Nomen est omen

Might as well start off with a small item: the most popular boys' name in Amsterdam last year was Mohammed. In the first quarter of this year, Mohammed fell back to 6th place, although the second quarter saw a return to the top spot.

There's an Muslim saying that if you have a hundred sons, name them all Mohammed. Apparently that's what they're doing over here.

Threat to cap wage growth

It seems we finally have a new government in the Netherlands (more on that later). With the economy doing as poorly as it is, the new government has its work cut out. Trying to revive economic growth is going to have to be the main task for the new coalition. But some of the ideas being floated make very little sense. The minister-designate of Social Affairs and Jobs spoke at a gathering of his Christian Democrat party, and said that high wage growth would be inadvisable. So far, so good. The Dutch competitive position in international markets has been hurt very seriously by the strength of the euro, as the Netherlands has one of the most open economies in Europe. So high wage growth indeed would add to the problems of the Dutch economy. This is not a particularly controversial thing to say. But he then went on to issue a threat: the government would consider legislative measures to cap wage growth. In other words, the government would dictate the rate of increase in wages, negotiated by employers and employees (sometimes in the form of central bargaining with employer organizations and labor unions, sometimes on a company-by-company basis).

This is a horrible idea. It's applying a very blunt instrument to heterogenous problem. Not all companies or industries are equally affected by the loss of international competitiveness. A simple ceiling on negotiated wage growth removes the case-by-case finetuning that would be possible otherwise. It does not guarantee optimal results in every case, as unions may be able to extract more than the companies can afford to pay. Interfering in the economy in this way would set a very bad precedent for the rest of the 4-year term of this government. The last time a government used wage-restraint legislation is 30 years ago. We really don't want to go back to those days.

Dutch AEL leader arrested

One of the leaders-designate of the Dutch branch of the AEL, the Islamist Arab-European League has been arrested, together with his brother. He is accused of theft and extortion after an incident last November. At a McDonald's restaurant in the eastern town of Hengelo, he and his brother allegedly had arranged a meeting with an entrepreneur from the nearby town of Enschede in order to transact a deal involving laptop computers. When they met, the two brothers are said to have to threatened their victim with a firearm and forced him to hand over his money to them.

Dutch media can't give the full names of those who are being investigated, so the AEL guy is only known as "Nabil M." It's not as though his past is entirely squeaky clean. He used to deal in stolen laptops and had a website offering to remove passwords from laptops. He actually admits to all this, but calls these activities "youthful indiscretions." Apparently the tail end of his exuberant youthful behavior was still in evidence last November.

We'll see whether the prosecution can get a conviction in this case.

Casablanca redux

The Dutch media are reporting that the terrorists responsible for the attacks in Casablanca may have had help from the Netherlands and Belgium. These reports are based on anonymous sources in the Moroccan justice system, so a healthy dose of skepticism is recommended. If true, it must be a pretty depressing development. It would mean that the Moroccan expats living in the Netherlands have become a destructive influence on not just the Netherlands, but on their own home country as well.

Morocco is, as Arab countries go, a fairly easygoing and tolerant place. One of the attacks on Saturday was on the Jewish quarter of Casablanca. It's one of the few Arab countries to have one, and although many Jews have left for Israel, the community still exists and can function. It is in fact, the largest Jewish community in any Arab country. There are tours for tourists, and even kosher tours. Although I tried to find more information on this on the web, there wasn't much about the actual daily life in the Mellah, the Jewish quarter of Casablanca is known. But here's a disquieting thought: it might now be safer for a Jew to walk the streets of Casablanca than go into Amsterdam-West with its Moroccan population. (Well, that might have been true until the bombs went off; fortunately, we haven't had any of those here.)

The radicalization is in no small part the work and influence of Saudi money. There are schools and mosques funded by the Saudis, and apparently they've left their mark, even to the extent that the expats are now willing to murder their own compatriots at home for not adhering to the medieval savagery of Islamofacsism. Meanwhile, recruiting for the jihad continues in the Netherlands.

On that note, a Dutch judge today released four men from custody, who were being tried on charges of recruiting youngsters to the anti-western Jihad. Several others are still on trial, potentially face up to two years in jail. That is, if the public prosecutor's demands for a three-year sentence are granted; this would put them back out on the street in two years. It's probably going to be less. A previous trial last year collapsed completely.

The only silver lining in all of this might be that the Moroccan authorities will become more active in their fight against Islamofascist terror. Morocco would be an obvious candidate for progress in the transformation of the Arab world that is necessary if the region is to emerge from its self-inflicted backwardness. But a stronger response in the Netherlands wouldn't do any harm either.

Choosing sides in World War II

At the beginning of May, there are two important days in the Dutch calendar, the 4th and 5th. The fourth of May is Remembrance Day, when the dead of the Second World War are remembered and honored, followed by Liberation Day on the 5th. At 8 PM on the fourth of May, the country comes to a halt to remember the fallen and the murdered, silence descends on the country, with only bell tolling on the Waalsdorpervlakte, a plain near the dunes of the Hague where the Nazi executed Dutch resistance fighters. All over the country, wreaths are laid, speeches made and above all, the memory of the of occupation and the Holocaust are renewed.

This year, the remembrance ceremonies were descrated. There hadn't been much attention paid in the media to this initially, but there are now more reports appearing the papers. Today's edition of the Trouw newspapers has a long article on the events. I shan't translate all of it, but here are salient excerpts:

It was the leader of the D66 Michel Rog from the Amsterdam precinct of de Baarsjes who went to the media. He was furious over what happened on Sunday May 4th at the remembrance ceremony in his neighborbood. But neither the organizers, nor the precinct council, nor the police reported the incident. "Subsequently it turns out that the ceremonies were disrupted in several Amsterdam precincts. That's serious. But everywhere it's been kept quiet, even when reports had been made to the police. Shocking. Some of the incidents have even now not been publicized yet."

[...] The horn sounded, it turned quiet. Almost immediately afterward [..] Rog heard from behind him, further down the street, the chanting of slogans. There was a group of boys, apparently Moroccans, between the ages of 10 and 18. At least five of them chanted "We have to kill the Jews." [In Dutch, this rhymes]

[...] After the ceremony Michel Rog managed to identify together with the neighborhood police officer one of the boys, just a child, who strenuously denied having participated. But a friend of his furnished indirect proof, pleading with the cop "Mister, he did not know there were Jewish people there."

The article goes on to the question whether this is just plain vanilla vandalism of youngsters who don't know any better, or whether there is something deeper going on. The appropriate answer is probably a "duh" here.

Amsterdam-West, where this and other such incidents took place has a large Arab immigrant population, mostly consisting of Moroccans. The schools there, according the article, "find it ever harder to teach about the second world war." Anti-semitism is a way of life there. Most May 4th incidents involve Moroccan youngsters. Playing soccer with the wreaths, shouting anti-semitic slogans, throwing eggs and otherwise disrupting the ceremonies. Some apologists claim it's "just vandalism," that does not wash. These scumbags knew exactly what they were doing, and what the significance of the event was. This was a calculated attack to cause as much offense and grief as possible. These disturbances were very deliberate attempts to offend. On the day when we remember the victims of the Nazis, the Moroccans youths came out and supported the Nazis. They consciously and deliberately aligned themselves with a regime that has become the generic shorthand description of evil.

The newspaper article recites the rise of anti-semitism:

All over the Netherlands the number of complaints of anti-semitism keeps rising. The problem is most visible in Amsterdam, because that's where the biggest Jewish community is. According to the CIDI [Centrum Information and Documentation Israel] it's usually verbal abuse, almost always in Amsterdam, almost always by Moroccan boys. [...] "Yehoud" has become a well-known expletive. Jewish men wearing a yarmulke can be certain nowadays to be accosted. Moroccan boys last year threw stones at synagogue visitors in Amsterdam-West. [...] A few months ago, in a busy shopping street, the house of a Jewish man was vandalized. "JEW" it said with big red letters on the windows."

It's not really news that the Arab immigrants here are virulently anti-Semitic, but the descration of the of May fourth remembrance ceremonies is a further escalation, taking the anti-semitism to a brazen new level. And while the war may have ended over half a century ago, the May ceremonies still play an important role in Dutch life. By disrupting them, the Moroccan thugs have placed themselves even further outside of civilized society than they already were. Choosing the side of the Nazis so blatantly makes it very hard even for the most deluded multiculturalist to defend them. They've been forcibly deblinkered, at least temporarily. It won't take long for new blinkers to grow back on though, but perhaps not all of them will regenerate.

Repercussions of the Casablanca attacks

The terrorist attacks in Casablanca are having repercussions here in the Netherlands as well. With about a quarter of a million Moroccans living here, it is hardly surprising that these attacks have attracted some attention here beyond the standard newsworthiness. Vile as these attacks may have been, something positive may yet come out of them. What struck me is the reaction by one of the organizations representing Moroccans, the "Samenwerkingsverband Marokkanen Tunesiërs," which not only expressed its shock and disgust at the attack, but also followed it up by saying that they would have to have a closer look at the recruiting practices by Islamic terrorist organizations, and a denounced the suicide bombings. (Unfortunately, I can't find a link although I did see it in the news over the weekend.)

It's hard to say if this is for real, or whether it's just a spasm in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. If the terrorists managed to awaken some opposition to their methods within the Moroccan community here, that must be a positive sign. It's a start to rooting out Islamic terrorism, but only by the follow-up will we be able to determine whether they mean it or not. It's also sad, but not surprising, that it wasn't until these attacks in Morocco that they ventured forth in speaking out against suicide bombings. Apparently blowing up Israelis by these means is OK. To be fair, I don't know the specific position of the one organization I mentioned by name above on this, but the prevailing virulent anti-Israel sentiment in the Arab immigrant community never had much of a problem with murdering Israelis. Thus they helped create this monstrosity, the psychotic death cult born of Palestinian terrorism, and that is now becoming the defining hallmark of Islamic terrorism in general. And the monster is turning on its erstwhile sympathizers.

Also missing this time around are the usual attempts at exculpating the terrorists. The usual litany of "understanding" for their "desperate acts," the recitation of the sins of the victims, the praising of the "courage" of the murderers, the susurration of support are all missing. Those only apply if the victims are Jews or Americans. Where are the apologists for the terrorists now that the terrorists attack Muslims? The absence of the terrorist apologia is of course welcome, but somehow I suspect this position won't be carried to its logical conclusion: the condemnation of terrorism against Israel.

Terrorism, the AEL and porn

The Dutch secret service AIVD presented its annual report for 2002, spending considerable time on the threat of Islamic terrorism and the recruiting of terrorists in the Netherlands:

Despite recent successes in the battle against terrorism, Islamic terror networks are still capable of carrying out attacks all over the world, according to the 2002 annual report of the Dutch secret service AIVD.

Caretaker Interior Minister Johan Remkes presented the report to Parliament on Tuesday. The AIVD said radical Islamic networks are also active in the Netherlands and the groups generally play a supporting, rather than a front-line terrorist, role by giving financial, material and logistical assistance to terror cells.

The Dutch groups also recruit young men for the holy war, or jihad, against the "enemies of Islam," the AIVD alleged. This is a repeat of its claim, made in December 2002, that dozens of young Muslim men were in training.

But Dutch security authorities have not brought any alleged terrorists to justice since the September 11 attacks in the US.

This is nothing particularly new, but it underscores the activities of Islamofascist organization in the Netherlands. The Saudis have been financing a lot of this, even to the point where Dutch politicians are now calling for the government to take action against Saudi Arabia. But at the same time, the AIVD's report also shows that while awareness of surveillance of various extremist Islamist groups has increased, there has been little tangible progress. The arrests that were made last year evaporated in the increasingly risible Dutch justice system.

One of the groups mentioned in the report is the Arab-European League, founded in Belgium and now establishing itself firmly in the Netherlands:

The AIVD emphasised that groups — such as the Arab European League (AEL) in the Netherlands and Belgium — which play on creating a Muslim identity and religious or ethnic sentiment, are a security risk.

The leader of the Dutch AEL has not formally been instated yet, but it's likely to be Mohammed Cheppih, who is known to be funded by the Saudis in role as chairman of the Muslim World League in the southern Dutch town of Tilburg:

Islamic centres in Amsterdam and Eindhoven have been singled out as particular hotbeds of Muslim extremists and a report in newspaper Het Parool said two hijackers involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, including Mohammed Atta, possibly received ideological training at the El Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam.

Wilders and VVD colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali have demanded the mosque's closure.

The Islamic conference was organised by a foundation which the intended chairman of the Arab European League in the Netherlands, Mohammed Cheppih, is involved with and Atta and another hijacker possibly attended at Eindhoven or Amsterdam.

The AEL is a profoundly dangerous organization because its founder Abu Jahjah knows how to play the democratic game. He's not just another ranting zealot, but he's proving adept at using the rhetoric and paraphernalia of a bona fide democratic movement as a cover for his radical Islamism. But he does conform to one of the more culturally invariant features of shady populist leaders in that he does not really practice what he preaches. Abu Jahjah was under investigation in Belgium last year for his role in rioting in Antwerp, and as part of that investigation several of his computers were seized. The latest information to trickle out of that investigation is that Belgian police are taking a closer look at the porn on Jahjah's computer to determine whether any of it is illegal. He claims he's being set up of course, because even the possession of legal porn would rather undermine his Islamically Pure image amongst the Arab immigrant masses. In a few weeks' time the Belgians go to the polls, where the AEL is participating in an alliance with an extreme left-wing party. The revelations certainly come at an awkward time for Jahjah.

Then again, it would not surprise me in the least to see Jahjah partaking of the carnal pleasures of the decadent West. Not that this would even be too out of step with my own insight into the Saudi mind. I am getting quite a few hits via search engines to my blog from Saudi Arabia, looking for various things like "Saudi girl sex," as well as search strings in Arabic. I touched upon this earlier, but that particular blog entry keeps getting the search engine hits. The string "Ù?Ù?اÙ?ع سÙ?س" alone netted me 182 hits this month (it's part of a comment in Arabic). I wish I could read Arabic though, but it does seem that my blog has become a Saudi porn magnet. I've had 842 hits from the .sa domain this month.

I'm not sure whether to be encouraged by this or not. On the one hand, it does show the universal appeal of sex and porn. The "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" meme coming from Iraq would support this. On the other hand, the strict puritanism of the Islam, and especially Wahhabi Islam is in stark contrast to this desire for sex and porn. In that sense, it's another manifestation of the fantasy world, the dream palace of the Arabs. They've been very good at lying to themselves, about their own importance and the sorry state of Arab society. The liberation of Iraq has made these lies, both official and self-inflicted, painfully obvious. Reality does come crashing through in the end. As they say, reality is that which is you stop believing in it, does not go away. And it's not going to go away for the backward Arab societies either.

Nor is the reality going away that Europe too is threatened by the Saudi-funded Islamofascism. That's the reality politicians here will have to confront.

The Saudi connection

It will come as no surprise to hear that various Muslim extremist groups in the Netherlands are being financed by Saudi Arabia:

A director of the Islamic foundation Al Waqf al Islami in Eindhoven, Ahmad Al Hussaini, is included in a list of 20 Saudi Arabian business leaders alleged to have provided financial support to the Al Qaeda terror network.

[...]

But the [Dutch secret service] AIVD included the Al Waqf al Islami foundation in a report last year that identified the foundation as one of several extremist groups with close ties with Islamic primary schools in the Netherlands. The foundation was also described as a radical Islamic group.

These recent revelations are just further confirmation of the role that Saudi money is playing in supporting Islamofascist terrorism. Politicians are stirring again, and the parliamentary representatives of the CDA, VVD and LPF are demanding (link likely to go stale, sorry) that the foreign minister summon the Saudi ambassador for an explanation. They also demand that the Dutch government force that Saudis to stop such support. It's a thought I fully support, but somehow I don't think it's going to make much of a difference, but at least the realization of the Saudis' role in the subversion is getting more play here. The Saudis are not going to be impressed by the protestations of a tiny, insignificant country like the Netherlands. We need President Bush to put its weight behind this. As Glenn Reynolds has been saying on Instapundit, this has been one of the big blind spots in this current administration's War on Terror. Until now, pragmatic expediency of getting rid of Saddam meant that the Saudis would have to be dealt with later. Now that Saddam is gone, the time has come to start ratcheting up the pressure on the Saudis. If even the Dutch are willing to do it, then why not the Americans?

Inverted justice

The blogosphere has been pretty good covering the sentencing of Fortuyn's killer, who was condemned to a ridiculous 12-year sentence. Now the appeals are beginning to roll in both from the prosecutors as well as from the defense. There was a big outcry in the Netherlands over the light sentence handed out to Volkert van der Graaf, which even led to one of the judges receiving a bullet in the mail. The Dutch judiciary has never been known for handing out particularly tough sentences, as evidenced in recent cases. Moreover, the authorities are all but capitulating to criminals.

The appeal by the defense in this case is a real tear-jerker. The defense attorneys argue that the judges did not take into account the "harsh conditions" under which murderer van der Graaf had been kept initially. Moreover, they say, they disregarded the statements made by several politicians about murderer van der Graaf. Poor baby.

Meanwhile in the inverted world of Dutch justice, a jeweler is faced with a demand for a two-year prison sentence because he shot and killed one burglar, and wounded another. The public prosecutor claims it's a case of manslaughter, as the jeweler refused to help the scum who were trying to rob him after shooting them. And he also kicked one of them (hard, they add) in the head. And to make matters completely unbearable, the gun he committed his crime with was of course illegal.

It's outrageous that law-abiding citizens face jail time for protecting their property. If more burglars were faced with the threat of having their brains blown out, they might decide to take up a less risky profession. The only silver lining is that even if the jeweler is convicted to the full two years, he won't have to spend very long in prison. But every day that he does is an outrage in itself. Meanwhile real criminals, like Pim Fortuyn's murderer, are treated with preposterous lenience.

Mickey Kaus (no permalinks?) pointed out the following:

Among the lessons the twentieth century teaches us, one is surely that assassinations work -- maybe not in the long-term (centuries), but in the medium term (decades). You're not supposed to say this. It's a bit like admitting that most great popular music is made on drugs. But Oswald, Sirhan, Ray, Amir, van der Graaf -- name five other men who have done more to alter the course of history (for better or, in this case, worse) in their lifetimes. You'd think the Dutch judges would recognize this and adjust the punitive calculus accordingly. Instead, they've made an offer many ineffectual-yet-earnest activists may find hard to refuse.

This is exactly the point. If you do want to commit murder, do it in the Netherlands. If the reason is important enough for you, then spending 12 years in prison may not be such a bad deal. And if you can convince psychiatrists that you're actually nuts, you can get off even more easily. It's a ridiculous and dangerous position for a country to be in, but somehow I suspect it's not going to improve any time soon.

A year without government

The Netherlands has now been without effective government for over a year. It's been almost a year since Pim Fortuyn was murdered in the election campaign that followed the fall of the Kok government over the Srebrenica affair. While elections are pending the old government stays in office as a caretaker, but is allowed by custom to take any significant policy decisions. The same applies to the period after an election while a new coalition government is formed. Last May's election resulted in the historic win of Pim Fortuyn's LPF party, but that victory was squandered by the incessant bickering within the LPF. So while there was a "real" government in power fairly shortly after the elections of last year, it never got around to doing very much. It all ended in the fall of the government which in turn led to elections in January. All in all, the country has now been rudderless without an effective government for over a year.

A new government is still not in sight, as negatiations between the Christian Democrats and Labor have collapsed, and this after three months. They had to make the effort to try to form a coalition, since these two parties were the big winners of the last election, and they came pretty close to agreement. However, neither seemed very enthusiastic about actually forming such a government and it was the Christian Democrats who finally pulled the plug on the negotiations. One consequence is that the leader of the Christian Democrats, the current caretaker prime minister Balkenende, has suffered from a fall in his credibility. He apparently needed to consult with his followers every other minute during the negotiations, giving an impression of someone who's not really in charge of his own party.

The most likely outcome now is a second try at a coalition of the Christian Democrats, the right-wing Liberals (VVD) and the LPF. There are personal issues galore with this combination, since it was VVD leader Zalm who torpedoed the last coalition over the LPF's infighting. He thought he could harvest the LPF voters easily, but that never happened. So the LPF does not look favorably on him. At least in terms of party programs these three parties seem to be close to one another, making it easier for them to agree on policy than the Christian Democrats' abortive tie-up with Labor.

It's going to be a while yet before we get a new government. Is not having a government really such a bad thing? I definitely think we have far too much of it in the Netherlands, but the day-to-day machinery of the State continued to grind and grind finely in the absence of a policy-setting government. Meanwhile the economy is in a hole, crime is rising, education and health care have their own problems and the issue of the assimilation of immigrants has not been addressed. I hold little hope that any new government would actually tackle these problems effectively, but the status quo is not a tenable situation either.

More drift ahead, and plenty of rocks to hit.

Massive public searches now common

Under a law enacted last year, the Dutch police has the power to conduct massive searches. The way it works is that an area of town is cordoned off, and everybody within that area is subjected to a search in order to confiscate weapons and drugs. And they're not just on the streets, as police officers also go into bars and cafes and search the people there. After a slow start these searches are becoming common. Last Friday there was a big search around the Rembrandtplein, a popular nightlife hotspot in Amsterdam. About 1,000 people were subjected to a search. As a result 25 knives were confiscated, an imitation gun, some pepperspray and cocaine. This kind of police activity now happens almost every weekend. It does not make the newspapers anymore (the link above goes to a local TV station's news).

The goal of these raids is to reduce crime by making the possession of weapons riskier. You're not allowed to carry any kind of weapon here, be it a knife, gun or pepperspray, and the statistics from Friday night's raid indicate that about 3% of those searched had proscribed weaponry on them. In removing these from circulation, you could call the raid a success. It would be interesting to see more details on the kinds of people who were caught; were these hardened criminals, or just ordinary people who happened to have a swiss army knife on them? I suspect hardened criminals will find a way to escape the raid. Ultimately, it's the actual recorded crime numbers that will show whether these raids are having any effect on reducing crime.

Irrespective of that, the infringement of civil liberties that these searches represent is very serious indeed. Going out for dinner and a drink in Amsterdam (or anywhere in the Netherlands) now puts you at risk of being searched by the police. Not because they have probable cause or a reasonable suspicion, but simply by the fact that you're there. It puts an excessive amount of power in the hands of the authorities, and history shows that such power is likely to be abused. The state has no business prying into an individual's affairs as long as there is no reasonable suspicion of criminal behavior.

Crossing that line and casting the net as wide as the Dutch authorities have done will also have more pernicious effects in the longer term. It will inure the population to intrusive government control, which makes the next step on the way to eviscerating civil liberties that much easier. The most distressing thing is that these raids enjoy massive public support.

if the current level of oversight and intrusion fails to curb crime, the temptation will be great to ratchet it up a notch. It will be possible to reduce crime by ever greater amounts of oversight and intrusion, but with every step you take down that road you end up closer to an authoritarian police state. It's better not to get on that road on the first place.

The AEL opens up shop

it comes as no surprise, but now it's official: the AEL has opened its Dutch subsidiary. The AEL is the Arab-European League, an organization which had its roots in Belgium and claims to represent (and probably does) the muslim immigrants in the Netherlands. It claims to be a democratic and Islamic party. There is little doubt that it is Islamic, but the democratic bit seems to be more difficult to find. At the inaugural meeting, the interim leader Jamil Jawad immediately called for the destruction of Israel, claiming that it has no right to exist. The quote is for "the State of Israel to be dismantled." That's great way to start a new democratic party, by calling for the desctruction of the only democratic state in the Middle East.

But what of the citizens of Israel? Do they only want the state destroyed, or the people as well? The press officer of the Dutch AEL, Naima Elmaslouhi, is quoted in the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad as saying that she did not disapprove of Moroccan youths chanting "Hamas, Hamas, gas the Jews" during a protest march last year in Amsterdam. Of course, she now denies making the remark. Speaking of democratic credentials, the interim leader Jawad also said he understoof why Moroccan youths are keen to see body bags with US soldiers to be sent back to the US. He said, "Those kids see war against Iraq as a war against Islam." Keep this up and it'll become one.

Saving the village

The comments to my earlier blog about Combating the Enemy Within have focused in part on the issue of immigration. The Netherlands isn't the US, a country whose very identity is inextricably linked to immigration. But the Netherlands has for many centuries been a safe haven for various refugees, some of whom then proceded to seek sanctuary elsewhere. Recent immigration to the Netherlands has however been different. There is no melting pot here. The current wave of immigrants from the North Africa and Turkey were referred to in the past as "guest workers," who had been invited here in the 1960's and 1970's to do the kind of dirty and menial jobs that the Dutch no longer wanted to do themselves. The idea was that they'd stay for a few years and then return to their native countries, having earned some hard cash. Since the whole arrangement was based on the idea that it would be temporary, no attempts were made to try to integrate or assimilate them. Why bother if they're gone in three or five years' time anyway? It did not quite turn out like that, and many of them did become permanent residents of the Netherlands and other parts of northern Europe. Add to that an insanely generous socialist welfare state and you have the makings of the parallel society that has sprung up. Even if they lost their jobs, they could continue to cash government checks. Paid for doing nothiing; why bother going back?

The current situation is based on the serious mistakes of the past. Still we have to face the problem as it exists now, and there's no use crying over spilled milk. You have to understand why the milk containers leaked so much to avoid at least repeating the same mistakes. That realization is slowly dawning now. As for what to do about the problem, various commenters suggested draconian measures such as deporting large parts of the population. It may come to that, but I certainly hope that won't be necessary. The price we would pay for that would be enormous. After all, we do have a liberal, democratic constitution and throwing it out the window like that would be highly corrosive to our own standards and the ideals we purport to stand for. But it's that constitution that is under threat from the Islamofascists; whether it's the US Constitution, the Dutch or any European one for that matter, they're essentially the same in their goals and aspirations, and are viewed as being the same by the Islamofacsists. It's their goal to undermine our system of government and our liberties. The nightmare scenario I outlined previously is one where we have to face the choice between certain destruction of our way of life by the Islamofascists and inflicting considerable damage to our principles in defending these same principles. That's what I meant by having to destroy the village in order to save it.

If we act now to stop the ring-leaders of Islamofascism it should still be possible to defuse the situation without compromising our own principles. But time is running out. And I return to a point I made earlier: those secularized, moderate Muslim immigrants who do live here must find their voice, and we must help them find their voice. If they don't (and we don't), then they too will be become the victims of wider anti-Muslim hysteria. That's where I differ from Hirsi Ali at this point; we need engage and encourage the moderate Muslim immigrants, not insult their religion. It's a disagreement about tactics, not the final goal of victory of Islamofascism. I think she can do a lot of good, but her public statements are not helping right now. In any war, you have to choose your tactics and strategy carefully; just shooting at anything that moves does not constitute a good strategy.

I must disagree with the commenters who say that wholesale expulsion of immigrants is the solution. Advocating such a wholesale expulsion of a large part of the population, you are summoning up dark forces. Those are the same dark forces that are lurking under the surface now and feeding anti-semitism, for instance. If we ever get to that point, it's going to be very ugly time indeed in Europe. They're hardly likely to line up meekly to be sent off to the place where their grandparents were born. The amount of force required to implement any such solution would be horrendous.

It takes two to tango, as they say. The assimilation of the current immigrant population can only happen if there is a willingness on both sides. This means that the Dutch government should stop any policies that allow people to live in virtual isolation by handing them welfare checks (although I advocate this as a general principle, and it should not be based on ethnicity). For those who continue to undermine our system, there are laws for treason and subversion. Those who advocate or commit violent acts should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. One of the problems is that the law and criminal justice systems in the Netherlands are outrageously lenient, and the law enforcement authorities are all but capitulating to criminals. This in turn is encouraging the street gangs, many of whom consist of immigrant kids.

There is a serious danger coming from this fifth column within our own society, but as I said, we still have time to defuse it. And this is important for another reason as well: demographics. The Netherlands and Europe need more (young) immigrants in order to avert the demographic catastrophe that otherwise awaits us. Aging populations are a global problem, but Europe is particularly at risk.

I'd rather not be around if the village ends up being destroyed while it's being saved. The rebuilding effort will be arduous, and you'll wonder whether it's worth rebuiding in the first place.

Combating the enemy within

One of the more controversial figures in Dutch politics has been Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali immigrant who abandoned Islam and became an atheist. In combination with her high-profile remarks about Islam and the oppression of Muslim immigrant women in the Netherlands, this has earned her numerous death threats, and she even had to leave the country for a while as a result. She's still under increased protection. She used to work as a researcher at the Wiardi Beckmann Foundation, the think tank of the left-of-center Labor Party. She defected over to the right-of-center Liberal Party (VVD) and got an electable position on the party list. Since the last election, she's been a member of parliament for the VVD.

A few days before I went off on my vacation, Hirsi Ali gave an interview to the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw which really set the cat amongst the pigeons. The theme of the interview were the ten commandments, and religion played a major role in her observations. Some of the stories she told were about her childhood in Somalia, such as the time when she was beaten unconscious and had her skull fractured by an imam. She and her sister had been taunting him previously, not wanting to learn about the Koran.

I don't have the patience to translate the whole thing, but here are some of the highlights of the interview. She started off by saying that the current Christian Democrat prime minister Balkenende is not a Christian:

[Balkenende] is always talking about biblical values, but never about the things God asks us to do. Balkenende, the scientist who had to learn to refute in order to arrive at certain truths, believes that the world was created in six days? That Eve was made from Adam's rib? That's impossible. Scientists don't believe. I am convinced that Balkenende is not a Christian.

I suppose it depends on the definition of Christian that one employs. But this was not what caused all the excitement. It were her comments about Islam and Mohammed that led to the ire of Muslim organizations. In the following she refers back to a comment she'd made earlier about Muslim being "backward" or "retarded" (depending on how you want to translate the word), she said the following about the second commandment:

With the first commandment Mohammed tried to imprison common sense and with the second commandment the beautiful, romantic side of mankind was enslaved. I really think it's horrendous that so many people are left bereft of art. In that sense Islam is an outlived culture. Which is to say: unchangeable, set in stone. Everything has been written up in the Koran and there's no tinkering with it. Personally I still think that Mohammed's teachings are obsolete, but because in my new role as a politician I could not go into debate with people who'd hold it against me that I'd called them backward, I have retracted that statement. Or actually I should say that I have qualified my words: I think that Islam - the submission to the will of Allah - is a backward principle, but that does not mean that I think that the practitioners of the religion are backward too. They're behind the times. That's different. They can still move forward.

Traditional political weaseling here, but she goes on about the third commandment:

Insulting the prophet Mohammed is punishable by death. This the prophet heard himself from God, just like he heard other convenient things from time to time. Read about it in the Koran: he stole Zayned, the wife of one of his students by saying it was Allah's will. And what's worse, he fell in love with Aisha, the nine-year-old daughter of his best friend. Her father said, "Please wait until she reaches puberty," but Mohammed did not want to wait that long. So what happens? He gets the message from Allah that Aisha has to prepare herself for Mohammed. That's apparently Mohammed's teaching: it's OK to take the child of your best friend. Mohammed is, by our western standards, a perverse man. A tyrant. He's against freedom of speech. If you don't do as he says, you'll have an unhappy ending. Makes me think of all the megalomaniac rulers in the Middle East: Bin Laden, Khomeini, Saddam. Do you it's strange to have a Saddam Hussein? Mohammed is his example. Mohammed is the example for all Muslim men. Does it surprise you that so many Muslim men are violent? You're scared by the things I am saying, but you make the same mistake that most native Dutchmen make. You forget where I come from. I've been a Muslim, I know what I'm talking about. I think it's terrible that I, living now in a democratic country where freedom of expression is our greatest good, am still confronted with the posthumous blackmail of the prophet Mohammed. In the Netherlands mister Aboutaleb can read to Koran and think, "that Mohammed is great." And I can think, "that Mohammed as an individual is despicable." Mohammed says that women have to stay indoors, have to wear a veil, can't do certain jobs, don't have the same inheritance rights as men, have to be stoned if they commit adultery. I want to show there is another truth besides the "truth" that is spread with Saudi money all over the world. I realize that the women who call themselves Muslims won't understand me yet, but one day they'll remove their blinkers. We have to employ all channels of socialization - family, education, media - to make Muslim women self-sufficient and independent financially. That's going to take many years, but one day that women will realize like I did: I don't want my mother's life.

These comments about Mohammed caused a massive storm of protest from Muslim organizations in the Netherlands, including some veiled threats. Prosecutions under various laws have been threatened but nothing has come of these thus far. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's stated aim is to liberate Muslim women living in the Netherlands who are currently living under the fairly repressive conditions. I wonder whether this is the right way of going about these things. Her approach of open confrontation, indeed open attack on Islam makes sense if you think that there is no hope for reform possible without a dislodging the religion of Islam. Such open confrontation is not going persuade any moderate or secularized Muslims who might be allies in the fight against the Islamofascists. Instead, it's only going to antagonize them.

The problem is that thus far there has been little evidence of any pro-western, secular or moderate movement within Islam, certainly here in the Netherlands. The organizations purporting to speak for the Muslim immigrant populations have been very much along the mould of CAIR in the US. They show little affinitiy with the secular, western values which form the bedrock of our society. Instead they're not quite openly supportive of outright Islamofascism, but it's clear their sympathies are a lot closer to Bin Laden than the constitution of the Netherlands. Yet within the second or third generation immigrants there must surely be a significant number of those who're more attracted to our western secular lifestyle than the stultifying backwardness of fundamentalist Islam. But unless they make themselves known and their voices heard, the only signal we'll be getting from the Muslim immigrant community is that of adherence to a primitive, medieval religion and sympathy for those who seek to destroy our society and civilization. This in turn will vindicate Hirsi Ali's stance to seek frontal confrontation with Islam. It may become necessary, but to think that you'll be able to convert a significant portion of them to atheism is fanciful and not realistic. Even then the best you can hope for is to convert them to a more modern version of Islam, one which does not live in the glorious past of 1,200 years ago but at least tries to come to terms with the modern world of the 21st century. The best hope is the Turkish model, which combines a secular state with a somewhat more modern version of Islam. It's far from perfect as a model, but it's the best we have. And since there is a large Turkish immigrant community here in the Netherlands which is at least somewhat imbued with secularized thought, it's from within this group that any moderate and reasonable Muslim strand is most likely to emerge. That's why it's counterproductive at this stage to go for a full confrontation with Islam as Hirsi Ali is doing. It may yet become necessary, and perhaps I am too optimistic or naive to think that we have not yet reached that point. The alternative is worse.

Steering towards a full-blown confrontation is the Arab-European League, the AEL. The organization has its roots in Belgium and has been spreading its wings to the Netherlands as well as other European countries. Follow the links to read about the AEL and its founder, Abu Jahjah. Apparently there was a TV or radio debate with him a week or so ago here in the Netherlands. I have not seen or heard it, so I can only report what I heard about that debate third-hand. He was pitted in the debate against a number of pretty sharp Dutch debaters, such as the former GreenLeft leader Paul Rosenmuller. I generally disagree with him, but he's pretty good at debating. The general consensus about that debate is that Jahjah swept the floor with the Dutch politicians. In Dutch, a language he only learned relatively late in his life (20s?). Abu Jahjah adeptly used the very concepts of liberal democracy to defend himself against all accusations. He calls on the values enshrined in our constitution (however imperfectly defined they may be at times) such as freedom of expression and freedom of religion to justify what he's doing. He knows exactly which lines he cannot cross publicly; whereas he says he's only exercising his rights under the constitution, it's also clear that the AEL is working towards undermining it. It's the old Sinn Fein trick, building a semi-respectable facade for the world to see, while still being allied with dark forces.

Abu Jahjah is an extremely intelligent man. He can argue his case and defend himself using the vocabulary of liberal democracy while we works to undermine it. His sympathies lie clearly with the Islamofascists, but he's toned the public rhetoric down to a level where he's just another voice in the cacophony of our liberal democracy. He's perfectly aware of the weaknesses of liberal democracy and is detemined to exploit these to further his own Islamofascist aims. Combined with his intelligence, this makes him an extremely dangerous man.

The best way of dealing with idiotic and repugnant points of view (such as those espoused by the AEL and Jahjah) is to expose them for what they are. A well-informed population will be able to sift through them, consider them and reject them. The frightening scenario here is that it might not work that way. The immigrant community in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe has never made any attempt to integrate into wider society, nor has there been any effort by the governments to force them to. There's no melting pot here. There are multiple pots bubbling and boiling next to one another. Many of the immigrants from countries such as Morocco and Turkey (who form the bulk of Muslim immigrants to the Netherlands) have been living within their little parallel world in the Netherlands for decades. There is a bit more integration with second and third generation immigrants, but overall there is an astonishing degree of separation between the immigrants and the native population. And their numbers are large enough that they can't be ignored either. Within a few years, about 10% of the Dutch population will be Muslim. Another problem is that the immigrants are very different from the kinds of (Muslim) immigrants the US gets. What we have here is the bottom of the barrel, people who were at the bottom end of society even back home in Morocco. They're the worst educated of the bunch. The ruling elites in Morocco consider them utter barbarians and are just as glad to be rid of them.

Exposing them to the fresh winds of vigorous debate is going to be hard. Many don't speak Dutch, and living on the margins of Dutch society they're easy prey for the power-hungry predators of the AEL. If traditional methods of persuasion (or dissuasion in this case) do not work, what alternatives are left? A massive propaganda campaign could have an impact, but I am skeptical it can break into the majority within the group. The AEL will always have an advantage. Stopping government handouts to might increase pressure on them to learn Dutch and try to become more connected to society, but that too will not be enough.

This leaves the depressing prospect that we are very likely to end up with a substantial portion of the Dutch population under the sway of a brutal, primitive, fascist ideology. It certainly won't be the 10% of the population, but even if the AEL can muster the support of 5% it'll have the critical mass to disrupt wider society. You don't need a huge percentage to create a big problem, especially if they're willing to employ violent means to underscore their demands. This is the nightmare scenario. Accede to the demands of the Islamofascists or you'll be faced with widespread violence. Suddenly the poll over at LGF about which European country will first introduce Sharia is no longer so far-fetched. Will we accept the introduction of a parallel system of governance for Muslims, as is happening in Nigeria? It's too absurd to imagine.

There are no good alternatives. The AEL under Jahjah is going to become a powerful disruptive force, and any options for dealing with them are problematic. Will we have to destroy the village in order to save it? The best bet is still some combined education/propaganda campaign with the stick of loss of government subsidies (which I think should happen anyhow, regardless of religion). But the vast majority of these immigrants have now obtained Dutch citizenship. Sending them back would be very problematic in any case, but deporting Dutch citizen to a foreign country will raise insuperable constitutional hurdles. Using repression or outlawing certain kinds of speech or opinion are equally unconstitutional and very likely to be counterproductive anyway. The reality is that we have a large section of the population who can easily fall under the sway of the AEL and there's not too much we can do about it. The result will be increasing polarization between the growing group of immigrant who'll support the Islamofascists and the wider population. This guarantees an ugly outcome.

There might still be a chance to avert such an ugly outcome, but it will require strong and determined action. The flow of Saudi money has to be stopped; mosques cannot be allowed to spread anti-western propaganda any longer. We have to get a grip on the incubating Islamofascism within the immigrant community, and encourage the moderate. secular strands to come forward and denounce the Islamofascists. We might still be able to pull it off, but time is running out. And while I strongly defend Hirsi Ali's right to say the things she has said, I think they're counterproductive at this point. Only if and when we come to the conclusion that all Muslims are beyond rhyme or reason does it make sense to open up a full frontal assault on Islam. I hope it does not come to that.

There is another aspect that would help: a big crushing defeat for the various dictators in the Middle East. Starting with Saddam is a good beginning, but getting rid of the Saudis (who're funding much of the anti-western forces in Europe) will have to come next. Removing the external support for the enemy within has to be part and parcel of the strategy of defending the West against the threat of Islamofascism.

UPDATE: I have written a follow-up here.

Gretta in 1,000 words

Here's an excellent summary of Gretta Duisenberg's exploits.

(I'm still having routing problems which makes blogging difficult at the moment.)

Alienation

Frequent commenter Ralf Goergens writes in response to my election analysis:

I guess you aren't happy with that result, :

"For the establishment, tonight's result is a success. The foreign body of the LPF has been largely repulsed"

given what you think about your political establishment.

It's weird, but I had not even thought about it in those terms. I accepted the result with equanimity. Getting upset over it is just as effective as trying to stop the tide. Socialists win elections in the Netherlands. The lack of non-socialist parties pre-ordains that.

It's also because happiness is not something I associate with thinking about Dutch politics in general. Even when Pim Fortuyn was shaking the political landscape and the LPF won its victory last May, I was not really happy. I was gloating, but that's different from being happy. Fundamentally it boils down to a deep cynicism about the political establishment. I have become convinced that things simply aren't going to get structurally better. Sure, we might have governments on occasional that are less socialist than others, but the gap between what I think is desirable and what is politically feasible is too large to be bridged. It's just not going to happen. That's why I was not really disappointed or unhappy at the election result. I just accepted it as something that was going to happen anyway. I observe the elections and the result as if from afar, insulated from the actual reality that I live and work in the same country and that I am affected by the results. I feel detached. Sure, I use my blog to vent now and then, or poke fun at the goings-on, but there's always the subtext of not caring much anymore. In short, I have become alienated. This is not good. I fully realize that, and this is not a situation that can go on forever. I don't think I am in the danger zone yet though (denial is one of the warning signs, right?). So at some point there will have to come a resolution. Either I have to come to terms with my existence here, or find an alternative existence elsewhere.

That's more than enough about me. On to more interesting issues...

A final update for tonight

With almost 86% of the votes counted, the projection for the final result is as follows:

CDA 44, Labor 42, VVD 27, LPF 9, SP 9, GL 8, CU 3, D'66 6, SGP 2.

More tomorrow on the final result.

Back to politics as usual

With the results stabilizing, it looks like the broad outline of the election result can now be forecast with a reasonable amount of certainty. The main headlines of tonight are the expected collapse of the LPF, the CDA holding on to the top spot and Labor almost doubling in size. The big shake-up of Dutch politics which Pim Fortuyn had intitiated has more or less petered out. Not much is left of the original impetus that he brought to the political landscape. Still, he does leave something of a legacy in the LPF. And the other big parties too have been marked by the Fortuyn effect as they started to campaign on his themes and his ideas, even if they did not believe in them. But looking back on tonight, the old Dutch political elites can pat themselves on the back on having apparently neutralized the Fortuyn-wrought threat to their pre-eminent roles. It's back to politics as usual for the most part.

The blame for squandering the Fortuyn legacy must fall to a significant degree on the LPF. Their internal disagreements which descended into utter farce destroyed the LPF in the opinion polls. It also gave their coalition partners, the CDA and VVD a good excuse to pull the rug out from under the government and call for new elections. They calculated, or rather miscalculated, that the disaffected LPF voters would turn to the CDA and VVD in any elections, thereby re-establishing something resembling the old order. The VVD especially would have been the natural home for LPF voters based on party platforms. It did not quite happen like that. The protest vote migrated first to the SP and was later absorbed by Labor, whose new leader Wouter Bos has been addressing the Fortuyn issues. According to Dutch TV tonight, about half of those who voted LPF last May have gone over to the VVD and CDA this time around. But about one-third did not even bother to vote. Overall turnout has been slightly higher today than it had been last May.

For the establishment, tonight's result is a success. The foreign body of the LPF has been largely repulsed, although with 9 seats in parliament it will remain a player and might even join the new government again. Even if we get a new CDA-VVD-LPF coalition, the mission for the established parties (CDA and VVD) has been accomplished; the upstart LPF has been reduced in significance. The actual Pim Fortuyn issues have not gone away though. The real test of how well Pim Fortuyn's message has been understood by the old parties will the test of time. If the issues of crime, delapidated health care, deteriorating education and unassimilated immigrants are not solved, the LPF will have another opportunity. Unless they become part of a government that won't or can't solve these problems.

Almost half the vote counted

With 47% of the vote counted, the CDA is still 5 seats ahead of Labor, so it's becoming more certain that the Christian Democrats will become the largest party in parliament, and that Prime Minister Balkenende will retain office. The question still remains who his coalition partners will be. VVD is now at 27, LPF at 9, so a CDA-VVD-LPF coalition is numerically possible, but the CDA-Labor option still seems to have the most momentum for now.

Projections stabilizing

There's just been a big jump in the number of votes counted to 22% now, although the projection has not changed much from the previous report. CDA is still comfortably ahead of Labor with the same 45-40 seat margin. The LPF loses one seat to go to 8 compared to the previous projection's 9 seats, and the SP gains one to move to 10.

CDA pulling ahead

With 8% of the votes counted now, the latest projection shows the CDA pulling clearly ahead of Labor with 45 versus 40 seats in parliament. It's still too early to consider this matter settled but Labor has an uphill battle from here if it is to become the biggest party. The VVD is now at 28, the LPF at 9. Still comfortably enough to renew the current coalition, which might yet happen. If these results hold, the first attempt to form a government will be the Grand Coalition of CDA and Labor, which would have a very comfortable majority. Depending on where the CDA wants to go, it might let these talks founder and go for a new coalition with VVD-LPF. It's too soon to tell, but ideologically it would be a better fit.

The good news tonight is that the far left parties have not done as well as had been forecast. The neo-stalinist SP stays stable at 9 seats (which I still think is a scary level of support for a totalitarian party) while the GreenLeft loses 2 seats on current projections. Overall there's still a center-right majority in the new parliament with CDA, VVD and LPF. The only question is whether they can form a government together.

Votes are being counted

The votes are being counted, and the first prognosis based on actual results has been published. It still puts CDA and Labor neck-and-neck with CDA ahead by one seat in parliament. The main shift compared to the exit poll is that both the VVD and the LPF do better (27 and 10 seats, respectively) while several left-wing parties come out worse. It still does not fundamentally change the arithmetic of coalitions though. The tenor of the commentary thus far has been that the most likely outcome will be a CDA-Labor coalition, as CDA-VVD did not get the mandate it asked for. Adding the LPF to the mix is becoming a bit more likely though, with a potential CDA-VVD-LPF coalition now projected to get 80 seats. If the LPF actually manages to get 10 seats it would be a victory of sorts for them, as they had been on the brink of extinction in October.

More projections later.

Exit polls results

The polls have closed, and Dutch TV has just shown the usual exit polls. The numbers are in terms of seats in parliament, and 76 seats are needed for a majority. In parentheses is the number of seats in the previous parliament.

CDA: 43 (43)
LPF: 8 (26)
VVD: 25 (24)
Labor: 42(23)
GreenLeft: 9 (10)
SP: 11 (9)
D'66: 6 (7)
CU: 4 (4)
SGP: 2 (2)
LN: 0 (2)

So it's a very close race for top spot here, and looks like a disappointing result for the VVD who had been expected to win more. There's nowhere near a majority for CDA-VVD, but with the LPF they might scrape through to a majority of 76. A long night ahead, and it's not at all clear what kind of coalition we'll end up with. Whatever happens, the CDA is likely to be part of any new government though.

See also yseterday's guide the elections. The first results from computerized voting districts should be coming in shortly.

Crime and Dutch punishment

Having established that the price to pay for murder is relatively low in the Netherlands, we now get another example of how utterly ludicrous Dutch sentencing has become. Six men between the ages of 18 and 28 have been convicted of attempted murder, two others of public violence and causing premeditated grievous bodily harm. On the 10th of September 2002, the group of masked men attacked two other men with truncheons and a machete causing serious injuries. It was supposedly a revenge attack for their victims supposedly hitting one of the group, but they ended up attacking the wrong men. In any case, it's a pretty gruesome case of wanton violence, and they have been rightfully convicted of attempted murder.

So what's the punishment for attempted murder? If murder only gets you 8 to 12 years, what's an appropriate level of punishment for attempted murder? Hang on to your seats: 30 months, of which six months are on probation. So effectively the longest amount of time these thugs will serve in prison is 24 months, probably less on good behavior. They tried to KILL SOMEONE for crying out loud!

I think I'll go bang my head against a concrete wall for a while.

Guide to the Dutch elections

The time of voting is nigh. The polls open tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM, and close at 9:00 PM local time (3 PM EST). If I manage to catch the early flight home (which I should be able to do), I'll have the exit poll results here as and when they're shown on television with regular updates throughout the night.

Since the fall of the Dutch government, the political circus has been traveling from town to town and monopolizing the airwaves. The situation is somewhat different from what I predicted in my original comment following the government's collapse. In the early polling the LPF seemed to be on the verge of extinction, but they managed to claw their way back to a low level of stable support. As campaigning wore on, the polls shifted in favor of scary-very-far-left Socialist Party (not to be confused with the Labor Party) which seemed to be picking up a lot of support. The biggest winner in all of this is the Labour Party, which might even end up being the biggest party in parliament. Before I go into the electoral arithmetic, here's a list of the parties which are likely to win seats tomorrow (current number of seats in parentheses, 76 needed for majority):

CDA: the Christian Democrats (43 seats now). Classic European middle-of-the-road consensus party. It's essentially conservative with a small c; averse to change, steady-as-she-goes. The CDA does still retain some of its religious roots, for instance in its opposition to euthanisia and abortion, but even this tends to be rather tepid. The current prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende is the leader of the CDA. Current polls put it at around 40 seats.

LPF: List Pim Fortuyn (26 seats), named after its founder and leading light. Its internal wrangles and theatrics eroded its support very quickly and led to the fall of the government. Simply put, you just could not take the LPF seriously, and it looked like it was going to disintegrate completely. It's now polling at around seven seats, which is going to make the LPF the biggest loser of tomorrow's election. But considering how close they were to complete extinction, even the seven seats are something of a victory. Its platform is an extension of Pim Fortuyn's original election program, but the LPF is now becoming more of a traditional right-wing European party with an authoritarian streak in some of its ideas an law enforcement. The LPF had a unique opportunity to reshape Dutch politics and break the old elites' strangehold on power, but they screwed it up royally.

VVD: the Liberal Party (24 seats), more or less in the classical sense of the word. Well, if you look carefully with a microscope, you might find the classical Liberal heritage in the VVD, but it's now a slightly right-of-center party with a preference for less socialism and lower taxes, if possible. Some of their proposals on law and order would make any classical Liberal cringe. The LPF's collapse should have benefited the VVD, as it, of the "old" parties, is closest in program to the LPF. However, the VVD is polling at 29 seats, a pickup of just 5. It has not managed to attract the LPF voters, it seems.

PvdA: the Labor Party (23 seats), also known as the Social Democrats. If polls are to be believed, Labor will be the biggest winner tommorw, vaulting over the CDA to become the largest party in parliament with 42 seats. Part of this support must come from ex-LPF voters, who perhaps flirted earlier in the campaign with the SP. This indicates that the LPF's support was not as strongly ideological as previously might have been thought, since the LPF and SP programs are very, very far apart. In any case, the resurgence of the Labor party means a return to more politics as usual.

GreenLeft: (10 seats) the whacko enviroloony left, born out of various communist and radical parties of the past. Their program contains all the stuff you might expect from a party with this kind of name. Polls show them at 7 seats now.

SP:, the Socialist Party (9 seats), which is not far from being stalinist in its electoral program. At one point during the campaign it was slated to win over 20 seats in parliament, almost eclipsing Labor at the time. The fewer votes they get, the better; polls show them at around 11 seats now. I'd much rather see those votes go to less insane Labor party.

D'66: Democrats '66 (7 seats), usually referred to as Left Liberal, although a more accurate description would be that it's the party people used to vote for when they didn't know whom to vote for. It was often the third (small) party in a coalition of two bigger ones. It's a bland, safe, non-threatening somewhat left-of-center party whose main idea of referenda and direectly elected mayors has been stolen by many others, mostly based on Pim Fortuyn's advocacy of such issues. I have no idea how it differs from Labor. Opinion polls give it 6 seats.

ChristenUnie: now at 4 seats, it's the result of a merger of the GPV and RPF. Together with the SGP these parties used to be called "Small Right," because of their strongly religious conservatism and small national impact. They're the Dutch version of the Religious Right, although that's a slightly misleading way of describing them. They seem much more at ease with socialism than the religious loonies of the GOP ever could be. Polls give them 5 seats now.

SGP: at 2 seats it's the third "small right" party which couldn't bring itself to merge with the GPV and RPF based on disagreements on religious doctrine. I would not be able to tell their electoral programs apart, but to them it's a big deal apparently. Polls show them keeping their 2 seats.

LN: Liveable Netherlands (2 seats) was the original grass-roots party which tried to storm the elites' fortress. Pim Fortuyn was briefly its leader before they kicked him out again and he started the LPF. The LN party is now led by a teenager after a staggering string of internal disputes. Even the LPF has more credibility. They may retain one seat in parliament.

So there you have it. The electoral battle has been complicated by the fact that the Labor campaign leader (the one who's at the top of the party list) Wouter Bos has declared he will not seek the office of Prime Minister if Labor becomes the largest party. Instead, Labor only this weekend put forward the mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen as a prime ministerial candidate in case Labor get to supply the PM.

In terms of possible coalitions (76 seats are needed for a majority), the CDA and the VVD would like to continue to govern, but without their current LPF partners. Early on the in campaign both parties had said they would not form another coalition with the LPF. But that was when they were ahead in the polls and could form a government on their own. Now that the deadline nears, they're furiously backpedaling on their earlier statement and saying that perhaps a coalition with the LPF might be possible after all.

The left-leaning parties don't have the numbers to form a government based on the poll results. At one point, the specter of a Labor-SP-GreenLeft coalition began to loom (and immediate emigration for yours truly), but they're nowhere near the level of support they need. So the only viable alternative to a CDA-VVD-LPF coalition is a CDA-Labor coalition. There have been such coalitions in the past and if the numbers don't add up for other combinations, this looks like the most feasible majority.

Of course, all of this is based on opinion polls. We'll see in less than 24 hours how accurate they were. As I said, I will be posting exit poll numbers as soon as I get them off the TV tomorrow at 9 PM local, 3 PM EST.

Gretta's shady past

The furore over Gretta Duisenberg's idiotic remarks has died down a little but it's not yet slipped from people's radar. Nor should it. I received an email from someone who'd read my blog on Gretta's Nazi comparison, and then asked me in the ensuing email exchange whether Gretta is a classic pathological anti-Semite, or just very very stupid. That's a hard question to answer. But it did jog memories of an article I'd read in a Dutch newspaper some indeterminate time ago about Gretta's past. Through the marvels of Google I found Stop The Lie, a Dutch pro-Israel site which has been keeping track of such things. Even better, I found the link to the article I was looking for. It appeared in the daily newspaper De Telegraaf on June 6th, 2002 and carried the headline "Gretta Duisenberg had ties with left-wing activists."

That is a understating matters a little bit. I guess I'll just translate the relevant part of the article:

... Gretta Duisenberg had sympathized in the past with people in shady circles of left-wing activists. For instance Gretta Bedier de Nieuwenhuizen, as she was called at the time, had close ties with the Transnational Institute, based in Amsterdam. Member of the staff there was the Pakistani Eqbal Ahmad, who was suspected of terrorist activities. The TNI is a left-wing think-thank headed by Basker Vashee, an activist of the Rhodesian Marxist Liberation Front (ZAPU). Vashee counted Gretta amongst his best friends, as he stated more than once. His ZAPU fought a bloody war of independence in Africa against the regime of Ian Smith.

Before she married Duisenberg in August of 1987, Gretta was also a confidante of Philip Agee. This ex-CIA agent became public enemy #1 after he'd betrayed the identity of American secret agents in the Soviet Bloc. Some of them were them liquidated.

He lived in the TNI building on the Paulus Potterstraat in Amsterdam and was ultimately deported from this country. Before it came to that he asked Gretta to be a witness at his wedding with an American ballerina.

As a result of her colorful friends Mrs. Bedier de Praire came to the attention of the Secret Service when she had a relationship with Hans van Mierlo, who at the time was minister of Defense. Because he was responsible for all ongoing investigations of the military intelligence agencies in this country, the Americans were worried that information might leak to Agee and his buddies.

This goes slightly beyond being stupid. Somebody who's very very stupid might fall for Arafat's propaganda, or even the Soviets' propaganda. There were plenty of well-meaning idiots who were in the same boat, and who somehow always ended up supporting the side of unspeakable evil.

But Gretta takes it a step further. She's beyond the scope of the merely gullible. This woman has a history of consorting with the evil and depraved. As someone who frolicked with a traitor who was responsible for the murder of American agents in the Soviet Bloc, she has forsaken all moral right to speak out on behalf any oppressed. When people were being brutally oppressed by the evil of communism just a few hundred miles from where she lived, she was actively sympathized with the henchmen of tyrannical regimes. This is somebody who has no moral compass, no sense of right and wrong, not the slightest sliver of intellectual integrity. This woman is evil, pure and simple.

The price of murder

The way in which serious criminals are punished in the Netherlands verges on the absurd. This is not something new as there is a general failure, and indeed in some cases unwillingness of the criminal justice system to go after criminals. Even then they are caught, tried and convicted, the punishment meted out is ridiculous. One recent instance is the murder of a four year old child, known as the Girl from Nulde, named after the beach where her head was found. She was beaten to death by her stepfather while her mother looked on. They then cut her up into small pieces and tried to get rid of them at various places throughout the country. A morbid jig-saw puzzle finally allowed forensic experts to reconstruct what happened.

So what's the punishment for this crime? The mother is sentenced to eight years in prison, while the stepfather gets twelve. The prosecutor had demanded fifteen. Of course, this is only the nominal sentence. On good behavior, they're likely to leave prison after three-quarters of their term has been fulfilled. The reason why the sentence is so light is because of extensive psychological and psychiatric reports which established the various mental shortcomings of both murderers. The mother was very dependent, lacked emotional independence and was conflict averse. The stepfather suffers from a severe form of paranoia. In his case, the court also imposed on him what's known as "tbs," which is psychological treatment after the sentence has been served. If he can convince the therapists that he's sane enough, he'll be free after his jail sentence.

I will admit that people who beat a 4 year old girl to death are insane and indeed evil. But once you start giving shorter sentences to people because they commit acts which are intrinsically deranged, then virtually any murderer will be able to get a reduced sentence. And that's all too common here in the Netherlands. It does lead to an interesting calculation if you're sufficiently bloody-minded but capable of rational thought. If you want to commit murder, the Netherlands may not be such a bad place to do it. Make the murder as gruesome as possible, get yourself certified as insane and spend six to eight years in prison for it. If you hate someone enough to kill him, the logic becomes disquietingly compelling.

The death penalty would have been more appropriate in this case. Although there is absolutely no chance that the death penalty will be reintroduced here, public opinion polls show significant (though not majority) support for it. And cases where murderers get away with such light sentences are stoking the fires of discontent. There is a big gap between the views of the man on the street and the prevailing practices of the criminal justice system. And with sentences like these, the gap is only growing.

Street gangs of Amsterdam-West

The area known as Amsterdam-West is one of the parts of town where street crime is a big problem. The street gangs have an interminable history of both petty as well as more serious crime. The situation is not as bad as in some of the more notorious inner city areas of the US, but living in Amsterdam-West is not exactly a pleasant experience. The Dutch daily Parool has a summary of a report (pdf) on the issue, available only in Dutch at the moment. The author, Frank van Gemert, writes that he intends to publish articles in English as well on his research into one particular street gang, the Molenpleingroup, named after a square in that part of town.

It makes for extremely depressing reading. There's a hard core of 24 gang members and they're about 18 years old, and there's a secondary group of about 40 to 50 followers. The hard core members have been involved with the police on average 33 times per person, while one of them managed to chalk up no fewer than 202 brushes with the law. They spend their time hanging around on the streets, uneducated, unemployed and completely wrapped up in their group identity. The gang forms their only frame of reference, and any outside influences are met with hostility and suspicion. Not only do they commit many crimes on outsiders, they're also perfectly happy to turn on their own. One example is a policeman stopping two boys riding a moped without a helmet and license plate. Other gang members used to opportunity to steal the moped from under the nose of the policeman and the putative owner. The policeman only managed to detain the driver by threatening him with pepper spray.

The report goes also into the details of group identity and dynamics. The report describes the siege mentality of "us against them," groupthink, how they create their own reality and version of the "truth," their complete refusal to accept any responsbility for their acts: it's all somebody else's fault, and by blaming the authorities for not giving them something to do or aspire to they don't have to accept responsbility. The report also points out that they're incapable of even listening to opposing points of view, because they're used to winning arguments by shouting others down.

A recurring theme is the inability of the law enforcement authorities and the criminal justice system to deal with the gangs. The identities of the group members are well known, and many are arrested on a regular basis. The report states on page 60:

A boy who ends up at the police station for some infraction of the law almost always will know the names of the others who were involved. To name them however would be treason and the rule is that the boys keep their mouths shut at the policestation. They've learned that often they'll be back out on the streets in a few hours. No matter how clear the evidence may be against them, the boys deny their involvement and cooperate as little as possible with the interrogation.

There's also a description of how the gang targets the "supervisory teams," who are not police officers, but work with them to try to contain violence. They're local people from the neighborhood and part of the community. When one of them admonished a gang member for his behavior, he was head-butted. So he filed a report with the police. The next weekend he was going for a night out on the Leidseplein, which is at the heart of the entertainment district of Amsterdam. A reception committee of gang members awaited him; they beat him up and threw him into a canal. The police quickly arrived on the scene and arrested the gang members. The report says, "A short time later they were sent home, even though the charges against them were of attempted murder and the gang members were well known."

The report also tries to address how to deal effectively with such gangs, but it is very much from a perspective of trying to reform the gang members and make them useful members of society again. But this is not a societal problem, it is a clear failure of the criminal justice system. The authorities know who the gang members are, they arrest them frequently for various crimes, they have evidence against them and yet they're still out on the streets. Locking them up would seem an obvious idea, but it does not appear to be on the menu when searching for a solution. Throwing them into prison is not going to reform them, but at least it will prevent them from committing further crimes. Protecting society against these serial offenders would be the main benefit of incarcerating them. The laws that would allow this are mostly there, but they're not being applied. One change that would make locking them up more effective is to incarcerate offenders for longer periods of time as they commit more crimes. It's unreasonable to throw somebody in jail for years on account a small act of petty vandalism, but by the time he's arrested for the third, fourth or tenth time, I have no problem with removing him from circulation for exponentially increasing periods of time. It would keep society safe from these incorrigible deviants, allow law-abiding citizens to take back the streets and remove negative role models for new generations of youths to follow. Right now young kids in those neighborhoods grow up in an environment where they see how their elders get away with openly flouting the law. In their eyes, no ill consequences come of breaking the law and in some cases actually can bring in a lot of money. They do not perceive that a life of crime leads them to marginalize themselves in society.

There is one final twist to this story which I have not mentioned so far, because it is not strictly relevant to the above. The gang, like many others, consists of Moroccan immigrants or immigrants' children. This adds another explosive dimension to the problem of the street gangs, as their highly visible criminal profile reflects poorly on the entire immigrant community. Such gangs would exist even in the absence of immigration if law enforcement would be as broken as it is now. It's not so much an immigration problem, as it is a law enforcement problem. The relevance of the ethnic origin does come into play when you look at secondary effects. To maintain their group identity, they fall back on their imported culture. The enemy, the evil people responsible for their current disenfranchised state are the Jews. The gang members latch on to anything that puts them into as much conflict as possible with "respectable society," and thus the gangs become a hotbed of anti-semitic, anti-western Islamofascist sloganeering and proseletyzing. It's not a big jump for such violent and inveterate criminals to be recruited by a bit of clever manipulation into full violent Islamofascist mold of anti-western terrorism. And that's another reason why we need a good dose of Guiliani-style zero tolerance policing to stamp out these gangs, quite apart from the general issue of maintaining public safety.

Shifts in the polls

With the election circus heating up ahead of polling day on January 22nd, the polls have shifted considerably since I last wrote about them in December. The biggest change is that the Labor party has been making big gains in the polls. The last elections were a complete disaster for them, when their parliamentary representation was cut in half. Now they seem to be making up for that and more. The latest daily tracker poll shows that Labor would now become the largest party in parliament, surpassing the Christian Democrats. This comes mostly at the expense of other left-wing parties, such as the hard-line communist SP and the enviroloony Green Left. Combined these three parties would have 62 seats, well short of the necessary 76 to form a government. So it's mainly a shift within the left-wing parties. The right-of-center Liberal party (VVD) has also been gaining some ground in the polls. It should have been the natural home of the disgruntled LPF voters, who could no longer put up with the farce that the LPF had become, but they don't seem to be attracting too many of them. It does not help that the VVD party leader, Gerrit Zalm is not particularly inspiring. He was also instrumental in bringing down the previous government, and I suspect that may play a role with ex-LPF-voters' reluctance to cast their ballot for him. Together the CDA and VVD would now have 70 seats, short of an overall majority. They both say they want to continue to govern, but right now they just don't have the seats. Add the LPF's 7 seats, and you might have a government, but neither the CDA nor the VVD is keen on having the LPF in a new coalition. I can't really blame them. It was the LPF's instability and farcical behavior that led to the fall of the Dutch government.

The most likely government, if thesee polls are accurate, would be a Grand Coalition of Labour and Christian Democrats. A new CDA, VVD coalition has been ruled out in advance, the left does not have sufficient support to form a government, so all that's left is the two biggest parties combining forces.

Whatever the outcome, I predict higher taxes.

The Nazi comparison

The most prominent Dutch idiotarian at the moment is without doubt Gretta Duisenberg who last Sunday wasted no time in blaming the Palestianian terrorist attack on Israel. Not content with that particular expression of her moral bankruptcy, she's been very chummy with terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, protectively wrapping her arm around him:

Appearing with Arafat, the ECB president's wife said she thought Israel should "give back the occupied territories" and said the PA chairman "hates killing."

"I think there should be peace and the military situation of the Israeli government should stop because their actions are terrible. You can't have peace when you have all these killings around. There should be dialogue and negotiations," she said.

Of course, the last time there were negotiations and dialog, Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat just about everything he wanted, but Arafat declined. Instead, he breathed new life into the terrorist campaign against Israel and help nourish the psychotic death cult that has now poisened the minds of many Palestinians. There is no reason to assume that any negotiations or dialog would have a different result now. Arafat, the Palestinians and the Arab world are still clinging to their fantasy of destroying the state of Israel. I know I've been overusing the term, but Gretta Duisenberg truly is Arafat's useful idiot.

But Gretta's on a roll. Her idiocy just compounds itself day by day. The latest revolting comments she made are causing another stir. She said today that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian terrories is worse than the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands (with the exception of the Holocaust). History clearly isn't her strongest point. The Dutch never tried to exterminate the Germans, they did not carry out terrorist attacks on Germans, they did set up the Dutch Liberation Organization whose aim it was the destroy the German nation. Israel was forced to fight wars in order ensure its very survival, because the Arab nations surrounding have been trying since 1948 to destroy Israel itself. The Nazi comparison is all the more despicable because it being directed at the Nazis' victims, and Gretta knows that full well. It's a calculated act of callousness. And her parenthetical qualification that excepts the Holocaust from this comparison is just a superficial attempt to pre-empt criticism. You cannot compare anybody to the Nazis-ex-Holocaust. Anti-semitism and the deliberate extermination of the Jews is the very defining feature of Nazism. Gretta's attempt to have it both ways is disingenous and despicable.

But of course, she was not done yet. She also said:

The cruelty of the Israelis knows no bounds. It's really no exception that they blow up the houses of Palestinians. The Nazis never went this far during the occupation of the Netherlands.

Yes, in their "boundless cruelty" the Israelis blow up the houses with the people inside them, right? Oh wait, they give them a chance to leave and not be physically harmed. When's the last time a Palestinian terrorist showed this much consideration for an Israeli life?

Onward through Gretta's phantom world of saintly Palestinians and villanous Je.., eh Israelis. Showing yet more historical illiteracy, she happily skips on to Jenin which was the base for many Palestinian terrorist attacks in which many dozens of Isrealis were murdered. She says:

This wall that Israel is building, is many times worse than the Berlin wall. It is terrible. It is much higher and goes over land that was taken from the Palestinians

Yes, it was taken from them in one of those wars in which the Palestinians and their friends tried to expunge Israel from the face of the earth, remember? And Ehud Barak was willing to give it back to the Palestinians (who never really owned it in the first place, as it was part of Jordan before the Six Day War). But the Palestinians prefer to strap on explosives and murder and maim as many Israelis as they can, reveling in their death cult. For good measure she also mentions that the situation is worse than it ever was for blacks in South Africa.

Historical illiteracy, a stupendous dose of gullibility, a never-ending supply of idiocy, utter callousness towards the Jews of Israel and complete moral bankruptcy; these are the ingredients that make up our highly sophisticated European intellectuals. Truly revolting.

Of course, since the protection of free speech is less strict in most European countries than in the US with its First Amendment, we have laws on the books which can impose various penalties on people who say things which are hateful. In response to Gretta's blather, several Jewish organizations are now saying they're going to sue Gretta Duisenberg under these laws. The head of the "Federative Jewish Netherlands" organization has said that he wants the courts to prohibit Duisenberg from "expressing hurtful or offensive sentiments about Jews or the Jewish people." Much as I sympathize with them, I strongly prefer the American absolutist approach to free speech. Shutting people up by means of court orders is dangerous and wrong. Therefore I support even the right of the utterly reprehensible Gretta Duisenberg to say these offensive and hurtful things.

UPDATE: LGF is on it too. Lots of good comments there.

Random searches on trains and roads too

With the election campaign in full swing in the Netherlands, the Christian Democrats have come up with the idea of extending the random searches that are now conducted in towns. The idea is that by randomly stopping and searching large numbers of people (including the cordoning off of areas of town) crime will be reduced. The first such searches have resulted in several arrests with the confiscation of guns and knives. There is no indication that this actually will reduce crime, but the measures are depressingly popular. Anybody can be searched; there's no need for probable cause or anything like that. There's no Fourth Amendment in the Netherlands. An "unreasonable search" is a search that the police decide is unreasonable.

So the Christian Democrats have come up with the idea of extending these searches to trains and highways too. The police would have the authority stop cars at random and search them for drugs and weapons. The first target area would be the Amsterdam beltway, the A 10, which has recently been the subject of other idiotic proposals, such as the ring-fencing of Amsterdam.

In the words the second-in-command at the Christian Democrats, "[this] is necessary for a safer society, for the protection of citizens." But if you're not creeped out about that, he added that the erosion of citizens' privacy is not an impediment. "The protection of society is more important than the privacy of the individual." That's a pretty scary sentiment to be coming from a prominent politician of a middle-of-the-road political party. One that is going to win the largest number of votes in the upcoming election no less. He's already received support from the Labour politician Van Heemst, who basically said "we thought of it first!"

It must be one of the sophisticated European things I don't understand. I guess I'm too simple with my cowboyish unilaterist insistence on privacy and such. With such widespread support, the practice of random searches is going to expand. Bear that in mind next time you travel to Europe. Or better yet, bear that in mind next time you hear the American Left glorifying life in Europe.

There's no place like home

The Indonesian authorities have released from custody someone's who's lovingly described as a "Muslim militant." His name is Abdul Wahid Kadungga and he's suspected of having links with Al Qaeda and of being involved in recent terrorist attacks in Indonesia. He's on good terms with various Islamofascists in Indonesia, including Abu Bakar Bashir, the leader of the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist organization. According to the report:

According to a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), Kadungga assisted Bashir in 1985 when Bashir fled Indonesia for Malaysia.

ICG said Kadungga "is believed to have had direct communication with al-Qaeda through his ties to the Egyptian-led Gama Islami".

The Gama Islami is a core group of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, according to ICG.

The research organisation said Kadungga is also associated with the Makassar-based Committee for Upholding Islamic Law.

He denies being involved in terrorism, of course. It's so good of the Indonesians to believe him like that. But since his arrest and release, Kadungga has developed a sudden yearning for his adopted homeland, the Netherlands. He obtained political asylum here in 1985 and became a Dutch citizen in 1991. The Dutch daily Parool reports how Kadungga gushes that "the Netherlands is democracy number one." Translated from Islamofascistese this means that the Netherlands is a good basis from which he can operated unhindered. It's touching to see how well he's assimilated into Dutch society and embraced the values of tolerance, freedom and democracy. A shining example of the success of our multicultural society.

Parool also reports that he's a big admirer of Osama Bin Laden's: "He's fantastic, one of a kind." Actually, he's not. He's more one of those kinds who've been pulverized by a daisy cutter. I'd be more than happy for Kadungga to join his hero in this rarefied status.

Kadungga's activities from his Dutch base have focused on supporting the Islamofascists' armed struggle. He says, "I'm an international activist. I travel from Europe to the Middle East and to Asia. I establish contacts with Islamic fighters everywhere. I dream of an Islamic empire."

I dream of the day he meets the daisy cutter on one of his missions in the Middle East.

A useful contribution

The Dutch press has over the last days been carrying reports how two patrolling Dutch F-16 fighters rescued an American Black Hawk helicopter over Afghanistan. The helicopter came under fire from the ground and requested assistance. The two Dutch jets came to the rescue, and their mere presence was enough to stop the enemy fire. The incident took place at night, and the Black Hawk was flying without any lights on, so the F-16's had to use their infrared sensors and night vision equipment to track the helicopter down. According the reports, the USAF was impressed by the quick response of the Dutch F-16's.

I'm glad to see that the Netherlands is contributing something useful to the American effort, even if it is only in such a small way. The general state of the Dutch armed forces is not particularly up-to-scratch, but at least they are keeping the F-16's flying. Having a full set of armed forces here in the Netherlands is just plain silly. The Dutch armed forces can only be meaningful in a broader alliance such as NATO. The defense budget is spread much too thinly over too many aspects, as the Dutch military is still trying to do too many things. There are two ways in which the Dutch defense budget can be used productively: either focus on a few tasks and do them really well so as to support other NATO (i.e. US and British) forces when necessary, or the simpler option of scrapping all Dutch armed forces and sending the money to the Pentagon. We're completely dependent on the US for our security anyway, and the marginal dollar spent by the Pentagon is going to be much more useful than spending it on the Dutch military.

Finally, I can't help but wonder whether the USAF was simply being courteous to an ally when it said it was "impressed" with the Dutch F-16's response. With radar, infrared sensors and night vision equipment, isn't finding the Black Hawk easier at night than during the day? Still, with all the complaining I do here I thought I'd focus on something more positive for a change. I'm glad to see that the Netherlands can and does do something useful in support of the US.

Slogging through the mire

Prominent Dutch idiotarian Mient-Jan Faber, the head of the IKV "peace movement," spoke at the silent procession at the World War II concentration camp Westerbork yesterday, despite protests from Jewish organizations. His speech was predictably, well, idiotarian. He claimed that the Netherlands is no longer a multicultural society (so far, so good). But why? Well, he asks himself how immigrants must feel in Dutch society, having been here all these years, and suddenly they're not part of it anymore:

"They've been in the Netherlands for years and now suddenly they're told tht their mosques are incubators for terrorism."

Eh, perhaps that's because their mosques ARE incubators for terrorism? It's not something that they're told, it's something they're actively doing with funding from Saudi Arabia. Islamic schools in the Netherlands preach hatred of the West and the Jews, again with Saudi funding. The fault lies not with Dutch society, but with those who preach hatred and call for the destruction of the infidels.

After the criticism that Jewish organizations had had about his speaking at the procession, Mient-Jan Faber also addressed the situation in the Middle East. He had previously called on Israel to get rid of its Jewish character, and now added these words to his record of shame and infamy:

"[...] both [the] Jewish and the Palestinian communities live in constant panicked fear. People yell at each other from fear and hate, but there is lack of a dialog. In the Netherlands too it is hard to have a good discussion about, as I have experienced again."

Yes, poor Faber is being held accountable for the idiocy he spews. Let's take this one at a time. The Jewish community lives in fear because the Palestinians are trying to murder as many of them as they possibly can. The Palestinians live in fear because the PLO is running a totalitarian police state where deviating from the official line means torture and death. Note the moral equivalence: Palestinians who deliberately murder civilians are put on the same moral basis as the Israelis who are trying to stop the Palestinian terrorists and take great care to avoid civilian casualties. Faber trudges even deeper into the swamp of moral equivalence: he claims people shout at each other from fear and hate. There's plenty of hate on the Palestinian and Arab side; after all, they've been trying to destroy the state of Israel for the last half century, and still see that as their ultimate goal. Arab and Palestinian official news media are reviving and recycling Nazi anti-semitic propaganda. They're actively fanning the flames of hate. Now, show me the equivalent of this hate on the Israeli side. There is none. Israeli newspapers and politicians don't call for the destruction of the Palestinians, they don't call on God to destroy the Muslims, they don't wish to eradicate them from the face of the earth.

If he'd had any credibility to begin with, Faber would have lost it now. But he's hit absolute zero a long time ago, in the days when we was Moscow's useful idiot during the cold war. Now he's Islamofascism's useful idiot. Quite a career.

Commemorating the past

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands the town of Westerbork became the home to a concentration camp. It was just a transit camp though, and the Jews who were imprisoned here were soon sent on their way to be murdered in Auschwitz and other German camps. To commemorate the evil that took place here, a committee has been organizing annual silent processions at Westerbork. This year though, a Dutch Jewish organization is protesting against the choice of speaker to address the crowd. Somehow the head of a Dutch "peace" movement, the IKV, got the job. This is someone who during the cold war invariably chose Moscow's side, wallowing in a deep mire of moral equivalence. He and his organization were the Evil Empire's useful idiots who protested against the US for keeping the Netherlands free and prosperous. Of course, he's learnt nothing from the cold war, and he and his ilk are not content with having been on the wrong side of history once in a lifetime, but they're going for two. Thus the usual anti-American protests, which you would expect from a "peace" movement. But part and parcel of that is also an anti-Israeli attitude, which is manifested by the IKV steadfastly taking the side of the Palestinians terrorists who are trying to destroy the state of Israel. In his wisdom the IKV's leader said that Israel should distance itself from its Jewish character. The insanity of multiculturalism from the mouth of an idiot. His long track record of pacifist depravity should have disqualified him from being taken seriously in the first place. Anti-semitic? I won't go that far yet.

This will be the 50th, but also be the last silent procession. The group who's been organizing these marches since 1992 can't find anybody to continue the tradition.

Banned substances in the Netherlands

It's that awful realization in the middle of the night. As an inveterate insomniac I am used to waking up in the middle of my Big Nap (as opposed to the Little Naps I take on occasion, although my office furniture is not conducive to Napping). Last night I awoke from the restless slumber which passes for sleep and immediately I sighed in exasperation, as a distinctly sore feeling was creeping up through my throat. If it had advanced any further it would have crept and tied a double knot in respiratory system. A cold is coming up, which means my ruminations will become increasingly febrile if the cold does indeed manage to vanquish my pharmacochemically reinforced defense systems.

Getting the right kinds of drugs here is surprisingly hard. In the country where marijuana is legal and even "harder" drugs are not entirely completely illegal in practice (sort of), if you try to find Nyquil, you're out of luck. They just don't sell it here. It's illegal. I kid you not. I once asked an acquaintance of mine who happens to be a pharmacist, and he rolled his eyes in exasperation: "Oh, we haven't had that stuff here for decades!" He recommended taking a paracetamol and some cough syrup. It does not work as well as Nyquil, I can tell you that.

Experience has taught me to stock up on drugs like Nyquil (or in this case, The Giant's generic version of it) whenever I am in the US. Since tend to be in the US fairly often, this is never a problem, but at one point I had actually run out of Sudafed. Oh, the horror! If I ever get searched coming back from the US, I'll have some explaining to do I think...

By the way, never take Sudafed into Singapore. They treat it as an illicit drug, and they're not kidding about it. Apparently you can make speed out of the pseudoephedrine that's the active ingredient in Sudafed. I wonder whether they sell Nyquil there.

Ring-fencing Amsterdam

This is one of those moments where I sit back, scratch my head and wonder, "did he really say that?" Crime is a problem in the Netherlands, but so are the law enforcement authorities, who have all but thrown in the towel on the fight against crime. Then we also have the chief of police in Amsterdam, who thinks that the police should not investigate crime if the victim had not taken sufficient precautions. Compulsory national IDs for everyone over 12 are one reaction from politicians, as are random searches.

But since combating crime probably does fall under his job description, the chief of police has now come up with a new idea: ringfencing Amsterdam. He says that the police wants to get a better grip on who's entering and leaving the city, so he proposes installing security gates at highway exits to scan all license plates. This will help find stolen cars, he says. It will also help people feel Watched. He also wants stricter traffic checks; they're like checkpoints where you're checked for alcohol in your breath, except at these checkpoints you can get stopped for any reason. I drove past one such checkpoint last Saturday. Apparently this sort of thing is constitutional. To top it all off, the chief of police also wants tighter checks on people who enter Amsterdam by rail or boat. I think we should call this the Erich Honecker Memorial Project.

People with ideas like this should not be in any position of authority, anywhere. Least of all should they be the chief of police. The fact that the Amsterdam police chief does not shy away from making such comments publicly (even if he might have them privately) is also frightening, because it means he's not too afraid of the reaction. And that tells you something about the sad state of people's affinity for civil liberties here.

Dutch Libertarian idiots

With all my criticism of the Dutch political parties, what of the Dutch Libertarians? I tend to be sympathetic to the libertarian vision of the world, but the embodiment of that vision in the Libertarian Party is highly problematic. The Dutch LP is not, as far as I know, participating in the elections, so why they call themselves a party is a bit beyond me, but we'll leave that aside. I had not visited their web site for a long time, so I clicked on their "latest news" links. The second one takes you to a page that non-Dutch speakers can understand too: the Confederate flag is shown prominently. This is supposed to be a party in favor of freedom? I support people's individual right to put up symbols like the Confederate flag, but by there's a difference between supporting the right to do so and actually doing so. In the latter case you align yourself with the content of the symbol and in this case, it's slavery. The enslavement of millions of people. A party in favor of freedom that without even a word of criticism shows the Confederate flag and what it stands for is just beyond pathetic.

Most of the article is a translation of this article by Walter Block, which argues that the Union's victory in the Civil War is still hampering US foreign policy today. It refers to Abraham Lincoln as a "monster" and claims that amongst the many people who were killed in the Chechnya conflict there might have been someone who could have invented to cure for cancer. But wait, there's more! If you order now, you get an additional truckload of insanity for free! It's a $0 dollar value! The great professor Block has a solution for the conflict in the Middle East:

Jews and Arabs have been slaughtering each other for years in this troubled part of the world. One of these dead, conceivably, might have invented a travel machine or technique that could have allowed us to explore and colonize not only additional planets in this solar system, but in other galaxies as well.

Many Africans died as they were shipped into slavery in the South and in the harsh conditions under which they had to work. Many more would have died if slavery had continued; in the Jim Crow South, many blacks were murdered even after Restoration. One of these dead, conceivably, might have invented a machine or technique that could have allowed us diagnose and treat the mind-bending idiocy of people like Walter Block, whatever planet he's living on.

One simple answer to this firestorm is a geographical and political separation of these two peoples. (This would not entirely solve the crisis; there would still remain the issue of which pieces of land would be controlled by which countries, an issue outside our present focus. But such partition would at least be a step in the right direction).

This is of couse aside from the minor fact that the Arabs have been trying to exterminate the state of Israel and the Jews within it. Arafat was offered just such a secession plan, and reacted instead with more violence to try to expunge Israel. That's just a detail though: the real reason the Clinton mediation failed between Barak and Arafat was because the South was still part of the Union:

However, no American, not even a private citizen, could recommend any such plan with clean hands while the Confederate states are still held by the US Colossus. First we have to set straight our own house, before any of us can recommend separation to other jurisdictions, without fear of the justified charge of hypocrisy.

Quick, somebody tell Trent Lott that he was right after all! Let's allow the South to secede, track down all those blacks who've fled since 1864 and enslave them once more, so that US foreign policy not be hobbled by this any longer!

If the Libertarians ever grow up, I might consider voting for them. Right now they're a cringe-inducing embarrassment at best.

The Dutch Conservative Party

The main cause for the fall of the Dutch government was the incessant strife and infighting in the LPF. Two members of parliament actually seceded from the LPF to form their own parliamentary group (I don't exactly remember why), and they've now set up their own party to contest the upcoming general election. It's the Conservative Party, and it does not stand the slightest chance of winning any seats if the current polls are to be believed. So what is a self-styled "conservative" party like in the Netherlands? Their web site has the answer. The translation of the bullet points at the top of the page:

• Back to a safe Netherlands


• Back to law and order in our country


• Back to good health care for everybody who needs it, i.e. tackling waiting lists!


• Back to normal prices for rents and houses


• Back to good education for our children


• Back to clear language!

There's another translation for this: beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.That's the sound of the Truck of State stuck permanently in reverse gear. What a message to convey... you'd think they'd have learnt the lesson of the Bob Dole presidential bid in 1996. Trying to restore the mythical past is not a particularly fruitful tack to take. What I'd like to when these people think the better conditions actually obtained, to which we should return. They're taking the meaning of "conservative" a bit too literally. While I applaud that from a etymological point of view, I don't find it particularly attractive. Although they claim to be in favor of market mechanisms in preference to state intervention, the party program is still mostly a promise to run the welfare state better, rather than a fundamental rejection of the welfare state. Nowhere do they question whether the state should be in the business of providing education and health care. While they complain a lot about the welfare state, they're more than happy to keep supporting and extending it. For instance, they want to reinstate the state benefit to people who can't do their jobs in winter. This is a conservative party? Apparently the talk about personal responsibility elsewhere on their site does not apply here.

Keeping tabs on the people

The Dutch Minister of Justice has announced plans that would make the carrying of an ID compulsory for everyone over the age of 12. Anyone who fails to produce a valid ID on demand is liable to be fined up to 2,250 euro or be jailed for a maximum of 2 months. Moreover, it's not just the police who'll be able to demand an ID under the threat of fines and incarceration, but other civil servants involved in checking compliance with government regulations will be able to do so too. For a supposedly "liberal" nation, such intrusions of the state into one's personal liberty are remarkably popular in this country.

It's bad enough that the police would be granted this power given the sad state of law enforcement in the Netherlands. But by giving every meddling two-bit bureaucrat the same powers is heaping madness upon insanity. These measures come in response to increasing worries about crime, but it's really just a proposal for creating the impression that something is being done, rather than truly tackling crime. But the deleterious effect on civil liberties will be felt nonetheless. Criminals will hardly be inconvenienced, while it'll be the ordinary citizens who'll be on the receiving end of this ID scheme. If crime in New York can be reduced without compulsory ID, then sure placid old Holland can do it as well, one would think. Why should the police and petty bureaucrats get this power, when the auhtorities are capitulating to criminals and the police will not deign to go after burglars?

Since we've got elections coming up, I've tried to find what the major parties think of this. The VVD, the party that calls itself Liberal (in the classical sense) comes out in favor. The reasoning is a bit contorted, because they say if the police can search you, they should also be able to ask you for an ID. But the thought that the searches might raise serious civil liberty concerns does not cross their collective minds. The PvdA (Labor) Party waffles on the issue, asking whether compulsory IDs will increase safety without answering the question. Instead, they go on the tried-and-failed road of spending more money on prevention. The Christian Democrats of the CDA are in favor of this measure. Only the eco-luddites of the Green Left party seem to opposed to it.

Not exactly inspiring, or indeed an encouragement to go voting in January.

The AEL spreads its wings

The Arab-European League (AEL) is an organization of radical Arab immigrants of the second generation, which found its origin in Belgium. Its leader has recently been arrested and freed again there; the entire chronology can be found on Live From Brussels. Now the organization is spreading to the Netherlands, led by 32 year old M'Hamed Zaghoubi, who has lived in Amsterdam since the age of four. He dropped out of the "HBO," a vocational training course and is now unemployed. The NRC Handelsbald newspaper had an interview with him. Here are some translated highlights. He says, There's an inequality in society. Moroccan youths are being disadvantaged." Then when asked about the high crime rate amongst Moroccans:

That surprises you? Since the 80's [Moroccan] youngsters have been educated to succeed their fathers on the factory floors. The Dutch educational system has failed. A difference is being made between immigrant and native youngsters. These are allowed to go to university, while most of the immigrants are sent to lower-level technical schools. Immigrants are being treated as a kind of Untermensch."

I am not a particularly big fan of the Dutch educational system (and my colleagues who have children in school are telling me it's getting worse), but it's not quite that bad. The complete refusal to accept any kind of responsibility for their own behavior and (lack of) achievements shows how thoroughly they've assimilated one part of Western culture: the vocabulary of victimhood. The gratuitous reference to the Nazis is deeply revolting. When Zaghoubi and his family get shipped off in cargo trains to be exterminated in concentration camps, then he'd have the right to complain of being treated as an Untermensch. He continues:

Dutch society is to blame for the societal problems caused by immigrant youngsters. That's why we have to increase awareness amonsgt Moroccan youngsters.

Again the well-rehearsed language of victimhood. The criminal is the victim. Society is to blame. Above all, don't accept responsibility for your actions, but try to get others to feel guilty instead. Disgusting. Zaghoubi is also dismissive of the established immgrant organizations. As an example he says that when he wanted to organize an anti-American demonstration shortly September 11th (!), these organizations came out against him, because he was too radical, too militant. Thank heaven for that brief glimmer of sanity (or was it pragmatism?). The interview ends with the question why Moroccans in the Netherlands, who're mostly Berbers rather than Arabs, would want to join an Arab organization. He says: "Islam unites us all, all youngsters from North-Africa."

Ah yes, this is sure to ease tensions. The multicultural future is now.

Preaching and practicing

Keeping track of what the sheikhs and imams in the Arab world are preaching, Little Green Footballs is performing a valuable service in informing us of what the Religion of Peace is saying to its subjects. Here in the Netherlands, Saudi-funded schools promulgating similar messages. The problem also extends to Dutch mosques, where imams have preaching the same litany of hate. The current affairs program NOVA secretly recorded some of the sermons last June. The imams in mosques in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Tilburg were filmed calling for the destruction of the enemies of Islam while glorifying martyrdom. One of them called for Allah to destroy Islam's enemies, naming President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon. After an investigation, the public prosecutor has decided not to press charges against these imams, as they deemed the chances for a successful conclusion to a trial to be small. After all, the reasoning goes, the imams called on Allah, and not their congregation to destroy the enemies of Islam.

At what point do you cross the line that separates freedom of expression and incitement to violence? The structural poisoning of the mind in which these imams engage is a big danger for the long-term survival of a liberal civil society in Europe. The traditional antidote to hateful speech is not banning it, but confronting it and defeating it by argument. This is difficult to achieve, since many of the muslims who go to the mosques live in their own cultural cocoon. With the satellite dishes, they only watch Moroccan or Arabic TV. Too many of them still don't speak or understand Dutch, and their entire social lives are wrapped in an inward-looking closed-off circle with nary a Dutch influence on it. So how to get through to them?

It is clear to me that if we don't defang the poisonous imams, the situation will sooner or later descend into civil unrest and ethnic strife. Europe's history is an indication of how ugly these things can become. The best way of dealing with the problem is to cut off the flow of money, which is still coming from places like Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the Dutch economy requires a much-needed overhaul, and the prime place to start is the hypertrophic welfare state, which has been sucking the lifeblood out of private enterprise. It has provided perverse incentives for both native Dutchmen as well as immigrants of all kinds to prefer doing nothing over actually finding a productive job. Time is starting to run out though, on both counts.

Dutch politicians discover blogging

It looks like the blogosphere is having an impact on Dutch politics too. Or rather, the phenomenon of the blog has reached two Dutch politicians: Klaas de Vries of the Labor party. It was not so long ago that the previous Prime Minister Wim Kok was seen at a computer grasping a mouse and pointing it as a remote control at the monitor.

These sites may be blogs in name, but they're still a far cry from what goes on in the blogosphere. Gerrit Zalm is the VVD's top candidate, and if his party were to get most votes he stands a good chance of becoming Prime Minister. Right now, the polls make that unlikely. Zalm's blog is definitely the less interesting of the two. Most of his blog entries are boring. I don't care that he made breakfast at 11 AM last Sunday and that it consisted of eggs and croissants. I don't care whom he met for dinner, or whether the pea soup was any good. His blog is mostly a journal of what he did, where he went, whom he met. He does go into the meat of politics now and then, but there's way too much personal fluff. But Zalm is not a real blogger: he seldom types the entries for his blog himself. Instead, he uses the phone to dictate his entries. Often he'll even write the blog entries in longhand on paper for someone else to type. What next? Chiseled cuneiform script? Zalm's blog is very much a calculated tool, supported by the machinery and funding of a political party. There's nothing wrong with that, however it's a far cry from most bloggers who just type stuff at their screens for the hell of it.

Klaas de Vries is closer to what we would recognize as a pure blogger, as he does most of the work himself. He's even had his blogging burn-out already, but I find his tone more engaging and his content more politically relevant, even though I disagree with more of it. The political blogs appear to be succesful. They don't have open counter on their sites, but the VVD claims between 5,000 and 10,000 hits per day for Zalm's site. I suppose de Vries will be getting a similar amount of traffic. Apparently it's mostly young floating voters who visit the sites, so it certainly makes sense for them to continue with elections coming up in January.

Blogging is not easy, Zalm has found. He rewards himself with a cigarette for each entry completed...

The election circus in the Netherlands

Since the fall of the Dutch government in October the political circus has been gathering momentum. Just as the LPF, the List Pim Fortuyn had made a complete joke of itself after its stunning election victory in may, most of the pre-election color has come from them. After much internal wrangling, including attempts by some ex-LPF ministers to set up their own parties, the situation seemed to have calmed down a bit until the LPF got sued by some of its members. Their complaint was that the current leadership of the LPF had not been duly elected, and that therefore they had no authority to make any decisions on behalf of the LPF. Amazingly they actually won, and for a few days it seemed as though the LPF might not even be able to put up candidate lists in time for the election because of this ruling. They seem to have scraped through though.

Not content with letting the LPF get all the attention on the weird news front, the LN (Livable Netherlands) party also provided some amusement by appointing motivational guru Emile Ratelband as its top candidate. At best, the guy is a scary example of management consulting gone horribly wrong. At worst, he's not a very stable person mentally. His former wives have accused him of behavior that verges on the psychotic. His two sons he named Rolls and Royce. He also has the dubious distinction of having scored the lowest ever on political popularity since he got the LN job. No other politician of any party has ever had a favorable rating as low as his: 1.4 (out of 10).

The polls show that the LPF is headed for a massive loss, down from 26 seats in the current parliament to about 6 or 7. Still, this is a lot better than I had expected, because my initial reaction was to write them off completely. At the time of the fall of the government the LPF was down to 1 or 2 seats in the polls. So where are all the LPF voters going? The two other coalition parties of CDA and VVD are not benefiting much, gaining perhaps a handful of seats. The big winner is the SP, the Socialist Party, going from 9 to 24 seats in its most favorable poll, almost overtaking the Labor party at 27. Now, the SP is not your run-of-the-mill social democratic party. That is the PvdA (Labor). The SP is much, much further to the left of Labor and has always worn the mantle of a protest party. How far to the left? Well, calling them stalinist would not very far from the truth. Their party structure is modeled on the communist parties of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe before they were liberated. Their party program is one that would recreate conditions similar to those. If they had their way, it would mean a de facto end to private enterprise and the introduction of expropriatory taxation. In short, if the SP ever got into power here, I would be leaving the country very quickly.

So what happened to the LPF voters that they're switching from the right-of-center LPF (well, they never had a really coherent philosophy) to the far-left SP? It must be that most of the LPF voters were the protesters who felt disenfranchised and ignored. Pim Fortuyn gave voice to concerns over the assimilation and integration of immigrants, rising crime, failing health care and failing schools. It was more the fact that he dared raise the previously unmentionable issues that attracted the voters, who hoped that since he raised them, he could also solve them. The voters were not ideologically committed to his solutions, but were willing to give them a try. Now they're flocking to the next-loudest voice of protest, that of the SP, again without much regard for the actual ideology or program. They just want the issues addressed, and the SP is cleverly positioning itself as the champion of those causes.

The electoral arithmetic is getting complex now. The VVD and CDA do not want another coalition with the LPF, given the mess that the LPF made during the government's short tenure. But CDA and VVD don't have a majority in the latest polls, and would have to rely on some smaller parties. They might try to get the small left-of-center D66 party to join, but that would not be a comfortable fit. The "small right" parties of Christian Union and SGP are the Dutch version of the Religious Right, but that would not be a good fit ideologically either, bot would they have a sufficient number of seats. The Greens are out of the question, as is Labor. So that leaves the LPF again. Who knows what political necessity will bring?

The frightening scenario is a pure left coalition of Labor, SP and Greens. They're currently on a combined 60 seats, well short of the 75 they'd need, so the risk is not too high. A big coalition of CDA and Labor also comes up short, but the addition of the Greens or the D66 might make it work. On balance it looks like the Netherlands is going get a government that is considerably further to the left than the current one, unless the VVD and CDA can rise in the polls before January 22nd. But that is still an eternity away.

No anti-semitism to see here, please move on

American commentators have been pointing out the resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe. The response from European politicians has mostly been one of denial. No anti-semitism here, please move on.

To combat this non-existent anti-semitism, the Anne Frank Foundation is launching a new campaign and a book. The Dutch daily Parool carried this article with the following quotes:

"More and more, the Anne Frank Foundation is receiving signals from teachers who for instance in their lessons on the Second World War and the persecution of Jews are confronted with anti-semitism under their pupils. [...]" says the Foundation.

Teachers are afraid to give lessons on the holocaust and the hatred of Jews, because half the class will walk out, says Jan van Kooten, head of education at the Anne Frank Foundation. "Another example: pupils from Monnickendam were not allowed by their parents to visit the Jewish Historical Museum, because they did not want their children to learn about Jewish culture, 'because Jews are bad.'"

[...] "Many groups in the Netherlands have feelings of loyalty to the Palestinians and are therefore by definition against Israel and the Jews. Hatred of Jews and the policies of Israel are thus becoming entangled. As far as I'm concerned, anyone can say that he's opposed to Israel's policies, but that can't mean that every Jew in the Netherlands becomes the victim of that. Just as it is wrong to hold all Muslims responsible for the actions of Bin Laden," according to van Kooten."

The Anne Frank Foundation does a lot of good work in keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, and it's needed too. But I do wonder how effective they can be if their own spokesmen blithely trudge down into the morass of moral equivalence, equating Israel's self-defense with Bin Laden's acts of barbarism. Of course it's true that not all Muslims should be held accountable for Bin Laden's acts, but the fact is that many of them are cheering him on, even those living in the west. If you can't tell the difference between the deliberate mass murder of civilians on the Islamofascists' part, and Israel's self-defense (which seeks to avoid civilian casualties), then you have no business being in charge of education at a foundation like Anne Frank.

Not only is anti-semitism alive and kicking, but even those fighting against it suffer from the European disease of Muddle-Headedness.

Expanding the state's role

First of all, my apologies for the continues light blogging. I remain restricted to dial-up, which makes keeping track of what's going on a bit harder; I'll follow up on your comments Real Soon Now (thanks for commenting though; I do enjoy reading your thoughts). An additional complication is that I am also trying to remember what time zone I am in and I am bit jetlagged, so my blogs may be even less coherent than usual. So here's a few short items for your amusement.

A "family pedagogue" at the University of Nijmegen has called for the state to provide television programs that would instill "socially desirable" behavior in children. It's to be targeted tp both children and parents. The professor sees it as modern way of providing the kind of social guidance that used to come from the church and other social activities.

What a creepy idea. Fortunately, I don't think there is much chance that it'll happen. I'd much rather have private and voluntary organizations take on this role than have a politically-driven government program. Who'll decide what is "socially acceptable" behavior? You can't force people to be good, and beaming propaganda on TV at them is not going to help much. Social norms have to be constructed from the bottom-up, and not imposed top-down. The Netherlands has become a society where it is taken for granted that the government does everything. Or at least, if there is a problem, it is the first port of call for those who want something done. I am not sure there's an easy way out. After all, it is comfortable for the government to do things for you. And if you've never known anything different, the prospect of being out on your own to deal with life is scary. How can there be order if there is none that is imposed? That's always been the siren call of collectivism as people seek order and stability in a society that has changed dramatically from the small-scale village life of just a century or two ago. It is this yearning for stability that underlies much of the thinking of the statists. The thought that systems can have emergent stability without constraining them to a single stable state appears harder to grasp. But stability for its own sake brings problems because it reduces the adaptability of the system. Japan has a stable social and political system, yet this very stability has condemned the Japanese economy to a decade of stagnation and recession. The complete absence of any constraints does not work either. A state of anarchy is the exact opposite of freedom. Theoretically you might be able design a fantasy society where anarchy works, but in practice it's always led to misery (remember Somalia?). Freedom and anarchy are not compatible. Anarchy means getting rid of rules just for the sake of it; it's bleak and nihilistic. For freedom to exist and be preserved you do need some rules, some form of authority that can help safeguard them. The state is inevitable. Making sure the state remains the guarantor of freedom is the really hard part. Perhaps somewhere, sometime we'll get it right.

Capitulating to criminals

After the defeatist comments of the Amsterdam police chief about crime, we now get a report from the Scientific Council for Government Policy on crime. Their shocking advice: serious crimes should always be prosecuted. Only if it is in the public interest not to prosecute, should prosecution be foregone. Of course, this means that right now, not all serious crime is prosecuted as a matter of course. The Council says that especially in serious violent crimes prosecution should always take place. Makes you wonder what the policy is right now.

The Council furthermore points out that the Dutch police is ineffective compared to the German police. No further Europe-wide comparison were given in the newspaper article, and the report itself is not online (yet?) at the Council's site. Other salient points: in the Netherlands, there is no reaction from the justice system to even serious crimes. "That raises questions about the internal efficacy of the police." The Council recommends hiring more judges and prosecutors.

But the Council shows the same defeatism as the Amsterdam police chief. Crime is "policy-resistant, the goal of stopping or reducing crime appears to be too ambitious." That's why the Council opposes tougher sentences. Holy legal mazes! Do you really have to be a social scientist to think that locking up people for long periods of time is not going to reduce crime? While they're in prison repeat offenders are not very likely to be committing crimes on the street, are they? Three strikes and you're out sounds like a good policy to me. But getting there is going to be hard; this is the country where a "life" sentence means you're out in 18 years (if not sooner; I'm trying to find hard data on that). Life sentences are rare though. Often murderers get "long" sentences of 10-15 years, which gets them out in 2/3rds of the time.

What would have happened to New York City if Rudy Giuliani had had the same mindset? Both the police and the policy makers have capitulated to crime. By shrugging their shoulders and saying it can't be affected by policy anyway, they shirk their responsibility and condemn the citizens to more crime.

Qualifications for parliamentary seats

In the party list system that many European democracies have, the way to enhance your career as a politician is to be popular within the party hierarchy. This leads to perverse incentives for political hopefuls. With elections coming up again in January in the Netherlands, the parties are busy deciding whom to put on their lists. Where you get placed decides whether you can get elected or not. One of the people moved to a low, unelectable position is the Labor politician Rehwinkel. I'd never heard of him before, but apparently he's been moved to somewhere between 30 and 35 on the list, meaning that the Labor party needs to get that many seats for him to return to parliament. That seems very unlikely.

So he's upset. In fact, he's so upset that he has resigned. He claims he's been given a low place on the list because he lives in the Randstad (the area of Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht) and because the placement committee wants give preferential treatment to women and minorities. So his argument for a better place is to claim he's a member of a minority too (he's gay).

Apart from the inherent problems of the list system, shouldn't competence matter in this at all? And how far have you sunk as a party if the quota system has become so entrenched, that there's now a bidding war for "minority" status going on? He's not even trying to argue on the basis of merit. This kind of superficial tokenism is a reflection of intellectual enervation. Tokens and symbols matter more than actual merit, talent or accomplishment. Whistling in a vacuum. It's not only unhealthy, it's also not going to get you anywhere long-term.

South of the border

I hadn't been to Brussels for a long time, so this weekend has been a good opportunity to acquaint myself with the town. Driving down in driving rain on Friday night, I ended up in a state of confusion around Antwerp when there were two roads marked as leading to Brussels, the A12 (I think) and the E19. Of course, I should have taken the latter, but I took the former. It was not too much of a problem, but I do think the Belgians need to invest in clearer signage. Then as I wound my way into town, I was greeted with a police roadblock. A whole host of police cars, lights flashing and several policemen with machine guns standing around as they were checking cars for something or other. I was waved through, but machine guns? Why? Are roadblocks really that dangerous that the police needs to have that much firepower? Or is it just a way of intimidating the populace?

There's some fantastic architecture in Brussels spanning several centuries, including some wonderful modernist buildings from the early 20th century, such as this pair of buildings on the Stefanie square on the Louizalaan. There's also a lot of absolutely atrocious architecture there from the Concrete Era of the 1960s and 1970s. The Belgian Finance Ministry further up on Louizalaan bears an eerie resemblance to its Dutch counterpart in The Hague. Cold, ugly, impersonal monuments to an era blandness when being heavy handed was seen as the golden future. But building gargantuan structures is a constant throughout history as the Palace of Justice shows. Although meant to show the magnificence of the Belgian state, its superhuman scale just serves to make the point that the state can build big things. Really, really big things. In fact, if we can build things this big, we can steamroller right over you. Symbolically, it's a Borg structure, the Belgian state's way of saying "Resitance is Futile." All in the name of the people of course.

The Belgian state also seems to be confused about the difference between public and private. In front of the Palace of Justice, I found this hilarious sign. It says "Private State Property." Apparently it's the kind of state property that belongs privately to the state. You may have paid for all of this with your tax euros, but it's not yours anymore. It belongs to somebody else, the State.

The best thing about Brussels is the amount of chocolate that is present. Every other shop sells chocolate. Chocolate shops are almost as common in Brussels as ski stores in Vail, but not quite. In order to ascertain whether the quality control processes in the Belgian chocolate industry are up to scratch, I had to conduct several chocolate-consuming experiments. I even brought some experiments home with me. And I also visited the best-smelling museum in the world: The Museum of Cocoa and Chocolate. The aroma of cocoa is overpowering when walking into the building. The museum itself is fairly small, and I was disappointed in the content. To bring the exhibits alive, they should have more interactive displays where customers could experience the chocolate more directly. They do have some interactive chocolate items (they taste good), but more would have been better.

Blowing and drinking

According to an evangelical foundation for drugs care called "The Hope," children in Dutch schools have increased their use of alcohol and drugs. The headline mentions "blowen," which is the Dutchified version of the English verb, and which refers to (unless I am terribly mistaken) to the use of marijuana. They base this on a survey of 14,000 kids in the ages of 13-18 or so (it says "voortgezet onderwijs," which encompasses roughly that age group). 6 out of 10 drink alcohol, while 13% did drugs. This is up from 50% and 6% respectively in 1998. About 26% smoke cigarettes and 11% gamble.

What puzzles me is the additional statistic that 28% claims to have learned about the consequences and dangers of drug use, but a full 40% says that they decided never to use drugs as a consequence. How is that supposed to work? Assuming all those who decided never to use drugs as a result of a visit by The Hope to their schools, that still leaves 12% who did not learn anything and still decided not to use drugs anymore. Weird.

On a related note, there's a discussion in the comments at England's Sword in the comment section about the negative effects of drug use on one's health. Those in favor of drug legalization are trying to undermine the validity or credibility of the research cited. This smacks of protesting too much, without passing judgment on the research that the blog referred to. It's the wrong argument they're trying to win. Trying to establish that drugs have no ill effects is futile. The real question is whether the negative effects of trying to interdict drug use and trafficking are outweighed by the positive effects of saving users from themselves. I don't think they are.

More jihadis in the Netherlands

They nabbed another one. A 22-year old man was arrested in the southern town of Eindhoven on Monday who apparently had been recruited in the international jihad. The police found a tape with his farewell message to his family. A second man who was also arrested has been released.

New initiatives in law enforcement

I have blogged quite a bit about the sad state of law enforcement in the Netherlands, and here's another twist to add to it. The police chief of the Amsterdam-Amstelland region J. van Riessen has said that people should only be entitled to police assistance if they've demonstrably tried to prevent the crime they have become the victim of. He wonders, "does a citizen have a right to an investigation after a burglary if his house was insufficiently protected?" He answers his own question in the negative. "As a government, you can force people to protect their houses. For instance through building permits, so that all houses end up secure to a certain degree." He thinks the police should only start to track down criminals if towns, building corporations (usually pension funds who build aparments and then let them) or citizens have done everything possible to prevent crime.

So next time you're the vicitim of a crime, the police will first start to investigate you to see if you've done enough to prevent the crime. I find this disturbing. The main reason for giving the state as much power as it has is that it will act as the enforcer of the democratically enacted laws. That is the police's sole function, and it's failing miserably in that function over here. By saddling victims of crime with the burden of proof to show that they are entitled to police help it's making a mockery of contract between the people and the police. It's really scary that someone in as senior a position as this would entertain such notions and air them publicly.

For all that, I do feel that citizens do have a responsibility to protect themselves, and do all in their power to defend themselves. Outsourcing all responsibility for your own safety to the state is an abdication of your own duties as a citizen, yet the dependency culture of many European countries has driven many people to do just that. But even with that proviso, it's not acceptable for a police chief even to suggest what van Riessen did.

As a coda, van Riessen also proves defeatist. He also said that the impact of laws, the efforts of police and the judiciary on crime are "marginal, really marginal." More cops on the beat, more prisons or more money for judges will not lead to a substantial reduction in crime in the Netherlands. It's not clear what in his opinion will reduce crime. And he's chief of police in Amsterdam. Yikes.

Whom shall we name this award after?

Dangling prepositions be damned. In Andrew Sullivan style, I think we're going to need an award for this here. It's an election analysis in the serious right-wing (by Dutch standards) NRC Handelsblad paper. Under the headline "George Bush is Finally Elected," their US correspondent Marc Chavannes starts off by saying that Bush finally got elected with a real majority, pointing out that he only won because of the Supreme Court ruling in 2000 and had half a million fewer votes than Al Gore. The analysis then goes on to explain how the Republicans will now be in charge of the committees in the Senate, and how that will help Bush. Then analysis really goes off the deep end. He claims it could be a pyrrhic victory, because he spent so much time fighting against moderate Democrats like Carnahan (MO), Cleland (GA) and Johnson (SD). These are the Democrats Bush could do business with, he goes on, and by alienating that kind of Democrat he risks provoking a harder and more coherent Democratic opposition. I suppose neo-Marxist class warfare Gore-style probably is harder and more coherent. It's also a vote loser, but that seems not to register.

The truly amazing part comes at the end. I'll translate it for you.

But for another reason it's only the question whether this victory is as remarkable as is claimed. The most often heard reaction in the American media last night was that the Republican victory was unique because the president's party usually loses. This was the second time in one hundred years that this happened. [sic]. In 1998 the Democrats pulled it off.

According to Nelson Polsby, the veteran Congress-watcher and professor of political science at Berkeley University this analysis is incorrect. "Who won the 2000 elections?" he asks rhetorically. "Exactly, the Democrat Al Gore. His party lost slightly this year. It's the normal setback for the party that really gave it its all last time around." In this reading of the results of mid-term elections the historical trend has not been broken at all."

It is of course well known that Berkeley University professors are well-grounded in reality, so they make the ideal commentators on election results. Living in the alternate reality of planet Zog where Al Gore did actually the 2000 election, Polsby embarks on his fantasy quest to present today's result as another Democratic triumph. Two consecutive election cycle defeats for the Democrats suddenly become two victories. Really, how pathetic is that? And why is it that only professors at elite universities are capable of NOT seeing the blindingly obvious? Is it something in the water? A secret medical procedure they carry out?

Zaphod Beeblebrox had glasses that turned automatically black whenever there was danger, so as not to alarm him by not allowing him to see the source of the danger. Somebody's been passing these things around at Berkeley and our other elite instutions of Moral and Intellectual Blinkering.

Guns and crime in the Netherlands

Yesterday saw the publication of a report (PDF) by the Dutch Justice Department on guns and gun crime. (There's an English summary on page 173). It has been summarized in the newsmedia, with the key headlines being that it's easy for criminals to buy guns. For 250 euros you can get a basic gun. The most popular is the Browning Highpower while Glocks and Berettas are popular too. The more refined criminals pay 1500 euros for an honest-to-goodness Smith and Wesson. Machine guns start at 1900 euros, and hand grenades can be had for 7 euros a piece.

The total number of illegal firearms is estimated to be between 85,000 and 120,000 depending on various assumptions on circulation speed and extrapolations from the numbers of confiscated arms. It's also estimated that up to 20,000 firearms trade hands each year. Most weapons are single-use. The criminals get rid of the weapon once's it been fired. In some cases, they sell it on to clueless newbie criminals.

By European standards, it's easy to get a gun legally in the Netherlands. The requirements are that you have to have been a member of a shooting club for a year, be 18 years or older, prove that you can handle firearms safely, have enough shots to your name and you obviously can't have a criminal record. The actual procedure for buying a gun is arcane and requires approval from the shooting club and the police. You must keep the gun in a safe in your home (so it's no use for self-defense), you're only allowed to transport it to and from the shooting club, and the police will come inspect your home at least once a year to check on how you're storing the gun. There are about 80,000 people with a gun license in the Netherlands.

This report focuses almost exclusively on illegal gun ownership. It makes no mention of how many legal guns were used in committing crimes. The report does point out that going the legal route of obtaining a gun makes little sense for criminals, since it's long and cumbersome while they can get guns easily anyway in the illegal circuit. If there had been many legal guns used, I suspect it would have been mentioned.

The number of gun crimes has been relatively constant in the three years that the report covers (1998-2000). There have been 30 crimes with firearms committed per 100,000 inhabitants. There are huge regional variations. In Amsterdam the rate was 72 per 100,000 people, while in the rural provinces of Drenthe and Zeeland the rates were 14 and 13 respectively. The big cities have much higher crime rates than rural areas, so the higher incidence of gun crimes is no surprise.

How does this compare to America? The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports provide the answer. The UCR keeps track of gun use in three kinds of crime: murder, robbery and aggravated assault. There are 5.6 murders per 100,000 people in the US (page 19 of the linked PDF) with 63.4% involving firearms (table 2.9, page 23). Robberies run at 148.5 per 100,000 (p.32) with 42.0% involving guns (table 2.22, p.35). Aggravated assault occurs at a rate of 318.5 (p.36) with 18.3% gun use (table 2.24, p.38). This means that gun-related crime in the US runs at 124 per 100,000 people.

This is substantially higher than the 30 reported for the Netherlands, although the 72 rate in Amsterdam comes rather closer. But this is not the whole story. Does lower criminal gun ownership translate to lower crime rates overall? Looking at the FBI data in table 1 on page 64, the violent crime rate in the US was 504.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, while property crime ran at 3656.1 per 100,000 inhabitants. The Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics has crime numbers online, but not the crime rate. The table shows 101,143 violent crimes and 919,262 property crimes in 2001. With a population of 16,171,520 (September 2002), this works out as 625.4 violent crimes per 100,000 people and 5684.4 proprety crimes. Or, to put it differently, the violent crime rate in the Netherlands in 24% higher than in the US, and the property crime rate is 55% higher.

More guns, less crime. What a surprise.

URLs on radio

Running radio commercials with a URL for your web site makes sense. However, there is the problem of how you pronounce the URL on air. Hypens, numerals and ambiguous spelling have to be clarified so that listeners can actually find your site. One radio commercial here promotes the region of southern Tyrol and it directs listeners to the site by pointing out that the ü in S¨dtirol is spelled as ue in the name. This works for me. In one of those "did they really say that" moments I heard an ad for the Schönberg Ensemble, which is a small orchestra with a modern classical repertoire. To plug their website, they decided to pronounce the schoenberg part of the domainname in Dutch rather than German. It sounds horrendous. At first I didn't even recognize it, because everyone pronounces Schönberg (or in this case, the written Schoenberg) the German way and the Dutch pronunciation is so different. Not only that, "schoenberg" in Dutch means "shoe mountain." Talking down to the target audience of your ad is never a good idea. Those interested in contemporary music would have been able to figure it out. Really.

Cocaine as a weekend staple

The town of Volendam is best known for its picturesque port and it's also a major tourist destination. It's now also a cocaine use hotspot. According to the report, on any weekend between 50% and 80% of under-25s use cocaine. That puts the weekend cocaine consumption in town at one to two kilos. This comes out of a 3-month project run by the police in Volendam this summer, the aim of which was the reduce the excessive use of drugs and alcohol. It failed miserably. A police spokesman said that using cocaine was considered completely normal. An anonymous telephone hotline to snitch on dealers received no calls at all.

I wonder how they came up with the 50 to 80% number. The margin seems rather wide which leads me to suspect that the data gathering might not have been too strict. Furthermore, one to two kilos of cocaine is a lot. According the to most recent data I could find, a gram of cocaine cost between 32 and 49 euro in the 1998 to 2000 period. Multiply that by a thousand for a kilogram of cocaine, and you're talking between 30k and 50k in weekly turnover. It's a lot of money, but I suppose it's not so much that people can't afford it. The combined population of Volendam and Edam is about 28,000. Assuming a shot of cocaine is a gram, that gives us between 1,000 and 2,000 people using the cocaine, and fewer than that if the average shot is larger. If the 50% of under-25s number is correct and we put a lower limit to the age band at 15, this means that there should be between 2,000 and 4,000 people in that age band in the area; this works out at between 7% and 14%. That is close enough to make sense. The 80% number is almost certainly too high, because this would mean that the 15-25 population would comprise only 2 to 4% over the overall population. That is way too low.

Cocaine is nominally illegal in the Netherlands and the authorities are trying to stop trafficking in it. Given the widespread use of cocaine, it seems they're not having much luck. The more interesting aspect of this story is that it provides a great opportunity to study what would happen if drugs like cocaine were legalized. Such widespread use as in Volendam amounts to de facto legalization (although a further drop in price would be expected if the frictional costs of extralegality were removed). How are the cocaine users doing? Is it affecting their job performance? Is it affecting their health? How dependent on the drug are they? What is the impact on crime?

I do hope somebody is using Volendam for some serious data gathering. It's too good an opportunity to pass up.

Hirsi Ali rips the multiculturalists

In a somewhat astoudning development, Ayaan Hirsi Ali today annouced she was switching political allegiance from the left-of-center Labor Party (PvdA) to the right-of-center Liberals of the VVD. Reasons for her defection from Labor are explained in an op-ed in today's NRC Handelblad (free registration required). It is unfortunate that it's in Dutch because it deserves much wider airing. No, I'm not going to translate it. I will point out some highlights from her commentary, which deals with the plight of muslim women in the Netherlands, and how they have been let down by Left. Writing about social democracy, she says:

Social democracy means standing up for the weak in society. Right now, that's mostly women and children in muslim families. They don't have the same basic rights that Dutch women and children have - they do on paper, but in practice they don't in everyday life. This causes mental suffering, but also physical suffering, as the population in women's shelters shows.

She explains the shame-honor values of the muslim immigrants in this country, which put enormous pressure on members of that community not be critical of their own. It also imposes a stifling conformity on them, consigning especially women to lifelong misery and oppression. But she is especially critical of the failure of the Left to support and protect the weak. Group identity politics, so beloved of the contemporaneous Left, lead to putting the maintenance of the ethno-religious group over that of the rights of the individual, in this case muslim women. She writes:

All freedoms that for some are a matter of course: falling in love, going out, staying with a friend, a shopping trip, swimming, cinema or going to the theater, is met with gossiping within the group of women and the inevitable screaming of a father or a brother or a husband: where were you?

[...]

It's the girl who're limited in their freedom of movement, they have to have their hymen repaired, they get beaten and kicked. We know it, but we don't want to say it. Thus these women pay the price for tranquility and thus the so-called supporters of the multicultural ideal can sleep soundly.

[...]

It shows how little real willingness there is to integrate within the mulsim leadership. And how much contempt they have behind closed doors for the culture and inhabitants of this host country: the heathens. The infidels will burn, the Dutch muslim television said on September 11th last year.

The marginalization of the muslim immigrant community is self-imposed and widespread, but also facilitated by the Dutch socialist welfare system. Two thirds of the muslim immigrants live on government handouts.

In other comments she made today about her decision, she's also quoted as saying that the Labor party can only start to make a constructive contribution to this discussion, once "it saves itself from the stanglehold of the multicultis and muslim conservatives."

Much of what she has said is also relevant in the wider discussion in the west about the folly of multiculturalism. Those who prided themselves on being defenders of individual liberty on the left have become enablers of brutal repression, all because the hatred of America and western culture has become more important to them then the individual rights, the rights which we hold to be self-evident and which are most respected and protected exactly in the West they despise so much.

Negiotiable civil liberties

Here's another classic headline. It says "Opstelten: Limit citizens' privacy for more security." Opstelten is the mayor of Rotterdam and he wants additional powers in order to be able to deal with various problems such as tackling serial troublemakers. He wants the government to link all of its databases, more scope for video cameras in public places, the authority to shut down bars, coffeeshops and brothels if they cause ongoing problems.

It's a wishlist for more government power. The notion that the state can shut down establishments it does not like is disturbing. If such places are breaking the law, they should be shut down. But the way this has been phrased gives the impression that the mayor would have considerable discretion over who is to be shut down. That's simply pre-programming future abuses of power.

The scary thing is, these kinds of measures probably will be popular, much like the searches in Amsterdam.

The pot is boiling, not melting

The Dutch pot is not melting, it's boiling. The latest manifestation of racial tension came in the wake of a tragic death in the eastern town of Venlo. René Steegmans was a 22 year old student who was beaten to death for an act of gallantry. When he saw that two youngsters on a small motorbike almost crashed into a handicapped 73 year old lady, he came to her defense and admonished the young men about their reckless driving. In response, they beat him to death. He was buried today.

What otherwise would have been yet another senseless, brutal act of violence quickly acquired an anti-immigrant dimension. The main suspect, who had done most of the beating, is of Moroccan descent. The other young man was Dutch, but that was quickly lost in the outpouring of hatred towards Khalid L. (as he is known in the press). The condolance books on the internet had to be closed because of the anti-Moroccan sentiment that spilled into the comments. There is a significant problem with crime committed by Moroccan youth gangs (such as this horrific case), but in this case it's more a case of a life gone awry, and his Moroccan ethnicity seems unimportant.

Then Khalid's parents were interviewed on a current affairs program on TV. His father said their 18 year old son was "a good boy who wouldn't hurt a fly." Well, this could be the usual parental blindess, but the fact is that Khalid had already been convicted once of assault. This being the Netherlands, he had to do community service. His father said that those were the kinds of brawls any kid could get involved in. But then his father went on that his son was insulted by Steegmans. "Is he then not allowed to fight?" the father asked. His mother also added the comment that her son Khalid was "Allah's instrument to end René's life."

It is hard to think of more stupid, inflammatory things to say. Emotions had already been running high, and these comments have really put the cat amongst the pigeons. Invoking Islam transformed the crime from a single individual to the whole muslim community. The organizations representing Moroccan immigrants were at least quick to disavow these comments. After a talk with leaders of the Moroccan community, the parents issued a written retraction of their earlier comments. According to the imam who drafted the letter, their comments had been misinterpreted which is the traditional backpedaling maneuver. What they actually had meant to say, is that they lost two sons, their own and the boy who died. Yeah, right.

To boggle the mind even further, Khalid's parents have been living in the Netherlands for 36 years now. They hardly speak Dutch and his father has been on disability benefit for 25 years. The Dutch "WAO" system of disability benefit used to be excessively generous. For a minor work injury you could essentially retire, and the state would pay you 70% or 80% of your last pay. Even if you were able to do other work. The system has since been pared back because it had become very expensive as you might imagine. Still, over a million Dutchmen out of a total population of 16 million get some form of WAO benefits paid. That's why our taxes are so exceedingly high.

The entire welfare system is utterly excessive, if not to say insane. The incentive to work is not very high if you can live more or less comfortably on state handouts. And this Moroccan guy managed to do so for 25 years without even speaking the language! No reason to learn Dutch, the checks keep on coming.

The reaction to the Moroccan involvement in this crime also shows how tense this country has become. The assimilation of immigrants has to become a top priority if nastier forms of anti-immigrant sentiment are to be averted. Immigrants need to be forced to assimilate into Dutch society, and cutting off the flow of state money to those who refuse is likely to be good first step.

The dangers of self-defense

Defending yourself can be a dangerous proposition in the Netherlands. The preferred way of dealing with crime is to leave it to the professionals. If they bother to show up, or even if they do show up eventually, they may decide that things like burglaries are just not worth investigating. But apparently investigating and prosecuting people who do defend themselves is something that is considered worthy of the state's time. The owner and the manager of a supermarket in Amsterdam chased a robber, who'd threatened the cashier with a knife and made off with 500 euros worth of loot. They finally caught him in a park, and subdued him. Forcefully. In the tussle, the robbered suffered a broken nose. And then he filed a report with the police (who had arrested him by then) about the abuse he'd been subjected to. The owner and the manager of the supermarket are each being charged with the Dutch equivalent of causing grievous bodily harm. The prosecutor's office says they used "excessive force" in subduing the criminal.

With the damage being limited to a broken nose on the part of the criminal, I am having a hard time seeing this as excessive force. Perhaps the broken nose may not have been necessary. I don't know, not having been there to witness it. I do worry about the chilling effect of coming down hard on self-defense in these matters. Defending oneself is not risk-free in the first place, but having the additional discouragement of being treated yourself as a criminal if you do manage to defend yourself successfully will serve to encourage criminals.

Oh, if you're wondering how murderers are treated here, read this.

Islamic schools and the Dutch melting pot

The Dutch educational system as it exists now is a relic the vertical regimentation of society that existed throughout much of the 20th century. What we've ended up with is a hybrid system, which is state funded yet has elements of independence. Most publicly funded schools are religious, with catholicism and various offshoots of protestantism dominating. Most schools do retain that religious element in their character, although the intensity of the religiosity is diminishing as society has become more secular. This was the compromise that the various soceital groups had managed to work out that enabled them to live peacefully with one another, although there was substantial segregation between the columns of society. newly-built schools in newly-built areas still generally are affiliated with a religion even in these secular times.

With the influx of migrant workers from north Africa there are now, inevitably, also Islamic schools. Since the issue of immigration and integration of these migrant workers was shorn of the taboo that had been cast over it, more attention has been focused on these Islamic schools. Of particular concern is whether they promote anti-western and anti-semitic (aren't those two synonymous these days?) sentiment. An investigation by the "Education Inspectorate" concluded that it is impossible to check on what's going on in the religious classes offered in these schools. Of the 37 schools investigated, they were unable to ascertain what was being taught in religious classes in 14 of them. There is for instance the As Siddieq school in Amsterdam, which the Inspectorate criticized as follows: "The school must find a better balance between the transmission of identity-determined values and mores, and the transmission of values and mores which facilitate the pupils' ability to participate [in society, ed.]" This is bureacratese for "they're cramming the kids full of anti-western propaganda." In the As Siddieq school, boys and girl are separated in class and in the playground. The head of the school, who has never denied that the school gets money from Saudi Arabia has also written a pamphlet, in which he said that "Jews, the erring, the Christians are the fire wood of Hell." You can imagine what the children are being taught. It is hard to pin down exactly what is taught though. In the presence of the inspectors, no radical or extremist language was used. However, they also note that there are no books or syllabi for the religion classes which are often taught in Arabic. So other than bugging them there's no way of knowing what's really going on.

The melting pot needs to have the fire stoked, because not much melting is going on here. The phlegmatic tolerance of these seeds of destruction and strife has to end. It pains me greatly to say this, because I have always felt that people should be left alone to educate their children as they deem fit without interference. Yet I find myself now advocating a position that I find very troubling, leading on a path I would rather not travel down. However, being left alone works two ways, and September 11th was the wake-up call that showed the West that the Islamofascists are not going to leave us alone. Not addressing this problem of anti-western hate being taught in Dutch Islamic schools is the ostrich response.

At its heart, the problem is that the current wave of immigrants is fundamentally different from previous waves that the Netherlands has seen. Although not an immigrant country like the US, the country has had a long tradition of being a save haven for the persecuted. In 1620 a group of such refugees, having spent 11 years in this country preparing, set out from the port of Delfshaven to seek a new life, cross the Atlantic and lay the foundation of what was to become the United States. The wave of immigrants that has come to the Netherlands and western Europe as a whole is different. It is also different from the traditional immigrants to the United States. They were not fleeing persecution, but were invited as "guest workers" to fill jobs that few natives were willing to fill in the 1960s. The difference is crucial: rather than being emigrants who seek a new and better life, partake of a new culture and liberate themselves from their past, these guest workers brought their culture with them with no intention of abandoning it. After all, they were not expected to stay very long, nor did they themselves expect to stay very long. Few of them sought the clean break with their past which drove millions of Europeans to America. So right from the start, integration was not really an issue. Why integrate, why fire up the melting pot if they're going to be gone soon? Thus the pathologies of Arab culture and society have been transplanted into segments of the West European population.

Another complicating factor is that those who did come here were the least educated, most marginalized members of their own societies. The rich elite, the rulers, the well-connected had no need to leave countries like Morocco. They were doing OK. The uneducated and unskilled were the ones who answered the lure of European guest worker status; it is exactly this group which is now most susceptible to the call of Islamofascism.

"Guest workers" did not work out that way. Many stayed, started families (or brought them over), and became a permanent part of society. Or rather, they formed their own parallel society within Dutch society. The Islamic schools are a reflection of the unwillingness and inability to adapt. This lack of integration is being encouraged of course by the sinister forces of Wahhabi petrodollars, which lubricate the machinery of anti-Western extremism. It must be stopped.

But it would be wrong to treat the Arab immigrants as a monolithic block. Amongst the second and third generation Arabs, there are plenty who have become part of western, secular Dutch society. It is hard to tell how many of them fall into this category, as the immigrant community is defined in peoples' minds not by the assimilated but by the Islamic fanatics and the criminal Moroccan youth gangs. There is a danger that by tarring all of them with the Islamofascist brush, the formerly moderate and assimilated will be driven into the arms of the fanatics. Any strategy to deal with the fifth column in our midst must be two-pronged: encourage the westernized assimilationists to assert themselves, while dealing harshly with those who spread the gospel of anti-Western hatred.

Listening to Pim

A big furore burst forth in the Netherlands recently, when allegations surfaced that the Dutch secret service, the AIVD, had placed phone taps on murdered politician Pim Fortuyn. This was vehemently denied by Klaas de Vries, who was secretary of the Interior at the time and who would have had to give his permission for any taps. However, it now seems that he could be lying and the AIVD could be lying, and it's all perfectly legal. Apparently the AIVD and the secretary are allowed to keep the commission investigating the murder of Pim Fortuyn in the dark, if the information is categorized as a "state secret." So the AIVD can tap and observe people, and there is no way for the public ever to know if they consider it a state secret.

It is somewhat scary that nobody seems to exert any oversight at all over the doings of the AIVD. I understand that secrecy is necessary in some cases to protect the security of the state (much as I hate to admit it), but the fact that nobody is in a position to exert any oversight is worrying. I am not quite sure how to solve this dilemma. On the other hand, in cases such as the investigation into the security of Pim Fortuyn, where past actions of the secret service are at issue, more transparant access to the doings of the secret service must be possible, and should be made possible by law. It's preposterous to have a situation where even in retrospect, the actions of the secret service cannot will not be divulged. That's just an invitation for abuse.

Religious nuts not an American monopoly

Mention Christian religious nuts, and thoughts immediately turn to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. However, America does not have a monopoly on religious nuts. as a branch of Dutch protestant church is cautioning its followers against the pagan American import of Halloween. Supermarkets are now decorated with pumpkins with scary faces, as the American tradition of Halloween makes new converts around the world. Yet P. Vergunst warns that "evil spiritual powers" lurk behind the apparently innocent facade of Halloween, and urges Christians to oppose them with prayer.

I think I'll go buy a large stockpile of chocolatey snacks. I've never had anyone trick-or-treating here, so I may be forced to finish the stockpile myself. Ah, the horror of pagan rituals.

92% of Amsterdammers support erosion of civil liberties

Under new Dutch legislation, the police can now cordon off areas of a town and search everybody in that area for weapons. No protection of the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches. If you're in the area, you'll get searched, just for being there. The weapons they're looking for are of course guns (in gun-free Holland), knives, or basically anything that may be used as a weapon. A poll finds massive support for this erosion of civil liberties, with 92% of those polled in favor. Other key results are that 82% think that the searches need not be announced in advance and 67% opine they can be carried at random times. Also 78% claim to have no problem with being searched.

I guess that puts me in the 8% who think this is an outrageous erosion of civil liberties. It is depressing to think that the population has become so inured to state intrusion in all aspects of life, that a draconian measure such as this one finds broad support. Once you start down the path of outsourcing self-defense to the state, the contract between the state and the citizen changes. No longer is the citizen the ultimate source of authority, but he becomes the state's supplicant for mercies and protection. You are not supposed to defend yourself, as Big Brother will take care of that for you. Except when he's not around (not even we here have managed to slip THAT far).

Crime is a big and growing problem in the Netherlands, but eroding civil liberties is not the right way of fixing that problem. It's another step on the way to a more authoritarian structure of government oversight. Sure, crime in a completely totalitarian state will be lower. But it's not a fun place to live. Then again, I guess people deserve the kind of government they've got.

Glimmer of sanity on the left

Next Saturday, an anti-war demonstration is being planned in Amsterdam, with the obvious target being the US. All the usual suspects have signed up for it, the great coalition of Dutch Idiotarians. Many of the organizations that are going to show up were born as the so-called "peace movement" of the 1980s, whose principal message was unilateral disarmament in the face of the Soviet threat. These were people whose choice in the Cold War was to side with the Evil Empire, and most of Moscow's useful idiots still march to the tune of anti-Americanism.

Nothing new so far. However, what struck me in this report is that one of the organizations known as the IKV (its name would be the inter-church peace council in English) has refused to sign on to the anti-war platform. The reason: opposing military action also means opposing the liberation of the Iraqi people. If an organization with a track record such as the IKV can come to its senses, there may be hope yet.

Astounding economic illiteracy

In a an amazing display of economic illiteracy, the Dutch Labour party proposes a new law that would force banks to maintain branches in rural areas. The wave of rationalization and consolidation means that many smaller branches are being closed by the big banks. In a mind-boggling display of statist thinking, the Labour party want to force banks to keep a minimum of branches open, with at least one branch per three kilometers or 10,000 inhabitants. I am not sure what they mean by three kilometers, since they're unlikely to be strung along a line, but I suppose three square kilometers might work. The plan is to force banks that leave an area to pay a subsidy to the bank that does stay. So we'll end up with transfer payments from one bank to another. Once the system is established, it is sure to create perverse incentives for maintaining branches in weird locations to siphon money from their competitors.

It also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the economics of doing business work. The banks are closing the outlets because they're losing money on them. That means there is not enough demand locally to justify having a branch in the area. If there really is pent-up demand after the disappearance of all bank branches from an area, a competitor will step in eventually, perhaps with a leaner, meaner structure. Yes, in the interim there will be misalignment of supply and demand, but that is nothing new. There has been an oversupply for decades. But the cost of forcing banks to maintain unprofitable branches is higher in the long term than the pain of not having a bank branch around. The proposed cure will depress profitability, distort incentives and make the banks more inefficient. Worst of all, it adds yet another layer of government interference to the economy. If the costs of doing business weren't so high in the first place, if the fixed costs of employing people were lower, then a lot of these branches would not have to close in the first place. So the socialist welfare state is exacerbating a problem it created.

The sad thing is, there is a majority in parliament for this. The Labour party, the Christian Democrats, the Green Left Party, the D66 (the Vague Party) and the stalinist Socialist Party all will vote for this. Not exactly surprising though.

Dutch happy with the euro (half a year ago)

Now this comes as something of a surprise to me: a poll showing 76% of the Dutch to be happy with the euro. On the other hand 69% does not seem to have any emotional affinity to the euro; it's a largely utilitarian happiness. In the EMU zone as a whole, 6 out of 10 people are happy with the euro. The report also contains the information that 50% of the population supports enlargement.

Since this appears to be a Europe-wide survey, I tried to find an English-language source to link to, but no other news outlets seemed to be carrying this story. Finally, I managed to track down the source at the EU's website, which contains the startling information that the data gathering took place in April. This is old news. In fact, highlights were originally published in June. The story I linked to in the Telegraaf contains no new information at all. Talk about sloppy reporting!

Since the survey was taken, many European economies have deteriorated substantially, which has a significant effect on public opinion. The data is almost half a year old now, and in political terms, that is a long time indeed. It's too bad the data is so stale by now, because you can download the entire report with its many detailed glimpses into European public opinion. For the psephologically inclined, it's a veritable goldmine of factoids. I don't have the time to read it all though.

Recruiting terrorists in the Netherlands

The Dutch intelligence service reports that there is solid proof that islamic terrorists are recruiting in the Netherlands. A 22-year old Egyptian immigrant, who was arrested on the 30th of August in Rotterdam, appears to have left a cassette tape with a message to his family, saying he'd left home in order to become a martyr.

The fall of the Dutch government

Now here is a perfect example of how to make complete fools of yourselves and miss an historic opportunity while doing so. That, in a nutshell is the story of the LPF, the List Pim Fortuyn. It had been spiraling into self-destruction for a while now, and before leaving for London I was thinking to myself that I should blog about it, but I never had the time. So barely after I get back (including a canceled flight from London City airport) the government finally falls. The immediate cause: two of the LPF ministers hated each other's guts and would not longer even talk to one another.

There's more background on the whole thing at the Visser View, and as he rightly points out, a complete chronology of the farce that the LPF had become would be impossible to blog, even on an increasingly verbose blog such as this. Still, here are some of the highlights. I never thought the LPF would last very long, as it was founded in a hurry following Pim Fortuyn's disagreements with his erstwhile political home, the party Leefbaar Nederland. Carrying his name, the party was mostly a vehicle for his ambitions and highly dependent on his. So after he was murdered, the LPF would sooner or later have had to come to terms with its post-Pim direction. But the haste of forming the party, and its huge electoral success, meant that the people representing it in parliament were completely untested and in many cases unvetted. This opened the door to a lot of, shall we say, colorful personalities to enter parliament on behalf of the LPF.

Once in a coalition government with the Christian Democrats (CDA) and somewhat-free-market Liberals (VVD), the LPF quickly started to tear itself apart on many levels. The parliamentary party sent its chairman, Matt Herben, packing after only a brief time at the helm. The ministers in government showed their inexperience. None of this would have been fatal, were it not for the ever increasing level of internecine warfare within the LPF. The members of parliament were at each other's throats pretty much continuously in the last few weeks. Splits and defections popped up regularly, and were sometimes mended. However, it became ever harder to take the LPF seriously.

What surprises me most is that the people in the LPF did not seem to have any instinct for self-preservation. Forget national interest. Forget responsibility. The LPF did not even seem to have an urge to prolong its own existence. Everybody could see the crash coming if they continued like this, and the opinion polls were looking ever more bleak. Precipitating the fall of the government meant for all LPFers the loss of their seats in parliament. It's amazing that this simple threat of political extinction did not impose more discipline on them. Instead, the egos of the parliamentarians asserted themselves, and if that meant sinking the party or the government, so be it. Still, the blindness is amazing. They should have known, as the rest of the country did, that their ego-trips would render them irrelevant after any new election.

And new elections are on the way. There is little hope of glueing the pieces back together again after all that has happened. The CDA and VVD quite rightly pulled the plug on this ongoing nonsense, and the LPF faces electoral oblivion. I don't think they're going to get any seats in parliament at all, and that is a big shame. The LPF, even without Pim Fortuyn, had the opportunity to reshape Dutch politics, and to inject much-needed new thinking into the political debate. There were instances where the influence of the LPF was refreshing in the new government, but they were completely overshadowed by the internal rivalries. And heirs of Pim Fortuyn's heritage squandered a big opportunity to shake things up.

The ossified political culture of the Netherlands was certainly the richer for Pim Fortuyn's cheerful, thoughtful and occasionally outrageous iconoclasm. What we got in the LPF was a stone-throwing mob without direction or purpose. Some of the LPF ministers would have done really well, but were never given the chance. So what's going to happen next? The elections are probably going to be held in December, and the LPF will be wiped out. Part of the former LPF voters seems to be shifting to the CDA, which is rather ironic as the CDA is the ultimate Respectable Establishment party. In terms of program, the LPF had more in common with the VVD, which also seems to be benefitting in the polls. But that still does not account for all the LPF's seats. It appears a large part of the LPF voters won't bother to show up to vote, leading to a scaling up of other parties' seats. The disenchanted part of the electorate which Pim Fortuyn managed to mobilized is going to withdraw out of politics again, which could lead to problems down the road.

At the heart of Fortuyn's program were several long-neglected but highly relevant issues. Not just the formerly-taboo issue of immigration, but the wider functioning of society such as transport policy, declining standards in health care and education and the increasing crime rate were all resonating with voters. The big danger now is that once the those arriviste troublemakers of the LPF are gone, the old established parties can return to their politics as usual. This is only storing up trouble for the future. In that sense, Pim Fortuyn's legacy will remain relevant to an extent, as the VVD and CDA won't entirely ignore the issues. But the big impetus, and above all, the impetus to look anew and think anew without the shackles of politics past will be gone.

In the shorter term, there are other problems too. The economy is stalling, and additional uncertainty about what a new government will be like, and what it will do is not going to help. Moreover, the European Union is due to decide on the expansion to the east, and this had become a bone of contention in the government too with the VVD taking a hard line on Polish entry. Scuppering EU expansion could be the biggest international fallout of the fall of the Dutch government.

But what's blogging without a prediction? The VVD and CDA will form the next government. Back to politics as usual after some lip-service to the LPF's hot issues.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Doubts surfacing

The story of another gang rape that I blogged about a few days ago is beginning to be called into question. According to the police, a medical examination showed that there is no evidence of rape. Forensic investigations of the house have failed to turn up anything either. As Drudge would say: Developing...

More twists in the Hirsi Ali case

In yet more twists in the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the weekly Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland now claims that she's made up the death threats, mostly based on the fact that her father, who lives in London, now denies having received any such threats after initially reporting them. So what is going on? The newspaper Trouw has an analysis of the case. That there have been threats is beyond any doubt, as many of these have been made on public fora on the internet. Furthermore, some phone calls have been traced to Sweden and Italy. So what to make of her father's story?

Two facets of Muslim culture are important here. First is the patriarchal structure, where the father of the household is supposed to be able to control what members of his family are doing. That's why phone calls would be directed to him as well as his daughter. Second is the tribal nature of Arab societies, with its emphasis on shame and honor. To avert shame and gain honor for the tribal group, in the case the wider Somali expatriate community, the right thing to do is to deny the death threats.

In the assessments of both the police and the Dutch internal security service, the threats are real and the danger is real. This is not in the least strengthened by the argument Ayaan Hirsi Ali had on television with M. Cheppih, the chairman of the Muslim World League in the Dutch town of Tilburg. This organization is known to be funded with Saudi money, preaches a violent and fundamentalist Islam and seeks to recruit young Dutch Muslims for its cause. The security service is also observing continued radicalization amongst Muslim youth in the country, with special venom being directed against apostates such as Hirsi Ali. The police hope that if Hirsi ali lies low for a while, tempers will cool. But further publicity would rekindle the flames and the danger; respect for freedom of expression is apparently still too much to ask for in parts of Arab immigrant community.

Craven criminal-coddling catering

Sometimes I wonder whether the reality I see here in the Netherlands is distorted. I've tried to have my head examined to see if there's a giant distorting lens attached to my perceptive faculties. That came up negative, so I have to conclude that either the medical community in this country is part of the Conspiracy, or that this place is really utterly grotesque and surreal. Please step over here, and behold the Low Countries through the looking glass.

In recent news, we've heard that the police won't even bother to investigate burglaries anymore, but in order to maintain law and order, you will now be subject to compulsory searches for no other reason than being in a certain area at a certain time. And if you happen to be one of the car-owning class (which puts you in the Highly Suspect category), the government has plans to keep track of your whereabouts. No wonder 65% of the population is unhappy with the police.

But if you're wondering where the proceeds from the extortionate taxation are going, well, look no further than this: it's being used in part to make sure criminals are comfortable. Specifically, it's being used to make sure one particular criminal is comfortable, Volkert van der G., the man accused of murdering Pim Fortuyn. You see, he's a vegan vegetarian, and the food that's cooked in the slammer is just not up to snuff. I mean, at one point, there was even melted cheese on his cauliflower! The horror! Can you imagine what that does to this poor, abused man of such high principles? Obviously, it's more important to make sure he is comfortable than, say, actually investigate and prosecute crime. So now, the cooks at the prison are being instructed in vegan vegetarian cooking. I'm delighted, delighted! to see my tax euros spent so considerately. Brings tears to my eyes.

For those who've not been following the Volkert Story, he's been on hunger strike too for a while. One of his demands for ending his hunger strike was better catering. He also wanted more privacy when his girlfriend visited. The one demand that was not honored was the removal of the 24-hour a day video monitoring of his cell. At one point he was apparently not far away from being too weak to do much anymore and in danger of dying within a few weeks. This led to a debate on whether he should be forcibly fed or allowed to die. On the one hand, it would set a questionable precedent with regard to the amount of force the state can use on its detainees. On the other hand, being in prison (although not yet tried or convicted) by necessity is an abridgement of individual rights. The main reason I don't want to see him dead yet is because there is a possibility that he might have had accomplices, and I want to avoid a Timothy McVeigh situation. After we've got all the facts and nailed any possible accomplices, I'm all in favor of frying the bastard.

Oh wait, we don't have capital punishment here. There is a non-trivial proportion of population in favor according to polls; the last one I could find puts support at 43%. Of course, this is not reflected by political parties that constitute the ruling elite. Perhaps I should trade that distorting lens for blinkers. Might make life less complicated...

European elite opinion

I knew I wanted to blog something else last night, but fortunately fellow Netherblogger Michiel Visser has taken care of it. It's yet another astonishing example of those highly cultured European elites' blatant anti-Semitism.

Andrew Sullivan is on it too.

Open invitation to burglars

Introducing the new resort for professional criminals everywhere: the Netherlands! Come spend your vacation in this lovely country of polders, cows, cheese and easy to rob houses! Included in your vacation package is a weekend stay in a luxury hotel, your free "Burgle in Holland" guide and a complimentary crowbar. Reserve now and enjoy the vacation of a lifetime!

Yes, burgling has never been easier. Nor less dangerous. The chances of getting caught in Holland are low to begin with, but as of today, you need not fear investigation in the land of tulips and windmills. The new guidelines for the police state that only serious offenses will be investigated. Your standard burglary is not one of them. There are going to be "minimum requirements" for crime in order to be investigated; breaking the law is not enough (unless you're speeding, but that's different, of course). Now if a crime does not meet the criteria, the police won't even bother.

The Amsterdam police chief Jelle Kuiper crititized the plans, because of the emotional impact on the victims. But that was foreseen, in the words of J. L. de Wijkerslooth, the mandarin whose brainchild this is: "In other words, the police will only come into action if the victim complains. That can't ever be the basis for investigative policy or for victim prioritization." Yes, heaven forbid that victims of crime actually complain about the police's inaction!

But all is not lost, as the whole thing is scientifically underpinned. "In industry it's perfectly normal to do a market analysis before making an investment." Ah right, it's an investment now. Everything is an investment. Child care, education, welfare, health care, it's all investment. Now catching criminals is an investment too. Or not catching them. It's not neglect or dereliction of duty, it's just opportunity loss in terms of catching criminals.

But finally it is the minister of justice who's responsible. Says De Wijkerslooth:

The criteria fall under the political responsibility of the minister, which also legitimizes them politically. This puts the district attorneys on a firmer footing when they have to say 'no' to all the organizations and interest groups who want them to do 'a bit more' or a 'a bit less' than has been agreed upon."

Good to see that this is going to make the DA's lives easier then. I've been worried about their mental state quite a bit recently, and in terms of overall investment, it's more than reasonable to sacrifice the odd victim or two to relieve pressure elsewhere in the System.

So now it's official: don't count on the State to protect you or your property. Not that this is anything new. It's just blatantly out in the open now. Does this mean that citizens will be allowed to defend themselves? Of course not. Guns remain largely illegal, and besides, self-defense if frowned upon and harming burglars is not being ignored by the police. It's harming other human beings after all. And while they're robbing your house, perhaps you should ask yourself why they hate you so much. It's poverty, of course. And as a house-owning member of the bourgeousie you're part of the system them oppresses the poor criminals, leading them to rob your house. It's all your fault really. Defending your home and your family only escalates the cycle of violence.

Pfui.

Honoring the heroes of the past

Blogging about outrages and idiocies is the staple. It is sad to note, but good news is no news. Getting riled up, outraged and righteous about one's favorite pet causes is so much more satisfying that trying to find things that are right. So in the interest of balance, here is some good news from Holland, published in the Times of London. It's about the 7-year hunt for the wreckage of a World War II Wellington bomber. Here's why:

Moulton, from Brockville, Ontario, was regarded as a local hero because witnesses said that at the last minute he steered the stricken aircraft away from Wilnis, 11 miles south of Amsterdam, as it descended in flames towards the town.

Captain Hans Spierings, of the Air Force recovery unit, said that the pilot’s action had probably cost him his life: “The people in the town all say that Moulton stayed in the plane to avoid hitting the town and this still has a great impression on the citizens. In their mind, Moulton was a hero.”

[...]

Jan Rouwenhorst, a history teacher who set up the foundation to find the Wellington, said yesterday that the aim had been to honour men who died fighting for freedom.

“We knew human remains were inside. We thought it our moral obligation towards our liberators 60 years later for them to have a grave known to their families.”

Fortunately, some people do remember.

Another harrowing tale

Here's another story of a gang rape of a 13-year old girl in the Netherlands, allegedly committed by 8 Turkish boys. The story so far: they threatened her last Monday, because they did not want her to associate with Moroccan boys. They allegedly forcibly entered her parents' house on Wednesday morning (she had absconded from school since she was afraid), where they then tied her up, raped her, and also stabbed her in the leg with a knife. And they also tried to administer drugs to her. And then before leaving, for good measure, they set a fire.

A pretty horrible story, yet again. Yet it is so brazen, so mind-boggling that I have trouble believing that this actually happened. So far there has been no confirmation that this actually occurred, only the filing of the report with the police. The whole thing is so extreme and horrific that perhaps I am trying to find a rationalization that will allow me not to believe it. I hope it's not true. Further investigation will tell.

Cradle to grave

It's only that a decade or two ago when Dutch tourists who fell ill while vacationing in Spain would try to get themselves repatriated as quickly as possible. Now, Dutch people are going to Spain for treatment as the domestic health care system is getting ever worse and mired in red tape. Tales of woe ricochet from one to the next; there's the story of the man diagnosed with intestinal cancer who had to wait for four months to be operated on, and another four months to get radiotherapy.

But the latest tale in the Dutch press concerns a woman suffering from a disease called amyloidosis which eats away at the heart and liver. Now, having come to the conclusion that treatment in Holland was not possible, there was the possibility getting a heart and liver transplant in Britain, a lifesaving operation in this case. Except she could not get an E112 form. Without an E112 form, the Brits won't operate. I am not clear on what the E112 form does, but apparently she was ineligible for one of those, as she had "private" health insurance. The Dutch version of private health insurance is not what you think it might be; you're still reliant on the state system for treatment, except you pay your premium to a private health insurer instead of the state system. Above a certain income level (around $30,000), this is your only choice. The difference between the "state" and "private" systems is minimal, since all patients end up in the same hospitals with the same doctors. Truly private health care is still far away. And as with any system where the price mechanism has been abolished, the way to get faster service is through under-the-counter transactions, by pulling strings, relying on networks of friendly doctors and trying to find any angle to jump ahead in the waiting list. Those who happen to know the right people will get treated sooner than others. Behold the "fairness" of socialized medicine.

Now that the story has hit the press, suddenly treatment options in Holland may be available after all. Oh well... and the Belgians have offered treatment too now. Amazing.

Hirsi Ali leaving the country

Well, she's going on vacation. Sort of. Having received death threats for her remarks about Islam and women, she's now has a private company protecting. Apparently the vacation has been planned for a long time, but they're keeping the details about her plans and security arrangement secret. A strange twist is that nobody's been able to contact her father, who received some of the death threats. Nobody's answering the phone there, but there is no indication of where he lives. Meanwhile, there does not appear to be any progress on tracing the islamist zealots who are sending the threats.

And you thought NPR was bad...

The Dutch broadcasting system is hybrid. Commercial broadcasters have been around for only about a decade or so, and inevitably they have stolen market share from the state-funded system. The state-funded system is in itself a relic from the way Dutch society used to be organized in the first half of the 20th century when radio started to make its appearance. The Dutch word to describe this is "verzuiling," meaning "columnization." People grew up, lived and worked mostly within their own "column" of society. A catholic would send his children to a catholic school, read a catholic paper, go to a catholic bar, sport at a catholic club and listen to the catholic radio station. Other columns included various protestant denominations, the socilaists, the liberals and some smaller groups. To a remarkable extent these columns lived parallel lives interacting to a surprisingly limited degree. In this environment the Dutch state-funded broadcast system was formed. Each group could set up its own broadcasting organization, which would be funded to a small part from member contributions and to a large part from "listening money," a tax levied on every radio (and later TV) owner. The amount of air time was determined by the number of members.

To this day, most of the original broadcasters still exist, even though the societal conditions which led to their emergence have long since vanished in the post-war secularization of Dutch society. They still claim to be true to their original mission and to represent their particular constituency, but those claims are very hollow. Most of them just produce mass-market TV and radio programs with government funding. The old "Listening Money" has been abolished, and the funding now comes out of general taxation. And now we have commercial broadcasters which have larger market shares.

In order to support all these broadcasters, the Dutch tax payer has to ante up no less than 650 million euro. To put this into context: NPR gets about $43 million a year, while PBS gets $620 million. While privatizing NPR and PBS are probably good ideas in their own right, the relative cost to the US taxpayer is much less than what the Dutch taxpayer gets hit with.

A large part of the money is wasted on duplication of functions within each of the broadcasters. Some of them are now cooperating, such as the block of NCRV (protestant, don't ask me which variant), KRO (catholic) and AVRO (liberal), known as AKN. In their palatial new headquarters each of the three members still has its own radio studios, their own staff and presenters. Supposedly to maintain their identity. The five public radio channels cost about 100 million euro a year and get an average of 760,000 listeners. The commercial broadcasters have 1.14 million listeners and don't get a single cent from the taxpayer.

It is time to overhaul the public broadcasting system. It has long outlived its original purpose and has become yet another self-sustaining bureaucracy that feeds off the public trough. We don't really need 5 radio stations and 3 TV stations funded by the taxpayer. Cutting off public funding would be a start to help the broadcasters focus on controlling costs. Many will not survive in a competitive environment, and will be gobbled up by competitors. But consolidation here is a good thing. We really don't need dozens of broadcasters in this country. Those who do have a dedicated audience will be able to survive. The others won't be missed.

We know where you are

On an average day in this country, if you walk in public areas in towns and cities, there is an increasing chance that at some point you'll be filmed by closed-circuit TV cameras. It does not stop things like bike theft, but you can't catch everything. Not yet, anyway. Also if you happen to be in a nightlife district, you could get stopped and searched for no other reason than being there. Now the fearless Dutch government is planning the next step in keeping tabs on you: more intensive speed checks on highways. (The reason the Dutch government is fearless is because the Dutch population isn't exactly well-armed and assertive in defending against abuses, but I digress.)

The plan involves doing away with stationary cameras and replacing them with speed checks over a distance. You get logged at the start, and again at the end, and the system then calculates your average speed. If it's over the limit, you get a ticket. This is obviously a far more intrusive system than a solitary camera, which is only triggered by a speeding violation. This system, by necessity, has to keep track of all traffic passing through. And the plans are to introduce it on a wide scale too: after an initial trial at a half a dozen locations, the plans are supposedly for a minimum of 55 such catchment areas.

Of course, this will work to reduce speeding. And of course, it will do very little to increase safety. And of course, it will provide a nice cashflow to the government. This is again one of those cases where there is a significant loss of privacy for a marginal benefit. But perhaps people have become so used to being watched that it does not come as an imposition anymore. That is really a scary thought.

The Bicycle Event Horizon

As an inveterate car driver, I hate bicycles. They're a damn nuisance, and are usually propelled by suicidal maniacs whose sole aim in life is to break as many traffic regulations as possible on a given stretch of road. Car drivers in Naples (Italy, not Florida) are more disciplined than cyclists in Holland. More on driving a car in southern Italy some other time.

Anyway, there are lots of bicycles in the Netherlands. Way too many. But I am beginning to understand the death wish of the cyclists themselves, as there seems to be something supernatural going on. It seem that about 900,000 bicycles are stolen every year in this country. Estimates for the total number of bicycles in the country vary from 16 to 20 million on a population of 16 million. So that means that between 4.5% and 5.6% of all bicylces get stolen in any given year. But that's not all: there's an additional 1 million bicylces sold every year. Does that mean we are adding a million new bicycles to the overall stock every year? The link above is not clear on whether it's a million new bicycles, or whether it includes used ones as well; given the rest of the page, it would seem to refer to new ones. And where do the 900,000 stolen bicycles go? There must be some regurgitation of these bicycles back into the overall stock, rather than just ending up in the blind alley of illegality. It still leaves us with a huge new supply of bicycles every year. Since there is little growth potential left (I would think the market is fairly saturated), there must be a large amount of bicycles disposals. Or the stolen bikes are exported, but I don't see the economics of this working too well.

Very puzzling. Back to the original story. It also refers to the futility of reporting a bicycle theft, and only 1 in 5 victims bother to go to the police. At police stations, there's a form for submitting a claim to the insurance company. (Hm, insurance fraud inflating the numbers?) But help is at hand: after three years of negotiations no less than three ministries and various organizations have come to an agreement on a concerted effort to combat bike theft. All new bikes will be fitted with a chip that can be scanned. Once a bike is stolen, its chip code will be entered into a national database, so that police can easily scan "suspicious" bikes and determine whether they're stolen or not. Of course, the police have also said they're not going to spend any time or manpower on this, as they're busy combating more serious crime. Except they're not doing too well on that either.

A cunning plan to prevent welfare fraud

I guess this is going to succumb to linkrot soon (I have to find permalinks for this stuff), but here is a fascinating story about a cunning plan in the Dutch town of Deventer, aimed at cutting welfare fraud. Their brilliant innovation: they check people's claims before paying them any money!

{the sound of mouths gaping}

Exceedingly harsh taxation

Some people are lucky enough to live in a country where they can write this:

It actually turns out that if we want to truly, substantially, rapidly reduce energy use the only way to do it is with lifestyle changes, and the only practical way to force that is through exceedingly harsh taxation (i.e. $3000 per year per car, $5 per gallon on gasoline). It's not a problem susceptible to a painless technical fix, mostly because we've already done most of what can be done easily.

Emphasis mine. Welcome to the wonderful world of Euro-Socialism, where an American's nightmare of exceedingly harsh taxation is reality today! And no, it has not led to any significant behavioral or lifestyle changes. More about that later, but first, let's dissect the various and varied ways in which the Her Majesty's Government in the Netherlands appropriates your money.

How much do you think the tax is on a new car? It's one of my favorite games to play with innocent Americans. When I ask the question like this, they immediate assume it must be some horrendous percentage, like 20? 30%? There are two taxes levied on cars: one is the general 19% Value-Added Tax, the other is a special car tax of 42.5% adding up to a grand total of 61.5%. These taxes are additive, not cumulative. Be thankful for small mercies, I suppose.

This way a $29,220 Chrysler 300M in the US ends up costing almost $54,000 here in the Netherlands. I know, the percentages don't quite add up, but there are other effects at work too.

That's one part of the puzzle. Steve mentioned gas prices. A liter of 95 RON (that's 89 octane in the US) gasoline costs 1.17 euros, or about $1.15. This translates into $4.43 per US gallon. Excessively harsh yet?

The only part where we're still "lagging" behind Steve's nightmare vision is the annual taxation of cars. The road tax here is based on the weight of the car, and for the above-mentioned 300M, you'd pay about $700 to $800 in road tax per year. It gets cheaper for smaller cars, obviously. But if you amortize the tax on purchase over, say, 5 years you're a lot closer to the dystopic $3000/year.

Erich Honecker called "real existierender Sozialismus:" socialism that really exists. Yup. My pocketbook can tell you all about it.

Of course, none of the state-thuggery has led to any substantive change in lifestyles. Sure, there are more old cars on the road. There smaller cars on the road. But people will go to great lengths to have a car, because the car is such an empowering tool. Without a car, the radius of your existence shrinks dramatically. It can partially made up for with public transport and bicycles, but the loss of freedom is tremendous. And that is why people will rather cut back on other kinds of spending before they make the decision to give up their car.

So why not raise taxes even higher? Because the pain threshold has been reached. As the mass protests in Britain showed last year, taxes on gas are about as high as people will put up with. I am amazed that people will actually put up with this insane level of taxation. Perhaps it's because I spend a lot more time in the US than the average European.

Who'll applaud for Hirsi Ali?

A disappointing few. Hirsi Ali is now in hiding after receiving death threats for fundamentalist Muslims for daring the suggest that Muslim women have rights too and should be treated with respect. At a discussion meeting between Moroccans and native Dutchmen, one of the moderators asked: "Who'll applaud for Hirsi Ali?" About half the audience did. No prizes for guessing which half.

"Integration, that's Muslims going to the mosque and not harrassing infidels like me," said Theo van Gogh. The response from co-moderator Ahmed Aboutaleb? He shakes his head in disgust.

Islamic fundamentalism in Holland

Sometimes I miss really obvious news, and it has to be pointed out to me by people who're one or more oceans distant. Here's the story at Shoutin' Across The Pacific about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who's been threatened by radical Muslims for her comments on women's rights.

I think there are a lot of Muslims in the Netherlands who would agree with her comments, and are more than happy to have escaped the stifling and repressive climates in their erstwhile domiciles. We also see this in the US, as Instapundit linked to here and here just recently. Unfortunately, the organizations claiming to speak for Arab immigrants seldom are this enlightened (CAIR anyone?). This is also the case in the Netherlands. Muslim organizations have condemned the threats against Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but have pointedly refused to agree with her. And that is the real problem.

Improbable cause

Next time you're in Amsterdam's center at night, don't be surprised if the police stop you and search you. And seize anything that they deem to be a weapon. The Dutch daily Parool reports that a new local ordinance will be enacted which will give the police these powers. The mayor will designate certain "safety risk areas," in which several annual "weapons checks" will be held. But Amsterdam is not the first to go down this route. Last night in Rotterdam, the police cordoned off the center of the city and checked everybody to see if they were carrying weapons or munitions. A number of arrests were made. The northern port city of Den Helder will begin doing the same this weekend.

In Amsterdam, it's all part of a bigger scheme to reduce violence. Under the quintessentially bureaucratic moniker of "Updated Progam of Dealing with Aggression and Violence," 1.2 million euros have been earmarked by the city council to reduce violence. The other parts involve more CCTV cameras, checking for guns, "youth safety," strengthening "oversight," combating violence against the "overseers" (police and the like), safety in public transport, combating domestic violence and street violence in the nightlife areas.

That's quite a shopping list of "oversight" measures they have there. The goal? By 2006, the council hopes to have reduced the number of violent incidents with weapons by a quarter. Weapon-ownership (including knives and guns) amongst schoolchildren they hope to reduce by 80%.

Putting all of this together, it entails a substantial increase in government oversight of public life. Going for a night out in Amsterdam and many other Dutch cities means that you have to check some of your liberties at the door. Your own front door, that is. It is outright scary that you can end up being sealed into an area of town by police, and not let out before you've been searched for no other reason than being there. This is creepy stuff. Add the increased use of CCTV cameras and we're are one step closer to the Panopticon State as Samizdata would call it.

Will it work? Well, it is probably going to reduce casual violence a bit. It will have a deterrent effect on people. So in some sense, it will work, but it will come at a serious cost to personal liberty. The logical extension of this kind of government thinking is to have random searches of people's property, tag everyone with a transmitter and GPS system and forcibly implant thought recorders.

I have to go now; if you need me, I'll be at the store buying bulk quantities of tin foil. I'll need it for the hats.

Go to Spain for a new knee

While we have a projectgroup for examining transcultural aspects of health care, and integrating them, there seems to be little time to integrate that embrassing set of people, known as the patients. The long waiting lists are forcing ever more people to seek treatment abroad. The latest trend is to go to Alicante in Spain for orthopedic surgery. It is expected that about 600 Dutch patients will fly to Spain to have a new knee fitted, up from about 100 this year. Taxes may be high in Holland, but at least we get the best and longest waiting lists money can buy!

Health care priorities

As the health care system is creaking and groaning, trying desperately not to fall apart completely, you come across this.

Minister Bomhoff (Volksgezondheid) heeft medisch specialist J. van Londen aan de kant geschoven als voorzitter van de projectgroep interculturalisatie in de gezondheidszorg.

I guess you want to know what that means:

Minister Bomhoff (People's Health) has fired medical specialist J. van Londen from his position as chairman of the health care interculturalization projectgroup.

Well, we may not be able to treat your cancer until next spring, but by then we may have a better intercultural understanding of the issues. If this goes on, I'm going to need a bypass... high blood pressure is said be to be bad.

(cue: scream in background.)

Dutch research: more roadspace, less congestion!

No, really. Who would have thought? More roads, less congestion? But that's Dogmatically Problematic, isn't it? We have all been told to believe that more roads lead to more congestion, because they'll just suck in more traffic... but now... perhaps they were smoking something. Fumes from the tar pit.

What this story is all about is the use of emergency lanes as temporary driving lanes at peak hours, effectively increasing the space available to road users. As anyone outside the Ecologically-Imperial Complex might have expected, having more lanes available reduces the congestion. So the the Dutch government is going to prioritize the building of more of these "peak-lanes" so as to reduce traffic jams.

So far, so good. Traffic minister de Boer says however, that they'll only be adding width to existing roads, not building new ones. "We don't want to become known as a asphalt-cabinet." And why not? The huge increase in mobility that the car has brought to the masses in the second half of the 20th century is a very large part of the quality of life we enjoy. Being able to get from point A to point B quickly, efficiently and comfortably is a great thing to have, and it's not one that public transport can fulfill in many cases. If we want economic growth and increasing living standards, then building more roads is going to have to be a part of it. Unfortunately, the government has fallen back on the eco-dogma that more roads should never be built.

The Social and Cultural Planning Bureau

Of course the Netherlands has one. You mean to say your country doesn't have a Social and Cultural Planning Bureau? Well, it is good to know that the Netherlands has this vital organization tied into the very heart of government. It is obviously impossible to have either a social structure or culture without either being planned. I mean, if you don't give people social and cultural guidance, the skies would be rent open to reveal the petrifying face of Primordial Chaos. Or even worse, people might do things that the wise bureaucrats of Social and Cultural Planning disapprove of.

The name conjures up images unbidden: Brazil, the film. Countless bureaucrats toiling away day after day, charting the future course of Social and Cultural Things. Quick, the people in the province of Zeeland are not consuming enough of their Cultural Vegetables! Send in a quick dollop of musical broccoli! And after we told them right from their childhood on to eat their Cultuveggies... how frustrating it is. The last consignment of Stockhausen Carrots went largely unconsumed too. They just don't know what's good for them. All they want is sugar-heavy nekulturny desserts. Memo to Televisual Directorate: Should we ban MTV?

But, at the end of a hard day's work of planning, the reward lies in a job well done. "Honey, I'm home! And you won't believe what happened at work today! We discovered that there was going to be a surplus of Social Deprivation Units in west Amsterdam, so we had to adjust the notional child-care distribution curve to shift Synthetic Social Health Propagation Tokens from Zaanstad to make up for it. We just averted a major crisis!"

Phew. That was a close one.

12-year old girl abducted, used for sex - repeatedly

Today's Telegraaf reports a horrifying tale of a 12-year old girl, who's been abducted by a group of men, and was then forced to work as a prostitute. Repeatedly. TWENTY times.

The rape gang, a group of young Moroccans, threatened her with knives and guns, and took her blindfolded to a bar. On the bed there, she was forced to have sex with dozens of men. The story only came out after the girl, Miranda, had fled to Amsterdam where she'd been roaming the streets for five days. During this time, her parents found her diaries with the details in her room.

The parents reported this to the police in May, who did not take them seriously. Only after the third attempt to report the case did the police deign to investigate. Meanwhile, Miranda's father had discovered the identities of the rape gang and gave them to the police.

So the situation now is that the family is fleeing their home in Assen, because they're being terrorized by the rape gang. They get harassed with phone calls in the middle of the night, get messages sent to their cell phones, and members of the rape gang strut prominently in front of their home. The father used to work as a sales clerk in a store, where the rape gang members started to harass him too. He's had a nervous breakdown and lost his job.

Police spokesman Martin Panman says: "This week or next, we'll set up a serious detective team of six people." The initial report was filed in May. Now it's middle of September. The suspects' identities were known. And still the police wouldn't act, and are now, under the pressure of publicity, setting up a team to investigate. Wasn't Holland pretending to be a civilized country?

Nor is Miranda the only victim of the Moroccan rape gang. One other victim is now in a psychiatric institute, the other is too scared to leave her home. Three lives scarred, perhaps permanently, by a gang of despicable violent thugs, while the police have to be shamed into action. Utterly disgusting. This is yet another, albeit particularly horrendous, example of the state of law enforcement in the Netherlands. Citizens are not supposed to defend themselves, since that is what the police is for. Yet the police are simply not up to the job, and this has not gone unnoticed.

One final question is whether the ethnic origin of the gang rapists is relevant here. They are all Arabs, mostly Moroccan, with the odd Iraqi and Kuwaiti thrown in. The relevance stems from the structural proclivity of Arab men in western countries to treat women as they had been taught to in their own dysfunctional culture, where women's rights are virtually non-existent and they are treated as property. This carries over into their behavior when they live in the West. This is not an isolated incident. In France, gang-rapes comitted by Arabs are so common, they have a name for them: tournantes. Australia recently saw a brutal gang-rape, resulting in a record 55-year jail sentence for the ringleader. In Denmark and Norway, well over half those convicted for rape are of Arab origin, while they form only a small minority in either country.

This is a problem. Putting a the Multicultural Blinkers of Political Correctness on is not going to change the underlying reality. Either the Arabs living in the West assimilate into our culture and bring themselves up to our level of civilization, or they should seek their abode elsewhere. Mark Steyn put it thus:

As one is always obliged to explain when tiptoeing around this territory, I'm not a racist, only a culturist. I support immigration, but with assimilation. Without it, like a Hindu widow, the West is slowly climbing on the funeral pyre of its lost empires. You see it in European foreign policy already: They're scared of their mysterious, swelling, unstoppable Muslim populations. Islam For All approvingly reported the other day that, at present demographic rates, in 20 years' time the majority of children (i.e., under 18) in Holland will be Muslim. It will be the first Islamic country in Western Europe since the loss of Spain. Europe is the colony now.

The Prime Minister hard at work

Dutch Prime Minister has a busy schedule; after all, he's got a country to run. One of the things clogging this busy schedule of his give rise to photo-ops now and then. The caption of the picture is:

Premier Balkenende en zijn vrouw woonden op prinsjesdag een 'interlevensbeschouwelijke bezinningsbijeenkomst' bij.

Which in English boils down to "Prime Minister Balkenende and his wife attended on Budget Day a..." ehhrrrmm.... well, I'd love to translate it for you, but I have no clue what it means. Neither does the caption-writer given scare-quotes.

It roughly translates into "Inter-Life-Philosophical-Contemplation Meeting." It sounds just as horrible in Dutch too. In plainer language it would probably be a Multicultural Snuggle-and-Hugfest. (OK, I lied, I did have some clue.)

Ye Gods.

Take it slow, don't hurt yourself

It never ceases to surprise me which cross-sections of sub-Idiotarianism will meld together into a new strand. The Netherlands has spawned a new one, the "Union Against Hurrying", as reported on nu.nl. It seems to be an amalgam of luddites, anti-globalizers and religious groups. They are calling for a slower working pace, limits to working hours, more "appreciation" of slow activities such as contemplation, social contacts and daydreaming. And Wednesdays are to become "Slow-working days." Right. I just hope they didn't rush into all of these goals, or overexert themselves.

So let's see: we kill productivity, cut GDP and living standards in half, force people shops to close after 6 PM, and set up a National Appreciation Committee for Daydreaming. I was going to say something witty and/or pithy about this, but I'm afraid I've exceeded my daily work-hour quota. Don't want to rush things, you see. *yawn*. Perhaps I should take a nap. Or at least do some serious daydreaming - and I expect to be appreciated for that, ya hear?

65% of Dutchmen unhappy with police

And this comes as a surprise?

Today's Telegraaf has a story (Dutch only) on the results of a survey by the Social and Cultural Planning Bureau (yet another institution in this country with a name that defies parody), that shows that 65% of Dutchmen are unhappy with the way the police to their job. People think the police should spend more time chasing criminals. Imagine that. And with just 14.6% of crimes (191,000 out of 1.3 million) being solved, it's not exactly surprising. And since most people only see the police when they get a speeding ticket, the misplaced priorities begin to register. Also of note: 90% of those interviewed thought that criminals should be punished more severely.

Holland must be one of the countries with the most lenient sentencing in the world. If you want to commit a murder, do it here. With some extenuating circumstances and a halfway decent lawyer, you'll likely get away with being sentenced to, say, 12 years. Throw some good behavior in the mix, and you could be out in 8. Even better, if you can claim to be an "activist" of some sort, you might get off even more lightly.

The new government, when it is not decending into farce, is planning to spend more money on the police. However, without realigning the police's priorities, it's going to be hard to make a dent in crime. One of the proposals that's come bubbling out of the new government is to be more lenient with people who exceed the speed limit by a small amount. Why not just increase the speed limit then? Current speed limits, especially on the highways, are ridiculously low (100 or 120 km/h, which is 60 or 70 mph), and are widely ignored. Having laws that are ignored on such a wide scale undermines respect for the law in general. When reality and the written law diverge by this much (and no harm comes of it), then surely the wise thing to do is to amend the law.

To round it all off, we also have the news that due to a "cell-shortage" many people who are arrested end up on the street again immediately. In the first six months of this year, 832 arrests ended up in the immediate relase of the suspects. In many more cases, the police don't even bother to act, since they know it's going to be futile. Now, isn't a "cell-shortage" an oxymoron? We have a number of cells. We have a number of criminals. Divide the latter by the former, and you get the average occupancy rate per cell. What's so horrible if this number is greater than one?