Recently in In the news Category

For the first time in the history of The Netherlands a cartoonist was arrested for offending someone. And looking at some of his cartoons I can understand some might be offended. His name alone will offend people.... Gregorius refers to Pope Gregory IX, who instituted the Papal Inquisition. Nekschot means literally "shot in the neck," a method used by "fascists and communists to get rid of their opponents."

But is that reason to arrest someone?

Remember the riots after the Danish cartoon publication? For some reason a lot of people where so offended that they resorted to violence. The response in Denmark? They supported the cartoonist and published the cartoons again after death threats. All in defense of the freedom of speech.

Just as in Denmark and most western countries, freedom of speech is in the Dutch constitution (article 7). And we have artists that use that to express. Sometimes artist offend others. In 2004 Theo van Gogh was murdered for doing so. He had offended part of the Muslim community.

What did we do here in The Netherlands? Sure, there where protests. But after a few weeks, maybe months it all seemed to be forgotten. I don't think his film, that was critical on how woman are treated in Islam, was ever shown again on TV. And some now seem to be trying to prevent a second murder or riots. Not by referring to the constitution. But by trying to prevent someone ever gets 'offended'.

Politicians are told to tone done and now Gregorius Nekschot got arrested. We are scared shitless* to offend someone. But I believe intimidation and censorship are no answer. Though I find most of the Gregorius Nekschot cartoons tasteful nor funny, I support his right to publish them. It should be allowed in a constitutional democracy.

As far as I can see now, there was no reason to arrest the cartoonist.

According to this video, the Dutch are much longer than Americans, so if we move to the US we could help bridge the height cap.

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
H.R. 3402: Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005

Unfortunately I almost feel the need for a new category on my weblog: Why NOT to move to the US. Things like this, the Patriot Act, and other recent laws and regulations are the main reasons. Still love the people, mentality, politeness, spaaaace, food etc etc. But Freedom and Liberty? It's almost totally being diminished. It's a shame.

News.com: Create an e-annoyance, go to jail
CNET: FAQ: The new 'annoy' law explained

A short update on the NYC Subway Pervert story. He's arrested. For some reason flickr removed the picture from their site.

Though there has not been an official request for help from the American government yet, the Netherlands is dispatching a frigate to deliver relief supplies to the stricken area, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said.

Frigate Hr.Ms. Van Amstel will depart shortly from the Netherlands Antilles and can be in position to offer assistance in four or five days. So it could have been there Saturday already.... but hey, better late than never!

The Netherlands also offered the US authorities the services of a dike inspection team to help combat the flooding in New Orleans.

"Long Beach halfway down from the tracks is trashed. Obliterated."

Machpi updated his blog and posted some 'after' pictures. His story and the pictures are a very disturbing first hand report from what happend in Long Beach.

"The coast to a couple hundred yards inland is absolutely smashed. Who knows how many people are still buried in the rubble."

"The street parallel to Woodward.. ...has a 200 yard barge sitting on it and where a house used to be."

Machpi will be posting as long as there is power and internet. Check his "before" pictures. He is right in the middel of it at Long Beach, MS.

More pictures can be found on Flickr.

The old media outlets also have weblogs. CNN has Miles O'Brien's hurricane blog. The USA Today Blog doesn't work to well in Firefox, but at least you can read the text.

To donate to refugees, here’s a link to the American Red Cross.

During the summer months there is often less news here in The Netherlands and since newspapers and TV still want to provide you with something they serve you less interesting news. In Dutch we revere to this as "komkommertijd" or "cucumber time". It's a period filled with "Man bites dog" and "Biggest pizza ever in Italy" stories that tend to bore you to death.

But the past week I noticed something. A lot of things are happening in the world but the newspapers and TV seem to miss them. Are reporters and journalist all on vacation? Did they loose their internet connections? Or are they just to stupid to visit digg.com, read popular weblogs and listen to Podcasts?

Here are some of the stories that I missed and you might have missed in the news, probably because it wasn't in there....

Suicide bomber strikes on bus in China on August 8. link
Nanotechnology kills cancer cells. link
U.S. ready to make bird flu vaccine. link
Tell the FCC to stick it…kick it, The revolution’s on! $8.85 million in venture investment for Podshow. link
We are having a baby. link

Let me know what you think that not got the attention in the regular news it deserves.

A love-struck Kenyan government official has offered former U.S. President Bill Clinton 40 goats and 20 cows for his daughter Chelsea's hand in marriage.

"Had I succeeded in wooing Chelsea, I would have had a grand wedding," Chepkurgor said.

"I would have invited South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu to preside at the ceremony."

- The New Zeeland Herald

Microsoft attempts to patent the creation of emoticons. That's right, evertime you smile :) or wink ;) you'll have to pay Microsoft. I think I'll file a patent for creating words by putting individual letters in a pre-defined order *wink*.

Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht did not mean to insult Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende by comparing him to Harry Potter.

Hahahha... sure! But let's get real here. Everybody has been comparing our Prime Magician with Potter, I did so in this post. If Balkenende really doesn't like being compared with the most succesful wizard ever, the he should GET A HAICUT!

What do you think? Could Balkenende and Potter be related?

(Potter is on the right)

You can't have missed it, the Dutch rejected the proposed EU constitution.

I asked my dad if he and my mom had voted. He awnsered he had but that it was a total waste of time. "Why?", I asked. "Well, your mother voted for and I voted against the proposed contitution."

A Dutch court will rule 29 April if Dutch authorities should arrest US president Bush during his visit to The Netherlands in May. The ruling is asked by a group of local politicians and individuals. They want him arrested for violations of the Geneva conventions. Bush will be visiting, if he doesn’t cancel, May 7-8 to commemorate Victory in Europe Day and visit the American cemetery in the Dutch city of Margraten. I they do arrest him, there's already a plan for his rescue: "Hague Invasion Act". Boy, I am happy we have our own escape plan!

This is why I'm not a fan of biometrics. What would have happend if the car used Face Recognition?

"Carjackers nipped off the fingertip of a man to make away with his luxury vehicle whose security system required the owner's fingerprint to start it."

The Hindu
BBC news

Researchers in Japan have discovered some eye-opening news about coffee: It may help prevent the most common type of liver cancer.

A study of more than 90,000 Japanese found that people who drank coffee daily or nearly every day had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank coffee. The protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups a day and increased at three to four cups.

Source: RedNova

We already knew it can lower your risk of diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and colon cancer. So drink up!

I'm downloading (Bittorrent: Link) this as we speak, there's a lot being said about Jon Stewart's Brutal Exchange with CNN (transcript). Can't wait to see it.

Want more Bush? Think Kerry is honest? Vote! http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Jacco from Wooden shoes abroad posted about this possability for people from all over the world to vote for the coming US elections.

So we lost the game against Portugal....

At least we can stop dressing in orange. Or should i say undressing.

Just a short post about our glorious victory over Sweden yesterday :)
Two of my favorite Orange fans:

Think He had time to listen?

Oh, and myself?
Well, i was kinda tired of our fun trip to Batavia Stad Outlet Shoppig earlier that day.

But i did enjoy the game!

Because I believe you get more of what you focus on. An update about the Good things happening in Iraq.

Last week all the remaining gear that Spirit of America donated to the Marines two weeks ago for 7 Iraqi owned and operated TV stations has arrived at Camp Blue Diamond – the Marines Division Headquarters in Ar Ramadi, Iraq. Read all about it on the Spirit of America Blog.

I also found a great project: Operation Iraqi Children. During and after Operation Iraqi Freedom, American soldiers were horrified at the squalor of Iraqi schools. Moved by the plight of these children, many American soldiers have taken it upon themselves to help. Working in small groups on their days off, soldiers gather supplies sent by family members and church groups and take them to villages, sometimes coming under fire as they work to reconstruct the schools and deliver learning tools to Iraqi kids. Read about the great things they've done already.

So remember. Even though horrible things happend and you see those pictures everywhere, good things are also happening. Give it time, Europe wasn't rebuild, stable and peacefull in may 1945 when the Germans surrendered nor was it one year later. It took time, faith and hard work.

With al the horrible news about American soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners I want to point out that good things are happening in Iraq too. I posted about WWII earlier this week and there are numerous stories about allied soldiers hurting and even killing German soldiers when they had already surrendered. That’s wrong, but nobody would say therefore that the allied should have pulled out of Europe or that defense ministers should have resigned. The same thing now with Iraq: yes, there should be an investigation and people should be punished. No, the US and it’s allies should not pull out of Iraq and Rumsfeld should not resign.

And now on to the Good things happening in Iraq.

After commemorating the Second World War on 4 may, celebrating our freedom on 5 may, today we remember the murder of Pim Fortuyn in 2002. Two years later I still get tears in my eyes. I get angry, sad and pessimistic about the future of The Netherlands. Not only because our sense of democracy and freedom of speech are altered, also because the press is still misrepresenting the facts about Pim Fortuyn, his ideas and what happened the weeks before he got murdered. If there’s one thing I could go back to change I would prevent Volkert van der Graaf killing Pim Fortuyn. It would have been great en super Dutch to have an openly gay prime-minister shaking the political grounds and shaking hands with, let’s say Bush.

Today schools and homes where raided by law enforcement agencies around the world (Reuters). More than 120 searches were conducted in a 24-hour period in 27 US states and 10 countries in an effort to dismantle organizations known by such names as Fairlight, Kalisto, Echelon, Class, Project X and APC, officials said According to the Miami Herald.

In Arizona Federal agents raided schools (azcentral.com article). In The Netherlands student homes where raided (Expatica article and this editorial by Leigh Phillips) in Enschede, Utrecht, Delft and Groningen. Among the other countries in which FBI searches have been conducted are Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Singapore, Sweden and Great Britain.

Now, since when can the FBI determine when and where raids should take place here in The Netherlands and other European countries? Didn't we have our own legal system? What's considered illegal in the US might be very normal in The Netherlands. Like smoking weed and prostitution. I think we are too liberal in The Netherlands but it's our call. These actions shouldn't take place just because the FBI wants to. The weird thing is that nowhere did i here anything that suggests any involvemend of the Dutch Justice Department or politics. The news is just that raids took place requested by the FBI.... i think that's scary. Before you know they start raiding abortion clinics in The Netherlands because once they helped an American citizen. The US already has the 'Hague invasion act' that, simple stated, says "it's ok to invade The Neterlands".

Think you had a bad day? How about Hall. This 59-year-old janitor in Texas had a really bad day Wednesday. First he gets hit by a train, then the ambulance he's in gets hit by a car. The good news is he just had some Bruises.

NBC30.com has a slideshow of both accidents.

Next time when you fall down the stairs and think your bones are broken, just call Natalia Demkina in Russia. She has X-ray vision and can see inside human bodies, according to the BBC and Ananova.
Wow, just imagine! Your boss is standing in front of you and is going on and on about some boring project. Your mind drifts away and without realising it you start counting his ribs. After a rib or five you see that his hart really is made of stone!

I really don't get it sometimes. I feel like quoting a Dutch soccer coach, he said something like "is it that i am so smart or are all of you so stupid?". How can a political party (Labour PvdA), when they where in office, legalize prostitution and support a Union for hookers on one hand and than on the other kick out one of their own (probably the most honest one) because he visited prostitutes. That's so hypocrite..... read all about it at Expatica.

I wrote more about prostitutes.

Yes, you really can! Visit The Netherlands and earn your money back, guaranteed (almost). It’s riskfree. You can now finance your roundtrip to beautiful Amsterdam by bringing over some drugs.
Don’t we have enough already? Apparently not!

Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner released plans today to don’t press charges against all drugs traffickers anymore. First offenders and people who don’t bring really that much, just have to hand over their sweet stuff. So, when visiting The Netherlands you can take a chance, either your visit is free or..... better luck next time. What’s the risk?

Now, Piet Hein Donner makes the same mistake as he did before, when he announced that 'petrol theft' is a relatively minor offence and the police won't do anything about it anymore. For some strange reason there was a sudden sharp increase in petrol theft. You would think that our wise Justice Minister would have learned from that. But no, he announces to let drugs traffickers go, and apparently thinks there won’t be even more than there are already.

Well, in my opinion Piet Hein Donner is a dumb ass loser. Too stupid to be a police officer. And he’s our Justice Minister. uh… help?

By the way. Unlike our Justice Minister i am in no way endorsing drugs trafficking or anything related.
Say no to drugs!

Like i said before, the Ducth are real traders. And it's helping our economy with a psychedelic boost. You ask, we deliver. In the first half of 2003, German police stopped 25,000 LSD hauls from the Netherlands. That's about five times as much as in 2002. And it's not even time for the Love Parade yet! (Germans are just like French so don't expect an English version of that site)

For more about our LSD export read Dutch gangs fuel LSD comeback

Denise Mulder took a plane to the USA and did her thing to win. Win what? Well, the World Pole Dance Championship, what else would the Dutch Miss Striptease of 2002 do? Mulder attributed her championship title to the originality of her act. During her Lara Croft-style act on Sunday, she combined stripping with pole dancing in a way that had not previously been seen in the striptease world.

Mulder is a Gouda redident. You remember Gouda from al the Dutch Cheese?

It's terrible to see the images of the wildfires in Calafornia. The five-day old Grand Prix Fire has torched more than 35,000 acres and the nearby Old Fire -- previously called the Waterman Canyon Fire -- has already consumed more than 10,000 acres and more than 200 homes in less than 24 hours.

As many as 12,000 homes in the region are under some form of evacuation. More than 4,000 firefighters battle erratic, wind-driven flames.

Again, feedroom offers free up-to-date regional video:
NBC4 Los Angeles
KTLA5

Two stories in the news this week show that tigers are not suitable as pets or entertainers. First there's the white tiger that attacked Roy (you know, from Siegfried and Roy). Roy is still in critical condition at University Medical Center in Las Vegas. The attacking tiger, which was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and raised by a private breeder, was quarantined at The Mirage following the attack.

The other story is about the 400-pound Bengal tiger living in an Harlem apartment building. The tiger was sharing his apartment with a caiman. Remember the caiman? Their spittle is poisonous. But who cares about that....

When you care about these animals then you´ll like these links to organisations that help them:
WSPA
PrideRock
Google Directory Listing

Following a sudden sharp increase in petrol theft after last weeks stupid remarks from Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner, our wise leaders today anounced that they will look into the posibility of thinking about planning to start an investigation to find out if it maybe is a good idea to create an institution where owners of gas stations can get the name and address of people who steal gas from their station. So they can send them a bill.
Now, why didn´t i think of that...... or did i? hmmm "give you the name and address of the thief so you can collect your money yourself", did i write that?

NATO on Monday picked Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as its next secretary general. De Hoop Scheffer lied about his candidacy until the last moment, saying he wasn't a candidate. Our prime minister Balkenende said the same thing. This while everybody knew they dicsussed his resume with Bush recently. And everybode endorsed him. Why endorse somebody who's not a candidate?
But today our great and wise leader Balkenende explained it all to me on tv. It was all just tactical politics and the result is the only thing that counts! He talked to Bush about "values and norms" this month and now he says it's ok to lie as long you win the game in the end?

de Hoop Scheffer, kissing our Prime Minister Balkenende?

I'm a big fan of The Feedroom and now you can watch Live Video of Hurricane Isabel. If found the link at wnbc.com. Check it out!

I'm so proud to be Dutch!
We have great Royal Family.... of pigeons:

click image to enlarge

I really don't understand why the Queen is wearing a lovenest on her head while presenting the countries biggest cuts in decades.

Public confidence in Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has taken a nosedive like a muggle on a Nimbus 2000.

Would you trust Harry Potter Prime Minister Balkenende? Or can you tell why he didn't get my vote?

More about how the confidence in Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has collapsed can be found here.

click to enlarge
This Magazine cover caused a lot of commotion this week. It shows a KLM airplane about to hit the office of Nationale Nederlanden (Dutch site) in Rotterdam. This well known Dutch insurance company is a subsidiary of ING. The text reads "Target Netherlands, muslimterror getting closer". I haven't read the article, but there have been more stories about how the Dutch open society makes it vulnerable against terrorists.

KLM asked the judge to order the issue to be taken out of the stores but the judge decided not to. I think that's the right decision. But it's a very unappropriate cover, especially in the week that we remembered 9/11.

I really wonder what they ate.... Do you think the Dutch Prime Minister took some real Gouda Cheese with him to Washington? Did they share pretzels at 7 am? Who knows!

It's nice to see that the US press still considers The Netherlands a 'key ally'. But it's not really the truth.
Maybe Balkenende didn't dare to tell Bush. A recent poll showed that a majority of the Dutch doesn't support sending more Dutch troops to Iraq. And a lot of people even want the troops currently there to come back. I just don't get it. Don't they think the Iraqis need as much help they can get, just as Canada and the US helped us after WWII?

...land in jail

The Den Bosch Court ordered on Tuesday the release of Fons Spooren, a former PSV football club director accused of having sex with underage youths and intentionally exposing them to the HIV virus.

Spooren is to be released from Jail on the condition that he does not commit a criminal offence. uh.... wait a minute.... aren´t we all free on the condition that we don´t commit criminal offences? What a *!*"#$*. The guy willingly had unprotected sex with underage boys while he knew he has HIV, this went on for years! It´s so wrong that he is released! Spooren himself said that his wife is the only one that may condemn him. How about the children you could have murdered? How about the law? How about GOD?

Just a comparison. The total cost of the recent blackout for New York City is estimated to be $1 billion, according to NY Newsday. That's the total Dutch GDP per day!

Dutch marines in the south of Iraq have come under gunfire in the first clash with Iraqi renegades since the peacekeeping troops were deployed in the war-torn Islamic country.

More

The desperate Cuban migrants that took a '51 Chevy and build a boat gave me a great idea! Sweety and i want to move to the States and i figured that we could try the same thing. If the Cubans can do it, the Dutch can do it! We've alway been a nation of seafarers. We've conquered the sea before! So i bought a beautiful red VW Beetle. Now all we need is to get the engine running again and some drums to make it float. Can you help us out?

Remember the Prince song Purple Rain? It's time for a revision; Purple Bear. The unusual color is a side effect of the treatment for dermatitis. The polar bear, named Pelusa, had to be separated from her mate Arturo. It seems that in the animal kingdom skin color does count.

CNN.com

Toot, toot! Cuban migrants fashioned a boat out of a 1951 Chevy pickup truck and "drove" it to within 40 miles (64 kilometers) of the United States before they were spotted, taken off and returned to the island, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday... (CNN)

Thank God i'm not French. They officially banned the word "e-mail" from the France vocabulary. The Culture Ministry has announced a ban on the use of "e-mail" in all government ministries, documents, publications or Web sites. The new buzz is "courrier". If you want, you can send an e-mail courrier to the Fench minister of Culture & Communication and try to explain that the internet is World Wide, e-mail is World Wide and France isn't the world.
CNN
Chigago Sun-Times