Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Dutch right wing PVV party leader Geert Wilders wants to close the Dutch borders to refugees from all Arab countries including Libya. Wilders said that if a civil wars break out, “we must do everything to stop the refugee flow, ” says the PVV leader in an interview with the Dutch paper Spits.

The likelihood that that the refugees are Muslim, according to Wilders has nothing to do with it. “If it had been non-Muslim countries, we would not have coped with that mass either.” When Libyans cross over to Malta or Italy, they need to be collected in special camps.

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Libyan demonstrators again clashed with supporters of Gaddafi in Misratah. The insurgents have even shot down a fighter plane belonging to Gadaffi. Also in Az Zawiyah there are threatening battles. Around two thousand people who are loyal to the president have surrounded the city occupied by protesters.

A former policeman who joined the anti-government demonstrators complied and was combative. “We will do our best to repel them. They will attack soon. We are willing to die for our cause” he told Reuters.

In many cities the protesters threw up barricades against the government troops. Parts of the capital Tripoli in the hands of the people. An army officer has said that his men will rally behind the people. The power of Gaddafi will therefore be greatly reduced.

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Recently many people who are not too familar with Libyan history started asking quations about the sanity of Gadaffi. Is this man clinically insane? To answer the question one only has to read the ‘Green Book’ Gadaffi wrote as some sort of political bible Libyans had to live up to. Let me quote from chapter three:

“According to gynaecologists, women menstruate every month or so, while men, being male, do not menstruate or suffer during the monthly period.” Colonel Gadaffi, Green Book, Part III, The Social Basis of The Third Universal Theory

Men do not menstruate or suffer during their monthly periods, says Colonel Gadaffi. Why thank you Mr Gadaffi, that was some very useful knowledge from the supreme high leader, the Chose revolutionary of the people!

Now can you please stop hiring mercenaries to shoot your own people?

Before I made it clear that I believe at this point NATO or the UN face a final test to their credibility: do they really care about human rights they should act now. But the same is true about the Arab nations: they should help out and intervene. Tunesia and Egypt, come on, help your neighbours out and stop the slaughter.

The American couple Scott and Jean Adam, who have been sailing around the world since 2002 in their sailing yach ‘The Quest’ have been killed by gunfire aboard their yacht, which had been hijacked by Somali Pirates last week.

I have noticed some weird aspects to the story. First of all, they sent four warships to surround the yacht. That seems odd since there’s no way you could stop an good sailing yacht even with 4 war ships, so if ithe number was an attempt to block the ship that would have been fruitless.

Secondly reports say that ‘before the negotiations started gunfire was heard’ and when they went on board the four Americans were found dead and some of the pirates as well.

So what exactly happened here? Did Scott and Jean Adam manage to get hold of some of the pirates weapons? Why would they do so with four war vessels surrounding them? That doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe some pirates started to panic and started shooting, but that doesn’t explain why there are dead pirates as well.

Or what about option three: a fucked up rescue operation? Or option four: a mutiny and fight amongst the pirates? Lots of options on the table here, maybe later on someone can find out what really happened aboard the Yacht the Quest.

I find it incomprehensible that the international community has not been able to come up with an answer to this sort of piracy in years. With advanced technology it must be relatively easy to detect and defuse these guys. They can see the dust in your belly button with their spy satellites so its only a question of a decent sweeping routine combined with some radar-sharks with evolved DNA that fly and bite off the heads of pirates. Its just an idea but you get my drift.

After a day of horrible, rash violence in the Libya uprising we get to see Mr Gadaffi, whom some said had already fled to Venezuela, but in a very strange and unsettling setting: holding an umbrella in an old lorry, wearing Russian ear-warmers. What a surreal image. It must have been done on purpose. But what does it mean and why these propagandistic choices?

The obvious explanation is that Gadaffi fears for his life and does the ‘Look, I’m a nut, please don’t kill me’ routine.

But a nut would speak about strange stuff. And he doesn’t. He just says I refuse to speak to you because it started to rain. And he is holding his grey umbrella while sitting in a 1960 style lorry van. Completely unnecessary since he’s already inside the van. What’s he holding the umbrella for? Is he scared that the lorry will get wet? Why the weird grey coloured sober umbrella? Russian ear-warmers? It a scene so weird even David Lynch would probably scrap it.

Now of course Gadaffi always was a colourful tyrant known for his posturing qualities. The war crimes he committed last days stand in stark contrast with his public image, because he is purposely playing the ‘sweet lunatic’ here. There is only one other possibility. That is the possibility that he is genuinely insane. Which is quite likely, for one must be insane to use ones air-force on ones own people.

Let’s hope the Libyans will succeed quickly in getting rid of this tyrant. I think this is the one case where NATO actually could make an impression as something not entirely irrelevant when it comes to freedom and democracy. So I say: intervene, and do it know. This is a place that needs a UN peace force. Libya consists of several tribes and there is a huge potential for civil war there. Institutionalize Gadaffi, get a peace keeping force in and let the Libyans for legitimate political parties and hold elections.

These have been two interesting months, to say the least. Whatever the real causes are, fact is that the current chain of revolutions is unprecedented in history. I cant recall any other period in history where such a chain of revolutions took place. Now Libya looks like its going to fall, lets hope all other tyrants are next. We need to make sure that humans rights and civil liberties are a global and not just a local phenomenon.

As to Gadaffi, here’s a song for you, old man:

This week the Iranian government hung one of my fellow countrymen because of unclear reasons. I decided to write a poem about it when i saw this picture, so here it is. This work is free of copyright so you can reproduce it wherever you want.

Let’s talk about the guy in the safari shirt.

This woman named Zahra was hanged
because she drank alcohol, or protested the government, it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter to them and it doesn’t matter to us.
Forget about Zahra. Focus on the chameleon in her hand,

can you see how it took the color of the street, can you see
the shopping bags, the guy in the safari shirt?

Let’s talk about the guy in the safari shirt.
He cannot be anything else

than a guy with a belly
in a too small safari shirt
even if he tries very hard

there will always be
a camera like this one
exposing him, in a way

he’s hanging just like Zahra was, it’s just that
he never drank alcohol, as far as we know,
and never protested anything either

and if it wasn’t for a stupid poet like me
no one would have ever noticed his demise

a thought that brings him great comfort
on a cold, distant evening in a room close
to where you are sitting now.

Martijn 29-01-2011