OVO

If you pick up some crap book about the history of punk rock, chances are there will be about 90 pages dedicated to Joe Strummer’s jackets but only two sentences about Crass. This is despite them selling millions of records, singlehandedly creating the DIY punk blueprint, and maintaining their hard-line libertarian and anarchy principles even as they reach their mid-60s today. A lot of you reading this will be aware of their logo and the fact that they were a punk band, but not a lot of people know their actual story. Because it’s so inspirational and so “anti-music” (in the sense that it was a total revolt against the established music industry of the time) we feel that everybody with even a passing interest in punk rock should hear it.

And so we interviewed founding members Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant for a brief history of the group and to procure their ideas surrounding this issue’s theme. During the talks between myself and Penny that preceded this interview I discovered that the unthinkable has happened and that Crass, the most anti-authoritarian, anarchy-endorsing free spirits in the history of punk music, are on the verge of going to Crown Court to ask lawyers and judges to intervene in a huge row over some remastered CDs. Despite our efforts to include all sides of the story here, a couple of former members of Crass declined to participate. [...]

What was the reason the band folded?
We always all had the idea that ’84 was the mythical, Orwellian thing. And I think it largely folded because I was becoming interested in something broader than punk. Our interests were going out, and really it was after we’d done that last gig in Aberdare which was so disillusioning and so sad, which was the fucking result of Thatcher’s vicious Britain. And I think all of us felt that jumping up and down on a stage saying “No more war!” was a joke in light of the poverty and desperation we saw that night.

What happened?
It was a benefit gig for the sacked miners in Aberdare. We went down in the van as we usually did, loaded with bins of food because people were literally starving in those villages. It was inevitably raining, which it always does in those valleys, and it was just so sad, the sense of destruction and the sense of despair. There were lots of men who didn’t know what they were doing anymore. Lots of men who just didn’t know what had happened. It was horrible. And the gig was great and everyone enjoyed it, but it was still just so sad. It was the next morning that Andy came through and said, “I’m leaving the band, Pen,” and I didn’t react because I thought,“Fine, I completely understand.” So he sort of initiated what I think would’ve inevitably happened anyway. It was 1984 and we had said we were going to end then, which is what the countdown was all about in our catalog numbers. We’d said everything that was to be said in that context, fucking hell. The fact that it’s still just as pertinent today is indication that nothing’s changed. You can’t say more than what we’ve said, really, except possibly offering a few answers. But you know, I’m still looking for them. And they’re certainly not ones that will be found in the context of punk rock. I think within the context of punk rock we did everything we possibly could.

We’d been doing it since 1977. It had been all those years, nonstop. We lived at Dial House, the doors were always open, and who we were onstage wasn’t any different from who we were in life. It wasn’t like we could come off tour and have a week’s holiday. We were doing it all ourselves and running the other label, Corpus Christi. Pen was always in the studio; I was doing vocals with Conflict or something like that and writing songs for other people. And it wasn’t like a nine-to-five job. It went on and on forever. When Margaret Thatcher came in, it all went up a notch. It was endless. Looking at horrible images, living in a horrible time, dealing with things like the Falklands War, the miners’ strikes, unemployment. It was a horrible time. There was violence at gigs; I was wearing black clothes all the time. I got fed up. If I went out for a drink there was an unspoken responsibility I always felt that if I went and got drunk I couldn’t show it. If I fell over in the gutter it wasn’t just me falling over in the gutter, it was Crass. So there was this responsibility to not fuck it up.

A lot of “punk” was being proud of falling in the gutter. People would pretend to do it even if they weren’t drunk. What made Crass different?
Well, we thought that the message was important enough to make people come and listen and buy the records. We couldn’t shit all over that by being idiots in the pub afterward.

So it was anti everything that rock ’n’ roll stood for.
Yeah. I never got all that. I have been around people who should know better. I mean, throwing a TV out the window, nothing new. I have seen people throw food around, and that really annoys me. I mean, someone has taken the time to cook the stuff. I have seen people onstage giving it all large about “nonviolence,” and the next minute they are in the street fighting with someone who comes from Manchester because they are from down south. Complete and utter bullshit. I have never been into that rock ’n’ roll image. Yeah, you get a bit of adulation; fair enough, I can deal with that. But the limousines and paparazzi and all that? You can stick it! Stick it as far as it can go. Bullshit! I have seen musicians who have so many people around them telling them they are great that in the end the idiots actually think they are and that they can tell people what to do.

Did that ever happen to anyone in Crass?
No. But it happened to a couple of close friends of mine. So, in that sense, for us it was never about being a part of a rock ’n’ roll band, though sometimes I did want some of the things associated with it. I wanted the blonde girls and the free drinks, which I never got. The only people I spoke to at gigs were spotty blokes in anoraks asking me about anarchy.

Haha. But that’s what you signed up for. Do you regret that?
I suppose sometimes it’s a little thing, I don’t know. It would have been fun for it to happen now and again. Regret it? Not really, we did what we did. As you said, that’s what I signed up for. It was a commitment; and my own fault, really. [...]

And now you’ve remastered all the albums and Gee’s done new artwork and Southern is going to release it, but that’s all caused a bit of a hullabaloo, right?
Yes, well, in the remastering I’ve been doing of the Crass material, I’ve incorporated stuff which is otherwise only available as bootleg. And why is this stuff only available otherwise in bootleg? It’s because we never bothered to do it ourselves. We’re to blame, not the bootleggers. So what we’ve done now is to sort of reclaim that, give really good sound to it, as good as we can, and then put it out so that if people want our version of it they can buy it. The bootlegs will probably still be there.

I discussed the plan to remaster everything with John in the year that he was ill. I was visiting him once a week or so. We talked a lot, obviously, about the future and that. We fantasized about going in to remaster the entire catalog, remaster a lot of my own works like Acts of Love, do new material, but I have to say that most of the time I knew it was a fantasy because it was quite obvious he wasn’t going to survive. When he died, Southern had a lot of trouble coping with it all and during that time I spent a lot of time worrying about what the fuck was going to happen to our material because with John there’d never been any formalities, nothing had ever been signed, who owned what, what owned who. There was nothing to go by. What I was really worried about was the receivers being called in. I thought, “Well, if Southern goes down, they’re going to go in and all the fucking stuff’s going to get nicked. I want to know what’s ours so we can have it.” I sort of made halfhearted attempts, but really the place was such a fucking mess that I thought, “OK, I’ll back off and let them sort whatever they need to sort out, and then we’ll go from there.” That coincided with trying to stop the house being taken over by a lot of property investors, so I got very embroiled in a big legal battle.

Who has the house now?
We do.

You nearly didn’t?
Yeah, you know, several times over. During the era of the band, we could have sat down and said, “Look, we don’t own this house. Why don’t we buy it?” We could easily have done it, but it never even occurred to us. Every time we got any money we were like,“Oh, we’ve got a grand! Let’s go ask those people down the road if they want to put out a fanzine!”

It was the same when we did fucking gigs, actually, which I’m not so pleased about. Like we’d go and do a gig, pick out a place somewhere, hand all the money over to people in need or charities or whatever, and then realize we hadn’t left enough money to buy supper that evening. We were that stupid, seriously. We didn’t look after ourselves. If we had looked after ourselves, the house would’ve been ours and Gee and I wouldn’t be living in what’s close to poverty most of the time. We’d have looked after it, but we didn’t, and that’s because we weren’t interested and we’re still not interested, so I’m not complaining, it’s just that’s a fact. [...]

I was a 35-year-old man when a 17-year-old boy turned up and wanted to form a band, and the band that he and I formed together denied him everything he should’ve had. He should’ve been fucking the groupies, snorting coke, and having a laugh. He never had a laugh; he never had a fucking adolescence. It was denied him by our hard line. I realize that now, I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought we were having fun, but Jesus what fun it was. I mean, I suppose I could get more fun out of it because my fun has always been more cerebral and intellectual, so for me some of the conflict that we created with the state and that sort of stuff was fun. But Steve wanted to be having proper fun, and I can completely understand that now. And also I can’t actually believe that he is so underappreciated. I think the guy was brilliant, among the best of the punk voices.

Why do you think Pete is so opposed to the rereleases?
When the band broke up and we no longer had that common ground, it increasingly became obvious that there were distinct differences between the various members. That didn’t rest well, and so certain conflicts started developing in the house. Notably I would say between those who didn’t see the folding of the band as a collapse of security, the individuals who were secure in their own being and quite happily got on with whatever it was they might be doing or not doing, whereas another part of the band was worried, like: “Where’s the future now? Our security has suddenly been taken from beneath our feet.” I think that was the root of the conflict, but it became expressed in lifestyle arguments. I created this house as a center for anything anyone wanted to do with it, in a way. It wasn’t for me to define, it wasn’t for me to judge, it wasn’t… I’d found the house, I was quite happy to finance it, and everyone could do what they wanted within certain parameters. I’ve since been accused of standing back when I should’ve helped a situation. So the objection that Peter’s making, by his own admittance, is that I would not give support to his criticisms, some of which were probably just, but in large number were bloody infantile or impractical.

Such as?
Well, one infantile one was to not recognize a natural authority. A natural authority is one that produces 65 percent of the material that you’re making a living from. Not for their own ends, but for a genuine belief that there’s a shared purpose here, which is why I wrote all those Crass songs. I don’t take kindly to someone turning around and being critical of that authority when they’re not directly benefiting in the way they want to directly benefit, while at the same time benefiting in all sorts of ways in which they continue to benefit. I don’t think that’s graceful. I think it was infantile to feel that one could change a situation by stamping your foot and being rude. It’s not how to do it. I’m willing to sit and listen if someone is willing to sit and talk, but I’m not willing to be insulted by anyone. I don’t think it’s very graceful of people not to acknowledge that; to live somewhere for seven years, rent free, for fuck all, to use every little iota of space which could’ve been mine in a selfish way, and then to make a big cacophony about it all. [...]

There’s no question that during the period that we lived 15 people in the house with 25 cats there was unbelievable accord. Obviously there were occasional rows about something, but they were very, very rare and we managed somehow. We couldn’t have done what we’d done otherwise. However many albums, all of the stuff, it ran like a machine. We did it at the cost of our emotional lives, and we were very good at it. But when it all ended the emotional baggage wasn’t properly dug out from all the dark holes around the house and dealt with by us. We should have deprogrammed, but we didn’t. We deprogrammed in our own slow way and within that a lot of bitterness formed. [...]

No contracts were ever signed.
There’s no contract, there’s no written anything in the history of Crass and Southern, and there never was between any of the bands that Crass recorded. It was done on trust or it was not done at all. And in fairness to John, I think that was a principle he kept on Corpus Christi. If Pete wants to play the law, in the real sense of the word, it’s a very foolish line to take. If I were to play the law on a 65 percent ownership of the songs of Crass, I could be sitting with a swimming pool just close to us, rather than a cat bowl, and he would have to work a little bit harder at whatever part-time jobs he does now. That’s the truth of it. [...]

When was the last time you saw Pete?
I think it was the week John was dying. He knew he was going to die and I bumped into Pete at the studio, and I said, “Pete, we really need to talk,” so we went over to a café and sat down, and it was cordial enough. I said, “Look, John’s going to die, we need to sort out our material.” He said, “No we don’t, it’ll be all right.” He just wouldn’t even hear of it. [...]

To my mind, the dispute has its root in ideological differences that existed between the individual members of the band. In my understanding, Pete was fundamentally a socialist, and socialists like wagging their fingers at anyone except themselves. He claims to be an anarchist. Well, I claim to be an anarchist, but I’m fundamentally a libertarian and a fierce individualist. I think that does fit into an arena of anarchistic thought. I certainly draw a line at all this stupid anarchistic organization of industry and that sort of stuff, because I’m just not interested. If people want to do that, then I’m not going to criticize them. But frankly, it’s not my thing. My thing is rising with the angels and flying in the sky.

Article continues.

A. Getting More Free Time:
1. I am wasting less of my time (LIFE) watching, listening to and reading THOUGHT LEADERS, ie, TV, movies. radio, music. newspapers, magazines and novels. These are like spectator sports. They cause me to live life vicariously, ie, second-hand, not real, only in fantasy. These mind conditioners are subtly designed to create not only fear and anger emotions but also create feelings of guilt and inadequacy. These feeling stifle growth and keep one securely in one’s rut. And of course the more visible purpose of the media is to create the desire to acquire (BUY! BUY! BUY!) and keep up with the Joneses. ‘Buying’ uses up my savings. I spent 22 years of my TIME (life) working as a Wage Slave. I helped perpetuate the status quo, ie a world of 98.6% Slaves and less than 1% Elite (Billionaires). I don’t wish to do that any more.
2. l am talking less ‘trivia.’ I will try to take responsibility and lead conversations into areas that are meaningful and interesting to me (or l will find someone else to talk with). This will give me more meaningful input and more free time, to think about what l would really like to do with my life, to experiment with different ideas and to experience the ones l like best. I wish to discover what it would be like to be a “Natural” human being (instead of a “Normal” one, who conforms and obeys) to see it I would like that better. I plan to spend more of my time trying to discover what makes ME happy.
B. Got rid of all my debts and credit cards.
C. Getting rid of my surplus possessions.
D. Getting my rent down as low as I can.
E. Teaching myself how to choose my thoughts, so that I can choose not to linger on self-destructive thoughts, and I am learning to focus on thinking about creating more freedom and happiness for myself.
G. Learning ways to live happily on very little money, ie, becoming more independent. (People with lots of money don’t need to do this. In the present system – MONEY IS INDEPENDENCE).
H. Experimenting with food. I’m discovering which foods and how much my body prefers. It tells me when I pay attention.
I. Got rid of my vehicle as soon as it felt like a burden.
J. Won’t attempt to gain Power over anyone. A slave’s chain has two ends.
K. Striving to be free and happy. I share my methods of happiness with others if they are interested.
L. Overcoming the fear of being alone. I realize that loneliness is only a thought and I am gaining control of my thoughts.
M. Worrying less about what people (including mother) think about me.
N. Starting to try some new things, friends, places, skills, routes, foods, areas, etc.
O. Absorbing new and useful input into my biocomputer and avoiding much trivia helps me surpass my old programming of “garbage in – garbage out” ie my old way of life.

Each has the potential to become a genius in some area. But most are astray with trivial diversions.

“Plow your furrows deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and keep.” – Benjamin Franklin

How much is too much?
What portion of my conversation is trivia?
How can I expect to accomplish anything but TRIVIA if I allow that to be my major focus?
(However, at this point in my evolution, I seem to need some trivia. My ability to focus on the important is still limited).

DEMOCRACY IS NOT FREEDOM (Except for the Elite)
I was programed to feel referent whenever I heard, saw or thought the word democracy. Tears would almost form in my eyes. I assumed that Democracy was a wonderful thing to have. l never looked it up in the Dictionary. I never thought of it as ‘Government and Bureaucrats.’ I thought of it as an entity; being there to protect, care for me and give me FREEDOM! What an ignoramus I was. I had no notion that there was any “alternative” except some worse kind of government. I took it all for granted. I assumed I (we) controlled it because I (we) had voted. It was DEMOCRACY! How naive I was. Just another one of the “suckers” Barnum said are born every minute.

Websters New World Dictionary:
Democracy: Government by the people, directly or through representatives.
Government: The exercise of authority over a Slate (of people), organization, etc.: control; rule.

The “Rule of the Majority” is a farce! In practice it has always been, “The Rule of the Minority” ie the manipulators ie the Elite. No thank you! You can have them both. I don’t have a need or desire to be ruled by either or anyone!

DEMOCRACIES and other governments have kept people in wage slavery for the past 5,000 years or more. ALL GOVERNMENTS are basically the same – they RULE! Rules create conformity. Rules create the status quo. Rules create slavery. Rules stifle creativity. Rules prevent INDIVIDUAL freedom! I do not desire to have people rule me directly or through representatives. I am not a cow or a sheep. I refuse to remain domesticated. I am fully capable of ruling myself. I do not desire to rule anyone. I just want to be FREE! And I am getting more free because I’m not playing their games much anymore. I no longer GIVE my consent to be ruled, I no longer vote for a Ruler or for Laws!

My chosen work right now is writing and publishing. I give my work for free. My past 18 years of payless working has been far more fun than my previous 22 years of paid working. We volunteers are in control of the how, when, if, where, why, what and who we give our work to. Volunteers have more freedom than paid workers. When everyone is a volunteer everything will be free for me, and for everyone else as well!

(first published in OVO 2 1987)

I’ve become jaded of late and convinces of the impossibility of achieving anything worthwhile.  Concerning the modern state, I cannot see any way out or around or through, and it strikes me that one’s time is better spent seeking after the little (and the great!) pleasures of camaraderie, art and study.

Although not a mystic, I appreciate some of the tactical insights of Taoism… I think once the critique of organization is firmly assimilated, the whole political project of “anarchism” is exposed as a fraud. As anarchists: leafleting, speaking, proselytizing, agitating anarchists, we are continually trying to smooth over the inherent contradictions of trying to motivate people to act while disavowing any responsibility for their choice of action(s).

If we toss over organization and hierarchy (as we should) we are left with the prescriptive task of anarchist propaganda, and must face the emptiness of our individual lives, the emptiness activity was intended to mask and failed to fill. There is still the joy of provoking and of communicating, but this begins more and more to fall into the older modes: humor and art.

We must stop thinking in terms of issues, power struggles, programs, policies, and projects (state and social) before we are going to be able to not anywhere, and this means an end to most of what the modern anarchist movement consists of. Being an exemplary person is the most difficult thing; it is why so many of us are lured into prosperous schemes for publishing: promoting and capitalizing on, non-monetarily, of course, discontent with a dying culture and an oppressed world. It vanishes into the mist on some rainy afternoon, and the aftertaste is bitter. But why when grown, do we mourn for our childhood games? Let’s invent new, better ones, that don’t have this built-in self-destruct mechanism.

October 1983, published Spring 1985 in VULTURE No. 1 (Montreal). with French translations; the title presumably supplied by its editor.

(from OVO 1 1987)

1982 (age 16): I find Factsheet Five and by way of that magazine I find Kerry Thornley. By way of Kerry and Factsheet Five I find many anarchist periodicals and pen pals.  Anarchism seems smart, strong, right.  Looking back, I used the word to describe what I like and wanted and what was ‘mine.’  It’s something about the primacy of the individual, or you can’t tell me what to do, or something in between.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I think that these ideas are so good that the only reason they aren’t in practice now everywhere is that they haven’t been tried.  Or perhaps tried just right.  Or perhaps the ideas aren’t widely distributed, and if people only knew about anarchism they would sign on.

1987: I find an anarchist poster on the campus of the University of Tennessee and by way of the poster I find The Alternative, an anarchist group in Knoxville.  We talk and do things, but anarchism does not flow out from us like a river.  And while we’re all on the same team against a much larger and more powerful team, we certainly do bicker.

1987: I published Letter from the Graveyard Shift by Gerry Reith in my zine OVO. “I’ve become jaded of late and convinces of the impossibility of achieving anything worthwhile. Concerning the modern state, I cannot see any way out or around or through, and it strikes me that one’s time is better spent seeking after the little (and the great!) pleasures of camaraderie, art and study. [...] l think once the critique of organization is firmly assimilated, the whole political project of “anarchism” is exposed as a fraud. As anarchists: leafleting, speaking, proselytizing, agitating anarchists, we are continually trying to smooth over the inherent contradictions of trying to motivate people to act while disavowing any responsibility for their choice of action(s).”

1988-1989: I attend anarchist events in many cities.  I meet with anarchists in the South and on the East Coast.  I am a guest lecturer on anarchism at the University of Tennessee.  The same imp of the perverse that led me to read about anarchism pricks up his ears when he hears a friend say how concerned he is that another friend is reading Ayn Rand.  Not that the friend is signing on as a true believer, but that the books themselves are wicked.  Noted.

1991: I write “Anarchist: Think for Yourself,” published in the book Anarchy and the End of History.  A high point in nine years of letters, essays and art published in anarchist magazines around the world. Factsheet Five continues to create contacts for me, including an unsolicited letter from George Walford in England.  I correspond with George until his death in 1994.

1992 (age 26): I move to Portland, Oregon and find radical bookstore Laughing Horse Books.  Make a friend who volunteers there.

1993: From a letter by George Walford: “You remark the scarcity of ‘real live human being stories’ in anarchist literature. Very perceptive. But it’s not an accident. Anarchism is not about people as we meet them, it’s about abstruse principles and theories (and, even more, about the resistance these encounter). The real human stories appear in the literature at the other end of the range, in the popular romances, thrillers, love-songs and — perhaps most of all — in tabloid newspaper stories, which go to extreme lengths to personalise (humanise) political events.  Your own view of anarchism has it that people should be free to do what they want. The overwhelming majority of those who have encountered anarchism have shown very clearly that they do not want to do what anarchists want them to do. They prefer to do what they are doing now. We have no reason to expect the others, when they meet anarchism, to respond differently. Can your anarchism accept this? Or do you feel bound to impose (however gently and rationally) your ideas of what it is good for them to do? The dilemma of orthodox anarchism cannot be escaped by ‘practical living anarchy’ within present society. We cannot live without taking part in society, paying taxes and supporting capitalism by our consumption, and orthodox anarchism condemns all of this. The attempt to live the anarchist life is a living demonstration of the arid, empty, abstract unreality of orthodox anarchism; it cannot be put into practice, it is virtually nothing but theory.”

1994: My friend from Laughing Horse Books and I attend a meeting.  The meeting is made up of people who want to start an anarchist bookstore in Portland.  The bookstore is to be called 223.  I offer to help write the mission statement, including a definition of anarchism. Not trying to define a thing into existence, not trying to exclude, not trying to control, just trying to clarify our goals and means and provide a base to start from.  Having a definition of anarchism is discouraged, as it will be divisive and we all know what we mean anyway.  Anarchism is smart, strong, right.  I notice that in twelve years of being around anarchists, most of us are under thirty.  Where are the older anarchists in a movement that started in the 19th Century?  And what has anarchism done… ever?  I work on a definition for myself, looking for the first time with any degree of seriousness into the history and accomplishments of anarchism for source material.

1994: From a letter by George Walford, responding to my essay in Anarchy and the End of History: “I have to say one or two things about the content. You ask one of the crucial questions: ‘if anarchy is so great, how come we’re not all anarchists?’ You ask it, but you don’t answer it, sliding off into discussing whether individuals can live as anarchists — also important, and certainly connected, but not the same question. Your omission is not surprising, for that question cannot be answered within the orthodox anarchism which your article accepts. The position is in fact even worse for anarchism than that sounds, because that is only half the problem, the other half being that some people, few but enough to form a movement, have become anarchists. A differential explanation is needed, and significant, enduring, social distinctions between groups of people orthodox anarchism cannot accept. Third (this one we’ve had before), your first new para on p.128, the one beginning: ‘Just as …’ in which you blame the personal inadequacies of individual anarchists for the failure of anarchy. This does not stand up any better than blaming individual supporters of capitalism for the failures of that system. In each case the failure is sufficiently constant and widespread to indicate a structural source, something built into the position. The only way to get past that sort of difficulty is to move on to another position. Examples of anarchist successes will be springing to your mind, but if you examine them you will find that (so far as they are successes in any field other than theory and argument) they are not distinctively anarchist. This of course links up with the first problem raised above. They both arise because orthodox anarchism, far from being “so great” is extremely limited. Not only can anarchy not be practiced under the state, it can’t even be thought out as an independent social system, in any concrete way, without running into contradictions that, appearing in practice, would wreck the new world.”

1994: I define anarchism as the belief it is possible and desirable to maintain the world’s population at the current standard of living without government and without a period of transition from the present to an anarchist world.  The moment I put the definition on paper, I ask myself if I believe that and I answer myself no I do not.  Thus I am not an anarchist.  I go to my anarchist friends to see if they can find an error in my thinking – they shy away from that conversation, and my doubts are not lessened for it.

1994: I read extensively in the works of George Walford and his peers.  The idea of the ‘mass rationality assumption’ hits home.  People project their values on others, and this includes intellectuals.  Intellectuals think that most people would prefer to solve problems with intellect, and most people are capable of solving problems with intellect.  Neither are true.  Intellect and reason aren’t forbidden to most people, they just aren’t valued as much as convention and passion.  Assuming otherwise is what keeps intellectuals in the political minority.

1995: One of George Walford’s best critics, David McDonagh, writes me to continue his criticism.  David proceeds to poke holes in my thinking from that point onward.  Looking into what David considers good thinking, I am introduced to the works of Sir Karl Popper.  Popper’s book Conjectures and Refutations causes the bottom to drop out of everything I knew about science, rationality, history and politics.  What a rotten foundation it was. David also directs me to “The Impossibility of Economic Calculation under Socialism” by David Steele.  This essay kicks the chair out from under socialist economics.  I start reading about economics.  What a fool I’d been, thinking I’d understood it before.

1996: Feeling free of anarchism and a little burned by what I now see was my own hooded thinking, I call up the imp of the perverse to see what other forbidden ideas might be out there.  Ayn Rand is suggested, and I read her works.  Having already shed one hood I’m less inclined to put another one on, and I do not become an Objectivist.  But moving through Objectivism brings libertarian thinking to my all-important attention.  It’s something about the primacy of the individual… but I’ve walked down that path already and don’t sign on as a libertarian either.

2001 (age 35): September 11th.  I’m at work at a homeless shelter.  The base nature of much of humanity stops being abstract and my appreciation for individuals who are basically decent increases.  The idea that we can all just get along stops scratching on its coffin lid.  The need for having hard men on the payroll to keep away other hard men makes sense.  I support the State, the army, the police.  How embarrassing I ever thought otherwise.

2005: The imp of the perverse continues to slip books into my hand, emboldened by the importance I place on reading one’s critics gained by my reading of Popper.  Nothing seems more important than finding critics who will point out errors in my thinking – friends who think like I do never will. I read extensively about right wing politics and pay more attention to mainstream politics.   All houses poxed long ago.  That being said, when a fact or idea rings true I don’t turn up my nose if the source is otherwise unpleasant.

2010: What am I now?  I try to be a good person and keep out of harm’s way.  I hammer at the chains of religion and theocracy.  My atheist efforts are small, but I’ve seen small changes from them and that is satisfying.  I think humanity’s best hope is the open society described by Sir Karl Popper.  I lean towards the free market and small government and the primacy of the individual, but I don’t see these as flawless or always appropriate.  This makes me close to a small-l libertarian although that’s not a word I’ve used to describe myself.  But I’m definitely not an anarchist.

It doesn’t happen often, but it happens more than never.  Sometimes people in power use legal means to remove some of their own power, or share their power with others and thus diminish their own power.

Wikipedia: Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519 BC – 430 BC?) was an ancient Roman aristocrat and political figure, serving as consul in 460 BC and Roman dictator in 458 BC and 439 BC. Cincinnatus was regarded by the Romans, especially the aristocratic patrician class, as one of the heroes of early Rome and as a model of Roman virtue and simplicity. A persistent opponent of the plebeians, when his son was convicted in absentia and condemned to death, Cincinnatus was forced to live in humble circumstances, working on his own small farm, until he was called to serve Rome as dictator, an office which he immediately resigned after completing his task of defeating the Aequians. His immediate resignation of his absolute authority with the end of the crisis has often been cited as an example of outstanding leadership, service to the greater good, civic virtue, and modesty.

Wikipedia: Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus [...] was Roman Emperor from 20 November 284 to 1 May 305. [...] Diocletian appointed fellow-officer Maximian his Augustus, his senior co-emperor, in 285. He delegated further on 1 March 293, appointing Galerius and Constantius as Caesars, junior co-emperors. Under this “Tetrarchy”, or “rule of four”, each emperor would rule over a quarter-division of the empire. [...] Diocletian retired to his homeland, Dalmatia. He moved into the expansive palace he had built on the Adriatic near the administrative center of Salona. [...] Galerius assumed the consular fasces in 308 with Diocletian as his colleague. In the autumn of 308, Galerius again conferred with Diocletian at Carnuntum (Petronell-Carnuntum, Austria). Diocletian and Maximian were both present on November 11, 308, to see Galerius appoint Licinius to be Augustus in place of Severus, who had died at the hands of Maxentius. He ordered Maximian, who had attempted to return to power after his retirement, to step down permanently. At Carnuntum people begged Diocletian to return to the throne, to resolve the conflicts that had arisen through Constantine’s rise to power and Maxentius’ usurpation. Diocletian’s reply: “If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn’t dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed.”

Wikipedia: Peter Kropotkin was born in Moscow. His father, Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, owned large tracts of land and nearly 1200 “souls” (male serfs) in three provinces. [...] “[U]nder the influence of republican teachings” he dropped his princely title at the age of twelve, and “even rebuked his friends, when they so referred to him.”

Wikipedia: Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin [...] was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism born in the Russian Empire to a family of Russian nobles.

Wikipedia: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon [...] was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first to call himself an anarchist.

Wikipedia: Richard Milhous Nixon [...] was the 37th President of the United States (1969–1974) and is the only president to resign the office.

About John Robbins: The only son of the founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire, John Robbins was groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps, but chose to walk away from Baskin-Robbins and the immense wealth it represented to “…pursue the deeper American Dream…the dream of a society at peace with its conscience because it respects and lives in harmony with all life forms. A dream of a society that is truly healthy, practicing a wise and compassionate stewardship of a balanced ecosystem.”

Wikipedia: At least four of the fifteen post-Civil War Constitutional amendments were ratified specifically to extend voting rights to different groups of citizens. [...] Abolition of property qualifications for white men, 1812-1860; Non-white men, 1870; Women, 1920; Native Americans, 1924; Residents of the District of Columbia, 1961; Poor, 1964; Racial minorities in certain states, 1965; Adults between 18 and 21, 1971.

Wikipedia: Solidarity was the first non-Communist-controlled trade union in a Warsaw Pact country. In the 1980s it constituted a broad anti-bureaucratic social movement. The government attempted to destroy the union during the period of martial law in the early 1980s and several years of repression, but in the end it had to start negotiating with the union. The Round Table Talks between the government and the Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections in 1989. By the end of August a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed and in December 1990 Wałęsa was elected President of Poland.

Wikipedia: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev [...] was the second last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 until 1991, and the last head of state of the USSR, serving from 1988 until its collapse in 1991. [...] Gorbachev’s attempts at reform as well as summit conferences with United States President Ronald Reagan and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War, ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Michael Meyer, The Picnic that Brought Down the Berlin Wall: in Hungary itself, a new generation of reform-minded communists had taken charge. Almost overnight, they wrote a U.S.-style constitution and began speaking openly of a free press, free markets and free elections. Emboldened, a small group of local Sopron activists decided to celebrate the new spirit. Their modest aim: put up some tents, hire a brass band and let the beer and good vibes flow. One of the organizers came up with an especially inspired idea – to briefly open a gate through the barbed-wire frontier to Austria, allowing people to casually stroll back and forth across the border for the first time in four decades. They called it the Pan-European Picnic. Because anything involving the border was a matter of extreme sensitivity, their request for a permit came to the attention of Hungary’s young prime minister, Miklos Nemeth, the man behind so many of the Gorbachev-like changes taking place. Immediately, a light bulb went off in his head. [...] Nemeth hoped to unleash a flood. He believed that a mass escape of East Germans from Hungary would pose an existential threat to the regime of Erich Honecker, the dictatorial boss of the German Democratic Republic. He also believed that if Honecker fell, it would bring down the Berlin Wall – and with it the entire communist bloc. Amid the chaos, he could realize his true goal. Hungary too would gain its freedom.

This book has been called a “Manual of terror” by Max Geltman, writing in National Review (July 22, 1971). I find this phrase aptly descriptive, but not in the same sense that Mr. Geltman would have us believe.

This “cookbook” consists of three basic parts: an introduction by Professor Bergman entitled “Anarchism today,” and two much longer sections by William Powell on drug and explosive manufacturing.

If ever there were an example of Orwellian doublespeak, this is it! “Anarchism Today” is basically an interpretation of the philosophic roots of anarchism, awkwardly coupled with sketchy references to current events. Almost all of the intellectuals discussed are from the Nineteenth Century; and there is virtually no mention of the writings from 1930 to present. This may be expected from someone who appears to have briefly studied the topic while at college during the 1920′s, and thereafter relied only on superficial newspaper accounts. Bergman should have been aware of Albert Jay Nock, for example, and anarchists today are certainly aware of Murray Rothbard, Karl Hess, etc.

Bergman considers Nihilism to be a form of Anarchism, and Anarchism a form of radical revolutionism. He interprets Marxism in an anarchistic light, and correctly suggests that Communist governments today are feudal / reactionary. However, his emphasis on the Marxist element in anarchist intellectual tradition is clearly one-sided. A more through and fair analysis can be found in Native American Anarchism (1932) by Eunice Minette Schuster.

Bergman’s emphasis on the Nihilistic and destructive aspects of Anarchism I find disturbing. This emphasis seems to arise from the axiom that the State is all, so to oppose the State is to oppose everything. Anarchists do not have to propose a concrete alternative because that would be authoritarian.

The rest of this book consists mainly of drug and explosive recipes relayed to us by William Powell. His motivation for doing so is supposedly to allow the “silent majority” access to information which he claims only the radical groups now possess. The idea of a “silent majority” comes from classical Greek literature and in that context referred to the dead who are the real majority. If you follow the steps outlined in these recipes, you may soon join them! the Library Journal (March 15, 1971) puts it this way:

“Much of it is so sketchy as to be harmless, but there are a number of booby traps still for the nitwit who wishes to try them. There are drug making recipes…that may make one very ill…there are also a number of stunts which could backfire on the idiot who tries them.”

Let’s get down to specifics.

Ed Rosenthal told me that he had spent a lot of time trying to track down the rumors of pot growing in New York sewers. Well, I just may have stumbled on the origin of the “New York White” rumors. Despite what Powell may think, plants are not as adaptable as alligators and need light to grow. Another choice quote: “…strangely enough, insects ignore marijuana and do no harm.” Strange indeed.

The DEA has a Precursor Control Program watch list. This means that if you buy large quantities of the common precursors to illegal chemicals, the Federal Government may take an interest in your activities. Several of the chemicals on this list are used in Mr. Powell’s LSD recipe, such as Acetonitrile, Trifluoroacetic Anhydride, Dimethylformamide, and Diethylamine. Benzene is also on the list, and my also arouse the interest of the EPA because it is a known cancer-causing agent.

Much the same can be said of many of his other recipes, and in some cases the precursors are as hard to get as he final product. For instance, his recipe for DMT starts out with indole, which is quite hard to get. Much better methods using L-Tryptophan (available in most health-food stores) are covered in “Synthesis” (1973 – present).

Powell suggests ground up nutmeg for a psychedelic experience. Nutmeg has a poor dose/toxicity ratio! However, the oil extract of Nutmeg, containing myristicin, can be used in the synthesis of MMDA – a better and mellower high than MDA. See Journal of Psychedelic Drugs (Vol. 8, #4, October-December 1976).

On page 58 of Powell’s cookbook, Nalline is described as “…a freak – a drug someone forgot to make illegal.” Perhaps they forgot because Nalorphine is a powerful narcotic antagonist, which tents to produce violent convulsive reactions in morphine addicts. (See the Merck Index.)

For more information on drugs, see “The clandestine Drug Laboratory Situation in the U.S.”, Journal of Forensic Sciences (January 1983, p. 18- 31.) This article, obligingly written by the DEA chief, reports that none of the 17 labs busted the previous year were successful in producing what was intended to be produced. The busted chemists were relying on recipes from popular “underground” drug manufacturing books. It was noted that such books contain errors which prevent the manufacture of the desired chemicals, while at the same time drawing the attention of government authorities because of the precursors recommended.

Let’s now examine his recommendations for manufacturing explosives:

His methods for producing Mercury Fulminate is incomplete and dangerous. Between steps 2 and 3, the solution should be cooled. Do not breathe the fumes. See A Dictionary of Applied Chemistry by Sir Edward Thorpe.

Powell’s recipe entitled “How to Make TNT” is also quite dangerous and incomplete. In step 1, mixing sulfuric acid and nitric acid will likely result in fulmination and red toxic fumes. Also the crude method he describes does not cover the removal of the Ortho-Dinitro groups. If this were not done, the TNT would be extremely unstable. However, they can be removed with great ease by heating the crude material with aqueous sodium sulfite. See Chemistry of Explosives by George Wright, University of Toronto, in Organic Chemistry (p. 974).

The description of picric acid does not sufficiently emphasize its unstable nature. For example, storing it in a cracked glass container may cause it to explode. See “Thorpe’s”. However, on page 120 he describes two relatively safer and easily obtainable chemicals (potassium bichromate and potassium permanganate) as very sensitive, unstable, and too hazardous to work with.

He does have a couple of pages on general safety precautions, but the language suggests that they have been lifted from a military manual. Also, he uses the German spelling for some chemicals. If you attempt to order chemicals from an American company using German spelling, your order would likely be looked at with suspicion.

The Anarchist Cookbook was originally published in 1971; the review by the Library Journal, which exposed these dangerous errors, came shortly thereafter. I wonder why it has gone through 26 printings without these errors being corrected. My theory is that Mr. Powell is not an anarchist, but in reality is spreading disinformation to potential enemies of the government. At the time of original publication, Mr. Powell was an unknown 21-year-old college freshman. Where did he get access to this “information?” He says, from radical friends on both the left and right.

The Minuteman Manual is listed in the bibliography. The original Minutemen were colonial American revolutionaries. In the ’60′s there was a radical offshoot of the John Birch Society called the Minutemen; they have since been disbanded by the FBI. It is not likely that the 1960′s Minutemen would have handed out their manual to a long-haired 21-year-old college freshman. Also, the John Birch Society and the Minutemen are opposed to the United Nations, and Powell’s father was a powerful bureaucrat in the UN propaganda ministry (see Newsweek, April 12, 1971.) Things are getting curiouser and curiouser!

This same William Powell has also written a book entitled Saudi Arabia and its Royal Family (1982). It consists of interviews with members of the Saudi royal family and other observations gathered while teaching at the University of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It does not seem likely that the Saudi royal family would give such generous treatment to a real anarchist. Reading the Saudi book, I came across some interesting quotes (p. 17):

“Were something or someone to cut the flow of oil from the Arabian Gulf, the result would be truly apocalyptic or the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and much of the developing world…In a worst case scenario, all gasoline available would go to essential services such as the military, the police and fire departments, and the transportation of foodstuffs. Most nonessential businesses and industries would close. Unemployment would skyrocket.”

“All major cities would, in all probability, have to be placed under martial law. Curfews would be enforced at gunpoint…Inflation would metamorphose…into a lethal epidemic. We would enter a wheelbarrow economy like that of Germany prior to Hitler’s rise to power.”

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. While his pessimistic analysis does not take full account of the market’s ability to conserve and switch to alternate fuels, I think a more important point is that Powell seems to believe that government is as essential as the transportation of foodstuffs, and that it can help solve the fuel crisis through the draconian methods he describes. If governments were to run out of gas tomorrow, anarchists would be dancing in celebration.

(Mr. Powell’s talk of martial law is not fantasy. Executive Order #11490, signed by Richard Nixon in October 1969, allows the president to assume dictatorial powers after declaring a “national emergency.”)

It just doesn’t add up, unless an alternative theory is developed to explain these anomalies. My attempts to get the other side of the story from the publisher were met with a stone wall of silence. My suggestion is that much of Powell’s disinformation and influence may have come from the Trilateral Commission and / or the CIA. A U.S. Air Force combat controllers group studying theory would seem to dovetail with the National Review article which presented The Anarchist Cookbook at face valued and even included a patronizing reference to “the boys at Harvard.” It is well known that W.F. Buckley, the National Review editor, is a Yale graduate and once served the CIA in Mexico. (E. Howard Hunt, of Watergate fame, was CIA paymaster in Mexico City at the same time Buckley served.)

I would like to quote Mr. Powell from the April 12, 1971 issue of Newsweek: “My book places power in the hands of the individual, where it belongs. The right calls it communist, the leftists call it profiteering, the liberals call it Neo-Nazi.”

And this reviewer calls it bullshit!

(from OVO 12 SCIENCE November 1991)

First Edition. 300 numbered copies. November 1988. B&W photocopy, 56 pages. 8.5 inches by 5.5 inches.
Second edition. 20 numbered copies. March 1989. B&W photocopy, 56 pages. 8.5 inches by 5.5 inches. New introduction.
Third / Grey Area edition. 200 numbered copies. May 1989. B&W photocopy, 56 pages. 8.5 inches by 6 inches. New introduction.

Toronto Anarchist Gathering, Nadzrealizem versus Anarhizm, spray paint stencil art, Grey Area. Printed on two continents.  Pages 29-48 were reproduced without permission from copyright protected sources and do not appear here.

[01] Cover. In 1988 I thought of OVO as a ‘movement’ (of one). OVO 5 was focused my experiences at an anarchist conference I’d just attended in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The cover of OVO 5 tried to show the two ‘movements’ crossing paths: the OVOglyph and the ‘circle-a’ symbol of anarchism.
[02] Statement.  OVO is said to be available in exchange for IRCs, which meant international reply coupons.  An international reply coupon is like a self addressed stamped envelope between countries.
[03] Introduction. An early suggestion that OVO would be modular; users would add or remove pages from a binder. The print-on-demand editions of OVO now make this possible. Also, an attempt to put to rest previous works and make OVO more than it had been (particularly by emphasis on themes for each issue).
[grey3] Introduction to Grey Area Edition of OVO 5. A copy of OVO 5 made its way to a man named Barry who was part of an English anarchistic group named Grey Area. Grey Area liked OVO 5 and asked if they could reprint the entire issue. I sent them the master copies and this new introduction, and they printed an edition of two hundred.
[04] Stencil.
[05][06][07][08][09][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Toronto. It took a special effort to find a place that would print this essay on a laser printer in 1988. The man with the green mohawk I met at the bus station was Tom Jennings, inventor of fidonet and publisher of Homocore magazine. The RCP that was not welcome at the event was the Revolutionary Communist Party. The body art I saw there prefigured the explosion in body art in years to come; I also saw my first ‘fanny pack’ there. The “Mike of Rensalaer” I met was Mike Gunderloy, publisher of Factsheet Five magazine. I heard Michael Board of Maximun Rockandroll magazine made fun of me for crying in the polyfidelity workshop but I never saw the article in question if he did. The “ABC” mentioned was the Anarchist Black Cross, a pen-pal club between anarchists and prisoners. The band MDC did play in a club while I was in Toronto, but since they were banned in Canada they went under the name My Dog Charlie. The “Rainbows” mentioned were the Rainbow Family Gatherings, something like an earlier movable Burning Man event. The “Psychic Youth” mentioned was a member of the Temple of Psychic Youth, founded by Genesis P. Orridge of Psychic TV. The crime I saw at the ‘day of action’ meeting was one anarchist picking the pocket of another – I did nothing to stop it, to my discredit. Riots induce altered states of consciousness. I have not before nor since felt the surrender of individual identity I felt in the riot. I acted as part of a group and entirely lost my sense of self.  It felt like bird appear as they change direction in flight, with no plain signal between them. The number of times I wrote about ‘ending up somewhere’ is an indication of my altered state. It was frightening and exciting, something I both want to experience again and never want to experience again. The altered state of the riot followed by the shock of being in jail was a great strain. The initial bail hearing was conducted late at night. A friend had his before me, and when he left the office he was smiling. Turns out the officer who was supposed to be conducting the interviews had been out drinking and didn’t show up until my turn in the office. So my friend left and I spent three days in jail. No wonder he had a smile on his face as he left! I do not believe any longer that the other people in jail were interested in anarchism. A short while after my adventure in Toronto I went to the anarchist demonstrations at the 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta, Georgia. I felt a need to prove to myself I wasn’t afraid of getting in trouble while causing trouble. One of the events I participated in there was blocking a white power group from marching in the streets; when our blockade was clearly successful, we marched on their planned route. The police in Toronto said that they were going to inform the local police in all our home towns about our arrest. Whether they did or not, I was under clumsy surveillance for the next four years in Knoxville (my car was repeatedly broken into but nothing was ever stolen: friends had their houses robbed, but the only things taken were address books, etc.). What stood out for people who read my account of the Toronto anarchist gathering was how personal it was. What stands out for me is my appreciation of big(ger) city life, and the shock of the riot followed by a few days in jail. I know now that my time in jail could have been much longer and much worse than it was: I was fortunate, no matter how much of an impression the experience made on me at the time.
[19] What Can You Do With This Page. Well, what can you do with this page? I think leaving this page blank was a mistake, corrected at the last moment by presenting it as an opportunity for the reader to make use of it.
[20] Nadzrealizem versus anarhizm. This text originally appeared in the book Pozdravi iz Babilona. I do not have a copy of what I wrote in English, but I remember that it was a clumsy provocation stating surrealism was ‘better’ than anarchism.
[21] Brian. This is the friend who entered the bail hearing office just before I did, who got away instead of staying in jail.
[22] T-Shirt. Artist unknown. My attempt to bring money back to the people who donated my bail money by advertising a fund-raising t-shirt.  The address shown here is no longer valid.
[23] Stencil. The paper candy-stripe used here is the kind used to indicate classified documents. A friend gave me a small stack of this paper, now all used up in pranks.
[24] People with AIDS: The Government is Not Your Friend. The United States government was slow to respond to the spread of AIDS, and many people suffered due to that delay.  At the time I thought it was the government’s responsibility and no one else’s responsibility to respond to the spread of AIDS.  I don’t think that any more.
[25] Image taken from the first edition of The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan. Also seen here in OVO 4 1988.
[26] Recommended Contacts. Background recycled from here in OVO 2 1987. Note that one half of the rent on my apartment in Knoxville in 1988 was $140/month.  None of the addresses or telephone numbers shown here are still valid.
[27][28] Ovoglyph. I wanted the ovoglyph to be used by other people as a symbol of free information and (in some vague way) surrealism. I thought it would be helpful to make a standardized version of it. No one ever used it but me, and I stopped using it long ago.
[49][50] Announcement of OVO 7 INFORMATION. OVO begins to move clearly toward themed issues. The first US patent for a mammal occurred in 1988, the year I mentioned it in OVO. The border is more of the secret paper candy-stripe paper.  The address and telephone number shown here are no longer valid.
[51] Catalogue.
[52] Collage. I was around 21 years old in this photograph, also seen in color here in OVO 4 1988.
[53] Back cover. This scan depicts a copy returned in the mail.  The address shown here is no longer valid.
[grey4] Back Cover to Grey Area edition of OVO 5 1988.  The addresses shown here are no longer valid.
[toronto01][toronto02] my account of the Toronto anarchist gathering got enough positive feedback that I made it available as a booklet.  The address shown here is no longer valid.

OVO is a collection of new works in the public domain edited and published by Trevor Blake. New issues are in progress. Past issues include…

OVO 18 Money (April 2008)
OVO 17 The Dreadlock Recollections (January 2007)
OVO 16 AntiChrist (January 2006)
OVO 15 Sperm (February 2005)
OVO 14 Suffering (March 1992)
OVO 13 Travel (January 1992)
OVO 12 Science (November 1991)
OVO 11 Control (September 1991)
OVO 10 Mayhem (July 1991)
OVO 9 (July 1991)
OVO 8 (May 1991)
OVO 7 Information (October 1989)
OVO 6 (Infinite)
OVO 5 (November 1988)
OVO 4 (May 1988)
OVO 3 (November 1987)
OVO 2 (July 1987)
OVO 1 (1987)

… and may be downloaded here.

November 1987. Twenty-four pages, 4.25 inches by 3.6 inches. Black and white photocopy inside envelope with stencil and hand made stamp exterior, stencil art on page torn from first edition of Queer by W. S. Burroughs. Copy art, BBS, surrealism, Neoism, Lunalogue by Cunnichant Night Owl.

[01] Cover. Scratched photocopy.
[02] Statement. First mention of OVO in electronic form.
[03] Introduction. This issue was made for distribution at an anarchist event in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1987. My goal was to introduce surrealism to anarchists.  This was part of my trajectory through anarchism.
[04][05][06][07][08][09][10] Art Poetique. Andre Breton and Jean Schuster.  One of my favorite surrealist poems.  “I have seen neither majesty in a king nor ministry in a priest. I have attracted attention to the mockery of the sceptre, the slime of the sandal. I have attacked things broadside.”  That notion has certainly held true, decades later.
[11] More About OVO. Text files for Commodore computers announced. Among them was ‘A Call to Heresy,’ a collection of contradictions and absurdities from the Christian Bible. In the late 1980s I uploaded that file to a local BBS. In the decade that followed the essay appeared on a disk distributed by Palm Computers, on many Web pages, inspired the name of an Internet domain in Hong Kong and at least one Web page criticizing it. I produced but never distributed music on the Commodore.  My simple animation work on the Amiga was used on two videotapes; Arise! by the SubGenius Foundation (later distributed by Blockbuster Video) and The Popular Reality Videotape.
[12] Collage. I was around 21 in these photographs. Nearly all of the hundreds of cassette letters I recorded were made while driving, and the photograph was made while recording. The double exposure in the lower photograph was an interesting accident achieved by being an unskilled photographer with a low quality disc camera. This was not a digital camera that used a disc, but a cheap camera that used a now obsolete format of film that was disc shaped.
[13] Cut-up text from Queer by William S. Burroughs. This issue of OVO was distributed in a sealed envelope with a spray paint stencil cover and a page from a first edition copy of Queer that was also decorated with a spray paint stencil.
[14][15][16][17] Operation Negation by Karen Elliot. I received this text and ‘Give Up Art, Save the Starving’ by Karen Elliot (published in OVO 14 SUFFERING) at different times and in different states.  Karen Elliot was a name shared by many people around the world.  Years later the particular Karen Elliot who wrote those two essays revealed herself to me. The Art Strike was described by Stewart Home the next year in chapter 16 his recommended book The Assault on Culture.
[18] Collage.
[19][20][21] Lunalogue by Cunnichant Night Owl. Drawings by a high school friend. I first heard of what would be known as AIDS in 1981, when Judith Hooper wrote an article in OMNI about a mysterious ‘decreased resistance’ to disease among gay men. In 1987, when OVO 3 was published, I did not know anyone like the people described in this story. I published it because I could tell Cunnichant Night Owl was describing something important. She disappeared from my mailbox soon after. Who she was, how she found me, why she wrote me and what happened to her are all mysteries.
[22] text by Andre Breton.
[23] Back cover.

OVO is a collection of new works in the public domain edited and published by Trevor Blake. New issues are in progress. Past issues include…

OVO 18 Money (April 2008)
OVO 17 The Dreadlock Recollections (January 2007)
OVO 16 AntiChrist (January 2006)
OVO 15 Sperm (February 2005)
OVO 14 Suffering (March 1992)
OVO 13 Travel (January 1992)
OVO 12 Science (November 1991)
OVO 11 Control (September 1991)
OVO 10 Mayhem (July 1991)
OVO 9 (July 1991)
OVO 8 (May 1991)
OVO 7 Information (October 1989)
OVO 6 (Infinite)
OVO 5 (November 1988)
OVO 4 (May 1988)
OVO 3 (November 1987)
OVO 2 (July 1987)
OVO 1 (1987)

… and may be downloaded here.

A photograph which purports to show Republican militiamen shooting at the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at Cerro de los Ángeles near Madrid, Spain during the Spanish Civil War. The photograph was given wide distribution by the Nationalists during the war. [Been looking for this image for 10+ years. I think it's fake, but still... ]

File:SpanishLeftistsShootStatueOfChrist.jpg – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wolfi Landstreicher is the current nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist involved in theoretical and practical activity [formerly: Feral Faun]

Wolfi Landstreicher – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

bolo’ bolo is based upon the book of the same name which lays out P.M.’s ideal society based upon sub-communities, each autonomous, with an economy fueled by trade.

bolo’ bolo: Eine Welt Ohne Geld | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

A very curious game from Switzerland, designed by “PM” from its novel ‘Tripura Transfer’ published in Switzerland and Germany.

Demono | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Kategorie: Gesellschaftsspiel

Infos zu Bolo Bolo

A decidedly odd card game developed by the enigmatic Swiss anarchist known only as “P.M.”, author of the utopian work Bolo’Bolo: Substructing the Planetary Work Machine among others.

User Review | Demono | BoardGameGeek

I’m guessing the queers and anarchists who disrupted this Church service are miffed at being called liberals.

RightMichigan.com || Michigan liberals attack Lansing congregation in the middle of Sunday worship

Journal du Cercle de la Rose Noire

S Y N T H E S I S

I have a better chance of winning the Powerball jackpot 7,400 times in a row than of affecting the election’s outcome. Which makes it pretty hard to see why I should vote.

Don’t vote. Play the lottery instead. – By Steven E. Landsburg – Slate Magazine

See Sharp Press publishes books and pamphlets on a wide range of topics — anarchism, atheism, music, substance abuse, and psychology.

See Sharp Press Home Page

Incorporating the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, the politics of anarchism, and the culture of capoeira angola, Soma is used by therapists organized in anarchist collectives to fight the psychological effects of authoritarianism.

Soma – Nick Cooper

August 6th marks the 20th anniversary of the historical 1988 all night throwdown between squatters, local residents and police in Tompkins Square park.

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Hey guys, has anybody seen a police badge covered in black tape?