Major pro-Israel giver funds ‘Jihad Watch’ and Wilders' hate-trip to New York

Geller, Wilders, celebrating in LA, 2009

My God, when even the Jerusalem Post is questioning the funding and the motives of the planned 9-11 meeting against the Islamic Center's new premises in Lower Manhattan, why should I refrain then, from mentioning again the scandal of Mr. Geert Wilders' participation in it?

The JP says (September 4) in nits article Major pro-Israel-giver funds ‘Jihad Watch’:

Jihad Watch, the group that is organizing a rally against the planned Islamic center timed for the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 2001 attacks, is funded by Freedom Center, a conservative group based in Los Angeles.

An investigative report appearing on the online version of Politico on Saturday says that it has confirmed that the 'lion's share' of the $920,000 funneled through Freedom Center to Jihad Watch over the last three years originated with Joyce Chernick.

The JP mentions a flurry of US Jewish lobbying- and anti-Islamic groups that have been funded by Chernick and the "Freedom Center".

A number of these groups, including the Investigative Project, the ADL and the ZOA, have positioned themselves as opposed to the Islamic center. Other Jewish groups, led by the Reform movement, have been outspoken in supporting the center.

Jihad Watch, founded by Robert Spencer, has in recent months taken on board Pamela Geller, the New York-based blogger who launched efforts to stop the center's building.

Jihad Watch and Wilders claim that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf would be a "radical" and "being funded" by Islamic fundamentalists.
The funding smear was exposed as utterly ridiculous, when it was revealed that the main Saudi investor in the Center is a major shareholder of hate-mongering Fox News as well. Look at: Amerikaanse Wilders-vrienden schieten in eigen voet! [NL] (comment in Dutch, video in English).

Even if you are a (Sufi!) Muslim who loves your country and its institutions, it seems near to impossible to escape the lies and accusations coming from people like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller:

Rauf has spoken overseas on behalf of the U.S. State Department, under the Obama and Bush administrations, and has described the United States as a nation whose freedoms benefit Muslims.
He also eulogized Daniel Pearl, the Jewish journalist murdered in 2002 by Pakistani Islamists, by saying that such victims demand a response from Muslims that they, too, are Jews.

But the mere fact that Rauf is a Muslim, is enough for the agitators to depict him as a very dangerous foe of the USA. ("The so-called moderate Muslims are the most dangerous" - Ajaan Hirsi Ali)
We understand very well, that Geert Wilders shares those ideas. They are his daily mantra in Holland and Europe. He is going to say things about President Obama at Ground Zero on 9-11, that even Spencer and Geller do not dare to say. That might be the very reason why they pay with money from innocent Jewish contributors for his flight to New York.
The Jerusalem Post concludes with this remark:

The Islamic center's opponents, led by Jihad Watch, have demanded an accounting of the proposed center's donors, although Rauf has of yet barely raised funds for the center.

And YES: Where does the MONEY come from? It will be somewhat difficult for Geert Wilders to support just this one demand. Wilders himself hides in Holland the sources of the funding of his organization, of which he is the one and only member. A political party organized like a mafia: At least, that would be unthinkable under US Law.

But, alas, our hysterical anti-Islam agitators are not afraid of living in paradoxes and incompatibilities.
For they are not held to account by the men and women we elected to protect our state of law.

Which is at this point of time one of the main roots of European and American troubles.

Wertheim: Modern-day Racism: A Mixture That Calls for Some Clarification | Informed Comment

In front of the tsunami of discrimination and hate-mongering against foreigners and their families, that invades Europe here and now, too few are the voices of intellectuals and scientists, who master the courage to say what they know is the truth: Modern-day hate-mongering is following the same road as recent waves of hate, discrimination, pogroms, ethnic cleansing and mass-extermination rode, just before they burst into collective aggression, war and death. 

In Germany, recently, a team of sociologists, historians and media-experts scrupulously researched the stunning parallels between the genesis of European antisemitism after the emancipation of Jews thanks to the French Revolution during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and modern anti-Islamism. I published an authorized summary of it in HUIBSLOG: Antisemitismus und Islamophobie – Neue Feindbilder, alte Muster [DE] in June 2010. In French (and mostly translated into English), similar studies by Olivier Roy: La sainte ignorance. Le temps de la religion sans culture. (2008).


University Of Michigan Professor (History) Juan Cole publishes a Blog (Informed Comment) since 2002. He is a fine expert of the Muslim world, its history and its diversity. Two of his most recent books are here:

Engaging the Muslim World (2009) sets a possible course for the new Obama administration, doing away with the neocon-inspired Bush "war against evil states".

Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (2007) develops a historic parallel between Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Egypt in 1797-99 and the 2003 Bush war against Iraq.

Cole generates a daily stream of posts that deal with the real developments "on the ground" in the Middle East and Asia and intervenes into US debates, learned and less learned, that develop around those issues.

Now and then, Cole publishes a "guest editorial" by another expert. Amsterdam-based retired journalist and writer Anne-Ruth Wertheim develops her father²)'s analysis of the different types of racism here, inspired by the rise of Mr. Wilders' political career, based on discrimination and hate-mongering. Wilders' ideas are racist, in her view. She explains, what mixture of racisme we have to to do with, here.

²) (Prof. Wertheim, Amsterdam University, one of my teachers there during the Sixties)

Ruth Wertheim is announced as follows at Informed Comment (IC):

Anne-Ruth Wertheim is a journalist and the author of various books including De gans eet het brood van de eenden op, mijn kindertijd in een Jappenkamp op Java (The Goose Snatches the Bread from the Ducks, My Childhood in a Japanese Prison Camp on Java, 1994). An Indonesian translation of the book was published in March 2008.She works with the concepts of exploitation/colonial racism (contempt or condescension) and cultural/competition racism (envy and distrust).

Wertheim: Modern-day Racism: A Mixture That Calls for Some Clarification | Informed Comment:
Posted on August 30, 2010

Anne-Ruth Wertheim writes a guest editorial for Informed Comment:

Propagators of modern-day racism, which is often called Islamophobia in an effort to take off the edge, claim that all they are doing is warning people about what they see as the danger of Islam, and that it has nothing to do with racism. But it is a misconception to think that racism only pertains to the physical features people are born with. Throughout history, cultural characteristics that people develop in the course of their lives have also been grounds for maligning and excluding certain groups. The competition racism that mercantile minorities all across the globe have been, and still are, confronted with, as well as the anti-Semitism in pre-WWII Europe, were imbued with cultural prejudices, and never failed to include the item of religion.

Nonetheless it is understandable that people feel confused. Modern-day racism is a mixture of two types of racism, exploitation or colonial racism and cultural or competition racism. Thus, while focusing primarily on a cultural aspect of the group, such as Islam, their religion, there still exists a focus on the group’s physical features. I will try to explain this in my article.

I was born in Indonesia when it was still a Dutch colony. I lived in a beautiful house with my parents and my little brother and sister. Like any child, I looked at the world as something that was just there. There were always Indonesian servants around who were quick to pick up anything I dropped. They would take my dirty clothes and give them back clean and neatly ironed. At breakfast every morning, my mother would sit at the table and talk to Kokki about what she would cook that day, Kokki squatting on the ground as they spoke. And when I was allowed to go along shopping, I would see Chinese proprietors bossing around Indonesians who swept the floors.

My view of the world consisted of three layers, with us white Dutchmen on top, the Indonesians at the bottom, and the Chinese in between.

From one day to the next my view of the world turned upside down when I was seven. World War II was raging in the Pacific and the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies. They set up a cruel regime that was to last for three and a half years and sent us and everyone else who was white to internment camps. We hardly had anything to eat, not much of anything else either, and were kept in line with a show of physical force. Our camp was guarded by Indonesian soldiers who were beaten just as hard by the Japanese as we were, though they were fed a lot better.

Now the Japanese were on top and we were at the bottom with the Indonesians in between.

Halfway through the war, the Japanese, who were allies of Nazi Germany, started to follow its example and separate Jews from non-Jews. My father, who was at an internment camp for men, was Jewish, but my mother, who was with me and my brother and sister at the women’s camp, was not. So we three children were half-Jewish and the Japanese threatened to separate us by force from our mother. To keep that from happening, my mother decided to register as Jewish herself and all four of us went to the Jewish camp together.*

After the war our family returned to the Netherlands and I discovered that my father’s Jewish family had been almost entirely killed and my Jewish grandparents had committed suicide the day the Dutch capitulated to the German army.

Shortly before and during the war, both of my parents were gradually convinced of the legitimacy of the Indonesian people’s struggle for independence. As outsiders among other Dutch people, who still felt and thought in a very colonial way, our family had to endure a lot of aggression, which of course had great impact on me as a high school student.

So by that time I had experienced quite a bit of racism and violence and all kinds of images were tangled up in my mind. It was not until much later that I started to untangle the chaos of images. One of the people I learned from was my father, a sociologist of Southeast Asia, W. F. Wertheim. He drew a distinction between two types of racism:

1. Exploitation or colonial racism towards colonized peoples and blacks during slavery and Apartheid. They were considered stupid and lazy and unable to govern themselves, but good enough to do the heavy labour for the ruling white minority.

2. Competition or cultural racism towards mercantile minorities all across the globe who compete with the established majorities. The Chinese in Indonesia and Jews in pre-WWII Europe were considered sly and cunning and accused of wanting to rule the world.

Continuing in my father’s footsteps, I discovered a shift here in Europe and thus also in the Netherlands. The first guest workers from Turkey and Morocco were confronted with the familiar old-style colonial racism and they were looked down upon. As is witnessed by the numerous references in modern-day racism to the alleged inabilities of immigrants, this tendency to look down on these people is still very much in evidence. But now that their children and grandchildren are better able to compete, the racism is starting to exhibit more elements of competition racism and to focus more on their cultural features. It is turning against Muslims and in essence all non-Western immigrants.

So, at the moment, a shift can be observed from the colonial, exploitation type of racism that focuses on physical features to the cultural type of racism that focuses on cultural features such as religion. Being somewhere in the middle of this shift we now have to do with a mixture which combines elements from both types of racism.

This modern-day mixture is nicely illustrated by the language the extreme right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders uses, slyly intertwining looking down on people with inspiring fear of them.**

In this chart I show exactly where the differences lie between the two types of racism. To start with, they apply to totally different groups. This is directly linked to the kind of work they do and their economic position. In this connection, there is also a difference in the prejudices that are put into circulation. In colonial racism, the prejudices have to do with contempt and disdain and focus mainly on physical features, and in cultural racism they evoke fear and mainly focus on cultural features. The intentions behind the prejudices are completely in line with what they are supposed to justify, in one case exploitation, in the other exclusion.

When I write and talk about these two types of racism, something that always strikes me is how much more familiar the exploitation type of racism is to people than the competition type. Racism that pertains to groups that are forced to do the heavy work and are considered to be stupid and lazy, is widely known, and the human damage caused by colonial and post-colonial procedures is recognized manifold. But the other type of racism that pertains groups that are competitive and for that reason accused of being dangerous and striving for total domination, is amazingly unknown. Nevertheless this last type has also caused and still causes much damage in the world – ranging from pogroms on Chinese mercantile minorities everywhere in Asia, to the expulsion of the Indian- and Pakistani mercantile minority from Uganda, to what happened to the Jews in Europe.

It is also interesting to see what makes people believe in prejudices that they nonetheless prefer to keep to themselves. No one is about to admit how much they like feeling superior to another group. And in our competition-ridden society, envy and jealousy are frowned upon; anyone who has less than someone else has only himself to blame. This capitalistic ideology was aptly stated recently by Dutch right-wing politician Mark Rutte when he sardonically referred to a higher tax for the rich as jealousy tax. So it is no wonder people would rather not admit their envy towards the competitiveness of immigrants and prefer to be carried away by cheerleaders for the fear of Islam.

Lastly, the violence – be it extremely diverse – that accompanies each type of racism. In the case of exploitation racism, only a few rebellious individuals are publicly punished to keep everyone else in their place. The group as a whole, after all, has to remain healthy enough to do the hard work. But the intention of cultural racism is to exterminate an entire group or expel them from the country. History has shown that this kind of mass violence is set in motion once the epithets that really scare people have been uttered long and systematically enough about a specific group. It is not without reason that people who commit these acts of violence so often say that they had no choice, that it was self-defence. And in every case, the outbreak of violence was preceded by a sharper outlining of the group, accompanied by allusions to expulsion, and a stronger emphasis on recognizing members of the group.

With their seemingly purely economic question about the costs of all the non-Western immigrants and their children and their children’s children, the propagators of modern-day racism in the Netherlands recently put a group in the spotlight that everyone can recognize by the colour of their skin. This is going to mean trouble. But there is still time. Time for more and more people to understand the mechanisms that are in motion and opt for a future of peaceful coexistence.

* I tell this story in The Goose Snatches the Bread from the Ducks. My Childhood in a Japanese Prison Camp on the Isle of Java, which can be ordered on DVD or downloaded via this site.

** See This Link to my earlier essay at IC (Wilders' Lethal Words)
----------------------
Anne-Ruth Wertheim beloofde me vandaag een Nederlandse vertaling, die onmiddellijk zal worden opgenomen.
(Update 1/9/10:  NL versie is gepubliceerd in Huibslog: Anne-Ruth Wertheim: Hedendaags racisme, een mengvorm die verheldering verlangt [NL] en in De Lage Landen, plus Krapuul: Nuttig essay van Anne-Ruth Wertheim: Wilders’ koloniaal- en concurrentie-racisme)
Eerdere versies van bovenstaand artikel van Ruth Wertheim verschenen op Republiek Allochtonië en Weblog Anja Meulenbelt.

Urban Legends abour Muslims are a Disaster for the Dutch international Standing (1)

How the Dutch extreme-right wing exploitation of islamophobia is really bad for The Netherlands' international reputation...

Today, three examples of the international echo in English of the actual Dutch obsession with urban legends about Muslims.

1. The US Loonwatch site about Tariq Ramadan.
Ramadan, a Geneva-based Islamic scholar, was engaged by Rotterdam city to teach 'Integration' at the Rotterdam University and to advise the Rotterdam City about how to deal with its immigrants from Islamic countries. Ramadan was controversial at the time of this engagement. The US had banned his entry into the States (2005).

Four years it took the successors of Pim Fortuyn (still an important party in the local council), to find finally a "stick to beat the dog". Tariq Ramadan commented on an Iranian website on Israel. What he said, was not in the least belligerent or out of place. No, the FACT that Ramadan co-operated with an Iranian programme was sufficient. He was sent away by both the local authority and the University.

Tariq Ramadan is a theoretician. Not a civil servant. His family may have ties with the original Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which was an Arabic intellectual movement for modernization of the Islam. The actual fundamentalist Muslim Brothers are in favor of the contrary: Back to the Roots! They are not in favor of Saudi Wahhabism, but (too) often, they link up with it.

The original Muslim Brotherhood took its inspiration from the Enlightenment. The founders were in narrow contact with the European Freemasons. I.e. the people who helped Christianism to become rational and who invented the Separation of State and Religion. Just like the Founders of the United States of America, when they signed the Declaration of Independence.

That is, what I hear, when I listen to Tariq Ramadan. And that is, what I think, should be the message, our Muslim immigrants will have to understand. You can preserve the whole richness of your religion and culture, provided, you become a decent citizen (if you aren't already) of the Western society that is receiving you in its midst.
It can be argued, that Ramadan's message is too intellectual, too abstract, for Moroccan (Berber) farmers from the Rif region, who constitute the bulk of Rotterdam city's Muslim immigrants. That is not Tariq's fault. For their way of thinking and perceiving, there exist other strategies, that may help to calm the problematic relations with the other cultures that are to be found in the City of Rotterdam. The mayor and his aldermen should have thought about that, five years ago.

Like Ajaan Hirsi Ali, ironically, Tariq Ramadan was ousted by the Dutch, to find a refuge in ... the US. While Ajaan was (during the Bush reign) welcomed by the Neocons of the American Enterprise Institute, Ramadan is going to teach at a Catholic University in the Midwest.

The New York Times, today, has an article about President Obama's tranquil way, to engage American Muslims, after their marginalization and the mistrust they are exposed to, due to the Bush demagogy. Engaging Ramadan, is part of it.

It is a shame to the Dutch, that their country, formerly known as a refuge for original thinkers like Spinoza, Descartes, etc., is sending them away now, tarnishing their reputation.

Like Dutch entrepreneurs and tycoons said before (and who are we, to contradict them on this point?): Mr. Wilders and his supporters are doing a big disfavor to the country.
The country they say they love so much more than us, the "cultural relativists" who continue to open up to new and old contributions to our society.

Here is the first one we'd like to show to you:

Posted at loonwatch.com on 16 April 2010: "Tariq Ramadan, “stealth jihadist,” exposed!"

Tariq Ramadan

As you know, Dr. Tariq Ramadan - Muslim scholar, writer, and thinker - has had his visa to enter the country reinstated, and he used this to his advantage: speaking at various engagements across the United States. We here at LoonWatch alerted our fellow citizens of the arrival of the “stealth jihadist,” coining the terminology of Robert Spencer. Yet, we didn’t want to stop just there. We wanted to report on what this man was saying."

Loonwatch.com had a stealth observer at Tariq Ramadan's Chicago annual banquet speech for CAIR.
The man reported that Ramadan concluded his speech with the following dangerous incitement:

His final words were this: Never forget that you Muslims are American. He urged them to speak about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, and do so as Americans, not Muslims. Moreover, Muslims need to institutionalize their presence in America: Muslims need institutions, and they must work with all people. The key is confidence and humility: be confident about your position, but be humble at the same time.

Part 2 and 3 will feature the urban legends that are rocking Holland and Wilders' stealthy way of associating with racist persons and websites.

L.A., May 1st: Spencer and Geller Celebrate St. Geert Wilders, a Loony Prophet from Holland

Pamela Geller* (Atlas Shrugs) and Robert Spencer ** (Jihad Watch), are not the kind of people, Geert Wilders likes to show himself off with. In Europe, that is.
On May 1st, in Los Angeles, he will do, what he avoids doing in Europe: Associate openly with 100% racist loonies, suprematists and war-mongerers.



(Wilders and Pamela, Spencer, Los Angeles, May 2009)

Again. For Wilders' outrageous and hollow hate-speech (I have no time to give you a link) against Muslims, Obama and Liberals in May last year in the same LA, has left his US adorators longing for more. They have produced a one-hour long movie "Islam Rising", featuring Geert Wilders as "the Winston Churchill Of Our Times (Pamela)".
In Europe, Wilders is accepting and cashing passively support, money, adoration, celebration and flattery from nazist, revanchist, ultra-zionist and racist personalities and groups, like

1. the Vlaams Belang (former Dutch-speaking Nazi-associates in Belgium, getting about 20% of the vote in their region),
2. the French Front National of Mr. Le Pen (ultra-nationalist, anti-arabian revanchists, 17% at the last French elections),
3. British and Danish white suprematist groups like SIEO,as well as rightist anti-European movements like UKIP in Britain and a similar party in Denmark,
4. German Nazi-Nostalgics from the NPD, but also "modern" German, Swiss and Austrian racists, who say that they are inspired by the actual Israeli politics, such as the "Politically Incorrect" hate blog and others.

But Wilders NEVER acknowledges their support and, at the same time, NEVER explicitly dissociates himself from those (hidden) anti-semites, either.
He thinks that he can get away with Likud and Israel Beteinu support, for the Dutch feel guilty about the huge number of Jews, carried away 1940-45 from Holland to Auschwitz with the active and passive help from many among them, and they will not dare to discuss Holocaust.
He also thinks, that he can get away with Daniel Pipes, whom he invited as an "expert" to his Dutch hate-mongering trial. In fact, I think, that Wilders is completely dependent on Israeli-US financing of his agitation. That is why, for instance, he announced his solidarity with an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (muslim AND christian) from Palestine, NOT in Dutch Parliament, but in Copenhague, so as to satisfy his Israeli-American sponsorers, without provoking an upsurge among the Dutch, who oppose of course nearly all such an outrage.

 Enjoy (above) the trailer of the Spencer-Geller movie celebrating the clown Wilders!

*) Pamela Geller, the looniest blogger ever, her site and her evaluation at Loonwatch.com
**) Robert Spencer, his site and his evaluation at Loonwatch.com
-----
Please, join us at the LA information campaign, against anti-semitism, against anti-muslimism and against anti-Holland agitation, at a meeting on May 1st in Los Angeles, time and location to be announced soon!

Clinton and Ashton: US-EU Girl Power Made Netanyahu Climb Down

The three "40+ breakthroughs"

• Hillary Clinton spent 40+ minutes on the telephone with Israeli PM Binjamin Netanyahu, making it perfectly clear that, this time, the Obama Administration would not accept "No" for an answer to its demands that Israel puts an end to its provocations.
• In a first show of which impact a united European stand can have on Washington's capacity to effectively change its policies in the Obama way, Catherine Ashton braved Israeli objections and visited Hamas-governed Gaza Strip on a 40+ hours' mission.
• Combined US and European action made the overconfident rightwing Netanyahu-Lieberman Government give in within another 40+ hours.

Israeli Government gives in and works at damage-control
This morning's Guardian brings a first evaluation: Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu in climbdown over US demands for peace.
The key issue of the clash between the US and Israel was the provocatively announced construction of 1.600 Jewish flats in the contested East Jerusalem area. The Guardian:

He [Netanyahu] did not announce, as the US had demanded, a freeze on the construction of Jewish homes in Ramat Shlomo, in East Jerusalem, the key point at issue.
But diplomats in Washington, Moscow and Jerusalem said Netanyahu had given a private promise that there will be a temporary freeze on any new construction. The work, while not cancelled, is to be postponed for several years.

Substantial negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are still far away. But this could be a turning point. The Guardian points out, that:

Obama and Clinton stand to gain from the Israeli retreat, which will heighten their reputation among the Palestinians and in the Arab world. Obama and Clinton were left looking weak after a similar stand-off with Israel last September when peace talks failed to get under way.

The EU as a whole is in an awkward position concerning the Middle East. They have big security interests at stake, much more important than those of the US.
During the G.W.Bush administrations, a divided Europe had to remain powerless at the side-lines, when its vital interests were put in danger by the 2003 Iraq invasion, by the Bush-supported killing of the remains of the Oslo arrangements, by the ill-inspired Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and, last but not least, the Cheney-handcrafted 2008 Georgian disaster (where Israeli "advisers" to the Georgian army played a key role).
A story of exacerbated European divisions
Most of the time, Europe was divided. In 2002/2003, divisions between the Blair-led UK and the other bigger EU powers France and Germany, were even exacerbated, as Blair harangued most fresh Eastern European EU-members and, to a still undisclosed measure, Balkenende's Holland, at the side of the US Neocon Iraq scheme. A lasting European rift was avoided, thanks to the stupidity of US post invasion policies in Iraq, that brought soon striking evidence of the underlying fraud and made it clear, how much the Iraq adventure was and is contrary to every possible European interest.
As part of the big powers' Oslo Quartet, the EU did not weigh much upon the steady dismantling of the two-state solution. As a "useful idiot", the EU furnished and still furnishes, the bulk of the international financial support to the Palestinian Authority, only to see its investments repeatedly destroyed by Israeli bombs (harbour, airport).
And Tony Blair again: As a Quartet appointed facilitator of negotiations in the region, what has he done?

During the 2006 Lebanon invasion, the EU found more of a common stand than before. It helped and helps, thanks to the wisdom of many Lebanese leaders, to maintain a shaky cease-fire at the Northern border of Israel. But proposals by the German Foreign Secretary Fischer, to extend the EU peace operation to areas of conflict between Israel and Palestine, fell on deaf ears.
Another result of the US failures, their pro-Likud stubbornness and their open contempt of the NATO allies, has been, now and then, a revival of outdated particular claims in the Middle East from former European colonizers and mandate-holders. France saw an opportunity, for instance, after the murder of Hariri in Lebanon, to reassert some of its former influence there, as the US hopelessly failed in understanding the particular dynamics of that multicultural society. That did not help to forge a common European stand, either.

Georgia: A turning point in retrospect
But Sarkozy's unique and rapid intervention (as he happened to be president of the EU in 2008) in the Georgian conflict, showed for the first time, that the EU can deal independently with its own interests in the wider region, if it acts quick and undivided.
While Cheney himself was desperately stoking conflict in defeated Tbilissi, France made for the EU an honorable compromise with Moscow that the Bush administration had to bow to.
This was exceptionally possible because of the halfheartedness of the US intrigue in Georgia.
For, in a general way, it is a hard fact, that the EU only can progress in its international security policy, if it is not going against the US and/or Russia's.
A united stand of the EU, even at this moment of the still fledgling Ashton mission, will also influence US and Russian positions, like it seems to me, that has happened now by way of the surprising Gaza initiative of the EU's Ashton.

Let us give the two-girls power a chance!

Obama Health Care Reform is at a Tipping Point. For Europe, too

The historical struggle in Washington about Health Care Reform went mostly under the horizon of the European mainstream press, lastly. 

One understands why. The procedure got stuck, last autumn, in the dark alleyways of US decision-making on the federal level. 
For it is complicated to understand, why a Senate and a House of Representatives, both with a comfortable 50%+ majority of Democrats, cannot agree on a set of arrangements that are, since dozens of years, part of the civilization of most EU countries: Collective insurance, guaranteeing access to health care for every citizen.

Most European countries have adopted a mixed system, where state guarantees and tax measures facilitate commercial insurance companies as well as non-profit co-operatives in providing basic health care to every citizen (and, in many instances: even to non-citizen inhabitants). Paradoxically, Great Britain, champion of privatization, is an exception: It has a completely state-governed NHC system. Even Ms. Margaret Thatcher proved unable to change things there...

What the Obama team is proposing in the United States, is nothing more than a first step into a world, where the 20% not-assured- and the 25% insufficiently protected citizens, will get access to a compulsory (yes!) basic protection against being left behind, when they fall ill. 

The conservative-Democrat and Republican foes of the Reform, are divided as for their motives:

• loss of profit for private insurance companies (representatives sponsored by insurance comps and medicine producers)
• too much state (federal) intrusion into private citizen responsibilities (libertarians and their ilk)
• angst for state constraint on decisions on life and death, on abortion and on church-prohibited matters - imagining local "death committees", repayment of abortion charges, advantages for illegal immigrants and making God-abiding citizens pay for other people's sins while caring AIDS patients, for instance (here we find the fundamental Christian Right together with the Libertarians).

President Obama is not only a fine expert of the American Constitution and its guarantee for all citizens to be able to struggle for happiness, but he is also influenced by the Chicago School of Community Development. This School has adopted the view, that (local) emancipation of people in disadvantaged situations is best served, when their aspirations are coupled with advantages for the men and women in power. The result is a, you could say, rather cynical and resolutely NON ideological approach to empowerment. New coalitions are to be built around every step forward to emancipation and more equality.
That is why, in my opinion, President Obama has spent so much effort and time in building a large and diversified majority for his health care plans, leaving behind, under way, many principles of it, in exchange for support from people of whom he hoped that they would find more (immediate) profit in supporting the laws, than in refuting them.
As the American economy and the American private-public relations are different from the same, when you are dealing with a difficult urban neighborhood, this strategy did not work. Even a provisionally Senate-adopted set of laws, full of "pork"*), could not pass the hurdle of a 60% majority in the Senate.
So, to my relief, Obama changed recently his strategy and decided to use legal means at the disposal of the Presidency and the Democrat majorities in House and Senate. There is nothing revolutionary in that. Former president G. W. Bush made his outrageous tax-cuts for the rich also into law in that way. And he had a smaller majority than Obama.
This Rooseveltian (regulating the cisis-ridden economy during the 30's) and Johnsonian (social system and race equality) Obama-operation, is nearing its completion, these days. It is more than due. Liberal support is withering away, and "tea-party" like demagogy is not only on the move in the US, but also in Europe and in Israel.
In Europe, a Wilders does not hide his contempt for Obama (Copenhague and recently in London), an Ulfkotte spreads his venom on German websites, etc. The Israeli Government humiliated the Obama administration with its continuing colonizing policy.
As of March 15, it seems, when we believe Slate magazine, that the Health Care Bill will be rightly and legally forced on Congress:

March 15, 2010: "I have no intention of not passing this bill," says Speaker Pelosi. She doesn't have the votes, as her own whip, James Clyburn, said yesterday on Meet the Press. But pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak told National Review late Friday, "they've been able to peel one or two of my 12," and he sounds discouraged: "It's almost like some right-to-life members don't want to be bothered." That sounds more like five or six. Fox News calculates Pelosi has 211 of the required 216, with many still undecided, while Nate Silver guesses she'll get "between 216 and 218." Nobody has a clue, but the mood is upbeat. Chance of passage: 55 percent.

Slate's Whipometer: How many vote-switchers does the pope have?

Slate's "Whipometer" indicates a small but real opportunity that the bill will pass later this month.
The European Stake
The European stake in this titanic fight is big. If Obama looses, he will be weakened in all possible fields where Europeans need the support of the US for policies that differ from those that were pursued by the Bush-Cheney administration: Iran, Israel-Palestinian peace, world-wide regulation of hedge funds and credit swaps, Afghanistan, engaging Russia, engaging the Muslim world, nuclear disarmament and also climate change policies.

More so, a continuous divergence between the US- and European(-Canadian) social systems, would kill the necessary harmonization and cooperation in the globalized world economic and financial field. Only if, what I cannot bring over myself to imagine, Europe would abandon its "aquis" in the social field, a harmonization the other way around, would set the conditions for a (doomed) Atlantic supremacist "white 21st century".

There is much at stake in Washington for Europe, the next weeks!

Holocaust education is to encourage reflection, not to encourage a taboo.

Nuremberg U-Bahn station "Walther-Rathenau-Platz, 6 März 2010       Photo: tofoto

About the prohibition on thinking, avoiding the taboo of comparisons, see:
Holy Adolf. Is it possible to compare Bush with Hitler?;
An analogy is no comparison;
Comparisons with the Nazis; Uri Avnery;
Comparison, based on any knowledge

T: I: S, (Steinberg Recherche, March 8, 2010.

(All in German)

With thanks to Claudia Karas, the indefatigable Mailerin. And Steinberg, a monument of -often too- Critical Criticism)

Walther Rathenau was a philosopher, businessman and minister of foreign affairs in the early Weimar Republic. He was also a Jew.He would now be classified as a Liberal Conservative or a right Social Democrat. All the same, many reasons for revanchists, anti-Semites, PI-ler, Mafiosis und Ulfkotte-people to hate him. So much so that he was murdered in 1922 by three so-called Fememörderern with a hand grenade.

He makes the difference between predetermined conclusions  from superficial analogies from history (or the collective memories) on one hand and, on the other hand, the enlightened thinking, not  the based upon stories attached to prejudice, but engaged to comparison with what is now happening. Stating:

Denken heißt Vergleichen In short: To think is to compare

What we get to hear now too often in the debates about the supposedly necessary exclusion of potential terrorists and enemies of the Enlightenment in "our West", are the prejudiced conclusions of "the" History.
But, THE history does not exist. Only stories do exist. Narratives that communicate what people think or thought that woul be important.

One can make two things out of stories.

1. To use them, to support any ideas or theories;
2. To study them, in order to, in comparison with perceptions of current or historical events, create a better analysis.

The first leads to ideological immobility. It will just be instructions for maintaining the taboo of other interpretations than the predetermined ones.

Teaching about the Holocaust is often understood as a canonization of all this, what is said in the name of Judaism and the actual Israeli Government. But real Holocaust Education not only speaks of the suffering of millions of murdered Jews, but informs just as much about the construction of the will to genocide. Thus, of the tendency of acting by irritation and xenophobia.  

Stories about it are from all ages. The Holocaust story is "just" its translation into the industrial age of former pogroms and primitive ethnic cleansings. The First World War sacrificed millions instead of tens of thousands, as we were used to before, as it was an expression of the new industrial age. 

The second leads to free thinking about the ways, exclusion develops.It may be helpful to understand today's exclusion and their reasons. Good Holocaust education thus helps to understand how ideas about genocide do devlop themselves within a non-violent society..

That is why I think that critical historical studies are of importance. Also for Muslim immigrant children in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. They will understand that the Holocaust story is not about a so-called collective guilt of Germans and Muslims, but see it as awarning, never to follow extremists.

And take seriously the warnings of the day.

Technorati Tags: Facing History , Genesis of Genocide , Walther Rathenau , Steinbergrecherche , Education , Political Philosophy

Wilders' Money to remain hidden to you and me, but open to CIA?

The European Parliament will have to decide, this week, if it allows American authorities to data-mine your and mine international euro-transfers by way of copying the SWIFT data.
Swift services banks in Europe and elsewhere. For instance, when I send some of my Dutch retirement money to my Belgian account, the ING bank warns me, that this may be monitored by American authorities.
I have no problem with that. If the CIA wants to know, that I live in Brussels and that I buy my shrimps there at Delhaize, good riddance, OK with me.
But the EP has a point, when it says, that American authorities have to have a reason, when they ask for Swift data. Any European nation allows prosecution to scrutinize my financial data, or listen to my private communications, only, when there is a probable link to crime or terrorism. If there is no one, I can trust my bank, that it protects my privacy.
So, why does the CIA not trust my national European secret services?
That is a long, difficult and complicated story.
I will tell you another time. For a considerable part, they may be right. For who believes, for instance, our Italian secret service Mafiosos?
So, please, CIA, NSA, search for bank transfers linked to Al-Qaeda! I couldn't agree more.
And, do not forget to tell us about Mr. Wilders, from Holland, who gets millions of dollars from US accounts for destabilization of European nations.
Pardon me, if I watch the Dutch representatives from he PVV "party" in the EP.
What are they up to?
Will they vote for a going Dutch alone, as their program states? Or will they vote for transparency to the CIA, while Dutch public opinion remains left in the dark?
Hey, Mr. Wilders, your credibility is at stake!

How the Wilders Hysteria is Linked to Holland. Who exploits it. And how it can be ended. (4, Solutions)

How will it be overcome, the Wilders agitation and its sisters in many European countries?
My friends say: By understanding the fears of men and women who live in marginalized urban neighborhoods. Elder people, who lost their references, when their children and the local baker left their street. And were replaced by, mostly gentle, Turkish families and their daily providers of vegetables and fruit. For you and me, they say, it is easy and even thrilling, when the local snackbar is replaced by a Japanese Sushi Bar. But imagine, you are old, you have a small pension and little money to spend...
Well, that is how people get scared. The new shop-owners are friendly, no problem. Their vegetables are good. Bur the street becomes a foreign country, with young men claiming their space. As young men have always done. In the fifties, when we were young, we claimed our room as 'rockers', we did so ourselves. In the sixties, we could live with the 'provos' and the 'hippies', for we could understand them, while we did not agree.
But now, our home is enveloped in foreign country. We never asked for being 'integrated' with people who speak Arabic and Turkish. If you like that, take those people with you, in your neighborhoods.
"We want our country back!"
In Holland, from the seventies on, conservative governments left them alone, those people. I know for myself, as I were a Government agent for "urban neighborhood redevelopment". As long as there was no urgent problem, money for integration solutions, was held back. Only when security problems came up, the State got itself involved.
No wonder, that (semi-) criminal groups learnt to profit from that. No wonder, that fundamentalists exploited that situation. Mohammed Boujeri, Van Gogh's murderer, was a product of that dealing and wheeling among authorities and maffiosos.
Restoring the dignity of original habitants as well of that of the newly arrived immigrants, it seems impossible. But it is not!
Mixing the traditions of old immigrants and the richness of the traditions of new immigrants, it is possible! I refer to my experiences in France. In the community of Chatenay-Malabry, in the Île de France region of Paris, an intervention of a theater-group solved the alienation-problem. In the North of France, in the Roubaix-Tourcoing region, a flemish-moroccan jardinage project opened many roads to live together, sing together and ask successfully help from regional authorities.
It is all about understanding people who are on the edge. Make people understand that the Turkish vegetable shop is not something that tramples upon you, but the only solution to have a shop near you.
Have young Moroccans understand, that their fathers' knowledge about trees is essential to the neighborhood. It will show on the central square!
Well, this is how I worked in many parts of Europe. And every time, when we were near to our goal, the project was called off. For there were no more threats to security, for instance.
That is why I like so much my friend Ewoud Butter's posting about the "better party" Wilders' followers should get: A political party that cares as well for the old who suffer under small pensions and isolation within urban relegation. They are left alone. Is that the immigrants' fault? NO! The immigrants are being left alone as well!
That is why I believe, that a better future is possible. Not by giving in to fundamentalism. Not by letting go. But by respecting the practical contribution anyone can give to a common project.

The Dutch Wilders Hysteria. Who exploits it. And how it will be Overcome. (3, The Funders)

Who are exploiting the Dutch crisis? And How? Follow the Money!
1. A loophole in Dutch legislation.
While most developed ("judeo-christian") democracies have laws and rules that block organizations with foreign funding and/or no democratic structure, from participating in elections, the Kingdom of The Netherlands makes a notable exception.
In Germany, in France and even in countries like Belgium, Spain and Portugal, political parties are subjected to rules, based upon Law, that guarantee their democratic (membership) structure and the transparency of their revenues.
For instance, former German Chancellor, Mr. Kohl, was sued in Court for black financing of his CDU party. In Belgium, each locally elected representative is screened by Justice, and if he or she has published his/her name or image in local official publications within a three-month period in advance of elections, he or she is punished.
But in Holland, any body can participate in elections. As far as I know, Mr. Wilders is the first person to go it entirely alone. Geert and Geert alone, selects candidates for Parliament, for the European Parliament and for local elections.
2. Populist maffia leaders have to go "whoring"
Before the year 1917, in Holland, members of Parliament were chosen locally in conscriptions, like in Great Britain. After 1917/1918 big "pillar" parties, with their membership structure, took over. There was never a real need to discipline parties. They cared for themselves. Until, at the end of the Nineties, Mr. Pim Fortuyn started to organize his following under a "List Fortuyn". (LPF: List Pim Fortuyn).
Fortuyn himself described his meetings with potential funders as "whoring". He met marginal traders in real estate, who promised funding in exchange for liberty of speculation within the Rotterdam social housing sector. Eventually, the funders even took over the whole LPF party, after Fortuyn's death in 2002. The Rotterdam social housing was for a large part sold to real estate speculators. The motivation: "Raise rents, so that people with low income will have to leave and be replaced by young gentry." People with low incomes are, of course, mainly (muslim, but also Surinam and Antillean,) immigrants. (See: Rotterdam weert arme Nieuwkomers (February 2006, Dutch, in my blog "In Europa Thuis").
Likewise, Ms. Verdonk, a former Conservative Liberal Minister of Immigration, funded her party 'Trots Op Nederland', TON (Proud of Holland'), with donations from marginal personalities and real estate speculators.
3. The Wilders construction
Geert WILDERS must have decided at an early stage, that, if he wanted to keep his independence, he could neither count upon eventual members of his PVV party, nor on Dutch private funders. At first, Wilders hoped, that the bulk of his money would come from the US Neoconservatives. In 2005/6, Mr. Bart Jan Spruyt wrote a Reaganite programme for Wilders' new party and did some headhunting among the neocon followers in the Netherlands. Geert Wilders, who was then sitting alone in Parliament as a dissident of the conservative liberal VVD party, was transported into the States, where he met the Neocon pundits, who were just then at the apex of their power under the presidency of George W. Bush.
But the neocon cabal was not sufficiently amused by the peroxide blond loon. Wilders is a (rabiate) critic of religion in general, although exclusively haunted by the Islam, while the Neocons, who are not religious themselves, as former Trotskyites, consider religion (for the masses) as a necessary antidote to social action. Even if some Neocons made a visit to Holland under Wilders' patronage, their alliance did never materialize. I wrote about the neoconservative strategy of engaging fundamentalist Christians into their action in: Paul Wolfowitz and neocon Morals (June 6, 2007). And the Spruyt-inspired neocon American Enterprise Institute's excursion to Rotterdam was a failure. In the neocon Weekly Standard, Spruyt was relegated to the cultural and book review section.
It was soon afterwards, that Wilders broke his relation with Mr. Spruyt. He was to go it "alone". But not so much alone as that. Fundraising trips to Israel and the US started to fill Wilders' war treasure.
4. The Likud-US connection
While the Neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (where his former friend Ajaan Hirsi Ali is engaged as a researcher since 2005) kept its purse closed, the president of the American Peace (!) Initiative, nominated by Bush in 2002, Daniel Pipes, came to the rescue. Pipes, who is firmly linked to Likud in Israel and to the powerful AIPAC pro-Israel lobby in the US, channeled American taxpayer funds to Wilders, as well as private contributions from US sources, collected through websites like "Gates Of Vienna" e.a.

John Tyler, blogger at the Dutch world service radio "Wereldomroep (RNW)", sorted it out. The RNW site is not just a loony dhimmi playground, but an independent blogging platform hosted by the Dutch state-financed worldwide information service by radio:

An important source of funding for his legal defence comes from supporters in the United States. He has travelled there frequently: showing his anti-Islam film Fitna, giving speeches, accepting awards. And raising money.
Neither Mr Wilders nor many of those involved in organizing fundraisers for him are prepared to indicate how much money he has raised.
Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, has raised money for Geert Wilders’ legal defence through The Legal Project. “The Legal Project engages in various efforts for individuals who talk about this bundle of issues: Muslims and Islam. Wilders is one of those that we have helped both financially and in other ways. I have helped him in terms of law and in terms of fundraising. But I can’t tell you amounts… It’s not my concern.”
Although Mr Pipes is not prepared to talk in more detail about money raised for Wilders, he has told a Dutch magazine that Wilders raised a six-figure amount during a recent US trip.

In June 2007, at the Californian Pepperdine Conference about the looming 'Collapse Of Europe', Pipes set the agenda already, with his proposals to support "advocacy" against Muslims, denying them the building of Mosques, wearing headscarves and attacking "leftist" anti-racists in Court. That is what the "Legal project" is about. The Legal Project and other advocacy initiatives were dealt with in a closed session, following the public one. Now we get a peep into what it boils down to. Tyler, again:

Readers are asked to send money to a bank account of the Friends of the Freedom Party Foundation. This is the same foundation which funds Freedom Party (= PVV, HR) activities. Apparently, Mr Wilders has not set up a separate foundation for his legal defence. According to Dutch daily de Volkskrant, Mr Wilders instead re-wrote the statute of the existing Freedom Party foundation to include his legal defence. This would mean there is no division between donations for Mr Wilders’ personal legal defence and the Freedom Party’s political activities.

As Wilders keeps his financial resources hidden, and says: "Where I get my money and from whom is nobody’s business”, it is difficult to prove exactly, how much of the spenders' money is used for legal defence, and what part is devoted to party campaigns. Tyler:

According to Dutch daily de Volkskrant, Mr Wilders instead re-wrote the statute of the existing Freedom Party foundation to include his legal defence. This would mean there is no division between donations for Mr Wilders’ personal legal defence and the Freedom Party’s political activities.

5. The European dimension. Mccarthyism returns?
As we saw in the preceding article in this series, Dutch Law governing funding for political parties is quite lax. A new law is being prepared at the Ministry of the Interior, but two of the three bigger political parties, the liberal-conservative VVD and the Christian-Democrat CDA are used to get their funding for a large part from big business. However, says Tyler:

Greco, an anti-corruption body and part of The Council of Europe, reprimanded the Netherlands in 2007  for the lack of transparency regarding political donations. A new law governing political parties and how they are financed is in the making. But as it now stands, Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party have very few limits on how and where they can raise money. And he has no obligation to reveal his money sources.

I remember the McCarthyist US policies during the Fifties. Funding was channeled to anti-Communist organizations. Neutral youth- and students-organizations were being infiltrated. Let me add, that this reflected similar policies that originated in Moscow. But that doesn't make it any better.

Racist anti-islamic websites like "Politically Incorrect" (PI) in Germany are being funded and even hosted in the US. The CIA sponsored (if we may believe the German security- and anti-islam expert, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte) a huge anti-Eurabia conference in Brussels, November 2007, hosted by the separatist and post-fascist Vlaams Belang Party, outlawed by all other Belgian political parties. Ms. Bat Ye'or and her husband, as well as the enigmatic white supremacist "Fjordman" and Dutch "Arabist" Hans Jansen, converted from anti-Zionist to anti-Islam agitator (we will come back to him!), came together and studied, how hate-mongering against Islam and Muslims could be promoted. Wilders himself never mingles directly or openly with the far right as assembled in Brussels. But their money is apparently welcome.

6. Couldn't we get some information about the secret Wilders funding, out of the anti-terrorist legislation's monitoring of bank transfers?
I believed, that some forty years ago, we put an end to this kind of shameless intrusion into our political life. When Nixon had to step down in shame, at that point of time, more or less. But I was wrong. American authorities, as says my bank every month, when I transfer some money from Holland to Belgium, from my retirement pension, register what I do. I hope, they will catch Al-Qaeda transfers timely, in that way. But what about secret transfers of money from the States to people who undermine democracy and freedom in Europe and who are in Court for hate-mongering and discrimination?
If Pipes and Wilders cannot be forced to reveal their financial dealings, perhaps the post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislation and rules could be of help for once, for the necessary transparency!

Photos: 1. Jihadwatch, USA. Wilders and Robert Spencer. 2. Hoeiboei Blog: Arabist Jansen.

Technorati Tags: Bart Jan Spruyt, American Enterprise Institute, Geert Wilders, Daniel Pipes, Neoconservatives, Robert Spencer, Hans Jansen, Party Funding

Please, comment at: At Home in Europe-Euractiv.

How the Wilders Hysteria is Linked to Holland. Who exploits it. And how it can be ended. (2, Dutch society)

Wilders is NOT about Islam. Any foreign intrusion would have done. He is about xenophobia and hate-mongering.
In the first part of this series, we talked about the transnational effects of the Dutch Wilders hysteria against Muslims. And how it is exploited and financed by foreign sources like the Advocacy Project of Daniel Pipes in the U.S.A. and Israel. We will have to return to the international financing problem as well as to the ongoing European contamination, in one of the next instances.
"Geert Akbar": The some 200 activists who supported Wilders on January 20 at his Amsterdam court appearance, were not without some humour... 

Our subject here, in the second part, is the typical Dutch background of the hysterical Wilders upsurge. The Wilders phenomenon has nothing to do, in our opinion, with the Islam. Any religious, ethnic or cultural intrusion into the dream of a peaceful and quiet Dutch society, could have done the job. Wilders is not about Islam. It is about xenophobia. And hate-mongering.
Redundant workers are left alone
As many researchers and thinkers nowadays understand, the globalization of economy, trade and culture are felt as an intrusion into their daily life, by the men and women who live in marginalized parts of Western cities. Structurally, they are no more needed for production of goods. (See my articles about the rise and downfall of the need for urban workers at the e-urban site: Les quartiers relégués... (FR),  Missbrauch der Geographie des Armuts.. (DE).
Foreign, mostly Muslim, immigrants take the jobs of the former local (former generation) immigrant workers. And the new immigrants are in their turn put aside, as their wages get too high, compared to those in, for instance, China. But China is over their horizon. The local inhabitants only see their immigrant neighbours.
And that is hard. Welfare State has, since a century, taken responsibility for the citizens' well-being, their security and their peaceful life, taking the place of the Church and the heads of the village communities. And it is felt, that the State fails. Nobody is really left alone. But life has become pointless. Strangers are coming in. They take our houses, our schools, our local shops. The State does nothing against it. Frustration becomes aggression against the newcomers and their children: headscarves, minarets, halal slaughtering are symbolical targets.
How is it possible, that an open, tolerant, society like the Dutch, reacts so strongly against the newcomers?
The Dutch tolerance is an "empty tolerance" as in: "De Lege Tolerantie", a book, published in 2007 by a number of Dutch thinkers and writers. It is empty, for it is in fact a way of hiding within one's own community.

It was developed during Middle Age and the early Modern Times. As a small country, the Dutch republic, in its summit of power, received the Flemish refugees from Antwerp and made them the top of Lowlands' culture (notably Joost van den Vondel, poet). Sepharade refugees from the Iberic countries were welcomed, as new traders on the world markets. Baruch d'Espinoza, one of them, was condemned to isolation, by the Sepharade court, confirmed by Dutch justice. The Jews had to manage their own problems.

As long as immigrants did not endanger Dutch elites' relations to England or to France, they were welcome. Not in the countryside, but in the cities. When the 18th century was nearing its end, Dutch "Patriots" demanded a Democracy in Holland. Second-class citizenship rules for Jews were to be abolished. But, finally, full-fledged discrimination was reestablished under the "Restoration" regime, which lasted from 1814 to 1830.
In the second half of the 19th century, the country accumulated its riches from its colonial possessions, the Netherlands Indies, i.e: Indonesia. Typical Dutch "tolerance" was developed into an ideology of "inspraak", "giving your opinion", imposed upon Indonesian leaders. "Inspraak" is not about real policies. It deals exclusively with social issues. It was a check on how far Dutch authorities could go in their exploitation of Indonesia.
The imperial illusion
While the British left the Indonesian wealth to their Dutch clients, those last ones lived with the illusion of an imperium. Holland considered itself both as a world player and as a small reserve of peace and civilization. It did not take part in the First World war, it only profited largely from trade with both sides. The German Nazi occupation in 1940 was a shock, but was relegated into shameful oblivion afterwards.
Dutch society reacts to foreign arrivals with tolerance. But what does Dutch tolerance mean? It is not about accepting, but about leaving alone. Leave us alone. Manage yourselves. The well-known "pillar" structure of the Dutch nation is its outcome: catholics, protestants, conservatives and social-democrats have each their own "pillar" under the state. It consists of social, educational, cultural and political organizations, whose tops negotiate all the time compromises with the other pillars, in order to keep the state going.
The emptiness of Dutch tolerance
Secularization, death of ideologies, dealt a mortal blow to that system from the sixties on. So mortal, that there can be no question of a new Dutch "islamic" pillar now, at the start of the 21st century. Which leaves Dutch society with a fundamental destabilization. The "inspraak"-strategy, so successful with the Indonesian elites, doesn't work with the new immigrants. Denial, until the middle of the nineties a favored attitude among the political elite of the country, became impossible after the tumultuous passage of Pim Fortuyn, murdered in May 2002.
In short: Dutch society is without a clue. Traditional elites are either hiding behind their pillar walls, or expecting the fall-out of Fortuyn- and Wilders-like racist movements to fall into their laps. That is why Parliament and traditional parties (for the most part) let Wilders do his thing. Hoping, that somebody would dare to come forward and put him in the right place. At this moment, it is a part of the Dutch judiciary system, who are coming forward against Wilders' hate-mongering. There is little or no support from the political side. Everybody is commenting as if it were a match between two foreign soccer teams.
Strangers to the new European community
The structure of the European Union, a hybrid hesitating between a common civilization and a loose union of independent nations, does not help. Dutch citizens, in their majority, do not feel responsible for the European common good. As the traditional parties do not work to engage citizens with an European project in the world, demagogues like Wilders, find an ample room to play with the illusion of a Dutch "Alleingang", as if the country were still an imperial power. Wilders copies the model of the ex-maoist populist Dutch "Socialist Party" in the European Parliament, who sabotaged during many years all European construction.
A commenter on this blog, rightly said, that a Wilders movement would not be possible in the bigger European countries like Britain, France, or Germany. But, as the EU is composed, now, of 27 countries, a destabilization of one or more of the smaller ones, like Poland, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Greece or Holland, could contaminate the whole process of European unification.
2007, a financial support for the Irish movement against the Lisbon Treaty, channeled through a military contract with the US State of Georgia, and managed by the American Heritage Foundation, succeeded in endangering the whole project. The US funders behind Wilders may have the same intention.
That is why not only the Dutch, but all people of the EU should be worried about the fragility of democracy, as illustrated by the destructive Wilders phenomenon in Holland, and its hidden sponsors from abroad.

(From At Home in Europe (EN) and Huibslog)

Please; comment at: At Home in Europe - Euractiv, where this post is republished!

Why Wilders Hysterics happen in Holland. Who exploits it. And How it will Disappear. (1, Daniel Pipes)

Ritual slaughter, normal in Jewish and Muslim traditions, is attacked at right-wing pro-Wilders manifestation in Amsterdam, Jan. 20, 2010.

 In the USA, loonies like Mr. Geert Wilders, just appear in the shape of hysteric bloggers, or television priests, or talkshow-pundits. (Making an exception for Ms. Sarah Palin. That is another story.)
Even so, it is bad enough. But in Holland, a small country in Western Europe, those loonies can even become statesmen, or, as things are at this point, statesmen-hopeful.
Daniel Pipes, January 19 2010, consecrates Geert Wilders' ambitions on his blog: Why I stand with Geert Wilders. More on Daniel Pipes at Loonwatch, USA.

Pipes doesn't hide his admiration for the peroxide blond Lowlands Messiah:

Who is the most important European alive today? I nominate the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. I do so because he is best placed to deal with the Islamic challenge facing the continent. He has the potential to emerge as a world-historical figure.

 

Pipes and Wilders, 2006

Well, well. Mr. Wilders has no proposals for economy, social issues, culture, education, etc., other than eliminating immigrants of Muslim descent from Dutch society. He has no ideas about foreign policy, other than debilitating the European Union (we'll come to this later) and following the Likud - and even more right-wing policies, of Israel (idem).
Pipes:

In addition, Wilders is a charismatic, savvy, principled, and outspoken leader who has rapidly become the most dynamic political force in the Netherlands. While he opines on the full range of topics, Islam and Muslims constitute his signature issue. Overcoming the tendency of Dutch politicians to play it safe, he calls Muhammad a devil and demands that Muslims "tear out half of the Koran if they wish to stay in the Netherlands." More broadly, he sees Islam itself as the problem, not just a virulent version of it called Islamism.

"A full range of topics"? - When Dutch Parliament debated measures to counter the banking crisis, Wilders and his 8 colleague-parliamentarians left the meeting. Playing victims of majority dictates, but in reality, because they have no answers to the economic challenges of the crisis. No, the one-member Wilders party (Wilders himself is the only member, financing is hidden from the public, see my analysis of Wilders-finances later), waited and diverted the discussion to xenophobic issues later on.

Pipes ends the eulogy about Wilders in this way:

The Netherlands' fractured political scene means the PVV must either find willing partners to form a governing coalition (a difficult task, given how leftists and Muslims have demonized Wilders as a "right-wing extremist") or win a majority of the seats in parliament (a distant prospect).

Wilders must also overcome his opponents' dirty tactics. Most notably, they have finally, after 2½ years of preliminary skirmishes, succeeded in dragging him to court on charges of hate speech and incitement to hatred. The public prosecutor's case against Wilders opens in Amsterdam on January 20; if convicted, Wilders faces a fine of up to US$ 14,000 or as many as 16 months in jail.
Remember, he is his country's leading politician. Plus, due to threats against his life, he always travels with bodyguards and incessantly changes safe houses. Who exactly, one wonders, is the victim of incitement?

Confronting Wilders' agitprop, is that a "dirty tactic"? We are talking of freedom of opinion here! I regret that Dutch politicians did not confront Wilders with the means they have at their disposal under parliamentary democracy.
They ducked away. That is, why the Dutch Justice system was forced into action. The Amsterdam High Court rejected a lame response of the prosecutors to a number of complaints about Wilders' agitation and decided to go forward in challenging him to Court on the issue of hate-mongering against groups.
The City of Amsterdam has a libertarian tradition. February 1941, a mass strike occurred against the beginning Nazi elimination of Jews, who made 10% of its population of nearly a million. It has been a heroic action against the Nazi occupier. Many strikers lost their lives under SS-fire and in concentration camps afterwards.

The Amsterdam heroic tradition of struggle against anti-semitism
The city of Amsterdam and its major, Mr. Job Cohen and its assistant major Asscher, and its former assistant-major Ahmed Aboutaleb, now government-appointed major of the city of Rotterdam, have consistently avoided discriminatory action against its Muslim inhabitants. Wilders and his provincial followers are all the time trying to represent those politicians as "capitulators" in front of the so-called "Islamic Tsunami". As "dhimmis", shortly. I always am questioning myself about how it can be possible that Cohen and Asscher, of Jewish descent, could be diabolized by an Israel-friend as Mr. Wilders. And, indirectly, by Mr. Pipes...
But no, Daniel Pipes is not completely in tune with Geert Wilders:

Although I disagree with Wilders about Islam (I respect the religion but fight Islamists with all I have), we stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the lawsuit. I reject the criminalization of political differences, particularly attempts to thwart a grassroots political movement via the courts. Accordingly, the Middle East Forum's Legal Project has worked on Wilders' behalf, raising substantial funds for his defense and helping in other ways. We do so convinced of the paramount importance to talk freely in public during time of war about the nature of the enemy.

And yes, Pipes' "legal project", or, in other words: "advocacy against Islam", financed by the US taxpayer under the G.W.Bush presidency, has sent much money to the falsely-blond agitator. So much, that he has not to submit to the rules of party-financing transparency in Holland. Wilders' one-member "party" can afford to refuse government subsidies, thus avoiding being scrutinized on its revenues!
This is a typical "failed state" issue, that must have some consequences on the EU level. The European Parliament should not accept non-democratic maffias as members. (About the consequences of the Wilders intrusion into the EP, another time.)

As opinion-polls stand now, Mr. Wilders' fake party could master a 30% score at national elections (at the latest in 2011), become the biggest one in Parliament and get a claim to the post of Prime Minister. With the Christian-Democrat and the Conservative Liberal Party as junior partners in a coalition (as both big parties mentioned here, have not excluded that sort of coalition up to now), Wilders could effectively become Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

This would not be as disastrous as it looks now, if the Netherlands were on a Pacific island, with a small, self-sufficient, economy. But the country is among the world's twenty biggest economies and a middle-size member of the European Union, as well as a core NATO-ally.
The world has changed into a global village. Small countries may exert a disproportional impact on world affairs. The big European Union Three (Great Britain, France and Germany) are, at this moment, stable and responsible players in world politics. That was illustrated at the occasion of the 2006 "Danish anti-Islam cartoon crisis". All three managed to remain neutral and not add to the world outrage, nor to the provocations by anti-Islam people. The new members of the European Union in the East are, with the notable exception of Poland, too small to transmit their eventual instability to the European Union as a whole.

How did Mr. Geert Wilders get such a large following in a country, formerly known for its tolerance and stability?
That is the subject of the next article in this series.
Keep an eye on us.

Published also in HUIBSLOG and At Home in Europe - Euractiv.
Please, comment at At Home in Europe - Euractiv, where this post has been republished!