[Thanks to northernindymedia]

Max Smeets

Shale gas.  Attention for this topic has been growing on the local, national, and international levels (see THB’s ‘The Future’s So Dire, We Gotta Pump Shale’). Shale gas is the gas that has, at several places in the world, including the Netherlands, become accessible through a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Due to the low permeability, a mix of water, sand, and chemicals is injected to get it all out of the ground.  This article covers some interesting recent developments on all 3 levels.

In the US shale gas mining started in the 1970s on an industrial scale. Today, the production of natural gas from shale formations has rejuvenated the natural gas industry in the United States – and it is still booming. In the last couple of years other countries have followed suit and started to explore the possibilities. We have seen developments in Canada, India, South-Africa, Australia, some European countries, and above all China.  There is an upsurge of billion dollar contracts being struck and explorative drilling is increasing.

The revelation in a tv documentary on Monday night that Maxime Verhagen wanted to mobilise the AIVD to find out about Geert Wilders’ plans with Fitna has kicked up a major storm in parliament this week. The opposition has been busy peppering the cabinet with demands for an explanation. Yet somehow the words ‘storm’ and ‘teacup’ come to mind. And Wilders himself has remained pretty much out of sight.

On Tuesday the parliament demanded a response from Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner, but he adopted the classic ‘neither confirm nor deny’ approach, and gave the usual rejoinder that all matters discussed by the ministerial council and concerning the AIVD are secret and shall remain so. But any opportunity to undermine the cabinet is worth seizing, so we had the spectacle of Tofik Dibi (Groenlinks), Alex Pechtold (D66), and Jeroen Recourt (PvdA) falling over themselves to table questions and haul Donner back to parliament for further interrogation on Thursday.

Dibi wants the CITVD to investigate, because after all MPS should be allowed to express their views freely and if necessary should receive the protection of the security services to do so. Pechtold thought this was a cheap shot, instead demanding that Donner and Verhagen walk the plank while facing a barrage of criticism from the irate opposition. Recourt protested that this was evidence of an undermining of the democractic system – ‘Nixon-like practices’, for which Nixon (read: Verhagen) had to resign. All three of them then joined forces to submit a list of 11 questions for Donner and Verhagen, including the following: Can you provide an overview of the members of parliament who have been eavesdropped or surveilled by the intelligence services? If not, why not?

What is going on? Firstly this is not only an opportunity for more cabinet-bashing, but more specifically Maxime-bashing, the real entertainment for a large section of the parliament (including a large chunk of his own Christian Democrats). So far Donner has taken the flak, and on Thursday he responded true to form (plenty of outraged indignation etc). Secondly this seems to be yet another chance for taking the AIVD down a peg or two, it being a popular target for those afraid that the ‘secret state’ is forever undermining the democratic system. Others disagree – aivdwatch has pointed out that we need the AIVD to watch out for serious breaches of democratic protocol, as the case of Wilders’ PVV colleague Gidi Markuszower illustrated not so long ago. And Roelof Bouwman has reminded us that not so long ago members of the Communist party, the Pacifist Socialists, even the Farmers party were regular targets for security service surveillance as ‘threats to the state’.   

Wilders, of course, has been here before – back in 2007 the Telegraaf printed a story, leaked from the AIVD, about Wilders’ visits to the Israeli Embassy which triggered a list of questions from GW  himself for the then Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst. The Minister denied the allegations but refused to go any further than that. Vrij Nederland (among others) jumped in to question the right of the AIVD to leak judgements on a politician’s loyalty to the press.

So four years ago the Left backed Wilders against the security service, saying he should be allowed to visit the Israelis any time he wants. In 2011 the Left again backs Wilders on suggestions of surveillance of his Fitna project, even though the security service clearly rejected this task. GW as an unjust target of state power? Do Dibi, Pechtold and Recourt really know what they are doing?

[Dutch citizens with a second passport, 1 January 2009: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek]

On a visit to England recently the discussion turned to education, and the obstacle course that parents face to sort out their children’s future. After describing briefly the demands and choices that Dutch children face around the age of 12, with all the tests and the different levels of schooling these lead to, my sister-in-law, surprised by all the rule-making, made the classic statement: “But I thought the Dutch were so liberal?” After more than fifteen years living in the Netherlands, such a comment can now only raise a smile of despair. The image of the refugee-hugging, dope-tolerating Dutch remains fixed in many people’s minds, and is still very much alive and well, but the political reality of the last ten years has been going in a very different direction. Now we have a right-wing minority government (they possess barely one-third of the seats in parliament) introducing a nationalist-populist agenda that threatens to remove the word ‘liberal’ from the Dutch lexicon.

This can be confirmed in all areas of policy, but a striking one was illustrated by Yasha Lange in De Groene Amsterdammer a week ago: dual nationality. Against the worldwide trend, Minister Donner of Home Affairs will almost certainly introduce a bill into parliamanet this autumn that will require all dual passport holders to simply become Dutch. At present only Austria, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands have a problem with dual nationality in Western Europe. And the Dutch government are looking to put this into law.

How many people are we talking about here? 6% of the Dutch population – around 800,000 individuals. The issue, in nationalist-populist terms, is of course one of loyalty – from this perspective double passport holders cannot be trusted, they are some kind of cultural fifth column coming here to undermine the rest of society. Recent reports have trashed this image – demanding that someone gives up their original passport in order to proceed with naturalisation only hinders the process, because those who may stay with a long-term work permit now will probably decide to leave instead. As Gerard-Rene de Groot emphasised in the 2009 report Meervoudige nationaliteit in Europees perspectief , dual nationality fits within an increasingly interlinked, globalised world, and there is no proof that it causes any ‘loyalty’ problem. Even the French, ever sensitive to the issue of immigration and integration, have accepted it as part of 21st century reality.

Dutch naturalisation law has been tightened up severely since 1997, and the rules for naturalisation were further tightened in 2003. The result – double nationality can be an obstacle for naturalisation, but it doesn’t have to prevent it outright.

The fact is that the proposed bill is not aimed at the whole 6% – not the 43,000 Brits, or the 50,000 Germans, or the 20,000 Americans – but at the 5% who happen to hold Turkish and Moroccan passports alongside Dutch. The Turks often have family and economic reasons to keep the link with their homeland, while the Moroccans are legally not allowed by their homeland to give up their original identity. 

Perfect, thinks the PVV and Wilders – a single Dutch passport will force exactly these groups – 5% of the population – to either give up everything in their other country and stay, or clear off. A wonderful piece of populist garbage, which will have a dramatic impact across the economy. What is more, they can indulge in some nice little political dirty tricks by getting their own back against PvdA MP and former State Secretary of Justice Nebahat Albayrak, who kept her Turkish passport when she joined the cabinet in 2007. A PVV motion to make this impossible for government officials – purely based on the loyalty issue – failed to pass. The law will trash the Netherlands as a serious destination for exactly the high-educated immigrants the government also claims to want to attract. Why come here to live and work if it is one of the few places in the world that makes such a demand? And the Dutch who are living and working abroad – will they also have to abandon the new nationality they have taken on, in order to simply keep their Dutch passport?

Despair is the word. The only hope is that this bill will generate such a response from the international business community and the Dutch emigres that the CDA (Donner) might just think again. The VVD seem to be a lost cause on this – despite the fact that Rutte earlier this year accepted the Swedish nationality of CDA State Secretary for Health Marlies Veldhuijzen van Zanten-Hyllner. And despite the fact that one of the new VVD MP’s Bart de Liefde, also possesses two passports. So how is the proposed bill going to deal with all of this? Just further proof that the PVV are driving the government from the backbenches?

Liberal? Thats a good joke…..