Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: News and politics

  • Reason Prevails…

  • From Frying Pan To Fire?

    A row has broken out around the Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is accused of being economical with the truth when she arrived in The Netherlands seeking asylum in 1992.
     
    The result has been that she has decided not just to step down from the Dutch parliament, but also to move to the US where she will take up a position in the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative thinktank based in Washington.
     
    I confess to having mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I can see why the conservative elements in US politics would want to embrace Hirsi Ali as someone who stands against "islamic facism", and I can see why she might want to leave all the shit she’s been getting in the Netherlands behind. But I can’t help feeling that, if she really is true to her views on women’s and homosexuals’ rights that these will ultimately jar with her new paymasters, and I predict a divorce in the not too distant future.
     
    It’s either that, or she’s just another typical politician, willing to change her views for her own survival. Time will tell.
     
    Update: reactions from various people in Dutch politics. Wiegel’s reaction is a typical smug Dutch pronouncement. I find that sort of attitude irritating beyond belief. He is clearly in the "I’m alright Jack" mode of thinking whilst rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Peter van Ham, however, points in the same direction as my feelings – Hirsi Ali will find strange bedfellows in the AEI.
     
    Update 2: the story is now emerging in the UK press, e.g. The Guardian and The Telegraph. The latter does point out that apparently the fact that Hirsi Ali lied about her background in order to get asylum status "has been common knowledge since September 2002". Still, that’s not going to sav her. Today, the Dutch papers are reporting that the lovely Rita Verdonk, the hard-line Dutch Immigration Minister, is now saying that Hirsi Ali should never have been granted Dutch citizenship in 1997, and therefore it is possible that she will be stripped of her citizenship.

  • Shuffling the Rats

    Simon Hoggart nails it as usual. But the biggest rat of all didn’t get shuffled- he was the one doing the shuffling. There ain’t no justice in the world.

  • The Benefit of the Doubt?

    The latest twist in the Tessa Jowell/David Mills saga is that they have now agreed to a separation. Part of me wants to believe that they had the best of intentions throughout this whole sorry affair, but an ever more vociferous part of me is starting to ask the same questions as Curious Hamster and Nosemonkey.
     
    My father was a politician. He was an honest and honourable man. He hated politics, but thought it was his social duty to do what was right for his fellow human beings. Why is it that his like seem to be as rare as hen’s teeth in today’s world?

  • Manx Voters Getting Younger

    I see that the land of my birth – the Isle of Man – intends to lower the age at which people can vote from 18 to 16. The intention is to attract young people to get involved in politics. Hmm, well good luck to them, it will be interesting to see whether it makes any difference.
     
     The story in the Guardian also comments that this is not the first time that the Island has led the way in democratic reform, it granted the right to vote to women of property back in 1881. I couldn’t help but have a wry smile at that "led the way" line. The Island also kept the birch (corporal punishment for male offenders) well into the 1970s, and kept anti-gay legislation on the books until well into the 1990s. There was a right little hotbed of anti-gay bigots on the Island, and at least one gay man I knew of committed suicide as a result of the poisonous atmosphere there at the time.

  • The European Parliament Debates Homophobia

    Doug Ireland, over at his blog, provides a good summary of the recent debate in the European Parliament on the topic of homophobia. The full text of the resolution adopted by the parliament is here.

  • RIP, Coretta

    Barely three months after the death of Rosa Parks, comes the news that another great light in the US Civil Rights Movement has been extinguished. Coretta Scott King has died.

  • Surely You Jest?

    This has to be a joke, surely? I mean, I know that New Labour has a tenuous grip on reality at times, but please, Mr. Coates, you are pulling our legs, aren’t you?

  • And The Award Goes To…

    The lovely Rita Verdonk, Dutch Minister for Integration and Immigration, won an award last night: the Big Brother award for privacy violations in the Government category for 2005. Couldn’t have gone to a more deserving person, I thought. She’s obviously on a roll, following her idiotic idea concerning how far Dutch should be enforced in public speech on the streets of our fair cities.

  • In The Thick Of It

    Life imitates Art. Although real life politics seems even more morally bankrupt than that portrayed in the TV satire. Why am I not surprised?

  • Noooooo…..

    Please tell me that this won’t happen…

  • A Delicious Irony

    The trial of Leo O’Connor, accused of breaking the Official Secrets Act, has started. The document at the centre of the trial, you may recall, is the record of a meeting between Bush and Blair in which the former is alleged to have suggested the bombing of the al-Jazeera TV station, while the latter is alleged to have suggested that this would not be a good idea.
     
    The Guardian reports today that O’Connor’s lawyer has now read the document and says that "I don’t think there was anything in it that could embarrass the British government". Brilliant. If the alleged contents of the document are true, then he is perfectly accurate. The fact that it confirms that Bush is a few marbles short is not the British government’s fault and is merely a delicious irony.

  • Not Worthy Of Respect

    Whatever happened to "Respect"? No, I don’t mean it in the way Tony Blair means it, I mean whatever happened to that perfectly innocent little word? How come it’s been appropriated by New Labour’s army of management consultants and spin doctors, and turned into some kind of Frankenstein’s monster?
     
    The latest example is the publication of Labour’s Respect Action Plan, an appalling piece of management-speak from beginning to end. What makes it worse is that all the ridiculous verbiage ("Everyone is part of everyone else") has successfully driven out any useful content that might actually be part of a plan of action.
     
    Justin McKeating, over at the Chicken Yoghurt blog, gives the document a fine old fossicking* and fails to come up with any nuggets of value in its 44 pages. Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian today, also blows the plan a well-deserved raspberry. His opening paragraph is a model of well-aimed derision at the mindset of the people that seem to have infiltrated New Labour.
     
    I’ve been watching The Thick of It on TV recently. It’s painfully funny and, judging by the antics of New Labour, painfully accurate.
     
    * To fossick – to search for gold in abandoned claims, or to rummage around for anything of value.

  • Is The Lid Coming Off?

    It would appear that the story that the UK government uses intelligence that has been acquired via torture in Uzbekistan has just been turned up a notch or two higher. Documents in the possession of the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan have been re-published on multiple sites in the blogosphere in an attempt to beat what is allegedly the UK government’s attempts to suppress the information.
     
    Justin McKeating over at The Chicken Yoghurt has a good summary of this story, including the alleged documents, and I recommend reading it.
     
    One thing that caught my eye was a supposed quote from Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary. He apparently said:
    "One of the things that is done with intelligence that comes from liaison partners, obviously an assessment is made about its provenance.
     
    Because it does not follow that if it is extracted under torture, it is automatically untrue. But there is a much higher probability of it being embellished."
    Embellished!? I am appalled that he could choose this word. It means "to add incidents or imaginary accompaniments so as to heighten a narrative". In other words Straw is assuming that the information obtained under torture is basically true. He apparently refuses ever to consider the possibility that the information could be false in every respect. I find that sickening, and morally repugnant.

  • Charles Socarides

    I see that Dr. Socarides died last Sunday. I can’t say I’m sorry – as the obituary says, he inflicted enough pain and suffering on gay and lesbian people in his time, and the organisation he founded (NARTH) continues to do so.

  • The In Terror Bang

    I’m sorry, I know it’s in appalling taste, but the headline just popped into my head when I read this news item. I hope they catch the person that did it.

  • IDiocy Thrown Over The Cliffs Of Dover

    I see that the judge has ruled in the Dover school board case in the US. And has said that Intelligent Design (ID) has no place in the science curriculum. Quite right too. The 139-page ruling from Judge Jones contains some rather direct language as well:
    To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.
     
    The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.
     
    With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.
     
    Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.
    (hat tip to Pharyngula for highlighting the above)
     
    But I fear that the forces of irrationality are not going to retreat into the shadows as a result of this. It’s quite depressing to read some of the comments on the BBC’s Have Your Say bulletin board on this story. All the usual crap is there: "Evolution is ‘just a theory"; "Students need to taught both sides of the story"; "Prove to me that God does not exist", etc. etc. Some folks never bother using the brains that evolution has given them.

  • “Any Policy Will Sometimes Lead To Errors”

    So sayeth the shoe-shopping Secretary of State of the US, Condoleezza Rice. Here’s an example. Do as you would be done by, Ms. Rice.

  • Warning – Kangaroo Ahead

    A motorist in Friesland (part of The Netherlands) collided with a kangaroo yesterday. The kangaroo was killed, and the motorist surprised. Quite what a kangaroo was doing roaming around in Friesland has not yet been established. If there’s more than one, perhaps the authorities ought to be thinking of a Dutch version of the Australian warning sign.

  • XS4ALL: 4, Scientology: 0

    The Dutch Supreme Court has today dismissed all claims brought by the Church of Scientology against XS4ALL and Karin Spaink. This legal case has been going on for 10 years, but finally, justice has been done.