Four months ago to the day, on September 30th, Jyllands-Posten published its twelve Muhammad cartoons. Over the past four months The Brussels Journal, an internet publication, has posted 19 stories about the affair, but the mainstream media (MSM) have – until today – remained conspicuously silent. In the Belgian newspapers and magazines not a single letter has been published about this important story. And when the MSM finally decide to devote some attention to the case it is amazing to see how they manage to get basic facts wrong despite having had loads of time to do their research. The Australian networks SBS reported today that one of the twelve cartoons shows a pig-snouted Mohammed, while our readers know from our article of 14 January that Muslim hate mongerers had added this particular cartoon (and two others) to the original twelve because they did not deem the original cartoons offensive enough. Why do Western journalists repeat the lies of these anti-Western fanatics? Out of incompetence, or worse?

This morning armed Palestinians stormed the European Union office in Gaza City, threatening Danes and Norwegians and demanding that they leave. Two Norwegian aid workers are on their way out of the region. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry has warned Norwegian citizens against travelling to Gaza. The Danish Foreign Ministry warned Danes to be extremely cautious while travelling in the Middle East and North Africa. Yesterday the Danish national flag was burned in the West Bank in protest against the publication of 12 cartoons of Muhammad (see them all here, halfway the article) in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten last September. Depicting the prophet is blasphemy according to Islam.

The Palestinian terrorist organization Islamic Jihad announced yesterday that all Nordic people had 48 hours to leave Gaza. The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades distributed leaflets saying that Danes and Swedes had three days to get out of the region. Sweden, however, unlike Denmark and Norway, has nothing to do with the cartoon affair. Perhaps the Norwegians have been omitted by the al-Aqsa Brigades because its leftist government parties have called for a boycott of Israel.

David Rennie, the Europe correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, reports over at his blog on a fine defence of the United States by the President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, at the Euro love-in in Salzburg this weekend.

The European Union leaders launched a salvage operation on the moribund EU constitution, but the Latvian president is our hero, and we are sure you will agree after reading Rennie’s report. Here is an excerpt. Three cheers for Vaira.

In an open letter to the “honoured citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten emphasized today that it never intented to offend Muslims by publishing 12 cartoons of Mohammed last September. The letter, written by Carsten Juste, the paper’s editor, was published both in Danish and Arabic. It was translated for us by Hjörtur Gudmundsson:

On Thursday, Google launched its Belgian version of Google News. It comes in two languages: Dutch and French. Google's algorithms scan some 400 news sites, thereby selecting, ranking and grouping news stories. But the Belgian newspaper editors are unhappy. "All [Belgian] newspaper editors are unanimous: Google did not ask for permission. Some form of agreement will have to be reached", says Alex Fordyn, the secretary general of the Belgian Association of Newspaper Editors (ABEJ-BVDU). Apparently the newspaper editors want some financial compensation from Google.

Stating that “homosexual behaviour endangers the survival of humanity” and that “heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality” can cost you dearly in France. Exactly these opinions, expressed by the French politician Christian Vanneste last year, led to him being sentenced on Tuesday to payment of a heavy fine.

A court in Lille [Rijsel in Dutch], in the French northern province of Flanders (adjacent to the Belgian Dutch-speaking region of Flanders), ruled that Mr Vanneste has to pay a fine of 3,000 euro plus 3,000 euro in damages to each of the three gay organisations that had taken him to court. The politician, a member of the French National Assembly for the governing UMP, also has to pay for the verdict to be published in the leftist Parisian newspaper Le Monde, the regional Lille daily La Voix du Nord, and the weekly magazine L’Express.

The left-wing government in Norway apologizes to Muslims worldwide for the publication of twelve Muhammad cartoons [see them here] in the Norwegian newspaper Magazinet. Oslo sent out instructions to all the Norwegian embassies on how to respond to queries about the cartoons. Unlike the Danish government, the Norwegian government is not concerned about safeguarding the right to freedom of expression. Foreign Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, a leading member of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s Workers’ Party, wrote the following e-mail to the Norwegian embassies:

Hundreds of teachers in Parisan suburbs that are predominantly populated by immigrants have gone on strike demanding more effort from the French governent to counteract violence in their schools. The most recent incident occurred last Tuesday in the Montreuil suburb where a 13 year old grabbed a pregnant teacher by the throat and tried to strangle her to the enjoyment of a number of his co-students. Among the incidents last week was an attack on a history teacher who was punched in the face by a student in Sarcelles. In the same week a 15 year old in Gisors broke the nose of another teacher and a Molotov coctail was thrown at a school in Argenteuil.

One of the worst incidents occurred in Etampes, south of Paris, on December 16, when a student stabbed a 27 year old art teacher in the stomach with a knife. Teachers in Seine-Saint-Denis in the northern part of Paris say their protest is directed towards the government which they say has not learned from the riots in November.

This morning the Belgian federal police conducted searches in 17 houses in Brussels. One of the buildings was the seat of the Centre Islamique Belge (CIB) in the Brussels borough of Molenbeek, where two people were arrested and several documents and personal computers were confiscated. A website close to the CIB recently called for the assassination of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister. “We must fight people who reject our democratic values and abuse religion for radical goals,” Laurette Onkelinx, the Belgian Justice minister said. The authorities added that this was the first tangible result of an “anti-radical action plan” aimed i.a. against websites inciting hatred and violence. The plan was approved by the Belgian government last… March 25, 2005.

Last Saturday five Moroccan “youths” cut the throat of a 16-year old black boy in the Brussels borough of Molenbeek. The victim, who was born in Niger, bled to death. The Molenbeek blacks say it was a racist murder. They complain about the hatred of the Moroccans for the black Africans. They also complain about the indifference of the Belgian authorities.

Three days after the murder the large pool of clotted blood was still visible on the spot in the Heyvaert Straat where the boy had been killed. The authorities did not bother to clean it up. Yesterday Abdelhai and Sedeat, two brothers of the assassinated boy, showed the large black spot with its foamy white edges to a journalist of Het Nieuwsblad. “The blood has been here for more than two days,” Abdelhai said. “Everyone could walk right through it.”