Staying on a somewhat Belgian theme here this week. Stromae is a Belgian-Rwandian rapper/artist and this is his breakthrough single. Heard it for the first time last night (shows how much attention I pay to new music) and felt the need to share.
Liberation Day 2010
As with the National Remembrance yesterday, it would be nice to spare some thoughts on Liberation Day as well to those people who remember their liberation from us: the Indonesians, the people of Surinam, the others we ruled/oppressed for longer or shorter periods of time as the Dutch colonial empire waxed and waned and last but not least, our southern neighbours, the Belgians, who liberated themselves in 1830. For too long we have denied the more sordid sides of our national history and a national holiday like today, where we celebrate our own liberation from the German occupation, should be used to acknowledge that we ourselve used to oppress other countries too.
National Remembrance Day 2010
This year, could we please also remember the victims of the Dutch slave trade in Africa, on the plantations in the Caribbean and in Surinam, the victims of our colonial wars in the West and in the East, the people we killed trying to hold on to Indonesia, not to forget those victims we made in the past two decades, as part of US-led attacks against Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan?
It would make a nice change from only remembering the victims of wars we were not responsible for.
UPDATE: and then the two minute silence was ended slightly prematurely by an outbreak of panic, after somebody screamed and a thud was heard in the middle distance. People started running, the queen and other vips were bundled into safety and for a moment chaos seemed to get the overhand. But luckily there was nothing to it: somebody fainted, somebody else screamed, one of the safety fences fell down and that seems to have started the panic.
Police violence at Rotterdam May Day demo
From a posting on Marxmail, an eyewitness account of police violence against this year’s May Day celebrations in Rotterdam:
Here’s some video I shot of the police attacking the Mayday demo in Rotterdam. I realize that police attack demos somewhere in the world every day, but this was rather significant because this demo has been held traditionally (for 30 years I understand) on mayday starting at the city hall in Rotterdam, but this time the police announced that we wouldn’t be allowed to march (supposedly because the sticks our flags were on could be “weapons”) and then told us we had to clear out of the area completely. After moving in and causing people to retreat and forcing us into smaller groups, they attacked the group still in front of the building with clubs, horses, and a dog, arresting 14. I only realized how close I got to being trampled by a horse after watching my own video!
http://www.xs4all.nl/~meisner/1meiRotterdam2010/CLIP0165.AVI
http://www.xs4all.nl/~meisner/1meiRotterdam2010/CLIP0175.AVIWhy the police attacked this time (again, for a traditional demo with a permit) isn’t clear, but might reflect a strategic shift against protest in context of the economic crisis. Or it might just be that they thought they could get away with it, partly since the demo was a lot smaller (about 500) than the usual 1-2000 (due to poorer organizing this year, I think). But this is held every year more or less without incident, so no one expected it. And I understand that the police also arrested people at the Mayday demo in Nijmegen, so this might signal a crackdown on the left and protesting in NL.
I’ve seen the excuse about sticks/flagpoles as “dangerous weapons” used before when police needed some reason to harass a demo, both here and in the UK. It’s absurd, but can be sold to the newspapers. The original poster overthinks the reasons for this police aggression; I doubt that the police has explicitely gotten orders to crack down on political protests. If I had to guess I’d think that it’s a side effect to the Rotterdam police overreacting to what happened at the Hoek van Holland beach party of August last year — where inept policing and rioting football hooligans led to the police accidently shooting and killing an innocent man. Since then the Rotterdam police has become a lot harsher in dealing with potentially dangerous situations and since leftist demonstrations of this kind have always been seen as worrisome by them, it’s no surprise that this happened. Wrong, but not surprising.
Chutzpah
The definition of chutzpah: looking like this man and calling somebody else a hollow-eyed onanist. Bonus: Nick Cohen being tired and emotional at the Orwell Prize award ceremony last year — an oldie but goodie.