Word: belgians
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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FEELING BLUE Smurfette's dead? What kind of world is this? That's what UNICEF wanted people to ask last fall when they saw this Belgian carpet-bombing cartoon--meant to boost awareness of war's effect on children...
...movie's critical response was tepid. Three war movies also failed to astound: Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a predictable rendering of the 1920 Irish battle of Catholic peasants against the Black and Tans; Bruno Dumont's Flandres, a horrifying but uninvolving study of Belgian farmers committing atrocities in an African war; and Rachid Bouchareb's Indigènes (Days of Glory), which dramatized the valor of Algerians who fought for the French in World War II, then found their pensions denied them after the Algerian conflict - an inspiring and troubling true story, encased...
Congo's history often seems like an uninterrupted tale of woe. After decades of often brutal foreign rule, first as the private possession of King Leopold II of Belgium and then as a Belgian colony, Congo won its independence in 1960. But within months its first elected Prime Minister had been killed by Belgium- and U.S.-backed opponents because of his growing ties to the Soviet Union, an assassination that eventually opened the way for army general Mobutu Sese Seko to grab power. A U.S. favorite during the cold war, Mobutu presided over one of the most corrupt regimes...
...racist politics was more deeply rooted. His father had been a founding member of the Vlaams Blok, the anti-immigration, Flemish separatist party renamed Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Interest, in 2004 in a bid to broaden its appeal. His aunt, Frieda Van Themsche, is a VB member of the Belgian parliament. And VB is no fringe party: it got 24% of the Flemish vote in 2004 regional elections, making it the largest party in Flanders, Belgium's biggest and most prosperous region...
...heaviest possible punishment for the murderer" and declaring that "such disturbed criminals ought to have no place in our community." But other politicians and commentators were quick to connect the murders to VB's xenophobic policies. "These horrible and cowardly crimes are a form of extreme racism," said Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. "No one can ignore what the far right can lead to." Whether such charges will erode the VB's appeal, or give it a new underdog allure, is still not clear...