While one in five Amsterdammers have anarchistic tendencies, the majority have no problem with government measures that aim to improve security at the expense of personal freedom, according to the first Freedom Monitor. However, initiator Ivar Manuel (D66) says that it is too soon to draw conclusions.

Manuel proposed the monitor in 2008 out of a concern that freedom and privacy are being curtailed by measures including camera surveillance, stop-and-search, harassment of suspects, administrative arrests, the ban on smoking hash in public, the closure of coffee shops selling soft drugs and the ban on magic mushrooms.

Rutte, Cohen or Balkenende: according to many anarchists, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other. The Anarchist Group Amsterdam (AGA) calls on Amsterdammers to throw away their poll cards. Others go one step further and suggest sabotaging polling stations. “We’re not against democracy, but we think this is a travesty.”

In national elections, one in five voters stay at home. A small percentage of them – probably not more than 5% of non-voters – avoid the polling station on principle. Anarchists have launched a number of initiatives to increase this percentage.

As a result of the crisis, more and more people end up receiving welfare. The procedures of the welfare agency (DWI) can be a bit Kafkaesque, an article in last week’s Vrij Nederland on Lena (37) and Ferdi (28) suggests.

Lena was not at home when the DWI wanted to search her home, so she reports to the DWI. An employee asks her to describe her home. He wants to know everything: “Please continue, what does you living room look like? Are all items there yours? Where do you keep your papers? Who does the computer belong to, you or someone else? Where do you keep your bank statements? Can you tell me what’s in the cupboard?”

“Amsterdam is full of art”, asserts designer Koos van den Berg. He created a map guiding cyclists along 300 of the estimated 1,000+ works of art in the city’s public space. The map will be presented next Thursday.

Van den Berg, who has designed a series of bicycle maps and who produces drag queen cabaret as a hobby, says the real challenge consisted in ‘tying it all together into a route that is easy to navigate on bicycle’.

Berit Soolsma and Marije van Veen intend to create a website dedicated to the history of the Paradiso, the former church that was squatted by hippies in the 1960s and became the most famous rock venue of the Netherlands. This week, their idea won an award from art institute Mediamatic and the Doen Foundation.

The Paradiso is a lieu de mémoire for Dutch society, Soolsma and Van Veen wrote in a paper for their bachelor graduation at the Reinwardt Academy in Amsterdam. In their paper, they explore ways to present the Paradiso heritage. In an email, Berit Soolsma explains the project.