Tonight, I was elected president of the PhD Network of the University of Twente (P-NUT). I am very proud to be able to fulfill this role, and look forward to doing so with a superb team of board members. Over ...

Na het verslagje over het toch wel enigszins bedroevende aantal boeken dat ik vorig jaar gelezen heb, wordt het tijd om mezelf eens aan het werk te zetten. Ik geloof niet in wonderen, dus ik ga mezelf niet vragen een boek per week te lezen. Nee, ik ga mezelf voor de verandering eens een haalbaar doel stellen. Vijfentwintig boeken. Concreet maken schijnt ook te helpen, dus here goes:

1. Inheritance – Christopher Paolini. Omdat ik er al in bezig ben, en omdat ik de serie graag wil uitlezen.
2. The Tiger’s Wife – Tea Obreht. Ik heb veel positiefs gelezen over dit boek waarvan ik eigenlijk niet eens precies weet waar het over gaat. Ja, iets met Joegslavië en een tijger.
3. Step across this line – Salman Rushdie. Non-fictie waar ik al een groot deel van heb gelezen, verzameling essays en artikelen waarvan ik om een of andere onverklaarbare reden nooit het eind heb gehaald, en dat terwijl ik Rushdie echt een genie vind. (Al was het alleen maar vanwege zijn zinnen tussen haakjes.)
4. Conversations with Salman Rushdie – Ed. Michael R. Reder. Ik heb het staan, en als ik toch in mijn Rushdie-fase zit kan ik er net zo goed even in blijven hangen.
5. A New World Order – Caryl Phillips. Omdat ik The Nature of Blood een heel goed boek vond en benieuwd ben naar wat Phillips te zeggen heeft over het werk van anderen.
6. The Post-colonial Exotic. Marketing the Margins. – Graham Huggan. Heeft mijn denken over de wereld zelfs veranderd terwijl ik alleen de eerste helft gelezen heb. Misschien wordt het eens tijd voor de tweede helft.
7. Van de Straat naar de Staat - Red. Lucardie & Voerman. Had ik natuurlijk allang gelezen moeten hebben, zoals iedere goede GroenLinkser.
8. Moral Politics. How liberals and conservatives think. – Omdat Don’t think of an elephant eigenlijk de Moral Politics voor dummies is.
9. The Assault on Reason. How the Politics of Fear, Secrecy and Blind Faith Subvert Wise Decision-Making, Degrade Democracy and Imperil America and the World - Al Gore. Al was het alleen maar omdat het een van de langste ondertitels heeft van alle boeken in mijn kasten.
10. Either/Or. A Fragment of Life. - S. Kierkegaard. Existentialisme trekt me. Als dit bevalt, schrap ik misschien wel wat dingen van deze lijst ten gunste van meer deprimerende boeken over hoe het leven geen zin heeft.
11. A Glossary of Literary Terms - Ed. M.H. Abrams. Ik ben veel te veel vergeten van mijn studie en merk dat ik soms minder goed onder woorden kan brengen wat ik zie in een boek, en ook dat ik het minder scherp kan analyseren dan eerst. Tijd om weer even op te frissen.
12. The Idea of the Postmodern. A History. – Hans Bertens. Staat al veel te lang ongelezen in mijn kast en wil ik ook lezen om dezelfde reden als nummer 11. Er weer een beetje in komen.
13. Regeneration - Pat Barker. Me ooit aangeraden door iemand, maar staat er maar te staan.
14. Diary of a Good Year – J.M. Coetzee. Ik ben een groot liefhebber van zijn werk en ik heb het grootste deel ervan gelezen, maar dit nog niet.
15. Summertime - J.M. Coetzee. Idem.
16. Broken Verses - Kamila Shamsie. Omdat ik Kartography, van dezelfde auteur, met veel plezier gelezen heb.
17. De Avonden - Gerard Reve. Ik ben er in bezig en het wil niet erg vlotten, maar ik vind dat het toch wel moet.
18. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian. - Marina Lewycka. Zonder goede reden. Het klonk amusant.
19. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon. Ik heb mijn schooljaren vlot doorlopen en omdat ik vergeleken met anderen dus erg jong was, heb ik nogal eens het gevoel dat ik misschien wel veel geleerd heb, maar er weinig van begrepen. Dit boekje heb ik volgens mij in het eerste jaar van mijn studie al moeten lezen en ik heb er weinig van begrepen – zoveel had ik toen ook al door. Vorig jaar deed ik een poging het opnieuw te lezen, maar het leest niet soepel en vanwege de negatieve herinnering staat het me tegen. Maar het moet en zal.
20. A History of Reading - Alberto Manguel. Door de jaren heb ik dit boek meerdere malen horen noemen door mensen en toevallig kwam ik het pas voordelig tegen. Ik kon het niet laten liggen.
21. True Brits. A Tour of 21st Century Britain in all its Bog-Snorkelling, Gurning and Cheese-Rolling Glory. - J.R. Daeschner. Ooit eens aan begonnen, halverwege gestrand. (Ik maak altijd af waar…). Hoe dan ook, het is redelijk geniaal omdat het gaat over bizarre ‘sporten’. Het is een beetje in de categorie reisboeken van Bryson, maar dan met een paar biertjes extra.
22. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson. Misschien wordt het nog wat met me als ik dat lees.  Misschien win ik dan zelfs nog een keer een slechte tv-quiz.
23. The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie. Eigenlijk doe ik niet aan hypes, maar hij is ondertussen wel een beetje overgewaaid. Toch maar eens lezen. 
24. Timequake – Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut heeft rare humor, daar hou ik wel van. Na Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-5, Slapstick or Lonesome no more en A Man without a Country wordt het tijd om het laatste ongelezen boek van Vonnegut in mijn kast eens te lezen. (En dan natuurlijk weer andere boeken van ‘m kopen).
25. De waarheid houdt van vrolijke gezichten - Marijke Höweler. Ook weer zo’n boek wat ik maar half… Ook omdat ik het niet leuk vond, in tegenstelling tot Höwelers Dagen als gras en vooral Van geluk gesproken, dat ik iedereen van harte aanraad. Maar toch moet ook dit boek echt een keer uit.

Een van de problemen die ik heb bij het lezen, is dat als ik een boek uit heb en weer een nieuw boek moet kiezen om op te pakken, ik niet kan kiezen. En zo eindig ik dan halverwege in vier boeken tegelijk. Staat mijn kast op een gegeven moment weer vol boeken met boekenleggers halverwege, geen gezicht. En alles voor niets gelezen, want als je verder wilt gaan weet je niet meer wat er in de eerste helft gebeurd is en kun je weer opnieuw beginnen.

Hopelijk helpt deze lijst, nu ik al heb bedacht wat ik wil lezen. Kan ik hooguit nog in vijfentwintig boeken tegelijk beginnen.

In een onlangs op meerdere plekken verschenen betoog roept Dick Pels links op om ‘de feiten te laten dansen op de maat van de eigen muziek’. Wij moeten rechts niet verwijten aan fact-free politics te doen, maar erkennen dat feiten kneedbare dingen zijn. De kritiek op rechts zou ‘ hypocriet’ zijn. In plaats daarvan moeten [...]

Recentelijk betoogde Dick Pels dat ‘links’ maar eens moest ophouden ‘rechts’ ervan te betichten fact free politics te bedrijven. Dit verwijt wordt het huidige kabinet, en vooral gedoogpartner PVV, maar al te vaak gemaakt. Een recent voorbeeld betreft de maximumsnelheid. Zelfs al wijzen alle onderzoeken uit dat 130 op de snelweg slecht is voor milieu, verkeersgebruikers en omwonenden, dan nog zullen boliderijdende VVD’ers er alles aan doen om lekker 10 kilometer harder te mogen rijden. Het genot van het autorijden neemt waarschijnlijk, net als de luchtweerstand, exponentieel toe met de snelheid.

Pels licht zijn bezwaren tegen het verwijt dat ‘rechts’ aan fact free politics zou doen toe aan de hand van drie stellingen. De eerste twee zijn eenvoudig samen te vatten: links doet het ook, en ook rechts gebruikt feiten (al dan niet gemanipuleerd, net als bij links overigens). Dat eerste is zo klaar als een klontje: als het gaat om 130 op de snelweg legt ‘links’ heel rationeel uit dat het nauwelijks tijdwinst oplevert, maar wel meer doden, maar als een asielzoeker het land uitgezet moet worden, moet het hart het ineens winnen van het hoofd.

Pels’ tweede bezwaar is ook zichtbaar. Alle partijen houden ervan om ‘feiten’ te presenteren – vooral als betreffende feiten hen goed uitkomen. Terecht wordt gesteld dat er in sommige dossiers eerder te veel dan te weinig feiten op tafel liggen. Herinnert u zich nog de enorme stapel rapporten waarmee Alexander Pechtold op de proppen kwam toen kabinet Balkenende-IV twintig ambtelijke commissies wilde instellen om bezuinigingen in kaart te brengen? Gelukkig spelen feiten een belangrijke rol bij de vorming van beleid.

Door feiten voor te doen als ‘dingen’, zo is Pels’ derde bezwaar, misleiden de fact-free-politics claimanten ons. Feiten zijn helemaal niet objectief. Feiten worden gefabriceerd, zo stelt de filosoof Latour. Het claimen van objectieve waarheid is fundamentalistisch en maakt vrijzinnige, zelfkritische politiek onmogelijk. Het is bovendien contraproductief om zelfingenomen populistische politici slechts ‘objectieve feiten’ voor te houden; zij zijn immers net als gelovigen die zich door niets van hun stuk laten brengen. “Links moet juist leren”, zegt Pels, “om de feiten te laten dansen op de maat van de eigen muziek: om de feiten te manipuleren, zonder ze te presenteren als onwrikbare dingen”.

Hiermee lijkt Pels zich, doch niet helemaal, een behoorlijk sociaal constructivistisch standpunt aan te meten. Het is duidelijk dat in de politiek, en in de sociale werkelijkheid in bredere zin, veel feiten inderdaad ‘sociale feiten’ zijn. Ze zijn sociaal geconstrueerd, zoals John Searle laat zien: geld, huwelijk en de regering, geen van allen bestaat zonder dat we daar gezamenlijk een betekenis aan toekennen. Maar dat betekent niet dat er in het geheel geen objectieve feiten zijn. De Mount Everest, bijvoorbeeld, zou er ook zijn als de mensheid niet was geëvolueerd. Los van het feit of we dat ding nu een ‘berg’ noemen: hij zou er staan.

Sociale feiten, zoals geld, zijn niet gemakkelijk te reduceren tot een objectieve waarheid. Maar dat wil niet zeggen dat je je in het publieke debat zomaar alles kunt permitteren met dergelijke feiten. Als u bij de bakker een brood wilt meenemen, zult u nog een lastige ochtend beleven als u hem probeert uit te leggen dat die muntjes en briefjes die hij van u verlangt geen waarde hebben. En hoewel er ontzettend veel debat is over de precieze betekenis van de termen ‘links’ en ‘rechts’ in de politiek, gebruikt Pels ze ruimschoots – en wij begrijpen hem.

Meer hoopgevend is Pels’ stelling dat we op zoek moeten naar een “een vrijzinnige politiek die twijfel toelaat en bereid is het eigen perspectief op de proef te stellen.” Juist een dergelijke kritische houding is hetgeen ten grondslag ligt aan goed wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Open staan voor het eigen ongelijk is de kern van het wetenschappelijke bedrijf. Als we alles al weten kunnen we de tent wel sluiten. Daarin speelt, zoals Pels terecht stelt, de rede een belangrijke rol. Het luisteren en serieus in overweging nemen van argumenten van anderen. Maar ook feiten, empirische waarnemingen, zijn daarbij belangrijk. Want zij bieden ons een uitzicht op de (sociale) werkelijkheid.

Elk overtuigend politiek verhaal berust op ideeën. En die ideeën kleuren ons perspectief op de werkelijkheid. Maar het is een vergissing om feiten dientengevolge slechts te beschouwen als framing. Als je serieus het politiek debat aan wilt gaan, moet je ook bereid zijn om uit je eigen frame te stappen. Je kunt sociale feiten nooit helemaal los zien van je standpunt, maar dat betekent niet dat het niet de moeite waard is om te pogen een onderscheid te maken tussen feiten en meningen. Juist omdat argumenten sterker staan als ze verbonden zijn met feiten. Ook dat draagt namelijk bij aan het voeren van een kritisch en vrijzinnig politiek debat.

It was back in the nineties when a Swiss-Serbian lab associate and friend introduced me to Tom Waits. I was (and thinking about it still am) painfully ignorant of whatever might sound like blues and bar music, so I got "small change" for starters. That same weekend I went out and got "Nighthawks at the diner" and "The hearth of Saturday's night". I wouldn't hear anything else for weeks. The delights of Wait's innovations came later, much later. At that time of being a foreign, recently divorced and without good prospects theoretical biology researcher in Europe, the early years of Tom Waits’ music were just perfect. I remember the lyrics still today, raising a nostalgic grin more often than not. From Emotional Weather Report, for example: "to come back and everything in your refrigerator turns into a science project"

The other day I open it and most of my refrigerator was, actually, a science project.

Differently than in Tom Waits song, though, I was not fishing for waitresses in some crummy bar. More like the real Tom Waits, actually, I am already ten years in what mostly is a very happy marriage. One kid, a satisfactory salary, time to criss-cross Europe for holidays, time for dive and even time for participate in the politics of my like, when I like it. Why would I complain if my fridge is not as clean and shinny as it should be? Actually that wasn't a complain, was it?

Perhaps it was. Perhaps the attempts of my beloved wife to stay in contact with her inner, and long gone, cook do get to my nerves, perhaps. Not because (as she actually claims) I feel the kitchen as proprietary space, not at all. Not because (being me the feminist male that supports the career of his emancipated wife) it's me the one that always cook. I also love it when she cooks. What I don't love is the before, and the after. I guess that’s the price of being the pampered stay-at-home spouse.

As a matter of fact I can see her cooking crisis coming.

It all starts with some slight discontent. Discontent that we all might have, actually. In my case it is that I would like to have more time for my old equations, or for the occasional client that still asks for my statistics. In the case of my wife is to recognize that her career as a successful bureaucrat leaves her no time to sharpen her cooking. I can actually spot the moment, when she looks at one or another concoction from my oven and I can see a nostalgic tingle in her eyes before she compliments it. Of course I know that she is thinking "I could have done this, if I only would have the time".

The next stage comes a Wednesday, her free day. Normally she will be solving geocaching puzzles, or playing some extra piano. But not these wednesdays. Then she will be turning the pages of her old collection of receipts. Not my books, of course not. Hers, the ones full of dust. Next she will be off for the open market, for the asian food shop, for the super market. And she will be back exhausted already, with bike bags full of things. The smile will still be there, though, so I am not nervous, not yet. I'll get there after her next couple of hours in the kitchen. I even might get exhausted myself. From a safe distance I heard the clings and the clangs from my daily tools, I heard the huffing and puffing and cursing under the lips, and I try to hide my own ones. I know that the kitchen will be totally transformed after, and I will still have to use it. But what’s the heck, it's my wife cooking,no? What can be wrong about it?

Eventually we three sit, and we eat. Most of the times, even more frequently than with my cooking, what we eat is very good. Chantal does not depend much on her memory, but on her heavily annotated receipts, so whatever she does, does come out nicely. And that should be it. The next day all should be back to normal, her cooking devil resting in peace until the next attack. Only that not all is normal, no. The next day I will be the one cleaning kitchen tools that I never use, some that I actually dislike. I will be the one searching for the parafernalia that I do use daily, which mysteriously have gone hidden into the most remote corners of the shelves. I will be the one storing all the non used ingredients, the extra food that we did not eat, the sauces and the side dishes. Because one thing is sure: Chantal remembers how to cook, but she does not realize that if you cook once in a blue moon, you should cook less. Because you are not cooking for a bunch of students anymore, because you will not use tomorrow the ingredients that you didn't today. Neither your husband will, because he cooks differently. I guess that what's coming to me is rather obvious.

One day I open it, and my fridge has turned into a science project.

I would like so much not to complain about it. I would like so much to manly struggle with my feminism, and to repeat to myself (and actually believe) that this is but a small cost for the whole package. I actually feel guilty, as guilty as I suppose my mother felt when she started asking from the rest of the family some help to maintain the kitchen decent. My mother knew that in a feminist world the kitchen was not more her domain that the domain of the rest of the family. I also know that. We all know that household tasks should be collaborative. And still I would like so much that my beloved wife would stay out, or in it. It would be simpler, wouldn't it?

In this world of emancipated wife and feminist husbands, of diffuse roles, we are still figuring it out. I guess I can't just call my mother and ask her. Could I?

It was late in the evening. As usual, I was taking part in a board meeting. Business as usual, you would say. Unusual was that this board was not political. In the last twenty years, pretty much any other meeting that I took part of was political. Not any longer, though. Having become more cynical than ever, I took a break from politics. And I went diving.

What I did not expect is that a year later I would be back in politics. The politics of diving. And here I am again. In a board of directors of my diving club, hearing pretty much the same sort of discussions that I heard in my venezuelan neighbors association in the eighties, in my university political movement in the nineties, in my dutch green party the last decade. How to motivate people to act, and how to control the people that acts. How to balance the wills and wishes of diverse groups. How to move on in times of crisis.

Business as usual, then. Up to the moment in which one of my fellow board member said it: "we are not politicians, no way!". And again, I have to think in that profound abyss, in the unbelievable gap between people that, after all, do pretty much the same. That actually depend on each other to live.

Hearing my fellow boarder disparaging politicians, I had to remember a conversation with another diver. In one of the long drives that we do between houses and dive places, we talk about everything, of course. Being close to one or another election, I asked my friend about his voting, and I was sadly not surprised by his being uninterested in voting. When I asked why was when I got surprised: "because I don't like them". Them? "Yes, them. Those that take decisions about my life, that have real power over me... and have never met me, do not and will not know me, and still... still decide what rules I have to play by. All of them are the same: they don't know me, and they don't care. Why would I care about them?"

Back to my divers' board meeting. We are not politicians, said my fellow board member. I asked what did he mean. I could see that he was quite angry. In the board we are in crisis, due to a rebellious core of active members. Tired of what they think is the incompetence of our chairman, the rioters threaten to resign. "It's you or us" they informed the chairman. Describing the rebellious group, my fellow boarder accused them of betrayal. Well, not quite of betrayal, but of being "politicians". Nasty. Looking around the faces of the board, I saw that the insult was quite clear. You might be many things, you might be right, you might be wrong... But politician? That you should not be.

The funny thing, I would say, is that a director board is nothing else than a group of politicians. Any big human group needs a few that represent the many and take decisions (or at least propose the decisions to be taken). What else could politics be?

Actually the question is: how big was the screw that politicians made? How can it be that if you decide to work for others today, you are meet with skepticism, even with anger?

Some of you, readers of my columns coming from the green party, will think that the main challenge of our years is global warming, or the unbelievable extinction of bio-diversity that we have witness. Some others of my readers might consider that the huge increase in human diversity that our years of globalization have seen is the real issue here. Migration and migrants, that's the real challenge. Me myself, I have been gravitating between these two and the capacity of innovate, of create alternatives at whatever-might-the-next-challenge-be.

But perhaps we are all wrong. Is not global warming, is not the migrant, is not the disappearing plant or animal. It is not even our capacity of coming up with new answers. It is us. It is our profound distrust of ourselves, our distrust for the ones that decide to do something, to claim responsibility, to step up and take position. Because politics, whether of diving or of electors, is nothing else than taking up position. How comes that we have come to hate that?

How comes that we despise the ones that lead us?

Donderdag en vrijdag organiseert Urgenda voor de derde keer de Nacht & de Dag van de duurzaamheid. Voor degene die nog wat tijd over hebben ter voorbereiding een aantal online leestips.

Om te beginnen De Duurzame 100 van Trouw met daarin veel inspirerende voorbeelden van mensen die het verschil maken, maar ook aandacht voor de hindernissen en de notie dat je voor milieu in Europa moet zijn.

Voor degene die geen moeite hebben met Engels is de column Here comes the sun van Paul Krugman in The New York Times interessant. Kern van zijn verhaal Climate Progress het verwoord ‘Only Politics Can Delay “an Energy Transformation, Driven by the Rapidly Falling Cost of Solar Power”’. Een van de onderwerpen in de column van Paul Krugman is de hindermacht vanuit de sunset sectoren. Een onderwerp dat je ook kunt terugvinden in het essay Klompen in de machinerie van Jan Paul van Soest. Hamlett in duurzame innovaties van Hans Wiltink en Jan Paul van Soest gaat in op de oorzaken van het achterblijven van duurzame innovaties in Nederland. Een ander interessant stuk is Staat van de Energietransitie van Jan Rotmans.

Voor wie na al dit leesvoer weer wat positieve doe energie ten toon wil spreiden: Spring over en ga naar de Nacht van de Duurzaamheid! Of organiseer een activiteit tijdens de Dag van de Duurzaamheid.

Ik ga zelf de Nacht van de Duurzaamheid missen, omdat ik thuis op mijn dochter pas. Er zullen wel collega’s aanwezig zijn bij de Nacht van de Duurzaamheid. Tijdens de Dag van de Duurzaamheid kun je me vinden bij de duurzame activiteiten bij het hoofdkantoor van Strukton in Utrecht. Een aantal collega’s neemt deel aan het congres Nieuwe Energie in bestaande bouw in Zwolle.

It’s cut a bit long, but the video above is worth a watch. I like the concept of a direct and consensus based decision making process, but…

What are the Occupy Wall Street lot, or the Indignados for that matter, calling for? In the backdrop of that video, I can see placards for every lefty cause imaginable, and in the clips of the General Assembly, they just seem to be saying “Let’s occupy Wall Street”, which is quite an ambitious demand, especially since they are already occupying Wall Street.

I have nothing against direct action; as part of the mechanism for citizens to get their voices heard, it is vital, but I always feel more than a little dismayed when direct action is portrayed as the only mechanism for change in politics. Think about it: direct action often means calling for someone else to do something. Close involvement in the political process, getting representatives elected, pushing policies, means making those changes yourself, not being at the mercy of someone else.

As is usually the way of these things, Brussels is alight (at least, the constitutionally geeky bits of it are) with talk of transnational lists for the next European Parliament elections in 2014. As far as I can tell, this radical idea hasn’t filtered through to the national level. Which is kind of odd, since the whole exercise is meant to bring the people closer to ‘Europe’.
I kind of like the idea of having a set of MEPs elected from a pan-European list, hopefully elevated above the usual popularity contest politics of European elections. It’ll probably mean a lot more French and German MEPs, but they dominate Brussels anyway.
What it will definitely mean though, if Andrew Duff MEP (UK, Lib Dem, promoting the new list in the Parliament) gets his way, is a change to the treaties. Now… surely when we’ve just come through a massive period of constitutional change, there can’t be any appetite for embarking on a whole new constitutional convention?! And since it will have to pass through several referenda, including a very hostile one in the UK, does it really make sense to do it like this.
Come to think of it, does it really make sense to do it at all? The level of consultation with national political parties has been quite low, if the absence of mention of it in my own party is anything to go by. Though I like the idea, the practical side of putting it into place seems to have been thought up entirely within the Brussels bubble: not the place that an initiative to bring citizens closer to the EU should really spend its formative years.

I guess that in any other moment the general public distrust their politicians. I seem to remember that a well known dutch politician said that democracy is organized mistrust. So in principle it seems a bit silly to talk about a political age of distrust. Was it ever different?

All the same in our years seems that distrusts and discontent mark every other political act.

If it pleases you, we might begin with the raise of right wing politics in Europe, or the rise of the left in South America. Both tidal waves have precisely the same origin, one that has little or none relation with ideology. The right in Europe and the left in South America are protest movements. Protests against an establishment incapable to offer any credible dialogue, any contact with the majority of the public. The social- and christian-democrats that ruled South America back in the eighties had a well defined neoliberal program, which basically failed to deliver all what it promised. Far worse, their leaders stop to identify themselves with their electorate. A democratic suicide that can be excellently exemplified by two candidates that counted with the support of the establishment from the first day, basked in the sun of supporting polls, and lost brutally their elections. I am talking of Mario Vargas Llosa, an intellectual liberal writer who loosed against Fujimori (an absolutely unknown candidate months before the campaign), and Irene Saenz, a former miss universe that loosed her presidential bid to Hugo Chavez an unsuccessful army commander turned brilliant politician. How could anybody possibly believe that a beauty queen could reassure and connect with the average impoverished venezuelan circa 1999? Or that a writer with a privatization agenda could offer any soulace to a country riff with terrorism and poverty? Those impoverished masses turned, not surprisingly in the south american context, to a new crop of caudillos, men that based on their personality and charisma, promised to change all by the strength of their personalities. Their left wing agenda was not the key of the success of Fujimori or Chavez, or Evo, or even Lula. Their success is based in their own personal narratives, as powerful leaders able to talk to a public largely forgotten from the discourse of the traditional politician. Leaders that in their talking did not only talked... but protested.

The neo-liberal character of the South American governments in the eighties and the nineties is not that relevant in their replacement by a radicalized left. Consider Europe. Meanwhile their South American counterparts were trying their neoliberal programs, the european governments were also run by social and christian-democrats, but with a different agenda. The continuation of the -rather left wing and anti-neo-liberal- european welfare state. If you look at the political landscape of Europe in the eighties and most of the nineties, you will see the social democrats running the majority of governments in the continent, actually. And if you look today, you will see -all around- governments lead by right wing liberals, conservatives in ideology and agenda. Again, it is not so that the political capital of these movements come from criticizing the european welfare state, that lefty paradise. Not at all. The political capital of the european right wingers today is based on the repeated protest against all the mistakes that the previous governments made, real or imaginary. Today is not possible to say that the world has become more right wing or less wing, then. What is correct to say, actually, is that the world has reacted against their traditional leaders, and is electing those who protest harder.

But are these movements a thing of the past? Or a unique Western phenomenon?

To answer that question we have to turn to the movements that we call (in yet another eurocentric analysis) the Arab Spring. Because there we are seeing the same pattern that happened first in South America, then in Europe... and now in the east. What we are seeing is a strong lack of ideologies of coherent politics. We are seeing simply a shout, a venting of a profound discontent accumulated by decades of frustration. Just like the masses that went to support the militarist Chavez, just like the masses that vote for the flamboyant Wilders. None of these groups have a well defined ideology. What they have is a saturated reality, populated with politicians far away in the clouds of government. A reality that offers no future perspective, but a forthcoming landscape of bad paid labor. No wonder that protest reigns the political expression of our time.

And to make the whole picture better and better, or perhaps more cynic, in our times of european aversion for the Islam, we have got the growing 15M movement. A movement, spanish from origin, which claims to have been inspired in the arabic one. A movement that has occupied major public spaces in Spain with open assemblies and digital counterparts. A movement that seems to keep expanding its reach to whole Spain, now to France. Would it reach and embrace the rest of Europe? It might, actually. It very well might, since their members have a clear and well defined goal.

They are protesting.

 
 
To my surpise the Dutch Academy of the Green Party was asked if they had a trainer who was able to come to Athens at april the 9th en 10th. The Greek Green Party organized, in coxf6peration with the staff of the Europian Green Party, a conference for their members and politians in Greece.

Suddenly I was sitting in an airoplane flying to Athens. Together with an Irish collegue, Tommy Simpson, I was invited by the Greek to tend to the conference in Athens. My contribution to the progamm was a lecture of good practises and lessons learned and a lecture of setting the right ambition, the right goals and the right stategy to communicate these ambitions and goals.

My Irish collegue would emphazise how you could structurize a party as the Greens and how you could get better organized. Further we both would accentuate trends in politics and the Green point of view and how to act in conflict-situations.

We didn't have the same group in our conference during both days, so we had to improvise at some point and repeated some of our issues during the second day. As matter of fact the time was quite short to train all the aspects the Greek Green Party would like us to describe. We were very glad there was a very good translater during both days. I made it possible to communicate better with each other.

I think it was a very nice conference and I was very happy to be invited. There's a lot more to discuss and lot more to tell. So hopefully based on this conference we can make an arrangement for a next conference to discuss the futher ambitions of the Greek Greens and to be more able to reflect on their specific situation in Greece.

The Greek Greens gave us a very warm welcome. During both friday and saturday evening we had a lovely time and we dined together. There also was a small period of time I had the opportunity to see some parts of the ancient city. I would like to thank the Greek Greens very much for inviting me and I'm looking forward to meet them again.

Yet another morning, and sitting in the plenary conference room of the 14 Council Meeting of the European Green Party, I am seeing how the voting on the document "Fit for the Future" goes. The fogs of the early morning are actually gone, and through the windows the light of the sun, reflected I the Danube, flows in. So, as one of the chairpersons said; we are fit for voting.

Which as usual, is a statement to be taken with a grain of salt. Since, just as yesterday and in previous sessions along the past year, we are already ten minutes in a discussion to choose between the words agenda, or program, or platform... To describe what the european green party is doing to "live up to our goals". A rather silly discussion if you ask me. Or if you ask me before I started this business of being involved in writing manifestos for political parties. The thing is that even in this wording discussion, the issue that comes to the front is the relation of national power facing european power, say it otherwise: Should a european (green) party dare to define a political program (that might be somehow forced upon national parties) or should the europeans limit themselves to draw an agenda of shared issues? Perhaps this is why european politics sounds very boring to the outer world, and actually is exciting. The form of the discussion is formalistic and seems to be only about words. But actually, what we are really discussing, is the distribution of political power in a complex reality. The word "agenda" carried the day, by the way.

And with these, and some other comparable discussions and voting, this session came to the one and only issue that have long term consequences. The European Green Party granted, few years ago, the status of observer to an organization called European Network of Seniors. Organization which aims to integrate members defined by their age, in opposition to their nationalities. Today this organization is arguing for having voting rights, to become in facto comparable to national parties. Which will imply that the structure of a party made of national parties would be, somehow, undermined. The European Green Party would not be a simple collection of national parties, but something else... whatever else might be. And I say would. Because just right now, as I write, the voting went 75 to 3, deciding that the Seniors would not be granted special voting rights. We Greens, at least in Budapest, remain safely in our comfort zone of being an organization made out of national parties..

And in these note of consensus and comfort, the rest of the morning went on, opening the space for the next sessions, now on concrete issues. One can always hope that this -very political- using meeting time to agree on structures will not happen anytime soon.

A good and old friend of mine decided to cook for my birthday. Not an old friend, I must say (she becomes 42 like me in a couple of months, and the issue is sensitive), but a friend from old, from my time of being a biology student in Venezuela in the late eighties. As any other of us, she uses quite some of the social media available to contact family and friends abroad and back home. Facebook and Skype are daily used, to keep up with a cloud of people. And still, she was in between offended and shocked when I decided to tweet between courses of her (fantastic) meal. Even more when my mobile begun to vibrate each time somebody would comment (appreciative and envious) on the previous post. Were her, her husband, her daughter and my son (at the table) not enough for me? Did I need to "share" with the "world"? (her quotation marks). I didn't stop tweeting, and eventually we settled in exploring her discontent. It turned out, like in many other similar conversations, that my friend was (and is) repelled by the idea of an ongoing line of live commenting on what we are doing, what we are feeling. Disrupting at best, arrogant and nihilistic at worse. For sure overwhelming.

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting of the ICT workgroup of my party, the dutch greens. Obviously, in between the routine tasks and issues that we have to deal with, twitter was mentioned and commented. One of us, explaining twitter to the rest, said that of course, follow more than thirty persons is nonsense, since it is impossible to really read and answer such amount of information. The debate went on for a while, and at least for the purpose of the workgroup, we settle in the idea of using social media to try and tap the constant flow of information... At least for the limited purposes of our politics. Perhaps we can improve the perception that our politicians have of their electorate and their city.

What shocks me, and actually interest me from these two examples, instances of the same issue, is the believe that we humans have a well defined capacity of processing information, capacity that ob-vious-ly has been reached (at least in the eyes of the twitter bashers). As a matter of fact, yesterday I caught myself at the same feeling. Having 500+ connections in facebook, and sunday being my birthday, my inbox monday was overflowed with notifications of people wishing me well. The first reaction, of course, is like "I can't answer them all!" "help!!". Which is a silly reaction indeed. To begin with, not all of them really want an answer. The intention is more to send a passing greet, just like the smile to some known face crossing in the street. That greeting, simple and non-pretentious, is also great. Not all our human interactions are intense and long winded. On the contrary: exchanging greetings, superficial greetings, in the street with neighbors that we barely know is a nice thing. And what is the problem with scanning the news? Do we all read all the articles of the newspapers that we are subscribed to? Or do we rather fast-read headlines and stop to check on the most promising ones?

Many of us talk today about an information revolution. And it is true that social media, internet powered, have placed to our immediate reach an unbelievable amount of information. But are we justified when feeling overwhelmed? Just take a look around you, stroll in any street of any city today. The information available for you is simply too much. Faces, cars, shops, adds... We are all showered with information, long before internet made its appearance. Libraries are inventions several millennia old. Has any person ever read all books of a library in a short while? Of course not. We humans are, almost by definition, filters of information. Our survival and welfare has always been determined by our capacity of filtering. Do you want to go to the extreme? Take a walk through a forest, as any of your hominid ancestors made few million years ago. Are you today capable to absorb all the information available? No, you aren't. And that is just fine. You will not be aware of each species of plant or animal available to your eyes. But you would certainly be aware if a wolf, or a bush with ripe blackberries, come close by.

So, coming back at our information forest of today, twitter and company. Is it really that bad? Is it really that new? I don't think so. I really don't, so for a fitting way to close these lines: What are you doing reading this oh soooo web 1.0 blog? Go and follow some more people in twitter!

The leader sleeples night
A congresswoman, member of a heterogenous and dynamic dutch party, struggles in the last stretch of her tenure as leader. Deep in the night a deadly question assaults her. She has been the undisputed leader of the youngest and most promising political movement seen in The Netherlands for decades, the greens. And she wonders if she has done enough. She has renewed the socio-economical agenda of her party, but as a matter of fact, electors has not punish or rewarded her. The voting share of the dutch greens has stagnated under her leadership. What more can be done? How to get her solidly minor party in a government coalition? What can be said to her more powerful colleagues for them to take her party in trust?

The other leader
For many centuries Europe has been the cradle and the center of whatever can be called a world civilization. But in the last hundred years the center of the stage belong to other actors. Global governance, surely after the last world war, has moved on further to the west. And still, european political leaders of small and big countries struggle to play their diminishing roles in the international theater. Every country, even the tiny Netherlands, push her resources to the limit... in order to change, influence, or at least help USA's foreign policy. As many of his predecessors, late in the night the recently elected premier of The Netherlands wonders then what signal could he send to the powers that be.

and the militant
After the barricades of the sixties, after the long march through the institutions, ever redefining his ideology, a member of the dutch greens wonder in his bed. He knows damn well that the good old plain pacifism is no answer in the face of international terrorism, failed states and widespread poverty. Devoted to the principle of human security, he is willing today to support armed interventions in foreign soil, if to prevent human massacres. He is not (anymore) the person willing to chain himself to the doors of the national congress, working today instead for having green or progressive legislation passed in his city council. But for a change, today he broods on an international question. Today he has been asked to support his political leaders after they did choose for what he, and many others, vocally opposed. His leaders asked his opinion on sending dutch police trainers to Afghanistan. In the consultation rounds he and many others opposed the envoy. And still, after all the voices were heard, the political leaders of his party decided in favor of the envoy. What will he do next? Can he trust a leadership that hears, but still decides to act against a majority? Does he have an option? Actually he admires the élan of his new elected leader, and believes that she will break through the long standing electoral stagnation of his party. But he is also deeply unset by her decision regarding Afghanistan.

The storm there...
Afghanistan, ha, Afghanistan. A big deal of the worldview of this writer has been shaped by Afghanistan and her ever complicated history. Early on I attended with my high school friends to that despicable Rambo movie, where the well-muscled-and-poorly-brained Stallone fights against cartoonish evil russians in Afghanistan soil, side by side with oriental youngsters. I did read the rolling final titles, dedicating this pastiche of North American hubris to the "gallant freedom fighters of Afghanistan". Whom, cynically enough, a couple of decades later would wreak havoc in North American soil the same way they did to the Soviets. I also had to relativize my childhood love crush with the Soviet Union when faced with their invasive policy in Afghanistan. I devoured Said's "Orientalism", reading how our own views of the exotic afghani predates and deform our attempts to understand the east and its inhabitants. I got to learn that the craving for a strong and harsh leadership is not only a sad South American phenomenon, but also a afghani one, when the Taliban did rise and dominate large swaths of Afghani land. And, last but not least, just like in the South America of my birth, I have been seeing all these years how whichever international power struggling for world relevance, makes its move on Afghani soil.

...and here
For the dutch greens this moment is a perfect and most undesired storm. The actors sketched above join together to produce a nasty situation. And not only before one of the most important elections in the country (where the senate will be elected... and will stop or enable the racist politics of the PVV) but also just before a congress, the moment in which members of the party get together to vent their issues and grievances. What we will do in this congress has the potentiality to shape our party -and our country- for a long while after. Once again, a good mix of hot blood and cold head are demanded from us. Will we raise to the challenge?

a humble opinion
It is my opinion that the politicians of GroenLinks committed a mistake supporting a mission of police trainers now. When the idea was breached and supported in parliament, it did make lots of sense. Then the noises from the powers to be, the USA, where pointing to an end of the armed conflict, with conversations with the taliban, the local and neighboring governments. Obama even fired the hawkish McChrystal, and brought back the dovish Petraeus back. If those noises would have been proven right, a training mission would have been coherent with our ideals and productive with the future of Afghanistan. But alas, the noises proved wrong. The strategy accorded by Petraeus, in apparent contradiction with his previous work in Iraq, is the maintaining of the surge, actually aiming at eliminate as many Taliban as possible before opening negotiations, in a not yet seen future. There is no chance that in this moment of ending-a-civil-war-by-means-of-annihilation police trainers make sense.

But it is also my opinion that the current leaders of GroenLinks has displayed an interesting level of respect for their members and has shown a desirable level of dealing with political opponents. The politicians of GroenLinks do not attend and organize meetings to hear their members too often. And they did this time. And it is neither frequent that a leader of GroenLinks changes a proposal from a VVD premier. Both realities must not be too easily forgotten.

So I do believe, and hope, that this coming congress will let know our politicians that we do not like what they did with our opinion. We really dislike to be heard and then to see them doing otherwise. I believe, and hope, that this congress also tells our leaders that they became committed to the wrong course. Not because old ideals, or bad choice of partners. They did choose wrongly because participating with the invader forces of Afghanistan today is not an act of solidarity, but an act of arrogance and hubris. But I also hope that our congress realize that with Jolande we have got a leader committed to the good fight. And well capable to fight it for us... and hopefully with us. I don't want to undermine her. I, and hopefully the congress, will keep on arguing with her, probably disagreeing now and then. But I, and I do hope we militants of GroenLinks, should go on supporting her.

GroenLinks, the dutch green party, has been through one of the most interesting year in a long time. Mirroring the developments on the land, change is on the move. The question is to where. Undoubtedly, the coming of december, that traditional moment of taking stock, opens the opportunity of playing the sage and try to peek into the next year. What's going to happen? Where will we, groenlinksers, try to direct our party? In what follows, some loose thoughts on the matter.

Navel gazing, our internal structures and their changes

Let's begin with the party as itself, the structures and groups that formally make groenlinks what it is. I believe that it is self-evident that the collective groenlinks has become less important as a creator of independent thinking and action. In the years before 2010 the party was asked to produce an agenda for the future, for the triad of ideology, organization and strategy. That agenda, finally produced in 2009, has have little or none influence in the public course of the party in 2010. The leadership of GroenLinks, at local, national or european level, has little use for the documents generated in the "toekomst project". Those that believed that the internal discussion could generate an innovative agenda have been corrected. Parliament and city council members has been pursuing their own agendas, with success, or not.

All the same, the toekomst project had, inside the party, two important effects: the (far) left wing of GroenLinks have been marginalized and the internal organization has been fundamentally changed. Regarding the first effect, it is not an exaggeration to say that around 2008 existed in Groenlinks a relevant current of opinion that opposed the liberal agenda of Halsema. Most of this current nucleated itself around the so called Kritisch GroenLinks group, that for a while challenged the views of the MPs. But this debate, which extended a bit into the toekomst project, had no ideological consequences. KGL was a protest, but offered no alternative. Accordingly, it loosed influence and today the day is un-existent. It might be that a number of groenlinksers are still uneasy with the liberal agenda of GroenLinks today, but they are nor vocal nor organized. It is very unlikely that in 2011 a new left revolt would flare in GroenLinks.

The second effect of the toekomst project at internal level was the creation of an extended training program for new political talent and the reform of the partijraad. The first program, alive and functioning today, has been training relatively new members of GroenLinks into the currents views and strategies that we use. I do not expect change in any way coming from this group, since "training" in itself is the teaching of a set of values and practices, instead of the generation of internal debate. It is undoubtable that the new trained members will support the current political line of GroenLinks, without challenging it. In the coming years we are looking at a party that will be less alive with internal debate, but will have a new level of stability and coherency. Turning to the reform of the partijraad: GroenLinks was one of the last parties in Netherlands to count with an internal assembly of members qualified to criticize the labour of elected politicians. Formally qualified, that is. The way of discussion of the partijraad made pretty impossible to create constructive counterweight to the political agenda of the party leadership. Even when the partijraad reversed several important decisions of the party board (the expulsion of senator Pormes is one key example) it was never considered as a constructive organism inside GL, but rather a collection of confused troublemakers. This has changed in 2010. Today the partijraad has been given the task of addressing long term issues. The relevance of this is still to be seen, but it is certainly of no relevance for the daily life of politics. In 2011 we will be looking at a partijraad searching for its own place in the debate of The Netherlands.

So much for the internal life of GroenLinks. Stability seems to be the key word for 2011. But what about GroenLinks new leadership? What will happen with the position of GroenLinks in the public arena? In what follows I identify three areas where GroenLinks will be busy in the years to come, or at least in 2011. The first is about our relation with diversity, the second is about our relation with other political streams in The Netherlands and the third is about Europe and the environment.

From culture to economics

The decade that we are leaving behind was a decade of huge societal change. The fruits from decennia of migration and progressive globalization finally came to the attention of the public debate, if not in the positive way that groenlinksers would have liked. Faced with the attacks of Al Qaeda and others, a strong current of opinion against Islamic fundamentalists became mainstream. Back in 2000 GroenLinks looked like being at the verge of forming government, but even when the numbers of party members grew in the years hence, our actual numbers of elected politicians decreased and stagnated. It is possible that this increase in party members and decrease in our capability to create political power owes to our attitude towards minorities. The societal climate was against strangers. GroenLinks leadership tried to walk a tight rope, maintaining our support on emancipation of minorities but adding an element of criticism to them. It is my opinion that this balancing act was very unsuccessful outside GroenLinks itself. The rank and file of the party showed themselves repeatedly in support of the sketched view, but our voting share did not increase, and the participation of minorities inside GroenLinks decreased abruptly. It seems to me that we alienated minorities without conquer much from other voters. To the outside world we repeatedly gave mixed signals. GroenLinks certainly and successfully opposed Verdonk, bringing about a cabinet fall, but did vote for a relevant part of the policies that Verdonk proposed, like the law inburgering. Meanwhile we kept looking for forms of constructive integration of minorities, our leadership repeatedly supported persons like Hirshi Ali, a rabid criticaster of the Islam, who has ended working for the most right wing institution possible, in the USA. Independently of the ethical correctness of our positions, GroenLinks did not succeed in finding an own clear voice in the polarized debate on minorities, as Pechtold managed to do in the last years, bringing about an unexpected revival of D66.

The relevance of this past for the immediate future is not to be easily dismissed. The persons hoping for a fast collapse of the governmental coalition of liberals and far right wingers has been, so far, deceived. The Wilders group, with all their internal problems, is in no way the chaos of the LPF. Most of the Wilders' political capital has been build around its hard stance against minorities. The interesting fact is that minorities, at least in The Netherlands today, are far less homogeneous that Wilders would like them to be. A second and third generations of migrants has steadily find a place in the society. Traditional identity politics have little or none effect in this population sector: nobody born and educated in The Netherlands is comfortable with being addressed as allochtoon, whether for chanting the marvels of diversity or for decrying the dramas of a multicultural population. With their own and diverse luggage of backgrounds, whoever forms the allochtoon sector of the dutch population today is not interested in ethnicity as a defining factor of his or her politics. But this sector will still be attacked by Wilders. Can the relatively new leadership of GroenLinks create new bands and connections with this former GroenLinks voters? That is a question defining the first third of the challenges for GroenLinks in 2011.

In the words of the anointed follower of Halsema, Jolande Sap, the past decade was about socio-cultural debates. With an emphasize in past, I gather. Jolande would like GroenLinks to focus on socio-economic issues, a hard core left wing issue if any at all. With this stance Jolande seems to acknowledge a long standing criticism to GroenLinks, which I first heard from Jean Tillie back in 2002: the left looses its identity (and its power) when engaged in cultural wars. Cultural discussions are interesting, but are almost always won by the traditionalists parties. The right of existence of the left is the recognition of inequality as a fundamentally unfair phenomenon. And the success of the left comes when we are capable to produce ideas and policies that tackle the (today growing) gap between rich and poor. Jolande Sap shows, with her starting statement, a remarkable capacity of identifying a key issue today. Because it is true that the pervasive welfare european society has shielded the most crude effects of the last financial crisis for the citizens, at least from north europe. We have not seen the levels of sudden layoffs, or spinning out of control financial sectors witnesses in other european countries, or in the states. But the crisis is by far and large not averted. Whether it produces the breakdown of the euro, as some commentators predict, or not, it is undoubtedly that the policies of the current dutch government will increase the gap between poor and rich.

Of course, to identify a key issue is not to win the debate about it. The relevant innovation that Halsema brought to GroenLinks was the liberalization of our economic positions. An innovation that brought a relevant level of discontent inside party members, and certain renewal in our power base. If a relevant percentage of voters of GroenLinks a decade ago where minorities, today they have been replaced by persons that would not go as far as to vote for the liberals, but certainly expect more liberalism that the offered by the social democrats. To serve to this raising middle class Jolande Sap is in an excellent moment. Extending the existing positions of GroenLinks, which aim at making the labour and housing market more dynamic, will increase our appeal for this sector. But will it increase our share of the vote of the dispossessed? There have GroenLinks a much harder sale. The new left, whether Clintonist, Blairite or Halsemian, based their temporal power in a middle class of well educated professionals. The lower classes did not vote for them. Today we are a huge crisis and ten years after the raise of the third way. Would GroenLinks under Sap be capable of articulate a set of policies that not only help the poor, but also are recognized by the poor as helping? That is the bigger question for GroenLinks, and we will see the first answers to it... in 2011. From my own thinking I can only point to a crucial issue. When GroenLinks heard of the liberal agenda of Halsema by first time, we where offered a package of economic measures that flexibilized several markets. The idea was to break the dominant position of a group of citizens, and open markets to outsiders. But the so called outsiders are the most flexible sector of the dutch economy. Flexibilization of work rights do not benefit outsiders. And even if that is matter of debate, what has been proven as a fact the last years is that no person with a low salary and a precarious job will vote for a more flexible labour situation. GroenLinks is more liberal than a decade ago, no doubt. But to make a success of this liberalism, we will have to sell it better, to begin with.


To fuse or not to fuse

The issue of the -relatively new- liberalism of GroenLinks brings, unassailable, the second third of challenges for groenlinks the next period. I refer, of course, to the much publicized creation of a progressive front between Groenlinks and D66, adding (hopefully) members of PvdA, VVD and even the CDA. To begin with, the idea of a progressive front has a conceptual trajectory that can be traced to several years ago, when a (new?) ideological break line became popular, the progressive/conservative divide. According to this view, the old differences between left and right are far less important than the differences between conservation and progression. Of course, if you would believe in such an idea, it is only a follow up that political movements that sit in one or another side of the divide should join forces. Already in 2008 a small debate occurred between Paul Vermast and Brechtje Paardekoper, that can still be found in internet. Paul pointed that the ideas of GL and D66 where very close to each other, so a fusion between these parties should be a success. To which Brechtje contested that as a matter of fact, the economic programs of both parties where quite different. The same debate flared few months ago, with a website and several pleas from Groenlinksers and PvdAers.

Interesting is to notice that both in 2008 and in 2010 (at least at the begin) the leaderships of the involved parties were careful not to appear as embracing or denying the idea. But this has changed few days ago. In comments reported by mainstream newspapers Jolande Sap shows a mild enthusiasm for the idea of a progressive front, including the creation of few shared programmatic points for the coming senate elections. This idea, supported by Ploumen, the PvdA fractie leader, has not been so popular with Pechtold, the D66 leader. These are, of course, news in development. Tomorrow's newspapers might bring any unexpected twist to this narrative. But the involvement of the party leaderships this time tells me that this is a debate that is not likely to disappear as in 2008. For me is puzzling that Jolande Sap, after having said that her focus will be economic inequality, is positive on a collaboration with D66, a party whose economical agenda lies far away from having reducing inequality as a goal.

In any case, the desperation that the success of the coalition liberal/far right wingers brings along will be a relevant motor for this debate. If the coalition would collapse today, no doubt that any fusion will be a far cry right away forgotten. But as long as the current cabinet stays in control and implements more and more policies, opposition parties will grow together, and whether this be left or progressive, talks about a fusion will remain alive. Perhaps it is instructive to look at the evolution of GroenLinks to predict how this discussion will evolve. Back in 2000 I repeatedly heard that the GroenLinks project was, in the strategical, a movement to bring the social-democrats closer to their left wing core. Simplification that made sense then, when the social democrats had been in power with the liberals for quite a long period. Nothing like that is said now, but we are talking about bringing progressive members of the PvdA in. huh? The not fully spelled motivation here, is to break the success of the right, and given that we do not believe in the power of the left anymore, we are looking for a new progressive coalition. It has been mentioned repeatedly that the number of parliamentary seats in reach of a progressive fusion might be relevant. Say it in other way: let's get together to obtain more power. The problem with this motivation is that it lacks a political identity of its own, and it bounces with the politico-economical identities of the parts to be fused, surely when thinking beyond the middle class that vote for GL, D66 or PvdA. All this people might look more or less the same, and appears to switch between these parties without qualms. But that is no guarantee whatsoever that a mix would be productive or stable.


And what about green?

Stability. Or sustainability, if you want. Taking the detached long term view, the birth of left-green parties twenty-some years ago brought an unexpected element in politics: a relation with nature that must strike a balance between use and conservation. We green lefties are not for isolating nature from men, and neither are we for the exploitation of it to the bitter end. Actually, we recognize that we must use nature to develop ourselves. Nothing new to lefties since Marx. The new thing was that we believe that this use might be phrased in a much more sustainable way. And here we are, thinking about the future of the dutch green party. So far, nothing like green and environment has been mentioned. 2010 saw two of the most dramatic international moments in this issue: Kopenhagen and Cancun. Well, dramatic... Kopenhagen was a defeat for the greens of the world, because we were brutally (and rightfully in my opinion) reminded that third world countries are not to accept whatever receipt to be offered by the first world. And one of the longest prepared international summits ended in abject failure. Cancun has just ended, without a defeat, but neither with a resonant gain. Perhaps this is all good, since small steps tend to be more sustainable than big pronunciations. But anyhow, Cancun has been of little or none importance for GroenLinks. Which is, to say the least, bizarre.

For any voter in The Netherlands GroenLinks is a green party. That is what define us. But the core discussions of the last years has not been focused in whatever might be green, at all. We think that the being clearly framed as greens, and having so few internal disagreement on what green is, is a perfect state of affairs. Which is a serious problem. The public keeps on perceiving "green" as a nice idealistic pursue of a small and well-off sector of the population. A left wing hobby per definition. Worse enough, not a sympathetic hobby at all. "Green" is still broadly perceived today as a set of rules that criticizes and constrains whatever life style a person might choose. Besides a feeble attempt to say that "green" might actually produce labor, GroenLinks has not invested any effort in linking the emancipation agenda of the left, with the sustainability pursue that is so obvious for any groenlinkser. Moreover, we lost the european ideological battle in a way that should have produced deep reflection. At the start of the past european elections we proposed the New Green Deal, our way to get out of the crisis. Simply said, the plan was to expend our way out of the crisis. Not with any expenditure, but with investment in green infrastructure. A wonderful plan, which has no impact whatsoever in european fiscal policy. Any european government today, and every european instance of policy making has chosen the other way. Not to expend our way of the crisis, but to save it. Europe is cutting every budget that can be cut away. But we, the greens, we are still talking about our New Green Deal.

This apparent autism is the more puzzling for me considering our current european politicians. Bas Eickhout is certainly aware of the relevance of green economics, and having worked a whole life as bureaucrat in several instances of the dutch government is well aware of the inroads and interconnections of Brussels and The Hague. When we elected Bas to the EP, and after his positioning in the green european parliamentary group, I expected the political talent of Bas to make the most of our green economic agenda. Differently than many other green politicians, one of the best talents of Bas is to present the positive side of whatever green issue would be debated. No catastrophic and doom scenarios for Bas. But so far this expectation, of a new coat of paint for our beloved but unsympathetic green standpoints, has barely come to fruition.

The blessing in disguise is that I expect the next year to be much more influenced by european politics. The delayed clash between the economical views of Merkel and Sarkozy is heading to a climax, with certain consequences for national economies. I expect that the positions of Bas in the issue will gain, slowly but certainly, an own place in the imago of GroenLinks to the extern world. And not only from Bas. Our other two MEPs, Judith Sargentini and Marije Cornelissen have positioned themselves at the core of two other key issues. Marije is deeply involved with the gender discussions in the EP, and Judith with the migration ones. Being gender policy an issue rather consensual in The Netherlands, and being a great majority of the dutch society in agreement with Marije, I expect her national presence to increase in the coming year. Harder to predict is the trajectory of the leader of our MEPs, Judith. As I have argued above, migration remains to be a hot issue in NL, and surely in Europe. But the positions that Judith appears to support are certainly contrarian to a relevant part of Groenlinksers. Her support for the circular migration scheme will bring debate, that will unravel itself in 2011. In the eyes of some of us, the very principle of circular migration is a badly disguised going back to the gastarbeider schemes of the sixties, scheme that not offering any integration policy to the migrant, expect her or him to depart after a short time. This did not happen, nor I can possibly imagine why would it happen in the future. So I predict interesting and not too cold discussions, if Judith want to bring GroenLinks to agree with such ideas.

Looking backwards I see that this post in my blog is the longest that I have ever written. But hey, I haven't frequently tried to predict a whole year of politics, have I? Let's see then what happens. Will my pet issues (left economics, fusion and green/migrating europe) dominate GroenLinks politics in 2011? Only the future can tell... and we love the future.

Vandaag releaste Michel Spekkers een "Lokale wikileaks". Ik ben enorm voorstander van transparantie en van wat wikileaks doet. Ik kan het daarom alleen maar toejuichen als het voorbeeld van wikileaks gevolgd wordt en de beweging Decentraliseert. Dat maakt de beweging alleen maar sterker.

meer lezen

What is a political party? What's the use of it? In the last decade these questions have entered the realm of historical philosophy, since they appear to be interesting musings on a construction that, to say the least, is passe. In South America we have seen the coming to power of caudillos that little have to thank to any organized collective, but that rather have created their own unorganized movement. In North America we are seeing a president beleaguered by a polymorph group of people -the tea partiers- that had no interested in politics few years ago, and few desire to get organized today. And Europe camps today with prime ministers and prominent public figures that owe their raise to the growth of anti-politics. Is the idea of a political party still meaningful?

Being daily involved in whatever might be called european politics, that question is of real relevance for me. And not only due to the abstract interest, but also because my own party, the european green party, has set up a "future workgroup", a collective busy with (re)formulating our goals and structures. An interesting exercise no doubt, that even when mired in traditional and rather boring discussions, offer a chance to re-found our own existing right. This workgroup is rounding up his work, being in the last stages of writing a draft proposal, to be discussed and approved in April. Approved if the writers now busy are capable to sort through the many contradicting and opposing views on european democracy, its goals and its middles.

As a matter of fact, one of the key issues that the European Greens have to decide is the status of the INet (short for Individual Supporters Network of the European Green Party). Whatever status will be the INet granted inside the structure of the European Greens, it will be an excellent signal to understand the capabilities of the greens in europe.

This is because the INet is a group of individuals working since almost a decade for transnational activism. With ups and downs, moments of bright success and moments of disappointing defeats, we have been trying to sell to members of green parties all across europe the view of a political action that knows no national borders. A way of political activism that based on the local politician, the city councillor or the town activist, recognizes that political action make sense when projected across the border, whatever border. So we have campaigns for reopening local (and abandoned) trains lines between dutch and german towns, against nuclear centrals that based in a country affect all the neighbors, or for the greening of harbors that determine the economics of a whole european region, rather than one city located in one country. The European Greens are one of the first european families that recognized the need for transeuropean politics, and inside the European Greens, the INet is the party members organization that has been doing their best to make this idea real. The question now is: what do the European Greens want from the INet? And how much political space are they willing to grant us?

Depending on your perspective, the prognosis is encouraging, or depressing. Consider one of the key discussions, membership. Can any european, member of a green political party or not, be member of the INet? Even if this sounds like a retorted question only interesting to old fashioned aparatchniks, it has taken a lot of attention in the internal discussions of many european green parties. Only recently seems that a consensus have been build on allowing anybody to become... supporters. Strange, isn't it? Should you not let anybody become your supporter? Well, party politics are sometimes more contorted than needed.

But that was about hard won consensus. Just yesterday, when meeting the coordination team of the INet, we heard that one of the Belgium green parties, Ecolo, has decided to stop the INet as a whole. They will plea for a takeover of all what we have been doing by the offices of the European Greens in Brussels, deciding in fact that transnational european activism must be thought, planned and implemented from Brussels. Could anybody really imagine that five persons in a Brussels office are humanly capable to coordinate campaigns from Norway to Spain? To understand the political dynamics of all the countries in between? And to act on that?

The fact is that Europe is a wonderfully diverse continent, where a lot of developments are taking place right now. And a lot of individuals, organized or not, are taking an active interest in politics. Only looking at the past few days we heard about protests in Rome on a confidence vote on Berlusconi, about extended demonstrations against budget cuts in England, about a suicide bomber in Stockholm. Not to mention the brave new world that the whole diplomatic corps is facing in the wake of wikileaks disclosures. Can somebody really believe that in such a landscape a centralized direction can move anything at all?

The issues that I mention are, actually, not random. If you think about them, every one of them illustrate the bankruptcy that political parties face today. Every one of my examples has the potentiality of changing the political dynamic in the place of occurrence first and in europe after. And none of these events have been coordinated or generated... By a political party. None at all.

Do the European Greens want to play a role in the complex landscape of european politics today? Do we want to be a motor of change and progress? I have believed all my life that the answers to these questions are a resonant yes. But then, if we greens really want to be factors of progress in europe, we can not amputate the initiative of our own members that connects individuals across borders. With all their inefficiencies and problems, the INet is the group inside the European Green Party that has understood long ago that a european demos must be constructed by individuals. If the future of the European Greens do not support embrace and work on the INet... Well... What are political parties for, after all?

One of the marvels of the internet today is to have people from all colors, political and others, mingled in whatever conversation happens. A best example was triggered by the previous post in this blog -A Xmas tale-. Since a couple of years I have decided not to have reaction space in the blog itself, but let whatever social network is around to be the space for react to whatever I write here. The approach actually works. If you would happen to follow my twitter/facebook timeline, or to check the comments that appear in the note itself, you would see that indeed, a strange meet of minds and ideas have happened around my last post.

To give a bit of context, I will allow myself to introduce the characters of this tale. On one side we have my friend of old times Tito. I meet him many years ago in university, when we both where members of the board of directors from the Movimiento Formate y Lucha, a left wing student's organization. I loose track of Tito for almost a couple of decades, up to when he resurfaced in my life via facebook. Tito lives now in the USA, and being active in what we call in Europe the Tea Party Movement, we had (and probably will have) plenty of heated arguments already on democracy, current politics and the like. If we happen to agree on politics, that was couple of decades ago. Which makes it, at least from my perspective, very interesting. How comes that people go so apart from each other in politics? Did we change or are we the same, but our different environments forces us to disagree? Do we understand each other? Questions that remain interestingly unanswered.

On the other side, we have Ton. Very differently than Tito, I have yet to meet Ton in person. I believe he is member of GroenLinks, my dutch political party, and certainly we share plenty of ideas and interests. It hardly passes a comment in my (or in any other of our shared friends) facebook timeline without comment from Ton. Reading philosophy and cooking lore, and certainly being more than 40, Ton fits as yet another example of the positive aspects of Europe today: a life style that permits to balance high taxes and high individual liberty with a rather left wing political line.

Between these two poles, we also have Imke and Dirk, friends that I have meet in different moments and groups of GroenLinks Utrecht. Differently than Tito, Ton and myself, Imke and Dirk are youngsters, ending their studies or just in their first full time job. Even if I consider myself young, when I heard and read Imke and Dirk I recognize that they respond and react from a perspective a couple of decades younger than mine, which makes any dialogue between us even more interesting. And on the other side, we also have Maruja. Maruja taught international relations when I was in university, a course that among other consequences produced the first students-professors human rights action group in Caracas. When I read Maruja I read a keen mind honed by decades of following the drama (or comedy) of politics of all sorts.

Now, after all that have being said. If you read my last post before, or care to check it after, you would remember that nagged by northamerican descriptions of the european welfare, I put down my own, sort of not-american-not-european perspective. In short I do believe that europeans in general, and dutchies in particular, enjoy ample free time, more than their northamerican counterparts. And I believe that such attitude comes from a long tradition of conservative values, where living in a comfortable middle class is seen as a desirable goal. Nothing too original, nor too conflictive, I thought.

But of course, my friends thought otherwise. And one of those facebook battle fields rise. Interesting in itself, because if you happen to follow the exchange, you will see right away the preconceptions that north-americans have of europeans, and otherwise. And not only. Also the views of a right winger on a left winger, and viceversa. Meanwhile Maruja cut though the middle of my too-extensive prose, and retweeted my own original title as "perfect social security or golden mediocrity", Tito and Ton engaged in a discussion on principles of right and left politics.

Not surprisingly, in the whole debate between Ton and Tito, I found myself agreeing with Ton and wondering in disbelief on what Tito has to write. But anyhow, what is interesting is how comes that persons that honestly share a desire for social improvement can come up with such a different views. I mean, I do not believe for a second when a right wing leader tells me that his agenda of tax cuts is actually in the benefit of the poor. But what when a serious, not stupid, honest person tells me the same? Probably my friend the right winger wonders in the same way (or at least I hope so): how comes that Inti (and Ton and many others), being not too stupid can believe all this nonsense from the left? Politics, of course, is not exact science, and there are no universal truths. But still. To me, anyhow, the many debates with Tito tells me that we should be much more open and tolerant than we actually are. In this world that we share, with problems that affect not only Tito and me, but the eskimo in alaska and the bushman in africa... This dialogue must go on, even if so frequently seems to be a dialogue between deaf people.

Besides this general issue of reaching out to our extreme opposers, and try to learn and to understand from them, still is the issue of ideal societies, or organizational modes. And here I must confess that even when sounding decadent, I am still in favor of the more soft societies that europe has created. Because today I am not willing to believe that freedom can only mean freedom of earning money, as much as I can. I do believe that money is only a middle, an instrument to help fulfill a meaningful life not only for me, but for the ones that by millions of different reasons earn less than me. Tito certainly has an important point when he tells that socialist dreams have become, far too often, in nightmares. True. But does that have to mean that any attempt to socialize and redistribute income is doomed to become a stalinist tyranny? I don't think so, I really don't. Even if only looking at the nightmares that the capitalist dream has produced in my countries, where myriads are born, grown and die in exploited hells that will never offer any chance of emancipation.

Which raises the last point of this post. It could be that because I am pushing the forties and I have the luxury of running my own company, which small (and frequently null) income only complement the steady income of my wife, I have actually forgotten my early years of toll. Surely Imke has not forgotten them, when reporting that most of her social circle does work harder than hard, with hardly any time left out of the rat race. So again, that is why this brave, free, mostly incoherent but still alive dialogue of internet is valuable. Because we can forget that our own limited view of reality is nothing else than that: a limited sight. If we are to move forward, we must go on contrasting the disparaging views across the Atlantic, and across the generations.

Dear BBC News,

The headlines may easily feed wrong impressions of what to expect from the new Dutch delegation in the European Parliament. Almost as spectacular as the victory of the far right, is the impressive gain of two clearly pro-European left wing parties. Both the greens (GroenLinks) and the left liberals (D66) now have three seats in the Parliament. This will most probably reinforce the Dutch voice in Europe on sustainable economic recovery, on global solidarity and on tolerance and fundamental rights. The previous delegations of these parties, although half their present size, were already very active on these issues. The right extremists, however, who vowed to sabotage the Parliament from within, will most probable have no more impact than creating a scandal or two. Although alarming, the Dutch results will not have a negative impact on European politics in the Parliament.

Yours,

Luuk van der Meer