Fleecing Belgium: No one pays more to the EU than a Flemish citizen

From Gates of Vienna

A Fleming pays twice as much as a Walloon, triple as much as a Briton and five times more than a Frenchman.

It was already known that, from the 27 EU-member states, 15 are net recipients and 12 are net contributors. Belgium is a large net contributor. The Vlaams Belang group in the European Parliament, led by Frank Vanhecke, has now calculated how much each citizen of Flanders and Wallonia pays each year. The result is surprising: with 1780 million euro net, not a single EU-country pays more per head than Flanders: each Fleming pays 282 euro net per year.

This is more than the 272 euro each Dutchman pays per year. This is almost twice as much as a Walloon pays (164 euro). It is also double the amount of a German’s contribution (114 euro) and almost triple as much as that of a Briton. It is even five times more than the 53 euro a Frenchman pays and the 49 euro an Italian contributes.

The 2007 ‘hit parade’ of the largest EU-contributors looks like this:

1.		Flanders		1780 million euro divided by 6.3 million inhabitants = 282.6 euro/Fleming
2.		The Netherlands		4464.1 million euro divided by 16.4 million inhabitants = 272 euro/Dutchman
3.		Luxembourg		117 million euro divided by 476.187 million inhabitants = 245.7 euro/Luxembourger
4.		Wallonia		690.5 million euro divided by 4.2 million inhabitants = 164.5 euro/Walloon
5.		Denmark		817.4 million euro divided by 5.4 million inhabitants = 151.3 euro/Dane
6.		Sweden		1280.2 million euro divided by 9.1 million inhabitants = 140.6 euro/Swede
7.		Germany		9393.6 million euro divided by 82.3 million inhabitants = 114.1 euro/German
8.		Great Britain		6156.6 million euro divided by 60.8 million inhabitants = 101.2 euro/Briton
9.		Austria		639.7 million euro divided by 8.2 million inhabitants = 78 euro/Austrian
10.		Cyprus		49.2 million euro divided by 778.684 inhabitants = 62 euro/Cypriot
11.		France		3362.3 million euro divided by 63.3 million inhabitants = 53.1 euro/Frenchman
12.		Italy		2938.3 million euro divided by 59.1 million inhabitants = 49.7 euro/Italian
13.		Finland		229.1 million euro divided by 5.2 million inhabitants = 44 euro/Finn

- - - - - - - - -
Vlaams Belang advocates solidarity on a European scale, between rich and poor countries and regions, but thinks that Flanders and the Netherlands contribute far too much. Frank Vanhecke, former chairman and Vlaams Belang MEP, calls therefore on the Dutch parties to form a Flemish-Dutch front for an absolute limitation of the EU-contribution, namely 200 euro per head. Therefore, the European Union needs to save, for example by abolishing the traveling circus of Brussels-Strasbourg (200 million per year) as well as the scandalous severance payment of more than one million euro for European Commissionaires, and by cutting in the large number of redundant ‘agencies’.

Frank Vanhecke
Vlaams Belang Member of the European Parliament

Belgium Socialist MEP Would 'Strangle' Israeli Diplomat

It is a news story back from 2007 but illustrates the Belgian political elite and mirrors the policy of PS - The Belgian Socialist Party.

By Gil Ronen for Israel National News

(IsraelNN.com) Member of the European Parliament for Belgium Véronique De Keyser stated in an address that she would like to “strangle” Israel's ambassador if he discussed Israel’s security with her.

Addressing an organization called the European Left Group last Wednesday, De Keyser opined that the European Parliament was showing “passivity” on the issue of "Palestinian prisoners" (a reference to convicted Arab terrorists from Judea, Samaria and Gaza being held in Israeli jails), and complimented the Palestinian Authority Arabs for their “moderation and maturity."

“I wonder how they are able to limit violence in the territories given the background,” she said. “If the Israeli ambassador comes in the future to speak of Israel’s security, I feel like I want to strangle him.”

The event, held at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, was part of a campaign for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah terror leader serving a life sentence in Israel for his role in several murderous attacks.

Anti-Semitism skyrocketing in Belgium

From Haaretz

Anti-Semitic attacks have skyrocketed in Belgium in 2009, according to a local government watchdog. The agency's director compared the hike to "the anti-Muslim hate campaign after 9/11."
The Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism last week said that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the first four months of 2009 has equaled the number of such incidents recorded in the whole of 2008.

According to Jozef De Witte, director of the government agency, which is under the direct responsibility of Belgium's prime minister, the hike owes to the Middle East conflict between Israel and some of its enemies.
Between 2004 and 2008, the Centre recorded around 60 anti-Semitic incidents every year. 

The same number of incidents was recorded in the first four months of this year. Incidents include violent attacks but also hate-mail. About one third of the incidents are hate-mails. The remaining two thirds are hecklings or physical abuses.

A few cases are of severe violence. The perpetrators mostly belong to Muslim groups, but also to extreme right organizations and persons.

The impact of what de Witte defined as "the conflict between Israel and Palestine" is according to the director "comparable with the hate-campaign against Muslims in Belgium" which followed the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. This statement irked some Belgian Jews.

"The two realities are incomparable," said David Lowy, founder of the JOBI group for Belgian youth in Israel. "There were some deplorable attacks against Muslims after 9/11 by extreme rightists, but mosques were not lit on fire as synagogues had been in January. Muslims were not threatened on the street."

Lowy noted that the attack in 9/11 was perpetrated in Islam's name, while Israel's invasion into Gaza was "in self-defense, unconnected to Belgian Jewery." He also remarked that no Belgian Jew or Belgian American attacked any Muslim after 9/11. "The same cannot be said about Belgian Muslims during Operation Cast Lead."

The Middle East conflict, de Witte said, is "a dormant issue which could still erupt and add new worries in the form a new wave of incidents under the mandate of the Centre." The Centre has commissioned a new report designed to delineate the manner in which the Middle East conflict is affecting racism in Belgium.

Related articles:

Flemish Jews irked by state-funded `anti-Israel` Samson opera

Belgium to stop exporting 'arms that bolster the IDF' to Israel

Report: Belgian court petitioned to arrest Livni upon arrival in Brussels

Update

New email address for blog contact, google has terminated the previous account for reasons unknown

The new mail address is: badnewsbelgium [a] gmail dot com

Regards

Bad news

Poll: Only 17% of Belgians believe in Belgium as a state

Belgium a failed state?

http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/38075/ignrt

Should Flanders continue to subsidize Belgium or declare independence?
By David Baeckelandt
Principal, U.S. Business Leader - Analytics & Research Group at Mercer Investment Consulting

Al Qaeda recruits back in Belgium and the EU, but why? Are they planning to strike?

From Los Angeles Times 24/05

Reporting from Brussels -- Determined to die as martyrs, the French and Belgian militants bought hiking boots and thermal underwear and journeyed to the wilds of Waziristan.

[...]

"We were expecting at least a welcome for 'our brothers from Europe' and a warm atmosphere of hospitality," Walid Othmani, a 25-year-old Frenchman from Lyon, recalled during an overnight interrogation in January.

Instead, the Europeans -- and at least one American -- learned that life in the shadow of the Predator is nasty, brutish and short.

Wary of spies, suspicious Al Qaeda chiefs grilled the half-dozen Belgians and French. They charged them $1,200 each for AK-47 rifles, ammunition and grenades. They made them fill out forms listing next of kin and their preference: guerrilla fighting, or suicide attacks?

Then the trainees dodged missile strikes for months. They endured disease, quarrels and boredom, huddling in cramped compounds that defied heroic images of camps full of fraternal warriors.

[...]

Islamic resistance doesn't come cheap

Beyayo is about 5-foot-5, chubby and bespectacled. Like the others, he is of North African descent. He grew up in the tough Anderlecht neighborhood of Brussels, and his brothers have done time for robbery and arms trafficking. But he does not have a criminal record. He interspersed college courses with fundamentalist Islam.
"He is the intellectual of the family," said his lawyer, Christophe Marchand. "He bears no ill will against Belgium. He went to Afghanistan to join an Islamic resistance movement."

Islamic resistance is expensive. The unemployed Beyayo scrounged together about $5,000 for the trip.

The Frenchman Othmani, a father of two, had to borrow about $1,000 from his mother, and he spent hundreds on hiking boots, a sleeping bag, thermal underwear and a "big Columbia-brand jacket for the cold."

The leader was Moez Garsalloui, 42, a Tunisian married to the Belgian widow of a militant who killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, an anti-Taliban warlord, in a suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Read the whole story from Los Angeles Times

Belgium Welcomes Islamic Terrorists

Geo TV Friday, May 22, 2009

BRUSSELS: Belgium's foreign minister says his government remains committed to taking in several detainees from Guantanamo Bay when the U.S. military prison closes down.

Speaking to La Premiere radio during his current trip to Washington, D.C., Karel De Gucht says it remains to be seen how many former inmates may be taken in.

De Gucht says in Friday's broadcast that he spoke to the White House's national security adviser Gen. James Jones about the issue. He says the matter is complicated by the free travel regulations within the European Union, which would allow the former prisoners to change their country of residence without informing the authorities.

Belgium first offered to accept ``a certain number'' of prisoners freed from Guantanamo when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Brussels in March.