Birds Before The Storm

At 3:30 on Saturday, March 13th I’ll be speaking about anarchism and fiction at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair in San Francisco. I hope that folks can make it out! I’ll be doing a slightly different talk than I did on my tour, too, for folks who’ve already seen me talk about the subject.

My good friend Isis started a blog recently, Patterns In The Void. Isis is one of the stranger and more interesting folks that I know, and their blog covers things like the 13 tiers of lying and the esoteric sexual symbology of feral children. They’re currently writing a book about anarcho-mysticist sexuality and are obsessed with languages and theoretical physics. Good stuff.

So, they’ve started shooting looters in the aftermath of the Chilean earthquake. They admit right in the first sentence: “One man was shot and killed and some 160 arrested as troops tried to stop the looting of food and other goods during an overnight curfew.”

The looters are after food, first and foremost. The army and the police should be helping the looters recover and distribute food. This is capitalism and government at their absolute and simplest worst. They did it in New Orleans as well. Honestly: how can anyone think that government is a good idea? Here’s the time that the idea of centralized governance seems best, helping respond to a crisis, yet instead of helping, they are protecting their hegemony and, well, killing people who are trying to survive.

The Oregonian wrote a rather nice piece about Ursula K LeGuin, including a bit about her anarchist politics and the event we did together at Powell’s. I’m pretty wary of corporate media, of course, but the only problem I’ve got with this article is that they claim I was wearing a kilt. It was clearly a skirt. I don’t wear kilts.

Killjoy, who wears a kilt and has dreadlocks, calls himself Magpie when he plays the accordion. He helps edit SteamPunk Magazine and maintains a blog of erotica called Steamypunk. He gives a loose, knowledgeable overview of anarchist literature and tells a story about Kurt Vonnegut Jr. being asked, “Why are you ruining the youth of America?” and walking away in disgust.

A few minutes later, after Killjoy talks about Tolstoy and writers who explicitly identify as anarchists, he pauses and takes a drink of water.

“Why are you ruining the youth of America?” Le Guin calls out, laughing.

Questions come thick and fast from the audience. Killjoy makes the point that anarchy and organization are not contradictory and that anarchists are productive people who get things done without a government structure. Someone asks about the role of anarchism in the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle and in a 1993 incident with police in Portland. Le Guin responds:

“As an inveterate peace marcher … I’ve marched around Portland more times than anyone in this room except my husband. I did get cross with the self-styled anarchists, the noisy ‘look at me’ people, whereas just as Margaret said, a lot of the organizers and people who were keeping it so it worked were also anarchists.”

A long question is summed up as, “What do you see role as?”

“What’s our cellular purpose?” Killjoy asks.

“To try to maybe show that there are alternatives to the way we presently do things and that people think is the only way to do things,” Le Guin says. “Democracy is good but it isn’t the only way to achieve justice and a fair share.

(image is of anarchists and communists awaiting deportation hearings)

Well, maybe he really meant the ALF part, but here’s a quote from a prosecutor, about Scott DeMuth.
“Defendant’s writings, literature, and conduct suggest that he is an anarchist and associated with the ALF movement,” Clifford Cronk, U.S. Attorney wrote. “Therefore, he is a domestic terrorist.”

I’m reminded, of course, of the Haymarket Affair, when the government hanged four people, explicitly because they were anarchists. Only later did it apologize. And of course there’s the Anarchist Exclusion Act, passed in 1903 and never repealed, that allows immigrants to be deported on account of their politics.

Now, I’m not one who really believes in the legitimacy of law, but I fully believe that what laws exist lose their pretense of legitimacy entirely when they are targeted not at people actually committing crimes, but at things that may lead to someone committing crime. For example, curfew laws are aimed at keeping crime down, but there already are laws against assault, vandalism, etc. And then there are sweeping laws like The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act that make free speech a crime, and add additional charges on top of other things, like vandalism and arson (which, last I was looking, were already illegal).

So yeah… being an anarchist isn’t a crime within a society that ostensibly respects the freedom of speech and thought. (that word ostensibly is important in that sentence though.) But here it is, we’re domestic terrorists.

edit: damn, anarchists knew how to dress back in the day. Look how classy!

Over on the Infoshop News post about Joseph Stack, there’s a raging debate about whether or not “we” as anarchists should support this action. I guess I’m not really seeing it in those terms. I’m seeing it as an event that happened, perhaps like an earthquake or something. I don’t support earthquakes, and I’m not anti-earthquake. They are events that occur. People feel screwed by the system and end up wingnutting out. In this case, the person got into their plane and crashed it into an IRS building. I still haven’t heard a death count, but it looks like at least two (one potentially being Stack himself?).

It is, however, heartwarming to read in those comments more than a few people pointing out the absurdity of anarchists embracing random violence.

from the ridiculously funny blog Hacked IRL.

I’m on everyone’s favorite “anarchists talking shit” internet radio show, “1,2,3 who cares” (possibly to be renamed “horizontal hostility”) on Portland Indymedia Radio in about five minutes, for about an hour. We still haven’t determined what our topic is. And I might be mostly quiet.

Edit: the show is archived and available. And, imagine that, I wasn’t just quiet. Here us rant about subculture, the black bloc up at the olympics, and some other stuff.

I haven’t gotten to see it yet (combine international shipping with my itinerant nature), but Dodgem Logic #2 is out now. Dodgem Logic is Alan Moore’s current brainchild, essentially a 60s counterculture magazine for the modern era (replete with strange illustrations of naked people, and advice about how to overthrow the government!). This second issue features an introduction to post-civilization that I wrote, expounding on the Post-Civ zine that Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness put out.

After the appreciative reception afforded to its premier edition, lauded throughout the gutters of the world, the second issue of Alan Moore’s mystifying new underground publication DODGEM LOGIC is available in early February. Delivering 52 pages of full-colour solid content thanks to its flinty-eyed Puritan policy of no advertisements, all for a frankly laughable £2.50, this plucky bi-monthly periodical is stuffed to the gills with wisdom and wonderment.

Behind a choice of three, count ’em, three luscious variant exteriors we have this issue’s cover feature, a sexy yet somehow sinister Burlesque photo spread from internationally acclaimed maestro Mitch Jenkins with an accompanying article on Burlesque past, present and future by our exotica expert, Melinda Gebbie. Former Steampunk supervisor Margaret Killjoy offers a pertinent and practical guide on ways to usefully pass our time before and after the collapse of civilisation, while Fortean Times godfather Steve Moore delivers a surreal survey of Northamptonshire’s bizarre phenomena, from phantom panthers to confused old men in treetops.

In addition to these delicacies, DODGEM LOGIC’s regular contributors continue to work their magic, with the exception of Josie Long who had a flimsy excuse and will be back next issue. Dave Hamilton’s environmental Eco Chamber column looks at the more worrying side of social network groups, while teenage mum Tink takes over our women’s page this time DL_covers_alt:Layout 1 around with an account of life on the disintegrating edge of England’s social services. Guerrilla gardener Claire Ashby dishes out another instructive communiqué from the urban undergrowth, spooky seamstress Tamsyn Paine knocks up an exploitative freak-show sock puppet, the magazine’s Spinning Doctors dispense more healthcare advice, winsome Wendi Jarrett cooks us a Valentine feast while M.C. Illuzion ruins our appetite for it with a discourse on Mechanically Recovered Meat. Meanwhile graffiti goddess Queen Calluz introduces us to three more Great Hipsters in History. Deities of delineation Savage Pencil and Kevin O’Neil continue to enthral, bewilder and unsettle with their subversive scrawls, while the unearthly Steve Aylett poaches the collective mind of the readership in tears of despair with his obscurely terrifying comic strip adventure, Johnny Viable. Then there’s the insurrectionary ranting and refined musical appreciation of eight-page local insert section, Notes from Noho, with the whole enterprise rounded out by Alan Moore’s illuminating dissertation on the history, difficulties and numerous delights of anarchy.

DL_covers_alt:Layout 1 Extending the ingratiating policy of quaintly and nostalgically including a free gift with every issue, and replacing the astonishing free CD of our debut, DODGEM LOGIC’s unkempt figurehead and founder also contributes a questionable eight-page mini-comic, Astounding Weird Penises, being the only solo comic book that he has managed to create in his otherwise lazy thirty year career.

With only one issue beneath its belt, DODGEM LOGIC has already managed to supply each of the sheltered-housing tenants of the area in which it had its origins with a halfway decent Christmas hamper, and is currently sponsoring its own top-rate basketball team from the same neighbourhood. If future issues do as well, the magazine hopes to extend its various activities across the district and then, ultimately, to construct an orbiting missile platform and demand all the Earth’s uranium.

DODGEM LOGIC ~ chuckling and stroking a white cat for a better tomorrow.

And maybe a little bit scary.

From Infoshop News:

As if the state of South Carolina didn’t have enough of a reputation, recent legislation now requires subversive groups to register with the government. A registration fee of $5 and the necessary paper work is now required for all groups seeking to overthrow the government. The law states that “every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States … shall register with the Secretary of State.”

here’s a bit of the law:

Every subversive organization and organization subject to foreign control shall register with the Secretary of State on forms prescribed by him within thirty days after coming into existence in this State.
…
Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means, who resides, transacts any business or attempts to influence political action in this State, shall register with the Secretary of State on the forms and at the times prescribed by him.

where

(1) “Subversive organization” means every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means;

Download the form and register today!