Belgian Minister of Defence De Crem: Bloggers are Dangerous
Yesterday, Belgian Minister of Defense De Crem stated in parliament that blogging is dangerous – after a blogger posted about the minister’s supposed drunk appearance in a NYC cafe, and was then fired. Belgian bloggers are upset.
More and better posts may appear have appeared (yay, Robin) as the story either develops or dies. But here’s a short time line of events.
Last week, the minister visits New York for a (cancelled) UN conference . He is spotted walking in drunk at a NYC Cafe by a Dutch girl working there. She posts the story on her blog.
A couple days later, the girl gets fired.
Questions arise about whether the Minister had anything to do with that. He denies. The media press on, find sources, he confesses.
Questions also arise in parliament: about the layoff, and about the drunk tax-funded escapade itself.
So far, most of this holds up. A Minister should show restraint when travelling in function, not go on drunken pub crawls. And staff shouldn’t blog about customers (as Maarten Schenk points out). And ministers shouldn’t exert pressure to get people fired.
But that’s where the S hit the F.
Yesterday, the minister said the following in parliament (loosely translated):
I’d like to use this nonevent as an opportunity to point out a dangerous phenomenon in our society. We live in a time where anyone is allowed to post anything to their blogs, as they please and without responsibility. This exceeds mud-slinging. It has almost become impossible to defend oneself against it. Every one of you is a potential victim.
Ouch.
He then added that he’ll have his legal department investigate how to protect himself and his ‘integrity’.
See, and that gets us upset.
Getting drunk is one thing, doing that with tax-payers’ money, abusing power, lying and then threatening freedom of speech are something else altogether.
Not amused.
One other english-language post so far, not updated
Image credit
Oooh. I can see how this ruffles a lot of feathers and I understand completely
In Malaysia itself, blogging itself is considered to be one of the weapons against national solidarity, which is an outright lie. But blogging has been used to instill awareness of the problems of the nation towards the younger generation, problems which involve the long standing government who don't want people to think otherwise.
So now we're the public menace that have been black bagged by our nation's Internal Security Act for "spreading mistrust and dissent" to the public.
In addition that , our government they is proposing that need to be registered and have a set of controlled rules and ethics for the sake of the nation.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:19 amA 'weapon against national solidarity', 'mistrust and dissent', 'ethics for the sake of the nation' – I can hardly believe that phraseology still exists. Still, you're worse off than we are then, because this may soon abate. Still, it shows how careful we need to be: it starts with this and before we know, we're in Malaysia too. Cheers, take care and thanks for the comment.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:54 amI saw the political debate on telly & was absolutely gutted -De Crem still claiming he has nothing to do whatsoever with the girl getting fired. I couldn't help ask myself what the phonecall then was all about -probably just a friendly chat with the owner, reminiscing on the great time spent there.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:39 amDude, you screwed up. Don't blame the person who caught you doing so.
Ugh. Politicians.
By the way, I was wondering if I could add your blog to my blogroll? I'm the one who posted on the fallschirmjager entry, and your blog seems pretty interesting.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:02 pmI think it's our bloggers duty to report when it seems that many feel accountable to no-one. OK, so he had a beer, nothing wrong with that, but when it's at the expense of Belgian taxpayers, and when he goes to such lengths to cover it up, then you have to question the integrity of De Crem.
Here in my local area in the UK, we bloggers wield quite a bit of power, reporting on many things that slip through the local media, and for this quite a few bloggers have had to be very careful upon receiving threats from lawyers etc. They still blog and the truth gets out, but now everything has to be backed up by facts and not just rumour. There is so much evidence against De Crem that he surely can't deny anything.
December 1st, 2008 at 9:28 amHey, yeah, I knew who you were and sure, feel free to link if you like. Thanks.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:26 pmIt was pretty laughable, and yet sad. Really wondering what will come of this.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:26 pmYeah, there has never been a lot of investigative blogging here yet, but I'm sure this will change some things. I don't think the guy will have a lot of success trying to check bloggers, but I'm interested to see what's going to happen.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:27 pmDutch shockblog geenstijl.nl is now involved and going after his scalp, this story will not end here. Geenstijl has quite a reputation getting politicians to step down or fired, but they are Dutch and not Belgium it will be interesting to see if they can cross borders.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:40 amSuperb. Hadn't heard that yet. Will do a small update
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm