when you use tax dollars for your rubbers, abortion and penicillin, you're in my pants."

All I have to say is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9FSjyaityE

And why let the state pay for condoms and such when they can pay for a whole child instead!

It does matter when you decide to name the whole idea after yourself.
I put quite some work in getting to know how to know you could do hard ops on players. I didn't call my results the "Arnor-rates" or something. First of all, because there must be other people who did the same, and second because I'm not a pompous twat.

throw it out the window? Install Ubuntu?

Somalia just isn't really a country, it's a name for a region

I even have an empire in PW!

The regular internet scammers..

And you'll never going to get it.
This thread is closed.

Mogwai - Killing all the flies

Calexico - Crystal frontier