looking away

moved away!

2007-06-12T14:30:00.000+02:00

We move away! This blog is to be continued at

http://www.scicha.org/blog

see you there!

Murder in amsterdam... is it really about the limits of tolerance?

2006-10-17T17:43:00.000+02:00

For all allochtonen that care about politics, the last book of Ian Buruma is a must. And probably for dutchies too!

Buruma, as any other expat, follows the developments in his country. No surprise that he finds them shocking. How comes that the hypertolerant Netherlands has become a country that denies her glories as multicultural paradise, in such an extreme way to get politicians killed? Or ejected, in a political power play, from the country? That question, predating most of the book, is very relevant. Here in NL we might think that the integration and immigration debate is gone from the politics (as election programs have it), but in europe the issue is alive and kicking, so it will be alive, and kicking in NL for quite a while.

My concern is hat actually the book is not so much about “the limits of tolerance”, as its subtitle has it , but rather about the ways in which the world has a direct, and powerful, influence in NL politics. Two of the most poignant analysis of Buruma are about Mohammed B and about Irsi Ali. He spend great prose thinking about these two characters of our ongoing multicultural drama.

And if you think about it, both characters are telling us that the world matters right here and right now. Take Irsi Ali. The very bogus asilum seeker, (as she describes herself, and not for her faking a name) seems to have imported her political concerns into dutch politics. Her war does not seem to be the emancipation of (muslim) women. Buruma vividly describes a chat that keep Ali busy for a little while with muslim women, and her haughty dismissal of them. The war of Ali is rather bigger, about the way islam threatens her own view of the enlightenment. If you don't believe it, just take a look at her current job.

Or think about Mohammed B. Surely he -rather dramatically- illustrate the process of alienation that our underclass of economical and social outsiders can (or is) going through.. But the alienation of Bouyeri is well connected with the broader world. Buruma clearly illustrates the naivety of some thinkers that hope for the solution of the palestina, or iraqui questions, so that the islam question might disappear as well. That is not the case. But, perhaps more relevant for european politics... would Bouyeri has gone that far, without internet videos of beheading in the middle east? Would the anger of the young muslim, living excluded in europe today, drive him to a terrorist cell, if Al Qaida would not be the PR success that it is?

So in my view, Buruma's book belongs better to the row of books that today attack, or praise, globalization. Luckily the writer is smart enough not to have subtitled it “the world is indeed flat” as Friedman did with his. But Buruma is not talking about what we call tolerance... he is talking about the tolerance of our societies to the politics beyond the damns. Quite a exciting issue, and if not convinced, think about the PvdA and her turks. But ok, that might be the issue for another column.

looking away from migrants

2006-08-29T14:00:00.000+02:00

A Guardian journalist remind us the accepted scientific knowledge that the pollution in the West is the main culprit on the drought in the Sahel region. Such a statement does not come as a surprise, I believe, to the readers of this page. More interesting is that in the same article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1860299,00.html) is discussed a proposal to reduce the greenhouse effect. Another scientist has recently proposed to shoot into the atmosphere certain chemicals, able to reduce the darkening of our skies. Nice and dandy, besides the detail that those chemicals are the same pollutants that caused the droughts in the Sahel. So another neat example of looking away. Let's deal with the greenhouse effect, which scare the wits out of our western populations (certainly after the hyped movie “the day after”), but let's look away from the consequences of our solution in other, less sexy, parts of the world.

Consider another stance of western-people-saving-the-world. For any reader of spanish newspapers, the drama of african migration is a day to day affair. I hardly remember a day in the last year in which I have not find in a spanish newspaper the body count of arrivals at the beach-heads of globalized flows of people. In the last months -finally- the media catch up with the fact that every day, the coasts from spain are arrival points of every kind of boat crammed with people flying from africa and intending to start again in europe. A real flow of people, that suddenly, could not be integrated any longer. It looks like europe does not need, after all, so much cheap labour. So we have got, in the last weeks, different spanish ministers doing the european tour of asking for support to stave the rising tide. Already couple of months ago, the sexy government of Zapatero trumpeted the agreement of the EU to supply helicopters, newer boats and money to the coasts guards of spain. It did look very much like fortress europa.

But for good or for bad, that europa -oh so hugely concerned with the migrant question- has turned her back to this issue as well. The headlines of today tell me that the EU has refused funding for the defence of the spanish front. No new helicopters, no fast boats, no money for welcome –or deporting- centres. It is really hard to imagine what is really going on. How comes that the fearful europa is going to left undefended the front? How comes that the governments -of say The Netherlands- are looking away from the reaching-for-money hand of Zapatero?

Probably it all boils down to crass budget policy. Probably the EU has not yet designed a budget instance called something alike “fund for the fighting of unasked migration”. So there is no money in the purse of Brussels bureaucrats for paying a fleet of boats rescuing the hundreds of persons floating away miserably, in their attempt to reach the beaches of europe. Probably, now that we are in the warming up of an electoral year, in due time those funds are going to be released, and less barbaric and more reasonable support will be given to the coastguards.

But now, xenophobic europa is looking away. And the african europhiles go on dying in the sea.

Fires

2006-08-22T00:34:00.000+02:00

The jungle at the south of Venezuela exerts the fascination of the unknown. As a venezuelan child, right after reading “the lost world”, with dinosaurs still alive and mountains made of diamonds, you are told that the places described lie right at the south of your country. So you want to go there. Later on, when you are about to give away the hope of seeing weird animals from long gone times, you realize that perhaps not dinosaurs, but surely unknown plants and insects. A field biologist trip to those forests will give you fame and adventure. So as a student of biology, you still want to go.

Well, it was around 1988, and I could register for an expedition organized by the climber's club of my university. I was already frustrated with studying physics, and indeed, after that travel I switch to biology. The travel itself was a disaster. I was in the group that supported the climber team, and we were made to carry backpacks of thirty some kilos, meanwhile hacking our way into the jungle with machetes. We run out of food, and expend two weeks more than planned walking, aiming at a wall that every day seemed to grow further away. As I say, I could not have imagined a better trip.

Today, one reportage of the Spanish newspaper “El Pais” made me remember the starting days of that hike. Before getting into the rain forest, we have to walk some forty kilometres in the savannah. It was a hell of a hike, but we ended it. Actually, in the many stops that we have to make to rest, the almost pristine savannah showed burned patches. We were told that few years ago, the inhabitants of the region had started a series of protests again a governmental ban on tourism. The people there worked as guides and porters of the few hikers that would arrive, and the ban coming from the capital (more than two thousand kilometres away) could deprive the region from its main income. So the people burned the place. As simple as that. The local law enforcement, perhaps remembering the science fiction best-seller Dune (the one that controls a resource is the one that can destroy it) acknowledge the treat, and restore the tourist flow. The savannah, nevertheless, stayed burned for the years to come. Ecosystems do not really recover after human crimes.

Now, I read in El Pais that the record season of fires in Galicia, a spanish province heavily burned the past weeks, had a social background. Different social workers, researchers and politicians of the region agree: the fires started as a protest.

Differently than in Venezuela, though, the reasons of the protest are less clear. There haven't been a ban on tourism, for example. Neither there is an identifiable movements behind the action. One university professor, though, believes that fires increase when left wing governments take power. The reasoning is that the right wing activist like to show he incompetence of the current government, and then produce the fire to expose them. Be this true or not, the agreement exists: people burn because they are upset.

In the table that I am using now there is a candle burning. I stare at the flame, the warmth light that transform my morning café into the intimate and personal location that I like so much. I imagine then the same flame, expanding on the forests of Spain, I imagine the trees going away in a flash of ashes. In the years to come I'll visit Spain again, and probably I'll walk in Galicia. I will stare at the burned places.

Once more, I won't be able to understand.

Time to look away, again

2006-08-16T02:38:00.000+02:00

One day of ceasefire, and we can look away. Time to turn our attention to more pressing matters. Talk about the politics of your own country, another book, the last film.

Nevertheless, from the first pages of most newspapers today, it does strike me the multitude that is facing the horror. I stare, almost in disbelieve at the procession of cars that go back home, to their home in Lebanon.

In one way or another those masses today remind me the few photos that I, as southamerican, have been able to see in museums. The photos of germans after the carpet bombings of Berlin, the photos of Warsaw totally destroyed after the bulldozers of the the nazi army. Photos that almost always fail to give me any inkling into the people there, in the paper. How could you go back to that? What are you going to do?

Well, actually I am not being very fair. It looks like Unifil is getting some reinforcement, and a part of the west will not be looking away. In the months to come we'll see again, if the international press allow us, blue helmets in between the ruins. Those young soldiers from other universes that will come and patrol, that will try to give some feeling of security to the ones that, right now, are waiting patiently in a car to move another meter, just another meter... and eventually discover if home is still there, or there will be the time, again, of building the walls, the roof.

Normally, when in other columns that I have written I get to this moment, it's time to reveal my own position, say my ideological or pragmatical evaluation of the facts so exposed. It will be so nice if I could do that now. Imagine that i could craft some sentences about the government of Israel, of Lebanon, of Iran. Some few sentences that could allow my conscience to look away again, my role of commentator of international politics fulfilled. Alas, that is not the case. At least for me, is still time of not look away. The drama of our century keeps on unfolding itself in the east. I can only go on looking, with the encountered feelings of the politically responsible citizen and the voyeur. The katiushkas did not fall in Utrecht, nor were all inhabitants of Caracas removed and send away to give place to other newcomers. We in the west are foreigners to the tragedy of the east. But we can look at it.

Back to basics

2006-06-13T01:46:00.000+02:00

Timothy Garton Ash today in the Guardian goes back, perhaps boringly, to the final photo of the world football cup, France 2000. The hands of the winning team were certainly colourful, and the success of France seemed to be the success of a multicultural team. Well, Europe has gone a long way from that moment. It was the same year in which I happily decided to live in The Netherlands, by then the most tolerant and multicultural country that I could spot in Europe. Wow, was I wrong. Six years, crashing planes, bombs in the tube, Afghanistan and Iraq abroad, meanwhile here in NL two murders and lots of right wing populism have changed the panorama in ways that might have seem impossible to the naïve migrant that I was. The elections following 2000 have bring to power all sort of conservative governments in the region, and politicians from all colours have gravely or hysterically talked about the multicultural drama, have done all sorts of foreigner bashing, have passed law aiming at reduce or simply eliminate immigration. Europe today looks very much like the scary fortress. But still, today guys like Garton Ash talk about the need of an inclusive society. In his words, the french national football team is the unique french instance that represent the multicultural real population of france today. He does not go as far as to predict (or desire, after all he is english) that they will win the world cup, but the plea in his lines to repeat the inclusiveness of football in other french institutions is clear enough.

Now, thinking again in The Netherlands, and being member of the green party, one might think that the migration issue is clear and well defined by my co-religionists. One might guess that we being the opposite pole of the right wing populism in power today, and having a tradition of considering multiculturalism as a fundamental value of Europe, one or two clicks into the websites of our party will arrive to clear cut positions, supporting inclusive policies, more migration instead of less and strong programs of migrant support. Sadly, that guess will be wrong. European greens have been cornered, as many other progressive movements in european societies today. It seems that the image of the retrograde imam calling for suicide missions from a state-subsidized mosque, or the 70+ first generation immigrants that still does not talk dutch, has dulled our ideas, or scared our principles away. So instead of call for the advantages of open societies and inclusive labour policies, we are mired in nuanced statements about the relevance of cultural integration, the need to control migration flows (as if three thousands years of european history would have taught nothing) and in general, a general, sympathetic, but ultimately inconclusive call for emancipation.

Coming back to Garton Ash, he did some fast field research in the banlieus from Paris. A single message seems to surface. Migrants, dispossessed migrants, are not waiting for nice, intellectuals and nuanced political positions. One word, perhaps difficult to understand for the emancipated middle class european of today repeats in the mouths of the migrant. Respect. A society that includes percentages always higher that ten percent, and increasing, of migrants, must for once and for all, consider what they are asking for. And this is not more state support, more subsidies, or better integration courses. It is simple respect. Politicians of europe, progressive politicians of europe must understand that the last years of Bush, war against terror and clash of civilizations have only brought distrust to the migrant. And as any other human being, migrants do want to feel respected. There is an increasing need of a political message that besides all the needed nuances, get across a simple line. Migrants are a fundamental part of europe today. And they deserve respect. They must be talking partners and the rest of the society, for a change, must hear.

So if we keep any desire to remain true to our cosmopolitan ideas, lets start at home. The world, as always, is moving to Europe. Shall we take seriously the ones that already arrived? Shall we go back to our basic ideas of democracy and hear the people that we aim to represent?

UFOs

2006-05-12T21:33:00.000+02:00

Being a science fiction fan, one of the worst communication problems that I have ever faced is to explain to my friends that 1) I am not a nerd, plus: 2) I am indeed 37 years old, and 3) Points 1 and 2 does not prevent me from being (still) a science fiction fan. No matter the difficulty because today's press have so many UFO's around, that I might as well try to mention some of them and make my friends see why scifi is still a great thing to read about.

Let's start at england. I always thought that aliens stopped to visit england few years after they were done with stonehenge, since nothing remotely romantic or bizarre happens in those murky skies, and if it would, nobody would see it anyway. Actually, I seem to be right. Pushed by an activist (probably a scifi fan and politically active guy, just like me, wow) the Ministery of Defence is due to make public her own report on UFO's, carried on by years and years of research. And pounds. So yes, Tony could afford in the past to let his minister spend time in these sort of issues, probably to keep them sharp when the detection of weapons of mass destruction came later. Well, apparently the report did not find any real UFO sighting. Neither WMD were reported as real. And given the believe of Blair's in the big bombs inside Saddam's bunkers, probably he is looking (defiantly? scared?) to the londinense skies.

Now, the previous note I consider string enough to shake the foundations of all of you that thought the scifi was a boring and demode issue, full of saber lasers and green little men. As a matter of fact, as fundamental pieces of scifi such as the sagas of Dune or the Foundations show, scifi can be a excuse to present, in a bizarre set up, philosophical or sociological disquisitions. Not to mention political ones, with Farenheit 451 at the head of a long list. And talking about bizarre political scenarios, all of you willing or able to open El Pais in the past days will see another UFO hovering the streets of Madrid. The Thyssen baroness is in the streets, fighting for the trees of her museum. The point here is that a urban renewal plan coming from the city mayor office aims to clear up the street leading to the Thyssen museum from trees. Some of those trees are simply huge, so no surprise that citizens oppose the plan. What is a real case of an UFO for me is to imagine the baroness to fulfill her promise of chain herself to one of the green giants. Just imagine her impeccable ivory linen suits and her XX shoes associated to a plebeian chain. Now, if that is not science fiction, you tell me.

And to end up my report of european celebrities going scifi fans (or simply nuts) I go back to the preferred exportation product of multicultural nederlands, Hirsi Ali that is. Our most famous asilee (that become in due time the thorn in the side of the rest of the migrants) tackles a fundamental science fiction problem (energy sources), from the pages of several european newspapers. Perhaps a voice shouting in the dessert, Hirsi has discovered that indeed the oil is a big problem, and calls for the use of alternative energy sources. Interestingly enough, Hirsi rejects two of the most populars routes that scifi thinkers follows when focusing on energy. She does not talk about a future a la Mad Max, a dried future earth without oil, nor she goes for the bright future of technological advance in which we would use whatever alternative energy is there. Hirsi rather goes to her well known sources of concern, the islamic radicalism. And, as bright as usual, states that oil is all what supports those terrorists. With her natural flair when writing, her article close with a very original phrasing, that will be more than enough to close my own column. “It's the oil, stupid. If you want to defeat Al Qaeda, drive an hybrid auto”.

Long life to Applied Science

2006-04-28T13:53:00.000+02:00

This week started good for what science matters. A former friend of me, for example, got a paper in Nature, which, as you might know, is one of the two most important journals in the world. It doesn't really matters what I think now of the person (nothing nice, actually), neither matters that I have tried unsuccessfully (already years ago) to get my science published in Nature (so I am actually bursting with envy). That was good news, since shows that even people that was like one long time ago, has a chance of being recognized scientists. Cool. My former friend is a venezuelan chap (we made together our undergraduate studies in biology in a venezuelan university), and his paper was published in collaboration with other latin american scientists. A point for the third world! yupi!!

But the scoring from my former university did not stop there. Few days later I was informed (casually by another Nature author) that research from my old venezuelan university was being recognized (again). Indeed, I got a link to a BBC news, in which a discovery from my former professors was nicely covered: Flatulence-free beans. It seems that researchers from the nutrition department used some interesting knowledge on bacteria to produce a strain of beans that liberates the consumer from that undesired side effect. What can I say? Are we not happy?

Interestingly enough, I remember years ago a raging discussion among few professors of that same nutrition department and others from the ethology group. The discussion was on applied science. The claim of the ethologists was that science is science, and the applied tag makes no sense whatsoever. Accordingly, the research of a scientist is always better evaluated by international scientists. Contrarily, came the opinion of the nutrition people. In a third world university the priority should not lay in getting internationally recognized research. Rather the production of knowledge that could be used in alleviating the social conditions of our impoverished countries. Applied science? welcome to you!

Well, in the light of the BBC report I wonder what this debate would be today. Would the ethologists recognize the value of the research, given the attention that the international community gave to it? Are the nutritionists convinced that they solved one of the problems of our poor population (that surely consumes lots of beans)?

And talking about socially relevant research, I can not but end this column reporting an article on The Guardian of today. The New Scientist (a popular science publication) compiled worldwide scientific research on the causes of couple attraction. Now, that seems indeed worth the grants. Imagine that scientists could teach us how to pick the woman (or man) of our dreams. I would like to apply that! (if I would not be happily married, I mean). Alas, once more the scientists disappoint me. The list can not be a more banal compilation of common knowledge. Chocolate is good, body language matters, eye contact is desirable, shared experiences of danger bond people together, soft music make persons more receptive to each other, and laughing together is good for a couple. Now, thank you very much. I really could not have think of those. Well, who knows?. Perhaps this list was not known by the scientists that carried the research. Let's hope that the readers of the New Scientists, then, count now with an easy recipe of improving their human relations. With all due respect to my scientist friends (most of them in couples made in field trips, a shared danger indeed) I can testify that in academy, any improvement in human relations is welcome.

Beating them at their own game

2006-03-14T13:43:00.000+01:00

Local elections gone, I turn back to the press to get my share of awakening events in the morning. I mean, it feels fine to read newspapers again, without the guilty feeling that I should be talking to somebody thatis about to vote for me, or giving some flyers away. Now, I almost forgot that such an strategy is two edged. In between today and yesterday, the press keeps me between the revulsion and the amusement, actually. Welcome back, Inti.

I mean, why do I have to stomach early in the morning Hirsi Ali hyping herself as the coming Voltaire that the muslim world needs? Now, not that I love Voltaire, with his gardens-for-retired-people ideology. But there are limits. As a matter of fact, that image is just balanced out by Condi , trying to get a grip in the guitar that Evo just gave her, conveniently made out of coca leaves. Or, I suppose, the roles of revulsive and montypitonish can be reversed. As a matter of fact it is just wonderful to portrait the shouting Hirsi Ali, a politician that has no qualms to puke on half of the world, as Candide. Or even better, to be writing Candide. How absurd can we get? And actually, the bloody nerve of Condi, present in the Michelle Bachelet assumption as president, when not only her government, but her ideas, put Pinochet in power, and also send the father of the new chilean president to torture and death. Doesn't these people has any shame left?

Well, actually they don't. And that is probably why I remain trying to figure out what to do. Shall I puke? Shall I laugh? puke-laugh, laugh-puke. In between the shout and the style, as usual.

The sad part of this ongoing comedy is that these two brilliant women, actually, are the forerunners of one of the oldest strategies in the world: Go out, and beat them at their own game. Not terrible ethic kind of game, but who cares?

Let's start with Hirsi. For many of my foreigner-huging friends of the netherlands, she is the archetypical well integrated allochtoon. The mythology runs like that: political refugee arrives to the country, teach herself the beauty of dutch, goes into university, raises due to her intellectual calliber, takes up the cause of those opressed muslim women, and ends up as star parliamentair. Of course, the world, and most of all, those scary evil muslims, take it up against her. What I believe of the intellectual calliber of Hirsi, actually, is that is best proven
in her adaptability. Lets pass over the details that do not work well in the narrative, such as the fact that she is no political refugee, but she run out on a marriage, or that she is no newcomer to politics, but is the scion of a family with a long tradition of politics in her own country. Her insight shines on when you realize that she has been doing for years what the traditionally tolerant dutchies love best: shout louder than they.

And there we have Condi. As distinguished member of a government that has just shown how much it cares for the dispossesed back in New Orleans, she does market herself as the incarnation of the compassionate-conservative-american-dream. Brilliant academic, gifted musician, able political operator. And coming from a humble origin.Lets, again, pay no attention whatsoever to the irritant details. Lets don't worry about that oil tanker that goes around the world with her name, recognition of her history as leader of the big oil companies, another blatant proof of the (not really compassionate) interwining power lines in between politics and big money. All this is food for the rabid left wing press. What actually matter is that Condi is irresistible. Just look at her looks in the UN, short of matrix-inspired dominatrix, leather clad and briskly walking. I mean, what marketting image is better than the accomplished piano player of Bush family meetings gripping the charango from Evo, a coca-charango, for god sake! The ultimate music instrument of every single southamerican lefty that wanted to reconnect with her roots, with the millenia of south american indian traditions, and the centuries of opression in the hand of white colonizers.

In any case. The cliche that women are smarter than men is totally true here. In a shouting society, why should you botter with trying to be nuanced? What's the need of going for the soft sides of multiculturalism? none. You'll get yourself a better and faster ticket to fame if, foreigner yourself, go on beating the foreigner bashers at their own game. Shout higher! beat the crap out of muslims! Invoque Voltaire, because anyway, nobody read his work today.

There is catch, though. Supppose that you actually suceed. Suppose that you are actually the foreigner that comes along, and win at the race of beating the others that like you years ago, are trying to get away from arranged marriages. Or warfare, or murderous regimes supported with the oil that the USA needs so much. If you suceed in the game of beating the beaters, you are a beater yourself. And that success-history-to-be, that child of war or that clitoris-less woman, will be refused at the doors of your new country. No more place in The Netherlands for refugees, or no more affirmative action in the states. But who cares? not you,
surely. You are safe now, in the limelight of the media, or learning to play the charango.

Football and multiculturalism

2006-03-12T12:47:00.000+01:00

The spanish newspaper El Pais brings today an interesting insight in what multiculturalism means for non-politicians. Even though I do not frequently read the sports pages, the headline of an interview to the dutch trainer of a spanish team called my attention: the Dutch likes to order, the Spanish likes to obey. Indeed, half way in the interview, philosophizing on the relation between players and trainers, the dutch trainer claims that he likes to play with teams down south and without stars, because then he will receive the attention that a trainer deserves. I presume that his perception of the spanish culture also make him happy at living in Spain, being Dutch. Which make me think in new reasons why so many retired old people from the north of europe like so much to move and live in the sunny towns of the south of Spain. Ageing in a society in which every young will boss you around is not such a beautiful perspective. Why to stay in rainy and bossy netherlands, if we can go to subservient and sunny spain?

Far too many parallels have been drawn by better writers than me in between football and politics, so I will not bother you with possible ramifications of this wonderful statement from that dutch trainer. But let's agree that the idea of southern, or latin countries being prone to authoritarism is one that runs deep both in (liberal and emancipated) north europe and in (corrupt and underdeveloped) southamerica. I will neither fall to the temptation of noting that every single prime minister of the netherlands in the last twenty years has profiled himself as a pater familias. More interesting, perhaps, is to think in the profiling that prominent politicians from the south have used. Can we really talk of subservient societies?

Lets start with the political landscape of few twenty years ago. There and then the picture was certainly appalling. Most of the countries of southamerica were under the boot of dictators. Even worse, dictators that successfully mixed the ideology of right wing with the values of the catholic orthodoxy, such as family, order and respect. We could say that precisely this dark chapter of history illustrate the view of our football trainer turned sociologist. How can not be subservient a society that bear decades of authoritarianism? But again, enlarging the time scale does bad for the analysis. What over the time before the dictators? Was southamerica not the beau of the european left wing? Don't we remember how the whole elite of north europe turned revolutionary admirers of the libertarian figures of Allende, for example? Was not, in the same decade, the revolution in Nicaragua a new breath in the libertarian cause? Or even today, when figures like Bachelet in Chile or Morales in Bolivia seems to rekindle the cause for the oppressed, the excluded and the tortured as viable leaders of a society, or when the iconic sub-comandante marcos still make the intellectuality of europe go gaga? So what are actually those societies in the supposedly subservient south? Libertarian people taking the future in their hands, or sheep following the first messianic leader that make it to the public arena?

I must conclude, once more, that society analysis is less prone to simplification than football. What is more spanish, one might ask, the boot of Franco or the individualism of Picasso and Dali? Or in the netherlands today, who is more representative, our stiff, young (and actually elected) prime minister, tireless champion of the mantra of law and order, or the still strong anarchic movement of squatters, emancipated prostitutes and vocal feminists?

I rather claim that our societies, in both sides of the Atlantic and the Ecuador keep their pendulous oscillation in between authority and emancipation. It might sound as a foregone conclusion now, but lets agree that describe spaniards as subservients and dutchies as bossy is as stupid as frame muslim as fanatics and danish as champions of the press freedom. Multiculturalism, that needed recognition of the existence of others, have blunted our capacity of analysis, and too frequently we fall prey of the easy cliché and the irresponsible analysis. The day that we will recognize the multiple layers coexisting in the idea that each individual has of his own culture we will be closer to a better functioning society. I keep on thinking that such a day is not that far away, but again, that might be falling in the cliché of wishful thinking. A sin that after all, belongs to my latin, and always positive, culture.

currency

2005-10-05T14:10:00.000+02:00

About a year ago, in one of this semi scientific articles that appears on economics, i read that the most exciting development of economic science was the criticism to the existence of the "homo economicus". such title carry the assumption that people take decisions rationally, making then the use of logical models a reasonable task in the understanding of economics. the criticism start saying that, far from being agents that take the rational decision to each transaction, we are closer to individuals that base their decisions on feelings, memory, personal allegiances, and the like.

Indeed this is exciting stuff, since the inclusion of uncertainty, or irrational decision making has allowed to explain, in the last decade, a far wider range of human -economical- behavior. Today, looking at the press, i wonder how fundamental those criticisms are.

The new that caught my attention refers to an ongoing lawsuit in the usa. As most of you are aware, it happens that porno is a dominant presence in internet. And, as some of you might be aware of, if you want to have lots of porno, you got to pay. But then what is paying? What would you give in return to access to couples, solos and groups, engaged in that ancient activity? blood, sweat and tears?

Well, it seems that this transaction can be done in many unsuspected currencies. An innovative entrepreneur from the states, offer the following deal to soldiers stationed in Irak... if you want access to my porno, you can give me in return images from your actions, in the front. there you are, a rational transaction. Give me some blood, some real blood, and i'll give you some porno.

Besides the implications that the success of this transaction might have for economical theory, I keep on wondering about my root ideals, for example make love, not war. Interestingly, I would say. To my forerunners in the sixties seemed obvious that if you engage in lovemaking, you will not be waging war. Not so, it what it comes out from the piece of news. if you want to go somewhere with your screen and shake it off, you got to make some war before.

From here onwards, there are several lines of writing in my front. we could discuss the idea of currency, and realize that even war has become currency in itself. or we could go deeper in the filing of the sixties dogma, and realize that sex and power have been always intrinsically linked. And of course, there is the looming thought about the intrinsic immorality of paying sex with murder, or occupation.

But perhaps it is better to leave it at that, not to write anymore, and just wonder. What I actually wonder is on the rationality of the soldiers. Are they not aware of the huge amount of porno for free in internet? Definitively, this exchange seems to me another proof that homo is if maybe economicus, certainly not rationalis.

German colours

2005-10-03T14:02:00.000+02:00

It was the early eighties, and I was more or less recently arrived to venezuela. The time was ripe to get to know how politics worked there. I don't remember if it was in the school, or from some neighbor. but eventually somebody explained to me that here parties were identified by color codes. The social democrats were white, the christian democrats were green, the socialists were orange. Not surprisingly there were yellow liberals and red communists. And the whole thing seemed a bit of a circus. My father, I seem to remember, explained that the whole thing was a device for people with few interest in politics. It's easier to remember a color that an idea, he said.

So here we are now, some twenty-some years away, trying to figure out the future government of germany. And of course, we are faced with a whole rainbow of alternatives. A semaphore. A jamaican flag. even a red and black combination, in the best style of the cuban revolution. It seems some sort of poetic justice that the land of complicated thinkers and convolute writers ended up discussing their political future in Technicolor. Globalization, I guess.

My problem is that behind the silly carnival are scary questions to be answered. Who would like more than me seen the greens back in government? We members of the european green party should actually be proud, since both social and christian democrats consider coalitions with the joschka team, even now that joschka is in retirement. Nothing scary here, then.

But lets go back to my first experiences with electoral carnivals, even if for a second. Back in the eighties, venezuela enjoyed her own version of stable politics. For any thinking citizens it was just normal and desirable that greens and whites alternate in government. Social and christian democrats, indeed, had made a pact of governability, which produced a stable country along some forty years. And that stability make all of us go into denial when our current president, the former commander Chavez, made a cup de etat, lost, but remainded incredible famous. He won elections in 1999, and has never since loose a political battle, sending any other political party to the shelve of the irrelevance.

Of course, much is there to be said about the corruption of previous governments, and the rampant impoverishment of one of the countries with the highest oil income in the region. But politically, the debacle that gave Chavez power was simply a political debacle. Social democrats were no longer distinguishable from christian democrats. the colors became extremely irrelevant, exchangeable, and ultimately discardable.

As usual, I might be stretching my imagination comparing Germany in 2005 with Venezuela in 1999. But at some level the same problem is just there. The only real argument against a grand coalition of christian democrats and social democrats seems to be the personality of their leaders. Both Merkel and Schroeder seem to agree in the economical and social reforms that germany needs. It is very hard for the elector to distinguish the nuances in between these two parties, and the vote seems to reflect this ideological melting. Ultimately, how to claim that the cdu is really neoliberal, if the spd want to implement the same agenda of economical reforms?

It seems to me then that political parties suffer from an international disease the lack of memory. Big parties that reach some sort of stable power seems to forget that ultimately their role in the society is to provide ideas to their clients. Ideas that can be debated, that can be contrasted, that can be voted for. Ideas that obviously will have implementations that actually might end up in similar agendas of policy. But if the elector, or actually the party herself, stops to produce a well-defined identity, if a political party stops to claim the imagination of their electors, troubles are not far away in the horizon. And if the mayor parties of a country end up contrasting their figures at the top, we know that finally the hurricane is just bout to land-struck. Germany is in this state right now. In the denial that the inhabitants of New Orleans were after enduring so many smaller storms, without the defense of the wetlands needed to keep the storms away. Katrina arrived and now New Orlens would never be what it was. Germany might still cape this storm, but the denial of her political class is a storm in her own right.

Sandals

2005-10-03T14:01:00.000+02:00

It is possible to track down my affinity to sandals to the way my father used to dress. In my childhood, living in the tropical Venezuela, sandals were the best shoe that you could use. But Venezuela, not yet globalized, was not the best place to find such things, so for years I heard my father mourn the leather sandals made in Buenos Aires, in that almost universal style called Franciscan, being simply inspired in the saint.

Years came and went, and the fashion made one of those circular turns. Already in my adolescence sandals made in brazil were popular in the market. They weren’t leather, but more modern materials, with black plastic soles and cordura straps. And since then, moving in between Venezuela, Switzerland and the Netherlands, I keep on using, and buying, these ubiquitous sandals, carrying some sort of familiar nostalgia.

Thinking in the globalized world of our days, I have spent the past weeks looking at photos of the dismantling of the Gaza settlers. It is certainly a repellent spectacle, to see the amount of media effort placed to cover the moving of the relatively few and certainly rich families that have been a daily spit in the face of the masses of Palestinians, living close by in abject camps, meanwhile settlers have grew their luxurious houses, their racist occupation and their fanatic agenda. Nobody behind this monitor supports the bloody strategy from Hamas and company, but I am neither able to see with sympathy the suffering of people that has brought hell to their fellow humans for so long time. So it is with a little relieve that I witness the families being moved away, finally.

And curious at being another global witness of this historical movement, I scrutinize the photos, to see if there is something to give the defeated settlers some finally human trait, something that could allow me to see them as just another group of people used in intricate political power games, one of the many tragedies in the near east. Surely, there is something to think about. There are the sandals that all this adolescents wear. My same sandals, teva-like.

In another reportage on this boys and girls, the apparently most extreme front of the settler movement, I read that their ideology touches, perhaps not surprisingly, the borders of the apartheid. They seem to be focus in an ecological future, in the building of ecological communities able to live in harmony with the environment. A close community, by the way. Communities without any relation with the rest of the people, without arabs, or palestinians. I can imagine them, in their almost Californian retreats, bordering the hippies and the nazis, excluding from their midst all other that could threaten their harmony.

A strange world this one that we have. There the sandals of my father, by the way no more produced by the argentinian artisans of yesterday victims as well of the global markets. I think in these israeli sandals, probably inspired by the ones that Francisco de Asis used to wear. The saint of the poor, the saint of harmony with animals, and the endless kindness with the fellow human. Sandals for the settlers, and their dreams of an israel without arabs.

Today is not so cold in Utrecht. My sandals are in between other shoes that I could possibly use. I wear my other shoes, instead.

Le (brave new) Monde

2005-07-11T04:48:00.000+02:00

Lets open the pages of Le Monde… Which means, in one way or another, to be comfortable enough, to be wealthy enough, to allow myself a coffee in Utrecht, and time to peek in the sophisticated world of the world according to the french. Le Monde, for my background and education, is a window to the centennial europe, to the fashions of the fashionable france, to the stratospheric discourse on philosophy by elevated professors of La Sorbonne. This morning, alas, something rings untrue in my own petit bourgeois window. Looks like the walls of the french intelligentsia are cracking, letting rays of other lights come through.

And here we go. The first article that gets me is an english (english, for god's sake) disquisition into the future of the left in europe. The writer, a former labor minister in the laborite government of Tony Blair, explains why the dinosauric european left, akin to the communist party, has left this old continent with few chances of development, meanwhile a progressive left, funny and paradoxically enough, rekindle flags closer to the neoliberals, is the movement that holds the keys of a more human future. The original shock, of having in Le Monde an english savant, is slowly blunted in the recognition that this is, again, simple propaganda for the blairite third way . Ok, nothing new here.

But the blunting of the surprise sharpens again at reading another anglo-saxon savant, this time writing on public policy against global warming. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs the column. Excuse me? I beg your pardon? Arnie? The muscles and the heavy accent? Yeap. Arnie is back, giving to the readers of Le Monde an overview in the policy that the californian state pursue in the search for a greener future.

My brain stability is definitively shocked. Trembling I turn the pages and some of my peace is regained when I am able to understand a brainy review on some exposition on Matisse, or a mourning reflection on the choosing of London instead of Paris as home of the olympic games of 2012. Eventually I turn the last page of Le Monde, and with a gauloise in my lighter, I breathe the poison and regain some comfort. But the question remains. What is going on?

Today, as any other day of my last three years, I am an active member of the green party of the netherlands. A green party called groenlinks, green left. In a recent meeting of our campaign committee, responsible of designing the strategy for the coming elections, we define our voters as mainly postmaterialists and cosmopolitans. And I end my cigarette wondering how this universe will react to a world in which a blairite minister guards the progress of the left, and Arnold Schwarzenegger defends the future of the greens. Strange bedfellows, at least. But my coffee is cold, and my cigarrete is over. High time to get to the street and do some work.

referendum

2005-06-06T01:34:00.000+02:00

Look from outside. Just try to imagine any other historical moment of humanity in which a bunch of nations, or whatever other human aggregation you can think of, has come together without the external enemy. Or without a dictator or personal leader consolidating his grip on power. Look from outside, I said, look from history to Europe, and realize once more that this continent is writing history. Or it was writing history.

Electorates are always moronic, one could claim. In democracy, the claim as been made as well that people gets the government -or the rules- than they deserve. Let’s make the stretch to Europe today, and the French and the Dutch people rejecting the projected constitution of Europe. Weren’t europeans extremely idiotic the past few weeks? Did europeans actually reject a well-earned place in history... rejecting a step in the building of a larger and better space for their descendents? Certainly, the rejection of the projected european constitution signals a stop in the business of building Europe, at least in the business as usual scenario. The question is what will be now the business of building europa?

For the ones of us interested in european politics, the term “salami strategy” is well known. Nobody buys a big salami, but everybody like few slices at a time. And before we get to know, we all are consumers of the same big salami. Unaware consumers, that is. So politics in Brussels has been, for years without end, and ongoing selling of slices, little pieces of legislation that were not even voted, but just passed to the people in sneaky ways. The fun of all this is that it worked out. The European voter has been hardly consulted about the way that Europe evolves. And nevertheless, Europe has evolved substantially in the last decades, with people more or less happy about it. This happiness of sorts is what might have inclined the politicians in Brussels to change their strategy. No more slices, they thought. And we found ourselves trying to read a constitution of hundred pages. And we wake up past thursday to realize that not only the french, but also the dutch public rejected, once more, to buy the big salami.

There are many analyzes done about what went wrong this time. One could talk about bad electoral campaigns; lack of readable explanations of what the constitution was about, provincialisms, globalization, fear of loosing national identity and more. Probably each analyze grasps a piece of reality. But ultimately it does not matter very much what went wrong. Because one thing that for sure the now rejected constitution would have brought, was the opening of many of the sealed rooms in which European policy is agreed. The constitution could have meant the end of the ongoing slicing of pieces of European legislation. No more sneaky discussions, since the citizens of Europe could have know which minister cut which piece of which salami, or European law. Not now, without our rejected constitution.

The lesson that we citizens of Europe have given to our politicians is that we are not yet ready to approve what they are doing. The sad part is that we are neither ready to change the way European policy is made. So the business of building Europe will go on as usual, cutting slices in closed rooms. It is clear to me that a long time will pass until another politician in Brussels will want to open his (or her) dealings to public consult. So we are back at the normal ways in which politics are done, unknowingly to the citizens.

A pity.

Ratzinger

2005-04-20T11:17:00.000+02:00

“I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.”

[The cardinals burst in]

“NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Amongst our weaponry
are diverse elements:
fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency
an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope
and nice red uniforms”

And that is the way it was. Monty Python shows off their preternatural sense of prediction. The world can always get sillier, but not sillier that a Monty Python sketch. Gone are the nice opinion columns of the past weeks, toying with the idea of a progressive pope from Latin America, or from Africa. The challenges of the catholic congregation (like women in the curia, married priests and diverse ecumenisms) will remain what they are, challenges. The well-wishers had short time to try to convince themselves that the catholic church could still be a reform-able organism. It seems that they did not expect a kind of Spanish inquisition. They got the german inquisition instead.

Of course, now we will be willing to edge our bets in the expectedly short term of a papacy that start with a cardinal of almost 80 years. With some luck within a decade cardinals will be burning dry weeds again. Few more, few less, they will be the same cardinals that yesterday choose the head of the inquisition as new pope for the century XXI. Not a big hope there neither. The press reports that the smoke was nor clearly white, nor black. It seems that for a while the conclave was giving away mixed signals. But that was only for a short while. I can imagine very few signals more clear than Ratzinger, the head of the inquisition, chosen as pope. For a long or a short papacy, the catholic church is a conservative entity.

Ratzinger has passed the last twenty years defending the catholic church against the heretics, those away from the dogma of the church. I cannot stop thinking in the passage of the testament in which Jesus explains why the pater noster is enough pray to establish the relation in between the person and god. No wonder that the catholic church needs a mayor inquisitor for pope. A century like ours, more and more liberal, gives more and more space to the individual convictions. We might even go back to that explanation of Jesus. The Vatican, hoping for preserving their whole apparatus as intermediary in between god and the human, should have an inquisitor in the Peter’s seat. Challenges habemus? A strong hand offero. Not surprisingly Argentina had as chaplain of the army a monster that suggested that heretics should be thrown with a stone in the river. Any other scenario will simply accelerate the long way along which we humans are trying to get rid of spiritual leaders of different clothing and conviction, in the search of our own paths. Yesterday a Spanish court sentenced one of the confessed responsibles of actually throwing the heretics of a dictatorship to the river. He will be in jail for the next 640 years. I wonder about the chaplain. And about the new pope, the inquisitor.

Nobody expects a kind of Spanish Inquisition? That is what the Vatican has to offer today.

Hotel in Paris

2005-04-18T12:44:00.000+02:00

In the middle of a Europe gone hysterical with refugee’s issues, we should be able to take a better look at ourselves, and be ashamed. And I am not talking only on the current disparaged electoral campaign of conservative -and racist- english politicians “do you think what we think?”, or some other populist and “spontaneous” declaration of a dutch right winger, staple of today political debate. What I am talking now is about the cold decision of allocate asylum seekers in a hotel, converted overnight in a deadly furnace.

I should go back to my forays in european tourism. It is hard to forget a week expend in a cheap room of Paris, walking each day back and forth to the Louvre, to finally see with own eyes pieces that I stare at (along the previous twenty five years) in book plates and posters. Paris still remains as the repository of treasures that allow me to be proud of my humanity. The rather basic sleeping quarter was irrelevant, I was with money enough in my pockets to roam the galleries during the day, and still walk the streets at night.

Politicians, and a rather relevant group of our citizens today, are threatened by the illegal immigration, by the refugee. Or so they shout untiringly in the media. And so different governments are in the struggle for different solutions. At one extreme we have the dutch government trying to kick out 26000 asylum seekers that are waiting for a decision more than five years already. At the other extreme we have the Spanish government, with her policy of legalizing workers that lack official documents. And somewhere in between we had the French, willing to put money of the city council for renting hotels of Paris, Paris of all places! to temporarily allocate the asylum seekers. Policy apparently illuminated and humanitarian. It was easy to think that the asylum seekers would then enjoy the resources of one of the most important cities of the world, one that still today holds high our culture.

But to my shame, that was far away from reality. The hotel in the center of the city resulted to be a new oven, were already twenty persons burned to death. The hotel thought as a temporary house resulted in a place with only an emergency exit, with un-existent fire fighting resources. A wrecking hell as departure from this world, for persons that already escaped from the hell of their own countries. Waiting for the permission to live in a better world, they died in fire.

I wonder if this tragedy, perfect mirror of our immeasurable egoism at making from the asylum seekers a political question (instead of the humanitarian need that it is) will be able to put again in context not only the severity of the problem, but also the cruelty of the solutions that are today offered. Sadly I believe that the scorched remains of the asylum seekers will not weight heavily in the conscience of the nowadays European, nor politician nor citizen. And it should. If Europe desires any credibility in the Brussels declarations of “being a social and humanitarian force in the world” Europe should be deeply ashamed of the people that looking for a better future in that project found death in fire.

Wojtila

2005-04-06T16:38:00.000+02:00

Wojtila is dead. Not able to escape the globalized media, I have to swipe my eyes from furtive tears, at opening my dutch newspaper and finding the photo of the pope leaning on a cross, contorted face and silken clothes flapping at the wind. That was indeed a man that carried the suffering of many. A man that used this huge load the best he could. And he certainly could. The world would have been quite different without Karol Wojtila.

What strikes me today is the easiness that so many opinion makers in the global press have to throw away not furtive, but all sort of tears of sadness and regret. I can’t avoid feeling repulsed by so much recognition of good deeds. Perhaps the whole thing is a best proof of God’s existence. He has descended on the people of our planet a colossal, massive amnesia, at the moment of call back his son in earth.

Of course today, knowing what we know, one could not but agree in the intrinsic desirability of the fall of the Soviet Union. But at seeing the decomposition of that society at barely fifteen years since their incorporation in the capitalist side, at least one could wonder about better processes of transformation. Or one could show a bit more of measure at declaring Wojtila the hero of the war between freedom and sovietism. Perhaps that war has been won. But the costs of the way it ended are costs that we are still dealing with, and that we will pay for long time.

And that is regarding the most positive relevance of Wojtila in international policy. But now, I really wonder in amazement at all those latinos and third worlders that today cry at the lying figure. How could they have possibly forgot the role of Wojtila in the destruction of the liberation theology? (Unless god did really made all of them amnesiac).

The catholic church, the most formidable survivor of the last two thousand years, still has a lot to say and to change, as everybody seems to acknowledge today. Perhaps it should change following the course of those antiglobalists-loathed institutions, the world bank and the IMF. It is high time for the catholic church to reestablish the progressive streak that declared a preferential option for the poor. A streak that the all powerful and finally death Wojtila crush so efficiently.

tsunami

2005-01-12T02:29:00.000+01:00

It was in a C. Clarke novel where I read by first time the description of a tsunami. The protagonist, an adolescent of about my age then, is playing in the seashore. In between rocks, there were one always hopes to find at least a tiny, pale reflex of whatever is in the deeper waters. To play at the seaside is to have a cat, knowing that you will never be able to own a tiger. In any case, suddenly the waters go away, back in the ocean. Fishes are stranded in the suddenly dry seabed. Reefs are finally uncovered, corals receive by first time direct sunlight. In order to give the novel a reasonably happy ending, just at that moment a friendly alien happens to be watching from the sky, and warns the child of the waters that soon, very soon, will come back. He runs, and the story can go on from there.

I retain the image, since now and then I wonder if in similar circumstances I would be able to resist the temptation of get into the forbidden place suddenly opened, even if for few moments. To run in the contrary direction seems to be one of the ultimate challenges that reason faces, since it has to overcome our ultimate, and irrational, curiosity. The logic shouts that we should run away and save the skin. And at least a piece of us call exactly for the opposite. To assume that until a last moment we could be privileged witnesses of a mayor catastrophe. And right now I wonder if there would be something of the same feeling in the minds of those occidental tourists that up to today remain in Ache. Bathing in waters that one can imagine as crowded with rests, half eaten, half rotten, of victims from the tsunami. Perhaps these tourists refuse to abandon their position of privileged and reasonably safe, witnesses.

The international press, the bon pensant, is obviously in disagreement with me. In newspapers all across Europe I have seen the photo -in first page- of a pot bellied man in his fifties with swimming trunks and without shirt, holding by the neck a bottle of cold beer, meanwhile at his back the bulldozers remove corpses and debris from the beach. The journalists are not so pleased with this man, stereotype of Europeans on holiday in Thailand. I wonder if so much indignation used to describe the fat guy who decided to invest his money in a cold beer instead of relieving some of the surrounding human catastrophe, is an idiotic indignation or is simply hypocritical indignation.

Truly enough, the progressive thinkers of this continent are almost rabid at the lack of social conscience of our fat tourist with sun-tanned skin. All of them report the answer of the fat guy –tourist money is now needed more than ever- as cynical at best. Some (perhaps right wing) commentators have dared to say that if our fat guy drinks his beer in Thailand, after all, some of the money will end up in the hands of a local entrepreneur, who might do something about the disaster. And at this thought that claims the desirable economical influence of peoples flow across the world, the progressive thinkers of Europe seems to discover another tragedy, that devastating international traffic called tourism, imbued in our Heineken drinker. So now everybody can rant against the predations that westerners do in tourist countries.

What I wonder about is if this recent discovery is stupid or simple hypocritical. Because, after all, is sadly stupid that hundred fifty thousand people (and some) needed to die, so that finally we are aware of the falsehood of that dictum from our neoliberal times. The one that claims that tourism is development. Perhaps after all these years we believed (until the tsunami, that is) that tourists like Lawrence of Arabia were really able to bring development to those under educated Bedouins. Perhaps we have been resting in the image of Marco Polo, as ultimate refuge of cultural exchange?

I feel that there is something to be grateful to the potbellied drinker of cold Dutch beer. Perhaps this fat pal has managed, after so many years of self-complacent lies to make us look at our own face, as disgusting as the face of any other human. That disgusting, repulsive if you want, disaster-tourist, is no more nor less than this. A Tourist. As we have and will be. Lets see who is going to keep on saying that -after this revealing fat lad- tourism does really bring, to the third world, development. That mythic cornucopia that is enjoyed… in the first world.

Yet another column on terror, religion... as if you wouldn't have read enough already

2004-12-16T14:35:00.000+01:00

Any written thought on terrorism today will find two words linked. Muslim terrorism. The deeds that we have witnessed -and suffered- along the past few years had produced tons of paper dedicated to the debate of this new phenomenon, muslim terrorism. But is this muslim? Truly, Islam is an expanding and militant religion. But terrorist? Even in the orthodox idea of jihad, that fairly misunderstood term, we will not find a call for the assassination of non-involved infidels. Jihad, as a matter of fact, can translate as the continuous struggle that believers follow in the road to self improvement. Today is vital to recognize that the deeds of Al Qaida and Mohamed B's as what they are. A desperate attempt of doing politics. They are not the expression of a culture that, among other things, has given to the west mathematics and Khayyam.

Recognizing that terror is the deed of the excluded of a psychotic criminal that uses death as a tool of political struggle opens the door to a much-needed debate for whatever might be called progressive west. Religions are, even today, a relevant source of ethical values. Ranging from Weber, who laid the link of the protestant ethos and the successful development of capitalism in Europe, to the theology of liberation, which in South America organizes social movements around communal solidarity, religion has played a relevant role in the creation of western societies.

Now is the moment in which the west should recognize that other ways of development are possible. Not only the Christian, or the secular are the paths to open and progressive societies. The acceptance of the other, that chooses for development within the road delineate by christians instead of the secular program, is a step that the west long ago has done. it is time then to recognize once and for all that Islam can play the same role. Tolerance for other ethos, is not only an ethic imperative in itself, but a needed development. Let people commit themselves to their own values, accorded to the law of the land. Lets focus the debate on terrorism as the threat that it actually is, a political threat.

Even the most superficial analysis of the right wing rethoric, shows that the recognized threat from terrorism is the threat to security. And that is true. Better and more efficient actions are needed to prevent the tragedy of a terrorist attack. But the ultimate threat that scarcely make it to the political debate, contradictorily enough, is the political threat. Terrorism not only faces us with the grisly view of body bags and destroyed buildings, but also with the painful alienation of our own neighbors. A tolerant, and multicultural society, is one in which their individuals live together, without the fear for the different neighbor. Beyond the potential success of their deeds, the discovery of terrorist cells in the hearth of netherlands faces us with the fear that our neighbor, that different person that goes to a mosque instead of a church, is a terrorist, and that fear is what we should fear the most. Fear of the other can only led to a dysfunctional society. That is the long term threat of terrorism that we should be able to defeat.

Rambo and Bin Laden in NL

2004-12-08T01:54:00.000+01:00

The ghost of past mistakes desolates the conscience of any person. And as ghosts are well known to do, they haunt our dreams, threatening with invading our reality.

What else could have fueled the blockbuster of Rambo, that seminal film? How comes that a huge amount of people went to the movies to see the history of their own soldier declaring, in the sluggish voice of a crying Stallone: “there are no friendly civilians, sir”? Only a sort of penance, I believe. Perhaps the recreation of the nightmare worked as the needed exorcism, bringing the worse fear to the screen, to the hopefully unreal screen. Rambo confronted the North American public with a monster that themselves created, a monster that was eating their own entrails. A monster, among many.

How to otherwise explain the amount of attention that Osama Bin Laden and his video apparitions creates in the North American media? Is the real fear of another September eleven, or is it rather the fearful confrontation with a monster or own creation? Bin Laden has the fascination that Rambo enjoyed. The freedom fighter, the soldier feed and trained with the taxpayer money, suddenly decided to kill friendly civilians in an act of megalomaniac rapture. Rambo and Bin Laden made headlines. Not because they are a couple of sonofabitches, but because they are our sonofabitches.

The newspapers of the NL have recently discovered their own monster. This society suddenly has awakened to the fact that terrorism is not only the work of crazy soldiers, or bearded schizoids. Terrorism is also the work of well-integrated citizens, ranging from Mohamed B to the youth that throws a molotov, not anymore in the streets of A'dam to bash the birthday of a queen, but to protest against the education of Muslims children. We stare at our television screens, and slowly began to digest a new phenomenon: the progressive and tolerant Netherlands has also created her own monsters.

A question looms for the years to come. The newspapers and governments of our days produced the only answers that they are capable of. Faced with the horror, they try to move it away. Mohamed B is the sad result of an international brainwash, and the Lonsdale kids are simple pubescent misfits, misguided and perhaps dangerous, but ultimately kids that will grow out. Or so they say. But the question looms untouched. Is our society able to deal with the monsters that had created? Are we able to recognize and analyze the simple fact that Londsdaler's and Mohamed B’ers are as Dutch as Balkenende? Today is impossible to know. Our certainty, in this troubled moment, is that we are awakened to a nightmare. A nightmare of our own making. Integration is a double side issue, where the person should fit to a society and the society should fit to the person. The lack of integration is also double sided. If the Dutch society wants to awaken, in ten years or more, to a better situation, we should start to recognize our own part of blame. What is it that we have done to give Mohamed’s and londsdalers their existence? That is a question that needs not only answers, but actions.