Category Archives: Uncategorized

Book – Liberation, by Brian Francis Slattery

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Just finished reading Liberation: Being The Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America, and it’s a fine, fine book. Essentially a pulp adventure story, but quite politically aware, this book is about, well, the aftermath of an economic collapse of the United States. But one of the most interesting things about this book is that it avoids traditional novel plot structure. The protagonist is hyper-capable, and there appears to be very little conflict… it’s like playing a video game in God mode or something. And yet it pulls it off as quite entertaining… the conflicts arise in the subtexts: this isn’t a book about love, but the love interests are where the tension arises. Mostly, it’s just beautiful to read.

I’m a little bit disappointed by the authors portrayal of the anarchist character, who is described as a “militant anarchist” and whose single goal primarily revolves around blowing things and people up with bombs. There is an anarchist organization mentioned in the novel as well that appears to have a similar desire… despite the author name-dropping Bakunin, it is clear that he is not at all versed in modern anarchism. There is a similar slander portrayed against the anti-industrial folks, but it is a bit more interesting, intentionally outlandish, and doesn’t pretend to connect to anything that actually exists in the real world.

Future Warfare – Crazy Tank Armor, Guided Bullets, Hovering Beer Keg Drones

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Today I learned a new word: misoneism. It means hating change. Sometimes I hate the future. Today I can’t decide if the future is neat or horrendous, or most likely, both. Anyhow, there’s been some interesting stuff over at Danger Room:

Tank armor, and how to get past it. In the old days, tanks just had a crapload of heavy metal as armor. Then someone developed shaped charge warheads, which blow right through armor. So, in the 1980s, they developed reactive armor. Reactive armor means covering the tank with little explosive tiles (a little bit counter-intuitive, I know). These will blow up when they are struck, thus removing the threat of the shaped charge. So, anti-tank people (you know who you are) developed the tandem charge. The tandem charge (in this case, an RPG) shoots a single warhead with two charges: the first triggers the reactive armor, the second is the shaped charge. So the ante went up, and tank designers made sensors that detected incoming RPGs and shot out charges to meet them. It’s called an active defense system (or watch a video). Not to be outdone, Russia managed to make an RPG they call the abrams killer. (The M1 Abrams is the USA’s main tank). This little devil sends a tiny missile a split second ahead of the main missile. The defense systems blow up the tiny missile, but have a .2 second cooldown before they can defend again, so blammo, dead Americans. (Or Russians, or Israelis, or anyone else defending a tank with active defense).

Next up we have guided bullets, which don’t exist yet. They are intended to be the future of sniping. Oh, joy. Here’s something from those bastards at DARPA:

The use of an actively controlled bullet will make it possible to counter environmental effects such as crosswinds and air density, and prosecute both stationary and moving targets while enhancing shooter covertness. This capability would have the further benefit of providing increased accuracy and range while reducing training requirements.

Nice use of the word “prosecution.” Kind of a Judge Dredd sort of law it brings to mind. Anyhow, the pentagon passed out millions to Lockheed Martin and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging, LLC to develop this nastiness. In fact, here’s a pdf of the project’s goals. Note that this includes phone numbers and names and all of that of people who are behind this project (at least on the DARPA end). Glad we have freedom of information in this country, I gotta admit.

And finally, something I gotta admit is pretty cool, even if it is cool in the “robots will kill us all” kind of way. A flying remote control drone thingy that looks like a miniature beer keg. It hovers. It provides survelliance. Did I mention that it hovers?

All of this begs the question… why don’t we apply our grand scientific opposable-thumbs minds towards something useful? Every time you develop a better tank armor, someone is going to develop a better anti-tank weapon. This can only escalate, how have we not noticed? What about, oh, I don’t know, developing systems to feed, educate, and provide liberty for humanity? (And not in the “tanks provide liberty, team America fuck yeah” kind of way, but in the “let people have freedom and autonomy” kind of way).

Well, there’s a lot more money in bombs than in, oh, destroying the concept of money. A lot more power in the accumulation of power than the decentralization of power. Ramble, ramble, rant, rant.

Edit: at least we have jetpacks now.

The Red & Black Ball – Neo-Victorian, Surrealist Masquerade in Baltimore

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You’d think that I’d put this on, but I didn’t. It just turns out that the people at Red Emma’s in Baltimore really are just that cool. They are putting on a Winter dance, complete with live orchestral music, masks, dark magic, and of course alcohol, that ponderous potion. I’m pretty excited. It’s being held at 2640, a community/radical space in a radical Methodist church that was . $10-15 sliding scale, Saturday, December 13th 2008. 7:30-10pm.

So yeah, come. Come for the music, the dancing, the mystique. Come to support Red Emma’s, because they deserve it. If you don’t have a mask, one will be provided.

If you want to be super cool, print out either the quartersheet flyer (print on letter, cut into 4), or the legal-paper sized poster and put them up / hand them out.

Day X – The Videogame

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Ah, Day X. On March 20th, 2003, the city of Portland came together in a pretty amazing protest that shut down a good portion of downtown for many an hour. The idea was “no business as usual”, a general consensus of the anti-war movement at the time: if we made the system cease to work by protests and demonstrations, the government might be forced to listen to us. San Fran did the best, of course, managing rolling blockades throughout downtown for almost a week, but our 6 hours were pretty amazing.

Anyhow, my friend “Lyra234″ appears to have made a video game with the title Day X: The Riot (Day X was the name that we used in our video about the protest). In this version, you are a ninja anarchist who throws molotov cocktails at cops and collects such classic video game power-ups like “shield”, “health”, and “circle bomb”. It’s fun. It has absolutely nothing to do with the protests I was just talking about. You should play it.

Thousands of Greek Prisoners Hunger Strike, Get Their Demands

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This falls under the “holy fucking shit” category. Over half of Greece’s prison population (the numbers vary depending on source, but at the beginning of the strike it was more than half of the of 12,315 people imprisoned in Greece and at the end it was still more than 3-4 thousand participants) participated in an 18 day hunger strike that ended with the government capitulating on a large number of their demands.

In short, the prison system in Greece is only intended to hold around 8,000 prisoners total, and has been holding 12,000+. As a direct result of this strike, half of Greek prisoners will be released. I suppose the law-and-order types think this is the worst possible news, but I would guess that most of the world understands that punitive justice systems don’t actually work. What does work, we can now see, is solidarity among people who are told they have no power. These prisoners refused food for 18 days and have fundamentally changed the nature of the Greek justice system.

Hell fucking yeah.

VIVACE – less destructive hydro energy?

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You know me, I’m really skeptical of energy generation. In general, if you ask me, the “solution” to global electrical generation is to cut it back substantially and radically decentralize what remains. But I’m willing to look at developing technologies, because, well, I like the internet and I don’t want everyone heating their homes with firewood. (Passive solar, and insulation, on the other hand…)

Anyhow, VIVACE is a machine that makes use of slow-moving water to generate electricity. What’s exciting about it is that it doesn’t need to block a river and it might be rather kinder to marine life than dams or tidal power generators. Hell, the company that currently markets the device, Vortex Hydro Energy, even rambles on about how dams are being resisted and actually ought be taken down. There’s an interesting introductory video over on the University of Michigan website (where the machine was developed).

We’ll see. I’d love to see the dams gone, but when it comes to electrical generation, TANSTAAFL. I expect that this thing is less bad than dams, of course, but I’m waiting for 30 years from now when people say “oh, woops, our windfarms have radically upset weather patterns, and our VIVACE have completely changed global currents.” But well, if there’s a world with people in it around 30 years from now anyhow, it means we ditched coal at least.

Playing Tonight In Baltimore! 7pm, Charm City Art Space

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I know, I know, I give like no warning for these things. But I only just now got finalized details on the thing. I’m playing a show tonight in baltimore, 7pm at Charm City Art Space, 1729 Maryland Ave. (Their website is woefully out of date, by the way.) It’s a benefit for Baltimore’s branch of Rising Tide, which is grassroots radical group that confronts the social justice issues of global warming (basically, addressing that global warming will screw over the poor even sooner than it screws over everyone). Anyhow, they are great people with their hearts firmly in their work, and deserve support.

I’ll be playing with Cringe (who I can’t find anything about), Randi Williams (another acoustic musician), and the “90s ukulele cover band” Car Phone.

Last Night’s Art Auction In Baltimore

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So eventually I’m going to start posting about events before they happen, even reasonably far before they happen. But last night was Red Emma’s first ever art auction, and it was a grand good time. Basically, they collected donations of art from tons of local baltimore artists and then auctioned them off, most of them as silent auction. I made like 10 pieces for them, and they all sold. And I forgot to photograph the pieces, of course.

Red Emma’s is baltimores worker-owned radical bookstore/cafe/infoshop, and it’s actually my favorite infoshop in the world. They are really passionate people, working incredibly hard in what is a rather dangerous, dirty city. There are a lot of radicals working really hard here, as a matter of fact. You have to. In baltimore, poverty and inequity are just so prevalent. But yeah, Red Emma’s is a wonderful place, and whenever I’m in town I spend almost every afternoon sitting around reading their books.

Harold Thompson (1942-2008)

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I’m sad I only learned about Harold Thompson because of his death. He was an anarchist prisoner, but one I never heard much, if anything about. He was convicted of killing a man who had killed the mother of his son and was threatening to kill his son.

He became interested in anarchism early, but his beliefs solidified when he served in Vietnam. Upon his return, he was actively involved in anarchist struggle and worked with the veterans against the war. (The modern incarnation of which, the IVAW, includes quite a number of anarchist veterans at all levels of involvement.) Since going to jail he was involved in a number of escape attempts and was well known as a “jail house lawyer,” both admirable things. (Sad, of course, that his escape attempts never bore fruit.)

His support website has plenty more information about him, including his writings. I’m just looking at it all right now and I’m kind of sad that I’d never heard of him before. He seems like an amazing soul. Too often, we anarchists focus on our prisoners who are in jail for politically-motivated direct action and forget about other anarchist prisoners. Certainly, defending our loved ones from a murderer is the right of every human being, and it is very much within the realm of anarchist desires.

So yeah, Harold, may you rest in peace.