Belgium seeks conviction of Church of Scientology

[csziggy]

Belgium seeks conviction of Church of Scientology
Fri 28/12/2012 - 10:21 Belgium's federal public prosecutors have decided to prosecute the Church of Scientology in Belgium and several of its high-ranking members. The organisation and several of its members face charges in connection with extortion, fraud, illegal practice of medicine and violations of privacy legislation.

Federal public prosecutors want the church of Scientology to be condemned as a criminal organisation.

The decision follows years of investigation that was triggered by a complaint by the Labour Mediation Service in the Brussels Region. Labour mediators were unhappy with a number of labour contracts.

More: http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/news/121228_Church_of_Scientology_belgium_criminal_organisation_federal_prosecutors

Belgium does not recognize Scientology as a church and there are not a lot of members in the country. But this would be a nice precedent!

ETA - HuffPost also has an article with a little more info: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/belgium-prosecutes-scientology-extortion-fraud_n_2375823.html

[Squinch]

1. Belgians rock! First the chocolate, and now this!

[Glassunion]

2. Don't forget the BEER!!!

179 Breweries in a country roughly the size of Maryland and Rhode Island.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. And the draft horses

don't forget them!
They were the horses that carried knights into battle.

[csziggy]

5. My Christmas T-shirt this year had a Belgian horse on it.

Wearing red leg wraps with white padding, a Santa hat, holding candy canes in his mouth and with a BIG wreath around his big ass! Cute as all get out and conveyed very nicely my ambivalence about the holiday.

Got it from Zazzle.

Let's see if the pic is still up there... I forgot the red bow around his tail!

http://www.zazzle.com/belgian_draft_horse_christmas_shirt-235480113898451613

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Wow...amazing, actually.

running into a Belgian draft horse shirt.

I like the big breeds and am very glad there are people who are keeping them around.

[csziggy]

7. I like the big breeds

And for that reason I regret the introduction of the European Warmbloods into this country.

Before those became popular, people who wanted more bone and a calmer personality crossed Thoroughbreds or other breeds such as Quarter Horses, Morgans and Arabs with draft breeds for their heavy hunters. Now, they tend to just go for the European breeds so the demand for the draft horses is less and less.

And those fancy European horses are not really all that great, IMO. In fact, a book I have written by a horse trader who sold horses out of the Chicago stock yards around World War I shows that the claims of centuries of selection for the European breeds is BS.

After the war, a group of Germans approached him to buy a large number of horses for them to take back to Germany to replace horses killed during the war and from the Spanish flu. The only criteria they had for selecting horses was they had to be big. No requirements as to conformation or personality, just big and healthy enough to pass a vet inspection.

Of course, the horse trader made his money out of those Germans - horses were selling for around two hundred each and he charged the Germans $425 for the big ones they wanted. They bought three hundred big American horses from that trader in one contract.

The book is Tales of an Old Horsetrader: the First Hundred Years by Leroy Judson Daniel as told to Helen S. Herrick.

[edhopper]

3. Frites!

French Fries are Belgian.