And the smoke from the fire is still rising

For years it's been creeping up on us, not by loony right-wing landslide wins, but the inch-by-inch but nevertheless solid shift from left to center, where even treehuggers who should look under every stone for any and all solution to this troubled Earth's problems cling to one Holy Writ and proclaim all other freethinkers heretics. Too much energy spent on climbing up to the next level, instead of pulling others less fortunate up to ours.

1984 and other horrendous mirrors were all the buzz last decade (another decade already? oh, how time flies!), and we've had a good laugh and patted ourselves on the back: look, with such messages abound in our culture we've staved off the dangers for sure.

But all the time it's been creeping, lads, not in our faces like 1984, but inch-by-inch like it always goes. And one day we'll wake up to find ourselves arrived at that next level, staring out our window at the "blessed" Morec spire and gathering each morning at the apartment block's warden unit to submit to the routine social check government demands of us. Are our shoes neat and shiny? Do we make enough money to live where we live? Do we toe the government's line?

Inch-by-inch, is that how the 80s happened? Reign of fear and apathy, rule of propriety and hypocrite cleanliness? Then where are those who'd protect our rights, every thing our ancestors obtained, remind those idiots of their promises, hold them to the law? I search the left for signs of renewal, but only find career opportunists, nobody willing to rock the boat.

I live in a little peanut country not exempt from riots, on that line where businesses seek cheap rent only to poke their leased C300s in the faces of families of at least 5 trying to survive on 2 paychecks (and lo and behold they are surprised when they get mugged and need to hire bodyguards!). I look out from this little peanut country into the world and hope people so hurt by the system, so insulted by the unabashed flaunting of riches*, find the energy not only to lift a brick from the pavement, but in the end to be the source of something new, a left to the left-which-is-now-center. Doubt we'll find many Caucasian faces amongst them, but that's okay. You don't need to be pasty-faced to jape, to blow up Parliament.

And look it has already begun...


*as if all bling comes with the guarantee of invulnerability and unstealability. When exactly did Modesty crawl into the corner of the room to die?

P.S.: Did you see that lot, how the other flinched but spoke no less honest of the flatscreens he pinched; did you see how he timidly glanced at his 16-year-old fellow who pinched nappies and a whole set of Johnson's for his kid? Ha, and they say there's no honour among thieves. In all that violence and destruction, all the yelling of pro and con, of Law please protect our Greed, of opportunists grabbing a quick buck (what and we don't cheat the hell out of taxes?), of bricks flying from one side to the other's glass house, there at least one blinding flash of sense: she lives and breathes yet, Modesty, hoorah!

I grow up and drag along in my suitcase...

With all the Is A Crisis, Is Not A Crisis* going on in Belgium the last couple of months, I figured it must be a really strange country young Belgians live in. Literally all of their life they've been seeing politicians shout and behave like adolescent shitheads or have talks that seem to go nowhere about things only politicians comprehend. They grow up in a Belgium where politicians continually polarize any problem in the country into something from one or the other side of the language barrier.

* sung on the melody of Soul Coughing's Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago

That train of thought got me thinking about what subjects from Belgium or international politics pierced the shell of my oblivious childhood years to leave a lasting influence on my then naive, nay, unformed view on the world outside.

World politics were incomprehensible. Absolutely. Bernard Benson's Peacebook offered a solution quite as simple as letting a little boy ask why big mean old people don't kiss and make up and then have them realize the kid is right. Can I have a collective "Awww that's so kewt"

And while harbouring that Peacebook dream all warm and fuzzy inside, I notice people digging out nuclear shelters in their backyards, even in little old Belgium. Mad Max beyond Thunderdome (1985) only fuels the easily titillated imagination of a child: this is what the end of the world looks like!

Then, 1986, cherry on the pie: spending lunchbreaks at school looking at the sky to see if you can see the poisonous cloud that's blowing in from Chernobyl.
Wait for the icing on this childhood's cake, darling digiblips: SEEING WHEN THE WIND BLOWS DOES NOT HELP OKAY??!!

Damn the world was a scary place back then!
But it did prepare me for whatever shit the world throws me now, from tsunamis in faraway countries to global warming and being an actual jinx for England whenever I visit (terrorist attacks, major strikes), to the End of Belgium. Nothing short of the true Apocalypse can rattle my cage, heh.

On the smaller--Belgian--scale, politics were zzzzzz boring, and televised debates were a contest in conservative fashions and nasal mumblings.
Nonetheless there was some scary shit going on!

Scariest mofos from childhood are the Nijvel Gang/Brabant Massacres, brutal gangsters active from 1982 to 1985, killing, torturing and plundering whatever they came across. The news speaks of pursuits and shootouts with police but on television it still looks like a contest in conservative fashions and nasal mumblings instead of CHIPS. The only exciting piece is the getaway car: a white Golf GTI. Suddenly, EVERYBODY wants a GTI. Dude, the cops can't catch up!

Then there's the very confusing (for kiddies) terrorism of the Cellules Communistes Combattantes, CCC in short. They were EVIL, I mean communist, bombs, links to all those other and certainly more deadly redski terrorists like Rote Armee Fraktion and Action Directe. But let's be honest: if you're turning in your own bombs, and giving the public services enough time to clear the area, you're way nicer than the *real* European terrorists. In the end the only deaths involving a CCC bombing occurred after an error in communication between public services, and this error may or may not have been deliberate, given the unexplained issues that surround both cases.

Good horror only functions if some of it is unresolved and left to fester.
Growing out of '80s childhood I find myself nearly trapped in that nightmare scene from American Werewolf in London: with the Gulf War the Mad Max reality can't be far behind, Chernobyl is on fire, and
legal prying and journalist investigations into unexplained issue and mysteries surrounding the CCC as well as the Nijvel Gang offer links with US stay-behind politics against communist influence. This brings the idea home of what a Cold WAR means. Nothing can be proven, though; it's all out there in the same fuzzball as Gladio, P2 and the fuzzpluzz which may or may not be named Echelon.


All in all, I guess my cold-hearted, cool-headed and sometimes acidly sarcastic worldview is not a surprise after all. Seeing all the truths and lies and love&rockets going on on my TV screen, I wonder what the world will look like to them kids when they're all grown up...

The return of the not so thin white duchess

Here I am, back from France, head still reeling with the impossibly complicated history of Europe, with a gazillion pictures to sort out. History is written by the victor, and then rewritten and rewritten some more. So if you do go to the region, a bit of historical background certainly helps to put things into perspective. It also helps you to avoid sounding like a total idiot; actually  overheard in one castle:
"Well, they certainly have a lot of things from Brussels and Flanders here"
"Didn't I read somewhere that the owner of the castle Belgian?"
Ack! We're talking about a period long before Belgium existed, I mean, hello, France wasn't France yet!

But anyways, history is just a big noodle puzzle of facts and you can twist the story any way you want it. Just to give some impression of the noodles: there's this large part in European history where the king of France had the Île-de-France (part of modern day Paris, and mightier persons (Duke of Orléans and Maximilian of Austria) had all the rest. Some of these mightier men also had England, like one of the most beloved kings of England (if the Robin Hood story is to be believed): Richard the Lionheart. But if you look at the facts (king of England from 1189 to 1199, hadn't set foot in England yet by 1194) it's easy to see why he would be beloved: what's better than to have a king who doesn't meddle in local affairs!


It was good fun, informative, thought-provoking, and I had plenty of good ideas even if I didn't do one jot of writing. Ha. And now for some fencing!