"[Geert] Wilders’s party — which has advocated banning the Quran, closing Islamic schools and entirely halting the acceptance of asylum seekers..."

"... won the largest number of seats in November 2023 elections, sending shock waves through the Dutch political system. Mr. Wilders was able to form a government with three other right-wing parties... after more than six months of wrangling.... Mr. Wilders had aimed to bring the 'strictest migration policy ever' to the Netherlands, something his governing partners had said they agreed with. In May 2024, the four parties reached a deal that included 'the strictest asylum admission policy and the most comprehensive migration control package ever.' But Mr. Wilders said that implementation was not going quickly enough. Last week he said he wanted to add 10 more proposals... includ[ing] calls for a complete halt to asylum, a temporary stop to family reunions for asylum seekers who had been granted refugee status and the return of all Syrians who had applied for asylum or were in the Netherlands on temporary visas. The leaders of the other coalition parties said that while they did not oppose Mr. Wilders’s plans, they wanted him to propose them in the House of Representatives. That would have taken longer and would not have guaranteed implementation...."

From "Dutch Government Collapses Over Migration Dispute/The populist Geert Wilders withdrew his right-wing party from the ruling coalition, saying partners were stalling plans for the Netherlands’ 'strictest migration policy ever'" (NYT).

About that proposal to ban the Quran — as reported in January 2024, after the election and before the formation of the coalition — "Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has withdrawn a 2018 proposal to ban mosques and the Quran" (Independent). The proposal denounced Islam as a "violent, totalitarian ideology."

"English sales have accelerated in recent years, in part because books now go viral on social media, especially TikTok."

"Booksellers in the Netherlands said that many young people prefer to buy books in English with their original covers, even if Dutch is their first language, because those are the books they see and want to post about on BookTok.... 'We are in the middle of a transition,' said Simon Dikker Hupkes, a commissioning editor at the Dutch publisher Atlas Contact. The fact that many readers overlook the Dutch translations, he said, 'hurts our hearts a little.' Asha Hodge, 19, who described herself as an avid reader, said she preferred to read in English because she enjoyed posting about books in English on her Instagram account...."

From "English-Language Books Are Filling Europe’s Bookstores. Mon Dieu! Young people, especially, are choosing to read in English even if it is not their first language because they want the covers, and the titles, to match what they see on TikTok and other social media" (NYT).

"Although still rare, euthanasia of couples was first noted in a review of all cases in 2020..."

"... when 26 people were granted euthanasia at the same time as their partners. The numbers grew to 32 the following year and 58 in 2022.... Elke Swart, spokesperson for the Expertisecentrum Euthanasie, which grants the euthanasia wish of about 1,000 people a year in the Netherlands, said any couple’s requests for assisted death were tested against strict requirements individually rather than together. 'Interest in this is growing, but it is still rare,' she said. 'It is pure chance that two people are suffering unbearably with no prospect of relief at the same time … and that they both wish for euthanasia.'"

From "Duo euthanasia: former Dutch prime minister dies hand in hand with his wife/Dries and Eugenie van Agt, both 93, died as number of couples in Netherlands choosing joint end to life grows" (The Guardian).

1. "Although still rare...." implies that we know where we're going and it will ultimately be routine.

2. It's a commitment beyond the marriage vow "'Til death do us part." Even death will not part them.

3. Makes me think of that Death Cab for Cutie song — "Love of mine, some day you will die/But I'll be close behind, I'll follow you into the dark..."

4. The claim is that the 2 who apply to depart together are evaluated independently, and their wish to journey together counts for nothing. Should it? A reason to say no is that it's hard to tell which way it should count. There could be too much charity or elevation of the other's interests over one's own. But perhaps that is part of self-definition. If you're allowing euthanasia — you've already gone this far — why deprive the individual of the spiritual aspect of the decision. 

Too much of a bad thing.

I'm reading "Headwind Cycling Race Called Off Over Too Much Wind Storm/Ciarán, which has battered Western Europe this week, proved too much for a quirky Dutch cycling competition" (NYT).

Even in a country where cycling is one of the most popular modes of transportation, many might wonder why anyone would submit themselves to cycling through such treacherous weather conditions. “I wonder that myself sometimes,” Mr. Stoekenbroek said. “There’s a group of people that likes to suffer.”

The country is the Netherlands. 

"Bali is part of a growing number of popular travel destinations fed up with overtourism."

"Hawaii is considering a bill to dissolve its government-sponsored tourism marketing agency. Amsterdam has been trying to reduce rowdy tourist behavior in its Red Light District, rolling out a ban on pot-smoking on the streets there, reducing hours for restaurants and brothels, and tightening some alcohol restrictions. Italian authorities have been fining tourists in Rome, Florence and Venice for littering, camping, vandalism and traffic violations.... 'We have a lot of tolerance here … but it’s this behavior of I am the more important person. Look at me,' said Fatmawati, an Indonesian personal assistant... 'It’s disgusting — people are tired of it. I’m tired of it.'"

From "'It’s disgusting': Bali locals are fed up with bad tourists/Many in Bali are sick of the disrespect, the illegal work and the indecent social media posts from foreigners" (WaPo).

"The Dutch like to say, 'Acting normal is crazy enough.' And we think that rich people are not acting normal."

"Here in Holland, we don’t believe that everybody can be rich the way people do in America, where the sky is the limit. We think 'Be average.' That’s good enough...”

Said Ellen Verkoelen, "a City Council member and Rotterdam leader of the 50Plus Party, which works on behalf of pensioners," quoted in "The Country That Wants to ‘Be Average’ vs. Jeff Bezos and His $500 Million Yacht/Why did Rotterdam stand between one of the world’s richest men and his boat? The furious response is rooted in Dutch values" (NYT).

“When I was about 11 years old, we had an American boy stay with us for a week, an exchange student,” she recalled. “And my mother told him, just make your own sandwich like you do in America. Instead of putting one sausage on his bread, he put on five. My mother was too polite to say anything to him, but to me she said in Dutch, ‘We will never eat like that in this house.’” 

At school, Ms. Verkoelen learned from friends that the American children in their homes all ate the same way. They were stunned and a little jealous. At the time, it was said in the Netherlands that putting both butter and cheese on your bread was “the devil’s sandwich.”...

"[W]intertime beach outings are a quintessential example of uitwaaien (OUT-vwy-ehn), a Dutch word that translates literally as 'out blowing' but is perhaps better understood as 'to walk in the wind.'"

"Typically used as a noun, it describes the act of undertaking some sort of outdoor physical activity in windy conditions. Wind, as local wisdom goes, refreshes and recalibrates you.... The Dutch have harnessed the wind as a power source for centuries; windmills have long been so intrinsic to society there that they’re practically a national symbol..... Like all lifestyles, uitwaaien has its casual partakers and more extreme devotees. Wim Hof, the Dutch health expert... says: 'We have a physical body, but it is like a radio: It receives and sends signals. And the carrier is the wind. The wind is able to change our biochemistry in the depth of our bodies for the better.... The wind offers the gas exchange between the outside and the inside of our selves. How do we regulate that? By doing the breathing, by letting the wind come into our bodies. That is a foundation of health."

From "Forget hygge, it’s time for uitwaaien" (WaPo).

Last night, Spotify suggested that I listen to a track that was 8 hours of the sound of wind — supposedly good white noise for sleeping. So this Dutch concept intrigues me. But I've been avoiding going out when the wind is high, especially in the winter, when it's not just about getting clobbered by detached tree parts, but it's driving the "feels like" temperature down below zero. 

I wrote about Wim Hof once before — in a 2019 post that ended, "Like the unfortunate couple who ate raw marmot organs and died of the plague and Willie Nelson inhaling/scarfing down marijuana, there's a thing that can be done and a human mind to imagine that it could work. It could work and it could cause a lot of damage, so... do it!" Read that whole post to see what sorts of things Hof does. 

I guess Hof formulates his ideas in Dutch. The English translation — "The wind offers the gas exchange between the outside and the inside of our selves... letting the wind come into our bodies" — sounds rather... farty.

ADDED: In France, you can walk in the wind indoors:

"Here in the Netherlands, where there is little land and a lot [o]f rain, hydroponic farming is almost all there is."

"Frankly, the vegetables and fruits such as strawberries have almost no flavor. Tomatoes taste like red sponges. It’s efficient but that’s it. Many of us live for the summer to travel to France, Spain or Italy where fruits and vegetables are grown in the ground and have real flavor."

From the comments section on this NYT article: "No Soil. No Growing Seasons. Just Add Water and Technology/A new breed of hydroponic farm, huge and high-tech, is popping up in indoor spaces all over America, drawing celebrity investors and critics."

"At this point we’re missing our tourists again. But I think there was a moment of really big joy in getting our city back."

Said the owner of an Amsterdam restaurant, quoted in "In Empty Amsterdam, Reconsidering Tourism/Before Covid-19, the city was packed with visitors. Now efforts to rein in the expected post-pandemic crowds are ramping up, but not without controversy" (NYT). 

In 2019, a record-breaking 21.7 million people visited Amsterdam, a city with a population of about 870,000.... On a typical Saturday night before the pandemic, the district, known as De Wallen, would have been heaving with young men going from bar to bar — perhaps stepping into sex shops or coffee shops or eyeing scantily clad prostitutes posing in their windows.

Riots protesting coronavirus restrictions: police attacked, cars and bikes set on fire, fireworks thrown, supermarkets looted, shop windows smashed.

"This has nothing to do with protest, this is criminal violence and we will treat it as such," the Dutch prime minister said, quoted in "Covid: Dutch PM Mark Rutte condemns curfew riots as 'criminal violence" (BBC).

In Eindhoven, golf balls and fireworks were hurled at police in full riot gear, who eventually used tear gas to clear the crowds. Burning bikes were built into barricades. In the eastern city of Enschede, rioters threw rocks at the windows of a hospital. A Covid-19 testing centre was also set alight on Saturday evening in the northern village of Urk, local authorities said.

The government imposed a nighttime curfew, the first since WWII. 

"Kids are encouraged to express their own opinions. Everyone in the family, including the youngest, has a say."

"By the time Julius turned three, he had already developed adequate language skills to express what’s important to him. After that, it was all about teaching him how to formulate rational solutions. Negotiation-based parenting isn’t for the faint of heart. It can be exhausting, and your patience will be tested. But by allowing our toddler to negotiate, we were teaching him how to set his own boundaries. The notion was that each time Julius questioned our authority, he was simply trying to express what he was and wasn’t comfortable with. It’s a skill that will be useful when he’s older, whether it’s to resist succumbing to peer pressure, to cope when he finds himself in a possibly dangerous situation or to assert himself at work. Of course, there are rules. As parents, it’s important that we explain our position clearly and let him know, for example, why he needs to sleep early: 'So you can get plenty of rest and grow up strong and tall like everyone else.'"

#4 on the list in "I spent 7 years studying Dutch parenting—here are 6 secrets to raising the happiest kids in the world" (CNBC).

#5 is "Kids eat 'hagelslag' (chocolate sprinkles) for breakfast" — and here, you can order hagelslag at Amazon. I don't know how crucial each of the 6 things are in the achievement of happiness, but sprinkling chocolate bits on buttered toast is certainly easy to do and no worse of a bad habit that jam on your toast or a jelly with your peanut butter.

As for the #4 secret... I felt encouraged (retrospectively) by that, since it's what I did (except not with the idea of "negotiation"!).

"Luckily through the divorce process I had the opportunity to take over this shithole place.... Everything is for sale except the pink chandelier and the dog. Anyone is free to stop by at anytime."

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“My husband got involved with a younger woman at work. I was relaxed about it at first. He’s thirteen years younger than me, so I thought: ‘Shit happens.’ But then she got pregnant. Luckily through the divorce process I had the opportunity to take over this shithole place with no heating, which I've turned into an art studio. And now I’m living my best life. Everything is for sale except the pink chandelier and the dog. Anyone is free to stop by at anytime. You can eat or drink whatever you want. All the young people in the neighborhood love me. I’m the oldest person in our friend group. Everyone else is in their twenties or thirties. They call me Queen Mama. I call them my adopted kids. I always help them with their school projects and resumes and interviews. I only ask one thing in return. Each of them has to teach me one new thing every week: a piece of music, a trend, an idea. Just so I can stay up to date. Before you take the photograph, let me go inside and put on some make-up. We were out until 2 AM last night.” (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

A post shared by Humans of New York (@humansofny) on Oct 3, 2019 at 7:34am PDT

"It is legal for someone as young as 12 to request and receive euthanasia, as long as the parents give their permission, according to Dutch law."

"For those 16 to 18, parents must be aware of the request but their permission is not necessary....  [Steven] Pleiter, the director of the end-of-life clinic in The Hague, said that gaining approval for euthanasia was a complex process. After the clinic receives a request, he said, it is reviewed, with doctors and nurses making home visits and conducting multiple interviews. Every person seeking euthanasia must meet criteria set by Dutch law, which include ensuring that the request is voluntary, that the person is in unbearable suffering with a poor prognosis that shows no improvement, and that he or she is mentally able to understand the process and its consequences.... The clinic received 2,600 euthanasia requests in 2018 — 27 percent to 28 percent of them were from mentally ill patients, according to Mr. Pleiter. Of the 727 patients who were euthanized last year, about 50 were patients with mental health problems, he said."

From "Dutch Teenager’s Death Sets Off Debate, and Media Corrections" (NYT). The teenager, Noa Pothoven, was not, contrary to news reports, given this Dutch euthanasia. She asked for it but was denied for reasons that are not disclosed. She died, we're now told, by her own action of ceasing to eat or drink. It sounds as though she was with her family and under medical care when she died but no lethal injection was delivered by a doctor. Her mother is quoted as having said, before the death, "Noa doesn’t want this life anymore. She just longs for peace."

ADDED: A few important details from the BBC report:

1. The "friends and family want people to know that she did not die of euthanasia" and want their privacy respected. I presume they are not happy about the criticism they received after the way the story was originally told.

2. After Noa Pothoven stopped eating, she was force fed through a tube for a while, but "[e]ventually her family accepted her wish to die, so they stopped forcing her to stay alive and instead used palliative care to make her final days as peaceful and bearable as possible." There seems to have been "palliative sedation... to alleviate suffering" as she died. This is easy to confuse with euthanasia, but it's not the same as the euthanasia procedure described above.

3. The girl's own refusal to eat is considered the cause of death. The use "palliative drugs" to ease a path to death when force-feeding is still a way back to life could be characterized as euthanasia, but it's not that official process defined in Dutch law. The Royal Dutch Medical Association is anxious to communicate this distinction: "Under Dutch law, euthanasia is defined as the active termination of life, by a physician, at a patients voluntary and well informed request... on persons who suffer unbearably from a medical condition." Accepting that a person is committing suicide and not actively intervening to save her is not euthanasia as defined in Dutch law, even if drugs are given to ease the pain.

4. The parents blame the Dutch authorities for making her wait "more than a year" to get treatment for her eating disorder. When she finally got treatment, it was intense — including an induced coma with tube feeding. The BBC article does not go into the difference that might have been made if she had received treatment for anorexia much earlier or the psychological effect of forcing a tube into a person who was traumatized by rape.

"When Keizer and the nurse who was to assist him arrived, they found around 35 people gathered around the dying man’s bed."

"'They were drinking and guffawing and crying,' Keizer told me when I met him in Amsterdam recently. 'It was boisterous. And I thought: "How am I going to cleave the waters?" But the man knew exactly what to do. Suddenly he said, "OK, guys!" and everyone understood. Everyone fell silent. The very small children were taken out of the room and I gave him his injection. I could have kissed him, because I wouldn’t have known how to break up the party.' Keizer is one of around 60 physicians on the books of the Levenseindekliniek, or End of Life Clinic, which matches doctors willing to perform euthanasia with patients seeking an end to their lives, and which was responsible for the euthanasia of some 750 people in 2017. For Keizer, who was a philosopher before studying medicine, the advent of widespread access to euthanasia represents a new era. 'For the first time in history,' he told me, 'we have developed a space where people move towards death while we are touching them and they are in our midst. That’s completely different from killing yourself when your wife’s out shopping and the kids are at school and you hang yourself in the library – which is the most horrible way of doing it, because the wound never heals. The fact that you are a person means that you are linked to other people. And we have found a bearable way of severing that link, not by a natural death, but by a self-willed ending. It’s a very special thing.'"

From "Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far?/Countries around the world are making it easier to choose the time and manner of your death. But doctors in the world’s euthanasia capital are starting to worry about the consequences" (The Guardian).

They made fun of Katie Couric for saying that the Dutch skate on their canals.

And now look...



The Dutch are skating on their canals.

The news in blackface.

1. "Men in blackface invade council meeting, school in support of racist Santa's helper Black Pete" (Daily News):

Tradition from the 19th century holds that Pete is a goofy and inept servant from Spain, with white Dutch people wearing blackface, painting their lips red to make them fuller and wearing curly wigs to simulate someone of African descent....

Larger cities such as Amsterdam have changed their parades to remove any racial signifiers to Pete amid debate over racism in recent years, with some creating a Soot Pete who has dirt on his face because he climbs down chimneys.

Demonstrators hold signs reading "Black Pete is Rascism" and "Free Black Pete" during a demonstration against Zwarte Piet in Amsterdam. But a group of men dressed as the “traditional” Black Petes have injected themselves into this year’s back-and-forth about the caricature by bringing it uninvited to a school in the city of Utrecht.

2. "Another Makeup Artist Did Black Face — And He Doesn't Think It's Wrong/Common sense is not that common these days" (Buzzed). "Russian makeup artist @notcatart uploaded a video where he goes from 'light to dark' because he 'loves skin of all colors'... and his dream is to have dark skin because he's 'fucking white'":

3. "On [the November 12th episode of] Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Kim faced backlash after fans online claimed she was in blackface in her KKW Beauty ads" (EW).

"Oh my gosh. I'm seeing these photos from the campaign, the ones that we took. And people online are saying that I'm doing blackface but I would never in a million years be disrespectful and do that," Kim said.

4. "A London-based tattoo artist is facing criticism online after deciding to cover her body completely in solid black tattoos...." (Allure).

Though [Belle] Atrix has referred to her body art as "a new black blanket of skin," she doesn't agree that the blackening of her skin constitutes racism: Following several commenters’ accusations on her July video, the freelance tattoo artist wrote, "Racist?? How the hell could it be interpreted as racist [emoji laughing faces] It’s a tattoo!"...

In an email to Allure, Atrix explained her interest in blackwork began as a form of therapy to get through a period of "deep distress" when her father was sick. "It became my only true form of comfort and solace and has really helped me a lot," she writes. "I love the ritualistic practice of it and the phenomenal strength and mental calm it brings me, a very powerful type of meditation which I have grown to love.... I think some people who aren't from the tattooing community aren't educated in the tribal origins of blackwork," she continues. "I'm from a mixed race family...."

5. "To this day, my pet peeve is when my skin tone is changed and my freckles are airbrushed out of a photo shoot," Meghan Markle told Allure. "For all my freckle-faced friends out there, I will share with you something my dad told me when I was younger: ‘A face without freckles is a night without stars.'" (I know this one is arguably off-topic, but it flows from the last sentence of #4, it talks about changing "skin tone," and I feel a special personal identification with people of freckle.)

"Nic and Trees Elderhorst, both 91, died [together, by euthanasia] in their hometown of Didam, in the Netherlands, after 65 years of marriage."

"The couple both suffered from deteriorating physical health over the past five years..."

...with Mr Elderhorst left with reduced mobility after a stroke in 2012.  Walking had also become increasingly difficult for his wife, who had also suffered from memory loss.

“It soon became clear that it could not wait much longer,” the couple’s daughter told The Gelderlande. “The geriatrician determined that our mother was still mentally competent. However, if our father were to die, she could become completely disoriented, ending up in a nursing home. Something which she desperately did not want. Dying together was their deepest wish.”

We're told it's rare for 2 persons to go together, given that each must meet the standard.

"And so it begins. With the Dutch election on Wednesday, Europe embarks on a yearlong test of how far it’s ready to realign itself..."

"... as an anti-immigrant, pro-Russian continent marked by ascendant nationalism, alt-Right intolerance and the fragmentation of the European Union. The worst could happen. Nobody who has watched the British decision to quit the European Union in a strange little-England huff, or the election of Donald Trump with his 'America First' anti-Muslim jingoism, can think otherwise. The liberal order has lost its center of gravity. People without memory are on the march. They have no time for the free world if the free world means mingling and migration...."

From Roger Cohen (in the NYT).

“The influx has been too much. The borders should close. If this continues, our culture will cease to exist.”

Says a resident of Amsterdam, quoted in "Anti-immigrant anger threatens to remake the liberal Netherlands" (in WaPo).

In interviews across the Netherlands in recent days, far-right voters expressed stridently nationalist, anti-immigrant views that were long considered fringe but that have now entered the Dutch mainstream.

Voters young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural said they would back the Geert Wilders-led Freedom Party — no longer the preserve of the “left-behinds” — which promises to solve the country’s problems by shutting borders, closing mosques and helping to dismantle the European Union.

"He’s the most strategic, smartest politician out there. He’s very skilled. He’s a very good debater. He has media savvy."

"Internationally, he’s compared to Trump. But with [Geert] Wilders every tweet is thought through, calculated. With Trump it’s emotional."

Said a Dutch political scientist quoted in "Geert Wilders, Reclusive Provocateur, Rises Before Dutch Vote" (NYT).