Op het gebied van terrorisme bestrijding heeft president Obama de politiek van zijn voorganger Bush voortgezet. Guantanamo bestaat nog, vele ‘terroristen’ zitten nog vast zonder enige vorm van proces. En er bestaat een programma om van terrorisme beschuldigde mensen te doden zonder vorm van proces. Zoals de Amerikaan Anwar Awlaki. Zijn vader is naar de rechter gestapt om dat te voorkomen. De Obama-regering pleit echter dat het gaat om een staatsgeheim, dus dat het zich niet hoeft te verdedigen. Als dat argmemt wordt aanvaard dan zal president Obama niet alleen het recht hebben om hoogst persoonlijk Amerikanen zonder enige rechtsgang ter dood te veroordelen maar hoeft hij het besluit om iemand te laten doden nooit te verdedigen of zelfs maar uit te leggen. Glenn Greenwald:

Obama argues U.S.A. assassinating Americans without due process is ’state secret’

At this point, I didn’t believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record. In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki’s father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims. That’s not surprising: both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality. But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”: in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate its legality.
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Paul Krugman, NYTimes - Once upon a time, a Latin American political party promised to help motorists save money on gasoline. How? By building highways that ran only downhill.
I’ve always liked that story, but the truth is that the party received hardly any votes. And that means that the joke is really on us. For these days one of America’s two great political parties routinely makes equally nonsensical promises. Never mind the war on terror, the party’s main concern seems to be the war on arithmetic. And this party has a better than even chance of retaking at least one house of Congress this November.

NY Times - A group called Unite in Action had hoped to have a three-day Tea Party extravaganza of seminars and rallies in Washington starting Sept. 10, but Ms. Kinnison said that classrooms that the group had set up for 500 people ended up with only 5 in them. And a rally held by FreedomWorks that Sunday, while large, was far smaller than the one the group held a year ago.
“This was to be our gauge for the convention and if the owners should pursue the convention and see if they could even break even,” Ms. Kinnison wrote. “Well, the reports back from Washington were not good. The bottom line is … no convention this year for Tea Party Nation!”

foto gelkhinge - finsterwolde
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Reageren op ikjes. Hier kunt u reageren op het ‘ikje’ dat vandaag is gepubliceerd op de Achterpagina van het NRC Handelsblad. Op de NRC-site kan niet meer worden gereageerd op het stukje dat door de lezers zelf wordt ingezonden.
Het alternatief op drasties. Is uw ikje niet geplaatst door het NRC dan kunt u het publiceren op drasties in de categorie Trots Op Ikje. Opsturen via ‘contact us’.

a) De voorkant.
b) De buitenkant.
c) De bestuurster.

‘je gaat het pas zien als je het door hebt’ (johan cruijff)

An asteroid discovered by Dutch astronomers in 1960 has been named after Netherlands football legend Johan Cruijff, that reports Voetbal International. The completely inconsequential piece of space rock was originally named ’14282′ but now, thanks to the relentless work of science journalist Carl Koppeschaar’s, the asteroid will forever be known as ‘Cruijff’. It has a diameter of about nine kilometres and it takes the asteroid five years, three months and 18 days to turn around the sun.
The former Ajax and Barcelona star joins an elite group of players to have celestial bodies named after them like Czech striker Josef Bican and Hungarian virtuoso Ferenc Puskas.

by keefe, the denver post

An evangelistic rally jointly sponsored by U.S. military personnel and evangelical Christian churches and ministries violates the U.S. Constitution and must be cancelled, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The “Rock the Fort” event at Fort Bragg this weekend targets both military personnel and adults and children in the surrounding community for conversion to Christianity. This clearly violates the separation of church and state, attorneys with Americans United informed Army officials in in a letter today.
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Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert testified — in character — before the U.S. Congress on immigration issues. Colbert - who demonstrates how silly rightwing Republicans are by acting like one - reassured Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) that he supports all Republican policies without question:

COLBERT: By the way I do endorse your policies. I do endorse your policies. You asked me if I endorse Republican policies. I endorse all Republican policies without question.
SMITH: Okay, including the requirement that members have 72 hours to read a bill before we vote on it?
COLBERT: Absolutely.
SMITH: Thank you for your endorsement of the “Pledge to America.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) was so happy someone announced support of the GOP’s “Pledge” that he promoted Colbert’s (fake) endorsement on twitter:

Comedian Stephen Colbert, born in Canada, delivers his prepared remarks earlier yesterday in a House hearing on immigration reform, reminding Congress that his grandpa didn’t sail across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to live in a country that would be overrun by immigrants:
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foto gelkhinge - eisenwichser, westerbroekstermadepolder bij groningen

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Reageren op ikjes. Hier kunt u reageren op het ‘ikje’ dat vandaag is gepubliceerd op de Achterpagina van het NRC Handelsblad. Op de NRC-site kan niet meer worden gereageerd op het stukje dat door de lezers zelf wordt ingezonden.
Het alternatief op drasties. Is uw ikje niet geplaatst door het NRC dan kunt u het publiceren op drasties in de categorie Trots Op Ikje. Opsturen via ‘contact us’.

U weet wellicht nog hoe trots drasties was toen er een persiflage van drasties op het internet verscheen. Dan heb je het toch een beetje gemaakt. Wel de mij voorheen geheel onbekende Nederlander Dennis Sibeijn heeft het nu ook gemaakt. Een competitie over copyright in Taiwan werd gewonnen door ene Wu. Hij kreeg een geldprijs en er werden affiches van gemaakt die in heel Taiwan zijn verspreid. Echter, zijn ontwerp bleek geheel overgenomen van Dennis Sibeijn. Herhaal: competitie over copyright!
Dan ben je als kunstenaar dus echt geslaagd. Als je wordt gecopieerd.
Iets wat JdeW natuurlijk nooit zou doen.

gecopieerd met toestemming van dennis sibeijn

It’s funny how my work gets much more attention after is has been stolen

Dennis Sibeijn - Earlier this week I got the news that one of my images (”Truth” see below) was used in a competition in Taiwan and actually won. Although I really dislike it when people steal my work, I also thought it was kinda amusing in an odd way. Later I learned this competition was actually about copyright and intellectual property, which makes the whole situation even more bizarre.
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JdeW zit weer eens bovenop het nieuws mensen. Doe er uw voordeel mee. Verkoop nu al uw paprika’s want straks gaat de prijs kelderen.
Canada overweegt namelijk een heffing te leggen op Nederlandse paprika’s en dan kunnen we ze aan de straatstenen niet meer kwijt. Volgens de Canadezen (het zullen wel de Franstalige zijn) zou slechts 0,6 procent van de Hollandse paprika’s in Canada niet zijn gedumpt. Dus even tellen 99,4 procent is gedumpt, verkocht onder de kostprijs of de verkoopprijs in eigen land.

Canada: Possible duties for Dutch peppers

FreshPlaza - Canada Border Services Agency will explain on 5 October the reasoning behind it’s conclusion that Dutch greenhouse bell peppers were dumped into the Canadian market. The agency has meanwhile released some key figures. The agency has concluded that 99.4 percent of Dutch greenhouse bell peppers exported to Canada last year were dumped. [read on] (more…)

Locanda Verde chef Andrew Carmellini mentions on his website today that he will name his new Soho restaurant in the Cub Room space in New York City, one of the big anticipated openings of the fall, The Dutch. Carms tells Pete Wells that the word doesn’t really mean anything special but that it evokes the feeling of a neighborhood restaurant, adding it’s “a little bit old school, a little bit O.G., a little bit Damon Runyonesque, maybe.” Also, it references that New York was once a Dutch colony and he thought the name “would look good on a pack of matches.”

Sometimes there’s a little bit of truth on Fox News. Last night Bill O’Reilly was whining about how Fox News is being blamed for the sick nature of the political debate in America these days. Americans with some education know that media like Fox News and MSNBC are basically not more than a hoax. Of course O’Reilly had to give examples and he did.

REP. ALAN GRAYSON, D-FLA.: One of the fundamental problems is Fox, OK? Fox has turned into Monty Python’s lying circus. All day long they spew lies out time after time, day after day. And they have created this bubble of irreality around the people who listen to them, and it’s a threat to this country.
FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Things have gone downhill, I think, in the last few years with the polarization of our country, with the evolution of a new kind of politics, with the birth of Fox News that now distorts everything rather than tells the truth.
RICK SANCHEZ, HOST, CNN’s “RICK’S LIST”: And then there is Fox News, which is essentially the voice of the Republican Party, whose job it is to make this man look bad no matter what he does.

Bill O’Reilly: “If you visit the left-wing websites, the rhetoric is pretty much all the same: Fox News lies; Fox News is a propaganda arm of the Republican Party; Fox News doesn’t give President Obama a chance.”
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In de Verenigde Staten van Amerika is nu 14,3 procent arm. Dat zijn 43,6 miljoen mensen, het grootste percentage in 51 jaar. En arm zijn in Amerika betekent echt arm: voedselbonnen arm. De inkomensongelijkheid is de laatste dertig jaar sterk toegenomen en heeft gepiekt onder president Bush. Het deel van het nationale inkomen dat naar de rijkste tien procent gaat is van 1980 tot 2008 toegenomen van 34,6 procent tot 48,2 procent. Zou president Bush trots zijn op deze cijfers? Is dit wat hij wilde?

Forbes magazine released its annual list of the 400 richest Americans yesterday. The combined net worth of the richest Americans climbed 8% this year, to $1.37 trillion. Wealth rose for 217 members of the list, while 85 saw a decline.
Still Republicans don’t want the richest 2% of Americans to pay the same amount of taxes that they used to pay before Bush decided to cut their taxes to make them even richer. And some Democrats are afraid to piss off that top 2% of America by asking them to save their country and pay a little bit more in taxes. Because if they would do that, the Republicans would run nasty ads against the Democrats.

*At this moment an estimated one in six children in the US is living in poverty, 16 million. In the city of Boston children account for 31 percent of the homeless.
*Children represent a disproportionate share of the poor in the United States; they are 25 percent of the total population, but 35 percent of the poor population.
* Levels of long-term unemployment, underemployment and discouraged workers are reaching historic levels in the United States of America.

Forbes 400: The super-rich get richer…

Rank Name Citizenship Age Net Worth ($bil) Residence

1 Carlos Slim Helu & family Mexico 70 53.5 Mexico
2 William Gates III United States 54 53.0 United States
3 Warren Buffett United States 79 47.0 United States
4 Mukesh Ambani India 52 29.0 India
5 Lakshmi Mittal India 59 28.7 United Kingdom
6 Lawrence Ellison United States 65 28.0 United States
7 Bernard Arnault France 61 27.5 France
8 Eike Batista Brazil 53 27.0 Brazil
9 Amancio Ortega Spain 74 25.0 Spain
10 Karl Albrecht Germany 90 23.5 Germany
11 Ingvar Kamprad & family Sweden 83 23.0 Switzerland
12 Christy Walton & family United States 55 22.5 United States
13 Stefan Persson Sweden 62 22.4 Sweden
14 Li Ka-shing Hong Kong 81 21.0 Hong Kong
15 Jim Walton United States 62 20.7 United States
16 Alice Walton United States 60 20.6 United States
17 Liliane Bettencourt France 87 20.0 France
18 S. Robson Walton United States 66 19.8 United States
19 Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud Saudi Arabia 55 19.4 Saudi Arabia
20 David Thomson & family Canada 52 19.0 Canada
21 Michael Otto & family Germany 66 18.7 Germany
22 Lee Shau Kee Hong Kong 82 18.5 Hong Kong
23 Michael Bloomberg United States 68 18.0 United States
24 Sergey Brin United States 36 17.5 United States
24 Charles Koch United States 74 17.5 United States
24 David Koch United States 69 17.5 United States
24 Larry Page United States 37 17.5 United States
28 Michele Ferrero & family Italy 83 17.0 Monaco
28 Kwok family Hong Kong NA 17.0 Hong Kong
28 Azim Premji India 64 17.0 India
31 Theo Albrecht Germany 88 16.7 Germany
32 Vladimir Lisin Russia 53 15.8 Russia
33 Steven Ballmer United States 54 14.5 United States
33 Robert Kuok Malaysia 86 14.5 Hong Kong
35 George Soros United States 79 14.0 United States
36 Anil Ambani India 50 13.7 India
37 Paul Allen United States 57 13.5 United States
37 Michael Dell United States 45 13.5 United States
39 Mikhail Prokhorov Russia 44 13.4 Russia
40 Birgit Rausing & family Sweden 86 13.0 Switzerland
40 Shashi & Ravi Ruia India 66 13.0 India
42 Mikhail Fridman Russia 45 12.7 Russia
43 Jeffrey Bezos United States 46 12.3 United States
44 Savitri Jindal India 60 12.2 India
45 Donald Bren United States 77 12.0 United States
45 Gerald Cavendish G. United Kingdom 58 12.0 United Kingdom
45 John Paulson United States 54 12.0 United States
48 Abigail Johnson United States 48 11.5 United States
48 Jorge Paulo Lemann Brazil 70 11.5 Brazil
50 Roman Abramovich Russia 43 11.2 Russia
51 Warhoofd Goirle, Brabant 64 11,1 Nederland

See here the fifty richest Americans…
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blair-bush-cheney

It can take a long time but in the end all will be known. About how the Bush-administration, guided by the neoconservatives, fucked up the world and for what purpose. Slowly more information is getting out about the lies that convinced a majority of Americans that Iraq was a danger to the United States. Again it shows how crucial the role of Tony Blair was in giving a stamp of approval to the agression of the neocons. The National Security Archive published the first of a three-part series on the Bush-government early plans to invade Iraq. Much of it has already been discussed but now there is proof. The series is based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
This is part of the documents. Notes for a discussion how to start a war against Iraq.

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