Uncle Sam en Nederland

Uncle Sam heeft het altijd al moeilijk gehad met democratische naties zodra die een eigen weg inslaan en weigeren Washington's oorlogszuchtige activiteiten blindelings te steunen. Ditmaal is Nederland aan de beurt om te worden bedreigd en gechanteerd. De Volkskrant bericht: 'VS straffen Nederland bij afhaken. "Als de Nederlanders besluiten geen troepen naar Afghanistan te sturen, zal dat schadelijk zijn voor de Nederlandse belangen in de Verenigde Staten. De Nederlanders kunnen niet zomaar zeggen: oké, wij gaan niet naar Afghanistan, verder blijft alles hetzelfde. Dat zal niet gebeuren." Oud-diplomaat Paul Bremer III voorspelt dat Amerika Nederland zal straffen als het niet de elfhonderd militairen levert die het de NAVO heeft toegezegd voor de stabilisatiemacht in Afghanistan. Bremer was tussen 1983 en 1986 Amerikaans ambassadeur in Den Haag. In 2003, kort na de val van Saddam Hussein, werd hij als vertrouweling van president Bush de Amerikaanse bewindvoerder over Irak.' Lees verder: http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/1136700142637.html

De Neoliberale Economie

Grafiek van de aandelenkoersen voor en na de crash van 1929. Global Circle Net heeft een artikel overgenomen van Gracchus Jones, 'the pen name of an historian and monetary theorist from Washington, D.C.' Hij schrijft het volgende: 'The Washington Post and the Coming Crash. The Washington Post is one of the world’s “great” newspapers. But to the American-European financial establishment, it is much more than that. It is one of their house organs, with close ties to the U.S. government intelligence community. The Post’s job is to shape the news the way the East Coast establishment wants it shaped. No one should think for an instant that rookie reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein would have been allowed to unmask President Richard Nixon if the intelligence/financier elite hadn’t decided it was time for the cursing Californian to go. Nixon’s crime? Probably not so much the dirty tricks and use of the IRS to hound those on his “enemy list” as much as his use of the Federal Reserve under Arthur Burns to radically ease credit in order to create a mini-economic boom in time for the 1972 presidential election. The Federal Reserve, you see, is an institution the establishment guards jealously as their own private preserve, one that not even presidents can tinker with.' Lees verder:
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/guest1.htm

LA Times en Sharon

Dit is het Israelische leger in actie tegen Palestijnse kinderen tijdens het bewind van Sharon. Sinds het begin van de tweede intifada in september 2000 zijn 728 Palestijnse kinderen, van wie 98 onder de acht jaar oud, door het Israelische leger of joodse kolonisten vermoord. http://www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm?DocId=454&CategoryId=1 Bovendien zijn Palestijnse kinderen in strijd met de Conventie over de Rechten van het Kind door het leger gevangen gehouden en worden sommigen volgens 'Defence for Children International' zelfs gemarteld. Opmerkelijk is dan ook de wijze waarop de massamedia Sharon portretteren als een groot staatsman zonder wie Israel niet verder zou kunnen. Gelukkig verschijnt er nu in de internationale media een tegengeluid, zo blijkt ook uit een artikel, dat Saree Makdisi, hoogleraar aan de Universiteit van California, voor de gezaghebbende Los Angeles Times schreef en dat overgenomen is door de Electronic Intifada: 'The whitewashing of Ariel Sharon. THE 'MAN OF COURAGE AND PEACE' STORY IGNORES HIS BLOODY AND RUTHLESS PAST. AS ARIEL SHARON'S career comes to an end, the whitewashing is already underway. Literally overnight he was being hailed as "a man of courage and peace" who had generated "hopes for a far-reaching accord" with an electoral campaign promising "to end conflict with the Palestinians." But even if end-of-career assessments often stretch the truth, and even if far too many people fall for the old saw about the gruff old warrior miraculously turning into a man of peace, the reality is that miracles don't happen, and only rarely have words and realities been separated by such a yawning abyss. From the beginning to the end of his career, Sharon was a man of ruthless and often gratuitous violence. The waypoints of his career are all drenched in blood, from the massacre he directed at the village of Qibya in 1953, in which his men destroyed whole houses with their occupants -- men, women and children -- still inside, to the ruinous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in which his army laid siege to Beirut, cut off water, electricity and food supplies and subjected the city's hapless residents to weeks of indiscriminate bombardment by land, sea and air.' Lees verder: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4387.shtml Nu de Nederlandse media nog. In Israel zelf neemt het verzet tegen de Israelische militaire repressie op de bezette Westbank toe. Door middel van publicaties en foto's proberen gewone Israelische soldaten van de actiegroep 'Breaking the Silence' hun joodse landgenoten duidelijk te maken welke terreur er in hun naam wordt uitgeoefend. Zie daarvoor het interview met Avichay Sharon in het programma 'This is Hell' van vorig jaar 3 december. http://www.thisishell.net/archives_2005.html En hun eigen site: http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/index_en.asp Of een artikel over hen: http://www.afsc.org/pwork/0410/041008.htm

Israel's Expansionisme

Eind vorige maand schreef Sarah Leah Whitson van de mensenrechtenorganisatie Human Rights Watch in een brief aan president Bush: 'Dear President Bush, I am writing to you with respect to multiple Israeli announcements of its plans to continue expanding settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). This directly contravenes international law and Israeli commitments under the Road Map. You recently reiterated Israel’s obligations to stop expanding settlements when you said, on October 20, 2005, following your meeting with Palestinian President Abbas: “Israel should not undertake any activity that contravenes its road map obligations, or prejudices the final status negotiations with regard to Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. This means that Israel must remove unauthorized outposts and stop settlement expansion.” Israel has acted contrary to these obligations, escalating the building of settlements in 2005. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of 2005, there was a 28% increase in settlement housing starts compared to the same period in 2004. Israel now proposes to further expand West Bank settlements in the coming year. We urge you to use U.S. diplomatic and financial influence to stop this trend in 2006.' http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/27/isrlpa12346.htm Vorige week donderdag werd Sarah Leah Whitson geinterviewd in het programma van Democracy Now. De journaliste Amy Goodman vroeg haar ondermeer het volgende: 'What would it mean for Israel to lose this money? SARAH LEAH WHITSON: I think more than the money, it would mean a huge understanding that the United States is not willing to support Israel’s unlawful activities, that the United States is actually willing to stand behind the public commitments, statements it’s made that it does not want Israel to expand settlements, that it continues to believe that these are wrong acts, that they undermine the political process and, obviously, they're unlawful, as well.' Zie: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/06/1451234 Voor een overzicht van het Israelische expansionisme van het afgelopen decennium, zie: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/israel/map/

Irak 10

De Sydney Morning Herald bericht: "The country's on the verge of a civil war," General Sanchez told soldiers preparing to deploy to Iraq during a ceremony held in Heidelberg, Germany.
Senior Shiite Muslim religious and political leaders urged restraint yesterday after some Shiites called for retaliation against Sunni Arab militants whom they blamed for Thursday's suicide bombing in the Shiite holy city of Karbala. Shiites make up 60 per cent of Iraq's population but were oppressed by the minority Sunni Arabs under former president Saddam Hussein, who also persecuted Iraq's Kurdish population. The new government is expected to be dominated by Shiite Islamists. General Casey sought to downplay last week's violence. "We can't let what's happened the last few days distract us from the progress that's been made over the last year. That's what the terrorists want," General Casey said.' Zie:
http://smh.com.au/news/world/us-generals-disagree-on-iraq-violence/2006/01/07/1136609984022.html

Irak 9

Op de bovenste foto ziet u: 'Razaq Al Kazem Al Khafaji grieves over the bodies of his children in Hilla in the southern province of Babylon on Tuesday. Khafaji lost 15 members (including six children) of his family as his car was bombed by coalition helicopters while fleeing Haidariya towards Babylon. Thirty-three civilians were killed and 310 wounded in a US-British bombing of the residential area of Nader south of the city of Hilla, 80km south of Baghdad (photo by Karim SAHIB/AFP).' Zie: http://www.streamreel.com/media/war.htm Op de onderste foto's ziet u de doodskisten van Amerikaanse soldaten vlak voordat ze worden teruggevlogen naar de VS.
De Amerikaanse onafhankelijke journalist Dahr Jamail schrijft in zijn dagboek: 'US Propaganda vs. Iraqi Reality... What better time to maintain tax cuts in the US, particularly when a new study by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes estimates the cost of the Iraq war to be between $1-2 trillion, and the national debt already over $8 trillion? Meanwhile, the reality in Iraq is the opposite of that generated by the Cheney administration as the carnage and chaos in Iraq worsens each day. A quick look at foreign media outlets yields the following developments that were either not reported or under-reported in the US: January 4: -Unidentified gunmen assassinated Rahim Ali al-Sudani, director-general of the Iraqi Oil Ministry, and his son early on the morning of 4 January in Al-Amiriyah area in northern Baghdad. -Clashes broke out between civilians protesting against unemployment and Iraqi police in Al-Nasiriyah city in Dhi Qar Governorate, wounding scores of civilians and police officers. The TV added within the same news summary that two civilians were “martyred” and two others were injured when an explosive charge missed a US patrol unit in Kirkuk. -Al Sharqiyah television reported that a US plane had crashed in Mosul. Quoting its correspondent in the city, the TV said that US forces had rushed to the area and sealed off the scene where the crash occurred. January 5: -At least 130 Iraqis and 11 US soldiers die (highest number of US soldiers killed in one day since August) in one of the bloodiest days in Iraq since the invasion.' Lees verder: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000345.php#more

'Collateral Damage' 2

Dit zijn slachtoffertjes van een Amerikaans napalm bombardement op Vietnam. In 1973 onthulde de Australische journalist John Pilger dat 'Americans were still fighting' in Vietnam 'even though they were supposed to have pulled out following the Paris Peace Agreement in January of that year and President Nixon's announcement of "peace with honour". "They had sent in private contractors who were really military in civilian dress,"explained Pilger. "Companies were contracted by the defence department to hire so called retired American officers to do exactly what US officers were doing when they weren't retired. It made a mockery of the Paris Agreement. Moreover, with this ghost army in place, the Americans intensified the bombing. More Vietnamese civilians were killed in those three years to 1975 than in all the years back to 1965.' Meer dan 30 jaar later voltrekt zich dezelfde militaire strategie in Irak. Niet alleen worden er nu ook 'private contractors' ingezet, particuliere huurlingen, maar aangezien de Amerikanen de grondoorlog in feite hebben verloren, nemen ook de luchtbombardementen op de burgerbevolking toe en daarmee de zogeheten 'colateral damage,' zoals International Clearing House laat zien. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11480.htm Voor meer informatie over Irakese burger slachtoffers zie ook: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2006/01/collateral-damage.html