THE DUTCH - NOT EXACTLY GROUNDED IN REALITY

Cruised into a Dutch news site after lunch, as is my wont.
I really don't know why I bother anymore, as usually I will find something that makes me wish that the entire Netherlands would be consumed by fire and the Northsea waves.


It is a guarantee that any article mentioning crime in the US, Hollywood celebs, or some American scandal, will be graced by a flood of reader comments - the Dutch, apparently, have little interest in their own crimes or scandals, but plenty of interest in ours - and at least one of the comments will always assert that Americans are the most perverted, the most insane, the most disgusting, the most vulgar, the fattest, or the most depraved people on the planet. The very worst of something, in any case.

[Netherlanders tend to overlook their own rather ghastly qualities. Fortunately, not too long ago I detailed some things the Dutch have deliberately forgotten about here:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2008/06/time-to-remind-yall-of-some-things.html
Please do a favour for the natives of Banda and remember these things for them, as they themselves can not do so.]


THE YOBBO READERS OF 'DE TELEGRAAF'

An article in today's Telegraaf mentioned that people with AIDS will finally be allowed to travel to the US, as president Obama intends to lift the entry ban soon. The process to lift the ban carried over from the previous administration.

The article itself is not really interesting.

QUOTE:
"Na een verbod van 22 jaar gaan de Verenigde Staten weer personen met aids of hiv toelaten tot het land. De ban wordt in 2010 beëindigd, maakte de Amerikaanse president Barack Obama vrijdag bekend. "
[Translation: 'After a ban of 22 years, the United States will again permit people with AIDS entry. The ban will end in 2010, as per American president Obama on Friday']

SOURCE:
http://www.telegraaf.nl/buitenland/5204987/__Mensen_met_hiv_mogen_VS_weer_in__.html?p=10,2

Plain and straightforward, nothing odd or meshune. The article, remarkably, is not anti-American.

The comments underneath are.

All three of them.


Comment 1.
tja waarom ook eigenlijk niet, het is daar toch uitgevonden ?
---C.C, Groningen 20:42 30.10.09
[Tr: 'Sure why not? It was invented there anyway.']

This reader accuses the United States of inventing AIDS. You've probably run into that assertion before, usually on the internet sites frequented by the 'not-fully-in-touch-with-reality' crowd.
Of which, it must be said, a very large percentage live in Europe and the Middle-East. People who write such things are poisonous little blobs, often alcoholic, frequently twisted beyond redemption. Probably resentful Old-World inbreds.


Comment 2.
Iedere zichzelf respecterende Aids / HIV patient zal de USA toch zeker wel links laten liggen!!?Wie denken die Yankee Doodles eigenlijk dat ze zijn :((
---Rick Vogelschrik, Spike City 20:56 30.10.09
[Tr: 'Every self-respecting AIDS / HIV patient would surely avoid the USA!!? Who do those Yankee Doodles even think they are?']

I suspect that Rick has no clue about the immense amount of research that has been done on AIDS in the United States, nor about the pioneering programs that started in San Francisco (location of this blog, by the way).
Frankly, Rick, your statement is hideously insulting, as it overlooks the fact that ground-zero of the epidemic was in the US, in San Francisco ( I lost many friends over the years, Rick, friends who were far far better people than you or any supercilious arrogant know-nothing Nederlandsche kloojak), it overlooks the fact that AIDS activism started in San Francisco, where also many of the approaches to fundraising, charity, care, and comfort of people with AIDS were developed, and it ignores the truly herculean work of such organizations as the San Francisco Aids Foundation.

Perhaps, Rick, you should just shut your ignorant Dutch gob and retreat to your hole?


Comment 3.
De meeste nieuwe virussen die volgens Amerika uit bijvoorbeeld Afrika of Azië komen (ook HIV) zijn in werkelijkheid met het geld van aandeelhouders in de pharmaceutische industrie gecreëerd in de VS om hun eigen zakken te vullen. Ze gaan letterlijk over lijken met hun drie grootste inkomstenbronnen: wapens, olie en medicijnen. Mij houden ze niet langer voor de gek, maar helaas is onze regering bevriend met ze.
---Flipje, Voorburg 21:15 30.10.09
[Tr: Most new viruses that originate in Africa or Asia, according to America (including HIV), actually were created with funds from shareholders in the pharmaceutical industry in the US to fill their own pockets. They literally go over corpses with their three largest sources of income: weapons, oil, and medicine. They ain't fooling me any longer, but alas our government is 'friends' with them.']

Flipje represents a type frightfully numerous in the Netherlands - a type that makes reading every Dutch website an experience akin to stumbling into a minefield. Not that they are quite the most common type of Dutchman, but many Ollanders will instinctively defend such people if an outsider (for instance, an American, Moroccan, Turk, or Jew) points out how gibberingly insane the Cheesehead in question really is. While a large number of rabid Dutch will happily and brutally mob the critic, others will say nothing and quietly stay in the background.
Even if the critic is right, there is no honour in siding with a foreigner, who in any case should know better than to find fault with the Dutch.

Remember, the Dutch are always right. Even when they are wrong, they are right. They will gang up on you and prove it.

In some ways it is a remarkably chickenshit little culture.


What Flipje in Voorburg also overlooks is the humongous Dutch investment in weapons, oil, and medicine - not only directly in Dutch companies headquartered in the Benelux (the Dutch are among the worst merchants of death in the world), but also by the Dutch in overseas companies. Individual Dutch, Dutch investment funds, Dutch insurance companies, Dutch banks, Dutch retirement funds, Dutch governmental organs, Dutch holding companies, and many among the Dutch ruling classes. The Dutch are far more fully vested in weapons, oil, and medicine than a very large part of the rest of the world.
If there is any evil afoot in those industries, then the Dutch too are complicit.


Irritating bunch, those Dutch.

===================================================


UPDATE

There are now six more comments underneath that article.

Flipje added a long and very typical Dutch rant about wars, pollution, torture, intimidation, pornography, fast food, violence, foul language, greed, materialism, capitalism, loneliness, egoism, hardness, drugs.... all of which are in his estimation solely and entirely the fault of the Americans. Oh those evil Yankees!
Apparently he's forgotten Holland's four-hundred year role as worst imperial power of all time, all of the hardcore smut including sadistic child-pornography that is printed in Holland, the incredibly nasty 'food' offerings of the typical Dutch frituur ('fry shop'), murderous fights between Ajax and Feijenoord supporters...... and so on and so on.
And as regards drugs, dude! Amsterdam is stoner central. You guys are the worst dealers in the whole world. The air pollution above Mokum Alef reeks of tetrahydrocannabinol and heroine labs. Ever heard of ecstasy? The Netherlands is the world's number one supplier. Date rape drugs? Again, the Netherlands is the number one supplier - and probably the number one user, too. In any case, pioneers.
We are quite innocent compared to you lot.

Some other bozo (Michel) claims that AIDS doesn't really exist, followed by Kaan in Utrecht drunkenly spewing anti-American venom about 'guantenema' (stet) and 'israil' (stet), then whimpering on a bit about inequality (he wasn't strictly lucent).

A resident of Spijkenisse (a veritable hotbed of civilization and all that is good and holy and nice in the world) then avers that ALL diseases are made in labs.
I really have to wonder about the mad scientists that gave us head colds and athletes foot - life must have been so nice before laboratories.......

These remarks substantiate my friend Floris' contention that the comments underneath Dutch newspaper articles on the internet are usually from mental defectives -"getuigen van een borrelnoot ikuu" ('attest to a cocktail nut intellectual level').
I have to admit, everything he said about Dutch newspaper commenters was correct.
Sometimes a Dutchman is indeed right.