Mi Piace Le Nero - NOT!

Black nativity angers Italy's "White Xmas" party

Is anyone really surprised? Certainly not me after having lived in Northern Italy for a few months. Beautiful country, met some great people I love and came up against some of other kinda racism.

ROME (Reuters) - A nativity scene featuring a dark-skinned Jesus, Mary and Joseph that has gone on display in a Verona courthouse has created heated debate in a city with strong links to Italy's anti-immigration Northern League party.

The nativity's appearance coincides with the League's controversial operation "White Christmas," a two-month sweep ending on Christmas Day to ferret out foreigners without proper permits in Coccaglio, a small League-led town east of Milan.

The Christmas scene -- featuring a dark-skinned baby Jesus dressed in a red shirt and lying in a manger -- was the idea of Mario Giulio Schinaia, the chief Public Prosecutor in Verona.

"History teaches us that baby Jesus and his parents were very probably dark-skinned," Schinaia told Reuters. "This nativity belongs to a universal Christmas tradition that brings together the whole of Christianity in celebration."

The nativity has caused heated reactions in the rich northern town, where resentment toward foreigners has spread as the number of immigrants, particularly from north Africa and eastern Europe, continues to rise.

"It is a useless act of provocation, just like the suggestion not to have a nativity scene at all, in order not to offend Muslims," Northern League farm minister Luca Zaia told one paper, referring to proposals in recent years that town halls and stores should no longer sponsor Christmas scenes.

"Magistrates have other problems to deal with: I hope they spend as much time thinking about lawsuits and trials," he said.

The Northern League, an ally of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with key cabinet posts including the interior ministry, has used its growing political clout to secure tough new laws including making illegal immigration a crime.

League proposals have ranged from separate buses and trains for immigrants to banning new mosques and forbidding the serving of Chinese food and kebabs in towns under its control.

Schinaia defended his black nativity scene, saying it was not intended to be polemical but to encourage debate.

"There shouldn't be a white or black Christmas, only a merry Christmas for everyone, of every skin color, ethnic background and nationality."

(Reporting by Ella Ide; Editing by Stephen Brown) thanks to AfroEurope for the heads-up.

Music Monday

One of the Best Unsigned UK Indy Bands:

The Thirst
Listen to I'm Falling and You're My Everything on YouTube
and tell me you don't feel them!

One of the Best UK Indy Bands of the Moment
Pic: Lead Singer Shingi Shoniwa [yea she's from Zim ; )]

Why is this man not standing trial at The Hague?

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/12/tony-blair-iraq-chilcot-inquiry

The Guardian UK

The former UK prime minister, Tony Blair made a confession during an interview with Fern Britton, to be broadcast on Sunday on BBC1, in which he said he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked. He replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]".
Significantly, Blair added: "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat." He continued: "I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons in charge, but it's incredibly difficult. "

• Omar Bashir of Sudan is still at large for his crimes, Charles Taylor of Liberia is languishing in the cells of The Hague for gross human rights violations. But +1 000 000 Iraqis are dead because of Tony Blair's false case for war; why is Tony Blair a free man and posing as a peace negotiator?

The Plantation has
confined our people with memes.We need to learn how to manufacture and
distribute memes that move people...

Everything else is talk.

- Denmark Vesey, 2009

Speaking In Tongues

Every once in a while it hits me, BLAM! I miss Shona; hearing it, speaking it and being in the presence of it. It's a craving that no other tongue can satisfy and no amount of phone calls home can quite quench. It's suffocating to primarily think and speak in one language if all your life you have been used to speaking and hearing more than one language. In moments like these hearing people speaking Chinese or Portuguese on a bus doesn't speak diversity to me, but alienation. I don't understand thus feel even further from home. I feel like I am out of sync and need to have the language part of my brain taken apart and re-organised so I can think and dream in Shona again. There is only one brain surgeon enough with enough skill and heart to do this; no surgery neccessary just get me on flight.

Mama me waaan' come home!

Feenin' Foodies

lard-filled IVF tubes flow down the oesophagus
like the nation were breeding geese for foie gras;
but the grease breeds disease
and mickey dees' the dopeman

fat feens pay for hits
of e's in numbers and coke,
till the heart's diseased and death's end increased.
while the coroner examines this fat feen,
on another corner a brand new crackhouse opens
selling deep fried chicken to more comatose walkers.

On World Aids Day

This post is in rememberance of all the family and friends I've lost to this terrible disease and to the ones still living positively in spite of it.

Light and Love.