I’ve been wanting to get something off my chest for a while, so let’s finally do it. It’s about Europe. No, it’s not about the Netherlands and how an extremist party got the second most votes here a few of days ago, nor is it a rant about the disgustingly stupid tv debate that night on Dutch public tv, which I thankfully haven’t seen. Because no matter how frustrating and annoying it is, in the long run it matters little and I predict Mr Wilders will bite the dust sooner or later anyway. It also is not about the BNP receiving two seats in the UK, or how “the Left” lost some seats.  I want to address a broader and more general issue about the European Elections, an issue that is also one of the reasons for the negative reaction and apathy from the public towards the elections.

And that is because there’s something that makes not much sense at all. How did they ever think that allowing people to only vote for national parties during European elections was a good idea? I believe it might hurt the EU actually more than it does good.

Because when you can only vote for national parties it automatically becomes some sort of second-grade national election, some sort of official poll for the upcoming elections, where people primarily vote on domestic issues and often use their vote to protest against the incumbent government. The media also interpret it as such.

The best result from these elections is that it does start off a debate on Europe. It does make people think about it and that’s a good thing. The problem however is that this debate is within country, which automatically limits the scope of the debate. The more ‘extreme’ (usually opposition) parties hijack the debate with simplistic oneliners (“Oh no, Turkey!”, “Oh no, Polish immigrants”, “Brussels is one big costly and corrupt bureaucracy” etc) that play into national sentiments against Brussels, while the more moderate parties that usually support European integration do not really respond to the EU-bashing for strategic reasons. They usually go for a “yeah, we are more-or-less for the EU, but not too much” route and hope for enough of their traditional supporters to show up and vote. It’s not surprising that the EU isn’t all that popular to the masses when their elected leaders avoid explaining and promoting it.

What Europe needs debate among Europeans, not a debate between among Dutch people, not a debate between Welsh people and people from London, but a debate between Polish and Brittish people, between Italians and Lithunians etc etc. How else can the public create an understanding of the common long-term interests we share, how else can those Polish workers that come here to take over jobs (uhu) defend themself, how else can you even have a sensible public debate of what role the EU should play as an actor towards USA, China and the Middle East? There has been a debate for decades about the lack of a common European identity, about the lack of a ‘demos’ that is necessary for a democracy, but how can an European identity progress when the European elections for the people themself is institutionally biased in favor of the nation-state, which impedes the international debate that is so much needed? (Or well, there are other ways of promoting European identity of course, but a shared democracy can be one of the biggest instigators in the process of creating an European identity)

Another problem in European politics that results from the lack of international debate is the psychological bias that everyone automatically feels towards their own national leaders when they are in conflict with other European leaders. When Sarkozy and Balkenende are in disagreement on something, I also am more likely to automatically support Balkenende, despite me considering him to be a horrible Prime-Minister and despite me perhaps agreeing with Sarkozy in this hypothetical issue. The problem is that national leaders are only accountable to their own population and that there is barely a debate between the people of different nations. National parties and politicians have their own interests that often not completely coincides with the interests of Europeans.These national politicians are however the main players with most power in the EU, but they are only indirectly accountable for their actions within the EU and often get away by playing the blame-game (“Constantly push EU policies, but when backfires “Brussels did it, not me. Oh, and didn’t I say I want less Brussels so vote for me in the next elections”").

The obvious solution would be making the European elections truly European by allowing people to vote on European parties. So why are there no pan-European parties to vote on you may wonder. Well, there are and there aren’t. Real European parties that you may vote on in every member state are prohibited. National authorities are in charge of the elections, so a political party needs to register as a national party to reach the voting lists. So the only way for a political group to become truly European is to register in several countries as a national party, which all have their own rules and barriers. Then there are huge thresholds to access representation and the distribution of the seats to the European Parliament that is being done on a national level as well. There are several pan-European parties that passed these barriers, but even the most well-funded one, Libertas, failed to get a single seat. I personally voted for Newropeans, but they did not even receive one percent of the votes here in the Netherlands. The only true European movement that is going to enter the Parliament is the Pirate Party that received a seat and 7.1 percent of the votes in Sweden. And that’s a good thing at least.

Still, the European Union needs a real democracy, it’s too important and has a too big influence on people’s lifes. It’s in desperate need for a reform. Also, I really want to be able to vote for a German. No really, just being able to do that should be a right for any European citizen.

I haven’t posted here in a while, I was tempted several times to post my thoughts on some stuff that is going on, but I kind of lacked time or at least did not prioritize blogging very highly. Anyway, there’s something I need to get off my chest. I just saw the most amazing nature documentary of my life. It’s an episode of Natural World of the BBC with David Attenborough as narrator (just like Planet Earth, which is also rather awesome). And it is about monkeys. Clever monkeys.

I’ve always thought that it was very very very likely that we humans descend from monkeys, but I didn’t know -that- much of monkeys, a lot of stuff was new for me and rather mindblowing. This documentary could be seen as an all-out attack on creationism and it succeeds wonderfully. It shows how much humans and monkeys are alike. They go deep into monkey culture. Yes, culture. They show monkeys ‘farming’ (putting holes in a tree, to harvest it’s juice several days later) and different tribes contesting this resource from time to time as if it’s oil in the Middle East (or moons in EVE Online..). They show a ‘United Nations’ of monkeys, with completely different monkey races cooperating with each other and some of the monkey races being able to speak in different languages, constructing simple sentences with a rudimentary form of grammar. They show monkeys being capable of deception (which requires one to think how someone else would think and take advantage of it, a form of awareness), although that bit wasn’t new for me.

Then they go on to show Machiavellian power-politics of baboon tribe dictators and the lust for power that is part of their nature (and arguably also ours, of course), monkey societies with groups of hundreds of monkeys and how some monkeys set up traps for jaguars.

That’s not all however. In the ending they go on to show monkeys doing something that looks – very – similar to some scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey (best movie ever) with exactly the same music from that movie! Fucking brilliant.

I’m sorry for spoiling some of the highlights for people that are interested in watching it now, although I can assure you it’s still worth it. I just wonder how thing swould look if you’d fast-forward a few thousand years to see if the baboons would’ve ended up dominating the savannah. At the moment I also kind of wonder how long they’ve been there, couldn’t find it on wikipedia, but have they been there 6 thousand years already or are they rather new?

Anyway, trailer is here. Full episode torrent here (I’m sure the BBC is fine with it. ).

Also this TED talk on chimpansees I saw a while ago is mindblowing, those creatures are arguably just as empathic as us humans.

Just a few more weeks and Mr Bush will be president no more, so I’m just in time to discuss some music related to the Bush administration. It’s been often said that music actually gets better the worser the situation is (in people’s perspective of course, think about: vietnam anti-war music, Reagan/Thatcher era and now Bush). The same is true for Ministry who made their best albums during Republican leadership and they gave that as reason to let their 2008 album be their final album in an interview, as it cannot get any worse than Bush.

Ministry made an anti-Bush trilogy of albums and for as far as I am aware it’s easily the most hatefilled music about the Bush presidency produced. I love it. It’s filled with samples of Bush speeches and other people and it’s amazing to see how they fit in a different context. It’s rather powerful to hear Bush say “By our actions we have shown…. what kind of nation we are.. we have shown the noble aims and good hearts of Americans…” with an incredibly aggressive up-beat tempo under it. Let the fool speak for himself, right? There are a lot of gems like that. They also go into Loose Change and the whole New Order conspiracy stuff, of which I’m not a big fan, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

And ending with the final song “End of Days Part Two” is magnicifent. It uses the full sample of President Eisenhowever’s farewell speech, where he warns for the “military-industrial-complex”, which is probably more fitting than ever today.

Anyway. Here’s a song for you all. It’s about TV influences people. Make sure to not miss the Bush samples in the middle.

[ Or youtube ->  ]

Earlier this year in the Netherlands we had our former incompetent minister of Immigration and Integration starting a new political party Trots op Nederland (translation; Proud of the Netherlands, which I find a rather hilarious and at the same time disgusting party-name) and she also initiated ‘Politics 2.0′ (reference to the term Web 2.0) with her own new website and wiki page where people could submit their own ideas of what should happen. Which is of course totally ridiculous, I mean, anyone with some common sense can see that forming your party’s agenda on what random people submit on the internet is just not going to work. So when the wiki page came online, many random people on the internet (including me) had some fun by submitting the silliest ideas and offensive jokes. After this fiasco reached the headlines in the national newspapers the wiki page quickly went offline for “technical reasons”.

So after seeing “Politics 2.0″ fail so miserably in this little country it’s rather interesting to see how it works out in a country where the people that operate it actually have a clue. If JFK was the first “television-president”, then Obama is going to be the first “internet-president”. I would actually argue it would’ve been very unlikely for Obama to win if the internet and sites like youtube didn’t exist.

But the campaign is over, Obama is President-Elect and it seems they aren’t going to give up on the internet and the massive campaign structures for volunteer that are in place. They set up a new website where people can apply for a job in the new Administration, where people can submit ideas and where Obama just posted his first weekly video-blog. An American president with a weekly vlog (video-blog) on youtube, what the fuck! Hahah, that’s just amazing. I don’t think anyone expected that to ever happen. I guess Google (who owns youtube) must be thankful for worldleaders using their platform like that. Funnily enough Google CEO Eric Schmidt was also quite involved in the Obama campaign (Oooh, conspiracy theories; Big Brother Google is going to support Obama constructing a New World Order with their massive personal-information-filled databases and power over the internet!).

I’m really curious to see how this will develop. Looking at how the campaign was done I don’t expect them to pull off disastrous silly things. But this really seems to be something that has never been done before. It’s been argued that by keeping their grassroots campaign structures intact, they have a lot of enthausiastic volunteers available that can help putting pressure onto things and force the powerful lobbyists to release their firm grip. I don’t know. Internet hypes and excitement usually doesn’t last long, I wonder how long you can keep all those volunteers excited anyway. Well, we’ll see.

It’s over. I’m happy. Even while I feel a bit like the xdcd guy, even while the election process was hilarious and I’d love to see more fun political stuff + Sarah Palin madness (that prank call, I’ve watched it over 5 times and still laugh out loud every time I see it) coming out every few days, I’m relieved that it finally is over with pretty much the same results as predicted in the polls.

I watched it last night and morning with a big group here in Amsterdam, which was a lot of fun. McCain finally looked like 2000 McCain and gave his best speech so far. Obama speech was good as usual and gave me goosebumps. Finally went to bed 10am this morning after being awake for about 24 hours. Ah well, historic moments are worth that I guess.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what this ‘change’ is exactly going to be. He’ll probably undo many of the Bush policies (also Guatanamo Bay etc), the taxes will become a bit fairer. Healthcare and education will have some reforms, it’ll be interesting to see how successful these are going to be and if it’ll be of New Deal proportions. I hope so. Other things that seem to be priorities on Obama’s agenda are ending the division between ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ and investing in alternative energies to make the US energy independent, both things are complimentary.

Then there’s the imminent change of course. The fact that an Afro-American with a funny name can become president is just… mindblowing. It’s inspiring for all ethnic minorities in the US, but also all over the world. It really does seem that with all this ‘positive emotion’ all over the world, the color and ethnic background of a person did become less important. Africa is dancing, Asia and Europe look at it with great respect and the fundamentalist mullahs will have troubles inciting their religious base against Americans when they’re lead by Hussein Obama (with both names having positive Arab meanings). And that’s good. Very good. Just this was enough to hope and support Obama to become president.

But I wonder if there’s more. How ruthless is Obama going to pursue the US’ national self-interest? I’m sure he will, and I’m sure the national self-interest of the US will coincide with the self-interest of the rest of the world most of the time. I’m also sure he’ll be more diplomatic and the US isn’t going to start a new Iraq-like war. But will there be more? Will Obama go against the US’ self-interest in some situations to make this world a better world? Will they finally accept the International Criminal Court, sign climate proposals that don’t favour the US (Kyoto etc), nuclear arms control, give up power in international insititutions (UN, IMF) to democratize and improve them? I do not know, but I certainly hope so as the EU isn’t strong and coherent enough as power bloc to force these changes upon the world even if the willpower is there, neither are countries like France, Germany and the UK. Whatever you say, I’m afraid we need the United States for this. I would love to see some sort of Geopolitical New Deal and I hope Obama is up for this, but I’m not sure about this at all.

(Oh, I think Desmond Tutu pretty much nailed it here as well, what a man)

Some stuff worth reading:
Views of smart people in different countries on the outcome. Time.com
http://www.newsweek.com/id/167582
There’s much more of course, but these are the best two articles I’ve read today. Also check the McCain and Obama outcome speeches on youtube of course.

Soundtrack of the day is The Evens – Everybody Knows. Just two more months Mr Bush, let the door hit you on the ass.

You arrive with empty duffel bags, hungry eyed
You looked around taking measurements to move inside
The capital it is your proving ground, your centering
You and yours can keep your scores, but Washington is our city

Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar

Too much technique with no texture below
You fabricated your way in here and everybody knows

Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar

Too many distractions just obscure what should be shown
Stop with the abracadabra ’cause everybody knows

You return via machinery and public lies
You broke to break, you’re breaking everything, it’s no surprise
The capital it is your playground now, your center ring
You and yours can keep your scores, Washington is our city

You and yours and all your wars have run your last campaign
You’re fired from a job you never should have had
That hideous strength absolutely sinks
You better watch your back

Let the door hit you on the ass

Anyway, from the bottom of my heart: Thank you for making it happen, yankees. Good job.

I’ve written more than enough about consensus democracy versus majoritarian democracy myself this week, I’ll just link two funny youtube videos on the subject.

I’ve been planning to start using this blog more for a while now and one of the obvious things to write about is of course the elections. I haven’t properly read a Dutch newspaper for two weeks now and I don’t know what the regular newspapers say, but I followed everything on the internet, which properly gives you a more in-depth insight into things anyway (if you know where to look, although 95% of the stuff hopelessly biased). To me it seems we’re really living in fascinating times that may end up being quite historic. Probably the most interesting US elections ever, with first the first ever female and black presidential candidate against each other and now Obama versus the oldest candidate ever who picked up a woman from Alaska almost no one had ever heard of as vp candidate (arguably the weakest ticket for the republicans ever). And it’s not just the elections, but also the bail-out proposal that not only almost triples Bush already huge government deficit, but also nationalizes the biggest American investment banks, while US have been spreading the idea that everything should be privatized for over 30 years and even forced that upon foreign countries.  I know it’s a bit sadistic when you consider Wall Street and the global financial crisis, but I found it all hilarious, espescially Sarah Palin.  Espescially Sarah Palin. Jesus fucking christ. What was the Republican campaign thinking?

Alright.. It worked very well for them for two-three weeks. I also just read this article of Rolling Stone magazine, which might explain – what – the Republican campaign was thinking and is also rather hilarious, but seems to be written a couple of weeks ago. Because quite a few funny things happened back then; the Palin “troopergate” probe, 4chan internet-thugs ‘hacking’ (“What’s my zip-code?” as secret-question for your yahoo email account, awesome!) Palin’s yahoo mail, the Courtic interviews of CBS with Sarah Palin (Just watch on youtube, it’s rather embarrasing), McCain suggesting Bush to by-pass congress for the bail-out,  an actress parodying Palin’s interview without having to change the text, McCain claiming to have won the debate… before the debate, David Letterman attacking McCain two days in a row in his show, Palin indirectly calling Kissinger terribly naive after meeting him a day earlier, even prominent conservatives call Palin’s vp pick irresponsible, dangerous and are urging her to quit etc etc.

Seems the McCain campaign make mistake after mistake, their momentum is lost again and they’re going down in the polls. You can never be sure, but it’s looking quite good right now. If McCain does win however, I guess someone like Putin will be having a good laugh. A Putin negotiating over important stuff with Sarah Palin will be hilarious and sad at the same time, they should film it and turn it into reality-tv show, I’d watch.

Also interesting is this little insight in American ‘backdoor politics’ by the Washington Post, it’s about Democrats and Republicans meeting each other about the bail-out last week. It’s the day before the debate and it seems Obama kind of humiliated McCain there, which might explain why McCain didn’t look at Obama a single time during that debate and why McCain looked so uncomfortable shaking Obama’s hands after the senate passed the slightly edited new bailout proposal wednesday(here). Interesting.

There’s also this new rather long write-up about the life of John McCain by RollingStone magazine, which makes it seems he’s even more of a spoilt brat than George Bush. Might take a while to read it, but it’s good stuff.

I’ve wanted to talk about this little site for a long while. VBS.TV is part of Vice Magazine, which is a free magazine (glosssy) about independent arts and youth culture. I’ve read the magazine once or twice and it doesn’t interest me at all, it’s also got that ‘hipster’ feeling which I don’t really like, but the free internet tv-channel VBS.TV is amazing. It’s one of the best things on the internet.

If you live in the Netherlands, you might know the public broadcasting company for the youth called BNN. BNN is awful and I think VBS.TV shows how BNN should be. It’s internationally orientated, innovative, taboo-breaking and shows stuff no one has seen before. For example, they just have a team of 2-3 people including a camera and just attempt to enter a country like… North Korea, somehow find a way to get into the country and then just film stuff inside the country secretly and interview people. Or they go to Baghdad and enter areas where CNN journalists never go, totally giving you a different perspective than what you hear in the Western press.

They call it Immersionism Journalism, they don’t really try to make objective documentaries, but just enter a situation, immerse themself in it and report from a rather personal perspective. You can find their mission-statement is here.

Anyway, they have a lot of good short docu’s, interviews and reports on music/art on their site. Make sure to check out their Guide To North-Korea, the reporter can be a bit rude and annoying, but him doing a karaoke version ‘Anarchy in the N-K’ of the Sex Pistols, which deeply shocks the Koreans there is rather hilarious. Check out True Norwegian Black-Metal, espescially when you hate metal, the interview with Gaahl in part 5 is one of the most epic interviews I’ve ever seen. Also take a look at Inside Sudan, Bolivian Maching Powder (with Evo Morales and Coca, very interesting!), Back in Beirut, El Dorado. There’s a lot more good stuff, but I haven’t seen everything myself. Also check out the Soft Focus interviews done by Ian Svenonius with Ian MacKaye, Penny Rimbaud and Henry Rollins, if you’ve heard of those people before.

Someone’s son got a letter from Barack Obama today.

This kind of stuff just scares the shit out of me. I’m not talking about a so-called “Pirate Bay killer”, I’d rather keep the Pirate Bays of the world around as well, but removing them isn’t in any way life threatening, I still could easily do without. It’s this extreme internet censoring bullshit that scares me, as the people at TorrentFreak said, it turns the internet into a virtual police state.

When I first read this (two hours ago or so) I really hoped it was fake, but quite a few major sites seem to have picked it up. I’m seriously more worried about this sort of censoring adding to the (already high in some countries) police state potential than a possible nuclear war.

Also, read this China’s All-Seeing-Eye article about how China has already build it’s own high-tech police state prototype. It’s worth your time.

( Dutch article about ACTA on tweakers. )