Archive for Read All About It
May 22, 2011 at 2:32 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
As a preview of the forthcoming tenth issue of Rolling Thunder, we present two texts about US border policy and policing:
The former, Designed to Kill, analyzes US border control policy, exploring how its actual effects and objectives differ from its ostensible purpose. The conclusions are based on several years of firsthand observation of both sides of the border by a participant in No More Deaths. For additional context, Four Stories from the Border offers glimpses into the lives of those who risk death to cross the border.
May 1, 2011 at 12:03 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by pfm
-
To mark the coming of May Day, we’re delighted to take part in the online debut of the subMedia film END:CIV, now available in it’s entirety—for free, of course—at our movie sub-site, the CrimethInc. Emergency Broadcast System.
The 76 minute film examines our culture’s addiction to systematic violence and environmental exploitation, and probes the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations. Based in part on Endgame, the best-selling book by Derrick Jensen, END:CIV asks: “If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?”
Backed by Jensen’s narrative, the film calls on us to act as if we truly love this land, moving along at a brisk pace, using music, archival footage, motion graphics, animation, slapstick and satire to deconstruct the global economic system, even as it implodes around us. Featuring interviews with Paul Watson, Waziyatawin, Gord Hill, Michael Becker, Peter Gelderloos, Lierre Keith, James Howard Kunstler, Stephanie McMillan, Qwatsinas, Rod Coronado, John Zerzan and more.
February 2, 2011 at 9:46 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by ret marut
-
North Africa is in revolt. As usual, the most striking thing is how familiar everything is: the young man with the prestigious degree working at a coffee shop, the unemployment and bitterness, the protests set off by police brutality—for police are to the unemployed what bosses are to workers. These details cue us in that what is happening in Egypt is not part of another world, but very much part of our own. There are no exotic overseas revolutions in the 21st century. Make no mistake—though these events dwarf the riots in Greece and the student movement in England, they spring from the same source.
To keep up with events, we urge you to read our comrades’ dispatches from Egypt and anti-authoritarian perspectives from the Middle East in general. But for these uprisings to offer any hope, we have to understand ourselves as part of them, and think and act accordingly. To that end, we’ve solicited this analysis from a comrade in North Africa.
Read on after the jump.
January 26, 2011 at 7:06 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by ret marut
-
November and December 2010 saw an unprecedented wave of student protest in the UK, touched off by an attack on the right-wing Tory party headquarters during a demonstration against tuition increases. With the assistance of members of the Last Hours collective, we’ve completed a belated overview of the causes and highlights of the UK student movement.
The events in the UK are significant in that they come on the heels of labor unrest in Spain and France, and coincided with fierce student protests in Italy as well. To the south, the government of Tunisia has just been toppled, sending shockwaves to Egypt. Broadly speaking, these are all reactions to the effects of the ongoing financial crisis that came into public consciousness in 2008; we will probably see more of these as disaffected youth take stock of the world they will be inheriting.
Sooner or later, this outrage is bound to erupt in the US as well. Last year’s student movement is surely only a preview, though we can’t tell what form it will take next. What we can do is study upheavals elsewhere in the world, reflect on how we can best contribute to oppositional momentum, and keep up our experiments in catalyzing resistance.
Read on after the jump.
December 3, 2010 at 10:35 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by peter p
-
On Saturday, November 13, a new and experimental infoshop in Winona, MN, opened it’s doors to the public. The Burrow is one of the first new infoshops to open since the controversial essay “5 Steps to Reviving Your Failing Anarchist Bookstore“, and at a time when long-standing infoshops are throwing in their towels, this account offers insight into the new models still unseen.
This story begins where our coverage of small-town organizing left off in Rolling Thunder #7. What follows is not only an account and recipe for a new type of space, but a possible intermediate step in anarchist organizing in long-term communities.
Read on after the break.
October 19, 2010 at 8:40 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
We just received this inspiring and instructive report from anonymous comrades in Russia, describing two years of struggle against logging operations in one of the major forests near Moscow. The struggle culminated this summer in the “Khimki battle,” in which several hundred armed antifascists and anarchists attacked a government building in suburban Moscow; the authorities responded in kind, and subsequent solidarity efforts in Belarus provoked further repression.
Most of the links in this text lead to Russian-language pages; those too busy to teach themselves Russian can at least plug the website addresses into Google translate and struggle through computer-generated translations.
Read on after the break.
October 14, 2010 at 2:17 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
A tremendous amount of attention has focused on Greece lately. Looking at the successful anarchist movement there, we can nurture utopian visions to strengthen our resolve; but if we only consider apparent success stories, we will not be prepared for the challenges ahead.
The entire Balkan peninsula is a sort of laboratory of crisis. Studying it, we can discern some of the possible futures that may await us now that North America seems to be entering an era of crisis as well. The vibrant anarchist movement in Greece represents one possible future, in which a powerful social movement establishes hubs of resistance. But only a few hundred kilometers north Serbia shows another: a nightmare of ethnic conflict, nationalist war, and false resistance movements in which the anarchist alternative has sunk almost as deep as Atlantis.
The roots of the differences between these countries are hundreds of years old, but we can identify some recent factors. Only a generation ago, both were ruled by dictatorships: Greece by a US-based fascist dictatorship that collapsed under pressure from rebellious students, winning youth revolt the respect of the general population to this day; Yugoslavia by a socialist dictatorship, in which Tito maintained power by playing various groups off against each other. When the Berlin Wall came down and the socialist government collapsed, the country was torn apart by ethnic strife. By the end of the 1990s, Serbia was reduced to a much smaller nation ruled by a nationalistic communist, Slobodan Milošević.
On paper, what happened next reads like an anarchist fairy tale. An ostensibly decentralized and nonhierarchical underground youth group named Otpor (“Resistance”) carried out a propaganda campaign aimed at rousing popular revolt, despite aggressive repression from the authorities. After a rigged election, hundreds of thousands of people converged on the capital and intense streetfighting ensued. An unemployed vehicle operator, nicknamed “Joe” by his colleagues, drove his bulldozer through a hail of bullets into the headquarters of the state television station at the head of a furious crowd. Other protesters set the Parliament on fire and violently wrested control of the streets from police. The authorities surrendered, the government toppled, and soon a former anarchist was prime minister.
More history, commentary, an in-depth interview and appendices after the jump.
September 8, 2010 at 2:15 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
Or, How We Raised $2000 for Scott DeMuth and Carrie Feldman
It is with great rejoicing that we announce our latest triumph, the successful development of an effective new means of fundraising to support targets of state repression.
All you need to try this yourself is 1) a person or cause that deserves fundraising support, 2) another person who cares about that person or cause, and 3) a bunch of people who want to play a practical joke on the caring person.
In our case, the targets of state repression are Scott DeMuth and Carrie Feldman, two young anarchists the FBI is struggling to tie to an Animal Liberation Front action that occurred at the University of Iowa in 2004 when the two were barely in high school. Scott is charged with conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act; he goes to trial September 13. After serving four months in prison for refusing to speak to a grand jury, Carrie has been subpoenaed again, this time to testify at Scott’s trial. The two face tremendous legal expenses and are in dire need of support.
Last November, we were fruitlessly trying to brainstorm new ways to raise funds for Scott and Carrie. At the same time, we were teasing our friend Steve for hating folk punk, an obscure musical genre. Have you ever had a friend who loved to hate things and be miserable in a way that was positively adorable? Steve is that kind of person, as hundreds of admirers can attest. Somebody had spread a rumor that Steve was in a folk punk band, Steve was incensed, it was hysterical—and suddenly we had a brilliant money-making scheme.
The scheme and resulting free MP3 album download after the break.
August 23, 2010 at 10:03 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
Ten years ago we published Days of War, Nights of Love, one of the most influential anarchist books of the turn of the century. Tremendous technological and cultural shifts have occurred since then. On reflection, it seems that many of the incidental changes radicals were calling for have taken place, but none of the fundamental transformations. We can learn a lot from studying how this happened and what is different about today’s context.
Towards that end, we present Fighting in the New Terrain: What’s Changed since the 20th Century, the product of months of discussion. We hope that this will inspire further analysis and strategizing, and we invite you to share your feedback with us.
August 18, 2010 at 10:25 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
Over the past decade, CrimethInc. texts have appeared in over two dozen languages, both as translations and original texts. Unfortunately, no one has done a thorough job of archiving these or maintaining contacts between different groups. We’d like to change that, but we need help. If you’d like to assist with such an archive or with maintaining communication between related projects around the world, please email us at foreignlegion@crimethinc.com.
A “spin-off” of Days of War, Nights of Love has recently been published in Danish. It’s not just a translation of the original material, but a new version with a lot of original content, a new design, and new illustrations. The book is available via the website www.tankekriminalitet.tk or in underground shops in Denmark. Most of the original contents are included and expanded; the new articles explore child-rearing, street art, the education system, and vegetarianism.
In Brazil, Protopia is translating CrimethInc. books into Brazilian Portuguese. They have already translated Days of War, Nights of Love and Expect Resistance, and are currently midway through Recipes for Disaster. All the texts are available on the Protopia website, and they plan to print Days of War, Nights of Love through a local anarchist publisher, Deriva, soon. Lots of texts by Protopia’s own agents and others are available on their website as well.
Since our last update about German-language CrimethInc. projects, our gender poster has appeared in German [PDF, 322kb] as well, and in Spanish [PDF, 363kb]. We reported on the Icelandic translation of Days of War, Nights of Love when it was printed in 2006. An abridged Italian translation of Recipes for Disaster, Ricette per il Caos [PDF, 3.29MB], was published around the same time and is now available online.
A Czech CrimethInc. group has long maintained websites here and here. A CrimethInc. cell in South Africa maintains a website here. An old Spanish-language CrimethInc. site is archived on this website; you can find our humorous dishwashing poster in Spanish here. A Finnish translation of our pamphlet “Beyond Democracy” appeared here. Various texts have appeared in Bulgarian on this website and in the zine Katarzis. An Indonesian group publishes a sort of sister journal to Rolling Thunder entitled Amor Fati.
It’s especially difficult to keep up with smaller-scale translations. For example, our interview ”How to Organize an Insurrection” swiftly appeared in German, French, Polish, and Catalan, among other languages. Some other translations of this interview, including the Russian version, appear to no longer be available online, another good reason to organize a more permanent archive.
Countless more texts and translations, like this Hebrew translation of Fighting for Our Lives [PDF, 2.2 MB], have never been widely available on the internet. Somewhere out there are Swedish, Norwegian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croat, Slovakian, Lithuanian, Basque, Mandarin Chinese, and Esperanto translations we have lost track of over the years, some of them full books. If you have access to any of these, please contact us and we’ll try to help make them available to the public.
August 11, 2010 at 7:42 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
While religious fundamentalism is still a powerful force, ideology seems to be on the wane as a motor of secular revolutionary activity. The days are long past when groups like the Communist Party could command millions of adherents worldwide. Should anarchists celebrate this decline, positioning ourselves atop the crashing wave of history? Is ideology itself the problem? But what would it mean to be against ideology?
Last May, a CrimethInc. agent was invited to speak about “The End of Ideology and the Future Events” on a panel at the 2010 Babylonia festival in Athens, Greece. We’ve polished the notes from that discussion into a text exploring what ideology is, what it could mean to oppose it, and what could replace it as a foundation for resistance.
Read the full analysis here.
July 27, 2010 at 3:31 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
Looking back over the past decade, it appears that North American law enforcement agencies are increasingly utilizing conspiracy charges to target anarchists and other radicals. In hopes of countering this, we’ve composed an in-depth report reviewing recent conspiracy cases and analyzing what we can do to discourage the state from pursuing this strategy of repression.
Meanwhile, our comrades are embarking on a nationwide tour to address this same issue. The full list of tour dates is available here.
July 5, 2010 at 7:15 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by ret marut
-
Our last update offered an overview of what happened in Toronto during the anarchist actions against the G20 June 25-27. We’ve received the following blow-by-blow report from on the ground there, offering context and analysis from inside the riots that shook Canada’s largest city. Anarchists have fully emerged in North America as a force to be reckoned with following the events in Toronto, and it is important to understand how this came about. The black bloc has become a household name throughout the region, and we must use this exposure to our advantage by maintaining our visibility even in the face of repression. We must also look critically at the events of the weekend in order to make strategic advances toward our goal of completely dismantling the domination and hierarchy of the present world.
Information on the situation facing arrestees in Toronto is still sketchy at best, as most of those with serious charges have not received bail hearings yet and full coordination of support campaigns has yet to emerge. We will present an additional update on repression and arrestee support as soon as possible.
Full report here.
July 1, 2010 at 2:57 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
On June 26, 2010, thousands of anarchists and other protesters gathered outside the G20 summit in Toronto, facing off against more than 19,000 security officials with a budget of nearly a billion dollars. The riots that followed have provoked outrage from public officials and corporate media commentators.
We salute the courage of those who put themselves at tremendous risk to shatter the illusion of social consensus and reveal the depth of public outrage against the G20 leaders and the capitalist system they defend. If you put your freedom on the line in Toronto—thank you.
Full statement here.
March 9, 2010 at 1:17 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
Anarchists in the US have been slow to respond to the economic crisis, missing many of the opportunities it has offered. One of the exceptions is the recent participation of anarchists in the student movement protesting budget cuts and austerity measures. This came into the national consciousness in December 2008 when students occupied a building at the New School in New York City. NYU followed suit in February, and the following fall students in California began occupying schools up and down the coast.
The most recent phase of the student movement came to a head on March 4, when protests took place all around the US. The Bay Area was perhaps the epicenter of this day of action, seeing thousands of people on the streets—but at this epicenter, the tensions and contradictions around anarchist participation in the student movement came to the fore. Here, we present an eyewitness report on March 4 actions in the Bay, and complement it with a set of discussion questions we hope will help anarchists and others in the student movement hone their strategies. We’re seeking responses to these questions—email answers to rollingthunder@crimethinc.com or post them in the comments section here.
Report from the Bay Area, March 4
Anarchists in the March 4 Protests: Discussion Questions
« Newer Entries ···
Older Entries »
