Dutch doubts about War on Iraq covered up

Dutch politics, War on Iraq
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Back in 2003 the then Dutch government -as now led by Balkenende and his Christian-Democrats- was quite keen to support the War on Iraq, while the majority of the Dutch voters and a large part of parliament were not. So, in a typical Dutch compromise it was decided to only support the war politically, not to offer military support but to be prepared to take part in the subsequent occupation of Iraq, as we indeed did. As we now know the British Foreign service had grave doubts about the legality and legitimacy of the war, but was overridden by the political leadership. As we learned only today, it seems it was exactly the other way around in the Netherlands.

Today the NRC Handelsblad newspaper got its hands on a secret foreign affairs memo casting doubt on the legality of the Dutch government’s position, but held back from the minister responsible by the ministry’s most senior civil servants! The document, written just after the invasion started, expressed serious concerns about the legal arguments underpinning the Dutch position, claiming it “failed both materially and procedurally”. However, a hand written note on the memo’s first page says “Many thanks. Carefully store this in the archives for posterity. This discussion is now closed”. With this note, written by the then secretary-general of the ministry, Frank Majoor, the memorandum was indeed safely locked away, until NRC Handelsblad got hold of it recently and published it online (PDF). An ironic note written by the lawyers responsible for the memo adds, “apparantly “audite et alteram (sic) does not apply in this case”.

The 64,000 dollar question now is if this was the secretary general’s own decision or whether the minister, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer –who would become the NATO secretary-general in december of 2003– knew about the memo already and made the decision not to be formally brieved on it. This is after all the sort of information a minister should pass on to parliament, especially when it still has to approve sending occupation troops to Iraq. If parliament knew the government’s own lawyers are doubtful about the legality of the war, this could very well have meant it would have voted against this decision. And we couldn’t have that, could we?

All of which explains a lot about why Balkenende vigerously opposes any inquiry into the War on Iraq and the Dutch contribution to it. He knows his own role and that of his then-government is dodgy and he has no wish to be “hung” for old crimes. In fact, the current government coalition had already stipulated in its coalition agreements that it would not support any inquest. With this new revelation however, there might just be enough support in parliament for such an inquest anyway…

Dutch government does not believe Israel has committed warcrimes

Dutch politics, War on Gaza
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Which means the following are not warcrimes or have not happened, according to the Dutch government (in Dutch).

To Balkenende and his fellow moral crusaders, so happy to tell us what’s wrong and right, what Israel has been up to in Gaza is of no great concern. The only thing that should be condemned is Hamas violence.

The reality of unemployement in Britain

economic crisis, Life under Capitalism
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The BBC has an excellent human interest article up on their website about the reality of being on the dole and trying to find a job. Some extracts:

Carl, 24, and Lauren, 20, have been together for nearly a year. They are both unemployed and receive benefits.

Lauren has been out of work for a year, and Carl for three years. They live in a deprived former mining village in the north of England where – a generation or two down the line from the pit closures – unemployment levels remain high.

[…]

Both Carl and Lauren left school at 16 without any qualifications and initially found work.

Carl drove a forklift truck at a local firm and has also done some window-fitting work. Lauren has worked as a packer at a factory and last winter had a temporary job in a pound shop.

She has also done part one of a college course in childcare.

Carl says employers usually ignore young people, and the jobs going are often so insecure and poorly paid they are not worth coming off benefits for.

[..]

“Everything that’s in the newspaper, you need qualifications. And at the jobcentre they don’t help you out much. They tell you to get a job and stuff like that, but then they just tell you to look on the [electronic] ‘job points’. I’d like them to help me out better,” she says.

Having nothing to do except search for jobs “makes you feel depressed”, says Lauren, who has two siblings also out of work.

“If I had the money and the chance I’d go back to college,” she says.

[…]

They say they had both hoped for a better life than their parents. They believe it is harder for young people now than in previous generations.

A sad indictement of Labour’s accomplishments over the pat decade. Gordon Brown boasted he had ended the cycle of boom and bust, but while he pinned all his hopes on London as the world’s number one financial centre and regenerating failed northern industrial cities with identikit city centre redevelopment schemes, he completely failed people like Carl and Lauren. People who unlike their parents and grandparents would never have a lifelong job as a highly skilled industrial worker because all the old industries were gone. People who didn’t have the opportunity or the ability to go to university to get that highly paid white collar job and escape their decaying town. Brown and Labour should’ve spent the last decade rebuilding Britain’s industry but instead decided that people like Carl and Lauren would be best of working in some call centre easily outsourced to Mumbai or selling dieet lattes to their betters. Eleven years of New Labour have been wasted for them and now the credit crunch is really starting to bite they’ll be joined by millions more.

The Israel lobby

video
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Two years ago the BBC World Discussion programme The Doha Debates held a special session at the Oxford Union on the question of whether or not the pro-Israel lobby has succesfully stifled the debate about Israel’s actions. Defending the motion are Norman Finkelstein and Andrew Cockburn. Opposing the motion are David Aaaaronovitch and Martin Indyk, former US Ambassador to Israel and research director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It’s now up on Youtube.

UPDATE: so it seems I got this post up just in time for Ehud Olmert to claim he could order Bush around like a busboy:

WASHINGTON — In an unusually public rebuke, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been forced to abstain from a United Nations resolution on Gaza that she helped draft, after Mr. Olmert placed a phone call to President Bush.

“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’”Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ” Mr. Olmert continued. “He got off the podium and spoke to me.”

Israel opposed the resolution, which called for a halt to the fighting in Gaza, because the government said it did not provide for Israel’s security. It passed 14 to 0, with the United States abstaining.

But remember: believing in the Israel lobby is anti-semitic…

Biggest douche in the universe

Numpties, War on Gaza
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heckuva job Brownie

No, not socalled psychic John Edward, but heckuva job Brownie, the guy who helped fuck up disaster recovery in New Orleans after Katrina so much. You’d think somebody so monumental incompetent would shut the fuck up forever afterwards, but the fool seems to have reinvented himself as a low-rent conservative media personality, de rigeur blog and all.

Which is where the Sadly-Nosians found him, talking smack about Dr. Mads Gilbert, a medical relief worker in Gaza. Apparantly Brownie can, with his great expertise in humanitarian relief efforts, tell when a video of a Palestinian child dying in hospital is “so fake it’s funny, but only after the Kerning Kommandos at Little Green fascists alerted him to it.

Un-fucking-believable. The guy who did his best to make Katrina as big a disaster as possible, somebody who in a just world would’ve become a ditchdigger in Patagonia out of pure shame, is fisking a medicial relief worker in Gaza. It’s beyond satire, but it is fitting; it’s not like Brownie cared much about the suffering of brown people much back in 2005. Somebody who was so criminally neglectant doing his job protecting Americans isn’t going to lose much sleep on the question of why Palestinians would put together such an elaborate fake when there are so many real victims of Israeli bombs
lying around…

The real question is why this asshole can still get speaking arrangements? Who is paying for the priviledge of hearing him speak, unless it’s to applaud his job performance with an impromptu tribute of tomatoes or dogshit?