- The Westminster child abuse ‘coverup’: how much did MPs know? | Politics | The Guardian – Another day, another set of shocking headlines about allegations of historical child abuse and high-level coverups, this time a dossier being handed over by the Metropolitan police themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to examine 14 allegations of Scotland Yard’s own complicity in the alleged coverup of a high-level paedophile ring.
- On the “dispute” between radical feminism and trans people – In a world where left-wing politics has often derided LGBT identities as “bourgeois” and then accused us of splitting the movement, it infuriates me that I’ve had to take a break from writing a piece on the Tories’ “liberation” of the NHS to write 8,500 words to debunk a sexological concept that was shown to be untenable before the start of the First World War.
- Featured news – Skeletons uncovered at Ipplepen reveals major Roman cemetery – University of Exeter – The significance of the discovery took on further importance when one of the skeletons was found to date from around 250 to 350 years after the Roman period, an era often referred to as the ‘dark ages’. These discoveries are of both national and regional value in providing a glimpse into Romano-British life and how the settlement continued into post-Roman times.
- Minister-President over discriminatie: oplossing ligt bij slachtoffers – "Eén van de dingen die ik [van leerlingen] leer, is hoe ingrijpend discriminatie is. Dat het in Nederland nog veel voorkomt en het echt uitmaakt of je Mohammed of Jan heet als je solliciteert. Ik heb daar over nagedacht en ben tot de conclusie gekomen dat ik dit niet kan oplossen. De paradox is dat de oplossing bij Mohammed ligt. Ik kan tegen Nederland zeggen: ‘discrimineer aub niet, beoordeel iemand op karakter en kennis.’ Maar als het wel gebeurt, heeft Mohammed de keus: afhaken wegens belediging of doorgaan. Nieuwkomers hebben zich altijd moeten aanpassen, en altijd te maken gehad met vooroordelen en discriminatie. Je moet je invechten."
- Who wants to be a millionaire? Peter Oborne on Tony Blair – But Tony Blair has made a fortune. A J P Taylor, in his masterpiece English History 1914-45, noted that Lloyd George was the first prime minister since Walpole to leave office considerably richer than when he entered it. Blair falls into the tradition of Walpole and Lloyd George (though his exploitation of the office of prime minister came after he left Downing Street).
- Malaysian SFF writers and projects: a directory | Zen Cho – I’ve been conscious for a while that I’m no longer able to keep up the list of Malaysian SFF writers in English that I put up awhile ago — because I’m busy, but also because there are more of us than ever! I think it is helpful to have a directory for interested readers and people who want to connect with other local writers, but it needs to be updated regularly if it’s to be of use.
- Google Bullies, Censors MintPress & AntiWar.com Over Abu Ghraib Photos – On March 12 Google AdSense contacted MintPress News threatening to disable our Google Ads if we did not remove gruesome and now infamous photos of American soldiers torturing Iraqis in the Abu Ghraib prison.
- Miwa Hirono: my Home Office hell | Opinion | Times Higher Education – Because of this policy, I am now forced to quit my permanent position at the University of Nottingham after six and a half years of dedication and contribution to the university and to the wider policy and scholarly communities. My family and I will be removed from this country as of next Sunday.
- Student political protest is under threat, not free speech | Comment is free | The Guardian – We are deeply concerned about the letter “We cannot allow individuals to be censored and silenced” on 15 February, which contained serious inaccuracies. For example, neither Kate Smurthwaite nor Germaine Greer were no-platformed; poor ticket sales were a factor in the cancellation of Smurthwaite’s show and Greer’s talk went ahead.
- We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals | letters | World news | The Observer –
- What is Twine? (For Developers) | Liz England –
Articles with the Tag Dutch politics
Undesirable alien
turnabout is fair play. Geert Wilders is denied entrance to the United Kingdom because he’s a threat to public safety:
A far-right Dutch MP whose film linking Islamic texts with the terror attacks on New York sparked protests around the Muslim world was last night banned from entering Britain.
Geert Wilders, who leads the small Dutch Freedom Party, was due to show his controversial 17-minute film at an event in the House of Lords tomorrow, but was informed yesterday by British officials that he would not be allowed to enter the country. The decision sparked an immediate diplomatic row after the Dutch Government pressed Britain to reverse the ban.
Now he knows how it feels to be an undesirable alien. He and his allies are of course squealing like stuck pigs about this outrage but really it’s no different from wanting to limit the number of Antillians coming to the Netherlands even though they’re Dutch citizens, to name just one example. That this has led to a diplomatic row between us and the Brits was predictable, even though we should be ashamed Wilders got elected to our parliament in the first place. Refusing him entry to the UK isn’t an insult to parliament: having him in the Tweede Kamer is an insult to parliament.
A thought experiment
Last Saturday there was a big anti-Wilders demonstration in Amsterdam, which unfortunately had a disappointing turnout, partially due to the weather and partially due to crap organisation and promotion; I only heard about it on sunday. Wilders, as you should know if you’ve been following this blog for any length, is the Islamophobic bigot who has built a political career on stoking fear of and hatred of Muslims, soon to climax in the public showing of his anti-islam movie. He himself denies he’s a racist, that he has anything against Muslims –here largely people of Turkish or Moroccan descent– but that he just dislikes their religion as inherently backwards and evil. As you can imagine this has made him the darling of the sort of people who dislike “Islam” enough not to want Ayaan Hirsi Ali as their spokesperson.
Wilders enjoys the support of a frightingly large part of the Dutch population, not just the kind of racist Lonsdale wearing meatheads you’d think would be suggestable to a good bit of Islamophobia but also various kinds of more respectable people, including not a fair few media people. Free newsrag De Pers (motto: “free but not cheap”) for example can always be counted on to give him or his party a friendly hearing. Not that these people are racists of course, no they’re just frightfully concerned with the problems of integration and fanatical Islamism and if Wilders might be a bit too extreme in his rhetoric, at least he’s addressing these problems.
so some anonymous genius at Saturday’s demonstration had an idea: create a pamphlet with various Wilders soundbytes, but everytime he mentions “Muslims” or Ïslam” replace it with “Jews” or Jewry” and see what happens. The result? He got arrested. Which is odd when the same remarks about Muslims had never gotten Wilders into trouble with the police, despite numerous complaints …
Economic orthodoxy
Last night the eight o’clock news managed to make us happy by revealing that the Dutch economy will indeed feel the hit of the American credit crisis and grow much less this year and next. Less growth, more unemployement, more inflation and higher pices for everything, dogs and cats living together, a veritable smorgasbord of doom and gloom. though the expert on tap did say that the Dutch economy was robust enough to withstand this storm, he did predict dire consequences if wages and benefits kept rising. Which is typical:
- In the economic downturn of 2001-2003 we were told we should tighten our belts to keep our jobs
- Then when the economy started to improve, we were told that wage rises would hurt the recovery
- Then it was Balkende who said that we had to get the sour first before we’d get to the sweet, confusing everybody until we realised it still mean no wage or benefit increases until an unspecified later date
- Then the economy boomed again, unemployement dropped and vacancy upon vacancy went unfullfilled and still wages and benefits could not rise, because that would encourage infaltion and we wouldn’t want that.
- Now the economy is doing slightly less well, mainly through corporate greed and stupidity in the US and of course we cannot have rising wages when prices of everything, including food are going through the roof, because that would hurt the economy and raise inflation and offend the spirits of our ancenstral stockholders.
Meanwhile the idea that companies and stockholders could learn to live with slightly less exuberant profit margins, that’s just insane. No, it’s wage moderation all the way, even if you never catch an economist living on minimum wage. It’s always the workers who have to pay, not the capitalists.
Which is why I was pleasantly surprised by minister of Finance Wouter Bos, when he presented his plans to target top earners more. He wants to put a thirty percent tax rate on socalled golden parachutes and leaving bonuses over 500,000 euro, change the basic tax rate of hedge fund managers to a higher band and a freeze on stock and option packages of CEOs and directors of companies involved in takeovers. These measures in themselves are not that spectacular, no 100 percent income tax bands for millionaires or something like that, but if enacted are a decisive break with a decades old policy of coddling capital.
Voting computers
Somewhat of an old story this, but still important. For some years now there have been doubts about the vulnerability of the voting computers used in Dutch elections which came to a head in last years national elections when several voting districts decided to use the oldfashioned red pencil again. In response a studygroup was set up to look at the whole voting process and recommend ways to make it more transparant. Almost three weeks ago this group gave its recommendation, which the responsible minister followed: to stop using the current voting computers. Instead, the study group recommended using a two stage process. The voter makes their choice using a voting computer which prints their ballot. The ballot is checked by the voter and if everything’s in order, put in the ballot box. Votes are counted electronically using these ballots and Optical Character Recognition technology; if in doubt these ballots can also be handcounted. So for the voter you have the convenience of voting electronically, without the vulnerability that this has, as the computer used by the voter does not record the vote…
Does this sound like something the US can use?