Adieu Belgium ?

Most Americans are caught in the never ending vortex of the Gulf oil spill. In the argument as to whether Obama failed miserably, or BP lied and cheated, we forget our oil addiction. When president Carter warned us that it would come back to haunt us in 1977(!!!), he was ridiculed and was stuck for ever with the word "malaise". He was right! Those who accuse Obama of incompetence have zero notion of the responsability and duties of a president. They also conveniently forget that, under the influence of the oil lobby and certain bought politicians (remember the Dick Cheney secret energy meeting?), everything has been done under the sun to remove all safeguards, safety measures, inspection, etc. The same people who gave you Enron, the Wall Street carnage of 2008 and the recent WV mining catastrophe, are now serving us with a gusher that nobody knos how to stop. Not a great publicity for those who advocate the supremacy of the private sector.
In the meantime, unbeknownst to the majority of Americans, brave little Belgium is fading away. The country that aroused anger and pity in 1914, is voting itself out of existence. Sunday's legislative elections gave victory to the NVA party of Bart de Wever, whose platform is the independence of Flanders, the northern majority of Dutch speaking Belgians. The French speaking minority, impoverished by a rust belt economy voted itself a socialist government. No doubt Mr De Wever will want to initiate a split. His model is the smooth divorce between the Czech and Slovak republics. Would the French speaking region want to rejoin France? Would France take them? What about the 80,000 German speaking Belgians? Actually, this could be the beginning of the unraveling of the Nation-State. Local affairs can be handled by Regions (Corsica, Britanny, Bvaria, Scotland, Alsace, the Basque region), and world affairs can be handled by the EU.

Europe?

On May 9, 2010, Europe celebrated its 60th anniversary.On this day, in 1950, Robert Schuman launched the European ideal with the Coal and Steel Community. It was a sad anniversary. Back then Europe was still partially in ruins. It limped out of a 31 year civil war (1914-1945). The human and material toll was unbelievable. Europe had just lost all influence on the rest of the world. A union of Europe was the only way out. 60 years later, the European Union is dead in the water. It has enlarged to 27 countries. But although it has a common passport, a common currency, a common agricultural policy and custom tariff, it is not a federation. Its great weakness, enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty, is to give all power to the 27 individual governments, with 27 budgets, 27 tax policies, and 27 armies. In other words, the farther Europe moves from its big bang, the more it atomizes. The current Greek financial crisis, demonstrates the powerlessness of a construction that stopped in the middle of its dream. The current European leaders want to stick to the obsolete nation-state. This way, they never will fulfill Schuman's dream.