Wintertijd

Israel will boycott World Conference Against Racism?

This is funny. But not ha-ha funny.

Tzipi Livni has stated Israel will boycott the UN world conference against racism in Geneva next year because the conference would be an "Anti-Israel tribunal" and it would incite to hatred. Get this. An anti-racism conference that incites to hatred.

In the mean time 1.2 million citizens of the state of Israel are de facto second rate citizens simply because they are not Jewish.

In the mean time Israel has no constitution that protects the rights and equality of *all* of it's citizens.

In the mean time there are Arabic cities and towns in Israel that do not have a closed sewer system because the Israeli federal government will not give them one.

In the mean time, 1.2 million people are taxed, but not represented, myself included.

In the mean time, every non-Jewish or non-Israeli will be profiled, humiliated and treated like garbage every time you try to fly in and out of the country while Jewish Israelis whizz past you.

Forget the Palestinians. What about Non-Jewish Israelis? I think it is preposterous that Tzipi Livni has the gall to say these things. Because as long as there is no constitution I will say that Israel is indeed an Apartheids-regime.

The thing that really pisses me off is that countries like Canada, The Netherlands, The United States, The United Kingdom and France actually legitimize this complaint of Israel by also boycotting that conference out of solidarity, while heaven knows that Israel, the Netherlands and The United States would benefit from a few more Anti-Racism conferences.

It's a fucking outrage. Tzipi Livni can suck my over-taxed, under-represented, Israel-residing non-Jewish dick.

Excuse me my language.

Stoopid monkeys...

Why is the American Presidential campaign so utterly devoid of actual content about policy?

This whole period's debate has been dominated by:
- Obama is a Muslim
- McCain has experience
- We're good men, vote for us
- Joe the Plumber
- I see Russia from the porch
- Fruit Flies in Paris are silly

To cut a long story short, the closest to information about actual topics of policy has come from the Democrat's side, but all in all it's a disgrace, this campaign.

Iraq.

The Dutch newscaster RTL is suing the Dutch government for not opening the files that contain the minutes of the cabinet meeting surrounding the (surprising) Dutch government's support for the Iraq war. And I think they're right. The whole country is against this war, but still "we" decided to send the Royal Marine Corps there, as well as to Afghanistan. This has led to a crisis, because ever since that decision no one has wanted to join the army, causing a debate on re-introducing the draft.

Now if I look at the presidential debates and I see people like Letterman actually lose it in their show because they're vehemently against the occupation of Iraq, it warms my heart in one way. In another way it saddens me greatly when I see Letterman talk about "Americans getting killed" senselessly. The reason I'm sad and ashamed about that is that every one talks about the military death toll in Iraq.

If you Google "iraq death toll", most news sources on the internet quote numbers of ~4.500 military deaths and some 30.000 wounded, most of which are American casualties. But nobody seems to be talking about the good people of Iraq itself. They low-ball the numbers. Bush claimed 30.000 civilians got killed, some numbers say 150.000, but at the end of the day I don't buy it, because every time you read the newspapers you see two Americans getting killed versus ~10 - ~20 Iraqis in any given operation or clash.

Now in October 2006 The Washington Post published numbers from a study that was conducted by American and Iraqi epidemiologists that said a whopping 655.000 Iraqis have gotten killed. Roughly 610.000 of whom were killed by violence and 45.000 by the outbreak of various diseases. Think about it. This is more than two years ago, so if you see the escalation in sectarian violence, suicide bombings, raids and the socio-economic state of the country by now, it wouldn't surprise me if we were up in the 800.000's.

According to the CIA factbook there are currently an estimated 28,221,180 Iraqis. This number is also quoted in other sources across the net, so by the current numbers this would put the death toll at a whopping 2.8% of the total population. By contrast, the US lost 0.0013% of its population in this war. This is what you get when a 400 pound gorilla decides to pick a fight with a lemur.

These numbers don't strike me as implausible at all. Yet everyone in the States is up in arms about "our boys". So let me get this straight: In 6 years of war, fewer people were killed in the States than one third of the annual domestic death toll of hand held firearms in the United States. I daresay this war has cost them less casualties than the amount of people dying because they slip on the soap in their bathroom in Wisconsin every year.

In the mean time, and nobody knows really, 800.000 Iraqi civilians were killed. Which is twice the amount of deaths the US attributed to Saddam Hussein's regime. Does that make Bush a bigger murderer than Saddam? Does that make me anti militaristic? I think you know the answer, specially when you realize Saddam Hussein was put in power with the help of the US because they didn't like the turn things were taking in Iran during the Islamic Revolution of 1978 and the ousting of the Shah in April 1979.

Iran, coincidentally, is one of the oldest continuous civilizations on the planet. They've been around since 4000 BC. They are reputed to have invented Algebra, Qanats and wind-mills. They preserved most of what we know of Hellenistic culture and philosophy during the Dark Ages in Europe and are a founding member of the UN. From Wikipedia I learned that Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics is a UNESCO chair in biology. In late 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep by somatic cell nuclear transfer, at the Rouyan research center in Isfahan.

This is a country which according to Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, John McCain and their fans needs to be invaded next. Sarah Palin is the woman who thinks research grants for genetic work on Fruit flies was ridiculous and who thinks that dinosaurs roamed the earth together with humans 6.000 years ago.

Go figure.

Peter Giesen.... back to socialism?

Peter Giesen is the editor of my favourite Dutch newspaper, and recently he wrote a beautiful critique (in Dutch) of the Right-Wing governments we've had since the eighties and certain abhorrent values that are being promoted in today's society. While I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of what he said, I got somewhat upset about the sentence "de islam, die onverenigbaar zou zijn met een moderne, democratische samenleving". In context he said he takes issue with the Right Wing suggestion that Moroccan misbehavior stems from their culture or Islam, which is purported to be incompatible with a modern, democratic society. As a true left-winger, he says we shouldn't be saying that.

But Mr Giesen is preposterously wrong here. Of course Islam is incompatible with a modern, democratic society. And so are Christianity and Judaism. He who reads the scripture will inevitably conclude these religions are based on immoral, inhumane and downright nasty writings. I will not go on to discuss the immorality of the various stories in there, as I don't have enough server space to finish that volume, but my point boils down to this: A psychologist at Tel Aviv university asked 1000 Israeli children if the slaughter of Jericho was morally justifiable. "And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword." "And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein."

68% of the children thought this act of genocide was justifiable because "otherwise the children of Israel would assimilate with the people in the land" and because "the other religion should be stamped out". Notice how assimilation, adaption to the culture of the land you're moving to needs to be avoided at the cost of killing a people? Only 26% thought it was not OK, and 6% had ambivalent feelings. Amongst those that thought it was immoral or a bit of both, there were those who thought it was immoral because of the destruction of the city itself. "Should have kept it standing, it would have been ours."

Apparently Israelis get taught that it's perfectly OK to march into a country, slaughter all who live there, "man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass" as it were, and take the land. This psychological study aptly demonstrates why I do not wish to raise my son in Israel. Now I'm not gonna pick on the Israelis per se. It's well known that Muslims think they can burn Danish embassies and bomb innocent civilians to smithereens, while Christians think they can kill Jews, Musselmen, Witches and native populations of newly discovered lands.

The point of this story is this: Monotheistic faiths typically have a misogynistic and xenophobic world view. "Thy neighbor" in the context of the Old Testament explicitly *only* meant Jews. Maimonides pointed out as much in the 12th century. Similar views are held by Christians and Muslims. Infidels can be slain without punishment. Even if you take it as an "allegory" or "metaphor", it has no place in modern thinking and modern moral philosophy. As Blaise Pascal once said “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction”.

I'm a left winger at heart, and I believe in a multicultural society but I won't soften up on Islam. Or any of the above, for that matter.

Aboutaleb

A Belgian gentleman deemed it necessary to warn against the appointment of Aboutaleb as mayor of Rotterdam on his website. I could jeer many things. I could argue Belgians are naturally pre-disposed towards stupidity, I could argue they haven't had a functional country and government for about a year now and I could argue they should mind their own damn business. But at the core of the matter, De Winter (No relation, thank you) claims three things I would like to react to.

Firstly he's saying that Europe is being "Morocco-nized". The funny thing is that the Turks are being left out of the loop completely, while in countries like Belgium, Germany and Holland, the amount of Turkish people roughly equal the amount of Moroccan people. In Holland, the amount of Moroccans is quite stable. Around 350.000 people are of Moroccan descent, and the amount of third and fourth generation Moroccans that lets go of Islam as a religion is quite staggering, so all in all the amount of people subscribing to "different religions" than Christianity (49%) or Atheism (44%) is on the decline. In the mean time the Catholic Church is becoming more orthodox in nature under the new pope, making them more dangerous than the moderate Muslims in the country.

If you leave all that aside, the stone-cold numbers tell us that there are 34 Million Moroccans on this planet. Most of them are located in Morocco. The migration rate is -0.77 migrants per 1,000 population. At any given time, Morocco sends 26.000 people abroad in any given year. With a world population of 7 billion people, those 26.000 are quite negligible. Holland "gets" 3.44 migrants per 1,000 population per year. That's a 0.3% increase in the population annually due to migration. Given the low birth rate and the aging of the population, I would argue this is a good thing.

The breakdown of foreigners in Holland is as follows: 20% of Holland is not Dutch. 10% of the population are "Western Immigrants" from other EU States and the US and whatnot. 10% are "Non-Western Immigrants" from our former colonies like the Antilles, Suriname, Indonesia and then of course the Turks and the Moroccans. 350.000 Moroccans equals a 2% slice of society, which in turn is only 10% of the total amount of foreigners in the country. To me, this implies that far from *all* of those 26.000 Moroccans that leave Morocco actually end up in Holland and, I'm quite sure, Belgium.

Hence I fail to see the Moroccans as a "Demographic threat".

Now the second aspect of De Winters' statement is that the fact that Aboutaleb became mayor of Rotterdam will "exacerbate the arrogance of Moroccans throughout Europe". I don't think the Moroccans are the most arrogant part of Europe's population. For that we have the French and obviously elitist fascists like Wilders, Haider, Le Pen and De Winter. Aside from that that I think many Moroccans, who are de facto second rate citizens in European countries, could view Aboutaleb's appointment as a beacon of hope. If you assimilate, learn the local language, get educated and work with the system, you, as an immigrant, can reach a position of power. It is living proof that the Constitutional Rights a Dutchman has also work for citizens of foreign origin.

Lastly De Winter goes through great lengths to point out Aboutaleb has dual citizenship. So what? If it's legal it's legal. As long as Aboutaleb does a good job and is the owner of a valid Dutch passport, I don't care what other things he's got going on. Is De Winter herewith suggesting that my son Daniel can never hold a job of significance in the Netherlands because the kid also has an Israeli citizenship and passport? The way I see it, Aboutaleb is not violating the law in any way, and he's not exactly becoming the prime minister either.

If he were to become the nation's leader or the supreme commander of the armed forces in Holland I would indeed argue that he can't morally hold two nationalities, but as Mayor of Rotterdam I see no dangerous conflict of interests. Quite the opposite, Aboutaleb has been quite harsh on misbehaving citizens of Moroccan descent, and he's in a unique position to be just that without getting slandered as a racist.

As a partian shot I would like to react to De Winter mentioning Rotterdam, the Netherlands and "our cities" in one sentence. Coming from a fascist Belgian I find that highly offensive. We have nothing to do with these people. Remember Van Speyk, asshole? "Dan liever de lucht in!". Mind your own business and stay on your own damn side of the border. You're rather less welcome here than the Moroccans. At least they bring good food.

Wilders II

A while ago I wrote a letter to this Dutch politician's e-mail address to indicate that he was making me ashamed of my Dutch citizenship. Now he's done it again. The largest harbour in the World, Rotterdam, has appointed a mayor of Moroccan descent called Ahmed Aboutaleb. Wilders immediately claimed that he should bugger off to Morocco, and that he'll turn Rotterdam into a "Rabat at the river Maas".

Meanwhile, Aboutaleb looks like an intensely competent politician, sharply dressed, good air of character around 'm, while Wilders' thuggish visage is a bit of an embarrasment. Content wise, from what I heard both men reflect the way they look. Quite honestly I am very, very much sorry that Theo van Gogh was killed by an extremist. I really wish they had taken Wilders' ass down instead.

I"m telling you, if a Muslim would ever get rid of that sorry specimen for us, I wouldn't want to call it terrorism. I would call it natural selection, and give the perpetrator a medal in the name of Darwin. Speaking of which, am I the only one that actively rejoices about Jörg Haider, that old bugger of a Nazi, getting sloshed and having the good grace to remove himself from life? I just read 25.000 people gathered to mourn him.

Austria must be a strange country. After Hitler, the Incest man, the Crazy woman who kept her kids in a basement for 10 years and Haider one starts to suspect that strange things are going on in Austria. If I were a foreigner I wouldn't want to go live with the mountain people either. Maybe Holland should have the good grace to deport Wilders and his wife (hihi) to Austria. I'm sure they would have a suitable camp site for 'm.

With him gone, we might start making progress on re-educating these unintelligent, malcontent and somewhat boorish 25% of Dutch society who are interested in what Fortuyn and Wilders have to say in the first place.

Sarah Palin in Rolling Stone

For quite a while I've been enjoying the music reviews at Rolling Stone magazine, but yesterday I found out they also do political commentary in a slightly different style. As seen here, they wrote a truly scathing and "funny but not ha-ha-funny" piece on Sarah Palin's candidacy for VP. I quote:

"Here's what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins "Country First" buttons on his man titties and chants "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.

The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn't that she's totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and horked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: that you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we'll not only thank you for your trouble, we'll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for a few hours around election time.

Democracy doesn't require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in a while, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.

This is a very different thing from shopping, which involves passively letting sitcoms melt your brain all day long and then jumping straight into the TV screen to buy a Southern Style Chicken Sandwich because the slob singing "I'm Lovin' It!" during the commercial break looks just like you. The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn't require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.

And when it comes time to vote, all you have to do is put your Country First — just like that lady on TV who reminds you of your cousin. U-S-A, baby. U-S-A! U-S-A!"

All this does is make me very happy about politics in the Netherlands. The funny thing is that I got to this piece in Rolling Stone by way of a link posted below an opinion piece in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant.

Yom Kippur

This year, like every year, I got very irritated about Yom Kippur. For those unfamiliar with it, it's the day of atonement for sins and transgressions against the 613 Mitzvot and the expansion thereof in Talmudic law. On this day it is not permitted for the observant Jew to light fires, eat, drink, work, enjoy any kind of entertainment or have sex. This is just a subset of the rules surrounding Yom Kippur. Now in Israel, they shut down the nation's TV network, you can't drive and everything is closed. I can't do diddley except hole up in my flat and play video games or go for a walk. But it's not advised to smoke in public, eat in public or even light a barbeque in my own damn back yard because it might displease the neighbors.

This is the crux of the matter. I still can't stand the notion that bearded assholes infringe on my right as a tax payer to drive or even eat in public and, worse, do certain things on my own property on account of their arcane beliefs. Some people that made the mistake of driving on Yom Kippur even got rocks hurled at their ass. Apparently the business of Stoning some poor schmuck *is* kosher on Yom Kippur. The fact that many Israeli's shrug their shoulders with a derisive "then don't do that if you don't want to get stoned" also gets me going because it shows a blatant disregard for the barbaric nature of it all.

Don't get me wrong. I respect Good Friday, Yom Kippur and the Ramadan equally. If people want to fast, abstain from entertainment, or if people don't want to drive or work because of their religious beliefs, fair enough. They can do that in the privacy of their own home and if they're practicing whatever rite they practice in public, I won't raise even so much as an eyebrow as long as it doesn't interfere with my existence too intrusively.

But as soon as we're talking about switching down the nation's TV networks, prohibiting all kinds of activities and forcing their culture upon other-minded people, I get enraged. As if the 1.2 million Arabs in this country should abide by that tradition. Or expats like me, or even secular Jews that think it's an annoyance. It's an outrage, because I strongly feel it's undemocratic, and it really isn't what I'm paying my tax dollar for. Hell, if I were a US resident I'd even point out that it's unconstitutional, and I would try going through the Federal court system to put a stop to it.

Mind you, I feel the same way about legislation that stops shops from opening on Sundays in certain communities in Holland and the fact that Christmas is forced down immigrants' throats in most of the Western World. Now in Israel, there are several people, friends of mine, who think my views are very extreme in their nature. From my perspective, I feel that my views are the product of a liberal humanistic agenda. So what goes? Is what I'm saying extreme? Anyone who has a viewpoint on this has to mail me though. Comments still don't work, because I'm a lazy bastard. Come to think of it, I did have the time to investigate and fix the problem on Yom Kippur but didn't. :-D

On the bright side, kids get to play in the streets. That's cool. We like playing kids.

Daniel

Petah Tiqwa, 24-01-2008, 16.55 GMT+2. Welcome!

Prophets and Epilepsia?

Everyone is making such a big hubbub about Susanne Winter's (no relation) comments on Muhammad. That he would have been a child molester in our system, that he allegedly wrote the Koran while suffering from epileptic attacks. Now the Austrian government is deciding whether that was hate-speech and whether she should go to jail for two years. To be honest, this pisses me off.

Now before I go on, I want to state very, very clearly that I don't like what Susanne Winter stands for. She is a member of a nationalistic party which would like Austria to stay a White, Catholic country for White, Catholic people. And this doesn't fly with me, because I am a flaming liberal who doesn't believe in the notion of race and promotes freedom of movement across the globe.

Having said that, I do think it's an outrage that Susanne Winter is being put under fire in this way for these two comments. First of all, neuro-scientists and brain researchers have indeed found links between religious revelations, apparitions and electrical mis-firing of synapses in the brain. To cut a long story short, it is highly likely that many prophets (including Jewish Jeremiah, Christian Paul and Islamic Muhammad) had epileptic symptoms which are likely to be the cause of their visions. Many more probably had serious personality disorders. This is not "incitement to hate", it is plain likely in the face of current scientific discovery.

The second comment is also likely to be accurate. There is some debate if Muhammad wed this girl when she was six, but then only consummated the marriage at the ripe age of nine. Islamic scholars now want to claim that he married her and consummated the marriage at age fourteen. Either which way you put it, be it six, nine or fourteen, a fifty-plus year old man doing it to a minor makes him a sex offender and the girl a victim. By any modern, western law, Muhammad would have been sent to jail. And what is more, I would argue that this is a good thing. In my eyes, it is not morally just to force such a relationship on a minor.

What then, if at all, should Susanne Winter be attacked for? For her blatant lies about the "demographic threat" the Muslims pose to us. For her failure to realize that it doesn't matter if we have the evil of christianity or the evil of the islam. All organized religion is inherently undemocratic and relatively genocidal in nature. And maybe we should attack her for her redneck approach to immigration. But certainly not for mentioning two things about a prophet that are likely to be perfectly true.

St. Paul was likely brain damaged while he was writing his letters to the Corinthians. Furthermore, he was a woman-hater and probably had a small penis. So who's going to throw me in jail for that statement?

Nazi-Netherlands?

I read an article in the Volkskrant that a semi fascist party would become the second largest party in the Netherlands if elections were held today. This makes me ashamed to be a citizen. Therefore, I have written a letter of complaint to the party-leader of said party, the Partij Voor de Vrijheid as led bij Geert Wilders. The body of this letter is posted below. I wonder if he'll reply or not...

Hallo,

Ik heb net voor het eerst uw verkiezingspamflet gelezen. Ook heb ik de jaarrapporten immigratie van het CBS gelezen. Het laatste punt wat van belang is dat ik al acht jaar in Zweden respektievelijk Israel woon.

U zegt dat de Turken en Marokkanen ons grootste probleem zijn. U wilt meer Lebensraum voor de Echte echte Nederlander. Evengoed zijn er slechts 10% niet-Westerse immigranten in Nederland, waarvan velen uit de Antillen en Suriname komen. De groep Turken en Marrokanen is kleiner dan men ons doet geloven en het aantal beoefenaars van "andere geloven" neemt jaar over jaar af, terwijl juist de vergrijzing van de baby-boomers voor economische problemen zorgt.

Uw partij, met haar nodeloze en on-constructieve racistische doelstellingen, doet mij er voor schamen Nederlander te zijn. Uw partij zou volgens de laatste peilingen groter worden dan de PvdA. Uw partij zet aan tot haat van bepaalde bevolkingsgroepen. Daarmee vind ik uw uitlatingen on-grondwettelijk en eigenlijk on-Nederlands. Nogmaals, het feit dat u mogelijk de tweede partij van Nederland zou worden is een schande, een blamage en een zwarte bladzij in de Nederlandse geschiedenis.

U zou uzelf een dienst doen door op te houden met uw quatsch over Marokanen en Turken. U moest zich schamen. U kon beter de nadruk leggen op de Grondwet. De Grondwet is wat de Nederlandse Staat goeddeels definieert, en daarmee zou ik uw partij niet zo moreel verwerpelijk vinden als u zou stellen dat u af wilt van burgers die zich niet aan die Grondwet willen houden. Waar ze vandaan komen is niet relevant.

Ik vertel mensen hier in Israel dat de Staat der Nederlanden beter in elkaar zit dan Eretz Yisrael. Ik vertel altijd dat onze grondwet iedere burger beschermt, ongeacht ras, afkomst, kleur of religie. Klaarblijkelijk wilt u echter mijn trots op mijn Nederlandse Nationaliteit de grond in boren, en wilt u toe naar een Nederland wat de Moslims ook achter een betonnen afscheiding zet.

Graag zou ik van u horen wat uw gedachten daarbij zijn, en mocht u uw stellingen niet adequaat kunnen verdedigen dan zou ik een geschreven excuus in het Engels op prijs stellen. Uw uitlatingen en de evidente groei van uw partij laten mij er namelijk als een idioot uitzien tegenover mensen in Israël met wie ik de staat der dingen nog wel eens bespreek.

Met vriendelijke groet,

Chris Winter.

Cartoons II

I just got this cartoon mailed to me. Maybe it's old news, but I get a kick out of the message. I may be an Atheist, but I feel the time has come to quote some scripture. :-D As it's said in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 23, verse 23-26:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin,
and have omitted the weightier matters of the law,
judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done,
and not to leave the other undone.

Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter,
but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter,
that the outside of them may be clean also.

Tee hee.

Training Day I

So I got sent to Germany. For two weeks. Since Papa's gotten a brand new bag I needed to be educated in the ways of the backup jedi, which means a two week stay in sunny B?blingen, Germany. For those of you that don't know the town, and I expect there to be many of you out there that really don't, it's a sleepy town in the vicinity of Stuttgart. The most exciting thing they have here is a KFC and a Mercedes factory with a glass parking garage.

Now the South of Germany offers good cuisine, fairly nice weather and I at least speak the language, but still, a country is only as good as the company you have. Most of the guys in the course are support technicians. From Finland, South Africa, Israel, Czech Republic, India, Austria and Germany. Now I've noticed that the further North you go in this list, the less inclined they are to idle talk and social activities.

So today we're in training sessions that get presented by coders. Slovakian coders. Once you get past the accent, you really can't help but notice that in the technical world there are two kind of trainers. Either they don't know shit and are good at presenting stuff, or they really really know their stuff and shouldn't be allowed to interact with humans. Our variety is most certainly of the latter persuasion.

I'm currently looking at a short, bald and stocky man in Tees and Jeans who is standing with his back to the class, looking at slides and mumbling stuff as he goes through his presentation. He constantly has things in his hands, and he plays with them while feverishly looking at the projection screen as though he's pretending we're all not here.

Furthermore he scratches himself. Either on the back or the tummy. Could have been worse though. Could have been scratching his crotch or ass all the time. His head shines. I feel I would like to wipe it off just to break the monotony. At least he knows what he's talking about, and he's open to discussions.

As I ponder what type of drugs they did when they designed the slideshow, I realise it's going to be a long, long fortnight.

Death of Consensus?

Sometimes people still ask me if I live in Sweden "for real", and I invariably answer that I would like to move back to the Netherlands at some point in time. Sometimes, however, I doubt those words, and this week has been such a time.

Once, there was a bit of a bastard. A rotund man of bad complexion with a chain smoking habit and a big mouth about most things. He worked for many publications as a columnist. He left an equal amount of employers after rows and with a sizeable cache of unpublished material due to provocative content. His name was Theo van Gogh, a relative to the well known painter.

This man also made movies. Recently he had made a short film about the inhuman conditions some islamic women face, called "Submission Part 1". He financed it himself and made it with a right wing female politician called Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who also provided the script. A graphic movie about rape and abuse of women under the guise of the Koran.

Of course, this man stepped on a lot of toes in his life. Like said, he was a bit of a bastard sometimes. And making this film seems to have been the drop. The jews had complained about him, the christians had sued him in an EU court for joking about "the rotten fish of Nazareth". It was however a 29 year old fundamentalist Muslim from Marocco that killed him on the doorstep of his home in Amsterdam by first shooting him twice and then making sure with a number of stabs with a knife.

Meanwhile, a right-wing politician split off from his party because it was not right wing enough, and is now an independent agent in the House of Lords. This man, after last week's murder and the cremation of Theo van Gogh, currently would get 18 mandates in the House of Lords. The man is, for all intents and purposes, a fascist bastard in a silk suit.

Since Pim Fortuyn the time-honoured political system has been declining. There used to be a Consensus-democracy called the Poldermodel that made sure all parties got talked to till consensus was reached on policy. Pretty damn slow, but very democratic.

Nowadays that seems quite long ago. The government in place is killing off all social welfare systems under the guise of Norms and Values and with the claim that you have to break eggs to make an omelette, the future of the country being the omelette in this case. Fascists and populists run rampant and achieve frightening popularity. Christian fundamentalist deem the times fit to air their contempt for their Islamic brethren, while fundamentalist Muslims seem to get more violent.

After hearing of Theo van Gogh's murder an artist made a mural with the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" in it. A day later, he was forced to see how the police removed the mural because it was "an incitement to riot". When exactly did "Thou shalt not kill" become a provocative thing to say? Apparantly in Holland it did last week. So we have not only complete madness but also a cowardly type of censorship on our hands.

Would I like to move back? The answer is yes, I do. My blood lies there. But it can't be denied: at present something's rotten in the state of Holland. Theo van Gogh was a provocative and difficult man, but he had strong opinions that he voiced, and he shouldn't have gotten murdered for them. I know it sounds fascist, but I'd almost wish they would round up all fascists, racists, zealots and fundamentalists and flog them to within an inch of their life and then nail 'm to a wall by the bollocks to set an example.

These people are destroying my country.

Mannenbelasting

Namens het Zweedse volk wil ik even iets rectificeren. Gudrun Schyman, Zweden's meest bekende communistische incontinente alcoholist, wordt hier ook niet serieus genomen. Ondanks de onstane publiciteit over het voorstel om een belasting te heffen voor mannen omdat sommigen onder ons vrouwen slaan, is zij nog het meest bekend voor andere politieke hoogstandjes.

De laatste jaren als partijleider kwam ze uit med de bekentenis dat ze alcoholiste is, hetgeen iedereen hier nog niet had gemerkt en dus met hooglopende verbazing ontvangen werd. Daarna, omdat niemand haar geloofde, ging ze een paar maanden naar een rehab-kliniek om vervolgens op weg terug in het vliegtuig zich een stuk in haar kraag te drinken. Daarna heeft ze, om geloofwaardigheid te winnen nog 'ns in de garderobe van het koninklijk theater in Stockholm zitten pissen tijdens de voorstelling.

Dit neemt niet weg dat de door haar geuitte voorstellen altijd vlijtig worden gediscussieerd in Zweden. Hier zijn er een tweetal idee?n aan bod gekomen. Het eerste idee is dat de voorgestelde belasting als positief kan worden verkocht aan veel mannen. Aangezien je belasting betaalt aan de staat en niet aan individuele vrouwen zou je kunnen zeggen dat mannen het recht kopen om alle Zweedse vrouwen te slaan, iets wat de acceptatie van het voorstel zou moeten vergroten.

Een ander idee is dat het voorstel aangenomen wordt, maar dat er dan ook een vrouwenbelasting komt. Deze belasting zou dan de kosten moeten dragen voor het fenomeen dat vrouwen de garderobes van theaters in het land steeds onderzeiken.

Zelf vind ik het gewoon betreurenswaardig en zorgwekkend te ontdekken dat Zweedse politici in feite nog dommere dingen zeggen dan de huidige worp Nederlandse politici. Ik refereer aan de locale CDA die vind dat "immigranten beter kunnen integreren door het uitvoeren van werk dat dicht bij het huishouden ligt", denk aan tuinman, schoonmaker en dergelijke, en een EU-politica die vond dat de EMU niet aangenomen moest worden omdat de Zweedse familie-politiek dan door EU en daarmee de paus bepaald zou gaan worden.

En dan Gudrun zelf die nog een duit in het zakje doet door te zeggen dat de EU maar slecht is omdat het hetzelfde concept is als Nazi-Duitsland.

Rare jongens, die politici.

Seksisme en reclame?

Vandaag zag ik een artikel in de Dagens Nyheter dat me de broek even deed afzakken. "Steeds meer Zweden tegen Seksistische reclame" luidde de kop.

Zweden is een organisatie rijk die de ethiek in de reclame bewaakt. En niet zomaar de algehele ethiek zoals onze eigen Stichting Reclame Code, maar specifiek de "genusdiscriminatie" in de reclame. Oftewel: Feministen aan de zwier. Er is klaarblijkelijk een enorme groei in het aantal aanmeldingen van vrouw- of man-onvriendelijke of stereotype reclame te bespeuren. Alle Zweden zijn het spuugzat, lieve mensen. Die vieze reclame moet eindelijk maar 'ns een halt worden toegeroepen.

Er werd verteld dat ten opzichte van de 180 aanmeldingen in 2002 er een recordaantal aantal aanmeldingen was gedaan in 2003. Hele 357 stuks. Driehonderdzevenenvijftig stuks, U leest het goed, dames en heren. Poe poe. Nou nou. Ik denk niet vaak "sjongejonge, dat zijn wel h??l erg veel aanmeldingen", maar dat waren toch echt wel h??l erg veel aanmeldingen. Ook frappant is dat het een half jaar heeft geduurd voordat het Zweedse volk van deze bijzonder belangrijke tendens op de hoogte werd gebracht. Het is ook zoveel statistiek...

In het artikeltje werd verder nog even gewag gemaakt van ??n van de klagers, een zekere Linda uit Lund. Linda vindt het een bewezen feit dat steeds meer zaken met hulp van seksisme en vrouwen-lichamen worden verkocht. Linda wordt daarna beschreven als een "vlijtige aanmeldster". Dit betekend dus dat achter die 357 aanmeldingen waarschijnlijk zo'n 15 personen staan die dan toch ene ruk om de reclame-uitingen geven van H&M, Van Gils en anderen. Na het bekijken van de website werd ??n en ander me even te veel.

IKEA werd op de vingers getikt omdat ze in een catalogus een meisjeskamer lieten zien in roze en een jongenskamer in blauw en grijs. Jongens werden afgeschilderd als technisch- respectievelijk sport-ge?nteresseerd terwijl meisjes veelal als smink-aanbiddend en muziek-liefhebbend werden gezien. Dit werd dan met veel bombarie als discriminerend en stereotype-bevorderend ervaren. Bah, IKEA. Bah!

De foto hierboven heeft een slogan "Heeft uw facade een lift nodig" en is een reclame voor een schildersbedrijf dat aanbied om gratis langs te komen om je gevel te bezichtigen. Dit vond de stichting dus ook vrouw-onvriendelijk. Gek genoeg waren de nogal porno-achtige reclames van Hennes & Mauritz voor ondergoed wel OK, omdat het functioneel is. Zo was die Money-shot HP reclame die ik eerder fotografeerde niet iets wat gediscussieerd werd, maar een begeleidende tekst in een folder die aangaf dat vrouwen het bedieningsgemak op prijs schatten terwijl mannen de features op prijs stelden werd wel de deur uit gegooid omdat dat denigrerend en discriminerend zou zijn.

Ook studentenverenigingen werden op de vingers getikt vanwege seksistische affiches. Hee. Goh. Tsjee. We hebben het nog steeds over studenten-verenigingen, toch? Sinds wanneer gaan die niet over de schreef eigenlijk? Ik dacht dat dat juist het hele punt van die dingen was. Dat een affische voor een feestje als reclame wordt gezien is nog zo iets. Big Brother is watching me, dus als ik de buren op een BBQ uitnodig moet ik er goed voor zorgen geen naakte karbonade op de poster te zetten teneinde geen vakvereniging voor varkens aan de broek te krijgen.

De poster die ik hier als foto aanbied is zo'n voorbeeld. Er hingen er drie van op Stockholm's campus, en er werd een zaak van gemaakt. Ik vond 'm zelf wel geinig. De afstandsbediening heeft knoppen als "dieet", "eten", "bier", "Pijpen", slikken" en dergelijke. Mijn gevoel voor humor raakt het wel hoor. Dan mogen ze wat mij betreft ook wel een naakte man op die poster zetten. Daar voel ik me als man niet door gekrenkt. Smakeloos? Misschien. Reden voor censuur? Ik vind van niet.

Hoe kleinzielig kan een mens worden eigenlijk? Zul je zien dat die mensen nog met belastinggeld worden betaald ook. Ik heb niets op bewaking van moraal en eer tegen. Absoluut niet. Maar huichelarij en onnodige censuur als gevolg van een totale afwezigheid van humor?

Trouwens,

foto:ANP

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Mobiele-telefoon verbod?

Ze zijn hier bezig met het discussi?ren of we niet 'ns mobiele telefoons moeten verbieden op scholen vanwege het feit dat een aantal jongetjes geprobeerd hebben een aantal meisjes in de douche te fotograferen.

Goh. Gaan we dan ook pen en papier (ze kunnen misschien een naakt-portret tekenen), camera's en netvliezen verbieden? Ach, zodra er een kwajongensstreek wordt uitgehaald krijgen allerlei ambtenaren en politici de notie dat ze toch maar 'ns fluks wetten moeten gaan stichten.

Hetgeen mij brengt tot de Poll van de dag op Dagens Nyheter, het heffen van een straf-belasting op suiker en vet. Jaja. Het wordt toch 'ns tijd naar Nederland terug te verhuizen.

Rare jongens, die Zweden.

Knutby...

Een dominee had een kindermeisje en en vrouw, neukte allebei, iemand heeft iemand anders doodgemaakt (ik geloof de vrouw het kindermeisje...) en daarna is de hel losgebarsten. Er wordt al in geen drie weken over iets anders geschreven. Toch tijd dat de dominee z'n ranzige memoires uitgeeft. De tijd blijkt er rijp voor te zijn.

Kotsmisselijk wordt je van dit soort gezeik. Alleen omdat er geen echte dingen schijnen te gebeuren...

Rare jongens, die krantemakers.

All the king's horses...

H?t nieuws van de dag hier in Zweden is de koning. Die is stout geweest. Op een persconferentie nog wel. Tsk tsk. De konig is namelijk in Brunei geweest. Een staatsbezoek wat onder andere bij de dames en heren Socialisten al de wenkbrauwen doet rijzen, maar buiten dat heeft Zijne Koninklijke Majesteit gezegd dat het hem leek alsof de Sultan goede contacten onderhield met de lokale bevolking, en dat de regering toch wel vrij open is.

Dit heeft algemene consternatie en verontwaardiging van heel Zweden tot gevolg als ik Dagens Nyheter, aftonbladet, en Expressen moet geloven. Er is zelfs sprake van een "Folkstorm". Poeh poeh. Waarom dan? Nou, wij, het volk, zijn tegen Brunei. Dit heeft een drietal hoofdredenen:

De sultan is een dictator. En Democratie is de enige weg volgens wij, het volk van Zweden. Dat ze in Zweden in feite eigenlijk een twee-partijen systeem hebben omdat de "rechterkant" niet met de "linkerkant" wil en zal regeren en andersom, waarbij 50% van de kiesgerechtigden toch bij het vormen van een regering voor gek wordt verklaard, wordt nergens genoemd.

De sultan is rijk en sommige van z'n onderdanen zijn dat niet. Nu is Zweden op dat punt toch nogal behoudend, want als ik als directeur teveel verdien moet altijd de staat ingrijpen omdat het een schandaal is, terwijl grotere problemen nooit worden behandeld. Zodra er in Zweden geen ene dakloze analfabetist meer is terwijl er geen enkele veel te grote tweede stadsjeep in een rijke buurt staat vind ik dat diezelfde mensen die nu een veel te grote stadsjeep hebben een grote bek mogen hebben over de sultan van Brunei.

De sultan censureert dingen en heeft meningen over geloofsuitingen. Zo mogen er geen kerken gebouwd of bijbels ge?mporteerd worden in Brunei. Dat in Zweden op het moment actief gepraat wordt over en verbod op sluiers op scholen, dat de Zweedse staat allerlei zaken censureert, van scenes in films tot advertenties om een happy-hour in de locale kroeg, wordt nergens genoemd. Om nog maar te zwijgen over de genadeloze stroom van propaganda en hersenspoeling over alles van de nadelen van persoonlijke vrijheid tot de werking van verdovende middelen die de gemiddelde burger hier tot zich moet nemen.

Kort en goed wordt ik zo misselijk van dit soort debatten. Het verwordt tot een populistiche media-storm die eigenlijk maar een paar doelen dient. Het glorifi?ren van het Zweedse systeem en het uitsluiten van alternatieven als denkbaar, het verzorgen van media-aandacht voor stoffige academici, aandacht voor de standvastige meningen van politici die nog nooit iets echts gedebatteerd of gepresteerd hebben en natuurlijk het vullen en verkopen van de sensatie-krant.

Het politieke en morele climaat in Zweden is op een aantal punten ziek, stagnant en huichelachtig. Maar daar wordt natuurlijk niet over geschreven. Misschien toch 'ns tijd voor een frisse dictatuur in dit land.

Het stormt...

in m'n omgeving op het moment. E?n van m'n vrienden is samen met een dame waar hij constant ruzie mee heeft, en da's al twee jaar zo, zelfs tot op een niveau dat ie d'r ondanks de liefde het bijltje bij neer wil gooien, een vriend van Lisa heeft er na vier jaar de brui aan gegeven, derden hebben zo hun problemen... Het lijkt wel een epidemie. Het jachtseizoen is geopend.

E?n van de dingen die er gebeuren als je zo een aantal vrienden en bekenden problemen ziet hebben, is dat je gaat nadenken over je eigen situatie. Of liever, Lisa ging dat doen, want ik denk niet zo veel. In ons geval is dit goed, want we zijn bloedgelukkig. Eigenlijk heel erg onrustwekkend, want het is algemeen bekend dat er niets zo saai is dan mensen die bloedgelukkig zijn.

Todat we bij het volgende punt arriveerden: "Wie van m'n vrienden zou jij proberen te versieren als ik er niet meer was?" In Lisa's geval is de keus gevallen op Freddy. En da's een beetje kinky want Freddy is zes jaar jonger en komt uit Noorwegen. Het is haar dus te doen om het feit dat ie d'r goed uit zou zien, een lamsboutje is en Noors spreekt, wat shexhy ish. Maar het kan erger...

Mijn keus viel op een lerares Duits. Van dertig. Hallo? Een lerares Duits? You may kiss me now, Herr Winter!. En het lijkt me nog lekker ook. Sjezus zeg, da's toch wel h?t teken dat ik niet langer tot het land der jongeren behoor. En dat besef doet toch wel een klein beetje pijn ergens.

Tuurlijk, ik kan obscure Lo-Fi platen kopen met vals gitaargejank, ik kan erg gebleekte en kapotte jeans dragen, ik kan op hippe gymschoenen rondlopen, m'n haar in de in Zweden gangbare "indie"-stijl leggen... Maar het helpt allemaal niets. Ik ben verworden tot m'n schoonouders. Fr?ulein Lehrerin houdt tenminste van Bootsy. En funk en zo. Maar het is toch maar een schrale troost.

Kom. Ik ga maar 'ns naar bed. Het is tenslotte al na elven op een Vrijdag avond.

Strange goings on.

Sometimes I ponder the possibility of moving back to the Netherlands. I miss home, I really do. But a growing number of friends are expressing thoughts about the Netherlands I left not being the Netherlands I would move back to anymore.

A quick scan of this morning's newspaper makes me wonder about this... The Volkskrant (registration mandatory) is going on about how the Prime Minister wants to deport 26.000 people who are denied asylum in the Netherlands, while the same day, the Telegraaf is reporting how a lot of the living quarters currently assigned to those that are looking for asylum in this country will be used to give students housing.

Giving students housing in a country that has to deal with a great shortage of living space for students sure is a noble cause, but this coincidence strikes me as funny and sad all at the same time. Are the Netherlands changing?

No they aren't, not really. In the 60's they used Kamp Westerbork, the former WW2 transportation camp for jews and gypsies, to house those that came from the Molukken (?) to seek asylum. Just as sick, but 40 years ago. Strange shit didn't start happening overnight after Pim Fortuyn and the Euro, folks. Get with the program.

In light of that it's uplifting to see that some things *never* change. The Telegraaf supports the advancement of women in society by writing about knitting in today's column. Ladies: Knitting is the new yoga. It will bring you peace, enlightenment *and* will make you the hippest housewife on the block... Unlike divorce, which is made up to be a Pain in the Ass by said paper.

Does that sound like you're reading Susan Faludi's "Backlash: the undeclared war on women" all over again? Jezus what a drag.

Google? Booble?

Volgens een artikel in de Volkskrant (registratie verplicht) is Google boos op de porno zoekmotor Booble omdat ze google's copyright op de frase en het uiterlijk schenden.

Als ze die rare rechtzaak niet waren begonnen, had ik nooit geweten dat booble bestond. Over jezelf in de voeten schieten gesproken, zeg.

Rare jongens, die google.