Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

The American media are crazy: documentary maker Michael Moore was supposed to be CNN's Larry King`s guest, but the "news" station decided Paris Hilton had something important to say and just cancelled the Moore interview. WTF!? Yes Ladies and Gentleman; it is off course way more important to talk to someone that has never achieved a single thing in her life about something lame as being in jail for a DUI, then actually have a talk to someone that has a far more important message about the state of the US healthcare.

"CNN.. the most trusted name in news." You must be kidding me?

SiCKO Trailer

I wrote earlier about Micheal Moore's latest documentary SiCKO. The story Below comes from The Washington Post and shows how the US Governement (i.e. Bush) treats its own people, in this case veterans from the Iraq/Afghanistan war. Did I hear anyone say "Vietnam?" It is really another example of how the "richest country in the world" just seems to give up on their own citizens. The sad thing is that I see the same trend in my own country.

SOLDIER WHO CAPTURED SADDAM IS SICK, BUT LEFT TO ROT BY VA

Army Spec. Jeans Cruz helped capture Saddam Hussein. When he came home to the Bronx, important people called him a war hero and promised to help him start a new life. The mayor of New York, officials of his parents’ home town in Puerto Rico, the borough president and other local dignitaries honored him with plaques and silk parade sashes. They handed him their business cards and urged him to phone.

But a “black shadow” had followed Cruz home from Iraq, he confided to an Army counselor. He was hounded by recurring images of how war really was for him: not the triumphant scene of Hussein in handcuffs, but visions of dead Iraqi children.

In public, the former Army scout stood tall for the cameras and marched in the parades. In private, he slashed his forearms to provoke the pain and adrenaline of combat. He heard voices and smelled stale blood. Soon the offers of help evaporated and he found himself estranged and alone, struggling with financial collapse and a darkening depression.

Continue reading "Bush' politics of war: just ... »

Will Bush ever learn? My guess is no, he won't. during the G8 summit in St.Petersburg Russia the last few days, Bush has been acting like the usual idiot he is. First he was groping German chancellor Angela Merkel, making her feel very unconfortable (see picture on the left and also see the Daily Show video on it here). He also was dumb enough to keep talking while his mic was still on, during the same G8 summit. Again I say, because during the 2000 election campaign he was also unaware that his mic picked him up when he blurted out to Dick Cheney: "There's Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York Times." Bush, off course, never apologized for that: instead he only said he regretted the fact he didn't know the mic was on. This time Tony Blair (prime minister of Great Brittain) realized the mic was still on and he switched it of, ending about 3-4 minutes of eavesdropping on Bush. Anyway: watch the video of Bush mouthing off here. Bush, cleary was demonstrating his "diplomatic skills" when overheard saying the following about the crisis in Israel to Blair:

"I feel like telling Kofi (Anan) to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen, see, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over."

What a tool!

Yesterday I showed we are having an official heatwave here in Holland with temperatures in the 30's (90's if you're from the US). We should not complain about it since we normally do not have such nice weather in Holland. Unfortunately this extreme weather also has it's downsides: for the first time in it's 90 year history the Nijmeegse Vierdaagse (the International Four Days Marches of Nijmegen) had to be cancelled, after three two people died yesterday and many others had to be treated for heat related problems. Only one time before did people die: in 1972, when there where two casulties. The only other time the event was cancelled was during the Second World War, so that kind of tells you how much of a tradition it has become.

Yesterday, while I was driving to work, I heard one participant being interviewed on the radio: he was 86 years old and this would have been his 55th time to compete in the "Vierdaagse". According to him he had walked the Vierdaagse under much extremer circumstances and he didn't care that much about the heat, he said.

Oh well, to end on a lighter note: I'm going to enjoy a nice BBQ tonight at my ex-collegues house. He is preparing the BBQ together with his girlfriend and I'm ready to taste my favorite BBQ dish: spare-ribs. Yummie!

Usually I have not that much sympathy for big companies that try to impose restrictions onto their customers/consumers. Especially not when they try to do so by using methods that are completely unethical. Like for example Sony who used a rootkit to impose copy protection in their CD's. But what I do not like is the kind of "company-bashing" that is now been done by a blogger from Engadget. Some editor called Ryan Block (no doubt he must be a single white caucasian asshole American nerd guy) is trying to make the international readers believe that "Sony is under fire for racist advertising" in Holland. Apparantly Sony is advertising for the fact that their is a new ceramic white PSP (Playstation Portable for the non-gamers) coming out. So they put a huge poster in Amsterdam of a fierce looking white woman grabbing a black woman's face. Wether the ad is tasteful or not remains debatable, but what is completely stupid is trying to make this into something it isn't; something racist.

Of course when you have a really guilty consience like, let's say the Americans have with their nice history of genocide (Native Americans) and slavery and racial segregation - then you might have some associations like 'white person - master, black person - slave' making this ad incredibly politically uncorrect. For us Dutch who see this add, these associations dont come at all, or maybe after long consideration. So for Dutch people this is just what it seems - an ad with a white person grabbing a black person. And - mind you - there are also images where the roles are reversed and the black woman is grabbing the white female.

After all: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So people who see some kind of racial thing in this ad are just projecting their own guilty consience and/or thoughts onto others. As I read in one of the comments on a forum regarding this hype:

As an ethnic minority in the Netherlands, I do not have a problem with this whatsoever.
I can imagine the uptight Americans having a problem with everything, so this one as well.
I watched the ads in amsterdam, and I did not see any riots in front of them, nor were people trying to damage it or tear it down.
I think the dutch people are somewhat sensible enough to see through such an ad.

Hear, hear, and shame on Engadget for trying to blow this out of proportions!

(see also: Ad Critic and Help I'm a Female Engineer)

It looks like we are close to yet another government led by our own 'Harry Potter look-a-like' Jan Peter Balkenende. When does he take a hint and get the hell out of politics? This will be Balkenende III and it's not a good thing; he didn't succeed in accomplishing what he said he was going to accomplish the previous two times, so why try a third time? Well, the idea behind it is simple: the two parties that will form the interim-government, CDA and VVD, think that if the stay in power the next few months it will possibly get them more voters. They want to start a PR campaign showing how well they are doing and think they can buy votes that way.

Funny thing is that the whole thing marks the return of Ruud Lubbers, former PM of Holland and resigned United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Lubbers, who is negotiating a way out of the crisis, is busy putting together a temporary minority government that probably will be officially announced and formed today.