The Gray Lady Weighs In

This article is now a couple of days old - which is significantly younger than my last update - but worth a quick reference.

Highlights include:
The German newspaper Die Tageszeitung a few days ago called Belgium the “most successful ‘failed state’ of all time.”
Okay, but I imagine with significantly less bloodshed than most.

“A Flemish friend,” Mr. Dannemark [an editor at Le Castor Astral, a French-language publisher, who prints translations of Flemish writers] said, “put it to me this way: ‘Flanders has nothing in common with Holland except language, and the Flemish and Walloons have everything in common except language.’ But there’s almost no communication between the two communities, except through rock music, which everybody sings in English, and sports, which transcend everything.”
Thank god for soccer and rock 'n roll . . . but what about waffles and mussels?

The only (sort of) good news is that, apparently, speaking English is viewed as non-hostile by all parties.