Balinese Treat

The news from the Bali conference on climate has been unsurprising to me. I generally shy away from hippie, evil corporations and Bush being a corporate pawn clichés, but it's like he wants us to think in those terms. Like always, Bush's administration moderates its tone when its critics are proven right, but it remains as unwilling to adress the problem. This time the US is unwilling to bind itself to an international agreement (again) that obliges it to interfere with domestic economy and CO2 output. Yeah, it is supported by Japan and Canada in this stance, but when you get down to it, you can scrap those of the list just as soon again since a) Japan has in the past already made such large contributions to cutting CO2 that it's really difficult for them to find anything else that could be cleaner without conflicting with a core value of Japanese: consumerism. And b) Canada is held hostage by a conservative government, so I do what I do best and blame those rather than Blame Canada.

Bush's logic is always free market oriented when it's not really such a strong arguement. He wants to protect the market from cheap Chinese cars so he wouldn't be caught dead telling the auto industry how to make cars. I heard somewhere a Ford cars wouldn't pass even China's enviromental standards. Or he says the US cannot make the change without incredible effort. If so, I'd like to hear him explain why Putin had Russia sign Kyoto. You'd think the older Russian industry would have an even harder time than a country much richer than itself. Of course that is if Putin wasn't just out to score brownie points with left wing critics who care about enviroment and human rights in equal measure.

What truly made Bush the laughing stock was his own little conference in Washington half a year ago. No bald faced liar could have humiliated himself more than that. His administration claimed it was leading on enviromental protection and Europe should follow their example. Sorry, but if the Netherlands followed that example I'd be typing this blog from a refugee camp in the German Alps now since our dykes would have broken like the levees of New Orleans. They then had the arrogance to expect other nations to contribute financial and scientific resources to improve the world. A cynic would say Bush wanted to rummage through the donations bin, pick out contributions he liked, and then throw in a half burned cigar and call it 'his contribution'. The rancid cream on top was a press statement by his lackeys, so they could cart the news teams off to somewhere so nobody would see the insulted and gravely disappointed delegation as it left.

I figure there may be a few climate change sceptics reading who will say "why waste money on something that hasn't been proven?". Okay, so if a 100+ reports on climate change are not proof, let's take a hypothetical situation, hmm? Ask yourself what the enviromentalists (mostly scientists, greens and left wingers) stand to gain from being right, then ask what the critics (corporations, free market proponents and right wingers) stand to gain from being right. I can see no benefit for enviromentalists that are material, and they cannot be driven to press for such sacrifices if there wasn't anything wrong to begin with. The critics however, if right, won't have to make expensive changes to increase their efficiency and cut their polution, so for them it's about the money.
Still nor convinced? Well, let's say the enviromentalists get their way and we make all those suggested changes, but climate change isn't just avoided, but it turns out to have never been a threat. Then we will have invested huge sums of money in biofuels, renewable energy, hydrogen fuel and even fusion power, while water and air pollution is brought back considerably, increasing the health and welbeing of people living in industrialized regions, and forfeited any tiffs over oil trade while economically strangling a few brutal regimes that are only tolerated and sucked-up to because of their fossil fuel reserves. Not a bad way to be proven wrong, is it?
And what about if we do things the way Global Warming sceptics want it and they are proven wrong? Well, I'd hate to see what the world will be like then. I'd also hate to be in any redneck's shoes when he has to explain to refugees from Shanghai, New York or Amsterdam why he didn't want to make a little effort to prevent pollution before it led to global floods and other disasters.

Ironically, Bali is an island in the Indonesian archipelago that is rather small and will probably lose significant amounts of land to the sea if it does not disappear entirely in the event of global flooding. My mom used to buy Balinese Treats at a baker but nowadays it's impossible to get those even at a specialized sweets baker. I estimate that if Bali is all washed up, they'll be even harder to get. We may as well call them sea snacks then, and I reckon if Bali is gone, we'll be having plenty of those here.

Take the NIE for a spin

It seems that once again the White House had the intelligence agencies dig up dirt on their enemies. This time it's Iran's nuclear program. The conclusion is that there is no evidence of a weapons program. Not in years anyway. This sounds contradictory to the things you hear from Bush and his cronies, who speak like there's no question Iran is close to getting the Bomb. Where have I heard these contradictory statements before? Could it be Iraq? Are we going to find out the hard way in Iran there is no WMD program as well?

Sure, I don't trust Ahmadinejad. I didn't trust Saddam either. Both together still sound more reliable than Shrub does. There is something blatant about them that is as transparant as Hitler's ambition to subjugate Jews and lesser people, one only needs to listen to their speeches. There's no doubt Bush believed he was presenting the truth as it is when he talked about 'smoking guns' and Iraq. This guy actually believes what his hawks are telling him. And if there is one group of people who have shown themselves un-reliable, un-patriotic, un-American and un-sanitary then it's war hawks. They'll push for war if the whole world is against them. I don't know how they can lack so much common sense. Must have been the kinds of worms they were fed when they were but chickenhawks.

So, Bush is pretty much set on invading anyway since so far there has been no change in attitude since the NIE. They only send out the spin doctors again to warp the facts they like to support their little adventure. Well I hope they do. If there's anything worse then being sunk into the mud in Iraq, it's being sunk into the mud in both Iraq and Iran! This should give those idiots a 2nd Vietnam. Take notes this time people, because that failed for a reason to!

Hirsi Magan is a South Park carricature

Hirsi Magan (formerly Hirsi Ali) recently made a scathing accusation that the Dutch withdrawal of protection is to silence critics. While I would not put it past some of the Dutch politicians, I can understand they're fed up with Hirsi's criticism. On legal grounds she no longer has a right to protection, but on moral grounds the parliament at least provided her the money to hire guards while she lived in the US (where the Netherlands has no responsibility for her). It was made clear this was only temporarily. Yet when the funding was finally cut she started to blur the lines claiming she didn't know. I knew, and I really couldn't care less about her security.
Some people will say "but the US government isn't obliged to protect her either!". No, but maybe her boss would have arranged some security. After all, isn't he the leader of the neo-con thinktank 'Empire Enterprise Institute'? I thought such a big group would have plenty of funds or security and the need to use them. If I'm mistaken that means fortunately neo-conservatism is dying. But if EEI is just unwilling, that makes me think they want Hirsi Magan as their martyr, since Islamic Fundamentalism have the edge in this department. Time for the Islamophobes to catch up.

It seems Denmark has taken the Trojan Horse by offering her support. Seriously people, if you don't want another Jyland Posten riot, distance yourselves from Hirsi Magan! They say the Dutch government wants her out of the way, because she's become a nuisance to them. I totally agree. We have ourselves a situation here which we are trying to solve. First we get 9/11, but we could handle that. Fortuyn opened the wound. Then America compounds it by started a totally irrelevant war in Iraq and the stupid government did not oppose it. Then they kill Theo van Gogh. And finally, we get the fascist Geert Wilders spreading yet more hate. The last we need is Hirsi Magan in our country.
Yes, I do pity her somewhat. If she hadn't been raised as a Wahibi Muslim, her view of Islam may have been more moderate now. But while she supported the Fatwa on the author of "The Satanic Verses" in her youth, she now makes the equally insulting and threatening statements like "Mohammed is a pedo" and used the reductio ad hitlerum on him as well. Yeah, I know, they're statements by others, but you can bet Hirsi Magan thinks the same way. I do support her right to free speech, but she's just not using it to contribute anything useful. And the former government which fell because of her citizenship handled it all very poorly, especially her own party. But she can't feel bad, Labour is currently doing the same to an equally intolerant Islam critic.

But I simply wouldn't want to see another tax euro paid by me to be spend on her protection. She is putting this country in danger by formenting a split between Dutch and Muslims, and she does it with the same fevor as the Hofstad Groep terrorist gang. We need to root out extremists and take away their supportbase, not make potential recruits for them more suspicious of Dutch society or start persecuting Muslims.
Seriously, Hirsi's criticism sounds like a bad carricature like those on satirical cartoons like South Park or Drawn together. She's like the poo-talking atheists who say Christianity is a dangerous religion and spreads intolerance, and at the same time discuss how to best eliminate Christianity as they puke excrements out of their mouths. She's like the smug fart-smelling enviromentalists who trade in their cars for hybrids to contribute to the enviroment, but alienate and humiliate those who have not switched to cleaner cars. Or like the hippies who accuse the corporations of being all corporaty and organise a useless sit-in and music festival to fight the power.
Islam is Hirsi's Christianity. Atheism is her hybrid car. And her pointless insults are counterproductive like a sit-in about music instead of protesting corporations. Just what is the point to it? Same goes for Jami who founded a comittie for ex-Muslims. Help protect the disenchanted Muslims, don't accuse their fellow brothers of abusing the dissenters when it's the radical groups who do most of the abusing. You're not making yourselfs more popular with sceptical Muslims by calling them cultists and fools. If that's how you're treating the moderates and progressives of the group, you're taking away their incentitive to change, since they're going to be hated anyway. Why not hate back then?
Atheism is an intolerant religion. Replace words like 'zealot', 'inquisition' and 'crusader' with atheist terms, and you'll have a very shameful stereotype that reminds you of Christians at times. But don't feel bad atheists, you'll fit in snugly with all the other Abrahamic cults.

Fudge Srebrenica!

One of my continuing peeves is people blaming Dutch soldiers in Srebrenica for the massacre there. They are free of blame, they're heroes, they hurt nobody. I support these statements based on three simple facts: A) they Serbs killed the Bosnians, there are your murderers. B) Very few people could have endured in the terrible situation Srebrenica was in during the siege and stayed until the chips were down, not even Bosnia's own military which fled before the Dutchbat soldiers did. C) No incidents of friendly fire are reported with Dutch soldiers firing on allies (plenty of reports of Bosnians firing on Dutch troops though).

Really, Bosnians shouldn't whine so much. The fact is, the Dutch were willing to go there and try to stop the chaos, against an enemy who's ruthlesness wasn't even fully understood yet. They picked the worst defendable town and hoped to set a good example. Hopefully other NATO countries would follow. They did not, NATO and the UN abandoned the meagre force in Srebrenica while it was blatantly obvious the Dutch force was not defending, it was just a start. Srebrenica was actually a lost cause from the start with just 400 men. I apoligize to the people of Bosnia if we went into the breach to save your people from a genocidal, rampaging general even though his army had been underestimated. I know now that the people who stand up for a righteous cause get screwed pretty painfully.
And I know Bosnians aren't Christian (or most of them) and you might not have heard of it, but remember the ancient wisdom: "He who is without sin casts the first stone". Bosnians residents tried to gather food from local farming towns. Serbian farming towns. The escorts these gatherers got were armed. The Serbs did not trust them (and who would trust an armed company of men saying they're there to collect your food?). So most of these trips ended up as bloodbaths. Whoever put the Bosnians in the victim role clearly wants to make sense of the Balkan where there are no good or bad guys. This is not like WW2 with two sides: one evil and one not evil. There is a lot of rivalry, defensive nationalism, state nationalism and religious intolerance all over the region which has much to do with conflict dating back to the time of the Habsburg Austrian Empire and the Ottoman Sultanate. This is a region full of loonies that are responsible for mind boggling wars and attrocities.
And who is going to be surprised they ran? There was no fuel, no food, no water. Any sane person would have fled already. High command did little to alleviate the problems, so the soldiers had been deserted by their officers for once. What's worse is that the only fatal attack on Dutch troops came from the Bosnian army, not the Serbians! Seriously, if these are the kind of people you are defending, they next time they need help I say we ignore them even if it was the devil himself bringing his reign on earth starting with Sarajevo.
Do I blame the French and British for not having been able to prevent the Netherlands from falling to the German army resulting in five long years of fear, starvation and murder? I blame only Adolf Hitler and anyone who believed in that sociopathic dogma called National Socialism. Why then are Bosnians blaming Dutch troops why tried to help, but were severely outmatched, just like the Allies back then?

Yes, I know people are going to bring up Colonel Karremans. He might be a flip-flopping coward, but a whole company doesn't have to suffer for that right? I know being a soldier is a big responsibility. But nobody should carry responsibility for the maniacal reign of violence caused by the Serbian forces besides those part of it. I think even a lot of Serbs are not strong enough to bear such a burden.
If it makes up for it, at least the Republika Srpska acknowledges the attrocity in Srebrenica. And it along with Serbia see the warcriminals involved as a liability now, which means there is hope for a coming to terms. Have the Bosnians ever apoligized for the much less important skirmishes between civilians? Minor attrocities would seem easier to come clean about I'd think.

If you ask me, that fudging country is good for only one things: Ion cannon strikes!

On the verge of an Turko-Iraq war?

I hope so. I can't say I like either country on a political level. The only ethnic group in Iraq which I believe you can make deals with are Kurds. Sunnis on average still are the most sympathetic to Saddam Hussein, and a Sunni dominated Iraq would thus be little but a regime change, and hardly democratic to the other groups. Shi'ites may seem like a nice group to support being the victims of Saddam and all. But this is as dangerous as liberating Israel for Jews solely because of Adolf Hitler. The Shi'ites are on good terms with Iran. I'm not an Iran-bashing type, but their theocratic government is no way to model a country. Not Iran, not Iraq. But the Shi'ites seem more inclined to form a theocracy in Iraq.
Ruling these out, you're left with the Kurds, and they are at least as sticky. There are Kurdish minorities all around the region. Not just Iraq and Turkey. I think Iran and Syria would want to have a say in the whole Kurdish problem. The west would lose their allies Turkey and Iraq and gain a fledgling ally in the region. One that would even be very hard to defend against enemies from all sides.

My previous evils analysis of Iraq goes to Turkey as well, in a way. Just months ago everybody was protesting the Islamization of Turkey by Gul and Erdogan, especially the Turkish military. In the west, military involvement in politics is viewed with great suspicion, and rightly so. But Turkey's military maintains strong ties to the past and specifically Kemal Ataturk, the first president and a secularist. Since Islamization is distrusted by the west to, the Turkish military would sound like 'the enemy of my enemy'.
But it's more complicated. While Erdogan has proven to be a genocide denier, the military is that by default. The bill recently passed in the USA came under heavy attack by both powers, as well as the White House, which needs Turkey as a whole as an ally. While you could support the military against Islamization, there's nothing in Turkey that you can support against state nationalism. Armenian (and Assyrian) genocide recognition earns you the attention of radical nationalists who solve dissent with murder much like terrorists with Fatwas. Turkish nationalists (and there's a lot of them) will treat much like you're a neo-Nazi in Germany. This stubborn and dangerous nationalism goes through all layers or Turkish society and it can be blamed for the Cyprus question, since Turkey does not acknowledge Greek controlled Cyprus, just Turkish Cyprus which was illegally invaded.

What these nationalists need is a little bit of humble pie. The Germans got it after World War 2 and they don't deny anything. I think the Serbs are also starting to take hints, even in the complex diplomatic web of the Balkan. But countries like Japan or Turkey have a hard time acknowledging their crimes. I can understand that because they may be afraid the actions of the past reflect on them now. Even I think the Indonesian conflicts of the Netherlands are sad, but necessary (I still see Soekarno as a creepy fellow with his own brand of state nationalism which is why islands that did not join his republic willingly were invaded). But it would be better for Turkey to come clean and then we can all relate to eachother on equal terms. It's not like any European Union member is without genocidal incidents or cases of mass murder and unnecessary violence. Well, Norway maybe. But Scandinavians are perfect for a reason.

So yeah, I hope this blows up in Turkey's face and (Kurdish) Iraq retaliates. It will kill two birds in one stone: the state nationalistic Turks and that arrogant George Bush who thought this war was a good idea. A war at this point will be most disruptive for Iraq, just as Dubya's clique was hoping to score points on the Betrayus report. Yeah I know, it's not nice to wish this on Iraqis now that they are so down and the whole region is at a turning point. I wish it was the neo-cons who lived in Iraq. The only IEDs we can expect from them in the US are October surprises, fillibustering, vetos and dirty politics.

Kudos for pussies!

Everybody who believed the Democrats (those guys holding the US congress) would end the war in Iraq swiftly, raise your hands. Feel free to regret your beliefs. Everybody who still believes the Democrats will make a stand against Bush now raise your hands. Then go stand in the corner and start shaming yourself deeply. Just by threatening a veto, Bush succeeded in making the Dems cater to the wishes of some repugnant greedy asshole at national security. They agreed to allow the intelligence agencies to now conduct warrantless tapping on foreign e-mail, phone conversation, pretty much every breach of privacy Bush has made over the years now. If the people in the US want to be spied on, that's fine. We in Europe don't want it. We're not your citizens, keep your despotism to yourselves. We can't oppose it democratically through voting out your sacks of shit that call themselves president of the US of A. We can't even make a convenient legal case against Alberto "torture memo" Gonzales, Donald "oops, I did it again" Rumsfeld, Dick "I shot the hunter" Cheney and the other usual suspects. Even if European countries ask the extradition of one of these criminals, people like Bush, so high and mighty in their little confined worlds of Jesus loving and bible thumping, will never agree because as they see it, USians are so special and grand that they're above all international law. International law is a tool to drag foreigners out of their spider holes, shave their beards, put them on a show trail and have their necks snapped by the noose of a gallow.

So my question to US citizens is: what are you gonna do about, punk? Just sit there and pretend you'll be fine as long as you act like the rest of the herd? Yeah, I know you voted the democrats already thinking that would help but it doesn't. You're supposed to go out there and protest for your rights! Sounds gay? Okay, let me offer the American solution to this problem. You people have easy access to guns right? Get one, preferably high caliber, good accuracy, long range and with decorative markings so you'll look cool doing your patriotic duty. Then it's up to you to decide on a style. March up to the front gates of the White House, pick an attic in a book depository, wait until the target goes to see an opera and make it an unforgetable curtain call. Then shoot that sonuvab*tch up real good. Don't leave that mothaf*cka with a single part of his body untouched by bullets. I read the musket balls could rip the flesh off of a person, so that's one way to make him suffer. Don't neglect the impact of hollow point bullets though. They can cause unnecessary pain in the victim.

I know that by writing this the NSA will forever ban me from entering the US and they're now going to ask my government to arrest me for terrorism and send me over to Poland in a gimp suit. Next time I update my blog, it will probably be from out of Gitmo, and what I wrote has been 'approved' by some CIA tool. Private e-mails will probably bounce from now on to if send to someone living in America. Pity, I had my eye on a certain girl that I might have asked for an online relationship.

Annoying easily discriminated youth

Tonight I joined a couple of girls from my school to have a night out in Rotterdam. It was fun, but on the way there we ran into some trouble on the train. One of our group is a middle-aged lady, easily considered White Secular Dutch (not to be confused with White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). On the other side of her sits a Temperamental 3rd Generation Morrocan-Dutch girl. As is befitting of the stereotype, this stranger is b****ing about life and has her music player on full volume without earplugs, explaining to her friend how some guy shouldn't be telling her to tune down the volume. The woman from our group comment to this girl how "she really should turn the volume down". This youth is up in arms about it immediately.
She start a whole rant about how this is only said to her because she's Morrocan and it's her choice of music and why nobody will ask a skinhead to turn down his hardcore in the same situation, and that only Morrocans get that kind of comment. So my friend replies how it's simply obscenely loud. The little b**** considers this an insult to a Morrocan's taste of music and how all Dutch songs are crap and not at all worth playing on her music device. It degenerates into her ripping on Dutch culture while accusing my friend of intolerance. G-rated language has at this point long been abandoned. A passenger sitting next to my friend, who has a young boy on his lap, tells the Morrocan girl she has to be more respectful of the country that allows her to life there. The girl, once again letting loose a spluttering of obsceneties that probably scarred the innocent soul of the boy, accuses both of being intollerant of foreigners. So the man explain to her "I am also a foreigner". Which should have been obvious from the man's skin color. Yet this does not convince the girl she isn't the victim of hate. The rest of the way she blows bubble gum in my friend's ear and keeps her music player playing loud, unknown music (which according to her was Morrocan, though I thought Morrocans had better tastes in culture). While this girl hold her tirade, the only one to come to her aid is some politically correct Jojo sitting in the back, hidden in a corner. Every other non-native Dutch person considers the Morrocan girl a nuisance, even that girl's friend.
Asside from this one Morrocan, my friend gets along well with the rest of our class, which is made up of a splattering of diverse ethnicities like Dutch, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Colombian, Nigerian and even Afro-Anglo (for lack of a better word). The only ones we don't really like at school are the loud and obnoxious Morrocans. I'm all for tolerance and respect for other people's culture, but if Morrocans or anyone is going to abuse that good faith whenever somebody disagrees, they can stick their complaints where the sun don't shine.