The Banality of Evil

Edward S. Herman's beroemde essay over: 'The Banality of Evil. From the book Triumph of the Market. The concept of the banality of evil came into prominence following the publication of Hannah Arendt's 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, which was based on the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt's thesis was that people who carry out unspeakable crimes, like Eichmann, a top administrator in the machinery of the Nazi death camps, may not be crazy fanatics at all, but rather ordinary individuals who simply accept the premises of their state and participate in any ongoing enterprise with the energy of good bureaucrats.Normalizing the UnthinkableDoing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on "normalization." This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as "the way things are done." There is usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set of individuals; others keeping the machinery of death (sanitation, food supply) in order; still others producing the implements of killing, or working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of defense intellectuals and other experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public. The late Herman Kahn spent a lifetime making nuclear war palatable (On Thermonuclear War, Thinking About the Unthinkable), and this strangelovian phoney got very good press. ~In an excellent article entitled "Normalizing the unthinkable," in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists of March 1984, Lisa Peattie described how in the Nazi death camps work was "normalized" for the long-term prisoners as well as regular personnel: "[P]rison plumbers laid the water pipe in the crematorium and prison electricians wired the fences. The camp managers maintained standards and orderly process. The cobblestones which paved the crematorium yard at Auschwitz had to be perfectly scrubbed." Peattie focused on the parallel between routinization in the death camps and the preparations for nuclear war, where the "unthinkable" is organized and prepared for in a division of labor participated in by people at many levels. Distance from execution helps render responsibility hazy. "Adolph Eichmann was a thoroughly responsible person, according to his understanding of responsibility. For him, it was clear that the heads of state set policy. His role was to implement, and fortunately, he felt, it was never part of his job actually to have to kill anyone."Peattie noted that the head of MlT's main military research lab in the 1960s argued that "their concern was development, not use, of technology." Just as in the death camps, in weapons labs and production facilities, resources are allocated on the basis of effective participation in the larger system, workers derive support from interactions with others in the mutual effort, and complicity is obscured by the routineness of the work, interdependence, and distance from the results.Peattie also pointed out how, given the unparalleled disaster that would follow nuclear war, "resort is made to rendering the system playfully, via models and games." There is also a vocabulary developed to help render the unthinkable palatable: "incidents," "vulnerability indexes," "weapons impacts," and "resource availability." She doesn't mention it, but our old friend "collateral damage," used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, came out of the nukespeak tradition.' Lees verder:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7278.htm

Iran 48

De Amerikaanse dissident en emeritus hoogleraar Edward S. Herman schrijft in CounterPunch: T'he Fourth "Supreme International Crime" in Seven Years is Already Underway, with the Support of the Free Press and the "International Community"
US Aggression-Time Once Again: Target Iran. With the United States having initiated wars in violation of the UN Charter, and hence engaged in the "supreme international crime,"1 against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq in 1999, 2001, and 2003, one might have expected that its commencement of a fourth aggression only a few years later against Iran would arouse the UN, EU, other international institutions and NGOs, and even the supposedly moral and independent Free Press, to serious protest and counter-action, including referral to the UN Security Council under Chapter VII's "threat of peace" articles and support of possible diplomatic and economic sanctions. This has not happened, and in fact the Bush administration has successfully mobilized the UN, whose "primary responsibility" is the "maintenance of international peace and security," and the EU, as well as the Free Press, to facilitate its fourth attack. We say that the fourth aggression is already underway, because once again, as in the Iraq case, the United States has been attacking Iran for many months, and not just with verbal insults and threats. It has been flying unmanned aerial surveillance drones over Iran since 2004; it has infiltrated combat and reconnaissance teams into Iran "to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic minority groups" (Seymour Hersh);2 it has bestowed an ambiguous "protected" status upon the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a group which, since 1997, the U.S. Department of State has designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but a group that the Washington regime now uses to launch cross-border attacks on Iran from within U.S.-occupied Iraq;3 and it and its Israeli client have repeatedly threatened larger scale and more open attacks. This pre-invasion aggression was an important feature of the overall aggression against Iraq, where the US and British greatly increased their "spikes of activity" with massive bombing well before the March 19, 2003 invasion4-major acts of war and aggression begun as early as April 2002, that were almost wholly ignored by the Free Press and "international community." What is mind-boggling in all this is that new attacks and threats by a country that is in the midst of a serial aggression program, that runs a well documented and widely condemned global gulag of torture,5 that has committed major war crimes in Iraq-Fallujah may well replace Guernica as a symbol of murderous warfare unleashed against civilians6-and that openly declares itself exempt from international law and states that the UN is only relevant when it supports U.S. policy,7 is not only not condemned for its Iran aggression, but is able to enlist support for it in the EU, UN and global media. This enlistment of support occurs despite the further fact that it is now generally recognized that the Bush and Blair administrations lied their way into the Iraq invasion-occupation (but still quickly obtained UN and EU acceptance of the occupation and ensuing ruthless pacification program),8 and that they cynically misused the inspections program, all of which makes the new accommodation to the aggression-in-process and planned larger attack truly frightening. The mechanism by which this is accomplished by the aggressor state is to cry-up an allegedly dire threat that Iran might be embarking on a program to obtain nuclear weapons-it might be doing this secretively, and although it has submitted itself to IAEA inspections for the past three years, it has not been 100 percent cooperative with the Agency.9 Combining this with demonization,10 intensive and repeated expressions of indignation and fear, and threats to do something about the intolerable threat, the Washington regime has managed to produce a contrived "crisis," with huge spikes in media attention and supportive expressions of concern and actions by the UN, IAEA, and international community.11 These groups join the aggressor partly to avoid offending it, but also to try to constrain its determination to get its way-but in the process they accept its premises that there is a real threat and hence give at least tacit support to its aggression program, and sometimes more. On the home front, with the acceptance of the seriousness of the manufactured crisis by the mainstream media and Democrats, and with leading politicos like Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh even egging Bush on, the noise creates its own self-fulfilling pressures on the leadership that manufactured the crisis, who now must "do something" about it to avoid political loss.' Lees verder:
http://www.counterpunch.org/herman05112006.html Meer van Edward S. Herman:
http://www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=72 En hier kunt u een artikel lezen van John Pilger die met een citaat van Herman begint: http://just-international.org/article.cfm?newsid=20000858

Martelen 43

De American Civil Liberties Union bericht: 'ACLU Applauds Call to Hold U.S. Accountable for Torture and Abuse. U.N. Committee Against Torture Criticizes U.S. Failure to Comply with Torture Treaty at Home and Abroad.
NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union today welcomed the recommendations of the U.N. Committee Against Torture which called for an end to U.S. policies that condone torture and abuse. The recommendations come at the conclusion of a three-week session during which the U.N. body of 10 independent experts on torture scrutinized a periodic report by the U.S. government and found it sorely lacking. "The message from the torture committee leaves no doubt that the U.S. policies and practices at home and abroad violated bedrock principles against torture and abuse," said Jamil Dakwar, an attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program who was in Geneva monitoring the session. "If America is to regain its status as a beacon of freedom around the world, the U.S. government must take immediate steps to end its policies of abuse and to hold officials and perpetrators accountable." The committee's exceptionally long and comprehensive recommendations are not legally binding, but they place an important moral obligation on the U.S. government, which has committed to complying with the treaty before the nations of the world, the ACLU said. The recommendations include the following:
· Ensure that no one is detained in any secret detention facility;
· Promptly, thoroughly, and impartially investigate any responsibility of senior military and civilian officials authorizing, acquiescing or consenting, in any way, to acts of torture committed by their subordinates.
· Cease to detain any person at Guantánamo Bay and close this detention facility, permit access by the detainees to judicial process or release them as soon as possible, ensuring that they are not returned to any State where they could face a real risk of being tortured;
· Promptly, thoroughly and impartially investigate all allegations of acts of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by law enforcement personnel and bring perpetrators to justice;
· Carefully review execution methods, in particular lethal injection in order to prevent severe pain and suffering;
· Design and implement appropriate measures to prevent all sexual violence, in all its detention centers;
· Not limit the right of victims to bring civil actions and amend the Prison Litigation Reform Act accordingly;
· Address sentences of life imprisonment of children as these could constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; and,
· Ensure that reports of brutality and ill-treatment of members of vulnerable groups by its law enforcement personnel are independently, promptly and thoroughly investigated and that perpetrators are prosecuted and appropriately punished.
The committee also asked the U.S. government, within one year, to provide detailed information on specific issues and recommendations both on the domestic and extraterritorial level.
The ACLU monitored the committee proceedings and provided information about U.S. sponsored policies and practices of torture and abuse at home and abroad. On May 8, the ACLU delivered a petition to John Bellinger, a Department of State legal advisor who headed the U.S. delegation in Geneva, with more than 51,000 signatures calling for the enforcement of the universal prohibition against torture. The U.N. Committee Against Torture is the world's leading human rights body tasked with holding countries accountable for torture and abuse. The committee, which meets twice a year to examine countries' compliance with the treaty, held a session earlier this month to review U.S. compliance with the torture treaty, ratified by the U.S. in 1994. At the beginning of the Geneva session, the ACLU presented the committee with its detailed report, Enduring Abuse: Torture and Cruel Treatment by the United States at Home and Abroad, which documents U.S. failure to comply with the treaty against torture within the U.S. and abroad. In a related matter, yesterday a U.S. District Court said that Khaled El-Masri, a victim of the CIA's policy of kidnapping and rendition, could not pursue his lawsuit against the U.S. government. According to the court, the simple fact of holding proceedings would jeopardize state secrets, a position advanced by the CIA. The ACLU is representing El-Masri.
The ACLU was founded in 1920 and is now the nation's largest civil liberties organization with more than 500,000 members. It is one of the few domestic groups involved in a broad expanse of legal cases and advocacy efforts involving both domestic and extra-territorial abuse.
The ACLU's report to the Committee Against Torture is available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/25354pub20060427.html

Economische Vluchtelingen 2

De onafhankelijke Amerikaanse journalist Chris Floyd schrijft: 'Border Lords: Immigration Plan is Crony Pork Bonanza. My, my, my, isn't this a surprise! It turns out that George W. Bush's "Secure Border Initiative" to "control illegal immigration" is actually just a great big pork trough for his cronies and benefactors in the weapons biz to cash in big-time off the suffering and poverty of dusky foreigners. Now where have we seen that before? The NYT reports that Bush is limbering up the federal checkbook to funnel even more millions to masters of war like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, still feasting sumptuously off the bloated corpse of conquered Iraq. These fine purveyors of contemporary "defense" (who says irony is dead?) will soon string the border with all manner of hugely expensive high-tech gizmonics designed to keep the hemisphere's most desperate and vulnerable people from crossing over to take the slave-wage, no-benefit, no-protection jobs offered to them by, well, Bush's cronies and benefactors in big business and among the wealthy elite (whom he has recently larded with more tax-cut largess). It's a neat scam, really, a win-win situation: your corporate cronies get even more loot from the public treasury – and they still get the cheap Latino labor that keeps them in clover. Because everyone knows that this new Maginot Line won't stop the influx of immigrants: it will just harry the desperate job-seekers a bit -- and no doubt give the "coyote" gangs even more power, as "professional" expertise will be more needed to avoid the new obstacles. And Bush will never make a genuine move against the employers and fat cats whose insatiable demands for profits and luxury are the main instigators and enablers of illegal immigration. Thus desperation and greed will continue their grim dynamic – with politically-stoked racial paranoia thrown into the increasingly volatile mix. But who cares? No matter what happens – if the border explodes in violent conflict and repression, if American politics is even further degraded and coarsened by hate and fearmongering – or if things just muddle along more or less as they are, with the occasional PR stunt to gull the rubes or stoke the base – the Bush Faction's cronies and ruling class comrades will contine to make out like bandits. It's precisely the same situation, the same scam, now operating in Iraq: hundreds of billions of public dollars are being transferred into the private coffers of the Bush Faction and its allies, a gargantuan windfall that will give them the money and power to dominate American society and politics for generations to come.'

Martelen 42

De Washington Post bericht: 'UN: US Should Close Gitmo Facility. Geneva - The United States should close its prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and avoid using secret detention facilities in its war on terror, a U.N. panel report released Friday said. In an 11-page report on its review of US adherence to the Treaty Against Torture, the committee said detainees should not be returned to any state where they could face a "real risk" of being tortured. "The state party should cease to detain any person at Guantanamo Bay and close the detention facility," said the U.N. Committee Against Torture, a panel of 10 independent experts on adherence to the U.N. Convention Against Torture. The United States should also ensure that no one is detained in secret detention facilities under its control and disclose the existence of any such places, the report said. The committee said it was concerned that detainees were being held for protracted periods with insufficient legal safeguards and without judicial assessment of the justification for their detention. The committee was also concerned about allegations that the United States has established secret prisons, where the international Red Cross does not have access to the detainees. "The state party should ensure that no one is detained in any secret detention facility under its de facto effective control," the report said. "The state party should investigate and disclose the existence of any such facilities and the authority under which they have been established and the manner in which detainees are treated." The report also said the United States must "eradicate" all forms of torture committed by its personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq and investigate allegations thoroughly, prosecuting any staff found guilty. "The state party should take immediate measures to eradicate all forms of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by its military or civilian personnel, in any territory under its jurisdiction," said the report, which was presenting its conclusions from a hearing earlier this month into U.S. conduct.' Lees verder:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051900105.html
Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051906Z.shtml

Nederland en Afghanistan 73

De Washington Post bericht: 'Italian Leader Calls Iraq Occupation "Grave Error." Another U.S. ally in the war in Iraq distanced itself from the U.S.- led effort today when Italy's new prime minister, Romano Prodi, called the invasion and occupation a "grave error" and said he would propose a withdrawal of Italian troops. "We consider the war in Iraq and the occupation of the country a grave error," Prodi told the upper house of Parliament, wire services reported. "It has not resolved, but complicated the situation of security." Italy has about 3,000 troops in Iraq in peacekeeping roles. They are already due to be withdrawn in groups before the end of the year. Prodi did not set forth a timetable for withdrawal and it was unclear whether he would speed up the departure. "It is the intention of this government to propose to Parliament the return of our troops from Iraq," Prodi said. Prodi's coalition narrowly defeated that of then-Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in an election last month. Berlusconi had been among President Bush's most ardent European boosters. Bush's best friends from the start of the Iraq war in 2003 are dropping off one after the other. The party of Spain's prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, was ousted in 2004 by voters upset in part by troop deployments in Iraq. The prime minister of Portugal, who stood next to Bush days before the invasion, resigned months later for another job. The leaders of Poland and Ukraine, which had sizable units in Iraq, were both replaced in elections by successors who pulled out some or all troops. Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, often cited by Bush in stump speeches as one of his best friends abroad, plans to step down in September. And even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, mired in Iraq-related controversies, appears poised to resign next year. Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic originally had forces in Iraq but withdrew them. Twenty six countries, including Australia, South Korea, Japan and Britain, remain active in the multi-national force, mostly in relatively small contingents.' Lees verder:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/18/AR2006051800451.html Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051806A.shtml En de New York Times bericht: 'Afghanistan Bomb Kills American and Wounds 2ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 18 — An American counternarcotics official was killed and two other Americans were wounded in a suicide bombing on Thursday in western Afghanistan, while heavy fighting between forces suspected of being Taliban insurgents and the Afghan police continued in two southern provinces, officials said. The violence occurred amid increasing reports of many militants moving around rural areas. The fighting killed 13 police officers and possibly dozens of insurgents, officials said.' Lees verder:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/world/asia/19afghan.html?n=Top%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fAfghanistan

De Pro Israel Lobby 8

De Britse Midden-Oosten correpondent van de Independent, Robert Fisk, schrijft: 'United States of Israel? When two of America's most distinguished academics dared to suggest that US foreign policy was being driven by a powerful 'Israel Lobby' whose influence was incompatible with their nation's own interests, they knew they would face allegations of anti-Semitism. But the episode has prompted America's Jewish liberals to confront their own complacency. Might the tide be turning? -- - Stephen Walt towers over me as we walk in the Harvard sunshine past Eliot Street, a big man who needs to be big right now (he's one of two authors of an academic paper on the influence of America's Jewish lobby) but whose fame, or notoriety, depending on your point of view, is of no interest to him. "John and I have deliberately avoided the television shows because we don't think we can discuss these important issues in 10 minutes. It would become 'J' and 'S', the personalities who wrote about the lobby - and we want to open the way to serious discussion about this, to encourage a broader discussion of the forces shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East.""John" is John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. Walt is a 50-year-old tenured professor at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The two men have caused one of the most extraordinary political storms over the Middle East in recent American history by stating what to many non-Americans is obvious: that the US has been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of Israel, that Israel is a liability in the "war on terror", that the biggest Israeli lobby group, Aipac (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), is in fact the agent of a foreign government and has a stranglehold on Congress - so much so that US policy towards Israel is not debated there - and that the lobby monitors and condemns academics who are critical of Israel."Anyone who criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy," the authors have written, "...stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism ... Anti-Semitism is something no-one wants to be accused of." This is strong stuff in a country where - to quote the late Edward Said - the "last taboo" (now that anyone can talk about blacks, gays and lesbians) is any serious discussion of America's relationship with Israel.Walt is already the author of an elegantly written account of the resistance to US world political dominance, a work that includes more than 50 pages of references. Indeed, those who have read his Taming Political Power: The Global Response to US Primacy will note that the Israeli lobby gets a thumping in this earlier volume because Aipac "has repeatedly targeted members of Congress whom it deemed insufficiently friendly to Israel and helped drive them from office, often by channelling money to their opponents."But how many people in America are putting their own heads above the parapet, now that Mearsheimer and Walt have launched a missile that would fall to the ground unexploded in any other country but which is detonating here at high speed? Not a lot. For a while, the mainstream US press and television - as pro-Israeli, biased and gutless as the two academics infer them to be - did not know whether to report on their conclusions (originally written for The Atlantic Monthly, whose editors apparently took fright, and subsequently reprinted in the London Review of Books in slightly truncated form) or to remain submissively silent. The New York Times, for example, only got round to covering the affair in depth well over two weeks after the report's publication, and then buried its article in the education section on page 19. The academic essay, according to the paper's headline, had created a "debate" about the lobby's influence.They can say that again. Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the UN, who now heads an Israeli lobby group, kicked off by unwittingly proving that the Mearsheimer-Walt theory of "anti-Semitism" abuse is correct. "I believe," he said, "that anti-Semitism may be partly defined as asserting a Jewish conspiracy for doing the same thing non-Jews engage in." Congressman Eliot Engel of New York said that the study itself was "anti-Semitic" and deserved the American public's contempt. Lees verder: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12865.htm

Hirsi Ali 16

Paul Jan Petersen uit Enschede wees mij op een oud bericht uit de Leewarder Courant betreffende de oud-wethouder van Borculo en huidige VVD minister van Defensie Henk Kamp en partijgenoot van Hirsi Magan: 'Media: VVD: asielbeleid van Verdonk nog harder. LEEUWARDEN - De VVD Friesland vindt dat het asielbeleid van minister Rita Verdonk nog wel kan worden aangescherpt. Opmerkingen in die richting van minister van defensie Henk Kamp gisteravond in Leeuwarden werden met applaus begroet. "Wij zijn in Nederland veel te slap geweest op asielgebied. Zijn we nu te hard? Ik vind van niet en ik spoor Verdonk geregeld aan wat harder te zijn.''Kamp deed zijn uitspraken tijdens de ledenvergadering van de Friese liberalen in het Oranje Hotel. Hij reageerde op een oproep van Karen Vasbinder, voorzitter van de VVD in Leeu warden. Zij noemde het beleid van Verdonk "keihard, bedoeld om af te schrikken. Ik denk dat op termijn een wat socialer beleid gewenst is.'' Dat pleidooi wuifde Kamp weg. "Ik vind helemaal niet dat wij hard zijn. De problemen die wij nu hebben zijn het gevolg van een veel te soepel beleid uit de jaren tachtig en negentig. Toen hebben we grote groepen kansarme allochtonen het land binnen laten komen. Met een uitkering, huursubsidie en gratis gezondheidszorg hadden die zo'n pakket aan inkomensbestanddelen, dat zij net zo veel ontvingen als iemand die tegen het minimumloon de hele dag hard moest werken.'' Ook nu is Nederland nog te ruimhartig, vindt Kamp. "De grootste groepen nieuwe asielzoekers komen uit Irak en Afghanistan. Waarom? In Irak zijn verkiezingen gehouden en er zijn nog wel veiligheidsproblemen, maar dat is volgens mij geen reden voor asiel. En hetzelfde geldt voor Afghanistan. Daar werkt de internationale gemeenschap hard aan de opbouw van het land. Mensen hier opvangen hoeft helemaal niet.'' De minister van defensie prees de "zeer belangrijke bijdrage'' die vier F-16's van de Leeuwarder vliegbasis vanaf juli gaan leveren aan de commandotroepen in Afghanistan. Gisteren vertrokken de 'special forces' voor hun missie in het land, waar zij op zoek gaan naar terroristen. De F-16's moeten de militairen vanuit de lucht beschermen. Bron: Leeuwarder Courant, 19 april 2005.' Zie: http://www.vluchtelingenwerkfriesland.nl/vvf/nieuws/bericht/1865

Femke Halsema

Ik heb net dit verzoek gedaan aan Femke Halsema van Groen Links: 'Geachte mevrouw HalsemaVoor zover ik weet heeft u nog geen spoeddebat aangevraagd voor het Iraakse gezin Naif, terwijl u wel onmiddellijk in actie kwam in het geval van Hirsi Magan. Zie: http://www.trouw.nl/hetnieuws/nederland … 6rsquo%3B. Toch zijn beide zaken volgens prof. mr. H.U.Jessurun d’Oliveira, oud-hoogleraar migratierecht aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam nagenoeg identiek. Bovendien stelt Ulli d’Oliveira in de Volkskrant: ‘Het is… onverdedigbaar om blindelings en zonder enige afweging, buiten de gesloten wettelijke regeling van verliesgronden om, vast te houden aan het idee dat de naturalisatie niet tot stand gekomen is als er sprake is van een valse naam of geboortedatum.’ Terwijl Hirsi Magan volgens de Bush-regering ‘meer dan welkom is in de Verenigde Staten’ om daar de gelederen van de neoconservatieven te versterken, (en die volgens een mij bekende journalist van de New York Times al lang geleden in 2005 in de VS begon te solliciteren), staat dit acht leden tellende gezin er in politiek opzicht alleen voor. In Trouw verklaart hun advocaat: ‘Daarna kwam een nieuwe brief, eenzelfde als Hirsi Ali afgelopen maandagavond kreeg: het Nederlanderschap is nooit toegekend. „Ze zijn op een naïeve manier ontzettend voor de bijl gegaan", zegt hun advocaat Frits Koers. Het gezin heeft met behulp van Koers de beslissing van de IND aangevochten, tot aan de Hoge Raad toe. Tevergeefs. Koers hoopt dat wanneer Hirsi Ali toch Nederlandse kan blijven of weer kan worden, dit gevolgen heeft voor de Naifs. „Als de leugens van Hirsi Ali geen consequenties hebben, dan moet er ook naar mijn cliënten worden gekeken." „Waarom is er voor mevrouw Hirsi Ali wel ruimte in de wet, en voor ons niet?", vraagt Achmed zich af. „Is dat omdat ze een bekend politica is? Zij gaat naar het beste land ter wereld, en wij straks naar het slechtste. Alleen omdat niemand ons kent."’ En dit het punt waar het om draait. Deze mensen die in tegenstelling tot Hirsi Magan geen politici zijn lijken door u en andere politici aan hun lot te worden overgelaten. Om nu de schijn te vermijden dat politici van mening zijn dat ze onmisbaarder zijn dan de rest van de mensheid en boven de wet staan, zou het u sieren als u die opvatting weerlegt door een spoeddebat aan te vragen Het heeft iets buitengewoon wrangs wanneer u wel optreedt voor een rechtse politica die na de uitzending van Zembla tegenover NOVA verklaarde dat ze achter het standpunt van haar partij blijft staan dat de grenzen hermetisch gesloten moeten blijven, want 'ik deel de opvatting dat de integratie niet zal slagen als de emigratie niet wordt beperkt. Ik deel die opvatting omdat er een grens zit aan hoeveel migranten een welvaartstaat kan absorberen en tegelijkertijd een welvaartstaat blijven,' en u niet voor een Iraaks gezin opkomt. Zie: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2006/ … ali-5.html Er speelt nog een argument, de leden van dit gezin bestaande uit moeder, vader en zes kinderen zijn in tegenstelling tot Hirsi Magan wel degelijk politieke vluchtelingen.In afwachting van uw antwoord,
Hoogachtend,
Stan van Houcke'

En nu afwachten. Zie: http://www.linkselente.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=3525#p3525

Economische Vluchtelingen

Hirsi Magan komt net op tijd om de gelederen van extreem rechts in de Verenigde Staten te versterken nu gekleurde economische vluchtelingen, zoals zijzelf eens was, door de neocons bedreigd worden. Progreso Weekly bericht: 'Once More Immigration: Bush Bows to Xenophobia. Caught between the rock of economic and demographic reality (demand for immigrant labor, the aging of the U.S. population, a sharp increase in Latino voters) and the hard place of widespread xenophobia in the Republican Party, George W. Bush showed his hand. Torn between selling his party to the growing Latino electorate and responding to fierce anti-immigration sentiment among hard core Republicans, Bush made his choice: He went with the immigration hardliners. Deploying thousands of National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border sends a clear message to the Minutemen and their brethren. It is a demagogic, desperate message sent by a President whose popularity is sinking like a rock. The latest polls show fewer than one in three Americans approve of Bush's job performance. Most disturbing to Republicans who fear losing control of Congress in the November election is the political erosion that polls have indicated is taking place among rank-and-file right-wingers. This is the sector that has remained most loyal to the Republican Party, ensuring victory in many close elections. The President's action in sending the National Guard to the Mexican border is designed to placate anti-immigration forces and to shore up the last bastions of support for George W. Bush, namely the most reactionary, racist sector of the GOP. Lately, this faction threatens to desert the Republicans because of frustration over the President's unwillingness to adopt a draconian policy to "stop illegal immigration" and "secure the border." The rhetoric of securing the border comes wrapped in the flag of national security and represents the latest instance of the right's manipulation of 9-11. As usual with the Bush administration, the facts don't support the policy, which is based on pure ideology. In an excellent piece, Washington Post columnist Peter Beinart ("The Wrong Place to Stop Terrorists,' May 4, 2006) lays out the real story: Using newspaper reports and government documents, Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke of the Nixon Center have painstakingly compiled a database of 373 known or suspected terrorists in North America or Western Europe since 1993. In a forthcoming essay in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence, they disclose their findings: Not one terrorist has entered the United States from Mexico. And they're not the only ones who have reached that conclusion. As a recent paper published by Syracuse University's Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism notes, "it does not appear that authorities have apprehended even a single terrorist trying to cross over the southern border into the United States." In contrast, as Beinert notes, Leiken and Brooke identified three terrorists who crossed into the United States through the Canadian border, including one who planned to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. That is not surprising given that Islamic fundamentalists are much more numerous north of the border than south of the Rio Grande. Why is Bush not deploying the National Guard to the Canadian border? The answer is that national security, like weapons of mass destruction, is a bogus justification for a policy undertaken for other reasons, in this case the need to placate lots of Republicans who are upset about the brown hordes invading the country.' Lees verder:
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Max_Castro&otherweek=1147928400 Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051806M.shtml

Irak 77

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous internet sites, including Tomdispatch, Asia Times, Mother Jones, and ZNet; and in print in Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo).
In TomDispatch schrijft hij: 'How the Bush Administration Deconstructed Iraq. Media coverage of the Iraq War has generally portrayed the current quagmire as the result of an American failure to achieve a set of otherwise admirable goals: suppressing the insurgency that is intimidating the Iraqi people and sabotaging the economy; stopping the destructive ethno-religious violence that has become a major source of civilian casualties; building an Iraqi army that can establish and sustain law and order; rebuilding electrical and sewage systems and the rest of the country's damaged infrastructure; ramping up oil production to place Iraq on a positive economic trajectory; eliminating the element that has made crime in the streets a prevalent and profitable occupation; and nurturing an elected parliament that can effectively rule. U.S. failure, then, resides in its inability to halt and reverse the destructive forces within Iraqi society. This rather comfortable portrait of the U.S. as a bumbling, even thoroughly incompetent giant overwhelmed by unexpected forces tearing Iraqi society apart is strikingly inaccurate: Most of the death, destruction, and disorganization in the country has, at least in its origins, been a direct consequence of U.S. efforts to forcibly institute an economic and social revolution, while using overwhelming force to suppress resistance to this project. Certainly, the insurgency, the ethno-religious jihadists, and the criminal gangs have all contributed to the descent of Iraqi cities and towns into chaos, but their roles have been secondary and in many cases reactive. The engine of deconstruction was - and remains - the U.S.-led occupation.
Repairing the Oil Pipeline at Al Fatah
Once in a while, we get a glimpse of this unreported reality. On April 25, James Glanz of the New York Times offered a neat window into the ugliness of U.S. culpability. He told the story of an American effort to repair an inoperative oil pipeline in Al Fatah, a village about 130 miles north of Baghdad. The pipeline had been damaged early in the war by an American air attack on a bridge across the Tigris River over which it traveled. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003, plans were activated to repair the bridge and reestablish the pipeline. Original estimates indicated that "it would cost some $5 million and take less than five months to string the pipelines across the bridge once it was repaired." Initially, $75.7 million was allocated for the repair job. Work began almost immediately, because the American occupation authorities were anxious to acquire the $5 million a day in oil revenues that a reconnected pipeline promised. Just as immediately, problems began to arise - first and foremost from the decision of occupation officials not to repair the bridge. As a result, KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary in charge of the project, was forced to seek a new pipeline route across the Tigris. To handle this unexpected problem, the entire $75 million budget - originally designated for both bridge and pipeline repair - was reallocated to the pipeline project alone. Nevertheless, when Robert Sanders of the Army Corps of Engineers arrived to inspect the work eight months later in July of 2004, it was already two months past its projected completion date. What Sanders found that day, according to Glanz, "looked like some gargantuan heart-bypass operation gone nightmarishly bad. A crew had bulldozed a 300-foot-long trench along[side] a giant drill bit in a desperate attempt to yank it loose from the riverbed." A supervisor later told Sanders that they knew this was impossible, but "had been instructed by the company in charge of the project to continue anyway." The denouement came soon enough: "After the project had burned up all of the $75.7 million allocated to it, the work came to a halt." Sanders issued a scathing report detailing what he called "culpable negligence" on the part of KBR. But his report had only the most modest impact. Though KBR was deprived of its bonus fees for the project by the Army Corps of Engineers, nothing was done to recover the wasted millions, or to force the company to complete the project.
Four important points emerge from this story:
First, the oil pipeline was damaged and the bridge destroyed by U.S. forces. The attack was ordered on April 3, 2003 by General T. Michael Moseley "to stop the enemy from crossing the bridge." This was typical of the infrastructural damage caused by the U.S. in Iraq. During the initial battles of the invasion, and then during sweeps against the Iraqi resistance after the occupation had begun, American forces destroyed or damaged roads, bridges, electrical transmission and oil facilities, sewage lines and water treatment plants, commercial and industrial structures, even mosques and hospitals. While the resistance also targets such structures, particularly oil pipelines and electrical transmission lines, its destructive powers have been relatively modest compared to what American airpower can accomplish with 500 and 2000 pound bombs.' Lees verder:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=84463 Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051806K.shtml

Amerikaanse Oorlogsmisdaden 4

MSNBC bericht: 'Lawmaker: Marines Killed Iraqis "In Cold Blood." Navy conducting war crimes probe into November violence in Haditha. Washington - A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday. From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children. One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. "The Americans came into the room where my father was praying," she said, "and shot him." On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true. Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right. A videotape taken by an Iraqi showed the aftermath of the alleged attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls. The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after town residents told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes on Nov. 19 and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.
On Nov. 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that on the previous day a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed eight insurgents, he said. U.S. military officials later confirmed that the version of events was wrong. Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn't been completed. One military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately killed.' Lees verder:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12838343/ Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051806J.shtm l

Nederland en Afghanistan 72

De Independent bericht: 'Western projects are bleeding Afghanistan dry, says minister.
Samihullah is just the kind of returned refugee his country needs. Aged 30, with a wife and two children, he was well educated in the camps across the border in Pakistan. After the Taliban were pushed out in 2001, he returned home and joined the Afghan Ministry of Education, where he helped to rebuild the higher-education sector. But not any more. I found him working as a security guard at the UN's World Food Programme headquarters in Kabul. With allowances he earns a total of $270 a month there, compared with $50 at the Afghan higher education. The decision to move jobs was not a hard one. But it is the international system that is sucking Afghanistan dry. Any returnee who speaks English can be guaranteed a job at a higher level in the UN, or the myriad big NGOs that have set up shop in Kabul. Ashraf Ghani, who was Finance Minister in the first year after the Taliban fell, and is now chancellor of Kabul University, says the international community has failed Afghanistan. Rather than build up the government, it has created a parallel system that has actively weakened the capacity of Afghanistan to run its own affairs.' Lees verder: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article485894.ece

Hirsi Ali 15

Nu.NL bericht: 'Tientallen vreemdelingen in vrachtwagen Hoek van Holland. HOEK VAN HOLLAND - De marechaussee heeft woensdagavond in Hoek van Holland 27 vreemdelingen aangetroffen die zich hadden verscholen in een vrachtwagen. Dat maakte het ministerie van Defensie, waar de marechaussee onder valt, donderdag bekend. De marechaussee trof de vreemdelingen aan tijdens een reguliere controle. Ze zaten verstopt achter pallets met tomaten. De truckchauffeur, een 42-jarige man uit Spijkenisse, was van plan de veerboot naar Engeland te nemen. Hij is aangehouden en wordt verdacht van mensensmokkel.' Lees verder:
http://www.nu.nl/news.jsp?n=734771&c=11&rss Uit de bijgaande foto maak ik op dat dit onderzoek naar economische vluchtelingen uitgevoerd werd door zwaar bewapende manschappen van de Koninklijke Marechaussee. Hoe anders is de behandeling van Hirsi Magan, het voormalige VVD Kamerlid dat de gelederen gaat versterken van de neoconservatieven rondom Bush en die op dit moment een campagne voeren om de miljoenen economische vluchtelingen uit de Verenigde Staten te deporteren. Wat dat betreft is het niet verwonderlijk dat ze voor de neocons gaat werken. Op de avond van de Zembla-uitzending verklaarde ze tegen NOVA achter het standpunt van haar partij te staan dat de grenzen hermetisch gesloten blijven, want 'ik deel de opvatting dat de integratie niet zal slagen als de emigratie niet wordt beperkt. Ik deel die opvatting omdat er een grens zit aan hoeveel migranten een welvaartstaat kan absorberen en tegelijkertijd een welvaartstaat blijven,' aldus de neoliberale volksvertegenwoordiger die zelf loog om van de welvaartstaat te kunnen 'profiteren,' om in het jargon van haar achterban te blijven. Ook toen zat er kennelijk 'een grens... aan hoeveel migranten een welvaartstaat kan absorberen,' maar daar trok Hirsi Magan zich destijds niets van aan. Als opportuniste waait ze met elke wind mee. Daarom is het ook niet verwonderlijk dat ze nu de linkse advocate Britta Bohler heeft ingehuurd om te voorkomen dat ze haar Nederlanderschap verliest. Bohler behoort tot de kring van advocaten die zich inzetten voor vluchtelingen die door het beleid van onder andere de partij van Hirsi Magan zonder enig mededogen uit ons land worden gezet. Zie: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2006/05/hirsi-ali-5.html Gezien de verwarring van de afgelopen jaren in Nederland is het zelfs niet verwonderlijk dat de Hirsi Ali affaire zoveel opwinding veroorzaakt.

Hirsi Ali 14

Trouw bericht: '"Hirsi Ali gered, dan wij ook." Terwijl de politiek zich druk maakt om het paspoort van Hirsi Ali, wacht het Iraakse gezin Naif gelaten op zijn uitzetting. Maar er is hoop.
De Hoge Raad oordeelde in november vorig jaar dat de naturalisatie van het gezin ongeldig is. Deze uitspraak gaf minister Verdonk (vreemdelingenzaken) de basis voor haar standpunt dat ook de naturalisatie van Hirsi Ali geen effect gehad heeft. Bij de aanvraag van zowel hun verblijfsvergunning als naturalisatie, gaf het gezin Naif destijds verkeerde gegevens op. „Het was geen kwade wil”, betoogt Achmed Naif (40), „we wilden onze familie in Irak beschermen.” Achmed zegt dat ze moesten vluchten voor Koerdische rebellen. De Hoge Raad bepaalde dat het besluit waarmee aan Achmed en zijn gezin het Nederlanderschap was verleend, geen rechtsgevolg kon hebben omdat hun ware naam niet in het besluit vermeld was. Niet zij, maar niet bestaande mensen waren genaturaliseerd, aldus de Raad. Achmed woont nu met zijn vrouw en zes kinderen in een klein plaatsje bij Doetinchem. In tegenstelling tot Hirsi Ali is er geen verblijfsstatus waar het gezin op kan terugvallen. Hun tijdelijke vergunning kwam te vervallen toen ze in 1997 werden genaturaliseerd. Daardoor werden ze illegaal. Na de uitspraak van de Hoge Raad kwam alles tot stilstand, vertelt Achmed. „We hebben nu geen papieren meer. Mijn kinderen mogen niet werken, krijgen geen uitkering. Eigenlijk wachten we op de laatste brief van de IND.” Het Iraakse gezin ondervond tijdens de procedures in de jaren negentig nauwelijks problemen, ondanks leugens over namen en geboortedata. Bij binnenkomst in 1992 noemden ze zich ’Zakholi’. „De naam van de vader van mijn moeder”, zegt Achmed. Een jaar later volgde de vergunning en in 1997 de naturalisatie. Achmed: „We hoefden slechts enkele papieren te ondertekenen, en klaar. Probleemloos.” Het gezin schoot zichzelf in de voet door in 1999 zelf om een wijziging van hun gegevens te vragen. Het gezin wilde graag de echte naam dragen en daarbij was het gevaar voor hun familie in Irak geweken. „Een advocaat in Doetinchem verzekerde ons dat het verzoek geen problemen zou opleveren.” Het gezin ontving vervolgens een brief van de IND. „Ze wilden met ons praten.” Daarna kwam een nieuwe brief, eenzelfde als Hirsi Ali afgelopen maandagavond kreeg: het Nederlanderschap is nooit toegekend. „Ze zijn op een naïeve manier ontzettend voor de bijl gegaan”, zegt hun advocaat Frits Koers. Het gezin heeft met behulp van Koers de beslissing van de IND aangevochten, tot aan de Hoge Raad toe. Tevergeefs. Koers hoopt dat wanneer Hirsi Ali toch Nederlandse kan blijven of weer kan worden, dit gevolgen heeft voor de Naifs. „Als de leugens van Hirsi Ali geen consequenties hebben, dan moet er ook naar mijn cliënten worden gekeken.” „Waarom is er voor mevrouw Hirsi Ali wel ruimte in de wet, en voor ons niet?”, vraagt Achmed zich af. „Is dat omdat ze een bekend politica is? Zij gaat naar het beste land ter wereld, en wij straks naar het slechtste. Alleen omdat niemand ons kent.”' Zie:
http://www.trouw.nl/hetnieuws/nederland/
article320927.ece/%26rsquo%3BHirsi+Ali+gered%2C+dan+wij+ook%26rsquo%3B
En nu opletten of linkse Kamerleden als Femke Halsema voor dit gezin opkomen en natuurlijk of de VVD-ster Hirsi Magan zelf publiekelijk voor dit onfortuinlijk gezin zal pleiten. Andere rechtse politici hoeven we het niet te vragen, want die zijn net als Hirsi Magan voor het sluiten van de grenzen. Die willen op Hirsi Magan na geen economische asielzoekers. Zie: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2006/05/hirsi-ali-5.html

Honger in de Wereld 2

Al die opwinding, al die aandacht voor iemand die de grenzen wil sluiten voor de armen en wanhopigen. Iemand uit een werelddeel waar kinderen van honger sterven. Maar stervende kinderen zijn allang geen nieuws meer. De Amerikaanse journalist Norman Solomon schrijft: ' Corporate Media and Advocacy Journalism. We see this kind of news story now and again. Sometimes we try to imagine the people behind the numbers, the human realities underneath the surface abstractions. But overall, the responses testify to journalism’s failings -- and our own. “Poor nutrition contributes to the deaths of some 5.6 million children every year,” an Associated Press dispatch said early this month, citing new data from the U.N. Children’s Fund. And: “In its report, UNICEF said one of every four children under age 5, including 146 million children in the developing world, is underweight.” The future is bleak for many children who will be born in the next decade. As AP noted, “the world has fallen far short in efforts to reduce hunger by half before 2015.” Reading this news over a more-than-ample breakfast, I thought about the limitations of journalistic work that is often done with the best of intentions. Try as they might, reporters and editors don’t often go beyond the professional groove of the media workplace. Journalists routinely function as cogs in media machinery that processes tragedy as just another news commodity. Many people are troubled by the patterns of negative events around the world. And hunger is especially disturbing; in an era of prodigious affluence for some, the absence of basic nutrition for huge numbers of human beings is a basic moral obscenity. Across the spectrums of culture, faith and ideologies -- whether remedies might seem to lie in religious charity or governmental action -- heartfelt desire to reduce suffering is very common. News outlets are adept at producing vivid stories about misfortune. Those stories might be emotionally affecting or even politically mobilizing in terms of relief efforts. But the overarching matter of priorities is not apt to come into media focus. In general, corporate-employed journalists are not much more inclined to hammer at the skewed character of national and global priorities than corporate chieftains or government officials are. In a world where so much wealth and so much poverty coexist, the maintenance of a rough status quo depends on a sense of propriety that borders on -- and even intersects with -- moral if not legal criminality. The institutional realities of power may numb us to our own personal sense of the distinction between what is just and what is just not acceptable.' Lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0516-35.htm

Hirsi Ali 13

Ooit schreef de grote Huizinga hoe in een klein burgerlijk land als Nederland 'hypocrisie en farizeisme... individu en gemeenschap [belagen],' en hoe het gezag er behept is met 'een lichte graad van knoeierij of bevoorrechting van vriendjes.' De hysterische reacties op de Hirsi Magan affaire van zowel politiek links als rechts en het opgewonden toontje van de fabrikanten van de publieke opinie bewijzen dit opnieuw, ze zijn tekenend voor het provincialisme van Nederland. Trouw schreef dat Hirsi Magan een maatje te groot is voor Nederland. Dat is maar half waar. De hele wereld is een maatje te groot voor Nederland. Dat is vanaf de achttiende eeuw altijd al zo geweest. Het liefst trekt Nederland zich achter zijn dijken en grenzen terug om met elkaar het gezellige polderspel te spelen. Doe maar normaal dan doe je al gek genoeg, ons kent ons en met wat collaboratie en gesjoemel gaan we het leven door. Het buitenland is veel te groot en te bedreigend. Een paar jaar geleden merkte ik dit weer eens toen in het kader van de bezuinigingen in Hilversum vooral de buitenlandprogramma's eraan gingen. Wat moesten de Nederlanders met al dat buitenland? Je merkt het ook aan de kranten. Uit betrouwbare bron weet ik hoe bij de landelijke dagbladen op correpondenten is bezuinigd. Het is niet vreemd dat veel Nederlanders geschokt zijn zodra ze met de grote mensen wereld geconfronteerd worden. Gisteren schreef de oud NRC correpondent in Washington Marc Chavannes in een opgewonden stuk in NRC.Next: 'Als het waar is dat Hirsi Ali asiel krijgt bij het American Enterprise Institute is haar tragedie nog niet voltooid. AEI is niet zomaar een conservatieve denktank in Washington, het is de broedplaats van Amerika's autistische Midden-Oosten-politiek - op dit pressiekantoor riepen dubieuze activisten als Richard Perle, Ruel Marc Gerecht en Michael Ledeen dat de Irakezen juichend langs de straat in Bagdag zouden staan. AEI heeft geld, maar van te veel tegenspraak dreigt Hirsi Ali te emigreren naar kritiekarme jubel.' Als ik hem goed heb begrepen beschuldigt Chavannes Nederland ervan [ 'Schande voor Nederland dat ze moet vertrekken'] dat Hirsi Magan bij een conservatieve Amerikaanse denktank terecht is gekomen temidden van autistische figuren als Perle etcetera. Ook dat is nonsense. De contraproductieve wijze waarop Magan de Islam aanviel is een schoolvoorbeeld van haar politiek autisme. En dat ze bij een neoconservatief en soms extremistisch bolwerk is terecht gekomen is een voorlopig natuurlijke stap in haar carriere. Ze zal zich er als een vis in het water voelen, zolang ze de rol van diva kan blijven spelen. De gedachte dat ze hier verdreven is, is absurd. Ze was al langer bezig in de VS te solliciteren. Waarom zou ze Nederland als eindstation zien? Omdat veel Nederlanders zo tevreden met hun land zijn? Hirsi Magan is een opportuniste, zo heeft ze als Derde Wereld bewoonster weten te overleven. Dit is geen verwijt, maar een constatering. Mensen die in een hopenloze, uitzichtloze situatie leven zijn gedwongen praktisch te denken. Alleen wereldvreemde provincialen in een welvaartstaat, die zich talloze illusies kunnen permitteren, willen en denken dat ze een heilige is. Die horen niets liever dan haar lofzang op hun voortreffelijkheid, de grootsheid van hun cultuur en de verwerpelijkheid van de islamitische beschaving. Zo projecteren ze van alles en nog wat in de wereld die ze niet kennen. En zo wordt een rechtse opportuniste die de grenzen wil sluiten voor mensen zoals zijzelf een 'icoon van de vrijheid van meningsuiting' en de strijd tegen het vlees geworden kwaad. Soms doen haar aanhangers me denken aan de volgelingen van Jomanda, ze zijn helemaal in haar. De fans willen geen kwaad woord horen over hun aanbeden heldin. Zonder Hirsi Magan zullen haar volgelingen nu alleen door het leven moeten. Mogen de goden hen beschermen.

Iran 47

Het Britse dagblad The Herald bericht: 'US spells out plan to bomb.-- -- THE US is updating contingency plans for a non-nuclear strike to cripple Iran's atomic weapon programme if international diplomacy fails, Pentagon sources have confirmed. Strategists are understood to have presented two options for pinpoint strikes using B2 bombers flying directly from bases in Missouri, Guam in the Pacific and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. RAF Fairford in Gloucester also has facilities for B2s but this has been ruled out because of the UK's opposition to military action against Tehran. The main plan calls for a rolling, five-day bombing campaign against 400 key targets in Iran, including 24 nuclear-related sites, 14 military airfields and radar installations, and Revolutionary Guard headquarters. At least 75 targets in underground complexes would be attacked with waves of bunker-buster bombs. Iranian radar networks and air defence bases would be struck by submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and then kept out of action by carrier aircraft flying from warships in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.
The alternative to an all-out campaign is a demonstration strike against one or two high-profile targets such as the Natanz uranium enrichment facility or the hexafluoride gas plant at Isfahan.
UK sources say contingency plans have also been drawn up to cope with the inevitable backlash against the Basra garrison in neighbouring Iraq.' Zie:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/62043.html

Iran 46

En terwijl de Nederlandse politiek zich opwindt over een tamelijk onbenullige affaire voltrekt zich elders het wereldnieuws. Infowars bericht: 'Iranian Oil Bourse Opens for Business: A Final Step Toward US Dollar Collapse & Preemptive Nuclear Strike. The impending opening of the Iranian International Oil Bourse (IOB), set to commence trading next week on the island nation of Kish, strongly increases the chances of an imminent nuclear American-Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear and financial facilities. The electronic oil bourse, much discussed by terrorism expert Webster Tarpley, appears ready to launch in the coming weeks or even days. Because it will offer oil in euros, it may trigger the rapid collapse of the U.S. dollar. Over the past four days, the Western media has finally ended their blackout and acknowledged the possibility of an imminent dollar collapse, as gold reaches nearly $700 an ounce. On Friday, May 5, the Associated Press covered the oil bourse with their article “Iran wants oil market in Euros.” The article warns of a rapid decline in the dollar while feebly attempting to minimize the importance of the oil bourse. Nevertheless, the AP quotes a top Wall Street analyst who gives a far more realistic assessment: “But if one day the world's largest oil producers allowed, or worse demanded, euros for their barrels, ‘it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike,’ said A.G. Edwards commodities analyst Bill O'Grady. ‘If OPEC decided they didn't want dollars anymore,’ he added, ‘it would signal an end of American hegemony by signaling an end to the dollar as the sole reserve currency status.’ Incredibly, some neocon warmongers are now openly calling for a strike on Iran because of the bourse. On May 8, Bush apologist Jerome Corsi penned an editorial entitled “Iran Signs It’s Own Death Warrant.” Corsi is the same GOP hack who helped sponsor the Swift Boat ads & wrote Unfit for Command during the staged 2004 presidential election. In his article he admits a major reason for the US invasion of Iraq was the oil-for-euros policy of Saddam Hussein, and warns of China’s interest in the oil bourse.' Lees verder: http://www.infowars.com/articles/
economy/iranian_oil_bourse_opens_for_business.htm

Ondertussen meldt in de Financial Sense de onafhankelijke Amerikaanse journalist Christopher Laird, specialist op economisch gebied: 'One of the first articles I wrote for Gold-Eagle was Mexican Stand-off. In it, I outlined the likelihood that foreign governments and institutional investors everywhere would reach a point of fleeing the US dollar. We may be looking at this situation quite soon. The way it would happen would be that, many holders of large USD positions would be facing each other, waiting to see who pulls the trigger on the USD. Then all would fire at once, blasting each other with their USD asset sales, trying to salvage what remained of the real value of their US treasuries, US stocks, US bonds. I surmised that, with the super fast electronic markets we have now, that, the USD could collapse in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. The idea that circuit breakers would stop this baby would probably fail because either the markets would just overrun them, or ‘bum rush’ them, or, there would be a week of limit down days, followed by another week of limit down days. End result? Possibly a complete or almost complete USD crash. In such a scenario, I surmise that only paid off real assets will survive. At the inception of such a collapse, gold and other precious metals would become essentially unavailable, and off market. The USD would crash so fast that no one would take any amount of dollars for metal until either the USD stabilized at some much lower rate, or, disintegrated into oblivion. If you own a paid off house, a paid off car, a few hundred ounces of gold and silver, they are all paid off, and are not USD assets. In these positions, you are insulated from a USD collapse, at least as far as these paid off assets are concerned. In my writing career, I have had a very great battle with the paper world because I do not like ANY paper asset associated with a USD value. It is my view, that all paper assets would be creamed somehow, and even possibly gold stocks in US markets, and that any massive collapse of the USD would take down every investment vehicle because of the incredible penetration of the USD into all markets here and abroad. If you have USD financial accounts that skyrocket 100 times in value, what good would that be if you could not buy anything with all those dollars????
Practically everything that is real is priced now in US dollars in their respective bourses.
Oil is traded daily in US dollars. Gold is priced preeminently in US dollars. Most foreign trade that has any presence in the US is priced in US dollars, and if there are other prices abroad, it is only as a secondary price level to the US pricing in USD because the US is such a huge component of those companies sales. The US comprises about 25% of total world GDP. If there was a serious USD collapse, on the order of 50% or more in a year, the US economy would see massive inflation, oil would sky rocket, the stock and bond markets would collapse. Prices of everything would at least double. The US GDP would effectively be cut in half, both due to a collapsing US consumer, the inflation effects on net GDP, great losses in all US markets, the very great oil price multiplier making the price of oil double, and rippling through the US economy, and instead of being a twice as large tax on production, would compound through the many layers of production to consumer. Oil price increases reduce the standard of living far beyond just the immediate price increases seen from the refiners.' Lees verder:
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/laird/2006/0426.html

Olie

Le Monde bericht: 'Pipeline Diplomacy. Forget about Iraq: This watchword tacitly in force at the heart of the transatlantic establishment today allows the West to put up a united front opposite the many crises it must confront, of which Iran is the top-ranking star against a background of global energy insecurity. "Today, pipelines have become as sexy as missiles," an American expert recently remarked at the Brussels Forum, a conference organized in the European capital by the German Marshall Fund, an American foundation devoted to strengthening transatlantic ties. "The problem is that you don't gallivant pipelines around the world like aircraft carriers."
For the backdrop to all the areas of tension that worry transatlantic leaders - whether it be Iran, Islamist terrorism, or Russia and its progression - is the energy crisis. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso cites energy as one of the three great transatlantic challenges: the others are trade and promoting democracy. With a price above $70 a barrel, "elevated oil prices are here to stay," and "energy is crucial for our long-term stability," he observes. Europe and the United States alone consume 44% of the world's oil. Energy instability, gas and oil producing countries' desire to better control their resources to the detriment of international companies (illustrated notably by the spectacular initiatives of President Evo Morales in Bolivia and his colleague Hugo Chavez in Venezuela), the rise in demand and prices, the reduction in global oil production, the fact that Iran harbors the largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia, Russia's assertiveness as an energy power: All of these factors shatter the landscape.
While Americans wonder how they can maintain their way of life with gasoline at $3.50 a gallon - triple what it was ten years ago - Europeans are reduced to expressing their "disappointment" with respect to Russia's behavior as it uses its energy resources as "an instrument of political coercion." Some, geographically closer to Russia, don't bother with such diplomatic niceties: Radek Sikorski, Polish Defense Minister, even talks about a resurgence of the "Molotov-Ribbentrop tradition," as he bitterly evokes the agreement concluded between Moscow and Berlin - above Warsaw's head - concerning a pipeline under the Baltic that will circumvent Poland. Seen from that angle, energy may also be a factor of European division.' Lees verder:
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-771761,0.html Of in het Engels: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051506H.shtml

Irak 76

De Amerikaanse journalist Joshua Holland schrijft: 'America's foreign policy elite seems incapable of understanding the limited uses of hard power. Until they do, we'll continue to get into wars like Iraq - over and over again. As the architects of the Iraq war cast about for someone to blame for their debacle, they've turned their sights inward - to the U.S. public. A lack of fortitude among the American people is to blame; only the folks back home can defeat our awe-inspiring military. Others, despairing of the Bush administration's "soft approach" to the Iraq insurgency - and casting hungry eyes toward Tehran - have adopted a feverish, almost genocidal view of the war. If only we had the stomach to bring more firepower to bear on the Iraqi people, they say, "victory" would be assured. In both formulations, the media is ultimately at fault for poisoning Americans' view of the war and sapping our national strength. But the war's advocates have no one to blame but themselves; we are in Iraq because of their delusion that raw military power can solve even the most complex transnational issues. They're incapable of grasping the importance of real moral legitimacy in modern warfare. Without that legitimacy, even the most powerful military in the world is likely to get dragged into a quagmire and, when it does, the public's weariness is entirely predictable. File it away as another error in post-war planning. Many military thinkers - people like Colin Powell and Anthony Zinni - learned the hard way, in Vietnam, how important it is to be right as well as strong. They appreciate hard power but also understand that wars of choice or ideological preference won't cut it unless they're over very quickly. Recent history is full of grim examples of the most powerful states launching wars with thin justification, only to find themselves bogged down by militarily weak resistance groups. But America's foreign policy elite - our strategic class - seems incapable of learning from those experiences. For them - both "hawks" and "doves" - hard power remains the ultimate tool of the game; he who has the most raw force will usually prevail. It's a belief that's deeply embedded in the strategic worldview, and it's been reinforced again and again by political philosophers through the ages: Thucydides ("The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must"); Niccolo Machiavelli ("War should be the only study of a prince"); Thomas Hobbes ("Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues"); and Mao Tse-Tung ("Whoever has an army has power, and war decides everything"). And it remains a touchstone of international relations today; Hans Morgenthau, the "father of modern realism," wrote that "World public opinion as a restraint on the struggle for power is a fiction" and "International law - is a fiction as well." But times change. Before the last century, it was largely (but not wholly) true that military might usually won out in the end. An army could, if need be, kill every man, woman and child in the enemy's camp without facing recrimination back home or condemnation abroad. Three developments in the 20th century changed the rules of the game. First, the brutality of the two world wars drained much of the romance from warfare; after the second global conflict in a 20-year span, launching a war of aggression became the highest international crime. Second, the concept of human rights took hold, embedding value in all human lives - including the lives of foreign citizens. No longer do we view enemy civilians as sub-human, to be slaughtered with impunity. Third, and most significantly, the world became wired for instant communication. Now, we watch wars unfold on CNN in real-time. And it's not just CNN; the news broadcast to the world is beyond the control of any government. Images of mangled Iraqi children are all over the internet.' Lees verder:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/36032/ Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051506B.shtml

Hirsi Ali 12

De Hirsi Ali affaire toont aan hoe weinig Nederland van Hirsi Magan heeft begrepen en op haar beurt hoe weinig Hirsi Magan van Nederland heeft begrepen. De meerderheid van de Nederlanders begrijpt kennelijk niet hoe wanhopig miljarden derde wereldbewoners zijn die in een uitzichtloze situatie leven. Die mensen zullen net als Hirsi Magan alles doen om de vleespotten van het Westen te bereiken. Vele duizenden verdrinken in de oceaan in een poging Europa binnen te komen, of ze stikken in vrachtwagens, of vallen in handen van pooiers en slavenhandelaren. De economische vluchtelingen zullen net als Hirsi Magan liegen en bedriegen om een beter leven te krijgen. Elke keer weer dat ik als journalist door de Derde Wereld reisde, schaamde ik me voor de zogeheten Westerse beschaving. Het is een schande dat het rijke Westen zijn grenzen voor de armen sluit. Het is een schande dat ook het Kamerlid Hirsi Magan onlangs nog verklaarde dat ze voor het sluiten van die grenzen is. Zie: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2006/05/hirsi-ali-5.html Dat wat betreft mijn landgenoten. Wat Hirsi Magan betreft. Zij heeft niet begrepen dat Nederlanders van slachtoffers houden zolang ze smetteloos lijken. Het geeft de Nederlanders het gevoel dat ze goed zijn en fatsoenlijk, dat ze mededogen hebben en tolerant zijn. Maar zodra het slachtoffer geen ultiem slachtoffer blijkt te zijn, voelen ze zich tot in het diepst van hun ziel gekrenkt en bedrogen. De slachtoffers moeten volkomen rein zijn, onschuldig zijn, anders gaat het spel niet op en onsteekt men in woede. Dat heeft Hirsi Magan niet beseft, ik denk omdat ze nogal bot is, geen rekening houdt met haar omgeving. Overal waar ze verschijnt, raakt de omgeving enigszins uit balans. Ook nu weer. Op Radio I hoorde ik de volksvertegenwoordigster Femke Halsema van Groen Links zeggen dat ze de uitspraak van de Hoge Raad kende op grond waarvan mensen als Hirsi Magan haar Nederlandschap kan worden ontnomen. En inderdaad is die wet onrechtvaardig, ook al vond Hirsi Magan dat niet zolang het anderen betrof. Halsema vond desondanks dat Hirsi Magan haar Nederlanderschap moest behouden. Maar juist een politicus moet weten dat iedereen gelijk is voor de wet. Zowel de werkster die de Kamer schoonmaakt als een Kamerlid zelf dienen zich aan de wet te houden, dat is een hoeksteen van de parlementaire democratie. Daar ging Halsema volkomen aan voorbij. Voor haar staat kennelijk een politicus boven de wet. Menig Nederlander raakt in de war zodra hij of zij met de werkelijkheid geconfronteerd wordt. Niet alleen in linkse maar ook rechtse kringen. Het provinciaal dagblas BN/De Stem bericht: '„We willen dolgraag dat Hirsi Ali zo snel mogelijk een paspoort krijgt met de juiste naam en de juiste geboortedatum”, zei VVD-fractievoorzitter in de Tweede Kamer Willibrord van Beek dinsdag in een reactie op het vertrek van het Kamerlid en vlak voor een Kamerdebat over de kwestie.„In emotie zeg je dingen die je later genuanceerd zou zeggen”, zei Van Beek over de verschillende reacties van VVD-fractieleden, onder meer Bibi de Vries en Charlie Aptroot, vlak voor de fractievergadering van de VVD. Volgens Van Beek kwamen tijdens dievergadering de neuzen weer in een richting te staan: de VVD wil dat Hirsi Ali alsnog het Nederlanderschap krijgt. „We zijn als één man achter haar gaan staan.”Van Beek zei partijgenote en minister van Vreemdelingenzaken Rita Verdonk niet af te vallen, omdat zij gewoon de wet moet toepassen. Maar hij vroeg zich wel af ze niet niet anders had kunnen beslissen. „Je kan je haast niet voorstellen dat dit de enige mogelijkheid is die de wet geeft.” Een uitzondering maken voor Hirsi Ali zou geen klassejustitie zijn omdat voor haar de omstandigheden heel anders zijn dan voor andere mensen. „Ze is in die veertien jaar dat ze hier is zo belangrijk geworden, ze is zo bedreigd, zo vervolgd.”' Kortom, Nederlandse politci staan boven de wet, ze zien zich als veel onmisbaarder dan gewone stervelingen. En ze laten het nog weten ook. Zie: http://www.bndestem.nl/binnenland/article344050.ece Hirsi Magan wordt inderdaad bedreigd. Maar vervolgd? Door wie dan? En Hirsi Magan is inderdaad politiek belangrijk geworden, maar staat ze daardoor boven de wet?

Hirsi Ali 11

De NRC bericht: 'Hirsi Ali wil Nederlanderschap niet kwijt. DEN HAAG (ANP) - Ayaan Hirsi Ali vindt het idee dat ze haar Nederlanderschap kwijtraakt ondraaglijk. "Ik kan niet omgaan met het idee dat ik mijn Nederlandse identiteit verlies", vertelde ze een verslaggeefster van de New York Times dinsdag. GroenLinks heeft een spoeddebat aangevraagd over de perikelen rondom het VVD-Kamerlid Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Als de aanvraag voldoende steun krijgt, zal het debat dinsdag aan het eind van de middag plaatsvinden. Minister Rita Verdonk (Vreemdelingenzaken) liet maandag de Tweede Kamer weten dat Hirsi Ali mogelijk nooit het Nederlanderschap heeft verkregen. Volgens ingewijden legt de van oorsprong Somalische politica dinsdag haar Kamerlidmaatschap neer. Hiertoe is maandagavond besloten tijdens een spoedoverleg tussen haar en de VVD-top. Maandag werd bekend dat ze vertrekt uit Nederland. Vanaf september gaat ze aan de slag bij het American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, een conservatieve denktank met connecties met de regering van de Amerikaanse president George Bush.
Leugens.
Hirsi Ali kwam in opspraak na een uitzending van Zembla, waarin werd beweerd dat zij mogelijk meer leugens heeft verteld bij haar asielaanvraag dan ze eerder al had toegegeven. Kamerlid Hilbrand Nawijn stelde vragen, waarna Verdonk een onderzoek instelde. Vrijdag zei Verdonk nog dat Hirsi Ali niets te vrezen had. Volgens Hirsi Ali zijn de beweringen van Zembla "roddels", zo zei ze in televisieprogramma NOVA. In antwoord op de vragen van Nawijn schrijft Verdonk dat "vooralsnog moet worden aangenomen dat zij geacht wordt het Nederlanderschap niet te hebben verkregen". Feitelijk komt het erop neer dat de politica onder haar eigenlijke naam, nooit het Nederlandse paspoort heeft gekregen, omdat zij bij haar naturalisatie in 1997 andere personalia heeft opgegeven. Hirsi Ali heeft al jaren geleden toegegeven dat zij bij aankomst in Nederland niet eerlijk is geweest. In de New York Times zegt ze dat te hebben gedaan "voor het geval mijn vader of mijn broer of mijn echtgenoot met kwade bedoelingen naar mij op zoek zou zijn". Nu wordt zij er naar eigen zeggen "uitgepikt wegens liegen, maar ik heb dit al jaren toegegeven".
Gemengde reacties.
Uit twee opiniepeilingen bleek maandag dat meer dan de helft tot twee derde van de Nederlanders het haar kwalijk neemt dat ze heeft gelogen. De meeste Nederlanders vinden dat Hirsi Ali haar Kamerlidmaatschap toch al had moeten opgeven, als de beweringen van Zembla hout bleken te snijden. Het spoedige vertrek van het Kamerlid naar de Verenigde Staten hangt mogelijk samen met een uitspraak van het Haagse gerechtshof eind april. Dat bepaalde na klachten van omwonenden dat Hirsi Ali haar zwaar beveiligde woning in Den Haag uiterlijk 27 augustus moet verlaten. De buren van het bedreigde Kamerlid vreesden voor hun veiligheid.
Ze zei op 6 mei tegen NOVA dat ze zich door de rechterlijke uitspraak en "door het politiek correcte schrikbewind" uit Nederland weggejaagd voelt.' Zie: http://www.nrc.nl/anp/binnenland/article317950.ece
Tegenover de New York Times verklaarde Hirsi Magan: "I'm speechless," Ms. Hirsi Ali said in a telephone interview from The Hague after she had received a call from Ms. Verdonk on Monday night. Ms. Hirsi Ali said she considered the move to take away her citizenship, leaving her stateless, as an attempt to silence her.' Zie: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/world/europe/16dutch.html?_r=1&oref=slogin En zo trekt ze verder de wereld rond met het verspreiden van halve waarheden en klinkklare leugens. Opnieuw speelt ze het slachtoffer, ditmaal niet van burgeroorlogen, die ze niet heeft meegemaakt, ook niet van haar familie en andere Somaliers, die haar met rust bleken te laten, ook niet van agressieve islamisten, maar slachtoffer van haar eigen neoliberale partij, met voorop minister Verdonk. Als ik haar een advies zou mogen geven, dan zou ik zeggen: kijk uit, mevrouw Magan, want in Nederland mag de slachtofferist dan populair zijn, tenminste zolang die vlekkeloos blijft, maar in de Verenigde Staten haten ze slachtoffers, voor loosers hebben ze geen mededogen.

Hirsi Ali 10

De Volkskrant bericht: 'Hirsi Ali per 1 september naar Washington. DEN HAAG - Het VVD-Kamerlid Ayaan Hirsi Ali treedt per 1 september in dienst van het American Enterprise Institute (AEI), een conservatieve denktank in Washington. Dit zal zij morgen in Den Haag bekend maken. Hirsi Ali bereikte afgelopen week overeenstemming met het Amerikaanse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken over haar beveiliging. Het was de bedoeling dat Hirsi Ali op 1 mei volgend jaar naar de Verenigde Staten zou vertrekken. Maar omdat zij op 27 augustus haar huis in Den Haag moet ontruimen, heeft zij het AEI verzocht of zij per 1 september terecht kon. De afgelopen maanden heeft Hirsi Ali ook onderhandeld met twee andere denktanks, de Johns Hopkins University (‘te arm’) en de Brookings Institution (‘die zaten niet helemaal op mijn lijn’). Hirsi Ali gaat in de VS haar boek Shortcut to Enlightenment (Een korte weg naar de Verlichting) afmaken. Zij had al geruime tijd het idee dat haar aanwezigheid in Nederland ‘averechts werkte’. Hirsi Ali zei in maart tegen de Volkskrant: "Ik maak meer kapot dan ik goedmaak. Bij de burgers komt mijn boodschap vervormd over."' Volgens de Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist Robert Dreyfuss is de American Enterprise Institute een denktank van de extreem rechtse neoconservatieven. Ze zijn de ideologen achter de gewelddadige Amerikaanse politiek in het Midden Oosten. In het boek 'Devil's Game. How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam' schrijft Dreyfuss: 'The Bush administration was heavily influenced by neoconservatives inside and outside whom preached the gospel of sweeping regional change.' Onder hen Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, de inmiddels aangeklaagde Lewis Libby, John Bolton, Elliot Abrams en Michael Ledeen van de American Enterprise Institute, een rechtse radicaal die net als Abrams betrokken was bij het Iran-Contra Schandaal. De voormalige Amerikaanse ambassadeur in Saoedi Arabie Chas Freeman schreef over deze mensen: 'The neoconservatives' intention in Iraq was never to truly build democracy there. Their intention was to flatten it, to remove Iraq as a regional threat to Israel.' Velen van deze neoconservatieven behoren tot de Pro-Israel lobby, sommigen van hen hebben ronduit extremistische gedachten. Zo schreven onder andere Feith en Perle een memorandum getiteld 'A Clean Break: Een Nieuwe Strategie voor het Veilig Stellen van het Rijk,' waarin toenmalig premier Netanyahu werd geadviseerd de Oslo Akkoorden te verwerpen en om de West Bank en Gaza onmiddellijk te annexeren. Zie: http://home.planet.nl/~houck006/oorlogomolie2.html. Voorts pleitten ze voor het omverwerpen van het Saddam regime en voor een oorlog tegen Libanon en Syrie als een 'prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East [to] threaten Syria's territorial integrity.' En natuurlijk moet ook Iran worden aangepakt. Kennelijk net terug van een sollicitatieronde in de VS zei Hirsi Magan in februari van dit jaar op de Nederlandse televisie: 'Wij staan aan de vooravond van misschien het begin van een oorlog. Iran heeft…' Maar toen werd ze onderbroken. Waarschijnlijk had ze willen zeggen dat Iran ons met atoomwapens zal bedreigen, zoals ook haar nieuwe bazen beweren. Zie: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2006/02/vrijheid-van-meningsuiting-4.html Een andere radicaal is Reuel Marc Gerecht. Hij is 'a former CIA officier with experience in Iraq and the Middle East, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a neoconservative hard-liner who was a leading voice in support of the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.' In dit rechts radicale gezelschap zal Hirsi Magan, die zichzelf als een 'verlichtingsaanhangster' ziet, niet uit de toon vallen. Het enige wrange voor haar vaak hyperventilerende achterban is alleen dat ze in de werkuren van de baas al die tijd in de Verenigde Staten naar een nieuwe baan heeft gesolliciteerd. Zie ook: http://www.aei.org/ 23 november 2005 schreef ik over haar: 'Onlangs zei Hirsi Ali tijdens een Trouw-bijeenkomst in de Rode Hoed: "In 1989 vond ik de fatwa tegen Salman Rushdie nog vanzelfsprekend. Ik was ook een radicaal." En hier komen we bij de kern van de zaak. Een jaar geleden schreef ik in het tijdschrift 'De Humanist' over haar: Op tv vertelde ze ooit: "In ’86 was ikzelf ook een fundamentalist, in Kenia. Ik was lid van de Islamitische Broederschap." Zo is ze van de ene extreme positie in de andere gevallen en zoals vaak met bekeerlingen is ze nu roomser dan de paus.' Begin dit jaar verklaarde ze op televisie: 'Ik ben een extremistische aanhanger van de vrijheid van meningsuiting.' Eerst een extremistische aanhanger van de Moslim Broederschap, toen een 'extremistische aanhanger van de vrijheid van meningsuiting', en nu als voorlopig sluitstuk een aanhanger van extreem rechts in Washington. Een ontwikkeling, geheel conform haar radicale karakter. Zie: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2006/02/vrijheid-van-meningsuiting-6.html Het feit dat ze nu bij de AEI belandt onderstreept opnieuw haar opportunistisch extremisme. Zie http://home.planet.nl/~houck006/autisme1.html En: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2005/11/hirsi-ali.html Dat de Johns Hopkins University 'te arm' is, is weer 1 van die onwaarheden van Hirsi Magan. Kennelijk wil deze universiteit weinig of geen geld aan haar besteden.

Afgelopen vrijdag schreef ik: 'Eens kijken hoe de politici elkaar de bal toespelen. Mevrouw Ali wacht rustig af in New York, waar ze aan haar carriere werkt. Het zou aardig zijn als de luie parlementaire pers eens onderzoekt hoeveel dagen ze in het Nederlandse parlement aanwezig is geweest het afgelopen jaar. Uit welingelichte kringen weet ik dat ze meermaals in New York verblijft in het appartement van haar agente.' Zie: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/ Dat onderzoek hoeft nu niet meer. Ze vertrekt.

Big Brother 15

De World Socialist Web Site bericht: 'NSA phone spying program: a blueprint for mass repression. In the wake of the May 11 revelation by USA Today of a massive telephone spying program by the National Security Agency, directed against nearly every American citizen, the media commentary has deliberately downplayed the sinister nature of the program. This is a deliberate cover-up of what is without question the most wide-ranging invasion of privacy by the federal government in US history. The press coverage has sought to obscure the vast scale of the data-gathering, as well as the political purposes to which it can be used, in order to lend credence to the Bush administration’s claim that the operation is targeted exclusively at suspected terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. There has not been a single serious media commentary questioning why a supposedly “narrowly focused” program should collect data on an estimated 225 million Americans. Nor has there been any suggestion that the real purpose of the spy program is to assemble a database on the political affiliations and activities of a wide range of American citizens. Further details of the program have emerged, however, in scattered press reports as well as legal papers filed by civil liberties groups and lawyers acting for telephone company customers who object to their personal information being handed over to the federal government. By these accounts, the computer programs being used by the NSA to analyze the phone call databases it purchased from the big telecommunications companies are a more advanced form of the “social-network analysis” software used by commercial and political marketing firms to profile potential advertising targets. Phone trees are traced to identify nodes and determine common interests and activities among those targeted. In the case of commercial marketing, the purpose is to identify the best targets to receive a sales pitch. For the intelligence agencies, the purpose is to select targets for more intensive electronic surveillance, or arrest and (perhaps indefinite) detention. The potential value of this information for purposes of political intimidation is enormous. Every person who has ever telephoned a 900 number, for instance, now has that fact permanently recorded in a government database, making him or her vulnerable to blackmail by federal agents. Likewise those whose phone records suggest problems with gambling, narcotics abuse, or even extramarital affairs.' Lees verder:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/may2006/nsag-m15.shtml