Media (502)
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The Chaos Presidency Revisited
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
During the campaign Jeb Bush called Trump a ‘chaos candidate’ and predicted a ‘chaos presidency,’ and boy was he right. The week started with the president proudly declaring, in a meeting with governors, that he would have run towards the shooter during a school shooting, even unarmed. This came as a bit of a surprise for those who remember how he avoided the draft for the Vietnam war with five deferments, the last one because of bone spurs that never seemed to hurt his golf game, and how he subsequently declared that the struggle not to get a venereal disease in the New York City night club circuit was his personal Vietnam. The next day Jared Kushner, who was in charge of everything from the imaginary Israeli-Palestinian peace process – for which his only qualification according to Tom Friedman is that he went to Jewish summer camps – to US relations with Mexico and China, the opioid epidemic, veterans care, reforming the criminal justice system and reinventing the government, lost his security clearance because of multiple vulnerabilities, putting him on the same level as White House cooks and gardeners and making him equally effective.
Later in the week it became known that Kushner had had White House meetings with bankers who subsequently loaned his companies half a billion dollars. Mysteriously, because according to Kushner those loans were never discussed. In the meantime the Russia probe remained in the center of attention. NSA Director Rogers, who is about to step down, testified that the US is not doing enough to prevent Russian intervention in the 2018 elections, because Trump has not ordered the security services to fully engage in a cyberwar. Robert Mueller has now shifted his focus to the theft of DNC and Podesta e-mails, and is expected to shortly indict the Russian hackers who were responsible. The crucial question here is who in the Trump campaign and in Trump’s circle of acquaintances knew about the theft before the e-mails were released, and if the president knew. It is fairly obvious that at least some members of his entourage knew, which means that they can be charged with conspiracy, and in some of his campaign speeches Trump appeared to be referring to upcoming disclosures by Wikileaks, strongly suggesting that he could be a co-conspirator.
In the middle of the week the sky in Trump’s world lost a star when Hope Hicks resigned, after informing the House Intelligence Committee that occasionally she had been telling ‘white lies’ on behalf of Trump. She was not only Communications Director but also Trump’s security blanket, and he decided to take his frustration out on Jeff Sessions, attacking the Attorney General for not properly having the FISA process investigated and calling him ‘Mr. Magoo,’ to which Sessions responded by defending his integrity.
During a bipartisan White House meeting Trump shocked Republican participants by declaring that he would want to take guns away from potential domestic terrorists and people with mental problems, and worry about due process afterwards. Later that day, however, he had a meeting with NRA lobbyists who issued a statement that the president was in total agreement with them, leaving everybody confused about where he stands.
To cap it all off Trump announced that he would impose stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, potentially starting a devastating trade war. It might cost him the services of Gary Cohn, who can leave through the door that will still be open after National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has been pushed out by Trump, Mattis and Kelly.
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Wereldwijd live naar de Radio luisteren
Ik schreef gisteren een stukje over Radio Forreá in Guinee-Bissau. Toen kreeg ik de vraag of we ook naar dat station kunnen luisteren.
Dat heb ik even voor u nagegaan.
Je hebt bijvoorbeeld Radio Garden, een fantastische site, waarbij je wereldwijd live naar duizenden radiostations kunt luisteren. Je gaat de wereldkaart over en klikt op een groen stipje. Zo simpel is het.
Als je HIER naartoe gaat kom je bij Radio Bantaba di Djumba in Guinee Bissau. Er is in dat land nog een ander station te vinden,
Ik moet u wel even waarschuwen: Als je eenmaal aan Radio Garden begint, kom je er niet zo makkelijk meer af. Een beetje verslavend.
Het is namelijk fascinerend wat er zoal in de wereld wordt uitgezonden.
Als je in Guinee Bissau begint en je gaat de West-Afrikaanse kust af, kom je bijvoorbeeld bij stations in Senegal, Guinee Conacry, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Togo, Benin en Nigeria.
Als je het dichter bij huis houdt, blijken er veel meer radiostations dan je ooit had kunnen vermoeden. Mijn god; wat zijn er veel mensen met radio bezig.
Als we HIER beginnen bij Radio Hoeksche Waard in Puttershoek, vind je in de omgeving stations onder meer in Barendrecht, Steenbergen, Fijnaart, Tholen, Rilland, Zierikzee, Ouddorp, Vlaardingen, Middelharnis, Dordrecht en Rotterdam.
Maar ach. Je kunt ook naar Thimphu Bhutan, HIER
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Cowardice and Insanity
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
‘Cowardice and insanity’ were the words used by the father of a student who was killed in the Parkland shooting, referring to respectively Congress and the White House. And Trump thought that the week started so well for him. He embraced Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russians, because the Special Counsel declared that nobody from the Trump campaign had ‘wittingly’ been in touch with them. For Trump, who conveniently ignored that the indictment covers only a small part of the Russian activity, it was proof that there had been no collusion, and while he was at it he also stated that the outcome of the election had not been affected, blaming H.R. McMaster for not making the same unfounded claim at a conference in Munich. Watching the news shows, however, it gradually dawned on Trump that the indictment rebutted his characterization of Russian interference as a ‘hoax’ and at best made him look criminally naive, so he started lashing out via Twitter. His most disingenuous tweet blamed the FBI for having spent too much time on the Russia investigation and therefore missing the warning signals regarding the Parkland shooter.
The shooting would dominate the news during the rest of the week. On Wednesday, after a ‘listening session’ with victims of multiple school shootings, Trump showed willingness to have the age limit to buy an AR-15 raised to 21 years, next to banning bump stocks, investing in mental health care and improving background checks. He never mentioned banning assault weapons or closing the gun show loophole that undermines background checks, but his comments still went too far for the NRA, which had supported Trump’s presidential campaign with $30 million, of which the bulk was spent on attacking Hillary Clinton. After having been corrected by the ‘patriots’ of the NRA the next day Trump was singing off their sheet, blaming Hollywood and video games for the shooting and arguing that there should be more guns in schools to protect students and teachers. After another night’s sleep he had refined his thinking and fulminated against gun free zones around schools, calling them an invitation for shooters, and settled on the idea to ‘harden’ schools by arming teachers, something that even the NRA had not fully endorsed.
That idea was not well received by experts, who argued that police officers fail to hit their target more often than not and that teachers would do considerably worse, making it inevitable that at some point a teacher would shoot a student. Both national teachers unions spoke out against it, and many teachers said that they would rather quit than carry a gun. But Trump doubled down, claiming that between 10% and 40% of teachers are ex-military and adept at handling guns.
Trump didn’t provide a source for those numbers, and his eventual position shows that he’s only willing to make small, marginal changes, next to pursuing a ‘solution’ that will never work. That message was received by the teenagers of the ‘never again’ movement, who now know that Trump is a pinball that eventually always bounces into the wrong slot, and will act accordingly.
Meanwhile Mueller is on a steady course. Today Paul Manafort’s former partner and former Trump campaign official Rick Gates pleaded guilty and started cooperating with the investigation. It will put tremendous pressure on Manafort and soon bring Trump in Mueller’s sight.
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De Omroepstaking en De Afspraak
Het was woensdag 17 april 1985. De afspraak was al weken tevoren gemaakt. Ik zou naar Genève vliegen om Jan Pronk te interviewen voor de VPRO-Radio. Hij was toen adjunct secretaris-generaal van de Unctad, de United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Een organisatie van de Verenigde Naties ter bevordering van handel en economische ontwikkeling. Pronk was daar in 1980 begonnen. Hij zou er in 1986 weer vertrekken.
Maar er ontstond een dilemma. Er was die dag een omroepstaking. Onvrede bij omroepmedewerkers, die werd gesteund door de bonden.
Ik had van mijn leven nog nooit gestaakt, maar besloot om me te laten registreren als staker. En dat terwijl ik in feite gewoon moest werken.
Maar ja.
Ga je dan die afspraak voor dat interview afzeggen?
Ge je die vlucht cancelen?
Ik deed dat niet. Ging ’s ochtends nog even naar een bijeenkomst op het Mediapark, die werd verstoord door Jan van Veen. Een omroepmedewerker, die een programma had onder de naam Candlelight.
Hij las op de late avond gedichtjes voor, gemaakt door luisteraars. Amateur poëzie, die vrijwel altijd over liefde en liefdesverdriet ging.
Meestal erbarmelijk slechte en genante versjes, die op een zalvende manier door deze Van Veen werden voorgedragen.
Hij was volledig overstuur, ging geweldig tekeer en begon de verzamelde groep stakers op een grove manier uit te schelden. Het was potsierlijk en bizar.
’s Middags arriveerde ik in Genève en kreeg de volgende dag ondermeer een rondleiding per auto van Jan Pronk. Er bleek zelfs een wijkje te zijn, waar een paar huizen waren gekraakt.
’s Avonds maakte ik een wandelingetje langs het meer en zag plotseling een paar ratten wegduiken.
Het interview was plezierig en werd vrijdag nog uitgezonden in het programma Het Gebouw.
De staking was toen al weer voorbij.
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Comforter-in-Chief
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
In the beginning of the week the White House could not get its story about Rob Porter straight. John Kelly stuck with his lie that he had acted immediately after finding out that Porter had beaten up two ex-wives, and Sarah Sanders pontificated about ‘the process’ that had taken so long. It got worse when FBI Director Wray testified in Congress that the Porter file had been closed in July 2017 and that the White House had been informed no later than November 2017. Even Sarah Sanders could not stick with Kelly’s story, and there are strong rumors that she has demanded that from now on he’ll tell his own lies. On top of this it was revealed that by November 2017 130 White House staffers did not yet have the appropriate security clearing, including 10 of 30 Assistants to the President, among them Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and even White House Counsel McGahn. Considering that many of these assistants handle classified material – Jared even the president’s daily security briefing that Trump doesn’t read – this situation contains high security risks and makes anything Hillary Clinton ever did with her emails pale by comparison.
The heads of all the intelligence services who testified before Congress confirmed that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election and was preparing to do so again in 2018. Trump had not imposed the sanctions a large majority in Congress requested and did not take any other action, only strengthening the impression that he is in Putin’s pocket. He could not remain entirely silent about Porter though, and after one week forcefully declared that he is opposed to all domestic violence. The High School shooting in the middle of the week gave Trump an opportunity to play the comforting role that is reserved for the president in these situations, but he failed miserably by giving a speech that probably caused more nightmares for the children he addressed than they had before. Trump did not mention the word ‘gun’ once, making clear to the NRA that he wasn’t going to do anything about gun control and instead picturing the shooting as a mental health issue. Subsequently the main stream media did their duty and reminded us that the only gun law Trump has signed made it easier for mental patients to acquire assault weapons.
In the wake of the shooting NRA-backed Republican rhetoric reached a new low. Paul Ryan called the requests to finally do something about gun control a ‘knee jerk reaction,’ and senator Grassley had totally forgotten that he sponsored the aforementioned bill, but both offered their thoughts and prayers like so many Republicans, including senator Rubio, who pocketed more than $3 million from the NRA. We can only hope that the GOP’s gutless hypocrisy will be remembered in November.
Next, Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen surprised the world with the announcement that he had ‘facilitated’ a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, without revealing where the money came from. It brought Trump’s philandering back in the limelight and was followed by the bombshell revelation that concurrently with Stormy he had conducted an affair with a former Playmate.
To top it all off, Steve Bannon spent 20 hours with Mueller’s investigators, after he had promised to tell the Special Counsel everything, and former campaign adviser Rick Gates was finalizing a plea deal. It looks like the indictment of 13 Russians that was announced today is only the beginning.
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