Sunday, August 12, 2007

Packing the Brussels City Council

TA, an enterprising and resourceful reader, has done an extended investigation into the makeup of the Brussels city council as a follow-up to my post from last night. His conclusions are informative, even if they won’t be a big surprise to most of our readers. Here’s the email he just sent us:

Hi Baron,

Intrigued by Cimmerian’s post on the Brussels city council, I have done some further checking with unexpected results. If you are interested, here it is:

Brussels City Council

Composition according to political parties (Data were taken from the list of councilors on the official city website. The political parties were identified according to Wikipedia):

Party
initials
 Party name Party political
ideology
 # Mus.
CDH Centre démocrate
humaniste
 Christian democracy 11 2
ECOLO Écologistes Confédérés
pour l’organisation de
luttes originales
 Green 4 1
MR Mouvement Réformateur
(Renouveau bruxellois)
 Liberalism
(free market + social)
 10 0
PS* Parti Socialiste Social democracy 17 10
SP .a-spirit-Groen! Coalition of
convenience between
socialists & green
 2 0
VLBE Vlaams Belang Flemish separatism,
conservatism
 2 0
VLD Vlaamse Liberalen
en Democraten
 Flemish, Liberalism 1 0
Total   47  13

*Note: Councilor Jean Baptiste de Crée, listed by Cimmerian as part of the PS, is not actually so. Though now listed as belonging to “Mouvement socialiste”, he was elected on the ticket of the “Renouveau bruxellois”, mostly MR, which is what matters for assessing voters’ intentions. See the above link for the list of councilors.
- - - - - - - - -
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Analysis

This is a foreigner’s impression of Brussels city council, no doubt lacking in understanding of political issues specific to Belgium, and concentrating merely on the issue of Muslim/Arab representation. Also, my only criterion for counting a councilor as Muslim/Arab is his/her name. I know nothing else about any of them. If anybody with access to additional data finds any of my conclusions wrong, I shall gladly be corrected. So here we go.

Political parties on the Right and Center (MR, VLBE and VLD), with no Muslim/Arab members, hold 27.6% (13 out of 47) of the seats on the city council. In addition, nearly 32% (15 out of 47) of the seats are held by CDH and ECOLO, including token Muslim/Arab representation (3 out of the 15 elected). Altogether — about 59.6% of the vote went to the Right and Center with some representation for immigrants, a clear majority (I count the ECOLO greens as center, because there are other greens to their left in the SP.a-spirit-Groen! Maybe I’m wrong here, but even without them the Center-Right still commands 51%).

One of the things I cannot tell is whether the CDH and ECOLO actually got any Muslim/Arab votes, or if the presence of such candidates on their list is merely a quirk of the system of Proportional Representation, with block-lists composed by party members regardless of the composition of the actual constituency. Anybody know?

The situation with the PS socialists is completely different. While clearly a minority among the electorate as a whole, some 36% (17 out of 47), it fielded a majority of Muslim/Arab candidates (10 out of the 17 eventually elected). This suggests that this party is largely dependent on the Muslim/Arab vote. It is therefore in its interest to increase immigration.

The bottom line is that Socialism finds itself in a minority in Brussels, and attempts to reverse the trend by encouraging the importation of foreign population. To my mind, this is no different from classic Imperialism.

And now to the big question: How typical is this neo-Imperialism of other European Socialist parties, whether local or national?

The strategy at work in Brussels is the same employed by the Left in the rest of Europe and throughout the West.

The Left and Socialism have long since been discredited in the public mind, and can no longer stay in power in a free and open democratic system. To maintain their control they rely on a four-pronged strategy to inflate their electoral base:

1. Increase the public sector by expanding government power and adding as many state jobs as possible.
2. Expand the number of government beneficiaries. Means to accomplish this include keeping the rate of unemployment high, defining disability to include more people, undermining the family and other traditional social institutions in order to create more welfare beneficiaries, etc.
3. In order to increase the available pool of clients for #2, import the type of foreigners who are disinclined to work and be productive, and who do not want to assimilate to the indigenous culture.
4. Maintain control of the media so that news about the above remains suppressed.

If all of this sounds familiar, it’s very much the same process that is currently unfolding in the United States, with the encouragement of both major political parties.

It boils down to two strategies: increase the power of the state, and control the flow of information.

I can’t do anything about the first one, but I’m trying to subvert the second one right now.

12 comments:

History Snark said...

47 members on the Council? Doesn't that seem like a lot? In Detroit, they only have 9, for a city of almost a million.

Of course, in Detroit they're presumably all dhimmis, though I'd like to believe Martha Reeves isn't. Unless there was a deeper significance to the song "Heat Wave", and it was actually a love song to the sands of Arabia.

At any rate, looking at the names, I'd almost guarantee that 3 are open dhimmis- One of them being the wife of the biggest dhimmi in the entire US, the idiot conyers.

So I don't know. Is a council of that size normal in Europe? Or anywhere else for that matter?

Aeneas said...

As far as the UK is concerned that is normal, and I know of councils in the UK that are not capital cities having larger councils than Brussels.

History Snark said...

Is it a full-time job? Maybe that's the difference.

AWOL Civilization said...

Baron, I wish your statement, "The Left and Socialism have long since been discredited in the public mind," were as true as I would like it to be. On one level, it's true: Blatant calls for Socialism, Communist revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat, etc. are indeed discredited. Unfortunately, there are a thousand and one euphemisms--derivatives of the Left and Socialism--that still resonate with a large public. How about these keywords: universal health care, Global Warming, glass ceiling, affirmative action, sexism, racism, Islamaphobia, big bad drug companies, tax the rich, etc.

I do agree completely, though, with your 4-point list of the Left's electoral strategy. It's quite insidious.

History Snark said...

But AWOL, the problem is that he says it's happening with both parties. And that's the scary thing- even the republicans are left of center now, especially since Bush came along.

I believe that one of the two parties is gonna be dead within a decade or so, since they've become almost identical. A year or two ago, I thought it would be the Dems, since their power comes from the loony left. Now, with the stupidity of the Rep's on immigration and the like, I'm not so sure.

But the results of last year's election still seems to support my original thesis. Yes, the Republicans got their butts handed to them, but almost every proposal in the country was won by the conservative side. In Michigan for instance, the only defeat was over the hugely unimportant issue of hunting doves.

At any rate, the American electorate has traditionally been in one of two spots- just left of center, and just right of center. The Democrats now are far to the left, and I would argue that McCain, Bush, Romney, Rudy et al are a little to the left of center, and sliding further all the time. Leaving a huge gap on the right.

Of course, this means we have to fight against illegal immigration, since that means more voters on the left.

The short-term bad news is that we could wind up with another election featuring a Perot type candidate splitting the conservative vote, and giving the election to the Witch from New York. At which point I might do a Baldwin for Eastern Europe. Except I might actually do it, rather than just promising it.

As for socialism as a whole, someone put it to me a few years back that, no matter how badly socialism and communism had failed, the attitude among their adherents in the US was "but they didn't do it properly, and we know the way to make it work."

CarnackiUK said...

Thanks TA for that additional research.
Cimmerian included Jean Baptiste de Cree as a member of the Parti Socialiste (PS) because that's how he appeared on a list over at SIAD.

Turns out this is one fickle guy!

Apparently he's been a close crony of Freddy Thielemans since at least 1989 when he helped him take control of a section of the PS. They were closely allied until 2006 when de Cree quit the PS and went over to a Brussels-oriented element of the Reform Movement(MR)party. From what TA says it appears he was elected a councillor under the auspices of that party. Whereupon he jumped ship again and realigned himself with the leftist Mouvement Socialiaste (MS) party, apparently a dissident offshoot of the PS.

Whatever party he belongs to this week, it doesn't sound like he's likely to vote much differently from his old patron and fellow traveller, Mayor Thielemans.

BTW out if a total of 47 Brussels city councillors (of all affiliations) it appears at least 13 are identifiable by their names as muslims.

Sheesh, at this rate we're all going to be experts on the intricacies of Brussels internal politics long before Sept 11!

X said...

gun-totin-wacko, I would avoid eastern europe if you're going to go a-runnin, it's too vulnerable to the predations of the EU or Russia. Head south, go to somewhere like argentina or paraguay, buy some land and buy a new gun. I've got some vague ideas along those lines myself now, which is quite a change from my attitude just a few months ago. Recent events have convinced me that I need to at least plan for an escape, even if I never act on it.

But yes, head south, not east.

Baron Bodissey said...

AWOL --

I should have said "overt" or "undisguised" Socialism. I agree with you that the Left keeps putting lipstick and a party dress on the pig to try to get it through the door.

PapaBear said...

re: Europe: German playwright, Bertolt Brecht, once proposed through a character in one of his plays that "If the government has lost confidence in the people, will it not be better if the government dissolves the people and elect another". the governments of Europe are busy doing just that.

Regarding the "failures" of Socialism, and its remaining attraction for the Left, you must understand one thing: SOCIALISM DID NOT FAIL in the Soviet Union. It succeeded beyond the Bolsheviks wildest dreams. It enabled the members of the Party to enjoy a standard of living far beyond what they could have enjoyed in the West. They had large houses, servants, mistresses -- they enjoyed a standard of living that was once limited to feudal nobility.

What Socialism and the Welfare State do is to provide an avenue for success to people whose main skills are being articulate schemers. They can't organize a successful company, or even fix a leaky faucet, but boy can they engage in games of politics and intrigue.

R. Hartman said...

Out of 47 seats, 28 are for the governing coalition. Of those 28, only 13 are held by native Belgians. The remaining 15 are either muslim (12) or otherwise immigrant.

See Paul Belien's article over at Brussels Journal.

Captain USpace said...

Muzzies controlling Brussels from the City Council, what a country!

GO Europe! Keep on fighting!

This dhimmi Mayor is a total coward and a despicable and cartoonish porcine traitor.

This will go to court hopefully, thus drawing more publicity. Where are all the lawyers when we need them?

Might 200,000 March in Brussels 9/11/07 Against Islamification BECAUSE Mayor Has Forbidden It?

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2bct2u

Everybody please sign the petition!


absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
avoid tough questions

allow Sharia to rule
bring back eighth century


absurd thought -
God of the Universe
wants Taliban Earth

that's what liberals want too
destroy all human rights
.

Anonymous said...

Send great massive weapons to these people. We tell you how to do, we suggest you a text and we give you the address. 11 sept : happy birthday Mr Thielemans !

Hallal Pig International