Sign the Petition Against Gay Death Penalty in Uganda

Tomorrow, the Ugandan Parliament will vote on a gay death penalty bill. This is horrible. Gay people are already in danger of the death penalty, but this bill could make it even worse. AVAAZ has created a petition to sign against this bill. The site is not very accessible, so don’t blame me for not [...]

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Saving Lives Act: Ending Lives

Jill over at Feministe has an excellent commentary on a new bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would allow doctors to refuse therapeutic abortions even in life-saving cases. Thomas over at Blog for Choice also posts some commentary and links to further information. Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, you should oppose [...]

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GOP Knows Best Whether You Were Raped

Over at Feministe, there is an excellent post summarizing the anti-reproductive rights proposals made in H.R. 3, the so-called No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Most strikingly, the Republican Party, who obviosuly sponsors this bill, seeks to redefine rape for the purposes of abortion access. Only victims of “forcible” rape will be able to obtain [...]

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Helen Keller Mythbusting: Of Politics and Disability

Today, Anna over at FWD/Forward is hosting a Helen Keller mythbusting blogswarm. It is surprising how ignorant even I, who definitely heard of Keller many years ago, was about her until very recently. I knew that she was the first deafblind person to earn a college degree, but that was pretty much everything I knew [...]

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Dutch Government Formation Comments

We had general elections in the Netherlands last week. The conservative VVD became the largest party in the country for the first time in its existence. Geert Wilders’ anti-islam PVV got 24 seats in the Lower House and thereby is also seen as a winner. However, Wilders won’t be on the government, because the christian [...]

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Voting While Blind

Last Thursday, there were of course general elections in the UK. The outcome is already known, and I liked none of the major parties anyway, so I won’t be blogging about that. What I do want to call your attention to, is this post from Jady_Lady, which highlights the difficulty blind voters can have in [...]

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Labor Pulls the Plug on the Dutch Government After All

Last month it seemed like the Dutch Labor Party would readily trade its principles for an extra year on a government in which it has nothing to say anyway. The Iraq war report, which shot prime minister Balkenende’s actions to pieces, could’ve been somewhat of an acceptable reason for a government collapse. However, Labor Lower [...]

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Labor Would Rather Collapse in 2011 Than 2010

So they didn’t let the government collapse. In yesterday’s Lower House debate, Balkenende refused to retract anything he’d said on Tuesday, but he did send the House an “additional” declaration, which did take the Davids report more or less seriously. Basically, it contradicts Balkenende’s “opinion” speech entirely. Nonetheless, both, completely contradictory responses were presumed to [...]

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Dutch Iraq War Report Finally Out

I rarely write about politics these days. First of all, I don’t think my opinions make enough sense to want to broadcast them to whoever is reading my blog. Not that anything I wrote in 2002 or 2006 makes more sense, but I had more arrogance and an illusion of Dutch privilege back then. That [...]

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Socialist Party May No Longer Keep Its Members’ Salaries

Guusje Terhorst, the internal affairs minister, has a plan to end the option of having representatives’ salaries go through their parties before flowing into the members’ bank account. The reason is the fact that the Socialist Party requires its representatives to donate part or all of their salary (depending on whether they are MPs or [...]

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