Anti-Muslim Dutch politicians in hiding after death threats

Just substitute "Bush" for "Pim", and that's the exact reaction of a lot of us on November 3rd... sigh...

AD is rather boulevard, I suppose.

Oh, definitely different in scale, no comparison really, I just thought it was funny how the wording was so similar.

I figure if I'm going to have any intelligent opinion at all, I have to know what BOTH sides are saying.

About your restraint in commenting on Fox News...LOL...I knew when I typed that that I was gonna be in for it. [..]

Unfortunately, Fox has been one of the few outlets to give much weight to the story and I've been sorta interested in it since day one and especially after watching the movie. Sorry if I irritated you further, LOL.

I think it's time for me to bow out of this thread (as gracefully as possible and for a variety of reasons )

Death threats force senator into hiding, police protection

A female Belgian senator has been forced into hiding after receiving death threats, it was reported on Wednesday.

Mimount Bousakla, who is of Moroccan origin and is a senator from Antwerp, was advised by police to take refuge at a secret address after receiving the threats by telephone, several Flemish newspapers reported.

An anonymous caller said he would execute the senator "ritually", the reports continued.

Since last weekend Bousakla has not been seen publicly or in the Senate without protection.

But the senator is not new to the threats, having received them written and by phone for the past two years.

The number of threats is
reported to have risen again recently, prompting her to alert the authorities.

Neither the victim nor the police have been able to identify the person carrying out the threats.

Christian-Democratic and liberal government parties clash: freedom of expression vs. respect for religion

The Verdonk quotes are notable because they signal a serious division, for the first time, within the government itself.

[..] this weekend CDA Minister of Justice Hein Donner has unleashed a conflict around exactly this point when he announced, on Saturday's CDA Congress, that his ministry will research whether it can more quickly launch judicial proceedings against blasphemy and the insulting of religious groups. This way, it can be judicially determined what can and can not be said about religion. "You can not insult people into the depth of their [religious] convictions," Donner anticipated, "insulting someone to the bone is something else than discussing things." He proposed to revive a 1934 law originally drafted to protect the Jewish community, which makes it punishable to practice "humiliating blasphemy" that is hurtful to someone's religious feelings. "Blasphemy and the insulting of groups has gone too far in the Netherlands," he submitted. [..]

It was this point that the VVD, in the person of Ms. Verdonk, reacted to so fiercely. It would only lower the resilience [the capacity to put up with things] of Muslims, she said, and "that can not be the goal": "If [Donner] wants to do something about insults on the basis of religion, then he should also do something about other basic rights. Think about the subordination of women and gays in the muslim world".

New political faultlines?

Verdonk was joined in protest by prominent stand-up comedian Hans Teeuwen, who said Donner's remarks "could almost be seen as a prostration before Mohammed B." [..] In the left-leaning Volkskrant, jurist and columnist Afshin Ellian also calls the idea questionable, "both from a political and judicial perspective."

The political faultline that is hesitantly emerging here is very interesting, by the way. The Democrats, the small (and militantly secular) left-liberal party that's a junior partner in the government, joined its right-wing brethren of the VVD in summarily dismissing Donner's idea. But Wouter Bos of the opposition Labour Party's declared his agreement. Instead of the normal left-right polarisation, we thus see a only partially overlapping opposition between individualist liberals (who are sometimes blamed for the loudmouth gimme gimme culture of the last decade) on the one hand and the communitarian "old" parties of the center (who are sometimes blamed for covering up all problems in a swamp of consensus, letting it fester on) on the other.

(Dunno what the Green Left's position is … its nonconformist tradition means it's usually had little up with notions of respect for religion or authority or self-restraint, but as the most prolific proponent of intercultural respect the tables might be turned now ..).

I suppose, this might be more connected to the High Court decission on the (former) Flaamse Block than actually to what happens/happened in The Netherlands.

In the meantime, Parliament has done a double take, with the Democrats (the left-liberal junior government party) actually tabling a motion to withdraw the law from the books altogether. It was instantly supported by the right-wing liberal VVD, the Socialists and yes, the Green Left

Cool! is the last movie directed by Theo van Gogh, the controversial filmmaker who this month was murdered by a Muslim militant. There's little controversial about this film though, or it would have to be that the main Dutch chain of commercial cinemas, Pathe, refused to screen it because they thought that unlike earlier van Gogh movies, it wouldn't draw enough of an audience (which made Van Gogh, a prolific TV personality, very angry).

Van Gogh made Cool! as something of an assignment movie on the request of the Glenn Mills school, where they drill criminal teens back into normal life. He was clearly impressed by the school and its tough but effective regime, as well as by the gutsy, take-no-prisoners kids there, all of them Moroccan, Antillean etc. Those play some of the main roles in the movie and they do so with entertaining and convincing gusto, probably playing themselves, and breaking out in impromptu raps that continually underscore the story.

*(some spoilers ahead, though nothing that wasn't in the newspaper movie reviews)*

Where it goes wrong is with that story - because instead of settling for something between reportage and reality TV, van Gogh decided to make it a proper movie, with a storyline and all. The storyline involves a bank robbery, a 'girl fatale' and an evil mastermind thug, as well as one of those good guy/bad guy cop duos. Unfortunately, none of that works at all.

The girl and the thug boss are both famous Dutch "soapies" (actors who became famous through soap series), and their acting is uninspired and cliched. Katja Schuurman's role remains cardboard cut-out throughout, while Johnny de Mol is totally out of place with his posh, white accent and vainly tries to get away with it by engaging in a lot of pseudo-Pulp Fiction dialogue. But not just does he fail to pull the surreal Tarantino-type gangsta character off (blame the crappy writing), it also is totally out of synch with the real "thug life" shown us by the actual Glenn Mills students/inmates.

They are real, and they come across vividly enough in the movie, vividly enough to feel sympathy for 'em in fact (they're totally like the kids that hang out on the street in front of my house all summer - talk like 'em, walk like 'em). And in a way these kids are done a disservice by how they're pasted into this cartoon-like robbery-movie thing. Because it pulls their credible enough selves into something flatly caricatural, just when the movie starts out to show us who they really are. This way van Gogh sort of pulls the rug from underneath his own feet. He wanted us to get interested in these kids, but the crappy story he puts them in prevents us from finding an interest - and them from acting out whatever interesting story they might have had to share.

Still, the movie's worth viewing nevertheless, and its got a few good raps. I enjoyed it already just because of the surprising supporting roles. In what is sure to make Cool! a memorable footnote in Dutch film history, for example, Vice Prime Minister and former Minister of Finance Gerrit Zalm does a surprisingly convincing director of the bank the kids try to rob. Former Minister of Education and Mayor of The Hague Deetman is in there somewhere too. And I was sure surprised to see my uncle (a jeweller in real life) pop up as the victim of one of the kids' criminal adventures ... his first movie role, no doubt ;-).

No no no don't!

If I was exhibiting objectionable behavior in my point re: Fox, it was a kind of glee rather than annoyance ... hence all the : razz : smilies ;-). I was definitely more like "yeah-see!! <grins>" than "how dare you bring that ridiculous point up". Sorry if it came across the other way round.

As for Fox being the one station to actually pay the story much attention, that falls right in line with an earlier experience I had that at the time totally took me by surprise: namely, when I found that the one US medium to pay an almost relentless attention to the Pim Fortuyn story was the National Review. Their takes on the matter had me scratching my head in anything from amazement to muttering indignation, but unlike other US media they did feature the story, again and again and again.

One of the reasons they did, of course, is that the story reverberated with them on the "danger of Islam" theme. Of course that does evoke the risk of the story being furiously played into a certain direction, as seems to be the case with the Fox reporting now. But still, better than total disinterest. I think ... <scratches head> ;-)