European Politics

Brigantium said:
Don't they already self-regulate in line with political pressure? Not so much about hate speech, but I remember Facebook becoming a lot stricter on anti establishment type comments after David Cameron talked about compulsory regulations for social media - partly around terrorism/extremism and as partly in their media crackdown. Strong criticism of the monarchy goes down particularly badly.
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I would think the possibility of fines would lead to more limitations in what people post, which would be a shame. One of the redeeming values of the internet is the ability to get a message and thoughts out to the world and people to react to those thoughts. Bring on the cat pictures .. until someone gets offended by them
 
Less than 2 hours ago, an armed man came into the studio at the start of the main news (20 o'clock news), was guided to another room where he asked for broadcast time. He said he was sent by a hackers organization. The other man talking to him (a porter, who can be called a hostage) stays remarkably calm and asks the man if he can leave the building. He cannot, and at a certain point police enters.


Still no regular broadcast. The building was cleared and the police are still searching through the building.

This is what the man said, related to his goal:
"The things that will be said, these are very big matters to the world. We are hired by intelligence services from which we have learned things society is doubting about. And we are going to bring out these matters. We are also doing this for the normal civilian."

This film was not broadcasted live. It came on TV about an hour later or so (before that: there was a message: "Please have patience, because of circumstances we cannot broadcast".
 
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Sounds like a plain lunatic? Why would a hacker group send an armed man into a TV studio? They can usually get enough attention doing what they are actually good at - hacking.
 
He did not come across as a lunatic. Of course, this was not a proper way to bring his message (which we still haven't heard), an understatement. ;-)
Apparently he felt it was needed to bring these matters to a big live audience. But it didn't look as if he found it important enough that he wanted to kill for it, if they didn't let him. When the police entered he gave in immediately.

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By the way, I am glad to see how the police have dealt with this.
At the same time, it angers me when I think of unarmed people getting killed by the police in the US. For fucking less.

Here the arrest from another view (from where the police entered), from 1.19 - 2.16:
 
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I suppose we'll find out more after he's been questioned or goes to court. The thing is, since al Qaeda, more people have cottoned on to the idea that any old psycho can claim they are attached to a bigger movement in the hope of being able to use that as justification for their actions. If they want attention, claiming to be a terrorist gets an instant media circus.
 
Forostar said:
"The things that will be said, these are very big matters to the world. We are hired by intelligence services from which we have learned things society is doubting about. And we are going to bring out these matters. We are also doing this for the normal civilian."
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EDIT: Also my graph card crashed when I played that video, conspiracy!
 
It turned out the weapon was fake. It was a 19 year old student (chemistry) and probably acted alone. He probably had no terrorist motive (and was not known in jihad database).
 
Dr. Eddies Wingman said:
Sounds like a plain lunatic? Why would a hacker group send an armed man into a TV studio? They can usually get enough attention doing what they are actually good at - hacking.
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Well, if a "hacker" was working for a legal "security consulting company", that was contracted by some state, he could've found out something, and wants it open it to the public.
Similar situation is Edward Snowden - he wasn't a NSA employee, but from a contractor.

But I doubt that's the case here.
 
If somebody breaks into a TV studio with a fake weapon to transmit a message, that defines a lunatic in my book. Or in any case, a person who chooses to ignore social conventions and means of civilised behaviour.
 
Zare said:
Well, if a "hacker" was working for a legal "security consulting company", that was contracted by some state, he could've found out something, and wants it open it to the public.
Similar situation is Edward Snowden - he wasn't a NSA employee, but from a contractor.

But I doubt that's the case here.
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Well, Snowden hardly entered a TV studio and threatened people with a fake gun, did he? :D
 
The motive is still unclear. It looks indeed like someone who got a bit confused (to say the least).

He was busy a lot with politics and with the question of how companies use power. He is allegded to believe in conspiracy theories. One of his fellow students thinks that he wanted to make the world better, step by step and do something against the groot-kapitaal (don't know how to translate this to English).

What can I say? Society can be uncomfortable or frightful to people, and trigger them to do unexpected and unwanted things.
 
I agree with everyone on all accounts. Just spitting out a possible scenario.
But EW is right, he's a loony, there are far better ways (for yourself) if you want to 'whisleblow' something out.

@Foro, what's groot-kapitaal? If it means "big capital" literal translation, as in big influential money instututions, banks, investment funds, stock markets etc, then there's a similar pharse in Cro - "krupni kaptial". It's mostly used by people to descibe, in a negative way, institutions who use monetary power to achieve some society-level or state-level change or whatever. This term is used a lot in conspiracy lunatics jargon (because it's really vague and inprecise).
 
Dr. Eddies Wingman said:
Well, Snowden hardly entered a TV studio and threatened people with a fake gun, did he? :D
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Ok, your point stands, but keep in mind that normal, or so called "official" channels set up for people to report corruption or abuse of powers are nothing more then honeypots used to catch whistleblowers.
That's the story behind Snowden debate. A lot of U.S. politicians are speaking about "he could've reported this way, he could've reported that way". No he couldn't, and if he tried, he'd end up in prison for breach of contract and espionage. Public wouldn't be aware of anything at all.

When we're dealing with issues such as state security, or in this case, high finance, a lot of media outlets are simply going to ignore you.

So there's a question on how it should be done? Well if you decide to force your way through, even with a fake gun like this chap, you'll get labeled, you'll repulse people by making a hostage situation on TV, and generally lose all credibility.
 
Yes, that's it guys. And thanks for the terms. :)

Looking up Dutch definitions I have these two (translated):

"The group of people with a terribly big amount of money"

and

"The world of the big money, banks, pensionfunds, etc."

Basically what Zare mentioned.
 
All that fits. As you may have guessed, the very same term exists in German. It's really a polemic term inherited from Communist literature.
 
Yes, that's Marx. The enemies of proletariat are these "big capitalists".

In other news, Germany AFAIK has fixed lowest income to 8.5euro/hour, equaling to ~1350-1400 euro/month for a standard 40 hour / week job. There has been some talk about taking this to European level. This has created a sort of a backlash from eastern members, or I'd rather say, their political elite. The legal minimum wage here is laughable comapred to minimum living costs.

I think that this kind of regulation is good, when you raise the bottom. We have a problem with absurd top capping, or "progressive taxes" as they say. If you want your employee to get 2000e/month net, you have to check out 4000e gross. For 700e/month net it's 1200 gross, and down you go it becomes progresivelly lower.
 
Yeah, the minimum wage has been a massive topic here for the last couple of years. It's a start, but there are way too many loopholes and exceptions to make it really effective. There's also the concern that it may do harm to small businesses, but I think that will only be a temporary problem until the effects of the wage can be felt in the economic cycle. But right now, it's noticeable that there is no great political will behind it, and the government only does it to appease voters.
 
How does the business lobby feel about it? There was real hesitancy to introduce a minimum wage here, and I know many businesses, particularly small ones, don't like it. Some get around it by having semi-freelance employment contracts or zero-hour contracts. Some people are campaigning for a 'living wage' of £7.85 or £9.15 in London. The minimum wage for over 21s is £6.50 an hour.
 
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