Rampart. The squat

  • 30 January 2006

rampart graf

Rampart Sign

Every social event or project, has as many versions as people participating in it.

My own personal version of Rampart Social Centre would be that it was born, together with many other squats in 2004, out of the need to house hundreds of attendants to he European Social Forum and adjacent alternatives.

The meetings for the preparation of said forum did acknowledge the need, and the problem of accommodating such a big number of people in the most expensive city in the UK, probably Europe.

But the possibility of housing them in squats was mercilessly laughed at in the ESF meetings.

Anticapitalists

  • 30 June 2005

From Top Cat in the g8southeast list. Top Cat has sent a text that looks it was written in 2003, together with his additions; this is a compendium of both together with my comment.

Offspring

  • 21 May 2005

Got a friend with her son at home today. Children are great, if and when you can afford them. I don’t think humanity can afford to have children any more.

Audio files

  • 26 April 2005

Not long ago, a friend explained to me the fact that, although technology nowadays allows to transfer my recorded two hours from my minidisk on to the computer in 20 seconds, the corporations that make such technology do not want to allow anyone to do this.

Irreverent thoughts

  • 5 April 2005

Bush and Blair have praised the Pope once he has died. But they were not ‘inspired’ by John Paul II when he was strongly opposing the invasion of Iraq.

History

  • 15 March 2005

Apart from the dissertation I also have to write some feature articles for uni, usually on the subject of my own choice. It has been half my choice to write about squatting. So I have done a bit of research and I have learnt a lot of contemporary English History. Well, proper historians would probably contest my methods and argue that wars and battles and Kings’ and Queen’s marriages are more important than a squatting boom in the 70s, but if I want to learn about any kind of History, that is the one kind of History I want to learn about. And squatting has certainly a very long history, and many other things help to understand squatting, and squatting helps to understand many other things.

Mass Media

  • 14 March 2005

The main tutor at university today confirmed what Simone had mentioned in the forum: yes, there is the desire to put as many journalists in the market as possible. Just put them there, however good, however bad, the point is, there must be many.

Angel

  • 12 March 2005

When I first arrived in London, Angel was the first area where I lived – or, as I have heard from some old londoners, and read in “Oliver Twist”, by Dickens, “The Angel”. I actually stayed there for quite long, one and a half years, which is my current record in one address. I remember this big green that was surrounded by a high wall. Every time I returned from Chapel Market, I would see this graffiti on the wall:

Freelance

  • 11 March 2005

Simone, on the freelance email forum, has just noted that freelancing is “harder now as there are more journalists about. There weren’t that many post-degree courses/evening classes eight years ago”.

What does this say about the “dumbing down” of journalism? What about the pressure on existing journalists to produce what the market demands/the owner allows?

indythoughts

  • 9 March 2005

The human being does not wish to make the same mistake twice, it wishes to learn from mistakes, mainly in order to not suffer so much.

This is why processes, instructions, norms are created. They should be drafted by people who have been in that given situation and have learned from it. Instructions and norms tend to turn into structures, which are almos always hierarchical.

They are primarily defence mechanisms to face a situacion that has given negative results in the past. They are not opression mechanisms as such.