| Paul Belien | |
|---|---|
Paul Belien (courtesy of Luc van Braekel) |
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| Born | 1959 |
| Nationality | Belgian (Flemish) |
| Occupation | journalist |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Spouse | Alexandra Colen |
Paul Belien, born 1959, is a Flemish journalist and founder of the conservative-libertarian blog The Brussels Journal.
Belien is both known as both a pro-American and a prolific writer and author. Belien has written in several newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, The Independent, The Washington Times, The American Conservative, The Daily Mail, The Spectator, and in Belgium 't Pallieterke, Gazet van Antwerpen, Trends and De Tijd. He was editor of the conservative magazine Nucleus.
He is an advocate of Flemish independence and free trade and is an opponent of abortion. Beliën strongly opposes immigration into Europe by Islamic fundamentalists. Belien has also published a book about Belgium and the "Belgianisation" of Europe entitled A Throne in Brussels.
Belien is a master of law with specialisations in European and social security law from the University of Ghent and has a PhD in international studies from the University of Buckingham. He is vice president of the International Free Press Society and a senior editor at the Hudson Institute.[1]
Belien is married to Dr. Alexandra Colen, a member of Belgian Federal Parliament and the political party Vlaams Belang. They have homeschooled all of their children.
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In 2005 Belien published A throne in Brussels : Britain, the Saxe-Coburgs and the Belgianization of Europe. The book explains Belgian history through the life and acts of the country's six kings. Contrary to mainstream historians, Belien depicts an artificial state, called into existence by the Belgian revolution of 1830, and led by rather ruthless kings and a corrupt political elite ever since. The book touches controversial subjects such as Leopold II's brutal colonisation of the Congo, the relation to Nazi Germany in World War II and the numerous Belgian political scandals in recent decades, including the pedophile Marc Dutroux affair. He suggests that the real father of Queen Victoria's husband Albert, Prince Consort, was King Leopold I of Belgium, Albert's maternal uncle, rather than Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, as is otherwise believed.
Belien warns that the European Union, if based on multi-ethnic Belgium as a model, will be an artificial construct without any national consciousness, prone to corruption and elitarian government.
The book has ample source notes and was well-received by some eurosceptic or conservative commentators, including philosopher Roger Scruton, Lord Rees-Mogg, economist Lord Ralph Harris, historian Hugo Vickers, and British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan.
Belien was editor at the foreign desk of the Gazet van Antwerpen, until he got fired in April 1990.
Belien had received information in October 1989, that the Belgian King, Baudouin, would not sign the new abortion law. Although the editor in chief of the Gazet van Antwerpen, Lou de Clerck, found this information to be too sensitive to be published, Belien published it anyway in the Wall Street Journal on 1 November 1989 and also later in NRC Handelsblad. In reaction to this, De Clerck refused to let Beliën write in foreign newspapers, mentioning his relationship to the Gazet van Antwerpen.
An op-ed of Belien for the NRC Handelsblad (published 6 April 1990) mentioned that Belien was working "for a newspaper in Antwerp, which name he could not mention". A couple of days later Beliën was fired. Jos Huypens, deputy editor of the Gazet, said that the cause of Belien's firing was a "conflict that was dragging on for years". Shortly later, the Wall Street Journal published another Beliën piece, detailing the connections between political parties and the media in Belgium.[2][3][4]
Leo de Haes, a former journalist at Humo, alleged that Belien was fired in order to rid the Gazet from "Vlaams Blok elements".[5]
In an article (23 June 2004) for the business newspaper De Tijd Belien reflected on current Belgian VLD prime-minister Guy Verhofstadt, saying that Verhofstadt brought Flemish Liberalism to the brink of the abyss. Beliën stated that he saw in Verhofstadt a transformation from adoring the economic liberalism of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and the laureling of Ludwig Erhard of Verhofstadt in Belien's magazine Nucleus in 1990, to a Third Way position taken by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, with Verhofstadt ultimately taking an Old Europe stance with Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder in 2003. According to Belien, this last 'change of winds' by Verhofstadt prevented him to become the next President of the EU Commission. Furthermore, Belien thinks that the vacuum left by Verhofstadt's failure to turn the VLD into a broad people's party has been filled by the Vlaams Belang.[6]
In May 2006, Belien received a letter from the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism asking him to remove the post Geef ons Wapens! ("Give us Weapons!") from his blog, The Brussels Journal. The agency falls under the responsibility of Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and is directed by Jozef de Witte. The agency claimed Beliën's blog post was a "call for violence against a group because of its ethnic or national origin"[7] and that it violated the Belgian law of 1981 on racism and xenophobia.[8]
The Centre against Racism didn't saw/overlooked the English written article from the hand of Paul Belien, two days earlier.[9] Belien wrote : " For an entire week the police, the authorities and most of the media have tried to downplay the fact that the killers are Muslim youths. Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and Cardinal Godfried Danneels addressed the indignation, but gave it a spin of their own. How was it possible for such an atrocity to take place in a crowd with no-one interfering, they asked. Both Verhofstadt and Danneels said that Joe was a victim of “indifference in Belgian society.” “Where were you last Wednesday at 4 pm?!” the Cardinal asked the congration in Brussels Cathedral during his Easter sermon on Sunday. The Cardinal blamed the murder on the materialism and greed of Western society “where people get killed for an MP3 player.” Belgian citizens realize, however, that the murder has nothing to do with “indifference in Belgian society,” but everything with a group of North African youths terrorizing Brussels and the “indifference” of the authorities to eradicate this scourge."
The blog post was written in the context of the Joe Van Holsbeeck murder, which was originally thought to have been perpetrated by people of North African descent (but later found to be perpetrated by Polish immigrants of Gypsy decent). Paul Belien denied all allegations of the Centre, but did remove the text.[10] A translation of an extract from his text follows:
The predators have teeth and claws. The predators have knives. Starting when they're small, they learn at their yearly offerings how to cut the throats of warm-blooded livestock. We get sick at the sight of blood, but they don't. They're trained and they're armed. We can't even carry pepperspray in our pockets. They have switchblades and butchers knives and they know how to use them.[11]
There is a problem with name Belien. In the French-Belgium language there is also Paul Beliën, ( see article Hans Van Themsche; On 12 April, Vlaams Belang MP Alexandra Colen's husband Paul Beliën, named a Vlaams Belang ideologist and a publicist, reportedly had called upon the Flemish people to get rid of people of Arab origin in a pamphlet titled 'Give us weapons'. That title referred to a 1963 –then obviously figurative– outcry refutedly ascribed to the later Prime Minister Martens that was related to disputes between Belgian speakers of Dutch and of French. Beliën withdrew his text upon an official complaint by the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Fight against Racism (CEOFR or CGKR).[1][24][26][27])
On 25 April 2006 Belien wrote a new article, which title differs from the post Geef ons Wapens! ("Give us Weapons!") from his blog, The Brussels Journal with a new title "En Geef Ons Dus Wapens" ("And, Give Us As Conclusion Weapons"Paul Beliën (2006-04-25). "brusselsjournal.com". http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1013. Belien made a lot of effort to remove any sign of the article Geef ons Wapens! ("Give us Weapons!" Paul Beliën (2007-08-15). ""“Cited Text Removed", ("Aangehaalde tekst verwijderd”)". The Brussels Journal. http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2320.</ref>
A month later, Paul Belien re-iterated his stand from that article, after the death of Guido Demoor in an Antwerp bus, saying:
The Belgian state is no longer able to guarantee the security of its citizens. [...] Belgians do not have a constitutional or legal right to bear arms, not even purely defensive arms such as peppersprays. With the police and the government failing to protect law-abiding citizens the latter are, however, totally unprotected. Saturday's murder has shocked bus drivers and train conductors, but they stress that they are not in the least surprised. Violence on public transport has become a fact of life.[12]
After the conservative Washington Times commented that "free speech is under attack in Belgium",[13] the Flemish newspaper Het Nieuwsblad complained about the Time's links to Reverend Moon.[14]
On 26 June 2008, in light of the lasting Belgian political crisis, Paul Belien wrote on his blog that he expects the artificial Belgian state has come to an end:
Belgium is slowly unravelling, like a Yugoslavia in slow motion. The supranational country is in a situation of political limbo since the elections of 10 June 2007. Belgium, which is often described as a miniature version of the European Union with which it shares its capital, is made up of Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south. Politicians in Wallonia are preparing for the moment when Flanders secedes from Belgium. Some Flemings fear that French-speaking extremists are planning to take over the Flemish towns surrounding Brussels by force.
Since its conception in 1830-31 when Walloon and French revolutionaries tore the country away from the Netherlands, its French-speaking minority has dominated the Dutch-speaking majority, which was denied higher education in its own language until the 1930s. As a result the linguistic frontier gradually shifted northwards, as historically Dutch-speaking towns and villages, such as Waterloo, were annexed by Wallonia, and as Belgium's capital, Brussels, originally a Dutch town, developed into a bilingual enclave within Flanders.
This process was exacerbated since the 1970s when the massive influx of North-African immigrants, from formerly French colonies, turned Brussels into a predominantly French-speaking city. [...]
The 10 June 2007 elections were a clear signal that the Flemings have had enough. They want newcomers, whether these be Walloons or immigrants, to respect the Dutch identity of Flanders. This demand for respect on the part of the Flemish as well as the refusal of the French-speaking Belgians to renounce their "acquired rights" have led to a political stalemate. For six months it was impossible to form a government, then an "interim government" was formed, and after that a "real" government which, however, quarrels on all issues and has not been able to agree on policies. The result is that legislative work in Belgium has come to an almost complete standstill. The stalemate has led to a hardening of the positions, with a majority of the Flemings declaring in opinion polls that they favour Flemish independence if Belgium proves to be no longer viable. Both Flemings and Walloons are now preparing for the post-Belgium age. [...][15]
Belien supports some aspects of Bat Ye'or's ideas about "Eurabia", for instance by publishing Fjordman in Brussels Journal.[16]
In June 2006 a judicial enquiry was conducted regarding the homeschooling of Belien's children. The Flemish Ministry of Education had asked the judiciary to press charges on child neglect by failing to educate his children adequately.[17] In 2003, the Flemish government adapted the executive order on compulsory education, requiring homeschooling parents to sign an agreement about the education they give their children. The declaration contains the following statement, inspired by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child:
The undersigned bind(s) themselves to give education that is aimed at the development of the full personality and talents of the child and at the preparation of the child on an active life as an adult, and that promotes the respect for the basic rights of man and for the cultural values of the child itself and of others.[18][19]
If the parents fail to provide an adequate education for their children, as estimated by two state inspectors, the courts may force the child to attend a school.
Paul Belien and his wife, MP Alexandra Colen, have refused to sign the declaration, arguing that signing such a declaration "undermines the authority of parents and transfers it to the state".[20]
John Kersey, an educational consultant and a British libertarian, in a pamphlet supporting the Beliën family, has stated that the government educational inspectors are held to no objective standards, that "their questioning of children is reported as being random and arbitrary" and that there is no right of appeal against their verdict. He claims the inspectors only have the purpose of removing children from homeschooling and force them into state schools based on the "authoritarian socialist views" of the Belgian powers in force.
Paul Belien, Alexandra Colen and others have speculated about a possible political agenda of dissident persecution behind what they call the state's "crackdown on homeschoolers".[20] They argue that Belien was summoned to a police station to give a statement on 13 June 2006, shortly after the above mentioned incident with the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism. Kersey claims outright that "Dr Belien has incurred the wrath of the authorities as a result of expressing opinions that they find inconvenient, and as a result, any cause is being found to make his life difficult."[21]
As of December 2006, Belien was appointed director of Islamist Watch. Islamist Watch is a new project of the think tank Middle East Forum which combats the ideas and institutions of radical Islam in the United States and other Western countries. According to the Middle East Forum's website, Beliën received this appointment because of his emergence as "one of Europe's leading experts on lawful Islamism, particularly in his role as founder and editor of The Brussels Journal."[22]