Word: dutchness
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...Indonesia's military, specifically the army, has long been more than just the defender of the flag. It fought the Japanese during World War II and the Dutch during the battle for independence, and soon established a nation-building role for itself as the only institution capable of holding the fractious archipelago together. Over the years, various leaders have dealt with the army differently?but always using the TNI as a means of staying in power. Sukarno, Megawati's father, played it off against the communists and Muslims. Suharto exploited it to enrich his family and cronies. After he fell...
...beyond one life to encompass the nation itself. A man who just weeks earlier was hotly disputing comparisons with French nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen seemed in death to have bizarrely taken on the luster of his avowed idol, John F. Kennedy. His new window on a harder-edged Dutch future, disturbing to some and promising to others, slammed shut before it ever really opened...
Fortuyn's meteoric rise in just nine months on an anti-immigration platform had dealt a telling blow to the pragmatic consensus seeking that has long defined Dutch politics. His murder appears to have destroyed it altogether, leaving the country without its moorings as it approaches the most emotional and uncertain election in its history this week. Polls before his death predicted that Fortuyn would attract about 17% of the vote, enough to make him a major player in forming a new government. He is widely expected to do much better than that as the martyred head of his electoral...
Fortuyn, 54, was a man for confrontation, not consensus. He wanted to re-establish Dutch border controls and let in refugees only from Britain, Denmark, France and Germany. He sought to dial back the generous disability scheme that supports the roughly 15% of Dutch workers who claim they can't work for medical reasons. At least a quarter of the state bureaucracy should be laid off, Fortuyn maintained, while at the same time the number of regional governments should be doubled and schools made smaller. A Fortuyn government would not only reintroduce the draft, but also mandate a special four...
...vegan who once told an interviewer he couldn't abide the cruelty of baiting a fishhook, Van der Graaf lived in the small town of Harderwijk with his wife and three-month-old baby. "He was not given to jokes or eccentricities," says Caroline Hoogendijk, a director of the Dutch Veganism Association who worked closely with Van der Graaf. Wien van den Brink, head of a farmer's activist group from nearby Putten op de Veluwe and a candidate on Fortuyn's list, was left unimpressed in his frequent dealings with Van der Graaf. "You had the impression that...