Frans Timmermans, the former European Commissioner and veteran Dutch politician, may no longer look like Father Christmas (he has lost a lot of weight) but he still believes in fairy tales. In a recent exchange with Thierry Baudet in the Second Chamber of the Netherlands Parliament, he repeatedly claimed that Europe and the West embody law and stability, while Russia deploys the politics of force and subversion. This conviction is so deeply held that no facts can even dent it. The numerous&nbsp; wars of aggression waged by NATO and NATO states in the last quarter of a century do not count, for him, as acts of de-stabilisation; the US bombing of the European owned Nord Stream pipelines in 2022 does not, for him, threaten European prosperity. The events in Ukraine from 2014 onwards are all Russia’s fault while Europe and America watched from the sidelines. The reason why such fairy tales are believed with such intensity is that they are comforting. Unfortunately, comforting illusions cease to be so when they lead Europe, as now, into war – a war from which there will never be a way out if we listen to people like Timmermans who remain trapped in ideology, unable to confront the world as it really is.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCDZSu9xaic&amp;ab_channel=FVDInternational">Watch Thierry’s debate with Timmermans here</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcsp5RrxUatxjiLnXcHSIFZV-qp_aCnYdtkDMGk5hvPj_kRlajbj27baQ63Lg5iPrpoEeqTyyRDZN1KWF3PLToqlhd7GEDYMez8HRiUlYeoaMbFXtp5RGTHseIXrjGv3yBNYLq9NQ?key=hsmLJAJLaTzfEH3VeTlGGg">FVD believes that the EU, and other international institutions, are not only not the solution but also the very core of the problem. Just as ex-Royal Navy commodore Steven Jermy says of NATO that it exists to confront the threats created by its own existence, so FVD’s MP Gideon van Meijeren argued in Parliament recently that the war, uncontrolled immigration and economic malaise from which Europe suffers is not something the EU can solve but which it itself produces. This is because, being detached from popular sovereignty – and indeed regarding popular sovereignty with contempt – the EU is not based on interest but instead on ideology. Only FVD tackles problems that are their very root.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iSM8ec7wVw">Watch Gideon’s speech here</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXehJa6iiqIf6-x3_dRzf7KmC82zrA0X92zBmOpP6iiWIRWL09U72yPtbYWSKBLhLm16k3jJxKXzWt_v7wXuGf879nCXpSHbwgshXpWKZHg9xQsfX4KGuoK8TUDg2a3za3qwktjV?key=hsmLJAJLaTzfEH3VeTlGGg">So the question is, can any problems be solved while remaining in the EU?&nbsp; FVD has often taken Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party to task for having abandoned Nexit in its last election manifesto. Gideon van Meijeren questioned a PVV minister about this and she was clearly embarrassed at what appears to be opportunism: Nexit was ditched so that the PVV could enter the government. The PVV governed for over a year but was unable to control the very immigration against which it has campaigned for a quarter of a century. Oscar Wilde said that the advantage of having principles is that you can sacrifice them in the name of expediency. But the PVV’s sorry record shows that you do not win political battles by capitulating even before you have fought them.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8kZ_ptgzpI">Watch Gideon tackle the PVV here</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe6rWhPIMkIYnqgOQufCguAbPOCg6hD1r1ul-g2-6H-DojGHGzeR5iOe9dDvG97On_RUJ4Zo12hwPe6sZvM1jMxd00PUjkmPA1KIbypLV3xqMBnKaqKh-DS8izUroHO98kHboT63w?key=hsmLJAJLaTzfEH3VeTlGGg">The formidable Kit Klarenberg was our main guest on The Forum this week, talking about his special subject – the nefarious role played by the British secret services in their mission to maintain American hegemony. He claims that their determination is to create chaos in order to maintain American hegemony which, in turn, gives Britain a role in the world - as lapdog.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhLFdJP2A8E&amp;ab_channel=FVDInternational">Watch The Forum here</a>

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The Weekly Forum - 3 July

One of the most arresting phenomena of modern politics is that politicians believe they can influence the climate and foreign wars, when in fact they cannot even manage their own ministries. FVD has recently demonstrated how the anti-immigrant immigration minister presided over record immigration last year. This week, Pepijn van Houwelingen showed how the Finance Minister, supposedly a liberal, has been unable to limit or reduce state spending and borrowing, or even to respect the rules governing how many&nbsp; expensive external employees work for the Finance Ministry. The current figure is twice the 10% ceiling. Meanwhile state debt is exploding and, with it, interest payments and the tax burden for future generations. A large part of the problem comes from international organisations which suck ever greater sums out of member states - especially European ones even though they do not have any spare cash – in the name of global governance which, in fact, does not work. Politicians cannot control the things they do, in fact, govern - while they pretend to govern things which they cannot control.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TpoE5l9ITo&amp;t=4s">Watch Pepijn’s speech here (translated by AI)</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeBLkUxC8JLkj919mstucTxCBtrF5kVO13I0MQ10wyToZIgEMIAHLdkWqv0N_GXORy7wAvwR1we0MztYknk5F5S16mlh1bxOJOyP9LYtNRr5o_7vv4ZlXd1CWJNWvAstDdePKOqig?key=ZsHcDvqTVkwepgJb_pmu7Q">International politics are thus a looking-glass parallel universe in which politicians can escape the hard slog of actual government. It is much more difficult to balance a budget than to attend a summit. This is why international politics has become a stage on which powerless puppets like to strut. President Zelensky of Ukraine spends most of his time abroad, most recently attending the NATO summit in The Hague and addressing the Dutch parliament. FVD was the only party to refuse to attend this latest piece of political theatre. Thierry Baudet explains that the national democratic representation of the Dutch people is not an appropriate forum for political grandstanding by foreign leaders. The near unanimous support for Zelensky’s speech only underlines the unreality of foreign policy – everyone (except FVD) agrees, precisely because it is make-believe.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDj5PwnNdag&amp;t=12s">Watch Thierry’s video here</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXetVRhirPQu2NgAD6eCzCG7ith1puC0Bcg8jg22txTTQQ9z90ID9zKAEgeyIkpsfuzcbEq8KX0eST9TLtL_vHk-h7E12BtqBZ_x9t1_CmBYwRZnwt3-I2oApWG6WN5vqYbbiU2YoQ?key=ZsHcDvqTVkwepgJb_pmu7Q">There are surely few better examples of make-believe in international politics than the recent US bombing of Iran. Trump used this to create a narrative of victory both for his own purposes and as a cover for the Israeli desire for a ceasefire. As the bombs fell, the usual war hawks unleashed a barrage of hatred for the Iranian regime which has been in their crosshairs since 1979. Israel itself promoted regime change by calling its attack on Iran ‘rising lion’, a reference to the old royalist flag of Iran. But, as Stephen Baskerville explains, this is not the way to deal with Iran. Despite its name, the Islamic Republic is not ideologically fundamentalist but instead only the latest incarnation of a very ancient Iranian (Persian) state and nation. The sense of nationhood is stronger than the religious ideology, just as it was in the English and American revolutions. As such, the notion of regime change is ludicrously unrealistic – and indeed, for the time being, seems to have been defeated.<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/better-ways-to-deal-with-iran">Read Stephen Baskerville’s article here</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfLmcqb4p5FaTBsdEYnIjgrVv6wsU-p06pf01kTzPAexkJdog-pOScDHFFdXhPunz7yebFOx4e-baycRBg7kLwxm4YzGU4ygs6cKJ2Dr0pXZZ6oJw_lFMsnCPugm92S8MLc6z_iFQ?key=ZsHcDvqTVkwepgJb_pmu7Q">We discussed Iran on The Forum this week with security and political analyst, Ali Rizk, and former ambassador and human rights campaigner, Craig Murray. If you missed it, listen back.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuT2a4XVrRU&amp;ab_channel=FVDInternational">Watch The Forum here</a>

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The Weekly Forum - 27 June

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Better Ways to Deal with Iran

The paradox of our time can be summed up as follows: Wi-Fi everywhere, connection nowhere. Because yes, we communicate constantly, but we understand each other less and less. This is because the same concepts evoke different associations depending on the group. Concepts such as feminism, sustainability, Islam and LGBTQ are now part of almost every conversation, but they are politically charged and have different meanings for different groups.This divide did not come out of nowhere, but was deliberately created by what I refer to here – with all the nuance that this concept deserves – as Cultural Marxism. Not the old-fashioned hammer-and-sickle variety, but a fusion of ideas that is tearing Western civilisation apart along moral fault lines.Let me start at the beginning. When Karl Marx elevated the worker to revolutionary subject, he counted on economic misery to fuel the fire. But look around you: metropolitan hipsters sip their oatmeal cappuccinos while their smartwatches pulse with dopamine notifications. The worker sits in synthetic sportswear waiting for his home delivery service. A heroic slave revolt à la Spartacus is unthinkable against this backdrop. To keep the torch of revolution burning, the intellectuals of the Frankfurt School – Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer – shifted the battlefield from the factory to the cultural sector. Marxism was no longer spread by seizing power over the means of production, but by monopolising the meaning of things.That is why the front line today lies in the framing of language. Highly elastic concepts such as “safe spaces”, “inclusion”, “diversity” and “sustainability” are used everywhere to push through policy, and whoever defines these concepts has power over our culture. This language struggle is therefore the instrument of the hegemony of the virtue&nbsp;signallers.Words are given new meanings so that people who use them join the moral bandwagon. Take a term like “people of colour”, which is used under the guise of “inclusivity”, even though this group includes everyone except white people, and is therefore anything but inclusive. The term suggests that people of European descent have colourless souls. And in exactly the same way, ‘women’ are redefined as ‘persons with a uterus,’ ‘Black Pete’ is repainted, and the Rijksmuseum ‘decolonises’ its signs. Each language change seems small, but when you take them all together, you see a Rubik's cube whose colours will never return to their original order.Critics ask: “Sid, aren't you exaggerating? Isn't Cultural Marxism a right-wing bogeyman?” But I heard the same thing when I warned about big tech censorship in 2019: people laughed. Now everyone knows that a single screenshot can destroy a career. Cancel culture is not a myth but an instrument of power. As soon as an idea falls outside the approved window, the digital scaffold comes down and suffocation begins. What the the hegemony of the virtue&nbsp;signallers calls ‘socially responsible’ is in reality mental gagging.Unlike the dissidents behind the Iron Curtain who were subjected to censorship, I can still let my fingers dance across the keyboard. Nevertheless, I feel the same underlying pressure that Václav Havel described. You write a paragraph, reread the text and immediately know that HR algorithms and search engines will label certain statements as “offensive”. This is Cultural Marxism in practice: it is not the gun to the temple, but the moral noose that tightens around the throat until no dissenting voice escapes.The seriousness of the situation is clearly reflected in the source of cultural legitimacy: education. Universities – once antagonistic arenas where clashing ideas improved each other – have been redesigned as “safe spaces”. Debates have been replaced by consensus panels and analyses have given way to impressions of atmosphere. Students receive “trigger warnings” for Ovid; teachers speak of “problematic whiteness” in Shakespeare. A civilisation that hides its classics in shame severs its ties with the cultural source that makes “authenticity” conceivable in the first place. Anyone who compares canonical thinkers such as Plato, Machiavelli and Nietzsche will conclude that truth is a mosaic, a spectrum within which the individual positions himself, and not an “imperialist” monolith.The equality of Cultural Marxism is the equality of Procrustes' bed: everyone must fit into the same ideological mould, even if it means cutting off limbs. When you engage in democratic debate, the idea is that the public interest is served by incorporating the criticism of opponents into visions for the future. But that model has now been completely destroyed, eroded and burned out: opposition – and by that I mean opposition that resolutely rejects the Cultural Marxist worldview – is only tolerated in order to channel social anger into forms that are harmless to the hegemony of virtue. Casting your vote is like pressing a light switch with no wiring behind it.Those who follow my work know that I advocate for ‘standing tall.’ Abolishing positions such as ‘diversity officers’ is no longer feasible through democratic means. This is because the media and education are creating a mass psychosis that is being further deepened at the institutional and bureaucratic levels. So you really just have to harass them until they quit&nbsp;their&nbsp;job of their own accord. The same applies to all committees that push this propaganda. However, as soon as we seriously try to unite or organise, we are destroyed by the forces we pay taxes to. This leaves us with clowns who are tolerated by the system: they want us to sell meal boxes instead of rewarding our intellectual work with a position that actually offers future prospects.Instead of ‘diversity officers,’ we actually need ‘freedom commissioners’: people who devote their careers to bringing extremes into dialogue with each other. Fresh air is a sensible response to dogmatism. But let's not fool ourselves: we know in advance that these ‘freedom commissioners’ will be stripped down to a kind of Jort Kelders and Lale Guls (both supposed ‘right-wing liberals’) who will gatekeep to prevent deeper systemic criticism from being tapped into.There is little you can do against such overwhelming power. If you resist, your bank account will be closed, and that is only the beginning of all the misery that will befall you. If you do not resist, it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back: all the absurdity and totalitarian coercive measures will start to feel “normal”. In that situation, resistance becomes unthinkable. In fact, we have nothing more than a credo to bring against this inhumane system: freedom of conscience, press, association. These values are not “white” but universal. They have been tested with blood, sweat and brainpower – they have proven their worth and made modernity possible in Europe and America.At the end of this month, I will turn 38: exactly halfway through my life. And in the second half, we will see how Western Europe definitively plunges itself into the abyss. The abyss from which there is no way back. What is lost now is irretrievably lost.That is why I conclude with Gramsci's famous words: ‘Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.’ With my mind, I understand how free thinking has been crushed under bureaucracy. My heart cries because of all the emotional blackmail and cognitive dissonance that have become normalised in society. Yet my will is optimistic: every time a citizen stands up, straightens their back and says, ‘No, I think for myself!’, light breaks through the cloud cover of suffocating virtue signalling. Cultural Marxism may have taken over the institutions – as long as there are readers who follow this essay this far, there is a spark. Hope is too big a word for this spark: at least there is hatred of the hegemony of the virtue&nbsp;signallers.I would prefer to appeal to freedom and reason – that suits me best – but we all know that such a plea will be ridiculed and ignored by the media machine. Substantive debate on the subject will be disrupted by state-controlled trolls. There are simply too few intelligent people left who can do anything meaningful with this. The few sensible people who do get the message are encapsulated by bureaucrats and have no room for manoeuvre within their jobs.So: make room in your soul for hatred. Because hatred is what they deserve – and it's all we've got.We hate the inhumane system that forces us to bend our thinking to present the absurd as normal.And hatred gives life.Follow&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/Sid_Lukkassen">Sid Lukkassen on X</a> and – even more importantly –&nbsp;<a href="https://sidlukkassen.backme.org/">support him on BackMe</a>.

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Sid Lukkassen – Cultural Marxism: A Field Report

If you want a short masterclass in why NATO is a bad thing, you need look no further than Thierry Baudet’s recent speech to the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament. The key issue, as Thierry explains, is not so much NATO enlargement as NATO aggression – in Yugoslavia in 1999 and in Libya in 2011. The Iraq war of 2003 was not a NATO operation but was waged by NATO’s leading states. These naked acts of aggression had nothing to do with self-defence, as even pro-NATO figures know and admit. Instead, they demonstrate that the notion of a ‘rules based international order’, which NATO now claims to be defending in Ukraine, is gross hypocrisy. The debate also gives us a masterclass in the inanity of the opposition: Jan Paternotte of the socialist D66 party intervened to say something about MH-17, the Malaysian airliner shot down over Ukraine in 2014. It was a classic example of how warmongering wokery uses cheap emotion in response to a carefully crafted argument about geopolitics.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1E6xlMM0CM">Watch Thierry’s speech here</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf02suS3yK6WaqVz5QVa_C9sZhrUTCncJTOQnVHz7_6Bn4Yhn79O0VbNCKVqx7R6tT1YzHd_Swip20DXAQLaxbQKNYLhiIlII_PWD8XIX-TkahV4xa7REvY7TIZM30bDAfWue0cFg?key=78BMfIpymRcSCwQqiQDPtw">And if you want a short masterclass in why the EU is a bad thing, you need look no further than Pepijn van Houwelingen’s recent speech to the same Second Chamber. In a few short, structured moments, Pepijn explains what is wrong with Brussels and why the Netherlands (and everyone else) should leave it. It is undemocratic, bureaucratic, over-regulatory and now warmongering.&nbsp; It is a threat to prosperity, sovereignty and peace. It should never be forgotten that the Netherlands is, with Ireland, the only country in the EU where not one but two national referenda have been overruled by Brussels – on the European constitution in 2005 and on the Ukraine association agreement in 2016. All this is bad enough but the EU has even now abandoned its claim to be a peace project and is instead sabotaging US attempts to put an end to the war with Russia which Brussels, it seems, is determined to inflame.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WVd8Oxk9HA">Watch Pepijn’s speech here</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdZcAzrnRo2BWBER18t6OEDXqlWh-6bwfBT6joI5LzUCStTbHaqqDugMe5dmVSVMMzpSq1ovjeqMqfKXFRiZhkR9qSb9UVRwTAwY6SYXyWq2xQDP44KW0NaynZKh9kkNoB4Pxtv?key=78BMfIpymRcSCwQqiQDPtw">One of Thierry Baudet’s most consistent claims is that Western governments are in office but not in power. The ability of politics to change anything is extremely limited, even if you win an election. Instead, political change comes from metapolitics – cultural change, intellectual change, economic change, the sorts of things FVD is trying to bring about. Perhaps the most striking example of this truth has been the dismal record of the Dutch government which recently collapsed.&nbsp; Its principal component, the Freedom Party which had been led by Geert Wilders for over 25 years with a single-issue anti-immigration message, failed to prevent over 300,000 immigrants arriving in the Netherlands in one year alone, the equivalent of the city of Utrecht. How is this possible when the Immigration Minister came from Wilders’ party?<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/how-the-government-led-by-geert-wilders-freedom-party-has-failed">Read Thierry’s speech here</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe-8rnNjoYstrxIKUh8wfPrp5Fl1-l2E8FNEpunQxZLtVl7OzI7bCED9TQPNt61oxCKkQAc5Vo4QzLDn9p3orY9cI8XDMGXXOCUcs0THJkwoJO9Cb_LbUxTWrc1heJwUONDeC6n5g?key=78BMfIpymRcSCwQqiQDPtw">We were delighted to have as our guest on The Forum Pascal Lottaz, assistant professor of neutrality studies at Kyoto University. Naturally the talk was about Iran and Trump’s apparent capitulation to the deep state. If you missed it, listen back.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzoWz4I4XoY&amp;t=4s&amp;ab_channel=FVDInternational">Watch The Forum here</a>

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The Weekly Forum - 20 June

Speech given to the Dutch Parliament by Thierry Baudet, 12 June 2025Chairman,&nbsp;I am beginning to understand better and better why Geert Wilders ran away from his responsibility last week with his tail between his legs: because today is accountability day, the day on which we evaluate the cabinet's policy over the past year, and boy, oh boy: what incredibly disappointing results the PVV has shown over the past year.To be clear: I do believe that the other coalition partners, the VVD and the NSC, are difficult partners.&nbsp; But the extremely disappointing results on infrastructure, immigration, healthcare, mobility, and so on – they really are the PVV's own fault.They were PVV ministries. They were PVV ministers.First of all, immigration. As many as 314,000 immigrants entered our country in 2024.That's a city the size of Utrecht.The Spreading Act has still not been repealed even though the Immigration Minister, Marjolein Faber, from the PVV, could have just done it.I will say it again, Chairman: this coalition has made a lot of choices with which Forum for Democracy disagrees, and the PVV has been thwarted both in front of and undoubtedly behind the scenes by coalition partners, but there was indeed an opportunity to reduce mass immigration, at least in parts. It is deeply regrettable that the PVV missed that opportunity. Our motion to develop the ten-point plan for a stricter asylum policy into concrete proposals was supported by VVD, BBB and NSC - but was blocked by the PVV itself!So next year we can count on even more asylum seekers - and therefore even higher costs, even more crime, even more pressure on social services, even more housing shortage. The latter rose further last year - thanks to the growing population as a result of mass immigration - to a shortage of 400,000 homes.Then there is nitrogen policy. There, too, the government failed miserably last year. According to minister Wiersma - of the Farmers’ Civic Movement, note! - the absurd, stupid nitrogen standards are (and I quote) ‘not scientifically questionable’. What a travesty. These standards are based on models that demonstrably bear no relation to reality. We are being held hostage to a modelling reality that could have been ended by removing Critical Deposition Values from the law and licensing.It could have been done by Wiersma on day 1 of her term of office.Instead, this cabinet has reduced air traffic at Schiphol Airport, a new speed limit of 130 km on the motorway has turned out to be a farce (because it applies only on three stretches of motorway) and farmers are being bought out or subjected to quasi-forced closures at breakneck speed.And then there is the financial picture. In recent years, the term “subsistence security” has become the focus of political attention, and not without reason. The Dutch are rapidly becoming impoverished due to rising living costs - inflation - and a failing tax and benefit system. As in previous years, the collective tax burden was as high as 38 per cent. People can no longer buy a house, they don't have a penny left over for anything extra and they can no longer pay energy bills, healthcare costs, petrol, and so on.What strikes me is that this Chamber, especially the cabinet parties, are constantly talking about the hard-working Dutchman but they mainly want to give presents to people on low wages: increasing rent allowance, energy allowances, whether or not to freeze social rent, while the vast majority of Dutch people, the middle class, don't benefit at all. The average hard-working Dutchman gets no care allowance at all but pays a higher care premium. The average Dutchman does not live in social housing, but does face higher housing costs because housing construction is locked up and our population (thanks to open borders) keeps growing. Foreign students now even get scholarships, while our loan students face ever higher interest rates after taking out the loan.Chairman,To get this country back on track, we need to do the following things:- Cut mass immigration;- Radically scrap the absurd nitrogen and climate policy;- Reopen the Groningen gas field, there is 1,000 billion euros’ worth of gas in the ground there;- And as DOGE cut government spending, regulation, radically simplify the tax system, increase the tax-free base for all working Dutchmen and all pensioners.You will see that our country will then recover at a rapid pace, people will have money left over and start to feel at home in this country again.&nbsp; In short, the sun will start shining again as the cabinet promised but absolutely failed to achieve.

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How the government led by Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party has failed

Is freedom a right or a social good? FVD believes it is the latter (and no doubt the former too). Freedom is a social good because if people are free to do and think as they please, then society will generally benefit from the ‘open market’ in ideas and activities. Unfortunately, today’s European states are structurally hostile to such diversity. Instead, as Thierry Baudet explained recently in parliament, they are governed by cartels. It is unfortunately a natural human phenomenon, in politics as much as in economics, to want to ‘control the market’ – by appointing your friends to high places, by stifling dissent, by creating narratives which sustain the power structure. This is not only unjust, it is also bad policy because it means that new ideas and fresh modes of thought are sidelined or silenced. Society suffers as a result. Democracy is supposed to create a system which breaks such cartels but currently it does not function at all in the West. Listen to Thierry’s magisterial presentation and you will understand why.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuz7Irp9XEI&amp;ab_channel=FVDInternational">Watch Thierry’s speech here (translated by AI)</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeLxCVswu5u7Z4H0As5OUv2v4QWiebAON9LUQsndh7v5Jp_xiwVsWGAvZbo8Omw7fIfAnM6MdYJO0KTa-UxlR0Pu88RyPePKxCXLo2LqBvp6-Y2n7tNgpB0hmezpnCcm0pKmCQT?key=LIhTsCZNgghbO8zdCxc5cg">To put it bluntly, the system is rigged. Gideon van Meijeren MP had the sad confirmation of this recently in the committee of enquiry into Covid. This is a group of MPs looking into the way the pandemic was handled five years ago.&nbsp; But it turns out that what they can look into is controlled by the civil servants working for the committee. MPs do not have their own right of access to documentation or witnesses. When Gideon realised this, he asked for a meeting with the committee chair. He and the committee members refused to accept any change to this bizarre arrangement which means that the MPs are but front men for a rigged enquiry. So Gideon decided to resign. The self-perpetuating system has won - and democracy and transparency have lost. Society suffers.<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/fvd-leaves-covidcommittee-gideon-van-meijeren-explains-why">Read Gideon’s statement here</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfm1xU8ze7HsVBuheI4nFVJZBTg91Pd4VsRjuTvnwO7MmheTRUelS3U4aa-wIn9M0pzxvOSMAPnd6eRNSAzpUUGaJZPUItUqapvBHABW-jQt18Td5OcvjvxmC7W4vWGlTnmpPaWyg?key=LIhTsCZNgghbO8zdCxc5cg">None of this is new.&nbsp; As Thierry said, you can find it all in Plato. Former FVD senator Paul Cliteur also discussed freedom at FVD’s Springtime School, held on Ascension Weekend in a beautiful 17th century château in Gelderland.&nbsp; Cliteur proposed a reading of Schopenhauer to the students and told the well-known story of Galileo and his run-in with the Holy Inquisition. If freedom of ideas is a general social good, it is all the more imperative to preserve it in universities, where ideas are the principal activity. Unfortunately academic freedom, like other freedoms, have evaporated in today’s West, as the Left seeks to stamp out all forms of divergence from its own line. Leftism is unfortunately now also supported in this by Islamism which similarly seeks to destroy dissent. Europe is abandoning centuries of liberal tradition in favour of an ever duller and more brutal authoritarianism.<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/arthur-schopenhauer-and-academic-freedom">Read Paul Cliteur’s lecture here</a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcruOqyXkdunlk0ogQsMxvgkHSo6aNu26c2pU2RXX8znKByeLSbhv7eSTKmOg33-1yqRu9FM7rvlkGg8JHAtIetBT7DLGOD5zbvW5Owbu5hunsoTymVb-p4y_quUUUAL-djFolH1g?key=LIhTsCZNgghbO8zdCxc5cg">As the war expands out in the Middle East, we were delighted to have Steven Jermy and Mark Sleboda as our guests on The Forum this week to discuss the military aspects of the Ukraine war in the light of the recent spectacular drone attacks on Russian air bases deep inside Russia.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuIucTRwa78&amp;t=20s&amp;ab_channel=FVDInternational">Listen back to The Forum here</a>

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The Weekly Forum - 13 June

Gideon van Meijeren has decided to step down from the COVID committee. In the following statement, he explains his reasons for this decision:I have just had to make a difficult but necessary decision: I am resigning from the parliamentary committee of inquiry on Covid with immediate effect. In this video, I will explain my decision.My main reason for joining the parliamentary committee of inquiry was to conduct an in-depth investigation into Covid policy and to question those responsible for it. In other words: to find the truth.But that is precisely what is being made completely impossible for me in the committee. Last week, I found out that, as a member of the Covid committee, I will not have access to the more than 3 million documents and pieces of information which the committee has requested, and that I will not be allowed to ask the main responsible parties any questions, or hardly any.The majority of the other members of the committee have decided that only the civil servants on the staff will have access to the requested documents.&nbsp; Only they will draw up the questionnaires and decide which committee members may ask which questions to which guests. It has literally been decided that the staff will conduct the investigation and that the members of parliament will only have a guiding role.In practice, this means that, as a Member of Parliament, I have no insight into the information on which the investigation notes and questionnaires are based, I do not have the opportunity to ask the questions that I consider important, and in many cases I am not given the opportunity to question the key players myself.This makes it impossible for me to make a serious contribution to finding the truth — which should be the core purpose of this committee.When I found this out, I immediately objected. Last week, I discussed this with the chair of the committee, Daan de Kort. He indicated that he would continue to support the current working method, but that I was free to raise this point at the committee meeting. That meeting took place today.I was willing to cooperate and was not demanding. The only thing I asked for, in essence, was access to the information necessary to conduct research, and on that basis to be able to question 8 to 10 people under oath for half an hour to an hour: Rutte, De Jonge, Grapperhaus, Van Dissel, Koopmans, Gommers, Aalbersberg, Akerboom, Schoof and – depending on the results of the source investigation – a handful of others. This would only take 5 to 10 hours out of the hundreds of hours reserved for the hearings.After a heated discussion, it became clear that the committee was standing its ground. I did everything I could to convince the members of the need to change the working method, but to no avail.The chair proposed to continue the discussion at a later date, but changing the working method was expressly ruled out. In other words, they wanted to prolong the discussion, but the decision had already been made.This course of action is, of course, unacceptable. It undermines the essence of parliamentary control and thus touches on the core of our democracy. A parliamentary inquiry is the most powerful investigative tool at the disposal of the House of Representatives, with far-reaching powers. If even the members of an inquiry committee are denied access to the necessary information and are not given the opportunity to critically question those responsible, then there is no longer any question of finding the truth – on the contrary. Then there is control, manipulation and exclusion of critical voices and neutralisation of dissent. In short: then there is a cover-up.Of course, I cannot and will not lend any legitimacy to this. The party fully supports me in my decision. Forum for Democracy considers truth-finding to be the highest good, on which we cannot make any concessions. If truth-finding is made impossible within the committee, then it must be done outside it. We are therefore determined to continue with this until the truth has been revealed and justice has been done.&nbsp;

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FVD Leaves COVID committee, Gideon van Meijeren Explains Why

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The Herzegovina uprising and international law, 1874-1878

Forum for Democracy International

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