Op zijn 85ste verklaarde H.J.A. Hofland in een interview dat hij een afkeer heeft van wat hij het 'digitale lompenproletariaat' betitelt, oftewel het 'digitale' — in de woorden van Marx en Engels — 'gespuis dat absoluut te koop [is].' De weerzin van de 'beste journalist van de twintigste eeuw' beperkt zich evenwel niet tot de 'schoften' of 'smeerlappen' van de onderkaste, maar strekt zich uit tot zijn eigen lezers. Op de vraag of hij niet via internet in discussie zou willen gaan met de lezers van zijn opinies, antwoordde hij resoluut: 'Daar moet ik niet aan denken, zeg.' Toen de interviewer opmerkte dat 'uw lezers dan terug[praten],' antwoordde de opiniemaker van de gevestigde orde met afschuw: 'Jezus Christus, daar moet ik toch niet aan denken. Ik weet hoe het zit. Ik heb het gevoel dat ik met overtuiging schrijf, dat mijn analyse goed is.'
Dit is ronduit een treffende karakterisering van de mentaliteit onder de zelfgenoegzame 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder. Het volk is er om te luisteren naar de heren van stand en niet omgekeerd, en daarmee zijn de grote tekortkomingen van de 'vrije pers' in het poldermodel meteen getypeerd. Het verklaart onder andere waarom het Nederlands journaille de opkomst van Pim Fortuyn en de onvermijdelijkheid van de kredietcrisis volstrekt niet konden voorzien, om slechts twee doorslaggevende missers te geven.
Dit is ronduit een treffende karakterisering van de mentaliteit onder de zelfgenoegzame 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder. Het volk is er om te luisteren naar de heren van stand en niet omgekeerd, en daarmee zijn de grote tekortkomingen van de 'vrije pers' in het poldermodel meteen getypeerd. Het verklaart onder andere waarom het Nederlands journaille de opkomst van Pim Fortuyn en de onvermijdelijkheid van de kredietcrisis volstrekt niet konden voorzien, om slechts twee doorslaggevende missers te geven.
Hoewel de Nederlandse pers te weinig weet, te provinciaals en te ideologisch is en te weinig contacten bezit met de wereld buiten het eigen kleine landje, heeft het toch een geweldige hoge dunk van zichzelf. Hoe minder ze weet des te stelliger haar meningen. De hetze die bijvoorbeeld Henk Hofland tegen Iran voert is al tenminste zes jaar gaande. Woensdag 17 juni 2009 stelde hij in zijn NRC-column:
We kunnen het jammer vinden maar het Westen heeft geen enkele invloed op het verloop van de machtsstrijd in Iran. Het omgekeerde is wel het geval. Dat wil zeggen: komt Mousavi, de leider van de fluwelen revolutie toch nog als winnaar uit de worsteling tevoorschijn, dan zal dat misschien een kalmerende invloed hebben op de westelijke publieke opinie. Wint Ahmadinejad, de ontkenner van de Holocaust die Israël wil vernietigen, dan is dat regelrecht van invloed op het imago van de moslims in Europa. Ahmadinejad wordt ervan verdacht bezig te zijn aan de constructie van een kernwapen. De drang in het Westen, en vooral in Israël, om een preventieve aanval te ondernemen, zoals in 1981 toen op die manier de installaties van Saddam Hussein werden vernietigd, zal toenemen.
Elf zinnen boordevol bedrog. Neem Hoflands volgende bewering:
Ahmadinejad, de ontkenner van de Holocaust die Israël wil vernietigen…
Nu de feiten: 'Iran's president: I don't deny Holocaust.'
En:
The Guardian's Jonathan Steele cites four different translations, from professors to the BBC to the New York Times and even pro-Israel news outlets, in none of those translations is the word 'map' used. The closest translation to what the Iranian President actually said is, 'The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,' or a narrow relative thereof. In no version is the word 'map' used or a context of mass genocide or hostile military action even hinted at. The acceptance of the word 'map' seemingly originated with the New York Times, who later had to back away from this false translation. The BBC also wrongly used the word and, in comments to Steele, later accepted their mistake but refused to issue a retraction. 'The fact that he compared his desired option - the elimination of 'the regime occupying Jerusalem' — with the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel. As a schoolboy opponent of the Shah in the 1970's he surely did not favor Iran's removal from the page of time. He just wanted the Shah out,' writes Steele.
Slechts één zin en toch twee koeien van fouten. Dit is geen journalistiek, maar propaganda. De volgende fout: 'Ahmadinejad wordt ervan verdacht bezig te zijn aan de constructie van een kernwapen.' Henk Hofland weet kennelijk niet dat Ahmadinejad's macht in Iran uiterst beperkt is doordat hoge geestelijken er de werkelijk macht hebben. Bovendien begon het nucleaire programma onder de Sjah en werd aangemoedigd door de VS omdat Amerikaanse concerns er veel geld mee verdienden. Hofland verzwijgt daarbij ook nog eens het volgende: Israel bezit naar schatting meer dan 200 kernwapens, die het zionistisch regime ten tijde van de de zogeheten 'Yom Kippoer-oorlog' dreigde in te zetten, als Israel niet ogenblikkelijk Amerikaanse wapens zou krijgen. Nu zelfs het Pentagon bekend heeft gemaakt dat de zionistische staat kernwapens bezit en tevens bekend is dat 'Israel has been stealing nuclear secrets and covertly making bombs since the 1950s. And western governments, including Britain and the US, turn a blind eye,' getuigt het van een verregaande demagogie toen Hofland in de NRC van woensdag 10 februari 2010 met grote stelligheid beweerde dat 'het onverzoenlijke Iran van Ahmadinejad' aan 'een kernwapen werkt.' Vijf jaar later herhaalde hij nog eens deze leugen in De Groene Amsterdammer met de woorden: 'Sinds jaren werkt Iran aan zijn eigen kernwapen.' Tegelijkertijd stelde hij dat 'Het bezit van de kernbom onderdeel [is] van de Iraanse buitenlandse politiek die al jaren wordt gekenmerkt door het streven naar expansie zoniet een overwicht in de regio' en dat daarom de 'druk op Teheran onverminderd gehandhaafd [moet] worden.' Kennelijk mag van hem alleen Israel de hegemonie in de regio hebben. Bovendien was de mogelijkheid niet uitgesloten dat Iraanse geestelijken 'misschien ergens onder de grond nog een geheime bom [bewaren]. En zolang niet alle kernwapens vernietigd zijn, blijft het probleem bestaan,' aldus Hofland daarbij verwijzend naar de 'schrijvers in Foreign Affairs,' die
het gebruik van geweld uitdrukkelijk niet uit[sluiten]. Maar met deze vernietigende stok achter de deur geven ze veruit de voorkeur aan een politiek van containment. Door dit in bedwang houden van een roekeloos bewind in Teheran wordt het ertoe gedwongen beter over de consequenties na te denken en - hopen we - het gezond verstand te gebruiken. In dit laatste geval zal het ontdekken dat de Verenigde Staten een bondgenoot kunnen zijn bij het verwezenlijken van de legitieme nationale aspiraties. Eind goed, al goed. Maar dan zullen China en Rusland wel hun medewerking moeten verlenen,
aldus de kleine demagoog in De Groene Amsterdammer van 31 maart 2010, onder de kop: 'De volgende oorlog.'
Helaas voor Hofland heeft hij ondanks al zijn inspanningen om Iran af te schilderen als een wezenlijk gevaar voor de wereldvrede tot nu toe te vroeg gejuicht. Feit is dat wat Hofland 'De Iraanse bom,' noemt, niet bestaat, en vooralsnog ook niet wordt ontwikkeld, aldus 16 Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten. De Koude Oorlogsretoriek heeft dus in het geval van Iran niet gewerkt, maar dat wil niet zeggen dat Israel, de zionistische en neoconservatieve lobby in de VS, het Amerikaans militair industrieel complex én natuurlijk ook Hofland zelf stil blijven zitten. Er moet op de een of andere manier een oorlog worden geforceerd om de oorlogsenthousiasten en de wapenfabrkanten tevreden te houden.
Dan nog dit: 'We kunnen het jammer vinden maar het Westen heeft geen enkele invloed op het verloop van de machtsstrijd in Iran.' Deze formulering verraadt een opmerkelijke uitgangspunt, namelijk dat het Westen het recht zou hebben om in de binnenlandse aangelegenheden van een soevereine staat te interveniëren. Dat dit recht niet bestaat en dat die gewelddadige interventies in het Midden-Oosten en de Maghreb zijn uitgelopen op burgeroorlogen en totale chaos, is een feit dat niet tot de botte hersenen van 'onze' opiniemaker doordringt. Hofland zou er goed aan doen het werk te lezen van deskundigen, te beginnen met boeken als
All the Shah's Men. An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (2003) van Stephen Kinzer, of Imperial Hubris, Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (2007) van Michael Scheurer, een voormalige hoge CIA functionaris, of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2003) van wijlen Chalmers Johnson, voormalige CIA-adviseur en één van de grootste Amerikaanse
May Your Highnesses believe that... this island and all the others are as much yours as Castile; for nothing is lacking except settlement and ordering the Indians to do whatever Your Highnesses may wish... Because I with the people that I bring with me, who are not many, go about in all these islands without danger; for I have already seen three of these sailors go ashore where there was a crowd of these Indians… They do not have arms and they are all naked, and of no skill in arms, and so very cowardly that a thousand would not stand against three. And so they are fit to be ordered about and made to work, plant, and do everything else that may be needed, and build towns and be taught our customs, and to go about clothed.
Dit is kort samengevat al meer dan vijf eeuwen de handelwijze van de westerse macht. Zolang de anderen zwakker zijn dan de blanke christen, kunnen de 'natives' met geweld worden gedwongen datgene te doen wat de westerling rijk en machtig maakt. Het is in wezen niets anders dan terrorisme, en dat beseften al de tijdgenoten van Columbus, zoals Bartolomé de Las Casas, de eerste Dominicaanse priester die naar de Nieuwe Wereld werd gezonden om daar Indianen te bekeren tot 'het ware geloof.' In zijn History of the Indies (1561) meldde hij:
Note here, that the natural, simple and kind gentleness and humble condition of the Indians, and want of arms or protection gave the Spaniards the insolence to hold them of little account, and to impose on them the harshest tasks that they could, and to become glutted with oppression and destruction. And sure it is that here the Admiral enlarged himself in speech more than he should, and that what he here conceived and set forth from his lips, was the beginning of the ill usage afterwards inflicted upon them,
Die 'ziekelijke behandeling' liep al snel uitliep op de genocide van de Indianen, zonder dat de blanke overheersers hierover enige wroeging toonden en nog steeds niet tonen. Vier eeuwen later beschreef president Theodore Roosevelt het continent van volkeren die geen kapitalistische industrie bezaten als ‘braakliggende ruimtes’ die niet
gereserveerd moeten worden voor het gebruik van verspreid levende primitieve stammen, wier leven slechts een paar graden minder betekenisloos, smerig, en meedogenloos is dan dat van de wilde beesten met wie ze het gebied delen.
Het spreekt voor zich dat deze expansionistische ideologie alleen door massaal geweld uitvoerbaar kon zijn, maar dat was geen probleem, want, zo verklaarde Roosevelt: 'Geen enkele vredestriomf evenaart de gewapende oorlogstriomf.’
De ideologie waarmee dit geweld gepaard ging werd geformuleerd in de korte maar krachtige formule 'manifest destiny,' het 'onmiskenbaar' recht op hegemonie. Dat was eenvoudigweg het lot van de blanke christen, om te heersen over alle inferieure volkeren die het licht nog niet hadden gezien. De Amerikanen, voor een deel het voormalige uitschot van Europa, beschouwen zichzelf als het nieuwe uitverkoren volk, de VS is de 'shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere' en bezit daarom de morele autoriteit om letterlijk overal met geweld in te grijpen. Ook Henk Hofland is van dit vanzelfsprekende 'recht' diep doordrongen. Hij werpt zelfs niet eens de vraag op of het dreigen met geweld in zijn 'nieuwe wereldorde' juridisch geoorloofd is, want in zijn optiek moet het recht wijken voor de superieure slagkracht van de VS. Onthullend is in dit opzicht Hoflands benepen terminologie: 'vernietigende stok achter de deur' en 'in bedwang houden van een roekeloos bewind' en 'het gezond verstand.' Zijn gewelddadige visie is zowel onvolwassen als gevaarlijk; er is niemand die hem kan dwingen 'beter over de consequenties na te denken,' aangezien 'Ik weet hoe het zit.' Als kind moet de kleine Henkie het sterkste jongetje van de klas hebben bewonderd, en dit maakt hem nu op zijn oude dag een dwaas. Het is niet Iran, maar het Westen dat al sinds de negentiende eeuw 'roekeloos' handelt in de islamitische wereld. Dit feit is de les van Devil's Game. How The United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (2006), geschreven door de gezaghebbende Amerikaanse journalist Robert Dreyfuss. Kort samengevat:
The central theme of this book is that the Islamic right was seen as a valuable U.S. ally during the Cold War... There is an unwritten chapter in the history of the Cold War and the New World Order that followed. It is the story of how the United States -- sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly -- funded and encouraged right-wing Islamist activism. Devil's Game attempts to fill in that vital missing link.
Maar ook dit boek heeft Hofland niet gelezen, want 'Ik weet hoe het zit,' en waarom zou hij zich dan nog verdiepen in het onderzoek van een deskundige. De schaamteloze onwetendheid van de Nederlandse mainstream-opiniemakers kent geen grenzen. Na de aanslag op Charlie Hebdo op 7 januari 2015 verklaarde de journalist Geert Mak onmiddellijk zonder na te denken met een adembenemende stelligheid:
De kracht van onze westerse samenleving is onze democratie, onze variatie in ideeën, onze tolerantie, onze openheid tegenover andere culturen. Maar dat is tegelijk onze kwetsbaarheid, blijkt nu ook weer.
Dit is de kenmerkende reflex van de opiniemaker van de gevestigde orde in de polder. Wij goed, zij slecht. Punt uit. Maar voor een ontwikkeld mens blijft de vraag evenwel: hoe goed zijn 'wij' dan? Weinig westerlingen kunnen dit beter beantwoorden dan de bekende Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist Jeremy Scahill, auteur van Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield (2013), een New York Times bestseller:
In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater, takes us inside America’s new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies…
As US leaders draw the country deeper into conflicts across the globe, setting the world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk—we are changing as a nation. Scahill unmasks the shadow warriors who prosecute these secret wars and puts a human face on the casualties of unaccountable violence that is now official policy: victims of night raids, secret prisons, cruise missile attacks and drone strikes, and whole classes of people branded as “suspected militants.” Through his brave reporting, Scahill exposes the true nature of the dirty wars the United States government struggles to keep hidden.
De filmversie werd genomineerd voor een Oscar als beste documentaire van 2013. Kortom, Mak's 'wij' wordt door een journalist van wereldnaam in een alles behalve positieve context geplaatst. Maar die context verzwijgt Mak angstvallig omdat het eenvoudigweg niet past in het mainstream-borstgeroffel over 'onze' eigen superioriteit, 'onze variatie in ideeën, onze tolerantie, onze openheid tegenover andere culturen.' In Nederland is de kwaliteit van de zelfbenoemde 'politiek-literaire elite' net zo laag als het land zelf; er is hier geen ruimte voor serieuze zelfreflectie en men krijgt over zowel belangwekkende incidenten als triviale nonsens ogenblikkelijk ongevraagd de verbale buikloop van de officiële opiniemakers opgedist. En bij gebrek aan frictie, aan tegenspraak, aan een dissidente kijk op de officieel gesanctioneerde versie van de werkelijkheid, blijft de status quo gehandhaafd. En daar gaat het om in het verlammende poldermodel. Het is absoluut ondenkbaar dat een alom gerespecteerde intellectueel als Jeremy Scahill, of wie dan ook van gelijk kaliber, in de Nederlandse mainstream uitgebreid de kans zal krijgen om over de besloten Charlie Hebdo-demonstratie van hoge politici in Parijs te verklaren:
this is sort of a circus of hypocrisy when it comes to all of those world leaders who were marching at the front of it. I mean, every single one of those heads of state or representatives of governments there have waged their own wars against journalists. You know, David Cameron ordered The Guardian to smash with a hammer the hard drives that stored the files of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Blasphemy is considered a crime in Ireland. You had multiple African and Arab leaders whose own countries right now have scores of journalists in prison. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel has targeted for killing numerous journalists who have reported on the Palestinian side, have kidnapped, abducted, jailed journalists…
I think that we should remember—and I was saying this on Twitter over the weekend—that Yemen should have sent the Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye as their representative. He, of course, was in prison for years on the direct orders of President Obama for having reported on secret U.S. strikes in Yemen that killed scores of civilians. Or Sudan should have sent Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman who was held for six years without charge in Guantánamo and repeatedly interrogated by U.S. operatives who were intent on proving that Al Jazeera had some sort of a link to al-Qaeda. So, you know, while there is much to take heart in, in terms of this huge outpouring of support for freedom of the press, hypocrisy was on full display in the streets of Paris when it came to the world leaders.
AMY GOODMAN: Reporters Without Borders issued a statement saying it, quote, 'condemns [the] presence of "predators'' in [the] Paris march,' and, quote, 'is appalled by the presence of leaders from countries where journalists and bloggers are systematically persecuted such as Egypt... Russia... Turkey... and United Arab Emirates.' [...]
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, and then you have — you know, you have General Sisi, the dictator of Egypt, who apparently is showing his solidarity for press freedom by continuing to preside over the imprisonment of multiple Al Jazeera journalists whose only crime was doing actual journalism and scores of other Egyptian journalists that never get mentioned in the news media.
Another thing that I think is really absent from a lot of the coverage of the aftermath of this horrific massacre is that France also is a surveillance state. And France has a very Islamophobic position toward their immigrant community, but also toward second- and third-generation Arabs or people from other Muslim countries who have settled inside of France. And there’s going to be an intense—intensification of an already overreaching surveillance system inside of France.
You know, some months ago I was on the show talking about the U.S. watchlisting system, and one of the things that we heard when we were doing this report on how you end up on the no-fly list or on the watchlist was that people within the U.S. counterterrorism community, who are actually trying to prevent acts of terrorism from happening, say that they’re flooded in information and that if everyone is on the watchlist, effectively no one is on the watchlist when it comes to actually looking at who might be engaged in these kinds of terror plots.
A similar phenomenon is happening in Paris, France. You know, people talk about an intelligence failure, an intelligence breakdown. When you are putting people on these lists for monitoring or surveillance based on flimsy or circumstantial evidence, what that means is that you overload your own bureaucracy. So, on the one hand, you have a surveillance state that unfairly targets Muslims and immigrants, in both the United States and in France, and on the other hand, you have a system that is intended to stop acts of terrorism or to monitor people that are plotting acts of terrorism that has become its own hindrance, its own biggest obstacle to actually figuring out the reality of these plots.
And let’s remember, while horrifying and reprehensible, these incidents represent a relatively minor threat to Western society. You know, in terms of the actual threats facing our society, this doesn’t even rank in the top five. And so, you know, to have this kind of a reaction is not only a waste of a tremendous amount of money, but it is going to encourage, I think, future acts of terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, it is a horrific moment where people actually see it before them.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yes, right. But, you know, it’s, again, the — let’s remember that the United States bombed Al Jazeera in Afghanistan very early on after 9/11, then bombed the Sheraton Hotel in Basra, Iraq, where Al Jazeera journalists were the only journalists. Then they killed one of the most famous Al Jazeera correspondents in Baghdad in April of 2003, when Victoria Clarke, George Bush’s Pentagon spokesperson at the time, basically said if you’re an unembedded journalist, you’re with the terrorists, and if you die, it’s not our fault. They shelled the Palestine Hotel, killing a Reuters cameraman and the Spanish cameraman José Couso. So, yes, we should be condemning any and all attacks, especially when they’re killing journalists, no matter who the perpetrators are, but let’s not act as though the West’s hands are clean and that any one of those world leaders marching yesterday, that their hands are clean on these matters.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Jeremy Scahill, founder of The Intercept. When we come back, we’re going to talk about the article that he’s written, "Al Qaeda Source: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Directed Paris Attack." His latest book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. This is This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
Geen sprake van dat deze uitstekend geïnformeerde Amerikaanse journalist door Nederlandse journalisten aan het woord zou worden gelaten over de bijvoorbeeld zijn kritiek op de Amerikaanse agressie. Hier is men bang van zijn stoel te vallen wanneer er een 'controversieel' onderwerp voorbij komt. Het gevolg is dat de polderpers in de klei is uitgegleden. Toen ik in januari met de TGV vanuit Brussel in Amsterdam aankwam, sprak bij het uitstappen de NRC-redacteur Raymond van den Boogaard mij aan, en vertelde hij me in Parijs te zijn geweest in verband met Charlie Hebdo. Ik reageerde met de constatering dat de hele Charlie-Hebo-affaire is ontaard in een Charlie Bullshit-zaak. Hij keek me verbijsterd aan en dus vertelde ik mijn collega dat wanneer politici als Netanyahu tijdens een photo op vooraan staan om tegen het terrorisme te 'demonstreren' deze hypocrisie misschien wel door naïeve westerlingen wordt geslikt, maar zeker niet door de rest van de wereldbevolking, omdat die uit ervaring beter weet. Wanneer de Israelische premier opduikt dan is er altijd iets fundamenteel fout. Een half jaar geleden was Netanyahu direct verantwoordelijk voor het vermoorden van meer dan 500 Palestijnse kinderen, zonder dat het Westen, op Ierland na, in de Verenigde Naties het burgerlijk fatsoen had om hiertegen te protesteren. Opnieuw werd voor iedere wereldbewoner duidelijk dat het Westen zich, wat betreft zijn 'variatie in ideeën, onze tolerantie, onze openheid tegenover andere culturen,' volstrekt ongeloofwaardig heeft gemaakt. Van den Boogaard keek mij aan alsof hij het, jawel, in Keulen hoorde donderen. Een tikje uit het veld geslagen wist hij alleen op te merken:
Daar ben ik het niet mee eens. Je kunt Netanyahu niet met terroristen vergelijken.
Een verklaring daarvoor kwam niet, wat mij de gelegenheid gaf om mijn gewaardeerde collega te adviseren om de reactie van Teju Cole te lezen, de Nigeriaanse-Amerikaanse auteur, die in The New Yorker van 9 januari 2015 kritisch had gereageerd op de cliché's van de blanke mainstream-pers op de aanslag. 'De wat?' vroeg Van den Boogaard. De 'New Yorker' brulde ik op orkaankracht in zijn oor. 'Ik weet van niets,' antwoordde hij verbluft. Ik: 'Daarom vertel ik het je juist, Raymond, jij en de rest van de politiek-literaire elite, zijn te provinciaals in jullie reacties. Over het algemeen lezen jullie niets wat buiten jullie beperkte blikveld valt.' Ineens spurtte Raymond met zijn lange benen weg, mij toeschreeuwend, 'Tram 9 vertrekt, ik moet mij haasten.' En zo is het maar net. Gauw naar huis om zijn stukje te tikken. Daarom voor de lezer, de visie van Cole:
Western societies are not, even now, the paradise of skepticism and rationalism that they believe themselves to be. The West is a variegated space, in which both freedom of thought and tightly regulated speech exist, and in which disavowals of deadly violence happen at the same time as clandestine torture. But, at moments when Western societies consider themselves under attack, the discourse is quickly dominated by an ahistorical fantasy of long-suffering serenity and fortitude in the face of provocation. Yet European and American history are so strongly marked by efforts to control speech that the persecution of rebellious thought must be considered among the foundational buttresses of these societies. Witch burnings, heresy trials, and the untiring work of the Inquisition shaped Europe, and these ideas extended into American history as well and took on American modes, from the breaking of slaves to the censuring of critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Rather than posit that the Paris attacks are the moment of crisis in free speech—as so many commentators have done—it is necessary to understand that free speech and other expressions of liberté are already in crisis in Western societies; the crisis was not precipitated by three deranged gunmen. The U.S., for example, has consolidated its traditional monopoly on extreme violence, and, in the era of big data, has also hoarded information about its deployment of that violence. There are harsh consequences for those who interrogate this monopoly. The only person in prison for the C.I.A.’s abominable torture regime is John Kiriakou, the whistle-blower. Edward Snowden is a hunted man for divulging information about mass surveillance. Chelsea Manning is serving a thirty-five-year sentence for her role in WikiLeaks. They, too, are blasphemers, but they have not been universally valorized, as have the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo.
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/unmournable-bodies
Maar ik durf er mijn eer en goede geweten op te verwedden dat Raymond van den Boogaard nooit iets van Cole is gaan gelezen. Net als zijn mainstream collega Geert Mak blijft hij ervan overtuigd dat
De kracht van onze westerse samenleving is onze democratie, onze variatie in ideeën, onze tolerantie, onze openheid tegenover andere culturen.
Verbale chronische buikloop is al eeuwenlang een hardnekkige kwaal bij degenen die in Nederland doorgaan voor 'welingelichte kringen,' voor opiniemakers met 'oorlogsenthousiasme.' Het opmerkelijke is dat hoewel een almaar toenemend aantal burgers haarscherp doorheeft hoe corrupt de mainstream-media zijn, de betreffende journalisten zelf van niets weten. De redactie van De Groene Amsterdammer denkt werkelijk dat de simplistische commentaren van Henk Hofland een inzicht verschaffen in de complexe materie. En waarom? Wel, omdat de hoogbejaarde zelf claimt 'Ik weet hoe het zit.' Dat beweert iemand die van zichzelf zei: 'Ik ben een contactgestoord persoon, ik wil het liefst in m'n eentje zitten. Ik hou niet zo van dat gelul,' en die geen boeken leest over de onderwerpen waarover hij een mening spuit. En die ook geen deskundigen interviewt, maar, volgens eigen zeggen, elke ochtend twee uur lang de kranten leest, om geheel gehersenspoeld zijn 'eigen' opinie te geven. De representanten van de door Hofland benoemde 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder kennen geen enkele distantie, bij hen zijn alle verhoudingen volledig zoek geraakt, ze praten elkaar na, en schrijven voor hun peergroup. Nooit, maar dan ook nooit zullen ze zichzelf afvragen wat voor een cultuur het is dat
[i]n a single night... burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children… Killing 50-90% of the people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve… What makes it immoral if you lose but not if you win? … [Lemay], and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals,
zoals de voormalige Amerikaanse minister van Defensie ten tijde van de Vietnam oorlog, Robert McNamara, in de documentaire The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara uit 2003 opmerkte. Hun houding beschouwen de spreekbuizen van de westerse macht als doodnormaal. En de 'beste journalist' onder hen, de 87-jarige H.J.A. Hofland, gelooft ondertussen niet echt in democratie en mensenrechten, hij gelooft, net als zijn opdrachtgevers, in 'de vernietigende stok achter de deur,' waarmee elke tegenstander van de westerse 'beschaving' kan worden doodgemept. In dat opzicht lijkt hij, ondanks al zijn kapsones, als twee druppels water op de eerste de beste mafioso, of beter nog op de fundamentalisten van ISIS die eveneens in geweld als verlossing geloven.
ISIS poseert voor een photo op. Alles is propaganda geworden. Showtime! En ze menen allemaal een 'License to Kill' te hebben, inclusief de Henk Hoflanden van de massamedia.
Melting Accelerates in Antarctica: So Far, 2015 Is Hottest Year Yet
Tuesday, 07 April 2015 00:00 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report
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(Image: Iceberg melt via Shutterstock)
The dramatically rapid melting of the earth's poles is the biggest news in this month's climate dispatch.
Increasingly fast melting in Antarctica, which will be discussed in more detail below, is now expected to increase sea levels by 10 feet worldwide in less than 100 years, according to recent NASA satellite calculations.
This will "recurve" heavily populated coastlines and reshape the world in which we live, according to one geophysicist with whom Truthout spoke. In addition, a second geophysicist, from Harvard, said that parts of Antarctica are thawing out so quickly that the icy continent has become "ground zero of global climate change, without a doubt."
According to NASA, every year for the last decade alone, 130 billion tons of ice have melted in Antarctica. For context, that is the weight of more than 356,000 Empire State Buildings and enough ice melt to fill more than 1.3 million Olympic swimming pools. And the melting is accelerating at a pace that is making scientists' heads spin.
"There is no pause in human-caused global warming. If anything, we've been lulled into a false complacency."
To make matters worse, recent researchcasts doubt on other studies that have oversold the role of the natural climate's ability to halt anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) during the next 15 years. Climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann, one of the authors of the study said, "Our work reinforces the notion that there is no pause in human-caused global warming. If anything, we've been lulled into a false complacency by the fact that internal oscillations in the climate system temporarily masked some of that warming. That may come back to bite us as these oscillations swing back in the other direction and add to global warming in the decades ahead."
Another study published in Nature Climate Change revealed how, as bad as things already are, we are actually standing on the precipice of a new planet where warming is likely to accelerate at rates not seen for at least 1,000 years (that is, abrupt ACD is upon us).
A story that has recently been covered in this series is worth mentioning again now, given the dramatic events covered in this month's dispatch relating to the poles, temperature records and droughts. A resiliency scientist recently showed how the planet has already passed through four of the nine limits for hospitable life, and is racing quickly toward those that have not yet been crossed. Take a look at his chart.
The National Climatic Data Center released its statistics recently, which showed the following:
- Globally, this was the hottest winter on record. The previous record was 2007.
- This was the 19th warmest winter in US history.
- Globally this was, by far, the hottest start to any year (January-February).
Buckle up as we go through the sectors of the planet, as this last month has seen a dramatic ramping-up of climate disruption.
Earth
This month, this sector is facing a whole lot of bad news.
Tropical forests are now vanishing at rates much faster than previously thought. This is disastrous news, given that the plant life in these areas sequesters massive amounts of carbon. When the plant life is removed, carbon is released back into the atmosphere, which is the last thing we need right now. A recent study shows that the rate of loss has increased by 62 percent from the 1990s to the 2000s.
Adding insult to injury, scientists have warned that now ongoing droughts in the Amazon are speeding up ACD. The forests there, dubbed the "lungs of the planet," are now emitting more carbon dioxide than they are capturing. A 2010 drought there released more than 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which is as much as China and Russia's annual emissions, combined.
Scientists have also warned that ACD now threatens to kill off more aspen forests by 2050, with the possibility of all of them in North America being gone by then.
The impacts of climate disruption on nature continue to escalate.
Another recent report warned that ongoing deforestation, which is occurring largely to expand agricultural lands, may well be exposing more people to diseases like the Black Death, which wiped out more than one-third of Europe's population during the Middle Ages.
On a similar front, Brazil's drought-stricken Sao Paulo is now battling an outbreak of dengue fever, as hundreds have been infected with the mosquito-borne virus. Scientists have been warning for a long time how diseases are guaranteed to increase in frequency and intensity of outbreaks as the impacts of ACD progress.
More bad news for forests comes in the form of a pine beetle epidemic in North America, where the warming climate has allowed the beetles to ravage western forests. Now they are rapidly spreading east across much of Canada.
A US-based climate study showed that ACD will cause deserts in Australia to expand to the south, as droughts and record high temperatures continue to plague that country.
Another study has shown that spring is "shifting" in trees: The season is now coming earlier because of ongoing temperature increases, causing changes in plants' growing patterns. The study predicts that ACD will alter the order in which trees begin to grow their leaves, which entails long-term implications for the survival of several plants that grow in woodlands.
The size of the massive cyclone that pummeled the South Pacific country of Vanuatu has been linked to ACD, according to the country's president and several climate scientists. One of the aid workers who arrived on the scene to help survivors said, "It looks like the town center has been hit by a bomb." Oxfam executive director Helen Szoke said of the situation: "It's becoming increasingly clear that we are now dealing with worse than the worst case scenario in Vanuatu."
"It's a pretty strong message that the marine ecosystem has changed. And not for the better."
The impacts of climate disruption on nature continue to escalate. A recent studyby Florida Institute of Technology confirmed that ACD is fueling a disease that has now almost completely wiped out all of the coral reefs in the Caribbean. In just 40 years, the disease has caused a 90 percent decline in coral reefs there.
Meanwhile, a study by the University of British Columbia revealed a 50 percent drop in seabird populations in the Pacific Northwest, and showed that it is primarily because the birds are starving to death. "It's a pretty strong message that the marine ecosystem has changed," said the study's lead author. "And not for the better."
A recent report by US Geological Survey experts revealed a "significant" drop in seabird populations in the Gulf of Alaska and northeast Bering Sea, and they blame warmer waters.
Other disconcerting news comes in the form of a whale showing up on the wrong side of the world: A gray whale, a species that has never been seen outside of the Pacific, showed up off the coast of Israel. Plus, Europe's bees are now threatened with extinction, and ACD is one of the primary factors.
A study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that ACD may well lead to disturbances in marine life that will take, literally, thousands of years to recover from, not hundreds of years, as was previously thought.
As populations continue to increase, cities will become much more vulnerable to both droughts and floods.
Another recent study has shown how ACD played a critical role in sparking the horrific war in Syria, by causing a dramatic increase in the odds that a terrible drought in the Fertile Crescent would occur just before the fighting began.
Scientists also recently warned that as populations continue to increase around the world, cities will become much more vulnerable to both droughts and floods.
Lastly in this section, an article published by Slate, titled, "Baked Alaska: If the Last Frontier is the canary in the climate coal mine, we're in trouble," provides a stark view of both how rapidly and severely Alaska is being impacted by ACD. There, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Alaska said, "Homer, Alaska, keeps setting record after record, and I keep looking at the data like, 'Has the temperature sensor gone out or something?'"
"A new report shows that warming in Alaska, along with the rest of the Arctic, is accelerating as the loss of snow and ice cover begins to set off a feedback loop of further warming," according to the Slate article. "Warming in wintertime has been the most dramatic - more than 6 degrees in the past 50 years. And this is just a fraction of the warming that's expected to come over just the next few decades."
Water
This month has seen a range of dire water-related crises around the world.
In the United States, lack of water continues to grow as a major issue in the Southwest and Western states. A 2012 federal supply-and-demand study of the Colorado River predicts that by 2060, the demand shortfall for the Colorado River could likely reach 1 trillion gallons, which is enough water to supply 6 million homes in the Southwest for one full year.
An excellent series of articles published in The Republic focused on the profound crisis that besets the Colorado River and thus the US Southwest. With every single drop of that river already guarded and being squeezed further, cities like Las Vegas, which gets 90 percent of its water from the Colorado, are facing deep trouble.
California only has one year of water left at current usage levels.
With 30 million people and billions of dollars of farm production reliant upon the dwindling Colorado River, the likelihood that younger generations will witness massive Southwest cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas becoming largely unlivable is high. The Republic series outlines how residents in some areas already fear they will no longer be able to remain where they currently live.
On that note, a recent study showed that California is likely to face droughts nearly every single year from now on.
As though to drive home that point, NASA recently warned that California only has one year of water left at current usage levels.
And the Southwest is not the only region with water woes.
In the Pacific Northwest, this winter saw a record-low snowpack across Washington State. That state's Olympic Peninsula's snowpack is a stunning 90 percent below normal levels. Several ski areas across the state never opened this year, and preparations for an impending summer drought are already underway.
The UN recently warned that the entire planet will likely experience a 40 percent shortfall of water by 2030.
Internationally, lack of water is becoming an increasingly urgent issue. A recent report showed how fresh water shortages will likely cause the next global crisis. By way of example, the drought in Sao Paulo has gotten bad enough that residents have attempted to drill through their basement floors in search of groundwater. As reservoirs continue to dry up across the globe, more than 1 billion people already lack access to safe drinking water. Water rationing and battles to control supply will only increase and worsen.
In fact, the UN recently warned that the entire planet will likely experience a 40 percent shortfall of water by 2030. Let that sink in for a moment; 2030 is a mere 15 years from now.
As warming continues to increase, in Alaska, the famous Iditarod annual sled dog race had to move its official starting point all the way to Fairbanks due to lack of adequate snow cover. For the first time in over a decade, a different course had to be used due to lack of snow, warm weather, the melting of previously frozen rivers and thawing permafrost.
Also in that state, the newest artist-in-residence at Denali National Park, photographer Camille Seaman, spoke to the media about her deep worries about ACD, since she has been photographing the Arctic for over a decade. Seeing Alaska as on the front lines of ACD, Seaman said, "No one can deny what Alaskans are experiencing and witnessing first hand."
In neighboring Canada, experts are predicting a "foreseeable end" to outdoor hockey, due to warming temperatures and less ice cover.
As sea levels continue to rise, California's iconic surfing business is in jeopardy. For example, in Monterey Bay, new climate modeling by the US Geological Survey shows that waves are getting larger, but then are falling flat as sea levels continue their inevitable rise.
On the other side of the country, in Florida, rising sea levels and invasive species, both obviously due to ACD, are threatening rare plants in Everglades National Park.
As an increasing amount of methane is released into the atmosphere, the rapidity of ACD's impact rises.
Finally in this section, the melting ice caps are again making the news. A recent reportfrom a Nobel Prize-winning scientist showed, yet again, how increasing temperatures are rising even faster in the Arctic, and predicted that that region's temperature will rise by at least 7 degrees Celsius within a century, and that the Arctic could be completely ice free within 35 years. However, some predict that we will begin seeing an ice-free Arctic much sooner - even this coming summer.
Giving credence to the predictions that this will happen very soon, US scientists recently announced that the Arctic sea ice has fallen to its lowest level for the winter season ever.
The melting in the Antarctic, which has already been profound, just worsened dramatically. A recent study showed that the Totten Glacier in East Antarctica is being melted from warm seawater underneath it, which is now the world's fastest thinning area of the world's largest ice sheet. Losing the Totten means that at least 10 feet of sea level rise just got added to the equation of rising seas.
The current ice loss of the Totten, a floating ice shelf, is now equivalent to 100 times the volume of Australia's Sydney Harbor for every year of water released from its melting.
The current ice loss of the Totten, a floating ice shelf, is now equivalent to 100 times the volume of Australia's Sydney Harbor for every year of water released from its melting.
In just the last 10 years, ice sheets in Western Antarctica are reported to be melting at least 70 percent faster, according to another study - and this is a low-end estimate.
Fire
A report from late 2014 showed us that lightning strikes around the world will significantly increase with a warming planet. This means a dramatic increase in wildfires caused by said lightning, because ACD is causing an increase of up to 8 million lightning strikes every single day.
The entire country of Chile recently declared a national fire alert due to major wildfires in three of its national parks and reserves that are threatening trees that are a thousand years old. In one region that has been suffering from several years of drought, firefighters have been struggling for weeks to try to contain the fires.
In California, tiny bark beetles are ravaging the drought-weakened pine trees throughout the state in what scientists are calling a fast spreading epidemic that they fear could very soon turn catastrophic.
Air
A recent study has revealed that the Gulf Stream system is most likely already weakening. This is very, very bad news: It means that the current fueling the ocean pattern that transports warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic has now weakened to its lowest level in 1,100 years, likely due to an influx of freshwater from Greenland's melting ice sheet. In short, this means that ACD is slowing down the Gulf Stream system much sooner than anyone expected it would, essentially locking in far harsher winters across Europe and dramatically faster sea level rise along the East Coast.
German researchers recently announced that the United States, Europe and Russia will face longer heat waves, since summer winds that previously brought in cool ocean air have now been weakened by ACD.
Recent research revealed how winds that are being changed in velocity by ACD patterns are rendering several airstrips across the Arctic less safe.
NASA announced that the vast methane cloud that has been hovering over the US Southwest is real. There was debate about its existence only because it was so large (the size of Delaware) and the methane readings were so unusually high, that at first it was believed to be an instrument error. The methane cloud is from massive coal mines in the region.
Seven massive craters that began appearing in Siberia last summer, now known to have resulted from melting permafrost and succeeding methane explosions, continue to garner media attention as more people begin to realize the dire impacts. As an increasing amount of methane is released into the atmosphere, the rapidity of ACD's impact rises, since methane is 100 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the short term. Hence, these craters are yet another runaway feedback loop caused by ACD. Russian scientists have unequivocally tied the methane crater phenomenon to climate disruption.
More research continues to link the wild weather patterns that have been wracking the United States (deep freezes in the Midwest, record low temperatures and high snowfalls in the Northeast, warm winters in the West) to ACD. A NASA-generated image gives a clear picture of the dramatic US weather patterns, revealing the stark difference in temperature anomalies (temperature variations outside the norm) across the country.
At the same time, other scientific reports have linked large Pacific Ocean cycles with warming temperatures on the planet's surface, which means that as Pacific trade winds slacken in the coming years, as they are expected to do, seas will begin absorbing less of ACD's energy, and some of the heat they are already holding will be released into the atmosphere, hence speeding up ACD even more.
Denial and Reality
Certainly the top of the barrel of denial dung from this last month comes from the denier-in-chief, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma). His latest antic found him bringing a snowball to the US Senate floor, because in his world, holding a snowball apparently proves that ACD is a "hoax."
Willie Soon, a "scientist" who works at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose funding sources - oil and coal interests - were recently revealed, told the media he was "saddened and appalled" by the "attacks" against him. "Deniers" is the perfect term to describe people like Soon.
It also came out recently that Florida Department of Environmental Protection employees were ordered not to use the terms "climate change" or "global warming" in any official communications, emails or reports.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, another outspoken denier, compared himself to Galileo and called those who believe in ACD "flat-earthers." Cruz told the Texas Tribune that contemporary "global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers," and added, "You know it used to be accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier."
Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recently shot back at the ACD denier camp. During a March lecture he said, "I don't blame the politicians for a damn thing because we vote for the politicians. I blame the electorate." Tyson went on to add, "Now we have a time where people are cherry-picking science. The science is not political. That's like repealing gravity because you gained 10 pounds last week."
Using the church segue from the Galileo reference, the US Episcopal Church announced that addressing ACD is on par morally with the civil rights movement, and that ACD denial is "immoral."
A recently released "must-see" documentary called Merchants of Doubt, based on the must-read book with the same title, exposes the dirty tricks the spin doctors from the fossil fuel industry use to fuel the "denial" movement.
Confirming how effective this film is at exposing the denial machine, ACD denier Fred Singer started lobbying fellow skeptics to generate backlash and legal action against the filmmakers.
Also on the reality front, climate scientists at leading universities around the world are now joining forces in order to formulate a plan that will govern investment (read - divestment) in fossil fuels.
Cruz and other denier politicians are now getting schooled by 12-year-olds on ACD. Given that 90 percent of eighth graders accept the reality of human-caused climate change, an event organized by the advocacy group Avaaz brought a group of kids to climate-denying lawmakers' offices and asked them to take a simple elementary school quiz on the science behind ACD.
As ACD progresses and accelerates, population growth, growing demands for all resources, ACD impacts and lack of potable water have already combined to causemany countries to fall into a state of chronic emergency, as a world made more violent by ACD is upon us.
Lastly, in March, right-wing Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was rebuffed in a Senate subcommittee hearing while trying to criticize NASA's recent decision toward an increase in funding for studying earth-based phenomena, along with a slight decrease in money for space exploration.
Cruz questioned NASA's aiming funding toward studying ACD, said he felt it was more important to explore space, and while talking to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, "I would suggest that almost any American would agree that the core function of NASA is to explore space. That's what inspires little boys and little girls across this country. It's what sets NASA apart from any agency in the country."
To which Bolden replied, "We can't go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center goes underwater and we don't know it - and that's understanding our environment. It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth's environment because this is the only place we have to live."
DAHR JAMAIL
Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last ten years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.
His third book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with William Rivers Pitt, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in Washington State.
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In het Parool: "Openlijke discriminatie is hard maar goed, stelt Renzo Verwer. Het scheelt tijd. Bovendien hanteren we in het dagelijks leven altijd vooroordelen." "Discriminatie is soms Walgelijk" http://www.parool.nl/parool/nl/30700/OPINIE/article/detail/3945419/2015/04/06/Discriminatie-het-is-soms-walgelijk-maar-we-doen-het-allemaal.dhtml
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