The Hague Quotes

“Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.'

All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was:

There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man!

Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“One would expect Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, who is said to have studied history, to know better and act better, but he too rejects all advice and criticism and runs around obliviously in a coach plastered with pictures of his grandmother abusing her captives, including women and children. You might imagine the bigoted Donald Trump to be riding a coach like that in a mock presidential parade in his dreams, but certainly not a twenty first century Dutch royal. I wonder if he ever considered how their Calvinist pomposity affected the psyche of black and white children.”
― Mawuena Addo, Roses in the Rainbow

“How could the eagle-eyed politicians of The Hague, who specialized in pointing out the tiniest specks in other people’s eyes, overlook someone riding a racist coach in their own neighborhood?”
― Mawuena Addo, Roses in the Rainbow

“How remorseless must one be find pleasure in riding a Wilhelmina golden coach in the 21st century.”
― Mawuena Addo, Roses in the Rainbow

“Nobody would be riding a racist Wilhelmina golden coach today in The Hague if the Dutch hadn’t swept unpleasant aspects of their history under the rug.”
― Mawuena Addo, Roses in the Rainbow

“Bigotry is what you get when you substitute the illusion of holiness for fair-minded enquiry.”
― Mawuena Addo, Roses in the Rainbow

“Bigotry will always find a way where people are kept in a bubble of ignorance.”
― Mawuena Addo

“There is hardly any other country that got as filthy rich through human trafficking and slave trade as the Netherlands.”
― Mawuena Addo, Roses in the Rainbow

“Did you know that even 50 years after all other countries had abolished slavery, the Netherlands refused to?”
― Mawuena Addo, Roses in the Rainbow

“Just as the Netherlands was the last country to abolish slavery, they are still the last one opulently celebrating racism; the English had to force the Dutch to abolish slavery in the late 19th century and now the US and the UN are forcing them to stop celebrating bigotry in the 21st century”
― Mawuena Addo, Roses in the Rainbow

“MUSEUMS OF INFAMY
A dynasty that thrived on
And blatantly celebrates
Racism and anti-Semitism
Belongs not to the 21st century
But the throes of history
In the museums of infamy
Under the banner ‘House of Orange”
― Mawuena Addo