Archive for December, 2007
December 30, 2007 at 10:12 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
Romantic Stories from the Revolution in the Attic
This just in from our friends in Bulgaria. We thought it was worth sharing here as an Eastern European counterpoint to the article about squatting one’s workplace that appeared in the first issue of Rolling Thunder.
This story starts a little before the end of my last term in the university. I’d spent four really crazy years in the students’ hostels in the well known “Students’ Town” in Sofia. The end of the term was coming and my life in the students’ hostel was about to end, too. I had to find a new place for living very fast if I wanted to stay in Sofia. I thought over a lot of options for renting, but all the rents were very expensive for me. I was working for a web page at that time. The job was pretty nice—I used to write news and concert reports, prepare photos, and do kind of a primitive book-keeping at the office. The best thing was that I had one or two free weeks every month and I was able to travel all around the country during this time, but the bad thing was that my salary was very low. It appeared that if I wanted to rent a lodging I had to find more “serious” and well-paid job. For me this was like putting a chain around myself and working the whole month only to get enough money to pay my rent and food, and hopefully to save some money to enjoy the weekends. I didn’t like this idea at all, because I didn’t want to sell my leisure time for a wage.
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December 22, 2007 at 5:51 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by ret marut
It is never acceptable to give information about any other person without his or her express consent. It cannot be emphasized enough that informing to the government is always a serious matter, whether it is a question of a high profile defendant snitching on his comrades or an acquaintance of law-abiding activists answering a seemingly harmless question. The primary goal of the government in any political case is not to put any one defendant in prison but to obtain information with which to map radical communities, with the ultimate goal of repressing and controlling those communities. The most minor piece of trivia may serve to jeopardize a person’s life, whether or not they have ever broken any law.
On December 21, Operation Backfire cooperating defendant Darren Thurston released a lengthy statement presenting the history of Operation Backfire as he sees it and laying out what he apparently considers to be extenuating circumstances connected to his decision to inform. He insists that he does not condone snitching, but claims that he didn’t share any information that was harmful to others; unfortunately, as Thurston has chosen to withhold from the public both his plea agreement and the debrief documents that detail his cooperation with investigators, it’s impossible to verify this claim.
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December 15, 2007 at 9:32 am · Filed under Calling All Anarchists, posted by ret marut
From September 1 to 4, 2008, Republican vermin from around the nation will overrun the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota for the Republican National Convention, one of the most noxious media spectacles of the capitalist world. Reciprocally, CrimethInc. groups from across the United States have agreed to endorse a strategy for defending the Twin Cities from this unwanted assault. This strategy came out of a meeting called by the locals of the RNC Welcoming Committee, and is supported nationwide by the Unconventional Action network and countless other groups.
Starting next week, CrimethInc. Far East will include copies of the free paper just published by Unconventional Action detailing the context of and plans for resistance to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. A pdf of this paper can be downloaded from the Unconventional Action website; further copies of it can be ordered via distro@unconventionalaction.org.
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December 10, 2007 at 11:13 pm · Filed under Internal Memos, posted by pfm
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It was a crazy day here at the Far East HQ—mailorder action from dawn til dusk. The books arrived at 9am, we started a big ol’ fire in the mailorder room to take the 36º chill off, and there was no letting up until we dropped off the packages at the Post Office at 7:23 PM with only seven minutes to spare. In a mailorder melee for the ages, we got more than 150 orders done today, filling 15 USPS mail bins and requiring two trips to the post office. Every order that came in before 5:00 PM PST Monday was mailed out today and the books are currently speeding their way to anxious hands. We’re excited beyond any words for people to finally see these books; let us know what you think when they arrive.
December 8, 2007 at 3:11 pm · Filed under Hot Off the Presses, posted by b. traven
CrimethInc. Launches New Offensive with the Publication of Expect Resistance
They called us bourgeois for urging people to abandon bourgeois culture.
They called us anti-worker for refusing complicity in exploitation.
They dismissed our advocacy of plagiarism as unoriginal.
They mocked us for producing paper bullets,
Then cried foul play when those projectiles hit their targets.
When we subsisted on crusts of bread, they insisted it was the upper crusts;
When we discovered cornucopias of abundance, they preferred their sour grapes.
We’ve been branded militants and dilettantes, black bloc and bête noire, primus inter pariahs.
We reply, as Marie Antoinette might have, that they can have their words and eat them too—like Samuel Clemens, we don’t care what our detractors say about us, so long as they don’t tell the truth.
Long ago, we embarked on the greatest adventure of our lives: the total rejection of hierarchy, submission, and tedium, of status and status quo. Seceding from an entirely colonized world, we cast ourselves as crash-test dummies in a life-or-death mission to smash through the walls of capitalism.
Contrary to all expectations, we’ve survived. To our surprise, we are now able to present Expect Resistance, a coded account of our adventures hitting those walls and a full report on our findings beyond them.
Printed in stunning black and red and bound in the skin of corporate executives, Expect Resistance is the perfect coffee table book for anyone who lives out of a backpack. Our writers have spent years experimenting with every possible extremity of existence; our editors have spent months hammering out imperfections and adding sickles to the periods to turn them into question marks; our designers, as everyone knows, are the best in the business, not to mention the best against it. A thousand sleeper cells across the planet prepare to swing into action as this announcement is typed.
Concerned citizens may object that some of the raw materials from which this book has been assembled have yet to enter the public domain; we ask them to think of Expect Resistance as a book ahead of its time.
To enjoy your very own copy of Expect Resistance, simply commit to a project as ambitious and absurd as our own, blunder obstinately forward for several years, then send a few dollars to CrimethInc. Far East to defray printing and shipping expenses. Better yet, save your money and request a copy at your local library.
Still in love with all of you and the amazing things we have yet to do–
–your faithful ex-workers
December 2, 2007 at 10:45 pm · Filed under Calling All Anarchists, posted by b. traven
This week, on December 7, it will be two years since federal agents arrested Daniel McGowan outside his workplace, a non-profit organization helping women in domestic abuse situations navigate the legal system. His arrest was part of Operation Backfire, an FBI roundup of suspected participants in environmentally motivated direct action. Daniel was accused of involvement with two arson attacks.
Though Daniel was not charged with injuring any human being or animal, he was threatened with a life sentence and held on 1.6 million dollar bail. Men who are prosecuted for domestic abuse–a small minority of all abusers–face dramatically less time in prison and dramatically lower bail. This disparity lays bare the values that form the foundation of the US legal system, not to mention government in general: inanimate property is more important than human and animal life.
Daniel spent a harrowing year facing the potential of life in prison; many of his codefendants had turned informant, offering to testify against him and others to try to curry favor with the government. However, when Daniel’s lawyer demanded that the government reveal whether National Security Agency wiretaps had been illegally used in the case, the government immediately came to the bargaining table, offering a plea bargain if the wiretap inquiry was dropped. If it had been revealed that wiretaps were used illegally, the entire Operation Backfire case might have been thrown out.
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Romantic Stories from the Revolution in the Attic
