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Few things warm my heart more than a story about political incorrectness and cigars. Love these guys. Dutch smokers are flocking to a religious movement known as "The Only and Universal Smokers Church of God" following a ban on tobacco smoking indoors. Michiel Eijsbouts, founder and "Smokelighter" of the church he founded in 2001, has insisted that the Dutch smoking ban in place does not apply to members of his church under national and European human rights legislation. "We think we have all the marks of a religion," he said. "We will have to find out what the secular...

Selected audio from President Reagan's radio spots from 1975 - 1979.

Smoking ban leads to new religion Wednesday 16 July 2008Café owners in the Netherlands are joining religious movement known as the One and Universal Smokers Church of God, the Telegraaf reports on Wednesday.‘We stand firmly behind the church’s teachings and that is smoking,’ Cor Busch, owner of the former Lindeboom café in Alkmaar told the paper. ‘Smokers are being discriminated against… but a beer and a cigarette belong together.’ Smoking has been banned in Dutch bars since July 1. Several dozen bars have joined the movement which claims the Dutch constitution and European rules give it legitimacy under the...

For decades, the proud seal of New York City, with its depiction of a sailor and a Manhattan Indian, of beavers and flour barrels and the sails of a windmill, has celebrated 1625 as the year the city was founded. There’s just one problem: Most historians say the year has hardly any historical significance. The first settlers arrived in what would become part of New York City on a Dutch ship as early as 1623; some say 1624. The Dutch “purchased” Manhattan in 1626. The first charter was granted in 1653. And the most notable event of 1625? Dutch settlers...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, June 23 (UPI) -- Thousands of people in the Netherlands say they expect the world to end in 2012, and many say they are taking precautions to prepare for the apocalypse. The Dutch-language de Volkskrant newspaper said it spoke to thousands of believers in the impending end of civilization, and while theories on the supposed catastrophe varied, most tied the 2012 date to the end of the Mayan calendar, Radio Netherlands reported Monday.

The Dutch government wants to crack down on illegal criminals. Deputy Justice Minister Nebahat Albayrak says criminal aliens will be deported sooner or, failing that, detained longer. Repeat offenders without resident permits can be detained for a maximum two years. Asylum seekers who had previous petitions turned down will be placed in custody. Ms Albayrak says the move aims to curb social problems caused by illegal immigrants. She added that she realises that a number of them live in precarious circumstances.

THE HAGUE, 20/06/08 - A large majority (82 percent) of the Dutch describe themselves as personally happy. But 64 percent simultaneously consider that things are going more the wrong than the right way with the Netherlands, shows a Social and Cultural Planning Bureau (SCP) study released yesterday. The Dutch give their circle of friends and acquaintances and their daily activities (work, study) a more than satisfactory rating (7.4-7.7). The Dutch society as a whole gets a rating of 6.2, while politicians in The Hague get no more than a 5.1. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of the population agree that 'in...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Unlucky for some? Dutch statisticians have established that Friday 13th, a date regarded in many countries as inauspicious, is actually safer than an average Friday. A study published on Thursday by the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics (CVS) showed that fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays. "I find it hard to believe that it is because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home, but statistically speaking, driving is a little bit safer on Friday 13th," CVS statistician Alex...

Dutch scientists claim they have completed the first sequencing of an individual woman's DNA. The researchers at Leiden University Medical Center say they have sequenced the entire genome of one their female researchers, though no other scientists have yet verified their data. The first sequencing of a composite human genome was announced in 2001. Four individual male genomes have so far been sequenced. Scientists have also mapped the DNA of about a dozen mammals, including chimpanzees, dogs, cats, cows and a platypus. The full complement of an organism's DNA is called its genome. In animals and people, it is made...

Unique Dutch settlement discovered from Bronze Age May 23, 2008, 8:52 GMT Amsterdam - Archaeologists have found a settlement dating back to the Bronze Age just north of Eindhoven, a city in the southern Netherlands, Dutch archaeologist Nico Arts told Dutch media Friday. The discovery was made during preparations for the building of a highway junction at Ekkersrijt, north of Eindhoven. The settlement may be the largest ever discovered in the Netherlands, and is definitely the largest settlement ever found in the southern Netherlands. Bronze Age settlements (1500-850 BC) have also been discovered in the province of Drenthe in the...

WASHINGTON, May 22, 2008 – A Pentagon announcement yesterday that NATO command tours will be extended to a year was premature, Defense Department officials said today. Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, said he was wrong when he said during a news conference that Dutch and British officials had agreed to extend their commands of Regional Command South from nine to 12 months. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has spoken with his Dutch and British counterparts about the problems associated with nine-month command tours in Regional Command South, Morrell said. “They have all agreed that extending them to 12 months would...

AUSTRALIAN and coalition forces have launched a major strike against Taliban insurgents in the violence-prone Baluchi Pass of Afghanistan's southern Oruzgan province. The push is part of a series of operations - among the biggest since the spring thaw - involving combat engineers, infantry, cavalry and support troops. The Defence Department in Canberra would not say when the operation began or how many troops were involved, citing operational security requirements. The lawless Baluchi region is where Australian commando Luke Worsley was killed during an anti-Taliban operation last November. A Defence Department spokesman said the operation's purpose was to evict Taliban...

A Dutch-Canadian Holocaust survivor explains what Israel means to him This week marks Israel's 60th birthday. It also happens to mark the 63rd anniversary of the liberation of Holland -- and my personal liberation after nearly three years in hiding with my Dutch saviours, Albert and Violette Munnik and their daughter, Nora. As I reflect on my life as a Jew, these historical events are linked in a powerful way. The 1945 liberation was not so liberating for many Jewish children: The majority of Holland's successfully hidden boys and girls were orphaned. But in my case, my parents miraculously returned...

Thanks to the intervention of the Dutch government, a second anti-Islam movie will not see the light, at least for now. "I can confirm that Mr Ehsan Jami has decided not to broadcast his controversial film," Ayhan Tunja, a member of the Muslim Coordinating Council of the Netherlands, told IslamOnline.net Tuesday, April 1, over the phone. "He has announced his decision on Dutch television," he added. Jami, a former Muslim of Iranian origin, told the Netwrek TV show he has decided not to release his cartoon film, The Life of Muhammad, as expected on April 20. The film would have...

It seems the Islamic world will do anything to continue to prove the point that the Dutch parliamentarian was making with his new film "Fitna." The film showed a number of verses in the Koran interspersed with Islamic sermons, footage of terrorism, and Dutch newspaper headlines. It started with liveleak.com, the first website to share the video, pulling the video from their website after only one day because of serious threats to their staff. As LiveLeak put it, "in the end the price was too high." So the response to a video showing an Islamic prediliction toward violence and terrorism...

Links to both a Liveleak embedded video and the Torrent if that stops working. The Islamic hackers are hitting Liveleak hard over it though.

AMSTERDAM, 27/03/08 - The majority of the Dutch are negative on Islam and immigration. Additionally, their knowledge of Dutch history is meagre, according to a survey by three history professors. According to 56 percent of the Dutch, Islam is a threat to the Dutch identity. As well, 57 percent named admitting large groups of immigrants as "the biggest mistake in Dutch history". The results come from the History Monitor. This survey was carried out among a representative group of 1,069 people by De Volkskrant newspaper, Historisch Nieuwsblad history journal and TV programme Andere Tijden in consultation with history professors James...

(IsraelNN.com) The world's largest website name registrar, Network Solutions, is blocking web surfers from accessing an anti-Islam site - prompting concerns that fear of Islamic violence has become so powerful that it even controls WWW content. Network Solutions developed the domain name registration system in 1993 and was the world's only domain name provider until 1999, when the domain name industry opened up to competition. Today, the company hosts seven million domain names. The Washington Post reports that Network Solutions is now, for the first time, blocking access to a site that has not yet put up any substantial content....

  Dutch anti-Islamic film's Internet site suspended Mar 23 10:20 AM US/Eastern     An American network provider Sunday said it had suspended a website that Dutch MP Geert Wilders had reserved to post his anti-Islamic film, which has sparked wide condemnation and fears of a backlash. "Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation," the provider said a message posted on the Internet. Although his website is offline, Wilders on Sunday insisted he still wants to put the movie "on the internet quickly" but did not specify how. He also told the...

Irish and Dutch vessels found in Scottish graves Evidence that some of our prehistoric ancestors travelled considerable distances has come from two graves in Upper Largie, near Kilmartin in Argyll and Bute. One grave contained three distinctive beakers which Alison Sheridan, of the National Museums Scotland, describes as belonging to an early, international style, best paralleled by finds from the lower Rhine region of the modern-day Netherlands. Radiocarbon dates of 2500-2280 BC from hazel charcoal from within the grave confirms an early Bronze Age date. Though no bone was found because of the acidic nature of the local soils, the...

Update: YouTube pulls anti-Islam videos to appease Pakistan Until now most of the intimidation has been of the “soft” kind, with the Dutch PM nudging Wilders to kindly remind him that if some savage beheads someone over his film, it’s his fault. Now, the inevitable: The Dutch government is looking into whether it can stop a politician from releasing an anti-Koran film, fearing attacks on its citizens and businesses, a newspaper reported on Monday.Government lawyers are looking into whether there are legal grounds to ban the film by anti-immigration lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s...

Our friend Robert Spencer reports that the Dutch public broadcaster KRO has given up on its planned production to show that the Bible contains just as much potential for violence as the Koran. NIS News states that the reason that KRO put this project in turnaround is that the producers couldn’t make the case: In his short film Fitna, intended to be shown in March, Wilders wants to show gruesome events said to be inspired by the Koran. KRO, nota bene itself a Catholic broadcaster, wanted to show that such a film could also be made about the Bible.The film...

In early February, Danish police launched a pre-emptive attack on terrorism when they arrested three men involved in a "terror-related assassination" plot. The cops carefully identified the men as "a 40-year-old Dane of Moroccan origin and two Tunisians." The would-be murderers targeted 73-year-old Kurt Westergaard, an editorial cartoonist, and his 66-year-old wife, Gitte. Think about it — a 73-year-old and 66-year-old. Visit two Danes that age, with names like Kurt and Gitte, and you expect a platter of Danish pastry. If Kurt has an edge to him (and fair bet he has one — after all, he's an editorial cartoonist),...

Dutch Catholics have re-branded the Lent fast as the "Christian Ramadan" in an attempt to appeal to young people who are more likely to know about Islam than Christianity. The Catholic charity Vastenaktie, which collects for the Third World across the Netherlands during the Lent period, is concerned that the Christian festival has become less important for the Dutch over the last generation. "The image of the Catholic Lent must be polished. The fact that we use a Muslim term is related to the fact that Ramadan is a better-known concept among young people than Lent," said Vastenaktie Director, Martin...

Moroccan organisations in the Netherlands want Geert Wilders prosecuted for discrimination against Muslims. THE HAGUE – Moroccan organisations in the Netherlands want the public prosecution department to prosecute Freedom party PVV leader Geert Wilders for discrimination against Muslims. If the justice department refuses, then the organisations will approach the court to force the prosecution department to take action. Chairman of the National Moroccan Council (LBM) Mohamed Rabbae said this on Thursday, partly in response to the film on the Koran that Wilders is currently working on. Rabbae says that the public prosecution department is hesitant to follow through on the...

A Dutch politician known for his views against Islam plans to air a film he produced that is critical of the Koran, which he likens to Adolf Hitler's hateful writings.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch government is set to impose a ban on the Muslim burqa in schools and government offices, media reported on Wednesday, in a retreat from the previous cabinet's plan for a general ban. The cabinet has decided against a broad ban on burqas in public as that would violate the principle of freedom of religion, news agency ANP said, citing unnamed cabinet sources. The Muslim community says only about 50 women wear the head-to-toe burqa or the niqab, a face veil that conceals everything but the eyes. They said a general ban would heighten alienation among...

THE HAGUE (AFP) - The Dutch government is ready for any possible fallout of a planned film by far-right MP Geert Wilders that attacks Islam as an "inspiration for murder," Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Friday. "We are ready to react quickly, it is our role to be prepared for calamities," Balkenende told journalists at his weekly press briefing. Earlier on Friday Dutch media had reported that the government had compiled a secret document on how best to deal with reactions to the film. Wilders, the head of the far-right Freedom Party, announced in November that he planned to...

The Hague - Dutch armed forces Commander Dick Berlijn has announced that the two Dutch soldiers who died in Uruzgan on Saturday were killed by friendly fire. The soldiers did not realise they were firing on each other due to darkness and bad weather. Two Afghan soldiers who were killed later that evening were also shot dead by Dutch soldiers. They were mistaken for Taliban fighters because they were not in uniform. At the time, the Dutch soldiers were assisting an injured colleague whose legs will have to be amputated. The two deaths bring the Dutch death toll since the...

Half of the Dutch people want the Queen to give up her role as a member of the government. That's the result of a recent poll, instigated by a plea from Geert Wilders of the rightwing Freedom Party. He wants the Head of State to stick to cutting ribbons and stay well away from politics. Opinion pollster Maurice de Hond asked: "Do you think the Queen should only have a ceremonial role in the Netherlands and not a political one?" In April 2007, 41 percent of those asked agreed. Now that has risen to 50 percent. Historian Thomas van der...

Iranian students are not welcome at the Technical University Twente in the town of Enschede. At the request of the Education Ministry and the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the university has agreed not to admit any Iranian students. The government fears that Iranian students and workers would steal sensitive nuclear information to help their government develop nuclear weapons. The university's decision is the direct result of a 2006 UN resolution calling on member states to prevent Iran from gaining access to nuclear knowledge. The UN has been concerned about the Iranian nuclear research programme for some time. The International Atomic Energy...

BRUSSELS (AFP) - Belgium's political tensions entered the glamour stakes after it was revealed that the new Miss Belgium does not speak Dutch. Belgium's political tensions entered the glamour stakes after it was revealed that the new Miss Belgium does not speak Dutch. Alizee Poulicek, who comes from the country's French-speaking region, was booed at the contest by some of the 4,000 audience when she admitted that she could not understand a question put to her in Dutch. Alizee Poulicek, who comes from the country's French-speaking region, was booed by some of the 4,000 audience when she admitted that she...

In an at times heated debate, the Dutch parliament has approved extending the mission to the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan. Dutch soldiers will remain part of the NATO ISAF mission until December 2010. The three parties that make up the governing coalition approve extending the mission, along with two opposition parties. During the closing debate, MPs opposed to extending the mission got into a few passionate exchanges with their colleagues who were supporting the move. At one point, the spokesperson for the Conservative VVD party, Hans van Baalen, and Socialist Party leader Jan Marijnissen looked like they would come...

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times An art handler at the Queens Public Library cleaned the display case Tuesday where the Flushing Remonstrance will be shown. The Flushing Remonstrance made a rare visit yesterday to the old neighborhood. ...the] Remonstrance...an important early recorded defense of the freedom to worship that has been called the religious Magna Carta of the New World. Relatively little known, this 1657 appeal by some 30 Flushing farmers for freedom to practice their Quaker religion goes on display... snip... According to historians, a group of about 30 freeholders in Flushing, which was then called Vlissingen,...

The Dutch military mission in Afghanistan will be extended by two years, Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has announced. Dutch troops had been scheduled to leave Afghanistan in summer 2008. The decision to extend the mission follows a call by al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden for European nations to stop helping US forces in Afghanistan. Bin Laden said that he - and not the Afghans - was the "only one responsible" for the 9/11 attacks. Dutch troops are stationed primarily in the southern Uruzgan province of Afghanistan. Since the Netherlands joined the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) last...

The Dutch government has extended the Netherlands' military mission in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan by two years. The last troops are to pull out by 1 December 2010. Originally the mission was to end in August 2008. NATO has put intense pressure on the Netherlands to lengthen its stay. No other NATO country was prepared to take over the country's role. Four months later than expected, the cabinet finally managed to come to a decision. With around 1400 troops, the Netherlands will remain the lead nation in the ISAF mission in Uruzgan until August 2010. France, the Czech...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - One was a Somali refugee, the other an Argentine investment banker. Both are now high-profile Dutch women challenging this country to rethink its national identity. Princess Maxima, the Argentine-born wife of Crown Prince Willem Alexander, triggered a round of national soul-searching with a speech last month about what exactly it means to be Dutch in an age of mass migration. "The Netherlands is too complex to sum up in one cliche," she said. "A typical Dutch person doesn't exist." Her comments have tapped into an unsettled feeling among many Dutch who fear traditional values have been...

The Hague - Another Dutch soldier has been killed in the Afghan province of Uruzgan. Corporal Ronald Groen, who was 21 years old, was on patrol in an armoured vehicle that hit an improvised explosive device in the road. Two other soldiers were injured in the blast but are said to be in a stable condition. The Dutch contingent is currently involved in an operation to drive the Taliban from the area around Chora. Corporal Groen is the twelfth Dutch soldier to be killed while serving on the NATO-led ISAF mission in Afghanistan.

One of the greatest injustices to the victims of racism, and in particular the holocaust, is the trivialization of it. One does not have to agree with the Dutch “Islamophobic” anti-immigration politicians Geert Wilders or Rita Verdonk, but what kind of person writes something like: “Whenever I see people such as Wilders and Verdonk I think of the Kristallnacht! The moment the Jews were rounded up...”? People who write such things do not care about the suffering of the Jews. They merely abuse the Nazi crimes for their own petty political objectives. The example quoted above comes from the Dutch...

Dutch lawmakers who recently visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison said they were offended by a testy exchange in Washington with a senior congressional Democrat. The lawmakers said that Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told them that "Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay." Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, was responding to arguments that the United States should shut down the prison, located on a U.S. naval base in Cuba, the lawmakers said. Mariko Peters, a member of the Dutch Green Party, who began the exchange with Lantos, said she took...

Unidentified young people set another car on fire in the night from Thursday to Friday during the fourth consecutive night of riots in Amsterdam's Slotervaart neighbourhood... The unrest began after two violent incidents ... Both times young Moroccan Dutch were involved. In the latest incident on October 14, 22-year-old Bilal Bajaka attacked two police officers at a police station with a knife. One of them pulled her gun and shot her attacker, who died on the spot. Amsterdam police chief Bernard Welten said the problems in Slotervaart were caused by a "core group of no more than 35 youths aged...

Bilal B. attacked police officers 15 October 2007 AMSTERDAM – The man, who was shot by a police officer at the police station of the Amsterdam district Slotervaart and died shortly afterwards on Sunday, was in contact with members of the Hofstad terrorist organisation in 2005. It was Bilal B., a man of Moroccan descent living in Amsterdam. Chief public prosecutor Leo de Wit said this at a press conference on Monday. The police and the General Intelligence and Security Service, AIVD had had consultations about Bilal B’s contacts with the Hofstad group, according to De Wit. "Several members of...

Identity and multiculturalism is back on the Dutch agenda. The beginning of the year saw a full-blown row over politicians with dual nationalities. The right-wing politician Geert Wilders claimed their divided loyalties were not compatible with holding a position in office. The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) has responded by publishing a report titled "Identification with the Netherlands", the contents of which are at odds with Mr Wilders' stance. The report wants to refresh the debate and help migrants identify with the Netherlands whether under two passports or one. It says we can't look to the past and...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The Dutch government will ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry said Friday, rolling back one element of the country's permissive drug policy after a series of well-publicized negative incidents.< >— A British tourist, 22, ran amok in a hotel, breaking his window and slicing his hand badly. — An Icelandic tourist, 19, thought he was being chased and jumped from a balcony, breaking both his legs. — A Danish tourist, 29, drove his car wildly through a campground, narrowly missing people sleeping in their tents.< >

Dutch researcher claims to confirm Queen Jezebel's seal By Cnaan Liphshiz For some 40 years, one of the flashiest opal signets on display at the Israel Museum had remained without accurate historical context. Two weeks ago, Dutch researcher Marjo Korpel identified article IDAM 65-321 as the official seal of Queen Jezebel, one of the bible's most powerful and reviled women. Israeli archaeologists had suspected Jezebel was the owner ever since the seal was first documented in 1964. "Did it belong to Ahab's Phoenician wife?" wrote the late pioneering archaeologist Nahman Avigad of the seal, which he obtained through the antiquities...

Over the past decade, groups of immigrant youths have been causing growing problems in Holland's main cities. The young people hang out in squares in the evening and commit petty and violent crime. They are often between 12 and 18 years of age and come from the Dutch Antilles, Surinam and especially Morocco. When they start hanging out, the teenagers are still going to school, but many of them are poor students and only take vocational training classes. They often make a nuisance of themselves and create problems for people in the neighbourhood. Dr Flip Lindo According to Dr Flip...

URK, Netherlands: Though its population is not quite 18,000, the Dutch town of Urk already has more Protestant churches than some small cities. For this remote and traditional fishing community, though, 19 established places of worship are not enough, so plans are afoot to build two more. An hour's drive from Amsterdam, where marijuana is sold openly in coffee shops and prostitution is legal, Urk is one of Europe's most God-fearing places. Thousands here spurn television, theater, movies and dancing. Many dress in black and attend three hours of church services on Sunday. And some refuse to immunize their children...

The Hague - The Dutch government has decided to send 80 extra soldiers to the Afghan province of Uruzgan. Within a couple of days, two units will be deployed in the Deh Rawod region where the smallest Dutch base is located. The reason for the reinforcements is the worsening unrest in the region. Increasing numbers of Taliban are moving into this part of Uruzgan as a result of fighting in the neighbouring province Helmand.

Amsterdam - Four out of ten Dutch people think the country has deteriorated since the 1990s. A study by magazine Reader's Digest shows that the Dutch gave the Netherlands seven out of ten back then and only six now. The study concludes that Dutch citizens have less faith in legislation, law and order, politics, the police, integration of minorities and the maintenance of moral values. People's faith in social cohesion has fallen by half, and they think society will only get even less caring. It is not all bad news, however: compared to ten years ago, the Dutch are happier,...

The Dutch government has decided not to hold a referendum on the latest European Union treaty. The so-called Reform Treaty was agreed upon in June by representatives of the 27 member states. It is meant to replace the EU constitution which failed after Dutch and French voters rejected it in referendums in 2005. The decision means the Reform Treaty will be sent to the Dutch parliament, where it is expected to be approved by a wide majority. The cabinet's decision to scrap the referendum did not come easily. For the second week in a row, Friday's cabinet meeting dragged on...