Ghost Writer
From the desk of The Brussels Journal on Sun, 2006-09-10 11:06
Belgium has a very bad image. I happen to know the publisher [editor?] of The Time Almanac, which includes a new chapter on Belgium. In the original text Belgium stood for corruption, pedophilia and the rows between the communities. All these ingredients were mixed in a short, unbalanced text, which, fortunately, I was able to refine. Recently The Wall Street Journal headlined: “The Many Faces of Belgian Fascism.” This was not a text about the Vlaams Belang (VB), but about the Belgian bureaucracy and the Parti Socialiste. Apparently, this journalist derived his inspiration from Paul Belien (the husband of VB parliamentarian Alexandra Colen). Obviously, this type of articles severely damage the reputation of our country.
Bret Stephens
Submitted by Paul Belien on Sun, 2006-09-10 11:12.
Contrary to what Prof. Van Parys implies Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal wrote his own text. I had never met nor spoken to Mr Stephens prior to our interview. He interviewed me (as he did others), but I did not “inspire” him. I explicitly “warned” him about the fact that I am married to a VB politician. In no way was I a co-author, as some have implied, of Stephens’s article, nor did I “refine” his text. It is interesting to note, however, that Prof. Van Parys is the co-author of the article on Belgium in The Time Almanac.