Belgian government "involuntarily" compares Bush with monkey

Belgium

Belgian government "involuntarily" compares Bush with monkey

Scoop on front page of HLN

Football hooliganism, or "soccer violence" as Americans would call it, is a problem throughout the world. The Belgian city of Bruges, where football club "Club Brugge" is highly popular, has developed a strategy against this violence. One of the elements is that special attendants will be present on buses that football supporters use to travel to and from the statium. These attendants are volunteers who are given a training course in conflict management and communication by the city. This training course is of such high quality that Patrick Dewael, vice prime minister and minister of the interior in the Belgian federal government, wrote a letter to all mayors and police chiefs of the country, recommending the training course and offering the Powerpoint presentation on request. Security in soccer stadiums is one of Dewael's responsibilities.

What Dewael did not know, however, was that the Powerpoint presentation contains a slide comparing president Bush with a chimpansee. The slide is used to illustrate the importance of body language in conflict management. "Fifty five percent of human communication occurs trough nonverbal language, thirty eight percent through the sound and inflexion of our voice, and only eight percent through the meaning of the words we speak", it says on a slide, immediately followed by another slide, showing pictures of president Bush and a chimpansee, where both are showing the same postures and the same facial expressions.

(click here for more and larger pictures)

Patrick Dewael

"Bad taste", Dewael admitted when Flemish newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN) confronted him with the pictures:

I hadn't seen the pictures. The slide presentation was not made by the ministry. But the comparison [between Bush and a chimp] does not belong in that presentation. The city of Bruges should have avoided that.

Yves Buysse, who is a citizen of Bruges and a senator for Vlaams Belang, the largest opposition party in Belgium, has formally summoned Dewael to explain the incident in the Belgian Senate. He adds:

After the incident during president Bush's visit to Brussels, when a cabinet member of another vice prime minister [Johan Vande Lanotte] had produced toilet stickers to start a campaign against the American president, the distribution of pictures comparing Bush with an ape in an official message from the minister of the interior, is not very clever.

The pictures comparing Bush to a chimp are not new, and can be found on a dedicated website, BushOrChimp.com. Oh, and this is not an April Fool's joke. The documents are real, and all this appeared in the newspaper on this last day of March.

UPDATE 19:38 CEST VRT TV news reports that the ministry has officially apologized to the U.S. Embassy in Brussels for the Bush-monkey comparison. Patrick Dewael is on a skiing holiday in Austria, but his cabinet has sent written apologies to the U.S. Embassy, Heidi Deridder from the Ministry of the Interior said on television.

UPDATE APRIL 1, 02:02 CEST Flemish newspaper "De Standaard" writes: Minister of the Interior Patrick Dewael mistakenly promoted a photo series that compared president George W. Bush with a chimpansee. [...] Dewael, who was unaware of any evil, immediately ordered the pictures to be removed from the presentation. He also offered his apologies to the American embassy. There's also an article in French in La Libre Belgique.

This incident in the press:
Calcutta Telegraph, India: Aping Bush
Expatica, Brussels: Bush chimp photos embarass Dewael
ABC News, Australia: Belgian minister regrets Bush-chimp comparison
Mail & Guardian, South Africa: Belgium red-faced over pics of Bush and chimps
Reuters: Official Calls Bush-Chimp Comparison Bad Taste
Obvious News, Canada: Belgians rapped over Bush-chimp comparison
AZ Central, Phoenix, Arizona: Bush-chimp comparison said to be in bad taste
Gulf Faily News, Bahrain: Manual likens Bush to a chimpanzee
China Economic Net, Beijing: Belgium red-faced over Bush chimpanzee photos

published on Thursday 31 March 2005 @ 17:40 CET - Share on Facebook

Comments

Brian Taladro

Thursday 31 March 2005 @ 20:11 CET - #6883

Oh oh oh, dear old Lvb tries another warp, in a headline this time, to start a bush fire in Bushland. The quote marks around involuntarily are a masterly move. The word involuntarily sure has its function in the sentence: it tells us how it really was (i.e. the Belgian government didn't compare Bush to a monkey at all, the Belgian government wasn't involved at all, it's busy enough with serious stuff and sane enough not to concentrate on comparing presidents to animals, even minister De Wael wasn't involved, there is no case, este gilipollez entera está sobre nada) and Lvb will always be able to fall back onto that position, but meanwhile those quotation marks make the word tricky and dubious and somehow give it a ring of untruth, offering diehard Bush fans a chance to get up their danders. Great tabloid expertise! Now if the Little Green Footballs guys in their eagerness would overlook the obvious facts and just pick this up for the fun of it ...

dof

Thursday 31 March 2005 @ 20:39 CET - #6887

" the Belgian government wasn't involved at all"

Clearly that is the case, and also the problem: any reasonably sane government should have vetted the contents of the training programme before recommending it.

luc

Thursday 31 March 2005 @ 20:58 CET - #6890

As is clearly explained in the article, the Belgian government was not at the origin of the Powerpoint presentation, but as they distributed and recommended the presentation, they are 'involved'.

And if you look at the graphics, you'll see that I just translated the title from "Het Laatste Nieuws", and replaced the name of the minister by "the government", since a minister acts on behalf of the executive power, i.e. the government.

Brian Taladro

Thursday 31 March 2005 @ 21:45 CET - #6895

@luc: So the fact that The Last News uses a dodgy headline absolves you when you translate it, make it even worse by spreading the blame over the whole government and knowingly mislead by the use of tricky quotation marks? And does recommending a training course mean one is responsible for a powerpoint somebody else made in its margin? Besides everybody with a bit of sense is aware of the fact that this is just about stuff the ministers' underlings have pushed in his name. As he's said himself: 'he hadn't seen it'! Come on, this is again just hot air and poses in stead of the serious information and debate one might expect from a website taken care of by a cagey guy like you!
Too bad The Outlaw has already most humbly apologized. Otherwise we might agree among ourselves it was all just a good joke.

Petit Renaud

Thursday 31 March 2005 @ 21:52 CET - #6896

La Libre Belgique:

«Ce collage n’était pas une initiative du ministčre de l’Intérieur», a expliqué M. Dewael, qui va demander ŕ la ville de Bruges que les pages controversées soient retirées au plus vite du manuel.

Voilŕ ce qui dit tout. Bien ŕ vous, Renaud.

Outlaw Mike

Thursday 31 March 2005 @ 22:33 CET - #6897

I think that Talandro guy is either surfing the waves in La-La Land or shuttling pizzas in Massachewsitts. You're right dude, our government is NEVER involved... when it comes to taking up responsibility for something. Examples are legion.

Take this case: as you rightly point out, the whole affair is basically nothing in itself.

Starting with a bang, in all likelihood ending with a whisper.

Dewael done nothing, the jerk or jerks in the hierarchy responsible for this done nothing, probably Vito Fossella writing another protest letter. That is why, after the Bush Piss Sticker and the BushChimp Powerpoint Presentation we may have, come May, Bush Targets on Belgian Army shooting ranges... if our sorry excuse for a Secdef Andre Flahaut "If I were an American, I'd vote for the Democrats!" after his excursions to Cotonou and Hanoi still has bucks to buy a round or two.

Problem is, an attitude like that - refusing to take responsibility - can have serious consequences if the affair is likely to evolve the other way - from a whisper to a bang.

After the brutal murder of 10 Belgian paras in Rwanda in 1994 the Belgian government IMMEDIATELY pulled out the whole contingent and then all hell broke loose. Now, I'm not saying those 1,000,000 dead Rwandans would still live if our troops had stayed. But I'm pretty sure that if instead of pulling out they had dropped the whole Paracommando Brigade and kicked some Hutu ass, the genocide might have been kept confined to Kigali.

Alas. Backbone, you know. Taking responsibility.

de andere kijk

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 08:37 CET - #6912

The following should be done:
- find out who did make the presentation and take appropriate action against the perpetrator, we should follow-up on this one
- review all internal procedures to avoid such things in the future

Meanwhile, apologies have already been made by the secretary in charge, which should be accepted.

The piss-sticker case was far more outrageous than this.

ivan

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 13:28 CET - #6922

I think that Bush is used to more than this. I'm no Bush-hater but i can't feel any outrage whatsoever, just at the time when Deckers and Ornelis made a mistake on their radio show by comparing Venus Williams with a monkey. (I was mad however at those politically correct fundamentalists who wanted to punish D&O for their stupid but innocent remark). Big deal! I was outraged with the piss-sticker case, but not with the action as such but with the lies and distortions surrounding it. This time, well concerning body language, maybe Bush has something in common with a monkey. So what?

Rudi

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 13:42 CET - #6924

If the Minister signed such a letter, someone prepared it for him and was assumed to check what was on the presentation. People in ministerial cabinets are in charge to prepare AND CHECK what they recieve etc... So for me the main responsable of this mistake is the assistant of the Minister, as well as the stupid company that prepared the powerpoint presentation. Both should be fired!

Barbara

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 16:45 CET - #6932

It's really so juvenile it's hard to be truly angry (I'll stand in as the object of the insult for the purposes of this discussion). But I would expect that decent people would object, and strenuously, to this to achieve maximum embarrassment of the responsible parties. I mean really- the outrage of the comments is more about being seen as a country of twerps and so is legitimate outrage.

As to the substance of the presentation, the chimp and the President both look calm and friendly and so have evidently resolved any conflicts peaceably- was that what the presentation was about? Oooohhhh, I get it. It was completely gratuitous, the proverbial cheap shot. I hope they have a laugh track for this show so that the audience can tell what the funny bits are supposed to be.

Koen Robeys

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 18:39 CET - #6939

I'd like to point out that since the truly excellent book "Chimpansee Politics" (1982) by Frans De Waal - and much follow-up research (including by himself) - it is no longer a surprise that human and chimpanzee behaviour display striking resemblances.

Since facial expressions and body language are especially important parts of that very political behaviour, it is then obvious they will be good examples of said similarities.

Now *assuming* a presentation for which this insight is useful knowledge, it will be very easy to illustrate this by comparing a human with a chimpansee. Suppose *you* are making that presentation: Are you going to use the most recognized face of the most important politician on earth as your example, or will it be Pipo the Clown?

So I tend to agree with Brian: the only way for this absolute triviality to be news, is for somebody to *make* it news. I do recognize Luc's point it was the newspaper who did so, including the quote marks.

I just watched the movie "Hotel Rwanda". It occurs to me that the scene where the black lady, after learning the whites will be evacuated from the killing fields, and the blacks will not, asks "and what about us?", is a more striking question than "did the minister compare the president to a chimpansee?".

Koen

Lieven

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 18:40 CET - #6940

It's hardly De Wael's fault that Bush looks like a chimp, so why should he apologize? Besides, the chimp hasn't complained yet.

ivan

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 18:50 CET - #6941

Have you seen the chimps body language of facial expressions, Lieven? If not, how can you know that the chimp hasn't yet complained? Now for a man regularily compared with Hitler and given what Koen has written, i think this is a major improvement.

ivan

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 18:52 CET - #6942

And if the improvement goes further, then one day he will be compared with some real nice guys, like fighters for freedom and democray, i suspect.

Barbara

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 19:39 CET - #6947

I don't know- it may be trivial but it's a bit more current than a movie that was released last year about a genocide that happened a decade ago. If you think that only weighty topics are worthy of discussion, go blog shopping or start your own. It's a free country- sort of.

I like to change things up and I've been writing about serious stuff aaalllll morning and came here to see what's shakin'.

Luc, if you're in the mood for complaints, mine is that this isn't trivial enough. I expect you to give my opinion all the weight and due consideration it deserves.

If anyone (including Luc) wants a laugh, we Americans got one in the news today:
http://quidnimis....

Joe

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 19:40 CET - #6948

Do you know what you get when you cross Bush with a chimp?
This question is impossible to answer, because chimps are too intelligent to f*ck with Bush.

JVS

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 21:21 CET - #6953

This is OUTRAGEOUS.

To all chimpansee and baboon lovers, please accept my heartfelt APOLOGIES for this callous act of utterly bad taste and hypocrisy.

This is DISGUSTING, and Patrick Dewael should either personally make a kneefall at the office of Mr. Daktari (WWF primates specialists) and Mr. Debomenin (director of the Antwerp Zoo), or resign.

Please, take into consideration that many Belgians feel nothing but loathing towards the incompetent monkey-haters in their country. That they are born anyway is partly the result of the very complicated in-vitro techniques with extra use of Playboy, Hustler, and photos of Anke Vandermeersch (VB).

The reputation of Belgium is hauled through slime and mud time and again by those people who think it's funny to make fun with chimpansees. If these people were of the same calibre as our entrepreneurs (like Jan Coene or Eddy Planckaert), scientists and engineers (like Dirk Frimout or Etienne Schouppe), Belgium would be a model state.

Briggs

Friday 01 April 2005 @ 23:28 CET - #6957

Well, the monkey came out of the sleeve :).
This is a training manual for football stewards, its unclear wether it was ordered by city council or the football club.
If its the club...it figures....they s*ck anyhow--long live RSCA :).
If its the city council then its source comes from a govermental institution. Since the interior ministry accepted it, it agreed with the contents and made a huge mistake.

But then again, here in Belgium its "normal", its SNAFU.
Meanwhile there goes our American investors and some jobs.
I'm confident the establishment is happy and so will be our southern brothren....now they can say that they're needed while they rejoice the economic decline of our region.

Add comment

TrackBack)

DISALLOWED (TrackBack)