KwaZulu Natal heeft vierhonderdduizend kilo armbanden gemaakt van kraaltjes opgestuurd naar Nederland. De kraaltjes zijn aan elkaar geregen door honderden plattelandsvrouwen. Zo ziet u dat alles uiteindelijk toch op zijn pootjes terecht komt. Het (opper)hoofd is vanuit Nederland terug gestuurd naar Ghana en wij hebben onze kraaltjes terug. Oranje dat ook nog. KwaZulu-Natal is een provincie van Zuid-Afrika waar deze zomer de wereldkampioenschappen voetbal worden gehouden.

diewertje damen

Bracelets to ignite Dutch team spirit

www.iol.co.za, by Colleen Dardagan - Four hundred tons of beaded bracelets made in KZN by hundreds of rural women are to be shipped to The Netherlands on Friday, as part of a campaign to get “crazy” Dutch football fans celebrating the Fifa World Cup - African-style.
The 100 000 beaded bracelets are part of a campaign originated by the Dutch social entrepreneur company The Rainbow Collection, and Africa!Ignite - a Durban-based company that supports crafters in rural areas in the province.
The Rainbow Collection Dieuwertjie Damen, who is in the country, said the orange bracelets had already been bought by 60 Dutch retail companies, and the aim was to “flood” the country with them before the World Cup.
This breaking news flash was supplied exclusively to iol.co.za by the news desk at our sister title, The Mercury. For more about this story, carry on watching iol.co.za.

by yaakov kirschen - the jerusalem post, dry bones

save water - stop canadians playing hockey

The water utility in Edmonton, EPCOR, published this graph of water consumption during the final hockey game of the Olympics. Up to 80% of Canadians were watching the gold medal Olympic hockey game.

by nate beeler - the washington examiner

‘Jihad Jane,’ as Pennsylvania woman Colleen LaRose dubbed herself, was indicted Tuesday for helping recruit a network for suicide attacks and plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist. Seven Muslims were arrested in Ireland in connection with the alleged plot. 
read on>> Lees verder hier »

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has principles. He thinks the reform of health care doesn’t go far enough so he’s voting against the new bill.
But what did Kucinich actually achieve with those principles during his long years as a congresssman? 

Sure, it’s good to see a politician standing up for his beliefs and fighting for a point of view that might not otherwise be represented. But there are ways to do that and simultaneously be an effective legislator. Kucinich simply isn’t, and he’s never really tried hard to be […]
In fact, according to the Web site GovTrack, of the 97 bills Kucinich has sponsored since taking office in 1997, only three have become law. Ninety-three didn’t even make it out of committee.
The three that were enacted are, in chronological order from first to last: A bill “to make available to the Ukranian Museum and Archives the USIA television program ‘Window on America,’” a bill “to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 14500 Lorain Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio as the ‘John P. Gallagher Post Office Building” and a bill “proclaiming Casimir Pulaski to be an honorary citizen of the United States posthumously.”

het weer nu

Reageren op ikjes. Hier kunt u reageren op het ‘ikje’ dat vandaag is gepubliceerd op de Achterpagina van het NRC Handelsblad. Op de NRC-site kan niet meer worden gereageerd op het stukje dat door de lezers zelf wordt ingezonden.
Het alternatief op drasties. Is uw ikje niet geplaatst door het NRC dan kunt u het publiceren op drasties in de categorie Trots Op Ikje. Opsturen via ‘contact us’.

Eens per week moet ik wel Chinees eten. Zeker een goede Chinees kan ik zeer waarderen. Er zijn thans diverse Chinese restaurants die culinair goed scoren en die ‘n speciale reis waard zijn.
Zo bezoek ik met zakenrelaties restaurant de Blauwe Lotus in Maarsbergen. Mooi restaurant, wel wat kitscherig, een groot zeeaquarium ontbreekt niet. Wat een mooie vissen! Ook zwemt erin een fraaie moederhaai met minstens 20 babyhaaitjes.
Wat zie ik? Telkens bijten die kleine haaitjes met hun al zichtbare scherpe tandjes in de staart van de moederhaai. Een nevelig bloedpoor kleurt het aquarium. Geen gezicht. Ontzet kijken we elkaar aan. Ik roep de Chinese ober.
‘Oh’ zegt ie glimlachend: ‘dat los ik zo op.’
Hij opent de bovendeksel van de grote zeebak. Roept heel hard: ‘Foei Jong Haai!! En braaf zwemmen de kleintjes weer achter de moeder aan…

GertJan van Passchier

loving husband

Nog een ingezonden brief in de New York Times over de Nederlandse terugtrekking uit Afghanistan. De schrijvers Willemijn Verkoren en Henk van Houtum reageren op een redactioneel commentaar - Dutch Retreat - in de globale editie van de New York Times - de International Herald Tribune. Eerdere reacties hier en hier.

The Dutch and Afghanistan

New York Times - Regarding the editorial “Dutch retreat” (Feb. 26): The Dutch government is right to reject continued participation in the war in Afghanistan. To wage a large-scale war in Afghanistan rather than prosecuting the criminals of 9/11 has proven counterproductive. The war has cost many lives, is still not won and has only diffused and crossed over to Pakistan. The hatred against the West has risen, not diminished. In addition, attempting to export a replica of a Western democratic state model to Afghanistan was naïve, as many academic analyses of the history of intervention and peace missions had shown earlier. If the micro-level achievements of the Dutch in Afghanistan are to have any lasting effect, then a much more realistic approach, supported by the United Nations, is needed. This should start through negotiation among all parties, including the Taliban.

Willemijn Verkoren, Henk van Houtum, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

by paresh nath - the khaleej times, uae

Ian Buruma plaatst actuele gebeurtenissen in een bredere historische context. Iets wat meer mensen zouden moeten doen, politici bijvoorbeeld. In 2008 kreeg deze Brits-Nederlandse auteur en journalist de Erasmusprijs omdat hij hèt voorbeeld is van ”De Nieuwe Kosmopoliet”. Buruma studeerde Chinees in Leiden en Film in Tokio. Hij was redacteur van The Far Eastern Economic Review en The Spectator en bezette de Cleveringa-leerstoel voor de Universiteit Leiden. Sinds 2003 is hij hoogleraar democratie, mensenrechten en journalistiek aan het Bard College in New York.

[To many Americans, especially of the neoconservative persuasion, Dutch behaviour might confirm all their suspicions about perfidious Europeans, addicted to material comforts, while remaining childishly dependent on U.S. military protection. When the going gets tough, they argue, the Europeans bow out.
It is true that two horrendous world wars have taken the glamour out of war for most Europeans (Britain is a slightly different story). The Germans, in particular, have no stomach for military aggression, hence their reluctance in Afghanistan to take on anything but simple police tasks. Mindful of Ypres, Warsaw, or Stalingrad, not to mention Auschwitz and Treblinka, many regard this as a good thing. Still, there are times when pacifism, even in Germany, is an inadequate response to a serious menace.
Pacifism, however, does not really explain what happened in the Netherlands. The reason the Dutch are wary of carrying on in Afghanistan is not the trauma of the Second World War, but of a small town in Bosnia called Srebrenica. In the mid-1990s, the Dutch volunteered to protect Srebrenica from General Ratko Mladic’s Serbian forces. Under United Nations rules, the Dutch, bearing only side arms, could fight only in self-defence.]

The Dutch Retreat
The Globe and Mail, Ian Buruma - The Dutch army has been operating as part of NATO in a remote and unruly part of Afghanistan since 2006. Fighting against the Taliban has been heavy at times. Twenty-one Dutch lives have been lost, out of about 1,800 men and women. The Dutch were supposed to have been relieved by troops from a NATO partner in 2008. No one volunteered. So their mission was extended for another two years. But now the Social Democrats in the Dutch coalition government have declared that enough is enough. The Dutch troops will have to come home. Since the Christian Democrats do not agree, the government has fallen. whole story here

by angel boligan - cagle cartoons, el universal, mexico city

leviticus 11:9-12 (king James version)

12: Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you. read on>> Lees verder hier »

A new study released by the research and consulting firm Spectrem Group finds that the number of millionaires in the United States increased by double digits the last year. According to Spectrem Group’s data, “families with a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding primary residences, rose to 7.8 million in 2009,” an increase of 16 percent:

The millionaires’ club in the U.S. grew by 16 percent in 2009, following a 27 percent decline in 2008.
Families with a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding primary residences, rose to 7.8 million in 2009, an increase from 6.7 million a year earlier, according to a survey of high- net-worth U.S. households conducted by Spectrem Group.
“With the markets trending upwards, we expected an increase,” George H. Walper Jr., president of Spectrem Group, said in a telephone interview. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index increased 24 percent in 2009 and has risen 68 percent over the past 12 months

While the number of American multimillionaires rose last year, Americans continued to suffer from the Great Recession. The unemployment rate reached double digits, millions of Americans lost their homes, and wages for most workers stagnated. The United States is unique among industrialized countries in its enormous income inequality. Data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that if income inequality continues to rise at the current rate, the income gap in the United States “will resemble that of Mexico by year 2043.”

het weer nu

Reageren op ikjes. Hier kunt u reageren op het ‘ikje’ dat vandaag is gepubliceerd op de Achterpagina van het NRC Handelsblad. Op de NRC-site kan niet meer worden gereageerd op het stukje dat door de lezers zelf wordt ingezonden.
Het alternatief op drasties. Is uw ikje niet geplaatst door het NRC dan kunt u het publiceren op drasties in de categorie Trots Op Ikje. Opsturen via ‘contact us’.

Ik zat in de tram en zag aan de overkant twee allochtone jongens uit een snackbar komen. De een droeg een grote tas met zo te zien een gitaar erin, de ander hield twee bakjes patatje oorlog vast. Ze smiespelden onderling, waarschijnlijk over hun kans om de tram nog te halen. Daarvoor moesten ze een drukke rijbaan oversteken. Het lukte en toevallig kwamen ze tegenover mij te zitten. Ze smoesden even en de muzikant van de twee mompelde “sorry” omdat zijn gitaar even tegen mijn onderbeen leunde. Maar die ander: wat een ogen! Wat een blik! Wat een prachtige handen!. Drie haltes verder stapte hij tegelijk met mij uit, na nog even een tikje op de pet van zijn vriend te hebben gegeven. Nu, negen maanden later, is hij de leadzanger van onze band Trash.

Pamela Windsor

Wat GeenStijl kan, kunnen wij ook. Misdaad oplossen! Dus mensen als u iets weet over de hier beschreven gewetenloze roof, bel dan als de wiedeweerga dit nummer: Richmond RCMP 604-278-1212.
Het gaat om de speciale Holland fietsen die in Vancouver werden gebruikt in het kader van het Heineken Holland House. Nu even dapper zijn: van de 400 zijn er 21 verdwenen! En de Canadezen krijgen daarvan de schuld. Onze bevrijders dus!
Mijn vraag: Laten we ze in de waan? Want wij weten natuurlijk wel beter.
Die fietsen zijn allang in Nederland.

Richmond Review, Martin van den Hemel - Every year in Holland, only a handful of the bikes that are part of the OV-fiets national bike rental program go missing. But somehow, in just a month, more than 5% of the roughly 400 bikes brought to Richmond with great fanfare as part of the Holland Heineken House activities remain unaccounted for.
Richmond Mounties asks for the public’s help in pinpointing the missing 21 bikes: “These bikes were on loan during the Olympics and are very unique in appearance,” Police are investigating whether the bikes have been stolen, or have simply gone missing. In the meantime, police requests that local residents keep their eyes peeled for these bikes and report any found bikes to the Richmond RCMP at 604-278-1212.

100,000 Dutch Sign Petitions to Permit Assisted Suicide of the Elderly

Wesley J. Smith - The Dutch show the consequences of opening the door to the assisted suicide banshee. A proposal to allow doctors to assist suicides based solely on age is gaining strength in the Netherlands. From the story:

A campaign to give elderly people in the Netherlands the right to assisted suicide said Monday it has gathered more than 100,000 signatures, hoping to push the boundaries another notch in the country that first legalized euthanasia. The signatures are enough to force a debate in parliament, where it is certain to face resistance. Even if widely approved, the proposal would normally go through a lengthy process of committee work and consensus-building that could take years. The legalization of euthanasia for the terminally ill in 2002 was preceded by decades of discussion and quiet negotiation that attached stringent conditions and medical supervision.

Can’t media ever get it right? Assisted suicide has been openly practiced since 1973, only being formally legalized in 2002. It has never been limited to the terminally ill, and the “guidelines” are not “stringent,” nor are they enforced with any vigor. Indeed, Dutch doctors now openly engage in infanticide, nearly 1,000 people are euthanized each year who have not asked to die, and the country’s Supreme Court has made it legally available to the depressed.
Those points aside, this story proves what I have stated repeatedly: The Culture of Death is never satiated. It is always hungry. It always wants more.

peray - thailand

pavel constantin - romania

In November of 2009, Sarah Palin — who is always suggesting that health care reform will lead to socialism — insisted that Canada needs to reform its health care system to “let the private sector take over.” Like in the U.S. which has ofcourse the best health care system the world has ever seen. Or has it?
This past Saturday in Calgary, Canada — at “her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska last summer” — Palin seemed to deviate from her fear of socialized Canadian medicine when she revealed that her family may have benefited from the Canadian system:

PALIN: We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic?
read on>> Lees verder hier »

Worden kinderen van gescheiden ouders toegelaten tot deze katholieke school? Worden kinderen van heidenen toegelaten? Worden kinderen van ouders die ooit voor het een of ander zijn veroordeeld toegelaten? Worden kinderen van ouders die varkensvlees eten toegelaten? Worden kinderen van ouders die ooit in de voetsporen zijn gevolgd van de tweede zoon van Juda, Onan, toegelaten? Worden kinderen van mannen die ooit met lust naar een andere dan hun eigen vrouw hebben gekeken, toegelaten? Worden kinderen van ouders die ooit de pil of een condoom hebben gebruikt toegelaten?

The ‘Taliban’ winnning hearts and minds in the US.
See the statement from the Denver Archdiocese after it barred a child from their preschool for having lesbian parents:

“No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parent(s) subscribe to the school’s philosophy and agree to abide by the educational policies and regulations of the school and Archdiocese. Homosexual couples living together as a couple are in disaccord with Catholic teaching… “Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment.”

Archdiocese spokeswoman Jeanette R. De Melo didn’t return calls or e-mails inquiring whether students whose parents are divorced, non-Catholic or used fertility medication also are not allowed to attend the preschool.

Click the link to see how both parents and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) are organizing to fight back against this assholery.

het weer nu

Reageren op ikjes. Hier kunt u reageren op het ‘ikje’ dat vandaag is gepubliceerd op de Achterpagina van het NRC Handelsblad. Op de NRC-site kan niet meer worden gereageerd op het stukje dat door de lezers zelf wordt ingezonden.
Het alternatief op drasties. Is uw ikje niet geplaatst door het NRC dan kunt u het publiceren op drasties in de categorie Trots Op Ikje. Opsturen via ‘contact us’.