Last week, the EU endorsed a fishing deal with Morocco. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that the deal includes the coastal waters of Western Sahara, a territory that has been occupied by Morroco for more than thirty years.

Tomorrow, Sunday, Montenegro's population will vote on whether to become independent or not. However, the European Union has demanded that at least 55% votes in favour, or it will not recognize Montenegro's independence. What is going to happen if the result of the referendum is between 50% and 55% remains unclear.

Seven months ago, I reported about a Brussels gang, the Flagadas. They were deflating the tires of SUVs to protest against pollution. Sometimes more than 100 SUVs were deflated in one single night. These 'eco-guerillas' claimed they did nothing wrong, as the "theft of air" is not illegal. The Brussels police seemed to agree, as they refused to register complaints from the SUV owners because "the cars had not been damaged". I argued that the Flagadas' actions were restricting the freedom of people and causing them harm.

Yesterday Laurette Onkelinx, the Belgian minister of justice, confirmed that deflating tires is not a crime.

If no harm is done to the car, the Flagadas can not be punished. The deflating of tires can not be considered to be a crime. It does not cause any harm to moveable possessions, nor does it make a vehicle unusable. Hence, the Flagadas can not be brought to justice before a court of law.

During the past few weeks I have been under attack from the Belgian Left and the media. In February the editor in chief of the mass circulation weekly Knack (a supposedly centrist publication) wrote a piece entitled “Paul Belien and His Pals,” claiming that I was part of a neo-con conspiracy, led by Daniel Pipes (whom until then I had never met or spoken) and the Danish journalist Flemming Rose (of the Muhammad cartoons), who wanted “to anger radical but also moderate Muslims into violent action. Their [=the conspirators’] goal is to persuade public opinion in Europe and America once and for all that all Muslims are violent and dangerous, so that the ‘clash’ [=the world war against Muslims] in Palestine, Iran and Syria can really kick off.”

Following last Thursday’s Antwerp massacre the Belgian authorities have announced zero tolerance for racism. Belgian journalists, lawyers and politicians (including Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt), say that I am responsible for creating the atmosphere of hatred that led to the massacre. Some people even demand that I be prosecuted.

Belgian television and the Brussels papers say that the Antwerp shoot-out is the result of my writings. Regular readers of The Brussels Journal know my view well enough: I have repeatedly defended the view that Muslim immigrants are not to blame for Europe's predicament. The latter is entirely of our own making. Europeans have foolishly replaced God by the State as the one on whom they rely to take care of all their needs from cradle to grave. The religious vacuum has led to a demographic vacuum, because those who lose faith in God lose faith in the future as well. A civilization that has created a religious and a demographic vacuum is bound to perish.

The lights are turning out for Europe. If America follows Europe’s example Christendom is lost.

Yesterday Hans Van Themsche, an 18 year old high-school student who had just been expelled from boarding school for smoking in the dormitories, went berserk and set out on a bloody rampage in Antwerp. In the morning he shaved his head down to the neck. He put on combat boots and a black leather outfit and went to a store of sporting and hunting gear to buy a rifle. Dressed as a “Goth” he walked through town and shot at three people who crossed his path: a veiled Turkish woman, a two year old Flemish toddler on a tricycle and her black nanny, killing the latter two and seriously wounding the first.

Ali Guissé

The crisis between the Catholic Church and the government is escalating in Belgium. So far over 30 Belgian churches have been occupied by illegal immigrants or so-called “sans papiers” (“people without papers” [=staying permits]). The latest church taken over by squatters is the Saint Susanna Church in the Brussels borough of Schaarbeek, where a group of thirty women with small children have installed themselves. They were invited in by the local parish priest.

“We only go to churches where we are welcome,” says Ali Guissé, the spokesman of the far-left Union for the Defense of People Without Papers (UDEP), which coordinates the “church asylum” actions. The relations between the Belgian Church and the government of Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt have soured since last week, when the Belgian Catholic Bishops spoke out in favour of the occupation of their churches and chapels by sans-papiers. The latter have installed themselves there in order to pressure the Belgian authorities into giving them permanent residence permits.

Some early optimism arose when it became known that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad handed the Swiss Ambassador inTehran a letter addressed to US President George Bush. Since the unprecedented occupation of the US’ embassy in 1980 (even the Nazis and the Communists respected diplomatic immunity) Iran and the US have no direct contact and communicate through the good offices of the Swiss. Wishful thinking recalled US-Chinese enmity and the careful steps that culminated in the normalization of relations in 1972. Quite correctly, a direct note was seen as an Iranian opening “tit” (given that the Mullahs caused the original the rupture) to be followed by an American “tat.”

Monsignor Karl-Josef Rauber, the Papal Nuncio (i.e. the Vatican’s Ambassador) to Belgium, supports the occupations of Belgian churches by illegal immigrants. “The Church has always sided with the weak,” the Nuncio says in today’s issue of the leftist newspaper De Morgen. With his statement the Nuncio comes out in support of the embattled Belgian Catholic Bishops. Hans Geybels, the spokesman of Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the Primate of Belgium, said the Nuncio’s support is “a positive signal.”

Tomorrow the Commission launches its contribution to the ‘Future of Europe’ debate or how we learnt to stop worrying and love the Constitution. A friend has seen the documents and sent me the following precis,