Word: rotterdamers
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...unemployment, tolerant and proudly multicultural, the country has long been a place where the politicians fine-tune consensus in long, well-behaved coalition talks. But into that idyll last week crashed Pim Fortuyn, 54, who rode an unapologetically anti-immigration platform to a substantial victory in local elections in Rotterdam, the country's second city, where many of the country's 800,000 Muslims live. His local party, Livable Rotterdam, won 17 out of the 45 seats in the municipal council, besting all three of the country's ruling coalition parties. "It's shocking that someone without a clear political...
Opinions like that, along with his shaved head and in-your-face attitude, have assured Fortuyn no shortage of media attention. Indeed, some blamed the media for Fortuyn's success. After his own party's disaster became clear last Wednesday, local City Party leader Manuel Kneepkens left Rotterdam city hall sneering at journalists: "You've got this on your conscience. You've created a monster...
...Muslims, and his promises to beef up police evidently appeals to urban dwellers who feel unsafe on their own streets. "Everyone in my local pub voted for him, because there is a small gang of Moroccan kids that terrorize the neighborhood," says Cathy Brouwer, a human-resources worker in Rotterdam. "They somehow think Fortuyn is the answer, which, of course...
...strategy has been so successful - driving theft down by 50% - that in mid-February Rotterdam police adopted it as well. But not everybody is happy. Civil libertarians question the legality of police obtaining cell-phone numbers without a warrant. And while sending SMS messages is free for the Dutch police, it is not free for Dutch service providers - some of which have declined to participate...
Reid had another reason for choosing the Netherlands. The country, says Rohan Gunaratna, an expert on terrorism at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, has become a center of al-Qaeda activity. In September, Dutch police raided houses in Rotterdam and picked up Jerome Courtailler, a French convert to Islam arrested as a suspected associate in the Paris-embassy plot and yet another young European who was known to have attended the Finsbury Park mosque. Dutch investigators now speculate that before he was arrested, Courtailler helped Reid find temporary employment in Rotterdam...