The Norwegian Nobel Comitee

This year's nobel peace prize went to Barack Obama, as you all know by now. I personally find this odd, mildly put. But this continues a tradition of, what I and others see as using the peace prize as a foreign policy tool on behalf of Norway. Increasingly this also extends to attempts at influencing US policies in several different fields.

In a way this started just after George W. Bush was elected, when former president Jimmy Carter was awarded the prize in 2002. At the time many observers were critical and saw the prize as a comment on the militaristic policies of the Bush administration. (In extension you can also see it as a criticism of american politics in the entire Reagen-era, which extends into the first and second Bush administrations.)
Then of course there was Al Gore, in 2007. Gore of course ran against Bush in 2000, and lost (despite getting more votes). It doesn't take a genius to see that this could be interpreted as a direct criticism of Bush. Especially his environmental polices.
Yesterday it was announced that Bush's succesor Barack Obama is this years winner. Apparantly he was nominated after 11 days in office, which indicates to me that his main award winning effort was winning the presidency.

I find this pattern striking, and very slanted towards a certain political party in the states, whose popularity in Norway is marked by massive support every four years when there is an election over there. Hardly any norwegian politican would even consider throwing his support for the republican candidate. Norwegians even seem to suffer from the misguided notion that the democrats are some sort of social democratic party. Considering that the democrats are to the right of the norwegian conservative party on most issues, this notion is simply amusing.

Anway, let's take a look at the people awarding the prize, and the picture will become even clearer. (Do also remember that the member's are chosen by the norwegian parliament itself.)
The leader of the commitee is a Thorbjørn Jagland, a former politican for the norwegian labour party. In fact, he is a former prime minister, former leader of Labour, former minister of foreign affairs and so forth. Today, the day after voting on the nobel peace prize he is also set to take the chair as secretary general of the Council of Europe. Hardly a neutral observer.
The next member of the commitee is Kaci K. Five. She is the former leader of the consercative party in Norway. Another former politican, who served several terms in the norwegian parliament, where she was a member of the committee on foreign affairs.
Then there is Sissel Rønbeck. Another former politican, and this one also a labour politician, with three terms in the norwegian parliament and two years as leader of the Labour party's youth movement.
The fourth member is the least conspicous one, having only served a single term in the parliament, for the ultra right wing progressive party. Still, another politican.
The fifth, and last member more than compensates however. Ågot Valle having served three terms for the socialist left party, as a member of the foreign affairs committee for two of these.
Among the three stand in members of the committee, we find a former minister of foreign affairs (who also served as ambassador to the United states for six years), and two former parliamentary politicans.

With such close ties to official norwegian political life I guess it would be safe to say that the prize is not beyond criticism. In fact I would go as far as saying that it seriously detracts from the prize's legitimacy and credibility. This year's award of course marking the apex in a string of obviously political awards. It is saddening to see how Alfred Nobel's original intention has been hijacked by state interests.

And now I'm not even touching the important subject of whether this year's laureate actually deserves the prize. That is a whole other blog, and a rather lengthy one at that. But shortly put: when your police uses rubber bullets against peaceful protesters, you don't deserve an award, you deserve to be deposed.

Another rave oriented blog...

You know your mind is screwed up when you wake up from dreaming about your blog. Especially when you spend as little time on it as I do. The post I dreamt about was about hardcore techno, and I figure that's a good reason to write a blog about just that. So put on your headset and fire up soulseek/last.fm/spotify or whatever, and get ready.

Way back in 1992 I was first subjected to the roots of hardcore techno. We are of course talking about Human Resource and the track Dominator. You've probably heard it. It's a really cool track, with nifty vocals and a really fantastic synthesizer track. Their album Dominating the world was very much an example of what was going on in the techno scene at the time, but with one very important innovation that was to crystalize the early hardcore style: the hoover. No, not the thing you use to suck up dust from your filthy floor, but a synthesizer sound. Put on nearly any hardcore track, and you'll hear it. It sounds like something halfway between a lazergun from the fifties, an angry wasp and a vacume cleaner (hoover for the brits).

Soon after hardcore techno proper was born, and a flurry of styles (all sounding more or less the same) was fronted by artists with such fascinatingly mature names as DJ Fistfuck, the Speedfreak, the Nightraver and so forth and so forth. Cities like Frankfurt, Berlin and perhaps most of all Rotterdam became synonymous with a very loud four on the floor beat and scratchy hoover-synths. The louder and faster the better. The various styles were represented mostly by a number of different compilation series: Thunderdome, Razorshock, Terrordrome, the Best of Rotterdam Records, Nightmare in Rotterdam (and similar) and others whose names elude me at the moment. The hardest was ofcourse the various compilations from Rotterdam Records, whose style was also the most eclectic. The wonderfully humorous poing from Rotterdam Termination Source was one end of the scale, while extremely angry and noisy techno was on the other end.

Every other month or so the various forms of hardcore picked up another five bpms to their average speed, and got more and more crystalized in terms of genre. Suddenly you had gabba (gabber to the brits, utlizing the hoover sound), Happy Hardcore (mostly fronted by Technohead and Scooter) and whatnot. Hardcore was really happening at the time, and more and more acts appeared on the scene. The Thunderdome compilations went completely overboard and released new comps in tempo you can't imagine. And the music tended more and more towards happy hardcore and simplistic childish hooks.

I kind of lost interest, especially since I absolutely abhorred happy hardcore. The kid who used to run around town spray painting "hardcore will never die" on various walls in his little shithole town got off the hardcore bus.

That is untill a few years later, when a chance visit to my favorite record shop in Oslo had me laughing with disbelief for days. I was under the impression that hardcore was very dead, and that noone over 18 would ever listen to that stuff, except for as nostalgia, when I heard 180bpms worth of "boomboomboomboom!! I'M GONNA FUCK YOUR MOTHER!!! Boomboomboomboomboom!!" Out of the speakers at this aforementioned record store. I had been subjected to power noise for the first time, in the year of our lord 1999. While power noise can be alot of things a great deal of it quite simply a less childish variation of old skool hardcore techno. Quite hysterical to think of actually. These two styles had existed side by side throughout the nineties, but while hardcore attracted ravers with umpteen colored baby suckers in the gabs, power noise attracted goths and "rivetheads". I never did find out what that track was, but I ended up byuing a few records by other power noise acts. They range from the really good stuff (Imminent [pictured], Noisex, Converter, NKVD) to absolute crap (Terrorfakt, Iszoloscope). Power noise is of course fronted by the flagship event Maschinenfest every year.

But hardcore wasn't entirely dead in its own right either. There were these little cells operating out of backwater towns practising a style known as break core. The local act Sunjammer is particularly worth checking out. To me it sounded like hardcore with slightly better production values and sometimes more interesting beats, and also something called speed core, apparantly a grandchild of nordcore. (All these cores are making my head spin. Which is kind of cool.) M1dy, the albino from Tokyo (pictured), is a prime example of doing the right thing at 350bpms. Many of the people who paved the way for hardcore in the early days are still active. Rob Gee, Human Resource, DJ Paul Elstak, and whole lot of other guys. Even Rotterdam Records.

And, people over 18 can certainly listen to hardcore, and not be embarassed. The crappy happy hardcore days are over, and with it most of the short lived acts that were in it for the rage of it. Hardcore has matured in a way, and has found its own little niche.

I like it.

Sixty years is more than enough.

October first 2009. It's been sixty years since Mao came to power today. The chinese people has my sympathies, as well as all others living under the yoke of dictatorships. Chinese or otherwise.

May the next sixty years bring you closer to freedom, rather than the oppression you have faced so far.