En dat allemaal voor het landsbelang.
De Leidse geleerde Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje schreef eind 19de eeuw het boek ‘Mekka‘ dat insloeg als een bom. In 2007, 120 jaar later, verscheen een Nederlandse vertaling. De faam van Snouck Hurgronje (geleerde, ontdekkingsreiziger, schrijver, spion) is grotendeels gebaseerd op zijn beschrijving van het alledaagse leven in de heilige stad van Islam, Mekka. Om tot Mekka toegelaten te worden werd hij moslim. Hij trouwde een Ethiopische prinses. Frankrijk beschuldigde hem van spionnage.
In de entree van het financiële centrum van Dubai hangen zwartwit foto’s uit dit boek. Hier een artikel uit Arab News over het boek.

As he couldn’t enter the jurisdictions of Makkah, Hurgronje first landed in the port city of Jeddah and immediately began to socialize within the city’s elite circles. In order to gain access into the Holy City, as well as the trust of citizens and government officials, he publicly converted to Islam and became known as Abd Al-Ghaffar. In Jan. 21 1885, he finally set forth on his much-anticipated journey.

A Dutch scholar’s chronicle of 19th century Makkah

Arab News - As you step into The Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai’s Financial Center, you are instantly greeted with Makkah’s busy markets and streets and detailed vintage black and white photographs of the city and its inhabitants.
Under the patronage of Princess Reem Al-Faisal, the gallery — in collaboration with Netherland’s Leiden University Library and Hes & De Graaf Publishers — showcases an exquisite collection of the daily sights, sounds and lives of the Makkan society during the late 19th century. The exhibit, titled “Mecca — A Dangerous Adventure,” features re-photographed prints of the works of renowned Dutch scholar, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936). [read on] (more…)

by patrick chappatte, the international herald tribune

President Obama krijgt ongeveer dertig doodsbedreigingen per dag. Volgens berichten vierhonderd maal meer dan toen George W. Bush president was. Minstens twaalf mensen zijn gearresteerd in de Verenigde Staten omdat hun bedreigingen serieus werden genomen.
Een van de tien presidenten in de VS is vermoord of gewond geraakt vanwege een aanslag. De laatste gelukte aanslag was op president Ronald Reagan in 1981 waarbij Reagan gewond raakte. Zie in dt verhaal waar de bedreigingen vandaan komen.

More than a dozen Americans arrested for posing a credible threat to president Obama

CSMonitor - Nearly one in ten American presidents have been assassinated or shot while in office (the last being Ronald Reagan, in 1981), with another 11 escaping assassination attempts unscathed.
The Secret Service has been particularly busy chasing down threats to Mr. Obama, who faced a barrage of death threats and at least one credible assassination plot while a presidential candidate and since taking office in January 2009.
[read on] (more…)

Glenn Greenwald hopes that nobody thinks that, just because the United States can’t identify who the Taliban leaders are after almost a decade of being in Afghanistan, there should be any doubt about America’s ability to re-make that nation.

The US of A breaks the Soviet record

Even for the humble among us who try to avoid jingoistic outbursts, some national achievements are so grand that they merit a moment of pride and celebration:

The Soviet Union couldn’t win in Afghanistan, and now the United States is about to have something in common with that futile campaign: nine years, 50 days.
On Friday, the U.S.-led coalition will have been fighting in this South Asian country for as long as the Soviets did in their humbling attempt to build up a socialist state.
[read on] (more…)

Republican Rep. Todd Akin took to the floor of the House of Representatives to explain the history of Thanksgiving.

Todd Akin (R-MO): “They came here with the idea that after trying socialism that it wasn’t going to work. They realized that it was unbiblical, that it was a form of theft, so they pitched socialism out. They learned that in the 1620s.”

Funny guy! The Pilgrims did not come to America to flee socialism and embrace capitalism “in the early 1620′s.” Socialism as an idea didn’t become known until the 18th century and socialist political parties did not start to gain power until more than a century after that. And it is difficult to see how socialism is unbiblical, given that the concept did not exist at the time of the writing of the Bible. [read on] (more…)

Er is warempel één Amerikaanse die geïnteresseerd is in Suriname. Haar naam is Janina Rubinowitz en ze is minstens zestig maal op bezoek geweest in ons voormalig wingewest. Janina heeft een collectie Maroon Art uit Suriname die in diverse museums in de VS te zien is geweest.

‘Resistance, Creativity and Survival: The Janina Rubinowitz Collection of Maroon Arts’. The Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

This exhibition examines the slave trade and seeks to increase understanding of this maritime epic and its legacies in the modern world including the cultural contributions of Africans that are an integral part of America today. Art objects from the Museum for African Art are also shown as part of the exhibition, as well as art from Maroon villages in Suriname from the Janina Rubinowitz Collection of Maroon Arts.

Janina [geen familie] stelde onderstaande vraag aan drasties. Het beste antwoord zal op drasties onder haar vraag worden toegevoegd. Het gaat over de plannen van Nederland om met steun van de Verenigde Staten militair een einde te maken aan het bewind van Desi Bouterse.

Sorry I can’t speak Dutch. It is a very significant thing that Holland had this plan and that the USA was apparently willing to back it up. My question is the big question: what stopped them from going through with the plan?
Many people died between 1986 and the time when the civil war was over. I would be deeply interested in hearing what the rationale that stopped the overthrow of the military government at that time. Thank you so much.

Janina Rubinowitz

Heer Rozenwater laat het afweten, dus heb ik zelf een poging gedaan een lijstje te maken van de reageerders van het eerste uur die ook nu nog (min of meer) aktief zijn. Het heeft de nodige tijd en inspanning gekost, maar dan heb je ook wat:

14/02/2007 mario de kort (Chakra’s)
21/04/2007 Marianne (Boodschappen) (is dat de enig echte Marianne?)
02/10/2007 Willem (Schoenen)
04/10/2007 De Schrijvende Rechter (Popcorn)
29/10/2007 de lallende lummel (Coquilles)
01/11/2007 Ilona (T.a.v.)
08/11/2007 mopperkont (Sterretje)
10/11/2007 Jammerende Jurk (Licht)
27/11/2007 Ingries (Gemeen)
07/12/2007 Afzender (Roken)
11/12/2007 Heer Rozenwater (Prestaties)
18/12/2007 deksels! (Maat)
06/02/2008 17.44 spuit elf (Angst)
06/02/2008 20.56 arteps (Halve finale)

Uiteraard houdt dit lijstje geen rekening met eerdere aliassen van deze reagluurders. Zo heb ik zelf onder mijn echte voornaam al eens gereageerd op 21/08/2007, maar dat telt niet mee, vind ik. Over de uitslag kan gecorrespondeerd worden.

spuit elf®

doorzwemmen jantje

De Surinaamse minister Winston Lackin is blij dat bevestigd is dat Nederland in 1986 plannen heeft gesmeed om Suriname te bezetten. “Veel mensen wilden niet geloven dat Nederland een invasie wilde plegen, terwijl dit zo vaak is gezegd door Bouterse. Wij vragen ons af waarom Nederland nu met deze publicatie komt.”
Het gedetailleerde plan van de regering-Lubbers was opgesteld op verzoek van drie leden van de Surinaamse regering, onder wie toenmalig premier Pretaap Radhakishun.
(more…)

This are the discussions one expects the Bush Presidential Library to have. Whether to put the Mission Accomplished banner on display or not. Remember that Bush blamed it on the Navy? Well it’s back where it belongs.
The banner was the backdrop aboard the USS Lincoln during Bush’s televised speech May 1, 2003, to proclaim the end of major combat in Iraq. It caused controversy in the months that followed when violence in Iraq spiraled.
The banner now sits in storage and will become part of the library’s collection. A decision on how or whether to display the red-white-and-blue banner hasn’t been made, said Alan Lowe, director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

Deze zaterdag is de meest trieste dag uit mijn leven. Twee-en-twintig jaar ben ik dé Sinterklaas van ons dorp. Fier zit ik dan op mijn inmiddels vierde paard, drie chef-zwartepieten heb ik versleten.
Maar dit jaar ben ik overgeslagen.
Geen paard meer in de optocht, maar een disco-lawaaibus met springende Pieten er om heen. Daar pas ik niet meer bij, daar ben ik te stram en te oud voor…
Maar een echte Sinterklaas heeft toch historie, potverdorie!

Mario de Kort

by dave granlund, politicalcartoons.com

ScienceDaily - Variations in atmosphere carbon dioxide around 40 million years ago were tightly coupled to changes in global temperature, according to new findings published in the journal Science. The study was led by scientists at Utrecht University, working with colleagues at the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of Southampton.
The researchers are Peter Bijl, Alexander Houben, Appy Sluijs, Henk Brinkhuis, Gert-Jan Reichart (Utrecht University), Jaap Sinninghe Damsté and Stefan Schouten (NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research) and Steven Bohaty (SOES). The research was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research Utrecht University and Statoil, and used samples and data provided by the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP).

“‘Decision Points’ by George W. Bush has dropped, and it’s like ‘War & Peace’ without the peace. Here’s the very first page:
‘In the last year of my presidency I began to seriously consider writing my memoirs.’ Right away he’s got you hooked. Did he write them or didn’t he? You won’t know until you read the book. Maybe the rest of the pages are blank. (Stephen Colbert)

The Hindu - The Dutch East India Company started the city of Cape Town. In 1652 they sent Jan Van Riebeeck to solve the problem of scurvy suffered by ship crew. He was to set up a station - Fort de Goode Hoop - to provide fresh vegetables to be loaded on to ships before they set off to the Dutch East Indies. Riebeeck and crew worked the hard, rocky ground, succeeded in creating gardens which supplied fresh vegetables to passing ships. [read on] (more…)

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez was tortured in the 1970s by the Argentinean junta. He has a clear opinion of President Bush who called the authorization of waterboarding a key accomplishment of his government. ”The enhanced interrogation techniques are available to presidents if they so choose to use them.”

JUAN MENDEZ: Mr Bush hides behind the fact that he is not a lawyer and he has this folksy you know kind of cute way of saying, well the lawyers told me it was legal, as if he didn’t know that it’s immoral. You know? Immoral and illegal. I mean he can’t really hide behind his lawyers.
I mean he was very hypocritical of him to say something like that. I mean it’s been so clearly established that those memos were, they don’t even deserve the name of legal memos because they are completely flawed from the legal reasoning. But even worse they are morally flawed as well.
MARK COLVIN: There’s no question that in international law waterboarding is torture?
JUAN MENDEZ: I don’t think there is any question, any serious question. I mean it’s a question of severity. If you think that waterboarding is not severe mistreatment you don’t really know what waterboarding is. … I mean if you then redefine upwards the severity standard to say that it’s only severe if it’s organ failure or death, then you know you’re really very clearly distorting the sense of the words and you know words have to be interpreted in treaty language, they have to be interpreted in their plain meaning and their plain meaning couldn’t be more clear in the case of waterboarding.

ThinkProgress - In a interview with the Dallas Morning News published yesterday, former President Bush touted his authorization of waterboarding as a key accomplishment to “leav[ing] behind a firmer foundation for my successors.”
[read on] (more…)

The level of the political debate in the U.S. is about the lowest in the western world. But if we get along with the rightwing’s logic, Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin is a Nazi collaborator. That is, if you believe Fox News number one sicko Glenn Beck.
The rightwing hates George Soros. Not because he’s a filthy rich capitalist but because he’s a filthy rich capitalist with a heart. A capitalist who doesn’t mind paying some taxes for the good of all. That’s why Glenn Beck keeps pushing the story that the Hungarian Jew George Soros, who survived WW II as a kid of thirteen in a catholic family, was a Nazi-collaborator.

The sick story goes like this:

Since Sarah Palin took the national stage in 2008, neocon Randy Scheunemann has been at her side as an apparent confidant and foreign policy adviser, getting $30,000 in fees from her as recently as June 30, 2010.
But at the same time, Justin Elliott reports at Salon, Scheunemann’s firm Orion Strategies was taking money to lobby the U.S. government from conservative boogeyman George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center.

So one of Sarah Palin’s close advisers also works for George Soros. Enter Glenn Beck:

Today on his Fox News program, Glenn Beck again falsely accused Jewish philanthropist George Soros of being a Holocaust collaborator. Beck used this false attack to buttress his Soros conspiracies, suggesting that “the lesson he learned” from his supposed actions are what informs the shadowy tactics he is supposedly using to destroy the U.S. currency and government[.]

DailyKos - It doesn’t really matter why Glenn Beck thinks George Soros collaborated with Nazis. It’s bullshit — like just about everything that comes out of Beck’s mouth.
[read on] (more…)

About the days when the Dutch had settlements in Pondicherry, Ahmedabad, Pulicat, Sadras and Nagapattinam in India.

Dutch heritage gets a new life in India

Chennai, The Times of India - It was the Dutch that were indirectly responsible for the birth of Chennai some 370 years ago. At the time, they had built a fortified settlement in Pulicat while the British, seeking to establish a hold on the east coast, had none. It was then the British decided that they too should have a fortified settlement of their own, and a village called Madraspatnam was chosen to build a fort, which grew into present-day Chennai. [read on] (more…)

architectura regia - van frederik coenders van helpen

‘Architectura Regia’ is a 2-volume ink and ink wash manuscript in Latin produced in 1683 by Frederik Coenders van Helpen and available online at the Bavarian State Library in Munich.

Dit manuscript is een kopie want Frederik Coenders van Helpen (edelman, rechter, spion) stierf omstreeks 1618.
JdeW heeft eens gewoond in de Coendersborg en hij fietste dagelijks langs het Helperzoom.
(more…)

Dana Milbank, Washington Post - I miss George W. Bush.
I don’t miss him in the sense that I wish he were still president. If he were, we might be at war with Iran and North Korea by now, and perhaps Portugal. Neither do I miss the endless debates over waterboarding and the Iraq war - bad memories that have returned to the news as Bush has re-emerged into public view this week to launch his book.
Rather, I miss him because in the end he was willing to toss aside his ideological orthodoxy when the national interest required it - a trait conspicuously absent among his fellow conservatives these last two years.

George W. Bush liegt in zijn dinsdag verschenen memoires. Dat beweert oud-bondskanselier Gerhard Schröder van Duitsland. En hij wordt daarin gesteund door twee Duitse diplomaten. Volgens Bush zou Schröder in 2002 hebben toegezegd mee te doen met de inval in Irak. Volgens Schröder is dat een leugen.
Mogelijk heeft Bush het gewoon verkeerd begrepen. Volgens de toenmalige regeringswoordvoerder Uwe-Karsten Heye was het met Bush lastig overleggen “vanwege zijn lage intellectuele niveau”, zodat “hij geen idee had wat er wereldwijd speelde.”

“Bush hatte keine Ahnung, was weltweit in Bewegung war”

Der frühere Regierungssprecher Schröders, Uwe-Karsten Heye, zweifelt offen am geistigen Horizont Bushs. “Wir haben bemerkt, dass die intellektuelle Höhe des damaligen Präsidenten der wichtigsten Nation außerordentlich niederschwellig war. Und von daher war es schwierig, sich mit ihm zu verständigen”, sagte Heye dem Nachrichtensender N24. So wie der spätere New Yorker Generalkonsul es schildert, hat Bush sein Land im Blindflug regiert. “Er hatte keine Ahnung von dem, was weltweit in Bewegung war”, sagte Heye. “Er war so fixiert darauf, Texaner zu sein. Ich glaube, er kannte jedes Longhorn in Texas.”

by olle johansson, sweden

by keefe, the denver post

Remember the last election? Barack Obama and his opponent the Republican John McCain?
Well it seems McCain didn’t have a lot of support in the Republican White House. It was in 2008 when British premier Gordon Brown was visiting president Bush who had just endorsed the Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Naturally the election came up in conversation. Trying to be even-handed and polite, the Brits said something diplomatic about McCain’s campaign, expecting Bush to express some warm words of support for the Republican candidate.
Not a chance. “I probably won’t even vote for the guy,” Bush told the group, according to two people present.“I had to endorse him. But I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me.”