Blog posts tagged "personal" – Posts 1..5 of 13 posts found:

Five years ago, I met and befriended a young man from the eastern European country of Georgia. He had come to the Netherlands seeking asylum. This was because he is bisexual, which is just not accepted there and he was in fear of his life. The authorities looked at a piece of paper that says that it is safe for LGBT people in Georgia, and told him that he would be sent back. I helped him evade deportation and he tried again in another country. That, I have written about at the time. Unfortunately, they too looked at that same piece of paper and sent him back. He was deported to Georgia.
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Today is a day of national mourning in The Netherlands. The remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) will start arriving at Eindhoven airport today. It will take weeks to take care of the entire mess that this situation has brought, but I trust my country will do everything it can to ensure that it is handled respectfully and all 298 victims' remains will be brought home. My thoughts and prayers are with the people who are left behind by the victims. I cannot imagine what they have endured over the past week.
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Apparently, today, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a report on its website about human rights in the European Union, calling the EU's system "ineffective and flawed" and this 153 page document also devotes 9 pages to my home country of The Netherlands. Although 2013 was a year in which we supposedly celebrated 400 years of diplomatic relations between the Dutch and Russian peoples, that celebration had more than a few hiccups along the way. The timing of this report is convenient, as Russia is under a deluge of criticism about its human rights situation, particularly its recent anti-gay laws. With much of this criticism being directed towards Russia's hosting of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, there is no doubt that this report being published now is not a coincidence. How should we react?
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The title of this post is probably more interesting than its contents, but there ya go. When I went to sleep last night, there was a unexpected guest in my bedroom. I certainly didn't expect to see this in the middle of a winter night:
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Never thought I'd have a legitimate reason to call 112 (the European equivalent of 911), but I just did. About an hour ago (4 am or so), I went for an early morning walk... or rather a late night one as I couldn't sleep. Roughly halfway, I noticed what looked like a large bonfire in another street. This turned out to be a conifer hedge on fire.
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