...we had Gaza, and the warcrimes in between have become so much routine that they hardly register the slightest indication they happened with the sources that bring us “the news”. While anxiety over the possible foundering of the economic prosperity Americans have known since the fifties, and the political maneuvering caused by it, has for the moment muted all cries for a thorough accounting in the United States, some Europeans indicate that they are loath to let the past go by unexamined. The Netherlands is a small fry on the world’s political stage, and its political elite rarely gets attention, but some Dutch bureaucrat whistle-blowers and opposition politicians are fighting for the truth, now evidence has been unearthed that the government was well-informed by its own legal specialists that it could get into big trouble in a hypothetical case before an international court for joining George W. Bush and the British in Iraq. In his latest column Jan Sampiemon gives an account of the parliamentary fight preceding a compromise offered by a prime minister who is clearly scared of the truth, and wonders whether one of the staunchest NATO members is capable of pursuing a true struggle with the past....

...terms instead, would render commentary about social affairs and politics much clearer and thus more useful. In the way ‘values’ is bandied about it may refer to a predilection for rock music, or to the deepest religious beliefs that govern all activity. Social scientists aspiring to ‘rigor’ in their analyses compressed all of these meanings into something that could then be used in a most trivial manner (e.g. the values of a particular teenage club) as well as made to stand for something beyond critical scrutiny, something sacred or semi-sacred, something that justified and gave contours to that other vague new quality known as ‘identity’. Especially now the Soviet Union has been replaced with new enemies we should dump the term, as it has dangerously begun to overlap with what Washington believes are security imperatives. Fighting for ‘our values’ has a sonorous resonance, far more compelling than fighting for oil. It implies that the military apparatus is used in the service of the deeper meaning that ties together much of what used to be called the ‘free world’, us Westerners, heirs to the Enlightenment, or Christianity. The moment you replace the amorphous ‘values’ with a more closely defined term, which...

...hearts and minds there are quite a few variations. The Americans and Brits fight, the Germans concentrate on reconstruction, and the Dutch are found somewhere in between. Unexpected incidents may complicate things from time to time, and the roles may be reversed. The commander of the German contingent, in the relatively peaceful northern area of Kunduz, felt threatened by two tankers which had fallen into the hands of the Taleban. Disturbed by a vision of them being turned into huge bombs on wheels driving into a German camp, he called for air support. Dozens of dead Afghans were the result. This incident occurred during a phase in which the Americans want to be more prudent with respect to the lives of the population. As far as we can see there is no sign of the change that President Obama had announced, also for Afghanistan, during his election campaign. In his Washington as much as the one of his predecessor serious interest in what is actually happening in that faraway country is simply not to be found. As Obama has confirmed: we are in Afghanistan to wipe out Al Qaeda and to make sure that this lot can do us and...

...power plays a role. Unfortunately, the fear among journalists of being labelled ‘conspiracy theorist’ keeps them from examining a lot of what is going on in our world. In the days when journalists were given more time and greater freedom to do their work, those with a strong hunch could devote much time to following leads without divulging what they were doing until incontrovertible evidence had been found for what they suspected. The Watergate detectives on a different Washington Post of 37 years ago represented the best known example of this. Today, very few bother. The ridicule implied today at the very mention of ‘conspiracy theory’ appears necessary not because gullibility is deemed socially undesirable – if that were the case we should see a constant mockery of the daily absurdities of advertising. The ridicule is prophylactic. It places beyond the bounds of serious contemplation all suspicions about the acts of the powerful that might seriously damage the presentation of reality that accommodates the political status quo. It is rather amazing that this ploy can be so successful against a background of what we know about governments and lying, which is quite a lot. Americans can dip into their recent...

...is highly dependent on what is presented as political and economic news. A perfect example of that have been the ubiquitous references to Japan’s economic ‘lost decade’, during a period in which much of Tokyo as well as Osaka was being rebuilt. The reason why Washington-based think tanks, like the Stimson Center, are important is because those are where the news about Japan is made, or rather amplified. Few people until now have realized that news about Japan has to be made outside it because most foreign newspapers, TV companies, and magazines that used to have regular correspondents in Tokyo have withdrawn them. The manner in which the rise to power of the DPJ has been reported stands out as an example of what you get as a result. The world learned about DPJ’s supposed clumsiness mostly from opinion dispersed by officials in Washington talking with reporters and columnists living next door. There are of course financial correspondents in Tokyo catering to the international investors community, but these wear visors that produce a heavily filtered picture of reality. The inept international reporting on Japan’s calamity, inspired by, and centering almost exclusively on, fears of radiation, is a sad example of...

On the surface the story is simple enough. Japan’s most important/powerful/controversial politician has done it again: shaking up the party political world by leaving, and perhaps breaking up, the DPJ, Japan’s ruling party. And that because things did not go his way. The Japanese media were, predictably, ready with their favorite epithet, ‘the destroyer’, and with quotes from political commentators that this time his star may be truly fading because the perennial polls show that the people have had it with him. Almost all foreign reporting trying to make sense of his latest turbulence in Japanese politics meekly follows the lead of the big national newspapers, as it has done for the last couple of decades (note that the number of regular full-time correspondents in Tokyo has dwindled to a small fraction of what it used to be). The financially oriented foreign reporting quotes resident analysts praising the leadership qualities of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, whose insistence that a law aimed at doubling the consumption tax must be pushed through Parliament triggered Ozawa’s move. Added comment holds that the Prime Minister is better off without the recalcitrant Ozawa in his party since this makes it easier to push through a...