Greene’s Insite

On Monday -with what seems to me unseemly haste- the Dutch First Chamber, Senate, Upper House or whatever you want to call this collection of 75 creaking elder statesmen and women gave the go-ahead for Dutch ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The road is now clear for our head of state Queen Beatrix, to affix the royal signature to the document and deliver what used to be a free, independent nation into the hands of a bunch of unelected power-crazed foreigners in Brussels. Funny thing is: the Queen, unlike the presidents of Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria, cannot refuse to sign. Many many years ago, for what seemed very good reasons at the time, the Dutch made sure the monarchy became a purely ceremonial affair and stripped the Palace of all executive powers. The advantage was mutual: the important political decisions would henceforth be taken by the democratically elected representatives of the people, while the monarch was no longer required to risk his life leading his troops into battle or send his henchmen round the country to extort money from the poor. There’s now a government with a popular mandate to do it for him..or her.

Brilliant thing, democracy. Once you’ve tasted its benefits you want everybody else to enjoy it too. So strong is our urge to draw the world’s oppressed and disenfranchised into our wonderland of “a general election every five years; that’s all you get so shut up and consume” that we’re willing to cause merry hell in many parts of the globe. Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone and Somalia are among the countries with first-hand experience of our selfless drive to spread sweetness, light and the Big Brother franchise throughout the known universe. Next, I hear you say, must surely be Zimbabwe, whose hapless citizens live every day that god gives under the cosh of a cruel dictator, a madman who is worse than -or at least as bad as- Hitler, an evil fiend who, with malice aforethought, brought his country to the brink of ruin. No wonder that the leaders of the G8, gathered on Hokkaido to address the huge economic and environmental problems that threaten us, took time out to call for severe sanctions against Mugabe and his regime.

Cheerleader during this game of “Let’s Get The Bastard” was -and is- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He’s been telling us for some time now about his disgust at the sham election that gave the Zimbabwean leader a new term of office. This surprises me, for when it comes to ruling the roost over millions of people without a shadow of a mandate Mr. Brown is doing rather better than most. His job of Prime Minister -indeed, his very presence in Parliament- rests exclusively on the fact that 24,278 people in the handkerchief-sized Scottish constituency of Kircaldy & Cowdenbeath voted for him in 2005, giving him a majority of merely 18,216. Moreover, on being anointed the successor to Tony Blair, Mr.Brown ducked out of a general election that would have given his leadership at least a semblance of legitimacy, for fear that he might lose it. I imagine that, had the Zimbabwe elections been free, fair and peaceful, Robert Mugabe would still have come away with a few more votes than Brown.

Joining in the Hokkaido chorus of condemnation were other luminaries, such as the strutting French peacock Nicholas Sarkozy; America’s George W. Bush, who knows a thing or two about snatching victory from the mouth of defeat; the Italian Silvio Berlusconi, who can only stay out of jail by being in office; the Portuguese windsock Jose Manuel Barroso, whose political convictions once switched in a thrice from communism all the way to right-of-centre; Germany’s Angela “Mutti” Merkel who thinks the war in Iraq was a really good idea; the Canadian PM Stephen Harper, so new in the job that he hasn’t had time to blot his copybook and, representing Russia, Vladimir Putin’s glove puppet Dmitri Medvedev. Huddled together on their square yard of moral high ground they felt it incumbent on them to aim darts of righteous anger at Mugabe and his government.

I am not for a moment suggesting that there is nothing wrong with the present and past behaviour of Robert Mugabe. He is, by all accounts, capable of extreme cruelty, he brooks no opposition, stops at nothing to have his way and nurtures an especially fierce hatred of the white man. It would be impossible to call him a democrat in the western sense of the word, but then: democracy is a concept with which the entire African continent still grapples in vain. It is no coincidence that, however loud and vociferous the anti-Mugabe rhetoric in the rest of the world, hardly a peep has been heard out of Zimbabwe’s neighbours. I believe this to be because, secretly, they find that there is a lot to admire in the old firebrand. He is, after all, one of the hands that rocked the cradle of the newly liberated state, once the despised white supremacist regime of Ian Douglas Smith had been ousted from power. Along with a handful of comrades in arms (most of whom later became his rivals or even enemies) he fought a courageous struggle, in the course of which he suffered many privations –including a ten-year spell in prison. Of the heroes of Zimbabwe’s liberation, he is the only one who remains politically and ideologically active. He has to be, for in his mind the struggle against white domination goes on. His great project -handing all of Zimbabwe’s land over to its black population- is not yet complete. He knows he’s running out of time, so his methods have become more brutal than ever. This, in Mugabe’s perspective, is not the time to hand over the reins to Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC, whom he sees as a bunch of appeasers seeking an accommodation with what remains of the enemy.

Still, for all his brutality and blinkered hatred, Mugabe is a man of principle, of substance; a man who believes that, as the creator of a free Zimbabwe, he has a natural right to rule it until he drops dead. We may beg to differ, but what we may not do is revile him as if he were some worthless vermin. His good and his bad qualities are all larger than life. His place in history as a flawed hero is assured. Can we say that for the transient little blots on the landscape that presume to govern us? I don’t think so.

I am, if you hadn’t noticed, a Dutchman. One’s nationality (one of the least avoidable accidents of birth, certainly one that no amount of embryo screening can protect you from) seems, for many people, to be a source of immense satisfaction and pride. I have never seen it that way. Having been born in Amsterdam in October 1940 does not make me co-responsible for the masterworks of Rembrandt, the invention of the microscope or Holland’s great 3-0 win over Italy at Euro 2008. I am an ordinary man of no particular achievement and the fact that I’m a member of the same people that produced the inventor of the CD, the first westerner to beat the Japanese at judo and the idiot who developed the Senseo coffee pad machine is pure accident. I accept neither praise nor blame.

But I’m not only Dutch, I’m also a European. I never realized I was; in my youth Europe was a large territory, divided up into many individual states that resembled each other in absolutely nothing. The Dutch were good at keeping the water out, the Germans drank beer and ate sausages, the Italians picked pockets, the French were good at sex and force-feeding geese, the Scandies rolled about naked in the snow and so the list of nationality-based prejudices went on. The great joy was that, from Holland, you only had to travel a little way in any direction to cross a border and find yourself in a completely different culture, with different money, a different language, different cuisine, different everything. Europe, blissfully, was a patchwork quilt made out of many old skirts, or (as the much-missed Anna Russell might have suggested) a skirt made out of many old patchwork quilts.

Those halcyon days of ‘vive la difference’, of innocent but deeply felt xenophobia are now behind us. Ever since France and Germany decided that they didn’t trust themselves never to wage war on their neighbours -and each other- again, this continent has been steered towards ever deeper union. Economic union was the goal in the beginning and I admit there was something to be said for that. As Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber pointed out as early as 1967, the Americans were getting far too big for their boots. Burgeoning US economic power, he warned, was goin to swamp us all, unless we joined forces and stood up to them at our supermarket checkouts. As a result European economic union was conceived, and not a moment too soon. Since the words ‘economic union’ suggested a future of flourishing trade and neat profit, even the terminally standoffish British decided to join, followed by a raft of much poorer (but not exactly stupid) countries around the Mediterranean.

Now, with economic union ticking over nicely, the unelected dinosaurs in Brussels have decided that the next step must be political union. Not only that, but this ever closer union must expand, expand, expand. Already the notion that such totally different countries as Denmark and Romania could successfully become regions within one superstate is ludicrous. What if nations like Azerbaijian and Kazakhstan start knocking on the door? So an all-powerful central authority, unelected and largely faceless, is to hold the thing together. To make this possible, the European Constitution was drafted, taking far-reaching powers from the national parliaments of Europe. Not surprisingly, it was rejected, first by the French, then by the Dutch. Several other countries, like Germany, weren’t allowed a referendum, although the public mood there was also strongly against. The Dutch and French No vote effectively scuppered the Constitution…but no fear: it is back under the name Lisbon Treaty. Sounds less threatening, doesn’t it? Forget it, it’s the same document, with a few meaningless alterations.

Today it’s up to the Irish, as the last and only country to get this chance, to throw this abomination where it belongs: in the bin. So this is my heartfelt plea: come on you Great Gaels of Ireland, whose wars were always merry and whose songs were always sad, save us from Lisbon! You’re Europe’s only hope. Mess it up now and whatever future we might have had as a prosperous, happy and free band of friendly nations will gurgle down the plughole. Vote NO and I promise you, tonight I’ll get wrecked on Guinness and Tullamore Dew. And when tomorrow comes, I bet you I won’t even have a hangover.

I certainly don’t wish the lady any harm, but it’s now time for Hillary Clinton to bow out gracefully and pursue some other goal in life. She’s a pretty impressive woman and, with the exception of ruling the roost at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there seems little she couldn’t achieve, either in politics or business. The desperate tenacity with which she has been hanging on in a campaign that had already seemed lost for some time evokes images of Rasputin who survived several attempts on his life. Poison didn’t do it, shooting didn’t do it, even a whack with an axe on the back of his head didn’t do it. Still he kept breathing and pretending that all was well, until they pushed his head into the Neva River; which turned out one assault too far for the durable Siberian. Today, for the Neva read: the Montana primary.

The importance of Obama’s nomination is difficult to overstate. Of course, if he doesn’t beat John McCain in November, much of the significance of this achievement will inevitably be lost and America (and with it the world) will carry on much as before. That there are still millions of American voters who find that an enticing prospect is both mystifying and deeply worrying. But look: millions of Americans now have no difficulty accepting the notion of a president of mixed race. And, to be fair, Hillary has demonstrated that the country is equally ready to welcome a woman to the Oval Office. That she is not that woman (at least not yet) is largely due to the tone of her campaign and the unstinting support of her husband. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when the Clintons sit at their kitchen table tonight to review the state of affairs. “Thanks Bill”. I can almost hear the bitterness in her voice.

And that is precisely why the one mistake Barack Obama must not make is pick Hillary as his running mate. Yes, on paper this may seem an unusually powerful ticket, it might bring the party together (or not), it might give the Democrats a bigger chance to win in November than Obama would have with another vice-presidential hopeful. Still, it must not happen. I’ve been trying to imagine how, if I were Obama,  I would feel going to bed in the White House knowing that, a few miles to the northwest at Number One Observatory Circle, the most ruthlessly ambitious couple in American politics were kicking the furniture out of sheer frustration. Toss and turn all night I would, as hideous dreams would torment me.  Newsreel footage of Dallas’ Grassy Knoll and JFK’s limousine going round in my head would make me break into a cold sweat. The angry faces of the Clintons would appear to me, making hissing noises before morphing into the even angrier faces of the Macbeths. Did I say the Macbeths? No, it’s Friedrich and Ortrud from Wagner’s Lohengrin!! Help! Is that a horse’s head under the duvet?

I am, of course, not for a moment suggesting that the Clintons would ever have violence and murder on their minds. Nevertheless, putting a defeated rival in a position a mere heartbeat away from your own job -the top job- may give rise to all sorts of dark thoughts and secret wishes. No bullets would fly and no knives would go snickersnack, but as we all know: there are all sorts of ways in politics to reach your objective. Better not put temptation in people’s way.  Obama, watch your back!

Funny the way things go: I’ve just returned from spending the winter months in Spain, well away from the Internet and all its temptations -few e-mails, no blogs, no surfing, no buying- and during precisely that time Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been tearing lumps out of each other in the hope of securing the Democratic party nomination. Every time I picked up a newspaper there they were: inching ahead in the polls, or falling slightly behind, losing this primary by a fair margin, winning another by not very much, see-saw Marjorie Daw, Johnny Doe shall have a new master. My fingers used to itch and yearn for my computer keyboard. I wanted to blog like no man has ever wanted to blog before. I wanted to warn the world against the Clinton woman, I ached to tell them to take the leap of faith and throw in their lot with the untested Obama. But I couldn’t.

Now that I’m back it seems that Obama cannot be stopped. After the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, it would take an act of such monumental skulduggery on the part of the remaining superdelegates to swing things Hillary’s way at the last minute that Washington, even at its most unprincipled, wouldn’t stand for it. Obama it is and if I were collective America I would heave a big sigh and say: ‘Phew! That was close. Saved by the bell!’.  I’m well aware that a November vote for Obama is a shot in the dark. But it should be -has to be- better than four years of Bush with a human face. For that is what John McCain is: a gun-toting Republican just like Dubya, only with more intelligence, gravitas and an honourable military record. I’d rather have him for a next door neighbour than Bush -obviously!- but I’d still worry about men who believe there are military solutions to difficult problems.

Hillary Clinton, although she did vote in favour of the invasion of Iraq at the time (hey! didn’t everybody?) would now like to end it. If she should make it to the White House, what better way to continue the great Clintonian tradition of ‘make love, not war’ than a withdrawal from the death trap that is post-liberation Baghdad? If she doesn’t make it, who knows which way she’ll bend in the future? The answer is: whichever way political advancement and a place in the history books lies. For make no mistake: the Clintons may have a few policies that might benefit ordinary Americans but their ultimate purpose is to achieve lasting greatness for the Clinton name. You only have to take one look at young Chelsea to know that, with Hillary’s presidency far from in the bag, they’re already grooming her for a shot at the White House in the more distant future. Like the Kennedys and the Bushes, the Clintons are firm believers in their dynasty’s natural right to govern.

Such boundless ambition, when thwarted, tends to bring out the darker side of the Clinton persona. At the start of the primary season, Hillary seemed a shoo-in for the nomination: riding high in the polls she could afford to treat her rivals with kindness and respect. Sweetness and light she oozed; was there any doubt she was going to be carried all the way to the party convention on a wave of adulation? A Clinton -and a woman at that- for president! Good old Bill back in the White House for a word of advice and some moral support, what voter could resist? Who’d believe that, in the course of the next few months, she would resort to womanly wiles, brazen lies, racist slurs and other dark manipulations to keep her campaign on the road?

Enter Barack Obama, a jug-eared, mixed-race senator from Illinois, with a family background linking him with such spooky places as Kenya and Indonesia. A man who took his religious instruction from a fiery black preacher with extreme anti-white views. To whom could he possibly appeal, except a few disadvantaged black voters of the lower middle class? Ah, but then a strange thing happened. Barack Obama opened his mouth and out came a message of change and hope that Americans hadn’t heard for a very long time. A message, moreover, delivered with resounding authority, couched in colourful rhetoric and with the potential to reach straight into the hearts of all who bothered to listen. Obama was not only new, he was different. He could persuade audiences that the way things are is not necessarily the way things will always be. God, how I long for somebody like that in the Netherlands, where things have, depressingly and unalterably, been the way they are since time immemorial! In no other country that I know is the democratic exercise of casting one’s vote in a general election so predictably futile. But I digress.

The fact is that, in November, America must have a real choice. Not the traditional toss-up between two candidates of the old school of politics, each with their long-established constituencies and well-known priorities and policies. It has to be a choice between the yawn-inducing predictability of what we’re used to (McCain, Clinton) and the exciting newness of the untried and untested (Obama). Lack of experience (of which the senator from Illinois has been accused by both his rivals) is no problem. Even the greatest of statesmen were once rank beginners. No great leader ever emerged, fully developed and Athena-like, from the head of Zeus. So take a chance, America. This man can reach across every divide: racial, religious, economic, educational and cultural; and I, for one, believe he will. Trust him to sort out your nation’s ills. And once he’s done that, he can start sorting out the ills of the world. A win-win situation if ever I saw one. Not to put too fine a point on it: instead of stumbling on as a mistrusted, feared, widely disliked, faltering and self-serving superpower, the USA has a unique opportunity to become, under Barack Obama, the powerful force for true freedom, prosperity and peace it once was…..in a distant, near-forgotten past. Don’t mess up, friends.

Strange or what? I now have to confess that my Christmas would get a real lift if little Maddie McCann suddenly turned up alive in a sled drawn by six reindeer, with a happy smile on her face and the world’s TV cameras in attendance. If that happened and there was a global fundraiser to buy the toddler a Ferrari Testarossa, a night of passion with David Beckham (to be delivered not before 2020 of course!) and all the marshmallows she can eat I would cheerfully chip in a few euros. And believe me: I’m not given to chipping in lightly.

Unfortunately I know with almost total certainty that I will be able to keep my money in my pocket and that my seasonal joy will have to be drawn from the knowledge that Christmas is going to be over by Thursday and life will return to its normal state. Yes, there’s still the hurdle of New Year’s Eve to overcome (why celebrate when, as every year before it, 2008 is going to be the world’s worst year ever?) but I’m already looking forward to the next eleven months and three weeks of ill will to all men. In other words: I’m not a fan of the ‘festive’ season; that time of year when, ostrich-like, people put their heads in the sage and onion stuffing, pretending that everything that seems bad is about to take a turn for the better, that old hatreds can be forgotten and that a free meal of turkey slices, Brussels sprouts and cranberry compote will see the homeless through to next December. Give me a choice between false, hyped-up cheer and genuine, comfortable gloom and I know what I’ll pick every time.

Funny thing is: I say this as a generally pretty contented person, with no major worries, a happy home life and a cold six-pack in de fridge. So what I cannot for the life of me understand is why the parents of Maddie McCann are having a Christmas at all.  I would have thought that, to a family plunged into the darkest fear and despair, haunted day and night by unspeakable images of what may have become of their darling little daughter, the very thought of Christmas trees, carol singing, angelic messages of peace and joy -let alone intrusive, round the clock media attention- would be anathema. Yet here we are: expensive detectives, retained with your money, having made no progress whatsoever (trust me on this!) suddenly start talking in terms of Maddie’s possible return home by Christmas. “We’ve got a pretty good idea who took her and where she is being held…..there may be an arrest soon.” Not now, you sucker. Not if she was taken by British paedophiles who read the papers.

And then came the McCanns themselves. Aware that they’re spending your hard-earned dough as if tomorrow will never come they felt it best to rein in the hired gumshoes a little, lest the inevitable public disappointment come Boxing Day might lead to a reduction of the cash flow. But, since there was a lot of dosh in the kitty already, there seemed no harm in keeping the public on their toes, interested and ready to invest in future wild goose chases, by means of a special Christmas video appeal. And so, the “Be Brave My Sweetheart” tape was born. Oddly, it wasn’t addressed to us, the general public, but to Maddie herself. Consistent, of course, with the McCanns’ campaign slogan ”we believe, nay: we know she’s alive” yet, even if that were the case, the little girl would be unlikely to be given a chance by her captors to watch it. Tagged on to that was an appeal to whoever might be holding Maddie to get in touch with their better selves and chuck the whole thing in.

So no: the McCanns weren’t really talking to Maddie and they weren’t really talking to anyone they think may be holding the girl captive. They were, in fact, talking to us after all. Could we please help them keep the show on the road and the circus going until she’s back or buried? My answer is: no. What we need is closure. The thing must now be declared over and done with and everyone, the McCanns first and foremost, must get on with their lives. If Maddie should, at some point, turn up alive that would be both miraculous and -depending on the state she’d be in- marvelous. Until then there’s only one sensible position to take: she’s dead. No need to throw more good money after bad.

Right. When is a constitution not a constitution? Is there still anybody left in Europe who is not fully aware that the document that was signed in Lisbon on Thursday is the old, rejected European Constitution in all but name? When Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, Chamberlain-like, returned home one day saying “I have here a piece of paper which we call a Reforming Treaty. It is nothing like that earlier piece of paper which you democratically binned” he gave as an example of the way he had fought tooth and nail for Dutch interests the assurance that there would be no question of a European flag and a European anthem. The Dutch people, after all, had made very clear to him that they already have a flag they like a lot and an anthem they like only slightly less. To trade these in for a blue cloth with an ever increasing number of stars on it and a few poorly sung verses of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy was, the people had intimated, both unnecessary and undesirable. You know: national identity and all that. Phew, the nation sighed, that was close. Maybe there was now a good reason for giving the new treaty the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps our elected representatives were right in saying that a new referendum, given the totally different nature of the revised text, was no longer required.

But lo! Or is it behold? We’re to be lumbered with an EU flag and anthem after all. True, thanks to Balkenende’s tireless campaigning on our behalf the main text of the treaty no longer makes mention of either. But what is a good treaty without appendages? So there, in an annex included at the insistence of our good neighbour Germany, both flag and anthem mysteriously come back to life. What Brussels has given with one hand it has taken back with the other. It would be nice if the Dutch Prime Minister, knowing he’s been had, were to fly into a rage and threaten the EU with serious consequences. Other government leaders do when they feel slighted. But no. Jan Peter faces this betrayal with perfect equanimity. “Thank God we’ve signed the Reforming Treaty” he says, “now the European Union can at last move forward.”

The question is: forward to what? Future expansion, that’s what. The power-crazed aparatchiks at the heart of the EU won’t rest until they’ve pulled half the world into their sphere of influence. After Poland, Bulgaria and Rumania expect Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania and Moldova. After that, who? OK, let’s have Israel, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Turks? Yes, they can join too, if they learn to be as good at democracy as we are. Kazakhstan, no problem. Next stop: North Africa. Already there are almost as many Moroccans in the Netherlands as there are in Morocco so why not? OK, I’m exaggerating, but you can be sure we have more Moroccans than we have Bulgarians. 

I’m a gregarious sort of guy and I have absolutely nothing against foreigners of any plumage. But this kind of burgeoning expansion is the road to hell. The European Union started many years ago as a smallish club of reasonably well-off countries. Begun as an instrument for pooling coal and steel resources, the European Coal and Steel Community (1951) comprised France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. In 1957 these countries renamed the club European Economic Community and in a sense that’s when the trouble started. There were still a number of affluent nations willing to join: the UK, Denmark and later Sweden and Austria, but the number of poorer nations accepted into the EEC and later versions of it (including the current 27-member EU) grew even more rapidly. The effect: the rich core of the Union has to share its wealth with ever more impecunious newcomers.

Roughly, the countries of the EU fall into two categories: the givers and the takers. It should come as no surprise that, at grassroot level (though not necessarily among the political classes) Euro-enthusiasm is greatest among the takers. Countries like Ireland and Spain, once among the economically backward nations in Europe, have done fantastically well out of the Union, not merely because of their own efforts but also thanks to generous grants from the Brussels coffers. Coffers which had been mostly filled by the likes of Germany, France, Belgium and especially the Netherlands. This country, under successive governments, has allowed itself to be squeezed as a “net super donor” till our pips squeaked. If you’re the leader of a small country and you want to play big on the international stage there’s always a price to pay and boy, have we Dutch paid it! We’ve paid it through some of the highest taxes, fuel duties and VAT rates in the entire European Union, not to mention a bungled entry into the common currency the Euro which wiped about ten percent off our combined national wealth.

The prospect now looms of a European Union that becomes ever larger and diverse and at the same time ever more centralised. More and more national sovereign powers will have to be sacrificed on the altar of some indistinct greater good. And will we have a say in this? No. Our punishment for rejecting the European Constitution is that we won’t be asked again. For those who, like me, believe that the changes that are going to be imposed on us are so enormous and so drastic as to warrant a new referendum: tough luck. There won’t be one. But then, there’s always the next election. We can turn that into a referendum on Europe. That is, if we don’t fall asleep in the meantime. Or else we can always move to Switzerland. Great little country, that.

I read a funny story in this week’s Sunday Times. Police in the Italian city of Bolzano have seized a toilet from a local gallery. It’s not an ordinary toilet in that, when in use, it plays the Italian national anthem. Apparently, in Italy it is an offence to ridicule the anthem and the gallery’s owners may well find themselves prosecuted.

To me, this is absurdist lunacy masquerading as national pride. If I were an Italian, the strains of my anthem (often so delightfully conducted by Michael Schumacher after a Formula One victory with Ferrari) would make my bosom swell with pride whenever and wherever I’d hear it. I wouldn’t be particular, either, about the way it was played: full symphony orchestra, brass band, paper and comb, Inuit noseflute or Italian cistern. Conclusion: the Bolzano authorities are nuts. An anthem is an anthem. Once, on a holiday in Scotland, I saw the Dutch flag hanging upside down from an official building. Do you think I went in and angrily demanded that this deep insult to the Dutch nation should be undone immediately and those responsible punished? Of course not. Silly Scots, I thought and left it at that.

This eagerness to perceive offence or insult is one of Man’s least endearing qualities. I was pretty aghast -though not surprised-, therefore, that British teacher Gillian Gibbons became the butt of Sudanese zealots’ righteous fury merely for allowing a child in her class to give a teddy bear the name Muhammad. As soon as the news came out (or rather, as soon as someone squealed on her) poor Gillian was arrested and prosecuted for insulting the prophet. By now, she’s been pardoned by the Sudanese president and returned home, but that doesn’t alter the fact that hordes of Islamic fanatics had earlier taken to the streets of Khartoum, demanding her execution. Hers, by the way, not that of the kid who did the naming or of the teddy bear itself. How far up the wrong tree can you bark?

And there’s something else. I don’t know how many Muhammads are listed in the Khartoum phonebook (nearly as many as in that of Amsterdam, perhaps), but there must be a good few. Indeed, phonebooks throughout the Arab world and Europe probably list page after page after page of Muhammads. Did anyone, the Sudanese police for instance, bother to find out whether it was actually Muhammad the prophet that the teddy was named after and not Muhammad the halva dealer, Muhammad the bicycle repairman or Muhammad the chartered accountant? Also, did no one realize that the teddy bear is the object of love and affection all over the western world and that naming one Muhammad is, far fom being an insult, as close to a compliment the prophet is likely to get outside the thin-skinned realm of Islam? Love your teddy, love Muhammad; that’s how simple it could have been.

The pardon, that’s another thing. It took the personal intervention of two high-ranking British Muslims to get the Sudanese president to order Gillian Gibbons’ release. Not that Omar Hasan Ahmed al-Bashir had become convinced of her innocence. As the one who imposed Sharia law on his country he was unlikely to do that. Had Britain not been an important investor in Sudan -and had there not been strong voices in the UK calling for divestment over the crisis in Darfur- Omar al-Bashir might well have cocked a snook at the West and kept her in jail, or even executed her. As it was he did the minimum required: a pardon. The crime stood, the insult to the prophet stood, her punishment was deserved, but the Sudanese president, known for his generosity of spirit, was willing to relent.

This idiocy must stop. We cannot have people arrested, incarcerated or worse who have not done the slightest wrong, who dedicate themselves to the betterment of complete strangers in a foreign land. I am therefore calling on people all over the world to challenge the zealots and name their teddy bears Muhammad. They can’t kill us all so sooner or later they’ll have to either pipe down and relax or else die of apoplexy. Oh and while you’re at it, re-christen not only your teddy bears, but also your cats, dogs, hamsters, parakeets and goldfish. I won’t rest until each and every pet and furry toy on the planet is called Muhammad. Or, for that matter, Jesus. Or Buddha. Or Jehova. As I said, I’m not particular.

I became a magician long before Harry Potter. Even JK Rowling wasn’t yet born when, for my eighth birthday, I was given a box bearing the legend l’Apprenti Sorcier. In  it was a black pointed hat adorned with silver stars, a magic wand, a red piece of cloth that could make an egg disappear, a set of loaded dice, a deck of marked cards, a small bottle of liquid that could turn water into wine and back again, four interlocking metal rings and a length of magic rope that you could cut in two and make whole again. It was, in short, a French-made magicians’ kit. It allowed me to astonish my friends and baffle my elders until they were heartily sick of me. Oh no, not the vanishing egg again!

Also in the box was a glass ball, filled with a clear liquid that would become milky and opaque if you gave it a little nudge. It would, according to the instructions, give the owner a glimpse of the future when nudged. I loved this ball more than all the other tricks put together, because it allowed me to use my own imagination. I could go up to someone, offer to tell his or her future and proceed to make the most outlandish forecasts without ever risking a clip round the ear. After all, was it my fault if the ball revealed that my elderly aunt Sarah would soon give birth to a Jack Russell terrier? In the end, though, I grew bored with magic and tired of my crystal ball. The future, I realized, was impossible to foretell, life was an endless succession of unpredictable events. Nobody, I felt, had any idea of what tomorrow would bring, let alone the day after or the following year.

Today, many years later, I still hold that view. Let the psychics, the clairvoyants and the palm readers do their stuff, it’s no more than a parlour game. Nobody, but nobody,  knows in advance what is going to happen and if they say they do they’re lying. Much easier is it to predict what is NOT going to happen. I know for a fact that I’m not going to wake up tomorrow able to play Mozart piano concertos. I know I’ll never be 25 again either. Yes, negative forecasting, that’s the ticket.

Another thing that’s not going to happen is this: there will be no firm deal on a free Palestinian state by the end of 2008. What were these people in Annapolis thinking of? The end of 2008 is only a year away. In the history of the Middle East conflict one year is the twinkling of an eye! How can the job of getting the immovable object and the irresistible force to bury the hatchet and live side by side in peace and harmony take only twelve months?  It can’t, of course. The fact that the end of 2008 coincides with the US Presidential election is a dead giveaway: George W. Bush, whose record so far consists of inflicting economic ruin on his own country and death and destruction on the world, would like to go out on a positive high. Hey, he and Condoleezza must have thought, let’s have a go at solving the Middle East. If it works we’ll be heroes and if it doesn’t (as it didn’t when Clinton, Barak and Arafat had a stab at it) there’ll be another Intifada for the Democrats to sort out. A win-win scenario for Dubya, which explains why he was grinning from ear to ear as Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas shook hands.

Well, the Israeli Prime Minister and the leader of the Palestinian Authority (a bit of a misnomer, that) can stand there pressing the flesh until the cows come home but that won’t alter the fact that neither man has anything substantial to give the other. Olmert knows that if he seriously starts pushing the idea of sharing Jerusalem with the Arabs he’ll be either out on his ear or dead. Abbas, for his part, may call himself the Palestinian president but who does he represent? Not the people of Gaza, for a start. They’re under the control of Hamas.  The fact is: both are weak leaders, much weaker than the ones they replaced. If the mess in Palestine is to be sorted out at all it will take two strong men; men who command the respect not only of their opponents, but of their own supporters as well. There are no signs that either man can claim such respect. Olmert is in trouble at home over corruption allegations and a disastrous adventure in Lebanon, at the slightest sign of him making a really important concession a fundamentalist knife may be plunged into his back; Abbas may have won an election in the West Bank, but many Palestinians -fearing that he may be about to flog the family silver- are baying for his blood. How could he keep any promise to curb terrorism?

So what is going to happen in the next twelve months? As I said, nobody knows. Probably a lot of jaw-jaw with Olmert being yanked back from the brink of agreement every time a sacrifice seems necessary. Future water rights, tricky. Settlements, hmmmmm…. Jerusalem, forget it. The Syrians want the Golan Heights back, up yours Assad! There are situations in which living with conflict and death is preferable to parting with what you’ve got. A lot of Israelis -too many for comfort- appear to feel that way. Ehud Olmert spoke of the need for ‘painful sacrifices’. So long as the sacrifices are perceived as more painful than the status quo he’ll be wasting his breath.  

I used to think that the only countries where you could get a decent pizza were Italy (by some distance, of course), the United States and (at some distance, of course) the Netherlands. How long I laboured under this misconception I can’t remember, but I do remember the day when my eyes were opened to the truth. I was on holiday in France, heading south where golden sands and blue waters beckoned, when I passed through the little town of Senlis, in the region of Picardie where, as the song has it, “roses are blooming”.  In the grip of lunchtime peckishness I stopped at one of Senlis’ four pizzerias, a charming place called Au Petit Creux, where I had one of the best gorgonzola pizzas ever. I had picked this place because its name did nothing to suggest the isle of Capri, the music of Antonio Vivaldi or a mustachioed padrone named Beppe. Au Petit Creux had a ring to it of carefully prepared, immaculately seasoned food at reasonable prices; something I was not led to expect from the others who were called Le Patio (ugh!), Chez Pino (ugh, ugh!) and Pizzeria Maestro, which I found particularly off-putting. Mind you, their pizzas may have been delicious, I mean no disrespect. It’s just that I’m allergic to gondolas, straw-clad Chianti bottles and plastic leaning towers of Pisa, much as I love Italy itself. 

Senlis’ main claim to fame -apart from its historic role as a staging post for travellers between Paris and the north of France- is its fine 12th century Gothic cathedral, a riotous concoction of every conceivable feature of the style. Smaller than its Parisian namesake, the Senlis Notre Dame is actually more pleasing to the eye. My eye anyway. Why such a pretty medieval town should have given its name to a 21st century club of worthies with global ambitions I cannot begin to guess, but we’re stuck with it. I give you:  The Senlis Council, grandly described by various sources as “an international policy think tank with offices in Kabul, London, Paris, Brussels, Ottawa and Rio”. I love think tanks, don’t you? People just like you and me who have ideas about what should and shouldn’t go on in the world. You and I may discuss these over a pint of Speckled Hen in our local pub, whereas think tankers do so over foie gras, a bottle of Crozes-Hermitage, saddle of venison, a slug of Islay malt and a good cigar in a mansion or chateau near Kabul, London, Paris, Brussels, Ottawa or Rio.

The Senlis Council made news this week, when it issued a report about the situation in Afghanistan. Its conclusion: things aren’t going well at all. Not to put too fine a point on it: the Taliban are back. They’re back, moreover, with what looks disturbingly like a vengeance. The question, according to the Senlis boys and girls, is not if the bearded zealots will regain control in Afghanistan, the question is: when and how. This is, of course, bad news, especially for women who’ve just passed their driving test and husbands whose wives surprised them on their birthday with the latest battery-operated Gillette Mach 3. Or is it 4?

Now, I’ve always been of the opinion that -although the Taliban are by and large a pretty objectionable bunch- it is not the place of other countries to come to Afghanistan and sort them out. Not only is it ethically indefensible to assault people on their own soil, it is also doomed to fail. Fighting the Taliban is like setting fire to your mattress; you put out the flames with a bucket of water (read: huge quantities of ordnance), but just when you think you can lie down and go back to sleep it begins to smoulder again. I know this because (as Richard Dawkins is my witness) I once actually did accidentally set fire to my bed. I could not put it out again. Anyway, since Uncle Sam called in some IOU’s western countries under the NATO flag have been slugging it out with the Tali’s, whose now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t type of warfare has so far thwarted each and every western objective, be it socking it to Islam, destroying the poppy fields, spreading women’s rights to every nook and cranny of the country or simply nabbing Osama Bin Laden. Occasionally, thanks largely to our superior firepower, we manage to mow down a dozen or so Taliban but, like mushrooms on a damp day, others spring up to take their place. A regular harvest of collateral civilian death ensures that the hearts and minds we are so keen to win remain resolutely turned against us. Except of course in Kabul. Kabul, though, isn’t Afghanistan by any stretch of the imagination. It may once have been a pearl among eastern cities but you wouldn’t think that now. It’s a low-rise, sprawling collection of shoddy buildings, with a few beautiful mosques to keep the spirits up and -more importantly- it’s where the Americans and their Afghan government can feel safe —–for the moment.

Why is the West in Afghanistan and when will we leave? Not because we expect to succeed in getting all the war lords to fall into each others’ arms and bury their Lee Enfields or making flowers grow in their deserts. Flowers that aren’t poppies, I mean. We’re there not because we have a hope in hell of finding Bin Laden but because we need a place to drop our bombs, see a few Taliban bodies fly up in the air and tell ourselves we’re fighting and winning the war against terrorism. It is an unwinnable war; terrorism will stop only if we are prepared to help remove the grievances that cause it. So when will we leave? Preferably tomorrow, but more likely not for many years yet. As a fellow Dutch columnist recently put it: the reasons for leaving Afghanistan are here now; the reasons for staying will still be there in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time. Take your pick. The Taliban don’t care either way; not only is Allah on their side, time is as well. A fact lost on the Dutch parliament, which has just OK’d an extension of what, with Christian zeal, they call ‘the mission’ in Afghanistan. See what I mean?     

There was a time -and not that long ago either- when a king losing his temper meant invariably that heads were going to roll. So when Juan Carlos of Spain started foaming at the mouth and told Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to belt up I expected His Majesty to follow that with an ominous ‘or else’ and the sound of swords being unsheathed. None of this happened and an unrepentant Chavez came away with his neck and opinions intact.

The scene took place at the 17th Ibero-American summit in Santiago de Chile, a conference piquantly devoted to the theme of  ’social justice’. Personally I wish Juan Carlos had had the self-control to fume in silence and later, away from the cameras, perhaps refuse to shake Chavez’ hand. As it was, the King (unelected, as kings always are) did not have a leg to stand on in his confrontation with the (three times elected) President of Venezuela. I might like Juan Carlos better than Chavez on a personal level (Hugo does tend to exasperate and fatigue even those who agree with him), but the irrepressible best friend of Fidel Castro had right on his side. It may or may not have been true that Spanish big business had covertly supported a failed coup against Chavez in April 2002 but it was certainly true that the former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar was and is such an unreconstituted far rightwinger that you don’t have to find yourself too left-of-centre to suspect a hint of fascism under that well-coiffed mop of hair. Had Aznar been old enough when Franco ruled the Spanish roost, José Maria -a devoted member of the Falangist student union- might well have become a favourite of the cruel Caudillo. As it was, Franco died in 1975, forcing the 22-year old to look elsewhere for a political home but he was lucky that the Spanish extreme right had largely survived its great leader. So, depending on your vantage point it is quite possible to see Aznar as a great nationalist and patriot or as a nasty fascist piece of work. It’s clear where Hugo Chavez stands on that one.

I’m not very close to Juan Carlos (although he has a reputation for getting on well with the hoi polloi) or else I would have warned him off going to the summit at all. A jamboree of heads of state from Central and South America -all countries with recent or current experience of totalitarian government and with populations steeped in poverty- is no place for a king representing the very European power that lorded it over them for three centuries. How credible can it be to have the privileged figurehead of a wealthy nation hold forth on social justice in a hall filled with men and women, Hugo Chavez among them, whose roots go back all the way to the Incas, Mayas, Yaqui and any of the other indian civilizations of Latin America that were conquered and bled dry by the Conquistadores of the 16th and 17th centuries? No, the Spanish king would have done better to have stayed at home and watch Getafe C.F. beat Barcelona by 2 goals to nil.  To see a nice guy put his foot in his mouth is an unedifying spectacle.    

As for Chavez, he has a big mouth but his heart’s in the right place. That’s as you would expect from a man who is a thorn in the side of George W. Bush. In terms of running a government of the people, for the people and by the people he is miles ahead of the oil man from Texas. America’s poor would do well to get in touch with their Venezuelan counterparts. They’d learn of the many programmes Chavez has introduced to relieve poverty, to provide land for the landless and education for all. Since the deep troubles that followed the april 2002 coup attempt (the nadir of the crisis occurring during early 2003) Chavez’ government has achieved an economic upturn that would make Bush blush: the country’s GDP is at the highest level since he took office in 1989; oil production is up again after the crippling 2002-03 oil strikes, inflation is down, unemployment is down, the list goes on. It’s certainly true that Chavez’ heavy-handed policies sometimes cause panic and anger in media and business circles, especially those who have difficulty seeing Venezuela as anything other than America’s backyard. But, as Tony Blair can confirm: you’re either a socialist or you’re not. The Venezuelans, if nothing else, can look to Hugo Chavez in the secure knowledge that he is their man, with only their interests at heart. How many people can say that of the government that rules them? I’m Dutch and I’m not even sure I can. So remember that, Juan Carlos, the next time you’re impelled to fly off the handle.