Sapere Aude
durf na te denken - durf wijs te zijn
Sapere aude - Durf Wijs Te Zijn
Verlichting is het uittreden van de mens uit de onmondigheid die hij aan zichzelf te wijten heeft.
Onmondigheid is het onvermogen zich van zijn verstand te bedienen zonder de leiding van een ander.
Men heeft deze onmondigheid aan zichzelf te wijten, wanneer de oorzaak ervan niet in een gebrek aan verstand, maar in een gebrek aan vastberadenheid en aan moed ligt, zich van zijn verstand zonder leiding door een ander te bedienen.
Sapere aude (durf na te denken). Heb de moed, je van je eigen verstand te bedienen! is derhalve de zinspreuk van de Verlichting.
Luiheid en lafheid zijn er de oorzaak van, dat een zo groot deel van de mensen, nadat de natuur hen reeds lang van de leiding door anderen heeft vrijgesproken, toch graag het leven lang onmondig blijft; en dat het voor anderen zo gemakkelijk wordt zich tot hun bevoogders op te werpen. Het is zo rustig onmondig te zijn . (Immanuel Kant)
Sapere aude:Latin for 'dare to know, or dare to be wise,' this phrase comes from a poem by the Roman poet, Horace. Its importance for the field of Enlightenment studies, however, derives from Immanuel Kant's use of it in his manifesto on what precisely the Enlightenment is and should be.
In his essay, "An Answer to the question: What is Enlightenment?" he declares the phrase to be "the motto of Enlightenment," implying a liberation from religious prohibitions on the kinds of knowledge that are permissible to human beings.
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Palestine: Truth Is the Path to Peace
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, PRAVDA 23-5-2003
Biased reports and false denials of extremist activity hide the will of the majority of good people on both sides of the conflict.
"Dogs! Sons of a whore! Your mother's cunt!" These were not the chants of a mindless football hooligan, yelled at the opposing team's fans or the referee. They were shouted in Arabic, over a loudspeaker, by Israeli Defense Force soldiers, who were enticing Palestinian children to come out and throw stones at them. They did. They were murdered in cold blood by the IDF troops, who used silencers.
This story is one of many reported by international journalists, in this case by Chris Hedges of the New York Times.
Countless others go unreported, yanked out of the press before printing because the network controlled by the pro-Jewish lobby in the world's media and advertising outlets prefers comfortable stories labeled "Palestinian terrorism" claiming that IDF activities are "defensive" or "controlling violence" or "counterinsurgency measures".
However, to suppress this type of story is the same as suppressing the activities of the many thousands of Israelis who disapprove of such actions and do everything they can to create a peaceful environment for coexistence with the Palestinians.
Not all the IDF soldiers murder children for fun. Not all Israelis agree to the construction of colonies on occupied land. Not all Israelis favor the intention of the conservative hardliners to increase the rate at which these colonies are built, to build walls and fences around the Palestinian areas and to cut off their water supply.
Not all Israelis agree to the imposition of curfews, which sometimes last for hours, sometimes for days, always without notice, in which Palestinians are forced to sit cramped in their rooms in the scorching heat, without supplies or even without water if they were not able to buy any during the hours in which the curfew was lifted. The children cannot go to school and if they step outside to play, they are shot. It does not matter whether the occupants of these houses are men, women, children, babies, old folk, sick or well, with or without water, diapers, milk.
Not all Israelis support the policy of bulldozing Palestinian homes when their families are still inside, not all Israelis consider the imprisonment of children to be right, not all Israelis cheer when wounded Palestinian journalists are fired at as they lie bleeding to death on the ground, the sickening thud of the bullets causing their already inert bodies to jerk in reflex action. Not all Israelis sneer in derision when Palestinian women are left to die in childbirth at Israeli checkpoints on their way to hospital, not all Israelis claim as military targets the ambulances that are shot up.
Voices of criticism inside Israel are shouted down by the zealots, voices of criticism outside Israel are stifled by vested interests before a hail of anti-Semitic accusations can be unleashed.
However, these voices, the voices which tell the truth, are those that will eventually lead towards this troubled land living in peace, not the extremists on both sides who perpetrate and provoke an endless cycle of violence.
Those who blindly follow the causes of one set of extremists or another - and supply them with arms - are as guilty of terrorism as any Hamas or Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad fanatic, while the Israeli zealots are as guilty of terrorism, racism and attempted genocide as any Palestinian suicide bomber.
Only by condemning the violence provoked and pursued by both sides can the truth be revealed and a process of healing and reconciliation can begin.
To reconcile on a lasting basis, it is necessary to recognize and admit the wrongdoings. Plainly and simply, this is called telling the truth, not hiding it.
Albert Schweitzer: "We Are All Guilty Of Inhumanity"
Nobel Lecture, 4-11-1954
What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shake us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place.
This hope and this will can have but one aim: to attain, through a change in spirit, that superior reason which will dissuade us from misusing the power at our disposal.
The first to have the courage to advance purely ethical arguments against war and to stress the necessity for reason governed by an ethical will was the great humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam in his Querela pacis (The Complaint of Peace) which appeared in 15175. In this book he depicts Peace on stage seeking an audience.
Erasmus found few adherents to his way of thinking. To expect the affirmation of an ethical necessity to point the way to peace was considered a utopian ideal. Kant shared this opinion. In his essay on "Perpetual Peace", which appeared in 1795, and in other publications in which he touches upon the problem of peace, he states his belief that peace will come only with the increasing authority of an international code of law, in accordance with which an international court of arbitration would settle disputes between nations.
This authority, he maintains, should be based entirely on the increasing respect which in time, and for purely practical motives, men will hold for the law as such.
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How Saddam was betrayed
Middle East Online 25-5-2003
Saddam Hussein was betrayed by three of his cousins, senior military officers, and a former cabinet minister, in moves that allowed the fall of Baghdad, ex regime officials have said. According to these former officials Saddam's cousins ordered troops not to fight against the US-led coalition and issued reports saying that the Iraqi leader was dead.
"The head of the Republican Guard Maher Sufian al-Tikriti, who was considered the shadow of Saddam, told the troops not to fight when US forces entered Baghdad on April 8," one of the sources said on condition of anonymity.
"The verbal order was confirmed by the head of intelligence, Taher Jalil al-Harbush al-Tikriti, as well as military officer Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti whose son headed the office of Saddam's youngest son Qussay," the source said.
At the same time a rumour that Saddam was killed in the bombing of the Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Mansur on April 7 began to spread among government members. The information was spread by one cabinet minister, the source said, refusing to identify the former official. "This minister was then evacuated by American troops along with his family and now lives in a European country," the source said.
The three military officers and their families were also evacuated by US troops aboard a military aircraft following the fall of Baghdad, the source said.
Bremer sets a goal of Iraqi free market
Western-style economy favored as catalyst for change in region
Mike Dorning, Sunspot.net 27-5-2003
The top U.S. official in Iraq set out a vision yesterday for a fundamental transformation of the country's economy along the lines of a Western-style free market.
Although he was short on specifics, civilian administrator Paul Bremer III said a major goal of the country's reconstruction would be to shift Iraq away from the kind of state-dominated economies typical of the Arab world.
"A free economy and a free people go hand in hand," Bremer said at a news conference in Baghdad. "History tells us that substantial and broadly held resources protected by private property, private rights, are the best protection of a free people."
In Washington, there has been a debate over reconstruction between those who have sought to limit U.S goals in Iraq and those who prefer to use the occupation as a beachhead to promote American influence and values in the region.
The establishment of a thriving, market-oriented economy in Iraq has been a key goal of a conservative camp in the Bush administration that hopes the changes will ripple through the Arab world and challenge the established order.
Bremer's comments, two weeks after he took over leadership of the U.S.-led administration in Iraq, suggest a public embrace of that view.
A true market economy would be a big change for Iraq. Government-run companies dominate the economy and employ large numbers of Iraqis, especially in Baghdad. Everyone is entitled to food rations. Gasoline prices are kept artificially low.
Commentaar WD 2003:
Vrijheid is een betrekkelijk begrip in een wereld waarin kapitalisme doodgewone dictatuur is. Implantatie van het kapitalisme in een Islamitische wereld waarin het spirituele principe een belangrijke rol speelt is niets anders dan het plaatsen van een kankergezwel in het lichaam van een halve dode. Je maakt de pati nt zieker en het resultaat zal alleen maar dood en verderf zijn.
Islam en socialisme horen bij elkaar. Wie de Islam het socialisme afneemt is een vijand van de vrijheid, een vijand van de Islam en een vijand van het socialisme. Hetgeen betekent dat hij alleen succes zal hebben wanneer hij van de Islam een fundamentalistische, mystiekloze burgermansreligie maakt, waarin een onvrije, gierige en wraakzuchtige God centraal wordt geplaatst: de God der kleine luyden, die de filosoof Friedrich Nietzsche honderd jaar geleden al dood heeft verklaard.
Edward Said: The Arab Condition
Al-Ahram Weekly 22/28-5-2003
As for American plans in Iraq, it is now absolutely clear that what is going to happen is nothing less than an old-fashioned colonial occupation rather like Israel's since 1967.
The idea of bringing in American-style democracy to Iraq means basically aligning the country with US policy, i.e. a peace treaty with Israel, oil markets for American profit, and civil order kept to a minimum that neither permits real opposition nor real institution building.
Perhaps even the idea is to turn Iraq into civil war. I am not certain...
The seeming powerlessness of the Arabs in the face of all this is what is so discouraging, and not only because no real effort has been expended on fashioning a collective response to it.
To someone who reflects on the situation from the outside as I do, it is amazing that in this moment of crisis there has been no evidence of any sort of appeal from the rulers to their people for support in what needs to be seen as a collective national threat.
American military planners have made no secret of the fact that what they plan is radical change for the Arab world, a change that they can impose by force of arms and because there is little that opposes them.
Moreover, the idea behind the effort seems to be nothing less than destroying the underlying unity of the Arab people once and for all, changing the bases of their lives and aspirations irremediably.
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Leaders of the 226,000 Jewish settlers of the West Bank and Gaza Strip vowed yesterday to thwart evacuation of their homes, which would end their dream of a biblical state from the Jordan to the sea.
For Elyakim Haetzni, a vitriolic pioneer settler in Hebron, Sunday's Israeli cabinet vote in favour of the road-map for peace in the Middle East was an act of "national treason".
Asked about an opinion poll that showed 56 per cent of Israelis supported the road-map, he said Jews had willingly boarded the trains taking them to the gas chambers. Jews, he added, had brought holocausts on themselves throughout their history.
The road-map provides for evacuation of the occupied territories and creation of a Palestinian state by the end of 2005. The first phase calls for a freeze on the growth of official settlements and the complete evacuation of settler outposts set up since 2001. Mr Haetzni stopped short of branding Ariel Sharon a traitor. Placards have already surfaced doing just that. "Sharon is the greatest builder that we ever had, and the greatest destroyer. Today he is in a destructive phase," he said.
Yesterday the settlers threatened to "return to the streets," as they had done after Yitzhak Rabin's Labour government signed the 1993 Oslo accords. "This decision is even worse than Oslo," Pinchas Wallerstein, a former chairman of the settlers' council, said. "It is the first time an Israeli government has recognised another state west of the Jordan. We'll make every effort to change it."
Commentaar WD 2003:
Mensen wijs maken dat ze uitverkorenen van God zijn is een gevaarlijke zaak, die niet in dienst staat van het pragmatisme (benadrukking van de waarde van het koele, zakelijke verstand) dat Ariel Sharon zo graag uitdraagt.
Dat rechtse Israelische regeringen desondanks jarenlang in strijd hebben gehandeld met het naar redelijkheid strevende pragmatisme toont aan dat het Zionisme, gezien als rechts-nationalistische ideologie, de vijand is van de zakelijke rede.
De zakelijke mens redeneert als volgt: zodra er vrede is zijn alle Arabische gebieden vrij toegankelijk voor joden. Waarom zou je iets dat je wilt bezoeken moeten bezitten? Vrijheid is geen vrijheid wanneer het bezitten van iets het normbepalende criterium is. Bezit een mens de sterrenhemel? Bezit hij de aarde? Bezit hij God..? Nee toch? Dus wat zeur je dan...?
Ha'aretz: Abbas in gesprek met Akiva Eldar
Ha'aretz 27-5-2003
"I don't want to judge Sharon by what he says or by what's said about him," says Abu Mazen, adding with a smile, "I know him inside and out. I'll believe him only when he implements the road map. The implementation is the only test as far as I'm concerned. I'm not so interested in what he says and what's said about him."
The Palestinian prime minister says that he told Sharon that the security services in the West
Bank have been totally destroyed and that 70 percent of the services were demolished in Gaza.
He does not conceal his view that the intifada caused great damage to the Palestinian cause. But he makes clear there is no greater folly than the claim that the intifada was planned in advance. "There was no conspiracy or planning - on our side," he says, emphasizing "our side."
Meeting Between Sharon and Abu Mazen
Maariv 27-5-2003
Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said today that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazan would meet in order to discus the roadmap.
Palestinian sources said that Abu Mazen will agree to Sharon s suggestion that security control in parts of Gaza will be transferred to the Palestinians first. Furthermore, sources say that Abu Mazen is making efforts to arrive at the meeting with a draft of a one-year ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
Ziad Abu Ziad, a Palestinian parliament member said today that the Palestinians are promoting the contacts while Israeli is the one delaying the roadmap from taking effect, despite Sharon s statements.
Sharon Rebuked For Using The Term 'Occupation'
By Gideon Alon, Haaretz 27-5-2003
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday backtracked on his use of the word "occupation," which he had used four times at a meeting with Likud MKs on Monday to describe Israel's presence in the territories.
On Tuesday, Sharon told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, "When I used the term 'occupation,' I meant it is undesirable for us to rule over a Palestinian population."
Sharon noted that Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein had rebuked him for using this term, pointing out that the legal position adopted by all Israeli governments since 1967 is that the West Bank and Gaza are "disputed territories" rather than "occupied territories."
Rubinstein explained, "These are territories that belonged to no recognized sovereign power before 1967, and therefore the correct way to describe the situation in the territories in legal terms is as 'disputed territory,' whose status is to be determined through agreements."
Sharon's statements at Monday's Likud faction meeting sparked a furor among rightist MKs on the foreign affairs committee. Coalition chair, Gideon Sa'ar (Likud), told him: "You taught us that all the rights to this land belong to the Jewish people. How is it possible for a people to be an occupying power in its own land?"
Shaul Yalahom (National Religious Party) demanded: "What's happened to you, Ariel Sharon? Statements such as the ones you made [on Monday] are a shock from which it is impossible to recover."
Sharon responded sharply to this criticism. "I have no training in how to treat people for shock," he said. "But as for what happened to me, I can cite statements I made as far back as 1988 in which I detailed the areas that are vital for Israel's security and those on which the Palestinians should be permitted to establish a state.
Today, things have changed. My opinion now is that we don't need to assume responsibility for 3.5 million Palestinians."
De inhoudsloze spitsvondigheid van Elyakim Rubinstein
Commentaar Wim Duzijn 2003
Rechtspraak is alleen rechtspraak wanneer er een instantie is die de bevoegdheid wordt gegeven recht te spreken.
Wie de auto van zijn buurman steelt en tegen het verontwaardigde slachtoffer zegt dat het eigendomsrecht dat hij bezit niets voorstelt, zodat hij maar beter zijn mond kan houden, die zal op twee reacties kunnen rekenen:
1) het slachtoffer stapt, wanneer hij in een rechtstaat leeft, naar de politie en/of de rechter, die daarna als bemiddelende instantie de waarheid probeert te achterhalen en de schuldige bestraft,
of: 2) het slachtoffer pakt, wanneer de rechtstaat dood is verklaard en een gang naar politie of rechter niet mogelijk is, een groot geweer en hij pompt een lading lood midden in je brutale kanis, vanuit de eerlijk-oprechte opvatting dat geen mens zomaar een andermans eigendom stelen mag.
Elyakim Rubinstein begrijpt die simpele logica niet, hetgeen merkwaardig mag worden genoemd, gezien het feit dat hij een hoge positie inneemt binnen het justitiele apparaat van een staat die zich zo graag hoge morele normen toe wil eigenen.
Moraal - zo weten we allemaal, ook al handelen we er niet naar - begint met simpele, doodgewone eerlijkheid, omdat het willen weten eist dat je alles wat leuigenachtig is verwijdert.
En wat zien we gebeuren? Ariel Sharon was heel even eerlijk, en onmiddellijk wordt hij van alle kanten belaagd en wordt hem door luitjes die zich 'moreel' noemenm duidelijk gemaakt dat hij liegen moet....
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Six is the symbol of harmony: the two triangles in one, the higher and lower energy. The 6th part of the circle the power of our 6ed sense together makes the balance. 
Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states.
Het is de tragiek van het socialisme geweest dat het nooit in staat is geweest het individualisme in Friedrich Nietzsche te bewonderen.
Minister Sharansky said, "I agree with the Prime Minister that there is no good option for Israel at the moment, and that Israel must choose between the lesser of two evils, but if we accept this roadmap it will set a precedent and cross red lines from Israel s standpoint. 
A "historic day" isn't the term being used by Palestinian and Arab spokesmen to describe the Israeli government's decision to accept the road map. Members of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's (Abu Mazen) parliament would prefer to call it a "day of suspicion." 
In de laatste aflevering van het webdagblad 'Iraq Daily' (een produkt van het Iraakse ministerie van cultuur en informatie) wordt aandacht besteedt aan de secularisten binnen de Islam, vrije denkers, die de kritische, opstandige rede boven het blinde, onderdanige geloof plaatsen. 
Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariya ar Razi (865-925) was perhaps the greatest freethinker in the whole of Islam. 
Dat schrijven meer kan zijn dan een boel vette centjes verdienen met behulp van het produceren van volmaakt zinloze, opportunistische prietpraat bewijst Kader Abdolah in de Volkskrant van 26 mei, waar hij in zijn MIRZA-column verwijst naar een poetisch werk van de Perzische dichter en mysticus Farid Ud-Din Attar, De taal der vogels, in een poging Westers en Oosters denken met elkaar te verzoenen.
Ma'ruf bin Abdul Ghani al Rusafi (1875 16 March 1945) was a poet, educationist and literary scholar from Iraq. He is considered by many as a controversial figure in modern Iraqi literature due to his advocacy of freedom and opposition to imperialism and is known as a poet of freedom.
Condoleezza Rice was quoted in a German magazine saying the Bush administ trying to patch up strained relations with Germany but would continue to ostracise Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.