Free Republic

......................Psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers, based at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, surveyed a roughly representative sample of academics and scholars in social psychology and found that “In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues.” This finding surprised the researchers. The survey questions “were so blatant that I thought we’d get a much lower rate of agreement,” Mr. Inbar said. “Usually you have to be pretty tricky to get people to say they’d discriminate against minorities.” One question, according to the researchers, “asked whether, in...

Ancient maritime inscriptions dating back to the early 1600s have been found on the coast of Madagascar by Flinders University researchers. The team of researchers, including Flinders archaeology research associate Mark Polzer and Jane Fyfe, a PhD candidate and rock art specialist from the University of Western Australia, discovered the messages carved into rock outcrops and boulders on an island in the Bay of Antongil, on the northeast corner of Madagascar. While some of the inscriptions were originally found in the 1920s, researchers have always believed there were no more than a dozen "postal stones". Dr. van Duivenvoorde said the...

The Dutch like their euthanasia — but sure are sensitive when a prominent person describes the horrors that medicalized killing has unleashed. Latest example: Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum criticized Dutch euthanasia in an interview with James Dobson, stating in part: Ten percent of all deaths, and half of those people are euthanized involuntarily, because they are old or sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go into a hospital. They go to another country. The Dutch media pounced, mocking Santorum for charging their doctors with “murdering” the elderly on “a grand scale.” Alas, he asked for it...

Mary Anastasia O'Grady writes in today's Wall Street Journal that George Soros's Open Society Institute has been funding terrorism. In a column entitled Friends of Terror in Peru, O'Grady notes that Thursday's vote by the European Parliament to take the Peruvian guerrilla group known as the Tupac Amaru (aka MRTA) off its terrorist list has Peru in an uproar. For good reason: The MRTA is notorious for kidnapping, torturing and murdering civilians to advance its political agenda. More recently, Peruvian officials have linked it to Hugo Chávez's "Bolivarian Movement," which seeks to destabilize democracies in Latin America, and to the...

Tilburg and Groningen universities are to take legal action against one of their professors after an investigation showed he had faked research data in at least 30 scientific papers. The fraud is ‘considerable and shocking’, the committee set up to look into Diederik Stapel’s academic publications said in an initial report into the scandal on Monday. Stapel, who was a professor of social and behavioural sciences at Tilburg, was suspended last month after doubts emerged about research that concluded eating meat makes people anti-social and selfish. 2004 The investigation shows at least 30 academic papers submitted to respected scientific journals...

SNIPPET: "Discussion: I first observed discussion of binary explosives on the al-Firdaws forum in January of 2007. In light of recent events I will post here my archive:" SNIPPET: "Implementation: On Christmas Day, 2009, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab boards a flight in Amsterdam, bound for Detroit, and on final descent he attempts to set off what was most likely a binary explosive. Thank goodness he either screwed up or had bad instructions, because the chemicals he was working with were evidently quite good."

Dutch police arrested 10 people after discovering a large marijuana nursery in the country's western tulip-growing region, a statement said Saturday. "Police have arrested 10 people, seven women and three men of Bulgarian and Turkish nationality after raiding a large marijuana nursery around 10:30 am (0830 GMT)," police said in an online statement. During the raid, in the small town of Roelofarendsveen, between 10,000 to 15,000 marijuana plants and 150,000 plant cuttings were retrieved, it added. It said the nursery was discovered at the back of some greenhouses in the town, situated in South Holland province's prime tulip-producing area, about...

Geert Wilders: "I am risking my life in defence of freedom in the Netherlands" Final remarks of Geert Wilders at his trial in Amsterdam, June 1st, 2011 Mister President, members of the Court, I am here because of what I have said. I am here for having spoken. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak. Many have kept silent, but not Pim Fortuyn, not Theo Van Gogh, and not I. I am obliged to speak. For the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology...

Did you know that the EU has ensured that there has been no war between its members for last 60 years?

Drilling companies rapidly expanding their U.S. operations in places such as Pennsylvania’s vast Marcellus Shale formation repeatedly tout they are providing American jobs and securing the nation’s energy future. Yet, a Tribune-Review examination found foreign companies are buying significant shares of these drilling projects and making plans for facilities to liquify and ship more of that natural gas overseas. A leading player in the natural gas grab is China, whose thirst for energy to fuel its industrial explosion is growing rapidly. Others include the governments of South Korea and India, and companies in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Japan and...

A gunman in the Netherlands has killed six people and wounded 10 before taking his own life, officials say. The killings took place at a busy shopping centre in the town of Alphen aan den Rijn, about 25km (15 miles) south-west of Amsterdam. The mayor of the town said the man opened fire with an automatic weapon and then shot himself. The gunman came from the town, was known to police and "almost certainly operated alone", said a prosecutor. Panic Mayor Bas Eenhoorn called the incident "unprecedented" for the town of about 70,000 people. He said four of the injured...

ALPHEN AAN DEN RIJN, Netherlands – A gunman opened fire with an automatic weapon at a crowded shopping mall outside Amsterdam on Saturday, leaving at least six people dead and wounding 11 others, Dutch officials said.

THE HAGUE (AFP) – A shooting in a shopping mall in the western Netherlands Saturday left "several" people dead and a number wounded, local authorities said. Witnesses quoted by Dutch radio said a man had opened fire on shoppers with an automatic weapon in Alphen aan den Rijn, causing mass panic, before killing himself.

LAS VEGAS -- A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site was detained by U.S. agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference, sources said on Saturday. He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project. Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the online privacy protection project called Tor, arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport from Holland flight Thursday morning when he was pulled aside by customs...

Clarity on how many Joint Strike Fighters the Netherlands will buy should emerge in the spring. Dutch defense minister Hans Hillen says the F-16 replacement program -- effectively the purchase of F-35s -- will be part of the larger review of force structure in light of planned reductions in defense spending. For Lockheed Martin the situation going into the review is not ideal. The Dutch are starting to come to grips with the cost implications to them of the big cost increases the core Joint Strike Fighter program is suffering. The latest assessment by the Dutch defense minister is that...

It may well become the trial of the century: this week, Dutch MP [Member of Parliament] Geert Wilders stands before the judge on charges of “sowing hate” through his speeches and writings about Islam. ... For Wilders, however, its timing could not come at a more strategic moment. As the founder and leader of Holland’s far-right Freedom Party (PVV), Wilders is not only Holland’s most controversial politician, but also its most-favored, ranking higher in the polls now than it did after a sweeping victory in parliamentary elections this past June. Moreover, just last week, after months of debate, the Dutch...

Dutch police have detained two men who flew from Chicago to Amsterdam on Sunday night after U.S. screeners found suspicious-looking items in their checked luggage before they departed, U.S law enforcement officials said.

Click here to find out more! In "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity," I bet my readers $1,000 that they couldn't name one thing that government does better than the private sector. I am yet to pay. Free enterprise does everything better. Why? Because if private companies don't do things efficiently, they lose money and die. Unlike government, they cannot compel payment through the power to tax. Even when a private company operates a public facility under contract to government, it must perform. If it doesn't, it will be "fired" -- its contract won't be renewed. Government is never fired. Contracting...

Daily Independent (Lagos) "Nigeria: Police Arrest Suspected Terrorist At Abuja Airport - Probe Al-Jazeera Report On Extra-Judicial Killings" Maxwell Oditta And Abel Orukpe 26 February 2010 SNIPPET: "Lagos — Barely two months after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian was arrested by U.S. authorities for attempting to blow up a Northwest Airlines Flight 253 flying from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan, with 289 passengers on December 25, 2009, the Police at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja, has arrested a 36-year-old suspected terrorist Ahmed Ibrahim Muhammad from Eritrea. A highly dependable source in the Abuja airport told our correspondent...

Dutch Government 'Collapses' In Row Over Afghanistan The Dutch government has collapsed over disagreements within the governing coalition on extending troop deployments in Afghanistan, media say. The reports came following extensive talks between the coalition partners. Christian Democratic Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende is considering a Nato request to extend the Dutch mission in Afghanistan beyond 2010. However, the Labour party, a member of the centre-left coalition, has opposed the extension.