Nep Nederland

2007-02-03T07:11:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of activity...

... but I've been "doing panto" and it has taken my life for the last six weeks.

Nothing terribly exciting has happened here that I have noticed.

Sorry!

2007-01-05T09:08:00.000-08:00

Left-wing propaganda

No even moderately right-wing person would get away with this blatant, Soviet-esque propaganda book aimed at very young children:

http://littledemocrats.net/samples.html

Note the use of the elephant (symbol of the Republican Party) that is heading right for the hobo to symbolise "bad stuff that the Democrats will protect you from", and the father caricature on the bottom plate which faintly resembles various anti-Semitic caricatures of the not-so-distant past. This really is exactly the same stuff that various totalitarian regimes got up to during the 20th century, so it does not surprise me hugely that some fervent Democrat has done it.

Is there any anti-idiotarian artist/photoshopper who would like to create a counter to this? Perhaps a recidivist donkey on early release raping and strangling a defenseless "Mommy" in her own home?

2006-12-30T12:34:00.000-08:00

Profiling

On my way up to Denmark a few days ago, I was a victim of profiling. Shock horror!

As a young male, driving a Dutch registered car alone up the autobahn away from the Netherlands, the German police decided to pull me over. Instead of shouting "is it coz I is young, alone, and driving a Dutch car?", I co-operated when they asked me whether I was carrying any soft drugs to Denmark. I even co-operated with them searching the boot of my car, and I was polite throughout. Speaking reasonable German certainly helped.

I fully understand why I was stopped, and why I was targeted. I do not feel sore about the incident at all. I see no point in them pulling over, for instance, French families travelling home from holidays in Germany and asking them if they are transporting drugs. Profiling is a sensible way to apportion police time, whether searching for drugs being smuggled out of the Netherlands, stopping football hooligans from flying to football matches, giving Irish sounding people special attention when flying during the 70s and 80s, or reducing the threat of Islamic terrorism.

Now, seeing as I can understand why I was profiled, and not immediately hold a press conference denouncing the Polizei for racism, why can members of the Religion of Peace not understand why they get extra attention at airports? (Rhetorical question, don't answer that...)

2006-12-24T05:59:00.000-08:00

How insensitive!

My Muslim neighbours send and receive Christmas cards. They manage to do this without complaining, holding press conferences, or getting any political Muslim organisations involved to complain about their non Muslim neighbour's lack of cultural sensitivity.

That is real tolerance for, and integration into, the host country's culture. Perhaps CAIR, MCB, MPACUK etc should ask them how they manage it?

When the BBC produced good programming...

I'm working my way through my "Yes, Prime Minister" DVD set at the moment, and it is remarkable to note how BBC comedy programming has changed. They even managed to allow the Prime Minister character to have a tax cutting agenda without totally ridiculing it! Unthinkable!

Anyway, the following section of dialogue is fantastic (apologies for any errors, I'm working from memory):

Sir Humphrey: he's [a candidate for appointment] against oppression in
Africa
Prime Minister: really?
So Humphrey: even when it's carried out by
black governments instead of white ones
Prime Minister: Oh, a racist then.

Can anyone imagine this attitude nowadays being a) openly stated, and b) clearly ridiculed by the BBC?

2006-12-13T12:24:00.000-08:00

Apologies

... for the lack of activity. I have been terribly busy, what with work and competitions and various other sundries.

Anyway, if any of you infidels were ever planning on visiting Mecca, forget it:

I believe that picture needs no further comment. Just remember it when Muslims spuriously complain about being discriminated against in Europe.

In other news, the crazy animal party has hired a close associate of Volkert vd G as an adviser working in the House of Representatives. Who is Dhr G, vd, I hear you cry? Well, he is the extreme left animal rights terrorist who shot and killed Pim Fortuyn. I believe that this tells us something about the crazy animal party, i.e. that they are every bit as crazy as I think they are. Some of the other politicians are not comfortable with this, understandably.

Apparently vd G has set himself up in business in the clink writing complaint letters for the other inmates...

2006-12-01T10:20:00.000-08:00

Oh dear...

In a vote of 75 to 74, the Dutch parliament has just voted to amnesty all failed asylum seekers who made the first application before 1 April 2001. Great. This motion was put forward by PvdA leader Wouter Bos, and was supported by all the left-wing parties, including the loony animal party (confirming yet again that this is indeed a left-wing party). What amnesty for asylum seekers has to do with animal rights, I have no idea.

The left of course wrapped this up in terms of "fairness" and all that usual claptrap, but in reality is this fair to genuine asylum claimants who have worked within the system, to bogus claimants who have voluntarily left the Netherlands over the last few years, and to the Dutch taxpayer who has to foot the bill for this?

And of course the Law of Unintended Consequences applies here, as it does to most left-wing policies. The blindingly obvious unintended consequence here is that this move will not go unnoticed around the world, showing the Netherlands to be a soft touch to fraudulent claims of asylum. Having somewhat successfully put the brakes on this phenomenon over the last few years, Bos and his other useful idiots have reopened the floodgates to illegal immigration. The message they have sent is that all you have to do is survive here for a few years, and then you will be amnestied.

Either Bos and cohorts are deluded enough to believe their own rhetoric, are blind enough not to see the obvious result of this, or there is something more sinister and cynical at hand.

Possible cynical interpretations could be as follows:
1. These bogus asylum seekers will vote left-wing, since these parties promise them free stuff, so it is essentially a case of the left-wing parties importing votes for themselves, literally at everybody else's expense.
2. Even more cynically, let us not forget that the SP are still a fundamentally Revolutionary Communist Party, and the others are not far off. Importing a whole load of bogus asylum seekers will destabilise the country socially and financially, giving rise to Marx's "revolutionary conditions", allowing these parties to seize power in a rather more permanent fashion. A less extreme version of this is merely the destruction of Western civilisation and its ideals by importing incompatible cultures with no desire to integrate.

Whatever the reason, this is bad news.

In other news, something went down a few streets over yesterday -- the police cordoned off the road at both ends, and I saw more police yesterday than I normally do in a whole year. Whatever it was, it wasn't big enough for the national news, so I will have to wait for next week's local paper to find out what it was.

2006-11-30T04:25:00.000-08:00

Thanks for clearing that up

The coalition talks continue apace. I expect a result by... oh... the end of the next decade.

Marianne Thieme, leader of the nutty animal party, told NOS Journaal that she does not fancy the idea of a CDA/PvdA/SP coalition (nor do I, frankly), and feels instead that a broader coalition of more "like-minded" parties, such as PvdA/SP/GL/CU/D66/PvdD would be better.

Hang on a minute, Marianne sweetie, didn't you say on your electoral campaign website that:

Niemand kan meer zeggen dat dierenrechten een links of rechts thema zijn. De rechten van dieren overstijgen oude tegenstellingen tussen mensen, net als bij beschavingsbewegingen die bijvoorbeeld de rechten van kinderen, slaven, arbeiders, vrouwen, zwarten en mensen met een homosexuele geaardheid op de agenda zetten.

No one can say any more that animal rights are a left or right wing issue. The rights of animals surmount the old differences between people, just as with the civilising movements which put for instance the rights of children, slaves, workers, women, blacks and people with a homosexual nature on the agenda.

And yet you are declaring yourself "like-minded" with a lot of parties which are, with the exception of D66, quite notably left wing. How helpful of you to finally point this out, not that it wasn't blindingly obvious that a party focusing solely on animal rights such as your own was not crypto-socialist at heart, even though you did not deem it necessary to write down any policies of importance to people in your manifesto.

Thanks for clearing that up, love. Now get back to your animal colouring books, there's a good girl, and leave the politics to the grown-ups.

2006-11-28T07:05:00.000-08:00

The Curse of Determinism

A Dutch language free-market/individual responsibility blog (I don't like to use the term "right wing", since it has been so thoroughly hijacked and warped by the left) Het Vrije Volk (The Free People) presents an incredibly insightful analysis of the difference in outcomes of systems based on determinism (such as Marxism, communism, Nazism, Islam) which assume that people are as predictable as billiard balls, and those based on free will (such as capitalism, and the majority of Christianity). It explains how Marx, who was no scientist, attempted to apply the scientific method of the 19th-century to society. The core of the post is translated as follows:

The core of this collectivism is still determinism. People have to be as predictable as billiard balls. Lenin, Hitler, and Den Uyl needed this predictability to build their Better World. Collectivism therefore denies human free will.

And this is goes against the roots of Western civilisation. The core of the (Catholic) Christian teaching is after all... free will. And this is at the same time the big difference with Jewish beliefs, with Islam, and some of the streams of Protestantism. In these one acts according to predestination, and one denies free will.

For this is Western civilisation in a nutshell: human free will means that people are personally responsible for their choices. We also call this "individualism". And this individualism and free human development are the basis of capitalism; the economically successful doctrine for which we can thank all our well-being and progress.

And so we arrive at the holy four-in-one of Western civilisation: Freedom, Individualism, Christendom, and Capitalism. All four are founded on human free will.

Diametrically opposite are: Submission, Collectivism, Islam, and Socialism. All four are founded on determinism.

This latter is truly the Kingdom of Evil. These last four brought the world the Holocaust, the genocides of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, the politically correct oppression in the welfare state with its growing asociality and criminality, the inhuman conditions for women and minorities in the Islamic world, and terrorism.

Friends, long live freedom, this is the core
of the issue.

I couldn't have put it better myself, and I feel it as a duty of this blog to bring such fantastically insightful things to an English-speaking audience.

2006-11-26T03:05:00.000-08:00

Dear Marianne

The Dutch language blog "Het Vrije Volk" ("The Free People") has a wonderfully sarcastic letter of congratulations to Marianne Thieme, leader of the nutty "Party for the Animals" on the occasion of her winning two seats in Parliament. The concluding paragraph is fantastic, and ties in nicely with my previous post on the subject:

Het zegt wat over de staat van een beschaving als het al zo dol en driest is dat een partij die zich om koetjes en kalfjes bekommert gekozen wordt in het parlement. Hier spreekt een totaal gebrek aan moraliteit uit. We zijn weer een stapje dichter bij de ondergang van het Westen gekomen.

It says something about the state of a civilisation if it it is so mad and audacious that a party which is so anxious about little cows and little calves is elected to Parliament. This expresses a total lack of morality.
We have come yet another step closer to the downfall of the West.

The same blog also has a short post about the public news broadcaster NOS turning the sound off on Geert Wilders' press conference. Wilders is one of the few high-profile politicians in Holland who sees the threat posed by radical Islam, and is vocal about it. Doing this won him nine seats, beating the crypto-Stalinist environmentalist party "GroenLinks", who were of course treated as a perfectly serious mainstream party by the left-wing biased NOS. Of course, everybody got to hear the views of Femke "Humorloze" Halsema. And we have to pay for this crap.

Aside from his anti-Islam stance, Wilders' "Party for Freedom" is a free market, deregulationist, pro personal responsibility, small State party, so of course the public broadcaster hates him.

The final few lines in the post speaks volumes,

Dit geeft maar weer eens aan hoe klein Nederland kan zijn. Het is toch van de zotte dat de NOS uitmaakt wat we wel of niet mogen horen en we niet in staat zijn om onze eigen mening te bepalen.

This shows once again how small Holland can be. It is really crazy that the NOS decides what we may or may not hear, and [has decided further] that we are not capable of forming our own opinions.

Just like the BBC and its convenient "technical difficulties" then...

2006-11-25T06:33:00.000-08:00

d(economy)/dt=0

An excellent post in my comments to this piece by daffersd illustrates perfectly why the European socio-economic model discourages hard work, discourages success, and actively prevents wealth creation and economic growth. He (or she) says:

I live in France and understand exactly what you mean, in 2005 I worked really hard and made a lot of money. My accountant told me that I was making too much money and that I should work less when I was asking about the level of tax and social security.

In 2006 the tax hit, I had a start up in mid-2003 and what happens is that the social security is in arrears and then they equalize, as a result I got hit by a huge bill.
For 2006 and 2007 I had changed the way I worked so that I would not make the same profit in one year, I am going to stop doing the major contract in 2007, there is no point, as a result my company will be back down to a low level of income and I should be in the area where I pay a normal amount of tax.
That is the reality of work in Europe. What makes me laugh, is that I was doing work overseas, out of France which was bringing money into France, but its not worth working like a dog for 40% of the profit. In France once you have income above a set level the tax increases significantly, as I already have built up a certain amount of capital, I can settle down to a more relaxed lifestyle and just earn enough to pay for the basics, that is the reality, sod wealth creation if you get taken for a mug.

And people still wonder why European economic growth is minimal? Well, I guess it's "socially just", right?

2006-11-25T06:26:00.000-08:00

The people have chosen...

... nothing in particular. The results are as follows:

Christian Democrats (CDA): 41 (-3)
Socialists (PvdA): 33 (-9)
Classical Liberals (VVD): 22 (-6)
Communists (SP): 25 (+9)
Fortuyn: 0 (-8)
Crypto-Stalinist environmentalists (GroenLinks): 7 (-1)
Social Liberals (D66): 3 (-3)
Christian Socialist (CU): 6 (+3)
SGP: 2 (+0)
Nutty Animal Party: 2 (+2)
Geert Wilders Freedom Party (PVV): 9 (+9)

And now comes the fun of picking a Cabinet with a majority. PvdA leader Bos seems to be pushing quite hard for a CDA-PvdA-SP coalition, since that would put the smarmy git in the middle between a centre-right party and an extreme-left party. The only other possibilities involve far too many parties to be stable. The VVD would do well to stay out of any coalition at this point so as not to be tainted by it. In a way, playing the long game, a far left coalition of PvdA-SP-GL-CU-PvdD-D66 might be a good thing (although of course in the short term it would be disastrous), since all parties involved would be horribly tainted by the inevitable infighting between different brands of socialism. If there is one thing a socialist hates more than a capitalist, it is a socialist of a different stripe. Such a coalition would make such a mess of the economy so quickly and would then fall apart that the damage could be undone without too much difficulty after early elections.

It amuses me, on an academic level, and of course horrifies me, to watch left-wing governments make an absolute cake and arse party of their country's economies, wonder how it came to pass, and then try to blame anyone but themselves. It happens every time! Despite this, they seem to believe in the correctness of their doctrine as Scripture, despite all evidence to the contrary every time it is applied (which gives it rather more similarity with Scripture than I originally intended with that metaphor). The much-vaunted dictatorship of the proletariat (whatever that is supposed to mean) may not be inevitable, but socialist parties destroying economies is.

This brings me to my final point. I was having a slightly alcohol lubricated conversation at the club last night about the election results, and how on earth the Communists managed to gain so many votes. The only reasonable conclusions that we could come to were that the party leader, Marijnessen, is very charismatic and firmly believes in what he is saying (which makes him especially dangerous); the vast majority of people likely to vote for them just do not realise that they are in fact Communists, nor do they understand what this actually entails; and they promised large quantities of other people's money to their target audience, particularly immigrants, i.e. state bribery using money forcibly extracted from others.

Oh well, I guess we'll have to wait and see...

2006-11-22T11:43:00.000-08:00

Dutch SF in Uruzgan

Here is an hour-long film shown on Dutch TV yesterday about Dutch SF in Uruzgan. The filmmaker that shot the footage ended up in an hour-long firefight, the footage of which starts at about 48 minutes in, and continues more or less to the end, interspersed with interviews of the soldiers.

What isn't said in the film is that at one point the filmmaker actually picked up a rifle and returned fire.

The film is mostly in Dutch, but there are bits of English.

Other interesting bits:

- Target indication for an F18 using vehicle mounted M2 Browning's: 18 minutes in
- Raid on a suspected IED factory: 42:30 minutes in

The SF guys interviewed were quite pissed off about several things -- 9/10 of what they do is not SF work and could be done by practically anyone, and decisions on the ground concerning for instance whether to go into an area or not have to be okayed by a general in The Hague, who will often forbid it because his intelligence suggests otherwise, preventing them from reacting quickly and properly. Another bone of contention for them is that their working rules imposed from The Hague make them look weak in the eyes of the locals, and they say that due to the philosophy prevalent in that area, the locals will always follow the strongest party -- and that they are running the risk of being seen as weaker than the Taliban, which would result in the locals siding with them.If you can understand Dutch, it is well worth watching the whole thing.

Otherwise, just skip to the indicated segments.

Election results imminent

In a few short hours we will know the results of the general election after the polls close at 9 p.m..

No prizes for guessing what I'm fearing...

My climbing partner last night said that if a left-wing Cabinet is formed after the election, he is seriously considering not renewing his contract at the end of the year, selling his house, and sodding off.

Why? Because the proposed increase in income tax alone would cost him €1500 a month extra. He is middle-class, married, 28 years old, and works in IT. The left-wing parties always go on about "social justice" and "fairness", but on what planet is depriving him of this amount of his hard earned income every month on top of what he already contributes in any way fair or "socially" just?

The SP politicians give their entire income to the party, which then pays them back a small allowance. They do this gladly. Bully for them. But they somehow cannot understand that perhaps other people might not want to do this, nor think that it is right to do so. They also cannot understand that if everybody did this, the economy would implode, since there would be no motive to work more than the minimum, as happened in the former Eastern bloc. Profit motive might seem crude and dirty from a Marxist perspective, but it is this motive which has given us the car, the personal computer, the mobile telephone, in-house sanitation, MRI scanners, countless life-saving drugs, and a phenomenal number of other things which make life better. Even the most fundamentalist left-wingers have benefited from this!

One definition of madness is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result, which is what socialists have been doing since the end of the Second World War. "We/they made mistakes last time, but it'll work this time". No it bloody won't, because (fortunately) people don't behave in the way that Marx decreed that they do. My climbing partner won't pay his extra taxes gladly, with a warm fuzzy feeling of "social justice" and "helping the less fortunate", he will pack his bags and leave, taking his labour and his taxes with him.

To finish, a fundamental question: in exactly what way is taking money from people who have earned it and giving it to people who have not, in any way "just"?

(Of course the exemptions to the above statement include those disabled such that they cannot work, etc. Even Lenin said "he who shall not work, shall not eat", and he was a proper socialist, mass murders and all...)

2006-11-20T11:25:00.000-08:00

"Cool" politics

Dutch MTV this evening ran a live debate between the leaders of four political parties -- PvdA, GroenLinks, VVD and D66, for teenagers. That is two left, two right.

Guess which side went for the ad hominems, and which stuck to the topic?

The audience were, of course, badly behaved, booing loudly those parties which they didn't like. And of course, being teenagers, there was more booing at comments supporting personal responsibility, economic freedom, and general economic liberalism than at the "we are going to take money from the rich and give it to our favoured groups" economic illiteracy from the left.

Left-wing parties seem to be always in favour of lowering the voting age to 16, as the Isle of Man has just done. Personally, I think that this is a Bad Idea. The vast majority of 16-year-olds live with their parents in essentially a gift economy. Perhaps they have to do chores to get their allowance, but they get housed and fed and clothed at somebody else's expense. This is all that they have experienced from birth. It therefore seems perfectly logical to them that you can apply this model to a whole country. I know, I was once one of them. As "progressive" governments have proved time and time again, however, this just does not work in practice, because the "free" money runs out. "The rich" are not a bottomless source of free money, and either retire early or sod off to economically sunnier climes if they are treated as such, and they take all the jobs that they were providing with them. It's funny how the self-proclaimed "progressives" cannot progress far enough to see this simple economic reality. Why do you think totalitarian communist regimes focus so much on children and teenagers? Perhaps because they are easily convinced of this?

One of the questions asked of VVD boss Mark Rutte by a teenage girl was why he wants to make it easier to fire people, and why he doesn't think that this is a bad thing. At the moment, because it is so terribly difficult to fire permanent employees, businesses do not hire them, and prefer to rely on temporary workers. This is a perfect example of the Law of Unintended Consequences at work: employee protection legislation designed to "protect" permanent employees by preventing them from being fired has created a whole class of young people in particular who just cannot get a permanent position. They then move from six-month contract a six-month contract, and as a result cannot get a mortgage. The Big Government solution to this problem would involve forcing employers to take on more permanent staff, but of course the Law of Unintended Consequences would apply again, possibly resulting in businesses going bust because they cannot fire useless workers that they have been forced to take on. The Small Government to VVD solution is to make it less onerous to fire people if necessary, to encourage employers to take on young people as permanent employees rather than as temps, in the knowledge that if they are useless they can fire them.

I bet the employment agencies hate it though...

BBC busted, again...

The BBC ran a "(Don't) Have Your Say" on the Dutch burkah ban. Unfortunately for them, it didn't run to their agenda so they ended it somewhat prematurely. For a good giggle at the BBC's expense, have a look at the first page of top recommended comments here .

Focus yourself...

Ageing Dutch progressive rock band Focus (they of "Hocus Pocus" yodelling fame) have just released their ninth album, imaginatively titled "Focus 9" . Overall, it is not as good as such greats as "Moving Waves" and "Focus 3", but there are some excellent tracks on it such as Niels' Skin, and European Rap[sody], the latter of which appeared initially on a film around 1971, and is reworked here.

The current lineup contains two original members of the band: Thijs van Leer (organ, keyboards, flutes, vocalisations), and Pierre van der Linden (drums), and two "new" members originally from a Focus tribute band: Bobby Jacobs (bass), and Niels van der Steenhoven (guitars). The latter two are certainly no Jan Akkerman and Bert Ruiter, of the "Moving Waves" and "Focus 3" classic lineup, but they certainly bring their own style to the music, which is somewhat more refined than their work on "Focus 8".

If you're into progressive rock and get an opportunity to see them live, take it.

2006-11-17T13:52:00.000-08:00

Activity lacking...

I would like to apologise to my small readership for the lack of activity over the last few days, since my evenings have been largely taken up with testing some samples of self-healing plastic for a professor at TU Delft, and with preparation for tomorrow's competition. The plastic, by the way, was very impressive -- 7.62 mm NATO holes at 50 m sealed up totally, as did .22LR. 9 mm Parabellum, however, did not seal completely, and .38 special JSP defeated it utterly.

You've got some more work to do, guys!

Anyway, back at the plot:

The "no shit, Sherlock" moment of the week award goes to the D66 party leadership, who were so awfully helpful as to inform us of the following:

A PvdA/SP/GroenLinks Cabinet would be a disaster for the economy.

Thank you, chaps, but this was already blatantly obvious to all but the most economically illiterate (i.e. those that would vote for PvdA/SP/GroenLinks in the first place, and I don't really think that these people care).

Holland suffers from the same periodic left/right swing as many other countries -- the (economically) left-wing parties (nearly) bankrupt the country, so the (economically) right-wing parties get voted in. The "free money" (extracted from taxpayers under force) stops flowing to certain sectors of the electorate, so they get pissed off and vote the left-wing parties back in, who rapidly spend the credit built up by the right-wing parties and thereby (nearly) bankrupt the country again... ad infinitum.

In further news, on Tuesday 7th November, the PCM printing office in East Amsterdam was attacked by "notorious antiracist action group" (i.e. far left terrorists -- I guess it makes a change from Islamic ones) RaRa, who fired a 40 mm grenade at the building. The motive is unknown. Why I thought this was relevant is equally unknown...

2006-11-13T08:04:00.000-08:00

PvdA - SP - Groen Links? Heaven help us!

As has been explained in posts passim, the proportional representation system of the Netherlands almost invariably results in a coalition government. In the run-up to elections, therefore, the various parties often discuss which possible coalitions they would be prepared to form should the cards fall their way.

The leader of the PvdA ("party of the workers", the Dutch Labour Party) has recently announced that in contradiction to earlier practice, and indeed earlier announcements, he would not only be prepared to form a coalition with the SP ("Socialist party", unreformed communists, see posts passim) and Groen Links ("Green left", "ex" communists looking to destroy Western capitalist society via environmentalism, again see posts passim), but he would find it "fantastic" .

The rest of his party, on the other hand, are not so chuffed with the idea. He, however, cannot understand why.

As I see it, it is perfectly simple -- no sensible middle-class floating voter is going to vote PvdA if it means a government and Cabinet held together by the extreme left. They might as well vote for SP or GL and get it over with. Had this announcement not happened, the middle-class floating voters may have voted for PvdA in the hope of a PvdA/CDA (Christian Democrats) coalition, as was the previous idea, with less focus on the CDA than at present. Due to the limitations of a coalition dependent system, small parties holding a coalition together punch heavily above their weight for the number of seats they have gained, since they can threaten to withdraw and bring the government down if their agenda is not being pushed to their liking.

Does any sane middle-class person want a government in which SP and GL, i.e. the "loony left", have a disproportionate amount of power?

2006-11-12T05:30:00.000-08:00

Also Sprach Grauniathustra

The Grauniad (via Dhimmi Watch) is running a story today about a possible move in the Netherlands to ban full face coverings, with a particular aim towards the burkah and niqab. Apparently, this was originally mooted back in December by anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders as a security move which would have banned all face coverings in public.

Of course, the Guardian smears Dhr. Wilders with the label "far right", because his policies do not conform to their left-wing worldview since he is anti-immigration and anti Islamist.

But anyway... the main thrust of this post was intended to be directed at the following paragraph:

The announcement is in stark contrast to the laissez-faire image of the Netherlands. The country is known for its tolerance for drugs, prostitution and
euthanasia, but in recent years has passed some of Europe's most unforgiving
entry and imigration laws.

Here we go again, the left-wing inspired fantasy land view of the Netherlands, as accepted around the world, just does not match up to reality. The biggest party in Parliament is a Christian party run by a devout Calvinist, and churchgoing is more common than in the UK. Your average Dutch person is rather more conservative than people on the "outside" give them credit for. Whenever the Netherlands does anything like this which is perceived by the chattering classes to be not "progressive" in the way that their fantasy view of the Netherlands is, it is castigated as if it is some kind of left-wing apostate.

Reading further, we learn that:

Muslim groups estimate that as few as 50 women out of 1 million Dutch Muslims wear the burka or the niqab, but the groups have protested that a ban would increase feelings of victimisation and alienation. "What the government is doing now is totally disproportionate to the number of women who actually wear the burka," said Ayhan Tonca, chairman of an umbrella group of Dutch Muslim organisations. "The legislation we already have to protect people for security reasons is adequate," he added.

I very heavily dispute this figure : my wife has seen at least three women wearing full veils at the shopping centre in Rijswijk recently, and that is hardly in the middle of a Muslim ghetto. Wearing it is a statement of adhesion to political fundamentalist Islam, including its egregious tenets of killing the infidel, Islamic supremacy, et cetera. If people who wish to publicly express their adhesion to such ideas feel "alienated" by those whom their ideas lead them to despise, then tough. If someone wears a swastika, they expect to be despised. Why should this be any different?

Would these people feel comfortable with white supremacists walking around wearing swastikas and balaclavas? Then why should we feel comfortable with Islamic supremacists walking around equally advertising their adhesions and hiding their faces?

Personally, whenever I see it it makes me feel uncomfortable. But they, and their friends in the Guardian, are only concerned about being "victimised" and "alienated" for doing something which is blatantly provocative towards the natives. Why not have some respect for the history, culture and mores of the country to which they or their parents voluntarily came? I seem to manage it, why can't they?

Interestingly, I could not find this story either on the site of De Telegraaf or RTL Nieuws.

On a similar note, in three years here I have never seen a middle-aged Muslim woman who wears Islamic dress (i.e. head covering) who has not been overweight. Draw whatever conclusion from that you will...

2006-11-11T05:05:00.000-08:00

Talking of animals...

One thing that the Islamists have got correct is that Europe is becoming decadent. One of the loony parties running in the current elections is the "Party for the Animals" http://www.partijvoordedieren.nl/ . Slogans include "Holland is working for people, but not for animals", and "if you keep an eye on the rights of animals, you know everything is going to be okay" (this latter I have not heard on the radio for a while, so the translation is probably not exact). We really must have solved all of society's problems if these people expect us to vote for them on this basis!

Number two on their list of 10 reasons why you should vote for them reads as follows :

Niemand kan meer zeggen dat dierenrechten een links of rechts thema zijn. De rechten van dieren overstijgen oude tegenstellingen tussen mensen, net als bij beschavingsbewegingen die bijvoorbeeld de rechten van kinderen, slaven, arbeiders, vrouwen, zwarten en mensen met een homosexuele geaardheid op de agenda zetten.
No one can say any more that animal rights are a left or right wing issue. The rights of animals surmount the old differences between people, just as with the civilising movements which put for instance the rights of children, slaves, workers, women, blacks and people with a homosexual nature on the agenda.

An... erm... "interesting" conclusion, don't you think? Animals are a victim group, too!

Readers of Dutch woman's magazine "Viva" recently voted for the party's leader, Marianne Thieme, as the "most spicy" female politician. This is proudly recounted on the party's website . Hopefully these will be the only votes that she gets, although she is aiming for three to four seats in the lower house. If she actually wins a seat, expect her to be torn apart as a silly wench with a pretty face who loves cutesy wootsy fluffy animals and has no concern for anything more serious.

Due to the proportional representation system here in the Netherlands, tiny single interest parties who manage to get seats are actually more important than they deserve to be -- they are often critical in forming a coalition with a slight majority, and their views hold rather more weight if their withdrawal from such a coalition would bring the government down. D66, for instance, brought down the coalition government earlier this year by withdrawing.

Around the time of elections, the local councils put up hoardings on which party activists can paste their official election posters. This gives rise to what I like the term "hoarding politics". It is always terribly interesting to see which party's poster gets torn down, defaced, or pasted over. At the last round of council elections, there appeared to be a series of tit-for-tat tearings and defacings between "Groen Links" (literally "green left", hard left environmentalists) and "Lijst Pim Fortuyn" (anti-immigration, set up by very charismatic and very gay anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn, killed by an environmentalist extremist for his troubles) in my area. This time around, on one hoarding the "Party for the Animals" poster has been torn, and on another one it has been pasted over with the "Lijst Pim Fortuyn" poster.

Looks like she's not so popular with the humans then -- maybe somebody might like to tell her that animals can't vote?

2006-11-11T05:04:00.000-08:00

All is not entirely lost

Whilst channel surfing this morning, I flicked past the Dutch public broadcaster's equivalent of the BBC children's news programme "Newsround", NOS Jeugdjournaal ("youth news programme"). The topic at hand was Saddam's death sentence, and they had had viewers e-mailing in with views. One of the views aired said words to the effect of, "I think Saddam should spend life in prison, because that would make him suffer more than executing him". Would such a view have been aired on Newsround, with its consistently "right-on" message?

The piece finished with the result of their survey -- 70% of their viewers were glad that Saddam is receiving the death penalty. That is, 70% of Dutch children who watch the public Dutch children's news programme and who responded. I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least. I guess the "correct" message that capital punishment is wrong in all cases for all people and in all places has not achieved the penetration that its proponents had hoped for.
I wonder what a similar survey of BBC Newsround viewers would show? How would the survey question be phrased?

2006-11-09T09:54:00.000-08:00

More BBC woes

First of all, I would like to thank Natalie Solent for her kind words on Biased BBC. Since I have no Dutch-specific link in today I will use this as an excuse to discuss an American experience of the BBC.

Mrs Nep Nederlander is American, and naturally grinds her teeth at the BBC's constant and seemingly wilful misrepresentation of her country, and the manner in which they deliberately obfuscate or do not inform viewers about the manner in which the US political system is organised, so that they can blame everything on Bush as if he is personally responsible for absolutely everything which happens in the country. Apparently they have not heard, or do not wish to inform, about the separation of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary, and the federal/state/local separation of responsibilities. The phrase "States rights" does not seem to appear in their vocabulary, and this was particularly visible during their woeful coverage of the Katrina disaster -- they essentially absolved the black Democrat mayor from all responsibility and laid it all at George Bush's personal door.

Last summer we went horse riding in the Arizona desert at a particularly lovely dude ranch. Amongst the other guests at the ranch were several other Brits, and we got talking about the woeful state of the BBC and its institutional leftism. Needless to say, we were all preaching to the converted. The ranch owner and the manager then chipped in with their personal experience about the BBC, which had left a particularly sour taste in their mouths.

Around the time of the release of the now infamous film "Brokeback Mountain" about gay cowboys, the BBC contacted the ranch and told them that they were doing a human interest story about dude ranches. Still believing that the BBC were the impartial service they claim to be and that the BBC had been entirely open and honest with them, they jumped at the chance for some publicity on a world-renowned broadcaster.

The BBC crew turned up, and started filming. Later in the day, they interviewed some of the wranglers and other staff on camera. The initial questions were innocent enough, about horse riding, what it was like working on a ranch, and so on. Just normal, usual questions to get the interviewees to relax. Then suddenly, the interviewer hit them with a series of leading questions about attitudes towards homosexuality and other similar things to do with the film which were absolutely unrelated to a human interest piece about dude ranches.

As far as I remember the story, the interview was terminated there and then, accompanied by much anger from the staff. It had become immediately clear that the BBC had not come to do a human interest piece at all, but to get some inflammatory anti-homosexual comments on film from some real cowboys, and intended to misrepresent them on screen by presenting them as the uncivilised right-wing redneck hicks that the European chattering classes firmly condescend that non-metropolitan Americans are. Why else would they vote for Chimpy McBushitler? [guffaws] Oh, you're so frightfully witty Jerome, is this Chardonnay from 2003 or 2004? I bet those hicks don't even know what Chardonnay is [guffaw]!

The BBC crew had misrepresented its mission, asked obviously leading questions, and clearly intended to misrepresent any answers given. The ranch staff were lucky that they had the good sense to terminate the interview -- they were certainly cleverer than the BBC took them for! I had certainly not anticipated finding a group of cowboys on a dude ranch in the middle of the Arizona desert who had had such a personal experience of BBC lies, misrepresentation, and left-wing bias.

(Apologies for the lack of text wrapping around the picture -- blogger was failing to upload the picture for me properly, so I resorted to putfile!)

2006-11-08T11:36:00.000-08:00

Al-BBC

Unlike in Britain, the Dutch authorities have, to some extent, stopped pussyfooting around the issues of Islamic extremism, and the intolerant/lack of integration from the so-called "silent Muslim majority". As I said, this is only "to some extent." A recent case (Expatica) of a female Muslim teacher fired for refusing to shake hands with males was a hollow victory: the court ruled that she was within her rights and could greet in other manners, but did not force the school to rehire her. Unfortunately, in the unlikely event that I should ever travel or live in a Muslim country, it is highly unlikely that a court would uphold my wife's right to shake hands with males or to greet them by kissing them on the cheek, as is the custom in the evil and decadent West.

This case has distinct parallels with the veiled teacher issue of a few weeks ago in Britain, around which the BBC pussyfooted, and neglected to mention the radical Islamist links of the girl in question, and the clearly political nature of her decision to wear the full veil.

Aah yes, the BBC... Here in the flat lands, we receive BBC1 and BBC2 as standard, and most of the other BBC channels on digital. Should I ever feel like grinding my teeth and shouting at the screen because I have not punished myself at work, I can watch the BBC six o'clock News, and view the current affairs of the day through the heavily-distorting prism of authoritarian socialism and faux-impartiality. One thing the BBC News certainly succeeds in doing, is making me hate the land of my birth even more.

For instance this evening there was finally a piece on the racist murder of Kriss Donald by a gang of Pakistani Muslims. They were, however, not identified directly as such -- their names gave them away, and the fact that after the killing they fled to Pakistan before being extradited back to Britain, kind of gave the game away. But the BBC's official designation of them was "Asians". This is a constant theme -- whenever a crime committed by a Pakistani Muslim is reported by the BBC, it is always "plumbers", "students", or "Asian" (but only if the BBC deems this newsworthy). I wonder what all the non Pakistani non Muslims think about being constantly implicated by association whenever a Pakistani Muslim commits a crime? Amongst reported crimes carried out by people of "Asian" origin, you will find very few Hindu or Sikh names. I wonder why?

The BBC's bizarre and unique approach towards Muslims will be returned to shortly.
The final piece in the Kriss Donald segment had the BBC finally admitting, after many years of very careful obfuscation and denial-by-omission, that in fact racist crime was not exclusively white-on-minority -- who would have thought it? A shocking admission! Excommunicate them from the Church of the Left immediately!

Some statistics were presented regarding the number of attacks on whites and blacks (why not non whites?) were presented, the most shocking of which was the number of incidents involving woundings: last year, blacks were wounded in racist attacks 4000 times, whites 20,000 times.
The fact that the statistics were presented as raw figures and not as rates was already obfuscatory, but the oh so helpful BBC went further and explained that this wasn't really so bad for whites because whites make up over 90% of the population, and racial minorities are still more likely to be victims of racist attacks than whites. That's all right then, we have not yet upset the BBC weltanschauung. Move along, nothing more to see here. For the BBC, this was ENDEX.

To anyone with half a brain for statistics, however, what the statistics show more than anything else is that non whites are significantly more likely to wound a white in a racist incident than a white is to a black. Assuming that those admittedly incomplete figures are in fact correct, and "black" represents all racial minorities, then we have 92% (2001 census) of the population committing 4000 racist woundings, and 8% of the population committing 20,000. This means that non whites are 57 times more likely than whites to wound someone in a racist incident!
A little overly simplistic, I acknowledge, but it certainly makes the point. I wonder why the BBC didn't mention this...? It certainly challenges their institutionally entrenched view of racial minorities as victims.

The BBC's attitude towards Muslims as perpetual victims is well-known, even when they are the aggressors. One only has to watch BBC news coverage of the perennial Israel/Palestinian impasse to watch them automatically criticise the Israelis for any response to Palestinian aggression, to accept Palestinian accounts as fact, and to air what are clearly poorly acted "Pallywood" productions as genuine. As discussed above, even when religion clearly is a factor in incidents they choose to carefully ignore it, resulting in laughable headlines about plumbers called Mohammed being sentenced for terrorism offences, as if the fact that they are "plumbers" is at all relevant. They are quick to involve Muslims in things where their inclusion is irrelevant, such as in that ghastly BBC2 programme about the Union Flag from several months ago, and aired several puff pieces about Islam on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. They are quick to repeat platitudes about Islam being a "religion of peace", when even a cursory knowledge of the Koran and the teachings of Mohammed will show you quite the opposite.

Why are the BBC cosying up to Muslims so much? Is it perhaps that they are expanding their operations in the Middle East, and even Iran, and desire to be viewed kindly by the Islamist regimes which rule the region and control the purse strings? Could this be driving not only their middle eastern coverage, but also their coverage of incidents involving Muslim settlers in Britain?

They have not gained the nickname Al-Beeb or Al-BBC in the comments sections of such sites as Biased BBC and others for nothing... Even The People's Cube has had a go, with the headline ("BBC adopts Sharia policies: stones gay staff" )

(Apologies for the crappy formatting, I am just getting to grips with this system, and since I have a chronic case of RSI I have to operate it with voice recognition, which it is not designed to do...)

2006-11-07T11:04:00.000-08:00

The Green Left

Since the collapse of Soviet communism in the late 80s/early 90s, western Communists have been at a bit of a loose end, so to speak. After having lost their ideological (and sometimes even financial) supporter, they wandered the political wilderness for several years without their spirit guide. What is a good socialist to do if the vehicle through which the final and inevitable destruction of capitalism and liberal democracy was to be carried out has crashed? Many diehards, such as the SP discussed yesterday, hung on, hoping for either a resurgence, or that they might actually gain power legitimately with a mandate to sweep away the bourgeois edifice.

For want of a better metaphor, at the turn-of-the-century, many others caught a totally new train -- the environmentalist bandwagon. And so, the "Green Left" was born.

How does one describe the perfect recipe to create the quintessential Green Left mindset?
Take the tired, same old raft of "progressive" policies which have neither progressed since the 1960s, nor have ever been successful in practice, mix in the usual doses of platitudes about "social justice", and how "the rich" are going to pay for it all, be careful to avoid contamination with statements about saving the proletariat from the domination of the bourgeoisie and class warfare, and replace it instead with messianic fervour about saving us all (and the planet) from ourselves.

Yes, messianic fervour. This movement replaces the quasi-religious worship of Marx with a quasi-religious worship of environmentalist received truth, and condemns any deviation at all from the line. Anybody who (quite rightly) dares to suggest that there is absolutely no evidence for any measurable human effect on the climate must be a tool of the oil industry. Any suggestion that the UN and the IPCC are anything other than wholly truthful and without agenda is to be strongly condemned, and any mention of the extreme dodginess of their calculations (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml) is to be avoided, since Anthropogenic Global Warming Is a Fact Because We Say so and If You Say Any Different You Must Be a Bad Person with Links to Big Oil.

During the last series of elections in Holland, their logo was a green pepper next to a red pepper. Perhaps a watermelon would have been better: Green on the outside, red on the inside.

Do not mistake these people -- they wish to "destroy capitalism" as much as any other hard left Socialists do, but they are canny enough to realise that they need a Righteous Goal which middle-class housewives could sign up to, and environmentalism certainly is currently terribly fashionable.

Let us just hope that in five to ten years time, the current anthropogenic global warming scare will be filed alongside its older brother, the global cooling scare of the 1960s and 1970s, and its cousin, acid rain of the 1980s, in a file marked "Oh My God I Can't Believe We All Signed up to This And Suppressed Evidence to the Contrary", and that the hard left have found another bandwagon.

Let's hope that it's something to do with teddy bears, and not radical Islam... Oh, wacht effâh... Bugger...

2006-11-06T12:01:00.000-08:00

This blog's title needs some explaining: I am a British expat living in the Netherlands, and all things considered, I rather prefer it to the land of my birth. I try very hard to integrate, speak the language, and not be identified as an expat: as such, I consider myself a "nep Nederlander", a "fake Dutchman". Aside from when it is being congratulated in the press for being trendy and right-on in a way that it just isn't, Holland is largely ignored. Since I am now able to follow Dutch language news to a good degree, I intend to discuss it on here in English, in amongst other topics of interest.

So, here we go:

It has most likely passed you by in the non Dutch world that not only is it an American election season, but Dutch too. Now, I can't vote since I am not a citizen, but Dutch politics certainly affects me all the same. Contrary to popular belief, the average Dutchman is not some left-leaning hippie. The last politician to really hit the pulse of what the average Dutchman thought and felt was the late, and very gay, Pim Fortuyn, and he got shot by an environmental "activist" for his troubles. Had he been a leftist, he would have undoubtedly have been applauded, and his assassination would have been known worldwide. So much for tolerance...

For the past four years, the ruling coalition has been centre-right, consisting mostly of the CDA (Christian Democrats) and the VVD (Liberals). It is worth noting here that the VVD are Classical Liberals with a capital "L", in the way the Victorians would have understood the term -- low regulation, free-market, personal responsibility etc -- and not modern "liberals" in the way that the term has been utterly twisted to the opposite of its original meaning in the US. They have instituted some very important reforms cutting back the welfare state, such as the imposition of compulsory health insurance, and have attempted to come to grips with the immigration problem with compulsory language tests and general cultural knowledge tests for immigrants. This has made them terribly unpopular amongst the chattering and welfare classes, whose self appointed representatives have become increasingly shrill.

Watching RTL 4 news this morning, they showed some footage of a speech in Arnhem Burgers' Zoo by the leader of the Socialist Party (the SP), Jan Marijnissen. The politics of this party are self-evident from their name. Of course, they want to make the Netherlands "more social and more socially just", whatever that is supposed to mean (more free money for their target audience, I can only assume). But, before mentioning that, and therefore their overriding concern, was to "prevent the Right from ever making a majority again".

Effâhtjes nâhkèkûh: "prevent the Right from ever making a majority again".

This raises some important questions: exactly what are they planning on doing to suppress the "Right"? Are they so scared of opposition that they feel the need to do such a thing? And perhaps more importantly, what with the press and chattering classes make of it if a CDA or VVD politician had said the inverse?

Such a statement beggars belief; a centre-right wing politician would never dream of making such a statement which is so antithetical to the entire concept of pluralistic democracy, and it would be crass to believe that they would do so. It would indeed be political suicide. Yet however a left-wing politician can make it with a straight face and get away with it. Politics in Europe has long since gone largely down the "Power for Power's sake" route, and this statement is enlightening as to what a political party stuffed full with "ex-" communists and a programme wishing to repeat all the Socialist disasters of the post-war period might do with such power.

Scary...

Interestingly, this line does not appear in the propaganda piece on the SP website -- second thoughts? Did I not hear it correctly? I believe the former...