Standby

Saving phone numbers is something very important, when you’re switching GSM providers and SIM cards. People gather numbers, as they meet people. Friends, colleagues, lovers. Sometimes those numbers are the start of a wild night through the city, sometimes the last futile rearrangement as everyone arrives too late on the wrong place. Sometimes a trophy, sometimes the last lifebuoy.
Even when the relationship dried up, the friendship became ice-cold or people moved on, it's still a last link. Waiting to be reactivated by fate or being a relic of something that was, existed, and lived.

I’ve saved and re-entered my grandfather’s phone number. So I can still call him, to check how he is doing, to tell him how I’m doing and to ask his advice. To listen to his stories of the olden days and ignore his worries about me. So I can still tell him how much I miss him.

djr

Jogging and highways, a perfect combination?

Last weekend, a friend and I went for a jog in the forest south of Brussels, het Zoniënwoud / Forêt de Soignies. We had the idea to cross this majestic beech and oak forest NE-SW. So we did, but halfway this green lung of Brussels, there was something we had completely forgotten about: we found the Brussels/Waterloo/Nivelles highway blocking our path. This 2 x 4 lane bitumen strip of madness appeared to be too difficult to cross, and as we were - and still are - bold men, we decided to run along the highway until we found a device to overcome this problem. A bridge proved very helpful, although we had to run for 3 km into the Flemish region to use it. No big deal, an hour and a half later, we were having dinner, feeling proud about our approx 16 km of mud and rain and fresh air. Not bad.
There is one thing that intrigues me: when we were running along this highway, we were moving a lot faster than ín the forest. Of course, the surface/soil we walked on was better, but still.
I think it was the adrenalin running through our veins. Having a stroll one meter next to a frenzy race of cars and trucks, that was quite a thrill. Every 500 m or so we saw traces of impacts: when there is a crash of 1400kg metal, rubber, hydrocarbons and human flesh multiplied by 120km/h = a lot of destruction. Ah, the smell of danger, and exhaust fumes.
This weekend, I suggest we run along the landing strip of Zaventem National Airport, or the E40 to Gent,...

The heavens are the limit.

Merci les Québécois !

Yesterday evening, I took up my lazy butt and went to a lecture about immigration. Finally, a deputy of the Flemish Parliament tries to do something about this touting silence on migration in my country. The past 40 years, nobody seemed to care about these people: they were simply ignored. They could do whatever they wanted in our country, nobody took charge and now a whole generation is illiterate, jobless, despised, without a future and ready to fall into the arms of the one-eyed imam with a hook.

“Managing migration” and “the design migrant”,… sounds like a plan.

New ideas, new people

maybe a better Future



djr

Perfide Albion

Yesterday morning, 1.30 AM, a plane hit the tarmac in Ville de Luxembourg. The two tired, but delighted foreign ministers of the UK and Turkey hugged each other, saying that this was a historical moment for the future of Europe. The European commissioner for enlargement Olli Rehn, a few diplomats and a the usual press crowd stood watching.
Turkey is to join the European Union, in time.

What’s all this? Where’s the rub?

Drama has its share: the dream of a United Europe lies in scatters. Making the Union a peaceful, democratic, economical as well as political, social, fiscal and military frame for its citizens, now seems nearly impossible. The Anglo-Saxon point of view has won a decisive victory: transforming the EU to a pure economic union, with ever changing alliances and policies à la carte, without the annoying social and cultural rights we (continental) Europeans were proud of. Foreign policy and its inevitably military “interventions” is to decide by bullies like the USA, UK and Turkey, not by fluffy bunnies like the French, Germans or, god forbade, peace loving Belgians.
Am I making a wild guess?

First of all, the UK (and its dominating brother, the USA) is not very fond of the joint powers Germany, France, Benelux, Spain (if socialistic governed), Italy (idem) and others. Squabbling about topics you can not make money with: a powerful European parliament, a constitution, majority-voting in the national state – controlled commission,… the UK wants Europe divided and profitable, no change of policy here, since 1066. In the beginning, when it felt forced to join the single market, the UK used its right to veto EU policy with a paralysing frequency: fishing, agriculture, fiscal harmonisation, government deficits, single currency, EuroCorps (European military),… just to keep things as unilateral and NATO as possible. And when Mrs. Thatcher was in desperate need of some votes, she blocked everything until she got her money back (£3bn annually, the other members have to compensate)
Now, the UK did realise that a proportional voting system will become inevitable, despite their fierce resistance. To overcome the popular weight of pro-integration members, it seeks now to make the union overstretched and poor, so the founding members and other social democratic lunatics will hesitate before laying the decision making in the hands of a simple x-citizens-one-vote system. (In ten years, a poor Turkey will be the most populous)

Second, I do not think Europe is meant to border Iran, Iraq or the Syrian desert. Besieging Wien a couple of times, looting the Balkan for 4 centuries, true, that’s all part of the rich and happy history we share, but if people are put in jail when they even mention some futile facts as deporting aka murdering one million Armenians 90 years ago or invading Cyprus and chasing Greeks or suppressing other, non-muslim religions or clubbing down peaceful Kurdish protesters, should we all forget about that, to avoid questioning that honourable Turkish pride?

Further, the smashing argument the UK tries to win leftists for the Turkish cause - “we are avoiding the clash of civilisations by rewarding democratic muslim nations with a membership and becoming a multi-religion European Union” - is without sense.
One: The Union is already multi religious and coloured. Millions of immigrants are living peacefully in the EU, and former Yugoslavian countries and Albania (= largely muslim pop) are about to join.
Two: Anno Domini 2005, religion is a private matter and has NOTHING to do with the government. It is strange so many people don’t seem to care about this. therefore, I repeat: Nothing!
Three: I vaguely sense the smell of Christian Supremacy in that argument, “it’s quite remarkable for those retarded muslims they even want an other form of state then dictatorship all by them selves, let’s reward them for that, don’t you think, James?”
Four: UK and USA are holding grip on Iraqi's oil, killing insurgents (or civilians, all the same) and make the EU pay for it.

The consequences of an adhesion of the Republic of Turkey are difficult to predict, but the Future of Europe doesn’t look good.
Maybe it just looks different, as everything is constantly changing, and I have to comfort myself with it. But not yet.



djr