Puriteins Fox News haalt Nederland door het slijk...

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Holland is a perfect example of what happens when there is no governing moral standard. The Dutch have decriminalized most drugs and people smoke dope openly in venues set aside for the practice. Prostitutes display their wares like mannequins in department store windows. And now we have at least one hospital murdering already born babies because someone has decreed them unworthy of life.

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Op dinsdag 7 december 2004 23:26 schreef Elusive het volgende:
Fox news 'nuff said

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Op dinsdag 7 december 2004 23:36 schreef Frenkie het volgende:
Ik ga em even mailen

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Op dinsdag 7 december 2004 23:22 schreef Tessje het volgende:
Hij lijkt wel op Sadam

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Op dinsdag 7 december 2004 23:42 schreef Sjaakman het volgende:

[..]

Een net mailtje zodat ze wellicht gaan antwoorden, of een ouderwetsche flame?

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And now we have the killing of newborns. All of this in a country where the Nazis murdered Ann Frank just because she was Jewish and therefore less than human.

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Hello,

Maybe it would have been wise to check some facts before you mingle them into your story. Please allow me to correct the most bothering amongst them.

Anne Frank wasn't murdered in The Netherlands, she was murdered in Germany. Holland is a region in The Netherlands.

Furthermore, I think it would have been useful to include an explanation of 'the arbritrary standard' that you mention at the beginning of your column. This 'standard' is a terminal stage of life, with no prospect of improvement or decrease in suffering.

Basically, what you refer to as murder, is no more than saving a newborn baby from a short perios of suffering, before dying anyway. Which option do you consider to be the least cruel one?

And the non-repressive stance toward drugs is known to cause low rates of drug use in this country. It's a shame you didn't know this when criticising our policy.

Prostitution is something that has existed forever, and will never dissappear. What the Dutch laws attemt to do is provide a safe and healthy environment for the women to work in, and gain control over any criminal acts that often occur alongside of prostitution.

I hope you will correct the factual mistakes in your column, but I'm pretty sure that it is not going to happen. Fox News and the people that work for it are already known to be objectivity's worst enimy. Maybe you can convince me otherwise.

Yours Sincerely,

/me

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I can understand why some people have objections to the Dutch laws about
euthanasia, even though I do not agree with those people. Foreign media,
especially conservative media, do not usually point out the lengthy
discussions in Dutch society and parliament that preceded the laws. Doctors
who practice it have to adhere to a very strict set of rules. The docters
who euthanise newborns adhere to virtually the same set of rules, with one
exception: instead of consulting with the patient (who's obviously incapable
of talking), they consult with the parents. People don't make this kind of
decision light-heartedly, it is an often painful and lengthy process. It has
nothing to do with declassifying a -quote- single category of life (...) as
having no intrinsic value and a right to life -unquote-, it has to do with
mercy. Dutch euthanesia laws were drawn up because we value life. We believe
that nobody should be forced to suffer life, just because somebody else
thinks that having to live is more valuable than how a patient has to
survive that life. The babies are not killed because they are deemed
unworthy, they are killed out of mercy, because it is very clear to their
parents and their doctors that they will never have a life (no matter how
short or long it may be) without pain. I cannot imagine a parent that will
under any circumstance be so selfish to put his believe in life above the
pain and suffering of his or her child, knowing it will ultimately die of
those pains anyway. No young parent will make such a decision easily, and
certainly not without great grief, and you are doing them great injustice by
ridiculing them into being light hearted murderers.

By comparing the issue with the horrors of Nazi-Germany, where decisions
about life and death in the concentration camps were made litterally at the
blink of an eye at the entrance of the camps, does the subject no justice.
Putting Anne Frank (notice his incorrect spelling of her name) into the
story to "prove" how righteous he is, is silly. Not only was Anne Frank not
murdered in Holland (she died in a concentration camp in what is now
Poland), she was murdered by the hands of the people she was born to:
Germans. Anne Frank and her family were German jewish refugees in The
Netherlands and had been hidden by Dutchmen for a few years. Had he read her
diary, he would have known that. If he did read it, he must have
conveniently have "forgotten" it to "prove" his point.

Singling out The Netherlands ("Holland" is actually two provinces of the
country) as having no moral standard because of decriminalising some (and
not "most") drugs, and having publicly accessible areas where prostitutes (a
profession which is legal here, because Europeans in general, and especially
the Dutch, are much more open minded when it comes to sex) work does not do
my country justice. I'm pretty sure your readers would be greatly offended
if I write something similar about the United States, claiming you have no
moral values because of the legal right to posess arms (and in some case
even permitting manslaughter) for every citizen (we are not even allowed to
have any weapon). Or because the United States is the largest producer of
porn in the world. Or because the United States kills people by order of a
judge (we don't have the death penalty). Or because the number of baby-moms
(kids having kids) in your country is the highest in the industrial world
(and ours one of the the lowest in the entire world). Or because you have
people living in ghetto's, with people living on food stamps and donations
by charity. Or because...

Referring to the brutal assasination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh to
prove his point about us is the most ridiculous of all. It has nothing to do
with values that we are lacking. It has to do with something the United
States are all too familiar with: discrimmination of minorities. Exactly
because Dutch lawmakers tried to avoid what Mr Thomas accuses us of
(racially inspired lawmaking to keep the "unwanted" out), my country had a
very open policy when it came to admitting foreigners. We have tried
everything but force people to adopt "our ways". In hindsight we could, and
probably should, have been more strict. But that would have gone against our
beliefs, we have a history of several centuries of harbouring people that
fled their homes for all kinds of reasons. We harboured Jewish immigrants
from Portugal. We harboured people from all over Europe for their religious
(read: non-catholic) beliefs. Your Founding Fathers left for what is now the
United States of America from my country, because they feared my country (a
safe haven) would be overrun and they would have to fear for their lives and
beliefs again. Fact of the matter is that the recent problems in The
Netherlands could have happened anywhere in Europe. Belgium, France and
Germany have similar problems with their minorities, and so do other
countries in Western Europe. And in part the USA are responsible for it,
because much of the radicalisation has to do with anti-American sentiments
caused by your foreign policies.
Mr. Van Gogh's assasin was, until a few years ago, a valued member of
society. A young man on his way to a great carreer, a fine example of
someone who was assimilated. When his mother died a few years ago, he turned
to his religion for consolance. Many people, Christians, Jews and Muslims
alike, do so under similar circumstances. At his weakest, his defenses down,
he got caught in a trap set by Islamic fundamentalists, paid for by very
wealthy people living in a country that is an ally of the United States:
Saudi Arabia. They brainwashed him during religious classes, and made him a
fundamentalist.

Mr Thomas, I hope you take off your blindfolds. Come see what Europe in
general, and The Netherlands in particular, have offered and continue to
offer the world. Notice for instance that The Netherlands has for decades
used at least 0,7% of it's national income for development work in the
underprivileged world. That is just the bit the Government is paying, NGOs
combined send yet more. How's that for a country that has no moral standard?
FYI: none of the G7 nations provide that much of their national income. I
believe the USA is one of those nations.

Nazi-Germany fed it's people with biased "news" and propaganda to fit it's
own goals.

Does history repeat? In the USA, apparently it does.

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Op woensdag 8 december 2004 00:32 schreef RonaldV het volgende:
Mail verstuurd om te laten weten hoe beledigd ik me voel en daarna beschaafd al zijn punten onderuit getikt.
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Niet dat ze de moed hebben om de reacties te posten trouwens, ik kon er geen vinden iig.