Soup Kitchen -- Dutch Style - Bifurcated Carrots

27 March 20173 August 2017

Soup Kitchen — Dutch Style

Soup Kitchens

As far as I’m aware, soup kitchens don’t exist as such in the Netherlands. We’ve just had elections, and the government is changing. Until now however, the government has been so pro free enterprise and privatization, the setting up of a government funded place, giving away something for free just didn’t happen here.

On the other hand, this country has very strong socialist values, and has a very strong commitment to helping the poor.

How do you rationalize both the idea of free enterprise and the need to help the poor? Basically, the government is going in the direction of only handing out money.

If you are poor, and need something to eat, the government gives you €5 and points you to McDonalds. If something happens to that money between the time they give it to you and the time you reach McDonalds, that’s up to you. Going to the supermarket instead, or spending it on cigarettes, are both possibilities.

Something similar happens if you need to sleep in a homeless shelter. These cost about €7/night, but if you want to spend the money on something else, and don’t get in trouble with the police, this is up to you.

Since I’m not on benefits, and I’m sure things are different in different places, what I say here may not be completely correct, but this is the general direction the government is taking.

Also, I should emphasize, not everyone is entitled to benefits, or there may be some strings attached. I think most cities insist all able-bodied people do volunteer work for benefits, for example, and if you are not recognized as being entitled to long term benefits, then your benefits are periodically cut off to encourage you to look for work. Unless you are recognized as a refugee, you are not likely to get benefits if you just show up from some other country.

Long Term Benefits

Fundamentally, long term benefits are not a lot different from short term benefits, they are just paid out on a monthly basis. If you show clearly that you are not able to manage your own money, then they force you to accept the services of a financial management company, at a cost of about €100/month. Those people who aren’t forced to accept financial management, can voluntarily accept it if they choose.

Most single people or couples get about €1100/month.

Financial management means, for example, you get €60/week (€10/day, but not on Sunday) in pocket money. This has to cover all your food, tobacco and possibly alcohol, and all other miscellaneous expenses like clothing or whatever. Your bank account is blocked, except for this pocket money, and you aren’t allowed to use any online or other banking services. Your rent and utilities are automatically paid, and in addition a lump sum is paid to finance a simple vacation in the summer (but again, this is cash and you can spend it how you want). Otherwise, if you need to buy something, you need permission from your financial manager, and they have to arrange the payment.

This is all my understanding, but like I said, I’m not on benefits, and don’t have any direct connection with these issues. It may also be different in different parts of the country.

As you can probably imagine, this is all pretty tough. If you aren’t able to make good choices between food and cigarettes, or just in general don’t have your life together enough to manage such a small amount of money carefully, you can get in trouble pretty quickly. I would guess most people can’t really manage, unless they have friends who can help out from time to time.

The Neighborhood

I used to live nearby, in the building above, called Hofgeest, and understanding the neighborhood is really key here. The neighborhood is called the Bijlmermeer or just the Bijlmer for short. Designed by an Italian architect, with very high expectations, and intended to become a sort of high class suburb of Amsterdam. It was once home to the mayor. Since I was born in Chicago, in the US, the closest thing I could compare it with was Cabrini-Green.

Basically, it turned out not to be a nice place to live. The population density was too high, and open spaces between the buildings intended to give a sense of luxury, became overgrown and full of muggers. The neighborhood was designed with complete separation between cars, pedestrians and bicycles, facilitated by elevated roads and underpasses. These elevated roads physically divided the neighborhood, and junkies moved into the underpasses, effectively controlling the movement from one area to another.

The city thought they had a clever solution, when they required low income people in Amsterdam to accept an apartment in the neighborhood, solving the neighborhood’s vacancy problem. In different stages, they also relocated junkies from the center of Amsterdam to this neighborhood, and over the years continued to make decisions like this which filled the neighborhood with behavior problems. They even at some point decided the neighborhood was really nice, except for these behavior problems, so why not relocate the behavior problems into their own building!

There were even discussions as recently as a few years ago of relocating drug addicts into their own building, ostensibly so they could be better cared for… Can you imagine a super high-rise building with nothing but drug addicts?

In 1992, a few months before I moved out of the neighborhood, there was the Bijlmerramp. An Israeli 747 airplane crashed into one of the high rise buildings, killing many people. It hit one of the other buildings near where I was living, about 1 mile (1,5 km) away. This was really a watershed, and prompted the Dutch government to take the rebuilding of the neighborhood seriously.

Many of the high rise buildings were torn down, renovated, or individual low income rental units were sold as condominiums.

Buildings like the one in the background here:

Were replaced with flimsy looking low rise buildings like this:

Would you like to live in the orange one or the red one?

Many of the same anti-social residents still live in these new buildings, and music like gansta rap can be heard coming out of open windows.

As well as replacing the high rises with lower buildings, they’ve also now built large office blocks around the neighborhood, and many people commute into the neighborhood for work.

They have also built some more luxurious housing, and in a few places have let people build houses of their own design.

The People

In spite of all the anti-social behavior, this neighborhood has always had some of the warmest people. It’s also become a place for immigrants, and is a melting pot with people from all over the world. Even though it was always possible to walk around the wrong places at night and get robbed, it’s never had a huge problem with violence or aggressive people. There are very few guns or other weapons around.

When I lived there, about half the residents were on some kind of social benefit, and this probably hasn’t changed much.

Many people who live here feel very attached to the neighborhood, and wouldn’t live anywhere else.

Cultural Expression

One of the biggest shames about the neighborhood, and Dutch society in general, is how self expression is discouraged. If you’re an immigrant, and you move to the Netherlands, you’re supposed to forget your past and become Dutch. All the buildings in the Bijlmer are sterile in their design, and don’t lend themselves to self-expression. You are not allowed for example to paint your front door a different color from your neighbors, or publicly display something that represents your own culture individuality. Nearly everyone speaks native sounding Dutch, and mostly without any unusual accent.

The Dutch are really missing something very special by not allowing immigrants to freely express themselves.

Freedom of Expression

In one of the most dismal parts of the old neighborhood, where they tore down a notorious high rise called Develstein (Devil’s Stein — as in beer stein) and put up low rises, they left the old parking garage of Develstein behind. This neighborhood was lacking in places to buy food, and the residents dependent on fast food had to walk a long distance. The city of Amsterdam decided to establish the World of Food.

As well as establish the food court itself, they decided to subsidize some startup food stalls, run by people in the neighborhood. The inside looks a little rough, remember this is built into a repurposed parking garage, all the steel and concrete from the old structure is still there, and the floors slope:

What did I get on the day of my visit? I wasn’t very hungry, and just wanted a snack. I chose the stand with the man barely visible on the right, in the picture above, Hi Lo Rotishop. I ordered a bara, which is a type of deep fried bread topped with chutney made from papaya and habeñero style hot peppers. This is a pretty common snack here in the Netherlands, it’s a type of Surinamese food. I have never seen someone roll out the dough in front of me and make it fresh!

It was really good! Normally the topping is screaming hot, but this was not. It was a little hot, and had a really nice flavor.

On another day I was there without a camera, and I ate at Monrovia Childhood Memories, a stand selling Liberian food. This was also very good!

I guess many of the other stands are really good too, but these are the only two I’ve tried. I’m vegetarian, and some of the stands only offer meat. All of the stands seem to offer a cheap alternative, as well as a more complete serving for those with more money to spend.

The Future

On the days I was there, I was nearly the only customer. Not just at any given stand, but in the whole place. It’s not getting enough foot traffic to survive.

The city has said they will not invest any more money into it. The small startup stands have said they aren’t getting enough foot traffic to survive, while at the same time the larger fast food chains have said they want to invest more into the project. This means soon the small stands will be replaced by Mc Donalds, KFC and similar places.

So much for the small glimmer of hope, in a neighborhood full of disappointments… So much for free cultural expression. Get there and try it while you can!

13 March 201714 March 2017

What is Fake News?

Fake news can take many forms. In broad terms, fake news is a lie someone publishes in order to influence public opinion. For the purposes of this blog, fake news is usually one or more corporations or super-wealthy persons, who are trying to promote a product or industry. The basic form this fake news takes is often very predictable, and fundamentally hasn’t changed in decades.

Fake news often originates from corporate lobby efforts. The largest lobby groups in the world now, in order of size, are the food industry, the tobacco lobby and the oil industry. Of course there are many others. Nearly all fake news come from these groups, sometimes more than one of them combined, and you can often recognize fake news by associating it with these groups.

Fake news rarely comes directly from one of the above mentioned groups, but rather a seemingly unrelated organization. For example, health and environmental organizations are frequently used to spread the fake news message. These are often well known or generally trusted organizations, who put their names behind the message. These organizations often have names or stated goals, that have nothing to do with what they really do.

Fake news is almost always a one-way message. It often seemingly appears out of nowhere, and there’s no way to discuss or influence the message. For example, a TV ad is just presented, and there is no direct way to respond. Another example would be a public rally or meeting, without any real advanced warning on the material to be discussed, and no way to give your opinion.

Fake news often attacks a particular product or groups of products, that compete with a commercial product belonging to the source of the fake news. This is often some cheap alternative they wish to have removed from the market. An example of this would be standard light bulbs or square TVs, which compete with newer and more expensive alternatives.

The message also is often presented together with cited and published scientific research. The reason is to intimidate the average person, who won’t have access to the means of generating such research on their own.

There is often a really emotional side to fake news, with very strong imagery. It sometimes has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but is just intended to shock you.

Fake news often doesn’t come out of the blue, but rather there has been some ongoing effort to make the topic familiar with other activities.

Your Brain on Drugs

This American TV ad from the 1980’s is a very good example of many of the points I made above. At the time, the Tobacco Lobby was the most powerful lobby force in the US, and it was later confirmed the sponsoring organization Partnership for a Drug Free America accepted money from tobacco companies.

The strategy tobacco companies take, then and now, is to make all alternative products as unavailable as possible. For example, they were behind prohibition in the US, where the sale of alcohol was banned.

After prohibition, they established a sort of partnership with the alcohol industry. This resulted in drinking and smoking ages, smoking always the same or lower than alcohol and little or no enforcement. The goal here was to see young people first become addicted to tobacco, then reinforce this addiction with an addiction to alcohol.

So in this video you have an organization, Partnership for a Drug Free America, who’s name doesn’t have anything to do with what they actually promote. Their real goal is to get young people addicted to cigarettes. As an organization, they gained trust through ties with right-wing conservative Christian groups, who were very influential at the time, especially with parents of young children.

So if you were a parent at the time, were afraid your children might be using drugs, and tempted to give this organization money. What you would actually be supporting was efforts to get your children to start smoking.

At the end of this video, “Any questions?”, is an example of the one-way nature of the message. There is no way to talk back to or influence this message or organization. They have one goal, to promote tobacco. Their message is tobacco is okay, and everything else is drugs.

What Can You Do?

If you are a supporter or a part of an organization that promotes fake news, you can talk back and make others aware. You can post about it on the Internet, social media or just tell others. The more the truth about fake news gets out, the less effective it is.

If you’re an activist, and an organization you support publishes fake news, you should be very suspicious of anything else they ever tell you. People sometimes make mistakes, but organizations generally don’t, and publishing fake news is an indication they are careless or being influenced.

Most large and wealthy organizations are not what they seem to be. The world’s wealthy 1% often exert their power and control over us through these organizations and fake news. You are often better off participating in a smaller organization that is more democratic in their way of thinking and working. Any organization that doesn’t care about what you think, isn’t worth paying attention to.

Other Example of Fake News

Once you find a fake news story, one of the best ways of finding others is to look for something related. For example the BBC is full of fake news, and it’s one of my favorite places to look.

If one environmental organization has a fake news campaign, look at the other organizations that are also promoting the same thing, and look at some of their other messages.

There are currently campaigns trying to phase out diesel engines, because they are old technology, and promote newer more expensive electric vehicle technologies. Gasoline/benzine/petrol is also a more profitable fuel for the oil industry than diesel.

The food industry is trying to get people to pay attention to ingredients in food, rather than the quality of food itself. This helps them promote their processed foods. They are also trying to phase out common and cheap ingredients, like salt and sugar, in order to promote more profitable alternatives.

This blog has a Fake News category, with other examples of fake news.

11 March 201712 March 2017

Glyphosate ECI — Fake News

This is a follow-up post to one I made a few weeks ago.

Fake News

Fake news is on people’s minds at the moment. It’s a very powerful tool for controlling public opinion and manipulating politics. It’s been around for a long time now, only people are just starting to see it for what it is and it’s becoming less effective. Social media platforms like Facebook have recently been criticized for spreading fake news, especially during the recent election campaign in the US, where some people blamed it for influencing the outcome and unfairly favoring Donald Trump.

Glyphosate European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI)

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weed killer Round-Up, is a disgusting chemical. There’s no doubt about this. Of course it should be banned. The root of the problem however is not a single product that we all hate so much, but the entire industrial food industry, who develops, markets and uses a chemical like this.

The issue at stake is the ability to patent glyphosate. It has now been on the market for 43 years, and the patents have all expired. It’s not profitable to sell any more, and no one is using similar but more profitable products, because glyphosate is too cheap and is widely sold as a generic product. It’s simply time to ban glyphosate, like traditional light bulbs and square TV screens, so the food industry can make more money by selling expensive alternatives.

Bayer already has a patent on a very similar product, called glufosinate, and there are many other products in the development pipeline.

The other part of this ECI, that the process of approving chemicals like this should be reformed, has no political meaning. To reform something might be a good thing, it might make matters worse and it might mean nothing at all. It’s just not something tangible like ban glyphosate is. Since there are no known independent groups, that might be able to stand up to the food industry and lobby for a positive outcome, it’s reasonable to assume a reform process like this could make matters much worse.

To support this campaign, and this ECI, is simply to support the food industry.

Good Side?

There are a number of risks associated with running an ECI. The most obvious is that you may get far fewer signatures than expected, making your cause look like it doesn’t have much support. There are also several other risks. I was involved in discussions on a possible ECI, so I have some experience with this.

ECI’s are very expensive to run. In general the advice is that it may cost as much as €1 per signature, so by starting an ECI you are pretty much committing to spending €1,000,000. This however is assuming things go well, and you are sponsoring a fairly popular initiative. If you are struggling to get signatures, you may have to spend a lot more money for a positive outcome. For example, if you have to pay a student legal minimum wage to collect signatures, you may have to pay €10-25 per signature, or more.

An ECI is a 1 year process, and cannot be stopped. You simply have to see it to the end. It’s very possible you get in the middle of it, and find yourself having to throw good money after bad, in order to avoid an embarrassing outcome.

It’s reasonable to assume the food industry will pay whatever they need to to get this passed, and a lot of money will be spent in the process. No independent organization, with good intentions, has this much money to spend on something like this.

Keep an eye on how the money is spent. For example, there are openings now advertised on the internet for country managers in Romania and France. Think about who is spending that money, and why.

Infiltration

If you support an activist organization, who is promoting this ECI, you should ask yourself what’s going on. You should ask them why they are supporting industrial agriculture, and think about the answer they give you.

Most environmental and activist organizations receive large financial support from corporations, or the worlds wealthy families, and as a result try to promote their interests. Maybe these are causes you don’t need to support any more?

Have a look at the ECI page on the Internet, and all the organizations who have let their logo be used for promoting it. At the very least these organizations were very careless, and at worst there are bad intentions. If you know these organizations, talk to them and find out the reason.

Above all else, talk with others. Talk with the people gathering the signatures and their organizations. Explain the situation to others who might give their signature. Talk about where the money is, and why it is being spent.

Together we can stop fake news in activist causes, and we can put pressure on activist organizations to support our causes, instead of telling us what to believe and support.

update: 12 march

Analysis of the Text

Subject-matter: We call on the European Commission to propose to member states a ban on glyphosate, to reform the pesticide approval procedure, and to set EU-wide mandatory reduction targets for pesticide use.

Main objectives: Ban glyphosate-based herbicides, exposure to which has been linked to cancer in humans, and has led to ecosystems degradation; ensure that the scientific evaluation of pesticides for EU regulatory approval is based only on published studies, which are commissioned by competent public authorities instead of the pesticide industry; set EU-wide mandatory reduction targets for pesticide use, with a view to achieving a pesticide-free future.

“mandatory reduction targets” A target is an approximation. A mandatory approximation? This won’t have much meaning in practice. If these mandatory approximations are EU-wide, even estimating them will be a big challenge, and local authorities may not have the authority to enforce them.
Banning one herbicide by name, glyphosate, will not benefit anyone. There are many others with other names, both on the market and under development.
“approval is based only on published studies” This means taking into account public opinion is explicitly ruled out. Also unpublished studies will not be considered, for example when the manufacturer or patent holder refuses to give permission for a study to be published. Published studies nearly always reflect the wishes of the company that pays for them, which in this case will be the one seeking the approval for marketing the pesticide.
“competent public authorities” In the era of privatization and industry self-regulation, these are controlled by the food industry.
There is no pesticide industry. Pesticides are sold together with seeds, and are part of the food industry. Barring the pesticide industry from participating doesn’t accomplish anything.
“a view to achieving a pesticide-free future” This is like a view to achieving a future free of nuclear weapons. We certainly all hope it happens, but the chances are pretty small. This statement has no political meaning.

2 March 201711 March 2017

The BBC and their Fake News Problem

I’m probably one of those people Donald Trump referred to recently as ‘Obama’s People’. I don’t work for Obama, am not any sort of henchman, don’t know him personally, don’t have anything to do with him except I broadly supported his term in office, and certainly don’t like anything about Trump.

I don’t know what the BBC was thinking when, referring to this comment by Trump, they proudly proclaimed in a headline “…Trump Blames Obama for Protests and Security Leaks“. In fact Trump was blaming ‘Obama’s People’, and probably not Obama himself or his henchmen. Is this a mistake? The BBC’s lack of understanding of Americanisms? Fake news?

In the context of the BBC recently being excluded from a presidential news conference, this almost looks like an attack on Trump. The idea of excluding the BBC or any major news organization in this way is unconscionable, but this headline makes the BBC look very clumsy, even like they are trying to fabricate news.

Over the last month or so, the BBC has launched an attack on fake news. This is not only on it’s headline news service, but for example visiting classrooms and talking with children about things like an old newspaper article proclaiming the arrival of UFOs. The BBC has not only themselves declared something of a war on fake news, they’ve taken it upon themselves to define what exactly fake news is. Their overriding message is trust major news outlets like the BBC, and trust peer reviewed scientific research. Be suspicious of everything else!

As a blogger, I really find all of this, and all of it’s inherent contradictions, completely unacceptable. For all intents and purposes, there are no independent scientists in the world any more. All peer reviewed scientific research has sponsorship, and someone is paying for a particular focus and specific outcomes. If a study doesn’t have a desired outcome, it can be discarded, modified or ignored.

For a few years now, the BBC accepts ’embedded advertising’. In plain and simple terms, this means the BBC accepts payment to write specific items, even what some of us might call ‘fake news’. These are stories no ad blocker can save you from, and usually there’s no disclaimer to warn you. Just like banner advertising, these fake news items are mixed in with real items, to make it as hard as possible for readers to tell the difference.

In many ways this has been a major aspect of this blog, not creating fake news, but rather spotting it in main stream press, and identifying it. One of the main sources of fake news is the food industry, and the BBC has always been one of my favorite places to look for it.

It’s always been a focus of mine, to avoid posting any information I thought was wrong or misleading. Bloggers are sometimes euphemistically referred to as pajama journalists, sometimes in a derogatory way, like we are unprofessional people you can’t trust. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have the resources or commitment professional journalists have. At the same time, I think, as a whole, you are less likely to find fake news on blogs than you are on major news sites. You need to of course make use of webs of trust, and pick and choose your blogs carefully.

An interesting thing has also been happening. Since I started blogging, the public has on it’s own become more aware of fake news. Almost so much so, there’s less reason for me to be so active.

So let’s consider a recent article on the BBC, Swedish mum’s battle against sugar goes viral. First, the reason this was supposedly viral was a few thousand likes on Facebook, not really viral in my opinion. Secondly, the core reason why this mother seemed to be against sugar, was in connection with her child’s behavior. The BBC was very quick to point out that no scientific and peer reviewed connection has been made between children’s behavior and sugar. The BBC then went on to make a number of claims themselves, some sort of vaguely citing research, and others making their own assertions.

I think for most people like me, ordinary sugar is a normal part of our diet. It is a minimally refined product, mostly coming pretty directly from sugar cane or sugar beet. It is a hunger suppressant, can help people eat less and avoid weight gain. It’s been around for a long time, longer in fact than many diseases like diabetes and obesity have been major health concerns.

On the other hand, many of us find reason to be suspicious of newer formulated sugars like those found in processed foods, or sugar substitutes like aspartame. Many of these have a different effect on hunger, some seemingly stimulate hunger and cause us to gain weight. The introduction of some of these on the market, notably aspartame and high fructose corn syrup, seem to coincide with the obesity and diabetes epidemics we have now. Many of us also do not feel scientific research on these products have been taken seriously, often being incomplete or ignored.

There also seem to be strong commercial issues behind this topic. Sugar has been around a long time now, and is no longer covered by patents. It’s not commercially interesting any more. The food industry would like to sell us more profitable alternatives.

Is there some reason the BBC is suddenly so concerned with our health? Could it be the BBC is generating their own news? Was the BBC paid to write articles like this? Is this fake news?

I think the BBC needs to get it’s act together, and address it’s own contradictions.