The laywer
Last Friday the 13th a Dutch news and commentary show Knevel en van den Brink featured a well known Dutch criminal laywer Mr. Theo Hiddema. What causes me to mention him was the fact that the laywer is known for some time as a Freedom Party (PVV) supporter and managed to bring the ideas and policies and the reasons for those policies of the PVV to the limelight.
Keeping the right-liberals on track
Amongst other things Mr. Hiddema mentioned that the Dutch courts are flooded with criminals of foreign origin. At some point his interviewers said that Geert Wilders was too radical and that it would be better to vote for the right-liberal VVD, which has a very restrictive immigration paragraph. To which Hiddema replied that the VVD would only be reliable on immigration as long as the PVV was there to compete with them for votes.
A joy to listen to. Unfortunately it is all in Dutch but still here is the video:
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Sunday, October 11, 2009
US Govt interferes with bloggers
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released new guidelines limiting the freedom of US bloggers. The caps are on freedom are in the field of endorsement. For instance on reviewing a book or a movie.
October 10, 2009Read more at Search Engine Watch.
Wake Up! - The FTC is screwing with bloggers
If you are a blogger in the US your life is about to change big-time.
You have just entered the Twilight Zone...
New FTC guidelines (read full version) described in the official press release state:
1 - "the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service."
and
2 - the revised Guides reflect Commission case law and clearly state that both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement - or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers. The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media."
My reading of this is very disturbing.
Here is a possible scenario:
1. You - a "social media" "celebrity" "blogger" (this is anyone who has more than a few followers on Twitter or some number of subscribers to their blog RSS feed) reviews a book, product, or service - making it an "endorsement"
2. You got a copy of the book to review, or got a free trial of the product, or a free trial of the service
3. You did not mention the freebie in your blog post
4. If someone does not like your blog posting you can be sued
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Freedom Party Website has the largest presence Online
Freedom Party (PVV) building its own media
According to an article on hyped.nl (Dutch) the Freedom Party (pvv.nl) website has become the most popular website political to a political party measured by monthly traffic in 2009. The visitor counter has passed the five million. Pvv.nl got 30.000 visitors per day during the European election campaign, slightly better than the D66 website, which was the next best contender.
The trends can be verified on Alexa.com.
According to an article on hyped.nl (Dutch) the Freedom Party (pvv.nl) website has become the most popular website political to a political party measured by monthly traffic in 2009. The visitor counter has passed the five million. Pvv.nl got 30.000 visitors per day during the European election campaign, slightly better than the D66 website, which was the next best contender.
The trends can be verified on Alexa.com.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
The Minister and the Merchant
Dutch media: less restrained on the downside of immigration
This blog previously featured a story on the Dutch media increasingly catering to the need for news reflecting the public's suspicions about immigrants, particularly Muslims.
The Minister and the Merchant
When Dutch commentators and pundits reflect on the soul of the Dutch nation, they will often use the parabel of the Minister and the Merchant. This is the "Koopman and the Dominee" parabel. On the one hand the Dutchman has always tried to project an image of stern Protestant rectitude. The Minister. On the other hand he REALLY wants to make money. The Merchant.
The Media as the Minister
In the pervailing climate of Political Correctness or Neo-Marxism it was the Minister who usually won out in the way the media reported from the multicultural frontlines. With the advent of the internet and readership of the dead tree media falling like a felled fir tree, the Merchant is in ascendance.
The Merchant strikes back
Today leftist newspaper "De Volkskrant" hawked a "More Morroccan Criminals in Rotterdam" story, which I used as one of the sources for my previous article. What is remarkable is the prominent place the article received in the paper version of the "De Volkskrant" today: frontpage in the upper left hand corner.
(The painting is a portrait of the 17th Century Dutch Merchant Jan Six by Rembrandt)
PC losing its grip as glasnost
As far as I know it is a first for "De Volkskrant". It is exemplary of where the media in The Netherlands are heading. The Soviet Union embarked on a policy of openess "glasnost" in 1985. This was meant to assist in reforming the Communist system. But the relaxing of censorship caused so many absurdities of the system to come to the fore, that the elite lost its faith in the ideology altogether and this spelled its doom withing less than a decade.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Expanding the media for colonist youth
Shaping the media
In The Netherlands the media are traditionally divided up between social groups such as liberals and religious groups. Since the 1960ies broadcasting organisations which are more or less solely commercial have been added.
A commission that develops Dutch Media policy (visitatiecommissie van de Nederlandse Publieke Omroep) has advised to expand the radio bandwidth for FunX. FunX (Dutch) is a subsidized radio station which broadcasts in the major cities, with large Muslim colonies. The radio station targets immigrant youth with their content and is popular amongst the target population.
The NPO commission argues that it is essential to increase the reach of the radio station, as it creates a channel to communicate with immigrant youth, while the current allocation does not cover demographic reality.
Media and the national state
Political Scientists have argued that the growth of the strength of the national state in the 19th century was possible due to the development of media which created a new, secular, language-based "imagined community".
Due to the fact that it is cheap and easy to start up new digital media, new media have been profilated since the 1960ies. As a result audiences are becoming more and more splintered. At the same time transnational elites have weakened the national state and allowed ethnically and culturally foreign colonies to settle in Western nations, especially in the urban areas.
Disintergration of society
Developing media especially for immigrant youth furthers this trend of societal disintergration and polarisation. It emphasizes the idea that the foreign youth are, well, foreign.
In The Netherlands the media are traditionally divided up between social groups such as liberals and religious groups. Since the 1960ies broadcasting organisations which are more or less solely commercial have been added.
A commission that develops Dutch Media policy (visitatiecommissie van de Nederlandse Publieke Omroep) has advised to expand the radio bandwidth for FunX. FunX (Dutch) is a subsidized radio station which broadcasts in the major cities, with large Muslim colonies. The radio station targets immigrant youth with their content and is popular amongst the target population.
The NPO commission argues that it is essential to increase the reach of the radio station, as it creates a channel to communicate with immigrant youth, while the current allocation does not cover demographic reality.
Media and the national state
Political Scientists have argued that the growth of the strength of the national state in the 19th century was possible due to the development of media which created a new, secular, language-based "imagined community".
Due to the fact that it is cheap and easy to start up new digital media, new media have been profilated since the 1960ies. As a result audiences are becoming more and more splintered. At the same time transnational elites have weakened the national state and allowed ethnically and culturally foreign colonies to settle in Western nations, especially in the urban areas.
Disintergration of society
Developing media especially for immigrant youth furthers this trend of societal disintergration and polarisation. It emphasizes the idea that the foreign youth are, well, foreign.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Dutch newspaper editors want to meet Internal Intelligence Service (AIVD) about wiretaps
This blog reported earlier about the investigation of the office of the Public Prosecutor against two Dutch journalists who uncovered a leak in the Internal Intelligence Service (AIVD).
The subject of the case is a Dutch Gun and Drugs Merchant: Mink Kok. The Internal Intelligence Service regards Mink Kok the most dangerous criminal in the Netherlands, due to his corrupt contacts in the investigative branch of the police and the same AIVD. Kok spends 2 million Euros per year on bribing officials. He has been doing that for 15 years. One of the corrupt officials was Paul H. Paul H. was a secret agent for the AIVD from 1980 and 2001. He was arrested on may the 4th. Paul H. had been sending letters with sensitive information to Mink Kok for years, detailing to Mink Kok any progress the police and secret service might have made in gathering information on Mink's activities and organisation.
Mink Kok is now serving time for the 1993 murder (Dutch) on big time pot dealer Jaap van der Heijden. Mink appears to be still in charge of his organisation. Mink Kok and his organisation continued to receive information from their informants within the Dutch security apparatus while the leader was in jail.
The journalists, Bart Mos and Joost de Haas, found (Dutch) out from their own sources in the police, that information from the Ministry of Justice and the AIVD against Mink Kok's organisation was passed on to Mink.
In a baffling twist the police arrested the two journalists and detained them, forcing them to give a DNA sample to the public prosecutor and demanding they rat on their sources. Bart Mos and Joost de Haas have refused.
Even more baffling is the revelation that the Internal Intelligence Service (AIVD) has been wiretapping the journalists for months in order to get hold of their sources.
Today several Dutch newspaper editors have requested talks with the Internal Intelligence Service (AIVD), stated chief editor Arend Joustra of Elsevier.
Mr. Joustra stated the public interest demands that the public is informed by independent journalists. The wiretapping of investigative journalists compromises the sources of said journalists, as informants will not come forward if they fear journalists may - unwittingly - be ears for police and the Internal Security Services. Moreover wistleblowing on corruption and collaboration between personnel of Security Services, the Judiciary and the Police is very difficult under such circumstances.
According to a recently published report criminal networks are becoming increasingly powerful in Amsterdam and other mayor Dutch cities. The have a strongly corrupting influence on police and other government and municipal services.
The Guild of Main Editors and the Dutch Society for Journalists have a meeting scheduled with the leadership of the Office of the Prosecution on June the 15th. This is a regular meeting which will be used to raise the issue of AIVD interference with investigative journalism.
The subject of the case is a Dutch Gun and Drugs Merchant: Mink Kok. The Internal Intelligence Service regards Mink Kok the most dangerous criminal in the Netherlands, due to his corrupt contacts in the investigative branch of the police and the same AIVD. Kok spends 2 million Euros per year on bribing officials. He has been doing that for 15 years. One of the corrupt officials was Paul H. Paul H. was a secret agent for the AIVD from 1980 and 2001. He was arrested on may the 4th. Paul H. had been sending letters with sensitive information to Mink Kok for years, detailing to Mink Kok any progress the police and secret service might have made in gathering information on Mink's activities and organisation.
Mink Kok is now serving time for the 1993 murder (Dutch) on big time pot dealer Jaap van der Heijden. Mink appears to be still in charge of his organisation. Mink Kok and his organisation continued to receive information from their informants within the Dutch security apparatus while the leader was in jail.
The journalists, Bart Mos and Joost de Haas, found (Dutch) out from their own sources in the police, that information from the Ministry of Justice and the AIVD against Mink Kok's organisation was passed on to Mink.
In a baffling twist the police arrested the two journalists and detained them, forcing them to give a DNA sample to the public prosecutor and demanding they rat on their sources. Bart Mos and Joost de Haas have refused.
Even more baffling is the revelation that the Internal Intelligence Service (AIVD) has been wiretapping the journalists for months in order to get hold of their sources.
Today several Dutch newspaper editors have requested talks with the Internal Intelligence Service (AIVD), stated chief editor Arend Joustra of Elsevier.
Mr. Joustra stated the public interest demands that the public is informed by independent journalists. The wiretapping of investigative journalists compromises the sources of said journalists, as informants will not come forward if they fear journalists may - unwittingly - be ears for police and the Internal Security Services. Moreover wistleblowing on corruption and collaboration between personnel of Security Services, the Judiciary and the Police is very difficult under such circumstances.
According to a recently published report criminal networks are becoming increasingly powerful in Amsterdam and other mayor Dutch cities. The have a strongly corrupting influence on police and other government and municipal services.
The Guild of Main Editors and the Dutch Society for Journalists have a meeting scheduled with the leadership of the Office of the Prosecution on June the 15th. This is a regular meeting which will be used to raise the issue of AIVD interference with investigative journalism.
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