"The big, international tug-of-war is over and the ball is in the court: Mark Rutte has been appointed NATO's new secretary-general.
He had been flirting with the job for months by condoning Israel's war crimes and throwing oil on the fire of the war in Ukraine, but has now finally secured the next step of his career.
"The results of the Lower House elections show, on the one hand, the justified discontent and anger among large sections of the working class about the antipopular policies pursued by successive cabinets in recent years. But on the other hand, the results show that there are still many illusions about parties that present themselves in various ways as an ‘alternative’ while essentially serving the same politics.
On 7 July, it was announced that the Rutte IV cabinet was going to resign. This happened mainly under the pretext of disagreement on the issue of so-called family reunification, as part of the broader asylum policy on which parties could not agree.
On Thursday 6 July, the Lower House adopted a motion by the coalition parties VVD, D66, CDA and Christian Union regarding the famine in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s. Against all historical facts, the famine is labelled a ‘genocide’ of the Ukrainian people. The motion claims that the famine was deliberately “planned and carried out by the then Soviet regime to oppress the Ukrainian people and identity.” The purpose of this unprecedented falsification of history is nothing but to further demonise communism.
More specifically, the full statement (Over het eerherstel voor Anton de Kom) reads:
"According to NOS (Dutch state media), part of the bourgeois political top in The Hague has known for a year about the heavy suspicions against the Ukrainian government for blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipeline. The Dutch military intelligence service (MIVD) warned the US intelligence agency (CIA) a year ago that there were plans from Ukraine to blow up the gas pipeline. The consequences of blowing up the Nord Stream have been very detrimental, including for the Dutch working class.
The Cuban embassy delivered a greeting, as did comrades from sister parties: the Communist party of Belgium, the German Communist Party, the Communist Party of Greece, the Communist Party of Luxembourg and the Communist Party of Turkey.
Representatives of the German Communist Party (DKP), the Communist Party of Luxembourg (KPL) and the New Communist Party of the Netherlands (NCPN) discussed their assessment of the current phase of the crisis of capitalism and its consequences for the working class in their countries at a joint conference in Remich (Luxembourg) on June 11 and 12. They noted that the ruling circles are increasingly using the Corona pandemic and, in recent weeks, the war in Ukraine to accelerate the redistribution of social wealth from the bottom to the top. This policy has a strong negative impact on the social situation and the purchasing power of wage earners, youth and pensioners.
The demonstrators denounced the long waiting lists for social housing, the high prices in the private rental sector, the owner-occupied market, and the rising number of homeless people.
In a statement concerning the issue, the New Communist Party of the Netherlands and the Communist Youth Movement (CJB), point out:
"Yesterday (Friday 15th of January) Prime Minister Rutte handed over the resignation of the government to the king – only two months before the elections for the House of Representatives will take place. The fall of the cabinet was triggered by the so-called “allowances affair” (toeslagenaffaire), although we can better speak of a terrible scandal.
The declaration reads:
The number of hospital admissions and deaths caused by the coronavirus is rising rapidly. Meanwhile, increasingly more people are feeling the consequences of the new economic crisis. Among workers, students, and pupils, there is a lot of uncertainty about the second wave and the economic crisis, as well as what this will mean for their job or education. The government, however, refuses to offer solutions and leaves everything to ‘individual responsibility’. Only big capital can count on the government for generous support.
