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:

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

On what basis does Frank Fenner think humanity will be extinct so soon? What’s his line of logic, what’s the evidence? He claims that humanity as a whole will suffer the same faith as the inhabitants of Easter Island. When that island was discovered back in 1772 the explorers found a small population of people at constant war with each other over a limited number of resources. The island had once been a true civilisation, but had degraded into an eternal war-zone once the resources proved to be insufficient to support everyone.

As humanity keeps on growing and growing and its resources shrink fast its not hard to see where Professor Fenner gets his idea from. He joins a long line of intelligent doomsday thinkers, some of whom I am suspecting of having popularity motives for being such (as is the case with Zizek and his pseudo hip end time phenomenon book) – I don’t think any reasonable person could refuse to admit the chance of this development is high, but let’s for one moment look at the only thing that CAN save us: science. For the last 10000 years we should have learned at least one thing: it is never politics that progresses humanity, it is science, art and culture that do.

Now, we do have a giant resource problem that will quickly worsen. The biggest problem is metals. All those mobile phones, all those laptops, they are all impossible without the use of rare metals and those metals are running out. Forget about the Oil crisis. Don’t even believe all those websites that claim some giant oil crisis is coming for more than 1 nanosecond: the solution to the oil problem has been found. Giant bio-farms with bacteria that produce oil constantly. Its possible and they are working on it. But you cant do that with metals. Those run out. And the ecological system does too. There is one very strange and hopeful development that, if implemented, would save humanity from its bleak future.

Its photosynthesis combined with microbiology. I have seen an interview with a eminent Dutch microbiologist who at this moment is creating fish that can live from sunlight. Yes, its possible and he did succeed in doing so. He claims that within 8 years he will be able to make humans that do not need to eat any more but can simply live from sunlight. The implications of such a development are enormous. Think about it: what resources would we need if no one needs to eat any more?

As to the scientific side, its a question of making the skin of even just the hair have photosynthetic qualities by mingling it with the right plant DNA.

So, ironically, in the future we might all be LITERALLY green. If we want to survive. These are strange times, aren’t they? The risks are enormous, but hopefully with some right decisions we will actually be able to overcome this rather infantile stage of self destruction.

A ‘tweet’ or a ‘status update’ is not an official publication. It is a quick thought you pen down to a network of supposed ‘friends’. We have learned now that such ‘quick thoughts’ are enough reason to lose your job. I can think of circumstances where such would even be somewhat justified, but in this case the expressing of condolences seems to me perfectly legal.

But what are the real ramifications here? Isn’t it that companies through these media now have large control over our thoughts? How much time will it take before companies can fire employees not because of what they express but because of what they think? If you think that idea is far away, you are not very up to date about the developments in human-computer interfaces.

It is very well possible to create an interface that directly links the brain to the computer. Such interfaces have already been build. Think about the enormous implications of that, especially if the computer learns to execute commands of the brain. You could simply think of a book and the computer would write it at the speed of your thoughts. You could visualise a website and the computer builds in in 3 nanoseconds.

Think also of the enormous dangers: viruses now do not only destroy your computer but can also directly effect your brain. You could be remotely controlled without even knowing it. And: in a company where everyone is hooked up to such a brain-computer device the employer could simply fire you for thinking something.

We are not far from that point at all if we fire people for a quick thought via a tweet or status update. I am all for responsibility and I don’t think an employee can make official publications that would seriously downgrade his company, but that is not what we are discussing here. We are talking here about giant corporations that think they have the right to determine what you can and cant say in your private life, not about the company but about a political matter. Think about it. That is very serious and very wrong.

The lesson, for now, seems to be mostly not to add your employer to your list of ‘friends’, but unfortunately it isn’t as simple as that. There’s always people who will rat you out, and show your tweet to your employer anyway. No, the solution here, especially in sight of the enormous risks of interface developments, is new legislation about what governments, companies and other institutions can do with our personal lives. There are too many unguarded and unthoughtful and very very risky scientific developments going on at the moment, and without some serious monitoring we will all live to see the day that we regret not having acted now against the dangers these developments imply.

Martijn Benders

Martijn Benders is a philosopher and a member of Novo Universalis, a centralist Think-tank that aims to help humanity evolve.

Don’t believe this news? It even made the NY Times: See here

“Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials.”

The new law states that journalists, media and bloggers could be fined 40.000 dollars and prosecution for a federal offence if they are caught within a certain radius of an oil cleaning operation.

Absurd, utterly absurd. And a very strong signal that the States are still heading the wrong way, in spite of the more friendly Obama appearance. Its just an appearance, unfortunately. To forbid media access to one of the largest ecological disasters that has ever occurred on this planet is the act of either a lunatic or an evil man.

What is going on here? Why cant these people be honest about what is going on? Are the American people simply accepting this sort of censorship? It’s obvious that Obama is not very happy with the whole disaster but banning journalism seems an oddball way of handling the situation.

In my opinion this is a criminal device, since the definition of a criminal device is that, wrongly used, it can harm innocent people. Who says this condom wont be used by revengeful lovers, by a wife tired of her husband, by idiots, by drunks, etc. etc.? The potential for abuse is huge, and its therefore a device that should be forbidden.

Instead of forcing women to wear unpleasant devices, why not actually try to educate the male part of the population? And mind you i’m no rose coloured spectacles sort of guy: I am talking a Spartan sort of education here, with serious sexual training for males. Lots of the problems comes from wrong education and wrong cultural traditions. Education is the only weapon we have against such inane traditions. Horror equipment like this wont do any good.

If you didn’t fall out of your chair yet, let me help you somewhat. The idea is that ‘by painting the entire mountaintops white’ the glaciers and snow ‘will melt less quickly’ which as we all supposedly know they do really fast now because of Global warming.

Can you picture the bureaucrats at the Worldbank gloating over this brilliant idea? Lets give this guy a lot of money to save the Glaciers! Never mind that you actually cant paint under a thick layer of snow, its the idea that counts! Never mind that paint is highly toxic, never mind that you are destroying the entire ecosystem on these mountains, we have found the solution to the melting glaciers problem! Just paint it! He’s a genius and so are we at the World bank!

Those poor Peruvians will lose their tourist industry, their local ecosystems and their wonderful view because some idiot gets a lot of money form the World bank to pollute the environment. Why? Well maybe the glaciers will melt a day later. An applause please for these brilliant minds, after bio-diesel they found another way to fuck up our environment with incompetent, absurd and highly spurious and costly measures.

Please, please, please get some competent people in control. People that actually have some knowledge about science and the environment. People who can think for more than 3 seconds in a row. People who do not love to waste everyone’s money with totally idiotic ideas.

So I decided that, since these people love to waste money, I’d just as well send them a mail with my own brilliant proposition. If they ever reply, I’ll let you know. Here’s the mail I have send:

Dear Worldbank,

Mr Platinum aka Martijn Benders
www. loewak.nl

Okay, we do play some nice soccer. I dont know how its even possible that we always end up amongst the final eight countries in the world. Maybe its the milk or the cheese, who knows. But of course as a dutchman I am proud of our boys and I think there must be something about the ‘dutch way’ that actually works.

But there is another side to Holland. A side foreigners know little about, a side so ridiculous a sane person can do nothing else but conclude its sheer manifested evil. It’s the insane overplanned bureacracy of the Dutch I am talking about.

Yesterday on the news: The National Heatplan was now in effect. The National WHAT? Is there an emergency? What’s going on? I read the article. There’s actually a government agency that made a NATIONAL HEATPLAN that comes in effect, dig this, ‘when its over 27 degrees Celsius for more than 4 days’.

Over 27 degrees Celcius? 80 degrees Fahrenheit and a Government Agency starts up an Emergency plan from tax payers money? Is this an episode of Monthy Python? Did we land in an episode of Groundhog day? No, this is the Netherlands, the country where even sexual intercourse would be taxed if they ever had any.

The institute that governs the National Heatplan is called ‘Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu’ meaning the ‘State institute for Public Health and Environment’. When the National Heatplan is executed this institute informs all the ‘GGD’ (Municipal Health Services) to start inform everyone about how to behave. And what information does this Municipal Health Service spread?

You should stay in the shadow. You should drink water. A cold shower could also help.

Serious! This is the advice they spread around using taxpayers money when the temperature rises above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Can you even for a second imagine what it feels like to live in such a country, that according to a recent investigation has 10 ‘advisors’ and ‘consultants’ for every existant journalist? So for every person that asks questions, there are about 10 persons employed to think of possible answers in the Netherlands.

So you wonder why the Dutch are angry? I can tell you why. They are treated like little kids by a totally incompetent elite of mediocre people. And that seems a rather Global phenomenon, but in case of the Dutch its effects are, well, just a tid bit more absurd.

Admirers of bureaucratic inanities can download the National Heatplan here