It’s that time of year again where we look back and tell you about some of the things we wrote about, and this year we had one clear theme that stood out and that, sadly, was ‘tastelessness’.
We’ll leave it at that, thanks for all your comments, and a reminder that next year is our 10th year anniversary in February, so I guess we should think about doing something special.
GeenPeil – it rhymes with Geenstijl and refers to polling – promises to set up an Internet app to hold ‘microreferendums” for all bills that pass through parliament. “All rank-and-file members of the party will be able to influence how its MPs vote on law proposals, always voting the way of the outcome of the microreferendums.
Like them or not, the fact that Prime Minister Mark Rutte has ignored the results of the democratic referendum prompted by this lot on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and possibly passing on the problem to the next government after the 15 March 2017 elections, is really embarrassing and proves that democracy isn’t being respected at all.
GeenPeil, has its own issues. Last month, Dutch media reported that the European Parliament has demanded they pay back €14,500 in subsidies. GeenPeil had used the money, which came from the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe, a body created by Ukip, a British eurosceptic party, to pay for a newspaper advertisement calling on readers to support the Ukrainian referendum initiative for a referendum although the grant was not allowed to be used for national campaigning.
Although the referendum was legally non-binding, senior politicians had promised they would take the result into consideration and it’s such a thorny subject that the issue is on the agenda of this month’s EU summit in Brussels.
Last summer we told you about a new law that allowed Dutch citizens to call for a non-binding referendum, in this case to veto Ukraine’s entry to the European Union. On 6 April, the Dutch will vote on a non-binding referendum on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, a vote and campaign that happens to fall at the same time as the Dutch presidency of the European Union — as if they didn’t have enough on their plate already.
One things the Dutch Party for the Animals doesn’t want on their plate is chicken, so they’re encouraging people to vote ‘no’ in the video below. One of the baddies happens to be one of the world’s biggest producer of broiler chickens for starters. As well, a lot of people throw around the word ‘oligarch’ without knowing what it means, now you can learn more about it and hear how horrible it sounds in Dutch.
“According to Transparency International Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe. Ukraine is ruled by oligarchs. Take Myronivsky Hliboproduct (MHP): it is one of the biggest poultry producers in the world and annually slaughters 332 million chickens.”
Long story short, billionaire Yuriy Kosiuk owns it, puts his money in tax havens in Luxembourg and Cyprus, is friends with President Poroshenko and has his fingers in way too many pies. The Dutch Party for the Animals considers him and the Ukrainian government corrupt, and wouldn’t be totally wrong in saying so. MHP’s motto is “if you want something done well, do it yourself”, and that seems to include bullying the government.
Ukraine has always been the doormat doorway to Russia, stuck between maintaining old Soviet relations and sucking up to the European Union. The people of Ukraine are the real losers of any deal, chickens and all.
KoreanDefense writes: “The rebels in eastern Ukraine seemed to have lost the anti-aircraft system they’re using to shoot down planes, so, let’s help them locate it.”
The author uses Twitter, Google Maps and Google Translate to help Russian terrorists, the ones that allegedly shot down civilian flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, locate their missing Buk rocket launcher. A more serious investigation appeared in The Guardian a week ago.
Dutch weblog Nine to Five has been doing its own research into Buk rocket launchers. It appears that Rostec, the company that manufactures these missile systems, is officially headquartered in Amsterdam in a building owned by Renault-Nissan. Rostec and Renault-Nissan work tobether in the car manufacturing business. The reason such a large Russian company has its office in the Netherlands is likely because we are a tax haven.
On Saturday I biked to the Rostec office expecting to find I don’t know what, anything really. A lone protester perhaps or a sign that this is where evil lives. I guess the most dramatic thing about the arms trade is its entirely uninteresting face of respectability. On one end of the planet you have hundreds of innocent people being torn apart in a ball of fire while back home you have marble slabs, sleek halls and a parking lot for visitors that is always empty.
(Link: Martin Wisse, top illustration: KoreanDefense)
Insiders will tell you that Dutch energy firm Nederlandse Energie Maatschappij has been accused of bad advertising before and even of questionable business practices, and don’t have a good reputation. This time, they’ve really outdone themselves: they’ve trashed a country, subjected another to gender stereotypes and told everyone not to go to the Euro 2012 in Ukraine (yes, partially being held in Poland).
The website with porno posing ‘shopped Ukrainian women is actually online as part of this media strategy and basically says ‘keep him [your guy] at home’. You keep him at home, away from the mail order porno brides by switching energy firms and receiving a home beer tap that’s all pimped up in Dutch team colours. Ukrainian women are sluts, Dutch women need to worry about not being so chunky and keeping their stupid football crazed men at home using beer.
I’m a ref and I am holding up a red card right now.
Imagine if the makers had picked on Polish women, considering the recent wave of Poland bashing some Dutch politicians have inflicted on the rest of us. Picking on Ukraine was probably the only culturally sensitive thing this company did.
UPDATE: Adversing blog Adformatie quotes the makers of the advert as ‘reflecting pure reality’ because Ukraine gladly profiles itself as having beautiful women. I never thought fake pictures looked anything like reality.
