Thursday 28 February 2008

Ayaan Hirsi Ali - The Ultimate 21Century Golddigger


Shameless arrivist"Be more cynical, people like it", to quote a swindler character from a very popular Russian novel of the 1920s. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not just cynical, she's brash and bold and has no scruples.

While en route from her resident Kenia to Canada to marry her boyfriend, she saw her chance and defected in Germany faking a hard-done-by story of a fugitive from Muslim torturers in Sudan. Granted Dutch citizenship, she became elected to the Dutch Parliament and gained notoriety for energetic Islam-bashing. At the time when it had become fashionable in Dutch politics, she was just what needed - an inspired dissenter from the enemy's camp, a sort of Cold War Soviet defector. Trying to gain political weight - that in our age basically equals media coverage, she would start testing the ground by showing up in as many TV talk shows as she only could and calling Prophet Muhammed a paedophile along with other highly inspired statements. Her own party PvdA (leftist Labour Party) declined to provide here with protection and Ali switched allegiance to a party with completely opposite views - the VVD (right-wingers with a relaxed stance on gays, drugs and abortion).


She was routinely coming up minor anti-Muslim factoids, trying to propel herself into the mainstream of Dutch politics, but that alone would not satisfy her. When she felt that her media exposure was not enough, she teamed up with a documentary-maker Theo van Gogh, who apparently was in the game for the same reason. Together they made an inflammatory anti-Islam movie where they used such sterling arguments as writing Koran verses on a naked female body and van Gogh's claims that all Moroccans engage in sexual activities with goats. Full of MTV-style powerful imagery yet devoid of any reasonable argument, the film did manage to spark controversy. It all ended up in van Gogh's murder at the hands of an angry Moroccan youth and Ali's sky-rocketing to prominence. Her calculation that the Dutch public would traditionally side with the underdog proved correct - a poor ethnic girl fleeing her oppressors and suffering for her flamboyant ultra-liberal views. She was given 24-hour bodyguard protection at the Dutch taxpayer's expense.

When the truth about her fake asylum application came to light, she did manage to retain her Dutch passport and simply jumped ships joining a US-based neoconservative (sic!) think-tank as a Islam affairs advisor.

But of course Ali would not be happy with her status in the US as a minor European celebrity of little interest to the American public. Also with her departure to the US, interest towards her in Europe greatly subsided - there came much smarter and shameless media manipulators after here. So she requests and is subsequently denied a French citizenship to gain better protection - since the Dutch government would not pay for her bodyguards in the US. However, she does not fail to cook up a highly publicised press conference enlisting support from the likes of Henry Levy.

Apparently, her withdrawal to the US was a wrong move - she was of little interest there and she lost her momentum on the other side of Atlantic. But I believe that as the legendary phoenix Ayaan Hirsi Ali would come up with another publicity stunt that will bring her back in her beloved limelight.


Dutch Islam Film 'Nearly Ready' - Lessons From History Not Learnt

Another media attention hungry is using attacking Islam for his political advancement - the unashamedly populist Geert Wilders is about to release an anti-Islam movie. Something, the infamous Theo van Gogh paid his life for.

Since back in 2002 Pim Fortuyn broke the traditional Dutch taboo on voicing racist opinions in the media, Islam has become the safe scapegoat of choice for any politician who wants to raise their media exposure.

Just like in the "good ole days" with Jews, everything is blamed on Moslem immigrants now - the plummeting since the Euro introduction life standard, the ailing polder economy, street crime (which actually is steadily declining). Dissenting voices are not muffled but are simply given less prominence and are simply not popular with the general public.

The general public in the meantime is relishing what they had been barred from for so many years - the good ole bullying of the weak. For more than 50 years after WWII, it was an absolute no-go in exchange for not giving a high profile to the Dutch participation in the Holocaust. For half a century, the Dutch paid lip service to liberal values -- airing opposing views, no matter how cherished, was not done. However, the chance for learning from the past through true remorse was missed. Anne Frank's house made up for all the gruesome dealings with Nazis.

Now all of it is mostly forgotten or not thought relevant - even the V-day is only celebrated every 5 years in the Netherlands - and as the lessons were never learnt, so we are starting to commit the same mistakes again, and no one seems to notice or mind. How far are we from enthusiastic crowds cheering again to charismatic leaders spewing racist slur?

Wednesday 20 February 2008

Another Triumph Of Democracy

"The US Supreme Court has dismissed a legal challenge to a domestic anti-terrorism eavesdropping programme.

President George W Bush authorised the monitoring, without a court order, of international phone calls and e-mails of US citizens after the 9/11 attacks.

The American Civil Liberties Union argued that Mr Bush did not have the constitutional authority to order the programme, which ended last year.

The Supreme Court gave no explanation for its ruling.

The Bush administration has so far refused to release documents about the programme that might reveal who was under surveillance."

The US has become what it used to fight - a USSR but with infinitely more advanced citizen surveillance technology. The infamous underground supercomputer in Langley already processes ALL the E-mails in the world going via US Internet hubs.


Monday 18 February 2008

All Good Talk About Saving Africa...


The African Union (all African countries except Morocco) has only 2% of the world's international trade. Because over 90% of international trade consists of currency futures, Africa's 2%, however, actually makes up the bulk of real commodity traded worldwide, including about 70% of the world's strategic minerals, including gold and aluminum. Africa is also a large market for American and European industry (money earned from selling natural resources are spent to purchase Western-made goods).


Like they say on EuroNews, 'No comment.'

The Future Of Freedom Of Speech In The Cyber Age

A controversial website - Wikileaks - that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US. It has already been blocked by the Chinese authorities, now it is time Swiss bankers had it shut down in the US.

Obviously, it was so cozy to perform money laundering and other dirty financial tricks before the Internet age. Now the anonymity of such transactions has been (partly) blasted. As there are naturally too many very powerful fingers in the pie - over 90% of international trade consists of currency futures - attempts to reveal such as Wikileaks will be taken offline. East or West, money feels the best.

Saturday 9 February 2008

Blair For EU President

The sheer irony of it: Mr. Blair is the likeliest candidate for the EU Presidency.

This may be meant as a symbolic gesture of more British involvement in Europe, but will it be really taken as such? He still will need the approval or at least acquiscience of all 27 EU countries and as we all know UK's popularity in EU is solid rock bottom.

He comes from the country that have staunchly opposed nearly everything that has ever happened on the way of the EU integration. What a weird twist of fate that Blair should be considered to head the very entity he has worked most if his life against - something akin to George W. Bush being invited by Cuba to take over from Fidel.

Blair was also the loudest supporter of the Iraq War outside the US, another disastrous affair that apart from being hugely unpopular on the Continent ruined European credibility in the Middle East and the whole Muslim world.

It can be that he was offered the job as a reward for his hasty signing of the Lisbon Treaty, bypassing the referendum - exactly one of the reasons why he is painfully unpopular in UK, too. Interestingly enough, if you look well enough into on what conditions UK entered the Lisbon Treaty, you can see that UK defied nearly every single clause except the one that establishes the EU Presidency. How very tale-telling.

Stop Blair website.