” Uiteindelijk blijken mensenrechten vooral effectief in de strijd tegen degelijke en menselijke grenscontrole.”
Author archives: yveseuonepress
52. Dutch – Gerontocratie ?
18 februari 2020 In Het Laatste Nieuws van 13 februari stelt Jan Segers vast hoe oud de Amerikaanse kandidaten voor het presidentschap zijn en in een opiniestuk concludeert hij dat anno 2020 geen enkel land zijn toekomst kan “uitbesteden aan tachtigplussers. Wellicht ook niet aan zeventigplussers of zelfs zestigplussers. Wat zij inbrengen aan verleden, weegt […]
51. Book Review : “The Mandibles, a Family, 2029-2047” by Lionel Shriver
8 januari 2020 In this book Lionel Shriver tells the story how the Mandible family deals with the decay of the USA and the dollar, and the loss of the family fortune. As such she describes how the family deals with “the notion of a lost everything, a permanent, irreversible decline – it’s alien to […]
50. HAPPY NEW YEAR
1 januari 2020 Dear reader, Hereby i wish you all the best for 2020. You might notice that I’m updating this website with a lower frequency and maybe you have the impression that my insights are not as sharp as they used to be. Do not worry about this. I have started writing my next […]
49. UK – The Promised Land
17 december 2019 Something I try to understand already for a while is why so many immigrants want to reach the United Kingdom, even at the risk of their lives. Based on what I find in newspapers, I come to the conclusion that the immigrants are not interested in the sunny climate, the delicious food, […]
48. The End of the United Kingdom ?
14 december 2019 Now that Brexit will have been done, it is clear that the unity of the United Kingdom is under threat. That unity is not evident; it requires an explanation why it exists in the form that it does. I dare to believe, and indeed this is speculative, that the United Kingdom lasted […]
47. Green Deal
14 december 2019 Ursula von der leyen, the new President of the European Commission, presented the “Green Deal” to the European Parliament. The intention is to make “Europe” carbon/climate-neutral by 2050. On 12-13 December the Green Deal was discussed at the level of the European Commission which reached a “unanimous” decision (with an exception for […]
46. Dutch – Meertaligheid
10 december 2019 De Brusselse Minister van Meertaligheid heeft een beleidsnota in dat verband neergelegd. Die roept een aantal bedenkingen/vragen op. 1) Meertaligheid is een zeer ruime term en het risico zit er dik in dat de Minister overambitieus is. Hij lijkt er vanuit te gaan dat een goede Brusselaar zowel Frans, Nederlands als Engels […]
45. Two Currencies
10 december 2019 From now on we (= all citizens of the world) have to think in two currencies. One of them is the monetary currency, the other one is the CO2-emission. Every investment decision will have at least two dimensions, the monetary and the ecological one. Whether you are a believer or a negationist, […]
44. Book Review ; Jan-Werner Müller: What is populism ?
10 december 2019 In this small book, JWM proposes a definition which describes populism as a style of performing politics (and NOT as a set of political statements). For him populism is a way of performing politics in a democracy which claims to make the democracy stronger while in fact it erodes key elements of […]
43. Book Review : Yascha Mounk – The People vs. Democracy
24 november 2019 Mounk starts from the given that Liberal Democracy as a political model is under attack all over the world. He sees how illiberal democracies and undemocratic “liberal” states come into existence and formulates the proposition that Liberal Democracy maybe only functioned well within certain constraints (“scope conditions”). (Fareed Zakaria had years ago […]
42. Dutch – De Rechtbank acht zichzelf niet bevoegd
23 november 2019 Begin november 2019 was de Nederlandse regering door een Rechtbank verplicht om alles in het werk te stellen om kinderen uit Syrië terug te halen. De Nederlandse Regering ging in beroep tegen dit vonnis. Op 22 november 2019 deed de Rechtbank in Den Haag een uitspraak in hoger beroep en gaf de […]
41. Book Review : Kishore Mahbubani – Has the West Lost it ?
22 november 2019 In this small book (only 91 pages) , KM confronts the West with some harsh realities. He starts from two key propositions : (1) In the past 30 years, i.e. since 1989, the world made an enormous progress. During that process the relative weight of the West versus the Rest (KM’s word), […]
40. Dutch – Slag Der Gulden Sporen
19 november 2019 In de nasleep van de discussie over de Vlaamse canon is reeds bij herhaling opgemerkt dat de Slag der Gulden Sporen (SGS) in de reële geschiedenis niet de rol had die aan haar wordt toegekend in de Vlaamse “roman national”. Recent legde een historicus uit dat deze Slag niet bruikbaar was voor […]
39. Dutch – Omvolking -light
17 november 2019 In de Knack van 6 November 2019 doet de socioloog Luc Huyse volgende uitspraak : “Vandaar mijn pleidooi om de positie van de nieuwe Belgen juist in te schatten. Als men de inwoners van Vlaanderen een ‘leidcultuur’ wil aanpraten en men zo hard de nadruk legt op identiteit, moet men dan schrikken […]
38. Dutch – De-humanizerend taalgebruik
De Afspraak” op vrijdag 15 november 2019. Beatrice Delvaux vindt dat termen zoals transmigranten en illegalen niet mogen gebruikt worden. Ze omschrijft deze termen als “de-humanizerend”. Een dergelijk statement valt geregeld te horen aan wat we gemakshalve de “linkerkant” kunnen noemen. Hiermee zegt Delvaux dus eigenlijk dat voor haar transmigranten en illegalen geen mensen zijn. […]
37. The European Union and the Balkan (2)
15 november 2019 On 13 november 2019 Donald Tusk speeched in Bruges and gave his view on the European Union. At that occasion he criticized the objection of the French President Macron to the start of negociations with some Balkan states. Tusk commented : ” There wil be no sovereign Europe without stable Balkans integrated […]
36. Food For Thought : Folke Bernadotte on Palestinian Refugees
10 november 2019 From a statement by Folks Bernadotte, Chief UN mediator for Palestine, published on 18 September 1948. Bernadotte was killed by a Zionist terrorist organization on 17 September 1948. “It is … undeniable that no settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee […]
35. The Western-European Demos exists
10 november 2019 A lot of pundits often defend the statement that a political entity “Europe” is an impossibility because there is no common language in Europe and therefore no common public opinion. While I have defended this point of view in some other place, it is time to make an observation which to a […]
34. Feast of Sacrifice
4 november 2019 The Feast of Sacrifice is one of the two most important Islamic feasts. It relates to the story in the Qur’an according to which Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son Ismael at the request of God. But at the moment that Abraham was to sacrifice his son, God sent a sheep […]