ext_36450 ([identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] talkpolitics2011-02-18 04:31 pm
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Belgian Senator decides Lysistrata is a model to be followed:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/09/133629265/after-241-days-without-a-government-belgian-senator-proposes-a-sex-strike?live=1

Belgium, if you haven't been paying attention, is coming close to becoming the country with the longest time between an election and the formation of a government. Iraq holds the record, having gone 289 days without a government, until coming to an agreement last year.

Today Belgium is going on 241 days sans government. Belgians are jokingly calling themselves the "most successful failed state."

____________

I must say that as a solution to social problems, this is all Greek to me. I think that it's a nice change of pace to have people addressing intractable political problems with humor as opposed to mass riots and Molotov Cocktails. I do not, however, predict that a sex strike will work entirely effectively in the age of cheap, mass-distributed porn. I do find it weird, however, that the Belgians have yet to figure out what the problem is with their governance. They may be a "state on autopilot" but that they can still function thus seems to argue a few things about government, namely that parliamentary government is capable of functioning without a necessarily summoned parliament and that anarchists may have something to their ideas after all.

What say you to all of this? 

[identity profile] fizzyland.livejournal.com 2011-02-19 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.

[identity profile] the-rukh.livejournal.com 2011-02-19 06:08 am (UTC)(link)
I hate to admit it, but I kind of do.

[identity profile] the-rukh.livejournal.com 2011-02-19 07:16 am (UTC)(link)
Image!

[identity profile] anfalicious.livejournal.com 2011-02-20 05:44 am (UTC)(link)
Me too... I'm even known as a "Balanda" where I live, which comes from the word "Hollander". White people, we're all the same anyway :P

[identity profile] fizzyland.livejournal.com 2011-02-19 06:55 am (UTC)(link)
What? Take the fahza away! Dutch hater! And now, it is time to say goodbye.