After waging a battle against Christian right-wing sect Faderhuset for several years, recent decisions in both the Copenhagen City Court and the National Court has ordered the current occupiers of Ungdomshuset out on December 14th, 2006. This decision and the process through which it was made is hotly contested.
This is obvious through both extensive coverage in mainstream social democratic newspapers like Politiken and in how opposition from the centre´s users more recently spilled over into street fighting when police attacked ( 1 ) a Reclaim the Streets demonstration.
This interview published on Indymedia was carried out during their 24th birthday party which was from the 25th to 29th of October. It tries to go into some of the recent history around the Ungdomshuset court saga and how the future is likely to pan out for a building that remains highly emblematic as a symbol of the left overs of the Northern European autonome scene.
Friday 5 January 2007
Bolvian Land Reform: La Paz´s Streets Become A Theatre of Power.
Hurriedly returning from negotiations with the Shell executive in Holland, Evo Morales last night granted accesion to a law of agrarian reform leading many of La Paz´s morning tabloids to carry headlines claiming he had declared war on the latifundia dominating the country's system of land distribution. In the other Bolivia of Santa Cruz and Beni, regions dominating 80% of the Bolvian economy, as little as 14 families hold over 3m hectares of unproductive grounds in their hands. This new land reform facilitates removing this land from idle hands and redistributing it to campesinos, similar perhaps to legislation facilitating the placing of unproductive factories into the hands of workers in Argentina. The passing of the law was accompanied by the arrival of marchistas from across the country as an excercise in...continues on Indymedia.ieGoing back to the Rossport Solidarity Camp gathering in June on Indymedia readers can find an interesting interview with Jose Sagarnaga, from La Paz in Bolivia, who is active in the London based Bolivia Solidarity Campaign. Two blogs both taking their names from Eduardo Galeano and worthy of note for their coverage of where power and social movements clash in Latin America are Upsidedownworld and Openveins. Pay attention to both of them for more.
Alec Empire Interview: "The Iraq war is an ongoing nightmare. Doing politics like this has no future."
With the would be 'Sir' Bonos of the world doing a wonderful job as the soft, recuperating face of global governance, its easy to be cynical about the space where politics and music combine. Still, few artists spring to mind that can rival the continued enthusiasm of Alec Empire for pushing the boundaries of contemporary music to incorporate radical politics. As a techno innovator responsible for the emergence of the digital hardcore genre, Empire was a figurehead to a generation of German experimental artists emerging in the wake of the Berlin Wall's collapse through the creation of his Digital Hardcore Records label.
Starting off within the punk scene fronting bands like Die Kinder, Empire eventually grew disillusioned and moved towards the emerging rave scene. During the turmoil of re-unifaction the bubbling techno scene was seizing ware houses in the east of Berlin for massive parties, linking it to a long standing autonome squatting scene that was spreading eastwards from its traditional bastions in areas like Kreuzburg.
Empire's political radicalism made him antagonistic to the E-fuelled, loved up, utopian culture that was all over the techno scene like a rash. Outside skinhead groups, cushioned by a renewed German nationalism, were fire-bombing migrant centres and organising pogroms while the police stood back and watched. As a forceful rebuttal to apolitical rave scene Empire formed the seminal Atari Teenage Riot. Involvement in the anti-fascist movement came to heavily define the band, even late into their career. One viral video popular among fans on Youtube features the group playing off a truck at a Mayday anti-fa march in Berlin in 1999. Screaming the lyrics of an early song suitably called 'Start the Riot,' the band implore the crowd to do just that - as they drive straight into the heart of escalating ritualised conflict with police. This was a group after all who believed 'riot sounds, produce riots' and they certainly sought to test it when given the chance.
Atari Teenage Riots first full length album Delete Yourself stands head high as a musical document of the intense political struggles and debates that emerged in post-reunifaction Germany. Atari Teenage Riot weren't just an angered, aesthetic reaction to the loved up boredom of rave or a desire for a scene that actually engaged with the realities of rising unemployment and accommodation shortages. It was a deliberate attempt to politicise and organise within a subcultural milieu. Atari Teenage Riot and Empire pioneered the digital hardcore sound of sped up break beats, metal riffs chuggy enough to put Slayer on the run and chanting punky vocals interspersed with samples from film and ainme. If you can imagine the dress up sloganeering of the early Manic Street Preachers ram raided by a German black bloc armed with trolleys full of drum machines and samplers - then you have some idea of what Atari Teenage Riot sound like. Coming to me at the time through the pages of NME, this was an early teenage musical revelation. The combination of two such distinct sounds, previously only sketched on The Prodigy's epic Music for the Jilted Generation now all sounds a little musically dated but an indelible experimental template was in place.
A trip organised by Beastie Boy's operated Grand Royal Records began a process of filtering DHR material out on limited releases stateside. Eventually the rave new world of the Berlin underground wound down around them and ATR found themselves competing on the stages of the big summer festivals alongside the likes of Nine Inch Nails and a whole plethora of bands still hanging around in the post-grunge wake. In the US they became a pre-cursor to that peculiar wave of stateside adoration of UK big beat that saw acts like The Prodigy dominate the albums charts there through the cartoon punk of Fat of the Land. Just before the blockades of the Seattle WTO opened up new constituencies for their music within an actual, growing movement , personal tragedy struck as band member Carl Crack died of a drug overdose and the Atari Teenage Riot project was more or less wrapped up.
In this exclusive interview for Indymedia.ie Alec Empire discusses the origins of Atari Teenage Riot amidst rising Nazi attacks in the early 1990's, experimentalism and conservatism in music, his future projects and much more besides.
Alec Empire will deliver a DJ set courtesy of Kaboogie at the Underground in Kennedys on December 29th. Kaboogie should be familar to Indymedia readers for recently doing musical combat with fundraising regulars Porco Dio in a mash up of scenes in aid of Indymedia Ireland. The Empire gig starts at 9.30pm and goes until the wee hours. Support will come from NIHI, K.AL.P.O.I. and Super Extra Bonus Party. There'll be a 12 bip hit on the door for entrance.
Starting off within the punk scene fronting bands like Die Kinder, Empire eventually grew disillusioned and moved towards the emerging rave scene. During the turmoil of re-unifaction the bubbling techno scene was seizing ware houses in the east of Berlin for massive parties, linking it to a long standing autonome squatting scene that was spreading eastwards from its traditional bastions in areas like Kreuzburg.
Empire's political radicalism made him antagonistic to the E-fuelled, loved up, utopian culture that was all over the techno scene like a rash. Outside skinhead groups, cushioned by a renewed German nationalism, were fire-bombing migrant centres and organising pogroms while the police stood back and watched. As a forceful rebuttal to apolitical rave scene Empire formed the seminal Atari Teenage Riot. Involvement in the anti-fascist movement came to heavily define the band, even late into their career. One viral video popular among fans on Youtube features the group playing off a truck at a Mayday anti-fa march in Berlin in 1999. Screaming the lyrics of an early song suitably called 'Start the Riot,' the band implore the crowd to do just that - as they drive straight into the heart of escalating ritualised conflict with police. This was a group after all who believed 'riot sounds, produce riots' and they certainly sought to test it when given the chance.
Atari Teenage Riots first full length album Delete Yourself stands head high as a musical document of the intense political struggles and debates that emerged in post-reunifaction Germany. Atari Teenage Riot weren't just an angered, aesthetic reaction to the loved up boredom of rave or a desire for a scene that actually engaged with the realities of rising unemployment and accommodation shortages. It was a deliberate attempt to politicise and organise within a subcultural milieu. Atari Teenage Riot and Empire pioneered the digital hardcore sound of sped up break beats, metal riffs chuggy enough to put Slayer on the run and chanting punky vocals interspersed with samples from film and ainme. If you can imagine the dress up sloganeering of the early Manic Street Preachers ram raided by a German black bloc armed with trolleys full of drum machines and samplers - then you have some idea of what Atari Teenage Riot sound like. Coming to me at the time through the pages of NME, this was an early teenage musical revelation. The combination of two such distinct sounds, previously only sketched on The Prodigy's epic Music for the Jilted Generation now all sounds a little musically dated but an indelible experimental template was in place.
A trip organised by Beastie Boy's operated Grand Royal Records began a process of filtering DHR material out on limited releases stateside. Eventually the rave new world of the Berlin underground wound down around them and ATR found themselves competing on the stages of the big summer festivals alongside the likes of Nine Inch Nails and a whole plethora of bands still hanging around in the post-grunge wake. In the US they became a pre-cursor to that peculiar wave of stateside adoration of UK big beat that saw acts like The Prodigy dominate the albums charts there through the cartoon punk of Fat of the Land. Just before the blockades of the Seattle WTO opened up new constituencies for their music within an actual, growing movement , personal tragedy struck as band member Carl Crack died of a drug overdose and the Atari Teenage Riot project was more or less wrapped up.
In this exclusive interview for Indymedia.ie Alec Empire discusses the origins of Atari Teenage Riot amidst rising Nazi attacks in the early 1990's, experimentalism and conservatism in music, his future projects and much more besides.
Alec Empire will deliver a DJ set courtesy of Kaboogie at the Underground in Kennedys on December 29th. Kaboogie should be familar to Indymedia readers for recently doing musical combat with fundraising regulars Porco Dio in a mash up of scenes in aid of Indymedia Ireland. The Empire gig starts at 9.30pm and goes until the wee hours. Support will come from NIHI, K.AL.P.O.I. and Super Extra Bonus Party. There'll be a 12 bip hit on the door for entrance.
Memories of the 'Dirty War' Reawakened in Argentina
The disappearance of Julio Lopez, an aging former political prisoner and important state witness in the trial of a former police investigator found guilty of human rights abuses electrified the social movement in Argentina back in November. Despite mobilisations and the appearance of graffiti demanding action from the Kirchner government all over the capital, there are now further hints of present day dirty tactics by police connected to the former dictatership. On the same day that Spain resolved to arrest former police officer and alleged death squad leader Rodolfo Almiro, a second disappeared witness in trials against military officers - Luis Angel Gerez - suddenly reappeared. This reappearance comes amidst widespread claims that hundreds of threats have been made against human rights and social movement activists in the capital and across the country, as usual Upsidedownworld.org has the latest...
'Que Se Vayan Todos': Of course, that slogan is still heard but more as a wish than as a distinct possibility
'Que Se Vayan Todos': Of course, that slogan is still heard but more as a wish than as a distinct possibility
The hunt for Red October...
Without any of the heightened galmour of context, it'd be easy to launch into a Brad Will stream of consciousness on Buenos Aires. So over come are you with the haunted whispering of a movement some rushed to call the most important working class uprising since Paris 1968. As the barricades of Genoa passed away in our memories as that last great summer of anti-capitalist hope
In Palermo there are some houses vandalised hastly, with the term 'the proles will be back' these are rich houses the think aylesbury roads as a point of refernce for the porteno social scale.
Motoqueros gave help during the fighting that engulfed the Plaza de Mayo during the December days, couriering rocks to the front and the injured to the back.
AST, the assemblea de San Telmo
Populated by bike couriers and the ever present dreadlocks that seem to mark them out globally.
A run down bar, the source of scores of grafitti scouring the area and the city?
Meat ball stew and heavily creamed, mashed potatoes served alongside a thin soup, some bread and a carmelised apple for desert. Served by a bald, pot-bellied man with a blue overoatt with a patch consisting of a cirlced 'A' with comedore populaire emblazoned around it in a half arch.
Beside us a twenty something year old woman and an older lady hold conference with an agitated family gathered around an old school table that looks like it passes for a reception. Behind the old table, cardboard boxes are legion, packed and tidied the fruit of the carteneros evenings in the dust of daylight and night and the space where third world survival collides with the first world of high street shopping fistricts. In the weeks before we arrived a law was introduced banning the collection of cardboard as the informal economy was undercutting official business.
Ahorrista graffitti all over the banks
A lot of graffitti commemorates the victims Lopez and Vegas, but not mere passive victims but activists in the autonomous movement of the unemployed,
The gap between housing along the motorway on the way into Buenos Aires, these Miserable towns 'villas'
Posters for the striking telefonica lockout - autogestion media - streams of street art - the permently walled state pariliment - barricades framing Hospital strike graffitti - cuts go back to economic minister Cavello
Comedor Comunitario
The asamblea popular Plazo Dorrego - selling handbags through the window to tourists
Centro de Jubiladis, Nuevo Horizantes - these old women sit around in a circle and its a false dawn as the term retirement comes to mind.
Across the city on the voluminous subway, as scours of kids selling religious medallions hand them out to you and pour luxurious description on their magic before gathering each and everyone back up again and hopping on to the next carriage.
Betty, a twenty two year old from the neighbourhood who became involved in the movement and stuck with her assembly. described the situation with the aborition laws (insert wikipedia'd info here) , then how the day after the pickateers were shot the neighbourhood opened up the place, an old factory used for freeze storage and then closed down - some 24 year old businessman bought it out before it collapsed and just left it there.
Veggie food delivered veggie milansea a breaded over (discuss micro enterprises and how it followed you all over city) - screen pressing tee shirts for a local business and handicrafts to be sold on street stalls, handicraft jewellry seems a prime diet of the informal economy, some chilenos hippies making a trip to La Paz to stock up their ruck sacks and sell them back in the bohemion market that gathers around Snatiagos art museum every Sunday.
Severed Head of State makes a sharp contrast to the sleazy mid 1990's techno steming from the back packer party central that is our hostel FOR THE FIRST TIME A BACK PACKER TOURSIT DESTENTION ON A MASS SCALE
In the Zizek Club down in San Telmo, the urbane consumer class dish out 10 pesos to listen to a DJ from the states dance Pee Diddy style, yelling ' i do it all hour like Austin Power' while a band called Maetimatike encourage them to 'bombo claap - clap your hands.'. In the sort of early milenium street wear, that meant leaving one tracksuit bottom leg up regardless if you had no intention of cycling a bike
Americans in our hostel were dishing out 40 club for club in Palermo
National rehabilition around the acceptance of the mothers of plaza de mayo
the racial aspect of it is hard to ignore, with many assumed to a third world existence moments away from others opulently living up a predominantly, white and rich hertigage.
All of the assemblies we visited featured the same poster for a Lopex demo, all of the m that is apart from the punk one which seemed critical of any discourse that engaged with the state at allowed
University party and student elections, turly like walking into a scene from a movie on 1968, this was student revolution as Hollywood imagined it. Over sized pint glasses for your scoops and and chairs piled against a door more for storage than anything bringing to mind the spirirt of occuaption. The Assamblea over at Medrano would have nothing to do with it.
Who worked within the assembly.
Assamblea Popular Plaza Dorrego, occupied on January 22, originally met in the tourist square famed for its massive tango sesssions
sitting in the restaurants with kids selling stickers
A gernal prior to the 'dirty war' said 'we are going to have to kill 50,000 people, 25, 000 subversives, 20,000 sympathesiers and we will make 5,000 mistakes.'
Not a new struggle goes back to the weeks of riots in Chubet in Patagonia, if it is a struggle against neo-liberal hegemony
the idea of "Fixing things with wire."
Away from the maddening crowds and in a bar called La Tanguerra De Roberto over near Plaza Almagro, popuarl with local leftists and Americans popping into study the movemnet for dissertations at the unviesrity as well - the cartenero collection point, dusty old trucks straight out of the old opening credits for the beverly hill billies cuts across the romaticised idea of autonomy in the informal economy
Tango, an emo laced latin tales of love lurching straight from the heart.
The petrol station outside covered in banners proclaiming 'two meso since NAFTA' '2 meso since Sueldo'
Our companions explains that this site is not as common as it once was. Bus station near Ritmo, CUBA MTD 'Libertad a chaco Berroz!" another political prisoner, amongst the many while the state takes up the discourse of the dirty war to salviate the opposition movements. So its on to an Andesmar bus, with reclining leather chairs and a world away from the chicken bus tales of Raymor Ryan.
The two murdered picqueterros, Dario Santillan and Maxi Kosteki appear in stencil form like patron saints of a whispered movement. You hear its echoes everywhere, but you have yet to chase it down.
The FORA building, stuck agitated in a sense of its own collosoll history. Tiny museum but an absurd collection of an archive, massive backing board , footage of a direct action and attempted land occupation by sections of the housing movement. Discussions among many there, including some recognisable faces from one of the assemblies we had visited on the actual status of the movement. Then it was Super Okupidos, theis dreadful documentary or early peice of riot porn from the spanish end of the autonomous movemnet, about these suposedly super powered Squatters. Moved between badly choreographed street stunts designed for the gilm and a tale of resistance to eviction.
It'd be nice to flesh and legitimise my own thoughts by wrapping them around some choicely selected replies by the interviewee as a justification and a cushion, that's what real journalists out there in the grown up world do I hear. Instead I've opted instead to lash it up here, good and proper Indymedia style with not a second to spare, not a glance to editing.
Biblioteca Popular Jose Ingenieros www.nodo50/bpji over on Ramirez de Velasco
The price of a pair of converse?
drop out hippy movements
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