Background: the dictator Gaddafi invited 200 and more hostesses during his visit in Italy to teach I-do-not-know-what. As a gift, the girls got 60 euros, water and pizzas and a copy of the Holy Quran.

This picture is presumably taken after the lesson from Gaddafi finished. It is difficult to explain why I do find this picture one of the most shocking pictures I’ve ever seen. It is not the contrast between a holy book and girls dressed for a hot night in a disco: I am not Muslim and I am not conservative.

However, somehow, this picture represents something I do not understand, something going out of my logic. 1. Gaddafi. 2. The Holy Quran as a presence token after a meeting. 3. Girls dressed up to listen to a dictator giving lessons of religion.

…

This is not only baroque. This is not only grotesque. This is far away stronger than any Tarantino’s movie. This is PURE. HORROR. VACUI.

Here is the one classified at the 2nd place …

errata: errata – i s’pose you’d have to class this as post-something if you were in the classification business. post-metal, post-hardcore, post-whatever. what they do is that kindof epic soundscape meets thundering uber-chordage and throaty roar-vox that envy (should that be inveja…) and cult of luna (if they were amphetamined out their swedish heads) and will haven (make up yr goddam mind grady…) do. they’re portugese (as if you could tell…) and really rather good. niftily keeping the right balance between deranged bellows, guitar battery and widescreen ambience. a bit like the brutal stick violence dance of jogo do pau. i like this.  a lot. 

i was totally destroying it: horror vacui - been hearing a lot of this kindof thing recently. feels like i’ve somehow regressed back to my teenage years. nirvana at reading on cd. yo la tengo live in glasgow last night. pavement, sebadoh, dinosaur jr. all playing again. this? this indulges some decidedly tuneful power pop. bit like superchunk or veruca salt. roughed up tunes aplenty. incredibly pleasant (not meant in the pejorative) powerchording and choruses. the radio friendly shit that for some reason never gets played on the fucking radio. makes me want to dig out those old cheap trick records. which is never a bad thing. and even if you don’t like their musical shenanigans there’s a fairly intellectual / amusing emo-boy rant by their lady singer:

male emo-pop bands are laughably effeminate at times in their mannerisms and personal hygiene, to the point where i, a lover of all things feminine, am almost offended by it. androgyny should be an exploration into the metaphysics of gender, but in this case, i feel that it’s just a thinly veiled mockery of women. all girls are to these boys are nameless entries in their lyrical diaries. we break their hearts, we cheat on them, we love them, we fuck them, and sometimes we even get back together with them. as jessica hopper puts it, “our existences, our actions are portrayed solely through the detailing of neurotic self-entanglements of the boy singer – our region of personal power, simply, is our breadth of impact on his romantic life.” our faces are their album art and tattoos. we have doe eyes, long flowing hair, we need validation through our relationships with these boys. they either have us, or they don’t. it makes me want to throw up.

oh and i rather like the band name too.

turzi – and a track i totally dig but know nothing about for some reason. it’s a bit of a curious hybrid, some utterly mental chimera that somehow reminds me simultaneously of goblin, iron maiden, harmonia, guapo and pounding fucking techno. it’s all very exciting and excitable and i suspect a rather sweaty danceable live show to boot. i need more. if you sent this, send more. moar! as the internet kids say.  it’s driving.  it’s pounding.  it’s relentless.  chuck any vaguely sexual metaphor at it you want.  oof.  and i love the fact the french still totally dig prog… 

The virgin looks great, but who told the chancellor this haircut was a good idea?

I am afflicted with art attention drift. After years of loving 19th-century realism, suddenly, after a first visit to the cloisters in New York City, I’ve become enamored of Medieval art. And not the later stuff, when artists were working out the rules of perspective and the craft of realism and coming up with beautiful renditions of the Virgin and baby Jesus blessing some guy with a weird haircut.

No, I like the early work, the cartoony figures, the lack of perspective, and the patterns. Lots of patterns. Because if they couldn’t draw a figure worth a damn, at least they could make beautiful patterns, compulsively covering church walls and painted parchment with animals, people, flowers, leaves, stalks, and bibs and bobs and swirling loop de loops.

James Gurney says this is called Horror vacui, the fear of open space. I don’t know if folks in the middle ages were particularly fearful of open spaces; I’m thinking it might have been more a function of some rich guy saying, “hey, Duke Weligsburdof in the duchy next door has half a wall that’s got paintings all over it. Be cool to have one of those too. I’ve got an empty castle wall here, and the son of the serf in cottage #5 is a pretty good painter.  Let’s fill this wall with pictures so it’s even more chock-a-block full of weird creatures and lovely maidens than Weli’s wall. Then we’ll have a dinner party, and we can all look at it. That’ll make Weli green with envy.”

It was a sure-fire way to impress the guests. In those days, painted, carved, or cast images were rare; there was little to look at other than the pile of garbage outside the south castle window. And church services were no doubt interminably long with that guy with the funny haircut droning on and on and on in Latin. All those intricate portals and tapestries, the crenelated baptismal fonts, the fancy work and bible stories in stone must have been like television for the Medieval man or woman, entertaining their brains while fueling them with stories and propaganda.

Today we are awash with images. We’ve got so many images, so much clutter (in the 21st century, society at large is suffering from horror vacui) that it’s a sign of wealth to have spacious houses empty of all but some uncomfortable furniture and an ugly rug. But nearly every household in America has a television. Sometimes every room in an American house contains a television.

And I suppose, like the complicated designs of Medieval art, television fills a vacuum in folks’ lives.

La expresión latina horror vacui (literalmente ‘miedo al vacío’) se emplea para describir el relleno de todo espacio vacío en una obra de arte con algún tipo de diseño o imagen.

El artista que ha decorado esta tabla no sé si tendrá miedo al vacío, pero seguro que ha metido una cantidad “impagable” de horas en este trabajo. El resultado es una auténtica locura, y seguro que no deja a nadie indiferente. Personalmente, me parece una pasada de tabla. Un poco “extremo” pero rebosante de calidad gráfica. Visto en The cyanide tooth.

An object filling the space just outside the entrance to Kiasma (photo:hanba)

Horror vacui means literally fear of emptiness or dread of vacuum. Such is the title of an exhibition held in Kiasma museum of contemporary art in Helsinki, Finland this summer.

I was impressed with how the artists dealt with the theme. The exhibition halls were filled with all sorts of visual and auditory stimuli which helped the viewers to focus attention on something all the time. In a very fine, peculiar way, the artworks guided us away from an unfocused, empty state. The exhibition hall was not primarily filled by interesting artwork, but by a lack of void. It was as if the objects were displayed due to a compulsion, panic, fear, dread over the thought of emptiness. The artwork was secondary to a primary need to be preoccupied with something.

The exhibition featured three male artists, Markus Copper, Kimmo Schroderus and Jari Haanperä. The artworks were undoubtedly masculine, featuring bolts and steel and the like, voluminous, loud constructions made of metal. I was especially impressed by a sculpture made of two cars interconnected to form an illusion of a single car turning 90 degrees at a high speed.

The exhibition inspired the Buddhist in me to do some meditating for couple of nights in a row. I wanted to “embrace emptiness”, or find a state of nothingness without fearing it. Still, it is interesting to watch how your mind keeps throwing past memories or other images just to keep you busy. Just to keep you from gliding out of focus. The dread of emptiness, horror vacui, I believe is a part of the human condition.  I am happy I was reminded of it through the exhibition.

PS. (I have to become a bit more up-to-date with my so called exhibition journalism.. This particular exhibition closed months ago now..)

PS2. Kiasma is designed by the American architect Steven Holl. In Beijing, Mr Holl’s mastodont housing project Linked hybrid has just opened for the public. I am really fascinated by this project and am interested to see how the inhabitants will use the semi-public spaces in the Hybrid. For more info, click here….

Un puto dia, 24 miserables hores, 1440 efímers minuts. Aquest ha estat el total de vacances que he realitzat aquest any en un estiu que, per a mi, ben poc ha tingut de festiu. He començat a pensar que aquesta estació realment mai ha existit, que tot ha estat un rumor infundat per quatre walpurgis avorrides.

Si ja ho deia Texas a “Carefull what you wish for” : si al més de gener em queixava que estant al atur el temps lliure m’ofegava en un “horror vacui” d’avorriment sideral, en quant vaig tornar a firmar un contracte qualsevol rastre d’oci s’ha esvaït per art de màgia.

I us pregunteu que he fet jo del meu dret a descansar? Doncs l’he consumit en els finiquitos de finalització d’obra i servei des de que, a mitjans de Febrer, vaig començar un tour que m’ha dut per nou empreses d’arqueologia diferents en un veritable huracà de nomadisme laboral on he excavat fons de cabana de l’edat del ferro a Sabadell, realitzat un estudi arqueozoològic de 5.000 ossos en 4 setmanes (rècord mundial!!), dirigit l’expedició a una cova prehistòrica al camp de Tarragona o controlat l’impacte sobre el patrimoni històric de les obres del AVE al pas per Sagrada Família. Fins i tot m’he permés el luxe de marxar de jaciments on, simplement, no m’agradava l’ambient laboral que s’hi respirava.

Potser es que estic atacat de stakhanovisme, aquest moviment social que va succeir als anys 30 a la URSS, consistent en que els treballadors feien hores i hores extra gratis per pur amor a la feina i que, realment, es tractava d’una moda impulsada pel mateix Stalin per tal d’augmentar la productivitat, sense haver d’invertir en tecnologia ni augmentar els sous.

Fins i tot em sento, a voltes, identificat amb el personatge de Sarah Polley al film de Coixet “La vida secreta de las palabras” en l’escena on el seu cap l’obliga a agafar vacances forçades, ja que està rebent queixes i pressions dels sindicats indignats per aquesta renuncia voluntària als propis drets obrers.

Suposo que això succeeix quan algú, com jo, té per ofici el seu hobbie favorit!

En fi! Tan de bo pugui estar molt de temps tan atrafegat com fins ara. Toquem fusta!

PD: Fotografia feta i editada per mi, realitzada al Cementiri de Monjuïc

PPD: Aquest post ha estat editat al contindre informació confosa, suposadament errònia i gratuïtament ofensiva. L’autor del blog demana disculpes per no contrastar els rumors, com tot bon periodista ha de fer.

]]> http://alulagigante.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/da-vida-moderna/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:28:32 +0000 beatrixmiranda http://alulagigante.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/da-vida-moderna/

a sublime existência:

subsistência auto-suficiente,
justificação reflexiva, ou
metalinguagem?

.

.

não -

.

meu voto vai para refinada idiotice.

.

citemos Fellini em seu Otto & Mezzo – é melhor destruir que criar o desnecessário.

I’ve been trying to figure out for a while now why exactly Hogar Clínica San Juan de Dios makes me feel so much heavier than the other two places I go to work. I thought at first it was because the illnesses are more permanent and visible–the children in San Juan have some some of physical disability, one of the boys just got his leg amputated, and lots of them have Cuban splints in their legs to make them grow–but that isn’t really true, because HIV is pretty permanent (Posadita), and Lady’s various crazy diseases (Hospital de Niños) are both permanent and extremely physically apparent. Furthermore, the kids at San Juan are active despite being in wheelchairs, and they give the best hugs ever.

However, working in places like this is always bittersweet, because the more you adore these kids the sadder you are about their misfortunes, and San Juan is the most bittersweet of all. My newest theory on the bitter is horror vacui, or fear of emptiness. The hospital clinic is run by a Catholic order called San Juan de Dios, and functions by donations. Because of mismanagement and over-generosity of the brothers in the past years, the financial situation has declined, and the clinic no longer has the resources to operate at its full capacity. This means that most of the beds in the large hospital are empty.

Posadita is always loud and overflowing, because there are lots of kids and they are all very energetic. Hospital de Niños is always jam-packed–there are never enough volunteers for the number of kids, and we only visit 4 or so salas out of many many many. In San Juan, right now we have only 4 permanent students. They live in a wing of the clinic that could easily house 50 with 3 or 4 bed-bound children. It sucks to grow up in a hospital. It sucks more to grow up in a hospital with flaky or nonexistent parents, and a permanent disability. But to live in a hospital with only 3 other children you can communicate/play with, with large rooms and spacious halls, where the sound of laughter and rolling wheels bounces off the dark empty walls? Very heavy.

On a lighter note, the movie theatre I went to last night to see Transformers 2 was not empty. Also, it was a pretty awful movie. However, Peruvian women laugh a lot, and in very funny ways, so I was entertained.

U srednjem vijeku kaos se poistovjećuje s tzv. horror vacui, tj. strahom od praznog prostora. Horror vacui se manifestira kroz jednolično raspoređivanje pozitiva i negativa unutar polja. Jedan od najreprezentativnijih primjera je prizor Vaganja duša s portala crkve Saint Lazare u Autunu iz XII st.

Na skici su odvojeni pozitiv i negativ, a u završnom crtežu su ponovo spojeni. Oblici koje tvore pozitiv i negativ imaju puno sličnosti (skoro pa dolazi do preklapanja).

Crteži su digitalno obrađeni u photoshopu reguliranjem tonske skale i pomoću filtera cutout.

… pensa che non dovra’ piu’ ricominciare. Perche’ se e’ buona la prima, chi si sarebbe mai aspettato la seconda, la terza… e invece.

E invece ti ritrovi di nuovo davanti ad un foglio bianco, che vuoi riempire in fretta in modo che non faccia poi piu’ troppa paura. E riversi tutto quello che hai tenuto dentro da tempo, e appena appoggi le dita sulla tastiera ti domandi come abbia fatto il tuo piccolo corpicino a tenerle dentro per tutto questo tempo tutte queste parole.

E torna quella sensazione di essere un bottiglia. Una bottiglia di vetro piena di parole. Una bottiglia di latte dimenticata fuori dal frigo. Una bottiglia riciclabile, che la butti via lo stesso, con tutto il suo sangue e i suoi “perche’ no”, ma a coscienza pulita.

No, la prima non e’ andata bene. E neppure la seconda. Ma questa non e’ solo la terza. Questa pare che aspiri ad essere l’ultima, l’ultima proprio. Devo solo riuscire a portare di qua almeno pezzetti del mio passato.

Ah. E ricordarmi di scrivere, certamente.

Morgan turned the pages of the newspaper to the crossword puzzle. She had never done them before in her life. She had no experience, no practice in this exercise. She took up a pencil and began. “1. (across): use the maxilla and mandible.” Four letters. “chew,” she wrote, and then felt hungry. She found her stash of chocolate in the cupboard and nibbled at it while she continued with the puzzle, struggling with the clues. Yet underneath this temporary distraction was the looming anxiety of what she was going to do when the puzzle was finished, when all the squares were filled in, when she laid her pencil down on the kitchen table. What then? What was time going to do with her, with her horror vacui? Would she find something else to do to pass the time, to fill these unstructured hours as the rain fell? Would she open the freezer, bury the fish, and have a funeral in the rain? Or would she give in and wake up the furnace?

huit ans après…

Linea 77

Sesta edizione per l’A13 Sud Festival, in programma il 26 e 27 giugno a Caianiello. Headliner della seconda giornata, il crossover torinese dei Linea 77, sul palco del Campo Sportivo. Intanto sono aperte le iscrizioni per le band emergenti che vogliono esibirsi durante la due giorni.

Nato nel 2003 da un’idea di Davide Laurenza, il festival si propone come obiettivo quello di far suonare in un territorio forse un po’ periferico dal punto di vista degli eventi, artisti di richiamo nazionale insieme a band emergenti. Negli scorsi anni, hanno infatti suonato all’A13 Sud Festival Meganoidi, Zulu e 24 Grana.

Quest’anno, come già detto, gli headliner saranno i Linea 77. Per chi volesse iscriversi invece, non deve far altro che collegarsi al sito ufficiale della manifestazione (www.a13sudfestival.it) e scaricare il modulo. Le iscrizioni scadono il 10 maggio, il costo è di 10 euro a gruppo ed alla fine ne saranno selezionati tra i 3 ed i 6.

I biglietti per i Linea 77 costano 7 euro in prevendita, 12 all’ingresso.

il sito ufficiale

Locandina 2008

“Walter è il PD e se lui se ne va cosa resterà di questo partito ? Probabilmente niente.”.

(Linda Lanzillotta, Corriere)

Ho messo in rete il primo capitolo di Horror Vacui. Seguite le indicazioni nella pagina del romanzo per trovarlo. Buona lettura.

Verkar som …and we smiled blivit för stunden en del av bloggsfären vi inte vill tillhöra. Vi ger oss inte in i deras debatter, deras gemenskap eller ogemenskap. Vi skriver om det som passar oss, om det som händer i våra liv och inte om dagsaktuella politiska frågor som tas upp i DN. Men ibland måste man gå ifrån sina principer, visa gemenskap och att man inte accepterar nazistisk terror, att den inte biter på oss.

Om du säger att du är demokrat, ser dig som motståndare till fascism, är fackföreningsansluten eller medmänniska – tycker jag du ska skänka en slant. För att visa ditt stöd till de drabbade, visa att mord inte tystar.

Decemberinsamlingen
Nu öppnar SAC en insamling till stöd för organisationsenheter och medlemmar som blivit utsatta för attacker från högerextremister.
Vi uppmanar alla, organisationer såväl som privatpersoner, att bidra.

Det är viktigt att vi ger utsatta och drabbade medlemmar allt vårt stöd, och minst lika viktigt att vi fortsätter verksamheten som vanligt.
Högerextrema åsikter är inte något som enbart bemöts under november och december i diverse städer, utan något som utmanas genom långsiktigt arbete, inte minst genom facklig kamp på arbetsplatserna!

PlusGiro: 80 99 23-6
märk inbetalningskortet “decemberinsamlingen

Det här får mig att minnas när jag som tonåring på 90-talet och läste artikel av Michael Alonzo, då ordförande i Ungdom mot Rasism, som handlade om han som ung lyssnat på The Clash – Guns of Brixton (YouTube) men aldrig tänkt i banorna att något som hände i Brixtons hårda förortsmiljö skulle kunna hända i Sverige. Vilket hände, nazister yxade igenom dörren till hans väns lägenhet och de fick fly via taket. Några år senare mördades Björn Söderberg. Jag tog och letade upp artikeln och återpublicerar den här, jag skulle tro att den är från 1998 och postades först i Röda Korsets tidning. Läs den, den är bra.

When they knock on your front door, how you gonna come? With the hands on your head, or on the trigger of your gun?

Tuff text va? Den är tagen från punkrcokbandet Clash, som var mina favoriter när jag var en liten punkrockunge. Jag var väl 17-18 år och sprang runt och trodde att jag var ball ute i den invandrarrika och fattiga Stockholmsförorten Vårby Gård. Clashs text handlade om en hård verklighet jag aldrig hade sett. Det kändes kittlande att lyssna på en text som handlade om rå rasism, insparkade dörrar, pistoler och modigt motstånd. Och trots att texten uttryckligen frågade mig hur jag skulle reagera den dagen dom knackar på min dörr så trodde jag aldrig att det skulle ske, och jag funderade aldrig över hur jag skulle reagera.

Jag är, antagligen precis som du, på ett självklart sätt för demokrati, för allmänmänskliga värderingar och mot rasism. Jag har aldrig på allvar trott at det skulle vara några problem med att tillhöra den “goda” sidan. Om jag skulle komma ut med händerna på huvudet eller med en pistol den dagen de “onda” kom, hade jag aldrig funderat över. Sånt händer inte här. Här är det lätt att vara snäll. De snälla har ju makten.

Men nu har det hänt. Nazister som står utanför min dörr med pistoler. Rasister som ringer hem och säger att de tänker skjuta oss. När jag varit på föreningen Ungdom mot rasisms möten så har det vid flera tillfällen kastats in stenar genom fönstren mitt i natten. En del av ungdomarna blev livrädda och började gråta.

“Kommer de in genom dörren kommer de slå ihjäl oss.”

I tidningen läser jag om hur en elev anmäler en annan elev för att han sprider nazistiska budskap på skolan. Lite längre ner står det att rektorn på skolan inte vill uttala sig om vad han tycker, han har nämligen blivit hotad och rädd.

En vän till mig föreläste om rasism för ungdomar i en skola i Märsta. Efter några dagar, en sen kväll, ringer hans granne på dörren. “Det står några maskerade typer i porten, den ena har ett märke som det står NS Stockholm på, de har yxor och slagträn i händerna, jag tänkte att jag skulle varna dig. Jag vet ju att du håller på och kämpar mot rasism.”

Föreställ dig hur rädd han blev. Föreställ dig hur rädd hans flickvän blev. De visste inte vad de skulle göra, de bara stod där mitt på golvet och väntade.

Snart bultade det på dörren. Någon skrek att de skulle döda honom. De flydde ut genom ett fönster, klättrade upp på taket, under tiden yxade nazisterns sig genom dörren. Som tur var kom mina vänner undan, men lägenheten blev helt sönderslagen och de flyttade därifrån.

Kan du föreställa dig det? Tänk efter en stund i kväll när du sätter dig framför TV:n. Tänk att någon yxar sig igenom dörren för att döda dig. Hur skulle du reagera? Skulle du fortsätta föreläsa, skulle du fly och aldrig mer våga gå emot de mörka krafterna?

Du vet väl vilka de är ute efter? When the door break in, how you gonna come? With the hands on your head. Or ..? Tuff text va? Nästa gång är det din tur!

Svar till kommentarerna efter artikeln
Jaha kära vänner, och eventuella fieder. I förra numret av den här tidningen skrev jag en krönika med rubriken “Nästa gång är det din tur”. För er som inte läste den kan jag förklara att den handlade om hur jag från att enbart ha läst om hur människor utsätts för grymheter och hot, själv blivit utsatt. Jag tyckte det var en intressant tanke att avståndet mellan den drabbade och den som hjälper ofta är så stort mentalt. Om det är svårt för hjälparen att identifiera sig med den som får hjälp, så finns det en risk för att hjälpen missar målet och fyller helt andra behov än de som den hjälpbehövande upplever. Det kan vara en tanke att fråga sig hur man själv skulle reagera när terrorgrupper sparkar in dörren för att hämta son eller far till förhör. Om man, som en del reaktioner på krönikan ansett, inte bör tänka på sånt, därför det är att uppmana till våld. Då har man nog inte förstått sambandet mellan tanke och handling. Det är just de, som när det händer på riktigt, inte går att stoppa. Personligen tror jag det är bra att ställa hypotetiska frågor om förhållningssätt till extrema situationer. På det sättet kan man ta ställning till hur man vill reagera när man fortfarande kan tänka klart.

En sak till. När jag ändå är igång. Flera har hört av sig och antytt eller direkt påstått att jag ljuger om händelser som aldrig har hänt. Ni som läste krönikan minns. Ni vet historien om killens om fick dörren inyxad av nazister, fick fly genom fönstret, etc. (Ni som inte läste förra nr av tidningen har lärt er en läxa, Röda korsets tidning läser man noga annars missar man viktiga grejer) Poliser, journalister, Röda korsare och andra medborgare har hört av sig och frågat om historien verkligen är sann. Händer sånt verkligen i Sverige?

Jag har två kommentar till alla er som tror att det inte kan vara sant.
1. Välkommen till verkligheten, det är inte någon särskilt hemsk historia jag berättade, utan ett axplock ur vad man råkar ut för om man är aktiv mot rasism i Sverige 1998.
2. Jag ljuger inte. Givetvis har jag ändrat små fakta, så att killen inte ska få dörren inyxad igen. Men i sak så stämmer allt. Följande är taget direkt ur polisrapporten: X säger att en granne ringt och varnat honom för ett gäng killar var på väg upp till honom. Så när det ringde på dörren vågade han inte öppna. En kort stund senare började personerna att slå sönder dörren med en yxa. En bekant till honom som heter X öppnade ett fönster och klättrade ut på taket, etc. Polisen lade så småningom ner utredningen och nu ligger den hos diskrimineringsombudsmannen för man vill kolla om poliser agerat diskriminerande. Ni som fortfarande tror att jag ljuger kan höra av er till tidningen, så får ni en kopia av polisrapporten. I övrigt kära vänner och fiender. Glöm inte. Nästa gång kan det vara din tur!

Artiklar i media: DN, SvD, Efterlyst, SR, Expressen, Stockholms Fria, Metro, Arbetaren, Expo, Aftonbladet, Tvärdrag

Bloggar: Dom ljuger, Estabis kommentarer, Partigiani Livornesi Scandinavia, Petter Partikulärt, En sökares hjärta, Acidtrunk, Forever United, Trottens betraktelser, Arbetarperspektiv, Anna-Lena Lodenius, Motbilder, Anders Nilsson, Per-Anders Svärd, Jordränta, Proletärbella, Autonoma Kärnan, Forever United, redundans, Vem som helst, Vardagspussel, Svensson, Pooma, Stockholmsvänster, Job, Bruntbloggen, Acidtrunk, Petter Partikulärt, Syrran, Jacken på lycka, Rilleee, Ivar internationell, Den röda liljan, 1915, Stockholmsvänster, Tjyvsamhallet, Matona, Världen är knullad, vad är nytt?, Mullvaden, SUF Uppsala, SUF Stockholm, Mathias Pavlov, Ohyra, Smith and Wesson, Stockholms punk

Andra bloggar om: nynazism, nazism, nationalism, nationalister, info14, info-14, salem, salem-marschen, sac, facket, fackligt aktiva, syndikalisterna, mord, mordförsök, brandbomb, mordbrand, brott, brottslighet, högerextremism, högerextrema, höger-extremism, höger-extrema | Intressant

Följer Petter och åter-publicerar här SAC uttalande:

1999 mördade nazister syndikalisten Björn Söderberg. Nu har de försökt igen. Två syndikalister från Stockholm – den ene tidigare styrelseledamot i fackföreningen Stockholms LS – och deras snart treåriga dotter tvingades klättra ut från sin balkongen på tredje våningen när nazister satte eld på deras lägenhet.

Fackföreningsmedlemmarna har innan händelsen varit uthängda på den öppet nazistiska sidan Info-14. Nazisterna bakom Info-14 är samma personer som årligen arrangerar en stor nazistmarsch i Salem.

Strax innan klockan 21.00 måndagen 1 december hörde våra medlemmar ett plaskande ljud från hallen.

– Jag såg att någon hällde in en klar vätska genom brevinkastet och förstod på lukten att det var bensin, berättar en av dem. Jag skrek så högt att de inte kan ha undgått att höra: ”vi har barn här inne!”. Bara någon sekund senare tände de på.

I hallen hängde familjens vinterkläder, och det tog bara sekunder innan elden spred sig vidare till köket och vardagsrummet. Att ta sig ut genom ytterdörren var omöjligt.

– Vi fick fira ner vår dotter till grannarna på balkongen under, säger vår medlem. Vi bor högst upp på tredje våningen. Hade vi tappat henne hade hon dött.

Paret klättrade därefter ner samma väg. Bakom dem slukade elden ägodelar, minnen och framtidsplaner.

Våra medlemmar och deras dotter klarade sig mirakulöst utan skador, men det förändrar inte det faktum att någon eller några kallblodigt och överlagt försökte ta deras liv.

För sex månader sedan publicerade den öppet nazistiska hemsidan Info-14 namn och bild på våra medlemmar.

Polisen arbetar utifrån teorin att dådet var politiskt motiverat, och utfördes av samma gärningsmän som två dagar tidigare brände ner det frihetligt socialistiska kulturhuset Cyklopen i Högdalen. Ärendet rubriceras som mordbrand.

Vår medlemmar har i sitt fackliga arbete verkat för antirasism och minskade klassklyftor. För detta skulle de enligt nazisterna straffas med döden.

Nazisterna bakom Info-14 är samma personer som driver organisationen Salemfonden, som den första lördagen i december årligen arrangerar Nordeuropas största nazistmarsch.

– De som arrangerar Salemmarschen är inga ofarliga individer med en lite avvikande åsikt. Det är personer som är ideologiskt övertygade nazister, uppenbarligen kapabla att mörda för sin sak, säger Ola Brunnström från SAC:s Arbetsutskott.

På lördag arrangerar de personer som försökte mörda våra medlemmar en marsch i Stockholmsförorten Salem. SAC uppmanar alla att ansluta sig till Nätverket mot rasisms motdemonstration klockan 12.00.

Låter vi nazisterna stå oemotsagda vet vi aldrig vem de attackerar härnäst.

/ SAC:s Arbetsutskott

Andra bloggar om: nynazism, nazism, nationalism, nationalister, info14, info-14, salem, salem-marschen, sac, facket, fackligt aktiva, syndikalisterna, mord, mordförsök, brandbomb, mordbrand, brott, brottslighet, högerextremism, högerextrema, höger-extremism, höger-extrema | Intressant

I Linea 77 hanno realizzato un video per il quarto singolo estratto dal loro ultimo album “Horror Vacui”. La canzone in questione è “La Nuova Musica Italiana”…un brano che mi piace parecchio e che avevo già segnalato nel volume numero 50 delle canzoni della settimana (suoni-le-3-canzoni-della-settimana-050).

Il video non è da meno ed è in rotazione da poche ore nei meandri del web. Un video-collage di artisti che vede interpretare il brano oltre che dagli stessi Linea 77 anche da nomi come Afterhours, Meg, Subsonica, Caparezza, Casino Royale e molti altri. Un parterre di artisti che rappresentano quella fetta della musica italiana che a me sta tanto a cuore.

Se lo volete vedere dovete andare nel portale di Alice, vi basta cliccare qui: http://altramusica.alice.it/video/linea77-la-nuova-musica-italiana.

Buona visione.

Consider the look of Paris during the reign of Napoleon III, the Second Empire, with all the highly ornamented façades and interiors. French architects used the term horror Vacui – the fear of unadorned surfaces – to describe the style. Why were they afraid of what, since Bauhaus, we love – blank bone-colored walls and open, empty vast volume? We don’t cover everything with opulent rococo crap. We’re cool, and a bit Zen. The meaning of that word, elegance, has certainly changed.

But maybe they were onto something – elegant emptiness is still emptiness. The absence of much of anything can get to you. See that chapter from Moby Dick, The Whiteness of the Whale – “It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be naught.”

That whiteness – the absence of any particular meaning or intention – drove Ahab crazy, with a mixture of dread and obsessive anger. That lack of meaning and intention was what he was fighting (and so was Melville).

Ahab lost. The absurd and beyond ambiguous white whale killed him. He lost heroically or absurdly – your choice. Of course Melville won his battle against the blank lack of meaning in this world – he wrote a book that even since has bedeviled undergraduates in every liberal arts college in the western world.

Of course lots of people get that same horror Vacui – that fear of not just unadorned surfaces, but the fear that nothing means much, really, that things happen without anyone intending evil, or good, or much of anything, and that no one is really in charge of it all.

There’s a lot of that going around these days – late November in America, a new president elected (finally) and the outgoing fellow nominally in charge until the big inauguration ceremony in late January, but not doing much but waxing nostalgic and marking time – and this at a time when everything seems to be falling apart.

Friday, November 21, out here in Los Angeles, sometime before dawn, the Times hit the doorstep with the usual dull thud. Another empty day began. Sure, it’s fine to be retired – no need to rush to get showered, shaved, dressed and organized to rush off to some office miles away and spend the day convincing people you don’t particularly like that you know what you’re doing, and that those who report to you should work hard and be happy, and that those to whom you report should be impressed with your remarkable competence and unflagging enthusiasm. It was always absurd – and it’s good that there will be no more of that. You were careful. You saved, invested, and now you can take your time with the morning paper – black coffee and catching up on the details of the world.

But on the front page, upper right, there’s this:

An intensifying panic has gripped the stock market, sending share prices to new depths and leaving investors afraid that they’ll never be able to recoup their losses. The latest teeth-gnashing plunge Thursday virtually wiped out the remaining gains from the five-year bull market that began in 2002.

Then, down the page, this catches your eye:

For those who have held on, guided by the conventional advice against selling when the market is down, the losses have been staggering. “It’s wiping out all the retirement savings in all the 401(k) plans,” said Bill Buechler, president of Buechler Capital Asset Management in La Jolla. “We’ll have a whole generation of people whose retirement plans have been wiped out.”

Now what? The low-grade fear comes back – it’s with you all the time now. Yeah, your late father was, in his next to last career, a wildly successful stock broker – and you remember what he said. Diversify, stay in Blue Clips, like GM, and never mess with commodities, and run like hell if anyone tries to sell you that fancy stuff like derivatives and whatnot. When things get tough, move to treasuries and money market funds. And buy a house – you get equity you can use and massive tax deductions.

He’d have no idea what to make of things these days – hapless and unlucky GM facing bankruptcy, all the Blue Chips at all-time lows, housing prices dropping so far so fast that no one has any equity, and those overextended are losing their homes to foreclosure left and right. Treasuries now yield next to nothing and money market funds are going belly-up. And the retirement funds… not much will be left soon. Then what?

It’s hard to explain how this feels. You read stories like this in the New Yorker, about a ninety-year-old woman who tried to kill herself when her house was foreclosed – but you’re certainly not there yet. But you understand.

It would take a better writer to capture what, you know, and everyone knows, far too many people feel these days. The retired doctor near Boston – now a published poet, and who now and then leaves comment on this site – does capture it all at her fiction site, Choking on Mice. Read Over the Cliff, and pay attention to the key paragraph:

Her fear was her shadow, her companion. Her universal other spirit, weaving into her mind and body both consciously and through her dreams and nightmares. It had been with her for so long now, she could no longer imagine life without it. It was integrated into her personality. Touch her and she’d startle and tremble. People would remark that lately she seemed a bit “jumpy,” or “nervous.” Because, inside, she felt as though she carried a bomb that was on the verge of detonating. The fear was so intense, and it’s power so devastating if unleashed, she felt it was capable of annihilating her. That is what she believed. So of course, she was very cautious with the bomb. She carried herself gently, so as not to disturb it, or agitate it. She spoke softly, carefully, if at all, worried about waking the bomb, and never raised her voice, or cried. Most of all, she knew she’d never be able to afford a specialist to disarm the bomb. It was hers for keeps, as long as she was alive.

We’re all there now. (Disclaimer: Doctor Vatcher was, long ago, my English student, but her talent is none of my doing.)

But, considering this fear that nothing means much, really, that things happen without anyone intending evil, or good, or much of anything, and that no one is really in charge of it all – and that things are either closing in, or shutting down, or both, can lift now and then. Hope is an odd thing:

Wall Street put a stop to a terrifying decline and stormed higher Friday as President-elect Barack Obama appeared ready to tap the chief of the New York Federal Reserve as the next treasury secretary and hand him the herculean task of righting the U.S. financial system.

The Dow Jones industrial average, which had broken even for the day until news of the nomination leaked about an hour before the close, raced upward and finished 494 points higher, a rally of more than 6 1/2 percent.

The outbreak of buying pushed the Dow above 8,000 – a figure that would have seemed like a nightmare three months ago but on Friday was a relief for Americans who have watched their investments and retirement savings drain away with alarming speed.

In the two previous days, the Dow had lost a staggering 873 points, more than 10 percent of its value, and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index had sunk to its lowest level since 1997.

The turnaround came when word reached Wall Street that Obama was likely to nominate New York Fed president Timothy Geithner, 47, for treasury secretary. Geithner would assume top responsibility for tackling what threatens to be the deepest recession in a generation.

One nomination can do that? Glance at the wording – Tim Paradis of Associated Press – everyone is relieved to be back to the relative safety of just the middle of what seems like an endless, horrible nightmare. Yep – that sure beats the apocalypse.

And this is all about relative fear, as James Surowiecki explains:

The Geither appointment doesn’t solve the interregnum problem, obviously. But it does reassure Wall Street that a smart, capable person – who isn’t Hank Paulson – will be running Treasury, and that Obama is serious about bringing real stability to the markets. Obama is supposedly going to introduce his entire economic team next week, and that will also be good for the markets, since it’ll give him a chance to lay out, even if only in broad strokes, what he plans to do as soon as he takes office. Two months is too long, but markets are forward-looking, and if people get the sense that real change (major fiscal stimulus, spending the rest of the TARP, saving the automakers, and so on) will be implemented in January, it could create a sense of optimism, however fleeting.

Okay – about that interregnum problem. The word means “between kings” – it usually refers to the period in England between 1649 and 1660. That would be between the time Charles I was beheaded and Charles II was restored to the throne – trying out a commonwealth, not a monarchy, the time when Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans, and their thugs, the Roundheads, ran things – not a particularly good time. We get off easy – November 5, 2008 to January 20, 2009 – when Bush, realizing that no one now cares what he thinks and that no one would listen now anyway (and that they had stopped listening to him long ago), and Obama, without the power to do anything until he’s sworn in.

But we asked for it, as Josh Marshall comments:

And it’s not just a rhetorical point. It’s a question worth considering in very real terms. How much would things be different if Barack Obama had been sworn in on November 5th? The question, to some degree, gets at the very different policy perspectives of Bush and Obama. But at least as much, it points to how much things might be different right now if we had an actual president in office – one who had some legitimacy, some level of public approval and, most importantly, knew he’d be able to see his policies through years rather than weeks into the future.

It’s no one’s fault, per se. It’s written into our constitutional structure. But though our real and fundamental problems are profound, I think we’re paying mightily for having no captain at the helm at one of the most perilous points in our recent national history.

Yep – no captain, but this one appointment offers hope. Daniel Gross here explains why he thinks Timothy Geithner is a strong choice for treasury secretary:   

Geithner has a great deal in common with Obama. They’re almost exactly the same age. (Both were born in August 1961.) They’re both products of elite East Coast universities: Geithner was a Dartmouth undergrad and has a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins. Like Obama, Geithner is a citizen of the world. He spent a chunk of his childhood in Asia. (He has “lived in East Africa, India, Thailand, China, and Japan,” his résumé notes.) Both are skinny, fit, high-energy guys with two children. And like Obama, Geithner sometimes appears mismatched to the majesty of his surroundings. Geithner has a quick laugh, a sense of irony, and bounces in and out of rooms at the sedate New York Federal Reserve, a grand fortress in Lower Manhattan.

But he likes the difference:

While Obama abandoned community organizing for politics early on, Geither has stuck with it. Of course, the community Geithner has been trying to organize – with limited success – is the international and domestic financial community.

You can read the details of that – but basically the guy is solid.

He’d better be, given this assessment from the NYU economist Nouriel Rroubini:  

The good news is that America has just elected a president with leadership, vision and great intelligence.

However, Obama will inherit an economic and financial mess worse than anything the U.S. has faced in decades: the most severe recession in 50 years; the worst financial and banking crisis since the Great Depression; a ballooning fiscal deficit that may be as high as a trillion dollar in 2009 and 2010; a huge current account deficit; a financial system that is in a severe crisis and where deleveraging is still occurring at a very rapid pace, thus causing a worsening of the credit crunch; a household sector where millions of households are insolvent, into negative equity territory and on the verge of losing their homes; a serious risk of deflation as the slack in goods, labor and commodity markets becomes deeper; the risk that we will end in a deflationary liquidity trap as the Fed is fast approaching the zero-bound constraint for the Fed Funds rate; the risk of a severe debt deflation as the real value of nominal liabilities will rise given price deflation while the value of financial assets is still plunging.

This is the bitter gift that the Bush administration has bequeathed to Obama and the Democrats.

It seems the retired doctor near Boston was writing for many of us all.

The Nobel Prize winner in economics, Paul Krugman, says that this not only seems like the Great Depression again, but in regard to who is in charge, we’ve been here before:

There is, however, another and more disturbing parallel between 2008 and 1932 – namely, the emergence of a power vacuum at the height of the crisis. The interregnum of 1932-1933, the long stretch between the election and the actual transfer of power, was disastrous for the U.S. economy, at least in part because the outgoing administration had no credibility, the incoming administration had no authority and the ideological chasm between the two sides was too great to allow concerted action. And the same thing is happening now.

But this is a bit different:

It’s true that the interregnum will be shorter this time: FDR wasn’t inaugurated until March; Barack Obama will move into the White House on Jan. 20. But crises move faster these days.

That is the whole problem:

How much can go wrong in the two months before Mr. Obama takes the oath of office? The answer, unfortunately, is: a lot. Consider how much darker the economic picture has grown since the failure of Lehman Brothers, which took place just over two months ago. And the pace of deterioration seems to be accelerating.

Most obviously, we’re in the midst of the worst stock market crash since the Great Depression: the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has now fallen more than 50 percent from its peak. Other indicators are arguably even more disturbing: unemployment claims are surging, manufacturing production is plunging, interest rates on corporate bonds – which reflect investor fears of default – are soaring, which will almost surely lead to a sharp fall in business spending. The prospects for the economy look much grimmer now than they did as little as a week or two ago.

Yet economic policy, rather than responding to the threat, seems to have gone on vacation. In particular, panic has returned to the credit markets, yet no new rescue plan is in sight. On the contrary, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, has announced that he won’t even go back to Congress for the second half of the $700 billion already approved for financial bailouts. And financial aid for the beleaguered auto industry is being stalled by a political standoff.

How much should we worry about what looks like two months of policy drift? At minimum, the next two months will inflict serious pain on hundreds of thousands of Americans, who will lose their jobs, their homes, or both. What’s really troubling, however, is the possibility that some of the damage being done right now will be irreversible. I’m concerned, in particular, about the two D’s: deflation and Detroit.

As with Cromwell, the middle period could cause irreparable damage, or as Digby says:

Irreversible things happening over the course of the next two months should scare the hell out of us and yet sometimes I watch what’s happening with the sense that we’re all speaking underwater. Maybe that’s how it always is when you’re in the middle of a complicated, unfolding crisis. But it would certainly be reassuring to know that those who are in charge were putting everything they had into dealing with it. Holding their breath until the new president can take the reins has no actual effect on events.

That is what it feels like – speaking underwater. And things just keep getting worse – Citigroup, the second-largest bank in the United States, with more than two trillion dollars in assets, is going south – a crisis in confidence has wiped out half its market value in just three days. Either a huge bailout is coming or they’re gone.

See Kevin Drum here:

Back in the hazy days of early 2008, Countrywide failed. But hey – they were hugely exposed to subprime mortgages, so that was hardly a surprise. Don’t read too much into it. Then Bear Stearns failed. But they were the weakest of the investment banks and had unusual derivative exposures. The others were probably OK. Then Fannie and Freddie failed. But they were GSAs. And Lehman Brothers went under. But Richard Fuld had really screwed the pooch, and the federal bailout plan would keep the other investment banks OK. But then Merrill got eaten, and Morgan and Goldman turned themselves into bank holding companies. No more investment banks. But at least the big money center banks were basically OK, right?

So tell me: now that Citigroup seems to be on the brink of failure, what are we supposed to think? Is anyone safe? Is Brad DeLong right, and full-scale Swedish style nationalization is the only real option still open to us? Does Congress really want to go into recess without passing some kind of major stimulus package before January 20? Really?

Brad DeLong, the noted sensible, moderate center-left economist from Berkeley does say it is time to nationalize Citigroup:

No real point to merging it into JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America. And it is definitely too big to fail.

Who wants to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Citigroup?

Should the government just run the damned bank? Citigroup could just merge with Goldman Sachs. Felix Salmon explains how that might work – “Nothing’s unthinkable in this market, not even the idea that you can tie two rocks together and hope that they float.”

Oh, and by the way, John Quiggin thinks Switzerland is about to go bankrupt.

It all comes back to the good doctor’s short story – that fear that’s always with you – things are falling apart, you control nothing, and it’s all you can do to keep yourself from exploding. Or it’s fighting the white whale – your rage against the blank powerful force of nature that intends nothing, really.

Or it’s, more basically, horror Vacui – the dread you feel when there is simply nothing there.

PROJECTS | Exhibition Design | JPS +MMA (ReD) | 2007
Invited by curator Hans Ibelings and the Netherlands Architecture Institute / NAi, ReD designed the “Horror Vacui – Urban Implosions” exhibition, which was presented at the 1st Lisbon Architectural Triennal as the official representation of the Netherlands. The theme of the exhibition -Horror vacui- refers to the idea of the fear of emptiness, and has roots in visual arts history.  Invited by curator Hans Ibelings and the Netherlands Architecture Institute / NAi, ReD designed the “Horror Vacui – Urban Implosions” exhibition, which was presented at the 1st Lisbon Architectural Triennal as the official representation of the Netherlands. The theme of the exhibition -Horror vacui- refers to the idea of the fear of emptiness, and has roots in visual arts history. In the field of architecture and the city in particular, the curator describes it as a concept that represents a model of growth towards the full occupation of empty spaces (not expansion), which illustrates the process undertaken by the construction of cities in Holland. Invited by curator Hans Ibelings and the Netherlands Architecture Institute / NAi, ReD designed the “Horror Vacui – Urban Implosions” exhibition, which was presented at the 1st Lisbon Architectural Triennal as the official representation of the Netherlands. The theme of the exhibition -Horror vacui- refers to the idea of the fear of emptiness, and has roots in visual arts history. In the field of architecture and the city in particular, the curator describes it as a concept that represents a model of growth towards the full occupation of empty spaces (not expansion), which illustrates the process undertaken by the construction of cities in Holland. 

In the field of architecture and the city in particular, the curator describes it as a concept that represents a model of growth towards the full occupation of empty spaces (not expansion), which illustrates the process undertaken by the construction of cities in Holland.

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