Green Left proud to be to the left of fascists in the Netherlands

Saturday suddenly it ended: the fascist one man party (calling itself Party for Freedom) withdrew its support of the Dutch minority government.

There are no obvious reasons for this withdrawal and I am very surprised by the way the news is presented by the BBC for example. The government did not collapse because of "the euro", neither because of the openly professed xenophobia, islamophobia nor its latent homophobia and antisemitism. It just collapsed. The main reason may be that the one man making up a whole party representing 1/6th of the electorate would be forced to disclose his paymasters soon. We can only guess who they might be and where they are.

Protester: Freedom to be
beaten by Wilders' Supporter? 

And it was becoming clear that Wilders was not able to keep the nitwits who represent his "party" in parliament at a national level, in provinces and in some communities at bay. He cannot control them all at once and still be in charge of government. One of them, a former police officer, who is proud of beating up leftwing demonstrators (hence the illustration) and thinks it would be good if more of them would be shot on sight, left the "party" the other day to start one for himself. That is the way the extreme right always worked in the Netherlands: Huge Egos not fitting in with The Leader (thank God..).

Is the end of this fascist-supported coalition a reason to be cheerful...? Very eager to take the fascists' place is a seemingly broader coalition of the so-called GreenLeft, "liberals" and "ChristiansUnion". I am not going to explain the latter category, it is an incredibly Dutch "Christian" party.

GreenLeft is neither Green nor Left. It is the product of a merger between pacifist socialists, communists and christian radicals who decided to die in each others' arms after the collapse of Real Existing Socialism in 1990. The end is near now they have decided they are "liberals" and will be supporting the "Christian Democrats" and conservatives in their class war against the (working or non-working) poor. Good riddance apart from the damage they can inflict on us before their inevitable electoral collapse in the autumn.

To be continued...

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.

Not following the straight and narrow

Sometimes I am forced to feel very Dutch. Like when I travel in the USA and next stop is announced: Van Buren - oh really - well, there is one difficult vowel in this, but if you learned to speak French or German the u should not be difficult.
That is how it works - having difficulty with the name of former prime minister Kok but not realising that the first name of former president Clinton in my language is Buttocks. Taking for granted that the whole world accepts the silly name Bill and giggling about Kok. (Both persons make me feel sad or angry, by the way).

Laughing about Herman Van Rompuy means that his predecessor, José Manuel Barroso had a name which was pronounced perfectly all the time. I can assure you, it was not. And actually, I can offer little help with the pronunciation of the name. An approximation of the uy-diphthong (usually spelled ui) can sometimes be heard in Scots pronunciation of ow or ou in general English. And I know no other European language where this diphthong is current - it is a Dutch specialty. Sorry buyt that (not really).
"Rompuy" definitely does not rhyme with "pompy" (don't tell me that is why they are rolling over with laughter about the new EU-president at the BBC!).
And I can give you an explanation of the meaning of the name. It means "from (a) wide path" - so not from the straight and narrow. A fitting name for a Christian democratic politician. (Not meant to be very personal - and probably the main reason Belgium was chosen is that it is both a member of NATO and defintely not of the Coalition of the Willing to invade Iraq, which would have made mr. Blair vulnerable of getting arrested as the war criminal he is, in quite a few countries - a truth British mainstream media conveniently want to forget).

I feel sorry for the people of the Southern Netherlands, since it will be difficult to find a new prime minister willing to preserve the state - which means the risk of having two new states or the even more abject idea of merging the Dutch speaking parts of the historic Netherlands. There is at least one state I want to keep for the time being, for the sake of civilised behaviour. It should not be necessary having to explain this, but I fear few people outside the Low Countries realise what I mean.

(The three bottles of what is considered by some the best beer in the world symbolise the three official languages spoken in Belgium).