Artnet: Director of Polish Culture Institute in Berlin Fired for ‘Too Much Jewish Content’

The cultural manager and director of the polish culture institute in Berlin, Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska, was fired this past Tuesday from her position. According to the German left-leaning daily TAZ that broke the story, Poland’s right-wing PiS-led government called for her immediate departure due to her programming, which included “too much Jewish-themed content,” as Poland’s ambassador in Germany Andrzej Przyłębski complained. [...]

In a recent internal assessment of the institute carried out by the foreign ministry, her work received a negative evaluation due to the focus on Jewish themes, and insufficient engagement with social media, the Berliner Zeitung reports.

Earlier this year, Poland’s minister of culture, Piotr Gliński (PiS) called for an end to the “culture of shame” regarding WWII and the Holocaust, and Wielga-Skolimowska’s work has irked the government ever since. [...]

This is not the first time that Warsaw interferes with cultural programming abroad. The Vienna branch of the Polish culture institute was not allowed to work with the Austrian author and journalist Martin Pollack, who had criticized the PiS party. According to the Polish paper Gazeta Wyborcza, 13 institute directors in different countries were fired this past summer. The director of the Madrid branch was criticized for not placing enough focus on the work of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin.

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Political Critique: Adjust to Eviction

While it is within the rights of the buildings’ owner not to prolong the tenants‘ leases, the situation is further complicated by the fact the tenants in question are Roma. There are over two hundred thousand Romani living in the Czech Republic, and roughly half of them are “integrated“, meaning they have a home, have graduated school and have a stable income. Nevertheless, they still face racism on a daily basis. The remaining half is deemed “maladjusted“, ‘inadaptable“ ‘uncivilized”, or, in more accurate terms, socially marginalized.

The City Council has outright stated that Brno lacks the capacity to accommodate dozens of large families and the chances of a Roma family being able to find accommodation in a privately owned building are essentially non-existent. As is, curiously enough, any initiative aimed at actually solving the problem: according to Czech TV, the City Hall claims it contacted the real estate agent while the company in question, Dolfin Real Estate, stated it was never approached. What we have here is a paradoxical dance; the two bodies’ movements are perfectly choreographed to avoid any contact whatsoever, possibly in the hope that the rapidly approaching winter will solve the problem for them, or at least allow the considerably less crowded cemeteries and crematoriums to take part in resolving this housing crisis. The imagery is, obviously, absurd (especially considering the temperature during an average Czech winter) but it shows the typical official response to the problem: close your eyes and hope it goes away. [...]

The leitmotif resounding throughout the Romani housing issues is the omnipresence of racism in our culture. We are not talking about just a couple hundred extremist crackpots or some kind of faceless ignorant mass: racism is prevalent in the system itself. We live in a country where the Vice Premier, who just happens to be one of the most popular politicians and quite possibly the most powerful man in the country, openly denied the Roma holocaust, a country where the deputy ombudsman, of all people, states that refusing to employ the Roma is not discrimination but simply the result of past experience , a country that sends Romani children to practical and special schools for no reason other than „normal“ parents of „normal“ kids not wanting their little darlings threatened by those mean, nasty ethnic minorities. In short, being racist in the Czech Republic is not only perfectly OK, but also fashionable, as it clearly deals a blow in the on-going war against the scourge of political correctness, whatever it may be.

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The Intercept: Growing Far-Right Nationalistic Movements Are Dangerously Anti-Muslim — and Pro-Israel

THE SPECTER OF a growing far-right nationalism anywhere, but particularly in Central Europe, immediately — and for good and obvious reasons — raises fears of an anti-Semitism revival. But at least thus far, the leaders of most of these nationalistic parties — increasingly inspired and fueled by one another’s success — have showcased dangerous animosity toward Muslims, accompanied by strong policy support for Israel and a rhetorical repudiation of anti-Semitism.

Whether from cynical tactical considerations or actual conviction, the most successful leaders of this emerging movement — while unrestrained with their reckless anti-Muslim fearmongering — not only repudiate anti-Semitism in words but are incorporating steadfast support for Israel as part of their policy agenda. And in many cases, the Israeli government — which itself exhibits many of the same far-right attributes as these movements — is expressing support in return. [...]

The same dynamic is seen even more remarkably in France, where Marine Le Pen’s National Front Party — founded by her Holocaust-minimizing father and long filled with overt Nazi sympathizers — has not only purged anti-Semites from its ranks but declared itself steadfastly pro-Israel. For years she has been re-casting her far-right party as pro-Israel based on shared antipathy toward “Muslim extremists,” and news reports in both Israeli and Jewish journals are increasingly describing the receptiveness of French Jews toward voting for her, in large part due to their shared fear of, and animosity toward, French Muslims. These far-right parties are uniformly opposed to any boycott movement aimed at ending Israeli settlements. [...]

Moreover, it is certainly possible for a group or individual to be simultaneously pro-Israel and anti-Semitic. The cynical, grotesque alliance between pro-Israel Americans such as Joe Lieberman, and Jews-are-going-to-hell-once-the-Rapture-comes evangelicals such as the vehemently pro-Israel John Hagee, highlights that paradox. In the wake of the Bannon controversy, The Forward’s Naomi Zeveloff examined this increasingly common dynamic, arguing that “Breitbart News isn’t the only place where anti-Semitism and Zionism go hand in hand. Anti-Semitic attitudes abound in Poland, for example, even as Poland has a strong diplomatic relationship with Israel.” Some Israel defenders are willing to make common cause with potential or even clear-cut anti-Semites if they are also — for geopolitical, religious, or political reasons — pro-Israel.

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Politico: Why Raul Castro is happy Fidel is gone

So what will the newly liberated Raul look like as a leader? He remains as poorly understood today as at any time in his more than 60 years in public life, in large part because he has existed in the shadow of his more charismatic brother. For decades there have been contradictory images of the dogmatic enforcer and the overly sensitive patsy, but the strongest clue as to what kind of leader Raul would be emerged when he took nominal control of the country after Fidel’s illness in 2006. It has been a challenging decade for Raul who often found that his boldest reform initiatives were undermined by his weakened but still meddlesome brother who demanded until the end fidelity to his decades-long revolution. But the economic and social pressures facing Cuba give Raul little choice except to make the dramatic changes that he has long wanted to enact. [...]

Raul was content to be cast by his brother as a cruel hard liner, “more radical than I,” as Fidel once propounded. In fact, Raul was long an admirer of Stalin and Soviet communism; he enjoyed vacationing in the Soviet Union, and made many friends there in military and security circles. At home, in a booming baritone, and at Fidel’s urging, he periodically delivered jeremiads meant to instill fear in the Cuban populace. He was a dependably stern player in every one of Fidel’s political purges. It is also known that Raul presided over executions during the guerrilla years in Cuba in the 1950s, and another, a gangland-style murder by his own hand, in Mexico. [...]

His own term in power after 2006, with the ailing Fidel monitoring and second-guessing his decisions, provides useful clues to how he will assert his power now that he is unencumbered by the lurking threat of his brother’s interference. Raul set out almost immediately to put some distance between himself and his brother. He pontificated publicly about the need for the regime to implement “conceptual and structural” changes. Breaking with one of Fidel’s shibboleths, he told the Cuban people that the American economic embargo was not the source of all the country’s severe economic problems; the Cubans had caused the problems themselves. During his first few years at the helm Raul often complained about Cuba’s gross inefficiencies in agriculture, and hinted that serious reforms would be implemented. [...]

What else might he have in mind? He will likely now seek to definitively implement wider market-friendly economic reforms and government sector efficiencies, while trying to forge an independent legacy. He may revert to emphasizing major agricultural reforms by empowering farmers to enjoy profits. The number of trades and professions permitted to open small businesses may well be expanded. Larger numbers of government workers may now be let go, although for security reasons that will always be risky.

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Atlas Obscura: When Americans Embraced the Bob, This New England Town Had To Make Something Besides a Comb. Enter the Pink Flamingo

It wasn’t always that way. Leominster, a proud town of some 40,000 people, was once the hub of a hugely practical industry: combs. From the time the visionary combmaker, Obidiah Hills, founded his first business there in 1774, Leominster was a hub for this essential item of personal hygiene. In the days before shampoo and indoor plumbing, a Leominster comb, hand-carved out of animal horn and hooves, was only chance many people had to look halfway presentable. Each day thousands of Americans ran Leominster’s finest fine-toothed creations through their oil-spattered, flea-infested scalps. By 1845 there were 24 comb factories within the town’s limits. It swiftly became known as “Comb City.” [...]

In ancient Egypt, the flamingo was considered to be the living representation of the sun god Ra. Whether the ancient god was working through Featherstone is hard to verify, but there was something almost supernatural about the popularity of his creation. Using images plucked from a copy of National Geographic, Featherstone created a plastic bird that was three feet high in hot pink plastic. Typically sold as a pair—with one bird standing upright, the other with its head down—the flamingos became a national obsession. Up until this point the most popular lawn ornament had been the garden gnome. But while the gnome harked backed to the dark fairy-tale forests of Europe, the pink flamingo was an icon of the New World, promising eternal summer and endless sunshine. Perhaps Ra was involved after all. [...]

When Union Products eventually closed down in 2006 it was estimated that they had manufactured over 20 million pink flamingos. Leominster, meanwhile, had been transformed into the capital of the collectible debris of our mass-market culture, the spiritual birthplace of all gimcracks, knickknacks and doodads.

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