In this mailing:

  • Alain Destexhe: Belgium's World Cup Football Riots: A Symbol of the Failure of the Migration Policy
  • Lawrence Kadish: A Presidential Trojan Horse: The Inflation Reduction Act

Belgium's World Cup Football Riots: A Symbol of the Failure of the Migration Policy

by Alain Destexhe  •  December 1, 2022 at 5:00 am

Facebook Twitter WhatsApp Telegram Send Print
  • In Brussels, Moroccans outnumber people of Belgian origin in the under-18 age group; many schools are attended exclusively by children of non-European origin. In those public schools where parents have the choice of religion classes, Islam is now followed by a majority of pupils. Whether one describes these changes as "diversity" or as a "great replacement" is of little importance; over a few decades the evolution has been considerable and has modified the social fabric of Belgium's cities.

  • The hijab (Islamic veil) is increasingly present and is worn by a majority of women in some municipalities. During the month of Ramadan, almost all shops and restaurants are closed during the day in some areas. The number of mosques is exploding and all currents of Islam are represented in Brussels, where tensions between Sunnis and Shiites, or even between Moroccans and Turks, are sometimes high, especially within the Muslim Executive of Belgium, a structure that the federal government set up in order to have a single interlocutor for the Muslim community, but which has been going from crisis to crisis.

  • During trials or elections, it is common to see women arriving with their husbands, and explaining that they cannot be retained as jurors or assessors because they do not speak any of Belgium's official languages, thus attesting to a completely failed policy of integration. The "vivre ensemble" ("live together") praised by the Belgian political world is a myth, with communities living side by side but not mixing with each other. Moroccans marry Moroccan women and Turks marry Turkish women...

  • In France, the country's colonial past is regularly evoked to justify the anger of young North Africans. It is an explanation that does not hold: similar incidents take place in Belgium, a country that has no historical link with North Africa.

  • What is most distressing is the denial and the total absence of debate on the issues of immigration and integration, mainly on the French-speaking side of the country. Neither the media nor the political parties talk about it. Sunday's riots were attributed by the mayor of Brussels to "thugs and scoundrels", a discourse that was widely repeated without any precision or analysis.

  • While in France and elsewhere in Europe there is a lively debate around this theme, it is as if Belgium has given up, accepting its destiny as a multicultural country with a Muslim majority in its capital and from time to time a "new normal" made up of urban riots, shootings and terrorist attacks.

Violent clashes took place in Belgium after the Morocco-Belgium football match during the World Cup in Qatar. In Brussels, Moroccans outnumber people of Belgian origin in the under-18 age group. While elsewhere in Europe there is a lively debate around immigration and integration, it is as if Belgium has given up, accepting its destiny as a multicultural country with a Muslim majority in its capital and from time to time a "new normal" made up of urban riots, shootings and terrorist attacks. Pictured: Police work to clear a street amid violent riots on November 27, 2022, in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga/AFP via Getty Images)

Violent clashes took place in Belgium after the Morocco-Belgium football match during the World Cup in Qatar.

Riots took place in Brussels, Antwerp and Liege, where a police station was attacked by about 50 "youths", and also in several cities in the Netherlands. Beyond these incidents, the popular jubilation in the predominantly Moroccan neighborhoods of Brussels, especially in Molenbeek, revealed that in these areas, the Moroccan identity has remained much stronger than the Belgian one, even though most of the inhabitants have dual nationality.

One would have to be blind and trying to fit reality into the ideology of "living together at all costs" not to see that the sympathies of Moroccans in Belgium were with the Moroccan team and not with the team of their "second homeland". Some journalists tried to do so, with headlines like "No matter who wins between Belgium and Morocco, it will be a party".

Continue Reading Article

A Presidential Trojan Horse: The Inflation Reduction Act

by Lawrence Kadish  •  November 30, 2022 at 4:00 pm

Facebook Twitter WhatsApp Telegram Send Print
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

U.S Senator Joseph Manchin has been playing both sides against the middle for the past year and it appears that game is about to end.

This year Manchin offered his vote to pass the so called "Inflation Reduction Act" in return for Senate leadership support of legislation that would loosen regulations now impacting energy pipeline construction in his home state of West Virginia. In some earlier era in Washington, that kind of Capitol Hill give-and-get would have gone unnoticed, just another deal being cut with taxpayers' money before lunch in the Senate dining room.

That was then. This is now.

Continue Reading Article

Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Donate
Copyright © Gatestone Institute, All rights reserved.

You are subscribed to this list as [email protected]

You can change how you receive these emails:
Update your subscription preferences or Unsubscribe from this list

Gatestone Institute
14 East 60 St., Suite 705, New York, NY 10022