politicsnews

Today the National Student Union announced that they want to organize a student-strike the 12th of November. After some thoughts I decided not to participate :)

There is even an official website about the strike.

Yesterday and today the parliament discusses the plans of the new government.


You can see the meeting live through internet here. See also the website of the parliament for live streams of other meeting rooms.

Quite surprisingly the new government did something I agree with: they've cancelled the (temporary) referendum law.

There was going to be a change in the constitution that would allow a referendum to be held among Dutch citizens. In preparation of that there was a temporary law put in place by the previous government, and this one has been cancelled.

I'm quite happy with that. I believe a government is elected because it has a whole package of ideas and measures, you can't just take one single decision seperate from other measures. A government is exactly there to balance things, and this balance would be disturbed with a referendum. A quote that summarizes this: "a referendum would probably show that the majority of citizens wants to abandon nuclear weapons, and at the same time that they want a nuclear bom to be dropped on Al Qaeda."


The political party D66, which considers a referendum to be a good thing, is now thinking about trying to organize a referendum on whether or not to abandon referendums.

My very first day in the States, in 1998, I went to the World Trade Center. Together with some other students who were going to work in the States I saw New York from to the observatory on top of one of the towers.

'Weet u wat ik vind? In Nederland wordt er heel erg negatief gereageerd op de ministers in dit kabinet. In Nederland is er direct een aantal mensen dat zegt: dit klopt niet, dat klopt niet, alles klopt niet! Er klopt helemaal niets van dit kabinet! Als je ziet hoe er is gereageerd op het strategisch akkoord van de kabinetsformatie!' Minister Nawijn (Volkskrant 28 augustus)

'You know what I think? In the Netherlands people are só negative about the ministers in this cabinet. There's a number of people in this country that will immediately complain: 'this is not right, that's not right...' Nothing is right about the cabinet! If you look at the reactions on our Government Coalition Agreement!'

Perhaps it would help if ministers would refrain from making stupid remarks :) This minister Nawijn has been in the news quite often the last two weeks, most of the time because of rather unusual ideas. On 23th Augustus he suggested to sent back all criminals from foreign origin, even the ones with a Dutch passport. As a Dutch newspaper wrote in it's main article, this would mean going back to the Middle Ages, where criminals were sent to leave the country. Interesting enough in the Netherlands we have this thing called Constitution, which (obviously) forbids expelling Dutch citizens...

Various digital archives are being created on what happened September 11th. This particular one stores e-mails and Instant Messaging logs from ordinary people. It's a heavy read -- chicken skin. Tens of thousands e-mails like this one have been sent.

Okay, something for in the lunch-break: Zusje, the daily comic in the Dutch newspaper Trouw. Last week they had a particular nice one:

Picture: www.trouw.nl/zusje

Let's see, the last thing we need is a broom. -- Don't we go to Blokker for that daddy? -- I won't go there anymore. It's a creepy shop with a nasty mentality. -- Oh come on, is this really necessary for in a comic? -- Well, that's how they do it, right?!

(Background information: Blokker's annual report -which was written in comics- stated that "Immigrants and the 'entire asylum and illegal immigrants industry' are responsible for the large number of armed robberies in the Netherlands". See here for an English article on it).

I would have never thought that these clowns would have been this clumsy, but there are.

By the way these LPF guys are really a bunch of clowns. Would be funny if it wasn't that they're going to be in our government...

I'm not sure if I expected this of President Bush -- but I must say he seems to be handling the situation fairly good. The speech he held this morning was really good.