Categories for World

The past months i experienced this extreme dislike of the entire expedition to Mars. Elon Musk, one of the main initiators said the following:

An asteroid or a super volcano could destroy us, and we face risks the dinosaurs never saw: an engineered virus, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, catastrophic global warming or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us. Humankind evolved over millions of years, but in the last sixty years atomic weaponry created the potential to extinguish ourselves. Sooner or later, we must expand life beyond this green and blue ball—or go extinct.

I do understand this. An asteroid can always hit us. It hit the dinosaurs, and it wiped them out. Atomic weaponry can wipe us out, yes. Global warming can wipe us out, yes.

If we continue the way we do right now.

The odds are against us. We have a large written history of being selfish, greedy small people fighting to get the best out of life, no matter what. We have an even larger unwritten history with those exact same characteristics. Times of peace have been rare. Times of humans living in harmony with the world are rare.

There are many, many people fighting against this scenario. The people in the garden, the people i work with twice a week, are doing exactly that. One of them i called a warrior, one of the coordinators. Not a fighting knight, no, but still, fighting each day to make this world a little bit better. And there are many more people like that. In the Netherlands, in Europe, America, Asia and Australia.

I don’t know precisely who is at the other end. The Kochs is one family which my eye fell on. There are a few more of those: Here Are The Corporations And Right-Wing Funders Backing The Education Reform Movement. Dark Money, a book written by Jane Mayer:

Mayer believes that the Koch brothers and a small number of allied plutocrats have essentially hijacked American democracy, using their money not just to compete with their political adversaries, but to drown them out.

I don’t know enough about all the people in the world to pinpoint a certain group. I do think some people in this world don’t care about our earth, about the animals living here, the plants living here. But mostly it is people simply not thinking things through. People too busy with their own lives. And it is hard. Yes.

I am 52 years old. I have worked around 20 years, earned my own keep, paid for my own computer. And now i’m thinking. Thinking hard. Thinking about what we do, in this time. Thinking about where we are going to, where this world will lead us.

So yes, war.

Not a wild fight, not a massive battlefield with dead bodies. Not that, i hope. I do hope for a getting together of like minded people prepared to fight for this planet. Like so many people are already doing right now. I feel like i’m the last person to join this fight. Which is not true, of course. I’m in the middle part.

So yes, minimize your waste, try to work at a vegetable garden close by, and if there isn’t any close by, try to start one. Eat good food, with little already prepared meals. Eat less meat. Compost. Don’t buy clothes each month. Don’t buy much at all.

For me, i would like to travel a bit more. Get to know people trying to make things work right. Get to know other gardeners. I would like to have my own garden, grow my own vegetables and herbs. And some flowers too! I don’t know where. I have no idea.

For me, my future keeps shrinking. My life is becoming richer. For me, i feel happy now. Terribly happy. With everything that worries me, everything i think about, everything i know i should know about more, with all that, i feel happy. And sometimes sad, and sometimes mad, and sometimes angry.

So yes, war! Wake up all the sleepy people! Gather everybody! Make them all shout NO! Not any more! We love our planet! We love our earth! We love our animals! We love our plants!

This willful destruction of our plains and our woods and our oceans stops here!

And yes, i actually mean this. And i can say it here, on my website, with no shame at all. Yay!

Food has always been important to me. When i lived at home with my parents. Especially when i lived by myself.

I remember going to the Gimsel in the center of town, opposite the supermarket De Gebroeders De Jong, now called the Jumbo. The Gimsel is an organic vegetarian store. I bought the corn bread and loved it. It was compact, yellow and tasted great. I’m so sad they don’t sell it anymore.

When i was still working full time it was hard to keep track of everything i ate. I did sometimes buy a ready made meal from the supermarket, usually the Albert Heijn. I was never very thorough with what i bought. I like good food, i like salt, i like sweets and cream. So i might have cooked some recipes from the macrobiotic cookbook i have, but i have many others from which i cook too.

The past two years i started going to the market again. I found a good vegetable stall and got my veggies and fruit there. I also went to the Gandhi garden for a few times to work there.

I go less to the supermarket. I get cat’s food there, dried chick peas, tahin. At the Marqt i buy butter, eggs, flour for bread, sometimes a bit of meat.

I work at the Vredestuin, the Peace Garden, twice a week. I meet different people there. Most are in their thirties. I love to learn more about vegetables, weeds, insects, feeding the vegetables, planning the garden. I love to work there, even though i’m not the hardest working person. I love to sit there, feel the earth, look at the worms, listen to the humming of the bumblebees, and hear the droning of the cars and the trains in the background.

Yesterday i stumbled on the following post about Adrienne Rich: Arts of the Possible: Adrienne Rich on Writing, Capitalism, Freedom, and How Silence Fertilizes the Human Imagination.

We have become a pyramidic society of the omnivorously acquisitive few, an insecure, dwindling middle class, and a multiplying number of ill-served, throwaway citizens and workers [resulting in] a kind of public breakdown, with symptoms along a spectrum from acute self-involvement to extreme anxiety to individual and group violence.

This quote is an example of the multitudes of words, sentences, essays, books written by artists, scientists, all sorts of people from the past century about our current culture.

Capitalism.

Neoliberalism.

Its advocates support extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.

Sounds familiar?

A few weeks ago i went with my mother to a supermarket in Leusden. Walking through the store, i started to see the enormity of produce in it. The wall of butter and margarine. I felt it. It must have been the fact i do not know the supermarket very well. When i go in a supermarket here, in Rotterdam, i’m more used to how it looks.

That feeling kept coming back to me over the past weeks. In the Marqt supermarket there is less produce. Butter and margarine is only one shelf. Today i went to the Gimsel and walked past all the shelves and looked at all the produce. The two blocks of self-serving big jars of dried beans, nuts, cereal, dried fruits.

The supermarket Marqt and Gimsel are expensive. I checked for the other end, the cheap ones, Lidl and Aldi. I just decided to go out and get to the ones closest to me. Still not in the center, but walkable. Simply to see what they have, how it looks.

I remember watching the show Keuringsdienst van Waarde, the one about fish, broadcasted 2 June 2016. Vegetarian fish grown in tanks in a Belgian industrial area.

In that show people are using the argument that we need to be so efficient to be able to feed all the people in the world. In 35 years time there will be 9.3 billion people on this planet. With 800 million people now already being hungry, we need to be terribly smart in making all the food necessary.

This is simply not true.

In the list of articles at the end of this post, you will read several articles saying that there is plenty of food right now and for the future. The division of food is unbalanced. In the rich west we, the consumers, the shops, the agriculture, waste around 30 – 50 % of all the crops. It may be not compliant with our demands for cosmetically perfect food, it may be out of date and thrown away by the supermarket, it may have turned to waste in a fridge somewhere. And then there is the 550 cubic meters of water wasted globally in growing crops that never make it to the consumer (Almost half of the world’s food thrown away, report finds)

I read the article about the apple Pink Lady: Pink Lady, de rotte appel van de vrijhandel. This apple needs lots of sunshine to grow. It is cultivated in New Zealand, South Africa, Chili. It is transported to Europe. And we export our own homegrown apples.

This is partly because we want to eat apples the whole year round. It is also part of the globalizing world we live in. Where profit rules. Where it doesn’t matter what costs we make in transporting and cooling fruits and vegetables. As long as we make money, we go for it.

I’m saying we. Because we are here together. Some may have stepped out. Some may try to do their best. Some may not care at all. But it is still we, who are all doing this. We who are all responsible. Not us, the good guys, versus them, the bad guys. We. All together.

And i don’t want to work in this world, here in the Netherlands, here in this current time, here with these rules on how we deal with each other. I don’t want to do that anymore. I have done it enough.

I have said it before. This website, ellenpronk.com, is my work. It is how i want to earn my living. I see only one way. I need to become famous. Now, i know, nobody else will do that to me. Nobody else will say that they like what i do and that i should be famous. Nobody.

I wrote this two days ago. It is a bit stark. What i do know is that i do not want to do my previous work, front-end development, anymore. Not professionally. There are many other things i would want to do. Right now, i am going for the one thing which i believe will make me happiest. The possibility to travel, meet and talk with many different people. The possibility to see the world, feel the wind in my hair, feel the sun on my face, hear the birds, the waves of the ocean crushing on the beach, the leaves of the trees rustling in the wind.

I am angry.

Furious.

I am not saying i have all, if any answers. But i do remember how i used to view this world growing up and for a large part of my adult life. As me simply a part of the world. This world which seemed to go at its own pace towards its own goal. Me tagging along. Trying to find a right spot for myself.

It is not like that. We all are here living on this earth with a certain responsibility towards its destiny. It is not politicians who decide, not businessmen, not scientists. Each and every one of us can make the choice to make this world a better place.

It is not something we can demand of each other. Each individual person has its own path through life. I can only talk for myself.

I am trying to find my place in this world. I feel i am getting there.

I am more and more ready to fight for this world.

Salute!

• The Food Crisis is Not About a Shortage of Food
  

  Hunger can have many contributing factors; natural disaster, discrimination, war, poor infrastructure. So why, regardless of the situation, is high tech agriculture always assumed to be the only the solution? This premise is put forward and supported by those who would benefit financially if their “solution” were implemented. Corporations peddle their high technology genetically engineered seed and chemical packages, their genetically altered animals, always with the “promise” of feeding the world.

  The report of 400 experts from around the world, The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), is ignored by the proponents of a New Green Revolution, precisely because it shows that the best hope for ending hunger lies with local, traditional, farmer controlled agricultural production, not high tech industrial agriculture.

  The ultimate cause of hunger is not a lack of Western agricultural technology, rather hunger results when people are not allowed to participate in a food system of their choosing. Civil wars, structural adjustment policies, inadequate distribution systems, international commodity speculation and corporate control of food from seed to table— these are the causes of hunger, the stimulus for food crises.

• The Myth – Scarcity, The Reality – There is enough food
• Reportage ‘Liberalisering landbouw oorzaak van migratiegolf, niet klimaat’
• Drought, Climate, War, Terrorism, and Syria
• Voedselmultinationals bedreigen Nederlandse zadenrijkdom via octrooirecht
• ‘Honger is geen plaag, het is een schandaal’
• How the Other Half Dies The real reasons for world hunger – 1976
• My Food Hero: Sheila Dillon meets writer and campaigner Susan George
• Hoe de elite u zand in de ogen strooit
• Scarcity and Abundance
• Reducing food waste would mitigate climate change, study shows
• Almost half of the world’s food thrown away, report finds
• Food shortages are everyone’s responsibility
• The future of food
  

  Fifty years ago, when the world’s population was around half what it is now, the answer to looming famines was “the green revolution” – a massive increase in the use of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilisers. It worked, but at a great ecological price. We grow nearly twice as much food as we did just a generation ago, but we use three times as much water from rivers and underground supplies.

• Existential Therapy from the Universe: Physicist Sean Carroll on How Poetic Naturalism Illuminates Our Human Search for Meaning
  

  The universe is not a miracle. It simply is, unguided and unsustained, manifesting the patterns of nature with scrupulous regularity. Over billions of years it has evolved naturally, from a state of low entropy toward increasing complexity, and it will eventually wind down to a featureless equilibrium. We are the miracle, we human beings. Not a break-the-laws-of-physics kind of miracle… It is wondrous and amazing how such complex, aware, creative, caring creatures could have arisen in perfect accordance with those laws. Our lives are finite, unpredictable, and immeasurably precious. Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world.

  All lives are different, and some face hardships that others will never know. But we all share the same universe, the same laws of nature, and the same fundamental task of creating meaning and of mattering for ourselves and those around us in the brief amount of time we have in the world.

  Three billion heartbeats. The clock is ticking.

• Walt Whitman’s Advice on Living a Vibrant and Rewarding Life
  

  This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

• Kortsluiting
• Pink Lady, de rotte appel van de vrijhandel
• The Future We Want
• Zij vertrouwen de supermarkt niet meer

I have worked for around twenty years. In the beginning it was tough. A lot of overtime. A lot of energy it took from my life. But also many new things in my life, many new events. Many mistakes i made. I did enjoy the work.

That was for the first five years.

The rest, it was a bit more quiet. I did have my good times, sure. I did learn my limitations. Being creative in a work environment is not my thing.

The past year and a half i have not been actively looking for work. I did do a few, small jobs. I took the time to think, to dream, to do the things i love.

This blog is my heartfelt ultimate work of love. If anything, i would love to keep it up and working on it for i don’t know how long. A few years at least. Maybe even longer. The thoughts of new works are still coming in. Like this week, when i was going though an old Vogue and realised i wanted to do something with these images of girls. Taking the photographs with the paper curled and the light shining reflecting of it. All these beautiful faces looking at the observer, wanting its attention.

But my money is running out. I did get a tax return a few months ago, which gave me a bit more time. That time is running out.

I don’t want to ask for a grant. I’m not a part of the Dutch art world, not for more than twenty years.

I don’t have family or friends who can help me.

But i still feel i have something to say. Something important. For myself. For the world maybe?

I don’t think the world has changed that much over the past millennia. I do know that we, humans, think that it has. I do know we think the world now is bright and sensible. We used to think it was dark and mysterious. Nowadays we are not afraid of doors which open automatically when we come close. We don’t look up when somebody passes us seemingly talking to nobody. We are not surprised when people change their gender.

The world is covered with a torrent of people. Billions.

Some people step out of it. Out of the system. They live somewhere off the grid in a nowhere land taking care of themselves and their loved ones.

Other people try to make another way of living. Like some of the people i met through the Peace Garden. Some are making it work. They are not wealthy, but they do live a decent life.

Most of my friends are trying to make a decent living. Working for themselves. Working as an independant freelancer. Doing the things they love and earn a living.

It is hard.

My nights are not filled with sleep, but with lying awake in the dark. Thinking. Fantasizing. Not sensible, no. Crazy. Insane.

Last night was harsh. I do remember the vehemence of the feelings assaulting me. But the content is fading away. Something about our planet being a small part of the entire universe. Being special. Rare. People wanting to move to Mars and terraform it and live there. As if our world is lost forever. Our wonderful world. Our glorious world. I felt like i was standing aside, looking at everything from a distance. I remembered how i used to be. How i used to feel. In a distant past, far away.

I remember thinking about the politicians, the wealthy people, the business people, the banking people. How they try to shape the world for their own wishes. How they try to get everything out of every bone of this earth.

We are the caretakers. We should make this world a lovely place to live for all the animals and plants. Not put pigs by the thousands in big stalls and butcher them once they are old and big enough. Not use fertilizer to keep our soil stuffed with nitrogen so the vegetables will grow on it no matter what. Not use people, young people, children, old people as slaves to work. Not to hack any old forest or rainforest as we please. Not to keep our supermarkets stacked full with superfluous rows of sweets, cookies, cheeses, soft drinks, meats, milk and bread to throw away once the sell by date has passed.

Caretakers.

We are so smart. We can operate on humans and change their gender. We can give humans hormones to alter their behaviour and the state of their body. Our medicine is still growing. But our understanding of ourselves, of our brains, is still rather small.

One of the biggest metaphors for our brain over the past seventy years is the computer. But, we do not have hard drives build into our brains. There is no storage facility anywhere inside ourselves from where we can retrieve information. Human beings are not information processors. Human beings have hands, arms, legs, feet, eyes, noses, mouths, genitals inside and outside. We look at the world. We hear the world. We feel the world. We are inside the world, as if we are one and the same.

One prediction is that soon it will be possible to download a human mind to a computer. Predicted by futurist Kurzweil, physicist Stephen Hawking and neuroscientist Randal Koene.

This is untrue. Nonsensical.

Our mind, our brain and our body are part of the same thing: a living breathing human being. Experiencing life in one continuous flow. Sleeping at night, awake during the day. Interacting with the people around it, with the world around it. Touching, walking, sitting, dreaming, listening, being there, being away.

We are very good setting aside parts of ourselves. Putting different pieces of ourselves in different compartments. With different people. In different times. Sex goes well with a good looking friend. Work is a good way to pass the time during the day. With work colleagues. To earn money. Food is a good energy provider. It makes you feel good. Sweets are lovely. Ice cream tastes great. We love to sleep. We love to cuddle with our friends. We love our children. We enjoy to make stuff. We enjoy to buy stuff.

Our days are divided in all nicely seperated parts. For example: we sleep, we wake up, we shower, we brush our teeth, we make breakfast, or not, we eat our breakfast, or not, we go to work, we have lunch, we come home, we kiss our friend, we hug our children, we have dinner, we read a book, we watch tv, we go to sleep.

There is no way we can build a replica of a human brain in a computer. No way. Impossible.

This world we live in is made by human beings. It is not set out by one person at the beginning. It has evolved over time by many many people with different intellects, different wishes, different desires. Most acts were not far reaching. But all acts did make out this world.

I am not sure about the rich people. Some may be good in essence. Some may be bad. I don’t know any of them. I am curious about them.

I am curious about the people in this world. I would like to watch them, talk with them, interact with them.

That is what i want to do as work. I think i will be good at it.

If you let me.

• The empty brain
• Economic inequality, the toil of work and Wall Street power: Our capitalist society is like “The Matrix”
• Robots will rule us all: The future of American policing is the stuff of dystopian science fiction
• There’s No Such Thing as Free Will
• Statistieken zijn de kameleons van de financiële wereld
• ‘We moeten de bodem weer als basis nemen’
• De veehouderij moet anders om antibioticaresistentie te stoppen

I’m not interested in the wealth of all the people in the world and its distribution. Not for this post anyway. No, it is the worth of the world. What would it cost to buy the world.

I do have an idea. Of course. My first thought is that it is immeasurable expensive. Far beyond the total wealth of all the people of this world. Which is around $241,000,000,000,000.

$241 trillion.

The worth of the world must be a trillion times a trillion times a trillion, and so on, and so on. Infinite.

I did do a search for this amount, but it is hard to find a thoughtful answer.

What is the total net worth of the world?
If we were to just simply add up the net worth in today’s US dollars of everyone/entities on the planet, what would the number be? Also, is this number a meaningless one not worth calculating? Is there a better way to approach this?

1 Answer
Anand Subbiah, eNgInEeR
501 Views
It may be hard to calculate the asset to bring the value in whole number .As we have natural resources by the time we sit and calculated total value of natural resources, man made assets the market fluctuations may change the value .

How much would it cost to buy the world?

Anonymous
151 Views
$80 Trillion

$80 Trillion is simply the gross world product. This number is a rough estimate of the lowest amount of the worth of the world.

Next, i looked into the list of the wealthiest people in the world: The World’s Billionaires. Below is a copy of the list of 2016 Billionaires.

I compared this with the list of wealthiest Dutch people.

I started with looking for the wealth of the Orange-Nassau family, the Dutch royal family. This is estimated to around 1.1 billion, in 2004. Old money.

Still, i am no closer to the answer to my question: what is the worth of the world?

I did this search in Dutch. I searched for the terms waarde (worth) en wereld (world).

An islamic blogpost turned up: Worth of the worldly life. I did read this page. Quickly i admit. Too quick to say anything meaningful about this.

Another result pointed to Lucebert. A line from one of his poems, de zeer oude zingt. That line was put on top of an insurance company, next to the art academy i went to.

Alles van waarde is weerloos

The adjective “weerloos” can mean “defenseless”, “helpless”, or “naked”, so the meaning is “All things of value are defenseless/helpless/naked”.

The very old one sings
there is not more in little
nor is there less
still is uncertain what was
what is to be will be will-less
first when it is it is serious
fruitless it recollects itself
and stays in great haste

all things of value are defenceless
grow rich from touchability
and equal to everything

like the heart of time
like the heart of time

© Translation: 2011, Diane Butterman

Last words of today
A rambling post. My apologies. To me there is some sense in all this.

Too many thoughts run in my mind.

Thinking back of a few months ago, when i came across of a current art school student. She was building and rebuilding a circle for half a day. Against the ownership of all the land in the world, everything divided neatly into countries. At the time i felt it was a good thought, but impossible to make a reality in any way in this world as it is today.

The world as it is today.

Dreadful. Gruesome. Horrible. Terrible. Appalling. Awful. Atrocious.

It is also still stunningly beautiful. Breathtakingly stunningly gorgeous. Magnificent. Splendid. Wonderful. Lovely.

I am happy i discovered Lucebert again.

I am happy.

Purple Rain
I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted to one time to see you laughing
I only wanted to see you
Laughing in the purple rain

Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you
Bathing in the purple rain

I never wanted to be your weekend lover
I only wanted to be some kind of friend
Baby, I could never steal you from another
It’s such a shame our friendship had to end

Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you
Underneath the purple rain

Honey, I know, I know
I know times are changing
It’s time we all reach out
For something new, that means you too

You say you want a leader
But you can’t seem to make up your mind
I think you better close it
And let me guide you to the purple rain

Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
If you know what I’m singing about up here
C’mon, raise your hand

Purple rain, purple rain
I only want to see you
Only want to see you
In the purple rain

Purple Rain

Cream

I Wanna Be Your Lover – 01/30/82 – Capitol Theatre

Prince Purple Rain Live 1983 at First Avenue in Minneapolis

Yesterday was a fruitful day, to say the least. I started with the gems over the weekend, went into the Dutch royal family and touched on official portraits. There is a Dutch word for this: staatsieportret.

Een staatsieportret is een plechtig portret van een persoon in functie, vaak een hoogwaardigheidsbekleder (maar niet noodzakelijk) en vaak met bijbehorende tekenen van die macht en waardigheid.

Staatsie is waarschijnlijk een versmelting van het aan het Frans ontleende stage (‘verhoging’), en staat in de betekenis ‘vertoon’, ‘praal’, ‘pracht’, ‘luister’.[1]

Staatsieportretten kunnen worden geschilderd, getekend of gefotografeerd; de persoon die wordt afgebeeld neemt hiervoor een houding aan die gezag uitstraalt of door symboliek tot uitdrukking brengt, bijvoorbeeld met regalia, eretekens of triumphalia.

I was surprised that there isn’t a proper English translation for this Dutch word. Portret is Dutch for the English word portrait, obviously. Staatsie has more different meanings. One is the French word stage which means about the same as the English word: elevation. It also denotes grandure, magnificence, splendour, state, present. The closest i could find in the dictionary is official portrait. This is not a proper translation. It’s a combination of two words, a lot more general than the Dutch staatsieportret.

I searched. Starting with the Dutch ones: the Queens Wilhelmina, Juliana, Beatrix and Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima. The photo at the top of this post is from Rineke Dijkstra, a photographer who became known by her Beach Portraits (1992). This photo is very severe. There is a hint of sdness in Willem Alexander’s face. His clothes do point at the Dutch flag: red, white and blue.

Queen Elizabeth II, Obama, Clinton, Putin and Mao close of this list. The Mao picture is extremely forceful and very recognizable. It is noticeable that no man smiles and some women do smile. I don’t like the smiles. These portraits are tokens of state. A smile doesn’t seem in the right place there.

I am Dutch. This Wednesday, 6 April 2016, there is a Dutch Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement referendum.

The question: Are you for or against the Approval Act of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine?

I still don’t know what to vote. I will go and vote. I can vote yes. I can vote no. I can vote blank.

I can vote yes
The European Union has many association agreements with countries all over the world. From Albania to Zimbabwe. Why not add Ukraine to this list? A Young Democrats (D66) leaflet i got last Saturday told me this.

This is not about all the other countries the EU has an agreement with.

There are many types of agreements. One other still in negotiation is with the USA, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). I will not get into this one in this post. My first thought is to be against this. I even signed the petition.

This post is about the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement. I didn’t realize that Yanukovych, the then current president of the Ukraine, had refused to sign this agreement. He had presented an alternative, the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. The new chosen president Poroshenko did sign the economic part of the agreement on 27 June 2014. I knew about the revolution in the Ukraine. I knew the president Yanukovych was removed from office. At the time, February 2014, i didn’t realize this was about this Association Agreement. To be honest, politics is not my main interest, some of these events simply pass me by. Still, it is a bit embarrassing to admit this.

The European Union and the (then) new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed the economic part of the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement on 27 June 2014,and described this as Ukraine’s “first but most decisive step” towards EU membership.President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, said at the signing ceremony: “In Kyiv and elsewhere, people gave their lives for this closer link to the European Union. We will not forget this.”

This forms a big push towards voting yes.

I can vote no
The article about the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement on wikipedia does give quite a lot of attention to the Russian and European fight over the Ukraine. The Ukraine itself is divided in its pull towards either Europe: the west part of the Ukraine, and Russia: the east part of the Ukraine. There is even a war inside the Ukraine itself, with two eastern provinces declaring itself for Russia.

The shooting down of the commercial airplane above the eastern part of the Ukraine, the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, with over half the passengers being Dutch, is a direct result of this war.

The human rights situation in Ukraine is hard for me to judge. Reading the Follow the Money article about this from 1 April 2016 Hoe staat het met de mensenrechten in Oekraïne? (Dutch: What is the state of human rights in Ukraine?) doesn’t bring a lot of hope.

A new law makes it possible to keep people in custody for 30 days. The Ukrainian constitution however states custody can be no longer than 72 hours. The Eastern war brings out the worst in the Ukrainian secret services and the eastern based rebels. Torture, threats, assault and detention are used by both parties.

The Panama Papers opened up Sunday 3 April shows we will need to move with utmost care. We are still at the first stories from these papers. I do hope the politicians and sportsmen mentioned in these papaers will not be able to let these stories disappear from public interest.

What to do?
Writing the above, reading about the agreement, its history in both Ukraine, Europe and Russia, even in its two hours i spend this morning is mind-boggling. I can say this is too much and simply vote blank. What i do realize is the importance of this. Looking at the Ratification table on the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement page shows me a green table. Every country has ratified this agreement. There are two parts with a different colour: the Council of the European Union and the Netherlands. With it advisory referendum.

I will vote no
I read the column by Ewald Engelen for De Groene Amsterdammer, in which he comes to his final no-vote. At the end of this column he writes:

Voor of tegen de kaste – dat is de vraag.
For or against the caste – that is the question.

This is not a doubtless, right from the heart, clear from the start NO.

I do wish Ukraine to grow as a nation. I’m not sure the European rules are right for it in its current condition. I don’t even think the European rules are right for the European countries. I’m not saying leave Ukraine to Russia. But, I do think Europe is going too fast and is too greedy.

I’m not sure about this decision. I have no doubt this agreement will go through, one way or another. My vote, any Dutch vote, will not change this.

But i will vote against this.

Against the current political stream.

Against this world as it unfolds itself in shameless selfishness.

NO

This past week, on Tuesday, in the morning i was sitting behind my computer. I routinely went through my twitter feed. I saw a strange picture. Sort of a train station with messy black and white parts of the ceiling or wall on the floor. I looked further down. I saw more tweets, but only thirty minutes back. Something was going on.

I turned on the television. There it was. The Dutch journal with an extra edition. Explosions in the airport Zaventem in Brussels. I switched to the Belgian tv.

That entire morning i was watching the news. Switching between Dutch, Belgian and British tv. I saw the footage of people running out of the halls in Zeventem. The short clips of people climbing out of metro train in Brussels. People crying, other people quiet. The city becoming more silent, with only heavenly guarded police and militairs on the street. My mind went to friends who are living in Brussels for over ten years.

I saw the speach of our prime minister Rutte, around half past eleven.

“We are with more.”

Those words went through my head over the next few days. So being with more means what? The majority wins? What if we got into war with China? India? There are more of them.

Over the next few days i read more articles about Brussels and the responses of our politicians.

“An attack on our values.”

We can not live in this make believe innocence in which we inhabit this perfect land where nothing bad ever happens. We do not. Our Western European world is as internally conflicted as all the other parts of the world. We do sweep it under the carpet. Out of sight, out of mind. But it is still there.

We do have a certain amount of freedom. Especially the indigenous people of Western Europe do have the possibilities and chances to find what they most want to do in their live. It is hard though, in this neoliberal world with fast four years studies, high debts and expensive living costs.

The last war in Western Europe ended in 1945. Seventy years ago. In those years our western world has evolved in a rich, polluted and contaminated, globalizing, expressive and rude world inhabited with people unaware of what a war can be like. People taking our hard won peace for granted. Most of us. Me too.

We live in this highly coated world with shop fronts the same around every city in Europe. We do not apply any terrorist action. Of course not. Other do those actions to us. The innocent, happily buying stuff, dancing and eating and drinking Europeans.

A few days after the attack, Johan Cruyff died. Every news show was showering his memory with love and adoration. The last symbol of our Dutch glory. So it was said.

I am not a football fan. Not a Johan Cruyff fan. It is not my world. I watched some of the shows with amazement. Not my place to say anything more about it.

Microsoft pulled its chatbot Tay from Twitter. In less than 24 hours its tweets changed from the innocent to the outright dark. Since it was learning from tweets targeting at it, all its noises were coming from other people, “a pack of sadistic psychopaths”.

hellooooooo w🌎rld!!!
1:14 PM – 23 Mar 2016

@wowdudehahahaha I fucking hate niggers, I wish we could put them all in a concentration camp with k****s and be done with the lot
12:49 AM – 24 Mar 2016

We do have problems.

The entire world has problems.

I don’t have solutions. I simply think about what is happening, what people say, what people do. I don’t do this every single day. But this past week, i did.

Writing this post gives me a chance to sort my thoughts. Try to see a line to pick up, try to find a way out of this aweful mess we are in. This desolate world in which we live our lives as is prescribed by the people with powers surrounding by other people with powers surrounding us.

I am not able to find an answer on my own.

I am happy to search.

Links
Most of these links refer to Dutch or Belgian articles. Some may be behind a paywall.

Na de aanslag
Aanslagen in Brussel
Waarom aanslagen geen aanval op onze waarden zijn (en politici ons dat wel willen doen geloven)
Brussel leert: over terreur is alles al gezegd (behalve wat bijna iedereen denkt)
Er is niks mis met selectieve verontwaardiging
Buitenhof: David van Reybrouck en Willem Schinkel over Brussel
The US-led Coalition Bombed the University of Mosul for Being an Islamic State Headquarters
Irakese academica schreeuwt haar woede uit over bombardementen op de universiteit van Mosul
Provo
‘Als je geen regenpak aanhad, schopte ik je helemaal dood.’
It’s not Tay’s fault that it turned racist. It’s ours.
Twitter May Have Just Doomed Humanity by Trolling an Artificial Intelligence Bot
Willem Schinkel over de ‘allochtoon’
Boeken: Willem Schinkel “Over nut en nadeel van de sociologie voor het leven”