Ok, normally I don't elaborate this long on a given subject but since the following upset me very much at the time it happened I thought I'd answer these questions from Larry:

1.)Is this devastation of free speech indicative of your surrounding EU members?

Well, in May 2002 there was this Dutch rightwing politican Pim Fortuyn who dared say that The Netherlands were "full" (having absorbed more than its share of non-integrating immigrants and with 16,000,000 people crammed on 36,000 square kloms, I can understand that).


He was shot dead by Volkert Van Der Graaff, a 32-year old Radical Green-Left activist.

"Fortuyn, 54, was shot in the head and chest at least three times at close range at 6 p.m. Monday as he was leaving a radio station in Hilversum, 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Amsterdam."

"Fortuyn, an openly gay former TV analyst, was a plain-speaking politician who targeted fears over immigration. Saying that the Netherlands was "full up," he criticized Muslims for not embracing Dutch culture."

Members of Fortuyn's party apparently had reason to be afraid too.

Okay, it's old news now, but it is says a lot of the way things have become for anyone who dares challenge the established views of the politically correct elites. But slowly, times are changing: France recently banned some extremsit clerics, Denmark put legislation into effect restricting the influx of radical Imams, and the Dutch will expel 26,000 illegals over the coming three years (it really, really has become too bad over there). From what I see, it's rather Belgium that, as so often, is at the tail of the movement to address the immigrant problem in a thorough way.


2.) Michael- I find this information mind-boggling.
Stephen Pollard's site mentioned the Vlaams Blok(VB)party advocates secession from Belgium and the establishment of a Republic of Flanders...Could you elaborate a little on that?
Where will conservatives seek refuge when sharia law is instituted if secession is not realized?

Well, I'm glad you bring that one up Larry. It is indeed true that the Vlaams Blok advocates nothing less than the breakup of Belgium as a nation and the creation of an independent Flanders. To be sure, I am against that. We are already so small a country, why divide it even further? It is however important to consider their rationale for such a bold claim. Flanders, the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, DOES transfer huge sums of Social Security money to sick brother Wallonia, the southern, French-speaking, purely socialist run part of Belgium. I think the amount per 4-person household has been calculated as being something in the neighborhood of the price of a small family car, say a Ford Orion, every four years.

Basically Flanders keeps Wallonia afloat through an imbalanced redistribution of federal funds. The federal government is raking in much more from Flanders than it does from Wallonia and then diverts it mostly to Wallonia - small wonder, in Wallonia 1 active person in three "works" for the state, the other two depend on social security. Marc Dutroux, this horrible child molester and murderer, who was just dandy, had somehow managed to get himself declared unfit for work and got 80,000 Belgian francs per month (some 2,000 US$) from Social Security - NOT KIDDING!!!

Still I think breaking up Belgium would be a bad idea. You might ask why I have joined the Vlaams Blok. Well, because it was the only party that vehemently OPPOSED granting the right to vote for municipal councils to non-Belgian immigrants - read the hundreds of thousands of Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians and Turks who live here since decades but of whom a majority still does not speak our language, of whom many don't abide by our laws (slaughtering animals at home during Ramadan, e.g., although law says they should do it in one of the designated slaughterhouses etc...).

For me the point about the voting right is right now much more important than the Vlaams Blok's unrealistic claim that Belgium should cease to exist - it will never happen, a grand majority of Belgians like it just as it is.