tres belle, si fucke

woot woot! it's gonna be so sweeeeet. Make something nice, something interesting, something that takes you all week to make, then give it away, watch somebody enjoy it, know that you would do it all over again if you had to. It's like burning man, you make something incredible knowing it is temporary. But maybe we can build community at the same time, hang out, keep warm, keep in touch.
We're going to have balloon orchestras, dance dance revolution, way too much food, twister, movie projections, and hopefully lots of nice, easy times.
Come one, come all.

and then the next night is Freek Show:
[ rave.ca ]

Robo/tek V.7

[english below]

Music: Jan Pienkowski (Live), Cyan, Meek (Live), illparé
Visuals: Fluid and beewoo

Date: jeudi, 19 janvier 2006 :: 19h00 :: GRATUIT

Les robots sont de retour ! ! ! Après une coupure de 3 mois, nous sommes de retour avec une nouvelle liste d'artistes. C'EST UN RENDEZ-VOUS!

Robo/tek

La série de Robo/tek fouille le spectre multicolore de la musique techno. Au cours des années, la techno a étiré ses frontières et s’est avec succès alliée à d’autres genres de musique comprenant la musique house, breaks, électro, jazz, opéra, musique du monde, classique et contemporaine. Robo/tek entreprend de montrer la musique techno sous ses nombreuses formes, allant du subtil au romantique, de l’expressif (et parfois expérimental) à l’engageant, de l’agressif à la pleine charge émotive.

Robo/tek, présenté par Jan Pienkowski et Cyan, est une réunion d’artistes qui échangent leur perspective musicale sur la musique techno et partagent leur voyage avec le public. Robo/tek est également consacré à l’exploration visuelle de la technologie et à ses liens avec le monde qui nous entoure. Avec le VJ résident Fluid, les artistes visuels emmènent les spectateurs dans un périple de découvertes et de redécouvertes.

BIOGRAPHIES

Jan Pienkowski [ ]

Compositeur, musicien, designer sonore, DJ et physicien, Jan Pienkowski écrit et performe avec un son qui reflète ses expériences variées. De sa formation électroacoustique et de son amour de la musique du monde provient un mélange particulier de sons mécaniques, d’espaces acoustiques et de thèmes ethniques. Ses projets en théâtre (DIALOG) et en danse A.R.M. avec le chorégraphe Nikolas Dixon), quant à eux, l’ont aidé à développer un flair pour la mise en scène et les rhytmes subtils.

Les performances de Jan traversent le Canada, les États-Unis, la France et Hong Kong. Son dernier projet de 2005, Shiva avec VJ Nokami, a été montré aux festivals à la Thaïlande, à l'Allemagne, au R-U, à la Suède, à l'Autriche, à la Roumanie, à l'Italie, au Portugal, à l'Espagne, au Brésil, à l'Argentine, aux Etats-Unis et au Canada, avec l'Inde finalement étant ajoutée à la liste de pays pour 2006

Jan est aussi très actif sur la scène montréalaise avec des spectacles aux festival Black & Blue, festival Montréal en Lumière, Fantasia, Fringe/Pop et Divers/Cité ainsi qu’à Tangente, Agora Festif, Exit. Il fait également des apparitions régulières au U Lounge, Saphir, Luba Lounge et Green Room. Les mixages réalisés par Jan ont été diffusés sur Proton Radio à New York, Clubland, Underground et 92.5FM à Chicago, et CKUT 90.3 FM à Montréal

Jan ajoute à son expérience de musicien électronique en collaborant avec des solistes (saxophone, violon, voix), des artistes visuels, des peintres et des danseurs. Il organise des soirées et performe souvent à la SAT, ayant participé au premier technOpéra (Turandot) avec les chanteurs de l’Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal, à Incidents improvisés, un mélange de Schubert et Chopin avec des structures électroniques et à [mix_sessions] sur une base régulière.

Cyan [ ]

Le son de Cyan est né de sa fascination grandissante envers l’interaction entre l’humain et la machine. Elle fusionne des éléments de techno suédoise et de Détroit avec des sons de la house music et du nouvel électro-rétro. En une cacophonie de musique technologique, l’âme de la machine est enfin libérée.

Meek [ ]

Mike Baugh, aka Meek, est un compositeur ouvert et versatile. Si le panorama de ses compositions est vaste, celles-ci ont en commun d'être novatrices et « inoubliables », puisque construites sur des éléments abstraits, absorbants et intenses, agencés avec délicatesse. Natif de Calgary, mais présentement installé à Montréal, Meek compte à son actif plusieurs disques enregistrés sur sa propre étiquette indépendante, plusieurs participations à des compilations internationales (FatCat, Worm Interface, Six Records.), ainsi que des performances à travers le pays, avec des artistes tels Stewart Walker, Phoenecia, Richard Devine ou Pan Sonic.

Les critiques, très positives tant à son égard qu'à celle de ses oeuvres, sont venues consolider les appétits du jeune compositeur pour la musique électronique, le travail de production et la diversité. Après avoir passé les sept dernières années à pousser ses machines à la limite de leur capacité, l'artiste entend se donner un peu de lousse pour sa performance à MUTEK. Ses compositions généralement complexes, chargées et fracturées, seront ramenées à des proportions plus épurées et sereines, aux composantes vocales et mélodiques.

illparé [ ]

illparé (Christopher Paré) est un auteur et un DJ avec la collective Attitude City. En 2005, il a co-produit le soirée fortement réussi d'Unidisco, et a fait plusieurs apparences dans le Blue Room à Tokyo bar. La prévision montre une chance de tech house avec un mélange de disco électronique du côte est. Attendez les classiques intermittents tout au long de la nuit.

Fluid [ ]

Élevé à Gênes, photographe, peintre et artiste vidéo, fluid appelle désormais Montréal sa demeure. Après quatre années à présenter ses vidéos dans des festivals internationaux, il expérimente maintenant en tant que VJ. Il s’amuse avec des images vidéo crues et aime improviser avec les musiciens live et les DJ avec qui il joue.

beewoo [ ]

VJ beewoo travaille le bruit vidéo et les effets de feedback en combinaison avec des animations 2D et 3D qu’elle filtre en temps réel grâce a une interface de "VJing" spécialement conçue pour elle. Elle explore la tension qui émerge entre l’architecture tangible et les flux des médias de communication avec ou sans fils qui forment des architectures impalpables au défi des lois de la physique. Une recomposition graphique et ludique de l’espace est projetée sur les écrans au rythme de la performance.


<



Music: Jan Pienkowski (Live), Cyan, Meek (Live), illparé
Visuals: Fluid and beewoo

Date: Thursday, Jan 19 2006 :: 7pm :: FREE

The robots are back!!! After a 3-month break we are back with a fresh line-up of artists. See you there!

Robo/tek

The Robo/tek series delves into the multicolour spectrum of techno music. Over the years, techno has been stretching its boundaries and successfully assimilating itself with various other styles of music including house, breaks, electro, jazz, world music, classical and contemporary music, opera. Robo/tek attempts to show techno music in its many forms, varying from the subtle and romantic, through expressive (and at times experimental) and engaging, to aggressive and emotionally charged.

Robo/tek, hosted by Jan Pienkowski and Cyan, is a meeting of artists who exchange their musical perspective on techno music and share their journey with the audience. Robo/tek is also dedicated to the visual exploration of technology and how it relates to the world around us. Along with resident vj Fluid, video artists take spectators on journeys of discovery and re-discovery.

BIOGRAPHIES

Jan Pienkowski [ ]

A composer, musician, sound designer, DJ and physicist, Jan Pienkowski writes and performs music reflecting his diverse background. From his Electroacoustic training and love of World Music comes a mixture of mechanical bleeps, acoustic spaces and ethnic themes. From his theatre (DIALOG) and dance (A.R.M. with choreographer Nikolas Dixon) experience comes a flair for the dramatic and a feel for intricate rhythms.

Jan’s performances span Canada, U.S., France and Hong Kong. His latest 2005 Shiva project with VJ Nokami has been shown at festivals in Thailand, Germany, UK, Sweden, Austria, Romania, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, USA and Canada, with India finally being added to the list of countries for 2006.

Jan has been also very active on the Montreal scene with shows at the Black & Blue Festival, Montreal High Lights Festival, Festival du nouveau cinéma, Fantasia Festival, Fringe/ Pop Festival, Divers/Cité Festival, Tangente, Agora Festif, Exit, and regular appearances at the SAT, U Lounge, Saphir, Luba Lounge and Green Room. Jan’s Live and DJ mixes have landed him spots as featured artist on New York’s Proton Radio, Chicago’s Clubland Underground, Chicago’s 92.5 FM and Montreal’s CKUT 90.3 FM.

Jan is constantly expanding on what it means to be an electronic musician by collaborating with soloists (saxophone, violin, voice), visual artists, painters and dancers. He organises evenings and performs often at the SAT, with a range of shows including: the first Technopera (Turandot) with the singers from the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Monréal; Incidents improvisés, blending Schubert and Chopin with electronic structures; and regular [Mix_Sessions] combining the talents of musicians, dj's and vj's.

Cyan [ ]

Cyan’s sound was born with her fascination towards the interaction between the human and the machine. She merges elements from the Swedish techno and Detroit techno with house music and the new electro-retro style. From the cacophony of the electronic music, the soul of the machine is liberated.

DJ, radio host and producer Cyan aka Corina MacDonald has been an active participant in Montreal's electronic music scene since her arrival in the city in 1996. From that time she has been involved in community radio, hosting electronic music shows on CKUT 90.3 fm. Currently she hosts modular_systems, an electronic music magazine show focusing on local artists, djs and events. Cyan has been active in organizing events with the [ phoniq.net ] Robo/tek and Women on Wax crews.

Cyan is known for her techno and house sets - she has a broad knowledge of music and is equally happy playing hard tech, minimal tec/house, Chicago house or old Detroit electro. Her dj sets are layered, deep rhythmic explorations into the intersections of techno, house and electro. They can be heady and abstract, hard and slamming, or funky and soulful. She djs regularly at events around Montreal, and has played at festivals and events in Toronto and in France. She has appeared alongside such diverse artists as naw, iznogood, b'ugo, sarcastic and andrew duke.
modular systems is broadcast on tuesdays from 1500-1700 EST on CKUT 90.3 fm or online at [ www.ckut.ca ]

Meek [ ]

Meek is the 7 year old spawn of 24 year old Mike Baugh, currently residing in Montréal, Canada. His hometown of Calgary is not much to speak of as an inspiration, especially for a queer ass-pirate aspiring to make innovative, unforgetable, and absorbing abstract beats. But this Meek bug, though raised in the prairies leaves behind him an impressive musical resume including 4 independent releases (CDR1, 2, 3, self-titled), spots on 6 compilations (FatCat, Worm Interface, Six Records, Meson Octet, NFB/Cocosolidciti and Mutek_rec), and live performances across the country with the likes of Unit, Stewart Walker, Phoenecia, Richard Devine, Apparat, Bruno Pronsato and Pan sonic.

His musical career began unexpectedly when he picked up a rack-mount synthesizer his dad bought to create drum beats to accompany his guitar playing. Too young to be able to afford a more user-friendly synthesizer, Meek learned the ins and outs of MIDI and synthesis on a 1" X 2" LCD. As the years progressed, so did his technical proficiency and taste for electronic music that pushes through boundaries and genres. Now trained in audio post-production, Meek has developed a penchant for solid production and a more critical ear.

In the future expect simplified programming, making use of more frequentlyrepeating but carefully crafted sounds. The past year has seen him climbing the daunting learning curve presented by more flexible tools such as NI Reaktor and the Nord Modular, and he vows that in the coming months we can expect to hear some, if not inimitable, at least obtuse dance music. "I know it sounds really academic, but what's really exciting me about music is further abstracting the part I play in a song's evolution." We will be listening.

illparé [ ]

illparé (Christopher Paré) is a writer and DJ with the Attitude City collective. In 2005 he co-produced the highly successful Unidisco soirée, and made several guest appearances in Tokyo's sexified Blue Room. Forecast shows a chance of tech house with an electronic disco front moving up the east coast. Expect intermittent classics throughout the night.

Fluid [ ]

Born in Genes, photographer, painter and video artist, fluid nowadays calls Montreal home. After four years of globe-trotting around the world to present his videos in international festivals, he is currently experimenting with the role of VJ. He plays with raw video images and likes to improvise with live musicians and other DJs

beewoo [ ]

VJ beewoo concentrates on the use of video noise and feedback in combination with 3D/2D animations processed in her own customized VJ interface. Her work explores the tention emerging between tangible architecture and the fluxes of wired and wireless media communication, a fuzzy intangible architecture that defies the laws of physics. It is a playfull and graphical recomposition of space, taking place on the screens that follows the rhythms of the performance.

j'pense que c'est une partie anarchiste, alors il y a pas d'autorite. Si nous avons un consensus, c'est correct. la seule loi c'est de faire une cadeaux brillant et de nourriture. je sais deja ce que je fais, il n'a aucune pomme de terre dans lui

yeah, this is going to be really nice. mais, c'est correct si je *faire* un sac de potato chips? avec des pommes bio et seche par la soleil?

great night, lots of fun, tons of people. Women on wax nights keep getting bigger and bigger, and it's great seeing more queers out partying. Now if only the drunk jocks would just stay the fuck at blue dog... I loved the last set of the night, lots of groove.

check this show out for some live idm
[ rave.ca ]

i want a goth tickle me elmo.
and i want homophobes that call everything gay to die.

She came out with a new documentary about herself, i'm going tell you a secret, or something like that. It's all about the kabalah and this weird fashionable mystical bullshit . It makes her look like a jackass. Plus it's got politics in it, but really weird, generic kind of politics, like go peace, go patriotism. She needs to get trashy again, like in desperately seeking susan.

c'est comme le film neverland
[ imdb.com ]

that one song by evanescence

Torn (dance mix)

i would do anything to be able to move like this. any teachers out there?

[ www.devilducky.com ]

Love It!
The music is great, the cartoons are ridiculous. I have a plugnplay that goes into my tv and is very lo-fi, but it's still got flashing colors and 16-bit hardcore. My friend has it for playstation, which has candy robot ravers. i am jealous. Video games in general i find kind of boring, but at least ddr gets me sweating and grinning, i'm not just sitting and drooling for three hours.
But there is a game i just played last week, I Heart Katamari. Ridiculousness. If you haven't played it, you must trip out on it. Words fail me, just go rent it.

fight club

evil

fluffernutter

it's all yours! i wish there was something good happening on xmas, cuz i'm too far from family and i just want to rave the fuck out. i'll probably end up going to parking

for me, it doesn't go to the first page, but to a list of categories i can click on. i'm asking about the page that has little samples of everything ravewave offers, like a random selection of party photos, of gallery photos, of poems, of of articles, that lists the parties coming up. that page.

why else would they name a stadium and tourist stops after him? i'm sure there's a statue someplace, goosestepping with a barbell held over his head

you guessed it

maybe there is one, but i don't know where it is.
If not, i wish there was a link on the navigator bar to get back to the main page once you're logged in.
The only way i can figure out how to do it is to log back out.
thanks!

i had a blast. Great location, the dark room was really nice and chill. It was nice being able to look out the windows (usually they're covered with garbage bags) and see a city full of lights. The djs in the dark room were great too, really looked like they were working the sound. I missed the one dj i'd come to see, but had a blast anyway

um, yeah, you're totally against the death penalty...
[ www.indymedia.org ]


That's rad, though, Mico, about the Austrians disowning him. I wish they'd go take care of their trash though instead of just trying to forget/deny how much they worshipped him.

i wonder what makes you think the writer doesn't like white people, and i wonder if she herself isn't white, because she never says "us" or "our". I don't feel like it says much about whites except that some try to steal Indigenous spiritual practices for their own. Your profile says your family is from Europe, so i don't think you're the most qualified person to be pretending any kind of authority:
You see, there's this fun game whites like to play called [ ] appropriation where some of us take whatever we want from different cultures and act like that's okay when it isn't. You say she should "leave the outsiders alone," but i think she's asking a similar thing, that the outsiders leave Indigenous cultures alone. I can give an example i've heard over and over again and which my grandmother mentioned in passing just last night: whites selling admittance to a fake sweat ceremony that they themselves perform. Do you understand why this is problematic?

you are allowed to bring cats if they are spayed or neutered, and there is a backyard, if you consider a gravel pit a backyard... It's across the street from a huge park, though. There is lots of space inside: it's got two floors, and the whole basement is different workshops or storage spaces, there's a huge kitchen, huge living room with a nice dancing floor.

je pense que c'est vraiment ecrit 'shisha', mais oui, c'est une genre du tabac

*****************************************************
/\> Nous sommes 4, cherchons un 5em colloc (pour Français voir plus bas)
-=- We are a house of 4 looking for a 5th
---------------------------------------

-a laid back collective house, queer-postive
-almost on the corner of ontario and delorimer, so village,
centre-sud, hochelaga-maisoneuve area.
-three blocks from papineau metro
-beautiful 12 1/2 ground floor with a decent amount of light. we have
a huge kitchen and living room and a basement with a operational
sewing studio and a half operational art studio. exposed brick, high
ceilings.
-there are rooms for 5 people to live here, right now we are 4 and are
looking for a fifth
-the avaliable room is a decent medium sized room for $200 a month
plus bills which is about $30 a month for hydro and $15-20 for phone
and internet
-we have 1 cat
-our smoking rule is cigarette smoking in rooms only and only one
roomate smokes in her room, but there is chicha smoking in the common
space
-we have a collective food plan where we all
pay $60 a month and buy groceries together and share the food
-we speak english and french both (though a bit more english)
-we are looking for February 1st

are you interested?
if yes,
send es an email at elegantstinkhorn@yahoo.ca
please tell us a bit about yourself and we'll contact you for an interview

*******************************************************

-un appart collectif, relax, et queer positif
-presque sur le coin de la rue Ontario et l'avenue de Lorimier, dans
le quartier centre-sud
-3 blocs du métro Papineau
-une belle appart, immense (12 1/2), 5 chambres avec abondance de
lumière. ya une cuisinie et un salon énorme, avec un sous-sol incluant
studio de couture opérationnel et un studio d'art. murs de briques,
plafonds hauts
-la chambre disponible est d'une grandeur moyenne pour $200 par mois
plus des factures d'environ $30/mois pour hydro et $15-20 pour le
téléphone et l'Internet. (nous avons tous une connection haute vitesse
dans chaque chambre).
-nous avons 1 chat
- notre règle de tabagisme c'est de fumer dans les chambres seulement,
et seulement une coloque fume dans sa chambre, mais nous fumons de la
chicha dans l'espace commun.
-nous avons un plan collectif de
nourriture où nous payons tous $60 par mois et achetons l'épicerie
ensemble, partageons la nourriture.
- nous parlons anglais et francais a l'appart. (un peu plus en anglais...)
- nous cherchons pour le 1er fevrier

êtes-vous intéressé?
si oui,
enyoyez-nous un email a elegantstinkhorn@yahoo.ca
et nous vous contacterons pour une entrevue
******************************************************

flying feces

i'm posting this because i'm sick of seeing dreamcatchers at parties!
and this goes for Mayan calendars and Buddhist symbolism, too!


[ www.easternecho.com ]

New Age Steals Native Spirituality, Identities

By Susana Adame / Staff Writer
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2005

Are you guilty of the genocide of Native peoples?

Come on now. Don't back up. Just answer the question.

Although it may be tempting to answer an emphatic "NO," let's slow things down a minute and examine what this "no" really means. For a typical responder, "no" is more than likely predicated on two basic assumptions of the meaning of genocide.First, that genocide of Native peoples was an event that occurred centuries ago, and, second. that genocide is something which entails direct physical violence against a group of people.

But genocide does not always entail direct physical violence, and it's not necessarily something that just ends. The American Heritage Dictionary defines genocide the following: "The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group." Within this definition, it doesn't matter how the extermination happens or how long the extermination takes. All that matters is the extermination part.

In the case of Native peoples, genocidal extermination began as direct physical violence, but over the years shifted to a "more peaceful" form of genocidethe theft of Native identity. The logic goes, if there is no such thing as a Native identity, then it stands to reason that there can be no such thing as a Native person who needs a land base. This identity theft has occurred in many different ways: for example, boarding schools which "kept the child, killed the Native". More recently, however, this theft has centered largely upon the appropriation of Native spirituality.

Native spirituality, unlike Christianity, is defined by a tribe's relationship with their land base. In other words, unlike Christians, who can simply walk into the church down the street to worship, Native peoples need the land particular to their individual tribe to worship. Furthermore, it is because the United States recognizes the specific cultural need for a particular land base that Native peoples have treaties and are considered sovereign nations by the U.S. government.

So what does any of this have to do with genocide of Native peoples? In the '80s, a spiritual movement started in the United States called the New Age movement. For those of you who are too young to remember, the New Age experience was a movement whose basic premise was the "reclaiming" of a more nature-based religiosity. While this might sound sweet and humanitarian, digging a little deeper into the practices of New Agers demonstrates a group of people using genocidal practices to become "more natural" (unsurprisingly, they're mostly white).

At no time did New Agers do any of the hard work of researching their own indigenous pasts to reclaim their own religious rootsdespite the fact that many European tribes were strongly based in earth-centered beliefs. No, New Agers went the easier route of "stealing" bits and pieces of other religions and claiming them as their own. For example, if you walk into a store catering to New Agers, you can find books and other memorabilia based in religions as far ranging as Buddhism to Taoism to the Kabbalah.

Although it's not good to appropriate any religion, the various religions that New Agers generally like to meddle with do manage to retain a large measure of control simply through their relative size. That is, a group of New Agers in Ann Arbor are not going to control how Hinduism changes or manifests itself in India. It simply isn't going to happen.

For Native peoples, however, this isn't the case. Representing only about one percent of the overall population of the United States, Native peoples are grossly outnumbered by New Agers when it comes to dealing with them on a tribe-by-tribe basis. Furthermore, after centuries of exploitation, imprisonment and murder for practicing their own religion, most tribes maintain a strong tribally enforced silence surrounding their religion. Outsiders are rarely, if ever, invited to participate in any ceremonies of significance, and in many cases, urban Indians may not even be allowed into a ceremony if their ties to the reservation community are not strong.

Because Native communities exist with little power or control within broader social structures, any self-proclaimed "medicine wo/man" can make any outrageous claim s/he wants toand that claim will be believed to the point of fanaticism by desperate white people who are tired of the murder and greed their own religions are based upon.

For example, many New Agers love to put on their own versions of a traditional Native "healing ceremony." "How-To" manuals and tapes are always popular among New Agers as well. New Age gurus have literally made millions off of their commercialization of Native spirituality.

But all this commercialization has created some insane problems for the Native community. For example, Lisa Aldred, a scholar and lawyer who represents Native peoples, points out that some New Agers have copyrighted material on Native American spirituality, and sought trademark protection of Native American spiritual themes. The Southwest AIM Resolution observed that a group of non-Indians operating under the name Vision Quest, Inc. were "stealing the name and attempting to steal the concept of one of our most spiritual ceremonies." If non-Natives control patents and trademarks of religious practices, then not only are Native peoples denied the economic benefit of something they created, but they also could be sued for practicing their own religion!

But most importantly, if New Agers succeed in their attacks against Native control of their own spirituality, Native peoples will no longer be a culture with specific and historic ties to a particular land baseand thus, they will no longer be Native peoples at all. The five-hundred-year genocide of North American Indians will be completed without shedding one drop of blood.

So how are you participating in the genocide of Native peoples? Although you may not consider yourself a New Ager, these people have been very successful in their integration of Native culture into mainstream culture. Dream Weavers, sweat lodges, vision quests, and medicine wheels are all things that have become normalized as "Native, but not quite." Most people see no reason at all why they shouldn't be allowed to buy a ready-made sweat lodge or as many medicine wheels as they want, despite the fact that most Native activists decry the commercialization of sacred artifacts.

But on a more local level, how many of you have taken Native American classes? I'm not talking about classes that deal with actual issues or topics, but those classes that dare to assume that all participants in the class are somehow participating in a Native ceremony simply by showing up for class? For example, maybe you sit in a "sacred circle" before the class begins, or you don't study Trickster stories because it's the time of the year Native peoples supposedly abstain from Trickster stories. Here's a newsflash for you: if there is something that Native peoples do or do not do out of religious observation, then you, a non-Native outsider, should not being doing it at all, regardless of what time of the year it is.

Or how about those classes that teach sacred creation storieslike these stories belong to anybody and can be heard by anyone? Have you taken any of those? Although the teachers of these classes are well-meaning, the danger in outsiders having control of creation stories is that they can then be "colonized" by any non-Native who wishes to do so. And if any non-Native can claim any creation story as his ownthus symbolically 'becoming Indian'then yet again, Native peoples no longer have a singularly identifying culture which entitles them to a land base.

It's not that hard, really, to be just a little respectful to a culture that has been attacked for over five hundred years. All Native peoples are asking is for you to show their religion the same respect that you would show Christians. But as I say that, I realize that most of Christianity's religious structures and artifacts are for sale somewhere. The greatest creation story of the Western world has been for sale in one form or another for centuries. So maybe the problem is to not necessarily leave Native peoples' religion alone, but to remember the sacredness of your own religion. Will there ever be a time when the Bible isn't for sale? Or is that too crazy a thought... even for a Christian?

loved dreamtektor's set. it made my night, really. good and fast!

What this article is talking about is also often times called dual power [ en.wikipedia.org ] and it is this facet of raving that is most interesting to me. Essentially, i feel like it is saying that we don't need to wait until some point in the future (after the revolution, after decolonization, after the ndp get in charge, after quebec's secesion) to start creating the world of our dreams. Isn't that what raving is? Isn't it (in a large part) about fuck the law, the police, common sense and normativity? 100% illegal parties happen despite the consequences, and everytime this reminds me that another world is possible. It is empowering and helpful in reminding me that we ARE capable of living our lives in a way that makes sense to us, of self-determining what we can and cannot do and how we relate to each other. Me, i want to get free and to work with others to do the same.

A guy told me about this preacher show he watched that plays on cable, i forget his name, but he reads news with an eye on the bible. A few months back he reported on his show that Condoleeza Rice contacted him personally to ask questions from Bush: does his current foreign policy coincide with the book of revelations, and if not, how could he alter his policy so that it will.
This guy went on to say that revelations is actually matching up with what's going on. He said that the u.s. would become hostile with China after it raised a certain number of troops (which it has), and that Russia would then ally itself with China and that this would spell the end. I don't know the bible at all, but it scared me a bit to read that week that the u.s. was calling China a fascist society and that it was working with Japan to discourage countries in the region and their own investers from trading with China.
Either way, bush scares the hell out of me.

[ auto ]

Counter-Power and Anti-Power
by John Holloway

1. Time is central to any consideration of power and counter power or anti-power. The traditional left is centred on waiting, on patience. The social democratic parties tell us “Wait until the next election, then we will come to power and things will be different” The Leninist parties say “wait for the revolution, then we’ll take power and life will begin”. But we cannot wait. Capitalism is destroying the world and we cannot be patient. We cannot wait for the next long wave or the next revolutionary opportunity. We cannot wait until the time is right. We must revolt now, we must live now.

2. The traditional left operates with a capitalist concept of time. In this concept, capitalism is a continuum, it has a duration, it will be there until the day of revolution comes. It is this duration, this continuum that we have to break. How? By refusing. By understanding that capitalism does not have any duration independent of us. If capitalism exists today, it is not because it was created one hundred or two hundred years ago, but because we (the workers of the world, in the broadest sense) created it today. If we do not create it tomorrow, it will not exist. Capital depends on us for its existence, from one moment to the next. Capital depends on converting our doing into alienated work, on converting our life into survival. We make capitalism. The problem of revolution is not to abolish capitalism but to stop making it.

How do we stop making capitalism? How can we refuse, say ¡Ya basta!, Enough! ¡Que se vayan todos! Get rid of all of them!? Refusal is the first key to thinking about radical social change. We live in a world in which humanity is rushing like lemmings towards the cliff or our own self-destruction. How do we dig in our heels and say NO? How do we break the continuum, break history, break time itself, how do we refuse to survive and start to live, how do we infuse our lives with an intensity that breaks the greyness of capitalism? That is the first temporality of revolution, the temporality of ¡Ya basta! Enough! A temporality of impatience and intensity and revolution here-and-now, because capitalism is unbearable, because we cannot go on creating our own destruction. This is the temporality of certainty, because there can be no doubt about our NO to capitalism. It is also the temporality of innocence, of the simple, uncomplicated NO.

3. But there is also a second temporality. To give force to our refusal, we have to back it up with the construction of an alternative world. If we refuse to submit to capital, we must have some alternative way of living and this means the patient creation of other ways of organising our activity, our doing. The Zapatistas say ¡Ya Basta!, Enough!, but they also say “We walk, we do not run, because we are going very far”. The best of the piquetero groups in Argentina say “¡Que se vayan todos! Get rid of all of them!, but they also insist very much on following their own rhythms, their own times in creating an alternative sociality, an alternative way of doing things. If the first temporality is that of innocence, this is the temporality of experience.

This is the temporality of building our own power, our power-to, our power to do things in a different way. Building our own power-to is a very different thing from taking power or seizing power. If we organise ourselves to take power, to try to win state power, then inevitably we put ourselves into the logic of capitalist power, we adopt capitalist forms of organisation which impose separations, separations between leaders and masses, between citizens and foreigners, between public and private. If we focus on the state and the winning of state power, then inevitably we reproduce within our own struggles the power of capital. Building our own power-to involves different forms of organisation, forms which are not symmetrical to capital’s forms, forms which do not separate and exclude. Our power, then, is not just a counter-power, it is not a mirror-image of capitalist power, but an anti-power, a power with a completely different logic - and a different temporality.

The traditional temporality, the temporality of taking power, is in two steps: first wait and build the party, then there will be the revolution and suddenly everything will be different. The second temporality comes after the first one. The taking of power operates as a pivot, a breaking point in the temporality of the revolutionary process. Our temporality, the temporality of building our own anti-power is also in two steps, but the steps are exactly the opposite, and they are simultaneous. First: do not wait, refuse now, tear a hole, a fissure in the texture of capitalist domination now, today. And secondly, starting from these refusals, these fissures, and simultaneouslyt with them, build an alternative world, a different way of doing things, a different sort of social relations between people. Here it cannot be a sudden change, but a long and patient struggle in which hope lies not in the next election or in the storming of the Winter Palace but in overcoming our isolation and coming together with other projects, other refusals pushing in the same direction. This means not just living despite capitalism, but living in-against-and-beyond capitalism. It means an interstitial conception of revolution, in which a new world, a new communism, commun-ism, grows in the interstices of and in opposition to capitalism - a conception of revolution as the active disintegration of capitalism in which an alternative society is constructed in the process of disintegration.

There are no rules on how to build a new world, no model we can follow. Here there are no certainties. It is inevitably a question of experimentation and invention. Behind the NO of our refusal of neo-liberal capitalism stand many YESes. The force behind these YESes is a drive towards self-determination. Self-determination can only be a social process, a global knitting together of collective processes of self-determination, a weaving together of councils or communes or assemblies. But it is not just a question of deliberations (of how we take decisions), it is also and above all a question of how we can organise our doing, our activity, in a way that goes against-and-beyond capital. And not just against-and-beyond capital, but against-and-beyond the law of value, against-and-beyond the market and the times and the disciplines which it imposes. That is the most difficult part of thinking how we can create and are creating a new commons (or common), a new commun-ism.

4. The way forward is full of difficulties and uncertainties and requires much patience. Yet we should not turn things upside down. The traditional idea of revolution tells us contain our impatience, to subordinate our impatience to the patient construction of the party. But we do not want to fall into that, for it kills the movement by boredom. We too have two temporalities: the temporality of the impatient ¡Ya basta!, revolution here and now! and the temporality of the patient construction of another world. But in the traditional concept impatience is subordinated to patience, and in our concept it should surely be the other way around: patience is there to give force to the impatience of refusal, not to subordinate it. The wisdom of experience is there not to restrain the rage of youth, but to give it strength.

The movement is made up of songs of innocence and experience. Both have their place. Usually the voice of experience dominates, but perhaps it is the voice of innocence that should sing the lead.

This paper was presented at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, 2005.

good idea, but it will be hard to get that awful voice of his down pat.
me i'm going as my cat.
it's not listed yet, but there's going to be a halloween pique-nique on the saturday before, should be crazy

canada's just too big, like the us, like the former ussr. As a government, there's no way something so large can adequately meet the needs of even a minority of the people a fraction of the time.
And though you say:
Yes you're right, what we need to do as a people is divide ourselves some more, this will infact bring us together you see....
sarcastically, i really do believe it. It's not through the media and the government trying to convince us that we're all the same ("canadian", one love) that we'll be able to get together. It's by working with people that have common interests and goals that we'll be able to make ourselves strong enough that we can relate equally with other peoples of the world.

Rave Nation!

[ www.indymedia.org ]
there's pictures and discussion at this link


CZECHTEKK 2OO5

A 'Freetekno' Party was stopped during the weekend by a series brutal and irrational actions of the Czech Police. Around 6000 people were attacked by the riot cops while having a party. The Highway was blocked and people entering the Czech Republic were turned away at the border, discriminated against on the basis of their looks.

Czechtech 2005 is the 12th Annual Freetek Party in the open air. This years, self-organised, event met unusual hostility from the Czech Police.

The first soundsystems and visitors gathered, on legally rented land, near the city of Milec, on Friday Morning (29th July). From the early hours the police blocked the exits from the highway, D5, causing an 8 km long traffic jam. Eyewitnesses reported police trying to stop people leaving the highway based on their looks. Around 150 people sat on the road requesting to continue on their way to Milec. After 6 hours, following an ultimatum, at 13:00 the police used water-cannons and heavy force to clear the blocked highway. Abandoned cars were towed away. The police continued to block exits to the highway, as well as several routes around Milec.

Official statements from the police said that the legal contract between the owner of the land on which Czechtek 2005 was to take place were invalid. The Czech Minister for Justice, Frantisek Bublan, a member of the social-democratic CSSD, also stated that the contract was invalid and claimed that the owner of the land had revoked it. Later on Friday the contract got to the media, as well as several inteviews with the legal owner of the land. These confimed his support of the event and the validity of the contract. Following his statement, Senator Jaromír Štětina and the Czech Green Party requested that Minister Buban stops the raid against citizens of Czech republic who have not commited any crime by gathering on legaly rented land. Nevertheless, the police continued to block the area without reason.

During the night several thousand visitors managed to pass the police lines, leaving cars behind on the road. The police received reinforcements from Pilsen, brought in vans and buses. By Saturday morning, the party had 5000 visitors and around 300 cars that had managed to make it. Music started to play from the soundsystems.
A spokesperson from the Czech police claimed that the visitors had damaged neighboring land whend trying to pass their blockade. The landowners filled a legal complaint against the organisers of Czechtek 2005. Citizens of �jezd pod P�imdou, a small town near the event signed a petition and handed it to the Police Commander requesting that the participants be allowed to continue on their way. The streets of the city were filled with cars and people who failed to go through the police street cordons.

Police redirected cars coming from the German border in Rozvadov to other border crossings. According to their statistics 105 out of 249 foreigners were turned back at the border on the basis of "coloured old cars, haircuts and tatoos". The D5 Highway was closed on both sides between 128 and 135km.

At 16:25 the police requested the participants, now numbering more than 6000, leave the gathering. If they failed to comply the police action would follow. The assault started at 16:30. Around 1000 riot cops using masses of tear gas and trying to push visitors away from the place. The assault was answered by objects being thrown at the police cordon and people shouting "gestapo" at the police. According to eyewitnesses police used water to damage the soundsytems. There are also unconfirmed reports of the use of gum projectiles and mobile phone disrupting frequency-jammers.

The Shadow Minister Ivan Langer sharply criticised the police attack saying it was a political decision imposed by the Prime-Minister, Jiří Paroubek (CSSD). Czechtek's weblog published a request for solidarity asking people to join a demonstration in Prague at 19:00 in front of the Ministery of Justice.

The police assault ended around 19:20 (before the evening news) with 50 people injured on both sides, police and participants. The organizers of Czechtek 2005 stated that they are going to appeal to European Court for Human Rights in Strassbourg.

On Sunday 31st July at 14.00 another demonstration took place in Prague. The number of the people reached 5000, requesting that Minister Buban steps out. The Czech Leage for Human Rights also joined this request, qualifying the police actions as illegal and the means used against the participants as inadequate and brutal. The Prime Minister Paroubek defends the police actions as "adequate". He also mentioned short-to-be-prepared legal changes to the Czech law of assembly, so that "an event like this will not happen again".

candy dj