Dutch Blog "War" - GeenStijl vs GeenCommentaar vs NOS

(GeenStijl)

The NOS reported today that a "war" has broken out between GeenStijl and GeenCommentaar.

That's the Netherlands' BBC equivalent, reporting on the blogs NoStyle and NoComment.

GeenStijl is the most popular Dutch blog, and it got that way by being smart and well, tasteless. Love 'em or hate 'em (I love 'em), they can't be ignored.

GeenCommentaar is a lesser known site designed as a response to GeenStijl (which is populist and perceived as right-leaning).

Recently GeenCommentaar put up a fake petition, guessing (correctly) that GeenStijl would invite its readers to deface it. But GeenCommentaar simply gathered the IP addresses of users coming in on the GeenStijl link to create a database of the site's readers.

Then they began offering the database as a "GeenStijl Checker" so that other leftist websites could use it as a filter to prevent GeenStijl readers from commenting again in the future.

So in retaliation, GeenStijl launched a denial-of-service attack on the site where the database was housed. Which is technically illegal under Dutch law.

(NOS)

(by chance I happened to see this interview taking place near Artis this morning _ I wondered what it was all about; if I had known I would have stopped to take my own photo and ask a few questions).



The NOS played an interesting role in all this. They've been wrong-footed by GeenStijl frequently in the past, but this time it seems to me they did a nice job of ruffling the feathers of the infant terrible, without getting their own hands dirty.

GeenStijl put out a lengthy response to the NOS piece, photoshopping a frame grab from the program and crying "boo hoo" (one of their favorite phrases for mocking complainers) about the database, claiming it violates privacy laws. Doubtful, dudes.



I forget who it was who first said this, but in U.S. politics and in life, once you have to start explaining yourself, you've already lost.
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Kanker Luiers - Lost in Translation

Once again, big trouble in little Hemonystraat.

Someone has vandalized the Taco Mundo with the following message:



"Brommer vrij Hemonyplein kanker luiers ! "

Which presents translation problems.

The folks over at GeenStijl are having a field day with it.


Actually, the GeenStijl/Dumpert headline, "Look An Angry Small Business Owner," kind of misunderstands the situation.



It's not the store owner who's mad (other than than his store got vandalized).

Let me explain. But first of all, let me say I deny any involvement.

I think the basic idea has to be, this is an expression of anger by a local about the Taco Mundo employees riding their scooters too fast over Hemony square, where lots of kids play. Including mine.

So the first part is "(keep) Hemony square scooter free" or "Hemony square (should be) scooter-free."

Kanker luiers = "cancer-diapers," presumably a play on the common Dutch insult kankerlijer or "cancer-sufferer."

Yep, that's really a normal insult here. There's a whole range of sickness and disease insults.

But "cancer diapers" instead of "cancer sufferer." The pronunciation is close. Assuming it's not a mistake (which can't be ruled out), what are we to think?

As if the message was scrawled by a gang of tough toddlers who call themselves the cancer diapers?

Or as if the author wishes to portray Taco Mundo couriers as so young they are still wearing diapers, which are cancerous?

The mind boggles.
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Water on Mars

(from geenstijl)

Forgive me.

I'm just saying. It seems like every 3 months for the past 7 years we see headlines saying "Water discovered on Mars."
Okay, we know that now. What else?
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Google's Knols - Etymology - Knowledge, Knollen and Knolls

(aaronfriemark)

So, Google is introducing a new kind of thing, which they're calling a "knol" which they're referring to as "unit of knowledge."

The basic idea is that they will encourage people to author what they hope is a definitive version of information about some topic, and attach their name to it.

Google gives the example of an essay defining insomnia, and as a result, people have generally assumed that means this "knol" project will be like an encyclopedia of knowledge.

Everybody is comparing the idea to that of Wikipedia or About.com.

But that's not really what Google says about it.

I have two observations about Google "knols." One is short, the other is long.

Since brevity is the soul of wit:

I wonder if anyone at Google is aware of the Dutch word "knol," which means the meaty lump of a root vegetable, as in Rutabaga.

Given the similarity of meaning between the Dutch word and Google's idea for their Knols, it's hard to imagine they didn't know. But that's speculation. In addition to knol, there's also the English word "Knoll," which means "raised mound" _ and is no doubt linked etymologically to the Dutch knol. "Knowledge," as the spelling suggests, has a slightly different derivation...

Now for the longer thought:

The basic idea that Google is putting forth here is that of encouraging "archetype" or "paradigm" pages on individual concepts to emerge _ and of course to compete with other paradigms and let the strongest win out. 'In the free and open contest of ideas, the truth will prevail'*

It's all very Adam Smith / Thomas Kuhn-sian.

The funny thing is, this already happened long before the Internet existed, and happens now that it exists, with or without Google.

It's also odd that, rather than trying to 'organize the world's information', in this case Google is trying to play an active role in drawing the information into existence, or at least getting somebody else to pre-organize it for Google.






I wish I were expert enough in philosophy to name all the thinkers who described the knol phenomenon before, but basically, it's always true in many fields of human endeavor that one early, good expression of an idea _ love it or hate it _ tends to become the locus of debate and attention. Even if it's not perfectly iterated.

Examples are vital to understand what I mean, so think about the phrase "The Politics of Personal Destruction." After Clinton said those words, which describe the phenomenon reasonably well, no other competing phrase will ever occupy that particular thought-space in our minds.

Another example would be the Internet's "Long Tail" effect, described by Chris Anderson.

You could call this an idea, a paradigm (Kuhn, though he was thinking in scientific contexts), or a "meme" (Dawkins).

The establishment of the paradigm is due to some combination of near-primacy and the fact that the first people to think something through are often thinking very clearly.

And maybe because they are forced to coin words or phrases to express a new idea, these terms become irresistibly appealing to those that come after.
Often the paradigm-makers are already authoritative figures in some way when they craft the idea that shapes the debate from then on, but sometimes not.

But knowledge is cumulative, so early ideas _ say those supplied by Socrates _ will always have more gravity than those of Kuhn, just as Shakespeare is always going to be a more commonly referred to poet and playwright than Dylan and Stoppard combined. He just got there first.

They continue to shape the discussion more, by having provided the common nodes that we refer to. The nodes, or knols if you like, are a kind of shorthand summary of an idea that everyone agrees on, which both speeds up our ability to argue about what else we *really* want to talk about _ and traps us in one way of looking at things (Foucault's epistemes) at the same time. These are the technical 'standards' of thought.

What I don't understand is, how does Google hope to actively encourage knols to emerge? Winning ideas come from everywhere, and the rules for establishment are very shaky.

For instance, prominent writers like William Safire will pick up on and popularize many more linguistic trends than you or I _ but many more will be coming out of websites tied into popular discourse like Fark, GeenStijl, the best page in the universe, etc. etc.

How does Google actually expect to accelerate the process _ by favoring some authors in their search results?! Well, here's what they say:

"Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content...Competition of ideas is a good thing...participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality."

"Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge."

Note "dissemination" of knowledge, rather than "organization."

They are confident they will be up to the challenge of ranking the knols. Well, that's not entirely reassuring.

Using links as a measure of popularity (the essence of Page Rank) is kind of like using the number of scholarly citations an article receives to judge its importance. There's obviously some truth to that ... but if it were everything, what happens to the Gregor Mendels of the Internet?

If it's done on the seemingly innocent basis of an author's past credibility, it will end up an incredibly powerful way of reinforcing the status quo.

In fact, is any acceleration of the 'knol' forming process even desirable?

Things can also coalesce around bad ideas (fascism) or expressions (Okily-dokily, neighbor!) as well, and then we're stuck with them. At least until something forces a paradigm shift...

Maybe any encouraging or speeding the adoption of knols will only ultimately ensure they are of lower quality?

As Samuel Johnson once said:

"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."

I'm not as negative about all this as many of the people I've seen writing about it, because I agree with
a) the basic premise that there is so much information out there it can be very difficult to find what's worthwhile.
and
b) although anonymity has its place, the Internet and world generally would be a better place if people would be more willing to stand up for what they believe in and put their name behind it.

That's something I know as a journalist.

But I just wonder if Google has thought this all the way through, and considered the law of unintended consequences...I can think of many negative outcomes, some worse than mere failure.

karenwithak has created something of a knol about Rutabaga right here


*Actually, the original quote was "who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?" It's commonly attributed to John Milton, though I bet other people had said or thought the same before him. And was it John Stuart Mill who first set out the basic argument? Anyhow, "Nothing new under the sun," right (Ecclesiastes)?

But I think you'll find that particular thought-meme of a "free and open contest" has evolved and is far more widely quoted in other formulations, such as mine above. Good luck tracing its origins if you ever run into it on the street...
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Disclaimer from De Telegraaf

De Telegraaf is the Netherlands' largest daily paper.

They're also building up quite a system of websites (including a 40 percent stake in GeenStijl), and today they announced they bought 70 percent of "Webregio Media," a 'hyper local' website network.

Coincidentally or not, here's a disclaimer De Telegraaf put on its main website today. I can't recall ever seeing anything quite like it:

"Despite the constant care and attention that we give to the composition of these sites, it's possible that the information that's published is incomplete or actually wrong. Mistakes in processing information cannot always be avoided."

"We can't be held responsible that the information published is fit for the purpose for which you are examining it. All information, products and services are offered in the state in which they currently find themselves and without any implicit guarantee or protection with respect to their properness or appropriateness for a certain aim or otherwise."

"With an eye to all this, the reader is always advised to seek independent information and or to investigate information gotten from one of the Telegraaf's sites before using it."

At least they're honest, in their own ... idiom.



YOU'RE ON NOTICE, TELEGRAAF!


(Buckofive, July 23, 2005).
De Telegraaf is also famous for having been "wrong in the war," as the Dutch put it. That means, they worked with the Nazi occupiers during WWII. I've always been curious how they managed to thrive despite that, while papers like Amsterdam's daily, "Het Parool," the resistance paper, are slowly decaying.

Dutchies?

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GeenStijl vs. Dutch Royal House

(photo: www.geenstijl.nl)

So, the Dutch Royal House is threatening to sue the website Geenstijl.nl if they don't take down the above photo of crown prince Willem Alexander and his Argentine-born wife, Princess Maxima.

What in the world is so controversial here? GeenStijl says the pair were in New York buying an iPhone, which would apparently be illegal to use in the Netherlands (?? as far as I know it just wouldn't have full functionality).

The Dutch Royal House is claiming breach of privacy. I really cannot see what privacy the couple could reasonably expect in an Apple store.

Threatening letter from Royal House: Willem Alexander and Maxima "determine when someone has invaded their privacy, not you."

GeenStijl response: "You are not going to determine what's news and what's not."

People get this wrong all the time _ I was taking a photo of Darth Vader on Dam Square a few weeks ago and some passerby yelled at me that I wasn't allowed to photograph her.

As if she were royalty! No, wait. As if she were celebrity! No wait. As if she were not subject to the same rules as everybody else, no matter who she was.

Read the law, you ignorant, arrogant person.

Anybody can photograph you on the street. They just can't use your image for commercial or promotional purposes _ to advertise a product for instance _ without your permission.

For the royals, I'd say they have a good chance of forcing GeenStijl to retract their claim that the pair bought an iPhone if it's demonstrably untrue. The store should have receipts, or not, right?

So GeenStijl would need to retract that as potentially damaging to the pair's reputation, if indeed it's illegal to own an iPhone over here for some reason, and if indeed it would defame (as opposed to improving) the Royal reputation. But even so, GeenStijl should be able to keep the photo up.

If it is true the couple bought an iPhone, well. End of story. Truth is always a very strong defense against accusations of libel.

On the other hand,



I confess some confusion in my value system about the recent incident where the Dutch pedophile organization Martijn posted photos _ free, hand-out publicity photos available on the Royal House's website _ of Willem and Maxima's children.

I'm against that and so were the courts. The essence of the argument is that the Royal House should not be forced to appear to endorse pedophilia. In addition, they owned copyright of the photos and had specified that they were to be used for "educational" purposes only.

But hard to say what would have happened if those photos were taken on the street and not used to 'advertise' the pedophiles in any way, but just buried in the members section of their website. Damn, it's hard not to get emotional about that one.

An easier case was when paparazzi used long-range lenses to take photos into the royal couple's living room for one of the House of Orange fan club magazines. In their own home, the royals have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and they won a case about it in the courts, rightly.

But in the GeenStijl case _ I don't see it. The owner of a store can forbid people from taking pictures on his property, but in this case obviously he/she didn't do so, or didn't enforce it.

Willem and Maxima are public figures, he the future head of state. He's doubly fair game for media scrutiny since the Dutch monarchy retains some real political power.

People may not like GeenStijl's taste or its satirical way of bringing the news, but there's simply no question it's part of legitimate public debate.

That the Royals are shopping in an Apple store is potentially the news equivalent of George Bush (Sr.) going shopping for groceries and never having seen a laser scan, or Wim Kok (previous Dutch prime minister) having never seen a computer 'mouse.'

So in short, I think justice and fairness are on GeenStijl's side. But no "Oraclar" prediction from me as to whether they will win actually win a suit if it comes to that.

The royals are truly awarded rights and privileges that others in the Netherlands aren't. For instance, it's a crime to insult the Queen.

That makes me mad, since (as a good American mutt) I don't believe some people should be 'more equal' than others just because of their pedigree.

And it's a restriction of freedom of speech.

For balance: the argument on the other side is that, under the constitution, the Queen can't stand up for herself, because that's delegated to the prime minister, who must take political responsibility for all she says and does.

I'm not buying that _ plenty of people can't stand up for themselves, but the royals are extremely wealthy and influential people who have other means at their disposal to get their way. To name just two: manipulation of media acces; and money for high class lawyers to send intimidating letters and even sue without grounds, never mind what it costs.

In short, with the privileges of royalty comes additional media scrutiny, and the Royal House should stop whining.

Agree?

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Dutch government to ban pimps?

(photo: wilwheaton)

It's a dark day for feathered caps, canes and high-heeled shoes: Dutch parliament has approved a motion that would ban pimping.

Say what?

Of course, prostitution has been legal in the Netherlands since 2000, and tolerated since donkey's years, but forced prostitution has always been illegal.

So you'd think there'd be no need to add a law specifying that pimping in *that* sense is illegal.

But take the next logical step: prostitutes often work in brothels for various reasons, including increased safety and vetting of customers _ and it's a slippery slope from paying for "protection" to ending up under the control of the brothel owner.

(professorpious)

And a recent government study found that neither the street pimp problem nor forced prostitution has been reduced by legalization.

(technokitten)

So, the justice minister Ernst Hirch Ballin is going to research whether there's anything to be done to crack down on pimps.



(christine (bpc))

Hirsch Ballin's predecessor, Piet Hein Donner (now the Social Affairs Minister), was a very unquotable guy, but he had one great moment.

Dutch media started using the English-inspired word "loverboys" to describe a group of young men in Rotterdam who would woo teenage girls with fast cars, jewelry, etc., and later force them into prostitution.

So there was a parliamentary debate where all the MPs were going on and on about the problems posed by "loverboys." This was back in about 2004 I believe. Donner was listening patiently and finally he asked "am I missing something here, or are we just talking about pimps?"

One final word on pimps.

A city council member for Labor (think: the Democrats) in Nijmegen, Paul Depla, is in hot water right now after website GeenStijl published a story titled

"PvdA-wethouder oraal bevredigd in fietsenhok"
or
"Labor Councilman Orally Satisfied In Bike Cage"

I wish there was some way to do justice to the Dutch word 'fietsenhok' _ it summons up the image of a rainy parking lot for bikes, with a corrugated tin roof, with puddles and wind and graffiti and a few French fries wrappers scattered around with mayonnaise still on them.

"Now, there's a clear headline for once," GeenStijl wrote. It's a little bit inside baseball from then on, but here's just a taste.

"In Havanna on-the-Waal they would rather have kept this quiet, but we like transparency, even in politics...The incident occured recently after a council meeting. After a no-doubt heated debate Depla retired with the only female member of the VVD (Republican) faction to re-evaluate the evening in their own special way."

Depla, married with children, had been tapped as a future top leader for Labor. The woman who is said to have blown him has resigned (no reason given). Depla takes the line Bill Clinton didn't: that there is simply no need to address allegations about his sex life.

Unfortunately, in the real world, when a rumor is this widespread, a politician either has to deny it or everybody assumes it's true.

Clinton, Depla: I feel your pain _ even politicians should have some privacy. However, considering the duty you bear to the people you represent, you should also weigh the merits of keeping your dick in your pants while you hold public office.

(the actual fietsenhok, photograph by Trouw)
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Mobile Marijuana Plantations Hidden Inside Trucks

(photo and others from website www.wietforum.nl)

This is the Dutch equivalent of what people in the United States would call "the can-do spirit." Over here they call it the "VOC mentaliteit" _ (meaning, Far East Indies Company entrepreneurialism. The acronym is still a household word in Holland four centuries later).

The photos show a truck that's been converted to a mobile weed plantation.



Here's the link to "Weed Forum," which has more photos, but it's Dutch language.

Credit to Dutch blog GeenStijl for finding the thread. They said that the truck used generators on its axles to power the lights, but people reacting to the post dispute that.

To be honest I can't tell exactly what's going on on the website _ it sounds like the guy that posted the photos was a cop (?) who helped bust the plantation (?). It was in the Dutch city of Heerenveen, anyway, in the north.

The post reads:

"Back to Heerenveen again last night.
At 6 a.m. I got a call for two trailers and a ready-to-go container. When I got there it appeared not only was there a container standing there that was completely converted to 'igrowbox', but also there was another one next to it set up as cutting room.
Two warehouses further there were two trailers with 1,200 plants and in that space there was another, more professional cutting room set up where we found 3 kilos plus. Photos upcoming."

And then he gives some of the specs of the lighting systems, etc.

The best line was one of the reactions: "I can't believe they're deconstructing this. It belongs in a museum."

Other posters are saying stuff like, 'Ah, the electricity systems could be better arranged' (with apparently no irony!).

Now, people who don't get the nuances of Dutch drugs policy may be wondering, why on Earth are they going to all this trouble when weed is legal in the Netherlands?




The answer of course, is that weed isn't legal here. It's illegal but not prosecutable for possession of amounts of up to 5 grams (and in practice much more).

To me, this story highlights one of the most interesting _ actually the most interesting _ part of the Dutch tolerance policy. By some incredible paradoxical logic they tolerate the sale of weed, but bust the growers.

So you have a mega industry _ "coffee shops" _ who have no way to legally source their main product.

And someone will inevitably service them, because there's money to be made. That's basic market theory. The VOC spirit leads to small plantations being built in residential neighborhoods, (causing fire hazards), greenhouses, warehouses, and, apparently, trucks and shipping containers.

A majority of the previous parliament was in favor of decriminalizing growers. That would have solved a lot of problems, notably the question of what chemicals are being used in intensive growing facilities.

But it was shot down because the government feared (rightly) that tolerating both growers and sellers would be seen by the international community as outright legalization, which would give NL problems with both Brussels and Washington.

Now things are back in limbo, with the political right dreaming of criminalization (good luck) and left dreaming of legalization (not until other countries start seeing things the same way).

(this is called 'igrow keet' by the poster. I'm not sure what that means, but those are obviously buds undergoing some kind of processing.)
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Dutch government spying on GPD press agency, GeenStijl had warned the agency

(photo:moriza)

The AP has a story about alleged spying by the Dutch government on a Dutch press agency, GPD. I for one am shocked by this (if true).

Minister Piet Hein Donner sent a letter to parliament confirming the essence of the accusation — that several employees in his ministry's communications department had been accessing the GPD network since mid-2006.

-AP


But I wanted to translate what I consider a classic letter that the Dutch language "GeenStijl" blog sent the GPD way back in 2003 _ for the pleasure of all non-Dutch out there.

This is just in fun, so GeenStijl and GPD, please don't sue me.

Without further ado, here it is:

PLEASE CONFIRM RECEIPT AND ANSWER DIRECTLY.

Dear GPD,

Hereby, a very important disclosure: Your website, and all connected systems, are as leaky as a basket. LEAKY as LEAKY can be, LEAKY!

We make www.geenstijl.nl, a weblog. In the whole history of our existence, we have never seen such a shameless excuse for a web site as yours.

Just with a little creative surfing, all your internal hard drives are vulnerable. I don't know where to begin, there are so many holes in your system.

God knows how a professional news organization like yours could have left all its systems open, probably for years! Not a single safety update has ever been installed, and there's no password to keep out someone who bears you ill will. We're not talking about cracks that could be exploited by advanced hackers, but ENORMOUS HOLES that any halfwit can find.

The chance is real that you've been tapped for years, and we can guess without too much difficulty that your email can be monitored as well. We didn't look at it, of course, but given the amount of holes, it's not hard to imagine it happening.

Even though it would be completely legal for us to post all the necessary links (to access your systems), we won't do that. Instead, we will warn you before we publish about this shameful situation. The damage for a news organization would be so great if we just publish the sentence "GPD is Leaky," given that many of our readers will become curious about it, that your business would be in danger. We'd like to avoid that, of course. So, with this note, we make the very emphatic request that you close the holes.

We wonder who your system managers are. It might be prudent to keep these people as far away from all computers as possible and immediately seek a professional security company. These so-called system managers form an acute danger for your organization.

REMEMBER: we're not even talking about hacking here, all anybody needs to do is enter some links in a browser. In order to "hack" there would have to be some security, and there isn't any.

Friendly greetings,

GeenStijl.

(March 11, 2003)



The original Dutch text, if anybody is interested, is here. MORE

Balkenende & Guerrilla Girl

These awesome t-shirts 'inspired' by the iconic Che Guevara image were part of the political campaign that got Christian Democrat (i.e. conservative) Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende elected last year. Oh, the delicious irony!

Today, Jan Pronk, the guy hoping to become the Howard Dean of Dutch politics (that is, Labor Party chairman) called Balkenende a "liar" for misleading the Dutch into Iraq.

"We were rushed into that war on the basis of lies," he said. Where have I heard that before?

Sticklers for detail like me will remember that the Dutch technically didn't rush into anything, but had a more nuanced stance on the war, namely that they supported it "politically but not militarily."

Politically but not militarily? Whatever.

Later, the country participated in peacekeeping. In a comparatively peaceful province (al-Muthanna). But I digress.

Pronk later said he "was a little sorry." But he still thinks this country is ruled "by a person who has lied."

In politics, it often seems, the goal is either:
a) a race to see who can say the stupidest thing first or
b) a fight not to have to retract the stupid thing you said.

Meanwhile, the Dutch press is in a tizzy about "Guerrilla Girl," identified (first by website Geenstijl, who else?) as Tanja Nijmeijer, from the small Dutch town of Denekamp.

(photo courtesy GeenStijl).
She studied Spanish, started hanging out in leftist squatter circles in the Dutch city of Groningen, and wound up traveling to Latin America to help impoverished people.

She's fighting for FARC in Colombia these days, and Colombian daily El Tiempo is leaking out the dirty details of her diary bit by bit, milking this story for everything it's worth.

Apparently none of the guerrillas use condoms, and big-breasted bimbos get favors from El Commandante. Her diary was recovered after a raid in which they were caught bathing and had to run into the jungle half-naked!!

Titillating story, no?

So how does this all tie together?

Proceeds from those Balkenende shirts go to a good cause: an organization called COMUNARTE by a young Colombian named Elkin Ramos, in which rather than fight turf wars, gangs are encouraged to dance instead.

Or so they say.

So, if you're either "with us or against us," then you're either a Balkenende or a Pronk, or a Nijmeijer or a Che or an Uribe.

But maybe, just maybe, if Us is Them, and the world isn't all black and white, and you can support a war politically but not militarily, you could choose to be a Ramos instead...
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Netwerk vs GeenStijl

An entertaining fight tonight: Old Dutch media vs. New Dutch media. The television program "Netwerk" (=60 Minutes clone) put out an 'expose' (French accent on that e) about the website "GeenStijl," basically accusing them of ... something.

For one, Netwerk 'revealed' that GeenStijl has had several civil complaints filed against it for alleged racism in its comments forum. One complaint was filed by an Amsterdam (district) city council member that GeenStijl routinely refers to as "Jabba the Hut."

No surprise there: the name GeenStijl name means something like "No Style." The site bills itself as the "Vaccuum cleaner of the Internet. You suck? We suck back."

I wish the site could be translated into English, but a lot of it is untranslatable, both culturally and linguistically.

The site's makers are fighting several ongoing lawsuits, including one for allegedly publishing peoples' addresses, which is apparently against Dutch privacy laws. (though addresses are also often available in the phone book...)

I don't want to open the can of worms about whether GeenStijl's comments section actually does have problems: debate and lawsuits abound in every corner of the English speaking internet about how liable websites are for comments, especially comments that are _ in theory _ moderated, as GeenStijl's are.

But I do want to point out: GeenStijl is on my links list. That doesn't necessarily mean I support them or think they're a force for good; it's because I think there's no way around the fact that they're interesting, and as indispensable as the NOS (=Dutch BBC) if one wants to keep tabs on what's happening in the Netherlands.



There's no easy comparison to GeenStijl that I can think of in the U.S. (maybe "Fark", but not really). A lot of it is kind of juvenile 'gotcha' stuff (see 'MORE' at bottom), and their readers are, disproportionately, young men.

But to some extent, they are a news site and at times they clean the clock of the rest of the Dutch media.

The classic example is that, as far as I know, they were first to publish the full name and photo of Mohammed Bouyeri, the religious fanatic who murdered Theo van Gogh in 2004.

I also think they're STILL the only, or one of the only Dutch publications to print his full name.

Come again?

Yes, "Old" Dutch media edit the names of convicts down to first name, last initial. So while the rest of the world knows the killer's full name, Dutch think of him as "Mohammed B." Imagine if American textbooks discussed the importance of Lee Harvey O., or John Wilkes B. to U.S. history...

The Netherlands manages to rank #1 globally for press freedom almost every year, something which makes me want to claw out my eyeballs.

Police here will NEVER confirm the name of a criminal suspect, even when it can be proved by other means (so say a soccer coach is arrested on suspicion of pedophilia, and his perp walk is captured on live TV. No confirmation of the name from Dutch cops).

Courts won't release a suspect's full name, even after he's convicted (on the theory that a murderer deserves to live a normal life once he's released, and not have people he's just met prejudiced against him). In court documents, only initials are used, and sometimes they are changed to make them even more anonymous.

Dutch judges and prosecutors routinely refuse to give their first names. Recently, the Justice Ministry mooted the idea of ceasing to release their last names too, on the theory that doing so left them vulnerable to reprisals from criminals.

So imagine the bailiff announcing a case: 'all rise for the case of suspect X.Y. The honorable Judge Judge presiding. Representing the prosecution, Mr. Prosecutor. Representing the defense, Mr. Koppe.'

(an inside joke: Victor Koppe represents about 1/2 of all high profile Dutch criminal defendants at any one time).

If the freaking prosecutors and judges of a country admit they're afraid to disclose their names in public, then you know its government has no idea how to deal with organized crime. As a defendant, you might as well be facing a panel of men wearing hoods and masks. But I digress.

The "Old" Dutch media is completely willing to play along by any rule authorities throw their way. GeenStijl, on the other hand, uses a mix of common sense and uh, recklessness, in deciding how far to go. So as their name suggests, they cross the lines of good taste sometimes. A lot actually. It keeps things interesting.

I personally believe in treating everybody with respect; but would support to the ends of the earth the right of media, or ANYBODY, to criticize and parody public figures, which is a lot of what GeenStijl does.

Politicians usually know better than to get into a pissing match with a skunk. But not so Dutch ones, especially local politicians (see 'MORE').

And other public figures _ people who have "thrust themselves into the spotlight" as we would say in the U.S., often go ballistic when they get some bad press from the site. And of course it all makes for good reading.

GeenStijl's reaction to Netwerk was predictable, and similar to what they did when they got a "censure" from the Netherlands Union of Journalists (to which they don't belong): they put up a photo of a woman's backside with the words "Kiss My Ass" written on her thong bikini.

Then they provided a full transcription of their conversation with a reporter from Netwerk; on the show tonight, the presenter said that GeenStijl had declined comment on their story, which, judging by the transcript, isn't exactly true.



A classic GeenStijl moment to give an idea of the other kinds of stuff they do:

They did a writeup on this photo of two guys who stole (sorry I mean "found") a cell phone, and took a picture of themselves with it, not realizing its owner had it set up to post photos automatically to his Flickr feed.
Hilarity ensued.
The two honest finders quickly returned the phone.

The other thing that's cool about GeenStijl is that they're Internet savvy enough to give spot commentary on things that are obvious to half the population, but old media aren't brave enough to say.

For instance, a politician in Groningen was adding fake compliments to her official city website _ then tried to deny it, claiming someone was 'spoofing' her IP address.

GeenStijl pointed out that would have had to been done by a rather unique hacker, hell-bent on covertly dishing out praise to a little-known politico...


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