<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 26 April 2009 - Volume 01<br>===========================================<br></div>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc.</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:roger.thijs@euro-support.be">roger.thijs@euro-support.be</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI">LL-L Language Politics<br><br></span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<font size="2">We will have regional and European elections in June
<em>(eventually also federal elections, but the federal government is
momentarily that immobile that is even too inactive to fall and get itself
renewed after new elections).</em></font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">There are some open issues. The constitutional court had some
objectives against the election district <strong>BHV
Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde</strong>, and this BHV combines the bilingual capital
region Brussels with the Flemish ring around it called
Halle-Vilvoorde.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">I live in Steenokkerzeel, which belongs to Halle-Vilvoorde.
Since BHV is not split, we will have the choice for the European elections to
choose between Flemish and Walloon candidates. This is apparently
inconstitutional since it gives us an advantage that other regions do not
have.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">From the Flemish side one thinks that a split will make the
borderline clearer and helps to stop the expansion of the Brussels
stain.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">From the French (Wallonia+majority-Brussels) side, one
wants to protect French speakers in the Flemish area around
Brussels.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2"><strong>Flemish</strong> speakers behave generally
<strong>bilingual </strong>Dutch-French, <strong>French</strong> speakers
emigrating in the Flemish municipalties around Brussels stick generally to
French speaking, making French the only possible language of communication and
<strong>converts the occupied area to French-only</strong> after a couple of
generations. The Council of Europe has more sympathy for the <strong>individual
rights of the French immigrants turning things in their
advantage</strong>Â than for the Flemish trying to <strong>protect their
culture teritorialwise</strong>.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">(<em>This is the reverse side of the European Treaty for
minorities: If the Russians migrate to Hamburg they eventually may claim to get
all services done in Russian, and if they grow sufficiently as a group and
refuse to speak anything else than Russian, they may get as a result that "all"
inhabitants have to convert to Russian for business reasons)</em></font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Many municipalities of the Halle-Vilvoorde refuse to organize
the elections. That will not change very much, since the province of
Flemish-Brabant will take over the organization.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">An example of other actions in my municipality:</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2"><a href="http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/ste/letter.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/ste/letter.jpg</a>Â
(*)</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2"><a href="http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/ste/sticker.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/ste/sticker.jpg</a>Â
(*)</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">The municipality is distributing stickers to the population
for them to fix on their mailboxes and keeping out election publicity in French.
</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">More symbolic, but what I think is
dangerous: it pushes people to show their political
preferences to the outside.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">(*) <em>webpages hosted by the <a href="http://scarlet.be/" target="_blank">scarlet.be</a> server in Belgium
are momentarily difficult to retrieve, due to problems with the scarlet
server.</em></font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Regards,</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Roger</font></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
•
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