Earlier this week (on 24 April) proceedings began at the EU’s Court of First Instance in the case brought by US-software giant Microsoft to overturn the corrective antitrust measures imposed by the European Commission two years ago.

There is a blog to which Margot Wallström, the European Commissioner for Communication Policy, will hardly want to link her own. BR23, a leading English-language blog on Belarus, reveals that the EU’s mismanaged media policy is bolstering Lukashenko’s regime instead of fighting it. The blog’s criticism is directed at Euronews, a TV channel subsidized by Brussels to broadcast EU-related news in exchange for 5,000,000 Euro in annual funding.

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo (25 April) reports that Spain’s governing Socialists are submitting a bill to grant human rights to four species of animals. The species are chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans: the so-called ‘great apes’ or ‘pongids’ (grandes simios in Spanish).

The purpose of the bill is to ensure that Spain adheres to the international Great Ape Project, granting the animals the right to life, freedom and not being tortured. The GAP motto is: “Equality beyond humanity”. Its declaration says: “We demand the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans.”

Investigating magistrates of the Brussels judiciary refuse to inform the media and the public any longer about the investigation into the murder of 17-year old Joe Van Holsbeeck. The Brussels judiciary is angry with Laurette Onkelinx, the Belgian minister of Justice, because she demands that it formally apologize for having “stigmatized” the “entire North African community.”

Thorbjørn Jagland is a former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Norway from the Labor Party. He is now President of the Storting, the Norwegian Parliament, and thus technically speaking the highest ranking person in the country, next to the King. He recently wrote an essay in Aftenposten newspaper entitled Islamofobi vårt nye spøkelse? (Islamophobia our new specter?) where he warned against the dangers of Islamophobia. According to Jagland, seemingly paraphrasing the Communist Manifesto, a specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Islamophobia. Between the lines, Jagland seems to hint that the situation in Europe is now similar to that of the 1930s: We are very close to a new world war and the downfall of European democracy, a conclusion I wholeheartedly support. This is also where our agreement ends. According to Mr. Jagland, “far too few people during the interwar period understood what a fateful time they were living in. While those who wanted peace were arguing, Fascism grew stronger. In the point of intersection between the Islamists and Islamophobia, a new type of Fascism could emerge.”

The European Parliament, it seems, has been swindled. We MEPs – or, rather, you taxpayers – have been paying €1 million a year over the odds to the city of Strasburg (see the excellent coverage online at www.thefirstpost.co.uk).

About twenty years ago (April 26, 1986) the “Lenin Atomic Energy Station” exploded. Sort of. Anyhow, a lot of radiation escaped (Hiroshima x 400!) and the remains of the plant had to be capped – like a decayed tooth – with a “crown” of concrete.

In today’s edition, the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad writes that it has learned from its sources that the 16-year old boy who was arrested earlier this week for the murder of 17-year old Joe Van Holsbeeck, is called Marius. He belongs to a family of Polish gypsies who have been living in Belgium illegally since 2000. Marius was studying garage mechanics at a school in Anderlecht, a Brussels suburb, where he was arrested on Monday evening at 4:30 pm. His teachers had recognized him on the footage of security cameras in Brussels Central Station. Marius had already been involved in four cases of robbery and robbery with violence.

The Brussels police and judiciary have apologized to the North African community. On 13 April, one day after the murder of 17 year old Joe Van Holsbeeck, the office of the public prosecutor issued a statement saying the murderers were two “North African youths.” This did not seem unlikely because Van Holsbeeck had been knifed and some Muslim youths are skilled with knives. Though it is illegal in Belgium to slaughter livestock at home, this happens on a very large scale in Brussels during the annual Muslim feast of sacrifice.

We just received the following e-mail from an IP-address at the Belgian Ministry of Justice:

Haha, there you are with your pants down! First you spend a whole week writing that the murderers are North Africans, and now they turn out to be Polish… Isn’t that the country of the previous Pope, beloved by Belien, an arch-Catholic with his own version of the Sacrifice…
How low can [one sink]…