I’m still here

I didn’t post for a whole week now and partially all my fault (ok almost entirely all my fault)

Emily (my flatmate-to-be) and me have been viewing apartments this whole week. And we noticed, that it isn’t that hard to find affordable apartments in inner-London. London is divided into 6 travel zones. We’re aiming for Zone 1 & Zone 2 , north of the river Thames. South of the river are the ghettos (where teen-gangs started a gun and knife-cult) so we don’t really want to live there. Zone 1 & 2 are the areas with all the landmarks and our universities.
We just have to accept the fact that we probably going to move in to a very ugly flat and not a Knightsbridge apartment with a view on Harrods.

On top of all this apartment-hunting, I’ve also encountered humongous money-problems. My employer forgot to pay me! I was supposed to get my pay last Wednesday but I never received it. And the 2 persons responsible for all the paying etc are on a holiday until next Tuesday.
So I didn’t get to pay my rent, which resulted in a fine of 12.5% of the total amount. Besides that, my ticket to Amsterdam in June got cancelled because I didn’t pay. ( I booked the ticket a while ago and I had to pay this Friday but since I don’t have money I couldn’t pay)

So its been a pretty hectic week and now I have a hang-over. Yesterday it was Queensday here in London. So I had a lot of Dutch herring, fries with onions, mayonnaise and sate-sauce. And fresh Dutch waffles! Oh and beer, lots of beer.
(pictures of me eating fries, drinking beer, eating cheese and pictures of Dutch in traditional clothes coming up soon hehe)
The real Queensday is tomorrow in Amsterdam. It will be the first time that I wont attend. Usually we hire a boat, buy a barrel or 2 of beer and “sail” through the canals of Amsterdam. And ending the day really drunk in the Vondelpark or at a rave-party somewhere at the docks.
It’s the best holiday ever! If you ever visit Amsterdam, come at the end of April. Imagine Amsterdam as 1 big, orange coloured, garage-sale with hundreds of thousands happy people. (I included some pictures at the end of this post)

A little preview (its this x1000)

In the meantime, Eatbees nominated me for a Thinking Award. Thank you!
Now I have to come up with other blogs/persons I want to give the award to.
I won’t do that now because I have no time. I have a viewing and a Darfur-rally to attend.
I’ll be posting a lot this coming week.

And oeh yeah, you know the changes I talked about in my previous post? Well, I kind of already started but I need my pay first:P

Neonazis and Palestinian solidarity

Usually when you see a Palestinian flag during a demonstration in Europe, its carried by either a muslim urbanite or an (extreme)-leftist person.

These 2 types of Palestinian-flag carriers are now joined by their arch-enemies, the neonazis (at least in the Netherlands)
They too wave proudly with a Palestinian flag.
A match made in heaven!

Link
(link takes you to a video on Geenstijl.nl, a dutch shocklog. The palestinian flags and their proud balded carriers show up a couple of times in the video. Most flags can be seen somewhere half way)

TV-news

Finally a seperate Star Academy for the Maghreb-region!
I was getting fed up with all those contestants from Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. At a sudden moment they all start to look like each other.
I do hope that more big (Arab) shows come with their own Maghreb-version.
I mean, we áre a little bit different.

Another bit of tv-news is the little uproar in the Netherlands about the decision to replace RTL7 (one of the most boring Dutch tv-channels) in the Amsterdam cable-tv package with Rotana Music.
According to the body responsible for the distribution of cable airtime (or whatever you call it in English), RTL7 is performing very bad in the Amsterdam region. So they decided to replace it with Rotana Music because of the big Arabic speaking population of Amsterdam.
Stupid decision. First of all, there is no big Arabic speaking population in Amsterdam. Unless you count the 1500-strong Egyptian community as big. The biggest community from the MENA are the Moroccans. Most of them speak a Imazighen language or Darija. 2 languages you hardly ever hear on Rotana.
Second of all, every self-respecting Moroccan household has a satellite-dish. So they already receive Rotana.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I want E! TV or the Fashion Channel. Not Rotana!

Dutch MRE’s and politicians

In the Netherlands Dutch politicians have been having heavy debates on the position of Turkish and Moroccan MP’s and cabinet-members.

In one of my previous posts I mentioned that the current government has 2 junior-members, Ahmed Aboutaleb and Nebahat Albayrak.
Dutch (far)-rightist politician Geert Wilders demands their resignation because both of them still have a dual nationality.
People tended to concentrate on the Turkish politicians, since the Turkish state does give its citizens the right to revoke their nationality.
So Aboutaleb and the Moroccan politicians were kind of excused and people demanded the head of Albayrak and the other Turks.

But that áll changed now. Dutch radio-station Wereldomroep found out that a Moroccan MP, Khadija Arib, is holding a position in the CCDH (Conseil Consultatif des droits de l’Homme). A body created and appointed by the King himself. The aim is to strengthen the (political) ties between Morocco and the MRE’s
A very weird position for Khadija Arib since the Dutch state repeatedly showed us that they aim at the opposite, a weakening of the political ties between Morocco and the MRE’s.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.
People claim that this is treason, espionage and illegal.
Khadija Arib replies with this “I’m not loyal to Morocco, I’m not loyal to the Netherlands, I’m loyal to my own principles, human rights and women rights”

Well frankly, I don’t care who she’s loyal to. I just care about the state of her brains!
Khadija Arib is supposed to be one of the most experienced Moroccan-Dutch politicians. One of the best-dressed and one of the most admired.
How could she not realize that accepting a position within the CCDH would mean that rightist politicians will demand her head and that of the other Moroccan-Dutch politicians.
How could she risk the achievements of the Dutch-Moroccan politicians?
We’re living in a time were politicians claim that “the Islamic tsunami has reached the government” when we appoint two secular, wine-drinking muslim politicians to the government.
She could’ve been more careful.

(Khadija Arib during a meeting of the committee. She’s the the second from left. Well she’s the only woman on the picture)

No Moroccans in Dutch government

In this post I blogged about the big chances of Dutch-moroccan politician to become the first ever Moroccan, immigrant, muslim member of the Dutch government.

Today came the little disappointment. The new government is 100% white and if it wasn’t for the social-democrats and the liberal part of the christian-democrats, the government would be 100% old white male.

Ahmed Aboutaleb didn’t make it, instead he got a post of a junior-minister in the Department of Social Affairs & Employment.
Turkish politician Nebahat Albayrak got the post of a junior minister in the Department of Justice

Actually I should be happy. I always complained that the elected Dutch government didn’t reflect the population. They were all “white” and more than 10% of the Dutch is of an ethnic minority. There are a lot of capable, intelligent politicans out there but they didn’t seem to make it to the top.
I always wanted to see muslims in our government. For 2 reasons.
To shut up those ignorant, selfhating muslims who always complain that nobody takes them seriously. And to shut up those ignorant, selfhating farmers who always complain that muslims are anti-democracry and are here to destroy the Netherlands.
To add some speculation, according to a poll (link in Dutch) conducted under members of the ChristianUnion (one of the governing parties), most of the party-members are against nomination of a muslim as a government-member.

This time a Turkish and a Moroccan politician are member of the government. And both are in departments in their field of expertise.
But its still a little disappointment that “my” Ahmed didn’t make it as minister, so maybe better next time.

Nebahat Albayrak & Ahmed Aboutaleb, aren’t they beautiful?

Moroccan politicians about to make history

At least in Holland.

The Christian-Democrats (CDA), Christian Union (CU) and the Labour Party (PvdA) announced this week that they’re were forming a coalition and a new government.

We’ll have to wait till the 18th of February to see what the composition of this new government will be like.
But one thing is almost for sure, this new government will probably include a politician of Moroccan origin. For the first time in history.

Ahmed Aboutaleb, a member of the Labour Party, is a prominent candidate for the post of Education Minister, Integration/Urban Policy Minister or Minister of Social Welfare.
Born in Beni Sidel (Rif) as son of an imam, this politician grew to be a popular one amongst the “native” Dutch and the immigrants. Something quite remarkable in Holland.
He’s tough on integration (face-veil = no social welfare) and on Islamic radicals but he does know what he’s doing and saying. (unlike our present Integration Minister)

But nothing is sure yet. The coalition-parties still have a week to bitch-slap each other on the nominations. So lets wait and hope that Aboutaleb will make it through.