Imagine that a peculiar species of mold was growing in the walls of your house. Now imagine that you could somehow shrink yourself down and explore that mold, directly encountering the alien shapes that make up its microscopic structures. Finally, imagine that you were able to enter those structures to discover that deep within the invisible folds of the mold’s cells, tiny creatures living inside the mold were having some sort of outrageous underground party. This is one way to attempt to describe the Autonomous Mutant Festival.

An in-depth analysis of Twitter from a radical perspective.

I created a Twitter account during the planning phase of the protest surrounding the 2008 Republican Nation Convention. I had heard about it's text-to-phone cababilities and thought it might be useful to help organize the protesters and provide them with up-to-the-minute logistics while they were in the streets. This still seems like a potentially viable use of the system (capable of bringing flashmobs to a whole new level), but I had neither the time nor the technical understanding before the protest to make a serious push in this direction. I simply posted a prescient "tee hee" tweet and abandoned the endeavor.

Borrowed from the blog www.punkrockpermaculture.wordpress.com

Permaculture Economics: hot to truly create a just and sustainable economy

[excerpted from TURN OFF YOUR MIND by Gary Lachman]

Another theme of THE MORNING OF THE MAGICIANS impacted on the sixties: the idea of some great leap in human consciousness, an evolutionary mutation that was about to take place, if it hadn't already begun, and which would result in the new man. In a section of THE MORNING OF THE MAGICIANS, called 'Some Reflections on the Mutants', Pauwels and Bergier give evidence for their belief that human beings -- some of them, at least -- are about to enter what they call an awakened state.

This paper was originally presented by tobias v as an informal talk at the Rebelstar Activist Retreat, Crescent Beach, BC, Canada on November 26th, 2001. (http://www.shrumtribe.com/text/musikalresistance01.htm)

Musikal Resistance: A Short History (I)

History.

Rave Culture began at the juncture of several political social movements.

i) Jamaican Dub Soundsystem Culture of the 70s/80s
ii) UK Traveller Culture (ex-hippies); Punks; New Agers; also a centuries old tradition of Carnival on the Common Lands
iii) Austin, Texas, 1986: the impact of Ecstasy
iv) Continuation of Chicago Disco into house music; the rise of gay culture and the Funk Movement
v) Detroit: the artistic-social backlash to the failed modernist city-project resulted in Detroit techno and rap.
vi) The late 80s in the UK saw the rise of Acid House music (Chicago house with a 303 overtop, the combining of Chicago dance culture with UK rebellion), which took on new social importance due to its context: “dj’ed,” on turntables, mixed by djs with pitch controls (this is a new thing!), in illegal spaces: occupations of warehouses, farmlands, public and private spaces.

In the UK and in North America, the theories of anarchist Hakim Bey came into prominence. Bey was highly influenced by French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who were active as radical professors during the May 68 revolution in France. Bey took the theories of Deleuze and Guattari, along with a bunch of others including Fourier, William Burroughs, and many anarchists, and turned them into two main (for the point of this lecture) practical ideas.

The issue of autonomy has been an interesting topic over the years... and it always comes back to being able to exercise your own autonomy without infringing on someone elses.... but over the years I have come to realize that many (NOT ALL) people in this community really are still children's minds in adult bodies (trust me... I've been wiping many of their noses for years....) and they are not exercising autonomy. In fact, My lover and I were working so hard so others could have the "autonomy" that they were looking for, that I ended up really sick(not just the endo), and he couldn't stop working because there weren't enough people out of the thousands in this community to pick up the slack... and I had to leave the community to get the support that I needed. Come to find out, had I not left... I would have eventually DIED. Do I have to die because others can't take care of themselves? This is a real issue, and should be examined thoroughly.

THE ABOLITION OF WORK

by Bob Black

No one should ever work.

A Big Hang-over
Life on this planet isn't as agreeable as it could be. Something obviously went wrong on spaceship Earth, but what? Maybe it was a fundamental mistake when nature (or whatever it was) came up with the idea "Man." Why should an animal walk on two feet and start thinking?

[From The Temporary Autonomous Zone, ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism by Hakim Bey]

 THE CONCEPT OF THE TAZ arises first out of a critique of Revolution, and an appreciation of the Insurrection. The former labels the latter a failure; but for us uprising represents a far more interesting possibility, from the standard of a psychology of liberation, than all the "successful" revolutions of bourgeoisie, communists, fascists, etc.

The second generating force behind the TAZ springs from the historical development I call "the closure of the map." The last bit of Earth unclaimed by any nation-state was eaten up in 1899. Ours is the first century without terra incognita, without a frontier. Nationality is the highest principle of world governance--not one speck of rock in the South Seas can be left open, not one remote valley, not even the Moon and planets. This is the apotheosis of "territorial gangsterism." Not one square inch of Earth goes unpoliced or untaxed...in theory.

If the ideal situation tends to bring about the worst possibilities eventually, then wouldn't the opposite be true as well? It does seem possible to me, as I traverse the communities of Berlin with the savage realities of histories come and gone from its turf; all leaving their scars upon these resilient people, both those that are native and the one's who come here to escape other tyrannies.