Political Crisis

On day 101 Ingrid Robeyns writes a great analysis of the current Belgian crisis on Crooked Timber. It's also a must-read for anyone who doesn't understand what's going on here and wonders if we've all gone raving mad. She sums up 16 elements of the Belgian cocktail. As a teaser from #14 Divided Media:

"This fact of divided media has international implications, since there is every reason to think (as Van Parijs also argues) that the international arena gets its information on Belgium through the Francophone media, not through the Flemish media. The logical consequence would be that the reporting on Belgium in the international media is very prone to be as biased as the francophone press – very biased, that is (it wouldn’t be any better if they would only read the Flemish press, though)."

Since I'm too lazy and tired of it all to keep explaining the Belgian situation to foreigners I'm considering printing Ingrid's text on leaflets and handing the out whenever I'm abroad.