Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian

Beginning of the end for the mad mullahs?

Extensive blogosphere coverage of protests in Iran (e.g. Pejmanesque, Winds of Change, Instaman, Jeff Jarvis,...) contrasts with near-absolute silence in the big media.

Dog of Flanders dug up this priceless article in Forbes magazine entitled "Millionaire Mullahs". Let's just say that "kleptocracy" is almost too kind a word for what goes on there...

Silent Running

This post on Silent Running gave me the shivers. I dearly hope he's wrong about where Europe is headed. But I grimly fear that he is right.

"Yellow dog Democrats" no more?

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.) The Forward (Jewish newspaper published in New York, originally in Yiddish as Der Forverts) has an article about the inroads the Republican party is making among twenty- and thirtysomething American Jews.

This is particularly noteworthy as American Jews have a deserved reputation for being "yellow dog Democrats" --- a colorful Americanism for somebody who would vote for a cowardly dog rather than cross party lines. (I have previously commented on some of the historical reasons why.) Indeed, rich Jewish donors used to provide much of the financing for the Democratic party, which makes up for the tendency of big business to favor the GOP [=Republicans, for non-US readers].

Contrary to popular belief outside the US, American Jewish voting patterns tend to be more driven by domestic issues (religion-state relationship, the public school system, welfare,...) than by foreign policy. And the canard often heard outside the US that American presidents treat Israel with kid gloves because of the Jewish community overlooks the fact that Jews only represent two percent of the US electorate --- so a pro-Israel policy would backfire electorally if it were grossly out of step with the view of the population at large. (In fact, an older Sunday Times article by Andrew Sullivan argues that much of grass-roots Americans support of Israel rests on a perceived commonality of values, further strengthened by a perceived commonality of fate post 9/11.)

What I see happening now is a confluence of two things. Firstly, the GOP is aggressively courting voters outside its traditional core constituencies (not just among Jews, but particularly among blacks and Latinos) -- both in an attempt to prove that they are a party of everyone, and because there has been an ideological "paradigm shift" among mainstream conservatives towards a movement defined by commonality of values rather than commonality of background.

Secondly, the increasing McGovernization of the Democratic party has led to a situation where an increasing percentage of American Jews finds itself out of step with the Democratic party on domestic as well as foreign policy issues.

While I do not expect the American Jewish community to turn GOP overnight, I do think the days of Democratic tickets polling 80% and up of the Jewish vote will be a thing of the past.

Universal Jurisdiction v.4.0?

This afternoon, the "old-wine-in-new-flasks" Belgian government is being inaugurated (with Louie the Garden Gnome as Foreign Minister). De Standaard (in Dutch) reports that the very first item on the new Belgian government's agenda, after its inauguration this afternoon, will be the preparation of yet another version of the "universal jurisdiction law". The idea is to keep it on the books and avoid an all-too-overt caving in to Washington, yet to plug any loopholes allowing its use as a tool for politically motivated "judicial harassment". Translation of some key paragraphs:

One of the lines of thought [for the new law] is that the plaintiff should be either a Belgian citizen or have resided in Belgium for at least three years at the time of the events. At the end of June, the government still proposed that the plaintiff should fulfill these conditions at the time of filing the lawsuit -- which was "not good enough" for Washington.

For instance, a Palestinian who wanted to bring a lawsuit against an Israeli officer for [alleged involvement in] the Sabra and Shatila slaughter, would need to have been a Belgian national since 1982 or have resided legally in Belgium since 1979. [Or the way FB reads it: for a minimum of three years anytime prior to 1982.] The government thus [would] create a significant additional filtering mechanism.

But this still does not entirely rule out lawsuits against Americans. Therefore the "immunity proposal" of Flemish Liberal-Democrats chairman Karel De Gucht is also on the table: De Gucht wants to exempt subjects of NATO- and EU-countries from prosecution.

[...] The "civil plaintiff" ["burgerlijke partij", Belgian legal term meaning private citizens or organizations -- other than the Public Prosecutor's Office -- who file a criminal lawsuit] should also be more directly affected by the events -- for instance, a German residing in Belgium will no longer be able to file a suit on behalf of an Iraqi fellow human being with whom he has no relationship otherwise.

It should become clear this afternoon what the whole mechanism will look like. Time is pressing for the new [Verhofstadt II] government: one of [its] challenges is restoring Atlantic peace without overly blatantly genuflections.

(Translation and emphasis mine.) In other words: version 4.0 could essentially be a "Belgium takes care of its own worldwide" law, something which precisely countries in which "patriotism" and "national sovereignty" are not yet dirty words should find much easier to understand. (In fact, both US and Israeli law allow prosecutions of this type, as do several other countries.)

Losing it

According to De Standaard (in Dutch), Louis Michel will remain the Belgian Foreign Minister after all, in order to "prevent loss of face". Strange. Losing something you never had.

Michel's party (the French-speaking Liberal-Democrats) pays a heavy price in ministerial portfolios for their unwillingness to, as a Belgian blogger put it, "send the clowns back to the circus". However,contingency plans has apparently been made for the case where Michel will be forced to leave the international arena, and the possibility has been raised that Michel will only remain FM for a year. These plans involve a complex game of "musical chairs" that also answers the European ambitions of PM Guy Verhofstadt (Flemish Liberal-Democrats) and FLD chairman Karel De Gucht.

Otherwise the government seems to be mostly "old wine in new flasks", except for the most welcome absence of the Greens who received a severe drubbing in Wallony and got wiped off the political map altogether in Flanders.

Welcome/Bienvenus/Welkom/Willkommen/Brukhim ha-Ba'im

Welcome to our new abode. All posts from the month of July have been moved over: for the time being, the archives for March through June 2003 will stay on Blogger.

BBC eating it?

Instapundit rounds up coverage that suggests that the Biased Bull Commissars (as I've taken to calling the BBC) may finally be presented the bill for having degenerated into The Guardian's radio and TV branch.

Don't get me wrong: as much as I loathe al-Guardian, nobody obligates me to buy it or otherwise subsidize it. But you can't even own a TV in England without paying a hefty license fee that is basically used to finance the BBC. Under the cricumstances, I would probably have given up my TV. The following quote from the Times sums it all up:

[The recent confrontation with the Blair government] has left the BBC dangerously exposed. It has served as a catalyst, allowing diverse complaints about its news coverage to resurface simultaneously. The Beeb has been accused of, among other matters, fanatical suspicion of the motives of those in power and unrelenting hostility towards the Conservative Party. It has been attacked for a wholesale scepticism about capitalism, combined with a weakness for quack environmentalism and health-scare speculation over hard science.

Reporting the Middle East, it sometimes seems so remorselessly anti-Israeli that Mr Dyke might as well be open about it and allow his reporters to appear speaking Arabic, riding a camel, stopping occasionally to suck from a long pipe in a crowded souk.

Put bluntly, the BBC, a public sector bureaucracy funded by a poll tax, with a privileged status that looks starkly anomalous in an age of hundreds of television channels and thousands of radio stations, needs more friends. It is already detested by other broadcasters, derided by the print press for squandering its vast resources and damned by publishing houses for its increasingly aggressive marketing activities in their domain.

If the BBC wants to retain its privileged position when its charter is due for renewal in 2006, then it must construct a coalition of supporters broader than the Liberal Democrats, Friends of the Earth, Friends of Yassir Arafat, the sort of people who believe that taking an aspirin will inevitably result in limbs falling off and its own staff. It requires mainstream allies as well. . . .

The old consensus that Auntie [common BBC nickname, FB] should be preserved and protected is fraying; the contention that “something must be done” about the corporation is acquiring serious credibility.

Glenn Reynolds, in fact, argues that the problem is intrinsic to the BBC's very nature:

The likelihood that a major, state-subsidized entity with considerable political clout can actually be objective and fair over the long term is so small that it would seem better to drop the pretense, and to quit subsidizing the political views of the New Class under a threadbare cloak of public service that no longer fools anyone but the gullible.

UPDATE: Jerusalem Post editor Bret Stephens weighs in on the subject.

Bush, stop beating around it

Thus the Wall Street Journal enjoins the US President. One might hope they would have picked another title if the POTUS were a woman...

Universal incontinence law

Today's De Standaard [in Dutch], citing well-informed sources, reports that Washington is still not happy with the proposed "revision 3.0" of the "universal jursidiction" law, and wants the law abolished altogether. (Washington has refrained from commenting officially until an actual law is brought to parliament for a vote.)

If the law is to stay, the US would request scrapping the clause under which any Joe Q. Public can file a complaint under the law. The US also questions the role of the Chairman of the Court of Appeals, who is supposed to decide which countries are "democratic" and therefore competent (under the terms of the law) to judge their own citizens.

In this manner, as the newspaper puts it, the Belgian negotiators have been "sent back to square one" ("terug naar af gestuurd") for the second time.

The chairman of the Flemish Liberal-Democrats proposes attaching a immunity clause to the law under which citizens of EU and NATO countries (or other countries which are bound to Belgium by similar treaties?) would automatically enjoy immunity from prosecution under it. He also proposes handing the whole matter over to Parliament, which could save the Belgian government "loss of face".

Finally, the paper speculates that Belgian FM Louis "le nain jardin" Michel may be transferred to another ministerial post. The Flemish socialist Frank Vandenbroucke (who appears to be missing out on the Social Affairs portfolio) is said to come into the picture as possible Foreign Minister.

Shark on a roll

The Shark is again on a roll, and, moreover, has blogrolled yours truly.