Mr. Chirac is very unhappy about the pro-American stands of many East-European countries. Yesterday evening at the EU emergency meeting he called Bulgaria's behavior "childish":

"They missed a great opportunity to shut up," he chided the candidates, and their pro-US stance could feed public hostility to EU expansion. Their position is already very delicate, he said, and if they wanted to diminish their chances of joining the EU they could not have chosen a better way. "When you are in the family ... you have more rights than when you are asking to join and knocking on the door," he said.

Well, it won't be a surprise that I agree more with Bulgaria's stand (joining the US against Iraq) than with Chirac's, who in my view has acted really quite dangerously in Nato last week. I'm sure that many West-European countries are underestimating the impact of the EU-enlargment on the common European policy, and I am not sure if it's the Bulgarian or the French position that is getting delicate... The relatively powerful postition of France and Germany will get less when 10 new countries are joining. Obviously they'll still be powerful, but many East-European countries are still very happy about American help during the transitional period after 1989.

The Economist has a nice article about it as well:

"The sight of a Russian president being embraced in Paris and Berlin has caused a few shivers in the capitals of ex-communist Europe. Indeed, it is the attitude of countries once under Russia's sway that is the biggest obstacle to the French dream of an autonomous Europe that would stare Uncle Sam insolently in the eye. Everything about their recent history tells people in these countries that the United States and NATO are still their only real guarantors of security. As an otherwise impeccably “pro-European” Czech diplomat puts it, “One thing we learned from the 1930s—no more security guarantees from France.” A truly common EU approach could only be settled by majority voting within the Union. But count the votes in the EU of 25 countries that will take shape in 2004, and the French and Germans are in a minority in their attitude to the United States. "

A poster made me smile when I walked to Chess: "What are your plans for the new cabinet?"

I wrote about Loesje before.

Article in Trouw today: "Nawijn should resign":

"Minister Nawijn heeft jammerlijk gefaald. Hij wist wat de moeilijkheden waren. Desondanks heeft hij verwachtingen gewekt bij een kwestbare groep. Bij die mensen kan hij nu niet meer aankomen met de boodschap: jammer dan, maar het feest gaat niet door. Nawijn dient daarom terstond op te stappen."
"Minister Nawijn failed miserably. He knew what the problems are. Still, he gave vulnerable people false hope. He can't go back to them now and saying: too bad, there's nothing I can do for you. Nawijn should therefore immediately resign."

Politicians are by nature a bit opportunistic, and I believe that's okay. But as a minister from a party that 'promised' to be 'tough on foreigners' Nawijn made himself utterly ridiculous by promising to have a look into the faith of thousands of asylumseekers and then being stopped by the cabinet. But hey, what's new.

I am not sure why I dislike him that much; much more than other LPF politicians. Maybe because he should know better; after all he has been working as a civil servant for asylum cases etc. He should know what type of pain this opportunistic false promises can causes in hundreds of families. There are no easy solutions!

I'm sure sometimes politicians have to be tough; that's how life is. But playing this kind of games is quite another thing: the guy is just plainly incapable.

Long before I started using "blogger" to keep track of my daily life online, Novi was doing this already.

After a break in 2002 she's seems to be back with her Adventure online. She has some nice jokes there :


"The Bush administration said today there is a lot of support for us to attack Iraq. Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Chevron, British Petroleum, they're all lining up."

"Some Democrats say the estimated $60B cost of a war could be better spent at home. When he heard that, Pres. Bush agreed and announced plans to bomb Ohio."

"President Bush will not personally attend the Earth Summit, but he sends his greetings to the people of Earth."

I'm at the CWI Library; I had to bring back some books. It's a strange idea -- I was here the end of November 2002 also to find literature for my internship.

I basically had no idea where to look or what to look for. Now I hope to be ready with my internship in two or three weeks.

There was a time when climbing the Mount Everest was a huge thing but that's long ago.

Thousands of members of expeditions each year are expected to be using a new internet café, which will be at a height of 5 kilometers above sea-level. The internet connection will be established using a satellite.

In showbusiness the saying goes that "All publicity is good publicity". So Idols is probably not worried too much by rumours that Idols is completely pre-arranged and that the winner is already known by the production company. Always nice to read that kind of stuff ;)

My ranking for tonight is different than last week:

1. Hind
2. Dewi
3. David
4. Jim
5. Jamai

It's definately time for Jim to leave Idols if you'd ask me. Jamai gave a bad performance but he has a lot more 'spirit' and a much better performance so he can come back next week. Anyway, after Hind's performance it became clear that all the other candidates might as well go home immediately.

Before we moved to Amstelveen we lived a long time in Florijn, a flat in Amsterdam.

The other day Sasha saw on the news that three people got killed in a nasty family-homicide in Florijn. It happened on the same floor that we lived on. On the picture with the police guys in the article you can see housenumber 502.

One of the people living in the flat said: "This is a rather criminal flat. Last year somebody got robbed of his laptop in the elevator".

Hmm... guess who. I'm happy that we don't live there anymore (although except for this very unfortunate incident we had a very good time there).

Yesterday evening Jerry and I went out in Haarlem. First we went to Den Uiver; there was live-music there. We tried 'Highland Park' and 'Laghar Culin'. The second one was especially very nice.

The second pub we visited was Proeflokaal. We were quite surprised to see the same face there as we saw in Den Uiver. Turns out the two pubs have the same owner. Tried Dalwhinnie there.

We closed the evening in Studio, a bigger pub that we should visit more often.

Martijn just sent the tournament agenda for the 999 Games tournaments in 2003.

The tournaments will be bigger than before, there'll be a maximum of 128 players. There have been some changes in the registration procedure too, for this please see 999 Games' website.

Let's hope the tournaments will be as much fun as last year!