De Standaard brandt Pronk af

[Henk Vreekamp]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

In Brussel schijnt men nu ook de Verschrikkelijke Man Uit Scheveningen in 
het vizier te krijgen.Hier een in het Engels vertaald bericht dat op een 
internationale lijst verscheen...

>Translated (quickly and probably not perfectly) an article in Flemish 
>press by the most important foreign affairs journalist of the (not really 
>left) press, Mia Doornaert.
>
>Here is the article in De Standaard of today
>http://www.standaard.be/standpunt/opinie/index.asp?ArticleID=GHP8M1S8
>(link can only be read if you have a subscription though)
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>The Sudanese government cooperates in good faith, but on the field in 
>Darfour the agreements are not yet implemented.'' Which innocent heart in 
>the world would say something like that, with an unmistakable Dutch 
>accent, on the BBC World service? No other than erstwhile Dutch minister 
>of development policy Jan Pronk, now special envoy of the UN for Sudan. 
>Also international ngo's gasped for breath at Pronks report to the UN 
>which so obviously 'took on' the Khartum regime with such velvet gloves.
>One wonders what an Islamic regime must do before it would become 
>unaccpetable for the man who for thirty years claimed to be the 
>(self-appointed) conscience of the Netherlands, if not of the world. The 
>then minister of the social democratic PvdA still said in 1998, that "one 
>could not say that human rights in the Afghanistan of the Taliban were 
>violated. They are rather implemented according to another philosophy.''
>There being no form of freedom, women being reduced to brood cattle and 
>charge animals, obscurantism triumphing, only a Western imperialist would 
>moan about that, isn't it?
>Pronk was and is with that, typical for an elitist Western European left 
>which contributed more to the successes of the French Front National and 
>the Flemish Blok, of Jörg Haider and Pim Fortuyn than anything else. 
>Because it immersed itself in a permanent mood of denial, and refused to 
>see anything that didn't fit it's bias.
>Such left accused the crimes of fascism but was silent about punishment 
>and torture camps of communist countries. Its heart was bleeding for the 
>exploitation of workers by capitalism but not for the victims of 
>stachanovism. It sympathized with the victims of extreme rightist regimes 
>but found in the  '70ies and '80ies the Vaclav Havels annoying jammers of 
>'detente'. It wanted to enjoy the prosperity and freedom of the west and 
>believe that in the east, the 'new human being' was created. And in its 
>moral comfort, its cosy conformism, it refused to be disturbed with the 
>price others paid for that blooming future.
>That left side knew that Stalins hegemonism was an invention of the 
>Americans and that in fact the well-being of the working class was served 
>by crushing the East-German worker rebellion of 1949. They knew certainly 
>that only America and the NATO threatened world peace, and acclaimed until 
>deep into the eighties the freedom killing regimes of Eastern Europe as 
>angels of peace. It protested and continues to protests violently the 
>least obstruction of its own freedom, but continues to burn candles on the 
>altar of the cuban caudillo Fidel Castro who mercilessly punishes anything 
>even smelling of derogatory opinion.
>All problems of the world were and are to be caught in the prism of a 
>marxistoïde catechism. North south antagonisms are a class struggle on a 
>world scale. The blame for all problems goes to the 
>imperialism/(neo)liberalism. To say that corrupt regimes exploit their own 
>population just as mercilessly as the colonizers ever did, is improper. To 
>dare determine that nationalism preserves an enormous emotional 
>recruitment strength, that collisions between ethnies and cultures are 
>some of the large causes of war and instability, is proof of fascistoïde 
>inclinations. To judge that Osama bin Laden is not conducting a war for 
>the poor but against Enlightenment is cultural racism.
>Ayaan Hirsi Ali left the socialist PvdA disappointed because the left 
>found  in its multicultural credo an alibi not to have to see the 
>far-reaching oppression of women in immigrant communities. And look, this 
>champion of the oppressed is now 'right' and the objective allies of the 
>oppressors are 'left'.
>Long time ago the left used to stanf on the side of the little people. But 
>the latest decades the most talked-about self-declared left elite looked 
>down on the rabble. To speak about integration problems of immigrants was 
>not done. To complain about insecurity likewise, was just a 'feeling'. 
>With the same aplomb with which they erred concerning Stalin or the large 
>cultural revolution, concerning the new human and real socialism, the much 
>talked-about left intellectuals of western Europe decreed that immigration 
>could and should be no problem, and that speaking about order and security 
>was dreadfully Right(wing).
>And then they still were astonished and incensed that the worker, ordinary 
>people, turned their back to the left parties and were seduced by false 
>prophets of populisme and extreme right. And then it still takes 
>bewilderingly long before the politically correct eye flaps fall and the 
>left no longer becomes synonymous with a disavowal of complex realities.
>Most probably the poor chums in Darfour are ignorant of the reelings of 
>Mr. Pronk.  But it is quite disillusioning that such champion of so-called 
>moral left does not stand in more burning indignation on the side of the 
>victims, rather than pull his punches against a dreadful
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>regime

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