Another chance here to hit on the theme of the Netherlands leading the way to the Moral Apocalypse.

Saturday was quite a day for carousing, probably the year’s peak, at least for Amsterdam, for while the yearly Gay Pride Canal Parade which I treated in my previous post was proceeding, something called Dance Valley was going on as well – also yearly, consisting of tens of thousands congregating in an area of farmland called Spaarnewoude, just west of Amsterdam, to spend the day gyrating to electronic music coming out of huge speakers.

“Nothing really wrong with that,” you might say – and some of you might even add “. . . especially if that diverted some impressionable youth from otherwise spending their Saturday watching the homosexuals do their thing on Amsterdam’s canals!” True enough, were it not for one particular “impressionable youth” so diverted: our very own Prime Minister, Mark Rutte! The Algemeen Dagblad has the story: Mark Rutte dances along at Dance Valley, complete with pictures and even a brief video of the PM swaying along with the crowd. (I would embed it here, but it’s not all that interesting.) He’s the dude with the shades and the open-necked white shirt, who apparently likes to pose with chicks (with shades). Well, he is only 44, but he heads the VVD, the right-wing businessman’s party, so you’d think he would at least wear a tie!

For the sake of any of you who might gain satisfaction anew from the fact, let me repeat here my observation from that earlier post that the Canal Parade (and therefore Dance Valley, only about 15km to the west) had to deal with repeated interruptions of heavy rains and thunder/lightning. Also, from the AD article, Rutte has attended Dance Valley before, as recently as 2008, when he lost his telephone and so had his friends treated to rude SMS messages from same. But he wasn’t Netherlands head-of-government then.

Just after Christmas (“Boxing Day”) in 2004 it was “Surf’s up!” throughout South Asia as a tremendous tsunami hit lands as widely-separated as Indonesia and Tanzania. Then only a bit less than three weeks ago another tsunami washed over most of northeast Japan, devastating many coastal habitations and setting off certain nuclear problems.

Here in the Netherlands we can only sympathize and send assistance, financial and otherwise (which I understand we’ve done to a great degree). However, something similar might very well be in store for us soon, according to today’s article in the Algemeen Dagblad with the pleasing title Tsunami wipes out Netherlands population in 2012. That at least is the message of doom being put forward by the “Watchers of the Night,” a religious group out in the provinces who are already preparing for catastrophe by making themselves economically self-sufficient, laying in substantial stores of food and water.

What is their reasoning? you may very well ask. Well, it seems to involve some combination of Revelations, Nostradamus, and that Mayan thing you might have heard of that predicted doom for the planet in 2012, and they are by no means the only ones thinking along these lines. Many of this ilk see Japan’s earthquake/tsunami together with the widespread Middle East unrest as a sure sign that the prophecies are correct and there will be even worse to come next year. Even for the Netherlands.

It’s now early May, the time of year when many West European countries celebrate their liberation at the end of World War II. Today is in fact Liberation Day in the Netherlands, a public holiday, while yesterday was Dodenherdenkingdag – Day for the Remembrance of the Dead. And at a ceremony in The Hague a certain Eberhard van der Laan, a former government minister for the Dutch Labor Party, gave an interesting, even provocative speech (covered here in the Algemeen Dagblad) calling for a line of a certain sort to be drawn under the WWII experience so that society can finally move on.

The “hook” to Van der Laan’s speech, as it were, was the fact that it has now been 65 years since the end of the war – that’s the standard retirement age, at least within Europe, so why don’t we finally put WWII out to retirement as well? With this, the ex-politician was giving voice to what many in Europe surely have always thought in secret about the War (especially those too young to have lived through it): for how long will we have to keep paying respect, keep letting it influence our lives? It’s a very pertinent question, especially when applied to Germany and the issue of when, if ever, the guilt for what that nation perpetrated will finally be washed away and made irrelevant through the eroding effect of all the passing years. (more…)

I reported a couple months ago about what I termed Potemkin Shanghai, that is, about the authorities in that city applying what we could call the “Chinese Treatment” in advance of the 2010 World Exposition due to kick-off there on May 1. I go so far as to call it that because we already witnessed this in Beijing prior to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, namely city administration and police going to ridiculous lengths to present the city’s “best face” to the hordes of foreign visitors they expect to welcome. In Beijing, for example, whole city blocks were razed to make way for the erection of more eye-pleasing buildings; in Shanghai attractive women are reportedly being shipped in from the countryside to man – excuse the expression – bus-ticket sales counters.

But a new piece from the Dutch Algemeen Dagblad (Thousands of arrests for Expo Shanghai) brings an altogether new and sinister tinge to this. It’s not just those arrests, totalling 6,042 from the massive police-sweeps conducted so far, and said to be for the offences of “theft, gambling, prostitution, sales of pornographic materials, drug trafficking, and swindling practices.” It’s also the bodyscan machines that the authorities plan to place at each of the 870 entrances to the Shanghai metro while the Expo is going on (1 May through 31 October) – and they’ll be looking not just for weapons but for anything they don’t happen to want people to have. And then there’s the security guards that will be riding in all the buses for which those Sichuan sweeties will have sold you a ticket.

He doesn’t live there anymore, but when he did James Fallows of the Atlantic painted a convincing picture of a Middle Kingdom that, far from being some monolith state of worker-ants bent on world domination, was actually still rather poor, somewhat diverse rather than uniform, and very messy in daily life as people there actually had to live it. Still, this “Chinese Treatment” stuff also convinces me – together with their infamous Internet “Chinese Wall” – that the Communist Party authorities over there are hell-bent to recreate George Orwell’s Oceania.

OK, the report I caught about this is from the Dutch press (specifically, the Algemeen Dagblad – I don’t routinely cover the Swedish press due to language incapability). But it’s an instructive tale nonetheless: after some guy had announced (anonymously) on an Internet forum site his intention to head to the KTH Royal Institute of Technology (a state technical university located in Stockholm) and kill as many people as he could find there, police managed to track him down and arrest him before any harm could be done.

How instructive? First of all, this sort of thing is not supposed to happen in a place like Sweden, due to the much stricter gun-control there, but mainly because of what people assume is a more non-violent culture that doesn’t lend itself to that sort of thing. (Although one shouldn’t forget how Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was gunned down on a Stockholm street back in 1986, in a murder that is unsolved to this day.) Secondly, the authorities did manage to track the proto-perpetrator down – even behind the veil of supposed Internet anonymity – and detain him before he could actually perpetrate. What does this say about how genuine this supposed “anonymity” on the Internet actually is – and how genuine should it ultimately be allowed to be, when lives are on the line? Thirdly: Were lives truly on the line? How can anyone tell whether the suspect really meant to do what he declared he intended to do? That must still be unsure – you commit a crime only by doing it, not by only thinking it or even announcing it. (The latter probably constitutes a crime in itself, but of a different sort and one calling for nowhere near as much punishment as actually killing.)

Anyway: in the final analysis we seem to have here in Sweden one pole of a spectrum whose other pole is Seung-Hui Cho and 32 people shot at Virginia Tech. Where do you, and the society where you live, want to be on that spectrum? “At the pole of the Swedish incident that was prevented in time” may not truly be the answer, given the injury to privacy rights that was an important part of that episode.

“Sports car maker Porsche has a problem in America,” an article up now in the “Autoworld” section of Holland’s Algemeen Dagblad announces. And indeed it does, as you might figure out from that piece’s headline, whether you understand Dutch or not: Porsches slurpen te veel voor VS (even though slurpen in Dutch does not mean “slurp,” not quite, it means “gulp,” as in “to drink something fast.”)

That’s just the problem: Porsches do “gulp,” they don’t just “slurp.” But up to very recently no one really cared about what sort of MPG a Porsche would get – if you had to worry about that, then you certainly could not afford the car in the first place. In these energy-conscious times, however, that’s not allowed anymore: everyone has to worry about MPG, says the US government, and that includes Porsche. Or eventually it will, at least, for the American authorities did grant Porsche an exception to the requirement put out last year that all autos sold in the US meet minimum MPG requirements – that in exchange for collecting from the German company a couple hundred dollars as a “fine” for every such car that is presently sold.

But that’s a temporary exception, and it expires in 2016. For Porsche cars to meet the requirement then, the article reports, they would have to achieve an average 10% improvement in MPG each year in-between. Yes, hybrid Porsches are on the way, but not in time for 2016. And that’s when that little “fine” presently being collected balloons up to amounts that can reach $37,500 per vehicle sold.

The big story here over the weekend in the Netherlands, for once, is one with ripples that extend out to touch many other countries. It’s namely the fall of our coalition government, called “Balkenende IV,” but more precisely it’s the reason the government fell, which was simple: one part of it (CDA, CU – both of those C’s stand for “Christian,” by the way) wanted to waffle on the plans to withdraw Dutch troops from Afghanistan by next August; the other part (PvdA) insisted that there be no waffling. Result: there will be no waffling, because the plans are going through, the troops will be back home by the end of the summer, and as an added bonus it looks like there will be (premature) national elections in May to determine a new parliament (Tweede Kamer) and a new government.

One way you can tell this is truly a “big story” (if ipso facto is not itself sufficient for your reasoning process) is that the weekend is not even over, yet reports of repercussions are already coming in. Here’s a piece from Trouw reporting how the governor of Uruzgan (the province in southern Afghanistan where most of the Dutch combat troops are), Asadullah Hamdam, is already getting worried and has called upon the Dutch government to change its mind. On the other hand, Afghan General Juma Gul Himat, chief of police there, says he’s willing to live with a Dutch withdrawal – for a price. He wants better training, better air support, faster economic development, and better equipment: mine-detectors, helicopters. (Ah, mon cher général – what part of “We’re outta here!” don’t you understand?) (more…)

Four days on, and most of the world’s attention is still focused on the earthquake-disaster in Haiti. You’ll get no complaint about that out of me, and in fact I’ve finally come up with some things to pass on here that you might find interesting. Keep in mind, though, that I try only to do so when it’s material you probably have not encountered through the English-language press. Often, as here, that means it offers an unconventional, even perverse perspective.

For instance: Brazil is another country ready to assist the Haitians in their hour of need, as you would expect. But in Brazil’s case it is the Ministry of Defense that is taking the lead, as the Dutch newspaper Trouw reports: Brazil sends weapons to Haiti. Weapons? For sure: because people are getting so desperate there by this point that there is the very real threat of a complete break-down of public order, so the place stands sorely in need of some guns that shoot rubber bullets, and other crowd-control armaments.

We can see that from yet another Dutch report, this time from the Algemeen Dagblad: Dutch [team] break off rescue-attempt after gunshots. A Dutch “rescue-brigade” of four ten-man teams (and their dogs) specialized in finding and rescuing people from rubble is finally in Port-au-Prince, but they had to stop their first efforts to rescue people under a collapsed bank after gunfire came ever-closer, and now coordinate with local UN officials for an armed escort. And by the way, it’s a Brazilian who is in command of all UN troops in the country, many of which are Brazilian.

Then there is a rather controversial opinion piece placed today in the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique: Are blacks incapable? It’s quite interesting that I can’t find the author’s name anywhere on that webpage, although it does seem he is of African origin himself, as he writes of his “brothers of color” and how they are sure to let him know how they don’t like what he is saying. His lede is brief: “Haitians’ liberty has served for nothing but bringing forth tyrannical regimes.” The situation there is catastrophic now – but it was catastrophic even before the earthquake struck. Much the same applies to the countries of Africa, he writes, still trapped in backwardness and poverty, as they have been for decades since the departure of the colonial authorities. (Also, their own silence now when it comes to offering help of their own to Haiti has been deafening.) The mysterious editorialist attributes this state-of-affairs to black culture, for while all human beings have the same capacity for intelligence, the more “emotional” black outlook on life looks always for a strongman to take charge, and ultimately does not care about the corruption and elites-creation that must ensue. As a result, “we must have the courage to affirm that our culture does not favor [economic] development, it is indeed antagonistic to development.”

A low blow during Haiti’s time of Calvary? Or strong words whose uttering is made all-the-more necessary by the emergency? It does seem that Haiti is fated to be a ward of the US and/or the international community, a basket-case in state form, for quite a long time to come. Anyway, it looks like La Libre does not do comments, so I don’t know how this guy’s “brothers of color” are supposed to check in with their anticipated objections. As for you, dear readers, you’re welcome to do so here by e-mail as always, and perhaps then I could pass along any suitable comments to La Libre.

“Cold enough for you?” I know: a trite thing to say, and the worst part is that I used precisely those same first eleven words to begin another blog-post of just four days ago.

Still, I just couldn’t help myself, not when the answer is quite clearly “No!” for Chen Kechai, a Chinese man written about in a brief profile in the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (“Snow-grave for a cool Chinese”). Go ahead and click through: there are three photos as well, featuring Mr. Chen rather extremely under-dressed both for the cold Chinese countryside around him (said to be -10ºC = 14ºF) and the activities in which he is engaging – burying himself in the snow, pouring cold water on his head, that kind of thing. It says here that he has been indulging in these antics since 1989.

These days, more and more, it’s Hitler this! Hitler that! I just wish that Adolf Hitler would go away! The Nazi dictator stuck a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger more than 64 years ago anyway, isn’t that right?

But no, Hitler is a meme that will just not disappear (especially, I suspect, because it is in the public domain, so you don’t have to pay anyone any royalties to bring it up). I’ll just briefly mention here the ridiculous “Obama/Nancy Pelosi-as-Hitler” theme turning up lately, such as at last weekend’s “Tea Party” rally in Washington, DC. Then there is that German AIDS awareness ad you might have heard about recently, depicting a young woman having sex with Hitler and various other historical dictators. (After all, AIDS – like Hitler & Stalin et al. – “is a mass-murderer.”)

Now the Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad brings us the latest (by way of the Italian Corriere della Sera). A French tourist browsing in an Italian supermarket (namely Carrefour, headquartered in France) was shocked to find wine being sold in bottles bearing the likenesses of Hitler and Mussolini – and, for that matter, with various fascist slogans inscribed on the labels as well! This particular tourist happened to be of Jewish extraction; she immediately complained to store management, with the result that Carrefour soon removed from its shelves all such bottles. The article adds, however, that other wine bottles remain that are decorated with images of Pope John Paul II, Che Guevara, and Bob Marley. They sell fairly well.

Ah yes, Holland: Land of prostitutes-in-windows, of “coffee shops” where what’s mainly at issue (meaning what’s issued) is not coffee at all – everyone knows about all that. So perhaps you would also expect that that would be one country where a reigning beauty-queen would also feel free to pose nude – but preferably “tastefully” – in any publication she might desire, without recriminations. Alas, that is not yet true, as an article in the Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad today reminds us about the appearance in the new issue of the Dutch Playboy of the current Miss World Netherlands.

She is Carmen Kool, out of Amsterdam, and in addition to her name (if it actually is real, of course), I really like her attitude, especially for a 23-year-old. She was already clearly unrepentant in a slightly earlier piece from the AD (entitled Miss Netherlands with bare bottom) that first brought her exhibitionist transgression to light and speculated that she “was gambling with her crown.” “I think that the [Miss World] organization won’t be happy with my photo-shoot for Playboy. Unfortunately. I myself have nothing against nakedness. What’s more: I like to be a bit of a rebel.” She added, “I am Miss Netherlands. My countrymen have a right to it,” where by “it” she seems to be referring, again, to her naked photo-shoot. Again, a rather refreshing, even somewhat surprising attitude.

The axe did inevitably fall on her title shortly afterwards, and that follow-up piece announcing the sad news recounts a bit of a she said/he said dispute between Kool and a spokesman from the Miss World Netherlands organization about whether the latter sufficiently supported her in getting further opportunities for acting, TV commercials, and the like – in short, in getting further exposure, which she implies is why she felt she finally had to turn to the world-famous masters at providing exposure, as it were. Of course, the Algemeen Dagblad itself had now rendered its own assistance in that regard: you can click either of those two article links above to marvel at a photo which provides a coy sampling of her considerable charms (as well as an object lesson in how what is deemed proper for a European news publication often would not pass muster in the US).

As for Playboy.nl, for now it has only this entry in what it calls its “Playblog” announcing the coup, together with a shrunken rendition of the cover of that current issue on Netherlands newsstands now. (The Naakt! you see there of course means “Naked!”, as in “Hey wow! Look who we got!”) More revealing images tend to migrate to the website after subsequent issues, and subsequent centerfolds, follow, but I’ll have to leave it over to my dear readers to keep checking back on that Playboy.nl site to see when that happens, if desired. Alerting you to that here (if I even ever find out myself) is really not the purpose of this weblog. For that matter, perhaps this very subject is not really its purpose, although it does involve the “European non-English-language press.” In the end, I think I’m supposed to determine what that purpose is, but I nonetheless welcome any more e-mail contributions of opinion you might care to send!

Yay! Today marks the kick-off of this year’s Tour de France, the 96th version, from Monaco, which will ride through there, through France (of course) and through three other countries (Spain, Italy, and Switzerland) before ending up in Paris on July 26. And you know what all that means: yes, doping! In recent years the drama taking place on France’s (Monaco’s, etc.) highways and byways has reliably been overshadowed by the twists and turns in individual riders’ fortunes caused by bad news emanating out of testing-labs about their urine and blood samples (and even by police raids on teams’ hotels), and then by the deliberations by the cycling authorities about how to react.

Sometimes the sort of doping-drama that has become part-and-parcel of the Tour de France experience has taken place far after the (alleged) winner rode over the finish-line in Paris, so that it has taken until months later for the world to learn which race-results were entirely bogus. But it often gets started early as well, and that certainly is the case this year, as we see in an article from Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel: Quick-Step defends itself against doping accusations. Basically, Matthias Klappenbach’s piece describes how one of the cycling-teams entered in this year’s Tour, by the name of Quick-Step, already finds itself on the hot-seat. Allegations of doping practices come from one of its former riders, a certain Patrik Sinkewitz, who has specifically accused Quick-Step team leader Patrick Lefévère and team doctor Manuel Rodriguez Alonso of doping their riders – but over the period 2003-2005, it turns out, and in a statement that Sinkewitz submitted to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 2007! As Klappenbach reports, it’s only recently that the WADA passed on Sinkewitz’s statement to the International Cycling Union, and it was also only earlier this week that these allegations were made public (in Germany, at least) in a TV program on the German ZDF network, called “Frontal 21.”

Quick-Step is naturally “shocked” at the “false and slanderous” allegations and has signalled its intention to go to court against them. But it needs to be careful, because it’s clear that that team is not really pure as the new-fallen snow: as the Dutch paper Algemeen Dagblad reports (Quick-Step team-leader relieved), Quick-Step team-member Tom Boonen was only allowed yesterday to participate after all in this year’s Tour de France, despite having tested positive for cocaine-use, due to a ruling from the French Olympic Committee’s arbitration panel. He had already been forced to miss last year’s Tour due to being caught for the same thing at a previous point. (Photo credit: Wladislaw Sojka)

While Benjamin Netanyahu heads to the White House later today for his first official meeting with President Obama, is anyone listening to the Israeli Armed Forces Radio? At least the ANP, the Netherlands national press agency, is listening, and it provides the information that enables the Algemeen Dagblad to report on what is going on under the radar back in the Middle East while the American and Israeli heads of government have their discussions.

Whether the Israeli Armed Forces Radio broadcast in question is an explicit advertisement or not is unclear, but its point is to announce the opening of registration to purchase one of twenty new houses in Maskiot, a Jewish settler colony in the occupied West Bank. In fact, as we learn from its very own Wikipedia article, Maskiot is so deep into the West Bank – it’s way over on the other side from Israel, right on the Jordan river, for Heaven’s sake – that past attempts to expand it have drawn the publicly-expressed ire of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the British government, and even George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

Where is the public anger now? Clearly this sort of thing, in addition to being a direct slap in the face to the Palestinian Authority, is tremendously counter-productive to the sort of two-state solution and peace negotiations which are the main elements of the desired American approach to achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Does Netanyahu really remain unaware of this as he heads to meet with President Obama over precisely such measures, or is he just breathtakingly cynical?

Ah yes: Miss World! Miss Universe! Miss What-Have-You! They all raise loads of money and attract widespread media-interest. And did you know that they even have a beauty pageant for young misses in Saudi Arabia? Indeed they do, in the capital Riyadh; the Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad is kind enough to report on this today (Miss Pageant in a niqab).

That reference to the niqab – namely the veil over the face worn by Muslim women – and for that matter to Saudi Arabia should warn you, though, that what is going on here is somewhat different from the normal template. Take “beauty”; in Saudi Arabia, it’s all about inner beauty, you see, which is good since naturally no sort of evening gown – much less bikini – competition could ever be allowed.

So how do they judge that? Apparently the whole evaluation-process takes ten weeks, and is conducted by a panel of all-female judges – and that last bit alone tells you quite a lot. What is examined is things like respect for elders and how contestants respond when asked about how they “discover their inner force.” There’s even a “bring-your-Mom-to-the-contest” day, during which contestants are evaluated as to their respectful interaction with their own and everyone else’s mother. At bottom as a fundamental consideration, as you might expect, is any given candidate’s fealty to “Islamic values.”

Not likely to be a top-ten television hit, then, either in the rest of the world or, I dare say, within the Kingdom itself. On the other hand, there’s some serious money involved: the woman with the “most beautiful soul,” as the AD puts it, walks away with a prize of $2,600. And that prospect has attracted this year a field of some 200 contestants.

UPDATE: What do you know: It looks like even the Saudi beauty pageant has fallen victim to scandal! Yes, topless photos have been discovered of the winner – you can even see her entire forehead.

[Cymbal crash] I wish I could take credit for that one. But no, it’s from Jay Leno.

It’s coming on Christmas, but it’s also coming on the end of 2008, and so it’s time to look ahead to 2009. Economically, things do not look good. The leading Dutch business newspaper Het Financiële Dagblad has already picked up on remarks from Vice President-elect Joe Biden that will be televised later today on This Week with George Stephanopoulos that the US economy is in danger of “absolutely tanking.” (You can get the run-down in English plus a brief video of their interview here.)

Right, but what about closer to (the €S) home, what about the Netherlands’ economy? Also from Het Financiële Dagblad, we get some good news straight from the Dutch premier Jan Peter Balkenende that he is confident that the strong character of the Dutch will get them through the hard times. (more…)

The Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad reports today over the nods approval coming from the Dutch Voedingscengtrum over the recent policy announced by the city of Los Angeles to impose an initial one-year moratorium on the construction of new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area in the city’s south part. The Voedingscentrum (“Nutrition Center”) is a semi-governmental institution based in The Hague charged with dishing out advice, recipes, etc. having to do with healthy eating (also warnings, in the event of food-safety crises), and naturally it is delighted with the idea of adopting a similar policy in the Netherlands to ban such establishments from areas where there are already “many” of them (“many” not defined anywhere, as far as I can see), as well as near-by schools and those sorts of establishments.

While the AD supplements its brief reporting on this subject with a photo of a pair of fat little tykes to illustrate the point, the Belgian (Flemish) newspaper Het Belang van Limburg goes a step further with a quote from a Voedingscengtrum press-spokesman: “Since children are extra prone to temptation, a similar ban should come in the neighborhood of schools. Eating fast food, as well as other calory-rich consumption, must become an exception. It cannot become a habit.”

Psssst Hey pal. Yeah – you! Things getting a little cool with the old lady? Been wondering lately just where is that ol’ loving feeling? Tell me this: has she let you know that she’ll be out this coming Saturday afternoon (9 February), doing some shopping or getting together with her girlfriends, or for somesuch other reason? She has? And do you live anywhere near Utrecht (that famous old city in the Netherlands)? My friend, I’ve got to give it to you straight: your wife/partner/significant other will probably be on her way then straight to the Divorce Fair scheduled for that day in Utrecht’s convention hall, the Jaarbeurs. (more…)

As if there weren’t enough troubles already in Iraq, another tribe there is now in revolt. And this is among folks who would ordinarily be among the last you would look to for such trouble, the “good guys,” so to speak. I’m talking here about the 1,350-strong contingent of Dutch soldiers stationed there, and that’s a direct quote from the head of their union, the AFMP, W. van den Burg: they’re in opstand, or “in revolt.” What that means in practical terms? Increasing talk about some sort of “strike action,” whatever that is supposed to look like in the middle of Iraq.

At least the Dutch still have military forces helping out there, as one-by-one other national contingents slip away (the Hungarians being the latest such). After I first came aware of this story and commenced my usual Dutch press-scanning for it, it turned out that most Netherlands dailies have declined to cover it, at least on-line. The exception is Allard Besse, of the Algemeen Dagblad and his article Soldiers in Iraq Grumble Over Money, but quite a good exception it is. (more…)

Last Wednesday evening (1 December) Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands died in hospital at Utrecht, at the age of 93. He had been the husband, or “prince-consort,” of Queen Juliana (mother of the present Queen Beatrix), who herself died earlier this year, on March 20. The highlight of the service to his adopted country that this German-born prince performed was no doubt his role during Holland’s occupation in World War II, when he commanded the Dutch resistance from his post in London. The day after his death, as you would expect the Dutch press was filled with remembrance and tribute articles, even the financial press (free registration required). These included, from the Algemeen Dagblad, A Fighter to the End (free registration required), which is perhaps a strange title since, shortly after being admitted to the hospital for the last time, the Prince instructed his doctors not to intervene anymore. Plus, he had reportedly communicated to friends the loss of his will to live after the death of his wife in the spring. Also from the AD: the tribute They Don’t Make Them Like That Anymore, by Marc Kruyswijk. Make them how? Namely “difficult, but full of character, headstrong, but colorful. Convinced that he is right – whether he was right or not.” Well, we’ll see how “right” Prince Bernhard was.

It only took one day later for the dirty laundry to start being laid out in public. And for all his wartime record, the Prince had quite a load of dirty laundry indeed that he had accumulated through his life. (more…)

Yes, EuroSavant has been gone for a while. And what a time for such an absence! Just when the assassination of controversial Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh on the American Election Day touched off a wave of violence and counter-violence against places of religious worship here in the Netherlands, suddenly throwing into question in the eyes of the rest of the world this country’s reputation for tolerance. Have we been swept up too much over here in violent street-pogroms against local Muslims to find time to get to our computers to do a little blogging?

Nothing of the sort, of course; the absence has had more to do with unexpected delays in fully implementing a cable-to-ADSL Internet connection transition, which left me access-less for a while in the meantime. And just to make things perfectly clear: that “street-pogroms” phrase above was nothing more than exaggeration for effect. (Could we call it “blogger’s license”?) There’s been actually nothing more here than occasional night-time vandalism attacks on mosques and Muslim schools and churches. Nothing at all like mobs or a “pogrom,” although those incidents are certainly bad enough, of course, and do raise concerns about where this country is going with relations between various immigrant communities and native Netherlanders. At least rest assured that both the prime minister and the Queen herself are on the problem, paying visits to the right places and speaking calming and reasonable words.

Rather than try to follow the day-to-day incidents, I think mention of another happening, reflecting on the political background, is in order. (more…)

I have to say, folks here in the Netherlands are in general really friendly to Americans and appreciative of American culture. Wanna know how appreciative they can get? How about a thirty-day diet experiment recently carried out by the former food editor of the Algemeen Dagblad, Wim Meij, in which he ate nothing but what was on the McDonalds menu? Yes, you’re right – the very same schtick around which Morgan Spurlock built the movie that has been in circulation in the US for months now (and which opens here tomorrow, perhaps not so coincidentally), namely Super Size Me. Except that note: Meij turns out to have lost almost 14 pounds during this experience, and to have ended up generally with better health than he started with!

The whole tale is told in an article in Dutch (naturally) in today’s Algemeen Dagblad (also naturally): Thinner After 30-Day Fastfood Diet – free registration required. (more…)

It’s the silly season, the dog days, cucumber time – take your pick. In any case, hot and sunny summer weather has finally arrived here in Northwest Europe over the past couple of weeks, and real news is hard to find.

Other than the usual, ongoing violence in Iraq, of course. But it’s been good weather for taking the Segway out for riding past diners at one sidewalk café after another, as I recently did over in Germany, in Bremen/Hannover/Oldenburg – that’s why I was away. But I’ll spare you the link to my other website to read about that; you always know where to find it anyway on the left side of this homepage. (more…)

Unprecedented! As is being reported today on Sport.cz, an on-line magazine owned by the Czech daily newspaper Právo, a group of Dutch firms operating in the Czech Republic are offering to pay the Czech national football team €4 million as a reward if they beat the German team tonight in the final qualifying round of the on-going Euro2004 football tournament in Portugal. Why would they want to do that? Well, the Dutch play the team from Latvia tonight, and must not only beat them to advance to the quarter-finals, but must also rely on the Czechs to win over the Germans to gain that result. But the Czechs themselves don’t have much motivation going into their game with the Germans; with two wins achieved, they are already assured of advancing, and in fact ordinarily could be expected to leave their key players out of the line-up tonight, to let them rest up for when the games start getting serious again. (more…)

As you all well know, almost-simultaneous bombs set off in several Madrid commuter trains during the morning rush-hour last Thursday killed over 200 people, and wounded many, many more. Then Spanish general elections followed on Sunday; in a result that took many observers by surprise, the Spanish Socialist and Workers’ Party, i.e. the opposition, emerged as the winner, with that party’s leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, posed to take over as prime minister instead of the hand-picked successor (Mariano Rajoy) to José Maria Aznar of the ruling (right-wing) Partido Popular.

Aznar of course had been one of US President George W. Bush’s stoutest allies when it came to the War in Iraq, and 1,300 Spanish troops are still stationed in the Polish sector there. Mounting evidence suggests that last Thursday’s massacres on the rail-lines of Madrid were the work of some sort of Arab-linked terrorist organization; so that the thought has come to not-a-few that Spain was being punished for that support for the US with these attacks, and that the Spanish electorate reacted to them drastically by removing the regime that would bring this sort of punishment down on them.

So: Is Aznar’s loss a victory for terrorists? That question is posed in an on-line article by Kathleen Knox from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It is answered in the affirmative in today’s New York Times by regular columnist David Brooks – he asks in his column Al Qaeda’s Wish List “What is the Spanish word for appeasement?”, although he also claims to be resisting the conclusion that “swing Spanish voters are shamefully trying to seek a separate peace in the war on terror.” That’s basically the same answer given by Edward Luttwak, on the very same NYT Op-Ed page, in Rewarding Terror in Spain, which starts out “It must be said: Spanish voters have allowed a small band of terrorists to dictate the outcome of their national elections.” (But the NYT editorial board disagrees.)

But that’s all English-language; you already know about all that. Let’s check what the German press has to say. (more…)

The Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad has an interesting section covering tech developments called Internet and PC, in its on-line edition too, and the subject of weblogs written by Dutch politicians was recently treated there, in an article entitled Blogging for the People by Reinoud den Haan. The star Dutch political blogger, whose on-line work has already attracted some attention due to his leading role in several current controversies (such as the French & German violation of the EU’s Growth and Stability Pact), is of course Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm. (Edward, are you out there?) Den Haan’s article does not disappoint: we learn quite a lot about Zalm’s blogging habits, such as that he regularly sits down to write an entry, with “iron discipline,” on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays, and even then he has to be careful, as he finds his weblog to be verslavend, that is, “addictive.” But probably the most surprising thing is that, when he prepares his latest contribution on that regular schedule, he does so at his kitchen table and with pen-and-paper – i.e. not with a laptop, or indeed with any sort of keyboard whatsoever! (“That’s faster,” he explains. “I’m still in the department of those who type with two fingers.”) (more…)

As many of you know by now, the drawing for the Euro 2004 match-pairings was held last Sunday in Lisbon. Nearly every such football tournament, whether it be for the World Cup or for the European Cup, can be counted on to produce in its run-up the so-called “Group of Death”: i.e. the matching of four national teams in a preliminary group which are of such a high quality that it’s a shame that only two of them will be able to advance further into the knock-out stages of the tournament. (The international football organizations that run such tournaments – FIFA and UEFA, respectively – do their best to pre-cook such drawings with “seeding” arrangements. These are supposed to ensure that each group has a proper mix of teams that are expected to do very well and teams that are not. Of course, one aspect of the charm of such events is that at least one team which, prior to the tournament, had not really been expected to advance, actually ends up doing so, meaning that at least one team that had been expected to do so does not. This generally results in national embarrassment and gnashing-of-teeth, and always in a coaching change.)

Sure enough, the Euro 2004 tournament coming up next summer in Portugal has its own “Group of Death.” Appropriately, that is group D (for “Death”), in which the teams from Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Latvia will play each other in a round-robin arrangement. Germany was the runner-up in 2002’s World Cup competition, only losing to Brazil; and the Dutch and the Czech teams are both highly regarded. (That’s true even though, strangely, both failed to qualify to play in that World Cup tournament in 2002. But the Dutch recently sent the Scottish team packing in a playoff with a 6-0 score. And it was the Czechs who defeated the Dutch and sent them into that playoff in the first place.) For its part, Latvia comes in last in the list of countries expected to win the European Cup compiled by those experts with their financial derrières on the line, namely the book-makers. Still, Turkey was a team that was supposed to be at this tournament, and the fact that they are not is directly attributable to the Latvian team (who no doubt caused substantial losses for the book-makers with their remarkable feat).

As it happens, I have the familiarity with the languages involved to shed some light on the domestic reactions to that “Group of Death” drawing from Germany, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. Let’s head off to the Internet, shall we?, on the hunt for football insights which go beyond the standard line of “Yes, it’s a tough group; and we can’t afford to underestimate Latvia.” The Dutch press will be first on our list. (more…)

Open the envelope, and the winner is . . . Jaap de Hoop Scheffer for next Secretary-General of NATO! And so the Netherlands contributes its third Secretary-General in the history of the Atlantic Alliance, the first two (as only NATO trivia-buffs will know) having been Dirk Stikker and Joseph Luns. Me, I’m slightly disappointed since I was looking forward to seeing the Norwegian Defense Minister, Kristin Krohn Devold, named instead as NATO’s first female Secretary-General. The New York Times Magazine, in a hagiographical article about her that it published back on August 24, virtually promised that this would happen. (That article has by now retreated behind the NYT’s paid archives-access gate; if you think you might like to pay to see it, the link is here.)

No, its Jaap de Hoop Scheffer instead – and surely it’s time here for a survey of the Dutch press to find out how the thinking-class in Holland is reacting to one of its own being picked out for such a crucial international position. What sort of a politician is he? What qualities will he bring to NATO? What is Holland losing by having him (temporarily) plucked away from its political scene? After all, he is currently the Dutch Foreign Affairs minister; and he used to be head of the CDA, the right-wing, somewhat Christian-oriented (“Christian lite,” anybody? – as opposed to the more “hard-core” Christian parties EuroSavant has briefly discussed before) political party which is now the Netherlands’ largest and whose current leader, Jan-Peter Balkenende (the man who replaced De Hoop Scheffer), is prime minister. (more…)

The votes are in, the Swedish people have spoken: 56% of the voters said “No,” and so they prevail, for a while at least.

I had hoped to find something interesting to tell you about the referendum’s result in the national press of Germany: the nation that, after all, was once the guiding power behind the idea of one single currency for all of the EU, yet which now, by its misbehavior in getting its own fiscal house in order and staying under the 3%-of-GDP limit for government budget deficits, is quite possibly driving away those EU members (such as Sweden) who do not use the euro but are/were contemplating that. But the on-line German newspapers that I’ve looked at for today aren’t very on-the-ball: they’ll tell you little else than what you already will have been able to find out from your own newspaper of choice (with one exception, noted below). OK, they quote Bundeskanzler Schröder lamenting the continued absence of Sweden from the ranks of EU countries using the euro. Well, he would lament, wouldn’t he? I’d definitely file that bit of news under “dog-bites-man.” (more…)

That battalion of marines that makes up the core of the 1,164 Dutch troops on occupation duty in southern Iraq will be going home earlier than originally planned – after four months, rather than after six. The NRC Handelsblad, along with several of its competitors in the Dutch press yesterday revealed this latest decision from the Ministry of Defense. The reason? It turns out it can get awful hot in Iraq, with temperatures climbing to 45 or even 50 degrees Centigrade (that’s 113 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit);as a result it would be “not responsible,” according to the Ministry, to make the marines stay there for the full six months. (more…)

It’s Sunday, so let me take break – let me return home from Afghanistan (so-to-say: see yesterday’s entry if you don’t get what I mean) and consider what’s in the Dutch press. Ironically, the Dutch press doesn’t publish on Sunday. While in the US Sunday is the day for the often-massive Sunday newspaper editions (the New York Times tops the scales, probably at several kilograms, but many others are almost as big), and even Germany has its special Sunday papers (e.g. Welt am Sonntag), in Holland there’s still that strong Dutch Reformed Church/Calvinist tradition of no work on Sunday.

So am I pulling your leg? Certainly not! – let’s take a look at the Dutch papers, from yesterday. I promise you there are some interesting articles. (Actually, you’ll probably like best the “Saddam’s Waiter Tells All!” article, that I discuss immediately following. Click off to it now, I don’t mind – just come back here when you’re finished!) When it came to Dutch topics treated in the Dutch press, what particularly struck me this Sunday were reports about the resurgence of that ages-old threat to public order here: that’s right, swearing (i.e. uttering naughty words, in public). (more…)