Birds Before The Storm

A well-done, simple video advertising the upcoming protests against the International Monetary Fund, put together by the IMF Resistance Network, who I don’t really know anything about. They are calling for protests on October 9th to 11th, 2010, in Washington, DC (where the IMF is headquartered).

The IMF is, in short, an institution pushing global capitalism as the solution to all the world’s problems. Ironic, of course, to promote capitalism–an economic system intentionally engineered to siphon resources, money, and power into the hands of a small minority of people–as the solution to things like poverty. The IMF has an absolutely horrid track record as well. This is the kind of stuff that led to the anti-globalization movement of a decade ago, the same movement that largely defeated the consensus that neoliberalism was an effective system of global governance. Of course, as an anarchist, I’m rather against the idea of global governance at all.

From the IMF Resistance Network:

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have a well-deserved reputation for being the loan sharks of global capitalism. Both institutions are infamous for forcing poor countries in the global south to ruin their own economies in order to further enrich Western corporations. Nations who decline to borrow money at exorbitant interest rates and then beggar their populations to pay it back (or worse, default on their existing debt), are subjected to trade sanctions that have been described as “the economic equivalent of nuclear war.”

I’m writing this from HackMeeting 2010 in Rome.
From their website:

Hackmeeting is the annual meeting of communities, (not only) digital countercultures and individuals who have adopted a critical and proactive approach towards the advancement of new technologies — which are more and more tied to social control, the business of war and the marketization of every vital space. Three days of workshops, games, parties, debates, exchanges and collective learning.

The event is totally self-managed: there are no organizers or users, but only participants.

With my friends from the countercultural fiction magazine Ruggine, who among other things print translations from SteamPunk Magazine from time to time, I just did a workshop on steampunk, the crisis that is civilization, apocalypse, and about countercultural access to radicalism. One of the writers from Ruggine did an excellent bit on what it means to be No Future, about how this liberates us to imagine our lives as they ought to be lived and makes it clear to us that we need to reject authority.

This space is a fucking brilliant example of counterculture. I’m at a squatted villa surrounded by a remarkably gender-diverse crowd of radical hackers. There’re bands playing and people teaching workshops on how to reclaim dumpstered computers from the 70s. This is a space that appeals to a certain kind of person, and it offers them access to radicalism, culture, solidarity, and community.

I’m leaving Italy in a few days, and I’m certain I’ll miss it. I toured through Vicenzia, Milan, Florence, Naples, and now Rome, and Italy is fascinating. The government is practically fascist (after WWII the leaders just changed the name of what they believed) and the mafia runs many of the cities, but that’s just the existing power structures and is a terrible way to judge a country’s spirit.

I’ll be in Tampere, Finland between the 8th and 11th of July to speak at Musta Pispala, an anarchist festival. I’ll be doing both a presentation on anarchist fiction and one on anarchism in the US. I might also end up playing a show there, I’m not sure… depends on the availability of an accordion, it looks like. The folks who run this seem to be the ones behind Takku, an anarchist magazine that I got to see at the Stockholm anarchist bookfair and that features (among lots of other things, of course), translations from Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. I’m excitied.

I’ve always kind of loved Finland and I’m excited to have an excuse to go back.

On Tuesday I’m flying off to Italy to do a small speaking tour there. There is plenty of information about the tour in Italian, but the tour dates are:

* 19 giugno – La Corte, Vicenza
* 24 giugno – Cascina Torchiera, Milano
* 25 giugno – CSA nEXt Emerson, Firenze
* 29 giugno – Perditempo, Napoli
* 3 luglio – La Torre, Roma (durante l’Hackmeeting)

I’ll be talking some about anarchist fiction (I think the talk in Milano), but I’ll mostly be speaking about the steampunk’s guide to the apocalypse!

I’ll be speaking about anarchism and fiction at a Wagenplatz in Berlin, on June 2nd. The address is scheffelstr 21 in lichtenberg (friedrichshain). I think I’ll be talking at like 8pm or something.

I’ll also be speaking at the Stockholm Anarchist Bookfair on June 5th as part of the panel on anarchist publishing from 3-5pm, and I’ll be presenting my book Mythmakers and Lawbreakers the following day at 2pm.

Okay, sorry about how last-minute everything has suddenly become. I’m speaking tonight in Frankfurt at a place called Raumstation Rödelheim, on anarchism in fiction, joined by my friend who writes Click Clack Gorilla. Then I’ll be speaking about anarchism in the USA here at Haus Mainusch in Mainz on the 31st, essentially opening for my friends in From The Depths.

I’ll also be speaking in Berlin, I believe on the 2nd.

I’ll be speaking in Mainz at Haus Mainusch at 20:00 on May 18th, 2010. There’s a myspace event thingy for it if you can imagine that.

Sorry, I’m really shit about short-notice posts about events I’m doing. Tomorrow night I’m speaking at the MKZ about anarchism in the United States. It’s at 20:00, and it’s free. I might even have visual aids, but I’m not certain about that yet. This was a special request from friends here in Amsterdam that I speak on this subject, and I hope to do justice to the actually really vibrant and diverse scene that I hail from.

I’ll be tabling at the 4th annual anarchist bookfair in NYC on April 17th for Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, along with my friend and fellow crud goth Enola of the wonderful zine No Gods, No Mattress (who is too curmudgeonly to have a website or put the zine online or anything).

April 17th, 11am to 7pm
Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, Manhattan

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.