Are Dutch media deliberately downplaying terror threats?

I am just wondering, because this little civil war tidbit never appeared in Dutch newspapers. Elsevier News Weekly ran it on their website, though - after I'd tipped them off.

Now I have to read about a foiled bomb attack on Rotterdam at Robert John's blog (not that it isn't a delight to absorb his musings on miniskirts in Iran). Even more weird: Robert John gets his stuff from the Chinese (!) website Xinhua. Here's the story. Xinhua attributes all this to De Telegraaf, which is a large populist newspaper (though not nearly as bad as it's made out to be), but even if that's correct, why didn't any of the quality broadsheets pick it up? Or, for that matter, populist blog GeenStijl, which is closely intertwined with De Telegraaf? (I just did a query at their blog with search string 'Rotterdam' - no relevant results.)

Makes you wonder: has 'ignorance is bliss' become official media policy?

19:46

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'ABSOLUTELY no terrorist threat'

'Look, the fact that we're mobilizing the entire Amsterdam police corps to an extent never before seen during the SAIL nautic event has nothing to do whatsoever with any specific terrorist threat. And no, we still haven't apprehended the guys who recently stole enough diving equipment to mount a major attack on, say, a bunch of tall ships. It's just that we want to be prepared, what with all those Al Qaeda guys roaming the world these days.'

Sheez. Why can't we have a government which doesn't patronize us at every bloody opportunity?

Anyway, I'll be at SAIL next Friday, and I'll bring a camcorder, so if something happens, I'll upload the footage here. Provided I survive, of course.

17:05

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Ah, those memories

I empathize, mate. You'll get over it. I did.

(Only in my case she was a Kiwi girl, and we were walking around in Dublin, and I was way too shy in those days to suggest a trip to Phoenix Park, which was infamous in the middle nineties anyway, and my landlady was a very friendly, but also old-fashioned Catholic Irish woman, so that wasn't an option either.)

Douglas Adams was wrong. Knowing where your towel is isn't nearly as important as always having a twin-sized tent with you.

(Via Tim Blair.)

2:55

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Submission, part II?

After the murder of Theo van Gogh I heard a lot of stories how he'd had it coming, as it was heresy to paint Qu'ran texts all over the naked body of a woman, as he had done in the now infamous movie Submission, part I.
< male chauvinist pig mode>
(I agree, by the way, there are a lot more useful things one can do with the naked body of a woman. Not sure if that's what Mohammed Bouyeri had in mind though.)
< /male chauvinist pig mode>
Anyway, I sure hope the Arabic text on her body (a) is just the literal translation of the English text, and (b) doesn't appear anywhere in the Qur'an.
Besides jest: why was this woman arrested? Running nude is illegal in the Netherlands too, but surely, the officers could have turned a blind eye. Most New Yorkers will probably have seen a nude woman before, and an arrest as a result of this provocation is probably exactly what she was aiming for. I may bitch from time to time about Dutch tolerance, but in this case, methinks the American coppers could have learned a thing or two from their Dutch colleagues, who would have ignored the woman, as you would a spoiled child.
(Yes, spoiled. Otherwise she'd be in Syria, although I can only applaud her good taste by remaining in the USA.)

(Via Rand Simberg.)

2:33

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