Author Archive
September 30, 2010 at 2:49 pm · Filed under Calling All Anarchists, posted by b. traven
Two of our favorite hip hop artists, Testament and Illogik, are facing serious charges for their alleged involvement in the historic protests against the G20 summit in Toronto last June.
Performing as Test Their Logik, the two were in the middle of preparing their debut album when they were arrested. Now their release conditions prohibit them from associating with each other, and they are unable to continue recording.
Fortunately, we managed to get our hands on the material they finished just before their arrests, and we’re releasing it as a benefit to help with their legal expenses. This is some of the most powerful, passionate music we’ve heard in years; it’s an honor to share it here.
-
Test Their Logik
“Arrested Development” 9-Song Album
: 160kbs (VBR) MP3 [40.3MB] :
: 160kbs (VBR) AAC [41.9MB] :
-
Click here to make a donation to
the Test Their Logik Legal Fund.
The album is available here for free downloading, but we urge everyone to donate to their support fund. If you can’t use Paypal, click here to learn how to send a check to their support committee.
The charges against Testament and Illogik are a shameless attack on political activism. The two have been outspoken critics of the G20, the 2010 Olympics, and capitalism in general, publicly speaking out even when others were intimidated into silence. They are among over 100 people facing conspiracy charges in connection with the G20 protests, an unprecedented crackdown on dissent.
The charges are also an attack on hip hop. Sure to come up in the trial is the Crash the Meeting video the two released to promote the G20 protests, which has received nearly 50,000 views on youtube. The video is hardly shocking by corporate hip hop standards; it doesn’t objectify women, promote guns or gang violence, or glorify personal acquisition of wealth. Instead, it spreads a positive message of collective struggle against tyranny—exactly the kind of message the authorities want to keep out of popular music.
Before corporate America started paying attention, groups like Public Enemy used hip hop to spread revolutionary messages and consciousness. Profiteers moved into the hip hop market not only to make millions off it but also to promote artists who rap about pimpin and blingin instead of social change.
Test Their Logik take hip hop back to real life, describing the destruction wrought by capitalism and calling for grassroots resistance. Everything they predicted in the Crash the Meeting video came true in Toronto beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Essentially, they’re being charged for having their finger on the pulse. The authorities can try to jail the messengers, but there’s nothing they can do to stop the music.
Additional details after the break.
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 9, 2010 at 10:33 am · Filed under Hot Off the Presses, posted by b. traven
In heartbreak and rage over the murder of Oscar Grant and the institutionalized hypocrisy of a system that kills black men by the dozen while excusing the killings as accidents, we present this poster. We hope it will appear on telephone polls alongside burning police stations all around the US and the world.
-
-
Color Version [PDF, 1.5 MB]
Black and White Version [PDF, 1.4 MB]
Poster text after the jump.
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.
April 8, 2010 at 1:47 pm · Filed under Calling All Anarchists, posted by b. traven
-
This week From the Depths depart for a two-month tour of Europe coinciding with the European release of their Germinate LP on the German label Fire and Flames. They’ll be traveling everywhere between Holland, Greece, and Finland, stopping at the anarchist book fairs in Paris and Stockholm and playing with some of their favorite bands, including Plague Mass and Next Victim.
An updated list of the shows is available here. Contact the band at fromthedepthsnc@gmail.com.
Geoff, who has played drums in From the Depths, will not be joining the band on this tour, in order to focus on an accountability process he is participating in. More information is available on the band’s website.
March 23, 2010 at 10:27 pm · Filed under Calling All Anarchists, posted by b. traven
-
We’re soliciting stories about workplace theft for a journal that will appear in early April, in honor of STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY. Obviously, they should be anonymous and fictionalized. A simple paragraph will suffice, though if one of you sends in the War and Peace of employee revenge, we won’t complain.
Send stories to stealfromworkday@gmail.com. The deadline is Tuesday, March 30.
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
March 3, 2010 at 11:54 am · Filed under Hot Off the Presses, posted by b. traven
-
Throughout diverse subject matter, Rolling Thunder #9 subtly explores issues of legitimacy. Who is entitled to speak, to act, to organize? How important is legitimacy in the public eye, and how can anarchists cultivate it? What are the drawbacks of pursuing various kinds of legitimacy? As usual, one must read between the lines of on-the-ground news coverage and analysis to seek the answers—and, more significantly, the further questions they suggest.
Following up on our coverage of the 2008 DNC and RNC protests, this issue of Rolling Thunder appraises anarchist action at the 2009 G20 summit, detailing the background of the mobilization, mapping conflict throughout the city, and analyzing the factors that determined the strategies of the police and protesters. The accompanying Pittsburgh scene report examines the decade of local organizing that prepared the ground for this and other confrontations, deriving lessons relevant to communities around the country.
Elsewhere within, this issue scrutinizes protest and resistance on campus—from the recent student occupation movement in the US to the campaign to shut down a fascist organization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Overseas, we survey Smash EDO, a British anti-military campaign that tests some of the hypotheses advanced in coverage of the SHAC campaign in Rolling Thunder #6.
This issue also includes Russian history from the “time of troubles” to Kropotkin’s escape from prison, reviews of Uri Gordon’s Anarchy Alive! and the obscurantist publication Politics Is Not a Banana, and more of the reflections and witticisms that set Rolling Thunder apart as a peerless exemplar of “how beautiful anarchist journals can be.”
Starting with this issue, we’ll also be complementing each issue of Rolling Thunder with an online supplement offering additional information, links, and materials. Among other things, the supplement to this issue features maps of action during the Pittsburgh G20 protests, a PDF of the newspaper wrap anarchists used in their campaign against a fascist student group, and a FAQ flier answering objections to militant antifascist organizing commonly posed by partisans of liberal democracy.
Online supplement after the jump.
January 7, 2010 at 11:49 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
So do we—a total break with domination and hierarchy in all their forms, involving an armed uprising if need be. Until that’s possible, we’ll settle for recurring clashes in which to develop our skills, find comrades, and emphasize the gulf between ourselves and our oppressors.
But how do we bring about these confrontations? How do we ensure that they strengthen us more than our enemies? What pitfalls await us on this road? And what else do we have to do to make our efforts effective?
Over the past few years, a small current has gained visibility in US anarchist circles prioritizing the themes of insurrection and social conflict. This analysis explores how effective these strategies are at achieving their professed goals, as well as the relationship between insurrectionist theory and the activities associated with it in the current US context.
Read full piece here.
December 22, 2009 at 12:07 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
On the heels of three new settlements in which the government of Washington, D.C. is paying protesters well over $22 million, we’ve completed a new feature and two-sided poster on the subject of payouts to survivors of police repression. Both black and white and color versions of the poster are available.
Over the past decade of mobilizations, CrimethInc. agents have repeatedly pulled off narrow escapes from mass-arrest situations in which all our comrades were captured. We felt pretty pleased with ourselves until we learned, some years too late, that everyone who didn’t get away was making thousands of dollars! How embarrassing—we’re such dropouts, we can’t even get a job getting arrested! This, despite the FBI defaming our milieu as the “top domestic terror threat.” What’s a ne’er-do-well supposed to do? So we read with sympathy the account from our comrades who followed in the footsteps of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters, crawling through the sewers to escape arrest and, little did they know, a whopping $18,000.
Pass the word around—resistance doesn’t always end in defeat, even when we get beaten and arrested. We may not believe in the legitimacy of the law any more than our rulers do, but we still ought to include the battle in the courts in our strategizing alongside the battle in the streets. By bringing lawsuits against our oppressors, we can increase the costs of repressing us, and sometimes tie their hands for future demonstrations—compare the behavior of the Washington, D.C. police at the 2000 and 2002 IMF protests to their conduct during the 2007 IMF protests. Unfortunately, some sectors of the current anarchist milieu have such short memories that by the time the lawsuits are concluded, many have stopped paying attention, and the initial thoughtless appraisal of protests as “a failure” is all that sticks in people’s heads. We’re only now learning the net results of mobilizations that occurred a decade ago. To mount an effective resistance to capitalism, we need to think in terms of decades, not months.
Read full text here.
December 10, 2009 at 11:24 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
-
In the past few years, scientific consensus has finally emerged that global warming is taking place as a result of industrial capitalism and with dire consequences for life on earth. Corporate efforts to bribe scientists to argue otherwise are attracting fewer and fewer takers; this is especially telling in view of how many researchers depend on industry backing. But rather than engaging with the fact that capitalism itself is destructive, governments and liberal environmentalists are promoting corporate responses to the problems posed by climate change.
This week, representatives of governments around the world are meeting in Copenhagen for the COP15, ostensibly to make decisions on how to respond to the climate crisis. The results are bound to cater to the agenda of corporate interests hoping to legitimize carbon trading and other false solutions. Fortunately, anarchists and other opponents of self-inflicted extinction will be there to crash the party.
Comrades have published a full-length critique of the prevailing narratives around climate change, Introduction to the Apocalypse [PDF, 1 MB]. Likewise, we’ve added new material to our online reading library addressing the issues:
The Climate Is Changing & A Field Guide to False Solutions
Older Entries »
-
