Back in the early nineties an attempt to get the Olympic Games to Amsterdam broke down on the indifference and cynicism of the voters, not interested in the glamour and prestige this was supposed to bring to the city, but who did have a sharp eye for how much this would cost and who would end up paying that bill. Since then the Olympic lobby has kept to itself, but with the shining example of London 2012, is slowly starting to bang the drum for Amsterdam 2028, exactly a century after the first and only Dutch Olympics. And this time it’s actually taken seriously, perhaps helped to a not inconsiderable extent by the fact that this date is quite a way aways yet. Not that this means anything will come of it, but seeing how the climate here is slowly shifting towards acceptance, if not enthusiasm of the Olympics, doesn’t make me any happier reading about the way the London Olympics are organised. As I’ve noticed over the years, what happens in Britain is inevitably introduced over here in some degenerated form some years later.
Dutch politics
Wilders wants to deport millions of Muslims from Europe
In an interview with a Danish television station Geert Wilders dropped his mask and said that Europe should be prepared to deport millions of Muslims. He argues that any Muslim who “crossed the line” should be “taken back” to their supposed country of origin, whether or not they were an EU citizen. He said that this should not just happen to criminals, but also to any Muslim who believes in Jihad or Sharia law, in what he calls the “Islamic ideology”. All Muslims or even all non-western immigrants should sign a assimilation contract in which they pledge to obey western values and behaviour and if they fail to do so, they should be deported.
However, in interviews with Dutch papers he has already argued that you cannot trust Muslims to keep their pledges anyway, as according to him their religion gives Muslims living in a non-Muslim society the right to “just lie and cheat” — his interpretation of Taqiyya, the right within a Shia theological framework of Muslims to conceal their religious identity when treatened with physical or mental harm because of it. This is a “right” only to be used in situations where Muslims are prosecuted for their beliefs, but Wilders warps it into the right to lie to any non-believer for any reason.
What’s more, the interview makes it clear that Wilders has a problem with all Muslims, not just “radical” or criminal Muslims as he bangs on about the Islamisation of Europe, of mass immigration of Muslims into Europe and how a society will change when twenty, thirty or forty percent of the population is Muslims. He scaremongers by predicting that in 2025 one in three babies born will be of Muslim descent, which as Randy McDonald already showed for France way back in 2004 is nonsense. He constantly reiterates that, despite his protestations about having no problems with Muslim people themselves, a society changes, becomes “less pleasant” when Muslims reach a certain percentage of the population. He also repeats how Muslims are more criminal, that the majority of criminal is from Muslim countries. There is only one solution to this and that’s to sent them back.
These statements are the most clear Wilders has yet made about his intentions. If we look back at his career since 2002 we’ve seen Wilders become, if not necessarily more radical in his views, more radicial in how he expresses them. He has constantly sought out the limit of what’s permissible in a politician, constantly pushed the window so that what was taboo ten years ago is recieved wisdom now. He started as your average, slightly racist rightwing politician obsessed with immigration and integration and now he’s proposing mass expulsion of Muslims from Europe.
Back to the future…
This year’s European elections in the Netherlands are the first to use a particular futuristic piece of technology: the red pencil. This because the government last year was finally convinced voting computers just weren’t safe, after years of mounting doubts and campaigns against them. Because elections are organised on a municipal level, there has always been a patchwork of voting methods here, some councils like Amsterdam staying loyal to the red pencil long after most had implemented some form of electronic voting machine. Both main types of voting computer in use however at the last elections turned out to be easily hackable, which led to the first emergency return to the pencil.
Two years ago, the studygroup set up to making computer voting more safe recommended a two tier process: have the computer print out the ballot and use that as your physical vote. I’m not sure what happened to this recommendation, but obviously the current elections came to soon for it to be implemented. Personally, I don’t mind. The red pencil and paper ballot is about the safest method to use anyway: the most difficult to commit any subtle fraud with. Sure, ballot stuffing is still a possibility but as long as the system is reasonably honest, this will be much more noticable than altering computer records…
Bos want smaller, safer Dutch banks
Fucking rich coming from the man who allowed the takeover of ABN-Amro which laid bare the weaknesses of the overextended Dutch banking system. When he had the opportunity to do something to stop the rot, he declined to take action. What’s more, even now he may say he wants smaller banks, but the takeover of ABN-Amro by Fortis is still going ahead. Surely that would be the first thing to stop if he really meant what he said?
The problem with Wouter Bos is that he’s a product of the same system he supposedly wants to reform, a minister for a social democratic party who before he went into politics fulltime worked for decades at Shell in various management and consultant positions. Of course any social democratic principles his party adhered to had been long ago been abandonded under the previous party leaders, most notably Wim Kok, who had urged his members to “let go of the social democratic plumage” (prompting the Socialist Party to later remark that “it can get cold without feathers”). Other than some platitudes about “equal opportunities” and the like the PvdA has long since resigned itself to the status quo and in time has become just as much a supporter of it as the liberal or christian-democratic parties. It is therefore not suprising that despite their presence in the current Dutch government, it is ill-suited to handle the crisis. there has been some tough talka bout bankers taking their responsibilities and anger about their bonuses, but any real measures to radically change the system are not even considered. It’s subsidies for banks, some halfhearted measures to alleviate the pain in other sectors and budget cuts or tax hikes for everything else.
Blame Wouter Bos
John Lanchester has written yet another brilliant article on the financial crisis for the London Review of Books. Much of the article deals with the RBS and how its takeover of ABN Amro led to disaster:
The consortium’s plan was to split ABN Amro up, with RBS getting the Anglo-American and wholesale parts of the business, Fortis the Belgo-Dutch, and Banco Santander the South American. It wasn’t in principle a ridiculous scheme, but the problem was the price. Most of what has been written about the financial crisis is pure hindsight, but not this: many observers thought that the winning consortium had overpaid. The consortium won their takeover on 10 October 2007; by April 2008, RBS was going to the markets to raise more capital, to cover losses from the deal; by July 2008, Fortis had lost two-thirds of its value and its CEO, Jean-Paul Votron, had resigned; on 28 September, Fortis was part-nationalised by the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourgeois governments. We’ve already read what happened to RBS. So within months, the ABN Amro takeover destroyed RBS and Fortis and what was left of ABN Amro itself. Along with the AOL-Time Warner merger and the Daimler-Chrysler merger, the ABN Amro takeover is one of the biggest flops in corporate history.
There’s one person who could’ve avoided this mess, but didn’t, whose role in the whole debacle has never been fully acknowledged, not by the media and certainly not by him: the Dutch finance minister, Wouter Bos. Had he vetoed the takeover, or the earlier Barclays bid, ABN Amro, Fortis, Barclays and RBS would’ve been in much better shape now, perhaps not have needed the Dutch and British state to bail them out.