Resistance
Fuckparade 2007 from Mesq and Vimeo.
A chance event led me to visit the memorial site in the Bendlerblock. Situated near Tiergarten, the building is famous as the centre of resistance among the military of the Third Reich. The most famous of them was Colonel von Stauffenberg, who planted a bomb to a meeting Hitler was attending.
Director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) is currently shooting a film about the conspiracy – with Tom Cruise starring as Stauffenberg. The city officials have denied Cruise’s request to shoot in Bendlerblock and at some other locations. They are at odds with The Church of Scientology figureheaded by Cruise. Berliner Zeitung reported, that the cult leaders regard Germany as the most critical beach-head to Europe. The other front being the Beckhams?
I also ran into the Fuckparade (hence the video above). The beaty street party started in 1997 as an underground alternative to the Love Parade, but is also associated with political activism against state control.
In the wake of G8 summit earlier this summer, the anti-terror enforcement has now invoked Section 129a – a paragraph in the German Criminal Code law dating back to the days of RAF. The paragraph was used to arrest a non-conforming sociologist Andrej H. and three others suspected of “supporting” a left-wing extremist group Militante Gruppe (MG).
Let’s see how this mess sorts out. It’s been in the regional news, at least. In any case, if accusations are based on such conspirational behaviour like – ‘not taking his mobile phone with him to a meeting’ or ‘having access to libraries which he can use inconspicuously in order to do the research necessary to the drafting of texts of the MG’ – it’s needless to say, that something profound is in danger here.
