Three days on, and your intrepid blogger is still hopping mad about the
deconstruction of the Dutch military to save a lousy 1 billion euros. Given the amount that is nominally saved, this destruction of capability, of experience and tradition, is wholly unnecessary. To give just one example: Immigration alone costs the Dutch tax payer 7.2 billion euros
every year. On the face of it it should not be too much of an exercise to get the billion needed by curbing this a little, now would it?
But the point of the exercise evidently has little to do with saving money. Evidently, because there are several ways (one of which is migration, others include the infernal 'social programs' that throw money at the Moroccan scum making our cities less enjoyable to live in then they should be) this 1 billion euros could be saved without destroying our national army.
Defence minister Hans Hillen, in the wake of furious reactions both from within the armed forces and of public opinion,
said (NL) "The armed forces will remain of Champions League level. We will still matter". This immediately received the scepticism it deserved. But here the minister may have inadvertently indicated the true nature of the cuts.
For all intents and purposes the
UEFA Champions League is a pan-European League, where the elements of national competition have been removed as much as possible. Yes, there are Dutch teams, as there are British, German, Spanish and Italian teams. But teams are overridingly identified with the city, and specifically not the nation, they hail from.
As far as I'm concerned, that is quite okay, and it has given us some spectacular matches to watch. But it is an entirely different matter, when our armed forces are thrown out into a 'European league'. Minister Hillen is confirming exactly what we were suspicious of. The parts of our armed forces that will be left after the cuts are effected will be stationed in Holland, will be funded by the Dutch government. But they will no longer be Dutch.
Instead they will be minor units, battalions, regiments and squadrons, in a European Army, in a EUnion army. After the cuts, there will only be Dutch units under foreign command. But a Dutch army it will not be. Minister Hillen is overseeing the liquidation of the Royal Dutch Armed Forces.
Does that make minister Hillen a traitor? Presumably his ultimate defence will be that his hands are tied. Buried deep in the Lisbon Treaty are the requirements and measures to create a EUnion army, with a EUnion command structure, wholly subservient to the EUnion. Post-Lisbon our government is beholden by the terms of the treaty we affectionately call the Turnip. So, on the face of it Hillen is right.
But this is where the nefarious character of the EUnion becomes clear. It was after all the Dutch government (led by Jan-Peter Balkenende, a past recipient of the
Annual KV Anton Mussert award), who ratified the Turnip. Even when fully 63% of the Dutch had said 'NO' to the Turnips predecessor, that infernal European Constitution. The hands of our government are tied because it wants it that way.
His Grace also understands this. And he puts it more eloquently then I ever could. So, I will quote him verbatim:
The EU is one great quango: it is a democratic scam which permits the politicians of each member state to promise the earth to get themselves elected, and then blame "Europe" that their manifesto pledges could not be fulfilled. This then permits each political leader to stare their electorates in the face and say, quite truthfully, "Our hands were tied; we could nothing about it; we were bound by our treaty obligations, etc., etc".
Reacting to this new-found clarity,
Richard North elaborates:
This is the point which the Little Englanders and the dyed-in-the-wool UKIPites simply do not get. The European Union is not a conspiracy of foreigners, to take over and rule Britain. It is a conspiracy of the ruling élites, on a European scale to by-pass democracy. Our leaders are part of it, it is them, the British political élites, doing it to us. (...)
In our book, The Great Deception, Booker and I wrote of the slow-motion coup d'état - which is precisely what has been happening – and why the book is routinely ignored by the "great and the good". Slowly, slowly, almost imperceptibly, the organs of states, and the most important institutions such as the BBC, have been taken over. Our democracy has been stolen from under our very noses, not by those ghastly foreigners or the filthy Hun, but by our own élites.
Still, I find it hard to put into words the depths of my disappointment, anger and grief with this government. Up to now I lived under the impression that is was mainly the left that was in love with the EUnion project. I always thought the right, conservative sliver of our political establishment, would remember the traditional place and role of politics and government.
But the brazen attempt to rob us of a believable armed forces, by this, OUR OWN GOVERNMENT!, and the strangely subdued, tacit agreement by the opposition, proves that the entire political class in the Netherlands is wedded to the ideas and principles of the EUnion. It is actually no wonder our 'NO' from 2005 was swept under the rug so effortlessly. There is nobody in our political scene that actually wants to make good on that vote. The EUnion is just too convenient for that.
Dr. North once wrote: "We are a satellite state of the Greater European Empire, ruled by a supreme government in Brussels. We owe this government neither loyalty nor obedience. It is not our government. It is theirs. It is our enemy". At the time he first wrote this, I thought he was coming on a little too strong. But now, finally, a little sadder, a little wiser and a whole lot angrier, I realize Dr. North was right all along.
Even before our armed forces, our political class ceased to be Dutch. It is of the EUnion, in its entirety, from left to right. We may be allowed to colour a red dot every four years, but there is actually only one choice: The EUNion. In a very real sense, we live in a one-party state.
And so it is our own elites, that continue to hollow out the natural principles of just government, of freedom and of democracy, using the EUnion as the perfect excuse. And when we protest, they throw up their hands: 'It wasn't us. It's that damn EU'. But in their ante-chambers, where we don't see them, I bet they're sniggering in their little fists about the joke they've played on us.
If you take anything from this angry vent, this should be it: The EUnion is not some nebulous bureaucracy in Brussels, that makes our lives miserable. The EUnion, that is our own elites, fellow Dutch, making our lives miserable. They are the enemy. We should start treating them as such.
The court of substitution has today ruled against the defense. Thus Geert Wilders and his defense keep the same court, with judges Geert Jansen, Marcel van Oosten and Judith Boeree, who remarkably enough appeared today not in robes but in casual clothing.
