A slight error

Somali pirates attack a defenceless merchant ship only to discover that it was HNLMS Tromp.

And didn't they end up feeling silly.

Acknowledging their new masters

The Dutch town of Gouda pays the Jizya to a load of Moroccan "youths" to avoid "trouble".

What's the Dutch word for spineless?

Log cabin office

I've been thinking about building a tiny office out in the woods at Chez Szondy and the idea of a log cabin designed to look like a pile of timber has definite appeal.

Add a cargo net, let the ferns grow up around it, and spray it with green paint to make it look moss-covered, and I'll not only have an office, but a bolt hole in case I have a George Bluth episode.

EmoBraclet.

You know, whenever I get stressed, I always say what I really need is a big, gaudy bracelet that makes a bowl light up.

Dutch "social workers" hate liberty

In the None Of Your Damn Business Department, Dutch jumped up little Napoleons social workers are trying to make a 13-year old girl a ward of the court in order to prevent her from sailing single-handed around the world despite the fact that she is an accomplished lifetime sailor and has her parents' blessings.

The tin-pot Himmlers social workers say that this is in her "best interests", but given the state of the Netherlands today, I'd say that sailing a small boat to the antipodes and back is the preferable option.

Going Dutch

The Dutch unveil a new modular helmet system that allows soldiers to go from shooting glasses to full "Luke, I am your father" with a few additions.

Any smart ass who does heavy breathing in the thing gets a fortnight of guard duty.

Breach of the Peace

The ever-innovative Dutch have created a bus shelter that displays your weight for all to see.

It's lucky they didn't have these when we went on our honeymoon to Amsterdam. What my wife would have done to the things with the nearest blunt object doesn't bear thinking about.

Snowball Would Be Proud

I'm not an admirer of Geert Wilders and I don't agree with a lot of what he says, but I pay attention when he speaks because it always strikes me as something that is dismissed as "fringe" today, yet will be echoed in every pub within five years if the problems of a growing, unassimilated Muslim population that seems comfortable with radical Islam isn't addressed forthrightly and honestly. Unfortunately, that seems highly unlikely when Wilders, a democratically elected Dutch legislator, is denied entry to Britain allegedly because it "would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK" when in reality it stems from official fear of the likes of Lord Ahmed, a Muslim Life Peer, who threatened to bring 10,000 Muslims down on the Palace of Westminster if Parliament viewed Wilder's film Fitna–a threat that at least one commentator has pointed out fits the legal definition of treason.

This sort of cowardice on the part of New Labour makes one almost wish that the ban had been done out of the Brown government's usual prissy moral posturing. At least that had a slight tinge of honesty about it. What we have instead is something that hollows out Britain's ancient liberties a bit more while pouring another can of petrol on an already growing fire.

Update: Wilders arrested trying to enter Britain.

Little Chef is Watching You

Restaurant... of the FUTURE!

Di-Cycle

From the Netherlands, an amphibious bicycle.

Great. Now we'll see the waterways clogged with self-righteous traffic hazards as well.

Poop Power

The Dutch breaks ground on a 36.5 megawatt power plant that runs on chicken poop.

Now watch them do something typically daft and ban chicken farming.

Green Bricks

The Dutch are testing a rather novel idea; concrete bricks that catalyse nitrogen oxide into nitrates. If it works, this could be just the sort of green technology that will a) solve a problem elegantly and b) give the environmentalists fits because it doesn't involve scolding people about their wicked ways and demanding hair shirts for all.

A Solution Without a Problem

If you feel it to be a prudent investment to drop €5000 for this handmade gimballed champagne holder for your Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut 1996, then you're not drinking it fast enough.

CLEVER

When I saw the Technical University of Berlin new CLEVER concept I thought it was another one of those useless green machines like that VW tandem monstrosity that I talked about a couple of weeks back. But then I discovered two things: 1) It tilts up to 45 degrees and 2) If it's anything like it's Dutch ancestor the Carver One, it must be a hell of a lot of fun.


I think Richard Hammond summed it up best:

I want guns strapped to the side of it.

Share and Enjoy

Dutch designer Jelte van Geest has created a robot chair that follows you around the library on the off chance that you want to sit down. According to the report,

He wanted to make robots friendly and soft rather than mean and cold.

More like obsequious and annoying. Stand by for some major upholstery kicking.

Smoking Irony

You there! Put that out! Don't you know that smoking is banned? Oh, it's cannabis? That's all right then.

Art-Eggcident

Because nothing says "art" like a cheap to conceive, but expensive to execute and impossible to live with visual pun.

ThoRR

At last; an electric sports car based on the classic Lotus 7.

Must... resist... urge... to... reach... for... cheque... book.

Dogged Dutch

The Dutch have legalised gay sex and banned dogs running loose in public parks.

But what if the dog is... No, I'm not going there.

Brand Image

And the winner of the 2008 Jellyfish Award goes to the Dutch Catholics who have re-branded Lent as "Christian Ramadan".

Next up: Churches are to be henceforth referred to as "Christian Mosques".

Context is All

A collection of photographs of gay men? That's truly art and worthy of a major museum exhibit... Unless, that is, the artist is a woman. And the men are Muslims. In Mohammed masks. And the museum is in the Netherlands. In that case, it's one cancelled exhibit and one artist literally on the run for her life.

Welcome to Europe 2008.

A Humiliating Turn of Events

Headline from The Van Der Galiën Gazette:

French Intellectuals Accuse Dutch of “Unacceptable Cowardice”

It's offical; pigs fly!

Religion of Peace

"Youth" of indeterminate religion rioting continues in Amsterdam for a sixth night.

That won't do much for the "Moroccan-Dutch" of indeterminate religion's stigma.

Update: According to reports, part of the problem is that even as the "Moroccan-Dutch" of indeterminate religion "leaders" demand a crack down, the Dutch police are taking a softly-softly approach that amounts to letting the "Youths" of indeterminate religious burn and pillage as they see fit.

Uh huh. Worked so well with the Vikings, why shouldn't it with these barbarians.

"Youth" in Amsterdam

The Digital Journal reports that on Tuesday night Morrocan-Dutch "youths" of indeterminate religion rioted, set cars alight and stoned a police station in Amsterdam after 22-year old Bilal Bajaka, another "youth" of indeterminate religion, walked into a police station with a knife and was shot to death after he stabbed two police officers, leaving them in a "serious, but stable" condition.

Though the religion of the "youths" of indeterminate religion was not mentioned in the article, the fact that the assailant was "personally acquainted with Mohammed Bouyeri, the convicted killer of the late film director Theo van Gogh, as well as with other Moroccan-Dutch terrorist suspects", it is a fair bet that they were not Methodists.

Asked about the incident and riots,

Moroccan-Dutch residents of Slotervaart complained to reporters they were "sick and tired" of continuous "negative news reports" about fellow Moroccan-Dutch, adding they felt increasingly stigmatized.

"Sick and tired" of "negative news reports"? Here is a small suggestion for what it is worth: Maybe the "Moroccan-Dutch" of indeterminate religion would stop being "stigmatised" if they stopped brutally murdering filmmakers, forswore attacking police officers, and refrained from rioting in the streets when one of their co-indeterminate-religionists is brought to justice.

It's called civilisation. Try it some time.

For Allah's Sake!

And now from the Raving Mad Department comes a Dutch Roman Catholic Bishop who, with a perfectly straight face, has said that people of all faiths should refer to God as "Allah" to "foster understanding."

I don't know what is more breathtaking; the sheer theological imbecility coming from a man of the cloth that cannot recognise that God and Allah are fundamentally different ideas or the blinkered multiculturalism that is indistinguishable from craven cowardice. I never thought I'd see the day when the land of Calvin and Erasmus was in danger of falling under the sway of sharia law or that a Bishop of Rome would help fit the shackles.

Alternative Menus

Test-tube meat creeps out of the Petri dish again as Dutch scientists announce that they are working on lab-grown pork. Exactly how raising meat in a bio-factory with all that that entails is more "enviro-friendly" is beyond me.

I prefer the plan put forward in the Times by Jeremy Clarkson: Save the Planet; eat a hippie.

On second thoughts: Yuk!

Theo Van Gogh Memorial

A monument has been raised to the memory of slain Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was butchered in the streets of Amsterdam by a Jihadist in 2004.

It's a start.

Dutchmen Riot in Utrecht

Native Dutchmen have rioted for two days in Ondiep, a suburb of Utrecht, the Netherlands, after a 54-year old Dutchman was shot by police following an altercation with Muslim "youths."

According to the Brussels Journal,

Locals claim the police has failed to protect them for years. They say the authorities are afraid of the immigrants and tolerate their criminal behaviour. After the death of Mulder the indigenous Dutch decided they had had enough and started riots which went on for two continuous nights. The police made 130 arrests: 60 of them are Ondiep residents. According to the mainstream media the others are mainly “football hooligans” from other parts of the country. Annie Brouwer Korf, the Socialist mayor of Utrecht, has ordered to be sealed off from the rest of town to keep non-residents out. She expressed some sympathy for the frustrated Ondiep residents. “I understand that residents are sometimes upset about the nuisance around their own house and neighbourhood. That does you no good whatsoever.”

This is episode of a "reverse Parisian" riot is an foreshadowing of events to come in Europe that I find particularly ominous. Not because I share any of the belief on the Left that white Europeans are dyed in the wool racists who must be restrained at all times lest their blood lust runs rampant, but because it is an illustration of what I have been saying for years: If the governments of Europe do not address the problem of a large and growing unassimilated Islamic population squarely and honestly, and especially the role that the Jihadists among them play in the war against civilisation, then the native people and moderate Muslims will come to believe that the government is sacrificing them at the altar of multiculturalism. When that happens, the politics of appeasement and expediency in regard to recalcitrant and belligerent Muslims will be as nothing in the face of rebellious and frightened natives. Then God help us all.

It is a classic example of the longer we wait, the more we are going to find our options ever fewer and the results ever more unjust and bloodier for everyone.

A Pint for Me and One for My Friend.

A pet shop owner in the Netherlands has invented a beer for dogs.

He's a bit late. Down the pub we've had that for years. We call it "beer."

Warring Camps

As the Netherlands fights for its life against Jihadists who regard Dutch society as morally bankrupt, Amsterdam seems dead-set on proving them right by erecting a statue that will be "a tribute to all prostitutes all over the world"

Dutchmen caught in the middle can only hope both sides can lose.