I wonder what makes us Filipinos such dodos. It’s no longer democracy, it used to be adhocracy, then self-serving advocacy – but now, clearly, it’s idiocy. The complainers, gripers, whiners, furious "Gloria Get Out!" demonstrators, and assorted members of the Dak-Dak Brigade, claim they’re defending the people’s right. I think the people must invoke their right to be protected from their "defenders."
In any event, everybody’s going home to the province for the annual Todos los Santos, in which every family devotee believes his or her beloved deceased is a Saint in Heaven. The dead, surely, must be in heaven, because those of us who’re left behind think we’re living in hell. A hell, I submit, of our own creation.
The exodus of the metropolis for the hometown commemoration of All Souls’ and All Saints’ break gives La Gloria, too, a break from the demonstrations and provocations being launched by the Reds in parliamentary disguise. The Radical Left still cling to the fond misconception that they can somehow generate a revolution by stinging the police into cracking down with maximum force on protesting crowds or the opposition in general. They know that our PNP has been tasked to break heads if necessary to prevent any mob from reaching Malacañang. Hence, among other measures, they water-cannoned the former Veep and his group when they threatened to head towards Malacañang.
GMA, I’m sure, wanted to prolong the month-end All Souls and Halloween break into as long as one week – but we’ve all got to go back to work. We’re the land of too many fiestas – but better a fiesta, I guess, than the mob frenzy of a fight. GMA is lucky. Even the holiday calendar seems to be working in her favor.
There used to be a crack that when it came to any idea, the "Greeks had a word for it." Thus they gave mankind the word for "democracy" (demoskrataos), the word for tyrant (tyrannos), the term for an incestuous attitude, "the Oedipus complex," the terms for philosophy, logic – you name it.
They also gave us Greek cooking (ugh). At one time, most of the cafes and eateries in Australia were run by Greeks and were usually called Omonia Cafe, etc. Thank God, the Italians, Chinese, and Japanese have taken over the restaurant scene.
Homer, the immortal blind epic poet who sang the tales of the Iliad and the Odyssey, also gave us the story of the Trojan Horse – a maneuver still used in politics, only lately by Senate President Franklin Drilon when he remained in the Gloria Crisis Team until the very last day, then switched coats and sides overnight to demand her resignation. Like that twaddle about the waddle of a duck, if you look like a horse (Trojan), whinny like a horse, side-step like a horse, and wheel around like a horse, then you must be a horse.
Nowadays, alas (or Hellas), when one says "Trojan" he may only mean that famous brand of condom.
In Holland, a series of high-profile killings have unnerved most of the 16 million Dutch.
They woke up one day to discover that thanks to their easy-going migration laws (before 9/11 one could get a Dutch Passport after living five years in Holland) there are 1.7 million "non-Western" immigrants or their children in Holland, about one million of them Muslims.
The first shock to the Dutch came in 2002, when, while campaigning to parliament (he surely could have become Prime Minister), the dynamic but admittedly gay politician Pym Fortuyn, was assassinated. Fortuyn had made no secret of his intention to restrict immigration, particularly of Muslims.
"The Netherlands is full," he declared. "There’s no room for anybody from outside!"
He was shot to death while on the triumphant tail-end of his campaign –ostensibly by a demented "animal rights" activist. His List Fortuyn party, however, romped to an easy victory but, without Pym, was unable to enlist enough support to form a coalition to run the government.
In 2004, came an even more shocking daylight assassination. On a Wednesday, by Wednesday it will be a year ago, filmmaker and newspaper columnist Theo Van Gogh (a grand-nephew no less of the great painter Vincent van Gogh) was brutally shot down and half-decapitated.
The actual date was November 2, 2004. While on his way back to work on his bicycle in the Lineausstraat in Eastern Amsterdam. Van Gogh was shot at by a 26-year old Muslim named Mohammed Bouyeri. Wounded, Van Gogh attempted to flee, but was pursued by his attacker. "Don’t do it!" a witness shouts – but the rest of the crowd on the busy street, scared of being attacked themselves, don’t intervene. Van Gogh is shot a number of more times, then the killer, as Van Gogh pleads for mercy, slits the victim’s throat with a knife almost decapitating him. Then he pins as note, a "testament" on Van Gogh’s body with the knife. He gloats over his act, then warns that VVD Member of Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, will be the "next enemy of Islam" to be murdered.
Arriving cops engaged in a gun battle with Bouyeri, who gets shot in the leg, then arrested. When the newspaper De Telegraaf frontpaged the gruesome photo of poor Van Gogh with two knives in his chest, right-wing groups take revenge by setting fire to Mosques and Islamic schools. Ten thousand people rallied in Dam Square to protest the murder and show their respect for the slain Van Gogh.
The next threatened victim, MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somalian-born female member of Parliament, used to be a Muslim. After 9/11 she denounced that religion as violent, and has become one of its most uncompromising critics.
In sum, she had encouraged Van Gogh to do the movie which outraged Islamic Fundamentalists. Hirsi Ali, 35, wrote the script for the 11-minute film SUBMISSION, an account of the sexual humiliations of a young Muslim woman, by a rapist uncle, a repulsive husband, and a rebuked lover. The film was shown in August 2004. Three months later, Van Gogh was killed. Hirsi Ali, who was half-raised in Saudi Arabia, now lives surrounded by bodyguards. "All of Europe is in a state of denial," she still bravely declares. "It thinks these killings will go away, but they will not. The Holy Book (Qu’uran) says infidels must be destroyed.
On July 26, a judge sentenced Mohammed Bouyeri to a life sentence in jail. But he remains defiant. The killer was, ironically, born and raised in Holland, the son of Moroccan immigrants.
"If I’m ever released," Bouyeri boasts, "I’d do the same again!" That’s what he said in court in July. The killing of Van Gogh was "justified," he insists, because Islamic law "instructs me to chop off the heads of everyone who insults Allah or the prophet."
When we negotiate with the MILF in Mindanao, do we encounter fanatics like that in their ranks? The answer would be crucial to any "peace talks" and I’m afraid, it’s "yes."
Bouyeri in the same breath had dismissed the remonstrations of his victim Van Gogh’s mother with the unbending words: "I do not feel your pain because I believe you are an infidel."
Jan Dijkgraaf, the Editor-in-Chief of METRO, for which Van wrote a column and his reporters have been threatened regularly since the murder. Dijkgraaf snorts: "We are in the Netherlands." Columnists here can point out the weaknesses of the Muslim, Christian or Jewish religions in their columns . . . The climate here in this country has changed since the murder. Some columnists have quit, others don’t write as freely as they as they would like to. I really believe that Theo did not have anything against Muslims. But I think he was honestly concerned about these big groups of Muslims living in their ethnic areas. They do not want to integrate with the Dutch society at all. They don’t care about it. I know Moroccan people who have lived here for twenty years and still don’t speak three words of Dutch. Politicians and the mainstream media in Holland are always talking about ‘integration.’ They think that by drinking tea with them, this group will integrate automatically. But those people don’t even want to integrate. They want to keep on living where they do now, with their own traditions. Then the politicians and the politically correct media want us to: ‘respect their culture!’ This even comes down to respecting their tradition of female genital mutilation in the most extreme cases. Or share the concern of Theo about the Muslim enclaves . . . Perhaps we should change the name of Amsterdam-West to Morocco-North. Or we can do it the Verdonk-way: we send them back to their own countries."
Many Dutch citizens, it seems, are getting to think about the latter alternative.
The other hall porter was Alain – from Surinam.
All Muslims. All Dutch citizens.
With whom did they secretly symphatize? With Theo van Gogh – or with Mohammed B?