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You mean, based on kids going on strike because their schools are forcing them to? A bunch of schools in Belgium have turned these protests into an extracurricular activity, with mandatory attendance. I kid you not (in Dutch)

Something similar happened in the Netherlands when schools allowed children to attend. One of the school's principals was interviewed, and stated that it's good to encourage children to demonstrate and voice their opinion in this manner. Then, in an unbelievably rare case of a journalist actually asking a good follow-up question, he was asked if he would be just as happy with the kids skipping school in order to demonstrate against the effects of mass migration. (He wouldn't be ok with that, of course...)

No, we Europeans should stop singing "Imagine all the people sharing all the world" whenever an enemy attacks us in the heart of our society. My country still uses weapons from the 60's, bought right before the hippies spread communist ideas over the continent. The military literary have to shout "pang, pang" when practicing, because they have no bullets. But the left wing rulers say it is good and causes no problems to have no ammunition. They are more worried about human rights like forcing the public to accept transgenders and Salafist Muslims in the army. Although the government has finally realized that Salafist in the army were not a good idea since over 100 of them deserted to join IS. But the Salafist are just put on non-active (so still getting paid) instead of being fired because it would "so offend the poor Muslim community". A few months ago a minister admit that those fighting with IS were still paid a generous wage and were even treated in the hospital (paid by the tax payers) and allowed to join IS again... how can you ever win such a war against IS if it weren't for the Russians and Americans ....
 
Just imagine if the US would have put Nazi Germans in their ranks to fight the Nazi Empire, while forbidding any other soldier, politician or citizen to criticize this policy because 'that's racism'... who do you think would have won the war?
 
The only politicians in charge that are warning for the lingering Marxists ideologies come from the former communist countries, yet they are ignored and put away as extreme right neo nazi's... instead of listening to people who had first hand experience with communism.

Funny how reality is wholly different isn't it? That's why the EU(commission) has come out saying to paraphrase "we'll do whatever we want, and if the public doesn't like it too bad." [citation needed]

Nuff said...

I have no idea who this Nuff guy is or why you didn't quote him, but here's the interview with Van Rompuy.

http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dm...

Oh my. A citation. Whatever will you do now? Spin commencing in 3..2..1..

A few details on http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dm...
"Belgian professor in cryptography hacked"
("This is an English summary of an article published in today's [01/02/2014] edition of Belgian newspaper De Standaard. The article concerns the hacking of the computer of professor Jean-Jacques Quisquater")
Note the German aspect too near the end of the article.

There is no major news agency in Europe reporting about this outside of Turkey.

Apparently reading newspapers is becoming a lost art.
France
Germany
Belgium
The Netherlands
Great Britain

Clearly cut off. It might be that in reality it is not like that, but the pictures you see still have it.

SABAM (the group in question) said, in a response, that it was a misunderstanding (translated, Dutch original). They charge 15 euro per public reading, and they cannot distinguish between adults and children. They always have to charge (their words, not mine).

For those of you wondering where the misunderstanding is: they invented a nice strawman for that, by saying that the library wasn't yet slapped with a yearly fee of about 250 euro. Which is true, that hadn't happened yet. But, from the sound of it, SABAM has every intention to do so.

Thankfully, this hasn't gone unnoticed. SABAM is losing favour with politicians. Hopefully this storm will go somewhere. Note that SABAM isn't the only rightsholder club in Belgium (there apparently is some competition! yay free market!), so dissolving them ought to be an option.

According to this article in de Standaard, which I found through Google, it was Copiepresse, the branch organisation of French and German Belgian newspapers, which filed the suit, hence only their material is removed. Furthermore, according to Simon Morrison, who is Google's European manager for copyright issues and communication, the papers can get links to their articles included again using meta tags.

It's not forbidden because it's a tower, it's forbidden because it is a specific religious construction.

Seems to me that it is forbidden because it is a tower of a certain type (minaret) that residents feel wouldn't fit in with the rest of the environment. I live in country where in certain areas zoning laws prohibit buildings that don't fit in with the "rural nature" of the community (such as high-rises), etc. Prohibiting the building of a middle eastern type structure in a traditional swiss town isn't that far fetched to me and certainly NOT immediately evidence of discrimination.

The minarets have nothing to do with the *prayer* itself, but the *call to prayer*. (I'm not a muslim neither but at least I try to get informed about it)

I was being sarcastic. The call to prayer is obsolete, you can broadcast it to every household that wants it over the radio. Of course that won't stop muslims trying to get their minarets to blast out the call to prayer (article in dutch) even over predominantly western populations, calling discrimination every time they don't get their way.

Belgium decided today to adopt ODF for all goverment-related documents, starting from September 2008. Microsoft Office will no longer be allowed to be used, unless it fully supports ODF by then.

Being able to read ODF has to be implemented on all federal computersystems a year earlier.

I would provide a link to an article, but I don't find anything in english. Here is a dutch article

Dutch/Belgian article.
98.7198 registerd of wich 77.684 (Only one request)
The firsts where tickets.eu, job.eu, and hotels.eu.
sex.eu was asked for 204 times.

So expect to get mail for tickets to have sex in European hotels while looking for a new job.

Today, on national (government-sponsored) radio news in your typical EU country:

"Not respecting the Kyoto protocol could lead to natural disasters like tsunamis"

I'm not making this up. If you understand dutch, check out this letter by someone else who heard it.

Belgian on-line media is also covering the events :

Le Soir (in french)
La Libre Belgique
De Standaard (in dutch).

Also in french :
Le Monde

-DZM

This morning (Feb. 16) the following appeared in Belgian newspapers and the national radio news. Marc Verwilghen, Belgian minister of Justice (who, BTW, became very popular in Belgium because of his rather strict and efficient approach to the child porn scandals and subsequent justice reform a few years ago) has publicly declared that sueing Napster users will receive lowest priority from Belgian justice.

What actually happened: IFPI (the Belgian record industry lobby) looked up IP numbers for about 12.000 Napster users and sent them letters of complaint via their ISPs. About one hundred of these users were apparently found to be 'persistent in their evils' and are now sued by IFPI, who wants to fine each of these people for about $25.000. Today, the Belgian ministry of Justice has publicly declared that it frowns upon IFPI's practice of scanning people's IP #s and requesting domiciliary visits, stating that "public prosecutors should sue in such cases, and examining magistrates are the ones able to issue search warrants. Not private companies, not organisations like IFPI". And, as stated, Belgian justice will give lowest priority to prosecuting people who download music illegally -- they might be more strict about people who provide illegal mp3s, though.

Also, the 'Commissie voor de Persoonlijke Levenssfeer', a Belgian organisation which wants to protect consumers' privacy rights, is protesting against the way in which IFPI has been scanning people's IP numbers. They claim that IFPI's systematic 'tattling' is against these people's fundamental privacy rights.

I hope I've been accurate enough in describing all this; English is not my native language. For those among you who read Dutch it might be interesting to check the websites of the Flemish newspaper De Standaard and of VRT teletext (Flemish broadcasting organisation).