Future Dutch government proud to be to the right of the nazis

The hunting parties in France directed at Roma have faded from the news. Quite probably there is still need to be alarmed. But then, do we know a place in Europe that is providing good or hopeful news these days?
The new parliamentary season in Iceland started with the members having to run the gauntlet, around one per cent of the population of the island republic attending in the demonstration. The xenophobes in Sweden were left out of the government, that is still a consoling piece of news. Standards have been lowered rather drastically. Still two countries to escape to. Perhaps the Isles west of the North Sea might be an option too.

Hope has been given to us for the sake of the hopeless. The Roma. Those about to be on the losing side because of the "austerity measures" planned by the several European regimes - the poor who will be getting poorer since riches only look good if there are enough poor not enjoying the spoils of imperialism. The European Muslims, main aim of xenophobia, apart from the Roma. Apart from the wars the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is performing in such typically Atlantic countries as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran is next on the list.

These are rather strange days in the Netherlands. The so-called Christian-democratic party - resembling a real old style Eastern European communist party since its earliest days - has decided to form a government together with xenophobe extraordinaire Wilders - a one man party filling a sixth of the seats in the Second Chamber ("the Commons"). Yes, it is incredible, he has not got a party, only 23 obedient followers who take their time calling names to everyone they consider to be on the left or Muslim or both. A good partner for Christian Democrats. If all will still end in the regular way this will be the good thing about this episode: the end of these hypocrites in power and the end of that party in general. Yet there is no light at the end of this tunnel we in this country have not even entered yet.

The hunt is on.The most important this government has to decide immediately is prohibiting wearing burqas. There are about two thousand women in NL wearing this piece of garment, so this is an important matter as you will agree. Furthermore there will be tough measures against any immigrant from "non-western" countries who might still think it a good idea to enter the Netherlands. I can assure you, it was not and it will be even less. Highway speeding will be up, state support for the arts will be scrapped (they are left wing hobbies, we are told, even though NL has never had anything like a left wing government in the first place). Official education will teach that Muslims organized the "holocaust" and that Hitler was a socialist. This regime is proud to be on the right to the nazis.

Well, you have been informed for the time being. As illustrations I chose a "autochthonous" actress demonstratively wearing a headscarf telling she belongs to the "hard-headed" people.
The other day a male journalist put on a burqa in the southern city of Eindhoven and went his way through the mad shopping crowd. "They ought to be shot" was about the first and gentlest of responses he got. So I leave you now with two French female political science students who ventured on the busy streets of Paris combining a niqab with hot pants. More on their findings here.

Notes from a future pariah state

A beautiful Saturday afternoon in a small provincial town.. That’s how you are supposed to call it, but a glance on the map of Holland (the western part of the Netherlands) shows one urban agglomeration form North to South, from Haarlem to beyond Delft. This part of Holland actually is one large urban area with some rectangle patches of green jotted in between, nonsensically named The Green Heart, “the dunes” and some more.
In this small town most people know each other, which gives it a village feel. The adjacent street terraces are crowded and there is continuous mutual greeting going on. I do not exactly know how we fit into this, but we do not feel excluded. With a goblet of Augustine triple in the sun the world does not look all that bad.

Yet we are discussing the seriousness of the situation in NL. A party seems to be coming to power which yearns for Guantánamo-style concentration camps, which wants to ban the Book of about a million faithful (and more, since I want to be able to read the Qur’an too), a party expressing loads of contempt for some of these faithful who are covering their hair which the party pretends to be able to tax (“headragtax”), and much more. The Netherlands can easily and perhaps inevitably become a pariah state in Europe. Since the fourteenth century this river delta country has depended mostly on trade and so the ruling class should prevent the xenophobic crowd from coming to power. After a long time of commitment to anarchism I will have to count on the ruling class to protect me...

We are seriously discussing the possibility of having to emigrate and ask for asylum somewhere, in the near future.. What exactly seems to indicate the danger? In any police state you can sit perfectly on a pavement and drink in the sun, you only should not talk too loud about certain things. The above-mentioned one man xenophobic “party” wants a special state brigade that shoots on sight those “everyone knows to be the wrong types”. And at night you may expect the bang on the door. It is the leftists wot brought the mooslims over here, you see, and now NL is shaking off sixty years of lefty dictatorship, that is his story. History is what he makes of it. Escaping to – Germany, Sweden, Britain, Ireland – in Belgium a similar party seems to be just a hair’s width from state power too. You hardly can imagine you have to consider these things seriously.

How to explain NL A.D. 2010 to non-Dutch? That a sixth of the electorate feels attracted to a man with a baby head and a bleached coiffure wanting to resemble images of Mozart? Not a charismatic man with a dangerously attractive twinkle in his eyes like Fortuijn – it was not a reason to vote for him but you could imagine people being charmed by him. The baby head is only grouching in parliament, supported financially from Tel Aviv and dubious so-called think tanks in the USA. Chewing the rag is a favourite pastime for quite a lot of Dutch. A friend who escaped southward a long time ago described this typical Dutch mentality as “badgering is obligatory, hitting is forbidden.” The moooslims will be badgered, it does not matter if it be legally allowed or not, someone has to be the main object of badgering. A sixth of Dutch voters thinks this is a way to live life to the full. And if one may believe the opinion polls their numbers are rising all the time. And badgering is bad enough, but will that be all in the future?

Two men dressed in jellaba put away their bikes near the café where we sit outside. They walk along, seemingly to the mosque, wherever that may be, there is no minaret in sight. In the neighbourhood in which I grew up the building of the pes control service has been turned into amosque without much external changes to the building. Humiliating muslims “in finibus” is not a new feature of the Netherlands. I notice there are quite a few men passing by, dressed like this along the pavement. It is ramadan, how could I forget.. Nobody takes notice of them, maybe I am the only person sitting outside giving them any thought. What is there to worry about?

And then there is a female passer-by attracting many glances. High-heeled, wearing a tube skirt reaching just under her knees. Her pantyhose may be flesh-coloured or absent, I cannot tell. She radiates elegance not in tune with sitting outside a café in the sun, but that would not necessarily attract attention. Her hair is the remarkable thing about her.
Her hair is completely packed in a knot, covered y a piece of textile generally called a bandana, a headscarf. The muslim headscarf. The young woman puts on a sullen look – if she knows her way around she must know there are three cafés in a row with pavement arrangements, crowded in the sun, and she is bound to know she will draw attention. Her whole look is giving out a statement and it must be purposeful, even though she puts some anger on her face. In bigger towns it can be seen increasingly – young women combining the muslim headscarf with miniskirts, yet they will wear dark tights. It is a remarkable appearance. These girls to me embody the hope that all may still be well with the Netherlands, even thought the usual cantankerous types will not enjoy it at all.

We had been spending some time in a news free zone, back in the world we hear that the “Brown” coalition of so-called liberals, so-called christian-democrats and fundamentalist protestants with the fascists seems to have been blown off by the Blonde Xenophobe himself. I do not know if that really is a relief.
To quote a famous Dutch hymn: There will be lots of struggle ahead.

Being headline news once more

If you are not familiar with the face (you are of course, but you think of a fictional character, don't you?): this has been the prime minster of the Kingdom of the Netherlands for the past 7 1/2 years. He presided over four cabinets and is now ready to fix a fifth. Rather incredibly, the Dutch Labour Party pulled away because of the colonial war in Afghanistan (they never did it because of other colonial wars).
The words mean "have fallen", it is a joke on a certain telephone company which no longer exists or is existing again or - whatever.
A joke that has to be explained is awkward anyway. It already circulated three months after Balkenende took office so he may already have reached the books of holding the most and least successful of cabinet offices. At least, in NL.

Shamefully, the Christian Democrats and the Light Version of Christian Fundamentalists, the other two coalition parties in Balkenende IV, wanted to prolong Dutch participation in the Afghanistan colonial war. Oddly, the openly racist party that may be the largest after the early elections due in May 2010, supports the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The best way to get rid of these racists seems to be a sixth cabinet presided by Balkenende (if the Christian democrats succeed in being the largest party). It would be the best recipe for a short spell for the racists, who do not have a programme apart from muslim bashing. It all depends whether the officially politically organised Christians are willing to fully extend their war plans to the population of NL itself. It is always best to stay out of the headlines.

For now, brothers and sisters, I command you to God, awaiting in fear and trembling what is coming (but still with a smile about the picture above).

Footprint of freedom

A few years ago I got in touch with a representative of the UK Chagos campaign. It earned me the qualification of being the Dutch Solidarity Campaign, which only made me feel embarrassed and inadequate - this is very much an uphill struggle, a sisyphean labour.

Then I was invited by International Prison Watch to participate and focus on Chagos, this being the unknown Guantánamo of the USA on - officially - British soil. And so there it is: campaigning means blogging, these days, does not it?

The main introduction, Chagos in a nutshell

The Chagos Islands - an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, halfway Africa and Indonesia. Colonised by French plantation operators, populated by slaves taken from other French island colonies in the Indian Ocean. In 1804 conquered by the British who abolished slavery. Plantations and workers however stayed.

And then the government of the United States of America decided that the archipelago was of high strategic value and wanted to have the natural harbour of the main island, Diego Garcia, as a navy base - condition was that there should be no human beings snooping around.

The islands were detached from the original main island colony, Mauritius, were not given independence and the British government decreed that the population of slave descendants was really an itinerant worker community.Plantations were nationalised and immediately closed down. The islanders were deported, the US navy and air force moved in (1973).

In the so-called war on terror the islands are used as a prison and torture camp under the incredible code name of Footprint of Freedom.

Although the indigenous people won their court cases against their deportation they are still being denied the right of return. Nowadays, the risk of climate change is the main story why the islands should not be populated.
A continuing sad story.

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