The Amsterdam Roots Festival (formerly World Roots Festival) is an annual festival held in June in Amsterdam, which features world music.

On Sunday, the open-air part of the festival was held in the Oosterpark in Amsterdam East. This year there were three South African groups: Jomba Junior a group of high school students from Durban, Zip Zap Circus a "circus school" group from Cape Town, and last not but least the Mahotella Queens from Johannesburg.

The Mahotella Queens play township music from the 80's and earlier. What is amazing is that they started in 1964. All three Queens are around 60 years old, and they are still going strong. They joke that women are much stronger than men, that all the men they've played with have died, but they're still singing.

    

I have posted a gallery of photos here.

This is truly weird:

The Dutch government is trying to reclaim (a reported amount of) 1 million dollars ransom money they paid to Russian kidnappers for the release of Dutch citizen Arjan Erkel who worked for Medecins Sans Frontieres in Dagestan. The Dutch government claims that Medecins Sans Frontieres promised to pay them the money in an "oral agreement". Medecins Sans Frontieres denies being involved in the negotiations in any way, or having promised to pay anything.

The weirdest thing is that, in a statement published on their website, Medecins Sans Frontieres now alleges that Dutch officials demanded payment of the (reported amount of)1 million dollars in cash!

"After Arjan Erkel's release, the Dutch government claimed all credit for it, including having "greenlighted the operation". Soon after, however, the Dutch government began demanding that MSF cover the cost of their deal, even requesting that the payment be reimbursed in cash to avoid public scrutiny."
Medecins Sans Frontieres statement on Arjan Erkel's release

Somehow this doesn't sound like governmental procedure - something's wrong somewhere. Would a government authority really shell out 1 million dollars on an "oral agreement"? Since when do public servants do anything according to "oral agreements"?

Don't just Unbrand America, unbrand the whole world. It's not just an American problem. Although some of the biggest brands ARE American.

For the Netherlands you could add Shell, Unilever, Philips, Albert-Heijn, ABN-AMRO, ING, KPN and several other multi-nationals.

Unbrand America is a campaign by Adbusters.

The Dutch Socialist Party did well in the elections for the European Parliament. We went from 1 to 2 seats (out of 30 for Holland). I had hoped for 3, but being realistic, 2 was a more likely outcome. Especially since the number of Dutch seats was decreased due to the entry of the new EU members.

It was very encouraging that we got 8.4% in Almere. Almere (where I live and am active for the party) is a fairly conservative dormitory town. There is a very high percentage of moderately wealthy people who own their own home, often have two breadwinners, own two cars, etc. (This may sound normal for the USA, but it's upper middle-class in small and crowded Holland). In any case, these are not traditional Socialist Party voters. What's more, in the last European election we got 5% so it was an increase of almost 70%. I think this means that we're doing something right.

Even people who don't vote for us respect us for two things: listening to ordinary people and being honest. Two things that are hard to find in politics these days.

On the election night I went with Nuh Demirbilek to the TV news show covering the election results in Cafe Dudok in The Hague. I met the candidates Kartika Liotard and Frank Futselaar for the first time and I liked them both very much. There's something very natural and almost non-politician like (in the bad sense of the word "politician") about SP candidates.

I've put up an album of pictures here.

Yesterday I drove around Almere putting up "Thank You" posters. The SP is the only party that bothers to thank its voters - something that is much appreciated.

If you're in Holland and you voted for us, thank you!