Job Cohen, Dutch Labour Party leader and until March this year Mayor of Amsterdam, shows us his football moves. Yes, it’s an old film, but hey, sharing is caring.
The action kicks in at 0:32
June 12, 2010
January 29, 2009
Put your tulips next to mine in New York
You may have heard yesterday that New York City is celebrating is 400th anniversary and Amsterdam’s Mayor Job Cohen was there to give a speech. You may also have heard about the gift the Dutch are going to build in the form of a pavilion called New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion, designed by Ben van Berkel. It will be built in Battery Park, the Southern most point of Manhattan and “be shaped like a flower or a windmill, depending on your perspective.”
“Pioneers from Amsterdam settled into the Manhattan area and planted the seeds of democracy, entrepreneurial spirit, freedom of expression and freedom of religion in what we now know as New York, the unofficial capital of the world,” Mayor Cohen of Amsterdam said. “Amsterdam and New York share a commitment to quality of life. Amsterdam and New York share the same DNA.”
It doesn’t matter at all that Henry Hudson was an English explorer who just happened to be on a Dutch vessel trying to find a passage to Asia. Location, location, location.
(Link: nytimes.com)
November 25, 2008
Spinoza statue unveiled in Amsterdam
The unveiling of a very prominent statue of philosopher Baruch Spinoza in Amsterdam took place Monday, 24 November in the presence of the city’s mayor, Job Cohen. It has been placed on the Zwanenburgerwal near the Stopera (the city’s opera house), which is at the entrance of the former Jewish quarter where Spinoza grew up. The statue was crafted out of bronze by Nicolas Dings and the head was specifically made to match the one on the former 1000 gulder banknote.
Our very own roving reporter and photographer Branko Collin says that, “according to a radio item this morning, the symbols on the cloak – the roses, parakeets and sparrows – stand for Spinoza himself, immigrants (a reference to the parakeets in Vondelpark) and natives (sparrows are a diminishing breed).”
(Link: elsevier.nl, photo: Branko Collin)
Tags: Amsterdam, Jewish quarter, Job Cohen, Spinoza, statue
June 16, 2007
Job Cohen honoured in Canada
Yesterday Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen received an honorary Doctor of Common Laws degree from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. Cohen received this distinction because he was the first mayor to perform a same-sex marriage in 2001. He had presided over the necessary legislation only months earlier while serving in the Ministry of Justice. In 2005, Cohen was named one of Time Magazine’s European Heroes for his position on the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist in November 2004. Cohen rallied the citizens of Amsterdam – Muslim and non-Muslim – to condemn the murder and called for unity and tolerance in the wake of the racial tensions that followed the incident. Led by Cohen, citizens of the traditionally liberal city protested in the streets in outrage over the attack and Cohen was credited with diffusing a situation ripe with racial and religious violence into one of dialogue and social progress.
(Link: rtl, University of Windsor)