@ pvdh

It is a sad sight to see you put your head in the sand like that.  If you think that a little bit of a 'joke' and some sarcasm is a proper response to violations of the constitution in Belgium, then you are sadly mistaken.

But then, observe the absurd behavior of a "Minister Counselor" of a Belgian embassy.  He begins his letter by stating that there is a constitutional right to "freedom of speech and free press" and asserts that Belgium is "a democracy".   And then he goes on in the next paragraph to state that parliament has seen fit to take away this 'Constitutional' right in cases of something totally arbitrary and subjective as "racism".   Did the Belgian Constitution get 'amended' in the proper (very complex and politically-difficult) way, or did parliament act in an unconstitutional manner in some of its 'gewone' legislation? I do, of course, realise that the "Minister Counselor" gets paid to defend the indefensible. Perhaps, he even believes himself what he writes, although I have some faint doubt about that. At least, I can hope that the miseducation in Belgium hasn't progressed that far yet among intelligent people.

If a "Minister Counselor" and even the Belgian parliament seem to be rather 'cavalier' about democracy and the Constitution, then why shouldn't a PVDH?  And, it is true, Belgium is not yet exactly comparable to those other great 'democracies', like say North Korea or Congo/Zaire, who also seem to have a need to affirm their "democratic" character in the face of manifest counter evidence.

"Let the public decide whether to visit The Brussels Journal and how seriously they wish to take its reports and arguments. That is the way to handle disagreements, and infinitely preferable to shutting down the site."

I completely agree. By prosecuting them, you only provide free publicity. A website with a constant flow of complaints, and doom scenario’s about our society becomes very boring otherwise. Even VB-apparatchiks like Jurgen Verstrepen understand that you need something entertaining to get people visiting your website. By lack of a prosecution, he uses pictures of “babes 18+” and sexist jokes, along with the usual mocking hate mail against everything that’s left of VB, (all the rest of the country, actually). It is a bit curious for a party that attracts the conservatives of Flanders, but it’s surely effective.
If we want to see babes on the Brussels Journal, we have to stop prosecuting.

I got the same response from the Brussels US embassy.  Better to be murdered than speak ill of Muslims.

"That's right, I said it"

where they come kocking on your door and request that you would come to the local police office at your convenience.

Please, get real.

I have to share the following suggestion i recieved from Dr F Dolittle PhD MD:

"The following can be inferred from the logic behind this dastardly eurocratic plot:

1: All racism is evil

2: All intolerence is evil

conclusion: Belgian government is evil, if one assumes as a fact that they are intolerant of open discussion.

Solution (interim):

restrict the use of all dialects in flanders and reduce the vocabulary of the nederlands taal to a few words.  As a suggestion:

bad becomes ungood.  Really bad becomes double plus ungood. 

Applying this Orwellian newspeak principle to the language in Flanders will drastically reduce the startlingly high incidence of thoughtcrime here in Flanders.  If my program is adopted by the legislative and executive arms of the brussels political beast which is known in aboriginal australian dialect as guvment, I predict that it will be impossible to prosecute Mr Belien or this website as the crimes will be impossible to commit.  BB rules. 

"
BTW What is a minister counsellor? Is it the name for an advisor, or for the minister's personal mental health pratitioner?

Both Greece and Italy have attempted to prosecute people under blasphemy laws in the last year or two.  One would think that freedom of speach would be essential to any democracy but then again I don't think that democracy is what the euroelites really want.  Regarding Lou's comment I also find is amazing that one could go to jail for decades merely for growing plants such as cannibus on their own property in Texas.  If you dare pick the numerous mushrooms that grow in cow pies there they would probably throw away the key after 30 years.  No country in the world really has the concept of liberty and freedom down quite right.

What would prevent Paul and others in Belgium from contacting the police regarding any of the Jihadi sites in Belgium. Or for that matter any of the radical imans who preach "death to Israel and America". I mean if Islam or a Muslim practicing Islam is considered a race what is Israel and the Jews and Arabs and Christians that live there? Also, America is made up of just about every race and religion known to mankind. What is the difference? This kind of high-hypocrisy and extreme political correctness is like living in an alternative universe. Whatever became of common sense and calling a spade a spade. Its like living in the 1930's all over again.

Jack Lillywhite

It's pretty clear that the Belgian system for rooting out 'racist' speech is being gamed and hijacked by one group and turned into a tool for intimidating and silencing its critics.

Flooding the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism with allegations of 'racist' speech, each of which must be taken seriously, is a game any group can play -- especially when it is backed by the implied threat of violence.

It seems that in any dispute with the West, its antagonists know the drill: howl with faux outrage and indignation, demand prostration in the form of apologies or compensation, and hint that consequences may result if demands are not met.

Our flaccid elites -- far more interested in being liked and avoiding media censure than in doing the right thing -- fall for it every single time.

Which make Paul Belien's stand all the more impressive.

I am sorry that you are being harassed by the authorities, Paul. Unfortunately, based on demographics the situation in Belgium will not be improving. I can't imagine living in a place that arrests people for saying words that offend others. To me that is very Orwellian. The fact that so few people in Belgium (you included, of course) see this seriousness of this tells me Belgium is doomed.

Call me racist or whatever, but know that all terrorist attacks in the past and current terror are being commited by so-called peaceful Islamists. That you cannot deny. Eurabia continues (with the help of the leftest media) to put the blame on foreign policy, the U.S., Israel, Iraq, blah, blah, blah. It is so easy for the nitwits in Brussels to blame everything and everybody except for the evil Muslims who commit murder of innoncent people.

For the idiots who continue to blame the current terror on 9/11 and Bush check out the dates in the following stats.

http://patriotpost.us/news/profiling.asp

When president Bush used the term "Islamic fascism" I told my wife: finally! If I would dare to express myself in these terms, I would, indeed, and as Paul experiences, be persecuted by the Belgian federal dummies.

I work for a non-Belgian social security office, as a medical doctor/advisor, for more than 4 years now. Morroccans present themselves always as the sufferers. And if contradicted, I am a discriminating racist.

I oppose that easy-going point-of-view. I am not a racist, I want everyone being the same when facing the law. That's exactly what Paul wants: equal treatment for equal people.

That means we should support him. And his wife. And his children.

That also means that we should denounce the actual federal meanstream-attitude, not based on liberalism, but on socialist fascism.

This means that, among a majority of other Americans, President Bush is already no longer allowed to express his opinion in Belgium.