19 september 2006, 22:35
Quote:
"In Brussels, which somehow manages to combine the grayness of
bureaucracy with the gaudiness of modern popular culture's worst
aspects, I stayed in a hotel among whose amenities was 24-hour access
to pornography. Thus were freedom of expression and my human rights
protected at the same time.
In my hotel room was also a copy of The Golden Book of Belgium 2001.
Perhaps the intervening years had not been so golden. The Golden Book
of that year, however, was dedicated to the place of women in Belgium
[...]
Walking through the city center, littered and crumbling, I was invited
into several sex shows by men who did not easily take no for an answer.
Drunks were sleeping in doorways, and very large numbers of male youths
loitered with goodness knows what [...]
A very large proportion of the loiterers were Moroccan in origin,
dressed in the international uniform of the modern slum. They seemed
drawn to this seedy environment as flies to a carcass. It took me a few
moments to realize that not a single woman of Moroccan origin was to be
seen there. Where were they, the women of Moroccan origin? What was
their place in Belgian society? [...]
The answer was evident in the morning, after the sun came up. Large
numbers of women of Moroccan women, dressed in a non-European way, were
in the streets, as if a nocturnal curse had lifted. [...]
>>>>
One of the reasons The Golden Book did not ask the question was that
the authors might have been prosecuted had they done so. The first duty
of the intellectual in Belgium is not to state the obvious but to avoid
it. Perhaps Belgium is in the European vanguard, which is why it is
such a suitable choice for the capital of Europe.
<<<<
(http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2006-09-19td.html hat tip:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1356)
mvg, H.M.
"In Brussels, which somehow manages to combine the grayness of
bureaucracy with the gaudiness of modern popular culture's worst
aspects, I stayed in a hotel among whose amenities was 24-hour access
to pornography. Thus were freedom of expression and my human rights
protected at the same time.
In my hotel room was also a copy of The Golden Book of Belgium 2001.
Perhaps the intervening years had not been so golden. The Golden Book
of that year, however, was dedicated to the place of women in Belgium
[...]
Walking through the city center, littered and crumbling, I was invited
into several sex shows by men who did not easily take no for an answer.
Drunks were sleeping in doorways, and very large numbers of male youths
loitered with goodness knows what [...]
A very large proportion of the loiterers were Moroccan in origin,
dressed in the international uniform of the modern slum. They seemed
drawn to this seedy environment as flies to a carcass. It took me a few
moments to realize that not a single woman of Moroccan origin was to be
seen there. Where were they, the women of Moroccan origin? What was
their place in Belgian society? [...]
The answer was evident in the morning, after the sun came up. Large
numbers of women of Moroccan women, dressed in a non-European way, were
in the streets, as if a nocturnal curse had lifted. [...]
>>>>
One of the reasons The Golden Book did not ask the question was that
the authors might have been prosecuted had they done so. The first duty
of the intellectual in Belgium is not to state the obvious but to avoid
it. Perhaps Belgium is in the European vanguard, which is why it is
such a suitable choice for the capital of Europe.
<<<<
(http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2006-09-19td.html hat tip:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1356)
mvg, H.M.