Author Archives: Guy La Roche

About Guy La Roche

Dutch translator and subtitler living in Brittany with his three cats. Has also lived in the Flemish part of Belgium. Speaks English rather fluently and in a former life used to have a decent command of Spanish. Knows swear words in German and Russian. Not quite francophone yet, but slowly getting there. Vaguely centrist observer of the world around him, extremely naive and, sometimes, rather proud of it. Writes Venale Pecus.

Europe: feudalism and tribes

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From The Weekly Standard’s essay The return of the tribes by Ralph Peters (emphasis mine):

Now, in 2006, we see one European state after another enacting protectionist measures to prevent foreign ownership of vital industries (such as yogurt-making). France paused, as hundreds of thousands of its best and brightest protested the creation of new jobs for the less-privileged in a spectacular defense of the ancien régime. And a new German chancellor has called for saving the European project by destroying it–or at least by hewing down the massive bureaucracy in Brussels that alienated the continent. The future of Europe lies not in a cosmopolitan version of the empire of Charlemagne, but in a postmodern version of the feudal fragmentation that succeeded the Frankish empire. Brussels may be the new medieval Rome, its bureaucratic papacy able to pronounce in limited spheres, but there is ever less fear of excommunication.

You know the drill: discuss if you like.

(hat tip)

Art and therapy

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Dutch art weblog Suds and Soda tells us about an interview the Dutch publication Vrij Nederland recently conducted with British artist Tracey Emin. The interview is not available online, but the author of Suds and Soda gives us one quote:

Last week I went back to my therapist (Tracey says). I told him how happy I was. Yet, at the same time I was afraid of what that happiness might do to my art. Do you know what he said? “Woman, just go home and be happy!”

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Petite Anglaise got ‘dooced’ and sues

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Petite Anglaise, fellow blogger and double-whammy style winner of our very own 2006 Satin Pajama Awards in the categories Best Expat Weblog and Best Personal Weblog was fired from her job because of her blogging activities, or ‘dooced’ in weblog lingo. Her plight is receiving major news coverage, as you will see below the fold.
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Hirsi Ali’s shadow brings down Dutch cabinet

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The Dutch government has handed in its resignation after coalition partner D66 withdrew its support. Lousewies van der Laan, chairwoman of D66, had asked for the resignation of VVD minister Rita Verdonk because of her handling of the Hirsi Ali naturalisation case. The initial vote of censure* by Femke Halsema (GroenLinks-GreenLeft) that inspired Van der Laan’s resignation plea received no majority in the Dutch Lower Chamber and Rita Verdonk refused to quit on her own. D66 cabinet members Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Alexander Pechtold and Medy van der Laan consequently resigned and, by doing so, pulled the plug on the whole cabinet.
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali/Magan moves to US

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Controversial “Dutch” politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose true surname is Magan and not Ali, is reported to move to the United States where she will be working for The American Enterprise Institute. She is currently embroiled in a scandal because she had lied about her past to obtain a Dutch passport:

Hirsi Ali said she came clean about the lies she told to get asylum when she joined the Liberal Party (VVD) in 2002. Yet prominent VVDer (and now EU Commissioner) Neelie Kroes described Hirsi Ali as a person who had lived through five civil wars in Somalia. This was not true as Hirsi Ali lived in Kenya for over 10 years before coming to the Netherlands.

A spokesperson for the VVD said the party had been aware that Hirsi Ali lied about her name and date of birth when seeking asylum. This was not seen as a barrier to her joining the party or becoming one of its MPs.

These lies, in short, were already public knowledge. Way back in 2003, for example, the BBC published a story on Ayaan Hirsi Ali/Magan with the correct version of the facts, including her move to Kenya and stop-over in Germany.

The truly salient part of the story is, however, this:

Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk said on Friday that Hirsi Ali need not worry about facing repercussions for what she did 14 years ago. But she repeated she would have deported Hirsi Ali if she had been the minister back in 1992. “I don’t like lies,” Verdonk said on Friday.

Remember, Verdonk now plays tough on illegal immigrants. Yesterday evening, Monday 15th, Verdonk is reported to have made a phone call to Hirsi Ali, her colleague in the VVD party, saying that Hirsi may very well not be Dutch after all because, in 1997, she lied about her application for Dutch citizenship… Gotta love politics.

BTW, Hirsi Ali has declared to be shocked by all this, in The New York Times.

UPDATE, Saturday May 20th: Verdonk stated that Hirsi will get her Dutch passport back. The Dutch news story can be found here. Apparently they want to keep the VVD from splitting into two camps because of this affair. Huge pressure was piled on VVD member Verdonk to compromise and retract her earlier decision to strip Hirsi of her Dutch citizenship.

Van Themsche update

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Today more information was released on Hans Van Themsche’s motives for the killings through his lawyer. In my previous post I asked:

Is far-right ideology, in this case Vlaams Belang, responsible for poisoning his apparently unstable mind to such an extent that it would have inevitably led to murder, just like video games or heavy metal are sometimes blamed for violence, or is this just a hugely unfortunate yet isolated case of madness?

Well, it turns out to be a bit of everything.
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Belgium yet again in turmoil over killings

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In the night between May 6th and 7th 2006 five skinheads, coming from De Kastelein, a known extreme right café in West Flanders, beat up Raphaël Mensah, a fifty year old Parisian artist of Gabonese descent, and his thirty seven year old Belgian friend Alain Bouillon. Bouillon was heavily wounded and Mensah is now lying in a coma. According to Bouillon “the skinheads weren’t after money, they went after us because my friend has the wrong skin colour”. In fact, according to Belgian French-language La Dernière Heure, Mensah’s wallet was recovered on the crime scene with the 150 euros he carried on him still in it.

On May 11th, in an Antwerp street very close to where I used to live, an 18-year old man, Hans Van Themsche, went on a killing spree. His first victim, 46-year old Sonhul Koç, a Turkish woman who was sitting on a park bench reading a book, was heavily wounded. Van Themsche had shot her in the back from a distance of six meters (6.5 yards).

The second and third victims were both killed. They were a 24-year old Malinese woman called Oulemata Niangadou who worked as an au pair and the little Belgian girl she was looking after, two year old Luna. Van Themsche had spotted Oulemata and Luna walking down the street, he passed them, turned around and fired at them, in theirs backs, from point blank range. When he was later questioned about his motive for killing the little girl, he is reported to have said: “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time”. In all it took Van Themsche just four minutes to destroy three lives. He was stopped by a policeman who arrived at the scene and shot Van Themsche, apparently a willing target since he shouted “just shoot me”, in the stomach. Van Themsche is now in the hospital, but he will survive.
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European stereotypes and jokes

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Just a short and light post pointing you to this article on the BBC News site in which Stephen Mulvey talks about how the EU is trying to seduce its voters and why that is necessary:

Europe has been searching for years for something to inspire a new generation of citizens – a generation unimpressed by 60 years of peace and the ending of the continents’ Cold War divisions.

The piece itself is well worth a read, but what I really liked were the European jokes in the comments to the article. One example, from commenter Robert Fromow:

A prize was to be awarded for the first person to discover a horse with black and white stripes like a zebra. A German, a Frenchman, an Englishman and a Spaniard participated hoping to win the prize of 1,000,000 euros. The German decided to spend weeks in the National library researching into horses with black and white stripes. The Englishman went straight to a shop in Piccadilly which specialises in hunting gear, bought all the equipment necessary and set off for Africa in his quest for this strange creature. The Frenchman bought himself a horse and painted it black and white . The Spaniard went to the best restaurant he knew in Madrid, ordered an expensive meal for himself with a fine bottle of wine; after the meal he ordered an expensive Havana cigar and a Napoleon brandy, sat in a luxurious arm-chair in the hotel and began to consider what he would do with the 1,000,000 euros once he had found this remarkable horse with black and whte stripes. Robert Fromow, Beaconsfield UK

Go and have a laugh. And, if you know of any decent European jokes yourself, please feel free to submit them in our comments section.

The HRC is dead, long live the HRC?

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The UN has elected a brand new Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission. Why was the old HRC discredited? Well, basically and officially, because several of its members were known to violate human rights and/or to protect their own interests. It is only logical. However, who will be taking a seat in the new and improved HRC? Right, some of those very same countries that were known to violate human rights: China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
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Xenophobia and human nature

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There has been some cricket chirping on AFOE the past few days, so allow me to make a little bit of noise here and chase them away.

Amnesty International has a new report out, called Russian Federation – Violent racism out of control. I shall quote part of the report below the fold and ask some questions to our readers.
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