Free Republic

A Belgian court has sentenced an activist to one year in prison for running an organization that allegedly spreads “racist, hateful, Nazi and negationist speech.” According to POLITICO, a judge said 30-year-old Dries Van Langenhove “revelled in Nazi ideas that cause much suffering.” “Dries Van Langenhove, a political activist and leader of a Flemish-nationalist youth movement called Schild & Vrienden, was convicted of inciting violence and denying the Holocaust, the Ghent criminal court ruled Tuesday morning,” the outlet reports. “Former Flemish parliamentarian Dries Van Langenhove has just been sentenced to 1 year IN PRISON because supposedly ‘racist memes’ were shared...

In August 2016, then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton took on critics of her husband’s charitable foundation by saying the former first family “went above and beyond” to disclose their donors to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest when she served as America’s top diplomat. On the face, Clinton’s statement is true. A December 2008 voluntary ethics agreement the Clinton Foundation and incoming secretary of State executed with the Obama administration, before called for, disclosed all donors to the Foundation and its various initiatives, something normal charities don’t have to do. But over the years, the Clintons’ compliance...

In Flanders Fields By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) Canadian Army "In Flanders Fields the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We...

Three years ago, I was having lunch in an Italian restaurant with the leader of Belgium's Flemish nationalist party, Bart De Wever. "Give me Elio Di Rupo as prime minister of Belgium and then make Prince Philippe a king," the head of the New Flemish Alliance told me. "Within five years Belgium will be finished. Game over." At the time I took it as a joke, or perhaps some braggadocio from a man who might have become somewhat detached from reality following the huge success of his party in the 2010 elections. Three years later, it turns out Mr. De...

A founding EU member, Belgium, is struggling to maintain political unity as a separatist party scored major victories in municipal elections yesterday (14 October) and its leader is set to become mayor of the second city, raising the pressure on a fragmented national government. The Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (New Flemish Alliance or N-VA) won the most votes in a vast swathe of districts in the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders, including the port city of Antwerp. The party's leader, Bart De Wever, was on course to become the city's mayor after the N-VA were on 36% of the vote with most of...

CATALONIA may be the catalyst for a renewed wave of separatism in the European Union, with Scotland and Flanders not far behind. The great paradox of the European Union, which is built on the concept of shared sovereignty, is that it lowers the stakes for regions to push for independence. While a post-national European Union may be emerging out of the euro zone crisis, with a drive for more fiscal union and more centralized control over national budgets and banks, the crisis has accelerated calls for independence from member countries’ richer regions, angry at having to finance poorer neighbors. Artur...

This is going to be a funny one... On Dec 5 2011, Belgium after an 18 month crisis, finally had political parties agree to a coalition government. One of the agreements was to reduce the operating budget of the Cabinet by 5%. http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-05/belgium-s-di-rupo-to-take-office-after-18-month-political-ordeal Today it was discovered that instead of reducing the salaries and expense accounts of the Cabinet Ministers and their staffs by 5% as agreed upon in the Coalition agreement, the Ministers axed 105 low level employees of their 932 total employees. Then the Ministers gave themselves on average a 8% pay raise for the year. http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/5036/Wetstraat/article/detail/1374850/2012/01/08/Ministers-kennen-zichzelf-acht-procent-meer-wedde-toe.dhtml#.TwlbNQWBUSY.facebook As...

He was under strict orders not to leave the house after school. But 11-year-old Jared Flanders neatly knotted his tie, climbed on his bike and went to pay his last respects to fallen Worcester firefighter Jon Davies at a funeral home down the street yesterday. Jared didn’t know the hero jake who died after rushing into a blazing triple-decker last week. Yet, the boy’s kind-hearted salute lifted the spirits of firefighters attending Davies’ wake.

Record producer Pete Waterman and his daughter Toni are profoundly moved by the battlefields where their forefathers fought during the First World War. My grandfather, Walter Lord, the one I grew up with, taught me how to cheat at dominoes. When, a few months later, he discovered that I was indeed cheating, he chased me up the road until he couldn't run any farther. I remember even in the Fifties he would never accept the third light of a match; his superstitious logic was that enemy soldiers in a neighbouring trench would spot the lighting of the first cigarette from...

BRUSSELS — The move to break up Belgium gathered momentum Sunday as separatists won an emphatic election victory in Flanders, the prosperous Dutch-speaking half of the fiercely divided nation. A stunning electoral success for Bart de Wever’s Flemish nationalist party marks a significant new challenge to the fragile unity of a country where tensions between French and Dutch speakers run deep. Scheduled to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union in less than three weeks, Belgium will now do so with a caretaker administration and facing months of tortuous negotiations to put together a coalition government. “We are...

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below." [must-see video]

To continue the literary analogy, consider the library at Belgium's Leuven University. Make that two libraries. German armies had burned down Leuven's library in the two world wars, and it was rebuilt after each. But then in 1970, the last time the Flemings and the Walloons got seriously restive, the million-volume collection was carved into two: Odd-numbered books remained on the original campus in the Dutch-speaking part of the country, while even-numbered books went to a new Francophone school built in a field 17 miles to the south. Thirty-seven years later, Belgium's national identity is still so elusive, so fragile...

You have to strain to hear Harry Patch. At 109 years old, the last surviving Tommy from the horrors of the trenches in the First World War is growing increasingly frail. But his mind is every bit as sharp today as it was 90 years ago this week when, as a 19-year-old conscript, he was ordered over the top at the Third Battle of Ypres. The battle, better known simply as Passchendaele, has become a byword for senseless slaughter. Bitter memories: Harry Patch at Passchendaele today Read more... Hell on Earth: The never before seen colour photographs of the bloody...

They are the most remarkable pictures of one of the most hellish places on earth. Never seen before, these astonishing photographs, lovingly hand-touched in colour to bring to life the nightmare of Passchendaele, were released this week to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the battle that, between July and November 1917, claimed a staggering 2,121 lives a day and in total some quarter of a million Allied soldiers. Killing field: A German machine gun unit strafes No Man's Land at Passchendaele as artillery shells churn up hte ground and mustard gas billows over the front What was once pretty countryside...

A FAKE television news bulletin that Belgium was to split provoked outrage in both halves of the country yesterday."Irresponsible", "questionable" and "regrettable" were among the reactions from Belgium's political mainstream in both French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders after a fictional report that Flanders had declared independence. The prime minister Guy Verhofstadt's office described the bulletin as a "misplaced joke". A commission of the Francophone parliament was set to view RTBF's footage, which included a report that King Albert II had fled the country. Only much later during the broadcast did a subtitle reveal that the reports were fictional. The Francophone...

Nonsense first, as usual. Spain will no longer burn effigies of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslim armies occupied Spain from 711 to 1492. For the past five centuries the Spanish have traditionally celebrated the 1492 liberation from the Moors (as the Muslims were locally called) with local village festivals during which the battles against the Moors were reenacted and effigies of the Muslim prophet – the so-called “la Mahoma” – were mocked, thrown from the windows, and burned. Last year the town of Bocairent near Valencia decided to discontinue the tradition of centuries. The town did not want to risk becoming...

from the attacks of blasphemers at the first night of the play "Our Lady of Flanders" at the Flemish theatre in Brussels, KVS (logo behind the banners) 150 demonstrators were met with some three van loads of police - some of whom were friendly others a little less so. Advertising for the play in the foyer. Those who attended the state-subsidised play were noticeably "middle class". The whole charade has more to do with bourgeois liberal guilt than anything else. It is not just American universities that are victims of this guilt!

THE remarkably well preserved remains of a British officer, killed in one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War, have been discovered in the mud of Flanders. The man, still wearing his gas cape, boots and helmet, was killed during the battle of Passchendaele almost 90 years ago. A Commonwealth War Graves Commission team is due to arrive in Belgium today to help identify the Lancashire Fusiliers' officer, whose remains were found by archaeologists. The officer, who was found on Friday, is one of more than 58,000 men who fought in the notorious Ypres Salient in Belgium during...

Tomas van Houtryve for The New York Times Jean-François Bastin, 61, a Belgian convert to Islam, in his home in Brussels. His party is aggressively pursuing a pro-Muslim agenda. ANTWERP, Belgium - Filip Dewinter, a boyish man in a dark blue suit, bounds up two flights of steep stairs in his political party's 19th-century headquarters building where posters show a Muslim minaret rising menacingly above the Gothic steeple of the city's cathedral. "The radical Muslims are organizing themselves in Europe," he declared. "Other political parties, they are very worried about the Muslim votes and say let's be tolerant, while...

During World War I, in the winter of 1914, on the battlefields of Flanders, one of the most unusual events in all of human history took place. The Germans had been in a fierce battle with the British and French. Both sides were dug in, safe in muddy, man-made trenches six to eight feet deep that seemed to stretch forever.