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.

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.

24 september 2019

Page XVI-XVII

“One factor in particular is the peculiar nature of the contemporary international system, one that despite good intentions arguably promotes political decay.

If one examines historical cases of state formation and state building in the regions of the world that have strong states (primarily Europe and East Asia), the uncomfortable truth emerges that violence has always been a key ingredient…

Today’s international system does not look kindly on interstate violence and the kind of wars of conquest and consolidation that as recently as the 1870s produced the present-day countries of Italy and Germany. Africa, for example, was saddled with an irrational political map upon decolonization, one that corresponded to neither geography, ethnicity, nor economic functionality…

Today, we have a situation in which things that weaken states and promote political decay – like weapons, drugs, laundered money, security advisors, refugees, and diamonds – can cross international borders with relative ease, while the world’s normative structure and the institutions built around it … inhibit the kind of muscular state-building that was necessary to political development in other parts of the world.”