Latest radio 1 show

My latest radio show in Holland, about attempts by the Mayor to get more Londoners to cycle. Click on the link and my item starts straight away (in Dutch)

http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=11202701&start=01:21:30

www.radio1.nl
www.bnntoday.nl

South Africa celebrates: Nelson Mandela turns 92

Former South Africa President Nelson Mandela turns 92 today. Mandela, in South Africa better known as Madiba, released a statement asking people around the world to spend at least 67 minutes doing something useful in their community today, especially for the less fortunate.

In South Africa, and around the world, Madiba has become a symbol of equality, forgiveness and humanity.

The life and times of Madiba

1918: Born in Eastern Cape
1964: Charged with treason and sentenced to life
1990: Freed from prison
1993: Wins Nobel Peace Prize

1994: Elected the first black president of South Africa
1999: Steps down as president
2001: Diagnosed with prostate cancer
2004: Retires from public life
2005: Announces his son has died of an HIV/Aids-related illness
2010: Turns 92

Read more

Liberal confusion: why Nick Clegg is losing credibility

The Digital Economy Act (DEA), aimed at regulating digital media and reducing copyright infringements, officially came into force on 12 June. Although there was no reference to the DEA in the Coalition Agreement, it is known Nick Clegg opposes the Act in its current form.

On Sunday 16 May, the Liberal Democrat Party released a statement after its party conference, calling on the coalition government to repeal the website-blocking and three-strikes disconnection elements of the DEA. During the party  conference, the party voted on a motion dealing with the DEA.

In its statement, the Party said ‘the Conference urges Liberal Democrat Ministers and MPs to take all possible steps to ensure the repeal of those sections of the DEA which are inconsistent with policy motion “Freedom, Creativity and the Internet” as passed at Spring Conference 2010’. The policy motion in question condemned website blocking and disconnecting internet connections as a response to copyright infringement. At the same conference, the Lib Dems denounced the DEA as a whole for ‘focusing on illegal file sharing rather than on nurturing creativity’.

Even though there is no political support for the DEA within at least one political party, it is unlikely the Party’s latest motion will change anything. Even the fiercest critics do not have the illusion the DEA - or parts of it - will be revoked anytime soon. Unless sudden action is taken by the Lib Dems Ministers - which does not seem likely - it is status quo for the DEA.

The party’s recent statement might bring hope among the DEA’s critics there is no longer credible political consent for these sections of the law within at least one government party, but whether that anticipation is genuine remains to be seen. It is unlikely the DEA - or parts of it - will be revoked anytime soon. Lib Dems Ministers do not seem too keen on making this a political hot potato, unlike their time in opposition.

Bastille Day

It is that time of the year again, Bastille Day, the 14th of July, formally called La Fête Nationale and known as le quatorze juillet (14th of July). It celebrate the storming of the Bastille prison on 14 July 1789, the start of the French Revolution, the beginning of the ‘liberte, fraternite, egalite’ (freedom, brotherhood and equality) era, which meant the end of the Kingdom of France and the beginning of La Republique Francaise. Today, festivities take place all over the country and the highlight is a parade with President Sarkozy in central Paris.

Yesterday I was on the phone with a colleague in Montpellier, Southern France, and he wondered “really, what is there to celebrate? French is disappearing as a world language and the new generation barely speaks English, the pension age unlikely to be changed anytime soon (currently 60, the lowest in Europe), the Culture Minister is openly a pedophile, and last weeks hundreds of millions of cuts were announced to the corps diplomatiques (their foreign ministry and army of diplomats), meaning France will unavoidably diminish its power worldwide. Not to mention how France was a complete joke at the world cup, its main players being haunted by stories they slept with a minor and only last week, the President was exposed as a corrupt out-of-control leader who takes cash in envelopes from old, rich ladies”.

When I tried to interrupt and was thinking of something positive, he continued “oh stop it, I did not even mention the banlieues nor France’s lovely Algerian community, or kids playing the healthy game Le Jeu du Foulard (intentionally cutting off oxygen to the brain with the goal of inducing euphoria).”

It made me wonder whether France (considers itself) to be in the worst state in decades. Perhaps it’s time to get the weapons out again?

“Aux armes, citoynes,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons! Marchons!
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons”

Vive La France, Vive La Republique Francaise!
Happy Bastille Day

FT: 'Dutch footballers shed moral superiority'

This morning an editorial comment in the Financial Times (page 10, World news section) caught my attention:

Dutch footballers shed moral superiority

It was partly the sight of John Heitinga blindly thumping balls out of the Dutch penalty area. Partly it was Khalid Boulahrouz passing back to his keeper whenever he managed to find him. Even though the Dutch scored three goals against Uruguay on Tuesday and reached the World Cup final, they were again pretty dull.

Dutch football used to strive for beauty, but has now shed its moral superiority. Off the field, so has the Netherlands itself.

The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant phrased it well on Wednesday. “Good football is apparently no longer necessary to reach the World Cup final,” it said, and dismissed most of the team’s playing as “repugnant and irritating”. “Really nobody played very well, and that’s not many for the semi-final of a World Cup.”

Yet as these words were being written Dutch people were cheerfully waving goodbye to their tradition of beautiful football.

The tradition began at the World Cup of 1974. Admittedly the coach at that tournament, Rinus ‘The General’ Michels, cared only about winning, but he won with gorgeous attacking “total football”. The Dutch, who had never done anything at World Cups, surprised themselves by reaching the final. There they lost to West Germany, but won global praise. So Dutch football’s founding myth was glorious defeat.

In the next World Cup final, in 1978, a moderately glorious team suffered another defeat, and the tradition was cemented.

Gradually the Dutch came to glorify glorious defeat. Johan Cruyff, the star of 1974, was arguing decades later that the Netherlands had actually won that World Cup. How so? Well, said Cruyff, people still talked about their glorious football, and that represented a victory. While other teams competed to win the World Cup, the Netherlands pursued moral superiority. They were the one just man who would have saved Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Dutch breached their own tradition by becoming European champions with glorious football in 1988, but otherwise they competed only for moral awards. Before playing Brazil in the World Cup semi-final of 1998, the Dutch coach, Guus Hiddink, proclaimed from his pulpit: “Brazil, sadly, is no longer swinging and flaming. I see defenders boot the ball away shamelessly. Holland must never play like that. If we did, people would murder me, and they would be right to do so.” Brazil won on penalties.

In these decades the Netherlands was pursuing moral superiority off the pitch too. A favourite phrase in Dutch political discourse from the 1960s was “Netherlands, guide land”. It expressed the idea that the most perfect democracy on earth should be a light unto backward countries. Paul Scheffer, a Dutch political thinker, notes that it is easier for a small country to be good than strong. So the Dutch tried to teach foreigners euthanasia and gay rights.

But from about 2000, moral superiority withered. In football the Dutch suffered a few too many glorious defeats, most recently at Euro 2008. Hiddink, who supplanted Cruyff as father of Dutch football, began advocating the revolutionary notion that winning was nice. Moral superiority crumbled off the field too. In 2001 many Dutch began voting for anti-immigrant populists. The ideals-free technocrat Jan Peter Balkenende has been prime minister since 2002. In the parliamentary elections of June 9, the “Ban the Koran” man Geert Wilders won 16 per cent of he vote.

Today’s Netherlands is just another country, and its football team just another team. The players retain the Cruyffian qualities of passing and positional sense, but now they mostly defend.

Their only aim here is victory on Sunday. They need to win, because otherwise hardly anyone will remember anything about this team.

Please note: Financial Times 2010, written by Simon Kuper, published in the FT on Thursday 8 July 2010, page 10, World News section, 'Dutch moral superiority is shed on and off the field'.

http://cachef.ft.com/cms/s/0/aa82ff1a-89e9-11df-bd30-00144feab49a.html

Head coach orders Nigerians to stay at home

Can you imagine David Cameron suspending Wayne Rooney or John Terry for two years due to their bad performance, or Sarkozy ordering the French team to stay at home after losing a couple of games? Well, In Nigeria it is certainly possible. That is where Presidents are not leaders, they are still rulers, the Head Coach of the nation's national sport.

President Goodluck Jonathan has suspended the national players from international competition for the next two years after they performed so badly at the World Cup in South Africa. The ‘Super Eagles’ – who turned out to be everything but super – were eliminated in the first round, finishing behind South Korea, Greece and Argentina with just one point.

A Spokesman for the Nigerian President released a statement this morning, saying ‘the President has directed that Nigeria will withdraw from all international football competition for the next two years to enable Nigeria to reorganise its football. 'This directive became necessary following Nigeria's poor performance in the ongoing FIFA World Cup'. So how will these guys be fit and ready for action if they cannot participate in the Africa cup nor play any friendly matches? Perhaps Goodluck has given Nigerian football the final push by his decision today.

China confirms strict policy on internet use

The Chinese Government has published a White Paper reaffirming the need for strict policies aimed at limiting access to certain types of online content.

Although the report The Internet in China, published by the State Council Information Office on 8 June, highlights the importance of freedom of speech, the document confirmed the ‘continued need for the use of technology to stop illegal information dissemination’.

The Chinese Government will continue to prevent the spread of information that can ‘harm national security, upset public order or harm minors’ by using legal and technical measures. Internet service providers (ISPs) are responsible for the online content, the document said.

Since 1997, the internet in China is subject to strict regulation. Last February, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology introduced rules to ban online pornography. In March, Google withdrew from the Chinese market after refusing to give in to demands to restrict its search engine results.

With an internet population of over 400 million users, China has become the largest online market in the world.

Cumbria massacre

My latest radio 1 show in Holland, about the recent shootings in Cumbria.

Click on - or copy/paste - the link and my item starts straight away:

http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=11032949&start=00:06:27

www.radio1.nl

www.bnntoday.nl

Latest Radio 1 show

My latest Radio 1 show in the Netherlands, about the new BBC show 'Autistic Superstars'. Click on the link and my item starts straight away - in Dutch:

http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=11009383&start=01:25:02

www.radio1.nl

www.bnntoday.nl

Chinese secrets

The Chinese Government has issued new rules defining when corporate data should be regarded as a commercial secret. 

The guidelines - published by the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) on 26 April and aimed to protect Chinese businesses - classify information such as financial data, resource reserves, merger information and strategic plans as a corporate secret. A commercial secret is ‘information unknown to the public that can bring economic benefit to state-owned companies’, according to the SASAC. 

Additionally, under the rules commercial secrets can be classified as state secrets, which means commercial secrets could soon fall within the scope of the Law on Guarding State Secrets. 

On 26 April, an amendment to this law was submitted to the National People's Congress Standing Committee for a third review. The amendment would require telecom and internet service providers (ISPs) – domestic as well as international ISPs operating in China – to notify and cooperate with public security and state security authorities if they detect any disclosure or sharing of state secrets on their networks.

Michiel Willems - 2010

Latest radio 1 show

Latest radio 1 show in Holland, broadcast last Thursday - in Dutch. Click on the link, my item starts immediately:
http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=10898901&start=01:31:00

www.bnntoday.nl / www.radio1.nl

The global solution for Cybercrime?

The Council of Europe (COE) has said it will present its Convention on Cybercrime as the global solution to cybercrime at the United Nations (UN) congress on crime prevention and criminal justice. The UN will hold its 12th congress on crime prevention in Salvador,  late April. 

"The UN Crime Congress in April 2010 will be an opportunity to reinforce our global response to the global threat of cybercrime and cyberterrorism,” said COE Deputy Secretary General Maud de Boer-Buquicchio. “I think we will have the best chance to succeed if we unite around one international instrument which already exists – namely the Convention of Cybercrime.” 

The COE - an intergovernmental organisation overseeing human rights in 47 countries - organised its own cybercrime conference last week in Strasbourg. bringing together 300 cybercrime experts from some 60 countries, the private sector and international organisations. Here, the COE called for a worldwide implementation of its Convention on Cybercrime to continue legislative reforms already underway in a number of countries. 

“The Convention should be implemented globally. Since [the COC] requires authorizing legislation in each member country, it puts an additional burden on each member country to pass the implementing legislation,” said Kevin A. Thompson, Attorney at Davis McGrath LLC. “With global implementation wrongdoers cannot hide beyond the reach of the law. It's time for the Internet to move beyond the ‘Wild West’ model.”

Participants also recommended that a global action plan should be launched by the COE and the UN to get a clearer picture of criminal justice capacities and how cybercrime should be tackled. “Internet knows no borders. Fraud and crime do not have a geographical address”, said Ivan Koedjikov, Head of the Department of Information Society and Action Against Crime at the COE. “The law of which country to apply? The only meaningful response to cybercrime is global. There must be a minimum understanding of all countries about cybercrime, about similar procedures to prevent, prosecute and punish such crime.” 

Participants to the Strasbourg conference also urged the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to strengthen its oversight role of the internet domain name registration process in order to allow the protection of private data of individual registrants, as well as the opportunity for law enforcement agencies to use the database to fight cybercrime and cyberterrorism.

The Convention on Cybercrime Treaty has been ratified by 27 countries so far, among them the US, France, Germany and Italy. Another 100 countries are using the treaty as the basis for their national legislation. The call for a global approach came in the same week American and Canadian researchers have traced an extensive cyber-espionage network back to China – which has not signed up to the Treaty. It targeted computers in several countries, including systems used by the Indian Government and army. Although the UK has signed but not yet ratified the Convention on Cybercrime, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has recently set up a new cyber enforcement team. “Online consumer protection is a key priority for the OFT”, said Heather Clayton, Senior Director at the OFT. “The enforcement team will be looking at the activities of a wide range of commercial websites and taking action in cases where consumers’ rights are being abused.”

Michiel Willems - 2010 - Published earlier in E-Commerce Law & Policy magazine

Final steps for the UK Digital Economy Bill

The UK House of Commons approved the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) on 7 April, upholding measures destined to fight online copyright piracy.

The DEB will enable internet service providers (ISPs) to monitor the use of individual internet connections, and extend the remit of Ofcom – the UK telecommunications regulator - to cover telecommunication content and infrastructure. One of the most controversial aspects of the DEB is the ability for ISPs to cut off the internet connection of most serious infringers without a court order. The British Phonographic Industry’s Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor, said that “removing unfair competition from clearly illegal websites will encourage investment in legal online services”. Many in the industry have spoken out against the DEB. According to the Pirate Party UK, “[it is] a major attack on free speech and human rights”. Andrew Heaney, Director of Strategy and Regulation at TalkTalk, added: “oppressive and futile deterrents are not the solution”. Parliament is expected to finalise the DEB in a few weeks, in time for the general election on 6 May 2010.

Michiel Willems - 2010 - Published earlier in E-Finance & Payments magazine

Icelandic volcanic ash

All airports in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Ireland are closed today.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8621407.stm

April Fools' Day

It's 1 April, April Fools' Day in the UK. Therefore, every major British publication is running a fake story today. Find an overview of those features here:

http://www.anorak.co.uk/244104/media/aprils-fool-day-media-stories-the-best-ones-of-2010.html