Hans van der Kamp

Most of my life I have had sincere doubts about decisions made by the majority of people. The front pages of our newspapers show us a list of disasters initiated by that same majority every day. It is not what we think that matters when we get a chance to vote — what we think is merely a compilation of facts and opinions fed to us by the media and I have worked long enough as a Dutch reporter to know that most journalists are frustrated novelists and the other way around. If we really want the truth about what is happening in our world today, we will have to wait a few years for a movie or a book opening with a legal disclaimer telling us that all facts are based on fiction.

Since there is no real alternative for democracy, I find politics very depressing, but I am a Dutchman, a European, maybe even a world citizen, so I try to make the best of it by mistrusting information supporting a cause that is too pragmatic or overly nationalistic. I never booked a flight to Iraq to check on the existence of weapons of mass destruction; I just found the story very hard to believe from the start, since Iraq had been under economical sanctions for too many years to become a military force to be feared. So, when the tensions were building up and the Americans on my site(s) started to post derogative remarks about Muslims and started to describe themselves as “patriots”; I spoke up about the matter time after time and I tried to explain that we “in the old world” have always had bad experiences with people who like to call themselves “patriots”.

There was a heated discussion going on – especially on the Hidden Archives forums. I felt I had to warn people and I did so in a language that is not my own: English. It is hard to have a heated debate with people who can use their own language to attack your opinions, while you have to translate everything in your head before you can post it. So I often lost my “cool” and started to randomly insult people. In the end most of the Americans left and my only result was that I lost 30% of my income on the member sites, because I was suddenly considered to be a communist and an anarchist. Please trust me on this; I am neither.

I do not mind the 30% loss on my modest income, because the quality of my life increased with about 60%.

In the end I just kicked out the last few Islamaphobes and went on with life — after being compared to Stalin, Hitler and a few other nasty people in history by the last of the Mohicans. Lately I have noticed that some of these visitors are slowly returning to the sites. I have no idea why, but I like to think that they have altered their opinions on certain matters to an extent that they are quite parallel to mine. More likely however they thoroughly enjoy the fact that I rarely visit my own community site The Hidden Archives anymore.

I am going on about this because there was a comment on my previous piece, posted by a nice American. She had a sane view on the problems we are all in today and somewhere in her text she asked: “But who is going to listen?”

Who is or who is not going to listen, is a question I have never asked myself. A question of higher relevance is: What is the destructive power of all of us being quiet while we know there is yet another genocide taking place? I have always felt that since I was controlling a platform with such an incredible amount of visitors every day, I *had* to speak up instead of being quiet.

I still recall that as a child I asked my grandfather what he had done to prevent the deportation of Jews. “Nothing,” he said and he turned away from me. Later I learned it must have been a very tough question for him, because during World War II he worked for the Dutch Railways and he was driving steam locomotives from The Netherlands into Germany. My father later explained to me that he was transporting cole instead of people, but still… He may have been providing for his family but that did not look too good one decade later.

Lately almost every American assures me that he or she is appalled by what is happening in their country, but I do not see a whole lot of protest marches, do you? And that Democratic majority in congress does not change much for the better either. Or have I missed a lot of news lately? What I do see is tension building up towards Iran and I ask myself what is going to prevent a dictator on the rise like Mr. Putin to lend a few nuclear missiles to Iran so that they can destroy the state of Israel when another invasion takes place. Maybe the fact that Bush has assured Putin that the Cold War is over? I do not think Mr. Bush’s word is good enough to prevent disaster and the Americans are so confused that they make ideal targets for hit and run attacks on a infinitely larger scale than is already happening. No nation or empire can go tear-assing around the world without perishing eventually. Our history books show no exceptions to this rule.

Somehow the responses of “good” Americans remind me of the “good” Germans during World War II. If they are really so appalled, why don’t they act up? Is it because nobody will listen to them while they form 51% of the voters? If that is a fact I can no longer see the US as a democracy. A Theocracy on a rampage maybe, but certainly not a democracy.

Share on Facebook

I am continuously advised not to comment on the War on Terrorism on two of my own sites because these sites are visited by Americans and as you may have heard before; Americans are very nice people who – like me – cannot deal with criticism very well. They only have one bad guy amongst them and that is Mr. Bush. The rest of the United States is filled with people who could have starred in ‘Happy Days’ or the ‘Cosby Show’. Nice altruistic people who do not care about their own future or the future of their children, but focus on the well-being of the rest of the world instead.

My US visitors keep teaching me that it is wrong to think that average Americans are anything like Mr. Bush. They only voted for the man. Oh no, now I am confused again! Damn, damn, will I ever learn? They did not even vote for him; somebody just tripped over a few boxes with votes and in the confusion Bush became president. Twice.

Whenever I make a statement about previous or upcoming US invasions of countries who are to be freed of their resources, their well-being and their culture in order to trade all that nastiness for the kind of democracy that gives a blind cheque to a recovering alcoholic, I am told that I should keep quiet since my country was liberated by the Americans in World War II.

Forget the irony and my usual sarcasm for a moment and let me repeat once more that I – child of a woman who lost most of her family in this devastating war – have always honored the Allied Forces on Dutch Liberation Day more than our own cowardly population who did so little to stop Dutch Jews from being deported. Whenever I see a war veteran in Amsterdam, which unfortunately has not happened in more than five years; I offer them my hospitality or at least a few drinks. This is the truth. Few other inhabitants of Amsterdam do so and that pains me.

What bothers me is that most Americans seem to think that so many American lives were lost on the beaches of France only to free us, Europeans, from Nazism. That is historically incorrect. This may have been the main reason why Average Joe has fought this war, but that was certainly not the general idea of those in command who sent them to fight giant fortifications with tiny hand grenades. I hate to rain on anybody’s parade but June 6th, also known as D-Day, has a lot of resemblance to another day marked on our calendars; April 1, Fool’s Day.

The main target of the invasion was not to shatter Nazism or to destroy the death camps in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Mauthausen and so many other gruesome places — the main target was to be in Berlin before the Russians. To be in Berlin, or Peenemünde to be exact, where Wernher von Braun, soon to become chief engineer of NASA, was designing missiles. This is no conspiracy theory. If you do not take my (Dutch) word for it, ask the Brits who have been bombed with these missiles night after night, day after day during the Second World War without ever giving an inch. As a rule those who have suffered badly are quite modest.

If anybody should have been hanged by the neck to die in Nuremberg it should have been Herr Doctor Wernher von Braun. It is a good thing that those who directed the Holocaust were sentenced to death, although getting rid of Goering, Hess and their comrades never stopped the attitude that brought them to their crimes against humanity in the first place. Fascism and Anti-Semitism are more alive than ever. Almost nobody I know today can see the difference between the actions of the Israeli government and the basics of Jewish religion.

The Jews were considered a threat by Nazis in the 1930s for the same reason Muslims are considered a threat today. Because they were different and — nobody is allowed to say this in Europe — because they owned a large chunk of the resources. Not oil, but industry and capital, badly needed ingredients to expand Nazism over the continent. *Please* do not send an Israeli or a US rocket to Amsterdam to eliminate me for saying so, but if you must, please *double-check your coordinates* so that you do not hit the Shelter for the Homeless next-door and/or the Child Day-care Center across the street. Thank you for your consideration!

However gruesome; the Holocaust ended but the products of Von Braun’s vivid imagination kill hundreds if not thousands each day on both sides of this so-called war on terrorism. Ironically, the Israelis have an almost sexual fixation with Uncle Werner’s inventions. So, those good old “Happy Days’ Americans who like to zap away from the horrors in Iraq to watch another Shuttle-launch instead, should be well aware of the fact that it was a German Nazi and a mass-murderer at heart, who was in charge of Nasa for decades and it was Nasa/Nazi technology that has made the US Army the most feared military force on the planet. If you find this hard to believe, just ask yourself why most of your friends would rather own an Audi, a BMW, or a ‘Merc’ than one of those fuel-spilling marvels of American engineering.

Enough said for today. My advice: be happy and buy a Mac instead of a car, you will do a lot of good for the environment and the hardware used by Mac software is designed by the friends you had such a great time with in Pearl Harbor back in 1941. World dominance is all about investing your money in the enemy, isn’t it?

Photo insert 2: The house of my Grandparents, mistakenly bombed by the Allied Forces.
Unfortunately it was a large Catholic family who sat behind that wall to eat supper when it happened.

Photo insert 1: Americans marching The Champs-Élysées after the liberation of Paris.

Share on Facebook

Once in a while some smartass reminds me that the current exhibit on my oldest site AMEA // World Museum of Erotic Art has not changed in a year. This positive criticism, usually posted on the message page for the whole world to see, is often met by me with bad-tempered remarks. People who have a good point can be so irritating! Why can’t we have a society where everybody is talking Dadaistic nonsense, composed to distract our minds from the ugly excrements of human rationale? That would be so much better for our blood circulation. Other webmasters I know run sites where people cannot express themselves at all; they simply type moronic one-liners like ‘Ur 1 ugly fuck’ and leave – forever. Why do I have to be stuck with the two percent sincere intellectuals on the Web? I was born for misery, I guess…

For a while now I have been convinced that AMEA should feature more contemporary art; there is enough historical art in the exhibits section. Being the self-proclaimed webmaster I should go out hunting for art that I like and at times I do find some jewels on the web, but I always forget to bookmark these pages. Enjoying great art and pushing buttons somehow just don’t mix.

Instead I am approached by artists every day and I carefully look at their works. In general I do not like what I see, but I hate rejecting people, so I end up doubting my own judgment. The result is always the same; I have to conclude that there is nothing wrong with those works. They perfectly fit the description of what is commonly known as ‘Erotic Art’. Some of these bleeding hearts even refer to themselves as ‘Erotic Artists’ instead of just ‘Artists’. So, that leaves me with only one thing left; to read their attached artist statement — and *wham!* my original resentment is back again.

Erotic Art has its own galleries, museums, networks etc. It is an art ghetto, if you ask me. The competition is not half as fierce as it is in the ‘real’ art world. I like to think I am an artist myself and whenever I am approached by somebody who wants to showcase my works in one form or another, it is always the same ‘Bordello‘ series they have in mind.

A few months ago I was approached by the editor of NY Arts Magazine with a request to use some images of my – you guessed right – Bordello series and of course I was happy to oblige. Additionally I was asked to write an artist statement. I had stopped drinking for quite some time when he asked me and I was a little insecure. I prefer to write sober, with the exception of those so-called artist statements. Instead of thinking what people would want to hear from a business-oriented artist who prefers to photograph older people, I just jotted down what I thought was the truth behind my urge to become an artist. My old editor chief proofread it and he did not like it very much. His felt the piece was a tear jerker. Well, maybe it is, but I never felt as close to the truth as when I wrote those three hundred words.

There is an editorial preview at:

http://nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7341&Itemid=246

PS: Just days after writing the draft of this post, I ran into the works of Carolyn Weltman and Dean Cameron and I really adore their works! Days later I was approached by yet another great artist. His show will soon be up too. (I guess I just had to really put my mind to it.)

Share on Facebook