Belgian citizen files complaint against anti-Bush sticker

Great job Kurt, I am with you, SPA people in our poor Belgium should realise that the USA'ers
are part of our economy. Got something to say then do it open not sneaky childisch by putting
stickers in toilets?

i also given away those stickers, gooo animo

did you know that even socialism isn't allowed in the USA. Poor victims of Katrina do not have an accurance, because everything is privatesized. (liberalism)

p.s the usa need us more then we do they

that is correct when this debate was over the working usa people in belgium. but it isn't. this debate is over the way bush is making war on iraq, and that is something else. I'am a socialist but i like american's, that is not a bad thing. But 1 thingh I must say about WWll.

The USA came to our aid because the communist (stallin) was marching into Europe. Because the Kapitalist (USA) didn' like this, they came and help us. Before that, the USA was selling weapons to each side, nazi's, japanese and allies.It weren't the americans that saved us, but the russians in the battle of stallingrad, cause there is were the war turned over in a allied victorie. But We must be fair and say that the americans are brothers for life, and we own them allot, because nobody like's to hear his son died in a war who wasn't his.

Oeps !!

Aftreden zeg ik dat ganse boeltje rode gedoe dat ze hun verantwoordelijkheden opnemen er zijn er al voor minder moeten opstappen.En dat ze het niet konden geloven dat er zo een reactie zou komen van de Verenigde Staten wat zitten die kluivers daar dan te doen met ons belastinggeld

als ze de geschiedenis van de Verenigde Staten nog niet kennen en hoe zij voelen over hun vlag dat ze dan maar toiletten gaan schoonmaken daar zijn ze toch het best in (ze te bevuilen toch)En maar liegen dat ze van niks weten terwijl ze bij Van De lanotte worden verdeeld en gemaakt.

Je kan ze bestellen op hun spa site Gratis per 50 stuks tuurlijk het is ons belastinggeld word wakker allemaal en stop met slapen !!!

300 000 werknemers die voor de Amerikanen werken in Belgie omzet export 226 milj. dollar en wij gaan daar een beetje op plassen wie is hier volslagen gek ?

Ik ben die communisten zo beu als koude pap (spa)

En dan maar zeggen dat het Vlaams belang onze economie schaad je moet maar durven !!

@DOF: this is clearly a case of free piss.

The only clear point here is damage to public property. And the sticker doesn't bear a 'responsible editor' statement as required by Belgian Law. Points enough to be made here, but *not* free speech.

An athlete who wants to compete in the Tour de France should be training long before June. Students for, say, civil engineering, should be rehearsing well before June.

In both cases one should be well prepared in order to succeed.

What Frans Groenendijk is trying to tell us is that if the athlete gives an advice to the student to start preparing for the Big Thing in time, the student doesn't have to heed that advice since competing for the Tour and doing math exams are very different things. Ditto the student vs. the cyclist.

"...unlike Bin Laden Hitler was never encouraged and supported by the US administration to fight a war to another opponent of the USA."

This is another bogus argument. Frans is unfamiliar with the concept of "time frame". Or rather, he does his utmost best not to take it into account. If UBL has ever been supported by the US of A, it was in a time with vastly different power balances and with prominent threats which came from totally different corners, while the threats we know today were back then not even looming at the horizon.

I remember very well that when I was a student in Ghent in the mid-eighties, I was a Saddam supporter. Why? Because Saddam was the secular strongman who stood up to that crazed freak in Teheran. Saddam was not known for his crimes yet and that raving black-clad idiot Khomeini had violated International Right by occupying the US Embassy and illegally taking 52 Americans hostage.

(now that come to think of it, I don't recall mass demonstrations in the West protesting that hostagetaking. That would have been different methinks if the US had occupied Irans Embassy in the States and held 52 Iranians hostage. But I digress.)

Anyway, the big conundrum of that time, the Cold War, was solved by another Great President by the name of Reagan, and Frans, who then maybe just had grown out of his short pants, was undoubtedly also calling the President of the States a dimbulb. Twenty years have gone by, a situation different in circumstances but equal in nature has developed and once again a US President is ridiculed and spit upon by the likes of Frans. And all this while two horrible regimes have been decapitated, three democratic elections have taken place in "occupied" countries, Libya has given up its WMD program, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco are experimenting with democratic reforms and, to top it all off, Mubarak has annonced he will change Egyptian Constitution so that other candidates than himself can run for the Presidency in September.

All of this in a little more than three years... Meanwhile morally superior politically correct car-keying persons of diversity and tolerance are pissing on Bush stickers in urinals. Congratulations you fools.

Jeff wrote: "Similarly, few people here realized what a menace Islamic terrorism was until September 11. In both 1941 and 2001, the US suddenly awoke to the threat because of a surprise attack on our territory. The interesting difference is that most Europeans realized fascism was a huge danger considerably before 1941 (for obvious reasons), but now it is more than three years after 2001 and many still do not seem to see the threat. And the Islamic terrorist menace is actually greater in one sense. There was never much possibility of Hitler getting nuclear weapons. But it's almost inevitable that the Islamic terrorists will acquire them, unless we take strong pro-active measures to prevent it."

I disagree with almost every piece of what you say here but my main objection is to the idea that we can really learn a lot from WWII and the years immediately preceding it: the difference are to big.

To mention one of them: unlike Bin Laden Hitler was never encouraged and supported by the US administration to fight a war to another opponent of the USA. A few weeks ago I saw the German movie "der untergang" showing how Hitler in his last weeks. A few days before his suicide he still suggested that he could convince the Americans to join forces against the USSR but he had no chance. I can go on to elaborate on this comparison and we will decrease the already small chances to even get our difference of opinions more clear.

Gannongate is not about republicans and bloggers. Gannongate is about LEFTIE bloggers outing a gay guy because he is on the right. THAT has been more of the story than his fake credentials.

Gannon veered from the gay left plantation, and the left bloggers are going to make sure he is punished as an example.

Lieven: "I don't see anything in your texts that contradicts my "facts"."

I do. You state that "The US didn't declare war on Germany but was quite content to sit on the side lines until in December 1941 Germany declared war on them"

Roosevelt had long before realized that war with Nazi Germany was inevitable and was in fact looking for a pretext to start it. I call that something vastly different from "sitting on the sidelines".

Just like GWB now, Roosevelt was not a warmonger. He simply understood that if left in power, a vicious regime that had swallowed the whole of Europe and denied its populations basic human rights, would have to be defeated sooner or later. Not only because the Nazis trodded everything the US and its Constitution stood for with iron-spiked boots but lest it not, having acquired Europes industrial and scientific basis, finally become a threat for the States itself.

"BTW, do you think the US would have declared war on Germany if Hitler hadn't beaten them to the punch, something which he wasn't obliged to do under his treaty with Japan?"

I certainly do. Like I said, far from "sitting on the sidelines" the US government was merely waiting for a pretext. This is proven by the fact that only hours after Germany declared war on the US, on December 11, the US did the same towards Germany. Besides, there was already a virtual state of war between the two, the respective declarations only formalized it.

@Michael Cosyns: I don't see anything in your texts that contradicts my "facts". US neutrality was indeed a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" pretext affair both for domestic and international reasons. Those torpedo boats were part of the general Lend Lease program although predating the actual Act.

(From http://www.ww2pac... : Fifty older destroyers were transferred to Britain 3Sep40 in a trade for leases on British bases, thus predating the official lend lease program of free material aid.) Regarding the second part, I'm very much aware that U-boats didn't do much in the Pacific. The whole point of the US strategy was to help the UK so that the German navy didn't have the resources to get involved in the Pacific.

BTW, do you think the US would have declared war on Germany if Hitler hadn't beaten them to the punch, something which he wasn't obliged to do under his treaty with Japan?

To Lieven and Frans -- sometimes people don't easily recognize a danger until it hits them personally. If the US had given Europe more help fighting Nazism earlier in World War II, during 1939-1941, then the war might have been shorter and less bloody for all countries. Instead, many Americans did not see what a menace fascism was -- until the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Similarly, few people here realized what a menace Islamic terrorism was until September 11. In both 1941 and 2001, the US suddenly awoke to the threat because of a surprise attack on our territory. The interesting difference is that most Europeans realized fascism was a huge danger considerably before 1941 (for obvious reasons), but now it is more than three years after 2001 and many still do not seem to see the threat. And the Islamic terrorist menace is actually greater in one sense. There was never much possibility of Hitler getting nuclear weapons. But it's almost inevitable that the Islamic terrorists will acquire them, unless we take strong pro-active measures to prevent it.

Due to freedom of speech, Ms. Gatti and her associates have the right to trumpet their own asininity with their stickers -- though certainly not to stick them on other people's property without the owner's consent! Nevertheless I greatly appreciate Mr. Carnier's words and actions. Though he did not succeed in court, he succeeded in striking a blow for better transatlantic relations.

would have been attacked, sorry

Since the US lobby once again draws the World War II card, perhaps a little history refresher. The US didn't declare war on Germany but was quite content to sit on the side lines until in December 1941 Germany declared war on them. Until that point the US was nominally neutral and any aid they had given the UK was in the form of loans (Lend Lease Act). Once they were attacked by Japan, however, they certainly didn't want the German U-boats helping the Japanese in the Pacific so taking the war closer to Germany was in their own strategic and tactical interests. Western Europe should certainly be grateful to the US for their part in our liberation but that doesn't oblige us to a perpetual state of vassalage.

I think I'll have to echo first Luc and then Tom/CA here.

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

So YES, the scoundrels of the Socialist Party, their Youth Movement "Animo", Laurent Wittock, Valentina Gatti and whatever §%ù*+~(^è!?ç#@&;?!!!! dimbulb is on the apparatchik payroll have the RIGHT to defame the nation which twice sent out its sons to die for them.

As for Kurt, I don't care if his case becomes void through the abolition of this law yes or no, as a signal his complaint can count. Kurt has saved our honour. Luc too, for helping to get his story out. Kurt, if you are reading this: goed gedaan makker!!!

Francis' comments are only relevant to the criminal portions, the civil parts of the sentence remain unaffected.

In the case the judge orders Laurent en Valentina to physically remove all the stickers without delay, the sentence will hold up.

There's precedent, it would appear:

http://oud.refdag...