Just a reminder here about a European political figure probably destined to become rather more important in the near future. That’s Geert Wilders, head of the rather recent Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV: “Freedom Party”). The party is mainly known for its anti-Islam and anti-immigrant views; the politician is often known as “Mozart” due to his uncommon hair-do, of an artificial blond coloring. You’re likely get a chance to take a gander at that fairly soon on some newspaper frontpage/homepage, since we now have a national election scheduled for early June here in the Netherlands and, unfortunately, opinion polls show the PVV poised to make major gains, even though no other party is willing to work with them to form a new government.

For now, though, Wilders’ anti-Islam stance has earned him top-billing in a documentary film, with his name even in the title, “Islam Rising: Geert Wilders’ Warning to the West,” produced by PRB films, an American company, in cooperation with the Christian Action Network. And, as both the Volkskrant and Trouw report, he was supposed to travel to Los Angeles to attend the film’s premiere on 1 May. (more…)

Here in the Netherlands we also have a prominent financial sector, dominated by a handfull of internationally-operating banks (e.g. ABN Amro, ING, even Rabobank) for which the value of the assets of any single one alone exceeds the national GDP. It follows that developments here over the past six months or so have more-or-less echoed the more-prominent financial travails in, say, the US or Great Britain: overindulgence in promising new asset-classes – often involving American real estate – which then turn out to be “toxic,” concerns over solvency, government injections of capital through one means or another, and in general some rather poor performance on the part of financial executives when it comes to sober risk analysis and maintaining their institutions’ very financial viability.

What is also not missing from the Dutch experience is the phenomenon that has gotten much of the American and British public exercised in recent weeks, namely that of financial executives walking away with huge monetary bonuses in the face of what is commonly understood as the meaning of “bonus” (“paid over and above base salary to reward extraordinary performance”) and the glaring absence of any merit that would justify them. (more…)

Yes We Can! Barack Hussein Obama is now 44th president of the United States!

Time to assess reactions to that historical event from over on this side of the Atlantic. I’m tempted just to see what the Netherlands press has to say, particularly because of the great cover on today’s editions of the local quality free paper, De Pers: The black Jesus has landed! (Careful with that link: it will download for you the PDF of the entire issue.) “And now Barack Obama, since yesterday the new boss of the world, must really get to work,” the headline continues. “He is being looked to for carrying out wonders for every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

I like that sort of irreverent, tongue-in-cheek attitude (at least I think that’s what the De Pers editors intended there), but let’s briefly survey instead coverage from the French press, to which it seems I traditionally turn first in the wake of some significant global event. (more…)