I was born on the Isle of Man and grew up there. Fortunately, I was able to leave it and have a full life elsewhere. Not everyone was able to do that.
This documentary hits me hard and the final words are very powerful.
Category: Society
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A Force For Good
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.
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A Digital Coup
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.
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RIP Alexei Navalny
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.
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A Sermon For The Age
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.
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A Grain of Rice
Remember the old story about the grain of rice and the chessboard? Here’s a modern day take on it used to illustrate the disparity of wealth in the US. Do watch it.
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Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here…
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.
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What Really Happened in Amsterdam?
The recent riots in Amsterdam are being treated by the media and the Dutch Government as antisemitic. Wilders, in particular is doubling down on this. Frankly, what I saw was football hooliganism turned up to 11 by external events. This was not a “pogrom”, this was a riot – on both sides. And for the mainstream media (and Wilders) to cast it in purely antisemitic terms is both damaging and immoral.
Addendum 15 November 2024:
Here’s a balanced report on the events from The Guardian; however, the damage has been done and Wilders must be delighted as a result…
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Going To Hell In A Handbasket
The news that Donald Trump, a convicted felon and sower of hate, is to become the next US President is beyond depressing to me. As far as I can see, it means nothing but bad news on many fronts for the next four years. Only the Musks of this world will benefit, the rest of us are likely to be heading to Hell in a handbasket.
Many years ago, I had a T-shirt made for myself that bore the text: “Never underestimate the power of large groups of stupid people”. I should have kept it.
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A Fact Of Life?
The US vice-presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, recently accepted shootings in US schools as “a fact of life“.
Along these lines, the sociologist Kieran Healy made some observations on the rituals of childhood back in 2019. I found his observations quite prescient and chilling, and they immediately put me in mind of Shirley Jackson’s short story: “The Lottery“, except his observations are not a work of fiction.
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As Certain As Death And Taxes…
“I’m fairly confident that our institutions will hold and we will show once again that we have a resilient democracy in 2024” – well, I’m not confident at all, at all. If he loses, Trump will declare the results invalid. It’s as certain as death and taxes.
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A Bumpy Ride Indeed…
When the policy document of the new coalition government in the Netherlands was published a month ago, I predicted that we would be in for a bumpy ride.
Now that names are being put to the Cabinet posts, my prediction is becoming a dead certainty.
The first bump in the road was happily experienced by Wilders himself. He had proposed his PVV party member Gidi Markuszower for the post of Minister of Asylum and Migration, but the Dutch Security Service has said that Markuszower has failed his security check, and so Wilders has had to withdraw his nomination and has proposed an alternative candidate.
Markuszower, by his past public pronouncements, comes across as a particularly nasty piece of work who views those seeking asylum as merely “fortune seekers” and has held forth tirades against them in parliament e.g. the “ordinary Dutch man and woman” is being “replaced” by asylum seekers and that the current policy on asylum is “a crime against the people” and those responsible for it must face a parliamentary tribunal. He is on record as saying:
‘Het is walgelijk dat Nederlanders door de eigen overheid worden vertrapt, maar dat gelukszoekers uit Afrika en achterlijke Midden-Oosterse zandbaklanden door diezelfde overheid worden vertroeteld.’
‘De jungle van Afrika komt massaal hiernaartoe.’
‘We hebben te maken met roedels van zogenaamde ‘bontkraagjes’, groepen van jongeren die hier eigenlijk niet thuishoren.’
‘Ze trappen op het hoofd en beuken en rossen door. Hun slachtoffers kiezen ze zorgvuldig uit, vaak Nederlandse kinderen dus, die hier wél thuishoren. Nederland is van ons, maar de straat is inmiddels van hen. Dit is gewelddadig racisme, waarbij autochtone jongeren in elkaar worden gemept door allochtoon tuig.’
In translation:
“It is disgusting that Dutch people are trampled on by their own government, but that fortune seekers from Africa and backward Middle Eastern sandbox countries are pampered by the same government.”
“The jungles of Africa are coming here en masse.”
“We are dealing with packs of so-called ‘fur collars’ [a derogatory term for male youngsters of supposed Moroccan background], groups of young people who do not actually belong here.”
‘They kick on the head and keep pounding and pounding. They carefully choose their victims, often Dutch children, who do belong here. The Netherlands is ours, but the street is now theirs. This is violent racism, where native young people are beaten up by immigrant scum.’
Wilders has now proposed Marjolein Faber for the post, and she’s not much of an improvement in my eyes: in the First Chamber (the Senate) she has accused the current cabinet of treason because of their policies on mass immigration.
Then we have gems such as Reinette Klever who is to be the Minister for Foreign Trade and Foreign Aid. Presumably she’s been chosen because she wants to scrap all Foreign Aid. She’s written that asylum seekers bring “TB, hepatitus, polio, cholera, typhoid and other exotic diseases with them”. She left politics in 2017 to work in her husband’s business, but then since 2022 has popped up as a TV-commentator in the broadcaster Ongehoord Nederland (Unheard Netherlands) – the Dutch equivalent of Fox News or GB News – so you can imagine what that’s like…
Wilders claims that:
‘Nederland moet een land worden waar u zich weer thuis voelt, een land waar u een goede boterham verdient zonder te veel belasting te betalen, een land waar u ’s avonds veilig over straat kunt zonder beroofd te worden, een land waar de ouderen en de gehandicapten het goed hebben.’
‘The Netherlands must become a country where you feel at home again, a country where you earn a good living without paying too much tax, a country where you can walk safely on the streets at night without being robbed, a country where the elderly and the disabled are doing well.’
Laudable aims, Mr. Wilders, but the end does not justify your means to achieve it.
The real giveaway is that phrase “where you feel at home again” – in other words, white, Christian, and not from any other ethnic or religious background or country. As I said last month: this is not in my name, Mr. Wilders.
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Victim
With the news that Iraq has passed a bill making same-sex relations punishable by jail sentences of up to 15 years, it reminded me that jail sentences would have been applicable to me in the UK not so very long ago, and certainly in the Isle of Man where I grew up and entered adulthood.
The 1961 film Victim was very probably influential in leading to a change in British law in 1967. Same-sex relations were not decriminalised in the Isle of Man until 1992.
Matt Baume gives an excellent exposition on how courageous and influential the makers and actors of that film were.
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The UK Home Office Strikes Again
A woman is facing deportation, and being separated from her husband and 10-year-old son, despite a court ruling that the family has the right to live together in the UK. Full story here in The Guardian.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “All visa applications are carefully considered on their individual merits, on the basis of the evidence provided and in accordance with the immigration rules. It is longstanding government policy that we do not routinely comment on individual cases.”
Because if you did comment on individual cases you would be demonstrating here that you haven’t a fucking leg to stand on you heartless bastard.
Shameful and they are deaf dumb and blind to rationality. They clearly have no empathy with the people who are in anguish because of being cast into limbo.
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The Rise of the Far Right
An excellent piece by Lewis Goodall.
I feel very uneasy about developments at the moment. It’s as though Dutch society is like the frog sitting in water that is slowly being brought to boiling point.
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The Zone of Interest
I want to see this, even though I know it will be stressful. As Jonathan Glazer says: ” I think something in me is aware – and fearful – that these things are on the rise again with the growth of rightwing populism everywhere. The road that so many people took is a few steps away. It is always just a few steps away.”
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The End of Tolerance?
When I first came to the Netherlands in 1983, the country had a reputation for tolerance, an openness and a “live and let live” attitude to life. Over the years, attitudes have hardened and polarisation increased to the point where I scarcely recognise the country I first encountered.
We’ve just had a general election, and to my utter dismay, the far-right populist party of Geert Wilders has gained the most seats in the Dutch parliament. This is the man who has called Moroccans “scum” and whose manifesto proposes a ban on Islamic schools, mosques and the Qur’an, a ban on the wearing of headscarves in government buildings, and tight immigration and border controls. These include restoring Dutch border controls, detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, and reintroducing work permits for intra-EU workers. He is no supporter of the EU. The icing on the cake is that he appears to also be a climate change denier who ignores climate problems.
It remains to be seen whether he can persuade other parties to join him and form a coalition government with sufficient majority to govern. If he does, then it will be a right-wing coalition. The future does not look bright for tolerance and social solidarity in the Netherlands.
I despair.
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The Rise of AI
I blogged about Microsoft’s Copilot recently, and I had the comment that this AI technology was “exciting”.
I’m more of the opinion that it (AI in general) is “concerning”. A) because of its limitations leading to false impressions and conclusions, b) because of the fact that it can be so readily abused, and c) because it could pose an existential threat and destroy the concept of trust as we know it.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 