Archive for August, 2006
August 28, 2006 at 12:41 pm · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by pfm
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Thanks to Agent LaBox who sent in the above clipping from a recent issue of Portland’s daily newspaper, The Oregonian. The article is about the excellent radical bookshop Laughing Horse Books (please note the linked-to page still has their old address, tsk tsk), and while the text doesn’t mention CrimethInc., of course, the caption for the photo accompanying the print version of the article reads “Jessi Norris buys a book for her 14-year-old sister from Jack Piper at Laughing Horse Books . . .” The book, delightfully, is our very own Days of War Nights of Love! (Click on photo for a larger image.) Thanks Jessi and Jack, and inquisitive 14-year-old sisters everywhere!
August 26, 2006 at 2:39 pm · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by pfm
On Friday we received the proofs from the printer for Rolling Thunder #3, fixed a small error or two and sent them back. This means RT3 is now at the gold master stage (we’re appropriating that term from cd pressing, btw) and we should have it back and ready to go out in around three weeks. You can check out a PDF of the Table of Contents in the meantime. Not that anyone cares or will notice, but I changed the main text and display typefaces for this issue. I feel the new look better suits the content and aids in readability thorughout, while hopefully helping to establish a signature style for our little periodical. Both new text typefaces are visible on the above-linked TOC.
August 24, 2006 at 1:15 pm · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by b. traven
On Saturday, July 29, members of the Borf Brigade threw a roving street party in Washington, DC. About 200 people marched in the streets to celebrate the spirit of graffiti artist(s) Borf, in an event that looked like something straight out of Fight Club and was the most spirited anarchist march in DC in quite a while.
The party started at 10 pm at 11th and O Streets with the projection of the new Borf communique video onto the wall of a building. The police were there in full force, even maintaining a helicopter overhead, but were unable to do anything to interfere with the festivities.
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August 22, 2006 at 8:40 pm · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by pfm
CrimethInc. Special Agent Siggi in Iceland writes us with excellent news, especially if you too are from Iceland:
This year I finished translating the Days of War, Nights of love book into Icelandic, that is, we might call it the icelandic version of the original crimethinc book—some of the historical details I switched for Icelandic resistance history and examples of successful direct action, some texts I changed and others I simply translated. I will receive the finished book from the printer this week. I am very happy that this project finally goes onto the streets of Reykjavík. I also run a anarchist library here and distribute some zines and books. I am always looking out for enlarging the library so all donations of used books are welcome. At least I wanted to let some of you know about the icelandic version of this beautiful book.
Best wishes,
Siggi in Iceland, punknursester @ gmail.com, www.helviti.com/punknurse
August 16, 2006 at 9:25 am · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by pfm
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Today we picked up the third printing of our Towers poster, now featuring the essay Forget Terrorism: The Hijacking of Reality on the back. While not our best selling poster, it holds a special place in our hearts and I’m glad it has some new pizazz as it hits the streets with copies #35,001-50,000. Here is a PDF of the new poster back.
August 15, 2006 at 11:17 am · Filed under Calling All Anarchists, posted by ret marut
This August, we are taking a homemade floating monstrosity down the Mississippi. When we started we didn’t know much about boats or rivers, and we didn’t have any money. (We know this is craziness, but if the idea makes your eyes glow like coals then you understand!) For several months we met, made phone calls, held benefits, and drew up blueprints. We collected scrap wood from all over and hammered it together piece by piece. We had benefit parties and socked away brown rice and dented cans. We organized mostly out of New York because that’s where we live, but we were joined by folks on the West coast as well as in the Midwest.
We met in Minneapolis in late July with sections of our raft in tow. We pieced together our pontoons and filled them with salvaged blocks of foam. We tie on anything that floats, adding it to our junk armada, our anarchist county fair, our fools ark. Our precious cargo is everything we hold dear: pieces and parts of the culture we are already creating. Our ’zines and puppets, sewing projects and poster campaigns. Our Nothing to Lose Navy musical review and amateur(!) variety show. Plus our thoughts and dreams and irrepressible energy.
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August 11, 2006 at 4:17 pm · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by b. traven
Report from the 2006 CrimethInc. Convergence,
July 26-31 in Winona, Minnesota
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Supernatural Powers of Enjoyment
Not long after the convergence I went to a family function. Picture me in the pews at Catholic Mass, the priest wearing a robe straight out of the seventeenth century and quoting obscure theology as he holds forth on how to be a model of obedience to God’s will—and they say punk rockers’ subcultural baggage is alienating! A good part of the people present at this particular event are not Catholic or even Christian, but this one man is in control of the proceedings to such an extent that those of us who aren’t down with his program can’t even recognize each other. The paths that brought us here, the dreams and desires we carry with us, the relationships we might have with one other—all these are inaccessible, irrelevant. Trapped like this, it’s unthinkable that we could do anything together but sit in mute compliance.
Exactly eight and a half days earlier, two hundred of us have gathered on the green of a college campus outside an auditorium. Inside, bourgeois couples and theater enthusiasts watch a Shakespeare classic in a ritual not entirely unlike the one in the church.
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August 11, 2006 at 1:15 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
HeartattaCk, a magazine covering a certain subsection of the do-it-yourself punk rock underground, published their final issue summer of 2006. Texts appeared under the CrimethInc. banner in their columns section on an irregular basis; this one, “The Shape of Punk to Come,” ran in that final issue. It lays out a few concrete suggestions for how punk rock can retain its subversive charge in today’s shifting cultural context.
The Shape of Punk to Come
HeartattaCk, a little-known newsprint periodical, has just published its final issue. This is a small tragedy for punks like me, as this magazine played an important role in political do-it-yourself punk over the past decade. But let’s pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living, as they say. HeartattaCk is dead, but political punk and the d.i.y. communities associated with it are not—so let’s talk about what we can do to keep them vital.
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August 11, 2006 at 12:36 pm · Filed under Calling All Anarchists, posted by b. traven
When my friend came back from Chile, he brought with him a heartbreaking movie called Machuca, a work of historical fiction that follows the lives of a group of children during the CIA-sponsored coup in which a military dictatorship overthrew the democratically-elected government of Chile and “disappeared” thousands of dissidents.
It happens that this coup took place on September 11, 1973. Our idea is that this coming September 11, in order to counteract right wing propaganda to the effect that the United States government is an innocent defender of freedom, people organize showings of this movie in their communities, accompanied by discussions of the role the US government plays in global affairs. Over sixty copies have already been distributed around the country to this purpose. Machuca hasn’t yet been released in the US, but if you’d like to organize a showing yourself, email crimethincbooking@yahoo.com for a copy.
To learn more about the military coup and subsequent dictatorship in Chile, you could start with Chile: The Other September 11 An Anthology of Reflections on the 1973 Coup (though it hardly presents an anarchist analysis). Also not to be missed is world-renowned novelist Ariel Dorfman’s How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, an analysis of the capitalist propaganda Disney flooded Chile with in the months leading up to the coup. Exciting coverage of last year’s 9/11 protests in Chile can be found here:
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20050910111725891
http://www.hommodolars.cl/e107/content.php?content.649 http://www.hommodolars.cl/e107/content.php?content.653
August 11, 2006 at 9:26 am · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by pfm
We’re delighted to unveil our latest project, the CrimethInc. Worker Bulletin Board. The CrimethInc. Worker Bulletins of the past ten years have been distributed in scattershot fashion; some (notably, numbers 47 and 74) have been mass-produced by the thousand and disseminated to a wide readership, while others have only circulated among a couple comrades. This website will function as a clearinghouse for bulletins from participating CrimethInc. cells, enabling readers to keep abreast of their activities and, more importantly, coordinate activities with them.
Bulletins will appear here in three basic categories:
Calling All Anarchists
Announcements of upcoming events, proposals for future projects, appeals for participation and assistance
From the Trenches
Breaking news, eyewitness reports and analysis, accounts of the adventures and misadventures of CrimethInc. agents and other miscreants
Read All About It
CrimethInc. texts not available elsewhere on the internet, drafts in progress, other material of interest
