What's the difference between a mailing tube and Rita Verodnk? One is a hollow cylinder and the other is a silly Hollander.

Posted by: Kepha at June 9, 2006 7:19 AM

did you notice - they got through that entire article without mentioning 'Islam' or 'Muslim' even ONCE.

amazing.

Posted by: JenBee at June 9, 2006 9:48 AM

Kepha,

Nice joke.

JenBee,

The article also didn't mention punishment for the women's husbands, or for the family members who orchestrate these marriages.

Posted by: PRCS at June 9, 2006 11:04 AM

I heard about the wooden shoes, windmills, tulips, but I had never heard that forced marriages were a common part of Netherlands' culture. I also didn't know that stabbing a film-maker to death and leaving a threatening note staked to his body was part of Netherlands' culture either. We had better start keeping an eye on those Dutch, they sound like a bunch of extremists.

Posted by: special_guest at June 9, 2006 11:18 AM

So if Verdonk is so worried about those aspects of Islamic "family values", why did she kick the only person who tried to deal with exactly those issues out of the country?

Posted by: rahel at June 9, 2006 1:20 PM

Back in the 1980s they would still perform female genital mutilations in a hospital in Utrecht in the Netherlands. Their rationale being that in a multiculti society “we need to respect the traditions of our foreign members”. Social busybodies argued it would be better to allow female circumcision in a controlled sterile hospital environment, rather than having it performed clandestinely in grubby backrooms.

To avoid labelling Muslims, the Dutch invented a horrible word “allochtonen” and lectured everyone about how the autochtonen (the indigenous Dutch) must stop being ethnocentric. Everything is equal, primitive societies are not primitive; apparently there is no development from the swamp into a superior civilization.

Everything being relative and nothing being absolute or better, also meant everything is equal and thus it made perfect sense for Dutchmen to say “liever rood als dood”, meaning better to be red than dead. And so they demonstrated against setting up cruise missiles on their territory which would confront the Soviet reds.

Eventually the chickens have come home to haunt the rooster. Forced marriages, are one of the many evils that sadly, make life in the Netherlands increasingly intolerable.

Posted by: Hugo Schmidt-Fischer at June 9, 2006 6:36 PM

Hugo Schmidt-Fischer: "Back in the 1980s they would still perform female genital mutilations in a hospital in Utrecht in the Netherlands. "

My god -- it this TRUE? Can you provide any citations?

I know the term "liberal" has been bandied about overmuch at this site. But it's clear that what we are seeing is a kind of pseudo-liberalism at work. Underlying the apparent "tolerance" and patience supposedly expressed in the West for such quaint practices as "honor" killings, female genital mutilation, forced marriages, beatings of children and women, and the extertion of totalitarian control of Muslim groups by their "religious" leadership right under our noses, is an ugle paternalism and hypocricy. It's called the curse of low expectations, but it's more malignant than this label sounds. This idea says:

"These people are primitives. We can't demand anything of them, not even civilized behavior because they simply don't have it in them".

That's the truth of it. It's a very dark and twisted simulacrum of enlightenment and classic liberalism. It's a terrible form of racism and chauvenism disguised as "tolerance". It's social marxism. The solution is not to give these inimical people more -- they will not be dissuaded from their triumphal goals to take over Europe by getting more concessions. They will only want more and more, consolidate their gains, and then deman even more. Rather than helping them even more, they must be driven out of Europe, or there is clearly NO HOPE!

In the post-modern era, we're instructed to believe that standards are intrinsically oppressive and unfair. One man's dysfunction is simply another man's cultural milieu, and nobody ever is qualified to be judge, except for the zealots who peddle this trash. They tell us our society is not superior. They tell us that the Muslim's society is not inferior.

Is it true? Of course it is not! However, I am now extremely worried that the same apparent loss of self esteem which pursuaded post war Europe to jettison her cultures of origin for this false religion of NO-RELIGION-NO-CULTURE-NO-BORDERS-NO-WAR will only get worse. How shattering it will be to awaken from this surrealist socialist nightmare to discover that you've traded your first world post-enlightenment magnificent legacy for the barbaric slothful beast of Islam with all its social diseases and pathologies and filth?

The confluence of Europe's post-war loss of self-esteem and the arrival of millions of opportunistic gypsies of hate is an historical calamity of earth shattering proportions. I don't know if Europe can survive this cataclysm. Europe may simply be dead culture walking.

Posted by: jsla at June 9, 2006 9:43 PM

jsla writes: "In the post-modern era, we're instructed to believe that standards are intrinsically oppressive and unfair. One man's dysfunction is simply another man's cultural milieu, and nobody ever is qualified to be judge, except for the zealots who peddle this trash."

Actually, moral relativism goes much further back than today's post-modernism. It goes back to philosophical and anthropological schools of thought in the first third of the 20th century.

But it is true that in the post-colonial era, anti-colonialists adopted moral relativism as justification for their support of former colonies in the Third World. Multiculturalism requires moral relativism.

And, unfortunately, moral relativism is also at the heart of all Leftist totalitarian states, as George Orwell stated explicitly in his novel "1984," published over 40 years ago. Because moral relativism provides a convenient philsophical cover for the immoral acts of totalitarian states, as well as helping to intellectually disarm the critics and opponents of such states.

Posted by: Steven L. at June 9, 2006 10:08 PM

Hugo Schmidt-Fischer wrote eloquently about how Dutch liberals "lectured everyone about how the autochtonen (the indigenous Dutch) must stop being ethnocentric. Everything is equal, primitive societies are not primitive; apparently there is no development from the swamp into a superior civilization"

When the Dutch ruled western New Guinea, there were several cannibal tribes. The women of these tribes urged the men to kill their fellow human beings for the purpose of eating them. Of course the Dutch colonial administration did everything possible to end this murderous practice.

By today's standard they were being ethnocentric. Everything is equal, cannibal societies were not primitive and we should respect our fellow man's right to kill us or our children for an afternoon snack.

Posted by: Provoslavni at June 9, 2006 10:22 PM

'Autochtonen' reminds me of an Indian novelist back in the mid '80's who in a TV talk amused himself by referring to the native British as 'aboriginals': these people practiced strange tribal rites, like the 'Last Night of the Proms'. The guy was Salmon Rushdie and a year or two later he would be relying on the 'aboriginals' to save his skin.

Posted by: wallyUK at June 9, 2006 11:05 PM

But does the fact that Verdonk is even bringing this up show that, in her limited PC way, she understands the problems and is trying to do something?

Posted by: Lili at June 10, 2006 1:40 AM

jsla:

"Is this true?"

About 15 years ago, I was horrified to read in Dutch newspapers, that a hospital in Utrecht performs female circumcisions providing a more appropriate medical environment for the procedure.

I cannot prove citations today . I've researched this recently, and one finds only mentions that female genital mutilation is prohibited legally in the Netherlands. The affair has by now been sanitized so to speak.

I've found some comments confirming my information on Nazi type Websites, which specifically mention that the procedure was carried out in Dutch hospitals. But these sources are not acceptable to me. They are vile and unreliable.

My recollection however, is derived from having read this in mainstream Dutch media about 15 years ago, when this abhorrent procedure was still a 'respectable' gesture from Dutch society awarded to their "allochton" fellow-citizens.

Posted by: Hugo Schmidt-Fischer at June 10, 2006 2:18 AM

Even though an agnostic -- the only thing that comes to mind is:

LORD help us! What have these people been up to?

I keep learning things that force me to understand that Europe is more sick than I ever dreamed. I joke sometimes that "Cannibals are people too" but lately I've been reading elsewhere that Germans are actually wondering whether it's OK to cannibalize if both are consenting adults. INSANITY. Perhaps a Muslim takeover is not so bad by comparison!?

And on a more serious note, no wonder the newly liberated nations in the East are desperate to ally themselves with the US -- They are surrounded by monsters on all sides of them once again. I despair.

Posted by: jsla at June 10, 2006 2:27 AM