At the NATO summit in Ankara, Secretary-General Mark Rutte defined democracy as being about accountability. A free press is essential, he said, so that the people can find out what politicians are doing. What a shame this does not apply to NATO itself! FVD MP Pepijn van Houwelingen recently asked the Dutch minister of Defence, Dilan Yesilgöz, to write a letter to NATO to enquire about its propaganda activities. He asked this in the light of a report in The Guardian revealing that NATO has been holding closed-door meetings with film makers and TV screenwriters. The implication is that the Alliance is soliciting propaganda, as Hollywood has done for decades in conjunction with the American deep state and its military-industrial complex. The minister’s response to Pepijn’s request? A flat refusal. Only FVD asks the questions – and how revealing that the NATO crowd refuses to do so.
Watch Pepijn van Houwelingen’s intervention here
The Dutch government is planning to transport historical state archives from the Netherlands to its overseas territories, as an act of restitution and contrition for its colonial past. This is part of an official government reading of Dutch history as having been essentially violent and exploitative, at least for the last four centuries or so. FVD MP Peter van Duijvenvoorde said in committee recently that this is one-dimensional and unhistorical. A nation’s memory is multifaceted and should not be laid down by government fiat. Moreover archives are not symbols or instruments of oppression and should not be used as counters in some imagined game of payback. Instead, they are precisely a resource for historians to discover new facts - and to engage in the endless debate about story-telling which is precisely what makes us human.
Watch Peter van Duijvenvoorde’s speech here
John Laughland was Ian Proud’s guest again recently on his podcast, The Peacemonger. Ian has built up an impressive group of guests in recent months and John is honoured to be one of them. Their discussion ranged over different European subjects – the astonishing authoritarianism of the new Hungarian prime minister, the make-believe that Ukraine will soon join the EU, Europe’s severe cognitive dissonance and economic decline, and much more besides.
Watch John’s appearance on The Peacemonger here
Our guest on The Forum this week was Joshua Landis, Professor of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma. They discussed whether the Greater Israel project is over, as Scott Ritter had claimed when he was our guest last week. Joshua’s view is more nuanced: he thinks that instead the USA will remain trapped in a forever war with Iran and that Israel will derive some perverse benefit from this. The discussion also ranged over the issue of democracy and oligarchy: from the point of view of millionaires and billionaires, Joshua argues, war is great. The oil price has shot up, which hands the oil companies huge profits, while the military-industrial complex naturally loves a good war. The Gulf states, indeed, will soon be putting in more orders following the attacks on their facilities by Iran. Money makes the world go round, after all.