Civil liberties

Willfully ignoring crimes against humanity again

Published on May 27, 2025Leave a comment

As American planes are renditioning people to South Sudan via Ireland, Simon McGarr is reminded of the last time the country deliberately looked away from crimes against humanity:

We have been here before, of course. Here’s the 2007 Irish Human Rights Commission’s report on Ireland’s role in the George W Bush era of extraordinary renditions of individuals for the purposes of torture abroad. This was expanded upon by the Open Society’s Justice Initiative’s 2013 report “GLOBALIZING TORTURE: CIA SECRET DETENTION AND EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION“, which determined that Ireland had “facilitated” the CIA rendition and torture project.

Furthermore, the question of planes landing in Shannon and flying on to Israel has also triggered questions as to whether Ireland is being used as a refuelling stop in the delivery of arms to Israel’s government while it prosecutes its military action against the people of Gaza.

The reason that these are still only questions- as yet unanswered- is that the government declines to have officials inspect the planes which land. Indeed, An Garda Síochana seem as determined as they were in the Bush era to place the level of evidence required to trigger an examination of what might be on one of these planes so high that it would be impossible for any member of the public to meet it. The view taken then was that police would only inspect US planes if a member of the public could already prove that there were prisoners (or arms shipments or even undeclared restricted items such as guns) on board.

It’s not surprising that the Irish government would rather look away than confront either the US or Israel. Better to tolerate this than to dire the wrath of either country, would be the thought. Few European governments would choose to do otherwise. How then, could you force them to do so anyway? As McGarr outlines, maybe you need to use VAT law:

A few months ago Lelia Doolan assessed the legal situation regarding the treatment of planes used by the US government stopping at Shannon.

She wrote to the Attorney General to put him on notice that she had concerns that Ireland was not complying with its duties of systemic inspection of planes for cargo under EU VAT law.

A clever tactic which might work but I’m doubtful it will. Perhaps the only way to stop these renditions is to do on a massive scale what people have done with success to prevent immigration arrests in the UK, by surrounding the arresting officers and physically keeping them from taking somebody away.

NSA tapped 2 million dutch phone calls in one month

Published on October 21, 20132 Comments

So it turns out the NSA managed to intercept and tap some two million Dutch phone calls in just a month. Does this come as a surprise to anyone? Our own government is already far too keen to listen in to us and is obliging telecom companies and internet providers to keep traffic data for at least six months. The Americans were supposedly doing this as part of the War on Terror, but it seems politicians, civil servants and various commercial bigwigs were also tapped. Again, not suprising that once a capability to this is in place, it will be used for other purposes.

What’s more, does anybody actually think the NSA has stopped tapping phone calls here? Or believe the Dutch government is all that keen on getting them to stop? Our secret services and police are thick as thieves with the yanks anyway; they don’t care, they just care it came out.

Net Neutrality enacted in Holland

Published on May 10, 20121 Comment

Some good news from the Netherlands for a change:

On 8 May 2012 The Netherlands adopted crucial legislation to safeguard an open and secure internet in The Netherlands. It is the first country in Europe to implement net neutrality in the law. In addition, it adopted provisions protecting users against disconnection and wiretapping by providers. Digital rights movement Bits of Freedom calls upon other countries to follow the Dutch example.

[…]

In addition, the law includes an anti-wiretapping provision, restricting internetproviders from using invasive wiretapping technologies, such as deep packet inspection (DPI). They may only do so under limited circumstances, or with explicit consent of the user, which the user may withdraw at any time. The use of DPI gained much attention when KPN admitted that it analysed the traffic of its users to gather information on the use of certain apps. The law allows for wiretapping with a warrant.

Moreover, the law includes a provision ensuring that internet providers can only disconnect their users in a very limited set of circumstances. Internet access is very important for functioning in an information society, and providers currently could on the basis of their terms and conditions disconnect their users for numerous reasons. The provision allows for the disconnection in the case of fraud or when a user doesn’t pay his bills.

There are some specific Dutch clauses to the bill. The bill prohibits filtering of internet all together, providers cannot block any website or service whatsoever, no more blocking of Skype or Youtube on mobile phones just because it costs the providers money. But what it does allow is belief based filtering: there are a few providers who provide internet connections for e.g. Christians who’d rather not be confronted with the wicked outside and those are still legal. Which is as it should be.

The important thing is that no provider is now able to block services or websites they don’t like.

Dutch government wants immigration razzias

Published on March 23, 2012Leave a comment

The newest brainfart of our supported by bigots rightwing government is to throw a bone to those bigots by imposing a quota on the police to catch at least 4800 “illegal” immigrants. Many mayors, as the heads of police in their districts, are less than enthusiastic about this idea. After all, as the Amsterdam mayor said, everybody was outraged when the police had a quota on fining bicyclists for broken tail lights…

And it’s not as if illegal immigration is all that big a problem in the Netherlands anyway; we’ve made ourselves less than appealing to anybody who isn’t white, “western” and preferably rich.

Meanwhile, continuing on the same theme, one of the ministries that’s most likely to have its budget slash to the bone once the government has made up its mind how much and where to cut is that of economic development aid, as Wilders’ PVV is dead set against spending money on foreigners. Something that worried Bill Gates, currently the world’s most generous philantrope as he’s attempts to work off his bad Windows karma, enough to call on the government in an interview with Dutch radio to not implement these cuts. It’s yet another great advertisment for the Netherlands, coming after last month’s anti-Polish website set up by the PVV. If you had any illusions that Holland is still a liberal, tolerant country, this should disabuse you of them…

Liberal paternalism and the burqa

Published on February 22, 20126 Comments

I want to highlight part of a comment Alex made at a recent post:

Strangely, I’m strongly in favor of the burqa ban, which you referred to as foulness. My philosophical reasoning here is strongly affected by my emotions and the way I was brought up. I was brought up as a strongly conservative Christian, and sent to Christian schools my entire life, including boarding school in high school, and the dress codes were very strict. I look back on my entire childhood as abuse and torture, that affected me absolutely as much as the beatings. Given that most “women” are expected to start wearing these costumes at puberty, when they are not in control of any part of their lives, is giving too much control to parents. I know this raises issues of what an adult woman can choose for herself, but the adult women I know in any kind of conservative religion are mad and usually poor or no education which would enable them to have the economic freedom to choose, and they are kept from making real outside social connections which might offer them the support to make real choices.

As he himself acknowledges, this is a fine example of paternalism in action, where you’re so convinced these women wearing burqas need to be delivered from their oppression that you’re willing to send them to jail for it. This sort of attitude has a not very proud history on the left (*cough*eugenics*cough* and we should be very careful with it. For a start, just because your reason for wanting to ban the burqa is all meant in the best interests of its wearers, it doesn’t mean that the people actively trying to do this are motivated by anything more noble than a spot of Muslim bullying. Modern bigotry often hides behind a phony concern for “western” values and liberties.

Furthermore and quite obviously, a burqa ban denies agency to the very women who we are supposedly trying to liberate from their oppression, by making it clear that they cannot be trusted to make the right choice on their own. A burqa ban also supposed that the view of the burqa as a symbol of male oppression of women is the only correct one and that women cannot choose to wear it for any reason other than that somebody is forcing them. It therefore denies the existence of any woman who has made that choice for religious or other reasons. Finally, it also supposes that “we” know what’s best for “them”, when it may very well be that the burqa is just a minor issue or no issue at all in the lives of most Muslim women living in the Netherlands.

A burqa ban also means that those women who wear them for religious reasons are forced to choose between the law and their religion, never a happy occurrence, while those who are forced into it through social pressure or their evil husbands will have other tensions to worry about…

Let’s not forget also that the number of women who wear the full burqa, rather than just a headscarf, is very low: probably less than twohundred in the entire country. Not really a “problem” we need a law for, in other words.