Dutch-American Friendship Day Amsterdam

The Netherlands | April 19, 2006
Summary address at AABC Meeting
Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam
19 April 2006

Joint meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce, Amsterdam American Businessman Club and Schiphol World Trade Center by Jacob Gelt Dekker.

Your Excellency Mr. Ambassador Arnall, ladies and gentlemen what a privilege to see you in such great numbers and be back to talk to you after John Padget, my partner, thirty years ago took the initiative of the American Businessman Club meetings, though it was in those days still humbly in "Broodje van Kootje."

Mr. Ambassador let me give you a few insights on the Kingdom of the Netherlands , a country that stretches all the way across the Atlantic with Germany in the East, Belgium in the South and Colombia and Venezuela in the West.

Especially our Venezuelan neighbor, and in particular its president Hugo Chavez, is most belligerent nowadays.

As recently as yesterday, April 18, Chavez warned of an invasion into Venezuela by US troops from Curacao and Aruba. The Venezuelan army has increased from 30,000 troops to one hundred thousand and Chavez informed the world that soon he will have a nation of soldiers with more than 1 million troops on active duty.

Every day bears a new threat. Last year, Chavez called for the reunification of the Antilles with the motherland, meaning Venezuela. He called on the population of the Antilles to throw off the colonial yoke and to set up committees to prepare the reunification.

Although diplomats are playing down the rhetoric, Chavez has proven to be impulsive, erratic and highly unreliable. His new wealth from oil revenues enabled him to buy for over 3 billion dollars of new weapons.

Last week I was fortunate enough to meet with Jim Woolsey, the former CIA director under Clinton, and member of the Energy Committee. Woolsey pointed out that our addiction to oil and our consequent indirect financing of all kinds of crazies can easily be tackled by switching to ethanol fuel for transportation.

Using available techniques that one finds an abundance of in the Netherlands, we could be totally independent from fossil fuels, from oil within two years.

Brazil was supposed to be independent of oil by 2007, but today it already is. What can be done in Brazil, can be done in the USA and Europe, especially because it does not require change of the existing infrastructure.

Mr. Ambassador, I understand that with your great interest in this field and your position, you are well place to be a pivotal figure in this process.

I wish you all the luck and success in the world in these very interesting times.

Thank you