This is a video from the USA, criticizing the role of “Zwarte Piet” in Dutch Saint Nicholas celebrations.
Today, there is an interview in Dutch daily Metro with Member of Parliament Ad Koppejan. He is a member of the CDA, the biggest party in the three party government coalition.
The subject is the Dutch St. Nicholas holiday; Sinterklaas, on 5-6 December. It is an important day for children and others, who get presents then.
The Saint Nicholas celebrations later evolved into US Santa Claus.
In 1850, Jan Schenkman published his influential book on the Saint Nicholas celebration, Sint Nicolaas en zijn knecht.
Though incorporating some really traditional elements, Schenkman was an example of “invention of tradition“.
The original Saint Nicholas tradition was about an Orthodox Christian bishop from what is now Turkey, a friend of children; not an owner of African slaves. While Schenkman wrote that Saint Nicholas owned an African slave.
The restyling by Schenkman and others, among other aspects, had two sides related to sugar: many of the presents for children, later also for adults, were sweets or otherwise contained much sugar.
And from now on, Piet (Peter; Zwarte Piet, Black Peter), as later post Schenkman authors called the black servant of Bishop Nicholas, played a major role during the holiday.
Authors like Schenkman based Piet on (caricatures of) the black slaves then in the sugar and other plantations in the Dutch colonies of Surinam and the Antilles.
Still about 1960, a child opened a book of “traditional” Saint Nicholas songs.
One song line went: “Servant Piet, as black as soot, with a chain around his foot …”
The chain was also depicted in the picture on the same page.
“Mummy, why does Piet have a chain around his foot?”
“Because he is a slave, my child!”
Since about 1960, many people immigrated into The Netherlands from Suriname.
Sometimes, these objections get reactions of the type: “Zwarte Piet does not have anything to do with slavery!” Those defenders of the blackface Piet say that he is black, not because of any African background, but because of clambering in chimneys. Or that he is originally a devil, not a slave of African origin. Or, they say … well, err, maybe it IS a question of complexion. But then, again, nothing to do with Dutch slavery history. Sinterklaas supposedly comes from Spain (though older versions say Turkey, or Italy). And Piet’s dark skin reminds people of the Muslim inhabitants of medieval Spain.
Well, today Mr Koppejan was asked by the Metro interviewer:
Sinterklaas used to be obviously the master, and Zwarte Piet obviously the servant. Piet acted submissively and spoke broken Dutch with a Surinamese accent. Is this a tradition as well?
Koppejan replied:
I do not support a white Piet. It is also no problem to me if he talks with a Surinamese accent. We should have no problems with that. Zwarte Piet should keep on being Zwarte Piet.
Here, blackface supporter Koppejan undermines the points of his fellow blackface supporters. “Nothing to do with slavery”, really? Then, why the references to Suriname, the main country in Dutch slavery history?
‘Mussolini: I’ll build an island and put all the Jews there’
By Haaretz Service
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was a rabid anti-Semite who called Adolf Hitler “a big romantic” and despised the pope, a new book of his mistress Claretta Petacci’s diaries revealed, AFP reported on Monday.
The Corriere della Sera daily reportedly published extracts of the book “Secret Mussolini,” taken from diaries written between 1932 and 1938, on Monday two days before it hits Italian book shops.
While on a boating trip on August 4, 1938, Mussolini talked about the German dictator’s new anti-Semitic laws with his mistress, saying “I’ve been racist since 1921,” according to AFP.
“I don’t know how they can think that I’m imitating Hitler, he wasn’t born yet…” he was quoted as saying. “We must give Italians a feeling of race so that they don’t create half-castes, so that they don’t spoil what is beautiful about us.”
Two months later, on October 11, Mussolini is again at sea with Petacci, when he was quoted as saying: “Those bloody Jews, they should be destroyed … I’ll build an island and put them all there… They don’t even have any gratitude, recognition, not even a letter of thanks… They say we need them, their money, their help.”
Mussolini’s regime was generally considered less ideologically extreme than that of Hitler, who created concentration camps during the Holocaust to exterminate what he considered “inferior” people and races, including Jews.
On October 1, 1938, after the Munich Conference that gave Hitler a slice of Czechoslovakia, Mussolini tells his mistress that “the Fuhrer is very nice. Hitler is a big romantic at heart. When he saw me he had tears in his eyes. He really likes me a lot,” AFP reported.
A “bombshell.” That is the word used by Patrick Karam, the inter-ministerial delegate for equal opportunity for French citizens from the overseas départements and territories, to describe the report submitted to him by the Fédération nationale des Maisons des potes and SOS Racisme.
The subject is an explosive one: the practice of keeping files on the ethnic identity of people seeking housing or a job.
A revelation of the darker side to Walt Disney’s character looking at his racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist tendencies which finally led to a pathological hatred of communists and an active particpation in McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American Activities.
The Danish army has admitted that a leading neo-Nazi and Hitler admirer is serving as a member of the military unit charged with protecting the Royal family.
Daniel Carlsen, aged 19, is a member of the Danish National Socialist movement (DNSB) and has said Hitler is his idol, he is an enemy of democracy and he does not believe the Nazis exterminated the Jews during World War II.
Carlsen, considered by many as the country’s most prominent neo-Nazi after DNSB leader Jonni Hansen, celebrates Hitler’s birthday and wears a Nazi uniform to official functions. Carlsen served a short prison sentence for painting swastikas on walls. On his Facebook site, he calls himself, “White, proud and National Socialist,”and says his favourite film is the 1935 Leni Riefenstahl propaganda film The Triumph of the Will. The openly Nazi party is legal in Denmark and DNSB members can contest elections.
USA: Neo-Nazis and far-right extremists are not only recruiting more openly, they’re being much more public in their full-on expressions of racism, nativism, and xenophobia: here.
Britain: Scout ’shouted death threats at Jewish war veterans’: here.
Similar things are happening among the US’ Czech NATO allies. And not just among simple soldiers; also among commissioned and non-commissioned officers.
Lieutenant Jan Cermak wore the SS Dirlewanger brigade, and sergeant Hynek Matonoha wore the symbol of the 9th SS panzer division Hohenstaufen.
The SS units were the cruelest of German dictator Adolf Hitler’s armed forces, which actively exterminated civil population of occupied countries during the Second World War.
Even today, it is a crime to boast their emblems in the Czech Republic as well as in most European countries, Bartak said. …
Both men, having served in Afghan’s Logar province, were decorated for bravery on Friday after they returned home from the mission.
Prague - The Czech military has sacked soldier Lukas Sedlacek who co-founded and trained the White Justice neo-Nazi organisation, Defence Minister Martin Bartak said today. …
White Justice was preparing terrorist attacks on power plants and unit substations and kidnappings of “Jews in high posts” and the police.
Members of the extremist group were taught to destroy property, blast cars and fight with and without arms.
Britain: Stop The War convener Lindsey German has called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to end the human suffering and deaths in Afghanistan by pulling out the troops: here.
Britain faces a growing threat from violent right-wing extremists operating as “lone wolves,” the country’s most senior anti-terror officer has warned: here.
US anti-war groups have urged their members to launch nonviolent direct actions as soon as the long-expected escalation in Afghanistan is announced: here.
USA: With the massacre at Fort Hood and reports that President Obama is about to approve the sending of 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, “The Good Soldier” arrives at movie theaters in the nick of time. What is needed desperately right now is a shot in the arm for the antiwar movement and this deeply moving documentary about the conversion of five soldiers to the cause of peace supplies it in spades: here.
Gorbachev to Obama: ‘Prepare the ground for withdrawal’ in Afghanistan: here.
USA: Military Families Decry Move to Send More Troops to Afghanistan. “Honor Veterans by Bringing Our Troops Home!”: here.
As Israeli police arrest two settlers charged with assaulting a Palestinian family, Inside Story asks if this is a sign of a more serious investigation into settler violence by the Israeli police.
A resident of the West Bank settlement outpost Shvut Rachel was arrested last month for suspected murder and for his alleged role in a string of attempted murder plots, according to details of an investigation revealed on Sunday after a gag order on the case was lifted.
According to the Shin Bet and Israel Police, Teitel has confessed to most of the allegations against him. …
Teitel, a resident of the northern West Bank outpost, was born in Florida and has moved back and forth between the United States and Israel over the last two decades. In 2000, he returned to Israel to live permanently.
During a search of his home, police discovered rifles, handguns and explosive materials; they were unable, however, to find the gun which he allegedly used to kill the Palestinians.
Teitel was arrested on October 7 in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof, in Jerusalem, after posting signs around town praising the attack on the Tel Aviv gay club.
His posters were signed with the name ‘Shleisel,’ referring to the ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed and wounded a number of marchers during the Jerusalem pride parade a couple of years ago.
Police also found posters in his neighbourhood offering a one million shekel reward to anyone killing a member of Israel’s Peace Now movement, that opposes West Bank settlement activity. …
Teitel has confessed to murdering a Palestinian shepherd near Mount Hebron in 1997 and to killing an Arab taxi driver in East Jerusalem some two months later. He said that he came to Israel precisely to carry out attacks against Palestinians as revenge for suicide bombings.
The National Union of Journalists has called for “tough and urgent” police action in response to the physical violence, intimidation and death threats members covering far-right demonstrations endure: here.
German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk defends racist remarks by central banker
26 October 2009
The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has waded into the controversy surrounding German Central Bank executive member Thilo Sarrazin with an open defence of racist remarks made by Sarrazin in an interview published in a prominent European cultural magazine.
Thilo Sarrazin is a long-time member of the Social Democratic Party and was for a number of years finance senator in the SPD-Left Party Senate coalition in Berlin. Just a few months after his appointment this past summer to the executive committee of the German Central Bank, Sarrazin unleashed a tirade against the poor, the socially deprived and, in particular, immigrant communities in Germany. His interview appears in the latest edition of the cultural magazine Lettre International. (See: “The racist outburst of German Federal Bank executive member Thilo Sarrazin”).
According to Wikipedia, Sloterdijk is an ex devotee of Indian fraudulent guru Osho aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. So, this is not the first time that he does stupid things.
This is a video about Osho aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s commune Rajneeshpuram in the USA.
List of thousands of names of BNP members, along with addresses and phone numbers, published on Wikileaks
…
A detailed membership list of the British National party containing names, addresses and telephone numbers was published on the internet this morning.
The list, which contains thousands of names, was published on Wikileaks, a website that purports to be a clearing house allowing leaks for information to be published anonymously.
A Guardian analysis of the data suggests the BNP had 11,560 members as of April this year, including one peer and several doctors and military personnel. The party appears to have benefited from a surge in female recruits, with one in eight party members now women.
Three of the men put on the UK Border Agency’s (Ukba) first flight to the Iraqi capital last week have told the Guardian they were beaten by British security guards and that no Arabic translator accompanied them.
The commander of Baghdad airport was reportedly so infuriated by the unexpected arrival of the chartered plane on Thursday that he threatened to set fire to the aircraft if it did not leave within two hours. Details of the operation – involving as many as 100 private guards and about 40 failed Iraqi asylum seekers – suggest the secret expulsions degenerated into a humiliating retreat. …
News of the planned removals leaked out last Monday but the Home Office would not confirm the departure until four days later. The United Nations high commissioner for refugees has condemned the decision to return Iraqis to the central provinces of the country because of the risk of suicide bombings, kidnappings and sectarian violence. Until the policy switch last week the UK had only repatriated failed Iraqi asylum seekers to the Kurdish region on the grounds that north-eastern Iraq was relatively safe. Thousands of Iraqis are facing deportation from Britain but the Iraqi government appears to be hardening its line against enforced returns.
Kawa Ali Azad, 33, is back in Colnbrook immigration detention centre near Heathrow after an enforced 6,000-mile round flight and a detour to Italy. Speaking by telephone to the Guardian, he said he had been put on a bus and driven to Stansted airport. “It was like a kidnapping. We had no food for 12 hours. We were kept out of sight at the airport then put on an Italian charter flight. When we arrived in Baghdad, there was an Iraqi officer with sunglasses and eagle decorations on his shoulders. [The British immigration official] started to talk to him but his English was not good so I went to help translate. The British officials didn’t have an Arabic translator.
“[The airport commander] said he had received a message from his boss there was an Italian flight but was never told it was transporting deported Iraqis – otherwise he would not have let it land.
“He said to the immigration official he had two hours to refuel the plane and leave or he would take further action. He would not take responsibility for the Iraqis because of the danger of kidnapping and bombs. The immigration officer asked what ‘further action’ meant and he said would burn the plane with all the people on board if it didn’t leave. ”
When most of the Iraqis were put back on the plane – only 10 were let into Baghdad – relations with the security guards, who had remained on the plane, deteriorated. “The security guards were white English. I was called all sorts of words … I started crying and said I hadn’t done anything,” said Azad, who arrived in the UK in 2002.
“They slapped me on the mouth and handcuffed me. I still have the bruise. I was also spat at. When the plane stopped in Italy, we had to swap aircraft. I heard them talking to Italian security and they said we were a group of terrorists being transported. They put a jacket over my head and I received kicks.”
The second plane eventually carried them back to Stansted.
The security firm, G4S, said it had not received any complaints about the behaviour of its staff.
Families of service personnel killed in Iraq have demanded they be brought “face-to-face” with former prime minister Tony Blair when he appears before an inquiry into the conflict: here.
Two weeks after an Australian customs ship rescued 78 Tamil asylum seekers, the unresolved standoff over their future has focussed attention on the Labor government’s inhumane and illegal treatment of refugees: here.
Lawyers representing a nine-year-old Iranian boy have been desperately fighting to prevent his deportation: here.
And not just 
