#blegium

Monitor M33

The order for the Monitor M33 was given to Harland & Wolff of Belfast on 15 March. They subcontracted the building of M33 to the nearby yard of Workman, Clark & Company. The keel was laid in 1st April 1915 and the ship was launched on 22nd May. Monitor M33 was commissioned at Belfast on 17 June. She was based at Devonport and commanded by Lt. Cmdr. Q.B. Preston-Thomas. Monitor M33 was accepted from the builders and ordered to war on 24 June.

Jan 1916: Assisted the army in establishing a base at Stavros. Acted as guard ship of boom defence vessel at Salonika, the allied base for the war in Bulgaria.

May 1916: Under enemy fire assisted in salvaging guns from the damanged M30 beached on Long Island in the Gulf of Smyrna. Covered the evacuation of the wireless telegraph station and aerodrome on Long Island.

July 1916: provided covering fire during a cattle raid on the Turkish coast.

Aug 1916: Monitor M33 was detached to assist the French bombardments on the south coast of Turkey.

Dec 1916: Tasked with protecting the bridge between Euboea and mainland Greece from Greek Royalist troops.

May 1917: Bombarded enemy batteries near Sulva and Anzac beaches on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

A painter’s home in a Belgian castle | photos by Tim van de Velde

in belgium, we’ve got this concept called the cordon sanitaire -> sanitary cordon. it’s a agreement from 1988, now both political and media‑related, based on two principles :

1) don’t form political alliances with far right parties

2) don’t give the far right live airtime, to avoid spreading hate and disinformation.

problem is : belgium’s a complicated country. a federal state with 3 regions and 3 linguistic communities. and the subtle part, the 3 linguistic communities ≠ the regions. it’s a real political lasagna, where every level, communities and regions has its own powers and responsibilities, making them autonomous in several areas… which makes understanding the country absolutely hellish, even for us.

the 3 regions are : walloonia, flanders , and in between them, brussels‑capital. the cordon sanitaire is mainly applied in wallonia and brussels‑capital. it gets more complicated in flanders… it's actually one of the flemish parties that caused the creation of the cordon sanitaire : the vlaams blok, now vlaams belang.

in 1988, the VB’s first breakthrough pushed the other flemish parties to decide they wouldn’t form a coalition with the far right (even if some backed out later). a second breakthrough of the far right in ’91, both in flanders and wallonia, expanded the cordon sanitaire on a larger scale. But the VB’s still there in 2026.

the VB is a nationalist, far right party with a racist history. it’s currently one of the biggest flemish parties, and our current prime minister comes from it. which is pretty dramatic, because on top of being from VB, he’s anti‑belgium and wants flanders to be attached to the netherlands.

we can assume the reason for the far right’s long lasting presence in flanders is the following : the cordon sanitaire is only political -> so far right has a media presence.

i'm walloon and in wallonia, the cordon sanitaire’s both political and media‑based. which means the far right was, for years, something tiny and clearly isolated, ofc the right’s present in wallonia, through the MR, but the political landscape has always leaned left overall.

except you already know this : there’s been a rise of the far right across europe, which means everything’s sliding further to the right. the old "moderate right" isn’t that moderate anymore, to the point where the cordon sanitaire in wallonia has been broken several times by the MR (important party in french speaking belgium + oldest one) and its current stupid president, georges‑louis bouchez.

GLB likes trump, GLB makes statements that sound close to far right rhetoric. GLB cozies up to VB, GLB attends events where VB is present even though his party, like the other french‑speaking parties, committed to never showing up at events involving the far right. GLB accepts people into MR who used to belong to now‑dissolved far right groups.

the MR isn’t the right anymore, the MR’s becoming the walloon far right.

the famous overton window’s widened so much that, even with a tool meant to limit the far right, the far right still ends up present in french speaking belgium. what is terrifying to witness, as it was not expected to develop.

because the tool focused on where it started, not on the mechanisms that defined that starting point. and that’s often the whole problem.

and now far right protests are happening in brussels, and their hateful speeches are being given a platform bigger and bigger.