Anti-Coronapas-Petitie al 250.000 keer getekend

 

Mona Keijzer leidt coalitie die pleit voor afschaffing coronapas, petitie al 250.000 keer getekend

Een brede coalitie met voormalig staatssecretaris Mona Keijzer als initiatiefnemer pleit voor de onmiddellijke afschaffing van het coronatoegangsbewijs. Onverdeeld Open, zoals de coalitie zichzelf noemt, heeft een petitie gelanceerd die inmiddels ruim 250 duizend keer is ondertekend. Op de tekst valt wel wat af te dingen.

Maarten Albers5 februari 2022, 19:30

Mona Keijzer tijdens haar periode als staatssecretaris van Economische Zaken en Klimaat.Beeld EPA

Keijzer geeft met het initiatief vervolg aan haar aankondiging dat ze een ‘actieve, onafhankelijke rol’ wil gaan spelen in het publieke debat over corona. Ze deed die aankondiging in september vorig jaar, nadat ze was ontslagen als staatssecretaris van Economische Zaken en Klimaat. Dat ontslag volgde op openlijke kritiek op de coronapas, in het weekend dat het kabinet die invoerde. Keijzer (CDA) was in het kabinet Rutte III verantwoordelijk voor het midden- en kleinbedrijf.

In een manifest spreken de initiatiefnemers van Onverdeeld Open zich uit ‘tegen het coronatoegangsbewijs in al zijn verschijningsvormen’. ‘De schade die erdoor wordt veroorzaakt, staat niet in verhouding tot eventuele voordelen voor de volksgezondheid.’

De website waarop medestanders de petitie van Onverdeeld Open konden ondertekenen, was zaterdag slecht bereikbaar. Toch ondertekenden al ruim 200 duizend mensen de petitie sinds de lancering vrijdagavond.

Steun van prominente politici en wetenschappers

Het initiatief krijgt steun van enkele prominente (ex-)politici. Onder anderen oud-Kamerleden Joël Voordewind (ChristenUnie), Marianne Thieme (Partij voor de Dieren) en Michel Rog (CDA) ondertekenden de petitie. Ook bekende medici, juristen, ondernemers en wetenschappers hebben het manifest ondertekend. Onder hen zijn de hoogleraren Jan Rotmans en Ewald Engelen, voormalig Denkers des Vaderlands René ten Bos en Daan Roovers, cabaretier Guido Weijers, topman Ritty van Straalen (ID&T Groep), de regisseurs Dick Maas en Martin Koolhoven en predikant Paul Visser.

De initiatiefnemers stellen dat de snelheid waarmee het virus muteert en de beperkte werkzaamheid van de vaccins ertoe leiden dat ‘klassieke groepsimmuniteit door vaccinatie onhaalbaar is’ en dat corona als ‘endemisch virus’ rond zal blijven gaan in Nederland. De coronapas is volgens hen een inbreuk op de grondrechten die niet past bij die situatie. ‘Wij willen een onverdeelde samenleving waarin deelname niet afhankelijk is van een gezondheidspas.’

Veel experts betwisten het idee dat het coronavirus inmiddels endemisch is — een situatie waar het virus op een voorspelbare en controleerbare wijze rondgaat. Volgens epidemioloog Alma Tostmann van het Radboud UMC is corona ‘absoluut nog niet endemisch’. ‘We zitten midden in een piek van besmettingen, de gevolgen daarvan komen in de komende weken.’ Ook minister Ernst Kuipers van Volksgezondheid vond het vorige week ‘nog te vroeg’ om van een endemie te spreken.

Onverdeeld Open stelt dat de vaccins ‘geen langdurige bescherming tegen besmettingen en overdracht van het virus’ bieden. Dat is volgens Tostmann overdreven: ‘De bescherming van vaccins tegen besmetting is beperkt, en neemt na een paar maanden alweer af. Maar je kan niet zeggen dat die bescherming nul is.’

Coalitie meent dat 2G-beleid weinig zoden aan de dijk zet

Volgens de coalitie zal een 2G beleid, waarbij ongevaccineerden op veel plekken niet meer binnenkomen, ‘nauwelijks invloed hebben op de belasting van de zorg’. Wel leidt het volgens hen tot uitsluiting en isolatie van ongevaccineerden, en ‘draagt het bij aan de toenemende polarisatie en verdeeldheid in onze maatschappij’.

Het 2G-beleid dat het kabinet in wil voeren, ondervindt al langer veel weerstand, niet alleen vanuit politiek en samenleving, maar ook vanuit de wetenschap. Onderzoekers van de TU Delft en het UMC Utrecht concludeerden half januari dat invoering van 2G een ‘zeer beperkt effect’ zou hebben op het aantal besmettingen. Ook wezen zij erop dat de coronapas waarschijnlijk niet helpt om de vaccinatiegraad omhoog te krijgen.

Om daarom maar te stellen dat 2G nauwelijks invloed zou hebben op de situatie in de ziekenhuizen, is volgens Tostmann te kort door de bocht. ‘Zowel voor gevaccineerden als voor mensen die zijn hersteld van een infectie houdt de bescherming tegen ernstige ziekte langer aan dan de bescherming tegen besmetting. Maar het is een illusie om te denken dat besmettingen niet zullen doorsijpelen tot de groep ongevaccineerden. 2G ontlast de zorg in eerste instantie dus wel degelijk, dat houdt alleen niet aan.’

Tostmann vindt dat Keijzer en co de zaken aandikken die ze goed uitkomen, en vice versa. ‘Dat is jammer, want ze stellen een terechte vraag: hoe proportioneel is 2G- of 3G-beleid in de huidige situatie? Die discussie moeten we voeren, maar doe jezelf dan de eer aan om het correct op te schrijven.’

Coalitie ook geen voorstander van 1G-beleid

Een 1G-beleid, waar iedereen zich moet laten testen om toegang te krijgen tot bijvoorbeeld restaurants of bioscopen, kan op meer begrip rekenen van de Onverdeeld Open omdat het de ongelijkheid tussen groepen opheft. Maar 1G gaat volgens hen ‘nog steeds uit van de gedachte dat een bewijs van gezondheid voorwaarde mag zijn voor toegang tot de samenleving’. ‘De maatschappelijke nadelen van dit systeem en de kosten van de benodigde infrastructuur staan niet in verhouding tot de kleine vermindering van virusverspreiding die het oplevert’, aldus de initiatiefnemers.

Dat 1G praktisch onhaalbaar is, bevestigde ook OMT-lid Marc Bonten in november vorig jaar. Hij noemde het idee ‘volstrekt onrealistisch.’ Maar uit het onderzoek van de TU Delft en het UMC Utrecht bleek wel dat het aantal besmettingen met ruim 19 procent zou kunnen dalen als 1G-beleid overal behalve op school, thuis en op werk ingevoerd zou worden. Dat 1G nauwelijks helpt tegen besmetting, klopt dus niet.

Naast Keijzer zijn er twee andere initiatiefnemers van Onverdeeld Open. Jona Walk is een arts in opleiding tot internist, die onder andere onderzoek doet naar het coronavirus en zich al langer kritisch uitlaat over het coronabeleid en de stigmatisering van ongevaccineerden. Ook hoogleraar waarschijnlijkheidsrekenen Ronald Meester deelde eerder al zijn kritiek op het coronabeleid, met name de rekenmodellen van het RIVM.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/mona-keijzer-leidt-coalitie-die-pleit-voor-afschaffing-coronapas-petitie-al-250-000-keer-getekend~b35ae5d7/

 

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Tuesday 10 January 2017

Issue 2536

Features

Robert Burns—an auld radical

This article is over 5 years, 0 months old

A print of a radical meeting agitating for Parliamentary reform 1795 (Pic: Wikimedia creative comments)

Most people associate the 18th century Scottish poet with singing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve or Burns Supper events marking his birthday on 25 January.

At such events, we’re presented with a sentimental and romanticised portrayal of Burns.

But Burns’ poems, songs and letters reveal a revolutionary, who was unapologetically on the side of the poor and oppressed.

He was born into a family of tenant farmers in Alloway, Ayrshire, in 1759.

It was a period of revolutionary upheaval and new ideas—which would have a lasting effect on his work.

As capitalist development transformed feudal agriculture, most farmers were pushed into a life of brutal, grinding poverty.

This is brilliantly captured in Burns’ poem The Vision, where he describes himself as “half mad, half fed and half sarket” (clothed).

Religious

But the development of capitalism also gave birth to the “Scottish Enlightenment”.

This great intellectual flowering—and Burn’s Presbyterian religious upbringing—had a big impact on his work.

At the time two groups—the “New Lichts” (new lights) and “Auld Lichts” (old lights)—were waging a war for the soul of Scottish Presbyterianism.

Burns supported the New Lichts, who were influenced by the Enlightenment’s egalitarian ideas.

His satirical monologue Holy Willies Prayer is a scathing attack on the religious hypocrisy of the conservative Auld Lichts.

But Burns wasn’t just an idle bystander during this tumultuous period.

He wrote poems, songs and letters to radical newspapers, such as The Edinburgh Gazetteer, in support of the 1765 American Revolution and 1789 French Revolution.

His song Ballad on the American War (1784) was one of his first openly political songs.

It expresses support for the American Revolution, and the disarray it caused William Pitt the Younger’s Tory government.

After reading it, prominent Scottish clergyman Hugh Blair allegedly remarked “Burns’ politics always smell of the smithy”.

This radical politics ran throughout his work. But by far the biggest influence on Burns was the French Revolution.

He uses Ca Ira, the French revolutionary song, in some of his poems and songs such as his The Rights of Women in 1792.

This poem also shows that Burns was limited by the dominant beliefs of his time, but supported much greater freedoms for women.

Part of one version of Ca Ira translates as, “It shall be so, liberty will be established, despite the tyrant everyone will rise up.”

Burns was accused of singing Ca Ira in a Dumfries Theatre and disrespecting the king by keeping his hat on during the national anthem.

One of Burns’ most famous poems, Scots Wha Hae from 1793, is sometimes wrongly characterised as nationalist.

In fact, it concludes by invoking the Tennis Court Oath of the French revolutionaries, “Let-us-do or die!”

The last verse reads, “Lay the proud usurper low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty’s in every blow! Let us do—or die!”

Burns wasn’t just a passive commentator and he tried to help the French Revolution. In his job as an excise man Burns bought four canons from the Rosamund, a ship impounded for smuggling.

He then sent them to help the new French revolutionary government.

Nor did Burns just champion revolutions abroad—he backed the movement for parliamentary reform in Britain.

Burns was a member of a number of radical clubs and associations that sprung up in the wake of the French Revolution.

These included the Edinburgh Crochallan Fencibles and the Dumfries Friends of the People.

Feminist

He was also in correspondence with some of the leading radicals of the time, such as feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, anti-slavery campaigner William Roscoe and Scottish republican Maria Riddell.

Burns’ support for these radical causes influenced others. His support for Irish freedom inspired the Ulster Weaver poets, who backed the 1798 United Irish Rebellion and its Belfast Northern Star newspaper.

He believed that people in any country had the right to rebel against a government that did not rule in the interests of the people.

The organisations and causes that Burns was associating himself with were clearly radical and revolutionary.

As the French Revolution took hold and support grew in Britain, Pitt’s government launched a brutal crackdown on radicals.

But this didn’t deter Burns—in late 1794 he declared we should shed no tears for a “perjured blockhead” after the execution of King Louis XVI.

The intellectual figurehead of the reactionary backlash in Britain was the conservative Edmund Burke.

In his Reflections on the Revolution in France from 1790 he argued that civilisation would be “trodden down under the hoofs of the swinish multitude”.

In this fight, Burns knew whose side he was on.The radical Tom Paine’s brilliant pamphlet The Rights of Man was a stinging response to Burke.

He embraced Paine and loathed Burke, referring to the him in his Dumfries Epigrams as a “poisonous reptile”.

Conservative groups, such as The Association for the Preservation of Liberty and the Dumfries Loyal Sons of Natives, sprang up.

They distributed right wing propaganda and attacked Burns and other radicals.

Monarchist loyalists disrupted radical meetings, burned effigies of Tom Paine at demonstrations and attacked printers who published the Rights of Man and other radical works.

Burns had been optimistic that the movement for parliamentary reform would succeed, but he was proved wrong.

Treason

In 1793-4 the notorious treason trials, presided over by the vengeful Lord Braxfield, took place in Edinburgh.

Radical Scottish lawyer Thomas Muir was convicted of “seditious practices” and “exhorting persons to purchase and peruse wicked publications and writings”. This was a reference to Paine’s Rights of Man.

Muir was sentenced to 14 years transportation to a penal colony in Australia.

Similarly, William Fysse Palmer, a Unitarian minister from Dundee, was sentenced to seven years.

Pitt’s government ramped up repression in 1795 with the “gagging acts”—the Seditious Meetings and Treasonable Practices Acts. These draconian laws effectively outlawed free speech.

The reform movement in Britain was driven underground, although in Ireland it continued until the defeat of the United Irish Rebellion in 1798.

It was only a matter of time before the Pitt government’s ire turned to Burns.

Soon enough he was being investigated “as a person disaffected to government”. The elaborate spy network set up by the Lord Advocate Robert Dundas was also keeping a close eye on Burns.

It was only Burns’ fame as a poet and his personal contacts that stopped him from being arrested and tried for sedition.

Some of Burns’ most radical work was written at this time. The Dagger is a superb satire advocating support for the French Revolution and parliamentary reform—and a scathing attack on Burke.

Similarly The Tree of Liberty supports both the French and American revolutions and laments the repression of the reform movement in England.

It would become a potent symbol of the Scottish reform movement.

His iconic A Man’s a Man For A’ That denounces aristocratic power and privilege and champions equality. “The rank is but the guineas stamp … The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor, Is king o’ men for a’ that,” it goes.

Equality

The poem ends with perhaps one of the best known of Burns’ lines—“That Man to Man the warld o’er, Shall brithers be for a’ that.”

By 1795 Burns was seriously ill, but he did not recant his radical views as some critics have suggested.

In June 1796, an ailing Burns wrote a defiant letter to Maria Riddell shortly before he died.

“If I must write let it be Sedition or Blasphemy,” he writes.

We should celebrate Burns as a radical poet, a champion of the poor and the oppressed. He stands clearly in the tradition of revolutionary change.

https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/robert-burns-an-auld-radical/

 

State archive glitch reaffirms Israel’s genocidal intent

Recently unearthed statements from Israel's founders endorsing ethnic cleansing and violence during the Nakba will only be shocking if you are not familiar with the long history of Zionist leaders and thinkers showing genocidal intent towards Palestinians.

BY ZUBAYR ALIKHAN  JANUARY 19, 2022  17

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PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU STANDS IN FRONT OF A PORTRAIT OF ISRAEL’S FIRST PRIME MINISTER, DAVID BEN-GURION. (PHOTO: KOBI GIDEON/GPO)

A technical glitch in Israel’s State Archives has revealed quotations from Israel’s founder David Ben-Gurion and Israel’s first agricultural minister Aharon Zisling stating that “we must wipe them [Palestinian villages] out” and that forgiveness was to be offered to Jewish forces found to have committed “instances of rape” against Palestinian women. These long-censored writings illustrate the brutal reality Palestinians have testified to, and been subjected to, since Al Nakba, or The Catastrophe, in 1947-48. 

While the quotations are intensely disturbing, even more so is the apparent shock with which they have been received. Such reactions are only due to blatant disregard for the Palestinians’ powerful indigenous testimony, and ignoring the long history of statements from Israeli leaders themselves that reveal similar genocidal intent. 

It is fact, beyond the realm of reasonable doubt, that the acts described in the United Nation’s definition of Genocide were committed en masse during the Nakba and continue today. During the Nakba, Zionist forces violently expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their native lands, razed over 530 villages, cities, and towns, conducted numerous massacres (often hundreds of women, children, and men, per massacre), and raped countless native women—which Aharon Zisling, of course, would “forgive”. Thus, the only remaining factor to constitute genocide is intent. Here, Ben-Gurion’s uncovered statement is sufficient proof. What else does a written statement of the desire and perceived necessity to “wipe them [Palestinian villages] out” constitute, besides the intent to eradicate an ethnic, racial group? 

Ben-Gurion answers such a question quite aptly, writing in a letter to his son in 1937, “we must expel the Arabs and take their place”. It was to be the complete annihilation and purging of a native people from their historic homeland, and the superimposition of what Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, termed “alien settlers”, therein. 

Ben-Gurion was not alone. The outed documents are perhaps the most recent exposition of Israel’s crimes, but are by no means, unique. Any objective reading of history—be it the diaries of Theodore Herzl (the father of Zionism), the drafting of the Balfour Declaration, or the works of Israel Zangwill (a primary proponent of cultural Zionism)—evidences the conclusion that the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestine in 1947-48 was deeply premeditated. The Zionist movement and its allies considered expelling the natives a fundamental necessity, for the aim of establishing an exclusively Jewish nation-state in Palestine. When proposed, the targeted land was extensively populated and nurtured by an indigenous Arab people. Hence, the establishment of an exclusively Jewish national state— even a state of Jewish dominance—required, necessarily, the expulsion of the land’s native inhabitants. 

Theodore Herzl—in a typically colonial fashion—envisioned the genocidal regime that was to come as “representatives of Western civilization”, bringing “cleanliness, order, and well-established customs to this plague-ridden, blighted corner of the Orient” [1]. For Herzl, and the Zionist movement at large, these armies—which would carry out atrocities such as the massacre of Deir Yassin among many other villages—represented “a vanguard of culture against barbarism” [2]. Such sentiments lend insight into the ideological environment revealed by the leak—one nurturing the acceptance of rape and genocide against anyone deemed foreign.

Israel Zangwill took an equally devious approach, designating Palestine—a land then inhabited by over 700,000 Arab natives—to be “a country without a people”. Interestingly, this specific phrasing was first used by Christian Restorationists, who believed that Jewish dominance and control of the Holy Land was in accordance with biblical prophecy. The non-existence of the Arab natives was not based on the misconception that the land was truly vacant, but rather, that its residents were lesser beings, so incomplete in their ethnic and cultural makeup that they were not entirely human, if at all. The natives’ presence was hence irrelevant—an inconsequential obstacle in the path of European expansionism and colonization. Palestine, in Zangwill’s words, “was not so much occupied by the Arabs as overrun by them”. While still nauseating and obscene, the prospect of a once oppressed people forgiving “instances of rape” and wiping out entire populations becomes slightly more sanitized, when one strips the victims of their humanity. This dehumanization is precisely what the leaked documents exemplify.

The ensuing brutality would alter the course of Palestinian history irreparably. The vast majority of the indigenous, Palestinian populations were exiled, replaced by a regime defined by hatred, pre-eminence, and self-supremacy. In 1969, Moshe Dayan, Israel’s former Defense Minister and one of Ben Gurion’s generals, described the genocide:

“we came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing…a Jewish state…You do not even know the names of these Arab villages…because the geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either…There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population”. 

The abhorrent treatment of the Palestinians by the foreign-backed, invading Zionist forces—currently identifying themselves as, the state of Israel—was, in the views of countless Palestinians, as well as Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and even Aharon Zisling himself, something mirroring the demonic horrors of National Socialism which had gripped Germany only a few years prior. 

Unsurprisingly, the perpetrators would attempt to conceal their crimes, however this crucial information—albeit hidden and downplayed—has long been available to the public. Hence, any shock evoked by Ben-Gurion and Aharon Zislings’ quotes, is unjustified. Rather, the exposed documents should only serve to further substantiate and bolster the already well-established history and pre-existing Palestinian narrative on Israel’s ongoing reign of terror, and particularly, its violent settler-colonial birth through the Nakba—an atrocity which continues to this very day.

Notes

1. Herzl, Theodor, Raphael Patai, and Harry Zohn. The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl. New York: Herzl Press, 1960. Print.
2. Segev, Tom. (1999). One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate. New York: Metropolitan Books.

‘Aanwijzen’ van Joodse verrader Anne Frank

Ik ken Hans Fels als een integer mens. Hij schreef onlangs dit:

‘Aanwijzen’ van Joodse verrader Anne Frank maakt van cold case-onderzoek geheide kaskraker

Het cold case-project over Anne Frank haalde pontificaal de voorpagina van de Volkskrant en kreeg wereldwijd publiciteit. Omdat al lange tijd bekend was welke uitkomst zou volgen, groeide het uit tot een grote geldmachine, stelt Hans Fels.

Hans Fels18 januari 2022, 18:00

De kastanjeboom die het uitzicht vormde voor Anne Frank in het Achterhuis in Amsterdam.Beeld AP

Meer dan 47 jaar heb ik met mijn camera de wereld doorkruist om verslag te doen van wat de mens de mens aandoet. Als zoon van een moeder, die als enige van haar familie deportatie naar Auschwitz-Birkenau overleefde, heb ik de wereld altijd beschouwd met Auschwitz in mijn achterhoofd.

In Bosnië zag ik dat klasgenoten, of vrienden van de lokale voetbalclub elkaar moeiteloos konden aangeven of door het hoofd schieten als de maatschappelijke orde hen daartoe aanleiding gaf. In China verraadden kinderen hun ouders als die niet leefden volgens het Maoïstisch ideaal. In Argentinië stortten landgenoten hun eigen landgenoten als afval in zee en in El Salvador stonk het vulkanische doolhof van El Playón naar de lijken van Salvadorianen die daar ’s nachts door weer andere Salvadorianen werden gedumpt. De geschiedenis van de mensheid is doordrongen van broedermoord zodra de omstandigheden de geest corrumperen.

Maandagmorgen, nadat ik de Volkskrant had gelezen, haalde ik het Weinreb-rapport van Hans van der Leeuw uit mijn boekenkast om nog een keer na te lezen hoezeer Friedrich Weinreb mijn familie had bedrogen. Hij had mijn grootvader omgerekend honderdduizenden guldens afgetroggeld om hem en zijn familie op de lijst van een imaginaire trein naar Zwitserland te zetten.

Ook heb ik ontdaan en met tranen in de ogen door Primo Levi’s I sommersi e i salvati, (De Verdronkenen en de geredden) gebladerd en weer geprobeerd te begrijpen wat mijn moeder mij over Auschwitz-Birkenau heeft verteld: dat alleen de sterkste karakters een kans hadden om Auschwitz te overleven en dat overleven kon betekenen; overleven ten koste van een ander. In een interview dat ik in 1978 met mijn moeder maakte voor de film Namens onze Ouders (regie Monique Wolf en Hans Fels) zegt ze over Auschwitz: ‘Er zijn dingen die ik je nooit zal vertellen.’ Toen ik jaren later bij haar aandrong en zij mij met tegenzin toch iets onthulde, begreep ik dat er dingen zijn die je niet kan vertellen en dat er dingen zijn die je als zoon niet kan aanhoren.

Mysterie

Het kan zijn dat Otto Frank het mysterie van het verraad van het Achterhuis zelf heeft ontrafeld. Het kan zijn dat iemand uit de Joodse Raad, om zichzelf te redden, de Joden uit het Achterhuis heeft verraden. De echte waarheid die had moeten worden onthuld, is dat er zich voor de ogen van de gehele Nederlandse samenleving een drama afspeelde, waarbij het overgrote deel van de bevolking een volk zag verdrinken zonder hen een reddingsboei toe te werpen.

Dan gebeurt er wat deze speurneuzen nu kennelijk opgedoken hebben: dan graait en vecht iedereen om ergens een tak te grijpen, om houvast te krijgen en niet te verdrinken. De geschiedenis van de ondergang van het Nederlandse Jodendom kent vele verschrikkelijke anekdotes, ook binnen de kring van de eigen familie.

Otto Franks motieven kunnen diep menselijk en wijs geweest zijn, om een man te beschermen die in uiterste nood zocht naar een scheur in de muur om te ontsnappen. Het kan ook nog zijn dat Otto Frank geweten heeft dat de anonieme aanklacht op helemaal niets berust.

Maar als waar zou zijn dat Otto Frank de naam van de verrader heeft gekend, dan nog is te begrijpen waarom hij daar het zwijgen over heeft gedaan. Om de kop te voorkomen die nu in de Volkskrantis verschenen. Om de foto van Anne Frank over de hele voorpagina. En om die drie pagina’s binnen in de krant. Om te voorkomen dat er met de vinger naar ons gewezen zou kunnen worden, dat wij zelf schuldig zijn aan onze eigen ondergang. Mijn dochter van negen jaar oud zei me maandagavond ‘Abba, Anne Frank is door een Jood verraden.’

Tv-format

Ik had al eerder gehoord van het cold case-project rond Anne Frank. In oorsprong zijn dit soort cold case-projecten een televisie-format, ontwikkeld door filmproducenten voor wie geld en continuïteit van hun bedrijf voorop staan en die duidelijk geen enkele emotionele verwantschap hebben met het onderwerp. Omdat al lange tijd overduidelijk was tot welke conclusie men zou komen, is in de loop van het onderzoek het tv-format uitgegroeid tot een gigantische geldmachine: boeken die uitkomen in god mag weten hoeveel talen, ongetwijfeld tv-rechten in even zoveel landen. Een never ending story met misschien nog meer afleveringen in de toekomst.

De producenten hebben verdomd goed begrepen wat de commerciële implicatie van notaris Van den Bergh als hoofdverdachte betekent voor hun onderneming. Wat nou als uit het onderzoek tevoorschijn was gekomen dat ene meneer Jansen de boel had verraden, een dag voordat hij als treinmachinist de hele familie Frank in Westerbork had afgeleverd? Dan zou geen haan er naar hebben gekraaid, dan had de Volkskrant op het moment dat er oorlog met Rusland dreigt, haar voorpagina niet opgeofferd hebben aan Anne Frank, want dan zou er niets nieuws onder de zon zijn geweest.

De producenten zeggen wakker gelegen te hebben van hun conclusie en hebben een of andere rabbijn om zijn rabbinale zegen gevraagd. Dit nu is de definitie van een gotspe.

Hans Fels is cameraman en cineast. Hij werkte jarenlang als eindredacteur en regisseur voor de VPRO (onder meer Diogenes, In het kielzog van Darwin)

https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/aanwijzen-van-joodse-verrader-anne-frank-maakt-van-cold-case-onderzoek-geheide-kaskraker~b904e8c2/

5 Feb, 2022 14:31 

The Epstein Files: US Bureau of Prisons bent facts to support suicide narrative

The declassified papers on notorious pedophile case shed light on more suspicious details

Jeffrey Epstein © Rick Friedman / Rick Friedman Photography / Corbis via Getty Images 

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws by RT investigative unit The Detail include startling records revealing how the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) moved to shut down any and all public debate about the cause of Jeffrey Epstein’s death. Along the way, evidence was distorted, material facts ignored, and key anomalies unexplored and unpublicized.

After being found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on August 10, 2019, the records show that the Bureau issued statements to journalists and Epstein’s family categorically stating he’d committed suicide.  The result was international news outlets universally and unquestioningly reporting that Epstein had taken his own life from the word go, despite Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson having reached no conclusion at that time, and making clear in a statement the next day that the investigation was open and ongoing. 

It was not until August 16 that Sampson publicly declared Epstein’s death had been a suicide. The ruling was contested by leading forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who’d been hired by the billionaire’s brother to monitor the autopsy process. Speaking to the Miami Herald two months later, he charged that “the autopsy did not support suicide,’’ and that the pathologist who conducted it had recorded this.

Read more

 A lot of answers needed on Epstein-Maxwell saga – and not just from Prince Andrew

“Then Dr. Sampson changed it a week later, manner of death to suicide. The brother has been trying to find out why that changed,” Baden fulminated. “What was the evidence?”

No clarity on these questions has been forthcoming in the years since, although one rationale for the apparent volte-face may have been a shock Washington Post report a day prior to Sampson’s announcement. Sources familiar with the autopsy told the paper that the process had revealed several bones in Epstein’s neck, including the hyoid, were broken, and such breakages “are more common in victims of homicide by strangulation” than hanging.

Another explanation may be the then-ongoing “psychological reconstruction” of Epstein’s death compiled by Robert Nagle, BOP national suicide prevention coordinator. Files released to The Detail by the Bureau record how Nagle – whose name is redacted in the files – arrived at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on the morning of August 13 to commence his investigation. 

In his resultant report, Nagle noted that a video of an unspecified nature related to the “significant incident” was confiscated by the FBI prior to the review being initiated. He also said he’d been unable to conduct formal interviews with prison staff “to avoid interference with pending investigations” by the Justice Department, and that much of the information “typically gathered” in psychological reconstructions was not available.

These constraints “severely limited the ability to establish accurate timelines, confirm subjective reports, establish converging and diverging lines of facts, or discover new areas of inquiry,” Nagle wrote. 

For example, he was quite amazingly unable to piece together a “detailed description” of what the officers found when they discovered Epstein, as they “did not write memorandums and could not be interviewed.” Furthermore, as no pre-sentence report on Epstein had been completed prior to his death, numerous sections of the reconstruction – such as a review of the inmate’s “social history” – were avowedly incomplete in their appraisal.

Still, despite this glaring lack of hard evidence, the document ruled conclusively that Epstein had indeed committed suicide. His decision was attributed to being unable to sleep due to an “inability to tolerate the noise of prison,” plus the recent unsealing of thousands of records related to his 2008 conviction on child sex offenses, and the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. 

Sound enough reasoning, one might think – though in building his case, Nagle drew repeated attention to Epstein declaring himself on several occasions to be a “coward” in the weeks prior to his alleged suicide as indicative of suicidal intent. It’s certainly true the prisoner was recorded making such statements – but explicitly in the context of denying any intention, or even ability, to kill himself. 

“He said he is not the type who likes pain or would ever attempt to harm himself,” one psychological assessment noted. “[He] even does not like when he has to give blood.”

This can only be considered a staggeringly dishonest inversion of Epstein’s comments, although Nagle’s manipulations went unremarked upon in an internal review of the reconstruction by Metropolitan Correctional Center Warden Marti Licon-Vitale. Nonetheless, in a section marked “documentation accuracy” she took aim at the failure of officials to log an incident report in a timely fashion, and seemingly submitting conflicting reports on the same incident. 

FILE - In this courtroom artist's sketch, defendant Jeffrey Epstein, center, sits with attorneys Martin Weinberg, left, and Marc Fernich during his arraignment in New York federal court, Monday, July 8, 2019. © AP / Elizabeth Williams 

“Professional responsibility requires taking into account multiple descriptions of an incident as noted in your response. However, when discrepancies exist these should be compiled and noted in documentation to decrease the likelihood of conflicting conclusions,” she wrote. “Preconceived notions challenge the ability to remain open about alternative explanations … Please develop and provide local training for all staff that at a minimum reviews the timeframe for writing incident reports and offers guidance when there is not clear evidence of an infraction.”

While the specific episode criticized by Licon-Vitale is entirely redacted, one can infer that this section refers to the bizarre facts documented by The Detail in the first instalment of this investigative series. In brief, the initial incident report on Epstein’s alleged suicide on July 23, 2019 referred to “hanging/asphyxiation”, but another filed a week later was inexplicably amended to include “self-mutilation” by laceration, leading to him being disciplined for a penal code breach.  

These grievances aside, Nagle’s reconstruction was received with much delight by BOP higher ups. In an internal email dated August 23, the agency’s director Hugh Hurwitz effusively praised his “outstanding” work, remarking it was “unbelievable all you report without the benefit of interviews or video.” This email is ironic in the extreme, for it truly is “unbelievable” that a conclusive ruling of suicide could be reached without access to basic and vital evidence.

Four days earlier, Hurwitz was dismissed from his post by Attorney General William Barr without warning. Could this be attributable to attempting to shape the narrative on Epstein’s death, before the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Justice Department Inspector General had completed their respective probes of the case?

Whatever the truth of the matter, there is another supremely curious feature of the “psychological reconstruction” never hitherto publicized by any official or media outlet. A review of financial transactions associated with Epstein’s prison stay revealed that one of his attorneys “was depositing funds” into the commissary account of Efrain ‘Stone’ Reyes, Epstein’s final cellmate, “for unknown reasons.”

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This may account for why Reyes became a person of interest in the FBI’s investigation and was duly questioned. He reportedly feared that cooperating with the Bureau might “affect him negatively,” but in return for his help, he was moved to a minimum security correctional center in Queens, New York, which housed high-value cooperating witnesses like rapper Tekashi69.

While there, he was reportedly interviewed personally by Attorney General William Barr as part of the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General’s probe, who thanked him for his input. Strangely, though, the department has refused to confirm or deny the claim, while Kerri Kupec, its former spokesperson, charges that it’s “100% false.”

Reyes died in September 2020, five months after being released from the prison, due to a facility-wide Covid-19 outbreak, purportedly through complications arising from the virus. Subsequently, his niece told mainstream news outlets her uncle had frequently voiced intense skepticism that the six-foot Epstein could’ve hanged himself from the bunk frames in the cell, as they simply weren’t tall enough.

In January 2021, federal prosecutors ruled that all records related to Reyes would remain sealed, despite requests for disclosure from journalists due to the potential impact on issues allegedly unrelated to Epstein. In dismissing the request, authorities listed information concerning the billionaire included in all files related to Reyes, which ran to two pages – all of it redacted.

Almost a year to the day later, it was reported that the Inspector General report on Epstein’s death was nearing completion, with a Justice Department investigator suggesting all the team had left to do was “dot their I's and cross their T's,” and stating they’d be “surprised if it's not released in the next 30 days or so.”

Whether it will shed any light on the countless serious matters raised by the declassified Bureau of Prisons documents is anyone’s guess, although in light of the revelation Reyes was in receipt of funds from Epstein’s lawyers, The Detail has lodged a request with relevant authorities for the seal to be reconsidered.

By Keelan Balderson is a UK-based journalist interested in security services, and misuse of state power. Follow his work at @altnewsuk.

By Kit Klarenberg, an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg

https://www.rt.com/news/548335-epstein-us-bureau-prison/