Why I will boycott Qantas and Air New Zealand

This is beyond insane.

If anyone knows of other companies that pursue these kind of discriminatory and sexist policies, please let me know in the comments section. Because it's quite apparent that they exist.

Other airlines One News spoke to have similar guidelines. They say it's to protect male passengers from potential allegations as much as the children.

How very thoughtful. Assuming they're referring to potential false allegations, for I don't see why they would want to protect someone from a truthful one, wouldn't it be a better idea to deal with the people making such false accusations?

(Either that, or I want to be seated next to really pretty single women in exchange.)

11:22

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France surrendered - in a war it didn't take part in

Granted, it's about a week old, but one can never hear too many stories about the French. So I'll throw in this one as well.

13:09

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Stay the course in Iraq

As The Economist so eloquently puts it this week:

'The cost to America of staying in Iraq may be high, but the cost of retreat would be higher. By fleeing, America would not buy itself peace. Mr Zarqawi and his fellow fanatics have promised to hound America around the globe. Driving America out of Iraq would grant militant Islam a huge victory. Arabs who want to modernise their region would know that they could not count on America to stand by its friends.'

Read the whole thing.

14:50

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On the death of Louis Sévèke

I've been clearing up some confusion over the murder of Louis Sévèke, a leftist activist who did some great work exposing some less than desirable practices by the former Dutch intelligence service BVD (now AIVD) .

LGF Watch was under the impression that I hadn't reported on the case, which I had, albeit on my Dutch blog. I even provided some links to both Sévèke's articles and a blog with some reporting on the issue.

As for an update, there simply hasn't been much news since his murder. I fear his death may not be related to any spooky stuff at all, but to the string of recent mob killings in the Netherlands. Sévèke often ventured into criminal investigations as well. Winston Smith of LGF Watch says he considered a similar possibility.

"The mafia angle has occurred to me to, esp. in light of the fact that one of the "underworld figures" who was recently assassinated in Amsterdam was also a real-estate agent. And of course Sévèke was very active in the kraker (squatter) movement. He's bound to have had many enemies among the real-estate mafia."

It's all speculative, of course. Nevertheless, I work for Quote, a business magazine which got shot at in 2003 after some articles about connections between criminals and the 'normal' world. The police recovered 19 bullets at the office, and one more at the home address of the owner (in the ceiling of his son's bedroom). The fact that they took aim at a not exactly leftist business magazine suggests that these people could care less about your political persuasions.

I'm not suggesting a connection, but am trying to illustrate that the Dutch underworld is not to be underestimated. You don't want to irritate these guys too much. My fear is Sévèke may have done just that.

14:01

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Dutch government critical of Bush administration

Now it looks like an extra group of Dutch Special Forces may not be bound for Afghanistan to deal with terrorists because of the Bush administration's unwillingness to be clear about the rules by which the GWOT is fought. Secretary Ben Bot of Foreign Affairs made the following statements about the alleged secret prisons in former Eastern Europe:

"The United States must not play hide-and-seek. Sooner or later, it will come out anyway," said Bot on the EU's request for clarification on the alleged CIA prisons. Bot also said the Americans "have sought out the boundaries" of what is permissible in the fight against terrorism."

Secretary Ben Bot is a weasel (i.e. a diplomat) and I don't like him at all. But he does have a point. If there is nothing going on, why hasn't the Bush administration offered a staunch denial of the existence of such prisons?

The Bush administration has even managed to irritate the VVD. This is exceptional, for the conservative VVD is very much a pro-American party. What struck me was the harsh language that was used by MP Hans van Baalen, normally an ardent supporter of the United States and a proponent of the war against Iraq (for the record, so was I):

"The VVD supports the United States, but this support can be lost. (...) Even terrorists have rights, even though we condemn their actions. (...) The war against terrorism can only be won from a position of moral superiority, and that will be lost if we have to condemn our own actions."

I tend to agree. We play this game by sticking to the rules (rules which, by the way, we made ourselves). Either that, or calls for a time-out are warranted, if not to follow through on those calls, then to make sure the West is united in upholding similar moral values. After all, it was the United States that took great strides towards universal human values by encouraging human rights, first by cooperating with other countries in the United Nations to get the UDHR adopted, then through the Helsinki Accords.

This legacy must not be lost or even tarnished. And if it takes some harsh words of a proud friend of the United States to keep its current administration from forgetting the end by being uncritical about the means, so be it.

12:08

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We're go

In the next three weeks, Urbanesque will be a training ground for 19 journalism students. They are attempting to write articles for a girl's magazine. I'd say: give them your support, even if you're not fluent in Dutch. (This would be a great opportunity to brush up on ye olde language skills!)

Don't forget to add their rss feed.

23:26

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No content yet

At Urbanesque.nl, the website my journalism students will be posting their first stories to, starting Thursday night. I'm giving you the URL now, so (a) you'll be prepared and might even decide to add the RSS feed to your reader (b) Google will start crawling it, ensuring maximum exposure. After all, a journalist without readers is like a soundless tree falling in the forest. Or whatever.

Many thanks go out to Marleen Zachte for helping me solving some Movable Type template issues, and to Paul Jongsma for assorted technical difficulties. (Dealing with them, I mean, rather than causing them.)

21:09

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USA does operate torture flights out of the Netherlands

The culprit is US Airways, a company which torments its travellers by putting them into burning aeroplanes. The plane was supposed to travel from Amsterdam to Philadelphia, but the pilot apparently decided that he didn't need the extra illumination on his left wing, and returned to Schiphol Airport. No one was injured.

19:27

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Have you booked your holiday to a war zone yet?

My position on Guantanamo Bay is well known: since the prisoners there don't fall under the protection of the Geneva convention, and habeas corpus doesn't apply, Congress should adopt laws which classify them as - well, as something other than nothing - and which guarantee some sort of due process. They've had four years to do so and I think it's about bloody time they got on with it.

That being said, I do not buy into the meme that the people who were staying there are for the most part innocent bystanders who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, as Dutch quality broadsheet NRC Handelsblad seems to allege in an article today:

'Jamal al-Harith (38) did not have an alibi, and was released, like other British citizens, after the British government had exerted pressure (on the American administration, AD). The Jamaican website designer, whose birth name is Ronald Fiddler and who converted to Islam, was a holiday maker in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. When the bombardments on Afghanistan started, he wanted to leave.'

Yeah, I like to go hiking in dangerous, remote areas of the world too, especially when Al Qaeda training camps are within walking distance and America is about to start bombing the shit out of it. Napalm reminds me of the sunny sugar cane fields of Jamaica. Puh-leeze.

Of course, making sure the legislative and judiciary branch get to weigh in on what happens at Gitmo doesn't just make sense in a constitutional way, but also PR-wise. For the claims of the Bush administration that Gitmo is a necessity would become a lot more credible if they are supported by a different branch of the state, especially if that branch is not necessarily a political ally of the current administration.

17:45

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'The Republicans failed to plan for Iraq'

Is a lie. It's just that the Republican who does have some pretty sound ideas about how to go forward is not in charge of the Department of Defense. For that, we still have Donald 'I Don't Do Quagmires' Rumsfeld, supported by Dick 'Last Throes' Cheney.

Read this excellent article by John McCain. Then read this, and - on a lighter note - this.

McCain for 2008 doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

16:31

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Seulement le prix c'est different

If you've ever considered learning Dutch, then now is good time to start. You'll be able to understand this parody of Jacques Chirac.

22:05

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Change the law

There's one thing I don't understand about the current government. OK, there are a number of things, but the one that strikes me today is the way in which the Balkenende administration has put forth anti-terror legislation.

Justice secretary Donner has on several occasions attempted to curb our freedom of speech in a number of ways to stop radical Islamism. Apart from being wrong in principle, for I have rather libertarian views on such matters, taking this measure would also cause unwanted side effects, such as hate preachers going underground, which would make it harder to track them.

It seems to me energy spent on such rather dangerous and unproductive ideas would be better invested in trying to improve current anti-terror laws. Samir Azzouz walked from the appeals court today, who ruled that Azzouz did have terrorist intentions, but hadn't gone through enough preparatory motions to be eligible for a free stay in one of our famous burning prisons. (He'll remain in jail for the time being, as he's been indicted on other charges as well.)

I really don't like laws and I think this country could do with a fair few less. Also, I deplore the knee-jerk adoption of laws by politicians who feel more comfortable pleasing their electorate by looking steadfast, rather than explaining to them how the police is unable to make the most of the ones that are already in place. But if a triumvirate of judges say a guy is up to no good, and can't find the legal means to jail him, then the government and Parliament need to step in. Pronto.

18:42

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The Dutch disease

Bruce Bawer argues we didn't want immigrants to succeed:

For many Muslims in Europe, self-segregation has come naturally. What's tragic is that European authorities have supported it. Rejecting the American approach - namely, encouraging immigrants to work and integrate - they've instead helped newcomers to maintain distinct communities and provided benefits that have made it easy for them to stay unemployed. Why did these authorities prefer segregation? Supposedly they were enlightened "multiculturalists" who respected differences; for many, the real reason was a profound discomfort with the idea of "them" becoming "us." Naively, they imagined they could preserve their nations' cultural homogeneity while letting in millions of foreigners and smiling on their preservation and perpetuation of values drastically different from their own.

Knowing the small-town mentality of many of our leaders, I find this theory disturbingly plausible.

18:40

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My new book in Elsevier

Somebody was kind enough to breach my copyright for your viewing pleasure.

17:23

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Finally

Someone takes that Kundera drivel apart.

If there's one thing that turns me off on a date, aside from hearing 'My visit to the STD clinic went real well' after having asked about her day, it's yet another 20-something girl/woman having judged 'The unbearable lightness of Kundera being' by its cover (of the anamorphic dvd release).

(Includes a reading list with alternatives.)

20:16

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The Netherlands now officialy nearly crime free

Now that all other crimes in the Netherlands have been solved, MP Geert Wilders has seen fit to offer a reward of 10,000 euros to the person who can help trace the two guys who killed a dog.

Like many fellow citizens, which by no means is meant to exclude holiday makers, holders of residence permits or illegal aliens, I was quite horrified when I heard of this crime. It involved two muggers, who first kicked down an old handicapped lady and then made her watch as they choked her five months old dog to death.

(Sadly, It is not known if the muggers are supportive of the McCain Amendment.)

Seriously, these punks are (pun intended) a bunch of sick puppies. Get them, jail them until they've gotten so old they need a cane to walk, then give them community service for the rest of their lives, scooping up dog shit until they stumble, fall in said excrements and choke to death. I sure as hell won't help them to get up.

There are quite a few Dutch who feel the same way, although they express their sentiments a bit less floridly. And understandably so. Outrage after violence has struck those who can't fend for themselves is very much a sign of a healthy society.

But (there always is one) I get a bit suspicious when MP's start handing out substantial amounts of money for what according to the law is a relatively minor offense, as compared to, say, the gang rape in Rotterdam that took place a while ago, or the assassination of a political activist yesterday night, or the string of mob murders that currently has Amsterdam wondering who'll be shot off his bike next. Or, on the subject of animal welfare, what about the sparrow that was killed with a BB gun when it threatened to disrupt a domino record attempt.

(Sign the condolence register for said sparrow here or here. Yes, we've gone bonkers. Disclaimer: I am not in favor of shooting domino record attempt organizers instead. That would be too merciful. I'm thinking more along the lines of banning them from the airwaves forever, as there's plenty of coma-inducing television already.)

It's not that I want to be overtly cynical, it's that it seems to be nearly impossible to be that when it comes to Mr. Wilders. It couldn't, for example, be the case that Mr. Wilders' generous reward (which initially was only 1,000 euros because cheap publicity comes at a low price - fortunately, an anonymous benefactor upped the amount) is offered solely because Mr. Wilders wants to capitalize on the current public uproar?

Probably not, because it is well known that Mr. Wilders is abhorred by anything that degrades Dutch society, and such political opportunism would constitute precisely that.

17:42

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The fighting Dutch

A reader was kind enough to point me to this series of articles on the Dutch battle against the water. Yep, we Dutch know our water. Even our most famous beer tastes like it. (Drink Grolsch instead.)

9:35

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Review of 'Handboek Digitale Criminaliteit' in newspaper Trouw

A particularly hagiographic article on my book on digital crime was published by newspaper Trouw last week.

9:10

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Suffocation is not torture

(Try reading this article while holding your breath.)

I ended my subscription to James Taranto's 'Best of the Web' a while ago after a particularly vicious ad hominem attack on Andrew Sullivan. Now it seems I might have been prescient. The Wall Street Journal's defense of waterboarding is simply sickening. Both Andrew Sullivan and Marty Lederman take it to pieces. I'll add my two cents, responding to this particular sentence from the WSJ:

As for "torture," it is simply perverse to conflate the amputations and electrocutions Saddam once inflicted at Abu Ghraib with the lesser abuses committed by rogue American soldiers there, much less with any authorized U.S. interrogation techniques.

Morality is not an ecological concept which changes along with the rest of the environment: that's opportunism. Which is probably the one weapon you might want to refrain from using in a war which is more about values than about territory.

Some have argued that similar practices take place in the American military during training exercises. However, to me there's a huge difference in undergoing such an ordeal on request in an army which is all-volunteer to begin with. In that case, you can be relatively certain the government won't do anything stupid because (a) you are going to sue the hell out of them, (b) they need you as a soldier (c) the interrogators don't harbor any feelings of hostility towards you.

Now compare that to a real-life war situation, where interrogators may or may not show similar restraint towards enemy combatants whom they might hold responsible for murdering some of their loved ones. We've had a number of prison deaths on our hands already.

Or do this little mind game. Imagine the one person you hate the most. Now imagine you trying to choke him, letting go just before he loses consciousness. Then imagine you do it again. And again. And again.

Never mind him: do you still feel human?

12:36

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Philips Award

(The Philips Award will be given out to organizations that engage in self-defeating marketing, just like Dutch electronics company Philips, who with their campaign 'Let's make things better' made it abundantly clear that they themselves felt their current product range sucked.)

I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories but if there was ever a thing that made me consider the crackpot explanation of Al Qaeda as a CIA-Mossad ploy it's this. Al Qaeda has decided the proper way to instill fear into the Poms is to tell them they want to kill their beloved queen, Elizabeth II.

Yep, if I wanted to get my enemy angry, that's the way I would go about it. Keep this up and even the British Green Party will soon favor lobbing cruise missiles at terror bases around the world. Provided they use biofuel, of course.

11:28

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Let America retain control over the Internet

My take on the forthcoming WSIS conference in Tunis in this week's edition of Elsevier.

14:08

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On offer:

One invite for Paiq. Males need not apply at the moment; the invite is gender-specific (no, I don't get to make that call). Drop me a line if you're interested.

23:36

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What's (not) so great about America

In an excellent op-ed The Economist eloquently explains why Bush should sign the McCain Amendment - not because America is an evil country, but precisely because it is one of the greatest democracies in the world:

In the cold war, America championed the Helsinki human-rights accords. This time, the world's most magnificent democracy is struggling against vile terrorists who thought nothing of slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians—and yet the administration has somehow contrived to turn America's own human-rights record into a subject of legitimate debate.

Mr Bush would rightly point out that anti-Americanism is to blame for some of the opprobrium heaped on his country. But why encourage it so cavalierly and in such an unAmerican way? Nearly two years after Abu Ghraib, the world is still waiting for a clear statement of America's principles on the treatment of detainees. Mr McCain says he will keep on adding his amendment to different bills until Mr Bush signs one of them. Every enemy of terrorism should hope he does so soon.

We are better than our enemies. There is no shame in signing an amendment to that effect; only strength.

Update 18.05: Sullivan adds:

This is not about the moral status of terrorists or mass murderers. It's about us, the moral status of the West, and places where as a civilization, we simply will not go as a matter of policy.

Indeed. I for one refuse to let my moral standards be defined by those whom Mr. Bush aptly described as 'thugs and murderers'.

17:50

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Off to the USA

I'll be in Las Vegas in the first week of 2006, covering the CES for Elsevier and Planet Internet.

Please drop me a line if you're in the neighbourhood and want to meet up for a beer (that means no Budweiser, which for reasons I can't fathom still hasn't been classified as a chemical weapon).

17:44

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Wanted: a PD150 or PD170

If any of you guys know of someone who has a second-hand Sony PD150 or PD170 for sale (I'll settle for a HVR-Z1E too) and wants to get rid of it cheaply (or give it away in appreciation for all the hours I put in blogging ;-)) please drop me a line. I'll need an invoice, so don't steal anything on my behalf (unless you manage steal some company letterhead paper as well). Preferably it would be a complete kit, containing a filming floodlight, a wireless XLR mic, another mic for me to wear, and some extra batteries as well. If that person has an editing computer (or laptop) to sell containing a Matrox RT-X100 pci card, that's fine too.

(Oh, and while you're at it, get me an affordable house with a garden in the city centre. Yes, I know I'm being ridiculous.)

In case you were wondering: I am training to be a camera journalist and am in desperate need of both equipment and more experience. The two, in this case, are intertwined for practicising without a camera is rather cumbersome, though amusing for casual observers. Perhaps I should charge.

18:47

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How long until the army intervenes?

The only way something good can come from the current French riots, is when Sarkozy - a largely self-made immigrant's son who has not been corrupted by the ENA elite - manages to rise to power and rid the French semi-democracy of its oligarchic sclerosis.

Before that, I fear there will be a lot of bloodshed, for what else can the French do but to deploy the army if this continues? Read Le Monde, through Google if your knowledge of French is insufficient.

This, in turn, will lead to further escalation, casualties and a lot of deaths before this is all over.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go stock up on guns and ammo in case some 'second generation Dutch' get similar ideas.

(I'm only kidding of course - everybody knows that in the Netherlands, only criminals carry weapons, especially since the police are failing their gun exams en masse. So please, if you must send me your spare weaponry, do so in a package that doesn't arouse the suspicion of customs.)

14:06

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And in more important news

They've now started shooting at government officials in the Netherlands. Ms Verdonk, secretary of Immigration, was the target.

Update 5/11, 23.10: the NFI (Dutch Forensic Institute) has announced that it wasn't a bullet that damaged Ms Verdonk's office window, contradicting an earlier statement by the prime minister, which has since been withdrawn. They still don't know what did cause the damage.

23:29

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What Theo would have wanted...

...I do not profess to know. But the cartoon below is certainly rude enough to have provoked a chuckle - bear in mind that Van Gogh regularly called Christians 'followers of that rotten fish from Nazareth', and Muslims 'goat fuckers'.

I'll drink to his distasteful taste tonight, for I'd refuse to live in a world where only 'good taste' were allowed.

(Theo van Gogh: '72 goats?'
The devil: 'We were expecting your assassin to be here as well.')

21:33

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'Handboek Digitale Criminaliteit' on Business News Radio

In case you'd like to know what I sound like: here's the broadcast of Business News Radio's program 'De Elektronische Eeuw' (The Electronic Century) from last Thursday, where presenter Herbert Blankesteijn allowed me to shamelessly promote my new book.

13:28

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