Cogs can think.

The Dutch government has fallen. Prime-minister Jan-Peter Balkenende has declared in the Lower House that he and his secretaries will offer their resignations to the Queen tomorrow.

All this over the issue regarding Ayaan Hirsi-Ali. One of the coalition members, D66 (Democrats ‘66), a small party with only two secretaries in the government, opted for the resignation of the Secretary of Integration and Immigration, Rita Verdonk, after handling the matter of Ayaan’s naturalisation into our country rather amateurishly. This failed to go through the Lower House, and as a result, the government saw no reason to i.e. remove Verdonk from office.

This proved to be too much for D66 Lower House leader Loesewies van der Laan, who, this afternoon, withdrew the party’s support for the government. This set in motion a chain of events in which the two D66 secretaries resigned, and following those resignations, the rest of the government also resigned, just now, including the prime minister.

This will most likely mean new elections. First, the PM will offer the resignations to the Queen tomorrow, which the Queen will accept (theoretically, she could refuse to accept, but that won’t happen); the Queen will then seek advice from all the political leaders, after which we will know what happens; new elections immediatly, or, not unlikely, that this government will continue to run the country only attending to daily matters until the normal, planned elections in May, 2007.

I applaud that the government has fallen from a political point of view; they made some very bad decisions, some very impopular ones at that, and they always seemed to be fractured, unstable, and generally one big mess. Balkenende was not a strong leader.

I have absolutely no idea what I will vote for. The reason this government fell is appaling; everywhere in the world there is war, people are dying of AIDS and hunger; in our own country, public transport is a mess, the entire nation is gridlocked on the highways twice a day, we pollute too much, we barely reach our Kyoto goals, publich health and health insurance are in the middle of huge transitions, the economy is still not strong enough, 26000 immigrants who are victims of our failing immigration policies are on the brink of being thrown out of the country, and there are a million other important matters our government should attend to.

But what do they debate about for days on end? The naturalisation of one Somali woman, 12 years ago. And that brings our entire nation into turmoil, hurting political continuity and stability.

Disastrous. How on earth can I give my support to any of these parties in our Lower House? They simply don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about the real issues in the world. Appaling.

It just hit me: I forgot to blog about June Cash-Carter’s day of death, 15th May 2003. Odd I forgot to. In any case, better late than never:

In memoriam, June Carter-Cash, 1929-2003.

And yet again a faulty referee decision in favour of a big football nation: an off-side goal for Brazil. Adriano obviously stood off-side when he tipped in the ball; the TV images speak for themselves. However, the goal was correct, according to the referee and the linesman.

This shows the current referee system simply is not working. Where every other sport in the world relies on multiple referees and technical aids (i.e. video imagery), football is still stuck in the 1900s, simply because the FIFA is afraid of any form of change (FIFA is led by very, very old men).

The UEFA is much more open to change, however, even if they are the most powerfull football association outside of the FIFA, they can’t do it alone. Fcuk.

Football is dying. Seriously.

Ran into one of Fiona’s latest music videos today on YouTube. Enjoy the excellence that is the best singer/songwriter in the world. Sit back and enjoy Fiona Apple with “O’Sailor”.

“Blind Freddie can see that Apple’s wildly successful business model works because of a number of factors, two of the main ones being that iTunes is a wonderful concept and the iPod is a lovely product. However, there is a third factor which is equally important. The relationship between iTunes and iPod is symbiotic. Any attempt to severe the connection between the two facets of Apple’s business is just not on.”

Then I guess that guy also approves of Microsoft bundling applications with its operating system. After all, any attempts to severe the connection between Windows and other Microsoft applications is just not on.

I’ll not go into the iPod/iTunes bashing this time. Bashing the iPod is getting old, and other than that, it’s too easy.

Ever wanted any proof of how corrupt the FIFA is? Go watch the so-called foul Markus Merck gave a penalty kick for.

It was obvious that Italy was having a hard time making it through to the next round. So, as always, because the FIFA’s higher echelons consists of a lot of Italians (besides Spanish and a few French folk), they had to be helped. And that’s how a badly conducted schwalbe got promoted by Markus Merck to a penalty kick in the 93rd minute.

Football may have died a little yesterday eve, but it got brutally murdered this afternoon.

We were the stronger team, they were the smarter team. Figo fcuked us in the ass by faking a slap in the face. The referee deserves to be shot. I will personally pull the trigger. Scolari was annoying. We missed way too many chances.

My only comfort is that England will pulverise Portugal. Completely destroy them. Kill them. Make them bend over. Crush their spirits.

I am so fcuking pissed off right now. Do not come near me. I need to calm down. Time to update OSNews. Maybe I’ll write a column tonight after all.

Xandros 4.0, which I have here for review, has passed the ZipDisk test! I am not kidding! This is the first Linux distribution ever to have passed this test!

I still can’t believe it!

Can you give me solid ground
‘Cause all my footsteps turn me down
One by one
Can you give me free advice
I don’t know if I can
But I’ll try to listen
And I can blast friendship to hell
Or I can try to make things better
Believe me that I’ll make things better
But they change the rules when it’s my turn
So they can laugh and watch me burn

I can laugh about it
Or I can cry about it
I should ignore the words you say
‘Cause they can hurt
But won’t kill me
They can hurt
But won’t kill me
They can hurt but won’t kill me

A fist full of the things you love
Life’s a quiz so cough it up
Go on and cough it up now
When the future’s far away
It’s always better than today
And everytime I’m having fun
There’s something I’m doing wrong
And all these warning lights are lit
But always after you need it
Yeah well anyway

I can laugh about it
I’d better try to laugh
I can cry about it
You’ll never see me cry
I should ignore the words you say
They can hurt
But won’t kill me
They can hurt
But won’t kill me
They can hurt but won’t kill me

So I can laugh about it
Yeah I’d better try to laugh
I can cry about it
You know you’ll never see me cry
I should ignore the words you say
They can hurt
But won’t kill me
‘Cause they can hurt
But won’t kill me
No they won’t kill me