ENCHANTÉ – A ROYAL MIX
Our story.
And so Meghan and Harry are married, like “we did.” “Royally.” Meghan, a mixed-race American woman and Harry a royal British prince. A fascinating story many are calling a ‘Cinderella’ story. Well, Meghan was not exactly washing dishes and cleaning house, nor was Joy. Meghan is an accomplished actress and a gifted person, and Joy was a clever and adored World Bank front office staff-assistant. Both are extremely charming. But it does sound a bit like a Cinderella story: Meghan is a mixture of a Caucasian father and an African mother. The gripping marriage scenes under clear skies (what a gift from Heaven to the UK!) beautified this ultimate contemporary event, which would have been impossible some forty-five years ago, when we married.
What a difference! I remember watching just-crowned Queen Elizabeth visiting Amsterdam with her Prince Philip in 1958. (The story goes she met him, a second cousin, in Greece when she was 13 and fell in love with him at that time already, writing letters to each other). The state visit to the Dutch Royal family was all stiff pomp, though cordial. Then followed the problems with growing-up children: Charles and Diana’s disastrous divorce, followed by Diana’s tragic death, Andrew and Fergy’s divorce, and daughter Anne’s divorce from Captain Mark Philips. Her third son, Prince Edward, is the only one remaining married to his first wife (Sophie Rhys-Jones). Queen Elizabeth reportedly acquiesced in Harry’s marriage for love to a US commoner of mixed race because she was tired of facing her children’s unhappy marriages. Harry and Meghan’s wedding pictures show that the royal protocol has fundamentally changed.
I can feel that difference probably more acutely than others: Joy Jaundoo – a Guyanese of East-Indian descent – and I, a Dutchman from Amsterdam, married in Washington, D.C. in 1974.
The only person reacting positively was my mother seeing her picture: “Wat beautiful children will you have.” The majority in stiff Holland was upset and against. “He better stay in America,” one noble uncle said. “Why doesn’t he marry one of our own,” one prominent American uttered (many Dutch said the same). An American friend walked out of the elevator when he saw the two of us together. “Don’t do that! You break your family’s bloodstream forever,” another friend offered. “Why don’t you marry a French girl,” a boss said. In Georgetown Guyana, the reception proved a lot warmer. It was mostly more accepting in the World Bank, an eminent multicultural institution where we worked. “In fifty years the whole world will be brown,” a supportive French girlfriend said. Working in a multi-cultural institution made adjustments to each other’s cultures surely a lot easier!
Guyana beach: Drinking coconut water is an art you have to learn before messing up.
Well, perhaps we had the foresight and were ahead of our time: what would that Dutch uncle say now? However, Meghan and Harry will find that mixing cultures and race does have its consequences. Their children will grow up in privileged circumstances but will still be faced with the fact that they are different from their peers born out of same-race families. As parents, they will have to compromise perhaps more than others. The mixture of different bloodstreams causes unmistakably unintended fallouts: how do the children feel internally towards others, to whom do they ‘belong?’ Do they resent the cards that they were dealt with by their parents’ decision? How do they adjust in their childhood and puberty, can they find a partner in their split world, how do they think about being put on this world still full of bigotry? All children and young adults have growing problems but biracial children perhaps more, requiring close parental attention.
Visiting home in Holland in 1979
We are blessed with two good-looking and successful children, with each showing the ‘remnants’ of our individual backgrounds. At my and my sister’s eightieth birthday anniversary last year in Holland at the Maarten Maartens House in Doorn, they were a tribute to today’s changing world. The pictures below of Joy, our children, family and friends clearly show that we and they are no ”exception” anymore. That has been royally confirmed.
ENCHANTÉ – HAMAS MISTREATS THE PALESTINIANS
Below follows a slightly revised column I wrote in 2014 at the time of the Hamas intrusion into Israël. I repeated it in 2017 in view of the anti-semitic resolution adopted by the UN Security Council, orchestrated by the outgoing Obama Administration and the disturbing anti-Israël speech by John Kerry. I repeated it again in 2018 in the face of the Hamas riots regarding the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Noticing the continuing appeasement themes of the American ‘liberal left’ and its cohorts in Europe, it seems many still don’t see Hamas is mistreating its people by throwing them into the line of fire. Now, for the umpteenth time, Hamas, seeing the weakness and biased position of the new Biden Administration, retreating to the former Obama anti-Israel policy and thus trying to destroy whatever President Trump successfully achieved in the Middle East, we are repeating this blog again in 2021.
The UN and the American left are generally biased when it deals with Israël. Jerusalem was from millennia times in Jewish hands and was overrun by Arabs when Islam emerged in 630. The Holocaust was instrumental in assuring the Jews a State of their own in 1948. Jerusalem became “Arab” in 1949 when Jordan’s King Husain’s superior army overpowered the then still small Israëli army and annexed the Jewish capital. Israël took it back in the 1967 six-day war. The UN Security Council condemned this in the famous Resolution 242 which required Israël to “withdraw from the territories occupied in the recent conflict.”
ENCHANTÉ has Palestinian and Islamic friends. We sometimes agree to disagree but remain good friends. At a personal level, it works. At the political level, the Israeli-Arab conflict seems insoluble. Much is due to the anti-Israël media of the West, but also American and European anti-Semitic political forces. (more…)
ENCHANTÉ – Iraq: A case for hands-on economic development
In the midst of all the hoopla about border control of the seven Middle East countries, among which Iraq, I want to repeat a column I wrote in September 2014 (well before Mr. Trump came on the scene). Much what I said in that column is relevant today. It occurred to me how important it was to shed light again on the “good Iraq.”
Frankly, I felt hurt that under Obama Iraq had been listed as one of the dangerous Middle East countries; and that as a consequence it became part of an immigration ban for 90 days by the Trump administration until effective immigration procedures could be assured.
Much has changed since I dealt with Iraq at the World Bank. Already during the period that I collaborated to implement a diversified project portfolio in Iraq from 2003-2009, Shiite and Sunni rifts hampered execution, and covert Iranian meddling became increasingly ostentatious. Then Sunni ISIS grew exponentially after the US allied forces left.
It broke the camel’s back. Iraq became a wholesome mess with unsavory characters threatening and terminating the life of many. Iraq’s relationship with the US changed from partial partner to full-fledged terror. I felt horrible for my good friends over there, with whom I had worked so closely to get things going in the right direction. It’s always the bad guys that spoil it for the good guys.
In 2003, after the US invasion of Iraq, the UN allotted US$450 million to the World Bank, to devise and help implement basic needs development projects (water supply, school construction, education, health facilities, administrative reforms, technical assistance and training, road rehabilitation and construction, environmental protection, etc.) This relatively small donor-led operation, subsequently enhanced by a US$500 million World Bank soft loan, lasted through 2010 when the funds were exhausted. It was a period where both the World Bank and Iraqis strived to rebuild and upgrade the country’s decades-long retardation to modernize the economy and administration. The operation started out in the most difficult circumstances of growing insurgency. Eventually, after the “surge” in 2007, it reached a stage where both sides began to see the fruits of the hard work. This was achieved through regular exchanges on project development and implementation, a mutual desire to learn how to do things better, how to succeed, and relay the lessons to local and national economic management.
When the US and allied military support disappeared in 2011, much of what had been achieved was destroyed again in the growing sectarian strife and the ISIS insurgency.
Let me repeat the blog of 2014. It shows what is possible in Iraq, in the right environment of mutual give and take by religious sects, and given a chance to succeed:
“Iraq The Beautiful – As an introduction, some photographs of Iraq sent by a close friend.
Baghdad
Baghdad Museum and Northern Iraq
More of northern Iraq
The Marshes, near Nasiriya, Iraq — Marsh Arab Village — Image by Nik Wheeler/CORBIS
Marshlands area in southern Iraq
Imagine you are a teacher with an economics degree, bagged with worldwide experience in economic development and project generation. You are tasked to teach a class of people not speaking your language, with a fractured background of religious strife, totalitarian rule, and years of outdated statist management with the mantra “if you don’t do it my way, there’s the door”, in a region that is entirely different from yours.
Imagine also that you can’t see your class and have to do everything by telephone and e-mail. Imagine further you are working with sometimes squabbling but very intelligent and technically capable Iraqi teams of diverse ethnicity. World Bank staff consisted mostly of capable Arab and Palestinian engineers, educationalists, health specialists, and economists, with similar diverse backgrounds and opinionated opinions about the invasion of Iraq. Imagine lastly that everything has to be done by yesterday.
That’s how I felt when I joined that team in 2005. But in spite of this list of near-paralyzing limitations, the team managed to identify, prepare and help execute a broad-based project portfolio of some 25 projects.
Underlying this effort was a strong push for capacity building and technical assistance. None of this could have been done without the support of (a) carefully selected Iraqi consultants who courageously inspected the project sites and assisted in strengthening the ministerial administrative capabilities of procurement of works, goods and supervision consultants, and (b) dedicated Iraqi counterpart teams in the ministries who were in charge of project implementation.
During the insurgency of 2005-2007, work continued, even though Shiite and Sunni participants were shooting at each other in some ministries, the Central Bank in Baghdad was bombed, and contractors and supervision consultants were threatened and even pursued on project sites. Some of the local consultants got wounded in Baghdad’s almost everyday bombing that caused long delays in just organizing one meeting at an implementing ministry on a given day that would take just a few minutes to arrange in Washington D.C. and an hour or two to finish.
The Iraqi counterpart teams met with the World Bank teams and consultants in Jordan and Lebanon (security reasons prohibited missions from meeting in Iraq) to discuss project progress, crosscutting issues, and necessary changes in design due to continuously changing circumstances. These conferences proved extremely useful, as they were the only real life contacts with Iraqi administrators as a group. It gave the Iraqis the opportunity to talk to their colleagues of other ministries and implementing agencies about common problems they faced and made them feel owners of their programs. You may notice the translation boot in the back.
Meetings with Iraqi counterparts in Lebanon and Jordan (Dead Sea) as security did not allow meetings in Baghdad.
Beirut and the Dead Sea shore
In 2007, a one man hero World Bank mission was set up in the Green Zone in Baghdad, and when security improved in 2009, it was extended to a formal resident office. Some missions took place in Baghdad and Erbil in the Kurdish area which was relatively safe.
Erbil
The experience of meeting with the Iraqi counterparts, even if taking place mostly through simultaneous translation, convinced me personally that with a sustained effort over the longer term, it would be possible to turn well-educated but held-back Iraqi technocrats into modernized administrators, taking on modern rehabilitation and economic development.
The relative success of the projects, compared to sometimes overly complex design and over-estimated results, surprised many. Some projects, such as irrigation rehabilitation where farmers had a direct incentive to get better, succeeded remarkably well against all the odds and poor expectations.
fr.Wikipedia.org Iraq.businessnews.com
But politics and religious strife took priority over rational thought. Soon we were back at square one and the spread of ISIL put everything in question. As a pilot enterprise, the hands-on effort in Iraq proved that it is possible to do it right if you give it a chance, but its future looks somber. It was a drop on a hot plate with an uncertain sustainability.
We are now at a point where the Middle East, including Iraq, has to decide how it solves its internal issues. Some Middle Eastern nations realize that ISIL is not the answer. But will they be able to stop the brutal reactionary insurgency?
Mesopotamia was rich in agriculture. Eve gave Adam the apple in Paradise in Iraq, but there was also a snake spoiling the fruits. Ominous foreboding for later Iraq? At one stage, Iraq’s Tigris and Euphrates rivers made it the grain storage of the Middle East, until oil drove the incentive to rigs, and the rivers became polluted because of environmental neglect and were drying up fast. Still, agriculture was and still is Iraq’s largest employer. Oil dependence drives out diversification as often happens in similarly endowed countries. Because of sectarian strife, politics, and tyranny, priorities get distorted, and the general population suffers.
thewaterproject.org Iraq.interalter.org
maginternational.org
Can a religiously divided Middle East overcome ISIL’s barbarian Sunni frame of mind? How can Iraq continue its economic development? Should we not let them fight it out among themselves? For centuries the UK, France, the Habsburgers and later the USA got their fingers burned in the Middle East. If there had not been oil, what would the Middle East have been now? But ISIS has killed in Europe and the US and operates among others from Iraq. The US and Europe cannot let that continue.
The US is not eager to get into a new war in the Middle East. The Trump Administration intends to erase ISIS, but what action can we expect?
Meanwhile, my Iraqi friends are left in the doldrums, knowing that we could have achieved a lot more if they’d been given a chance. That’s the sad realization.”
Southern and northern areas in Iraq
ISIS has occupied large slices of Iraq. The fight on Mosul is still going on. I watched Iraq reaching stabilization after six years of hard and idealistic efforts, and am saddened by the fate that many of my good Iraqi friends now suffer because of what cruel people do to them and that the US has to close its borders to make sure that those cruel people do not enter the US.
I hope the current administration finds a modus vivendi for Iraq.
ENCHANTÉ – The Fake Schumer Tears! Border Controls only a US Issue?
We hear this constant push for the moral issue of accepting refugees to come and live in the US. In Europe, much closer to all the Middle East turmoil, refugees have become a major issue of non-assimilation, ghettos, and crime. Many of them are adhering to Muslim religion from the day they were born, and their family customs and religious way of life are intrinsically different from Western life and Christian values. The Christian value is that of the Samaritan: so we favor helping them and bringing them into our societies. But assimilation has proved difficult because of language, ingrained customs, and different beliefs. Today, this issue has grown into a major battle of Christian survival and the integrity of Western civilization. People in the US and Europe have come to realize that one cannot be the eternal “Samaritan.” Their own society is at stake.
Don’t think the current US immigration measures are just a “Trump Idea.” Actor Schumer may shed fake tears, but he does not tackle the issue: The US AND Europe must face the onslaught on Western Civilization. Brexit broke through because of that fear. Trump’s election grew from the same fear of reckless Obama Samaritanism. Just read the reports of what Europe already did in 2015! Are you getting wiser, dumb “leftists,” who prefer to be overrun by a foreign force of medieval people knowing nothing more but Sharia law? And the following are New York Times reports!
Austria, Slovakia and the Netherlands Introduce Border Controls
By MELISSA EDDY and DAN BILEFSKY SEPT. 14, 2015
Police officers directed migrants to buses at a camp near the village of Roszke, Hungary, on Monday.
Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
BERLIN — Austria, Slovakia, and the Netherlands introduced border controls on Monday, as Germany’s decision over the weekend to set up checks began to ripple across a bloc struggling to deal with the influx of migrants coming to the Continent.
In Hungary, the authorities said that a near-record 5,353 migrants had crossed into the country from Serbia before noon on Monday — even as Budapest continued to seal off that border with the construction of a 109-mile fence made with razor wire.
Around 50 police officers, wearing riot gear and equipped with pepper spray, converged Monday afternoon on the train tracks linking the villages of Roszke, Hungary, and Horgos, Serbia, which thousands of migrants had used to cross in recent days. An official in a bright yellow jacket turned away migrants seeking to enter Hungary.
Starting Tuesday, Hungary will classify unauthorized entry into the country as a criminal offense, punishable by up to three years in prison. In response, Serbia said it would set up reception centers in the north of the country and pleaded for the European Union, of which it is not a member, to take action.
Meanwhile, Dutch authorities said that they would conduct spot checks at their country’s border with Germany. And Slovakia announced temporary controls, and the addition of 220 officers, along its borders with Hungary and Austria.
Related Coverage
Numbers of Migrants and Unrest Prompted Germany’s Border Controls SEPT. 14, 2015
More Border Controls as Europe Stalls on Migrant Quotas SEPT. 14, 2015
With Some Paths Shut, Migrants Seek Others SEPT. 14, 2015
Germany Orders Curbs at Border in Migrant Crisis SEPT. 13 2015
For $14.50, Afghan Refugees Make a Desperate Bet on a Way Out SEPT. 13, 2015
Featured Comment
Ted Dowling
Sarasota
These countries are finally waking up to what their citizens want, rather than the demands of EU politicians and elite.
While Berlin said its new controls, along the German-Austrian border, were only a temporary, emergency measure, the restrictions, a response to the strain on local communities, signaled that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcoming stance toward the migrants was encountering domestic resistance.
Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told members of his center-left Social Democratic Party, which governs with Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, that Germany could face the arrival of even more migrants this year than the government had projected. “There are many indications that in this year we will not see 800,000 refugees, as predicted, but a million,” he said in a letter to his party.
“Germany is strong and can handle a lot,” Mr. Gabriel wrote. “Nevertheless, in the past few days we have experienced how, despite our best efforts, our abilities have reached their limits.”
Horst Seehofer, the premier of Bavaria, a deeply conservative state in the south, has criticized Ms. Merkel for her open-door policy. More than 25,000 migrants arrived in Bavaria over the weekend.
“There is no order, there is no system, and in a country governed by the rule of law, that is a cause for concern,” Mr. Seehofer told reporters on Sunday. He said that officials were straining to process and house thousands of newcomers, and that some of them were economic migrants, not people fleeing persecution.
“We need better controls in general because we have determined that in recent days, many of those on the move are really not refugees,” Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian interior minister, told a local television station. Officials in Eastern and Central Europe, including Hungary, have made similar arguments.
It was not immediately clear how long the German measures would remain in effect, but Mr. Herrmann estimated that they would last “at least a week.”
The extraordinary restrictions to the European Union’s border-free Schengen zone by Germany — one of the most ardent proponents of greater integration — signified a departure for Ms. Merkel, who had said just last week that there was “no upper limit” on the number of refugees her country could take in.
The Schengen Agreement, which guarantees passport-free movement within much of continental Europe, has been a cornerstone of European unity, along with the euro and a single market. Countries in the Schengen zone are allowed, however, to temporarily reinstate controls at their borders for security reasons.
Such controls have been set up seven times since 2013 when the rules were clarified for participating countries — but the first time such controls have been reinstated because of pressures from migration.
Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for Ms. Merkel, said the new measures were “not a closing of the border, or a suspension of the right to asylum,” but rather an attempt to instill greater order on the chaos of the arrival and application process.
“It also serves as a clear signal to our European partners that Germany, while prepared to take on a large share of responsibilities, cannot be solely responsible for taking in all refugees,” he said.
Nonetheless, Germany’s decision appeared to have edged neighboring Austria to enact its own restrictions.”
The above just shows that Europe, already in 2015, was becoming concerned about having to assimilate thousands and thousands of refugees, infiltrated by terrorists or potential terrorist through radicalization.
So why should the US be less concerned about this after the Maraton bombings in Boston, the radical Muslim murders in San Bernardino and Orlando, and most of all, 9/11? What are those silly Schumer tears for? He said the opposite a few years back (2015). Typical negative Washington politics at its worst and the Democrats are the ones who practice it heartily.
ENCHANTÉ – Border Taxes a Boring Issue?
You have to climb high to see the border, any border. It’s fascinating to see how world affairs repeat themselves in circles. This picture of mine was taken by a dear girlfriend in Switzerland when I dealt with “Border Taxes” at the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) in Geneva. How did I get there from Amsterdam? Because I was heading a Dutch delegation from the Ministry of Economic Affairs as the Netherlands’ Member of the GATT to the Border Tax Working Party.
It was a big issue around 1969/70. The GATT was established in 1947 to reduce and harmonize import tariffs to promote multilateral trade and encourage consumption. The GATT was part of the UN complex in Geneva as a Special Agency. Its meetings were held in the “Palais des Nations” which was built as of 1929 to serve as the home of the “League of Nations.” It is best known for “the Kennedy Round” (1964-1967), the sixth multilateral tariff negotiation named after President Kennedy, who was assassinated six months before the Round started in Geneva.
Photographs of the Palais des Nations from Wikipedia
Photographs of the Villa Bocage which housed the GATT Secretariat (Kris Terauds-krisageneve.wordpress.com).
From the terrace at the back, you could see the Mont Blanc, and we often had lunch outside in the spring and summer, enjoying the view. In 1975-77, the Gatt Secretariat moved to the historic building “Centre William Rappard” at the Lake of Geneva.
The Border Tax Working Party met regularly over a couple of years. Delegates from some eighty GATT Member States from all over the world descended onto Geneva to discuss the issue to abolish unfair taxes at the border to eliminate their nefarious impact on fair trade. (more…)