Forgiven by God 'himself'

David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican senator is linked to a prostitution ring in Washington DC. Now he claims that he received forgiveness from God himself. Looks like the Republicans have a direct line with God...probably they need that for all the crimes they are responsible for...
Read here the story.

You are in Turkish politics: Smile!

Monday, July 9, 2007 Turkish Daily News

Hans A.H.C. de Wit

Hardly any Turkish politician has the charisma, uses the appropriate language, or simply has the imagination to unite the Turkish nation. From right to left wing, from conservative to socialist, if only one of these present-day politicians had even 10 percent of the magnetism or the vision Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had, Turkey would be treated with more respect than it could ever dream of. And misanthropy would not flourish on Turkish soil. Atatürk started a new era for Turkey decades ago, and past and present politicians should complete in his spirit what he could not finish.

Turkish communication atmosphere
In recent weeks, I have witnessed some interesting developments in Turkey. For me, these have highlighted problems associated with the top-down flow of communication in Turkish politics, which lacks encouragement on meso-level and civil organization to be part of a communication platform. A platform that can have the layout of the physical infrastructure (communication and power distribution systems) especially on that of education, research and technology policy that is oriented toward improving the existing communication environment where the Turkish nation can be competitive, not only in business, but in politics as well.

The principles of the foundations of the republic of Turkey don't have to be violated; only the communication atmosphere will be improved. Whilst there are many issues in Turkish politics today, this article solely addresses those to do with communication.

Continue reading here.

First impressions of Earth Live

Snoopy Dogg in Germany. He had fun. Obviously.



Linkedin Park, my favorite of the last year. A pity that they performed in Tokyo. Missed the show.



Shakira in Hamburg. Originally planned for Istanbul - which could not make it as host for this worldwide event. She was the opening act in Hamburg.

One of the Seven World wonders?

The Oosterscheldekering in the Netherlands (see picture, a mechanical 8 km dam) is sometimes referred to as the eighth Wonder of the World, and has been declared as one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

It's part of the Delta works, which embraced around 10.000 miles of dams, dikes, storm surge barriers, locks etc.

After the North Sea flood of 1953, a commission was installed which had to come up with a plan to research the causes and seek measures to prevent such disasters in future. They revised some of the old plans and came up with the so called "Deltaplan".

With the Chinese wall, the Delta works are the only two human made constructions in the world which can be seen from the Moon!

Athens in debate, Bodrum in action

While in Athens they are still debating what caused the forest fires around Athens 10 days ago, see the entries of Vassili of the end of June, Bodrum, a well known place to go for Sun, Sea and pleasure in the South West of Turkey is today surrounded by fire. But with the help of the volunteers and the locals, Bodrum is saved from a disaster.

Ultra Nationalism

The elections are coming. Nothing different from other countries, only the fact that Turkish parties are appealing to their ultra nationalist roots, and their background, making this kind of images:



The leader of the MHP, an ultra nationalist movement in Turkey, throwing a rope in the public 'who will hang ...no. 1 state enemy of Turkey?'

The question remains: is Islam in Turkey compatible with Democracy Western style and is Turkish style Democracy in style with Europe's demands? Or has it to face a modern Middle East country kind of Democracy in the near future, with ultra nationalist Islam as leaders?

The people of Turkey must decide, not foreigners.

Ever lost your luggage?

Ad of Casino di Venezia at the airport carousel...

Changes

Too many changes this week. Which caused too much stress.
And the weather is also not helpful: a nice breeze would be welcome.
No real plans for the summer yet, due to all the misery. But we will see, things can change quick here....
Later!

Road trips, 9/11

What I miss about the USA are the road trips: driving in 5 days from downtown Miami to Kansas City for a wedding, and back.
September 2001. Wedding was on Saturday, September the 8th, so we left by car on September the 6th on Thursday, and arrived on the 7th after a 24 hrs. drive on Friday there. Exactly in 24 hrs: 1800 miles.
The weekend there, and some rest. Nice wedding.
On the 10th of September, Monday back. This time we decided to have a break in Atlanta.
We made it, in 12 hrs. Found ourselves a good hotel, and the next day on our way back to the South and the heath. Since Maria worked for CNN for 8 years we planned to visit friends at CNN. But we were late.
We drove our car on the road, turned the radio on, and..that was 9.18 it... 9/11.
The road from Atlanta to Miami was empty, 1.100 miles...we made it for the 8PM news.
I shall never forget that day. What a madness.
And it still lingers on.

Turkish and Turkishness 2

All of you:
Asked, especially the Turkish readers what now Turkishness means.
No, not one of you you came with an answer.
Tomorrow another person, Professor Aytal will be put on trial for 'insulting Ataturk'.
A good writer and friend of mine wrote a column about it. Read it here.

And out of the blue, a friendly person specialised in linguistics replied to my post of the 8th of June.
Here her responds to my questions.

Toyota is doing it again..

Toyota, a car for the proletarians in West Europe, is doing it again: disturbing wild life!

Ad populum argument, Ataturk and Aristoteles

I am not sure, but I guess that many of you never heard about the Ad Populum argument.
An argument often used in countries practising culture relativism (we did it like this for hundreds of years, so why change it?) or by indoctrination of the masses: everybody thinks like this, so, if you think different, you are wrong.
This argument pops up all the time in the Turkish polemics. Everybody knows exactly what Ataturk have said and would have implemented. They all use the Ad Populum argument, which simply makes any debate impossible. You face a militaristic attack of the Left or Right wing minded people while criticizing a simple thought or thing.
Maybe I must shut up, and stuck to Aristotle: after him 'nothing new' has ever been revealed, said or written...but he is a Greek...ha

Isn't it a Shame?

That in a country which braga all the time about religious tolerance (while even the Ottomans were well known about their segregation policies) a country where Turkish people feel so threatened by a tiny small community - whose members try to act as discrete as possible - that they are attacking the tiny minorities? I am not talking only about the killings, but the threats, harassment etc.
A tiny population of less than 0.3% of the total Turkish population...is considered as a threat by some Turkish people? And the violence increased after January of this year, 2007.
And isn't it a shame that the Turkish government had to issue a decree about this. To protect them? But it looks like for the mainstream Turkish media it is fun to fuel the anger all the time.
Read Hurriyet.

Police of Openess...

You can say a lot about Sarkozy's stance against Turkey's EU membership, but the guy has a domestic and economical agenda as well. Of his 33-person cabinet, 11 are women, 20% are from the left. And Rachida Dati, Rama Yade and Fadela Amara have one thing in common: They're women, they're from minority backgrounds and they're feminists. So, a woman from the Maghreb region of North Africa is now in charge of the Justice Ministry on Place Vendôme, a woman born in Senegal is responsible for human rights issues in the Foreign Ministry on the Quai d'Orsay and a woman of Algerian descent is to henceforth devote herself to the socially disadvantaged in the banlieues.



France's newly appointed Justice Minister Rachida Dati, and Rama Yade, new junior minister for human rights.

And Socialist politician and human rights activist Bernard Kouchner is now Minister of Foreign Affairs!!
Imagine...AKP wins the absolute majority in the parliament and asks Baykal to become Foreign Minister...and asks 10 women from the CHP, DP and MHP to join his new cabinet...

This can happen to you too...))

My first job as a copywriter was to make a campaign for Post-it memos for the Netherlands.
Click on the picture to enlarge it. As you see, this kind of memo is still doing well..))

A blog about the Netherlands

Today I came across an interesting blog of an American woman, who moved with husband and kids to the Netherlands. In fact only for 1 year, but decided at the end to stay longer.
It's good and funny to see your country through the eyes of a foreigner.
How she describes the Dutchies and the 'Dutch way', is worth reading.

Cross cultural communication

Can you deal with other business cultures without knowing their language(s)?
Yes, and no. Yes, if you have a language which both of you can speak, and no, when the business cultures are too different and both of you are too prejudiced.

But how to manage business people acting globally? Simple, adapting to the business culture in the country you want to do business with. And for the sake of mankind, leave all your prejudices at home.
Dutch people like me tend to be critical. Not to put someone else down, or to let someone to loose his face. No, I am critical because I want to learn and listen to others, and don't want to take everything for granted. So, being critical means, I am interested.

The Netherlands is a small but, business-wise, important country. We were invaded by the Scandinavians, the French, Italians, Spanish and the Germans. But we are still there. And know how to trade. In fact the first multinational was the VOC.

At the same time, the Dutch speaks 3.6 (average) foreign languages. Basically, always English, German and French. But you will find easily Dutch people speaking 5 or more languages.

About cross cultural communication, which has also to do with dealing with other cultures and habits, two Dutch people became famous about this subject. Fons Trompenaars, with his books: Riding the Waves of Culture, Seven Cultures of Capitalism, Building Cross-Cultural Competence and 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, and Geert Hofstede, check out his site: http://www.geerthofstede.nl/

No discrimination anymore

Plasters are now available in all kinds of colors...

The world upside down

May I introduce you to Düzgün Yıldırım. According to wikipedia a Dutch citizen, born in 'Turkish Kurdistan'. In September 1980, at the age of 17, he came to the Netherlands as a political refugee. Today, Turkish Daily News, put an article with the catchy but also suggestive heading on their front page 'Holland’s new problem child: Yıldırım'.
Now, I can tell you, he is not our Dutch problem child. There are more important issues to solve. But since the Turkish media are following their 'citizens' closely in West Europe, here are some facts.
In 1994 Mr. Yirdirim was elected in the city council of Zwolle, for the moderate socialist party the PVDA. Not nice for him but the PVDA, put him on a lower place for the city elections of 2002. Which made him change his opinion: he moved to the real left socialist SP. But he didn't succeed to be elected. But he came back in the city council in 2003.
For the national parliament elections of 2006, several districts pushed the SP to put him on higher places. Although the SP gained a lot of seats, he was not one of them on their list.
But during the 'Senate' elections (the First Chamber) he gained some preferential votes (One of these votes was of himself). But his party, like all other parties in the Netherlands, have their own programme and rules. For the SP are preferential votes not valid, which he agreed upon and which is embedded in their party structure.
He was put on place 18, but only 12 seats were available.
Now we get the difficult part: the election council recognize the preferential votes, but his party not, which is their legal right. And he knows this, when the PVDA put him on an unelected place in 2002, and he made the switch to SP... sounds opportunistic to me.
Te SP congress voted him away with 993 against 38 away yesterday.

Another important note: his voting area (Zwolle, Hengelo, and Arnhem), are in the east of the Netherlands, and was a battlefield for PKK supporters and the Wolves (MHP) in the nineties. The first party is illegal and is 'declared' a terrorist organization. The second, the Grey Wolves, of the MHP, are considered as patriots in Turkey but not in the Netherlands. Fascism is not allowed.

Overall: It is a sad story for Mr. Yildirim, who 2 years ago told, live on Dutch Television, that he has two university degrees, and two of a college. In the end, he has one open university degree: management and organization.

And the sage goes on...
And do we threat our brothers in Europe well? Yes, we do...
But it is up to them which way we have to go, now...it's their turn...

Don't be sheepish

...ladies and gentlemen, stay ahead of the flock..))