Easter snooze

Sorry I dropped off the radar (read: RSS feed) there for a bit but I do have a really good excuse. That is, I have been not busy enough. Uh? Not busy enough? Indeed. I have been too lazy rather than too busy.

To my pleasant surprise my employer has been generous enough to add on two more days to what was already a blissfully long Easter weekend. I haven't set foot in the office since last Wednesday and don't have to go back until tomorrow. Don't get me wrong -I like my job- but after weeks of 10 hour days and deadlines that are somehow always yesterday it is really nice to have a break.

My initial thoughts were that I should make the most of this time by getting out of London. Prohibitive flight prices quickly put an end to that notion. Then I figured I should explore London further; walk around, maybe see a museum or two, stimulate my cultural side. The miserable weather has been my perfect excuse not to do any of that. Instead I have spent many happy hours on my bed, watching lowbrow movies such as Shrek 3 and Harry Potter V, sipping tea and eating chocolate. Comfortable in my cocoon while outside the watery snow flakes dance.

Tomorrow I'll return to my deadlines and long days but today I celebrate the third day of Easter. Now where is my egg?

Hidden treasures

Enough of politics for a little bit, entertaining as it is. It cannot always be about tickling the left side of the brain; the right side needs stimulation too.

Last weekend I ran into a marvelous little treasure in the most unexpected of places. As a surprise for my grandfather's 97th (indeed: 97!) birthday I had flown back to the Netherlands and spent a weekend in my native Amersfoort. I cannot say I feel a lot of kinship with the city but it is undeniably a pretty town. Just how pretty it can be I discovered under the attic beams of the local cobbler! My shoes needed desperate mending and, it being the only pair of shoes I had brought with me, the cobbler was kind enough to fix them for me while I waited. Amazingly, I then learned that he and his twin brother are well-known local artists with a gallery above the store. In socked feet I browsed through their beautiful paintings of an Amersfoort as I have never seen it. Snow covered and idyllic, these paintings evoke images of a time long gone, yet feel as true a reflection of the city as can be. Beautiful colours, wonderful lines.



I'll bet your cobbler can't do that!

Criminal minds

My office operates an open floor plan. On the busiest of days we have about 12 people sharing that space, yet for all those big brains churning it is usually quiet like a crypt, safe for the sound of fingers rattling on keyboards. I don’t particularly like working in dead silence so I do what a lot of us do: I plug in to the radio. To keep my mind properly confused that is usually Dutch radio; staying in touch with what is going on back in the motherland I guess. Most of what I hear only fleetingly passes through my brain and doesn’t stick but today I heard a Postbus 51 commercial that had me lift those fingers of the keyboard and take notice:

"In the Netherlands we are working together to prevent people from developing terrorist thoughts. See what you can do at Nederlandtegenterrorisme.nl."

Please do me a favour and read that again. Notice anything odd? That is right: it doesn’t warn for terrorist actions; it doesn’t even urge you to be watchful for terrorist activity; it says you should be aware of terrorist thoughts. Welcome to the world of the Orwellian Thought Police. I can just imagine the red phones ringing hot with dutiful citizens reporting their neighbours for saying scary things like Allah Akbar or for buying fertiliser, bleach and a kitchen knife. In addition to a debate over freedom of speech, it now seems we also need a debate about freedom of thought.

I wonder what the logical extension of this is. Under what law would we prosecute people for harbouring terrorist thoughts? Perhaps even more importantly: what exactly IS a terrorist thought? Am I having a terrorist thought wondering what it would take to blow up the White House? Or perhaps if I publicly expressed my sympathy for certain undesirable causes? I am considering putting in an order for the Anarchist's Cookbook just to see what happens.

Would it be a coincidence that this message hits the airwaves just as paranoia is reaching uncharted heights? A penny for your thoughts.

Nothing to fear but fear itself

... the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural address, 1933

As with many famous quotes this one too has taken on a life of its own to brake free from its context. President Roosevelt uttered these words to persuade the American people that the power to overcome the Great Depression was within them, if only they stopped being paralysed by fear of the Depression. It is essentially the circular reasoning of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you stop being afraid, that what you are afraid of will go away. Economic theory holds that there is something to be said for Roosevelt's call to confidence. Recession and economic downturn are very much dependent on the mood of the day and much less so on cold, hard facts and figures. The question is if it holds true in other sectors as well.

Michael Moore built an interesting, albeit somewhat oversimplified, case in his award-winning documentary Bowling for Columbine that fear is what is driving American society over the edge: people have guns because they are afraid of people who have guns who are afraid of ... and so on and so on. A self-reinforcing spiral of fear. Fear is also what is gripping the Netherlands these days. Everybody is holding their breath to see what will happen when Geert Wilders' movie Fitna will be released. Nobody really knows yet what this movie is about but it is expected to be a heavy-handed accusation against the Quran and Islam. It is feared that this will incite reactions in the Islamic world similar to that provoked by the Danish cartoons in 2005. There is fear that Dutch embassies in Islamic countries will find themselves under attack, that Dutch business abroad will suffer and that the country itself has a bullseye for terrorist attack painted on its back.

I am not naive. I know there are people out there crazed and outraged enough to cross the line between lawful, proportionate opposition and unlawful, disproportionate action. I lived a mere 5 minute walk away from where Theo van Gogh got his throat slit and had a note pinned to his chest warning Ayaan Hirsi Ali that she would be next. One of my former colleagues was startled to learn she had been teaching chemistry to terror suspect Samir A. shortly before his (second) arrest. All this is very real. Still, I cannot help but wonder if we are building our own self-fulfilling prophecy with this mass hysteria. The message it seems to be sending is that this movie is apparently such a big deal that it calls for a likewise response.

I am a firm believer in freedom of speech so if Wilders wants to make his movie, that is fine by me. I am, on the other hand, also a firm believer in the freedom to ignore that speech. Can't we all just shrug our shoulders over this and agree everybody is entitled to their opinion even if we don't agree? If only we could all stop being so afraid of each other...