Dutch Nanny State, Muslims and Media

(martin q)

I saw a news story today on NOS that said a Dutch company that is paid to check up on people who falsely claim that they're sick has launched overseas operations.

So now they're checking up on people who call in sick while on vacation.

At first I thought the most amazing thing about this story was the implication that it's possible to call in sick while on vacation. Then I thought the most amazing thing is that there is a company in the Netherlands whose main function is to check up on whether workers are lying when they call in sick. Like professional narcs.

Well, those parts of the story are definitely true (you can call in sick while on vacation here in order not to waste any of your 25 days; the company that's made a business out of busting cheats is called VCC Groep).

It reminded me of another recent story that Dutch schools have started posting truancy officers ('leerplichtambtenaren') at Schiphol airport two days before the start of summer vacation to make sure that parents weren't sneaking their kids out of school early to avoid the crowds.

(heroiclife)

Anyway it turns out the NOS story was actually a derivative version of a slightly more interesting story in my favorite paper De Telegraaf(Dutch).

What a different impression we take away when we read the Telegraaf version:

"AMSTERDAM _ Special for Dutch employees of Moroccan and Turkish heritage, a new service is being set up to check up on those who call in sick during their vacations in those countries.

(akbar simonse)

"By calling in sick with a false doctor's declaration at the end of their vacation in Morocco or Turkey, they are able to milk out extra days in the sun for weeks at a time, healthy but paid. The doctor declares that the employee can't travel because of illness."

"It's striking that it happens primarily with Dutch of Moroccan and Turkish origin," says director Paul Chaillet of VCC Groep. ... "Usually a visit to the doctor who gave the false declaration is enough to get it retracted. But you do need to have a person there."

...

"The company primarily concerns itself with cleaners and production workers who 'arrange' a longer vacation."

I guess the text pretty much speaks for itself.

Personally, I've always been fascinated with the phenomenon of apparently healthy 'white' Dutch who don't work because they've been able (I guess) to swing a doctor's excuse but continue to draw their salary.

(photochiel)

Every day, summer or winter, I see well-dressed white people relaxing in the cafes or doorways reading their newspapers with a coffee as I bike to work, and I think, "what do they do?"

Can we have a story about that, please, Telegraaf?
(comicbase)
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Hell Hath No Fury Like A Journalist Prematurely Ejaculated!

(glutnix)

Telegraaf story translated from Dutch:

"Tribunal Throws Journalists Out"

The Hague _ The Yugoslavia Tribunal caused a great deal of outrage among the amassed international press that flocked there Wednesday by forcing the journalists out of the building a half an hour after the end of the press conference held by Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz.

Journalists without an office in The Hague who hadn't finished their stories went as a result, in poor spirits, to sit on the grass field on Churchhill square in front of the tribunal building.

Reporters from press agencies with fixed work places in the tribunal, such as AFP, ANP and Reuters, were forced to leave too.

At other international organizations, when they host a news event of global proportions, it is customary to offer journalists appropriate facilities to do their work.



Do I know anybody who got thrown out today and was sorely aggrieved? No comment...

hehehehehehehehe

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Dutch Culture Wars II - KLM the 'appeasers'

(flickr: darkpatator)

De Telegraaf reports that on a KLM flight from Istanbul to Amsterdam recently, a Muslim woman asked if the (Dutch) non-Muslim man sitting next to her could be moved to another seat.

There was another (better) seat open, so they moved him.

That's the story.

You might think: why is it news when an airline does a small courtesy to a woman traveling alone? You'd be missing the nuance. This is pure appeasement, proof that creeping Islamism is on the brink of destroying Dutch society!

De Telegraaf's headline reads "KLM Bows To Muslim Sex[ist] Demand"

The story drew more than 900 comments on De Telegraaf's website _ about a third of them so venomous that they had to be removed. The first comment that wasn't censored, the fifth, reads:

"Yeah, just wait a little longer and we will only be able to do what our Muslim brothers and sisters say we can. We just have to adjust in our own country."

That sets the tone. Comment after comment rails about the impending Islamic state in the Netherlands, the outrageousness of the woman's request, religion is stupid, this is the world upside down, etc., etc.



But just look at the story closely and it falls apart.

(bogers)

The only way we even know it happened at all is that the guy who changed seats, Lex van Drooge, happens to be a politician for the Christian Democrat party in Amsterdam.

More on that in a moment.

Funny enough, it's not clear whether he is sure it happened at all. He says he didn't speak a word to the woman he was next to and at first didn't know why the flight attendant asked him to move. "Later it emerged that this was at the request of my original neighbor with a headscarf," the paper quoted him saying. (A headscarf, the horror! We know what *that* means. What kind of backward people would wear a headscarf?)



But:
-He doesn't actually say her objection was religious _ he just suggests it.
-No other passengers noticed the incident.
-KLM staff say they don't know about it either.

A KLM spokesperson quoted in the story says their seating change policy is that if someone wants a change, flight attendants accommodate them when possible, and otherwise not. (sure sounds true to my experience). No special Muslims policy.

Lex van Drooge is also quoted saying he 'telephoned around' and no one else has heard of this kind of thing happening on other airlines, not even Turkish ones.

I believe the incident did happen in some form, so I'm not questioning Van Drooge's word per se.

But as a critical person you have to look at the situation:

1) Van Drooge is an opposition politician in left-leaning Amsterdam. He has something to gain by playing up this story. It didn't make its way into the paper without his help. (THINK, people!).

(CDA Amsterdam website)

2) Is it not possible that the woman didn't want to sit next to Drooge for some other reason? One person can take a dislike to another without exchanging a word _ it happens all the time.

(bs70)

So maybe she used religion as an excuse for having him moved; or maybe Drooge just assumed it was a question of religion.

***

My main interest in this story is really the double whammy of the incendiary way De Telegraaf cast it, and the nastiness of the reactions by the paper's readers.

On the readers: so many of them are concerned with Muslim intolerance and saying that Muslims should conform to 'Dutch' ways or not travel here.

But this didn't happen on the cheese train in Gouda. It happened on a flight between Istanbul and Amsterdam.

Turn the plane around, look in the mirror, and ask, why is this such a big deal?

Substitute "Catholic nun asks not to sit next to man on flight" for "Muslim woman," and I don't think anyone would have raised an eyebrow.



The defensiveness and over-reaction to a small perceived affront to Dutch culture is a sign of insecurity.

How DARE she tell us what to do! Why do WE have to be considerate to a foreigner in OUR country! Not fair!

Where's the sense of perspective here?

At one Dutch company I know of, they don't serve karnemelk (buttermilk) for lunch when Japanese guests are attending. Accommodating foreigners in this way is not a sign Dutch culture is about to collapse in the face of a Japanese onslaught.

On the contrary, making a small sacrifice for foreign visitors is usually considered 'nice,' or 'being polite'. I wish De Telegraaf's readers would try that thought out for a change.



On De Telegraaf: the use of the words "Bow" and "Demand" in the headline are unfair and indefensible, as far as I can see.

As in the previous two stories, the reporting is one-sided in the most basic sense of the word: no Muslim is quoted, let alone the "complainers."

One final thought on De Telegraaf. You'd think that a paper that was "wrong" in WWII would be a little more careful about slinging around accusations of "appeasement."
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EUR500,000 for Hot Eel Sex!

(photo:deceunickan)

According to De Telegraaf (Dutch), Scientists from the University of Leiden have received a EUR500,000 subsidy to try to breed eel commercially in the harbor of Volendam, near Amsterdam.

Thank goodness!

So why do I care?

Many people may not realize just how exciting and mysterious the sex lives of eel is. Are. Species-wise.
(loupiote, website www.loupiote.com)


For centuries people tried to figure out the life cycle of eel. It turns out to be extremely weird. Eel breeding grounds are way out in the Sargasso Sea _ exact location still unknown.

They start out as little larvae that inch their way across the bottom of the Atlantic until they reach the European coastline as glass eel ('leptocephalus', or 'light-heads'). These then head inland, going up rivers and turning into the freshwater 'yellow' eel that lots of Dutch people love to eat.
And a few tourists like to eat them too. But I digress.

They swim upriver and grow, and as adults, swim back out to the sea, where their eyes grow huge and they flatten out, becoming sea eel. They head back to the Sargasso to make sexy time.

So far, there's not any way of reproducing this cycle in a laboratory.

"Eel fisheries are still dependent on wild glass eel," prof. Arjan Palstra told the paper.

They scoop 'em up on the coast _ sometimes for stunning prices _ and then fatten them in controlled conditions to keep eel on the supermarket shelves and in restaurants.

"If we can get the process of breeding them going, then we'll be independent of nature and we can maybe even start releasing eel back into the wild," Palstra said.

To put it mildly, European Eel (anguilla anguilla) populations have collapsed. In a world where we hear lots of scare stories about fish populations falling, the eel stands out: with no way to breed them in captivity who knows what may happen.

So I bid the researchers/entrepreneurs good luck and godspeed.

(su-lin)

Unagi, my absolute favorite fish dish.
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Allochtonen enter Free at Zwarte Cross Metal/Motorcross Concert

How cool is this?

The organizers of the Zwarte Cross heavy metal and motocross festival have offered to allow any "allocthonen" enter free.

Definition of Allocthoon here.

This is, let it be understood, a festival that appeals predominantly to "white" Dutch, the primary consumers of metal music, motocross, and beer in this fair land.

I distinctly recall images of young Dutch men and women, uh, rolling around in the mud in liplocks at this festival last year.



The press release:

"Under the motto 'if only all of Holland was so hospitable', the Zwarte Cross festival is fighting the hardening .... of public debate around integration and minorities." This is "a funny, positive action to give some perspective against figures like Geert W(ilders) and Rita V(erdonk)."

The press release says all you have to do is show a foreign passport to get free entry. I guess that means I qualify as an American?

Telegraaf article.(Dutch)


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Lunatic in the Netherlands takes whole "pitfall" idea a little too far

(photo: traugott/ De Telegraaf)
Some lunatic has been digging pits in a Dutch forest and lining them with spikes.

International Herald Tribune story.

A passer-by alerted police after finding a pit 1.5 meters (5 feet) deep and 80 centimeters (2 1/2 feet) wide in Helden's Forest near the southern city of Venlo on Sunday.

It had been camouflaged with leaves and at the bottom were 25 steel spikes ranging from 15-30 centimeters (6-12 inches) in length, fixed in a concrete block, police spokeswoman Nicole Theun said.

"We've never seen anything like this before — I don't think anybody in the Netherlands has," Theun said. "It's out of a horror movie."

-Associated Press



According to De Telegraaf (Dutch), a month ago a man was injured by a similar trap.

The paper quotes an expert as saying "this must be the work of a psychopath."

"This is not a joke any more _ children could fall into this," said Cees Meijer of Consumers and Safety.

Put yourself in the mind of the person(s) that did this for a minute: if he were targeting someone in particular, he had a very small chance of actually getting him or her in this way, so that can't be the aim.

If he was targeting a class of people: why? In any case it couldn't be bikers or motorcyclists, as some Dutch media have suggested, because if they rode into the pit, they'd just be thrown over the handlebars.

If it's just a joke, it has obviously gone too far.

In every scenario, it's an insane amount of work and planning to fix the spikes in concrete, lug it out there, dig a pit that deep, and then cover it up.

The chance of getting caught would be much less if he would just go shoot random people in the woods...



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Salah Edin vs. Geert Wilders

(Mohammed Bouyeri, photo: AD.nl)

(Salah Edin, photo: hiphop.nl)


An intriguing sidelight to the ongoing Geert Wilders / Fitna story:

In the "initial release" of Fitna last month, Wilders included a number of images and multimedia clips that apparently he didn't have the rights to, including one of the famous Danish cartoons that caused riots two years ago.

Wilders apologized to the cartoonist, who accepted his apology, and Wilders has since replaced the cartoon. However, he won't settle a second case quite so easily.

He included _ he says by accident _ a photo of a Dutch rapper, Salah Edin in the film. Edin is incorrectly identified as "Mohammed B.," a.k.a. Mohammed Bouyeri, the murderer of Theo van Gogh.

On its face that's libelous _ but there's a twist.

Salah Edin, who attempts to project an image as a serious hiphop artist challenging racism in Holland, had taken a photo of himself done up as much as possible to resemble the most famous known picture of Bouyeri. He used it on the cover of his album "The Netherlands' Greatest Nightmare."

the fact that Edin was trying to look like Bouyeri doesn't lessen his copyright on the photo, or force him to allow it to be put to use for propaganda purposes by Wilders. But it does make it easier to understand how Wilders could have made the mistake.

It also raises the question of how much damage the mix-up could have done to Edin's reputation, if he was consciously trying to resemble Bouyeri.

He wants EUR25,000 in compensation, peanuts in the U.S. but it would be an unusually large award in Holland.



According to De Telegraaf newspaper, at a hearing Monday Wilders' lawyer Patrice Katz mocked Edin for pretending to be a "goody two-shoes" when he projects a violent image.

After the photo incident, Edin told De Pers newspaper that Wilders 'doesn't deserve a bullet in the head, but two in his knees would be a good start.' (paraphrased).

Edin's lawyer said that "Edin's face is now remembered by millions of people as that of the murderer of Theo van Gogh."

Wilders has removed the photo from the updated version of the film and is "in talks" on sending a correction to newspapers and press agencies.

If I were Wilders, I would just pay.

Assuming I had EUR25K, that is...

Verdict is due April 17.

Full article in Dutch:

Article in Dutch
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New Years Eve attack in Rotterdam foiled?

(photo: miriam mannak)

Another day, another massive front page story by De Telegraaf somewhat spoiled by an outright denial.

The gospel truth is that three men were arrested in Rotterdam on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack.

De Telegraaf was way, way ahead of the pack, reporting in this morning's paper _ on the basis of anonymous sources _ that the attack was targeting Rotterdam's landmark Erasmus bridge.

However, after the men were arraigned today, prosecutors released the following statement:

"The suggestion in De Telegraaf this morning that the possible violent act was supposedly directed at the New Year's party in Rotterdam was fabricated out of thin air."

After the escaped gorilla story, you have to wonder what De Telegraaf _ the largest daily in the country _ is doing.

I wonder if this could be related to the latest data out today showing all major daily papers losing more subscribers (though declines were smaller this time).

Anyhow, watch out for those anonymice!
(photo: alBaqir)

(huees)

That said, it's too bad to hear that the Dutch secret service thinks there are people out there trying to mount an attack. Just when things appeared to be cooling down a little in this country...

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Bokito Bezerk! Gorilla Goes Gonzo Again!

(photo:mrs. jolanda)

This is certainly the way to sell newspapers.

But was that banner headline and massive spread on the front page of Saturday's edition of De Telegraaf a tad too tabloid?

Bokito escaped from the Rotterdam Zoo in May and mauled a woman who was convinced she had a psychic connection with the ape. She had spent hours staring at him from behind the glass-walled indoor part of his enclosure, which primate experts say the 400-pound gorilla interpreted as provocation.

When a tiger got out and killed a young man in San Francisco last week, De Telegraaf decided it needed to do a follow-up story on Bokito.

The teaser:

"The Gorilla Bokito went crazy again when he saw his victim Yvonne de Horde for the first time after his escape at Rotterdam's "Happy Village Animal Nursery" in May. The woman, from Zoetermeer, has now had two meetings with the silverback since the attack."

The story quoted De Horde's husband describing the first meeting between Yvonne and Bokito.

Bokito "went completely crazy. He ran outside and Yvonne was in a panic, scared to death that he would attack her again. She wanted only one thing, and that was to flee the zoo as fast as possible. She squeezed my hand very hard with her broken fingers, but because of the adrenaline, she didn't even feel the pain."

-Gerrit de Horde, as quoted by De Telegraaf.

According to the story, her psychologist had recommended that she confront her attacker, but "in retrospect it wasn't such a good idea," De Horde said.

The story didn't mention when this all happened, but I think we can safely say it wasn't recently.

Later Saturday, zoo director Ton Dorresteijn confirmed the woman did return to the zoo twice, but gutted the rest of the Telegraaf story.

"It's possible that she caught a glipse of his back, but Bokito definitely hasn't seen her, much less gone crazy," Dorresteijn said, adding that
"This is really a canard, a straight-up monkey business story."

Bokito's quarters were altered after the escape, making it impossible for him to see people in the inside part of his enclosure. They can't make eye contact with him anywhere, and can only see him directly from outside, across a great distance.

(elke)



De Telegraaf decided to brazen it out in their Sunday edition: they didn't publish any correction. Instead they made a short acknowledgement of Dorresteijn's contradiction and stood by their story. They made the (justifiable) counter-accusation that Dorresteijn had tried to downplay the gravity of Bokito's initial escape back in May.

In addition, they ran a new story repeating their version of events, and asking psychologists what they thought of it all.

"The concept that new confrontation is good for working through a trauma is a false one," said Jeffery Wijnberg, house psychologist for De Telegraaf. "It's a simplistic way of looking and the phenomenon of trauma processing. She went back to (Bokito), but the danger hadn't receded. Her fear that he could escape again and get at her, is definitely not irrational. It can happen. They said it couldn't happen the first time and it did."

(another swipe at Dorresteijn).

He questioned whether it was even necessary for her to 'get over' her trauma.
"Because of Bokito's earlier attack she has developed a strong reflex to stay away from dangerous animals ... it would be a good idea for her to avoid zoos and to develop a new hobby," he said.

(kwispeltail)

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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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