~ Gesticht àls Gesticht ter Voorkoming v/d Maatschappelijke Randdebiliteit ~
~ HÉT "progressief" Orgaan Der "Hangmatsocialisten" ~ Gesticht àls Gesticht ter Voorkoming v/d Maatschappelijke & Politieke Randdebiliteit
09-01-2009
Gaza 2009 How to cast lead into gold ?!... ofte "De Gaaaz van Gaza !!" - Deel 1
Laat ons eventjes wat puntjes op wat i's zetten... Want dat mag zo stilaan ook eens gebeuren...
Gaza... de terroristen van Hamas & de disproportionele reactie van Israël... Wij begrepen niet zo meteen de juiste reden van de gebeurtenissen van de laatste dagen & dus gingen wij daar maar achter op zoek... Sommige flipo's hier op onze eigenste bloggensites begonnen al te raaskallen over "Heilige Oorlogen". Maar als er nu iets is waarvan onze haren gaan recht staan, is het wel de term/het begrip "Heilige Oorlog"...
Laat ons daarbij duidelijk zijn & dus onomwonden stellen waar 't 'm om gaat : oorlogen draaiden ~& dat gold zowel in het verleden als nù~ nog A-L-T-IJ-D om geld - PUNT !!
...& In dat opzicht vroegen wij ons dus af waarover dit conflict nu juist ook weer over ging. Die zandbak vol vluchtelingen leek ons niet meteen een èchte vetpot. Dat gelul van die qassamraketten hebben we ook al uitgelegd Kortom ...er is dus iets loos met dit conflict ...de nakende Israëlische verkiezingen misschien ?!... Neen !! Er moet nog iets anders zijn & kijk... leest u eventjes met grote oogjes met ons mee & let u daarbij vooral op de data van de publicaties die dateren van lang voor de aanval... Het gaat hier dus wel degelijk om het alchemistische principe van lood in goud te veranderen... In dit geval via gas & olie !! ...Het is misschien daarom juist dat deze ganse militaire operatie van Israël de codenaam "cast lead" meekreeg ?!...
...
Published October 2007
Vol. 7, No. 17 - 19 October 2007
Does the Prospective Purchase of British Gas from Gaza's Coastal Waters Threaten Israel's National Security?
Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon(*)
---------- (*) Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Moshe Yaalon is a distinguished fellow at the Shalem Center's Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies. Capping a distinguished career as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), he served as Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005, during which time he led the army's successful effort to quell the Palestinian terror war launched in September 2000.
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# British Gas is supposed to be the crown jewel of the Palestinian economy, and provide part of the solution to Israel's pressing energy needs. The British energy giant, now called the "BG Group," and its local partners - the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas and the private, Palestinian-owned Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) - are currently involved in advanced negotiations to sell to Israel massive amounts of natural gas - reserves of nearly 1.4 trillion cubic feet - that BG first discovered in 2000 off the Gaza coast. The market value of the gas has been estimated at $4 billion. Therefore, sale of the gas to Israel would mean a billion-dollar windfall for the PA and, potentially, for the Palestinian people.
# Unfortunately, British assessments, including those of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, that Gaza gas can be a key driver of an economically more viable Palestinian state, are misguided. Proceeds of a Palestinian gas sale to Israel would likely not trickle down to help an impoverished Palestinian public. Rather, based on Israel's past experience, the proceeds will likely serve to fund further terror attacks against Israel. No less threatening is the fact that terror organizations associated with the global Jihad, like al-Qaeda, will be highly motivated to attack any British Gas installation off Gaza's shores that provided fuel to Israel.
# For Israel, the need for BG's gas may have already taken a toll. It is possible that the prospect of an Israeli gas purchase may have played a role in influencing the Olmert cabinet to avoid ordering a major IDF ground operation in Gaza, despite at least 1,000 rocket and mortar attacks against southern Israel since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007.
# Clearly, Israel needs additional natural gas sources, while the Palestinian people sorely need new sources of revenue. However, with Gaza currently a radical Islamic stronghold, and the West Bank in danger of becoming the next one, Israel's funneling a billion dollars into local or international bank accounts on behalf of the Palestinian Authority would be tantamount to Israel's bankrolling terror against itself. Therefore, an urgent review is required of the far-reaching security implications of an Israeli decision to purchase Gaza gas.
Selling British Gas to Israel: A Key British Foreign Policy Goal Since 2000
The British government seems to have pinned much of its Middle East policy on the successful outcome of British Gas negotiations with Israel. A September 18, 2007, report in the Arabic al-Quds newspaper noted that the British government views Gaza's natural gas reserves as central to 10 Downing Street's "economic road map" for the Middle East region."(1) Tony Blair's position, first as prime minister and now as the very active Quartet Envoy for Palestinian Economic Development, has been that the Palestinian Authority's share of the gas sale proceeds, which could reach well over a billion dollars, could serve as the economic fuel to jump-start the Palestinian economy and advance the peace process.
The Blair government's admirable goal of helping the Palestinian economy wean itself from about a billion dollars a year in international handouts may have driven BG in November 1999 to make former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his tightly-controlled Palestinian Authority a local partner in the gas project, together with the Athens-based Palestinian concern, the Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC). Arafat clearly understood the financial potential of a billion dollars in royalties. Soon after the gas discovery, BG and its local Palestinian licensees approached the State of Israel to buy the gas. Then Prime Minister Tony Blair personally urged former Prime Ministers Barak and Sharon to finalize a deal.
Despite Blair's enthusiasm for the deal, Mossad Chief Meir Dagan opposed the transaction on security grounds, that the proceeds would fund terror.(2) Israeli fears were justified. Arafat and Fatah leaders stole billions from the public till to finance terror against Israel, as documents recovered by the Israel Defense Forces from Arafat's compound revealed.(3) Israel also faced virtually non-stop Palestinian terror attacks from 2000 to 2005, resulting in more than 1,000 Israelis killed.(4)
There had been no comprehensive interagency security assessment between 2002 and 2005 regarding a potential BG deal with Israel. However, Dagan's opposition to it (as noted by Member of Knesset Gilad Erdan in a 2006 speech to the Knesset Plenum) was also shared by former Prime Minister Sharon. Today, Prime Minister Olmert has revived the relationship with BG and has exerted much energy to reach a definitive agreement for the purchase of the offshore natural gas.
---------- (1) The Economic Road Map for the Middle East," Al Quds, September 18, 2007.
(2) Member of Knesset Gilad Erdan, Address to the Knesset on "The Intention of Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Purchase Gas from the Palestinians When Payment Will Serve Hamas," March 1, 2
(3) Dan Diker and Khaled Abu Toameh, "What Happened to Reform of the Palestinian Authority?" Jerusalem Issue Brief, vol. 3, no. 20, March 3, 2004, http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief3-20.htm. See also Lesley Stahl, "Arafat's Billions," CBSNews.com, November 9, 2003.
Since Sharon's opposition to the BG deal, and its subsequent collapse in 2005, strategic security threats to Israel have worsened considerably. Iran has fully penetrated Palestinian areas, particularly Gaza, from which its proxies Hamas and Islamic Jihad have fired some 2,000 rockets at Israel since its 2005 withdrawal. Iran is today the major funder, trainer and provider of advanced weaponry to its various Shiite and Sunni proxies including Hizbullah in southern Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Fatah-associated Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank. Iran funneled more than $250 million to Hamas in 2006 alone. Other Sunni Jihadi groups associated with al-Qaeda and the global Jihad also operate in Gaza.
Iran is also interested in controlling energy assets in the region and would likely target off-shore gas reserves either as a "carrot" to induce Hamas cooperation or as a "stick" against Hamas in the event of diverging interests with Teheran.
Hamas' "Partnership" in the BG Transaction
British officials have expressed confidence that the gas proceeds can bypass Hamas and benefit the Palestinian public by being deposited and monitored in international bank accounts.(5) Israel has also proposed paying for the gas in goods and services.(6) However, these assessments are mistaken. A gas transaction with the Palestinian Authority will, by definition, involve Hamas. Hamas will either benefit from the royalties or it will sabotage the project and launch attacks against Fatah, the gas installations, Israel - or all three.
Soon after Hamas' takeover of Gaza in June 2007, Hamas' economic minister in the PA government, Ziad Zaza, blasted BG as "an embarrassment to the Palestinian people," while labeling the transaction an "act of theft" against Palestinian lands.(7) However, Hamas soon reversed its position and now insists on renegotiating the agreed percentages in the deal to reflect its participation.(8) Dr. Mohammed Mustafa, head of the PA's Palestinian Investment Fund, a local BG partner, has indicated on more than one occasion that at least 10 percent of the gas proceeds will be directed to Gaza and that arrangements could be made to satisfy "the organizations" - meaning Hamas - in negotiations.(9) This means, in simple terms, that the current terms of the deal are still unsatisfactory to Hamas, although it stands to receive a minimum direct payout of $100 million, while the PA's Fatah leadership will likely pocket close to $900 million.
Hamas, in anticipation of its participation in BG negotiations, has confirmed its capability to bomb Israel's strategic gas and electricity installations in Ashkelon.(10) This type of threat is a pressure tactic against Israel that will most likely increase if the BG deal moves closer to completion. It is clear that without an overall military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement.
---------- (5) Mathew Krieger, "British Gas, Israel to Freeze Hamas Out of $4B Gas Deal," Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2007. Senior British diplomats also indicated in July 2007 that gas proceeds would be placed in international bank accounts.
(6) Uri Yablonka, "Israel Close to BG Deal," Ha'aretz, July 2007.
(7) Sonia Verma and Steve Hawkes, "Hamas Says BG Plan to Pump Gas to Israel an Act of Theft," Times (UK), May 24, 2007.
(8) Interview in Arabic with Hamas official Mahmoud Al Zahar by a senior foreign journalist based in Israel, July 2007.
(9) Pazit Ravina, "One Hundred Million Dollars for the Hamas Command," Makor Rishon, August, 18, 2007 (Hebrew).
(10) Wa'ri Suleiman, "Was Gaza Gas One Reason for the Coup?" AMIN website, June 23, 2007, http://www.amin.org/look/amin/press.htm. Wa'ri claimed that Hamas timed the coup in Gaza according to the reports of progress in negotiations on the BG deal in order to be party to it. He also noted that if Hamas' participation was rejected, Hamas would launch a "rocket intifada" covering all the areas in reach around
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Israel's Past Experience: Money Flowing into PA Also Funds Fatah Terror Groups
Israel's experience during the Oslo years indicates Palestinian gas profits would likely end up funding terrorism against Israel. The threat is not limited to Hamas. Since the establishment of the PA in 1993, monies that flowed into the Palestinian Authority from international donations, tax revenues, or profits from business with Israelis and other international investors - such as the Jericho Casino and other transactions - have ended up funding terror groups such as the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah Tanzim, and others. Simply put, once the funds reached the PA in the past, they could not be controlled by any outside authority.
For example, in the Oslo era, it has already been disclosed that monies that flowed through the PA's PCSC - a division of the PA's Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF), one of the partners in the current British Gas negotiations - ended up funding terror actions against Israel by the Fatah-associated Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.(11) Another good example is the money raised by Hamas charities in the United States that U.S. government prosecutors now charge is funding Hamas terror activities in Gaza.(12) True, part of these monies raised by charity ended up funding the Hamas' "Dawa" social programs in Gaza. However, a good portion of these financial resources also ended up funding terror against Israel. While senior British officials have continued to call Hamas "a problem that can be solved," their confidence is misplaced if they believe that they can find international financial mechanisms to bypass Hamas and other terror groups. Simply put, Israel's longstanding experience shows empirically that it is impossible to prevent at least some of the gas proceeds from reaching Palestinian terror groups.
---------- (11) Uzrad Lev, In the Pocket of the Chairman (Tel Aviv, 2005), pp. 162-63, 239 (Hebrew).
(12) Associated Press, "HLF Found Guilty of Funding Hamas," Jerusalem Post, September 18, 2007.
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BG Gas Deal Frees Hamas from Isolation
BG's negotiations with Israel, that have the full backing of the British government, have already helped unshackle Hamas from political and diplomatic isolation. While British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's official position is that Britain will not talk to Hamas as long as its goal is to destroy Israel, a number of prominent voices in Britain including the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee are calling for reengaging with "moderate" Hamas elements.(13)
Former MI6 official Alistair Crooke, who was also a former advisor to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, has "opened up unofficial channels of communications between Hamas and Western governments."(14) Quartet envoy Tony Blair has also advocated speaking to Hamas to replicate the Northern Ireland model.(15) Crooke's formal plan, entitled "Politicizing Hamas," was backed by Blair during his tenure as prime minister. Crooke's ideas today are clearly illustrated in the recent Labor conference speech by Foreign Minister David Miliband, who praised Hamas for the release of BBC journalist Alan Johnston and called for "listening" to Islamists.(16) Senior Hamas official Ahmad Yusuf has indicated that many behind-the-scenes meetings between Hamas and European officials have been keys to a Hamas reengagement in the diplomatic process.(17)
Furthermore, current British Gas negotiations have already helped fuel Fatah and Hamas discussions of a possible reengagement. Hamas' Yusuf has also indicated that despite U.S. and Israeli isolation of Hamas, Fatah and Hamas have been conducting back-channel negotiations to resolve their differences and reenergize a national unity government.(18) Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayad has also continued to pay the salaries of the Hamas Executive Force in Gaza.
---------- (13) Melanie Phillips, "Engaged to Hamas," Jerusalem Post, September 15, 2007.
(17) Ahmad Yusuf, "Hamas Is the Key," Ha'aertz, September 21, 2007.
(18) "Ahmad Yusuf Reveals: Secret Draft Negotiations between Hamas and Fatah," Maan Palestinian News Agency September 20, 2007 (Arabic), and Khaled Abu Toameh, "Hamas Ready to Settle Tough Issues," Jerusalem Post, September 21, 2007.
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A Prospective Gaza Off-Shore Gas Installation: A Magnet for Global Jihad
The Israeli government reportedly intends to deploy IDF naval combat vessels to protect a future British-Palestinian gas installation about 800 feet below sea level. According to this strategy, the BG installation would be guarded against above sea terror attacks while diver terrorists would not be able to execute attacks so far below sea level.(19)
However, even with IDF protection, the sea-based British gas installation will be a very attractive target for both local and international terror groups. Al-Qaeda's deadly "rubber dingy" attack in 2000 against the USS Cole is just one illustration. Hamas has announced the formation of a 150-man light naval force that will be deployed to protect "Palestinian interests" in Gaza's territorial waters.(20) Hamas has also smuggled high-quality weaponry into Gaza via underground tunnels from Egyptian Sinai, including medium-range Katyusha rockets, much of it supplied and financed by Iran. Some of the weaponry captured on the Karine A weapons ship in 2002 by the IDF included 22-km.-range Katyusha rockets and amphibious equipment that could be effective in attacks against an off-shore gas installation. Moreover, the tens of tons of heavy weaponry that have been smuggled into Gaza since 2006 alone via the Rafah tunnels include Katyusha rockets.
Al-Qaeda would also clearly be interested in sabotaging gas flow to Israel. Global Jihad groups, particularly al-Qaeda, would also be interested in attacking British targets, as was illustrated in the London attacks of July 7, 2005, and the ongoing al-Qaeda operations against British forces in Iraq. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, and other local terror groups will be highly motivated to attack BG gas drilling installations, particularly to sabotage a multi-billion dollar deal that excludes them.
---------- (19) Yablonka "Israel Close to BG Deal."
(20) Ali Waked, "Hamas Establishes Naval Force," Ynet News, August 9, 2007 (Hebrew).
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BG and Israeli Security Decisions Regarding Gaza
Israel must consider whether it can afford to be dependant on the Palestinians for such a critical energy asset as natural gas. If Israel becomes the Palestinians' main gas customer in a multi-year agreement, the PA or Palestinian terror groups could use the continued supply of gas as a lever to pressure Israel to make additional concessions and "gestures" as part of political negotiations. More significantly, the Palestinians could threaten to cut off the natural gas supply to Israel to prevent the IDF from responding to terror attacks and other threats emanating from Gaza or the West Bank.
It is possible that the prospect of a major natural gas transaction with the Palestinians has been a factor in the Israeli cabinet's refusal to launch a Defensive Shield II operation in Gaza. This concern is a result of the high price Israel has already paid for its relatively muted responses to Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza. The September 11, 2007, rocket attack by the Iranian-commanded and financed Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that wounded 61 IDF soldiers asleep in their Negev base, is a recent example. Despite hundreds of rockets and mortars, and various terrorist infiltration attempts against Israel from Gaza, there still has been no comprehensive military response by Israel.21
(22) Yablonka, "Israel Close to BG Deal."
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Have British Gas Negotiations Prejudiced Israel from Exploring Other Supply Options?
Another national security issue that must be considered is whether Israel's preference to advance the British Gas purchase has prevented or delayed government consideration of other natural gas options. For example, BG's original license was for drilling and exploration of natural gas off of Haifa Bay with the Israeli-owned drilling company Yam Thetis. While the license was granted in 1998, the nearly single focus on pursuing the Gaza gas option resulted in major delays in exploration and drilling off the coast of Haifa. It is possible that Yam Thetis will eventually be able to provide sufficient amounts of natural gas found in Israel's coastal waters, thus obviating the need to take unnecessary risks at this juncture in the Palestinian transaction. In fact, Yam Thetis is currently arguing this case in a petition to Israel's Supreme Court.
Conduct a Thorough Security Assessment Before Approving the British Gas Deal
The multiple dangers lurking behind Israel's potential natural gas purchase from BG have not deterred another attempt at finalizing a deal, due in large part to the redoubled efforts of Quartet envoy Tony Blair. The latest indications are that the BG Group, with the full backing of the British government, intends to finalize a multi-year agreement with Israel before the end of 2007.22
The dangers inherent in Israel's potential purchase of British Gas from the marine reserves off Gaza require an immediate, comprehensive, interagency security assessment by the IDF, Israeli Security Agency, Mossad, and other organs. This type of interagency assessment did not take place when I was IDF Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005. Since then, to the best of my understanding, no comprehensive security assessment has occurred, despite the intention of the parties to sign an agreement in the coming weeks.
Regional and local security conditions have worsened since 2005, and Israel must be prepared to face a possible two-front war against Hamas in Gaza, and Syria and Hizbullah in the north. Therefore, Israel will pay a painful price in its security if the British Gas transaction were to take place in the foreseeable future.
Israel needs additional sources of energy, including natural gas, and the Palestinians clearly need to create a peaceful civil society and a self-sustaining economy. However, with Gaza currently a radical Islamic stronghold, and the West Bank in danger of becoming the next one, Israel's funneling a billion dollars into local or international bank accounts on behalf of the Palestinian Authority would be tantamount to Israel's bankrolling terror against itself. Therefore, an urgent review is required of the far-reaching security implications of an Israeli decision to purchase Gaza gas by the State Comptroller's office or another external review panel.
Gaza 2009 How to cast lead into gold ?!... ofte "De Gaaaz van Gaza !!" - Deel 2
Begin deel (2) ...Het vervolg...!!
Gesnopen beste ?!... Wij zijn dus héél erg gerust gesteld want blijkbaar is dit dus weer eens bekend terrein... Namelijk één van die terreinen waarop een menselijk leven niks waard is & géén enkel ander principe standhoudt dan dat van pùùr economisch eigenbelang... lees dus : big money !!...
We vonden een zeer degelijke samenvatting van de situatie waarvan we jullie natuurlijk laten meegenieten...
...
Global Research, January 8, 2009
War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields
by Michel Chossudovsky
The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.
This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon's Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.
The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007).
The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).
The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.
The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine's gas reserves could be much larger.
map 1
map 2
Who Owns the Gas Fields
The issue of sovereignty over Gaza's gas fields is crucial. From a legal standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine.
The death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de facto control over Gaza's offshore gas reserves.
British Gas (BG Group) has been dealing with the Tel Aviv government. In turn, the Hamas government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields.
The election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 was a major turning point. Palestine's sovereignty over the offshore gas fields was challenged in the Israeli Supreme Court. Sharon stated unequivocally that "Israel would never buy gas from Palestine" intimating that Gaza's offshore gas reserves belong to Israel.
In 2003, Ariel Sharon, vetoed an initial deal, which would allow British Gas to supply Israel with natural gas from Gaza's offshore wells. (The Independent, August 19, 2003)
The election victory of Hamas in 2006 was conducive to the demise of the Palestinian Authority, which became confined to the West Bank, under the proxy regime of Mahmoud Abbas.
In 2006, British Gas "was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to Egypt." (Times, May, 23, 2007). According to reports, British Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened on behalf of Israel with a view to shunting the agreement with Egypt.
The following year, in May 2007, the Israeli Cabinet approved a proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "to buy gas from the Palestinian Authority." The proposed contract was for $4 billion, with profits of the order of $2 billion of which one billion was to go the Palestinians.
Tel Aviv, however, had no intention on sharing the revenues with Palestine. An Israeli team of negotiators was set up by the Israeli Cabinet to thrash out a deal with the BG Group, bypassing both the Hamas government and the Palestinian Authority:
"Israeli defence authorities want the Palestinians to be paid in goods and services and insist that no money go to the Hamas-controlled Government." (Ibid, emphasis added)
The objective was essentially to nullify the contract signed in 1999 between the BG Group and the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.
Under the proposed 2007 agreement with BG, Palestinian gas from Gaza's offshore wells was to be channeled by an undersea pipeline to the Israeli seaport of Ashkelon, thereby transferring control over the sale of the natural gas to Israel.
The deal fell through. The negotiations were suspended:
"Mossad Chief Meir Dagan opposed the transaction on security grounds, that the proceeds would fund terror". (Member of Knesset Gilad Erdan, Address to the Knesset on "The Intention of Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Purchase Gas from the Palestinians When Payment Will Serve Hamas," March 1, 2006, quoted in Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Does the Prospective Purchase of British Gas from Gaza's Coastal Waters Threaten Israel's National Security? Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 2007)
Israel's intent was to foreclose the possibility that royalties be paid to the Palestinians. In December 2007, The BG Group withdrew from the negotiations with Israel and in January 2008 they closed their office in Israel.BG website().
Invasion Plan on The Drawing Board
The invasion plan of the Gaza Strip under "Operation Cast Lead" was set in motion in June 2008, according to Israeli military sources:
"Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago [June or before June] , even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas."(Barak Ravid, Operation "Cast Lead": Israeli Air Force strike followed months of planning, Haaretz, December 27, 2008)
That very same month, the Israeli authorities contacted British Gas, with a view to resuming crucial negotiations pertaining to the purchase of Gaza's natural gas:
"Both Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler agreed to inform BG of Israel's wish to renew the talks.
The sources added that BG has not yet officially responded to Israel's request, but that company executives would probably come to Israel in a few weeks to hold talks with government officials." (Globes online- Israel's Business Arena, June 23, 2008)
The decision to speed up negotiations with British Gas (BG Group) coincided, chronologically, with the planning of the invasion of Gaza initiated in June. It would appear that Israel was anxious to reach an agreement with the BG Group prior to the invasion, which was already in an advanced planning stage.
Moreover, these negotiations with British Gas were conducted by the Ehud Olmert government with the knowledge that a military invasion was on the drawing board. In all likelihood, a new "post war" political-territorial arrangement for the Gaza strip was also being contemplated by the Israeli government.
In fact, negotiations between British Gas and Israeli officials were ongoing in October 2008, 2-3 months prior to the commencement of the bombings on December 27th.
In November 2008, the Israeli Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Infrastructures instructed Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) to enter into negotiations with British Gas, on the purchase of natural gas from the BG's offshore concession in Gaza. (Globes, November 13, 2008)
"Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler wrote to IEC CEO Amos Lasker recently, informing him of the government's decision to allow negotiations to go forward, in line with the framework proposal it approved earlier this year.
The IEC board, headed by chairman Moti Friedman, approved the principles of the framework proposal a few weeks ago. The talks with BG Group will begin once the board approves the exemption from a tender." (Globes Nov. 13, 2008)
Gaza and Energy Geopolitics
The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law.
What can we expect in the wake of the invasion?
What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palestine's Natural Gas reserves?
A new territorial arrangement, with the stationing of Israeli and/or "peacekeeping" troops?
The militarization of the entire Gaza coastline, which is strategic for Israel?
The outright confiscation of Palestinian gas fields and the unilateral declaration of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza's maritime areas?
If this were to occur, the Gaza gas fields would be integrated into Israel's offshore installations, which are contiguous to those of the Gaza Strip. (See Map 1 above).
These various offshore installations are also linked up to Israel's energy transport corridor, extending from the port of Eilat, which is an oil pipeline terminal, on the Red Sea to the seaport - pipeline terminal at Ashkelon, and northwards to Haifa, and eventually linking up through a proposed Israeli-Turkish pipeline with the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Ceyhan is the terminal of the Baku, Tblisi Ceyhan Trans Caspian pipeline. "What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel's Tipline." (See Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, July 23, 2006)
...& Voor de laatste twijfelaars zetten we nog dit laatste artikel erbij, zodat het zelfs voor een totaal gelobotomisserde chimpansee moet beginnen duidelijk te worden dat er nooit voldoende doden zullen kunnen vallen langs Palestijnse kant. Het is een heruitgave van het verhaal van de Noord en Zuid- Amerikaanse indianen die telkens weer op een verkeerde plaats een reservaat gekregen hadden... maar dus deze keer wonen de indianen in kwestie... in Gaza !!
...
From The Times - May 23, 2007
BG Group at centre of $4bn deal to supply Gaza gas to Israel
The British energy firm is set to agree terms of a $4bn, 15-year deal over gas discovered off the Gaza coast
Steve Hawkes and Sonia Verma in Jerusalem
BG Group is poised to agree the terms of an historic $4 billion (£2 billion) deal to supply Palestinian gas to Israel from a discovery off the Gaza coastline, The Times has learnt.
Representatives from the British energy company are scheduled next week to meet a team of negotiators chosen by the Israeli Cabinet to thrash out a 15-year contract. Despite the violence in Gaza, the Israeli Foreign Ministry has insisted that it wants to conclude a deal as soon as possible.
It would enable BG Group, the former owner of British Gas, to begin to develop an offshore field that is the Palestine Authoritys only natural resource. The move would mark an unprecedented milestone in Middle East relations. There would be enough gas to provide 10 per cent of Israels annual energy requirement, and the Palestinians would receive total royalties of $1 billion. Sources in the Middle East note that the sensitive talks could be derailed at any time by the acute political tension that surrounds the deal.
However, Nigel Shaw, the BG Group vice-president in the region, said: We are making progress. There are commercial issues to be completed and we also require bilateral agreement between the two governments to get this project across the line. But this is a chance for greater economic prosperity in Palestine and that is only good for peace.
The signing of heads of terms would mark an amazing turnaround, given the political and legal disputes that have dogged the project since BG Group discovered the Gaza Marine field in 2000. It holds one trillion cubic feet of gas, the equivalent of 150 million barrels of oil, equivalent to a large North Sea field.
Six years ago Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, vowed that Israel would never buy gas from its neighbour. The project also was held up by a legal challenge in the Israeli Supreme Court to establish whether the Palestinians had any right to the discovery. Last year BG Group was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to Egypt before Tony Blair intervened and asked the company to give Israel a second chance. Three weeks ago the Israeli Cabinet approved a proposal by Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, to buy gas from the Palestinian Authority. The Cabinet recognised the need for new energy sources to feed Israels rapidly growing economy.
Under BG Groups plans, gas from the field would be transported by an undersea pipeline to the seaport of Ashkelon. Although Israeli insiders are confident of a deal,significant questions remain, not least how payments to the Palestinian Authority will be made. Israeli defence authorities want the Palestinians to be paid in goods and services and insist that no money go to the Hamas-controlled Government.
Gaza 2009 De zoveelste doodgewone oorlog of een nieuwe genocide ?!...
Is dit de zoveelste doodgewone oorlog of wordt dit dan toch de zoveelste genocide... Iets wat we van Israël zo 'n beetje mogen verwachten na al het vorige wat Israël al in haar ~"burger"~ (-)Oorlogen heeft uitgestoken... 't Is zo precies weer één van die oorlogen waar we met z'n allen lijdzaam gaan op toezien, zonder ook maar even een protesterende stem te laten horen of een concrete poot naar uit te steken ?!... Het wordt dus waarschijnlijk de zoveelste beschamende vuile oorlog waarbij we ons ~zoals de zoveel andere keren~ schokschouderend omdraaien & er ons weer eens weinig of niets van gaan aantrekken, want het is toch maar de zoveelste "ver-van-onze-bed-show" ?!... Kortom, wordt dit dan toch de zoveelste schandvlek op gebied van politieke moed ~& dan zeggen we zowel op nationaal als internationaal gebied~ omdat er teveel "andere grote belangen" op het spel staan ?!...
Wij vreesden er al voor & deze vrees wordt precies ook alleen maar bewaarheidt als we zo wat het nieuws volgen...
Als de internationaal erkende pers al niet ter plekke wordt toegelaten, dan zijn daar meestal ook goede redenen voor... Bijvoorbeeld omdat er zaken gebeuren, die maar beter het licht niet zien... lees : de wereldpers niet halen...
Laten we dus zo eens hier & daar ons oor te luisteren leggen & u konde doen van hoe 't er ginder ter plaatse in Gaza aan toe gaat...
...
donderdag 08 januari 2009
'Inwoners Gaza zijn kapot'
JERUZALEM - INTERVIEW EVELYN LERNOUT, HULPVERLEENSTER OXFAM Het Israëlische leger heeft gisteren drie uur lang een grenspost van Gaza opengesteld voor een hulpkonvooi. 'Natuurlijk verwelkomen we elke vooruitgang, maar in de praktijk is het resultaat beperkt', zegt Evelyn Lernout van Oxfam, in Jeruzalem. 'Er vallen nog altijd doden en gewonden, de hulp bereikt alleen mensen dichtbij de grensovergang, en de hele situatie in Gaza blijft een catastrofe. De mensen zijn kapot.'
Van onze redacteur
in Israel
foto hiernaast : Palestijnen in het vluchtelingenkamp van Jabaliya bidden voor enkele van de 43 doden die dinsdagavond vielen bij de Israëlische beschieting van een VN-school. epa
In het kantoor van de hulporganisatie Oxfam, in een buitenwijk van Jeruzalem, heerst frustratie na twaalf dagen oorlog in Gaza en achttien maanden van Israëlische blokkade die het offensief van vorige week voorafgingen. 'De situatie in Gaza was voordien al verschrikkelijk en nu is het breekpunt voor de bevolking ver gepasseerd', zegt Evelyn Lernout (30).
'De mensen zijn kapot. Er mogen nauwelijks hulpgoederen binnen, de inwoners hebben geen gas om te koken, geen zuiver water, en door de bombardementen vaak geen dak boven het hoofd. Geen enkele van onze drie lokale medewerkers woont nog in zijn eigen huis. En als er gewonden vallen, worden vaak ook de ambulances beschoten.'
Dinsdagavond bestookten Israëlische mortieren een school onder bestuur van de Verenigde Naties - volgens Israël waren er twee Hamasstrijders in de buurt, die samen met een veertigtal burgers werden gedood. Na de internationale verontwaardiging bleek de Israëlische regering bereid tot het instellen van een 'humanitaire corridor': drie uur per dag, van 13 tot 16 uur lokale tijd, moeten de wapens zwijgen en mogen hulpgoederen het omsingelde Gaza weer binnen.
'Natuurlijk verwelkomt Oxfam elke poging om de toegang van humanitaire hulp tot Gaza te verbeteren', zegt Lernout. 'Maar een bestand van drie uur per dag is onvoldoende. Wij vragen een onmiddellijk en volledig staakt-het-vuren, waarbij de Israëlische regering de toegang voor hulpgoederen moet faciliteren, niet beperken of controleren. De reële impact van zulke kortstondige maatregelen is beperkt, omdat het onveilig blijft om de burgers in Gaza echt te bevoorraden.'
'Gaza is bovendien doormidden gesneden door het Israëlische leger. Alleen zij die in de directe omgeving van de doorvoer- en distributiepunten wonen, geraken aan goederen. De meerderheid van de bevolking heeft geen directe toegang tot voedsel, medicijnen en andere essentiële goederen. Zij worden aan hun lot overgelaten. Er zitten mensen vast in het puin van hun huis, zonder enige hulp. Zolang de grensovergangen niet onmiddellijk en volledig worden geopend voor humanitaire hulp én hulpverleners, neemt de humanitaire crisis alleen verder toe.'
De noden van Gaza zijn volgens Lernout immens, en het feit dat de internationale hulporganisaties - net zoals buitenlandse journalisten - worden buiten gehouden door het Israëlische leger, bemoeilijkt de zaken verder. 'Wij werken met lokale medewerkers en partnerorganisaties, terwijl we zelf een uurtje verder in Jeruzalem zitten', zegt Lernout. 'Met onze lokale medewerkers hebben we alleen nog telefonisch contact. Het enige wat je kan vragen, is telkens weer: is iedereen OK? Is je familie veilig? En intussen hoor je op de achtergrond de schoten en de explosies.'
Voor de bombardementen bijna twee weken geleden begonnen, werden de noden van de bevolking van Gaza geschat op een aanvoer van 400 trucks met hulpgoederen per dag. 'Eergisteren heeft het Israëlische leger er veertig van de Verenigde Naties doorgelaten', zegt Lernout. 'In de maanden tevoren zelden meer dan honderd per dag.'
'Zelfs de trucks die worden binnengelaten, geraken nauwelijks verder dan de grensposten. De enige grenspost waar hulp door mag, is Kerem Shalom, helemaal in het zuiden. De aanvoerband voor graan via de grenspost Karni is gesloten, en de pijpleiding voor brandstof via Natal Oz is ook afgesloten. Stel dat de ziekenhuizen zonder elektriciteit en brandstof voor hun generatoren vallen, wat gebeurt er dan met couveuses en beademingstoestellen voor patiënten in intensive care? Intussen houden de gevechten niet op en blijven de gewonden toestromen. Zonder een onmiddellijk staakt-het-vuren en een complete toegang voor humanitaire hulp zijn de gevolgen niet te overzien.'
...& De al evenmin te verdenken Gazet van Antwerpen die sympathieën zou hebben voor...
...
08/01
Druk op Israël verhoogt nu dodentol snel groeit
Ondanks de korte periodes van staakt-het-vuren heeft Israël ook donderdag delen van de Gazastrook zwaar onder vuur genomen. Daardoor liep de dodentol al op boven 750. Ondertussen lijkt het er ook op dat Libanon zich in het conflict wil mengen. Enkele organisaties willen Israël aanklagen voor het plegen van oorlogsmisdaden. Ook het Rode Kruis uit zware kritiek op Israël.
De stad Rafah, vlak bij de Egyptische grens, werd het slachtoffer van tientallen luchtaanvallen. Het was vooral Israëls bedoeling om de lokale smokkeltunnels te vernietigen, die dienen om Hamas te bevoorraden.
Zuiden zwaar onder vuur
Aan de grensovergang Kisufim, richting de stad Khan Younis, zijn verschillende Israëlische tanks het zuiden van de Gazastrook binnengetrokken.
Volgens de laatste cijfers zouden bij de heropflakkering van het geweld nu al 763 Palestijnen en 11 Israeli's om het leven gekomen zijn. Meer dan 3000 mensen raakten gewond.
Rode Kruis kwaad
Opnieuw stierven tientallen burgers, waaronder vrouwen en kinderen. Volgens de hulpverleners wordt hun werk enorm bemoeilijkt door het optreden van de grondtroepen in het gebied. Onder meer het Internationale Rode Kruis schreeuwt moord en brand en wil ook dat de hulpverlening vlot kan verlopen los van de drie uur waarop er een staakt-het-vuren is.
Ook de VN voelt zich bedreigd door de Israëlische aanvallen nadat een VN-hulpkonvooi werd aangevallen. Daarbij kwamen twee mensen om het leven. Daarop besliste de VN om alle transporten van hulpgoederen voorlopig op te schorten.
Libanon
Ondertussen wordt Israël opnieuw zelf bestookt. Donderdagochtend zouden verschillende raketten afgevuurd zijn. Daarbij zouden geen doden gevallen zijn. Het radicale Hezbollah ontkent elke betrokkenheid. De wereld houdt nu zijn hart vast dat de oorlog zal uitbreiden naar Libanon. De Libanese regering heeft de beschieting vanop haar grondgebied alvast veroordeeld.
Oorlogsmisdaden
Volgens Raji Sourani, hoofd van het Palestijnse Centrum voor Mensenrechten (PCHR) in Gaza, heeft Israël oorlogsmisdaden gepleegd en zou het voor een internationaal rechtshof moeten vervolgd worden.
"De herhaalde bombardementen op duidelijk gemarkeerde civiele doelwitten waar burgers schuilden, overtreedt verschillende regels van het internationale recht", zegt Sourani. De gezant van de Palestijnse Autoriteit (PA) in Groot-Brittannië, Manuel Hassassian, heeft al laten weten dat de PA gerechtelijke stappen wil ondernemen tegen de Israëlische leiders die volgens haar verantwoordelijk zijn voor de oorlogsmisdaden in Gaza.
Hassassian had het met name over het Israëlische bombardement op een school van de Verenigde Naties in het vluchtelingenkamp Jabaliya, waarbij veertig Palestijnse burgers het leven lieten. De voorbije dagen werden nog verschillende andere scholen van de VN geraakt. Bij bombardementen woensdagmorgen vielen vier slachtoffers op een speelplaats nabij een moskee in Gaza-stad.
...& Ook de buitenlandse pers laat hetzelfde alarmbelletje horen... We beginnen bij de Washington Post...
...
At Gaza Hospital, Chaos and Desperation
Israel's Strategy Of Dividing the Strip Hinders Relief Efforts
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Reyham Abdel Kareem
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
foto hiernaast :A Palestinian girl injured in the Israeli assault is carried to Shifa Hospital, which as been overwhelmed by the number of dead and injured. (By Abid Katib -- Getty Images)
JERUSALEM, Jan. 5 -- Mohammed Alwan applied pressure to the wounds of the young man in a corridor of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital on Monday. Blood flowing from his body turned the surgeon's gloved hands crimson.
"Khalas," a voice said, Arabic for "It's over."
The doctor refused to give up. He pumped the man's chest, hoping to resuscitate him. A few minutes later, the man died.
"What can I say?" he said in a fatigued voice. "I have seen this scene many times. I've been here four days straight and I've yet to go home."
As Israeli tanks and infantry push deeper into Gaza, an already dire humanitarian situation has worsened. The Israeli government has imposed what Palestinians call a siege on the coastal strip -- restricting deliveries of food, medicine and other staples -- since Hamas took Gaza by force from the rival Fatah party in June 2007. On Monday, Israel's military strategy of dividing the strip in two further hampered Gazans ability to reach hospitals and relief efforts.
The air assaults and ground clashes have paralyzed much of what makes the strip of 1.5 million people work -- hospitals, water and power systems, markets and roads.
About 550 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,500 have been reported wounded in the 10-day offensive; Palestinian health officials estimate that many of them -- between 24 and 30 percent -- are women and children. Most are at Shifa, Gaza's largest hospital.
Doctors there are working day and night on floors soaked with blood to help the rapidly mounting numbers of wounded. In the halls and corridors, screams and uncontrolled sobbing, along with the sounds of bombs and mortars, punctuate conversations.
"The numbers of killed and wounded are rising. Every minute we have a bombardment," said Hassan Khalaf, the director of Shifa Hospital. "The number of cases is overwhelming us. No hospital in the world can handle this."
It's become too dangerous for his staff to retrieve victims. Eleven members of his medical staff have been killed since the offensive began. "They were in ambulances," Khalaf said.
For the past three days, there has been no electricity. The hospital's emergency generators have been working around the clock. Even before then, when electricity was sporadic, the generators were working 16-hour-days. The hospital, he said, has only two days of fuel left.
"Electricity and communications are down over much of the strip both on account of lack of fuel and damage to critical infrastructure," said Maxwell Gaylard, the United Nations' humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories. "Over a million people are currently without power, and over a quarter million without running water, some for up to six days."
Khalaf said there are also shortages of medicines, medical tools, nitrogen for anesthesia, monitors -- nearly every item imaginable. Many essential staff members, especially nurses, have been unable to come to work, cut off by the fighting, Israeli tank positions and fear.
"Those in the middle of Gaza Strip could not come to work because the Israeli tanks have cut the strip into two pieces," Khalaf said.
Fawzi Nabulsia, the head of the hospital's intensive care unit, said he hasn't worked since the ground invasion began Saturday. He lives south of Gaza City near the former Israeli settlement of Nitzarim. Israeli forces are now in the area, blocking the road between his house and Gaza City, Nabulsia said.
"Maybe you can speak with the Israelis and ask them to allow me to go to hospital," he said over the telephone, his voice tinged with desperation. "We are in crisis."
Khalaf said hospital staffers who live north of the city, where some of the heaviest fighting and attacks have unfolded, are too fearful to leave their homes. "Moving along Gaza's streets is dangerous," he said.
Inside Shifa Hospital on Monday, its doctors struggled to cope. Imad Majdalawi had handled 20 operations in 24 hours. In virtually every case, he had to fix broken bones, treat burns and cuts, and stop bleeding. "The worse thing I saw was the burns," he said.
In one case, he wanted to send a patient who lost one of his eyes in an Israeli bombing to an eye hospital. But his request was turned down: the generator for the surgical theater in the hospital was needed to fuel the emergency room.
On Monday, he was treating Ghadeer, a 14-year-old girl whose hands were covered in gauze. Blood seeped through it. She was crying and shaking. Her mother and four brothers had been killed an airstrike. She didn't know this.
"I am cold. I can't move," Ghadeer moaned.
Majdalawi soothed her. "Don't worry Ghadeer. Everything will be fine."
But there was no anesthesia or even the appropriate scissors and thread to help Ghadeer. "We are leaving patients in pain," Majdalawi said.
A neurosurgeon, Rami al-Sousi, was engaged in a delicate operation to pull shrapnel from 5-year-old Salim al-Ar's head. The boy would survive. Sousi has two small children but he hasn't seen much of them in the past three days. Ninety percent of the patients he treated were civilians, he said.
"Yes, I'm tired. But I forget everything when I save lives," Sousi said.
A paramedic working for an Oxfam-funded organisation was killed today after an ambulance was hit by an Israeli-fired shell, the charity said.
The Palestinian, working for the Union of Health Work Committees, was killed in Gaza.
Another paramedic lost his foot and the ambulance driver was injured in the same incident.
The paramedic was trying to help evacuate an injured person in the Beit Lahiya area, when the shell struck the ambulance, Oxfam said.
The UN estimates over 100 civilians have been killed in Gaza over the past week although some other organisations believe the civilian death toll is significantly higher.
John Prideaux-Brune, Oxfam's Country Director for Israel and Palestine, speaking from Jerusalem said: "The incident shows yet again that trying to fight a military campaign in the densely populated streets and alleys of the Gaza Strip will inevitably lead to civilian casualties.
"There are no safe areas and Gazans who want to flee the fighting have been prevented from leaving the Strip."
The charity said that the Israeli ground offensive into Gaza is preventing urgently needed supplies of medicine, food, water, and fuel from reaching one and a half million Palestinian women, men and children.
Prideaux-Brune added: "Hospitals in Gaza are overflowing with dead and wounded while facing severe shortages of essential medical supplies and spare parts.
"Oxfam and local partners have had to suspend all our work, apart from emergency medical aid. Many of our colleagues in Gaza are trapped in their homes, and in fear of their and their families' lives. Others, such as the paramedic have lost their lives trying to save others.
"The trickle of humanitarian aid that Israel has sometimes allowed in through one border crossing at Kerem Shalom has been completely inadequate to meet the needs of 1.5 million people - 80% of whom are reliant on this aid.
"Since the start of the Israeli ground offensive, even that trickle has dried up. An immediate ceasefire is urgently needed to allow essential aid to reach those families who need it."
'Een tijdelijk bestand? Wij van Artsen Zonder Grenzen hebben er weinig van gemerkt. Voor ons maakte het geen verschil uit', zegt Jessica Pourraz aan de telefoon vanuit Gaza. Het Israëlische leger had aangekondigd dat het om de twee dagen gedurende enkele uren de wapens zou doen zwijgen om de humanitaire organisaties de kans te geven hun werk te doen. Gisteren om dertien uur (twaalf uur Belgische tijd) stopten de Israëli's met schieten en borgen ook de Palestijnse strijders even hun wapens op.
Volgens Jessica Pourraz van de internationale hulporganisatie Artsen Zonder Grenzen werd alleen in Gaza-Stad niet geschoten. 'Onder meer in het noorden zijn de Israëli's blijven bombarderen. De meeste gewonden die medische hulp nodig hebben, bevinden zich in de periferie. En uitgerekend daar werd nog geschoten.' Artsen Zonder Grenzen is er dan ook niet in geslaagd om de gewonden te bezoeken, laat staan hen naar het ziekenhuis in Gaza-Stad te brengen. 'Een bestand van drie uur heeft geen zin', zegt Pourraz. 'Het is veel belangrijker dat dokters de garantie krijgen dat ze gewonden kunnen bezoeken.'
Artsen Zonder Grenzen kon geen extra materiaal in Gaza krijgen. 'Er staan honderden vrachtwagens met hulpgoederen aan de grensovergangen te wachten. Maar de weg die in Gaza naar de grensovergangen leidt, werd gebombardeerd. Wij geraakten gewoonweg niet tot bij de vrachtwagens. Het was te gevaarlijk.'
De VN-organisatie die de Palestijnse vluchtelingen helpt (UNWRA), heeft 36 vrachtwagens over de grens gekregen. 'Ruim onvoldoende', zegt woordvoerder Chris Gunness aan de telefoon. Normaal passeren dagelijks 475 VN-trucks met hulpgoederen. 'Dit heeft geen zin. Israël bombardeert de mensen 21 uren per dag en dan laat het gedurende drie uur enkele hulpgoederen binnen.'
Een hooggeplaatste bron in Gaza is van mening dat het bestand niet meer is dan een manier om het gedeukte imago van Israël op te krikken. Israël kreeg veel kritiek nadat zijn leger dinsdag minstens dertig burgers had gedood bij een aanval op een school van de VN.
De inwoners van Gaza-Stad hebben tijdens het bestand hun gewonden in de ziekenhuizen bezocht en geprobeerd levensmiddelen in te slaan.
De woordvoerder van het Israëlische leger zei gisteren dat de 'humanitaire corridor' misschien wel elke dag open kan gaan. 'Alles hangt af van de veiligheid.'
...& Wat vinden we bij Artsen Zonder Grenzen hierover terug ?!...
...
08/01/2009
Tijdelijk staakt-het-vuren ontoereikend om hulp te bieden
Het militaire offensief in de Gazastrook treft burgers zonder onderscheid en medische teams blijven ernstige hinder ondervinden bij hun hulpverlening, zegt Artsen Zonder Grenzen. De organisatie stuurt een extra chirurgisch team.
De internationale gemeenschap mag niet tevreden zijn met een beperkt staakt-het-vuren, dat volgens Artsen Zonder Grenzen absoluut ontoereikend is om levensreddende hulp te bieden. Het Israëlische militaire offensief gaat door en het aantal slachtoffers naar schatting 600 doden en 2.950 gewonden in slechts 11 dagen neemt alarmerende proporties aan. Het toont aan hoe het extreme geweld burgers raakt.
Vandaag zijn anderhalf miljoen Palestijnen in de Gazastrook, waarvan de helft kinderen zijn, het slachtoffer van onophoudelijke beschietingen en bombardementen, zei Franck Joncret, landenverantwoordelijke van Artsen Zonder Grenzen. Hoe kan je nu geloven dat zon allesverpletterende aanval burgers zou sparen, die verhinderd worden te vluchten en die in zon dichtbevolkt gebied leven?
Het militaire offensief heeft terreur gezaaid bij de bevolking. Bewoners durven hun huizen niet meer uit om zich te laten verzorgen. Ook hulporganisaties lijden onder de onveiligheid. Palestijnse hulpverleners werden gedood en ziekenhuizen en ambulances zijn gebombardeerd.
De spoedafdelingen worden overrompeld door gewonde patiënten. De laatste tien dagen voerde het personeel van het Al Shifa ziekenhuis meer dan 300 operaties uit. De zes operatiekwartieren werken op volle capaciteit, met twee operaties tegelijk in elk kwartier, zegt dr. Cécile Barbou, medisch coördinator van Artsen Zonder Grenzen in Gaza. De Palestijnse chirurgen en het personeel zijn uitgeput. Ze kunnen het aantal patiënten amper aan. De meeste noodgevallen zijn patiënten met ernstige wonden en meerdere traumas, meestal aan de borstkas, de buik en het gezicht.
De teams van Artsen Zonder Grenzen in Gaza bestaan uit drie internationale en bijna 70 Palestijnse medewerkers. Zij proberen al sinds het begin van het offensief de Palestijnse medische structuren te ondersteunen en de gewonden te behandelen. Ze verdeelden medische noodvoorraden en medicijnen in verschillende ziekenhuizen die zonder materiaal dreigden te vallen. Momenteel behandelen 20 medewerkers van Artsen Zonder Grenzen mensen thuis en bezoeken ze dagelijks 40 mensen.
De onveiligheid is zo groot, dat onze bewegingsvrijheid en de mogelijkheid om medische hulp te bieden, extreem beperkt is, zegt Jessica Pourraz, terreinverantwoordelijke voor Artsen Zonder Grenzen in Gaza. We hebben onbeperkte toegang nodig om de gewonden de klok rond te verzorgen, en de burgerbevolking moet de ziekenhuizen kunnen bereiken.
Op vraag van artsen in het Al Shifa Ziekenhuis stuurt Artsen Zonder Grenzen een chirurgisch team (een chirurg, een anesthesist en een verpleegster), en een mobiel ziekenhuis met een operatiekwartier en een unit voor intensieve zorgen. Dat zal de capaciteit van het ziekenhuis vergroten. Artsen Zonder Grenzen hoopt de nodige toelatingen te verkrijgen om het team en het materiaal in de Gazastrook binnen te laten.
Het tijdelijke staakt-het-vuren zou misschien de toegang van gewonde patiënten tot de gezondheidsstructuren kunnen verbeteren, hulpverleners de kans geven zich te verplaatsen en transport van levensreddende voorraden toelaten (benzine, voedsel, medische voorraden en medicatie). Maar deze halve maatregelen zijn bedoeld om de internationale gemeenschap te sussen, en hebben geen impact op het geweld dat de bevolking ervaart, zegt dr. Marie-Pierre Allié, voorzitter van de Franse sectie van Artsen Zonder Grenzen.
Zaterdagavond zette het Israëlische leger in de Gazastrook een grondoffensief in dat tot vandaag in alle hevigheid doorgaat. De reeds uiterst kwetsbare burgerbevolking in de Gazastrook wordt hierbij het zwaarst getroffen. Zij kregen vorige week hevige luchtaanvallen te verduren waarbij reeds enkele honderden doden en gewonden vielen, waaronder ook vrouwen en kinderen. Tezelfdertijd blijven raketten vanuit Gaza ook de Israëlische burgerbevolking treffen in het zuiden van Israël.
Aanwezigheid van het Rode Kruis
Een chirurgenteam van het Internationale Comité van het Rode Kruis (ICRC) heeft groen licht gekregen van de Israëlische autoriteiten om de Gazastrook binnen te komen en zal de chirurgische staf van het Shifa hospitaal ondersteunen bij het behandelen van gecompliceerde kwetsuren. Tevens zijn Rode Kruis- en Rode Halve Maanvrijwilligers aan beide kanten van de grens dag en nacht in de weer met het evacueren van burgers, het opvangen van gewonden en het transporteren van de doden. Door de gevechten duurt het soms echter uren vooraleer de ziekenwagens van de PRHM de gewonden kunnen bereiken. Sommige gewonden sterven door het lange wachten op de ziekenwagens zegt Antoine Grand, hoofd van het ICRC in Gaza, dit is vanzelfsprekend ontoelaatbaar, de ziekenwagens moeten de gewonden onder alle omstandigheden snel kunnen bereiken.
Dankzij de voorafgaandelijke aanleg van noodstocks door het ICRC konden de meeste ziekenhuizen ook voorzien worden van generatoren, zuiver water, essentiële geneesmiddelen en medisch materiaal, maar de ziekenhuizen liggen overvol en de medische staf is uitgeput.
Watervoorziening in gevaar
Intussen komt ook de watervoorziening in het noorden van de Gazastrook in gevaar : door onderbreking van de stroomvoorziening vallen meerdere waterbevoorradingspunten in Gaza stad uit, en dreigt de bevolking van een half miljoen mensen op korte termijn van zuiver water verstoken te blijven indien de stroomvoorziening niet snel hersteld kan worden.
Bescherming van burgers
Het ICRC wijst alle betrokken partijen bij het conflict in Gaza op de regels vastgelegd in het internationaal humanitair recht die bescherming van burgers in een gewapend conflict voorschrijven. Ook blijft het ICRC de strijdende partijen aansporen om de hulpdiensten te ontzien en humanitaire hulp toegang te verlenen tot de getroffen gebieden.
...& Als extra ~om u toch enigszins inzicht te geven in de toestand van voor, tijdens & na...~ nog een korte reportage, gemaakt omstreeks de jaarwisseling over de humanitaire hulp aan Gaza die volgens Israël toch zo "probleemloos" verliep...
"Gaza Humanitarian Crisis That Israel Denies is Happening" duur : 7:21 minuten ...
...
Kortom... we mogen zo stilaan daarbij duidelijk spreken van "ONAANVAARDBARE RISICO'S VOOR BURGERS"... Weerloze vrouwen & kinderen waar Israël als 't er op aankomt weinig of géén rekening mee houdt...
"Rudi Vranckx in Sderot" duur : 3:05 minuten VRT-Journaal
...
...& Een getuigenverslag door Dr Mads Gilbert vanuit Gaza...
...& We vertalen hier eventjes een klein fragment voor onze Oost-Indische Doven & onze Selectieve Leesblinden !!
45 procent van de slachtoffers zijn volgens de arts uit Noorwegen vrouwen en kinderen. Veel mensen hebben zware brandwonden. Mensen gaan dood door gebrek aan medische faciliteiten !!
Volgens Mads Gilbert mogen er geen buitenlandse medische teams Gaza binnen omdat Israël deze tragedie ontkent !!
...& Een interview eerder met Dr Mads Gilbert vanuit Gaza...
"The Reality In Gaza" duur : 4:33 minuten ...
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Hoe lang nog ?!... & Hoeveel onschuldige slachtoffers zijn er nog nodig ?!...
Wij maken er anders wel geen punt van, om het allemaal bij deze nog eens uitdrukkelijk te herhalen !!
Gaza 2009 De "Digital Wargames" van Israël op YouTube...
Wij hadden zo intussen reeds enige tijd het donkerbruine vermoeden dat er nogal behoorlijk wat gemanipuleerd werd & wordt op het grote world wide internet... & jammer genoeg ook, eens temeer wat betreft Gaza. ...& Bij dit alles in het bijzonder spreken we dan hier over het u welbekende youtube !!
Israël is... & niet meer dan terecht, woedend dat Hamas tuigen afvuurt op de burgerbevolking, maar dat wil niet zeggen dat wat er nu ginds gebeurt, dit ook allemaal zo verantwoord. Wij noemen het "tuigen" omdat we die ~toch wel zeer primitieve~ dingen moeilijk kunnen beschouwen als raketten voor zover het gaat over die fameuse "qassamrockets". Dit neemt natuurlijk niet weg dat ook die knutseltuigen moordwapens zijn. In onze eerdere bijdrage(s) hebben we al uitgelegd hoe die dingen werken, maar sinds enige tijd wordt er ook beweerd dat Hamas Gradraketten zou afvuren. Wij durven natuurlijk niet twijfelen aan wat er door al die ernstige lieden wordt verteld... al willen we toch jullie een aantal dingen laten zien zodat jullie een eigen mening kunnen vormen... & aan dat laatste, daar houden wij nogal sterk aan.
Eerst & vooral.. wat is nu het verschil tussen een qassam & een grad ?!... De qassam moeten we niet meer uitleggen dachten we zo... & de gradraket is niet meer dan professioneel spul dat eigenlijk hier beter bekend staat onder de naam "stalinorgel". Het gaat natuurlijk over één zulke raket als we over een gradraket spreken. Hieronder kunnen jullie die in al hun glorie bewonderen:
Het hoeft dus geen al te grote &/of omslachtige uitleg, maar na de zoveelste "bewering" vroegen wij ons dus quasi onmiddellijk af hoe Hamas aan dit soort spul zou zijn geraakt... met lanceercamion &/of lanceerplatvorm, kortom tutti quanti ?!... Onmogelijk natuurlijk... Maar na wat speurwerk kwamen we er achter dat er toch een mogelijkheid bestaat om dat spul op een veel eenvoudiger manier af te vuren. Het gaat dan over een iets gewijzigde versie van dat stalinorgeltype.
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Weapons: The 9K132 Grad-P Rocket
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This latest conflict in Israel has highlighted an interesting weapon. Enter the 122 mm Grad Missile, or the 9K132 Grad-P rocket. Why is this different from the Kassam rockets and other homemade stuff? The range and lethality. It can go 20 plus kilometers and it is a factory made rocket. That means more Israeli deaths, and someone outside of the country is getting these things in. It could be Hezbollah, Syria, Iran (their Arash rocket-see article below), Egypt, Russia Who knows? But they have them, and they are using them. The most recent attacks were Grad rockets, and these longer range rockets were probably the tipping point(as well as just launching a massive amount of homemade missiles) for the recent activity. Just check out how many attacks have increased over the years.-Matt
Edit : According to news sources, these are Chinese made Grad rockets.
9K132 Grad-P(Wikipedia)
Single-round man-portable launcher, which can be reloaded and used again. The rocket itself is a 122mm fin-stabilized rocket, armed with any of the warheads used on BM-21 rockets. The weapon is not often used by the Russian military, but is popular with paramilitary and guerrilla force.
Egypt(Wikipedia)
The Egyptians domestically manufacture the rockets Sakr-36″ and Sakr-18″ with a respective range of 36 and 18 km. Rather than a standard HE-Frag round, the Egyptian military prefers a 23 kilogram cluster munition, which can be extremely effective against lightly armored equipment and troop concentrations. Both rockets, as well as the original Soviet models of course, are fired by locally manufactured rocket launchers like the RL-21 (copy of BM-11) and RC-21 (copy of BM-21, similar to the Hadid HM20). The Helwan Machine Tools Company also produces portable systems with one, three, four and eight launch tubes.
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The discovery of BM-21 components indicates that the Palestinians can now buy, or build, more accurate, and longer ranged, rockets. The 150 pound, 122mm Russian designed BM-21 rocket is nine feet long and has a range of 20 kilometers and a 45 pound warhead. Developed in the late 1930s, the 122mm rocket is normally fired in large numbers from many launchers at spread-out targets.Thats because the rockets are unguided. Aim lots of them at a target and youll hit something. Aim a few of them at something, and you usually wont, But the rockets are made by many countries, are relatively easy to get, and favored by terrorists for attacks that terrorize, rather than actually do any damage.
Well thats a matter of conjecture that rather than actually do any damage. If you believe that shit you havent been pounded by them.
An Egyptian company manufactures the BM-21, including a longer range version of the 122mm rocket. This one has a range of 45 kilometers. The additional range is achieved by reducing the size of the warhead. Another terrorist favorite is the is the 42 pound, 107mm, 33 inch long, Russian BM-12. This rocket has a range of about six kilometers and three pounds of explosives in its warhead. Normally fired, from a launcher, in salvoes of dozens at a time, when used individually, they can only be aimed at a large target, like a large village, or small town, with any expectation of hitting anything.
Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian terrorist group that is firing the rockets, says the BM-21s are Russian made, and of the 30 kilometer range variety.
9K132 Grad-P missile. Has a range of about 25 kilometers, payload of about 30 kilograms and the accuracy of /- a few kilometers. Pretty useless against modern military formations, but can kill a whole lot of random civilians if fired at, say, Tiberias. Or any of the kibbutzim, moshavim, villages and small towns around the Kinneret.
The timer-operated 9K132 Grad-P can be easily hidden in a loft, a garden, or just some bushes. It can be set to fire an hour or a month after it has been activated. The Syrian military has been stocking up on these lately (Russians were happy to provide them, even canceling Syrias tremendous debt to do so. Iran has their own variant, basically a mountless Arash missile with a modified launching mechanism) and training their slave-soldiers to operate these.
Notre: The article was originally written shortly after the capture of the ship Karin-A, however it is still very relevant, since it provides considerable information about the weapons the Palestinian terrorists could have accumulated in the Gaza strip.
On 6 May 2001 an IAF aircraft on routine patrol over the Mediterranean, spotted a suspicious vessel, named Santorini. Two Dabur patrol craft were sent to intercept the small (length 25 m, displacement 40 tonnes) ship, followed by two missile boats.
The missile boats intercepted the vessel in international waters, some tens of miles from the Israeli coast. Their crews noticed on the Santorinis deck a large number of plastic barrels of different sizes. A marine commando contingent of the IDF Navys Flotilla-13 (Shayetet-13′, Israels naval special forces unit) proceeded to board the vessel. The four crewmen aboard the Santorini did not attempt to resist the takeover. Upon inspection, the boarding party found the barrels filled with weaponry. The vessel was escorted to port at Haifa.
The investigation that followed revealed that the shipment had been purchased by Ahmed Jibrils Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC). Its value, including the price of the contraband delivery, was estimated at $10 million. The smugglers, who departed with the cargo from Tripoli, Lybia, were tasked with unloading the barrels-carefully sealed and waterproofed along with their contents-at a prearranged location off the Gaza coast, where they would be picked up by Palestinian Authority (PA) representatives.
The next day, 7 May 01, at 8:00 pm local time, a press conference was held on the matter in Haifa, with the participation of the Minister of Defense, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and commander-in-chief of the IDF Navy, Maj-Gen.Yedidia Yaari. The latter denied any knowledge of recent attempts at smuggling contraband by sea. By the next day, however, the interrogation of the suspects revealed that they had made three such attempts in the past, two of which were successful.
Eight months later, on the morning of 2 Jan 02 a squadron of Dvora patrol craft (and possibly Dabur boats) and fast attack boats of Flotilla-13 departed Eilat. This time the operation-code-named Noahs Ark-was planned well in advance. The task was the takeover of the weapons-laden Karine A. The actual interception was preceded by months of intelligence activity, code-named Operation Milk and Honey (khalav u-dvash).
The patrol vessels are too small to carry the commando boats on board, so the latter traveled the entire distance covered in the operation on their own power, refueling several times from the patrol craft. The takeover of the Karine-A, which Flotilla-13 personnel executed in 8 minutes without firing a shot, occurred on the night of 3-4 Jan in international waters on the Red Sea, between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, about 500 km from Eilat. Part of the contingent was fast-roped onto the vessel from helicopters, while the rest boarded from the speedboats. The takeover and escort of the Karine-A back to Eilat was supported by IAF attack helicopters. The operation was 0commanded from an aerial platform by Brig-Gen (tat-aluf) Eli Merom, chief of naval operations (mispen yam), with IDF chief-of-staff Lt-Gen (rav-aluf) Shaul Mofaz also on board. Karine-A arrived in Eilat the evening of 4 Jan 02, the entire operation completed in less than 60 hours.
The same day, at 14:00, the IDF held a press conference (Shaul Mofaz, Yedidia Yaari, IAF commander-in-chief Maj-Gen (Aluf) Dan Halutz, and IDF spokesman Brig-Gen (Tat-Aluf) Ron Kitrey participating) making public the Karine-As takeover. The first photos (taken while the ship was still at sea) of the deadly cargo were released. Two days later, on 6 Jan 02 at 17:00, another press conference, this time with the Prime Minister and Defence Minister attending, was held at Eilat naval base. The captured armaments were made available for the inspection of foreign military attaches, diplomatic officials and reporters.
This time the catch was more substantial: over 50 tonnes (up to 70-80 T) of arms and ammunition. It was to have been delivered by Karine-A (length 97.4m, disp.4000 T, constructed 1979) through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean off the Egyptian port of Alexandria, where it would be picked up and reloaded onto smaller craft. These were to deliver the payload, packed in 80 (83 according to certain sources) watertight containers, to the Gaza coast. A typical fishing vessel is capable of towing several such containers, with the added advantage that the containers in the rear would remain underwater. If the fishing boat were spotted by an Israeli patrol, the containers could be released and relocated later (with floating markers). The weaponry was hidden under a layer of civilian cargo (clothing, mattresses, suitcases, electronics, etc.)
The captain of the Karine-A was Omar Ashawi, a FATAH activist since 1976, Lt-Col in the PAs Naval Police, and its adviser on maritime affairs. Several other members of the Karine-As crew were Naval Police officers; the rest were Egyptian sailors, who may or may not have not known of the contraband aboard. Ashawis interrogation revealed that the vessel had been purchased by Adal Mugrabi, a representative of the PA. According to Ashawi, the deputy commander of the Naval Police, Fatkhi Gazem, and the PAs finance Fuad Shubaki, also participated in the operation, the latter charged with making payment for the cargo. The ships last run took it from the Jordanian port of Aqaba (neighboring Eilat) on 24 Sep 01, to an Iranian island in the Persian Gulf, where its cargo was loaded.
Further investigation revealed that the arms were purchased through Irans so-called Export Committee of the Islamic Revolution for $15 million. Payment was delivered via Lebanon through Hizballah middlemen. The civilian cargo used to smuggle the contraband was worth about $3 million, the ship itself about $400,000.
It has been reported that the IDF will make use of part of the confiscated materials (including sniper weapons and explosives) and destroy the rest. The vessel may be used by the IDF Navy for training purposes (but its mechanical condition was deemed questionable).
Armaments and Ammunition :
Santorini
Additional notes on Karine-A cargo:
* The shipment was so large that various items, such as RPG-7 rocket motors and AK magazines were not counted.
* A large part of the weaponry (mortars, anti-tank rockets, RPG-7 and motors) is of Iranian manufacture
* In addition to the Zodiac boats, a substantial quantity of diving equipment was present (diving suits, aqualungs, underwater illuminators).
* All mortar rounds and unguided rockets have impact fuse*
* All mortars and unguided rocket launchers were complete with aiming sights.
* In addition to the fuses in the mines, grenades, and rockets, the cargo included a large quantity of electric and mechanical fuse mechanisms of various types.
Rockets:
Arash. Analog to BM-21 Grad, Iranian manufacture.
Caliber: 122mm
Range: 20.75 km
Weight of rocket: 66.4kg
Warhead (WH): 19.18kg, high-explosive (HE)/fragmentation. Includes 6.4kg HE
Copy of Grad MLRS produced in China, Egypt, Rumania, South Africa, Iraq and Iran (?rash). Iranian variant is truck-mounted, with up to 30 launch tubes depending on model. Hizballah makes use of lighter trucks with 10 launch tubes, and of single launch tubes analogous to the Soviet 9K132 Grad-P (Partisan) system. Launchers intended for delivery to the PA were of the latter type.
Range depends on variant and warhead; data above is for BM-21OF (most common variant). Rocket is stabilized in flight by rotation and stabilizer fins, which open after launch.
Dit modelleke grad kan dus inderdaad afgevuurd worden op een eenvoudige manier & waarschijnlijk ook door 1 of 2 personen... Màààrrr... bekijk dat type dus eens heel goed & onthou ongeveer de grootte van de eigenlijke raket...
We gaan dan snel eventjes over naar de andere kant, namelijk naar het Israëlische leger die ons zéér boeiende beelden bezorgt van de slechterikken die Gradraketten aan het laden zijn. Jullie hebben dat ding nog steeds in jullie geheugen ?!...
Kijk maar :
"Israeli Air Force Strikes Rockets in Transit 28 Dec. 2008" duur : 2:42 minuten ...
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...& kijk... Goed als we zijn gunden we ze hier nog het voordeel van enige twijfel... Tót we het volgende filmpje onder ogen kregen... 't Is maar dat u enig idee heeft hoe deze oorlog in werkelijkheid uitgevochten wordt...
"B'Tselem questions Israeli account of attack - 1 Jan 09" duur : 2:37 minuten ...
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...& Al even veel last hebben we met het volgende filmpje ...
"Israel Air Force Pinpoint Strike on Grad Missile Launchers 30 Dec. 2008" duur : 0:40 minuten ...
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Volgens onze bescheiden mening gaat het hier toch wel duidelijk over veel grotere types raketten & wij hebben daarbij niet meteen het gevoel dat je zulke dingen door een onderaardse tunnel vanuit Egypte in Gaza kunt naar binnen wurmen... zeg nu zelf...
...& Nog het meest tot de verbeelding sprekende voorbeeld vonden we hier & we vragen daarbij uitdrukkelijk om beide fimpjes goed te bekijken. Wees gerust. Het is dus niet het spel van de 7 fouten. Alleeen de titeltjes & de commentaren werden "aangepast"
"Direct hit of qassam in Ashkelon" duur : 0:17 minuten ...
Op het eerste zicht lijken zulke dingen natuurlijk erg banaal. Ach, het is tenslotte een raket. Maar in werkelijkheid is het verschil tussen de in mekaar geknutselde qassamraketten & de pofessionele grad hemelsbreed, laat staan het resultaat van de impact van die dingen... & als je daarbij beseft dat Israël dit als excuus heeft gebruikt om te doen wat ze nu doen ?!...
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Tot slot & toch ook een beetje van kwestie van jullie enigszins met de neus op de feiten te drukken, over waar dit artikel over ging...
Ga zo ook maar eens een kijkje gaan nemen op "IDF Spokesperson's Unit", Israëls eigenste propagandakanaal op YouTube, of zeggen we misschien intussen op cynische wijze : MyTube ?!...
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IDF Spokesperson's Unit
idfnadesk
Lid geworden: 29 december 2008
Laatste aanmelding: 50 minuten geleden
Bekeken video's: 37
Abonnees: 13793
Kanaal aantal keren bekeken: 1036684
The IDF Spokesperson's Unit is the Israel Defense Forces' professional body responsible for media and public relations in Israel and around the world. This is our new site that will help us do so.
We thank you for visiting us and will continue to update this site with documentation of the IDF's humane action and operational success in Operation Cast Lead.
Sta ons toe dat we daar zo onze vragen bij hebben...
...& Nog zo'n voorbeeld hiervan. We zijn trouwens ook niet de enigen die dat zeggen &/of beweren...
"Oorlogsbloggers op het internet" duur : 1:52 minuten VRT-Journaal
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Zo vonden we ook bij De Standaard ONLINE het vrij verhelderende filmpje : Digitale media zijn de nieuwste wapens met volgende comment, dat daar misschien enig antwoord op kan geven...
05/01/2009 Israëlis en Palestijnen bestoken elkaar niet alleen met bommen. Ze gebruiken ook steeds meer het internet en telefonie om elkaar te treffen. De digitale media zijn de nieuwste wapens met het internet als ultieme oorlogsfront, zegt KU Leuven-professor communicatietechnologie Dirk De Grooff.
Wij blijven ons zo de vraag stellen of het geweld dat er op dit moment ginder gebruikt wordt, verhoudingsgewijs staat tot waar het in dit geval allemaal over begon ?!...
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...& Wat denken jullie nu zèlf hiervan ?!... In plaats van zonder enige twijfel aan te nemen, van wat men her en der in de kranten zoal vertelt ?!...
Gaza 2009 White Phosphorus - 's mens grootste smeerlapperij !!
Heeft u enig idee hoe een slachtoffer van witte fosfor ~White Phosphorus~ er uit ziet ?!...
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A Vietnam War Remnants Museum photo of a victim of a white phosphorus bomb
Volgens ons behoeft deze foto géén enkele commentaar... buiten misschien "verbijsterend barbaars" !! Wat u hier net kwam te zien was een slachtoffer van de Vietnam-Oorlog die in de jaren 60-tig & 70-tig werden uitgevochten... Intussen enkele decenia verder & 'n ietsje verder "gespecialiseerd" ziet het er niet veel anders uit...
...een eerste toelichting...
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White Posphorus used in Operation Silence
Posted by Teeth Maestro
July 14, 2007
On 12th July, AAJ Tv boradcasted a program of Live with Talat in which Talat Hussain visited Jamia Hafsa. While touring the bullet ridden compound a number of military personal hovered around, at a certain point Talat Hussain asked an accompanying Army personal about all the evidence of smoke around the area asking, Why is there so much smoke?, the solider replied WP, Talat put another question Please explain WP?, the solider answered White Phosphorus.
White Phosphorus is a flare / smoke producing incendiary weapon which is also used as an offensive Anti-Personnel flame compound capable of causing serious burns or death. White phosphorus weapons are controversial today because of its potential use against humans, for whom one-tenth of a gram is a deadly dose and according to the Geneva Convention which was later amended by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons signed into effect in 1997, expressively prohibits the use against civilians. White Phosphorus weapons have been used in the recent past by Israel in Lebanon and US and UK in Iraq, but probably the first time ever by a an army against its own people
Article 1 of Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
defines an incendiary weapon as any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target. The same protocol also prohibits the use of incendiary weapons against civilians or in civilian areas. However, the use against military targets outside civilian areas is not explicitly banned by any treaty.
There continues to be a strong debate on how Musharraf should have handled this situation, but what surprises me is the inhumanity of this attack, dexterity of the assault should have meant targeted exchange of fire maybe an occasional rubber bullet to pacify the milder militants, but the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons, by the National Army against its own people. Is jaw dropping serious, its akin to the mass murder which happened in Karachi on May 12th when the Army headed off to the barracks leaving the city at the hands of ruthless killers for six hours..
To understand the gravity of the situation one has only to look at these two images of burnt bodies the sight is excruciatingly painful, when the Americans used White Phosphorous on the victims in Fallujah back in April 2004.
If you look at the top most image which appeared in Dawn on 13th July (link) one sees the classic signs of a high intensity flame, which reached astounding temperatures to melt the steel framework of ceiling fans, one must also noted that the public was not shown the remains of numerous people killed in the disaster and quickly buried them in concealed wooden coffins the next day.
I am shocked and stunned at what has just happened, it should be enough for the world to wake up and ask for an unconditional removal of the dictator
Voelt u zich nog goed bij dit alles ?!... Wij dus niet !!...
Als we onze eigenste Belgistaanse pers mogen geloven, gebruikt Israël op dit eigenste moment fosformunitie & clusterbommen in Gaza tegen Hamas... & het staat dachten we daarbij buiten kijf dat de complete civiele bevolking van Gaza daar ook slachtoffer van is... Mannen, vrouwen... kinderen... ongeacht !!
"Nachtelijke beschietingen in Gaza" duur : 0:30 minuten VRT-journaal
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De feeërieke vuurregen die u zonet in het korte beeldfragment uit de lucht zag vallen is géén kerst- of nieuwjaarsvuurwerk... maar is wel degelijk witte fosfor !!
"White Phosphorus 0001" duur : 0:49 minuten ...
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Owwww... u betwijfelt dit alles ?!...
Test van een fosforbom tot ontploffing gebracht boven de USS Alabama BB-8, September 1921.
An alleged White phosphorous shell fired by the Israeli military explodes in the northern Gaza Strip -
Saturday 3 January 2009 -
...& wat het goedje veroorzaakt :
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'Special Weapons' Have a Fallout on Babies in Fallujah
17 june,2008
The new cases, and the number of deaths among children, have risen after "special weaponry" was used in the two massive bombing campaigns in Fallujah in 2004.
After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah.
In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tons of DU in Iraq thus far.
Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among US veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation.
"We saw all the colors of the rainbow coming out of the exploding American shells and missiles," Ali Sarhan, a 50-year-old teacher who lived through the two US sieges of 2004 told IPS. "I saw bodies that turned into bones and coal right after they were exposed to bombs that we learned later to be phosphorus.
"The most worrying is that many of our women have suffered loss of their babies, and some had babies born with deformations."
"I had two children who had brain damage from birth," 28-year-old Hayfa` Shukur told IPS. "My husband has been detained by the Americans since November 2004 and so I had to take the children around by myself to hospitals and private clinics. They died. I spent all our savings and borrowed a considerable amount of money."
Shukur said doctors told her that it was use of the restricted weapons that caused her children`s brain damage and subsequent deaths, "but none of them had the courage to give me a written report."
"Many babies were born with major congenital malformations," a pediatric doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "These infants include many with heart defects, cleft lip or palate, Down`s syndrome, and limb defects."
The doctor added, "I can say all kinds of problems related to toxic pollution took place in Fallujah after the November 2004 massacre."
Many doctors speak of similar cases and a similar pattern. The indications remain anecdotal, in the absence of either a study, or any available official records.
The Fallujah General Hospital administration was unwilling to give any statistics on deformed babies, but one doctor volunteered to speak on condition of anonymity -- for fear of reprisals if seen to be critical of the administration.
"Maternal exposure to toxins and radioactive material can lead to miscarriage and frequent abortions, still birth, and congenital malformation," the doctor told IPS. There have been many such cases, and the government "did not move to contain the damage, or present any assistance to the hospital whatsoever.
"These cases need intensive international efforts that provide the highest and most recent technologies that we will not have here in a hundred years," he added.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed concern Mar. 31 about the lack of medical supplies in hospitals in Baghdad and Basra.
"Hospitals have used up stocks of vital medical items, and require further supplies to cope with the influx of wounded patients. Access to water remains a matter of concern in certain areas," the ICRC said in a statement.
A senior Iraqi health ministry official was quoted as saying Feb. 26 that the health sector is under "great pressure", with scores of doctors killed, an exodus of medical personnel, poor medical infrastructure, and shortage of medicines.
"We are experiencing a big shortage of everything," said the official, "We don`t have enough specialist doctors and medicines, and most of the medical equipment is outdated.
"We used to get many spinal and head injures, but were unable to do anything as we didn`t have enough specialists and medicines," he added. "Intravenous fluid, which is a simple thing, is not available all the time." He said no new hospitals had been built since 1986.
Iraqi Health Minister Salih al-Hassnawi highlighted the shortage of medicines at a press conference in Arbil in the Kurdistan region in the north Feb. 22. "The Iraqi Health Ministry is suffering from an acute shortage of medicines...We have decided to import medicines immediately to meet the needs."
He said the 2008 health budget meant that total expenditure on medicines, medical equipment and ambulances would amount to an average of 22 dollars per citizen.
But this is too late for the unknown number of babies and their families who bore the consequences of the earlier devastation. And it is too little to cover the special needs of babies who survived with deformations.
...& Als u dacht het allemaal gezien te hebben, als u nog twijfelt over wat de effecten van deze onmenselijke smeerlapperij zijn, dan kunnen we u alsnog aanraden om naar volgende documentaire te kijken. Daar krijgt u het naaldje voor draadje uitgelegd... & voor eenmaal vinden wij het ontzettend jammer dat we u de geur ervan niet kunnen bijleveren, kwestie dat het even in uw geheugen zou doorbranden zodat u zulks nooit vergeet !!
The hidden massacre
by Sigfrido Ranucci
Produced by Italian state broadcaster RAI TV, the documentary charges U.S. warplanes illegally dropped white phosphorus incendiary bombs on civilian populations, burning the skin off Iraqi victims. One U.S. soldier charges this amounts to the U.S. using chemical weapons against the Iraqi people.
Gaza 2009 "ongehoorde meningen" - Wim Van Rooy versus Etienne Vermeersch
Onderstaand delen wij met u nog een stukje dat we hebben "ontleend" van het programma "ongehoorde meningen" op radio 1, waarin Lieven De Maeyer het zal hebben over de gebeurtenissen in de Gaza strook met twee gasten.
De éne is de minder bekende Wim van Rooy, Directeur van de Vrije Israëlitische School Yavne & ook hoofdredacteur van Tijdingen, het blad van de P.E.N. club)
De andere is Etienne Vermeersch, u allen welbekend als ~mits enige overdrijving van onzentwege~ het morele geweten van onze Belgische natie...
De Heer Vermeersch mept hier spijkers met koppen, zodat wij hier dus zelf niet veel meer aan toe te voegen hebben, behalve misschien het volgende :
De Heer Van Rooy vindt het in zijn argumentatie geoorloofd om de Palestijnen uit Gaza plat te bombarderen...
In het kort stelt hij dus dat de vrede gefaald heeft door de schuld van de islamo-fascistische ideologie & dat alleen de taal van de wapens troost kan brengen (noot: de Palestijnen hébben géén wapens.. enkel stenen, slingers & enkele zelf ineen geflanste fusees !!) & hij vindt dat Israël voor eens & voor altijd moet afrekenen met Hamas, "hoeveel slachtoffers dat ook zal vergen" (sic).
Door & door slecht zoals we steeds zijn, rijst in ons verdorven geweten natuurlijk meteen de vraag op : "Aan hoeveel slachtoffers had Meneer Van Rooy dan zo gedacht ?!..."
De teller staat intussen al bijna op 500... & Gaza begint dus nu al stilletjes aan de proporties van Deir Yassin, My Lai, Sabra & Chatila of Lidice aan te nemen... & de tanks zijn nog altijd maar aan 't warm draaien daar in 't grensgebied, als ze tenminste op dit eigenste moment niet de boel aan 't platwalsen zijn...
Is 5000 aanvaardbaar voor dhr. Van Rooy ?!... Of 50 000 ?!... Of 500 000 misschien ?!...
...& Is een Arabier z'n leven dan evenveel of minder waard als dat van iemand anders voor de Heer Van Rooy ?!... Zou de Meneer Van Rooy zulke cijfers even aanvaardbaar vinden moesten er 500 Vlamingen, Zweden of Canadezen worden afgeslacht ?!...
Als in een reflex haalt Mijnheer Van Rooy er natuurlijk ook meteen Hitler weer bij & hij verwijst ook naar het "islamo-fascisme". Wij gaan daar nu niet verder op in, maar we hopen dat zeer binnenkort eens wat grondiger aan te pakken...
Wanneer hij in zijn betoog, om het zo te parafraseren, beweert dat de vrede gefaald heeft & dat de Palestijnen enkel de taal van de wapens begrijpen, vergeet hij echter één ding... & nu komen wij tot de kern van ons argument... & dat is dat er gewoon nog nooit een vredevolle oplossing op tafel is gekomen !!
Het is namelijk zo dat het Palestijnse Volk nù al meer dan 60 jaar door Israël onder de knoet gehouden wordt.
Heeft Meneer Van Rooy misschien zichzelf al eens de vraag gesteld hoe ie 't zou vinden om z'n ganse leven lang ~want Meneer Van Rooy is er nog géén 60~ in zo'n onderdrukt oorlogsgebied te leven ?!... Gebied dat in dàt geval dan van zijn voorouders is ontstolen & dat te pas & te onpas om welke futiele reden dan ook "uitgezuiverd" wordt, waarbij vrienden & familie voor 't minste zomaar door de onderdrukker gevangen gezet worden bvb...
Wie in een plas modder op de grond ligt met een legerbottin in zijn nek gedrukt kan in de meeste van die gevallen nogal moeilijk de hand reiken aan de eigenaar van die bottin... als dat al niet als vijandelijk wordt beschouwd tenminste... want in tijden van oorlog weet men immers nooit... & daarom is dit argument van de Heer Van Rooy voor ons dus waardeloos.
De vredelievende oplossing kón gewoon niet falen, omdat ze er nog nooit gewéést is !! ...& misschien is het eens een keer de moeite waard om eens te proberen om Vrede te bereiken door de Bezetting te beëindigen ?!...
"Vrede" houdt echter wel in dat beide partijen pijnlijke toegevingen zullen moeten doen... & we kunnen bezwaarlijk gaan ontkennen dat de Palestijnen de laatste 60 jaar nog geen pijnlijke toegevingen hebben gedaan.
Deze bezetting van de Palestijnen door Israël was er overigens reeds vóór Hamas (1987) er was.
Dezélfde bezetting was er ook al vóór Arafat er was... & nu Arafat verdwenen is, is die bezetting er nog steeds. De énige constante in het conflict is dus niét de aanwezigheid van Hamas, of die van Arafat, maar wél die ellendige 6 decennia durende bezetting van de Palestijnse gebieden door Israël !!
Er is dus geen sprake van een "fascistische (Islam)ideologie", maar wel van een 60-jarige bezetting... & de Heer Van Rooy verwart dus duidelijk het begrip "Vrede" met een soort status-quo of "gezellige rust", terwijl de Palestijnen verder verdreven & weggepest worden...
Het verleden zou ons één ding moeten geleerd hebben... & dat is dat, waar er bezetting is, er nooit vrede kan heersen. Waar er bezetting is zal er dus automatisch ook verzet zijn, zoals dat in "Den Oorlog" ook al het geval was met "Den Weerstand"...
Zodra de bezetting van onze streken door den Duits ophield had ook de Weerstand hier geen reden van bestaan meer & is deze korte tijd nadien dus ook gewoon opgedroogd.
Dus, Mijnheer Van Rooy... we gaan het nog één keer zeggen teneinde dat u het goed in uw oren zou kunnen knopen !!
Het is de
bezetting die de oorzaak is van alle ellende... & dat geldt zowel voor de Israëli's als voor de Palestijnen !!
...& al de rest is daar slechts het logische gevolg van !! Niet meer & niet minder !!
is er geld om de honger uit de wereld te helpen? Wat denken jullie ???
Beste lezertjes, vermits een nieuw jaar begint met goede voornemens zullen ook wij ons best doen om deze voornemens te verwezenlijken. Wij willen namelijk iets dat zeer gemakkelijk te verwezenlijken valt. En dat is?.........wel doodgewoon dat -en laten we voor één keer erg regionalistisch egoïstisch zijn- er niempand meer honger moet lijden in ons eigenste vaderland Belgistan. Ok, we dromen weer. In elk geval durven wij nog dromen wat waarschijnlijk van velen onder jullie niet meer kan gezegd worden. Onrealistisch? Absoluut niet. Want we publiceren hieronder graag een artikel dat dateert van bij het begin van de financiële crisis en dat werd gepubliceerd in "Le Nouvel Observateur". Als dat allemaal kan in onze wereld wat daar zonder enige schroom wordt verteld, dan kan men veel makkelijker onze bescheiden doelstelling verwezenlijken. Lijkt ons veel minder surrealistisch....Neem dus eventjes jullie Frans-Nederlandse woordenboek bij de hand en laat ons samen de wonderlijke wereld der financiën betreden. Zet de kotsemmer toch niet te ver uit de buurt...jullie zijn verwittigd!Het geeft een mooi contrast met onze voorgaande bijdrage. Kwestie van evenwichten te bewaren natuurlijk. Het laat ons ook een mooi beeld zien van de beperkte invloed die nationale staten via wet- en regelgeving nog kunnen uitoefenen op het financieel systeem dat zich al lang geen bal meer aantrekt van grenzen. Behalve dan om er misbruik van te kunnen maken. Jan met de pet en Piet met de snot betalen de gebroken potten wel....en Jan en Piet dat zijn wij dus....
Bron : http://hebdo.nouvelobs.com/hebdo/parution/p2295/articles/a386854-.html
SEMAINE DU JEUDI 30 Octobre 2008
Enquête chez les seigneurs de la finance Les naufrageurs Ni
remords ni excuses. Banquiers, gérants de fonds d'investissement,
spéculateurs, ils portent une responsabilité écrasante dans la crise
qui balaie l'économie mondiale. Certains y ont laissé des plumes.
D'autres, à la faveur du krach, continuent de s'enrichir de plus belle.
Tant pis pour le petit épargnant. Tant pis pour le contribuable qui
devra boucher les trous. A Wall Street, Londres ou Genève, nos
reporters ont rencontré ceux qui n'ont d'autre credo que celui du
profit. Et ne sont pas près d'abjurer
Au
désespoir ! A la ruine ! A ces marchés stupides qui me permettent de
m'enrichir ! Simon Cawkwell nous reçoit dans son grand appartement dans
le quartier chic de South Kensington, à Londres, et, en hôte
attentionné, insiste pour sabrer le champagne et lever un toast en
l'honneur du krach. Ce n'est pas tous les jours qu'on trinque avec le
diable ! Avec ses 150 kilos débordant de sa chaise, ses chaussettes
rouge vif, ses quatre écrans d'ordinateur où défilent non-stop les
cours de la Bourse, le personnage rayonne d'une aura falstaffienne.
D'ailleurs, son surnom à la city, c'est «Evil Knievil», alias «le
chevalier du mal» ou quelque chose d'approchant. «Les krachs, j'adore, il n'y a pas de périodes plus
excitantes. J'ai connu celui de 1987, mais j'étais moins riche à l'époque, je ne
pouvais pas miser de grosses sommes. Cette crise-là est bonne, très bonne, pour
mes affaires. Evidemment, il va y avoir beaucoup de chômage, des années de
récession. Mais moi, je vais gagner beaucoup d'argent.» Cawkwell fait partie du club sulfureux des short sellers,
ces spé-culateurs qui ont joué à la baisse les valeurs bancaires. Lui,
il s'est attaqué à la banque anglaise Northern Rock. Et se rappelle
encore avec délice ce jour d'août où il a entendu que la Banque
d'Angleterre allait la renflouer. «J'ai compris que cela sentait mauvais et qu'il y aurait
beaucoup à se faire.» Northern Rock a ensuite plongé, n'échappant à la faillite que par une nationalisation in extremis. Se sent-il coupable ? «Mais pourquoi, ma chère ? Je serais bien stupide de ne pas
en profiter.» Au total, Evil Knievil pense que la crise lui rapportera 4,5 millions d'euros. «Une broutille... Si vous saviez
combien certains ont raflé !»
C'est peut-être le refrain le plus entonné dans le monde de la finance.
Il y a toujours un plus coupable que vous. Les patrons des grandes
banques comme Dick Fuld, de feu Lehman Brothers, ou John Mack, de
Morgan Stanley ? Ils accusent les short sel- lers, type David Einhorn
ou Philip Falcone (épinglé en une par le tabloïd «Daily Mirror» sous
l'étiquette «porc milliardaire cupide»), d'avoir conspiré leur chute.
Lesquels spéculateurs prétendent eux avoir fait oeuvre d'utilité
publique en alertant l'opinion sur les dérives des banques. «On apprend aux enfants à dire
pardon. Mais visiblement, dans le secteur financier, personne n'a appris les
vertus du mot magique», ironisait une éditorialiste de «l'Evening Standard».
David Freud, petit-fils de Sigmund et exbanquier d'affaires, a l'explication de ce déni collectif : «Il n'y a pas de sens de la responsabilité. C'est un secteur
très individualiste, perverti par la culture du bonus. Et le bonus, c'est
gagnant-gagnant. Quand vous êtes performant, vous gagnez. Quand vous perdez,
vous gagnez toujours, mais moins...»
David Freud a lui aussi joué au jeu des bonus, ces mégaprimes qui font
passer les salaires des footballeurs pour de vulgaires pourboires : «Si les gens savaient ce qu'on
gagne, on rétablirait la guillotine et des têtes valseraient sur des piques.»
1,
2, 15, 20 millions... Pour le commun des mortels, les sommes ne veulent
plus dire grand-chose. Pensez ! En plein krach des subprimes, Goldman
Sachs, la star du milieu (voir article p. 22), versait 18 milliards de
dollars de bonus, soit 600 000 dollars par employé en moyenne... Mais
ces dernières années, les mercenaires de la City savaient pouvoir
trouver encore mieux ailleurs. Les banques plus «pépères»,
traditionnellement peu enclines à jouer les acrobates sur les marchés,
ont voulu, elles aussi, monter en Ligue 1, celle des Goldman Sachs et
autres. Et, pour s'acheter les bons joueurs, ont aligné toujours plus
de cash. Et tant pis si les patrons en question furent bien vite
dépassés par les tours de passe-passe de leurs nouvelles stars. C'est
exactement ce qui s'est passé dans nos Caisses d'Epargne. Ou chez
Citigroup, où le PDG, Chuck Prince, ancien avocat, débarqué l'an
dernier pour avoir plombé sa banque de subprimes, confessait ingénument
son manque total de compréhension des mécanismes financiers en vigueur
dans sa boutique : «Aussi longtemps
qu'il y a de la musique, vous devez vous lever et danser. Nous dansons
toujours.» Les banquiers ont dansé. Les milliards ont valsé. Les chiffres donnent le vertige : les fameux Credit
Default
Swaps, ces instruments techniques pour se couvrir contre le risque de
faillite d'une entreprise, qui sont en train de faire tomber les
banques, ont été inventés fin 1997 : ils représentent désormais 55
trilliards de dollars, soit plus que le PNB de la Terre... «Personne n'avait intérêt à tuer la poule
aux oeufs d'or,
soupire David Freud. Ni les politiques, ni les banques centrales, ni
surtout les banquiers, qui s'enrichissaient tellement. Alors on s'est
tous allongé et on a écouté la musique.» Et la musique, qui la dictait
? Tout en haut de la pyramide, voilà les demi-dieux de la finance. La
caste mystérieuse des hedge funds, ces fonds spéculatifs qui
font désormais la pluie et le beau temps. L'écrivain Tom Wolfe explique
ainsi que ces «maîtres de l'univers» qu'il a immortalisés dans «le
Bûcher des Vanités» ne sont plus à Wall Street, mais à Greenwich,
petite ville près de New York où s'agglutinent les hedgies ou à
Londres. Là où l'unité était la dizaine de millions de dollars, les
hedgies brassaient des milliards, et comme ils se servaient à la
source, ils ont fait exploser les bonus. «Ils n'avaient aucune régulation, et gagnaient tellement
plus d'argent. Le rêve de tout trader, c'était évidemment de devenir un
hedgie»,
dit un trader. Et de déménager, à Londres, des bureaux impersonnels de
Canary Wharf ou de la City vers l'antre des superriches, le quartier de
Mayfair, ses immeubles victoriens, ses milliardaires russes, ses
restaurants huppés comme le Gavroche et ses repas à 1 500 euros... Même
les conférences busi ness étaient moins ennuyeuses : au rassemblement
Hedge Stock, en 2006, sorte de Woodstock de la finance, les rendez-vous
se faisaient sous des tentes à fleurs, le tout bercé d'un concert des
Who. Autre événement incontournable, le gala de charité annuel du
financier Arpad Busson, fiancé d'Uma Thurman, où l'on pouvait l'an
dernier enchérir pour gagner une séance de yoga avec Sting, ou une
leçon de guitare avec le chanteur de Coldplay suivi d'un dîner avec sa
femme, Gwineth Paltrow... Cette année, en juin, il n'y avait «que» Tony
Blair, désormais conseiller à mi-temps à la banque JPMorgan, et un
concert de Stevie Wonder. 30 millions d'euros furent néammoins levés,
malgré les subprimes... Aujourd'hui, à Mayfair, les hedge funds
commencent à fermer : on estime que plus de la moitié risquent de
passer à la trappe. Les panneaux «Bureaux à vendre» fleurissent. Peter
Wetherell, agent immobilier dans le très haut de gamme, constate un
ralentissement de 40% des transactions. «Après la fête, la gueule de bois... Mais pas pour tout le
monde. La semaine dernière, il y avait un petit raout chez George, le club privé
de Mayfair le plus coté. Il y avait ceux qui pleuraient. Et ceux qui riaient.
Personnellement, je ne suis pas inquiet pour mon business. Les riches ont perdu
un peu de leur patri moine, mais ils restent toujours riches...» Pauvres riches ? «C'est le paradoxe de la City. Vous êtes riche,
mais vous n'en avez jamais assez. Car il y a toujours un plus riche que
vous.»
Geraint Anderson, un analyste réputé, a décidé de larguer les amarres
après avoir amassé «seulement» 3 millions d'euros. Trop de cocaïne,
trop de stress, trop de cupidité. «Je devenais un vrai connard.
Et puis, au fond de moi, je savais bien que je ne valais pas mon superbonus
annuel» Dans la City, le sujet de conversation préféré est le fuck-off money, le montant avec lequel vous pouvez tout plaquer. «On avait fait un pacte il y a trois ans avec des copains
en se fixant un seuil de 3 millions d'euros. Eux, ils n'ont pas décroché. Ils
doivent être entre 5 et 10 maintenant.» Geraint dit que personne ne décroche dans la City : «C'est comme dans ces films avec ces
braqueurs qui disent «encore un dernier hold-up» et c'est fini. En général, ça
se termine dans un bain de sang.» Aujourd'hui,
alors que 3 000 milliards seront injectés dans les banques, on pourrait
penser que le système fou des bonus a vécu. Pauvres naïfs ! Selon les
estimations du «Guardian», les 10 plus gros établissements financiers
de Wall Street projettent de distribuer 70 milliards de dollars en
primes cette année, soit 10% du plan Paulson ! Ironie du sort, certains
des ex-Lehman, la banque qui a largement participé au cataclysme,
pourraient même en profiter : Nomura, qui a repris une partie des
équipes, a promis de ? maintenir les bonus que s'était engagé à distribuer leur ancien employeur. «Je ne
vois pas pourquoi je paierais les pots cassés ! Si je n'ai pas mon bonus cette
année, j'irais voir ailleurs, se justifie un trader. Les banques sont obligées de continuer le jeu pour ne pas
perdre ceux qui leur rapportent encore de l'argent. C'est la loi du
marché.» Impunité totale, donc ? Philippe, un des hedge funders les plus connus de la place, nous reçoit à Genève. Off. «Nous, les hedgies, nous sommes les boucs émissaires idéaux.
Même l'archevêque de Canterbury nous tape dessus ! Nous sommes comme les joueurs
de foot et les chanteurs de rock : les personnes qu'on aime haïr.»
Pourquoi Genève ? L'homme qui pèse aujourd'hui 200 millions d'euros a
été en bisbille avec la Financial Services Authority, le gendarme de la
City. Et a donc quitté Londres pour la cité de Calvin. «On me croyait fini, et
puis me revoilà. J'ai survécu à bien des choses, et ce krach-là n'est pas le
pire que j'ai connu.» En deux ans, il a créé son propre fonds et levé 5 milliards de dollars. Une
partie de ses fonds sont domiciliés aux îles Caïmans, l'une des
destinations favorites des hedge funds. Alors évidemment, la
régulation, ça le fait rire. «Ils
sont mignons... Si Brown ou les autres veulent se mêler de la politique des
bonus et durcir la politique fiscale, pas de problème ! Tout le monde fera comme
moi et on ira tous en Suisse.» Et si la Suisse se fait taper sur les doigts ? «Il y aura toujours un autre endroit...» Doan Bui Le Nouvel Observateur
Naar het gedoe van De Morgen... Lezers tippen lezers : Naar Nieverance, de zelfkant waar de zwarte sneeuw valt...
"Vuurwerk 2009" duur : 8:30 minuten ...
...
1 januari - 14.13 - Onze keuze om de kerst- & nieuwjaarstijd van 2008 tot in 2009 door te brengen had eigenlijk weinig of niets om het lijf... Net als de zovele roemloze & naamloze onbekende anderen, hadden wij weinig of géén andere keuze dan... of deze kersttijd op een zinnige manier trachten door te brengen in Nieverance... Het u aller welbekende gat aan de uitkant van de wereld, "In 't Hol van Pluto"... Of ten onder te gaan aan een zekere existentiele eenzaamheid & de daarbij horende quasi ondraaglijke dofheid van dit aardse bestaan... Wij kozen alvast voor het eerste & kregen er het tweede "GRATIS" & voor 't zelfde geld bij...
Ons algehele budget voor deze toch wel obligatoir te noemen schoolreis bij de aanvang van de schoolse kerstvakantie beperkte zich tot op de centiem na, tot het geweldige & te vermorsen bedrag van zegge & schrijven drieëntwintig uro & achtenzeventig urocent... & dat was dan voor àlle te maken kosten & alle uitspattingen die men zich daarmee kan veroorloven van het ganse aan ons toegewezen pretpakket... Het verblijf in onze kartonnen doos was al betaald, in dit geval was dit dus ook "GRATIS" te noemen... Onze 23,78 kon dus losbandig worden opgesoupeerd aan vreten & zuipen voor onze 10-daagse ~zeg maar~ "nood-gedwongen" retraite aan de zelfkant van de maatschappij... Een maatschappij waar wij tot nader order tenslotte ook nog deel van dachten uit te maken, al had deze maatschappij dan misschien wel liever van niet...
Màààrrr dit àlles had ook zo zijn goede kanten, want daar waar anderen bijna overstresst de stad in moesten om nu eenmaal naar goede gewoonte te voldoen aan hun financiële eindejaarsverplichtingen, werden wij van deze waanzin bespaard... Wij konden & mochten dit alles overschouwen van op ons door ons telkenmale zorgvuldig uitgekozen centraal gelegen stadsbankje... Meestal een exemplaar waar we net niet aan vast vrozen, maar waar de koude wel ondergeschikt was aan 't plezier van het u aller bekende mensjes kijken... Ook al zijn wij reeds sedert geruime tijd uitgesloten van deelname aan zulke sociale spektakels wegens een chronisch financieel tekort aan harde cash, toch kunnen we nog wel iet of wat geamuseerd kijken naar dit op zich toch wel jaarlijks herhaald waanzinnige circus met alle sociale verplichtingen vandien die er blijkbaar nog eens aan vast hangen. ook.. Daarbij hoort meestal ook nog eens de telkenmale daar aan verbonden terugkerende schier onoverzichtelijke massa van wurmendende & veel te haastige mensen... een menselijk kluwen dat meestal bepakt & gezakt is, soms zelfs als sjokkende muilezels beladen, waarbij dan de één al wat meer dan de andere mee sjouwt aan vooral dan duur & gegeerd materialisme, in vele gevallen meestal ook nog eens onpersoonlijke consumenten-troep waarvan na nieuwjaar het één al nuttelozer zou blijken te zijn als het andere...
De als nijvere mieren wriemelende menselijke stroom, bijna allemaal zich quasi onophoudelijk haastig spoedend, sommigen een droeve blik op oneindig gericht met in het zog van hun naarstig geloop, anderen die het alfabeest dan maar gedwee of juist heel nors volgden om de meestal volgepropte kerstboodschappenlijst toch maar op tijd afgestreept te krijgen... De hoeveelheid beschamende taferelen die wij van dichtbij of veraf ~als toeschouwer wel te verstaan~ mochten aanschouwen, vooral dan van ruzie makende ~zo gezegde~ geliefden, "vol-van-goede-wil" over de te geven kado's waren soms zo grotesk dat wij ze u omwille van enige beschaafdheid bij deze zullen besparen... In de meeste der gevallen ging het dan ook aan ons voorbij als ware het slechte film met een slecht geschreven scenario, met nog niet te na gesproken meestal ook nog eens de verkeerd gecaste vertolkers van een vooral leeg & oppervlakkig geleefd leven... De menselijke nachtmerrie volgens Sartre... l'enfer c'est les autres...
De walmen van verse wafels vermengd met de weeë geur van veel te lang gebakken hamburgers & slechte gluhwijn hing overal in de lucht wat er voor zorgde dat er her & der enkele fanatieke entoesiastelingen waren die zich hieraan reeds al lang aan te buiten waren gegaan &/of dat duidelijk van plan waren te gaan doen... Groepjes debiele volwassenen met al dan niet flikkerende kerstmutsen of rendiergeweien op het hoofd... Horden van brallende zatte kerstmannen gevolgd door een troep van luidgibberende kerstmanwijfjes, losgeslagen door de kunstmatig opgepepte euforie van feeëriek verlichte kerstmarkten... Ons liet het ons slechts af & toe het water in de bek krijgen van de honger & voor de rest zorgde het alleen maar voor spontane krampen van onze opspelende lege maag, meestal dan nog eens gevolgd door een opvallend leeg gerommel van opspelende spasmisme darmen...
Af & toe herkenden we een lotgenoot, waarvan dan de ene al wat meer getekend was dan de andere door de aftakeling van de armoede... Want zulks wordt na een tijdje zichtbaar & voor wie hier bedreven in kijken & zien is... is één blik al dikwijls voldoende om de onderhuids tragiek te zien die zich bij de andere innerlijk afspeelt...
De zwarte sneeuw van Nieverance wordt dan ook vooral gekenmerkt door zij die deze winter-lente-zomer-&-herfststormen kennen & die ook reeds ettelijke malen hebben ~moeten~ doorstaan als waren zij dan geharde & ervaren poolreizigers & zij die er hebben horen over praten, als was het een zeldzaam fenomeen in Belgistan dat quasi ook onbestaande is & zeker als je het niet wilt zien of wilt weten... Niets is immers zou koud & kil als menselijke koudheid & menselijke onverschilligheid, niets is in zulke gevallen ook beschamender als onbegrip of domheid & blindheid voor elk ander menselijk lijden dan dat van henzelf...
Terwijl 8 miljoen Belgen zich nog quasi te goed konden doen aan ~dure~ kerstfestijnen met enigzins exubertante kerstmenu's & de bijhorende dure kado's, waren 2 miljoen anderen verplicht het met aanzienlijk veel minder te doen of gewoon zelfs met niks... Het feestmaal van ondergetekende beperkte zich tot 2 gebakken zwarte pensen met confituur & een broodje... & wij menen dat we het in vergelijking met sommige anderen dan nog goed hadden, want er zijn anderen die het bij ons weten met nog veel minder moesten doen...
Maar in tegenstelling tot ons, ligt u daar waarschijnlijk ook niet echt wakker van... Zo hebben wij toch mogen merken...
Kijk, we willen een kleine technische toelichting, vanuit onverdachte bron, geven over het geweldige gevaar van de qassamraketten die Hamas op Israël afvuurt. Voor ons zijn het inderdaad terreurwapens omdat ze totaal ongeleid zijn en neerstorten als de brandstof opgebruikt is. Maar deze krengen zijn niet te vergelijken met wat Hezbollah ooit afvuurde vanuit Libanon. We plaatsen deze bijkomende info eenvoudigweg om jullie te laten nadenken over een bepaald soort berichtgeving dat F16-bombardementen op het dichtstbevolkte gebied in de wereld een "gepaste represaille" vindt voor de dagelijkse "raketaanvallen" vanuit Gaza. En nogmaals wij zijn geen bewonderaars van zulke knutseltuigen...
bron : http://www.think-israel.org/brain.kassamrockets.html
HOW KASSAM ROCKETS WORK
by Marshall Brain
If you've been watching the news, you know that Israel is under
attack once again. This time, the weapon of choice comes from the
skies. It is called the Kassam (or Qassam) rocket, and dozens of them
have been landing in Israel.
In America we have a certain mental image that appears whenever
we hear the word "rocket." We tend to think of something big, complex
and expensive. We get that impression because we are used to seeing
huge moon rockets or billion-dollar space shuttles flying precisely
into orbit under the control of thousands of technicians.
The Palestinian Kassam rocket is just the opposite. It is
small, simple and cheap. The idea is to create an easily manufactured,
inexpensive terror weapon that one or two people can launch from almost
anywhere.
How can Palestinians manufacture rockets in their basements?
The key is to think small and to use everyday items wherever possible.
Therefore, a Kassam rocket starts with a simple iron tube. In other
words, you start with a piece of pipe. In a Kassam rocket, the pipe is
usually about 6 feet long and 6 or 7 inches in diameter. At one end of
the piece of pipe you weld on four simple fins made of sheet metal. The
sheet metal can come from anywhere - an old car fender will do.
A Kassam rocket lands in a Sderot, Israel synagogue
Since this is a rocket, it needs some kind of rocket fuel inside
the pipe. Palestinians use the simplest fuel possible. It is made of
sugar and potassium nitrate, also known as saltpeter. The obvious
question most people have is, "Sugar?" It turns out that sugar
contains quite a lot of energy. You can see that energy when you are
roasting marshmallows and one of them catches on fire. The problem is
that sugar does not burn fast enough to use it as a rocket fuel. The
potassium nitrate solves that problem by providing an oxidizer that
accelerates the reaction. In the United States, there is a whole
category of model rocketry called "Candy Rockets." American hobbyists
hold competitions to see who can create the highest-flying
sugar-powered rockets. The Palestinians have simply taken the hobby to
an extreme.
Once you have filled your pipe with its sugar fuel, you need a
nozzle for your rocket engine. In a Kassam rocket the designers use a
round metal plate with seven holes drilled in it. Each hole is about an
inch in diameter, because that is about as big as a standard drill bit
can get. This round plate then screws onto the bottom of the rocket.
At the other end of the rocket is a small bomb. A Kassam rocket
has a payload of 10 to 20 pounds and the bomb is very simple. It is
made of a metal casing filled with an explosive like TNT. The TNT is
probably the hardest material for the Palestinians to obtain, so they
smuggle it in or harvest it from old military hardware. The shell of a
rifle bullet acts as a blasting cap to initiate the TNT explosion.
When you put this all together, what you have is a rocket that can
lob a 10 to 20 pound bomb through the air for a distance of five or
six miles. It is very much like an artillery shell, with the advantage
that you do not need a massive artillery piece to launch it. Instead,
you need a couple of simple guide rails to act as a launch pad. You
set up the rails, lean the rocket against them, light the fuse and
stand back. 30 seconds later a 20-pound bomb explodes five miles away.
By the time Israelis can react, the people who ignited the rocket can
be long gone from the launch site.
Because they have no guidance system of any kind, Kassam rockets do
have their limits. There is no way to know precisely where the rocket
will land. However, as a tool of terror, that randomness can make the
rocket very effective. The Germans employed the same tactic with the
V-1 and V-2 rockets that they sent toward London during World War II.
[Editor's Note: Steven Plaut has suggested that Israel could stop the
manufacture of rockets in Gaza by the simple expedient of blocking the
importing of sugar into the Gaza Strip. Read his essay
here.]
Marshall Brain has a degree in computer science. He is founder of
the "How Stuff Works" website (www.howstuffworks.com), where he
explains how things work -- from spud guns to hybrid cars.
He lives in Raleigh NC and can be contacted at
marshall@marshallbrain.com. Visit his website at
www.marshallbrain.com
This article appeared in Jewish World Review
(http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0507/HowStuffWorks.php3).
en een iets "gekleurdere" opinie
SUGAR DADDIES; BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SUE FOR
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 6, 2007.
1. Sugar Daddies
Want to know WHY al-Kassam rockets are falling on Sderot every
day? I mean -- besides the obvious cause, namely, the mega-stupidity of
the Israeli government ordering the eviction of all the Jews from the
Gaza Strip and turning it over to the genocidal terrorists of the
Hamas.
Want to know the OTHER reason why the rockets keep falling?
It is because Israel's government does not have the courage to
prevent sugar from being imported into the Gaza Strip.
Huh? -- you say?
Yes, the root problem is sugar. Why sugar? Well, Kassam rockets
are primitive little devices thrown together in the basements and
underground tunnels of the Gaza Strip. They use a primitive fuel that
is mainly a mix of sugar and fertilizer. If you think I am kidding,
take a look at
http://www.me-monitor.com/files/The%20Growing%20Threat%20of%20the%20Kassam.htm
or
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0507/HowStuffWorks.php3?printer_friendly
or http://www.israelnetdaily.com/feed_content.php?feed=27641.
These are NOT the Katyusha rockets of the Hizbollah, although a few
katyushas have also been fired out of Gaza by the savages.
This has been known for years. If Israel had simply announced that
no sugar at all (better yet -- no fertilizer either) can be brought
into the Gaza Strip, the residents of Sderot would be strolling about
in tranquility, enjoying the evening Negev breezes and listening to
the birds. Instead, Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz prefer to be the Sugar
Daddies for the Gaza Strip.
The problem is that the same state of Israel that clobbered the
Arab aggressors in six days in 1967 and then rescued the Entebbe
hostages in 1976 is today too afraid of its own shadow to stop the
imports into Gaza of sugar and fertilizer.
Sure, the academic moonbats in Israel would have a fit if the
sugar shipments were stopped and Gaza were placed under a sugar
embargo. They of course would oppose anything short of unconditional
surrender by Israel to stop the rocket barrages on Sderot. Their
anti-Semitic friends abroad would also chime in their outrage.
So to keep a lid on things, I hereby
propose that Israel announce a new dental health program of preventive
dental medicine for Gaza. To help prospective suicide bombers and
rocket shooters from developing painful problems of tooth decay, Israel
will do the humanitarian thing and stop all sugar imports! Any leftist
protesting this would be seen as an anti-dentite.
And then to offset any damages to Gaza
from a halt in imports of fertilizer, Israel can also shut off the
water supply to Gaza and let the locals fertilize their fields with
human organic substances that cannot be used to produce Kassam rockets.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/1#2179
onze linkse nitwitsvisie op de massamoorden in Gaza
We kunnen niet blind blijven
voor het drama dat zich voor onze ogen afspeelt in Gaza. We lazen
vandaag minstens 100 verschillende meningen over het bloedbad dat de
staat Israël daar heeft aangericht. En we gebruiken zeer bewust de term
"staat Israël" en niks anders. We hebben hier op dit blog steeds het
onrecht aangeklaagd dat het Joodse volk werd aangedaan tijdens de
naziterreur en we zullen dit blijven doen voor elk volk daar waar
nodig. Racisme, genocide, zijn woorden die niet in ons woordenboek
passen. We zijn ook geen bewonderaars van Hamas en zijn zeker niet
blind voor bepaalde fascistoïde en vreselijk anti-joodse tendensen
binnen het radicale Islamisme. Dat zullen we hier eveneens ongenadig
aanklagen. Eén gekke grootmoefti was genoeg. Er moeten best geen
opvolgers opstaan. Toch moet het gezegd worden en we beweren hier ook
weer geen kenners te zijn van het aartsmoeilijke Palestijns-Israëlische
conflict, wat er daar nu gebeurt is ontoelaatbaar. Je kan, als zinnige
mens, moeilijk verdedigen dat zogenaamde precisiebombardementen slechts
slachtoffers maken onder de Hamasmilities. Het gaat hiet begot over één
van de dichtst bevolkte gebieden ter wereld met een meerderheid van
bijna uitgehongerde bewoners tegenover één der best bewapende
luchtmachten ter wereld. Een bom is, ondanks alle filmpjes en idiote
beweringen, nooit zo slim dat ze eens ze ontploft, een onderscheid zal
maken tussen een gewapende man en een kind. Punt uit. Je voert geen
luchtbombardementen uit in dichtbevolkte gebieden. Het excuus dat de
raketlanceerinstallaties van Hamas opgesteld staan tussen de
burgerbevolking snijdt gewoon geen hout. Hun vernuftig in elkaar
geknutselde Quassamraketten zijn inderdaad geniepige moordwapens maar
hebben geen lanceerinstallatie nodig. Dat is net het specifieke van die
tuigen je ze hieronder kan zien en je hebt er kleinere en grotere een
drietal types in totaal maar die telkens zonder uitgebouwde vaste
installatie kunnen worden afgevuurd. Bovendien is Israël gestart
met het uithongeren van Gaza en het in elkaar laten stuiken van de
plaatselijke economie begin november. De bombardementen maken dus deel
uit van een totaal plan Hieronder publiceren we een uitstekend
gedocumenteerd artikel dat we vonden op : http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/roy_01_.html
If Gaza falls . . .
Sara Roy
Israels siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the
day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally
to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June.
Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion
was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel
and the violence has not abated since then. Israels siege has two
fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are
seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political
identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to
foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the hundreds
of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt around which an informal but
increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form. The
overwhelming majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1
per cent are unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is
rapidly disappearing for the majority of the population.
On 5
November the Israeli government sealed all the ways into and out of
Gaza. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems,
fertiliser, plastic sheeting, phones, paper, glue, shoes and even
teacups are no longer getting through in sufficient quantities or at
all. According to Oxfam only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza
in November. This means that an average of 4.6 trucks per day entered
the strip compared to an average of 123 in October this year and 564 in
December 2005. The two main food providers in Gaza are the UN Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and
the World Food Programme (WFP). UNRWA alone feeds approximately 750,000
people in Gaza, and requires 15 trucks of food daily to do so. Between
5 November and 30 November, only 23 trucks arrived, around 6 per cent
of the total needed; during the week of 30 November it received 12
trucks, or 11 per cent of what was required. There were three days in
November when UNRWA ran out of food, with the result that on each of
these days 20,000 people were unable to receive their scheduled supply.
According to John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza, most of the
people who get food aid are entirely dependent on it. On 18 December
UNRWA suspended all food distribution for both emergency and regular
programmes because of the blockade.
The WFP has had similar
problems, sending only 35 trucks out of the 190 it had scheduled to
cover Gazans needs until the start of February (six more were allowed
in between 30 November and 6 December). Not only that: the WFP has to
pay to store food that isnt being sent to Gaza. This cost $215,000 in
November alone. If the siege continues, the WFP will have to pay an
extra $150,000 for storage in December, money that will be used not to
support Palestinians but to benefit Israeli business.
The
majority of commercial bakeries in Gaza 30 out of 47 have had to
close because they have run out of cooking gas. People are using any
fuel they can find to cook with. As the UN Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO) has made clear, cooking-gas canisters are necessary
for generating the warmth to incubate broiler chicks. Shortages of gas
and animal feed have forced commercial producers to smother hundreds of
thousands of chicks. By April, according to the FAO, there will be no
poultry there at all: 70 per cent of Gazans rely on chicken as a major
source of protein.
Banks, suffering from Israeli restrictions on
the transfer of banknotes into the territory were forced to close on 4
December. A sign on the door of one read: Due to the decision of the
Palestinian Finance Authority, the bank will be closed today Thursday,
4.12.2008, because of the unavailability of cash money, and the bank
will be reopened once the cash money is available.
The World
Bank has warned that Gazas banking system could collapse if these
restrictions continue. All cash for work programmes has been stopped
and on 19 November UNRWA suspended its cash assistance programme to the
most needy. It also ceased production of textbooks because there is no
paper, ink or glue in Gaza. This will affect 200,000 students returning
to school in the new year. On 11 December, the Israeli defence
minister, Ehud Barak, sent $25 million following an appeal from the
Palestinian prime minister, Salaam Fayad, the first infusion of its
kind since October. It wont even cover a months salary for Gazas
77,000 civil servants.
On 13 November production at Gazas only
power station was suspended and the turbines shut down because it had
run out of industrial diesel. This in turn caused the two turbine
batteries to run down, and they failed to start up again when fuel was
received some ten days later. About a hundred spare parts ordered for
the turbines have been sitting in the port of Ashdod in Israel for the
last eight months, waiting for the Israeli authorities to let them
through customs. Now Israel has started to auction these parts because
they have been in customs for more than 45 days. The proceeds are being
held in Israeli accounts.
During the week of 30 November, 394,000
litres of industrial diesel were allowed in for the power plant:
approximately 18 per cent of the weekly minimum that Israel is legally
obliged to allow in. It was enough for one turbine to run for two days
before the plant was shut down again. The Gaza Electricity Distribution
Company said that most of the Gaza Strip will be without electricity
for between four and 12 hours a day. At any given time during these
outages, over 65,000 people have no electricity.
No other diesel
fuel (for standby generators and transport) was delivered during that
week, no petrol (which has been kept out since early November) or
cooking gas. Gazas hospitals are apparently relying on diesel and gas
smuggled from Egypt via the tunnels; these supplies are said to be
administered and taxed by Hamas. Even so, two of Gazas hospitals have
been out of cooking gas since the week of 23 November.
Adding to
the problems caused by the siege are those created by the political
divisions between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the
Hamas Authority in Gaza. For example, Gazas Coastal Municipalities
Water Utility (CMWU), which is not controlled by Hamas, is supposed to
receive funds from the World Bank via the Palestinian Water Authority
(PWA) in Ramallah to pay for fuel to run the pumps for Gazas sewage
system. Since June, the PWA has refused to hand over those funds,
perhaps because it feels that a functioning sewage system would benefit
Hamas. I dont know whether the World Bank has attempted to intervene,
but meanwhile UNRWA is providing the fuel, although they have no budget
for it. The CMWU has also asked Israels permission to import 200 tons
of chlorine, but by the end of November it had received only 18 tons
enough for one week of chlorinated water. By mid-December Gaza City and
the north of Gaza had access to water only six hours every three days.
According
to the World Health Organisation, the political divisions between Gaza
and the West Bank are also having a serious impact on drug stocks in
Gaza. The West Bank Ministry of Health (MOH) is responsible for
procuring and delivering most of the pharmaceuticals and medical
disposables used in Gaza. But stocks are at dangerously low levels.
Throughout November the MOH West Bank was turning shipments away
because it had no warehouse space, yet it wasnt sending supplies on to
Gaza in adequate quantities. During the week of 30 November, one truck
carrying drugs and medical supplies from the MOH in Ramallah entered
Gaza, the first delivery since early September.
The breakdown of
an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is little
international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The
European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its
relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for
a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic
stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit
support of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah which has been
co-operating with Israel on a number of measures. On 19 December Hamas
officially ended its truce with Israel, which Israel said it wanted to
renew, because of Israels failure to ease the blockade.
How can
keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of
Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gazas children
more than 50 per cent of the population benefit anyone? International
law as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls,
the West Bank will be next.
Sara Roy teaches at Harvards Center for Middle Eastern Studies and is the author of Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
We
willen dus zonder problemen uitgemaakt worden door
pro-Israël-journalisten als Hans Knoop inde Standaard van vandaag, voor
linkse nitwits. Wij beschouwen dat eerder als een soort misplaatste
blogtaal ipv gedegen journalistiek en we zullen hem hier in ons blogje
dus vanaf nu bedenken met de titel "journalist van mijn kl....". Zo
staan we quitte. En wij zullen hier niet
vervallen in een blinde idolatrie voor de Palestijnse zaak maar -en we
vallen in herhaling- wat Israêl daar nu uitricht is pure massamoord.
Basta. We willen hier eindigen
met een artikel dat vandaag door David Grossman in de Israëlische krant
Haaretz werd geschreven (ook linkse nitwits meneer Knoop?) en dat ons
toch wel heel wat intelligenter lijkt dan het hatelijke zionistische
standpunt van meneer Knoop dat fel aanleunt bij (en dat zal Knoop niet
graag horen waarschijnlijk) de excuses die door de nazi's ooit werden
ingeroepen om de aanval op Polen te rechtvaardigen....propaganda dus
meneer Knoop http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051008.html
Last update-14:56 30/12/2008
David Grossman / Is Israel too imprisoned in the familiar ceremony of war?
After
its severe strike on Gaza, Israel would do well to stop, turn to Hamas'
leaders and say: Until Saturday Israel held its fire in the face of
thousands of Qassams from the Gaza Strip. Now you know how harsh its
response can be. So as not to add to the death and destruction we will
now hold our fire unilaterally and completely for the next 48 hours.
Even if you fire at Israel, we will not respond with renewed fighting.
We will grit our teeth, as we did all through the recent period, and we
will not be dragged into replying with force.
Moreover, we invite interested countries, neighbors near and far,
to mediate between us and you to bring back the cease-fire. If you hold
your fire, we will not renew ours. If you continue firing while we are
practicing restraint, we will respond at the end of this 48 hours, but
even then we will keep the door open to negotiations to renew the
cease-fire, and even on a general and expanded agreement.
That is what Israel should do now. Is it possible, or are we too imprisoned in the familiar ceremony of war?
Advertisement
Until
Saturday, Israel under Ehud Barak's military leadership showed
remarkable cool. It should not lose its cool in the heat of battle. We
should not forget even for a moment that the people of the Gaza Strip
will remain our close neighbors and that sooner or later we will want
to achieve good neighborly relations with them.
We should in no way strike them so violently, even if Hamas, for
years, has made life intolerably miserable for the people of southern
Israel, and even if their leaders have refused every Israeli and
Egyptian attempt to reach a compromise to prevent this lastest
flare-up.
The line of self-control and the awareness of the obligation to
protect the lives of the innocent in Gaza must be toed even now,
precisely because Israel's strength is almost limitless. Israel must
constantly check to see when its force has crossed the line of
legitimate and effective response, whose goal is deterrence and a
restoration of the cease-fire, and from what point it is once again
trapped in the usual spiral of violence.
Israel's leaders know well that given the situation in the Gaza
Strip, it will be very hard to reach a total and unequivocal military
solution. The lack of a solution might result in an ongoing ambiguous
situation where we have already been: Israel will strike Hamas, it will
strike and be struck, strike and be struck, and will become unwillingly
enmeshed in every trap a situation like this entails, and will not
attain its true and essential goals. It might very quickly discover
that it is swept up - a strong military power, but helpless to get
itself out of the entanglement - into a maelstrom of violence and
destruction.
Therefore, stop. Hold your fire. Try for once to act against the
usual response, in contrast to the lethal logic of belligerence. There
will always be a chance to start firing again. War, as Barak said about
two weeks ago, will not run away. International support for Israel will
not be damaged, and will even grow, if we show calculated restraint and
invite the international and Arab community to intervene and mediate.
It is true that Hamas will thus receive a respite with which to
reorganize, but it has had long years to do so, and two more days will
not really make a difference. And such a calculated lull might change
the way Hamas responds to the situation. The response could even give
it an honorable way out of the trap it has set for itself.
And one more, unavoidable thought: Had we adopted this attitude in
July 2006, after Hezbollah abducted the soldiers, had we had stopped
then, after our first response, and declared we were holding our fire
for a day or two to mediate and calm things down, the reality today
might be entirely different.
This is also a lesson the government should learn from that war. In fact, it might be the most important lesson.
Omdat het eindejaar wat poëtischer mag zijn en dat we graag even stilstaan bij één van de meest macabere actuele thema's namelijk de "kinderen zonder papieren" vonden we voor jullie op de Italiaanse site ilmanifesto volgend artikel dat, gelukkig voor ons, in het Frans werd vertaald door de mensen van de uitstekende alternatieve site : www.legrandsoir.info
mercredi 24 décembre 2008
Journal d'un "clandestin"
Zaher Rezaï, rêves et espoirs en forme de poésie.
GRISOT Francesca
Zaher Rezaï, 13 ans, soudeur, né à Mazar-el Sharif (Afghanistan), mort à
Venise samedi, écrasé par le camion sous lequel il s'était accroché pour
entrer en Italie.
Fragments de son carnet de voyage :
"J'ai tant navigué, nuit et jour, sur la barque de ton amour..."
Zaher Rezai, fils de Mahmud, était un Hazara de Mazar-el Sharif, la ville
qui, en 1998, fût le théâtre d'un des nombreux massacre de civils Hazaras
que nous rappelle l'Afghanistan. Zaher était tout petit et l'un de ceux
qui avaient eu la chance de survivre. Quelques années plus tard, encore
enfant, Zaher était en Iran. Il travaillait comme soudeur, en notant
soigneusement esquisses et mesures sur son carnet. Le profil qui émerge de
la lecture et traduction de son carnet de « clandestin » est le suivant :
un garçon fuyant la persécution, obligé de travailler très jeune comme
soudeur, qui se jette à contre coeur dans un voyage d'espoir dont il sait
bien qu'il est plein d'embûches.
L'histoire de Zaher peut être reprise comme icône du migrant afghan, le
plus souvent mineur, si ce n'est à l'arrivée, au départ sûrement. En tout
cas potentiel demandeur d'asile. Le cas des migrants afghans, très jeunes
le plus souvent, est l'histoire d'une diaspora silencieuse. Etant donné
son nombre réduit, elle n'a pas d'écho dans les journaux, mais révèle un
malaise social lié non seulement à la guerre ou à l'occupation du pays,
mais aussi à un féroce conflit ethnique et religieux dont on ne parle pas
en Occident. Et s'y ajoute la condition prolongée de diaspora et d'exil,
qui en est désormais à la troisième génération, et, des décennies durant,
a contraint des familles entières à migrer sans répit à travers des pays
frontaliers peu hospitaliers (Pakistan et Iran) et dans des zones
intérieures de l'Afghanistan.
A cette diaspora silencieuse Zaher va finalement donner une voix : une
voix très douce. Dans les vers de ses poésies, il cherche le courage de
continuer, au-delà des mers, là où il croit que son droit d'exister est
garanti. Le carnet qu'on a trouvé dans sa poche contenait en quelques
pages la résumé de sa vie : quelques esquisses talentueuses, rapportées
avec des mesures détaillées, du travail de soudeur qu'il faisait en Iran ;
une note sur les économies grappillées et quelques poésies, inscrites ou
apprises peut-être le long du trajet. La calligraphie du garçon indique un
degré d'instruction très bas et nous confirme que, comme nombre de ses
concitoyens, Zaher n'a pas eu la possibilité de fréquenter l'école. Et
pourtant, difficile à croire pour nous Italiens, il connaissait par coeur
et récitait en lui-même un certain nombre de vers en rimes. Poésies
classiques, poésies très souvent anciennes, de plusieurs siècles, qui
parlent d'amour et de nostalgie ; où l'aimé est Dieu et l'amour mystique
le désir de le retrouver dans la splendeur et la pureté de la prééternité.
Tu portes le parfum des gemmes qui éclosent,
Tu es comme une fleur du printemps...
Et douce ton affection
J'aime parler avec toi...
Tu es un ami enchanteur
Tu es soif de passion et beauté
J'aime souligner cela parce que l'amour de la poésie de ces jeunes
migrants afghans est le premier indice de la sensibilité, de la dignité et
du respect dans lesquels ils sont éduqués dès leur plus jeune âge. Quand
on parle avec eux, trop souvent émergent la souffrance de la
discrimination, la détermination avec laquelle ils luttent pour voir
reconnaître leur droit d'exister tout simplement en tant que « personnes
humaines ». Leur rêve européen est l' « Europe des droits de l'homme ».
Rêve auquel ils n'ont pas l'intention de renoncer. Inutile de les renvoyer
; ils essaieront à nouveau, jusqu'à la mort s'il le faut.
J'ai tant navigué, nuit et jour, sur la barque de ton amour
Qu'à la fin ou à t'aimer j'arriverai ou noyé je mourrai.
Continuer. A tout prix : « En Iran, on ne peut pas rester, en Afghanistan
on ne peut pas retourner », répètent de façon obsessive les jeunes
interviewés. La poésie continue. Elle raconte la peur du rejet ; d'être
traité comme un migrant quelconque ou, pire, comme un voleur ou un
clandestin.
Jardinier, ouvre la porte du jardin,
Je ne suis pas un voleur de fleurs,
Je me suis fait rose moi-même,
Car j'ai besoin d'une autre fleur
La peur du voyage. Le bras de mer qui le sépare encore du droit d'asile.
Ce corps si assoiffé et fatigué
Peut-être n'arrivera jusqu'à l'eau de la mer.
Je ne sais encore quel rêve le destin me réservera,
Mais promets-moi, Dieu,
Que tu ne laisseras point que finisse le printemps.
On est au seuil de l'hiver. Dans les limbes de Patras, Zaher s'embarque
sur un navire qui part pour l'Italie. La mer, la dernière traversée.
Oh mon Dieu, que de douleur réserve l'instant de l'attente,
Mais promets moi, Dieu,
Que tu ne laisseras point que finisse le printemps.
Dans mon expérience de médiatrice, c'est chose banale que les jeunes
afghans, mêmes analphabètes, gardent en mémoire des vers de poésie et les
répètent souvent pour se donner du courage pendant leur voyage et
l'expérience de la diaspora. Ce que j'ai le plus souvent entendu parle de
la douleur de la mort en exil. Je voudrais le dédier pour conclure à
Zaher, en rappelant que malheureusement c'est cette obsession qu'on lit
dans les yeux des migrants afghans avec qui je vis et travaille.
Si un jour d'exil la mort décide de reprendre mon corps
Qui s'occupera de ma sépulture, qui pourra coudre mon suaire ?
Que mon cercueil soit déposé sur une hauteur
Pour que le vent rende à ma Patrie mon parfum
Fragments
« J'ai tant navigué... »
Recueillis par Hamed Mohamad Karim et Francesca Grisot.
Merci à Domenico Ingenito pour son aide à la traduction
Feuillet 9
Tu portes le parfum des gemmes qui éclosent
Tu es comme une fleur de printemps
Je me fais pour toi ivre et heureux
Quand tu viens me chercher...
Ton affection est douce
J'aime parler avec toi
Feuillet 8
Et même quand tu m'ôtes la parole
Ton repentir est beau
Tu es un ami enchanteur
Tu es soif de passion et beauté
Voyons à présent jusques à quand
Tu t'accorderas à mon coeur
Feuillet 11
Ce corps si assoiffé et fatigué
Peut-être n'arrivera jusqu'à l'eau de la mer.
Je ne sais encore quel rêve le destin me réservera,
Mais promets-moi, Dieu,
Que tu ne laisseras point que finisse le printemps.
Oh mon Dieu, que de douleur réserve l'instant de l'attente,
Mais promets moi, Dieu,
Que tu ne laisseras point que finisse le printemps.
Feuillet 13
J'ai tant navigué, nuit et jour,
Sur la barque de ton amour,
Qu'à la fin ou à t'aimer j'arriverai
Ou noyé je mourrai.
Jardinier, ouvre la porte du jardin,
Je ne suis pas un voleur de fleurs,
Je me suis fait rose moi-même,
Je ne vais pas en quête d'une fleur quelconque
Edition de dimanche 21 décembre 2008 de il manifesto
Wel hoe zit het met 2009 en volgende jaren....een overzichtje
Beste lezertjes, het is het eindejaar. dat betekent niet alleen dat je
je strontlazarus moet zuipen en met een gek hoedje op vuurwerk moet
afsteken tot je geen enkele vinger meer aan je handjes zitten hebt. dit
betekent dat we een beetje in de toekomst trachten te kijken. Goede
voornemens maken enzovoort enzoverder. Wel we beginnen er dan maar
lmeteen aan en we gaan naar volgende bron :
The
head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that advanced
nations will be hit by violent civil unrest if the elite continue to
restructure the economy around their own interests while looting the
taxpayer.
During a speech in Madrid, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that social
unrest may happen in many countries - including advanced economies if
governments failed to adequately respond to the financial crisis.
He added that violent protests could break out in countries
worldwide if the financial system was not restructured to benefit
everyone rather than a small elite, reports the Guardian.
Strauss-Kahns comments echo those of others who have cautioned
that civil unrest could arise, specifically in the U.S., as a result of
the wholesale looting of the taxpayer and the devaluation of the
dollar.
Widely respected trends forecaster Gerald Celente recently told Fox
News that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there
will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax
revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining
food, not gifts.
Back in October, Senator Chris Dodd said that revolution would unfold if banks refused to lend money.
If it turns out that they are hoarding, youll have a revolution
on your hands. People will be so livid and furious that their tax money
is going to line their pockets instead of doing the right thing. There
will be hell to pay, Dodd told the New York Times.
Last month, leading economist Nouriel Roubini said that food riots
would be the ultimate consequence of the Federal Reserve and the
Treasurys current policies.
Riots and demonstrations have gripped normally sedate Iceland following
a financial catastrophe that has wiped out half of the kronas value
and put one third of the population at risk of losing their homes and
life savings.
Expectations of violent civil unrest have not gone unnoticed by the
U.S. Army War Colleges Strategic Institute, who recently issued a
report warning that the United States may experience massive civil
unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it terms strategic
shock.
The consequence? The necessity to use military force against
hostile groups inside the United States, according to the report.
Tens of thousands of active duty military personnel returning from
Afghanistan and Iraq are set to conduct homeland patrols inside the
U.S. and their duties will include tackling civil unrest and crowd
control, according to a Northcom announcement earlier this year.
Wat verder vonden we via de uitstekende Belgische site:
Members of Congress
were told they could face martial law if they didn't pass the bailout
bill. This will not be the last time.
Background: the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three
to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of
October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they
practiced in Iraq, subduing "unruly individuals," and the management of
a national emergency. I am in Seattle and heard from the brother of one
of the soldiers that they are engaged in exercises now. Amy Goodman reported that an Army spokesperson confirmed that they will have access to lethal and non lethal crowd control technologies and tanks.
George Bush struck down Posse Comitatus,
thus making it legal for military to patrol the U.S. He has also
legally established that in the "War on Terror," the U.S. is at war
around the globe and thus the whole world is a battlefield. Thus the
U.S. is also a battlefield.
He also led change to the 1807 Insurrection Act to give him far
broader powers in the event of a loosely defined "insurrection" or many
other "conditions" he has the power to identify. The Constitution
allows the suspension of habeas corpus -- habeas corpus prevents us
from being seized by the state and held without trial -- in the event
of an "insurrection." With his own army force now, his power to call a
group of protesters or angry voters "insurgents" staging an
"insurrection" is strengthened.
U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California said to Congress, captured on C-Span and viewable
on YouTube, that individual members of the House were threatened with
martial law within a week if they did not pass the bailout bill:
"The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and
sustaining a panic atmosphere. Many of us were told in private
conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky
would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the
first day and a couple of thousand on the second day, and a few members
were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted
no."
If this is true and Rep. Sherman is not delusional, I ask you to
consider that if they are willing to threaten martial law now, it is
foolish to assume they will never use that threat again. It is also
foolish to trust in an orderly election process to resolve this threat.
And why deploy the First Brigade? One thing the deployment accomplishes
is to put teeth into such a threat.
I interviewed Vietnam veteran, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and patriot David Antoon for clarification:
"If the President directed the First Brigade to arrest Congress, what could stop him?"
"Nothing. Their only recourse is to cut off funding. The Congress
would be at the mercy of military leaders to go to them and ask them
not to obey illegal orders."
"But these orders are now legal?'"
"Correct."
"If the President directs the First Brigade to arrest a bunch of voters, what would stop him?"
"Nothing. It would end up in courts but the action would have been taken."
"If the President directs the First Brigade to kill civilians, what would stop him?"
"Nothing."
"What would prevent him from sending the First Brigade to arrest the editor of the Washington Post?"
"Nothing. He could do what he did in Iraq -- send a tank down a
street in Washington and fire a shell into the Washington Post as they
did into Al Jazeera, and claim they were firing at something else."
"What happens to members of the First Brigade who refuse to take up arms against U.S. citizens?"
"They'd probably be treated as deserters as in Iraq: arrested,
detained and facing five years in prison. In Iraq a study by Ann Wright
shows that deserters -- reservists who refused to go back to Iraq --
got longer sentences than war criminals."
"Does Congress have any military of their own?"
"No. Congress has no direct control of any military units. The
Governors have the National Guard but they report to the President in
an emergency that he declares."
"Who can arrest the President?"
"The Attorney General can arrest the President after he leaves or after impeachment."
[Note: Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has asserted it is possible for
District Attorneys around the country to charge President Bush with
murder if they represent districts where one or more military members
who have been killed in Iraq formerly resided.]
"Given the danger do you advocate impeachment?"
"Yes. President Bush struck down Posse Comitatus -- which has
prevented, with a penalty of two years in prison, U.S. leaders since
after the Civil War from sending military forces into our streets --
with a 'signing statement.' He should be impeached immediately in a
bipartisan process to prevent the use of military forces and mercenary
forces against U.S. citizens"
"Should Americans call on senior leaders in the Military to break
publicly with this action and call on their own men and women to
disobey these orders?"
"Every senior military officer's loyalty should ultimately be to
the Constitution. Every officer should publicly break with any illegal
order, even from the President."
"But if these are now legal. If they say, 'Don't obey the Commander in Chief,' what happens to the military?"
"Perhaps they would be arrested and prosecuted as those who refuse
to participate in the current illegal war. That's what would be
considered a coup."
Published: November 14 2008 11:51 | Last updated: November 14 2008 11:51
Hallgrímskirkja cathedral looms up out of the mists and gloom of downtown Reykjavík
Think of Ireland. Rotate it 90 degrees clockwise, make it a third
bigger and hang it like a pendant from the Arctic Circle. Crack open
the earths crust below to release limitless supplies of geothermal
steam, then fill its territorial waters, all 200 miles of them, with an
abundance of cod.
Give it a population of 300,000, about the same as Coventry, 70
per cent of them in the cities of Reykjavik and Akureyri. Ensure they
are all related and give the majority the ability to trace their
ancestry back to the times of settlement, more than a thousand years
earlier. Endow these people with industry and ambition. Give them their
own language all but unchanged for a millennium a literary
tradition, three national newspapers, two television channels, free
universal healthcare and education and close to zero unemployment. Give
this country a consistently high ranking in the world
standard-of-living charts and you have the Iceland of the recent past.
Not a bad place, all in all.
Now allow this countrys banks virtually unregulated
to borrow more than 10 times their countrys gross domestic product
from the international wholesale money markets. Watch as a Graf
Zeppelin of debt propels its self-styled Viking Raiders across the
worlds financial stage, accumulating companies like gamblers hoarding
chips. Then sit on the sidelines as the airship flies home and
explodes, showering its blazing wreckage over this once proud, yet
tiny, nation.
There you see the Iceland of today the victim of an
economic 9/11 and one of the very few places in the world where the
words financial meltdown can be used without fear of exaggeration.
. . .
There is no daytime TV in Iceland. Parents are at work and children at
school, so the test card, that feature of a bygone age, is the only
thing aired. For the transmitters to be switched on in mid-afternoon
and a sombre-looking Geir Haarde, the prime minister, to appear behind
a desk, a national flag at his side, it had to be serious and it was.
The country was on the verge of bankruptcy; the government was taking
control of the banks and was going to assume far-reaching powers to
secure the safety of the nation and its savers.
As I watched, I felt a detached sympathy for those poor
people living on a blighted island until it dawned on me that I was
one of them. Recent events had savaged my net worth by 60 per cent and
pushed up my cost of living by more than 20 per cent. Icelands plight
was mine, too. What I failed to appreciate at the time was the emotion
of this unprecedented television address, particularly in the way it
finished:
Fellow countrymen ... If there was ever a time when the
Icelandic nation needed to stand together and show fortitude in the
face of adversity, then this is the moment. I urge you all to guard
that which is most important in the life of every one of us, to protect
those values which will survive the storm now beginning. I urge
families to talk together and not to allow anxiety to get the upper
hand, even though the outlook is grim for many. We need to explain to
our children that the world is not on the edge of a precipice, and we
all need to find an inner courage to look to the future ... Thus with
Icelandic optimism, fortitude and solidarity as weapons, we will ride
out the storm.
God bless Iceland.
Edda, my partner, was in tears on the sofa beside me.
A drive across town later that afternoon, October 6, at first gave
grounds for comfort. The roads were as full as usual for the Reykjavik
rush-hour a half-hour build-up of traffic. Aircraft flew in and out
of the downtown airport, students made their way home from schools and
universities note the plural while visitors went to hospitals and
fitness fiends to sports clubs. Reykjavik showed all the outward
appearances of carrying on.
But a different picture began to emerge from the hourly
news bulletins on the car radio. The Icelandic kronas freeze in the
capital markets had now spilled over into the day-to-day transactions
of Icelanders abroad. Holidaymakers and business travellers venturing
til Útlanda, as it is called, found their credit cards refused, and
those wishing to buy foreign currency could not find willing sellers,
aside from one or two who limited their purchases to 200.
Trust in the banks had evaporated and people were trying
to find a safe haven for their cash. One man had waited for six hours
in a bank while his life savings, more than £1m in kronur (at IKr200 to
the pound), were counted out in cash in front of him. I feel like an
innocent man dragged from his bed, put in a barrel and hurled over
Gullfoss! wrote one journalist that morning. We have been brought
down by a handful of men who bet our nations wealth, fame and
prosperity on a throw of the dice. Gullfoss is one of Icelands
tourist attractions a majestic 100ft waterfall.
On collecting our daughter from her handball practice, I
learnt the news that her club could not obtain the foreign currency it
needed to release their new team shirts from customs. The citys myriad
sports teams rely on local sponsors and our daughter also brought the
news that this source of funding for her team was likely to dry up in
the months to come. Later that evening, Skype, our communications
lifeline, would not renew our credits with an Icelandic credit card.
E-mails began to arrive from friends overseas, alarmed by news reports
and asking if we were all right.
But all this was trivial compared with the financial
distress, in some cases ruin, that now faces a significant proportion
of the population.
Easy access to 100 per cent mortgages has seen a change
to the traditional pattern of young Icelanders living with their
parents until their mid-twenties. The suburbs of Reykjavik have grown
by a third in the past decade, most of it housing for first-time
buyers. Whole new neighbourhoods have emerged. New streets house young
couples, many with children, most with two cars in the drive and
furnished with the best that Ikea can provide. All bought with 100 per
cent loans, many in foreign currencies.
Iceland is the only country in the world that indexes its
loans in addition to charging interest. This means that when Icelanders
borrow IKr1,000 from the bank and inflation increases by 5 per cent,
the bank increases their debt to IKr1,050 at the end of the year. A
great deal for the bank and fine for you, too so long as the
propertys value and your salary are increasing by inflation and more.
The majority of Icelandic mortgages are based on this punitive system
and with inflation running at nearly 20 per cent, they will see their
IKr1,000 loan turn into a IKr1,200 loan. The interest burden will
increase proportionally. This is bad enough, but when coupled with
falling house prices, it means that many face a particularly savage
variety of negative equity. The impact on highly geared borrowers,
which in practice means most Icelanders, would be hard enough even with
two incomes, but with unemployment set to soar, many households are
going to go under.
A recent first-time buyer, a woman in her late twenties,
said: I took a 100 per cent loan to buy an apartment. I placed my
savings in Kaupthings money market account, because it promised high
interest rates, and my pensions in Kaupthings Vista 1 at the prospect
of becoming a millionaire retiree. Both of these funds were based on
stock investments and I knew that they were risky but I took the bait
and the risk. Now most of this money, if not all, is lost.
Icelanders are by nature frugal people. It was one of the
few countries in the world, perhaps the only one, that had a pension
system that could meet the needs of its ageing population. But in
recent years, many older people have been persuaded by the banks to
invest their savings in high-yielding money-market accounts. As a
result of the collapse of the banking system, many of these accounts
have seen huge write-downs and some are now worth less than half of
their previous values. The additional money people had put aside to top
up their pensions has been hard hit.
Bjork, Icelands ambassadress of cool, summed it up in
The Times on October 28: Young families are threatened with losing
their houses and elderly people their pensions. This is catastrophic.
There is also a lot of anger. The six biggest venture capitalists in
Iceland are being booed in public places and on TV and radio shows;
furious voices insist that they sell all their belongings and give the
proceeds to the nation. Gigantic loans, it has been revealed, were
taken out abroad by a few individuals and without the full knowledge of
the Icelandic people. Now the nation seems to be responsible for having
to pay them back.
A homemade banner, made of sheets, hangs over the main
motorway in Reykjavik, tied to the railings of a bridge. Stondum
Saman! it cries out. Let us stand together! Its the new rallying
cry of a beleaguered nation.
A cyclist in Reykjavík on a gloomy day
Icelanders have seen their economy swell and shrink from time to time
over the centuries, and always handled it calmly. Perhaps their
heritage in fishing and agriculture enabled them to meet good years and
bad with equanimity. Now they must cope equally well with an attack of
economic bulimia. To understand what makes this crisis kreppa, as it
is known here so unlike any other, a little history is needed.
For Icelanders, the golden years were the early years, shortly
after the land was settled in the ninth century. The Viking tradition,
the Althing the legislative assembly dating to 930 and the literary
canon of Sagas and Eddas are the nations cultural bedrock. But after
that, Iceland almost disappears from the history books. While the
agricultural revolution, the Renaissance, the industrial revolution
came and went, while the fine cities of Europe were being built, while
artists from Michelangelo to Mozart were pouring forth their creations,
while the great inventions and discoveries were being invented and
discovered, Icelanders were hunkering down in their turf houses,
meeting the hardest challenge of all survival.
They survived plague, famine, earthquakes and volcanoes.
There were times when some even considered abandoning the island. But
they stayed on. They stayed and survived. Icelanders will tell you that
only the fittest survived, but that is only half the story, because
survival requires another key attribute: stubbornness. And Icelanders
have it in spades. It is a national trait, and they view it not as a
weakness but as a virtue. It comes from experiencing hardship and
enduring it. It means finding satisfaction in a simple task done well
and sticking to it; finding comfort and solace in family and kinship
and being bound by those familial bonds and duties. And perhaps most
important of all, it means believing in the independence of the
individual as part of the fabric of nationhood, and fighting for that
independence. Put simply, the country has values.
And this is what sets this catastrophe apart from the
earthquakes and plagues of former years. This is a man-made disaster
and worse still, one made by a small group of Icelanders who set off to
conquer the financial world, only to return defeated and humiliated.
The country is on the verge of bankruptcy and, even more important for
those of Viking stock, its international reputation is in tatters. It
hurts.
. . .
Picture a pig trying to balance on a mouses back and youll get some
idea of the scale of the problem. In a mere seven years since bank
deregulation and privatisation, Icelands financial institutions had
managed to rack up $75bn of foreign debt. In his address to the nation,
Haarde put the problem in perspective by referring to the $700bn
financial rescue package in America: The huge measures introduced by
the US authorities to rescue their banking system represent just under
5 per cent of the US GDP. The total economic debt of the Icelandic
banks, however, is many times the GDP of Iceland.
And here is the nub. Icelands banks borrowed more than
$250,000 for every man, woman and child in Iceland, and placed an
impossible burden on the modest reserves of the central bank in the
event of default. And default they have.
Voices of caution there were many in Iceland were
drowned out by a media that became fixated on the nations emergence
from drab pupa to gaudy butterfly. Yet, Icelanders opinions were
divided. For some, the success of their Viking Raiders, buying up the
British high street, one even acquiring that most treasured bauble of
all, a Premier League football club, marked the arrival of a golden
era. The transformation of Reykjavik from a quiet, provincial fishing
port to a brash financial centre had been as swift as it was complete,
and with the musicians Bjork and Sigur Ros and Danish-Icelandic artist
Ólafur Eliasson attracting global audiences, cultural prestige went
hand in hand with financial success. Icelanders could hold their heads
high before the rest of the world.
Hallgrimur Helgason, well-known for his novel 101
Reykjavik, said in a letter to the nation in a Sunday newspaper on
October 26: Deep down inside we idolised these titans, these money
pop-stars. Awestruck we watched their adventures and admired them when
they supported the arts and charities. We never had clever businessmen,
not for a thousand years, not to mention men who had won battles in
other countries...
For others, the growth was too rapid, the change too
extreme. Many became uncomfortable with the excesses of the Viking
Raiders. The liveried private jets, the Elton John parties, the
residences in St Moritz, New York and London and the yachts in St
Tropez all flaunted in Sed og Heyrt, Icelands equivalent of Hello!
magazine were not, and this is important, they were not Icelandic.
There was a strong undertow of public opinion that felt that all this
ostentatious celebration of lavish lifestyles and excess was causing
the nation to disconnect from its thousand-year heritage. In his letter
to the nation, Hallgrimur continued: This was all about the building
of personal image rather than the building of anything tangible for the
good of our nation and its people. Icelanders living abroad failed to
recognise their own country when they came home.
What international sympathy there was for Icelands
plight evaporated with the dark realisation that the downfall of
Icelands three main banks Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir
brought with it the potential loss of £8bn for half a million savers in
northern Europe, the bulk of whom were British. The shrill media
response in the UK was reported extensively in Iceland. The British
governments use of anti-terror legislation to freeze the assets of
Landsbanki pushed Icelands banking system into the abyss. It was a
move viewed in Iceland as hateful and unnecessary. A few days later the
one remaining viable bank, Kaupthing, went under.
Pedestrians
brave the cold in Reykjavík, beneath a poster of young Icelanders. The
prime minister recently urged people to explain to children that the
world is not on the edge of a precipice
Then Landsbanki was placed on a British Treasury list of groups
subjected to financial sanctions, along with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
A copy of the UK government webpage appeared in Icelandic papers and a
new website, www.indefence.is, was launched. A picture on it shows a young girl with a placard that reads: I am not a terrorist, Mr Brown.
At this time of year, the most-watched TV show in Iceland is Saturday
nights Spaugstofan, which translates literally as The Spoof Room. Its
a hit-or-miss affair, but events of the past few weeks have provided
the writers with a rich seam of source material. A recent episode
featured a well-worked lampoon of the film Titanic, entitled Icetanic,
with Geir Haarde and the chairman of the governors of the central bank,
David Oddsson, standing on the bridge of the economy that could not
sink. A sketch shows Gordon Brown throwing Icelanders off a life raft.
Get back in the water where you belong, you terrorist bastard! he
shouts as he throws another one overboard.
When I tried to explain Icelands plight to a friend in
the UK who works in banking, I received short shrift. You must have
gone troppo, Robert! They may not have dressed up in burkas and
strapped several kilos of Semtex around their waists. But to go into
the high street, persuade charities, pensioners, local authorities to
deposit money and then disappear, having trousered nigh on £8bn is,
even by City standards, bad. Financial terrorism, grand larceny, call
it what you will, but the government had to act and act quickly to stop
funds leaving the country.
Troppo can hardly apply one degree south of the Arctic
Circle, but if its northern equivalent is to go polar, then evidently I
have.
. . .
Fear, outrage, jealousy and guilt have mingled to form a volatile
cocktail of emotions as the blame game has started, and Icelanders
attempt to come to terms with it all. They are divided between those
who blame the Viking Raiders and those who blame successive governments
and central banks for allowing them to behave the way they did.
There have been demonstrations, previously almost unheard
of in Iceland, in which families have marched on the parliament
buildings, stringing up an effigy of Oddsson along the way.
Of the various Viking Raiders, only one, Jon Ásgeir, of
Baugur fame, has had the guts to turn up and face the music on a TV
chat show. But any temporary benevolence towards him evaporated when it
emerged that he had arrived back in Iceland with high-street
billionaire Sir Philip Green in tow. Together they proposed to buy
Baugurs debt, reported at the time as £2bn, thereby acquiring the
groups UK retail assets, including House of Fraser and Hamleys at a
significant discount that would involve massive debt writeoffs.
One of the most telling images was the departure of Jon
Ásgeirs private jet on news that the government had nationalised
Glitnir Bank (in which his investment vehicle Stodir was a leading
shareholder), wiping out his shareholding and rattling the
debt-burdened house of cards that is his Baugur business empire.
Painted black and as sleek as a Stealth bomber, the aircraft was
photographed taxiing from its hangar by Morgunbladid, a daily
newspaper. Like the last helicopter out of Saigon, the departure of
Ásgeirs jet symbolised the end of an era, the last act of Icelands
debt-fuelled spending spree.
Bjorgolfur Thor and his father Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson
have, to date, disappeared from the radar. Together they own a majority
stake in Landsbanki, and Gudmundsson owns West Ham United football
club. Their jets have also flown the coop. Downtown, beside the
harbour, construction work on a landmark project underwritten by them,
the National Concert Hall, is expected to stop any day now. Like
Hallgrimskirkja, the striking cathedral that presides over Reykjavik
and that took more than 40 years to complete thanks to a lack of
finance, the concert hall might need a change in the countrys fortunes
before it can be completed.
The government has announced that it will carry out a
thorough investigation into what happened and determine who is to
blame. It will be called The White Book, and leave no stone unturned
in getting to the truth. It will not be a slender volume.
. . .
We
live now in a foreign-currency lockdown, and although the government
has assured everyone that there are sufficient reserves to buy
essentials such as oil, grain and medical supplies for the winter, such
assurances only serve to create a further sense of unease in a people
who have learnt to take such commodities for granted.
There is some encouraging news. The International
Monetary Fund is putting the finishing touches to a $2bn bailout
package and this is likely to lead to a further $4bn from a consortium
of Nordic central banks. These funds will come with stringent
conditions that will impose external financial controls and impinge
heavily on Icelands hard-won sovereign independence. But they should
inject some much-needed confidence into the currency and into an
embattled people.
There is an Icelandic expression: We started with two
empty hands. Whoever coined it could not have expected that it would
still be so pertinent in 2008, as the nation begins the process of
rebuilding its economy and that thing it covets most of all, its
reputation.
It is going to be a long, hard struggle.
Robert Jackson is a British journalist who has lived in Iceland since 2003
Let me get lunch, I said, fumbling in my handbag for my wallet. Your
banks just gone bust after all. But old habits die hard and anyway,
the Icelandic banker wanted to find out if his company credit card
still worked. He handed it over and drummed his fingers nervously on
the bar in the gloomy City pub, writes Sarah OConnor.
The payment went through. And with a whimper two sandwiches and two
lemonades the banks six-year debt-fuelled spending spree sputtered
to a stop. The next day his card was refused.
Barely a month earlier, at his banks annual September
shindig in Iceland, international financiers who had arranged loans for
the bank were treated to quad-biking, axe-throwing, belly-wrestling and
copious alcohol and challenged to run round a traffic cone 10 times
while resting their foreheads on top of it. Believe it or not, but
some of the participating bankers fell over. And over. And ... well,
you understand, chortled Euroweek, a trade magazine also flown out for
the party.
Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir sported all the
trappings of fully fledged international banks. They had offices around
the world, slick PR, extravagant parties and huge amounts of debt. That
culture alone could have been enough to pitch them into trouble as the
credit cycle turned. But at their core, something deeper was amiss. Two
things, actually. The first has been picked over and over since the
trios calamitous demise: they were too big, and the economy upon which
they rested too small to support the huge liabilities they had taken
on.
The banks dont mind this explanation; neither do
Icelands politicians. It paints them as fearless if foolhardy in
their expansion, but ultimately as the casualties of a global crisis.
They would have survived in spite of their size, they argue, if Lehman
Brothers and Washington Mutual had not collapsed, leaving their
creditors empty-handed.
In September, creditors sense of security evaporated,
and soon Glitnir was facing demands for extra money from the
increasingly nervous institutions from which it had borrowed. It just
didnt have the money.
Glitnir went to Icelands central bank and asked for a
bridging loan to see it through to the end of the month in which it was
due to pay back a big bond issue. The central bank refused, and took a
75 per cent stake in Glitnir instead. The move triggered panic in
international markets. Maybe the government was big enough to bail out
Glitnir, but what about the other two Icelandic banks? It surely
couldnt afford to support all three.
In the face of a massive run on Landsbanki by foreign
depositors and creditors, the government seized that bank, too, and
soon after Kaupthing imploded as well.
A week later, in an upstairs room of the Ministers
Residence in Reykjavik, Geir Haarde the prime minister looked weary but
unruffled as he shook my hand and poured out coffee. We spoke before
didnt we, earlier this year? As I remember you were very aggressive.
His special adviser had called me out of the blue in
March. She had heard I was writing a story about fears the government
was not strong enough to underwrite the banks if they ran into trouble.
Would I like to speak to the prime minister about it? I would.
In the interview, he seemed perplexed about the
stratospheric cost of insuring against a default by Icelands banks on
their debts. If youre worried about not being repaid, which is what
the creditworthiness is about, you shouldnt be worried when it comes
to the Icelandic banks, let alone the Icelandic government, he said.
But would the government be capable of supporting the
banks, given that their foreign currency liabilities dwarfed the
countrys ability to generate cash? He didnt give a clear answer.
It was an odd episode, and highlights the other, deeper
problem at the heart of Icelands banking system. How did the prime
ministers office know that a junior journalist in London was writing a
story about Iceland? Presumably because someone from one of the banks
told them. If so, why are they in such close contact? Because the whole
system is run by a small group of men who go back a long way and, in
the words of one businessman, sit in the same hot tub three times a
week.
When the banks were privatised in 2002, the government
headed by David Oddsson, then prime minister, and Geir Haarde, then
finance minister sold chunky stakes to a select group of rich
businessmen. Father and son team Bjorgolfur and Bjorgolfur Thor
Gudmundsson, recently returned from Russia flush with cash, took a 45.8
per cent stake in Landsbanki after a process some have criticised as
uncompetitive. These new shareholders used the banks to support their
other businesses. For example, FL Group (which then became Stodir) an
investment company owned by the Icelandic retail entrepreneur Jon
Ásgeir Johannesson was both Glitnirs biggest shareholder and one of
its significant borrowers.
There were rumblings of discontent in Iceland over the
way the system was being run, but few spoke out. Icelands government
and supervisory authority did nothing to break up the close-knit
network of relationships.
Sveinn Valfells is one malcontent. A private investor now
living in London, his grandfather played a key role in setting up one
of the banks that were merged to form Glitnir. Sveinn left Iceland in
2004 when he decided the banking system was spiralling out of control.
This was like Eastern Europe, this was like Russia ... In most
respects it is a developed country, but the political system and
business culture are significantly underdeveloped.
The banks looked and sounded just like their large
international peers. But as one businessman in Iceland says: Astute
investors should have asked themselves, Does this smell right?
Riots and protests in Reykjavik calling for the government of
Iceland to resign have increased following a financial catastrophe that
has wiped out half of the kronas value and put one third of the
population at risk of losing their homes and life savings. Could
similar scenes of civil unrest be repeated in the United States as the
economy continues to implode?
It was the latest in a series of
protests in the capital since Octobers banking collapse crippled the
islands economy. At least five people were injured and Hordur
Torfason, a well-known
singer in Iceland and the main organiser of the protests, said the
protests would continue until the government stepped down, reports the Scotsman.
As crowds gathered in the drizzle before the
Althing, the Icelandic parliament, on Saturday, Mr Torfason said: They
dont have our trust and they are no longer legitimate.
Hundreds more gathered in front of a local police
station, pelting eggs at the windows, using a bettering ram to force
the doors open and demanding the release of a protester.
A banner hung from a government building read
Iceland for Sale: $2,100,000,000, the amount of the loan the country
will receive from the IMF.
Gudrun Jonsdottir, a 36-year-old office worker,
said: Ive just had enough of this whole thing. I dont trust the
government, I dont trust the banks, I dont trust the political
parties, and I dont trust the IMF.
We had a good country and they ruined it.
These arent the actions of unwieldy mobs in
third world countries, were talking about a country that had one of
the highest living standards in Europe and a relatively wealthy and
sedate population, the vast majority of whom are now in revolt over
mass redundancies and the fast disappearing values of their paychecks
and savings.
More peaceful protests against the Federal
Reserve during the End the Fed events over the weekend were largely
ignored by the U.S. corporate media, but the potential for wider chaos
exists should the dollar finally cave in to the hyperinflationary
bubble that is being created by the ceaseless printing of money to fund
the multi-trillion dollar bailout.
Those who continue to assert, It cant happen
here, only need to look at the scenes in Reykjavik to realize that
similar events could unfold across the U.S., where the reaction of
militarized riot cops and even the military itself may be a little more
heavy handed to say the least.
de aloude Ollandse koopmansgeest en inpolderingsdrang: een voorbeeld
Beste
lezertjes, we hebben al vaak het verwijt gekregen dat we onze Ollandse
buren soms wat te onheus behandelen. We, eerst en vooral bestrijden we
deze kwakkel en zullen dit beschouwen als een poging tot
destabilisering van ons blogje in opdracht van één of andere duistere
en dus buitenlandse mogendheid. We hebben trouwens al herhaalde malen
een politiek vluchtelingenstatuut overwogen. Recent nog op één van de
waddeneilanden. Maar het moet gezegd, en we geven dit grif toe :
helemaal vertrouwen doen we ze toch niet onze Bataven. Zeker niet nadat
ze ons de grootste en fierste Belgistaanse bank hebben ontfutseld met
volgens onze Yves Leterme, lepe streken. We willen evenmin over hun
onhebbelijke politiek i.v.m. coffeeshops vlak tegen onze grens
discussiëren. Tenslotte verkiezen we nog steeds de Ollandse coffeeshops
boven de Franse kerncentrales aan de andere grens. De goedkope
Luxemburgse benzinestations lijken ons een aanvaardbare tussenoplossing
aan de zuidelijke grens waar onze Duitse buren echter absoluut niks
hebben aan te bieden. Zij gebruiken dat stukje grens enkel en alleen om
regelmatig een nieuw omsingelingsplan te concretiseren en zo de Franse
erfvijand de nek trachten om te draaien. Maar beste lezers, we ontdekten zo pas
het snode plan van onze Ollandse ex-dwingelanden waarin ze nogmaals hun
vileine koopmansgeest, zelfs in deze barre crisistijden botvieren. Dit
natuurlijk zonder enig mededogen en ten koste van den medemensch! Leest u het
allemaal maar zelf wat deze ollandse collega blogger-koopman uitgedokterd heeft om
profijt te trekken uit de kredietcrisis die onze Ijslandse medeburgers
zo hard treft :
Geld moet rollen zei Wouter Bos, en zo is 't maar net!
Dus alle Hollandse IceSavers zijn - linksom of rechtsom - gered en krijgen hun centjes terug, tot het bedrag van 100.000. Wat wil je nog meer?
Nou, wij willen nog wel wat meer ja.
Namelijk dat we die 120.000 spaarders niet via onze eigen
belastingcenten gaan terugbetalen.En IJsland zegt niets meer te kunnen
betalen, dus is dat land failliet. En zoals dat dan behoort te gaan,
wordt de boedel verkocht ten behoeve van de schuldeisers. En die boedel
is het - grotendeels lege - land zelf.
Ik stel dus voor dat we een
boedelverdeling maken conform het bovenstaande landkaartje. Het
cirkeltje linksonder is Reykjavik en directe omgeving. Daar passen alle
IJslanders makkelijk in, dus dat mogen ze houden. Wie weet wordt dat,
met een beetje professionele begeleiding en know how, nog eens een
nordisch Hongkong, Singapore, of Dubai.
De rest wordt dan verdeeld tussen onze
Engelse vrienden en ons, waarmee we weer terug zijn in de VOC-tijd,
waar onze MP zo graag van droomt. We gaan dus weer koloniseren, maar nu
op moderne leest geschoeid. Zonder slavernij.
Win-win-win-oplossing
Soms ligt een oplossing zó voor de
hand, dat je die bijna over het hoofd zou zien. Want dit is natuurlijk
geweldig, voor alle partijen!
Ten eerste is IJslandin één klap van
al z'n schulden af. En vervolgens hebben wij én de Britten elk een
nieuw - groot en waardeloos - gebied ter beschikking om nieuwe waarde
toe te voegen. Handen uit de mouwen!
De Britten krijgen het westelijke
deel, wij het oostelijke. Want dat is handig voor de aardrijkskundeles.
Zodat de leerlingen het makkelijk kunnen onthouden. Engeland in het
westen en Nederland ten oosten daarvan. En dat het dan op IJsland net
zo is en niet andersom, want dat zou maar verwarring geven. Dan heb je
voor je het weet de Vijfde Engelse Oorlog.Deze verdeling is trouwens
ook gunstig - kijk maar naar het kaartje - omdat wij dan het grootste
binnenlandse wateroppervlak krijgen, zodat er eindelijk weer wat in te
polderen valt.
Totaaloplossing
Het is ongelooflijk hoe de gang der
dingen, de loop van de historische gebeurtenissen, ons steeds weer
verrast met nieuwe, onverwachte mogelijkheden en uitdagingen. Denk aan
het Cruyff-adagium: 'Elk nadeel hep se foordeel'. En verdomd, het klopt
als een bus, tot op de dag van vandaag!
Nu is er de kans om het
integratievraagstuk in één uitdagend project aan te pakken en op te
lossen. En het kan nu ook! Op 16 september, in haar Troonrede, sprak
onze Koningin al over de mogelijkheid van een... gebiedsverbod.
Dus voortaan sturen we alle rotjochies die niet willen deugen en de
buurt terroriseren, met hun hele gezin voor een langdurig
leer-werk-ontwikkelingstraject naar ... Oost Nederijsland.
Onze westerburen doen hetzelfde met hun eigen probleemgroepjes, die dan naar Great Western Britain-Iceland verhuizen.
Een unieke kans
Samen met onze Engelse vrienden gaan
we hier een heel mooi project van maken. Voormalige probleemgroepen
worden geprikkeld om zich te ontwikkelen tot volwaardige burgers,
streng maar rechtvaardig begeleid door de beste deskundigen
gerecruteerd uit kringen van PVV en TON.Zijn we daar ook meteen vanaf.
Denk nog even terug hoe de Engelsen
vanaf 1788 al hun zware criminelen naar de strafkolonie Australië
stuurden. Afgevoerd worden naar 'Down Under' betekende zoveel als
'levenslang'. En kijk nu eens, wat een keurig land dat geworden is!
Let op mijn woorden.
Als dit plan een kans krijgt, zal
IJsland over tien tot twintig jaar de leidende positie hebben
overgenomen van de VS. Engelse en Nederlandse gastarbeiders zullen zich
er melden, bij gebrek aan werk in eigen land.
Vandaag voelen
we ons, gezien de omstandigheden en een volgevreten pens, verplicht om
een sterk verkorte bijdrage te plaatsen. Vermits het aantal lezertjes
de laatste dagen ook sterk is afgenomen, vermoedelijk eveneens wegens
de zelfde omstandigheden hebben we meteen nog een tweede goeie reden om
het kort te houden. We beperken ons tot een duidelijke boodschap van de
grote kerstman uit Rome die ons een onderhoudend speechke brengt waarin
hij de gelijkenissen tussen regenwouden en homseksualiteit uitlegt
...vrolijk kerstfeest aan al onze lezertjes !
Overjaarse varkenskleppen & Brabantse boerepaarden redden Surrealistisch Belgistan van de ondergang !!
Kijk beste lezertjes... u kunt er van zeggen wat u wilt, maar wij hebben intussen toch maar mooi een generatiepact dat volop werkt !!...
...Het werkt zelfs zó goed, dat we de politiekers die ons landje van de ondergang nog kunnen ~of beter gezegd : zouden MOETEN~ redden, allemaal uit de geriatrie moeten gehaald worden...
Ok, er zijn er bij die dank zij de inplanting van varkenskleppen & waarschijnlijk ook van ossekloten, nog wel erg actief bleven op de huwelijksmarkt, maar om terug een land op het juiste spoor te zetten... allez kom... Laat die oudjes toch met hun kroost in Disneyland blijven... of den andere in zijnen hof in Vilvoorde... Laat die mensen nu toch eens gerust & laat ze toch eens van hunne "Ouwen Dag" genieten...
Plots wordt Martens nu ineens opgevoerd, alsof ie de koene redder des vaderlands is... Wij herinneren ons anders nog héél levendig dat we op een gegeven moment de tel waren kwijt geraakt, aan de hoeveelst Martens-regering we nu eigenlijk zaten... Maar één ding was & bleef ook zeker !! De buitenlandse schuld blééf stijgen, dus op dat vlak hebben we wel degelijk te maken met "een expert" ter zake als we van die kant een oplossing moeten verwachten...
Daarna kwam er onzer, u allen welbekende & bekwame "Gids-Loodgieter" die het allemaal min of meer terug wat onder controle kreeg, alleen hebben we eigenlijk nooit geweten hoe hij dat nu eigenlijk allemaal klaar heeft gespeeld. We ontdekken nog alle dagen truken van zijn foor, zoals afgevlakte indexen & index-sprongen... evenals verdoken taxaties op ziekteverzekeringen & vooral dan zijn gekende ~of zeggen we intussen, zijn beruchte~ "voorlopige" dubbele inhoudingen... maar dan wel "voorlopige" inhoudingen die ondertussen dubbel & dik "definitief" zijn geworden...
*ZUCHT*... & dàt Brabantse boerepaard met loodgietersallures zouden ze nu weer van stal halen ?!... Je zult hier anders in dit Surrealistische Belgistan maar eens twintig jaar oud zijn & dàt hele gedoe ~met grote argusogen~ bekijken met je I-pod op je oren... & dan vooral er het jouwe van denken, vrees ik... Want de huidige generaties Letermes, De Cremmen enz... zeg nu zelf, dat is wat wij noemen "gene vette", tenminste dàt zouden ze hier bij ons achter onzen hoek zeggen...
Maar wat is dan het alternatief zult u vragen... Wel, wij vrezen dat Vlaanderen dat al heeft uitgemaakt... de sossen !! ...We krijgen hier op de redactie haast de lachstuipen als we daar horen over praten...
Caroline Gennez, dàn tóch in een nieuwe regering ?!... Ja, mààr "mét keiharde" voorwaarden... Tja... & zoals wat ?!... De sluiting van onze kerncentrales ?!... In een land dat meer dan anderhalve percent boven het Europese inflatiegemiddelde zat... waarvan anderhalve percent volledig toe te schrijven aan de gestegen energieprijzen... moet je vooral die kerncentrales sluiten kameraden... dàn komen we makkelijk 4 percent boven de anderen uit... Je moet tenslotte in iets de eerste zijn...
Onze brulboei uit Oostende Jean-Marie & zijn LDD dan ?!... zo groot als de VLD voorspellen de peilingen nu reeds !!... Zijn beruchte programma~verplichte literatuur voor wie denkt dat de man allemaal "goeds" met ons voorheeft~ vinden jullie ten andere netjes in dit blogje terug... & wij kunnen daaruit slechts besluiten... van deze olijke vrolijkerd & zijn bende zal géén enkele constructieve oplossing komen... enkel één groot sociaal slagveld & kerkhof !! ...Wees daar maar gerust in !! Alleen maar méér sores & pakken ellende !! ~lees : dus NIKS~ voor de kleine man... & des te méér voor de rijken !!... De kloof tussen rijk & arm... tussen "the have's" & "the have not's" zal er alleen maar breder, dieper & onoverkomelijker op worden... U gelooft het of niet, maar het kan dus wel degelijk "nóg erger" !!
2009 ziet er dus zéér veelbelovend uit voor onze steeds maar groeiende ergernissen... Dùs overwegen we ~omwille van "politieke & culturele" gezondheidsredenen~ toch maar het politiek &/of cultureel asiel op één van de waddeneilanden aan te vragen... Zijn onze Ollandse vrienden hiervoor te vinden ?!... Stuur ons anders eens een berichtje !!... Wij beginnen alvast al in te pakken & jullie hoeven dààr ècht niks speciaals te voorzien... We worden wel strandjutter of... hebben ze daar al een coffeeshop ?!... of 'n goed Belgische Café ?!... Misschien een Belgische Frituur ?!...
Het behoeft waarschijnlijk niet al te veel tekst & uitleg, maar nog 9 keer slapen & we zijn alweer 1 januari 2009... dus zeg maar stilletjes aan tijd voor een klein jaaroverzichtje...
Nu eerlijk gezegd, we doen dit ook wel een beetje, omdat het blogsysteem van Bloggen.be zich namelijk beperkt tot slechts het weergeven van ~maximum~ de laatste 200 berichten die werden geschreven. Wij vinden het echter wel belangrijk dat onze lezers àl onze blogberichten op titel kunnen terugvinden, want soms wil een nieuwe lezer wel eens het prille begin ~het ontstaan~ van zo'n blog terugvinden bijvoorbeeld. Nu goed, je kunt dan wel met het systeem van Bloggen.be op de "weken" terug gaan, maar dat zegt dan nog altijd niks over de artikels die in die betreffende periode werden geschreven... Vandaar dus ook een beetje dit overzicht. Al bij al vinden we het eigenlijk wel wat jammer dat we met dit blogsysteem niet al onze geschreven artikels in één keer kunnen aanbieden... Maar goed, dit is dan bij deze opgelost...
Op 1 januari 2009 zullen wij ~de redactie van KITOKOJUNGLE~ dan ~juist geteld~ 341 dagen bezig zijn met dit kleffe blogwereldje te teisteren met onze schotschriften, die niet altijd ~hoe kan het ook anders~ bij iedereen in goede aarde zullen zijn gevallen... Dàt hadden we ook al wel door... & eerlijk gezegd, wij liggen van dat laatste niet echt wakker... Wij schoppen u trouwens maar al te graag een geweten als het er op aankomt...
de aloude Ollandse koopmansgeest en inpolderingsdrang: een voorbeeld
Beste
lezertjes, we hebben al vaak het verwijt gekregen dat we onze Ollandse
buren soms wat te onheus behandelen. We, eerst en vooral bestrijden we
deze kwakkel en zullen dit beschouwen als een poging tot
destabilisering van ons blogje in opdracht van één of andere duistere
en dus buitenlandse mogendheid. We hebben trouwens al herhaalde malen
een politiek vluchtelingenstatuut overwogen. Recent nog op één van de
waddeneilanden. Maar het moet gezegd, en we geven dit grif toe :
helemaal vertrouwen doen we ze toch niet onze Bataven. Zeker niet nadat
ze ons de grootste en fierste Belgistaanse bank hebben ontfutseld met
volgens onze Yves Leterme, lepe streken. We willen evenmin over hun
onhebbelijke politiek i.v.m. coffeeshops vlak tegen onze grens
discussiëren. Tenslotte verkiezen we nog steeds de Ollandse coffeeshops
boven de Franse kerncentrales aan de andere grens. De goedkope
Luxemburgse benzinestations lijken ons een aanvaardbare tussenoplossing
aan de zuidelijke grens waar onze Duitse buren echter absoluut niks
hebben aan te bieden. Zij gebruiken dat stukje grens enkel en alleen om
regelmatig een nieuw omsingelingsplan te concretiseren en zo de Franse
erfvijand de nek trachten om te draaien. Maar beste lezers, we ontdekten zo pas
het snode plan van onze Ollandse ex-dwingelanden waarin ze nogmaals hun
vileine koopmansgeest, zelfs in deze barre crisistijden botvieren. Dit
natuurlijk zonder enig mededogen en ten koste van den medemensch! Leest u het
allemaal maar zelf wat deze ollandse collega blogger-koopman uitgedokterd heeft om
profijt te trekken uit de kredietcrisis die onze Ijslandse medeburgers
zo hard treft :
Vandaag voelen
we ons, gezien de omstandigheden en een volgevreten pens, verplicht om
een sterk verkorte bijdrage te plaatsen. Vermits het aantal lezertjes
de laatste dagen ook sterk is afgenomen, vermoedelijk eveneens wegens
de zelfde omstandigheden hebben we meteen nog een tweede goeie reden om
het kort te houden. We beperken ons tot een duidelijke boodschap van de
grote kerstman uit Rome die ons een onderhoudend speechke brengt waarin
hij de gelijkenissen tussen regenwouden en homseksualiteit uitlegt
...vrolijk kerstfeest aan al onze lezertjes !
_1921.jpg/300px-USS_Alabama_(BB-8)_1921.jpg)
The
head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that advanced
nations will be hit by violent civil unrest if the elite continue to
restructure the economy around their own interests while looting the
taxpayer.
