Anybody need a place to live in Utrecht for seven weeks?

Low rates. The catch: you have to take care of two cats (not mine). Mail me privately.

12:49

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About those good intentions and that road to hell

A couple of girls tried to save my cat today. As a result, they might very well have gotten him killed.
Let me explain. Ever since Ender got run over by a car last year, I'm not allowing him outside anymore, except for the balcony. Since Ender has the same level of motor control I have after 8 pints of lager, he is always fitted with a harness which will make sure that when he stumbles from the balcony, he won't plummet to his death. Instead, the harness is attached to an elastic rope which will cushion the drop. Also, the harness of course fits below his forelegs, to prevent him from suffocating.
Well, today, when I was on the phone for a few minutes, Ender apparently fell down. A few neighbourhood girls saw my cat, and figured he was going to choke to death. There was no danger of that whatsoever, but without trying to ring my doorbell they cut him loose, and off went my cat. They could have checked then if I was at home (the balcony door was bloody open), but did neither.
Ender is not used to the outside world at all, so when I found him after roaming through the neighbourhood for about an hour or so, he was absolutely petrified. I'd never seen him scared like this before.
Figures. There's plenty of cars that drive way too fast. He might have been injured or worse - it's not like nothing has ever happened to him before.
Of course, I rechecked his restraint when I got home. It was absolutely fine - except for the really sturdy knot I had to use to reattach it to the rope.
All's well that ends well I guess, though my stomach is still filled with the same nauseating fear I felt when he was run over last year.
Cat's purring again though.

14:57

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Paarse Krokodil in Adformatie

Y'all will probably remember that I used to participate in a business plan contest for which I had to register the domain name Paarse Krokodil (Purple Crocodile).
Today I got a call from Erwin Wijman, who is a freelance hack for advertising weekly Adformatie. Apparently, the commercial RTL4 tv station has been airing a section called Paarse Krokodil for some weeks now in its popular show Barend en van Dorp.
I told him why I had registered Paarse Krokodil, and how I didn't win the prize I was aiming for. That's why there's nothing yet at Paarse Krokodil (nor at Paarse-Krokodil).
The upcoming article in Adformatie may change that now.

14:09

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55 minutes, 42 seconds

Is my final time for the 10 kilometer run in Utrecht today. Since my goal was 55 minutes, I was 42 seconds too slow. Which doesn't mean I'm entirely unhappy, since I ran today in spite of my doctor advising me not to due to a rather persistent knee injury. (Screw him.) Also, because I've been ill most of February, I wasn't able to put in the amount of training time I would have liked.

My running partner (Martijn) beat me by 53 seconds (his final time was 54" 49'). Congrats! Oh, and never mind that he (a) was too much of a coward to set himself a challenging goal, telling me for months he would be happy to finish within 65 (!) minutes, (b) is too much of a coward to do the 16,1 km run in Amsterdam in September.

Understandably, since he would lose. Martijn only weighs about 60 kgs and is rather thin. I am still hauling around 18 kgs of excess lard, which will be gone for the most part by then. (My weight has dropped from 101,2 kgs earlier this year to about 95-96 kgs, a decrease which would have been larger if not for the disease-ridden month of February. My GP kinda objected against the idea of slimming whilst I was on the verge of contracting pneumonia.) When I run now, it feels like 'rucking', the military practice of carrying a 20 kg backpack whilst walking to places that you could drive to.

Well, Martijn generally votes Labour or Green Party, so I should probably adjust my expectations accordingly.

22:02

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Why bloggers should go to jail

My new Netkwesties column is up. (Warning: in Dutch.) It deals with the matter of the 'Apple bloggers' that are currently appealing a court order to reveal their source for several articles citing confidential information about Apple.

Bottom line of the article: this is a test case for the entire blogosphere. These bloggers have an opportunity to make a stand for civil journalism, namely by not revealing their sources even if the court should order them to. Instead, I argue they should accept any punishment dished out and go to jail, just like any other journalist worth his salt would.

New civil liberties have hardly ever been granted, but many of them can eventually be won.

(Oh, by the way, Babelfish theoretically offers Dutch-English translations, but it will probably just give you a good laugh.)

18:52

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You will be assimilated

Here's a strategy for dealing with less than optimally integrated immigrant kids I hadn't thought of yet.

Instead of countering their intolerance with ours, we pretend we are not countering at all, but merely trying to adjust their behavioral problems.

This may seem soft to you, but it means that hordes of fanatic female social workers will descend upon the poor immigrants. With more fury than probably even Genghis Khan could muster they will talk and drug any deviants into submission (no Hirsi Ali pun intended), in the same way that any slightly active boy is currently being forced to take Ritalin, and every slightly shy girl is using Prozac intravenously.

I feel sorry for them.

17:19

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All hail Mrs. Verdonk

A few months ago, our immigration secretary Rita Verdonk was lambasted in the press for daring to comment on an imam who refused to shake her hand.

Now, it seems more people are willing to stand up for their right to be treated as human beings.

An Islamic man in The Hague will not be receiving his Social Security allowance this month for being unwilling to greet female employers of the Sociale Dienst (Social Services). In some Dutch media, the story is being spun as if the man is being punished for not wanting to shake hands. That's not the whole story. The statute of this particular office of the Sociale Dienst allows for religious people who are forbidden to touch women to express themselves in another way, for example by nodding or bowing. But this particular guy didn't want to greet women in any way.

I'd say if you are willing to touch money from female civil servants, you should also be willing to touch the women themselves.

I mean that in a completely non-sexual kinda way, of course. (You wouldn't doubt me if you'd seen the people that work at the Sociale Dienst.)

10:53

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Judge in AHA case: please **** the **** up

I started writing a rant about the judge who didn't convict Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but nevertheless made a remark about how AHA shouldn't have called Muhammad a pedophile, because he only married a 9 year old once. AHA got away with it though because she had called Muhammad a pedophile only once or twice.

Seems to be a 'once is not enough' kinda judge to me, but please, do shut up. Will I get away with a single murder as easily? Either something is illegal, or it isn't. I don't like the concept of blurry limits on freedom of expression.

Now, personally I find the whole debate rather distasteful. I mean, there's a bloke in the Bible who had a harem of 1,000 women (well, actually 700, plus 300 concubines), which is only slightly better than I do on most Saturday nights. Now, are all Christians proponents of polygyny or polyandry? (Well, I am, but I'm a heathen.)

Nobody brings this up anymore because most Christians consider the Bible a metaphorical book. Most Muslims don't feel that way about the Qu'ran (yet). Still, I think it might be more worthwhile to discuss the (im)possibilities of integrating Islam into a democratic system, and not resort to namecalling about apocryphal religious texts which stem from times when it was also quite acceptable to double park your camel, or to stone gay people to death. (Lord knows, did Jews and Arabs wear anything under those desert garbs in those days?)

Nevertheless, if AHA wants to debate on this level, then that's her prerogative. It is not up to a judge to issue implicit warnings about how many times you can call someone a pedophile and get away with it. If AHA wants to think Muhammad was a pedophile, seen from her western perspective, she's entitled to do so (as childish as I may think this way of debating is). Just as much Muslims have a right to think Muhammad was acting in accordance with the rules of that time, and Christians can choose to conveniently ignore how Solomon was able to sleep with a different woman every night, theoretically taking three years to make the rounds.

I was going to say I accidentaly erased my rant, and won't write it again, but that seems to be a rather superfluous remark now.

10:12

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The future of Geert Wilders

By now you will have read just about everywhere what a great and original thinker Mr. Geert Wilders is.

I am not nearly as enthusiastic, and I think comparisons with Mr. Pim Fortuyn are too much flattery for Mr. Geert Wilders. Let's dispell two myths right now, before I get to a fisking of his 'declaration of independence'. One, that Geert Wilders is the new Pim Fortuyn. Two, that he has to suffer through the same kind of verbal abuse and demeaning treatment Mr. Fortuyn had.

First of all, Geert Wilders is not Pim Fortuyn. I knew Mr. Fortuyn, albeit superficially. He was arrogant, but also very smart. I edited his copy when I was a junior editor at Elsevier News Weekly. His proposals were for the most part well thought out, and based on books he had written in the years before. Mr. Wilders' 'declaration' looks like it was penned down on the backside of a very soggy beer mat, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Second of all, Geert Wilders doesn't get nearly the same kind of nasty as Mr. Fortuyn. Ad Melkert, one of the most opportunistic Labour politicians this country has ever had to endure, refused to speak with him during a televised political debate. Mr. Fortuyn was called dangerous almost every time his name was mentioned. To top all that, influential former television host Marcel van Dam called him 'an inferior human being' on Dutch PBS. (Never mind that Marcel van Dam is the former CEO of the powerful PBS station VARA (which has socialist roots). Never mind also that he was accused of bankrupting Exota, a soda company, by allegedly falsifying television footage. Read more about it here.)

If you hear people blabber on about how 'the Main Stream Media' (MSM) mistreat Mr. Wilders, they are simply plain wrong. Ever since the murder of Van Gogh, most MSM don't take such an agressive approach towards politically incorrect ideas anymore. Not because they've suddenly become enlightened about their intellectual blackspots, but because they're also commercial enterprises (yes, despite their attempts to lambast their opponents as tools of evil corporations, they themselves have to make regular sacrifices at the altar of Mammon).

As a result, Wilders' 'declaration of independence' has received extensive coverage, even on Dutch PBS, and he was treated extremely mild compared to the abuse Mr. Fortuyn had to suffer through.

Which brings me to the first point, a discussion of what Mr. Wilders has on offer for the electorate.

I'm sorry to say his 'declaration' contains a lot of proposals, which are either unaffordable or at odds with some of his other proposals, or both. For example, Mr. Wilders claims to be in favour of increasing civil liberties, but nevertheless wants to give the police more leeway, for example by allowing them to frisk citizens without any suspicion or reason. He also wants to dismiss 50 percent of all civil servants, but increase the amount of funding for police departments and nursing homes, presumably to hire more people. (There's only that much money you can spend on diapers, and nursing homes don't have that many material needs either.) Never mind that most civil servants do have work to do, and although I can imagine some increase in efficiency, 50 percent seems rather outrageous. Finally, Mr. Wilders wants to lower taxes, but increase government spending in several areas. I know there's an American guy out there doing the same thing, but let's face it, he's got a trading deficit and the dollar to play around with, not to mention a really old banker who helps him to take advantage of the global financial markets. What is Mr. Wilders going to do? Oh yeah, I forgot: bring back the guilder, our former currency. Now that will help stabilize our economy!

I could go on, but then again, I'm really tired (and reading Wilders' stuff is not helping).

As I've said before, despite the shortcomings of his political doctrines I still think Wilders could do some good for Dutch politics. Populism might be just the right antidote for the pseudo-intellectualism that passes for political debate in The Hague these days. Wilders might be able to keep the right-wing VVD on its toes whenever it tends to stray too much towards the political center. He is after all competing with the VVD for the same group of voters. Labour party PvdA already has two parties on its left side (the Green Party (GroenLinks) and the Socialist Party (Socialistische Partij)) making sure it stays on the 'proper' course. It would be good to have such a counterbalance on the right side of the spectrum as well.

23:33

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Court rules in favour of Hirsi Ali

As expected, the court in The Hague has ruled that Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali will not have to restrain herself when speaking about Islam. The judge also denied a request to prohibit Submission 2. Read more on what the case was about here.

I may have a bit more later today. The ruling hasn't been released yet so it's rather hard to give any sort of in-depth commentary.

I'm also working on a fisking of Geert Wilders' "declaration of independence". To summarize: a politician should strive to make matters as simple as possible - but not simpler. It seems to me that Mr. Wilders is guilty of the latter. And never mind the inherent arrogance of naming a few sheets with populist statements after one of the greatest documents about liberty in existence.

Which doesn't mean I think there isn't a political future for Mr. Wilders, nor that I think he couldn't be of benefit to the Dutch political landscape. On the contrary. Populism might be just the right antidote for the pseudo-intellectualism that passes for political debate in The Hague these days.

Or, as Team America would say: You have dicks, pussies and assholes...

10:48

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Uptight employer

Meet Mr. Patrick Savalle. Mr. Savalle works as a contractor for a Dutch IT company. Or rather, worked.

With the prior consent of his co-workers, Mr. Savalle posted a Kill Bill parody on his blog, involving the rather gruesome murders of said co-workers.

His employer did not share the literary enthusiasm of Mr. Savalle and his (former) colleagues, and had him escorted out of the building immediately.

So I figured the best thing to do is to make sure that as many people as possible read Mr. Savalle's story.

Another very important reason to link to Savalle's blog is this section containing homemade model photographs. Well, important in a male chauvinist pig kinda way. Hey, it's Friday arvo.

(Hat tip GeenStijl.)

17:08

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Speelgoed voor sadisten (recensie Antworks, Eldohm)

Het is jammer dat het cliché van de over lijken gaande zakenman meestal niet meer is dan dat. Anders was nu het perfecte relatiegeschenk voor hem gevonden: de AntWorks. Dat is een fraaie container gevuld met een futuristisch uitziende gel, waarin mieren zouden moeten gedijen. In de praktijk valt dat tegen.

More...

18:10

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Rather sods off

Good riddance.

11:34

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Finally, a Dutch victory for freedom of speech

It's about time we had one after the dismal excuse for integrity Dutch film makers displayed at the Rotterdam Film Festival, where a screening of Van Gogh's Submission was canceled due to security concerns.

The Dutch Gerechtshof (court of appeals) of Amsterdam has ruled in favour of columnist Luuk Koelman, who wrote a scathing article about Gretta Duisenberg, the wife of Wim Duisenberg, former head of the European Central Bank. Mrs. Duisenberg is well known for sympathizing with Yasser Arafat. Mr. Koelman's article describes Mrs. Duisenberg taking the concept 'human shield' one step further: by crawling on top of Mr. Arafat.

A lower court initially ruled the article to be unlawful. Fortunately, there are still some sane people higher in the ranks of our judiciary, for the Gerechtshof makes it very clear that anyone with half a brain should be able to recognize that the article is meant to be ironic. Read Koelman's press release here.

10:34

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About Giuliana Sgrena (2)

Some of you have emailed me for a complete translation of the article. However, all the juicy bits are already below, plus it's kinda illegal for me to post a full English version of an article of which I don't own the publishing rights.

Meanwhile, Rogier sent me this link which allegedly contains pictures of Sgrena's car. Ever since since hearing her story, I couldn't stop myself from thinking: "Ma'am, if the Americans had wanted you dead, you bloody well would be just that." The pictures seem to corroborate that assessment. There's only a single bullet hole in the windshield. That's very consistent with measured use of force and an attempt to take out the driver and/or the engine (mind you, it was dark). It is absolutely not consistent with an attempt to murder to Sgrena or firing 300-400 bullets.

Oh, and Rome? Could this article about you having paid a ransom for Sgrena please not be true? I'm fast running out of places in Europe where I still want to go on holidays (France, Germany and Spain were already off the list), and the weather in the UK really sucks.

Peaktalk also has a roundup on Sgrena, and offers a link to this gem, a quote of Sgrena in Corriere della Sera:

I have not said that the Americans wanted to kill me, I have only said that the mechanics of this fact is the mechanics of an ambush.

Hand me some of that magic toad, will you?

9:00

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About Giuliana Sgrena

Mr. Harald Doornbos is a veteran war reporter. He is no archetypical hawk nor a staunch supporter of the United States. In fact, he used to be a reporter for the communist newspaper 'De Waarheid' (The Truth, or Pravda, if you like) before it went bust. (This doesn't necessarily mean he was ever a communist, by the way. De Waarheid used to be a huge employer.)

However, this doesn't make him overly sympathetic towards Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist who was held hostage by Iraqi insurgents. Some snippets from this article which was published today in a Dutch Christian broadsheet.

'Be careful not to get kidnapped,' I told the female Italian journalist sitting next to me in the small plane that was headed for Baghdad. 'Oh no,' she said. 'That won't happen. We are siding with the oppressed Iraqi people. No Iraqi would kidnap us.'

It doesn't sound very nice to be critical of a fellow reporter. But Sgrena's attitude is a disgrace for journalism. Or didn't she tell me back in the plane that 'common journalists such as yourself' simply do not support the Iraqi people? 'The Americans are the biggest enemies of mankind,' the three women behind me had told me, for Sgrena travelled to Iraq with two Italian colleagues who hated the Americans as well.

(Doornbos goes on to explain how the women demeaned him for travelling as an embedded reporter with the US military, for security reasons. They didn't want to hear about any safety concerns.)

'You don't understand the situation. We are anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, communists,' they said. The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers, the enemies of the Americans have nothing to fear.

(Doornbos tells them they're out of their mind.)

But they knew better. When we arrived at Baghdad Airport, I was waiting for a jeep from the American army to come pick me up. I saw one of the Italian women walking around crying. An Iraqi had stolen her computer and television equipment. They were standing outside shivering, waiting for a cab to take them to Baghdad.

With her bias Sgrena did not only jeopardize herself, but due to her behavior a security officer is now dead, and the Italian government (prime minister Berlusconi included) has had to spend millions of euros to save her life. It is to be hoped that Sgrena will decide to have a career change. Propagandist or MP perhaps. But she should give up journalism immediately.

13:32

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Schiphol does have a bird baiting device

Thought I was kidding? Well, so did I. Schiphol has apparently become a breeding ground for mice (and probably also rats, but they're more likely to work behind the counter or at KLM, our formerly national airline, now property of the infidel French). This attracts birds to the airport in huge numbers. They can't poison the mice, because that might also kill the birds, and you wouldn't want them to die before they get sucked into the jet engine of your airplane.

7:58

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Youngsters try to blow up my neighbourhood

Bloody idiots. Three kids threw bricks from an overpass at a truck filled with about 40 tons of gasoline. They hit the truck, but fortunately not the driver, otherwise we might have had some fireworks. All this took place at a distance of about 500 metres from my house, so if anybody has got some asbestos pyjamas lying around? Mr. Rather? Are you there?

12:36

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Why Schiphol Airport sucks (megaopenhaardkoor)

(Please ignore the last word in the title, it's a Dutch internet thing.)

I promised you guys 'n gals a rant about Schiphol Airport. Well, here goes. Schiphol must be one of the most dreadful airports in the world. And this is only for lack of having discovered any other planets with something resembling a civilization. Why is Schiphol so bad? Well...

First of all it's terribly slow. Schiphol is built according to a 'one terminal concept', which is a slick way of saying you'd beter bring your hiking boots. If you are misfortunate enough to land at gate A and have a connection at gate F, you'll be walking for at least half an hour. (Senior citizens had beter book a hotel for the night.) In fact, I would be tempted to suggest no terrorist in his right mind would want to attack Schiphol Airport because of the long walking distances, if it wasn't for the...

Extremely lax state of security at the airport. Only recently, a bunch of robbers nicked several millions worth of jewelry from what was supposed to be a highly secure area. If robbers can steal stuff, then I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to haul a few RPG's in there either and blast some birds out of the sky. (I'm referring to planes of course, and not the seagulls that shit all over your car if you're driving within five miles of Schiphol. We are the only country in the bloody world which has an airport that hides a bird baiting device somewhere.) Nevertheless, some people might actually welcome being blown up by Jihadi's, if only to be saved from the...

Extremely arrogant people which Schiphol employs. When hundreds of passengers had to spend the night on the floor last week because snow had shut down most of the airport's operations, Schiphol's PR representative did not apologize for this near-Communist lack of planning. Instead, she went on Dutch PBS stating she felt it was 'heel vervelend'. This roughly translates to a rather condescendingly vocalized version of 'gee, too bad'.

Some people think it's the government's strict immigration policy that keeps the influx of foreigners down. I know better. I live near Schiphol.

18:31

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Politician of the week

Of course, every sensible European or American knows that recent positive developments in the Middle East are happening despite of George W. Bush, and not because of him. Or could it be that...

Read this article in Newsweek, not exactly a neocon bastion:

'The other noted political scientist who has been vindicated in recent weeks is George W. Bush. Across New York, Los Angeles and Chicago—and probably Europe and Asia as well—people are nervously asking themselves a question: "Could he possibly have been right?" The short answer is yes. Whether or not Bush deserves credit for everything that is happening in the Middle East, he has been fundamentally right about some big things.'

16:20

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Good point

I noticed this a bit late, but Charles is still making a good point. Why wasn't Theo van Gogh an integral part of the Oscar night? Probably due to the same kind of cowardice that had his film Submission canceled at the Film Festival in Rotterdam.

20:04

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-20

That's the predicted temperature for the coming night in some areas of the Netherlands. (That's -4 degrees Fahrenheit for people who don't live in the civilized, metric world.)

Since my appartment doesn't have central heating, and there's only a very thin layer of glass between the chilly outside and my bedroom, I will have to sleep in my living room tonight. That's the only place in my (very old) house with a gas heater. I think it's kinda romantic though, a bit like the camping in your back yard you used to do as a kid.

I'll post a rant about the miserable excuse we've got for a national airport here in the Netherlands, but I decided it would be more fun if I gave them another night to fuck up as badly as they did last night. Numerous passengers then had to sleep on the floor because Schiphol Airport couldn't find them a place to crash (no aviation pun intended) when several flights had to be canceled. God knows you can't fly when it's below zero. That's why Anchorage has no airport.

Good night y'all.

23:09

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Snow day

It's been over twenty years since this much snow fell in the Netherlands. The northern provinces of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe sometimes recorded twenty inches of snow, which for Dutch measures is quite a lot. In Amsterdam, we had about 4 to 8 inches, depending on where you were.

So I grabbed my camera and took some pictures. (All of them can be enlarged by clicking on them.)

Unfortunately, I can't show you any shots of my near-collisions due to excessive slipperiness (I was too busy trying to avoid said near-collisions becoming actual ones).

So I guess this migratory polar bear will have to do.

A Jack Russell thoroughly enjoying a snow shower, courtesy of his boss.

A small footbridge near the Eramus Park. Funny how snow makes it look impressive.

The first snow this particular bear has seen in a long time.

There must be a car under here. Somewhere.

I don't know why, but somehow, this picture radiates tranquility.

Oh, by the way, I was kidding yesterday when I made a reference to the alleged greenhouse effect and the current weather. Turns out there's actually a meteorologist who is making the case.

21:00

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Don't you just love the greenhouse effect

The dikes seem to be in no danger. The proprietors of indoor ice skating facilities, however...

23:27

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Who's really on trial?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali spent today in court. A group of Muslims is suing her to bar her from saying anything the Muslims deem offensive about Islam, and to preemptively censor the making of Submission, Part II. The first part of Submission, as anyone but Hollywood and the morons at the Rotterdam Film Festival know, pissed off Mohammed Bouyeri to the extent of all but severing Mr. Theo van Gogh's head.
This particular group of angry Muslims is represented by Mr. Robert Moszkowicz, outcast of a famous lawyer family. Mr. Robert Moszkowicz has been accused of indulging a coke habit. The bar attempted to revoke his license a few years ago.
Needless to say, and not just because of the plaintiff's interesting choice in legal representation, this will be a slam-dunk case for AHA (no pun intended, Mr. Tenet).
What's more interesting is a remark by AHA's lawyer, Germ Kemper. He feels there's a pretty big chance AHA will win the case, but what then? Mr. Kemper thinks Muslims might resort to violence if they don't get what they want through the legal system.
So in a sense, it's the Muslim community that's on trial here. Can they play by the rules?

(The verdict is expected on March 15.)

21:38

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