Amsterdam, 'the cesspool', strikes back at O'Reilly

Amsterdam, 'the cesspool', strikes back at O'Reilly

(By Ernst-Jan Pfauth/ NRC Handelsblad)

It is a much-belated response, but 25-year-old Robert Nieuwenhuijs' July 27 video reply to Fox News' description of Amsterdam as a "cesspool of corruption" has nevertheless become a hit on the video-sharing website YouTube.

-snip-

By showing smudgy images of Amsterdam's red light district over negative commentary - "It's a moral disaster" -, O'Reilly wanted to make his viewers believe that Amsterdam has turned into a modern equivelant of Sodom and Gomorrah.

25-year-old film academy graduate Robert Nieuwenhuijs from Amsterdam recently saw the show on YouTube and felt affronted by O'Reilly's Amsterdam-bashing. He decided to post a video reply on YouTube, calling it 'The truth about Amsterdam'. He looked up numbers about drugs use from American and Dutch national surveys and made some striking comparisons.

-snip-

Nieuwenhuijs' video reply has been reposted to some America's biggest blogs this week "O'Reilly Factor versus reality", wrote Mark Frauenfelder from BoingBoing. The libertarian blogger Andrew Sullivan (Daily Dish) commented: "The issue O'Reilly has with Holland is that, compared with the US in many respects, it values individual liberty."

More, plus both videos: http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2316356.ece/Amsterdam%2C_the_cesspool%2C_strikes_back_at_OReilly

O'Reilly has some strange ideas about America too.

Perfect! Fuck off Faux.

but every so often it's good to see what passes for truth over there. The stilted language and expressions remind one of the communist propaganda of the 1950's or even some of the propaganda of WWII.

And I hope people visit Delft, Utrecht, and the lovely towns of Zeeland, all of which this American misses as soon as the plane takes off from Schiphol.

God made the world. The Dutch made Holland!

for putting the reality into one of many bill o'really's smear campaigns..so he can get the frothing asshole ratings.

http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html

and has been shown falsely by FOX.

We still don't have a counter-channel to FOX. Comedy Central ain't enough.

Those who put sunshine on Fox's lies are enough.

(Thanks for the video. It was beautiful)

We DO need a news network that is anti-Fox. I'm not saying that we need one that targets them by name... we just need a network that broadcasts uncensored, unbiased, REAL reporting of the news and events in the world; not one that obsesses about party politics or what color Michael Jackson's underwear was on the day he died. MSNBC gets a lot of things right, but even they are part of the disgrace that is corporate "news".

Unfortunately, until we break up the mega-corporations, we will continue to have propaganda, distraction and obfuscation disguised as news.

Really, when you get right down to it, Fox news with all its lies, distractions, and propaganda... they are just a louder, more blatant version of the same problem: our news is owned by megacorporations that see the news as just another tool to massive profits.

I agree that's a better concept than one that is simply anti-Fox.

And you're right, the problem is more about large corporations owning the media that broadcasts all this information.

In the meantime while they continue to spew their lies and nonsense, the best protection is to turn them off.

http://therealnews.com/t/

They're also on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRealNews

They depend on donations from regular people to keep their organization going.

the video in the DU video section about prisons being closed over there due to dropping prison population. I was in Amsterdam last fall and rode a canal boat past the red light district where they stand in the window with little on. Didn't seem to bother anyone there.

Good video but I still had to listen to O'Reilly, which I haven't done in awhile. He's a sick bastard.

They're closing 8 prisons in The Netherlands, but not for "a lack of criminals". It's just that in other prisons, they're keeping two inmates in one cell, as opposed to just one, like they used to do before. So the 'empty prisons' are artificial and they need not be empty if they just gave every prisoner his own cell.

..........and ship some of our violent marijuana users over??? After all we are the land of the free and the home of the imprisoned.:sarcasm:

the good ole wholesome USA averages 10 times worse in murder and drug problems. So what does that make us mR O'Lielly? I'm so sick of this right wing perpetrated myth of the shiny moral beacon of America and the depraved socialist cesspool of Europe. Lets get real.

Really? Well, I just might have to take O'Lielly's advice, head on over there, and suffer through their degrading high standard of living, ridiculously long life expectancy, and hope to survive their superb health care system. I'll admit, it will probably be tough. :rofl:

...of Human Garbage. Not one decent cell in the lot of them.
They should be exterminated.

'They should be exterminated' ... now you're sounding like on of THEM !

:wtf:

I am looking forward to spending a week there with my wife in September. The one problem I do have with Amsterdam (or the Netherlands in general) is they are leaning more towards the right; especially after the killing of Theo Van Gogh by a Muslim. Geert Wilders and his party just won a few more seats and his ideology bothers me as much as those from hard-line Turkish Islamic politicians does.

Interview with Wilders
An interesting read from Salon back from 2004

either way, I agree w the sentiment. they are not only useless but also downright damaging to this country and need to go away, permanently.

Still, the rise of his party and the acceptance of his rabid anti-muslim, borderline fascist ideas worries me very much. Already, he's talking about "solving the problem" of the "millions" of 'criminal' muslims in Europe by "deporting" them out of Europe. But nobody's willing to point out the similarities between Wilders' language and that of a certain German leader in the 1930's, because such comparisons are deemed "demonizing" to Wilders and allows him to revel in the position of the underdog.

...that they didn't exist.

I Let those bastards bring out the worst in me.

- K&R

matter to these lying assholes.

so that the rest of us can enjoy it.
:rofl:
If Faux says that something is black, the facts will show that it is white. It's as simple as that.
And Amsterdam, indeed all of the Netherlands, is a lovely tolerant place. Yes, there is a rabid and radical RW that is gaining some traction in some places, but this is still the same city where non-Jewish Dutch citizens literally risked their lives to hide Jewish residents like the Franks.
Having been there, I can attest to its charm and that O'Lielly, as usual, has it bass-ackwards. The woman Crowley is even worse.
Of course, there may be some distorted wile in trying to detract from Amsterdam. The Hague with its International Criminal Court is not far away.
:evilgrin:

is because hates them for their freedom.

I'd like to see Billo and his bimbos do that in Harlem NYC (Not Haarlem NL, of course)

Why Harlem?

:shrug:

That's why

I was thinking America probably shouldn't throw stones. Looks like I was right.

Crowley talked to an Albanian cab driver (who, she was quick to add, was a legal immigrant) who told her that he left Albania to escape socialism. Of course. The biggest problem in Albania is socialism?

They discussed how organized crime controls the sex trade and drugs even when they're legal, "and if you don't like it, we'll shoot you in the head." Which explains why the entire city council of Las Vegas was killed when they decided to get prostitution off the streets of the city. Or why all the New Orleans politicians were executed gangland style when (much to my disappointment) strippers on Bourbon Street were ordered to wear g-strings.

And, of course, O'Reilly brings it all back to the War on Christmas.

Then, the follow-up video, and O'Reilly again looks like a complete ass.

Bill-o the Clown at his best.

I live in the French Quarter and I have been to Amsterdam. Amsterdam reminded me of home, with the exception that it was cleaner and there were less drunks! I loved the atmosphere. I was there solo and never worried about my safety.

It makes me who I am.

Good point. Journalism at its best at Fox News.

In recent years, the number reports on human trafficking, forced prostitution and abuse has risen dramatically. Especially since the EU-borders went open to Poland, Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries, the amount of young girls who are working against their will as a prostitute has seen a sharp rise.

In Amsterdam and other cities, the number of windows has been reduced on order of the city councils, who want to 'clean up' their cities.

...O'Reilly, as usual, is scum.

If you walk thru the Red Light District in the daytime, it looks pretty much like any other neighborhood. Kids going to school, grandmas shopping, etc.

Also, the famous "women in the windows" are not restricted to that area. I saw a couple of hard-working entrepreneurs in their windows early one morning, while I was walking over to the Anne Frank house in a different district.

Someone upthread said many of the Dutch hid their Jewish neighbors during WWII. They did more than that. When news of the Nazi deportations to the death-camps got around, Amsterdam's labor unions went on strike and paralyzed the city. The Nazis crushed that pretty quickly, but it was more than a lot of "Xian" Europe did. (You can still visit the monument to the strike. IIRC, it's not too far from Rembrandt's house. But it's been a while since I visited.)

Also don't miss one of the world's creepiest buildings, Der Weeg (The Weighing-House) - a round wooden structure. The big plaza/courtyard in front of Der Weeg is where witches were once burned. And a few generations later, where the Nazis gathered the Jews for "transport to the East."

As a materialist and Fundamentalist Atheist, I don't register creepiness easily. But that weird round building is definitely creepy, once you know what happened there. I visited it on a gloomy winter evening at twilight, which heightened the effect.

Finally, I asked the usual tourist question - "How deep are the canals in Amsterdam?" The answer is 3 meters: one meter of water, one meter of mud, and one meter of stolen bicycles.

Maybe O'Leilly can do a follow-up on the Perfidious Bicycle-Stealing Dutch!

I'm still trying to figure out where his mention of Baby Jesus came from in that report. Face it, the man is one of America's funniest comedians. He just doesn't know it.

I will get back to you all with more on this matter. :beer:

But Dutch pragmatism is lost in a Puritanically Idiotic country like this one.

I want to go back at some point. :smoke:

I went to Amsterdam. Sure it's nothing flashy like Las Vegas, and it has its share of seedy areas, but what city doesn't have its share of seedy areas?

O'Reighley should loofah his mouth out for spreading such distortion and bullshit propaganda.