Sign the Petition Against Gay Death Penalty in Uganda

Tomorrow, the Ugandan Parliament will vote on a gay death penalty bill. This is horrible. Gay people are already in danger of the death penalty, but this bill could make it even worse. AVAAZ has created a
petition to sign against this bill. The site is not very accessible, so don’t blame me for not having signed it myself. I am just passing this on for everyone who is opposed to homophobia like I am.

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Saving Lives Act: Ending Lives

Jill over at Feministe has an excellent commentary on a new bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would allow doctors to refuse therapeutic abortions even in life-saving cases. Thomas over at Blog for Choice also posts some commentary and links to further information. Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, you should oppose this bill. After all, if the prgnant woman dies from lack of proper care, her fetus dies, too. I encourage all my U.S. readers to call their representatives to prevent the passage of the Ending Lives Act, as I call it.

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GOP Knows Best Whether You Were Raped

Over at Feministe, there is an excellent post summarizing the anti-reproductive rights proposals made in H.R. 3, the so-called No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Most strikingly, the Republican Party, who obviosuly sponsors this bill, seeks to redefine rape for the purposes of abortion access. Only victims of “forcible” rape will be able to obtain an abortion through taxpayer-funded insurance. This term is not defined, but it is assumed that a victim cannot have been asleep, intoxicated, unconscious, or otherwise not fighting against the rape. I’m not sure whether spousal rape is considered “forcible”, but, knowing the Republicans, probably not. And, of course, if a woman doesn’t report the rape for whatever reason, she cannot access an abortrion.

This is pure and simple misogyny. I am only a recent pro-choice “convert”, but it is bills like this that have contributed to my shift in opinion. It is unbelievable that the GOP thinks they know better when a woman was raped than that woman herself.

And, of course, the entire bill is utterly classist. Women who are able to pay for their own abortions, get them, but people who need Medicaid or even taxpayer-funded private insurance, are denied abortions in virtually any case. Healthcare for everyone, oh well.

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Helen Keller Mythbusting: Of Politics and Disability

Today, Anna over at FWD/Forward is hosting a Helen Keller mythbusting blogswarm. It is surprising how ignorant even I, who definitely heard of Keller many years ago, was about her until very recently. I knew that she was the first deafblind person to earn a college degree, but that was pretty much everything I knew about her except for the stereotypical story about the hand and the water. Of course, graduating from college is an accomplishment not to be minimized, but it simply wasn’t Keller’s only achievement..

As a leftist, I find it very interesting to find out that Helen Keller was a socialist. This is one of the major reasons Keller’s political activism is so little known. Of course, in the early twentieth-centry United States as well as today, socialist activism is not generally appreciated. On top of it, Keller was a suffragist, which was also not liked. As a result, media representations of her shifted from pride in her achievements to focusing solely on her disability. Thereby, the people who used to value Keller were now using ableist tactics to discredit her.

In addition to being a Socialist Party member and a suffragist, Keller helped found the American Civil Liberties Union, which to this day helps fight for the civil rights and liberties of people in the United States. The ACLU is still often seen as somewhat radical, but has gained more appreciation over the years. It is sad that Keller’s involvement in the founding of this organization is not recognized.

All of these achievements would’ve been worthy of recognition regardless of Keller’s disabilities. Her disabilities, however, are used by supporters to make her a token for the disability community, which she wasn’t, and by opponents, to minimize her achievements to her college degree. It is not always easy to tell why people support or oppose Keller: is it disability pride or ableism, as was the case for me, or is it politics? The two are often intertwined, and this is one reason we learn so little about Helen Keller’s achievements as a person and an activist.

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Dutch Government Formation Comments

We had general elections in the Netherlands last week. The conservative VVD became the largest party in the country for the first time in its existence. Geert Wilders’ anti-islam PVV got 24 seats in the Lower House and thereby is also seen as a winner. However, Wilders won’t be on the government, because the christian CDA is unwilling to negotiate with them unless VVD and PVV can come to an agreement first, and VVD and PVV need the CDA for a majority. I am very happy about this, not only because I strongly disagree with Wilders’ ideas, but also because the Netherlands is going to ruin its international position by having Wilders on the government.

There are two other options for a majority government: VVD, CDA and Labor, and a so-called “purple plus” government of VVD, Labor, the liberal Democrats ’66 and the leftist liberal GroenLinks. Despite the fact that I voted for GroenLinks, I have a strong preference for the VVD/CDA/Labor government. There are two reasons for this, one being the nation’s interest and the other pure strategy.

I strongly believe that a four-party coalition with such widespread differences of opinion as VVD and GroenLinks, will not be in any way stable, and we need as stable as possible a government in the current times of economic instability. Strategically speaking, it would further be detrimental to GroenLinks if they went on a government under a right-wing prime minister, especially in these uncertain times. It would not surprise me if VVD leader Mark Rutte promises GroenLinks a few of its pet peeves for the end of the governmental term, thereby calculating that of course such an unstable government will collapse within a year. Besides the fact that then GroenLinks would lose voters over the VVD policy it supports, this year of essentially no governance will be rather bad for our economy.

Unfortunately, Labor leader Job Cohen is playing the defiant child again by refusing to work towards a VVD/CDA/Labor government, which at least has minimal potential for a full term. I can understand him, in the sense that he will not get his way anywhere on such a government, but he won’t anyway. The truth in Dutch politics has been for years that, whatever you vote, you’ll always get right-wing policies anyway. I don’t think this is going to change under the most right-wing prime minister we’ve ever had.

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Voting While Blind

Last Thursday, there were of course general elections in the UK. The outcome is already known, and I liked none of the major parties anyway, so I won’t be blogging about that. What I do want to call your attention to, is this post from Jady_Lady, which highlights the difficulty blind voters can have in the UK. Without the help of a staff member, a blind person cannot cast their vote, and a mistake can therefore render a vote useless. Now that is exactly what may have happened in this case. Of course, mistakes happen, but when it’s about an important election, that is rather unacceptable.

As a side note, we don’t even have tactile templates in the Netherlands. When we could still vote using a computer, there were talking voting machines, but now that we have to vote using a paper ballot, there is no way a blind person can do this independently. I always get someone else with me to tell me where to color the box, but of course that does mean trusting someone else actually not to use it as a chance to have a second vote.

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Labor Pulls the Plug on the Dutch Government After All

Last month it seemed like the Dutch Labor Party would readily trade its principles for an extra year on a government in which it has nothing to say anyway. The Iraq war report, which shot prime minister Balkenende’s actions to pieces, could’ve been somewhat of an acceptable reason for a government collapse. However, Labor Lower House leader Mariëtte Hamer wouldn’t even take the great opportunity last Monday to support a motion calling for the government resignation. If she’d done so, she could’ve blamed Balkenende at least for some part of the government collapse, in the sense that, well, he flip-flopped on what the report said. It would still be rather nonsensical if Hamer had pulled the plug only last Monday, when she had every chance to do so last month, but oh well.

It is not about Iraq, however. It’s about Afghanistan. Labor leader Wouter Bos – turns out he is the real leader after all – keeps saying that the government promised the voters that we’d leave Uruzgan by 2010. Apparently this time, just ten days before the local elections, it is somehow important to stick to one’s “promises”, because maybe now we can gain some electoral favors that way. They of course weren’t the Afghan voters who were promised anything about protection from militant Taliban. I, for one, happen to have been against the war back in 2001, but now that we bombed Afghanistan anyway, it is our duty to protect the people living there. It isn’t like we can bomb away a foreign government we do not like and then leave it up to the people to rebuild their country from zero.

According to Bos, the government collapse had become inevitable yesterday night after Balkenende had told him to shut up about his idea that a prolonged stay in Uruzgan would be politically unfeasible and to just accept the standpoint that all options are open. Bos is right that this didn’t use to be the official government position – back in 2007 when it was decided that we would stay in Uruzgan till 2010, the government promised the Dutch people that we would really be leaving by then -, but what is the point? If Bos’ real point is that his opinion was being silenced because the other parties on the government had changed their minds, why didn’t he pull the plug on the government back over the Iraq report? At the time, Labor was silenced, too, since Balkenende gave a wee apology about his statement that the report was just an “opinion”, and from then on, everyone was supposed to say that the government had always agreed on Iraq. Since they obviously didn’t, and since now it seems Bos’ freedom of expression is more important than the will to keep on governing, why wasn’t it last month? Seems to me like Bos is playing the election card again. Either that, or he is burned out and knows no other way to let it know than to kill the entire government. My sister says an election date for the Lower House has been set for May 12, but on the news last night I heard nothing more clear than “late May or early June”.

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Labor Would Rather Collapse in 2011 Than 2010

So they didn’t let the government collapse. In yesterday’s Lower House debate, Balkenende refused to retract anything he’d said on Tuesday, but he did send the House an “additional” declaration, which did take the Davids report more or less seriously. Basically, it contradicts Balkenende’s “opinion” speech entirely. Nonetheless, both, completely contradictory responses were presumed to be on behalf of the entire government, including Labor. Wouter Bos was questioned in the Lower House as to what he’d thought of Balkenende’s Tuesday speech before having conferred with Balkenende, but he circumvened the matter. He went along with the “additional” nature of the speech, rather than it being a revision, so that he didn’t have to say Balkenende had flip flopped. In turn, he was of course flip flopping himself, but we know Bos for doing that. Incidentally, the debate lasted till 3:00 AM at night, and Bos found it funny that some MP referred to Tuesday’s speech as “yesterday”. Apparently, he had nothing more substantial to contribute than that.

Mariëtte Hamer, apparently so instructed by Bos, swallowed the response issued yesterday and apparently didn’t care anymore that Balkenende hadn’t retracted and Bos hadn’t distanced himself from the Tuesday speech, so she didn’t put out a motion against the government. Several other parties did put out a motion requiring Balkenende to retract the Tuesday speech; it will be voted on next week, but, given Labor’s current non-stance, it will most likely not get majority support. It is quite obvious that Labor is eager to trade its “breaking point” principles for an extra year of government participation, in which it will only shame itself more by having Bos issue huge budget cuts this September for the sake of the economy. The question isn’t if Labor will lose half of its electoral support, but when, after all.

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Dutch Iraq War Report Finally Out

I rarely write about politics these days. First of all, I don’t think my opinions make enough sense to want to broadcast them to whoever is reading my blog. Not that anything I wrote in 2002 or 2006 makes more sense, but I had more arrogance and an illusion of Dutch privilege back then. That is, the fact that most people who read my blog (except for those who knew me in real life, who had much rather write me about politics than about my daily blahs), didn’t know what’s going on in the Netherlands and wouldn’t otherwise care, so would just swallow whatever I said. Maybe I could be a good politics blogger if I cared to try, but quite honestly politics doesn’t interest me all that much anymore. This time, however, I do have to write, since the long-awaited Iraq report by former Supreme Court president Willibrod Davids is out, and our prime minister is hilariously trying to stumble around the harsh criticism he got from the man he himself picked out to investigate the issue for fear that a parliamentary commission would slice him to pieces.

As you know, every country’s government involved in the 2003 war on Iraq has admitted it was mistaken. We all know that Saddam Hussein no longer had weapons of mass destruction by the time the country was invaded, that secret services had information that cast doubt on this Bush rhetoric, and that quite frankly there was no international law backing up the countries attacking Iraq without a UN mandate. It has been suspected for a few years now that the Dutch parliament, like many others, wasn’t fully informed about the situation that led the government to decide to support the war. Now the report says the same. As I already said, Mr. Davids, who led the commission investigating our country’s “political” support for the war, was appointed by the prime minister himself. Before Davids went to work, prime minister Balkenende told everyone that, even though he wasn’t going to agree to a parliamentary investigation, we could all be reassured that Mr. Davids would be independent. Some media have questioned Davids’ independence, inferring a pro-Balkenende bias. Now that the report is out, Balkenende is touting triumph over the few conclusions Davids draws that are in his favor, and calls the main conclusions, that the parliament was misinformed and that there was no international law behind the war, just “opinions”. Now I remember why I once found politics humorous!

It gets even funnier, since Balkenende leads a government with his own christian party CDA, another, minor, christian party he just needed to get majority support in the Lower House, and the Labor Party. Now Labor has always opposed the war, and has called for a parliamentary investigation ever since, well, I can’t remember the exact time, but whenever every other country’s government was admitting they were wrong. Labor is known for flip flopping on pretty much every major “breaking point”, which suddenly turns out not to be a “breaking point” anymore as soon as Balkenende gives them some imaginary candy he is going to take away sometime later anyway. Iraq was their hugest so-called “breaking point”, and it turned out that they swallowed Davids instead of a parliamentary commission anyway. Now the funny part is that the response Balkenende gave, in which he claimed the unfavorable conclusions are just “opinions”, was supposed to be an official reaction. Are we supposed to conclude the entire government, including Labor, is on Balkenende’s side now? Labor Lower House spokeswoman Mariëtte Hamer stereotypically repeats herself saying that apparently we aren’t. But then again, is she the formal Labor leader now, or is it finance minister Wouter Bos, who has his hands full getting bankcrupt Iceland to pay several billions in evaporated bank savings, again?

In the morning news, Jan Pronk, a prominent Labor member and former minister, calls out the government’s collapse, because presumably Labor is going to pull the plug, either in government or in the Lower House. Yes, this time they are really, really serious. Oh, sure. I am a leftist, but I am also cynical, and I actually give it a fair chance that Bos will try to keep going for the sake of the economy. It won’t make much difference for Labor in the end, I bet.

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Socialist Party May No Longer Keep Its Members’ Salaries

Guusje Terhorst, the internal affairs minister, has a plan to end the option of having representatives’ salaries go through their parties before flowing into the members’ bank account. The reason is the fact that the Socialist Party requires its representatives to donate part or all of their salary (depending on whether they are MPs or local representatives) to the party. Oh well, precisely speaking, the party gets the earnings for its members and then pays the members whatever it sees feasible.

Agnes Kant, SP leader in the House of Representatives, asks whether Terhorst, who is a Labor Pary member, doesn’t have better things to do than “teasing the SP”. While I agree that there are probably higher priotities for an internal affairs minister, I don’t see how sending payments directly to the people who work for them, is “teasing the SP” (unless the idea of working for your money is “anti-Socialist”, of course). After all, Terhorst isn’t saying that MPs cannot donate their salaries to their parties. If they agree with the party head honchoes that this policy is fair, they can still send their money to the party as they please. The party can even kick out MPs who refuse to send their monthly donations – only then it would be more obvious to the general public that the party’s MPs buy their seats. Now that sounds a lot less socialist indeed, but is it any different? Ali Lazrak, a former MP, got already kicked out in I think 2004 for refusing to have the party take part of his salary. Of course, there were lots of SP members, including myself, who said it was okay to kick him out, because he knew beforehand that he’d have to accept a lower wage if he wanted to be on the Parliament for the SP. After all, this policy is outlined prominently in the flyer every new member gets. I didn’t think of it as buying a Parliament seat at the time, because I went along with the party rhetoric of accepting a modest wage rather than grabbing big money at the expense of ordinary people. Now of course this rhetoric would’ve made sense if the money the party earned from its members accepting lesser wages, actually went to the poor. In reality, it goes into expensive promotion campaigns. Now what does that do for the hypothetical laborer, nursing home patient or welfare mother the SP is supposed to serve? Okay, I have to say that the SP is probably the most involved in direct community action of all political parties, but a lot more could be done if it just didn’t value expensive self-promotion that much. I think if the party spent donations from its reps on actual community action, many reps would be eager to donate.

Of course, that is only as long as the representatives can actually afford to donate. You know, City Council membership takes up a lot of time, but SP members in this position are still supposed to donate their entire salary to the party. That way, how will the SP keep its promise, also prominent in its newbie flyer, that members will not be penalized financially as a result of their party service? I don’t assume that every local SP member who declines a position as a City Councillor because of the financial consequences, is a “big grabber”, but apparently, Agnes Kant does.

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