” Uiteindelijk blijken mensenrechten vooral effectief in de strijd tegen degelijke en menselijke grenscontrole.”

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 in een wereld die elke tien jaar compleet verandert niet op tegen hun gebrek aan kennis van, inzicht in en voeling met de samenleving van morgen. Geen benul hebben Bernie, Joe of Donald van hoe wetenschap, technologie, artificiële intelligentie, demografie en klimaat onze manier van leven en denken zullen omgooien, nog tijdens hun ambtstermijn. Gerontocratie bedreigt de wereld.”

Eerder op de week had Herman Van Rompuy op televisie met grote stelligheid beweerd dat zijn politieke ervaring irrelevant was om de huidige crisis in België te helpen oplossen omdat zijn ervaring “verouderd” was.

Eerder hadden sommigen al geponeerd dat de uitslag van het Brexit-referendum fout was omdat oudere mensen (overwegend exiteers) hadden mogen stemmen terwijl jonge mensen (meestal remainers) niet hadden mogen stemmen.

Kennis van het verleden wordt in het algemeen meer en meer als een nadeel aanzien eerder dan als een sterk punt. Kennis van de geschiedenis zou ons zicht op het heden en de toekomst belemmeren. Deze aanname wordt kort en krachtig tot uitdrukking gebracht met de zegswijze “OK boomer”. De oudere mag zijn opinie geven maar die wordt dan met een korte kwinkslag verticaal geklasseerd. De “OK boomer” reflex is een alibi voor de pubers van veertig, dertig en twintig jaar om intellectueel lui te zijn en zich niet te verdiepen in het verleden. Ze maken zich wijs dat het heden fundamenteel verschilt van het verleden en verwerven daarmee het recht om stoemelings de fouten uit het verleden te herhalen.

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 this country’s psyche”.(p. 291) Under the circumstances “the last thing to go is ego.” (p. 322)

The author is especially successful in describing the psychological (in)capacity of the different members of the family to adapt to the new realities. Some have theorized about decay but are nevertheless incapable of applying theory to reality. Others adjust their behavior (e.g.. stealing) and morality as smoothly as downloading a new version of a software. The loss of value of the dollar is a reason to overthink the old fashioned values of hard work and saving for later. Overall it seems a world in which following the rules and compassion are not really rewarded.

An interesting Psychological exercise…

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 book and it requires my (nearĺy) full attention.

Best Regards !

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, the friendly or handsome natives but in something completely different :

1. There are no identity cards in the UK which makes access to the labour market much easier. Both the left and the right would consider the introduction of such identity card as a threat for privacy. (The same goes for the United States.)
2. There are not so many rules in the labour market.
3. The wages are low which again explains an easy access to the labour market .
4. In the UK, society is organised in a more communautarian way than on the Continent. As an illegal it is easier to hide in your own community.

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 because there was an Empire built around it and this Empire allowed all creative and energetic powers of the English, Scottish, Welsh and even Irish populations to make a career in that Empire.

Once the Empire was lost, the unifying power was lost and we only had to wait for some careless politicians to shake the tree.

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 Poland) to support the Deal. The new Council president, Charles Michel, showed that his previous experience as Prime Minister of Belgium, had prepared him perfectly to explain the inexplicable.

Some concerns should however be addressed.

The Green Deal is in this phase only a vision without a clearly developed transition path and without financial support. The transition path should be made available by mid 2020 and the new long term fiscal plan for the Union by end 2020 at the latest. It remains to be seen if the high level ambition embedded in the Green Deal will be backed by the transition path and the financial means by then.

Von Der Leyen referred to the Green Deal as “Europe’s man-on-the-Moon moment”. I understand that VDL tries to create a “nationalist” European moment, an event which will unify all Europeans in a common project, like a long term HR European event. The comparison is however not fit in the sense that the man-on-the-moon was an event that did not impact everyday life of the Americans. The Green Deal however has a “totalitarian” character (which I want to use here in an objective, neutral way); The Government takes decisions which will impact all apects of our everyday lives : transport, food, living, factories. Private enterprise and the free market have a clear frame within which they will have to work.

Both the need for appropriate financing and the totalitarian impact might raise a revolt of the people, a “Europan Gillets Jaunes”, so to speak, if the European elites do not handle this with care.

Lastly, the Green Deal offers Europe an opportunity to free itself from some doubtful friends in the Middle East. However we should take care that our new friends are better than our old friends.

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 moet kunnen leren. Maar daar bovenop moet ook de thuistaal voldoende gerespecteerd worden.

2) Dat is heel wat, zeker als we rekening houden met de meest recente Pisa-resultaten. Daaruit blijkt dat het voor Nederlandstaligen en Franstaligen steeds moeilijker wordt om zelfs hun eerste taal goed onder de knie te krijgen. De oplossing van Gatz is geniaal. In plaats van een enkele taal zullen de Brusselaars er drie goed leren. Meertaligheid kan er toe leiden dat de Brusselaar 4 talen slecht kan spreken en/of lezen.

3) Meertaligheid leidt de aandacht af van het feit dat het Nederlands in Brussel onvoldoende aandacht krijgt, ook en vooral in het Franstalig onderwijs.

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, the CO2-reality starts to percolate the whole economy in the same way as the monetary currency already flows through the financial veins.

And of course we should also start to organize demonstrations to ensure that we reach strict goals for our debt reduction.

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 a robust democracy. Populism is therefore, according to JWM, a threat to real democracy.

Key elements of the populist style are that populists claim to fight the elites while, at the same time, they claim to be the representatives of the people. Hereby they believe that “the people” are a homogeneous group and that they are its representatives. People who do not fit in the homogeneous mass are outsiders or even enemies. Populists are therefore no pluralists and their ideology always contains some kind of identity politics (to determine the real people).

Once in power, populists try to occupy the state apparatus, they are corrupt, engage in “mass clientalism” and try systematically to suppress civil society. Sometimes they even re-write constitutions to outlaw pluralism.

JWM is strongly against the use of a concept like “illiberal democracies” because according to JWM a democracy without the necessary checks and balances, the liberal context, is no democracy at all. Critics of a regime who call it an illiberal democracy admit implicitly that it still is a democracy, quod non, according to JWM.

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 already conceptually decoupled Liberalism and Democracy).

In Part Two of his book , he tries to define the origins of the current breakdown of Liberal Democracies. He sees in essence three items which have changed substantially and which also impact the proper functioning of Liberal Democŕacy. First, the development of the internet has reduced the cost to communicate alternative versions of the truth and the cost to set up alternative command structures. This enables challengers to break or to pass by the traditional political channels with ease. Second, the slowdown of economic progress or the more limited distribution of the existing economic progress (increased inequality) creates uncertainty over the future. Third, Mounk states that successful democracies were in the past in general momo-ethnic. The current levels of migration threaten that stability. He however takes note that populists are especially strong where immigration is still limited (but not in the area with high levels of immigration) and concludes that it is only fear for the unknown that generates that uncertainty.

I’m positively surprised to see how Mounk puts forward the idea that successful democracies are/were in general mono-ethnic. Unfortunately Mounk does not focus on the importance of language and the possibility of an inclusive approach; mono-ethnicity is not necessarily exclusive if it is based on language. His wordings might suggest the opposite

Further, he seems to forget that in areas with high levels of migrants, populists might indeed no longer have political relevance if the immigrants with voting rights already form 40% or more of the population. I assume California is already in this situation. That populists are not so strong in those areas might be the result from the fact that they have already been put in a minority position from an ethnic point. This most plausible solution is not even mentioned by Mounk.

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 regering gelijk. De rechter was tot de conclusie gekomen dat dergelijke internationale kwesties door de politiek beslecht moeten worden en niet door rechters. De schriftelijke motivering zal uiterlijk op 6 december beschikbaar zijn. Beroep is nog mogelijk.

Deze uitspraak is minstens interessant te noemen. In een periode waarin rechters soms/vaak het verwijt krijgen dat ze hun boekje te buiten te gaan, wereldvreemd zijn of zelf wetgeving maken, valt het op wanneer een rechter zichzelf gewoon buiten spel zet. Bestaat er een algemene regel aan de hand waarvan kan worden bepaald of een rechter zichzelf aan politiek waagt of wanneer hij enkel recht spreekt ? Het argument dat dit een internationale kwestie is en de rechter daarom niet bevoegd is lijkt mij in deze kwestie niet direct  relevant.

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), expressed in terms of GDP, has strongly diminished. The West has to adapt to that new reality; (2) The progress of the Rest is the result of a successful emulation by the Rest of Western best practices. “The biggest gift the West gave the Rest was the power of reaoning” (p. 11).

In this booklet KM raises a lot of interesting points for further critical thought. However what I will focus on hereafter is the contradiction I see between his second proposition and his more in depth analysis in the last part of his book. At this place I will not discuss whether KM is right or wrong with his analysis.

From page 75 on it becomes clear that the Western model is certainly not fully copied by the Rest and should, according to KM, not be fully copied :

• “The West is wrong in believing that democracy is a necessary condition for economic success. If it were, China could not and should not have succeeded. But it has. This… undermines many key pillars of Western ideology.” (80) With this statement KM contradicts to a certain extent what he wrote in the beginning. There he still stated that the spread of Western reasoning led to three silent revolutions. The first revolution he saw was political and ended ‘Oriental despotism’. However he acknowledges that huge imperfections remain but “most Asian leaders now recognize that they are accountable to their people, and as long as they have to demonstrate daily that they are improving their people’s lives Asian societies will continue to improve.” (15)
• “Democracies are not designed to take on long-term challenges.” This weakness hinders the West in taking the right strategic decisions.
• KM gives some examples of wrong strategic decisions from the past. He mentions the decision to keep Turkey out of the European Union and allowing Turks in. “It would have been wiser to keep Turks out and admit Turkey into the EU (with restrictions on free movement of labour)”. Of course with such a statement KM rejects an essential pillar of the European Union, the free movement of people.
• Another strategic mistake mentioned by KM is the European “Common Agricultural Policy” (CAP) which was launched in 1962. “It enriched a few European farmers. It impoverished millions of African farmers, especially in North Africa.”
• “There is no doubt that the Western elites failed to prepare their populations for the inevitable ‘creative destruction’ that flowed from China’s admission into the WTO in 2001.” In the same context KM makes the known statement that the elites in the West, but especially in the USA, enjoyed the advantages of globalisation while the masses did not. “200 million Americans live on the edge”.

KM states that the West made also other important mistakes. For completeness sake I mention ;

• Wars against Muslim countries, but especially the second war against Iraq
• The humiliation of Russia after 1989
• Europeans should understand that their strategic interest is different than the trategic interest of the USA. “The Americans have destabilized Europe’s Europe’s geographical neighbourhood.” (68)

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 het Vlaams nationalisme omdat de overwinnaars bij deze veldslag (de Vlamingen) ook Frans spraken, evenzeer als diegenen die verslagen waren (de getrouwen van de koning van Frankrijk).

Een andere historicus corrigeerde de eerste en wees er op dat de overwinnaars wel degelijk Vlaams spraken maar dat de Frans-sprekende Vlamingen (de adel) meevochten aan de kant van de koning van Frankrijk en dus bij het verliezende kamp behoorden.

Nog een andere historicus wees er op dat de SGS dus zeker niet als een Vlaamse strijd kan voorgesteld worden omdat het eerder een sociale strijd was, een strijd van de adel tegen de opkomende stedelijke burgerij.

Waarbij ik mij dan de bedenking maak dat de sociale strijd in 1302 reeds samenvalt met de nationale strijd zoals ook in de beginjaren van België. In beide periodes “collaboreert” de Vlaamse elite met de Franstalige elite. Pas met de echte democratisering snapt de Vlaamse elite dat ze de kant moet kiezen van de Vlamingen en Vlaams moet spreken.

Dit lijkt mij toch een interessante discussie om in een canon op te nemen.

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 dat de inburgering van bijvoorbeeld de Turkse gemeenschap uiteindelijk een laag vernis blijkt te zijn ? Vlaams- nationalisten zouden vanuit hun eigen kijk op de samenleving toch kunnen veronderstellen dat als eigen identiteit zo belangrijk is, de inburgering van een grote groep vreemdelingen in een andere cultuur nooit echt voltooid kan zijn ?”

Uiteraard behoort Luc Huyse niet tot extreem-rechts, maar volgens mij bevestigt hij met dit statement minstens een light versie van de omvolking-these van Renaud Camus. Essentieel daarbij is dat de migratie vandaag de dag op zo’n schaal gebeurt dat het geen individueel gebeuren is maar een groeps (=volks)gebeuren van individuen met een collectieve gemeenschappelijke identiteit. Ten tweede zegt Luc Huyse dat het niet mogelijk (of zeer moeilijk) is om dergelijke groepen van nieuwkomers te integreren. Hij spreekt zich niet uit of dit wenselijk zou zijn. 

In dezelfde Knack stelt hoofdredacteur Bert Bultinck zich de vraag of “die ‘omvolking’ niet een gruwelijke overdrijving is ? Tenslotte heeft toch niet meer dan 12% van de Fransen een niet-Europese migratieachtergrond.” Het fenomeen ‘ghetto’ is Bultinck blijkbaar niet bekend (maar misschien mag je dat woord niet gebruiken omdat het stigmatiserend zou kunnen overkomen?)

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. Wat fout is. Er zijn allerlei soorten mensen in omloop : legale, illegale en transmigranten. Transmigranten zijn soms zelfs in zekere zin twee keer illegaal : soms zijn ze illegaal in het land en weigeren ze daar bovenop gelegaliseerd te worden. Maar het zijn zeker mensen. Delvaux moet daarover geen twijfel zaaien.

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 with the rest of the continent, and you don’t need to be a historian to understand this.”

It is difficult not to agree with Tusk on this but there are two big “but’s” : (1) The Balkans are NOT stable ; (2) They will not become stable by including them into the European Union.

To stabilize the Balkans border corrections are unavoidable. At best these corrections will be performed in a peaceful way via negotiations.

Only when the borders are updated the Balkans might be stabilized and fit for integration in the European union. The sequence of the events is of crucial importance.

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 to return to the home from which he has been dislodged by the hazards and strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The majority of these refugees have come from territory which… was to be included in the Jewish State. The exodus of Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion. It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees, who have been rooted in the land for centuries.”

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 certain degree contradicts this proposition.

If we look at the themes that determine the political agenda in Western Europe it will quickly become clear that the issues/challenges are to a great deal the same in the whole of that part of Europe. (1) How to deal with migration ? Can we choose our migrants ourselves ? Should there be more strict rules to obtain access to social security ? (2) How to deal with (radical) islam ? What about the nikab and the headscarf ? Quid separate schools for Muslims ? Should imams preach in the local language ? How to deal with European IS-fighters in Syrian prisons ? (3) How to transform the existing economy into a climate-friendly one ? Nuclear energy, cars, green taxes ? (4) How to deal with the Chinese presence ? 5G and Huawei, Chinese investors… (5) How to deal with the impact of the longer longevity of the populations on the finances of the state ? Evidently also other items are common to these societies.

But notwithstanding that the same issues fill the public domain, they are not discussed at the same moment and the solutions chosen might be different. They are discussed in the national parliaments, newspapers and the national magazines but these are closed “national” worlds although the issues and arguments are basically the same.

It must be possible to use this basic fact to organize a Western European public opinion in a more formal way.

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 and allowed Abraham to sacrifice the sheep instead of the son.

I have always been puzzled by this story which I know of course already since my youth in the version of the story which can be found in the Old Testament (and where Isaac has the honour of taking the place of Ismael). But it is confusing (or not at all) that Islam gives this story such a central place. What are we actually celebrating ? That God is so good to save Ismael ? That Abraham, as the example for all true believers, was willing to sacrifice his son at the simple request of God ? Or the combination of both : that God is good for the ones who are fully submissive ? I suppose the last explanation is the most accurate. The core of Islam is blind submission to Allah. A horrible message for a humanist.

One could argue that the same message can be found in the Old Testament and thus in Christianity. They are completely wrong. Christianity is not based on the Old Testament but on the New Testament. And a key difference is exactly that in the Old Testament God asks Abraham to kill Isaac while in the New Testament God sacrifices his own son to save the human kind. Islam goes back to the logic of the Old Testament.

Given the essential concept of submission to Allah in Islamic belief, we can question if there even exists something as ethics in Islam. Or if it exists, ethics is reduced to the question of obedience versus non-obedience. For Islam the believer is obedient or not. There is however no room for “real” ethics ; there is no room for an individual that has to take an autonomous decision following an internal moral compass.