Category Archives: Hot Off the Presses

In the latest installment of our bimonthly podcast, we discuss the current US prison system and its roots in the state itself, before turning our attention to movements for the abolition and/or destruction of prisons. Our special guests include a comrade from supermax lock up and Midwest Pages to Prisoners Zine Distro. News and a review of Between Predicates, War by the Institute for Experimental Freedom round out the episode.

Download the episode or stream it online or read the full transcript. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or email us at podcast@crimethinc.com. Episodes appear on the first and third Sunday of every month.

Industrial civilization got you down? Download the third episode of The Ex-Worker, our twice-monthly podcast of anarchist ideas and action—then smash your computer.

A short radio play about the Luddites introduces our theme segment for this episode, launching an exploration of the vibrant history and ideology of Green Anarchism. Hosts Alanis and Clara also present an activist fresh off the Tar Sands Blockade, a review of Fredy Perlman’s seminal book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, a statement from grand jury resister Jerry Koch, and a wide range of international news.

You can download this episode as well as our first two episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to podcast@crimethinc.com. Episodes appear on the first and third Sunday of every month.

Fed up with your job, or stressed because you can’t find one? Daydreaming of a world off the clock? Tune in to the second episode of the Ex-Worker, our twice-monthly podcast of anarchist ideas and action.

Why is this podcast called “the Ex-Worker”? In this episode, hosts Alanis and Clara join a friend in a café to discuss work and how it works, in the first installment of our series exploring anarchist critiques of capitalism. Other features include a special report on 2013 May Day actions around the world, a review of Silvia Federici’s “Caliban and the Witch,” and an interview and reportback from a Canadian anarcha-feminist conference, as well as news and upcoming events, with music from Underground Reverie.

Interested? Download the episode or stream it online or read the full transcript. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. We’ll be releasing a new episode on the first and third Sunday of every month, so stay tuned!

To celebrate May Day, we present the debut episode of the Ex-Worker, a twice-monthly anarchist podcast.

Each episode of the Ex-Worker offers an in-depth look at a different field of anarchist thinking and practice, rounding it off with news, reviews, profiles of current anarchist projects, upcoming events, and more. This episode focuses on the anarchist roots of May Day as a radical workers’ holiday, starting with the Haymarket affair of 1886. It also includes a profile of the Lucy Parsons Center in Boston, a review of the journal Modern Slavery: The Libertarian Critique of Civilization, brand new music from Underground Reverie, and a great deal more.

If you’re curious about anarchist ideas, history, and current practices—tune in! You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice.

Let no one accuse us of fiddling while Rome doesn’t burn! We’ve been hard at work on a new book that picks up where our others leave off, continuing our offensive against the status quo on the terrain of language itself.

In the tradition of The Devil’s Dictionary, our Contradictionary assembles a wide range of wit and whimsy. This is no mere miscellany, but a lighthearted work of serious literature, concentrating a wealth of ideas and history into aphorisms and anecdotes.

Whence do Stockholm Syndrome and Broken Window Theory derive their names? What is the common root of aristocracy and democracy? Who gets diagnosed with Anarchia and Drapetomania? How did voting kill Edgar Allen Poe, and why is a crater on the dark side of the moon named for the man who blew up the Tsar? Alternately scathing and sublime, Contradictionary pulls back the curtain from the war within every word, revealing the conflict behind the façade of the commonplace.

We’re supplementing this book online with a series of Contradictionary entries. The first ones are Prefiguration, Drapetomania, and Concessions.

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Unrast has just published the first full-length book of German CrimethInc. translations, Message in a Bottle: Selected CrimethInc. Communiqués 1996-2011. Our comrades in Black Mosquito have worked hard to translate and prepare this collection. A speaking tour throughout German-speaking Europe is currently underway to discuss the issues it raises.

After the jump: “A Brief History of CrimethInc.,” from the book.

We’re thrilled to announce the availability of the new second edition of Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook. We’ve dedicated an entire blog post to detailing the improvements, but here is the tl;dr version: Comprised of the same content as the first edition, the redesigned second edition boasts a new larger 7″ x 10″ format; photos and diagrams that are 77% and 164% larger, respectively; twenty-one new photos and a new introduction; improved typography and readability; and a more durable layflat binding; all for the same ol’ price of $12.

For those who have what is now the ‘old’ version, don’t fret! It’s still just as useful as it was yesterday, and the only new piece of writing is the Introduction to the Second Edition, which we’ve posted below in it’s entirety:

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At long last, Rolling Thunder #10 is back from the printers! The past two years have been a real roller coaster, so this one is packed.

We begin the issue with a reappraisal of the anarchist project in today’s context of crisis and technological transformation. From there, we chart the global trajectory of momentum: the student movements in the US and UK—the insurrections in Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond—the occupation movements in Spain, Greece, and finally the USA, from its awkward beginnings in Wisconsin to its aftereffects in Oakland. For case studies, we focus in on the anti-police struggles that catalyzed the rise of confrontational anarchism in Seattle, and scrutinize how US immigration policy is applied on the ground at the border to explain how its actual objectives differ from its ostensible purpose. The issue concludes with a historical review of Canadian anarchism, following it from its origins through the Olympics and G20 riots of 2010 and up to the present day.

Rolling Thunder #10 also features a graphic history from Argentine anarchism—24 pages in full color—and all the other bells and whistles you’ve come to expect from us times two. It was a long time coming, but the extra attention has only improved the final result.

This issue is funded in part by a legal settlement, the legacy of an earlier cycle of struggle. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to those who helped us get it published despite the usual host of challenges. Thank you for your faith in us. Everything you entrust we will return twofold to the struggle.

We’ve produced a new sticker to express the national mood about the upcoming election. Reading “VOTE HERE” with an arrow on patriotic red, white, and blue, it’s the perfect addition to trash cans, toilets, sewer drains, and other waste disposal sites. These are 4″ wide, printed on paper stickers (as opposed to vinyl) so as to be difficult to remove, and feature a QR code directing the curious to a new webpage discussing why democracy is bankrupt. They are available in quantities from 25-1,000, and, of course, one sticker comes free in every order from our online store.

We’d love to expand our photo gallery depicting these in action. If you see these stickers in use anywhere clever, please take a picture and email it to us, or better yet tweet it with the hashtag #votehere.

We gave away 1000 of these in a single day at last week’s Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair and we anticipate them going quickly. We’ll follow these up with a poster series in time for May Day.

Order the stickers here!

In times of high activity, it’s easy to get absorbed in the quotidian, responding to every opportunity and crisis and abandoning more playful pursuits. Yet in so doing WE LOSE OUR GREATEST STRENGTH. If anarchist practices are finally gaining currency, it is because they’ve had time and space to gestate at the margins, outside the logic of narrowly goal-oriented thinking. THOSE WHO DOMINATE THE PRESENT ABDICATE THE FUTURE: one must step back from the demands of this world to attune oneself to the secret tremors hinting at worlds to come.

Lest we lose our edge, THE EXPERIMENTATION COMMITTEE has been hard at work on a new publication, VORTEXT, the contents of which HAVE NOTHING TO DO with the recent surge of social movements. Vortext explores speculative philosophy, nihilist performance art, black magic, and MAXIMUM FUCKING ULTRAISM, celebrating the nonfunctional, non-productive, and irrational. OUTLIERS TO THE FRONT!

Each copy features a lovingly letter-pressed cover and further printing STOLEN FROM OUR FUCKING ENEMIES. Proceeds from Vortext, HOWEVER SCANTY, will offset the legal expenses of the various contributing FELONY DEFENDANTS. We encourage readers to support the Asheville 11, surely among the most NONFUNCTIONAL, NON-PRODUCTIVE, AND IRRATIONAL anarchist defendants of recent years.

Vortext is to anarchist literature what ÜMLAÜT was to hardcore and the MARQUIS DE SADE was to political prisoners. Vortext is the perfect gift for every fugitive trying to figure out what Wittgenstein can tell her about FACING CONSPIRACY CHARGES. Vortext is NOT FOR EVERYONE and it’s probably NOT FOR YOU.

Contents and ordering information.