Luckily once something is online it cannot be suppressed anymore, so:


here's part 2. comment?

a quote from the hollywood movie 'She's the one': You're going to Paris? Paris, France? Isn't that where they hate Americans?" "Now, that's not true, they just hate stupid Americans".

I do have quite a lot of US and UK friends, and value the communication I have with them. I also like to keep up or expand on my agility with the English language. Hence the use of English (not my native tongue) for this blog. I also thought it could be of some value to share my views on the US presidential primaries. Maybe that was not such a bright idea: Third parties opinions do tend to get "don't mess with us" and "shut the fuck up" reactions, as you might pick up from this bit of weblog comment.

Now, you all know, I will not "shut the fuck up" that easily.
We Dutch were right there with the Americans, when they moved into Irak, 5 years ago. We still are in Afghanistan, we lost about the same percentage of soldiers. Sadly hardly any American seems to know that.
About the same percentage of Dutch guys disagree with us being there as Americans do. Very few Americans though are aware of the turmoil our country is in these days about the fight against religeous terrorism. I will not comment on what the last comment dared to suggest. We European nitwits at least have the good sense to stop any discussion whenever WWII and antisemitism are used as arguments.

On devoting this log to the US elections. The democrats just keep on working to get McKain elected. How can they all be such pathetic children? Gore Vidal said "We have one party: we have the party of essentially corporate America. It has two right wings, one called Democratic, one called Republican."� How can people still say, that was a great speech, when all Obama said is: "I've sat down with this horrible Mr. Wright, for over 20 years while he was screaming: 'gay people are te same as rapists or child molestors', and I did nothing!" When you say it in the low Obama voice, people are like: "oh well, he sounds so calm and friendly and he is so sincere; I have no problem with it". No wonder we stop taking the US primairies seriously.

comment?

That Wilders may be best helped by media of the left is illustrated with the publication of an open letter of his by my newspaper and an article in the NY Times, both published this saturday. comment?

Another landmark writer has died. Like Wolkers he was very talented in celebrating female beauty and eroticism, but he went quite a lot further in his anti Cleric attitude. That was mainly due to him being raised from age 2 by the most horrifying type of catholic nuns, the deep countryside of southwest Flanders could dig from the clay. This resulted in one of the most famous Dutch novels of past century: "the Sorrow of Belgium"


When he passed the great original gothic cathedral at Chartres together with Amsterdam colleague Harry Mulish, the latter went lyrical about the beauty of the building, while Hugo could only utter: "Nuke it, NOW !" Proving the point Napoleon made earlier about that building:
"this cathedral must make atheists feel uneasy"

Being raised catholic I fully understand that. And hurt with the the guys who were in the thick of that hypocrit era, that lasted most of the previous century and makes you understand the pain, melancholy and resignation of guys like Brel and Claus.
Luckily I was raised in the north, where church liberation got an early start: My mother defended my refusal to go to church any longer at age 14 vigorously against a very old static pastor. She also sent me to a very critical Jesuit college, that never put any pressure on the students in religious choices. (But still forced me to go to church 3 times a week, until I was 17; they just counted it as school hours). Sadly I was never misused by any of the clergy. Maybe that is the reason that I can still have wild fantasies about that, as I'm all too aware that in reality it most likely was not such a fun passtime.
Anyway, maybe now you can grasp why I placed the Obamo church window upside down: Connecting the church to your election campaign? Stupid and suicidal ! Maybe now you US guys can grasp why centuries of religious oppression and misleading made us take separation of church and state so much more serious.

One last thing: luckily, even in catholic Belgium Mr. Claus could terminate his life this week, when he felt it had been enough, while in France a woman with a terrible and extremely painful tumor, ruining her face and mind, was made to suffer till the very horrible end, despite numorous requests by her and her family to assist in a painless end.
Her last plea, which was as heartbreaking as horrifying to watch made 75% of the French switch off the news: they could not watch her freak face. Despite the fact that her words were really profound and convincing. All these French dive into the Easter festivities with deep guilt: they did not do anything, but look away. a Toast to religion and happy Easter ! comment?

With royal attendance, a high profile was given this week to the signing of an agreement between our 4 majar cities and our minister of education, culture and gay affairs. They are all working, in education, at street youth

level, in events, to eradicate ignorance and violence and to improve tolerance towards homosexuality. One of the things in this field is that the minister anounced he will be present this summer on a ministry boat at Canalpride. Of course that is not a revolution as lots of multinational companies, like Shell, KLM, ING, ABN-Amro, TNT, Amsterdams firemen (and women on a separate boat), the police, went before. Still eyebrows were raised once again in our parliament. Ultra conservative Christians, present in the same governement, have aired their disagreement. His colleague minister of family affairs said that canalpride shows lifestyles in ways, lots of gays don't feel at ease with. An even more extreme Christian of the SGP said: "the extravagance shown there is something many feel ashamed and disgusted about". It's obvious: Henk Krol should join and be spokesman for this party instead of claiming to represent our community.

Further, this increase in anti gay violence is a worldwide issue: comment?