Antimilitaristic Camp in Germany – Info and discussion

By: börek - June 1st, 2017  Filed under: Infoavond, Volkseten/Voku

deckblatt7Monday 5th June 2017, Antimilitaristic Camp in Germany – Info and discussion. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm. Info and discussion at 8:15pm.

From the 31th of July to the 6th of August the War-Starts-Here camp will set up in Potzhene (close to Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany).

For several years now the War-Starts-Here camp brought together lots of different people in the village of Potzehne in central Germany, situated close to the border of the most modern and important military training site in Germany, the “Gefechtsübungszentrum Heer”, abbreviated as GÜZ. Antimilitarist discussions as well as practical resistance left a persistent mark on both the participants of the camp and the surrounding region. And it was fun!

We gather to gain and share knowledge about wars and their preparation, to figure out the situation we are living in and to analyse its internal relationships. Perspectives in emancipatory movements are highly diverse – and so are the views on military and war. This in mind, we want to further develop common ideas of resistance, strengthen the local anti-war-initiatives grown over long years and also discuss our differences respectfully. It seems highly important to us, that we make a step towards the locals and talk with them about their experiences…and maybe more…

By this year’s camp we build on last year’s main issues. The motto “Krieg.Macht.Flucht.” is still up-to-date, saying “war causes flight” while making use of the ambiguous German word “Macht” (translating both as makes/causes and power). This time our focus will be the development of common anti-militarist and anti-racist perspectives of resistance. Let’s overpower our powerlessness – the camp in Potzehne wants to provide a space for that. We want to have a discussions at eye level with everyone sharing our radical refusal of the global destructive circumstances.

Training, exercise, preparation and export – war starts here! We want to make this deadly site publicly visible, since it is of crucial importance to war preparation. Through various antimilitarist actions we want to disturb the “normal” operation on the GÜZ, let’s mark, block, and sabotage this full-speed-running machinery of war! To mobilize for the camp and give information face to face a comrade from Magdeburg will come to

Appeal in english: http://www.war-starts-here.camp/startseite/appeal-english/
http://war-starts-here.camp […Lees verder]

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Benefit NSU Tribunal

By: börek - March 1st, 2017  Filed under: Benefiet, Infoavond, Volkseten/Voku

NSU_tribunalThursday March 23rd 2017, Benefit for “Break the Silence Collective”. Infonight about the NSU murders and rising threat of extrem right-wing terror in Germany. Money goes to the project “NSU-Tribunal”. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

” Unraveling the NSU Complex – Indicting Racism in Germany
The immigrants affected by NSU terror knew who was behind the attacks on their family members, their neighbors, their friends or their own lives, their existences, their streets, and their businesses. The fact that their voices were not heard is due to structural racism in Germany. This, together with neo-Nazi structures established and paid for by the State, with all its official protectors, forms the NSU complex. NSU means: German state and Nazis hand in hand.
We, people targeted and affected by the NSU and antiracist activists, are organizing a tribunal in order to launch an indictment against all those responsible – a tribunal where the voices of the victims of racist violence are raised and heard.
In Cologne-Mülheim’s Keupstraße in 2004 the NSU attacked an entire street with a nail bomb. Moreover, they also attacked the idea of a multicultural society as such. In Germany in May 2017, juridical clarification of the NSU complex cannot be expected, racist hate violence and speech are still an everyday occurrence, and the people targeted by racist violence are repeatedly made into perpetrators.
The NSU could count on a racist division in German society which spreads fear among immigrant communities, while mainstream public perception either does not notice this at all or if they do, then only in an aggressive defense reflex, which immediately blames the people targeted by racist hate. This is the division we want to overcome with the tribunal.
An indictment launched by society instead of judge and verdict ”

Tribunal NSU-Komplex Auflösen: http://nsu-tribunal.de/
17.5-21.5 in Cologne, Germany […Lees verder]

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Black and white film night: M eine stadt sught einen morder (Fritz Lang, 1931)

By: börek - June 1st, 2016  Filed under: Filmavond

M_Fritz_LangSunday June 26th 2016, Black and white film night: M eine stadt sught einen morder. (Fritz Lang, 1931). Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm. Free admission.

The horror of the faces: That is the overwhelming image that remains from a recent viewing of the restored version of “M,” Fritz Lang’s famous 1931 film about a child murderer in Germany. In my memory it was a film that centered on the killer, the creepy little Franz Becker, played by Peter Lorre. But Becker has relatively limited screen time, and only one consequential speech–although it’s a haunting one. Most of the film is devoted to the search for Becker, by both the police and the underworld, and many of these scenes are played in closeup. In searching for words to describe the faces of the actors, I fall hopelessly upon “piglike.” […Lees verder]

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Benefit & Infonight: Germany and its Nazis: the NSU murders

By: börek - June 1st, 2016  Filed under: Benefiet, Infoavond, Volkseten/Voku

Thursday June 2nd 2016, Benefit & Infonight: Germany and its Nazis: the NSU murders. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

“The National Socialist Underground which was uncovered in 2011 killed 8 migrants, a son of a migrant family and a policewoman. Public discourse has remained focused on the “mistakes” made by German authorities during their investigations, especially the Federal Office and the State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution, while debates about racism in the German society, very alive indeed, remain absent. It was precisely this racism which was the basis of the 90’s militant Nazi scene, from which the NSU derived, and which allowed them to kill unhindered.”

Daniel Schmidt who will be giving a talk about the NSU murders and racist every day life in Germany is part of “das schweigen durchbrechen”, an antifascist-group, which was formed as an answer to these events and is located in Nuremberg – the city where the NSU started its murder series and which stands like no other for an unbroken continuity of racism in Germany.

Antifaschistische Initiative Das Schweigen Durchbrechen: http://schweigendurchbrechen.blogsport.de/

[…Lees verder]

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: The Murderers Are Among Us

By: börek - May 1st, 2016  Filed under: Filmavond

The_Murderers_Are_Among_UsSunday May 15th 2016, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema:
THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US 1946
(Die mörder sind unter uns)
Directed by Wolfgang Staudte
81 minutes
In German with English subtitles
Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm. Free admission.

With a style that is a fusion of deep expressionism mixed with harsh documentary, this rare movie captures the mood of a demoralized Berlin directly after the Second World War. We enter a city of devastation, of decimated streets and broken lives. But imagine the feelings of the main character Susanne when she returns to her home city after having been released from a concentration camp. When she returns to her wrecked apartment, she finds a stranger living there. Both of them are lost souls. They strike up a friendship… but as she goes through the streets she realizes she is in a city of people that betrayed her. Who is who? Who are the innocent survivors, and who are the villains?

This unusual movie was made directly after the end of the war, and therefore captures the ideas and sensibilities of that bitter time better than any film made today which looks back with contemporary prejudices. All of the film’s photography was done in the real streets of Berlin, and the main characters roam the desolate streets of rubble. And this thriller is also interesting to compare to the upcoming film noir movement… all of the elements are there – the sharp shadows, human silhouettes against cracked walls, unusual angles, spiral staircases, haunted tormented individuals wandering through a jagged broken landscape. There is a mood of dark melancholy hanging in the air of this sombre movie as Suzanne tries to find a way to forgive her city for the atrocities she has endured. […Lees verder]

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Benefit for recently established Prisoners Union in german prisons – Volkseten Vegazulu

By: ready - July 1st, 2015  Filed under: Benefiet, Volkseten/Voku

Monday July 06th 2015, Prisoners Union Benefit. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

This benefit is dedicated to the young Prisoners Union in german prisons. The following interview gives a brief insight into the union.

Union behind bars
experiences from one year of union work – four questions to Oliver Rast (GG/BO)

Who or what is the Prisoners Union? What does it represent and what are its goals?

Last year in May we established ourselves as self-organized union initiative of prisoners at JVA Tegel. Day by day prisoners gather at the workbench and are confronted with highly precarious work situations: low-wage, piecework rush and no pension scheme, which amounts to an express ticket into poverty in old-age after being released. At that point we concentrate on two key demands: social insurance contribution for imprisoned employees and the inclusion of working prisoners in the general statutory minimal wage. By means of those steps we are aiming for full union freedom behind bars. Notions of solidarity, autonomy, emancipation and social reform shall not remain unknown words within the prison population any longer – we know that these are challenging demands.
[…Lees verder]

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Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Kamikaze 1989 (Wolf Gremm, 1982)

By: börek - June 1st, 2015  Filed under: Filmavond

kamikaze_1989Sunday June 7th 2015, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Kamikaze 1989 (Wolf Gremm, 1982). In German with English subtitles. Free admission. Door opens at 20:00, Film starts at 21:00.

Set in the not-so-distant future, this film depicts a brave new world where illness has been eliminated, culture has been dumbed-down, there is no unemployment and a single conglomerate controls all the mass-media. Rainer Werner Fassbinder (in his final acting role) stars as the off-beat police lieutenant Jansen who is assigned to investigate a string of murders, but the deeper he digs the more complex and twisted the situation becomes. This is not the sort of film that leads you by the hand into a dystopian future, but a movie which dumps you in total alienation and a convoluted cultural anarchy- it’s Eurotrash, camp, arthouse and over the top.
Based on the 1964 novel Murder on the Thirty-First Floor by Per Wahlöö, this “West German cyberpunk thriller” features Fassbinder who was on his last legs when he starred in this crazed film. He is wildly dressed in a gaudy leopard-print suit, chain-smoking, sweating, and as one person said he is “lumbering around like a wounded walrus”. But that also adds a lot of flavor to the chaos. The decor and costumes are stuffed full of sci-fi kitsch, and that also adds to its nostalgic charm. The color scheme is gaudy, and the cinematography is by Xaver Schwarzenberger who shot Berlin Alexanderplatz along with most of Fasbinder’s last films. Besides Fassbinder the film also features Günther Kaufmann and Franco Nero. An extremely rare cult film from the Germany punk scene of the 80s with a vision of the future as an insane, senseless, labyrinthine junk world.
[…Lees verder]

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Documentary: Children of the Revolution (2010)

By: börek - March 1st, 2015  Filed under: Filmavond

children_of_the_revolutionSunday March 1st 2015. Documentary: Children of the Revolution (2010) by Shane O’Sullivan (Ireland, England, Germany, 2010, 92 minutes). In English. Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm. Free admission.

Shane O’Sullivan’s documentary about Ulrike Meinhof and Fusako Shigenobu, leaders of the German Red Army Faction and the Japanese Red Army weaves their lives together through the testomy of their daughters authors and journalists Bettina Röhl and Mei Shigenobu. A portrait of late-60s radicalism told from an unusual perspective. With capitalism once more in crisis, they reflect on their mother’s actions as the film asks: what were they fighting for and what have we learned?
http://www.childrenoftherevolution.co.uk/

[…Lees verder]

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