Rants & Raves of Jasmine’s Fiction

Tell me what you think of this article.  The whole time I was reading this my brain was going “WHAaaaaat the…???”

Dutch paedophiles to launch political party

Tue May 30, 2006 08:55AM ET

AMSTERDAM

(Reuters) – Dutch paedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalisation of child pornography and sex with animals.

The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NDV) party said on its Web site it would be officially registered Wednesday, proclaiming:  “We are going to shake

The Hague

awake!”

The party said that it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.

“A ban just makes children curious,” Ad can den Berg, one of the party’s founders, told Algemeen Dagblad (AD) newspaper.

“We want to make paedophilia the subject of discussion,” he said, adding that the subject had been taboo since the 1996 Marc Dutroux child abuse scandal in neighbouring

Belgium

.“We have been hushed up.  The only way is through parliament.”

The

Netherlands

already has liberal policies on soft drugs, prostitution, and gay marriage, but the NVD is unlikely to win much support, the AD quoted experts as saying.

“They make out as if they want more rights for children.  But their position that children should be allowed sexual contact from age 12 is of course just in their own interest,” anti-paedophile campaigner Ireen van Engelen told the daily.

The party said that possession of child pornography should be allowed although it favours banning the trade of such materials.  The broadcast of pornography should be allowed on daytime television, with only violent pornography limited to the late evening, according to the party.

Toddlers should be given sex education and youths aged 16 and up should be allowed to appear in pornographic films and prostitute themselves.  Sex with animals should be allowed although abuse of animals should remain illegal, the NVD said.

The party also said that everybody should be allowed to go naked in public.

The party’s programs also includes ideas for other areas of public policy including the legalisation of all soft and hard drugs and free train travel for all.

Last weekend Bear dropped in straight from work wearing his uniform – Kenya Airways: 3 times a week from Bangkok to Nairobi.  While we were talking about the Safari tours his travel agency offered I was quite happily reminded of a safari experience of long past…

Okay the honest truth is that it was not my personal experience.  Rather it was my good friend and former housemate Paul’s.  He was with the army and he travelled quite a fair bit on postings.  One of his favourite places was in Africa, and one of his most memorable trips was when he went with a local guide and a marine biologist to one of the smaller tributaries of the Congo River on a moonless night to look for a weird breed of glow in the dark fish.

Armed with an engineless longboat, numerous specimen jars and some UV lamps the trio set out in the middle of the night, braving a legion of mosquitoes and the errant crocodile.  It was pitch black, and they were slowly paddling along till they came about a swamp like area with tall grass and a little pool positively teaming with the little Day-Glo fishies.  As they set to work filling the jars, the sounds of the Congo jungle suddenly went quiet. 

Now if you have any experience hunting you would know that jungle sounds are good but when all suddenly goes quiet you should start to panic.  And hope that your guns are loaded.  With no weapons and no boat engine to make a quick getaway from only goodness knows what was coming, the trio quickly abandoned any further scientific research and started paddling as fast as they could back to base.

But before they got even more than a metre away, pandemonium broke out!  Out of nowhere, BULLETS were flying from every direction and making HOLES in their boat!  And to make matters worse, a STAMPEDE of about 40 odd HIPPOPOTAMUSUS of various sizes came barraging through the river trying to run away from the POACHERS that were camped out in the tall grasses, SHOOTING at everything that moved!  Being at the wrong place at the wrong time never felt quite like this I bet!

In a situation like this they did all they could do to remain alive. All three of them tipped the boat over and hid underneath the chunk of wood that was rapidly getting riddled with bullet holes and being bumped in every direction as the hippos trundled by, praying that they wouldn’t be hit or trampled to death.  Paul tells me the fear he felt serving the army during the war and live fire ammunition training exercises did not even come close to the terror he felt that night under the boat in the Congo River.

They got out (relatively) alive and (more or less) bullet and hippo footprint free.  But it involved treading water in the Congo for over 3 hours under the remains of their sinking boat as the poachers came past to finish off the hippos that they shot.  Attracting attention of these people would have been a bad idea as hippo poaching is illegal in Congo and you know the poachers will not let you get back to civilisation alive to tell the authorities about their activities.  So they had to contend with the fish that were nipping at them (luckily no piranhas), insects that were eating them alive, the odd water snake and again, the errant crocodile. 

Paul likes to tell me that Africa, after that little ‘safari’ would never be the same for him ever again.  I like to put it another way:

Plane Ticket to Africa:  USD 2500

Safari Fees:  USD 300

Boat Fees:  USD 50

Getting Shot by Hippo Poachers: Priceless

There’s some things in life money just can’t buy.  For everything else…

O, draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!

A recent movie poster reminded me that the very eagerly awaited Hollywood adaptation of Dan Brown’s critically acclaimed best seller premieres on May 18 at all theatres near you. Now unless you’ve been living in under a rock for the past couple of years you would know what I’m talking about. Seriously people, if you haven’t read the book please ask me and I will loan you my paperback copy (sorry but my illustrated hardcover is too precious to be touched by heathen hands)!!! So the book I’m referring to is the Da Vinci Code. (Note: it’s pronounced daa vin’chee, because I swear I will go medieval on the next person I hear saying it daa vin’see)

The movie, starring Tom Hanks as the enigmatic Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and Audrey Tautou as the gifted cryptographer Sophie Neveu, the pair race against a ghostly enemy to break a fiendishly clever code. All clues point to covert religious organisation that will stop at nothing to protect a secret that threatens to overturn two millennia of accepted dogma.

I’m a Catholic. I believe in the teachings of the church. But I also loved loved loved the book! Regardless of the lies it spouts, it is still a very well written piece of literature. Bugger all who say that I’m contradictory! So all is natural that I’m dying to see the movie as well!

Anyway, the book and movie are set in Paris (mostly) and if you ever get a chance to see the City of Lights you must see one of the many highlights of the city – La Musée du Louvre /laa mu’say doo loof/, the largest and most famous museum in the world. Formerly a royal palace (Henri VI & Marie Antoinette used to live there before they lost their heads) it now houses approximately 35,000 pieces of priceless paintings, sculptures, artefacts and architecture. Alongside them also lies the most famous painting in the world – the Mona Lisa by the great Renaissance /ren-na-saunce/ visionary, Leonardo da Vinci. Dan Brown draws on Leo’s great mind of logic, forward vision and masterful double entendres which wholly makes the plot exciting.

The other masterpiece that you may find at La Louvre that’s featured in the Da Vinci Code is The Virgin of the Rocks, also by Leonardo da Vinci. There’s another slightly more ‘sterile & benign’ version that hangs at The National Gallery in London (Leo painted the 2nd piece after a lot of religious hoo-ha was made about the 1st one) but I prefer the original ‘darker & grim’ version at La Lourve.

The third highlight of the Da Vinci Code in Paris is the Saint-Sulpice /san sylpis/ Church, the largest church in Paris (it’s slightly bigger than the Notre Dame) and it’s got the cutest mismatched towers. Contrary to the book though, the church was NOT built over a temple of Isis but an ancient Romanesque church that was built sometime in the 13th century and additions were made to the church till it is what it is today.

The defining quality of this church is the gnomon or a sundial of sorts. There’s a meridian brass line (and again, contrary to the book it was NEVER a Rose-Line) that runs across the floor of the church to an obelisk and a set of lenses are set up on one of the windows of the church so at the Equinoxes (March 21st & September 21st) the sunlight would touch the oval plate on the floor near the altar and during the Winter Solstice (December 21st) the brass line on the obelisk. That itself is a wonder of ancient engineering and totally worth going to see!

Of course there’s La Tour Eiffel /laa tur e-fell/ (Eiffel Tower); the Jardin des Tuileries /jhar-daan deh twee-ler-ree/ (Garden of Tulips); Notre Dame de Paris /no-tre ‘daam deh paa-ree/ (Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris); Arc de Triomphe /arc-du-twomp/ (Arc of Triumph); Sacre Coeur /sa-cray cur/ (Sacred Heart Cathedral) and all the other beautiful things along the way but we really don’t have time to go through all of them and they aren’t central to the book/movie.

So that concludes our little tour of Paris. We hope that you enjoyed the brief excursion. Tune in to future blogs when we go where all roads lead to – Rome!