Sounds like a war-zone outside

The Netherlands, the last day of the year: a never-ending roar of fireworks. It starts early in the morning on the 31st and does not stop till well into the new year.

I hate it, with a passion.
So do the dogs.
And the cats.
Bah.

Piet is dood

De buurman van mijn ouders. Niemand is echt verbaasd en toch wel. Piet had MS, zo lang als ik hem ken (bijna 20 jaar) in een rolstoel, behoorlijk gehandicapt maar toch voor 100% in het leven. Hij was heel beperkt, en toch genoot hij van alles om hem heen. Een vriendelijk man, een levendige geest. Zo vaak door het oog van de naald gekropen dat we dachten, hij wordt wel oud, Piet overleeft het wel.

Afgelopen week was hij voor een klein luchtwegen aandoening naar het ziekenhuis en... is geheel onverwacht overleden. Het is verbazend dat hij het zo lang heeft kunnen overleven, en toch wel schokkend dat hij overleden is.

Dag Piet! Nooit zal ik je zien door het raam en wuiven, goeiedag! En jij, langzaam een hand omhoog, glimlach, groet terug.

Lieve Anneke, gecondoleerd.

Climate feedbacks

An excellent animation:

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

Amazon, Paypal, Visa

I sent email messages to the above three, asking what was going on with regards to Wikileaks. I told Amazon I was closing my account with them (and I was one of their first customers, way back when).

No answer. Dead silence on all fronts. I keep getting promotional emails as if nothing's changed.
But, things have changed. I am listing alternatives for Amazon, Paypal and Visa. I've already told Amazon to close my account and remove all my information from their servers and if they don't accede to this, I'll take legal steps. The other two, I'll be closing down soon as well.

There are other credit cards out there that won't try to stifle me. There are other places where I can order books, music, movies. There are other online payment options.

I am the only one who decides whom or what cause I give my money to.

Oh, oh the irony!

Announced, today: U.S. to Host World Press Freedom Day in 2011

...in the light of this.
Laughable, really, if it were not so serious.

Governments are infringing on MY right to support Assange, should I so wish, by pressuring private enterprises, countries etc:

Sunday 28 November

• TECH: DDoS attack hits WikiLeaks as first set of US diplomatic cables is published.

Wednesday 1 December

• TECH: Tableau Software, which offers free software for data visualisation, removes the public views of graphics built using information about the diplomatic cables. It is the first company to distance itself from Wikileaks, and admits that the reason was pressure from Senator Joe Lieberman, an independent senator with ties to the Democratic party.

• POLITICS: Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security, calls for Wikileaks to be taken offline. "I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. Wikileaks' illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company - whether American or foreign - should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials."

• TECH Amazon removes Wikileaks's content from its EC2 cloud service, but later insists it did so because the content could cause harm to people and did not belong to Wikileaks – and that it was not due to political pressure or the hacker attacks against the site.

Friday 3 December

• TECH: Wikileaks.org ceases to work for web users after everyDNS.com, which had provided a free routing service translating the human-readable address into a machine-readable form, ends support.

Wikileaks shifts to a backup domain registered in Switzerland but actually hosted in Sweden, at Wikileaks.ch, though the cables are hosted in part by OVH, an internet provider in the north of France.

EveryDNS claims that the DDOS attacks against Wikileaks were disrupting its service provided to thousands of other customers. The company says it is "following established policies so as not to put any one EveryDNS.net user's interests ahead of any others. Lastly, regardless of what people say about the actions of EveryDNS.net, we know this much is true - we believe in our New Hampshire state motto, Live Free or Die."

• POLITICS: French industry minister Eric Besson writes to internet companies warning them there will be "consequences" for any companies or organisations helping to keep WikiLeaks online in the country.

Saturday 4 December

• MONEY: PayPal, owned by US auction site eBay, permanently restricts account used by WikiLeaks due to a "violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy". A spokesman said the account was suspended because "[it] cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity."
You can still donate at Commerzbank Kassel in Germany or Landsbanki in Iceland or by post to a post office box at the University of Melbourne or at http://wikileaks.ch/support.html

• TECH: Switch, the Swiss registrar for Wikileaks.ch declines pressure from US and French authorities to remove the site or block access to it.

Sunday 3 December

• TECH: The Pirate Party in Sweden says that it has taken over the hosting of the Cablegate directory of Wikileaks after the server in France at OVH, which had been hosting the contents of the US diplomatic cables released so far, goes offline.

Monday 6 December

• MONEY: Credit card company Mastercard withdraws ability to make donations to Wikileaks. "MasterCard is taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products," the credit card outfit says.

• TECH: Wikileaks' servers in Sweden attacked by distributed denial of service attack.

• MONEY: Postfinance, the Swiss postal system, strips WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of a key fundraising tool, accusing him of lying and immediately shutting down one of his bank accounts. The bank says that Assange had "provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process."
Assange had told Postfinance he lived in Geneva but could offer no proof that he was a Swiss resident, a requirement of opening such an account. Postfinance spokesman Alex Josty told The Associated Press the account was closed Monday afternoon and there would be "no criminal consequences" for misleading authorities. "That's his money, he will get his money back," Josty said. "We just close the account and that's it."

Tuesday 7 December

• MONEY: Credit card company Visa withdraws ability to make donations or payments to Wikileaks. "Visa Europe has taken action to suspend Visa payment acceptance on WikiLeaks' website pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules," said a spokesman.

source

This is the core of this entire damn business:

What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the US and UK in not regulating banks); corrupt (all governments in relation to the arms trade); or recklessly militaristic (the US and UK in Iraq). And yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger.
source

Wilders is speechifying in Israel

He opines, that the Palestinians should have the right to live in Jordan and form their own state there. Israel holds no blame for any of the problems of the region, he apparently said.


This man is not part of the Dutch government.
He does not speak for me.
He does not speak for me.
He does not speak for me.


Odious man.
Shudder.

Privatisering = gebrekkig onderhoud?

Vroegah.... hadden we ook blaadjes op het spoor. We hadden ook sneeuw en ijs en vriesweer.

Vroeger reed ik vaak met de trein en ik herinner me niet de drama van de afgelopen jaren. Stations gesloten (Utrecht, laatst), treinen laat, vertraagd, kapot (en sinds kort, zonder wc!!), steeds vaker technische mankementen.

Privatisering betekent een oog voor winst boven kwaliteit. Je gaat het minimum aan noodzakelijke onderhoud plegen om de kosten te drukken. Welk niveau van ellende zal de klant nog pikken, wordt de centrale vraag van een bedrijf in de marktplaats.

En hier zitten we nu. Hoe langer het doorgaat, hoe slechter de staat van materieel. Hoe duurder het wordt om het weer goed te maken.

Kunnen we niet zeggen dat het grote markt experiment met Openbaar Vervoer is mislukt (alsof we echt nodig hadden om zelf dezelfde experiment van Engeland over te doen, de uitslag daar was toch zo klaar als een klontje!), kunnen we niet gewoon OV en alle onderdelen hiervan weer terugplaatsen in het Algemeen Goed. Nationaliseren, dus.




(en voor we alleen maar post krijgen ééns per week, kunnen we de Post ook niet gelijk terugnemen?)

... and now PayPal as well!

This is their statement:

PayPal statement regarding WikiLeaks
December 3, 2010 PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action
link

I've been increasingly using PayPal over the past years for my internet transactions.
I can use IDeal, but I don't like it much. Or pay directly via credit card... and I probably will.

I use PayPal to pay small vendors who have no other alternative. I am going to let them know to change their options or lose me as a customer. I also use PayPal to do simple money transfers to people. I will simply have to find another way.

It will take a bit more work than Amazon to untangle myself but do it, I shall.
(It was an enlightening moment, to realise how many of my eggs are in one basket)

Ik hoop dat dit een grap is...

Jezus.
(bold is van mij)

De overheid moet meer op scholen aanwezig zijn om te controleren of leerlingen drugs gebruiken. Dat is een beter idee dan het invoeren van een wietpas of het sluiten van coffeeshops die dichtbij scholen liggen.

Dat zegt de Amsterdamse burgemeester Eberhard van der Laan in een zaterdag gepubliceerd interview in De Telegraaf.

''Ik denk dat we meer aanwezig moeten zijn op scholen’’, zegt Van der Laan. ''Bijvoorbeeld speeksel- of urintetests voor leerlingen. En de kluisjes op scholen controleren en drugs in beslag nemen.’’

bron

Internetverkeer inhoudelijk scannen????

Hello big brother!!!


Ik denk dat ik maar iedere mail ga ondertekenen met "kinderporno" in de voettekst.
Als ze het willen, kunnen ze het krijgen ook!

Amazon kicked off Wikileaks?

Bad move Amazon, bad move.
You were asked to remove them by (a) government official(s), and like sheep you did.

Bad, bad move. Bah.

After suffering aggressive cyber attacks last weekend, Assange removed his "cablegate" site from servers in Sweden and purchased a new home for it on Amazon's web hosting service. On Tuesday, Amazon talked on the phone with the office of Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security.

Shortly thereafter, Amazon booted WikiLeaks. The senator responded with a statement: "I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on WikiLeaks' previous publication of classified material. The company's decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material."

source

Update 2010 12-04: I sent a mail to Amazon (UK and USA) requesting to close my account with them. I've done a lot of business at these sites over the years but they are not the only book/CD/DVD sellers out there. Like many others, I will purchase what I want elsewhere in future.