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Pieter Jan Herman Fredrik (Wam) Kat (born 23. November 1956, Zeist) is a Dutch political activist and author who now lives in Germany and serves in the city government of Belzig.
As child Wam was a longtime member of the Boy Scouts and founded the local branch of the World Wildlife Rangers, the youth organization of World Wide Fund for Nature.
Wam was told by a doctor when he was 18 that he had a year to live and made a conscious choice to live a whole life in a single year; when he did not die, he did not slow down. During his youth and study period he co-founded different organizations and action groups at a national level for child and youth rights (e.g. Komitee Kindervuist). He was Chairman of the Pacifist Socialist Youth Organization and Dutch Youth Representative to UNESCO in the late 1970s. He was also longtime co-publisher from the first Dutch New Age magazine "Waterman".
Wam was also one of the founders of the Dutch mobile vegetarian kitchen, "Rampenplan" which supports political activists at extended actions by providing food and other services (since 1981).
In 1982 Wam appeared in a Dutch documentary by Hans Fels named: Donkere wolken boven het paradijs: Het offer (Dark clouds over paradise: The sacrifice), telling the story about how he intended to sacrifice himself in protest of the nuclear power plants, by setting himself on fire in the centre of Amsterdam, but got distracted. [1]
Wam took over the European youth environmental network EYFA (European Youth For(est) Action) from YEE Youth and Environment Europe in 1986 organized to address the effect of acid rain on the regional forests. Wam was instrumental in the rapid growth of the organization and was the principal organizer of the summer festival/university called Ecotopia which was first held in Cologne, Germany in 1989 and moved every subsequent year to a different country. Wam also developed the "Eco Rate" system which EYFA and other progressive organizations used to equalize access to events and goods. The Eco rates used a non-market currency conversation system, so that participants from poorer countries would have more favorable rates of exchange than participants from rich countries.
Wam is best known for his work during the Yugoslav Wars, co-founder of Za Mir Network (For Peace) and the "Zagreb Diaries" which he penned at the time, initially as the equivalent of a blog, but ultimately they came out in book form and were translated into several languages. Wam was also co-founder and instrumental in securing funding for the Suncokret Centar (Sunflower) a voluntary humanitarian and social organization during and after the Bosnian war, which had almost 8000 volunteers from all over the world, one of the largest non-governmental efforts to deal with the influx of refugees from the war and was responsible for the free-time activities, schools and social programs in up to 36 refugee camps in Croatia and Bosnia. [2]
In 1993 Kat's work in Croatia and his Zagreb Diary were mentioned, and Kat quoted in an article in The Nation, the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States, about the internet and its future. [3] This July 1993 piece, The Whole World is Talking, was the Nation's first article about the internet. [4]
Wam later went on to found the Pakrac reconstruction project in the western parts of Slavonia, a region in Croatia. This project used local people from both sides of the regional conflict and international volunteers to rebuild housing which had been destroyed.
After leaving Croatia, Wam moved end 1995 to ZEGG intentional community outside of Berlin in Belzig in the Fläming region where he lived and worked for a number of years. In Belzig he started the so-called "Info-Cafe Der Winkel" (a center for Tolerance and better understanding of different Cultures), which became known as one of Germans best examples of local actions against right-wing violence. Between 1999 and 2001 he shortly moved back to the Balkan, there he was co-founder of Balkan Sunflowers, which still works in Albania, Kosovo and the Republic of Macedonia.
In July 2008, he published a political cookbook in Germany, called "24 Rezepte zur kulinarischen Weltverbesserung" which is roughly translated to "24 recipes for culinary world improvement."
Wam has been arrested for crimes of conscience in multiple countries.
Currently Wam is also serving in the left-wing party Die Linke in the local towncouncil of Belzig.
Wam Kat is son of Frits Kat, sculptor, and stepson of Pieke Dassen, actor and painter.
Kat was married to Ulla Traedmark Jensen and had two children with her, Rik and Pjort, living in Denmark. His older daughter Tyche is from a previous relationship.
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, which spans roughly 40% of the continent's landmass while accounting for approximately 15% of its total population.
European Youth For Action (EYFA) is an environmental youth network in Europe. It is based in Amsterdam and has partner organizations in 18 European countries.
Narodna Odbrana was a Serbian nationalist organization established on October 8, 1908 as a reaction to the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the time, it was concerned with the protection of ethnic Serbs in Austria-Hungary. To achieve their goals, the Narodna Odbrana spread propaganda and organized paramilitary forces.
The World Population Foundation (WPF) was founded in 1987 in the Netherlands by Diana and Roy W. Brown. Their purpose was to create an organisation to draw attention to the effects of high birth rates and rapid population growth on maternal and infant mortality, communities and the environment, and to raise funds for population projects and programmes, with the ultimate aim of reducing world poverty and improving the quality of life of the world’s poorest people.
ZaMirNET (ForPeaceNET) is a Croatia-based non-governmental organisation working in the field of ICT. It describes itself as "a citizen association dedicated toward civil society development, promoting the culture of peace and the idea of sustainable development in Croatia and the region."
BlueLink Information Network/BlueLink Civic Action Network was a virtual network of Bulgarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and activists, based in Sofia, Bulgaria. The network offered a variety of Internet-based content and tools for environment, human rights and democracy defenders, organisations, groups and organisations. Established in 1999, it was maintained by the BlueLink Foundation in Bulgaria, which implemented a broad variety of projects in pursuit of its public interest mission.
Darije Kalezić is a Bosnian/Swiss professional football manager and former player He is current head coach Eerste Divisie club of Jong FC Utrecht.
Jesse Feras Klaver is a Dutch politician serving as a member of the House of Representatives since 2010 and Leader of GroenLinks since 2015. Prior to this, he chaired the youth union of the Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond from 2009 to 2010.
A. den Doolaard is the pseudonym of the Dutch writer and journalist Cornelis Johannes George (Bob) Spoelstra Jr.
The Grand Duchy of Flandrensis is a micronation with claims over some territories of Antarctica, which was founded in 2008 by the Belgian Niels Vermeersch. Flandrensis is not recognised by any country or government, nor is it their intention to be recognized as a country. Since 2021 the micronation is registered in Belgium as the environmental non-profit organization “vzw Groothertogdom Flandrensis”.
Derk Bolt is a Dutch television presenter, editor and producer.
Paulus "Paul" Blokhuis is a Dutch politician who served as State Secretary for Health, Welfare and Sport in the Third Rutte cabinet from 2017 to 2022. He is a member of the Christian Union (CU).
Johannes Alexander "Hans" Vijlbrief is a Dutch civil servant, economist, and politician, who currently serves as State Secretary for the Extractive Industries. He is a member of the social-liberal party Democrats 66 (D66).
Anarchism in the Netherlands originated in the second half of the 19th century. Its roots lay in the radical and revolutionary ideologies of the labor movement, in anti-authoritarian socialism, the free thinkers and in numerous associations and organizations striving for a libertarian form of society. During the First World War, individuals and groups of syndicalists and anarchists of various currents worked together for conscientious objection and against government policies. The common resistance was directed against imperialism and militarism.
The 2021 Dutch curfew riots were a series of riots in the Netherlands that initiated as protests against the government's COVID-19 prevention measures and specifically the 21:00–4:30 curfew that was introduced on 23 January 2021. The police have described the riots as the worst in the country since the 1980 coronation riots.
Alexander Robert Hammelburg is a Dutch politician of the Democrats 66 (D66). He has been a member of the House of Representatives since the 2021 general election. He previously worked as a lobbyist for COC Nederland and held a seat in the municipal council of Amsterdam.
Aliarcham (c.1901-1933) was a Sarekat Islam and Indonesian Communist Party party leader, activist and theoretician in the Dutch East Indies. He was a major figure behind the PKI's turn to more radical policies in the mid-1920s. He was arrested by Dutch authorities in 1925 and exiled to the Boven-Digoel concentration camp, where he died in 1933. He became a well-known Martyr, especially among Communists and Indonesian nationalists.
Jarne Steuckers is a Belgian professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Eerste Divisie club MVV, on loan from Sint-Truiden.
Soekaesih was a Communist Party of Indonesia activist known for being one of only a handful of female political prisoners exiled by the Netherlands government to Boven-Digoel concentration camp. After being released she traveled to the Netherlands in the late 1930s and campaigned for the camp to be shut down.
Late Visitors to Pompeii is a 1931 painting by Carel Willink. It depicts four modern men at the forum of Pompeii with Mount Vesuvius in the background. The painting belongs to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen since 1933. It has been interpreted in correlation with the cultural philosophy of Oswald Spengler, who is one of the men in the painting, and themes of civilisational crisis in the fiction of Ferdinand Bordewijk.
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