Oh Those Crazy Cloggies

Why stop campaigning because of an airplane crash?

Oh Those Crazy Cloggies
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In less then a month the Dutch parliamentary elections will be held, with a predicted outcome as uncertain as that of the UK elections. Yet despite this few if any political parties are campaigning. What’s happened that made them stop?

The airplane crash in Lybia is what happened. With some seventy Dutch passengers killed in the crash, the main political parties jointly decided that campaigning at such a time of national grief would be wrong.

A noble but wrong decision. That the crash was a tragedy for the people killed, their families and friends nobody will argue otherwise, but this tendency to make every such disaster into a national tragedy, owned by all of us and in which we are all supposed to be emotionally involved is ghoulish and hysterical. There is no connection between the crash and the elections, no reason that having a political campaign go on is somehow offensive to the bereaved — if it was, so much else should be stopped as well, because how could you shop for pleasure at such a time of national tragedy?

Ironically, it’s the Dutch media which has been accused of ghoulish behaviour by the government, at a press conference after a meeting of the prime minister with the families of the victims, who were asked to show some respect and keep their distance from the grieving relatives. True, some of the media (e.g. De Telegraaf, Holland’s most manipulative newspaper [1]) have crossed the line between reporting tragedy and wallowing in it, but what do you call politicians attempting to co-opt the same tragedy by stopping their campaign? That’s not a mark of respect, but a cynical exploitation of populist sentiment. It’s also cowardly, a pre-emptive capitulation to supposed media pressure if the decision had not been taken. It’s all of a piece with all those useless “silent marches” whenever some fucker murdered his family and committed suicide afterwars. It’s not doing anybody any good, but boy does it make us feel better about ourselves; aren’t we good people to dissapprove of murder?

[1] And also the most enthusiastic collaborator with the nazi occupation during WWII, which is one reason I’ll never read that rag willingly, but that’s beside the point.

Police violence at Rotterdam May Day demo

Oh Those Crazy Cloggies, Policing
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From a posting on Marxmail, an eyewitness account of police violence against this year’s May Day celebrations in Rotterdam:

Here’s some video I shot of the police attacking the Mayday demo in Rotterdam. I realize that police attack demos somewhere in the world every day, but this was rather significant because this demo has been held traditionally (for 30 years I understand) on mayday starting at the city hall in Rotterdam, but this time the police announced that we wouldn’t be allowed to march (supposedly because the sticks our flags were on could be “weapons”) and then told us we had to clear out of the area completely. After moving in and causing people to retreat and forcing us into smaller groups, they attacked the group still in front of the building with clubs, horses, and a dog, arresting 14. I only realized how close I got to being trampled by a horse after watching my own video!

http://www.xs4all.nl/~meisner/1meiRotterdam2010/CLIP0165.AVI
http://www.xs4all.nl/~meisner/1meiRotterdam2010/CLIP0175.AVI

Why the police attacked this time (again, for a traditional demo with a permit) isn’t clear, but might reflect a strategic shift against protest in context of the economic crisis. Or it might just be that they thought they could get away with it, partly since the demo was a lot smaller (about 500) than the usual 1-2000 (due to poorer organizing this year, I think). But this is held every year more or less without incident, so no one expected it. And I understand that the police also arrested people at the Mayday demo in Nijmegen, so this might signal a crackdown on the left and protesting in NL.

I’ve seen the excuse about sticks/flagpoles as “dangerous weapons” used before when police needed some reason to harass a demo, both here and in the UK. It’s absurd, but can be sold to the newspapers. The original poster overthinks the reasons for this police aggression; I doubt that the police has explicitely gotten orders to crack down on political protests. If I had to guess I’d think that it’s a side effect to the Rotterdam police overreacting to what happened at the Hoek van Holland beach party of August last year — where inept policing and rioting football hooligans led to the police accidently shooting and killing an innocent man. Since then the Rotterdam police has become a lot harsher in dealing with potentially dangerous situations and since leftist demonstrations of this kind have always been seen as worrisome by them, it’s no surprise that this happened. Wrong, but not surprising.

(Crossposted from Wis[s]e Words.)

Linky Linky

Food, Linky Linky, Merkins..., Oh Those Crazy Cloggies, UK elections, UK politics
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How was such a terrible environmental disaster allowed to happen? Deep Sea News has at least some answers in The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill: A Timeline. And guess what – the whole affair has Halliburton’s mucky fingerprints all over it.

Dill and Honey flavour potato chips anyone? Satay and Ginger? Frikadelle? Avocado & Lobster?

Maak de Smaak, the Cloggie version of Do Us a Flavour

If you thought Walkers crisps fans came up with some weird flavours in their “Do Us A Flavour” competition (last year’s winner, Builder’s Breakfast, allegedly tasted of bacon, eggs, sausage and baked beans) then you should see some of the suggestions in the Dutch version, Maak de Smaak. 95% of the entries can be dismissed as mere variations on that classic cloggie theme, kaas, kaas en kaas, garnalen met en beetje kaas, but there are some interesting entries, like the aforesaid Avocado & Lobster – mind you, whether the suggestions will translate into actual recognisable flavours remains to be tasted. Walker’s is still way ahead of Lay’s in the PR stakes though: their latest marketing effort is to tie new flavours to the world cup. Anyone for a bratwurst crisp?

Who says Merkins don’t get UK politics? A masterly summation of the election so far, by Stanley at Unfogged:

Let’s see. Labor and Tories are both lame-os. Brown, because, basically he’s boring, and there’s a recession about, and something about the banks, plus Britons are still smarting from the Blair decision to play wardude alongside Bush in Iraq, which was totes expensive and morally squicky at best. Cameron, because, despite being young and charismatic (not to mention riding a bike to work—did I get that part right? I remember something about a bicycle), he’s a privileged wanker.

There’s also the fact that that Cameron has (it’s not original but I can’t remember which commenter wrote it) a waxy-melty face like a Victorian doll. No really, just look:

Victorian wax boy doll

But do go on:

But! This year, they had very, very special US-style, televised debates, which, gasp!, propelled Liberal Dem Clegg into the national spotlight, and it’s possible that now, mayhaps, the Liberal Dems could win a plurality, but, no matter what, it seems no single party’s going to outright take it, so some sort of coalition of governing parties is inevitable, not to mention likely to be unstable. After all, the last time there was a comparable power-sharing agreement (in the 1970s? writing this from memory is easy, because I can seemingly make stuff up), the whole thing went in the can within six months or so.

So, lots of crazy uncertainty abounds, and no one’s really happy about the whole mess. But the queen’s position is definitely safe (for now)

Yup, that’s pretty much it.

Believe, indeed. We didn’t think the Labour Party would do such an illiberal and opressive thing as to force biometric ID cards on an unwilling populace either. But they did, because they were shit scared of being accused of being soft on immigration, just like Obama and the Dems. Now look where they are in the polls. Goodbye Gordon, Goodbye, Obama…

OMFG. This latest from Oklahoma is utterly inhumane. I’d even call it torture. From the Rude Pundit:

The Oklahoma Legislature Will Look Inside Your Daughter’s Vagina (Part of the “Your State Sucks, Too” Series):
The brutal assault on women’s rights continues in states where you’d expect there to be a brutal assault on women’s rights. This week’s yahoos are the members of the Oklahoma legislature who voted by a veto-proof majority to require pregnant women who want an abortion to get a vaginal-probe ultrasound in order to show them the fetus. There is no exception for victims of rape or incest.

In other words, if you are a woman who wants a perfectly legal medical procedure in Oklahoma, you must submit to the forced insertion of an implement into you, even though that act carries medical risks (you know, perforation, infection, that kind of stuff) and serves no actual medical purpose. It’s just to be total dicks about abortion.

In otherer words, the Oklahoma legislature wants to sodomize pregnant women.

Like I said, OMFG.

Even Christians have to obey laws, says Dutch high court

Civil liberties, Feminism, Oh Those Crazy Cloggies
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To the continuing shame of our socalled democracy, the radical Christian party SGP for over ninety years has been allowed to discriminate against roughly half the Dutch population: women. Though not so radical as to believe women should not vote, they do believe no women should be part of a political party or seek any sort of office; women therefore can only become members without voting rights of the SGP and even that is a concession made only recently. In the absence of political or state pressure to change this, various lawsuits have winded their way through court and this week the case reached the highest court in the land, who decided that the SGP was acting illegally:

The court, weighing the fundamental freedoms of religion, expression and association, judged that the SGP should allow women to be election candidates. It is the duty of the state to take action against men-only candidatures, the Supreme Court stated. A party cannot refer to its philosophical principles by way of defence, the judges said. “Under democratic rule of law, political principles and programmes can only be executed within the limits set by laws and treaties.” The SGP was found to distinguish men and women in a manner that is in contravention of a United Nations treaty. This implies that the Dutch state will have to take measures to ensure that the party allows women to put themselves forward as candidates. The orthodox group does allow women to be members, but leading positions are reserved for men.

It’s not before time.

Dutch keep bicycling even with Parkinson

Health, Oh Those Crazy Cloggies
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So it turns out even pople suferring so severely from Parkinson’s disease that they can barely walk, might still be able to cycle normally:



Dr. Bastiaan R. Bloem of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands thought he had seen it all in his years of caring for patients with Parkinson’s disease. But the 58-year-old man who came to see him recently was a total surprise.

The man had had Parkinson’s disease for 10 years, and it had progressed until he was severely affected. Parkinson’s, a neurological disorder in which some of the brain cells that control movement die, had made him unable to walk. He trembled and could walk only a few steps before falling. He froze in place, his feet feeling as if they were bolted to the floor.

But the man told Dr. Bloem something amazing: he said he was a regular exerciser — a cyclist, in fact — something that should not be possible for patients at his stage of the disease, Dr. Bloem thought.

“He said, ‘Just yesterday I rode my bicycle for 10 kilometers’ — six miles,” Dr. Bloem said. “He said he rides his bicycle for miles and miles every day.”

“I said, ‘This cannot be,’ ” Dr. Bloem, a professor of neurology and medical director of the hospital’s Parkinson’s Center, recalled in a telephone interview. “This man has end-stage Parkinson’s disease. He is unable to walk.”

But the man was eager to demonstrate, so Dr. Bloem took him outside where a nurse’s bike was parked.

“We helped him mount the bike, gave him a little push, and he was gone,” Dr. Bloem said. He rode, even making a U-turn, and was in perfect control, all his Parkinson’s symptoms gone.

How stereotypical is this, that this was found at a Dutch hospital? I found this article via my manager, whose partner is working in this field. He also said that when the NYT saw the video, they at first were cagey about putting it on their site, as the patient wasn’t wearing any helmet…