Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
Despite living for more than half of my life in The Netherlands, I still follow events in the UK closely. And recent events, such as the sudden proliferation of St. George’s flags and the far right march in London have proved both unsettling and depressing to me.
Chris Grey, as usual, provides an excellent analysis of what seems to be happening in the UK – I urge you to read it.
Like my father before me, I’ve been a Labour supporter all my life, but now I fear that the UK Labour Party has lost its way. These are not terrorists, but people protesting against the genocide in Gaza.
I would like to think that Marina Hyde’s withering contempt would actually count for something, but to a person with no apparent morals whatsoever, it clearly won’t..
I nominate Francesca Albanese for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. She deserves it. To award it to Trump would be an utter travesty.
Should Trump be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – Matt Green has the answer…
Professor Marci Shore explained in a video Opinion Piece for the New York Times why she was leaving the US to teach in the Canadian University of Toronto:
The lesson of 1933 is – you get out sooner rather than later
What might have seemed hyperbole at the time of the video’s making seems to be becoming more grounded in the reality of events in the US. She expands on her views in this interview in today’s Guardian. Required reading, I would suggest…
Techzine reports that Microsoft has blocked the email account of the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor.
This is an extremely worrying development and shows up the risks of European governments relying on Microsoft’s infrastructure services. Trump’s baleful influence comes in many forms.
Carole Cadwalladr’s prediction of a digital coup would seem to be spot on.
Addendum: John Naughton’s article on the whole affair is worth reading – he may well be the canary in the coalmine of what is to come.
Yesterday, 100,000 people gathered together in The Hague to protest against the Dutch Government’s refusal to “draw a red line” in its relations with Israel.
The furthest that Premier Schoof has dared to go up until now was to say that he found Israel’s activities in Gaza “zorgelijk” (worrying). Clearly that has not bothered Netanyahu one tiny little bit.
Whether yesterday’s demonstration will have any effect on Schoof remains to be seen.
The death of Pope Francis is a loss to the world. He was a radically different Pope to the authoritarian Pope Benedict and brought compassion to the papacy.
He was not afraid to speak truth to political power and clearly viewed Trump as a force for evil, decrying Trump’s deportations of migrants. He wrote, in an open letter to American bishops, that he had “followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” adding that any policy built on force “begins badly and will end badly.”
So now the process of choosing his successor begins. As an atheist, I obviously have no skin in this game, but I would hope that his successor will carry the torch of Pope Francis’s moral authority forward and not be a Pope that returns to the attitudes of Benedict.
Carole Cadwalladr has a warning for us all…
Addendum 21 April 2025: And in this piece for the Observer newspaper, Carole gives the backstory to that TED talk. It’s worth reading, but depressing in that, once again, it shows that AI is being driven by Careless People*.
*From the Great Gatsby:
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
That’s the title of the book written by the novelist, poet and human rights activist Victoria Amelina. It has the subtitle: A War and Justice Diary.
Reading it is a sobering experience. She documented the war waged by Putin’s Russia on Ukraine, photographing the ruins of civilian buildings and recording testimonies of survivors and those who eye witnessed Russian war crimes.
She became the chronicler of women such as Evhenia Zakrevska, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, and Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes. The Center for Civil Liberties was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
Victoria Amelina was only 37 when she died in the evening of the 1st of July 2023 from injuries sustained in a Russian missile attack.
The book was incomplete at the time of her death, but has been published by her editors to include her notes and field reports. The Foreword is by Margaret Atwood and contains this judgement on the war:
In this war, Russia is fighting for greed – more territory, more material resources – but Ukraine is fighting for its life; not only its life as a country, but the lives of the citizens of that country, for there is little doubt about what the outcome of a Russian win would be for Ukrainians.
The massacres, the wholesale pillaging, the rapes, the summary executions, the starvation, the child stealing, and the purges do not need to be imagined, for they have happened before. Russians claim to be the “brothers” of Ukrainians, but Ukrainians reject the kinship. Who needs a “brother” who is a homicidal psychopath and is trying to kill you?
Looking at the events, this is totally understandable but it could have been so different without Putin whipping up the psychosis. As Alexei Navalny (who identified as half Russian and half Ukrainian) said when asked whether he identified more as Russian or Ukrainian, “It was like being asked who you loved more, your mother or your father.”.
Read the book, it is a powerful document.
It seems as though the Jerry Springer Show found a new home in the Oval Office of the White House yesterday. Truly shocking and disgusting scenes of Trump and Vance berating Zelensky. Trump is increasingly behaving like a mafia boss, rather than a President, with Vance as his lieutenant.
It’s increasingly clear that Trump and Putin are chums, and that Europe is out in the cold as far as they are concerned. The office of the Leader of the Free World is empty.
As David Smith writes in the Guardian: Diplomacy Dies On Live TV.
And the analysis by Andrew Roth of how these events have been orchestrated to set up Zelensky as the fall guy is worth reading as well.
I’m beginning to feel as though I’m trapped in a version of Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life” with Trump cast in the role of Anthony Fremont – the three-year old child with godlike powers who is destroying everyone around him.
The difference being that Anthony is a child who knows no better, whereas Trump is a sullen, resentful old man who is fully aware of the deliberate chaos he is sowing.
The Observer asked a question in its recent editorial on Alexei Navalny:
When Trump calls Putin a “genius” who exhibits great “common sense”, does he understand – does he care – that he is dealing with a ruthless killer?
The answer, clearly, is that Trump couldn’t give a damn about other people, he cares only about himself.
Today it is one year since Alexei Navalny died in a Russian Penal Colony. By coincidence, last night I finished reading his memoir: Patriot. It is an extraordinary book and terrifying as an insight into the Putin machine. Navalny is a great loss to Russia, and to humanity, killed by a system run by a thug.
The Observer has an editorial today describing Navalny as “Principled, charismatic and humorous, the murdered Russian opposition leader was everything Vladimir Putin is not”. It is worth reading and ends on a particularly chilling note:
When Trump calls Putin a “genius” who exhibits great “common sense”, does he understand – does he care – that he is dealing with a ruthless killer? When, shattering the western consensus that Putin is an aggressor to be repulsed at all costs, Trump proposes a chummy tete-a-tete on Ukraine, does he have any idea how he is manipulated by this cynical ex-KGB thug? Does JD Vance, Trump’s ignorant vice-president, realise what a dangerous game he plays when he flirts with Europe’s pro-Putin neofascist far right? It seems not. Navalny would put them straight. Except he’s dead.
This week, Marianne Edgar Budde, the bishop of Washington delivered a sermon in front of President Trump urging him to show mercy towards LGBTQ+ and migrant communities. The president condemned it as ‘nasty’.
I’m not a Christian, just an atheist by nature, but it’s a very good sermon. It speaks truth to power. No wonder Donald Trump hated it and described her tone as “nasty”. The fault lies with you, Donald.
Marina Hyde sums up yesterday’s events better than I can. Read it and despair.
And if you prefer to follow a blow-by-blow account, David Smith has that for you as well.
So Mark Zuckerberg has just announced that he will be getting rid of all his factcheckers on Facebook and joining Elon Musk on the race to the bottom in social media. He’s clearly kissed Trump’s ring.
To reuse a particularly powerful turn of phrase: “they are swirling in a human cesspit of their own making”…
As Chris Stokel-Walker writes:
This is an extinction-level event for the idea of objective truth on social media – an organism that was already on life support, but was clinging on in part because Meta was willing to fund independent factchecking organisations in order to try to maintain some element of honest fact, free from political bias. Night is day. Up is down. Meta is X. Mark Zuckerberg is Elon Musk. Buckle in for a turbulent, vitriolic, and fact-free four years online.
The events in Amsterdam last week have led to a stormy debate in the Dutch parliament and an apparently equally stormy cabinet meeting. As a result, the deputy finance minister, Nora Achahbar, handed in her resignation yesterday. She wrote in her resignation letter that:
The polarising interactions of the past weeks made such an impact on me that I am no longer able to effectively carry out my duties as deputy minister.
There was speculation that other members of her party in the coalition cabinet might follow suit. It resulted in a five-hour crisis meeting of Dick Schoof, the premier, and his coalition partners. The outcome was that his Cabinet will continue, but I note that he said that the junior minister’s resignation:
“came unexpectedly and impacted me and other cabinet members”
Adding:
“there has never been any racism in my government or in the coalition parties”.
Pull the other one – it’s got bells on. You’ve got people such as Faber, Klever and Keijzer in your government who spout the same rhetoric as Wilders…
There’s an opinion piece in today’s Volkskrant where the writer says that they are unlucky to have a PM who gives the impression of bowing to Wilders before getting his marching orders for the day… More than a grain of truth in that, methinks.
Addendum 19 November 2024:
And now, two more party members of the NSC (one of the four parties in the coalition government) have resigned. Rosanne Hertzberger and Femke Zeedijk have had enough. Hertzberger said:
“Completely inappropriate statements are being made, both in front of and behind the scenes of this government. Basic standards of decency, civility, manners – how you speak about colleagues, how you speak about the Dutch – are being violated.”
The coarsening of politics gathers apace, and it seems to be worldwide, with pied piper-in-chief Trump leading the pack. Wilders is not far behind and now it seems as though Yesilgöz and van der Plas are following the piper as well.
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