The horrible murder yesterday in a day care center in Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde in Flanders (BE) by a "Clown" on two young kids and a child leader (F, 53 y.o.), is shocking The Low Lands and beyond. The murderer was arrested when biking away. Belgium suffered from serial killers like Dutroux and others, and now again.
Why do these dramas happen so often in Belgium? There is a lot of unsolved tension in this country: widespread corruption in business & politics, the endlessly debated potential breakup of Belgium in two, three or four separate states (Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels, the German-speaking Eastern Cantons), the related language fights, the dominance and now decline of the Roman Catholic Church, xenophobic close-knit communities, widespread feelings of injustice. Probably, there are many more factors involved, I am not trying to do a complete research.
As long as the democratic freedoms of the language communities are not fully respected, which may lead to the dissolvement of Belgium, the corruption on all levels of the state and society can not effectively be tackled. If the Flemmish want to separate or become far more autonomous, why is it possible that an other language community can frustrate this completely? This is not freedom, not an open democracy, not respect for the individual. And all the energy, money and time invested in the intercommunity fights, are not focussed on real problems like containing individual aggression, protecting the innocent and "weakest of the weakest" in this victimized society which still bears the scars of being the favorite battleground in many European wars: Napoleontic, WWI en WWII, just to name a few.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
The end of the end of investing in "closed" business models
Yesterday, cleaned up the old collection point of TakeitNow.com in Amsterdam (NL). As we had sold this business to Aces Direct in March 2008, it is a kind of closure of a 10 year period, pioneering in etail, and "closed" business models although based on open standards, open source and open content, and inspiring us to invest in Open ICEcat and open source shop system Batavi.org.
At the same time a perfect work-out: lost 1.5 kg in one day! With all the internet work, one start to miss the physical challenges. Ok running, swimming, squash, ice skating are good "surrogates" in my life.
The news that Microsoft, AMD and Intel lay-off jobs - sometimes for the first time - are healthy signals. I hope that one day those IPR companies are willing to license out their IPRs under open source licenses. I think that would definitely make the (internet) world a better place.
At the same time a perfect work-out: lost 1.5 kg in one day! With all the internet work, one start to miss the physical challenges. Ok running, swimming, squash, ice skating are good "surrogates" in my life.
The news that Microsoft, AMD and Intel lay-off jobs - sometimes for the first time - are healthy signals. I hope that one day those IPR companies are willing to license out their IPRs under open source licenses. I think that would definitely make the (internet) world a better place.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)