Belgium's rebel prince

The youngest son of Belgian King Albert II is in hot water again after conducting unauthorised diplomatic missions in Africa, including a secret meeting with a leader of the Libyan rebel forces and an audience with the president of Belgium's former colony the Congo, all without any diplomatic oversight. The King had explicitly told him not to go to the Congo.

It's not the first time that Prince Laurent has been in trouble, but it looks like this time he could be facing serious consequences. Even his father, who has defended himin the past, has let it be known that he is displeased with his son's actions. Yesterday Yves Leterme, Belgium's 'caretaker' prime minister while the country has no government, that he will prepare new restrictions on the prince which will mean that if he engages in such behaviour again the government can cut of his annual stipend of €300,000.

What do they teach the Belgians?

Tuesday night I went out for a beer with this Belgian guy I met when I was here in September, Leiven. We were talking about my usual favourite topic of conversation, the EU and European history. He’s pretty strongly anti-US, but I found a lot of his perceptions of the country are just wrong.

I find handling these types of situations to be rather delicate. After all, in correcting their perception and telling them the way it actually is, I don’t want to come off as an arrogant American who thinks he knows everything. But at the same time, it’s not in my nature to look the other way when someone says something that’s factually incorrect.

But this isn’t the point of my story. During the course of the conversation one of the incorrect things he said was that the sinking of the Lusitania by the Germans was what brought the US into World War II (he was so sure of it he even bet money on it, I won £10!). I informed him that it was in fact the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought the US into WWII, and that the sinking of the Lusitania was the cause of our entry into WWI. To my astonishment, he wasn’t even aware the US had participated in WWI! We only ended the war for you, you ingrate! But I digress…