My Kingdom For A Blog

Steven Erlanger, journaliste, a publié le 14 mai un article dans le New-York Times qui ne fait pas dans la dentelle de Bruges. Les Flamands sont désignés à l’attention du lecteur des Comtés de l’Etat comme une bande d’exaltés nationalistes, frappés du démon xénophobe.
Sacrés Américains; les journalistes n’y ont pas le stylo à sec ! Ils ne sont pas aussi timorés que nos plumitifs, courant à des micros trottoir dès qu’il y a une grève, plutôt qu’à faire leur boulot. Eux, ils se déplacent et ne s’embarrassent pas de paraître gentils et complaisants.
Dans le corps de l’article on aura retrouvé les véhémences bien reproduites du Vlaams Belang que nos gazetiers ne publient plus que très rarement, afin de ne pas donner des idées aux derniers démocrates de Flandre et apeurer les guignolos francophones, adeptes de la pensée suppliante.
Je passe l’intro pour déboucher sur le fond :
« Liedekerke wants Flemish to be its only language, a sign of the town’s autonomy.
Liedekerke has only 12,000 inhabitants, but its elected council has caused a stir by insisting on the “Flemish nature” of the town. Not only must all town business and schooling take place in Flemish, true throughout Flanders, but children who cannot speak the language can be prohibited from holiday outings, like hikes and swimming classes.
“België Barst!” says the graffiti on a bridge near the train station, or “Belgium Bursts!” the cry of the nationalists who want an independent Flanders. But here they also want to keep the rich French speakers from Brussels — only 13 miles away and 15 minutes by train — from buying up this pretty landscape and changing the nature of the town.
“Marc Mertens, 53, is the full-time secretary of the town, a professional manager who works under the elected, but part-time, town council. Sitting in a cafe near the old church — Liedekerke is thought to mean “church on the little hill” — he describes how his grandfather fought in World War I under officers who gave commands only in French. “And then they would say in French: ‘For the Flemish, the same!’ ” The phrase still rankles, and Mr. Mertens’s grandfather, a bilingual teacher, refused an officer’s commission on principle.
“Mr. Mertens, a handsome, genial man, is worried about his town.
“Brussels is coming this way,” he said, explaining that the people here, having gained some autonomy, do not want to be overwhelmed again by another French-speaking ascendancy. More schoolchildren, taught in Flemish, have French-speaking parents. “When I was young I never heard a foreign language here,” he said. “Now every day I meet people speaking French.”
Marleen Geerts, 48, a computer-science teacher of 13-year-olds, said teaching French-speakers took time. “You can’t go on with the material if they don’t understand it,” she said. “It’s a struggle.” Her school provides language tutoring. “

“Some Flemish nationalists, like Johan Daelman, the leader of the right-wing, anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang party here and a town councilman, want to keep out French-speaking immigrants from Africa, all in the name of keeping Liedekerke “unspoiled” — free of the crime and racial tensions of Brussels.
“We don’t want Liedekerke to become like a suburb of Paris,” Mr. Daelman said, describing the riots, car burnings and attacks on the police by mostly African immigrants to France. “Big city problems are coming here, and we want to stop it.”
“That combination of national pride, rightist politics, language purity and racially tinged opposition to immigration is a classic formula these days in modern Europe, what critics call a kind of nonviolent fascism.
“Flemish nationalists have another complaint. Flemish are 60 percent of Belgium’s population, and inhabit the richest part, with much lower unemployment than the French-speaking Wallonia part. “The French speakers used to rule us, ” Mr. Daelman said. Now, in the national government, he added, “It’s not the principle of one man, one vote, and every problem in Belgium now becomes a problem of the communities. It’s a surrealistic spectacle, and the best answer is to divide the country.”
“Liedekerke’s effort to restrict school outings by language embarrassed both the federal and Flanders governments, both seated in Brussels. Marino Keulen, the Flemish interior minister, vetoed it, though the town intends to proceed anyway.
“It’s the wrong vision and method,” Mr. Keulen said in an interview in Brussels. “They can’t do it by a language test.” He said the problem was the popularity of the Liedekerke program with Brussels residents “who want to use the facilities of Flanders, which are of a high quality.”
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Voilà nos “Flemish nationalists” bien épinglés. Quant à nous en « Wallonia », on doit passer pour des cons et des trouillards.
Steven va nous faire une de ces réputations de nos Flamands dans le New-York Times, je ne vous dis que ça !
D’ici à ce qu’on interdise bientôt l’anglais dans les jardins d’enfants en représailles dans la « Flandrie »… Bush devrait présenter des excuses à Marino Keulen… en flamand, bien entendu.
Bien sûr, on s’est calmé du côté de Liedekerke. Ce n’est que passager.
Elle est devenue maboule, l’âme flamande !
A l’étranger, j’étais déjà gêné que l’on m’assimilât aux Flamands. J’osais à peine sortir de Belgique.
Depuis le coup du NY Times, si en plus on ne peut plus se pointer aux USA, alors que l’euro est à 1 dollar 50, à cause de nos Flamands, franchement, qu’est-ce qu’on attend pour demander la nationalité française !