October 25, 2008

Man harassed by police for 13 years after identity theft

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:39 am

A Dutchman of Surinamese decent has been fighting the police, customs and the DoJ for the past thirteen years after a criminal junkie kept pretending to be him, says the national ombudsman. The anonymous man has a criminal record of 43 crimes, none of which he committed. Although the police knew almost from the start that a criminal junkie kept using the man’s identity, they never succeeded in entirely clearing his name. Instead, the treatment the victim received over the years at the hands of the police and customs got worse and worse. Among other things the man was arrested for reading a newspaper and his house was searched in the presence of his two young children.

When the man asked the police what they were going to do to clear his name, he bluntly got told to change his identity.

The ombudsman concludes:

“Kafka'” and “Kafka-esque” are terms in danger of becoming over-used when describing government actions, but in this case the label is entirely deserved.

The government will introduce a law next year that should miraculously help minimize mix-ups such as these by limiting civil freedoms even further and by increasing the number of points of failure, though the ombudsman seems quite happy with (part of) the proposal.

(Edit 22-5-2018: replaced link to Ombudsman press release by link to Ombudsman news article)

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October 23, 2008

FEBO croquette more expensive than Fortis shares

Filed under: Food & Drink,General by Orangemaster @ 5:12 pm
kroket1.jpg

A croquette (in Dutch ‘kroket’)(more info here) at the Dutch fast food chain FEBO is currently more expensive than a share of Benelux bank Fortis, according to the Amsterdam Stock Exchange of today. At 13:30 CET the Fortis share was a steal at EUR 0,98.

A croquette at FEBO costs EUR 1,20. A ‘vitaaltje’ (vegetarian croquette) is just one euro during all of October.

The Fortis bank recently had to be bailed out by the Dutch government because of the international credit crisis. Since then its share price has been taking a beating, to put it mildly.

But hey, there’s always junk food.

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October 22, 2008

Sampling Dutch poverty: to the food bank by car

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 9:58 am

(Going to the foodbank by car: English subtitles)

I hesitated posting this when I first saw it, but since it’s somewhat shocking, it’s time to share. You’ll probably be left with more questions than answers after this video. The ones I had as a foreigner looking in were:

1. Why doesn’t this woman work? Don’t answer because she has children, I’ll scream.
2. Where’s the father and/or his alimony? Deadbeat dad? There’s an obvious cultural issue here.
3. A car? What about agoraphobia therapy?
4. Do the Dutch give money to the poor for nothing so they don’t have to look at it?
5. Is that really a good thing? Is it a Judeo-Christian guilt thing?

I’ve seen teenagers for years in Montreal, Canada sleeping on the street outside at -20 degrees in sleeping bags. The ones sleeping outside in +30 degrees in the summer are purely decorative.

The person at Radio Netherlands who did the interview mentioned on their site that they found it difficult to find someone willing to go on camera. Hmm, people are willing to have sex on camera for free these days, so I’m really not convinced. The film is very good though, no question.

Again, some people really think that this is being poor in the Netherlands. I am happy the children are well cared for, that’s true. Some are proud to show that the poor don’t look poor. Her lack of gratitude is the clincher, making this film very interesting. Others have said that junks on the street are dirt poor, a film about them would have shown real poverty.

My suggestion would be to go to the Salvation Army (Leger des Heils) in downtown Amsterdam, as that is where poor people congregate, believe me.

UPDATE
The video was removed by Radio Netherlands.

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October 20, 2008

Amsterdam fence wins Dutch Design Award 2008

Filed under: Architecture,Design,General,Nature by Orangemaster @ 10:17 am

After having found out in July all about this nature accommodating fence on the Olympiaplein in Amsterdam, designed by Ruud-Jan Kokke, it was announced last Saturday that it won a Dutch Design Award 2008.

Out of 700 nominations, Kokke’s fence won a public space award for his one-kilometer-long fence around a big park/football field. It is the second time this year that the fence won a prize, as Kokke was also awarded the public award of the Design to Business Award 2008 together with the Oud-Zuid District earlier this year.

(Link AT5)

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October 16, 2008

New world fire-breathing record in Eindhoven

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 8:56 am
Fire breathing

On Wednesday 15 October, students of the Eindhoven University of Technology set a new world record for simultaneous fire-breathing. The Eindhoven campus got 267 people breathing fire simultaneously. On 14 March 2007, a world record for fire-breathing was set in Tilburg, Brabant, with 115 people breathing fire simultaneously. All fire-breathers used Roman oil as fuel under the watchful eye of the local fire brigade. As well, every participant followed a fire-breathing course the week before.

Will Tilburg try again next year? Will Eindhoven hold on to their world record? Stay tuned.

(Link and photo: omroepbrabant.nl)

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October 15, 2008

Glamsterdam, yet another lifestyle magazine

Filed under: Fashion,General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 9:10 am
Glamsterdam

The Dutch version of TimeOut Amsterdam won’t be the only new magazine to be launched in January 2009, as there’ll also be Glamsterdam. Glamsterdam will be a bi-monthly glossy magazine for “Amsterdam and its residents”. The content will be decided upon by locals together with an editorial staff. The goal is to portray the creativity of residents of Amsterdam (‘Amsterdammers’). Every edition will feature articles and reports of events and parties, music and film, and all that jazz.

Contrary to TimeOut, Glamsterdam will be free and have a print run of 40,000 copies. There sure won’t be a lack of anything to read in January 2009.

(Link: adformatie.nl)

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October 14, 2008

Two odd acts of mindless violence

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:34 am
Street tile

Last Saturday, a 31-year-old man from Zwolle, Overijssel beat up a lumpia (spring roll) seller because the man did not sell vegetarian spring rolls. When the 60-year-old spring roll seller told him this last Saturday, the client got angry and beat the older man repeatedly in the face and on the head. A security guard of the shopping centre where the spring roll stand is located intervened and held the angry man until the police came to draw up a complaint.

Last Sunday in Nijmegen, Gelderland, a 31-year-old taxi driver ran over a 29-year-old man because he refused to pay his taxi driver colleague. The 29-year-old client was driven around for hours in a taxi and when the meter had reached an amount of 250 euro, the man couldn’t pay. He got out of the car and walked away. Two taxi drivers came to the ‘rescue’, with one of them driving over the reluctant client. A witness saw the incident and called the police.

What’s with this street tile of a ladybug? Since 1999 it has been the Dutch symbol for “no mindless violence” and can be found in front of bars, clubs and other places where fights usually break out.

(Links: vleesmagazine.nl, knurps.nl)

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October 13, 2008

Amsterdam, king of the Nigerian spam jungle

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 10:09 am
419

According to Dutch newspaper NRC, Amsterdam Zuidoost (South-east Amsterdam) is the centre of a worldwide network of Nigerian con artists who send those e-mails asking for big bucks, commonly known as 419 fraud. “Nigerian fraudsters regard the Netherlands as a safe haven. The police are seen as soft and, moreover, Amsterdam Zuidoost is home to a close-knit African community making it easy to go to ground. It is also conveniently near to Schiphol airport.

According to Yvette Schoenmakers, a police academy criminologist, the first Nigerian swindlers started using the Netherlands as a base back in 1990. The police were unaware of what was going on because the scam was not directed at Dutch citizens. Most of the victims were foreigners, often American, some of whom lost thousands or even hundreds of thousands of euro.

How much money is involved in the Dutch-based scam is unknown, says Schoenmakers, although police figures from 2005 suggest that foreign victims may have lost a combined 22 million euro. But the real damage could be at least ten times that, she says.”

(Link: nrc.nl)

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October 12, 2008

Gay Frenchman fought the law and helped change it

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:18 pm
Frederic

A few months ago I wrote the following article on the Amsterdam Weekly blog about a French homosexual having his nationality revoked for marrying a Dutchman:

“Frédéric used to be French, but because he married a Dutchman, the French Embassy forced him to give up his French nationality. The French consulate revoked his nationality because they did not want to recognise his marriage when he also acquired the Dutch nationality. According to an agreement between France and the Netherlands, anyone who opts for the nationality of the other country automatically loses their original nationality, unless they are married to a person of the other nationality, in which case dual citizenship is automatically awarded.

The consulate declared Frédéric unmarried and wants him to hand in his passport, ID card and has told him he is banned from voting. Frédéric, very much attached to his home country, is terribly upset.

Tanguy Le Breton, the official representative of the French community in the Netherlands, calls this “blatant discrimination”. “It’s obvious that the French authorities discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. In this case, the discrimination is symbolically terrible because we are depriving homosexuals of their nationality. It is about time to start a debate on the issue and put an end to this discrimination.”

Frédéric is French again

This summer Frédéric got his French nationality back thanks to the efforts of people like French gay Amsterdam politician and author Laurent Chambon who spread the news and got things moving. The entire “reintegration process” took a speedy two months and was aided by a high Sarkozy cabinet official, Emmanuelle Mignon. Frédéric still had to show his birth certificate, national ID cards (1995 and 2004) his passport, proof he had become Dutch in 2006, and proof he kept ties with France by being registered with the consulate in Amsterdam.

What happened to Frédéric will probably never happen again to any French person in the Netherlands, as the law will change as of March 2009. Any French person marrying a Dutch person will not have their French nationality automatically revoked.

(Link: laurentchambon.blogspot.com (in French))

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October 9, 2008

Dutch railways upset about popular iPhone application

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 9:47 am
iPhone beaver

The NS (Dutch railways) is not pleased with the Dutch iPhone application ‘Trein’ (‘Train’) developed by IT student Dennis Stevense. The programme fully optimises data from the NS’ mobile site for the iPhone and is currently at the top of the list of applications you can buy in the Netherlands, costing a mere 2,39 euro. A spokesperson for the NS told Bright.nl that the student did not get permission from them to use their schedules and that they plan to release their own application shortly.

The question is whether train schedule information is covered by copyright law. I’ve asked a copyright lawyer this morning and will keep you posted.

UPDATE: Dutch copyright lawyer and photographer Olivier says:

“Not likely to qualify for copyright, but perhaps database protection. The schedules may not qualify for database protection if NS is not able to show that it invested (spent money) in the database, separately from the investment made in the operation of the trains. (The schedule database may be a so-called spin-off from the main activity of making the trains run on time, and informing the NS customers about the schedule.) The spin-off exemption to protection is not always applied correctly though.

Even if it qualifies for database protection, I am not sure that the *app* (and, consequently app maker) would infringe on the database rights, as it apparently only allows the *user* to more easily access the NS database. As far as I know, cases in the Netherlands have always dealt with instances where the content/database from one site was extracted in some manner or fashion to a database on another site.

And then there is always tort.”

(Link: bright.nl, Photo: Stevenojobs)

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