If you don’t vote the way we want, we can toss you out of your office and out of the building, even if you’re an assemblywoman!

Well, I’ve just read the Concept-nota Strandbeleid 2008 (versie 17 april 2008).
Besides wrecking the beach side by rebuilding the boulevard with a horrible diagonal sea wall and a main bus terminus in the middle of it, as well as destroying the allready bad parking situation by reducing the number of parking slots from 1020 to 650 (!) and making some parking garage owner rich as Croesses, compounded by fucking up traffic in the back streets of Scheveningen by having a one way street over the boulevard, they are now also going to redistribute the current beach side allotments because they don’t think it’s fair to potential new business owners that the only way they can get in as a new business is when an old business sells it to them. Can you smell corruption? I can! Not only this, but the new places have to follow ‘quality guidelines’. Who’s quality you ask? Well the people who built one of the most terrible, useless pieces of architecture in The Hague – The city hall. Which wasn’t large enough to fit all the people that needed to work in it.

Not only this, but there’s supposed to be links you can find more information on the plan about but they don’t show you anything about the plans.

The last person I know of to complain about the system has allready had his allotment rescinded for daring to speak out about these corrupt beaurocrats.

Toen ik het volgende las brak mijn klomp:

“In de huidige situatie betekent dit evenwel dat een nieuwe ondernemer alleen een exploitatie op het
strand kan beginnen door overname van een contract van een “zittende” strandexploitant. Dit gebeurt
incidenteel, het gaat slechts om enkele exploitaties per jaar.”…
“Het huidige beleid biedt onvoldoende transparantie en onvoldoende mogelijkheden voor potentiële
nieuwe ondernemers om een exploitatie op het strand te verkrijgen. Een meer zakelijke benadering van
het uitgiftebeleid van strandexploitaties is noodzakelijk. De gemeente zal daartoe overgaan tot heruitgifte van de strandexploitaties. Een meer marktconforme benadering staat hierin centraal.”

En waarom is het wenselijk om diegenen die het strand gemaakt hebben wat het is hun vergunning te ontnemen? Welke ‘nieuwe ondernemer’ heeft de wethouder zoveel geld in zijn broek gestopt dat die niet kan wachten totdat hij aan de beurt komt om een strandtent (of groep strandtenten) te kopen?

En die ‘kwaliteitsslag’ die overal in de nota vernoemdt wordt – wie besluit er wat ‘kwaliteit’ is? Is het niemand opgevallen dat er een heel stuk meer ‘kwaliteit’ is op het strand, zonder geneuzel van de gemeente? Moet alles generiek naar wens van diezelfde mensen die het ijspaleis neerzette worden?

Daarbij wil ik mevr. Verhaar svp vragen hoe het komt dat u durft commentaar te geven terwijl u de nota niet heeft gelezen of enig idee hebt wat de huidige regelgeving is? Is het u niet opgevallen dat sinds de strandtenten ander eten dan patat serveren en leuke muziek spelen het een stuk drukker en gezelliger is geworden op Scheveningen? En ‘s-avonds bij de afgelegen stukken van het Zwarte Pad bijv. – wie is er om het geluid te horen en er overlast van het hebben? Mocht u rust zoeken dan is er altijd nog het zuiderstrand, Wassenaar, Kijkduin, Noordwijk, wat u maar wilt? Moet u het zo nodig verpesten voor mensen die het op hun manier leuk willen hebben op het strand?

James Hall, head of the British Identity and Passport Service has come out and condemned centralised databases and expressed doubt at the ability of the government to adequately secure your personal data. The conservatives are allready suggesting keeping the data in seperate databases. This is a much, much better solution, as each acces to each database can be controlled, meaning there is less potential for misuse as well as less chance of all your data being compromised in one time.

Apparently the entry requirements for the US will require an electronic registration with the US government at least 3 days before travel. El Reg is there.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/03/us_visa_scheme/.

Keep in mind this is on top of the anal probe, DNA swipe, taking of fingerprints, retinal scan, drug use inquiry and all the other fun stuff potentially awaiting you at the US border *as a citizen of an allied country*. WTF?

On April 13, Reuters reported the following from Riyadh:

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah said he had ordered some new oil discoveries left untapped to preserve oil wealth in the world’s top exporter for future generations…

“When there were some new finds, I told them, ‘no, leave it in the ground, with grace from god, our children need it’,” King Abdullah said…

Saudi production capacity stands at around 11.3 million bpd, and is scheduled to rise to 12.5 million bpd next year.

The King’s remarks seem to confirm a statement made last year by Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi who, when asked “How high can your production go?” replied, “We’ll get to 12.5 million barrels a day and then we’ll see.”

If the Saudi announcement was a bombshell, American nearly newspapers ignored it. We decided to canvass experts we respect to see what they thought.

Official URL Link

Prince William knows how to be King – flying his RAF Chinook to stag parties and his RAF Hawk fighter jet to get a change of clothes. Hell yeah! If I was a royal I’d be doing it too – props and respect mate!

Radio Reg Few stories in computing history come close to matching the tale of Zelenograd – the Soviet Union’s attempt at creating something along the lines of Silicon Valley.

Episode 15 of Semi-Coherent Computing recounts the tale of Zelenograd’s founding along with the stories of the two US-born Russian spies behind the city. No one knows this history better than Steven Usdin, the author of Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley, who was kind enough to appear on the show. (You’ll find Usdin’s web site here and can buy the book on Amazon or from Yale Press here.)

I first saw Usdin talk about Zelenograd at a Computer History Museum event and was beyond enthralled by the story. It involves two US communist engineers who worked on top secret projects for US military contractors during World War II and funneled their technology secrets over to the Soviets. Eventually, these lads made their way to the Soviet Union where they started work on, among other things, the first Soviet made PC and even a desktop fab for producing chips.

Along the way, the spies tear apart families and then reunite them. They enjoy Khrushchev’s blessing and then struggle to deal with Brezhnev’s fury. They make a mockery of the FBI and parts of the Soviet way of life.

Amazing stuff.

This show is just the first part of my interview with Usdin. We’ll be running the second part next week.

Sincere apologies to everyone for being so slack getting up a fresh program. I vow to be more consistent in the months ahead.

Enjoy.

Official URL Link

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — A U.S.-based human rights group said China dramatically boosted small-arms sales to Sudan as violence escalated in Darfur. Beijing denied the group’s report on Friday.

The report released Thursday by Human Rights First said China is the biggest supplier of small arms to Sudan. It provided 90 percent of all the African nation’s small arms acquisitions between 2004 and 2006, totaling more than $50 million.

China ramped up its small-arms supply to Sudan almost fivefold in 2004 as others cut back to comply with a U.N. arms embargo, according to data Sudan provided to the United Nations.

Small arms such as assault rifles are the most common weapon used in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and about 2.5 million people displaced in five years of fighting between African rebels and government troops allied with Arab militia known as janjaweed.

Official URL Link

“Since 1830, the House has met behind closed doors only three times,”according to the Congressional Research Service: “in 1979 to discussthe Panama Canal, in 1980 to discuss Central American assistance, andin 1983 to discuss U.S. support for paramilitary operations inNicaragua.”

On March 13, the House went into secret session once more to considerclassified matters concerning the Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceAct. After some extended discussion of the unusual practice, followedby a security check, public access to the proceedings was barred.

Official URL

Thirty pages into a memorandum discussing the legal boundaries of military interrogations in 2003, senior Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo tackled a question not often asked by American policymakers: Could the president, if he desired, have a prisoner’s eyes poked out?

Washington Post Link

A £1,000 reward has been posted for the fingerprints of Prime Minster Gordon Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, both of whom, claim perpetrators No2ID and Privacy International, are “wanted identity felons”. In a campaign Wanted Poster the campaign groups claim that their plan to “steal the fingerprints of the entire British population… will be the identity theft crime of the century.”

Official Register Link

This is simply incredible to me: The Drudge Report knowingly goes and endanges British troops and a member of the royal family by reporting where he is in Afghanistan. Obviously the UK now has to pull him out before attacks increase in such scale that there is no defending anyone in that area. So not only have the morons at Drudge endangered lives, but also thwarted what little possibilities Harry had at living a normal life, at doing his job the way he is trained and supposed to do.
Every other media outlet, including Reuters, allready knew Harry was there, but had made an agreement to not disclose it untill after his deployment. Given lives are at stake here, that seems reasonable.
Now in the linked article, you have so called reporters calling this disgraceful. Trying to keep a high value target safe is called backroom politics. I have this idea they are confusing their ‘right to know’ with a blatant disregard for humanity. These are the type of reporters who think it’s perfectly acceptable for them to push and stand in front of you and take pictures or notes. Reporters have a right to report what they see – as one of the public. They are not some kind of elite who have a right to be where ever they stick their grimly noses. They get to go where we get to go or where they’re invited. And because they do spread their experiences, with the right to write about what they see comes also the obligation of being responsible with what they write.
This was irresponsible and disgusting.

Which means parties such as the RIAA or Brein. An incredible win for freedom and privacy!

Yes, apart from telling Canada it thinks the bit Canada is claiming is Neutral Waters (even though the US aren’t signatories of the Sea Law treaties), they are now sending their very own Coast Guard cutter over there to map out the seabed and see if they can’t also imagine up an underwater ridge connecting the US to the North Pole.
This trip was planned three years ago, they’re saying. Really.

Getting busy up there.

Here goes the next claimant: Denmark, acting in the interests of Greenland is now claiming the North Pole oil reserves.

You see, they, just like Russia have just discovered an arctic ridge linking their country to the Pole.

Canada isn’t taking this lying down either of course. They’re now sending 900 rangers to the pole as well, making that 2 military bases the Canadians have on the roof of the world.

And besides Putin dropping flags on the North Pole seabed and claiming the Pole is connected to Russia through an underwater ridge (see Putin on the Warpath), now Canada is running for it’s claim by putting an underwater ship base thing down, to the anger of the US who says it’s in “neutral waters”.

People are estimating around 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil is lying under the pole.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin has just stepped out of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), limiting the maximal amount of conventional weaponry that is allowed by both sides. This is his reaction to the US Anti-Ballistic Missile system (ABM) sheild as well as his petulance at NATO not ratifying some changes to the CFE.

In a near-silmoutaneous way to gaurantee friendship with the west, he’s also claimed the North Pole, with all attendant exploitation rights. This because he has a team of scientists who say the the Motherland is connected to the pole by an underwater ridge.

Yes, this man was fabulous. Recently I’ve taken (parts of) two of his speeches to heart:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

The Churchill centre has quite a few of his speeches and quotes in text form.

Earthstation1 has them in audio form – magnificent and powerfull stuff from IMHO one of the greatest statesmen of all time. (but in real audio format)

Freeinfo society has a great collection of a whole load of mp3 versions of great speeches made through time.

Thankfully some people in high political positions are still able to see sense. The DPP is accusing the government of scare mongering and increasing control over the populace with no good reason. He says he fears the downfall of the rule of law, and that the ‘war on terror’ is a construct that doesn’t exist.

Documents have come to light showing how the then French PM, Guy Mollet, approached the then British PM, Sir Anthony Eden on 10/10/56 to ask if there was the possibility of a union between the UK and France. When this failed, he came back later to ask if France could become a member of the British Commonwealth.
These documents have been found in the UK, the French are looking into it, with big surprised expressions.

The US is having a busy week!

In Iraq they’ve stormed an Iranian consulalte

They’re also sending in a ‘surge’ of troops – 21,500 – which is half the troops their generals think they need for the surge tactic to work. This will bring force levels to around 150,000.

A reinforced squadron of F-117A’s (15-20 aircraft) is being deployed to South Korea.

4 places were hit by airstrikes in Somalia

Allthough the US is denying it took part in the bombings there amid international criticism.

Sealand is the worlds smallest country, interesting mainly because it’s defeated several British attempts at invasion and hosts truly safe and anonymous servers. It’s now for sale, let’s hope the new owner keeps it as a safe place for the colocated servers.

Weird one this – Saddam is now certain that he will be hung, so his prose is all martylike. Strangely enough Yahoo news is running 2 stories on this:

and

So which one is it?

Jeremy Clarkson called a car ‘a bit gay’ and due to four complaints by a couple of poofters (four of them, no less), the Top Gear team has been told off by the BBC. Besides that calling things gay doesn’t automatically mean they are

or even sexually oriented at all, even if he had specifically meant it that way, what’s wrong with referring to items as catering specifically to the gay community? Plenty of advertisers see the gay community as a key market!
Won’t the queer, hetero-male hating, PC crowd ever let up?!

Well, lets face it – our choices all suck. There are several websites in the Netherlands that allow you to match your choices with a political party, of which none of the matches are larger than 50% and the questions are framed in such a way that you end up answering in a manner diametrically opposed to your wishes unless you read the question very carefully.
An advantage of the Dutch political system is that the government rules by coalition, so that means there are quite a few viable political parties. The downside to this is that if you want to research all of them, you have to spend quite some time looking through poorly designed websites for the party programmes which are often hidden away somewhere in a PDF download.
Now there are a few things freaking me out in the West at the moment, so I’ve chosen two main points to look at in the party I’m going to be voting for:
1) “Security”
2) Defence.

1) “Security”
Now this one winds me up no end – you peel away the veneer of the word “security” and you find a cesspit of privacy invasion and personal control. ID Cards, camera’s, unwarranted phone and internet tapping, incarceration without due process, legal systems that ignore the “innocent untill proven guilty” idea, centralised databases, etc etc etc. This reminds me of Nazi Germany and what really gets me is that almost every political party is for more “security”. As a matter of fact, the reason that the Netherlands was the greatest exporter of Jews during WWII was because it had the best personal registration system in the world at the time. People say it won’t happen again – but no one can give me that garauntee. The world changes, and we’re picking on all sorts of people here – Moroccans, Antilleans and with that kind of data at a politicians disposal, who says he won’t use it to blackmail any people opposing him / her?

The argument is trotted out that people can use these tools to catch paedofiles – after all, who wouldn’t be against harming our little children?! But all criminals are only caught after due and diligent investigation – which means that getting permission from a judge after considering the merits of the case should be a part of the investigation. Randomly spying on people without their consent doesn’t solve paedofelia – investigation through competent and thourogh policing does.

Then we get the “if you’re not doing anything wrong, what have you go to fear?” argument. Well, it’s my life, and I want it private. If I didn’t do anything wrong, why do you have to spy on me? And would you have a government camera put up in your bedroom over your bed if you accept that argument?

There is no excuse for random invasions of privacy.

2) Defense
We’re living in a much more unstable world than during the Cold War and we need to adapt to it. Now the Netherlands is doing a very good job in this respect – a professional, competent armed forces, restructured around mobility and operations other than war (OOTW), well versed in jointness (working with armed forces from other countries) and technologically advanced. We are doing a good job of protecting our foreign and local interests and it’s sheer naivite to expect that because it’s going well now we can stop investing in our armed forces. We need to keep changing to adapt to different global threats, as we do face them in the whole scale, from all out war, to undefined threats such as “terrorism” as well as disaster relief. For that we need new and diverse equipment, as well as manpower and training. We also need logistical support, transportation, and big guns to keep us safe. If we want to have a say in international politics, we need a big stick to help apply our say – even if it is by not using the stick (allthough we are using it now and heavily). We can’t expect the international community to do our dirty work for us and expect to feed our consumptive economy (which is one of the largest in the world) of the backs of our allies.
The Netherlands is a partner in an ill conceived second rate fighter programme called JSF. We should be investing in serious military hardware – F-22, Eurofighter, Gripen, Rafale, whatever gives us our best protection. Not another F-16 which won’t be wanted in coalitions untill it has had a mid life update!

So where does this leave me? Currently the only party that acknowledges my right to personal freedom and privacy is D66. The rest (traditionally I vote VVD) are all too intent in setting up a police state. Unfortunately D66 thinks we can have this liberty without protection, which I consider a bit stupid. Still, considering that D66 will never garner enough votes to actually become a dominant party in the coalition government, I’ll vote for them in the hope that the big parties (CDA, VVD, PvdA) will get the right message – Leave me to live my life the way I want to!