Flourishing business, flourishing virus

Sunday in November, around 5 in the afternoon, I finished my latest reunion with a cross trainer and other similar unsavoury devices in my gym.

A few doors down there is a post-secondary vocational education centre for older teenagers. On the ground floor of the same building there is a big supermarket belonging to the Dirk van den Broek national chain of supermarkets.

I stumbled from the gym to the supermarket.

When it comes to corona infections, the Dutch are up a creek and cannot find a suitable paddle.

They do not know how many people are infected because the maximum of their test capacity has been reached. Regular hospital wards and ICUs are filling up with corona patients at an alarming rate.

There is now talk of "code black": a situation where they decide to let people die because there is not enough capacity to treat everybody.

A talk show guru physician said recently that if code black is activated, the hospitals will have to be guarded by the police.

The police immediately replied: we do not have enough capacity, it will have to be done by the army.

The government has reintroduced a few measures.

One is the mandatory wearing of a face mask in all indoor areas accessible to the public, including shops. The only exceptions are indoor places where the coronavirus entry pass is used

The supermarket that was the destination of my weary tread was quite busy.

People were walking in and out without a face mask.

There were two young female shop assistants standing near to the entrance chatting to each other. One was wearing a face mask over her nose and mouth, the other had it under her chin.

I am not really integrated into Dutch society as I do not think rules only apply to other people.

I approached the young ladies and asked them why all these not wearing face masks people were in their shop. Should they not do something about it?

They replied that wearing a face mask was only an advice and their team leader had told them not to say anything about it.

I told them wearing a face mask in shops had been mandatory for over a week. They shrugged their shoulders.

Most of the staff inside the supermarket were either not wearing a face mask or wearing it under their chin.

Next day, a report in the media, Dutch Security Council chair:

"If compliance with the measures does not fundamentally change and the number of infections does not fall substantially, there will be a lockdown that will last all winter."

Another report: "still hoping that a lockdown can be averted, the cabinet makes another appeal to us about our behaviour."

Don't mention the Verkaufsbücher

I have written before that during the Second World War almost all Dutch government and private organisations collaborated with the German occupier in the isolation, persecution and deportation of Dutch Jews.

I have also explained that the reason for this collaboration was not virulent overt antisemitism as it was in other occupied countries.
The reason was much more mundane: it was profitable.

In recent years there has been more research into the collaboration and as a result it has been raining profuse apologies.
However, it is not something people like to talk about.

The silence surrounding the collaboration can lead to a distorted view of the prelude to the Dutch Holocaust.
The following case is an example of this distortion.

The Jan van Goyen Medical Centre, a private, well-known Dutch clinic with a growing number of subsidiaries, has its domicile at Jan van Goyenkade 1.
It is a beautiful building in a very nice part of Amsterdam near to the Hilton Hotel.

On their site they write about their "long history":
"In 1942 an ENT clinic was established in the building on the Jan van Goyenkade."
According to their site, the building had a glorious war record as well: “During the occupation, people in hiding still needed medical care.
That was possible in a secret hospital in Amsterdam. The hospital was located at Jan van Goyenkade 1."

Strange, even though I searched as thoroughly as possible, I could not find any corroboration of a secret hospital there.
Surely, somebody would have recorded it somewhere? This was not the case.

The bigger problem for me was: why do they not mention the original owner?
He was the man who had the house built in 1923. His name was Alfred Cohen and he was a Jew.

The reason they do not mention him is because their "secret hospital", that is not mentioned anywhere else, was one of the houses Jewish owners were forced to leave and sell at a fraction of their value.
This is now referred to as the "theft of Jewish real estate."

The address can be found in the "Verkaufsbücher", the files the Germans kept of all stolen Jewish property.

"The Verkaufsbücher provide a gripping overview of Jewish real estate that was confiscated in World War II and subsequently stolen by war buyers.
These books describe in detail how more than 7,000 Jewish properties and plots of land ended up in the hands of mostly shady entrepreneurs and real estate traders."
KRO, NCRV television networks.

Hamsin

Mornings in the desert can be long, especially if you start at dawn. Lunch is the main meal of the day.
Only mad dogs and shepherds go out in the midday sun.

I took the early bus to Beer Sheva for a morning course on sheep. This is around 50 years ago, so my memories are somewhat vague.

We were a small group of people standing on a lawn. There was a man who had a goat with him. Why he had a goat and not a sheep I cannot remember.

Perhaps goats were cheaper than sheep.
He was going to cut the goat up to explain its anatomy.
The goat seemed oblivious to our presence. All it was interested in was eating grass.

He laid the goat on its side on the ground.
The goat stretched its neck, trying to continue eating grass with the side of its mouth. 

Then the man slit its throat and opened it up.

I remember noticing undigested blades of grass in the goat's gullet.

It was very hot in the bus back to the kibbutz. It was a Hamsin day and the windows were shut to keep out the hot air.
There was no airco in the bus.

After lunch I started an afternoon shift with the sheep in the Hamsin. It was a lazy afternoon because of the intense heat. The sheep were not interested in moving much and neither was I.

People can be just as stupid as goats and sheep, except we are more diverse in our stupidity.

The power of the perception of power

I was an arrogant, bigmouthed teenager. I talked a lot because I found listening to myself less boring than listening to others.

Every now and then I had a bit of bother from these attributes. One time my big mouth got me into a fight with the school bully.

We had a verbal altercation at a bus stop; bully angry, “tomorrow, lunchtime, in the school playground”.

I had interfered with a perceived power relationship and had to pay for that. He was the bully and ruled. I was perceived to be weaker and supposed to appease not oppose him.

The next day I was in the playground at lunchtime (I may have been reciting poetry to myself or taking part in some other worthy intellectual activity, as was my want). 

He had not forgotten his threat and walked over to me, flanked by his followers.

They started chanting: fight, fight, fight. Soon all the kids in the playground were chanting the same thing.

A large circle was formed with the bully and me inside at opposite points.
I looked over at him and, surprisingly enough, he seemed somewhat apprehensive. After all, we had never met before the altercation and he usually did not have to fight people his own size.

We rushed at each other. I tripped him and then sat on him. There was not much he could do after that.
Some teachers came barging through the circle and the fight was over.
I had won.

Nobody at the school ever physically confronted me after that.
My tripping him was a fluke, but it created a perception of strength/power.

Some five years later I had a visit on my kibbutz from Dennis. He was the younger brother of a Jewish schoolfriend from my class. Dennis was three years behind us at the same school. 

I had hardly ever spoken to him before as I did not mix with the lower years.

Dennis thanked me. I asked him, why?

He said before my fight he had been bullied for being a Jew.

After I won he was left alone. They knew I was a Jew and friends with his brother, and did not want to mess with me.

What a difference a lucky trip can make.

The woke fig leaf Jewish girl

Arrogant, woker than woke, in a constant state of hysteria, a Dutch caricature of a smart ass, a perennial foot-stamping adolescent. 

Her name is Rosanne Hertzberger, a microbiologist, writer and columnist. She is also Jewish, her middle name is Yente.
I can't stand her.

She writes a whatever comes to her mind column for a national newspaper that, since it was bought by a Flemish investment company, oozes wokeness with special emphasis on hostility towards Israel. 
And that is the one blot on her woke CV: she supports the existence of the state of Israel.

Well just about, she is always distancing herself from the policy of that country.
For her employer this is great. She is their fig leaf Jew.

I wrote a story about an old Jewish schoolfriend who wanted to be accepted so much that he ended up being buried in a Christian cemetery.

Hertzberger has written that in her hometown of Dordrecht, where few Jews live, people always called her the "Jewish girl".

So I understand her predicament of not being completely accepted by her peers, of not being part of the herd.

I think it is this longing for acceptance that is behind her recent hysterical attack on other Dutch Jews.
An abysmal slander in a column with the title: "Sometimes you do have to say nasty things about Jews".

In the column she writes about child sexual abuse by a Jewish teacher in an orthodox Jewish school. The school and a rabbi tried to cover up the abuse and delayed the investigation. Eventually the court case against the abuser collapsed.

I also think the actions of the school and rabbi were beyond the pale, deplorable and unacceptable.
However, like I said, she writes in a constant state of hysteria. Therefore, she does not stop at the actual case. 

She goes farther.

Prejudice is often the extrapolation from one negative to a whole group. An example: saying all Black people are murderers after one Black person has been convicted of murder.

That is what she does to Dutch Jews in the second part of her article. She uses the case of the child abuser at the Jewish school to attack the whole Jewish community and its representative groups.

And then she crosses the line to antisemitism. She maintains that the culprits behind the cover up are also running the Jewish community. She does not use the same words, but portrays them as the "puppet masters" of the antisemitic libel. 

She must have been having a bad day, because after the attack on the Jewish community she starts scattering her hysteria around at more groups. 

From a tirade against Christian parties who are pro-Jewish she proceeds to an indictment of all politicians and elected officials who are not in her political bubble.

Then out of the blue, she interjects a sneer implying that Jews are better treated than Muslims.

Her friends are surely proud of her. Perhaps she will feel more accepted now.

A high-quality country

“Health providers nationwide began to vaccinate citizens over 60 against the coronavirus Monday, as Israel’s immunization effort reaches the general public for the first time…."
Monday 21 December, 2020, Times of Israel.

I live in the Netherlands which will be the last country in West Europe to start vaccinations. I think the over 60s will be vaccinated here at the earliest over 2 months.

All Western European countries will vaccinate old, vulnerable people with the first batches of the Pfizer vaccine, except for the Dutch.
According to the Dutch government, it is logistically impossible to distribute the Pfizer vaccine around the country in a high-quality way.
Therefore, vulnerable old people in the Netherlands will instead receive the later Moderna vaccine, which is some 10% less effective for older people than the Pfizer.

Other countries were ready to distribute the Pfizer vaccine once it was approved.
The Netherlands was ready to start the deliberations with the sectional interest organizations involved with the vaccination process, in order to ensure a careful strategy for the high-quality distribution of the vaccine and high-quality eventual vaccination of some of the Dutch population.

The tardiness of the vaccinations does not worry the government or the sectional interest organizations. They say that careful planning and high-quality are more important than speed. Some have also said that a week here or there is not important.
It will make no difference to them, but it will have a negative effect on the death statistics.
However, for the Dutch government and sectional interest organizations, these excess deaths are an inevitable consequence of a careful and high-quality process intended to stop excess deaths.

There are a few who have had the audacity to question current policy. They point to mediocre leadership, no accountability and a culture of unnecessary constant deliberations as the reasons why the Dutch are so late with the vaccinations.

They were answered succinctly by the director of the Dutch area health authorities.
He said, people who think it could be done faster in a careful and high-quality way do not understand vaccinations.

A damning indictment of the rest of the Western world or an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

Joe Biden, echoes of Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump

The United States is imploding.
This is the result of "psychic epidemics" (Carl Jung). No, not comparable to the benign flower power of the1960s but comparable to the malignant, tribalist hate of the interbellum years.

The major psychic epidemics in the US started before Trump, but the present manifestation centers around his person.
On the one hand, the zealots who worship Trump, adoring him as if he is a Messiah-light.
On the other hand, the zealots who think Trump is the incarnation of the devil.
Both are destroying the country with their tribal fanaticism.

Biden says he wants to "heal"America. 

Yes, he can isolate the Trumpist zealots with an outreach to more moderate Republicans. His expertise in wheeling and dealing makes him very suitable for this purpose.

However, it is his own zealots who are the biggest problem for him.
A “Squad” who want a McCarthy-type purge of Trump supporters from “polite society”; the thuggery of Antifa and BLM on the streets; the thuggery of a mob media that cancels those who do not toe the politically correct line; the thuggery of campus mobs who want to expel anybody with a dissident meaning and want to ban every dissident speaker from universities.

I doubt Biden is willing to take on his own zealots. I do not think he will “heal” America. 

He failed the first test: when Antifa recently attacked Trump supporters, he refused to specifically condemn their violence. Instead he condemned “all attacks of violence”. 

Echoes of Jeremy Corbyn condemning "all prejudice" and Donald Trump's "there are good people on both sides".