While the Dutch remember their war dead, the death of bin Laden gives rise to conspiracy theories. Also: How a botnet brought down the Radio Netherlands website yesterday, artistic freedom wins against big business, and if you need to talk to an angel, just call.

Remembrance ceremony passes without incident
Many of the front pages today carry photos of Queen Beatrix remembering the war dead on Dam Square in Amsterdam. The event passed without incident reports de Volkskrant. Last year, 63 people were injured in the panic when a man started screaming.

But in the southern suburbs of the capital, Gretta Duisenberg, a well-known activist for the Palestinian cause and widow of the former head of the Netherlands Bank (DNB) was removed from a restaurant after interrupting the two minutes silence reports De Telegraaf.

Evening paper NRC Handelsblad and protestant daily Trouw print pictures of houses where Jewish families were arrested and deported during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. In the window is a poster saying it is one of the 21,662 Jewish homes in Amsterdam whose residents were murdered, part of a campaign to tell the stories of the city’s former Jewish population. A Turkish baker asks what happened to Magdala and Levy who once lived in his house. 

Trouw reports on the huge media attention in the central Dutch town of Culemborg where the son of infamous Nazi sympathisers Grimbert Rost van Tongeren was asked to speak. His father, who was a Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB) leader, committed suicide after the war. His mother, nicknamed the Black Widow, defended Nazi sentiments until her death. He has long since distanced himself from his parents’ NSB past. His controversial speech, which called for reconciliation, received hesitant applause.

Conspiracy theories on bin Laden’s death rife
The death of Osama bin Laden is still receiving pages of coverage in the papers. Nrc.next prints a photoshopped picture of the notorious terrorist holding up a copy of the Los Angeles Times announcing his own death. Inside the paper, the same picture shows him holding up a copy of today’s edition of nrc.next. The paper asks: would a photo have convinced you? The question comes after US President Barack Obama’s decision not to release pictures of bin Laden’s body.

Meanwhile, conspiracy theories are rife. Is he really dead or did he even exist? According to the nrc.next, research shows that in more uncertain times, more conspiracy theories begin to circulate. The White House even felt the need yesterday to dispel a number of rumours created in what it describes as the “mist of war”.

De Volkskrant reports that the FBI is warning against cyber criminals who are taking advantage of people’s interest in bin Laden photos. If you click on one, your computer becomes infected with viruses that release your credit card data. A cartoon in the same paper shows a drawing of a grey-haired Elvis in a rocking chair on the porch holding a copy of the Daily Tribune announcing the death of bin Laden, “Oh Yeah?” he asks.

Botnet brings down Radio Netherlands website
The website of Radio Netherlands Worldwide was down for most of yesterday due to a DDos (distributed denial of service) attack. A day earlier Rabobank’s internet services were attacked. Nrc.next reports that botnets were to blame, but why? Angry customers? Someone disagreeing with RNW’s reporting? Or could it be blackmail?

The paper explains that a botnet is a group of infected computers which are manipulated without the owners’ knowledge. They can be used to make thousands of simultaneous requests to a single site. As a result, the website becomes overloaded and inaccessible. Yesterday Radio Netherlands received 5000 requests per minute – that’s 25 times the normal rate. Botnets can be hired for between 50 and 300 dollars in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Many Dutch companies are the victims of this kind of cybercrime. The Netherlands is particularly susceptible because of its cheap and fast internet connections. The perpetrators could be activists, East European extortion gangs or just simply teenagers messing around.

Artistic freedom wins against designer interests
A Danish art student at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam has won her case against Louis Vuitton reports de Volkskrant. The French fashion house had tried force Nadia Plesner to stop using an image of its designer bag in her art. The bag hangs on the arm of a stereotypical African boy in the painting Simple Living.

The painting is a protest against the mass media attention paid to celebrities like Paris Hilton, while the humanitarian crisis in Darfur is virtually ignored. The boy and the designer bag also feature in her 2010 Darfurnica painting, inspired by Picasso’s Guernica. The artist also sells T-shirts and posters with the image, giving the proceeds to Darfur.

Loius Vuitton argued that the bag was very similar to one from its collection, the Audra Bag and the fashion house did not want to be associated with the situation in Darfur. At the end of January, a court ruled in Vuitton’s favour, awarding damages to the tune of 5000 euros for every day the Simple Living picture was displayed. Ms Plesner in turn took Vuitton to court. Yesterday, the judge ruled Ms Plesner’s right to artistic freedom was more important than the fashion house’s intellectual property rights.

Need to talk to an angel?
Well you can. According to AD, a woman in the southern Dutch city of Den Bosch has put herself forward as the voice of an angel statue on the city’s cathedral. The statue on the recently renovated Sint-Jan’s cathedral is holding a mobile phone – a little joke by the sculpture Ton Mooy.

There is only one button on the stone mobile – a hotline to God. The number can be found on the website of ‘ut engelke’. The woman, who wants to remain anonymous, writes that she has good contact with the afterlife and a direct line with The Man Upstairs.