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

Museumnacht Hangover

(me captaining a U.S. WWII army jeep).

Museumnacht is the one night each year that most Amsterdam museums are open until late, 2 a.m. or later, and it's always a lot of fun. Unfortunately, certain people drank too much last night and are regretting it now.

Our evening began in the Verzetsmuseum (=Dutch WWII Resistance Museum) and ended up at an extremely weird (and fun) Halloween Party on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal. For those of you not familiar with Amsterdam, that means, in the Red Light District, the seediest underbelly of the city.

My head was hurting before I crawled into bed at around 6:30 a.m.; been a long time since I was out carrying on until all hours like that.

Now I have parenting duties, on a weak stomach, ugh.

Here's a quick clip of "De Fanfare van de Eerste Liefdesnacht" ('The Fanfare of Love's First Night'), a great band that performed at the Verzetsmuseum. They played authentic numbers that were popular at the time of the Dutch Liberation Day, May 5, 1945.
I'm afraid my hand wasn't very steady...


Both May 5th and Halloween hold special significance for me. MORE

Van Gogh - Letter Sketch - Loving Couple - Langlois Bridge

(vincent van gogh - the plan)
(vincent van gogh - what remains of the canvas, which he destroyed)
(vincent van gogh - a later, calmer painting from near the same spot)
(vincent van gogh - the concept once again)

The AP has a story about a nice display at the Van Gogh museum.

Basically, from the above pictures you can see the way that Van Gogh planned his compositions carefully, even though as a (post) Impressionist, he painted somewhat spontaneously at the spot. It all went wrong when he had to take the canvas back to his studio to finish, and he ended up cutting out the couple and throwing away the rest.

"With the sketch blown up to scale, the "Loving Couple" would fit perfectly onto it, matching notations of the colors van Gogh intended to use, down to the word "jaune" — French for "yellow" — on the man's hat. The canal water is emerald green, as van Gogh planned, and the woman is draped in an orange shawl. Although the path is mostly brown, rather than pink, as the artist indicated, he began with pink and then later colored on top of it."-AP

Google has the best layout on this that I've seen.

The one problem is, the story doesn't really lay the images in question side by side, or at full resolution. So I've taken the liberty.

I wonder only slightly about the copyright issues here. After all, Van Gogh's paintings and letters are surely in the public domain (?!).


By the way, tonight is Museumnacht, or "Museum Night" in Amsterdam, when all the musuems are open until 2 a.m., and I'm planning to go out and take some photos, weather permitting.

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Dutch nation wracked by Bike Light controversy

(photo:mioi)

The Dutch are in open revolt against plans thought up by some council of police chiefs to fine people for having "substandard" lights on their bikes.

Only in Holland!

Rewind a few years.

In the old days, every Dutch bike was outfitted little generator on the side of your tire that was supposed to power a little light on the front and back of your bike. (you can see one of those generators in the photo above, just below the fender).

And either the light would break, or the wires would get torn, or the generator would be too loosely pressed against the tire to work.
And if it all actually did work, then you would have to pedal about 10 times as hard as normal because the generator was pressed so hard against the side of the bike.
In any case, you'd get your hands greasy flicking the generator back and forth in the morning or evening.

So when the police first started ticketing people (EUR50 a pop) for not having working lights on their bikes (like 2001?), vendors saw a gap in the market. They started selling little battery powered lights that you could mount to your bike or better, clip on to your clothes.

These have advanced quickly over the years to become cheaper, and most of them have the option to flicker, and some are colored. Basically they've become expression of a person's individuality and freedom of choice while achieving the basic aim of not getting hit by cars.


(a short clip of bikes crossing near the Museumplein Thursday night. I've figured out how to compress videos by the way, so my page should load faster in the future.)

After the clocks were set back for Daylight Savings Time last weekend, the cops began their annual warning/ticketing campaign. But this time, for no apparent reason other than that they are fascists, the top cops said they wouldn't accept anything but unblinking lights, attached to the bike, white on the front and red on the back.

This morning, one newspaper had a story about how even some police officers were refusing to enforce the rule, and by tonight, it was the top story on the six o' clock news.

The Interior Affairs minister, Guusje ter Horst sensing that this was a stinking loser, politically, said that the country should have just one rule.

"The most important thing is that you're visible. I'm already happy if a biker has any kind of light."

Victory!
(photo: sindandune)
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Joma Sison: He Did It Mao's Way

Jose Maria Sison.

For decades, when "communist" was the worst thing the United States could say about someone, he was a communist. Now that "terrorist" is the worst thing the U.S. can say about someone, he's a terrorist.

Without labels, and indisputably: he's an intellectual ally and source of inspiration for the 9,000 soldiers still fighting for a communist revolution in the Philippines, a country of 90 million people.

He suffered for his cause, class struggle, while many others have suffered worse be-cause of it. Who but the impoverished people of the Philippines can say whether Sison represents (some of) them? Or whether they see "revolutionary taxes" as mere extortion?

The Philippines has a bloody history, thanks in part to its best and worst friend, the United States. I wonder whether Sison's conscience ever troubles him about his role in it all.

At any rate, I think he still has a part to play on the world's stage, and I felt it was my duty to interview him.

I could write 5,000 words about the contradictions and ironies of an American reporter interviewing Sison in the Netherlands.

But in summary, life's strange mutations brought two people of radically different world views to the same spot, far from our respective homes, to play our respective roles.

Superficially, he probably sees me as a numbskull, or ignorant; and I told him I see him in part as an anachronism.

The truth is more complicated.

Anyhow, I filmed a brief fragment of the interview, and here it is.

He's saying that since his (most recent) release from prison, he's "been up to good things."





And here, a special treat for anyone who kept reading past the "jump."

This is a sound clip from Sison's website, nestled among the protest songs, of him singing "I Did It My Way." With a lyric or two tweaked.

Sinatra he's not; but you certainly can't accuse him of not having a sense of humor.

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Hufterproof ("jerk-proof") bus stop destroyed. Jerks suspected.

(photo:algemeen dagblad)
"Hufters" have destroyed one of the Netherlands' new "Hufter proof" bus stops.
"Hufter" means something like jerk, or anti-social. In this case, it really means, juvenile delinquents.

The bus stops were installed to great fanfare on Oct. 12 in the town of Maasdam. That's part of Binnenmaas. That's part of Holland.

Saturday night, the destroyers stacked some kind of kindling in one, soaked it in gasoline, and burnt it to the ground.

(photo:nieuws.nl)

If I read the website of manufacturer "Havadi" correctly, the bus stops were made of styrofoam, and covered with some kind of special fiberglass resin to repel graffiti. The side doors were of plexiglass.

It could only be burned by a fire of 500 degrees centigrade. The paper said.

"We never said that they couldn't be broken," spokesman Erik Franc told Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad. "When you say something like that, you just provoke the youth."


Actually, the company's website pretty clearly claims to have developed "hufterproof" bus stops.

"The first "hufterproof" bus stops were placed in Binnenmaas on Oct. 12. The police of this municipality went crazy on the bus stop with rocks and baseball bats and it withstood the trial with great success!"

So, to their credit, they did use "smart" quotation marks around the word "hufterproof."
On the other hand, company employees also appeared saying the bus stops were invincible on youth television program "BNN."
(nieuws.nl)

According to the paper, now Havadi is going to try adding a fireproof material.
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Back to School: Omnia Vanitas or Omnis Vanitas?

Flurtissimo:

Your Asterix and Obelix comic was right of course, the quote from the Vulgate bible (Ecclesiastes) is: "Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas," famously translated in the King James Bible as "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

Lots of people don't like that translation anymore because the Elizabethan (okay, Jamesean) era language has drifted away from modern usage.

Wikipedia:

The word translated senseless, הבל (hevel), literally means vapor, breath. Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) uses it metaphorically, and its precise meaning is extensively debated. Older English translations often render it 'vanity'. Because in modern usage this word has often come to mean "self-pride," losing its Latinate connotation of emptiness, some translators have abandoned it. Other translations include empty, futile, meaningless, absurd, fleeting or senseless. Some translations use the literal rendering 'vapor of vapors' and so claim to leave the interpretation to the reader.

I actually like the King James version.
But leave it to a pretentious punk like me to challenge the vulgate Latin!

*Flashback to school*

(Monty Python: Romani ite domum!)



I learned a little Latin (little Latin, less Greek) in college, and as the saying goes, 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.'

Latin is leaving out the verbs, which should be "Vanitas vanitatum (est), omnia vanitas (sunt)."

I've got no quarrel with the first part, 'Vanity is made up of vanities.'

But focus in on the second phrase, "Omnia vanitas (sunt)."

For "omnia" _ "all things" _ to be the subject, it has to be neuter plural (see table at the very bottom of the post if you're interested). But if that's true, and it's the subject, shouldn't the last word ("vanitas") also be neuter plural? Because it ain't.

Here's some Latin grammar page I pulled up:

The verb “to be” (“sum”) is such a verb. It merely couples the subject with some other noun, or an adjective. For example, “Catherine is the queen (noun)” or, “Catherine is old (adjective).” Hence “sum” is called a COPULATIVE VERB. The nouns and adjectives that are coupled to the subject are called PREDICATE NOMINATIVES, to distinguish them from the typical nominative, the subject of the sentence. When you translate, make sure that the adjective on one side of the copulative verb “sum” is the same gender, number, and case as the noun on the other side. For instance, “Femina est antiqua”; “vir est antiquus; “feminae sunt antiquae.”

So if Omnia is the subject it should "agree" in number and gender with the form of "vanity" that you use.

If it were Omnis Vanitas, as I put it, no problem: "All is Vanity."

But Omnia Vanitas seems to say "All things (plural) IS Vanity (singular)."

Where I come from, you have to say "All thing ARE Vanity."

To make them both plural, it would need to be "Omnia Vanitatia"
or at least "Omnes Vanitates"??

In sum, I don't get it.

This is why I was never that good in Latin.

Latinists out there? Have I discovered a huge error in the Vulgate bible that millions of people have overlooked all these years?

I have the sneaking suspicion the answer is: no.

Maybe "all things" can be considered to be some kind of group single. Like: The United States IS big.

Or maybe it's some "Church Latin" thing. I hate church Latin.

At any rate, I'm damn well not going to change it on my web page until somebody explains to me why I'm wrong.

I will be once again amazed at the power of the Internet if that actually happens.



***

As a footnote, I came across a nice Disraeli quote while trying to figure this out.

"There is a great mistake in the Vulgate. . .the Latin
translation of the Holy Scriptures, and that is that instead
of saying “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” – Vanitas
vanitatum, omnia vanitas, the wise and witty king (Solomon)
really said, Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas. Gentlemen,
it is impossible to overrate the importance of the
subject. After all, the first consideration of a
Minister should be the health of the people."

-Benjamin Disraeli, 1872.

(Here are the tables, sorry if they're not displaying correctly. I tried)

Declension of omnis, omnis, omne

masculine feminine neuter

(singular)

nominative omnis omnis omne
genitive omnis omnis omnis
dative omni omni omni
accusative omnem omnem omne
ablative omni omni omni

(plural)

nominative omnes omnes omnia
genitive omnium omnium omnium
dative omnibus omnibus omnibus
accusative omnes omnes omnia
ablative omnibus omnibus omnibus


Unfortunately, I had to do the declension of Vanitas (-atis 3f., a regular noun). myself, since I can't find it on the web. The masculine/feminine nominative plural is Vanitates, and the neuter is Vanitatia.

Masculine/Feminine Neuter

Nominative: Vanitas Vanitas
Genitive: Vanitatis Vanitatis
Dative: Vanitati Vanitati
Accusative: Vanitatem Vanitatem
Ablative: Vanitati Vanitati
(plural)
Nominative: Vanitates Vanitatia
Genitive: Vanitatium Vanitatium
Dative: Vanitatibus Vanitatibus
Accusative: Vanitates Vanitatia
Ablative: Vanitatibus Vanitatibus

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Vanity prompts Journalists to Blog

(photo:zen)
An interesting article in The Observer, saying that basically the reason journalists are keeping or launching blogs is to promote themselves as a brand apart from their organizations.

True of me? I have several reasons for doing this:
First, to be able to talk a little bit about things other than stuff I can write about professionally. But I don't think it would work if a lot of people were looking here (it averages about 20 hits a day, about half Dutch and half U.S. or British visitors). So a little bit of a creative outlet.
Second, to communicate with people other than my friends and family about what I'm doing, and maybe reap some criticism or suggestions. In other words, looking for some feedback, but I'm not getting much of that either. (I'm thankful, though, for what I do get!).
Third, as a partial "record" _ links _ to some of what I'm doing professionally, so that it's collected in one place and doesn't totally disappear into the ether.
Fourth, self-education, especially about the technology. Tinkering with the HTML, editing clips, learning to take photos, etc.

All of those reasons are vain at some level. But then, Omnis Vanitas.

But as far as "personal branding" _ not so much. I intentionally avoid mentioning my employer here, in order to make it clear this is something separate. I'm pretty sure I'd be nowhere as a journalist without a big organization behind me, and my value to my employer is as an 'anonymous' hard worker; and I can't imagine an inherently self-limiting (see: Dylan posts) blog would make a difference in that regard.

Anyway, I think I'll always be employable *somewhere* after 9 years working for "the wires."

(photo: meredith_farmer)

In more vanity news,
I'm the new secretary of the BPV, de Buitenlandse Persvereiniging, also known as the Netherlands' Foreign Press Association.

***

Alleen voor de nederlanders:

hier te lezen op: "Villa Media" De Journalist. Tien woorden, en ze hebben een typefoutje gemaakt in mijn naam.

De Buitenlandse Persvereniging (BPV) in Nederland heeft een nieuw bestuur. Tijdens de algemene ledenvergadering werd verkozen tot voorzitter de Duitse correspondente Kerstin Schweighöfer (werkzaam voor FOCUS, DEUTSCHLANDFUNK en ARD-radio’s). Vice-voorzitter is de Zwitserse Elsbeth Gugger (Zwitserse Publieke Omroep Radio DRS, Tages-Anzeiger). De Amerikaan Toby Sperling (AP) is de nieuwe BPV-secretaris. Zijn landgenoot Douglas Heingartner (New York Times, The Economist) blijft penningmeester. En de Roemeense Claudia Marcu (Roemeense Publieke Radio) zorgt ook in 2008 voor de ledenadministratie. Verder zitten in het bestuur de Russische journalist Andrei Poskakukhin (RIA Novosti) en zijn Spaanse collega Isabel Ferrer (El País).

Hahahahaha ten minste niet "Toby Sperming."

Trouwens, ik ben ook nu een keer in de maand te hooren op "Desmet Live," 747AM of www.desmetlive.nl. Een segment over buitenlandse correspondenten in Nederland. Omgeveer 6uur, eerstevolgende zijn 13 november en 4 december.


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