Author Archives: pfm

At long last, we’re finally out of Rolling Thunder #6, and accordingly, a free, complete PDF of the issue is now available. This issue is one of my personal favorites, filled with spectacular photography and a diverse selection of writings based around the theme of experimentation. From Swedish anarchists literally building a social center to a detailed look at anarchist organizing in NYC, this issue has many hours of good reading between its covers.

And as the print edition of RT #6 sails off into the sunset, the newest issue from this past summer, RT #10, has now been added to the Rolling Thunder Bundle, where you can now get the last four issues for just $10. Happy reading!

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CrimethInc. agents have completed a speaking tour of northern Europe, offering 45 presentations in less than two months. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the countless organizers, hosts, and attendees who made this possible and inspired us so much in the course of our trip.

Some of the highlights of the tour included the Zrenjanin Antifascist Festival, attended by anarchists from over a dozen countries; radical history walking tours of Helsinki and several other cities; the candles filling Skogskyrkogården cemetery on the night of All Saints’ Day; and traveling with our comrade from Black Mosquito, whose hard work got the tour off the ground in the first place. We were struck by the large turnouts—peaking at almost 120, but regularly 50 or more. These seem to indicate a growing interest in anarchism throughout northern Europe.

And none too soon. Up to now, the nations of northern Europe have remained islands of relative economic stability and social peace as the continent burns from the south up, but this won’t last forever. Outside of Oslo, a European Dubai still buoyed by oil money, growing fascist power in the parliaments and on the streets attests to the general sense that it’s just a matter of time before capitalism fails its most historically privileged middle classes. As faith in the present system erodes, it’s especially important for anarchists to offer a vision of liberation, rather than simply preserving subcultural ghettos or taking a quixotic stand as the last defenders of social democracy. One of the reasons we chose to tour northern Europe at this time was to offer comrades there a preview of the context they may soon find themselves in, which is already upon us in the United States. What happens in northern Europe in the next few years may well determine the scope of what is possible in the rest of the world.

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I’ve wanted to reformat and redesign Recipes for Disaster for more than five years. Shortly after the dust had settled from the second printing, I had enough distance from working on the first edition to start noticing its flaws, or, more accurately, the mistakes I’d made. However, recognizing imperfections and failed objectives isn’t the same as finding solutions, and for years I’ve lived with the book, handling it nearly every day, sending out tens of thousands of copies to people and coordinating subsequent printings—all the while feeling like it wasn’t the absolute best version we could make. I made notes, registered feedback from readers, tinkered with prototype templates in InDesign, and—more than anything else—fretted. Today we announce the availability of the newly redesigned second edition, and holding it in my hands fills me with more than just relief, but also the sweet feeling of satisfaction. We really got it right.

What follows is a beyond-nerdy breakdown of the changes made in the second edition, the reasoning behind the changes, and a look into what led to the shortcomings of the first edition. To do that we’ll have to travel back to 2004, but first we’ll show off a few of the improvements . . .

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