“Once upon a Time, Not Long Ago, O…”: The title of the Preface to Kathy Acker’s Pussy, King of the Pirates at first may seem almost as trite as its pirate heroes. Almost, but not quite. Acker’s perverse juxtaposition of these sing-song fairy tale words with one of the most notorious female masochists of all time (O, of Pauline Reage’s The Story of O)[1] indicates from the outset that this story will be both familiar and foreign to the reader’s storybook sensitivities. For in the timbre of “Ago, O…” one hears the telltale tremors of trouble: “uh-oh…”

It's a few hours after midnight on New Year's Day, and I'm 45 feet in the air, standing on a satellite dish that's been converted into a platform on the fourth story of a 50-foot-tall tree house. The platform is tied to the tree with about a dozen or so ropes and, though it seems to hold my weight comfortably, I'm not exactly thrilled about where I am.

I'm on a cross-country tour right now, speaking about the history and present of anarchism and fiction. My upcoming speaking dates:

West Hollywood, CA: Monday, Jan. 11th at Book Soup, with Carissa van den Berk Clark.

Santa Barbara, CA: Tuesday, Jan. 12th at De La Guerra Plaza, 3pm. I’ll be speaking with the Earth First! Roadshow.

Ten years after Seattle many in in radical movements are looking to that day as an example of how we should organize, and this approach has led us down a route of  tactical repetition. In the days since Pittsburgh it has become clear to many of us that not only have we begun to see another way of fighting, we have begun to construct a whole other way of approaching action, an appraoch based in fluidity, affinity, and the ability to shift with circumstances.

Issue number 2 of AS OF YET, [UNNAMED]. deals with themes of identity, conflict and coming together. It’s the basis for what we hope will be a growing dialogue in our community and all those confronted by the same problems.

That’s an interesting list, but it’s pretty much green feminist Ecotopian West Coastie anarchist sci-fi. I don’t see much in there that would keep Nestor Makhno happy; why, there’s hardly even one single fat bourgeois strung up by the heels and machine-gunned.

"This is not a time for fight club, is it? The cynicism of the '90s appeared to have reached some sort of apex of anomie near the end of the decade. We could no longer choke down our own image as bored consumers, pathetic workers, and depressed youth. The course of action became disturbingly clear: one could either kill everyone in their vicinity, or learn how to fight with others...Steven Soderbergh's new cinematic trauma, The Girlfriend Experience, captures the world after this one."

South Asians—in varying degrees—carry the political, cultural, and historical traditions of their respective nations when they arrive in the United States. Some might hope to leave as much as possible behind for a variety of reasons. Others come here to replicate their homes, except with fuller stomachs. Most know that they will give up something to gain another and are willing to take that risk. Few can imagine what lies ahead.

I often wish that we still had songs that were sung as a group at anarchist events (a good group building activity in my opinion), so I modified this old socialist song, I figure I the Reds could steal our slogans like “Worker Power!” or “All Power to the Soviets!” (Berkman talks about this in “What is Anarchism?”) we can certainly borrow some of their songs and symbols.

Visitors to the harsh, cold, windswept Andes of South America are familiar with the traditional music there — it's almost all windpipes, with the occasional haunting lyric. It's been that way for centuries in the remote country of Bolivia, but there are many more kinds of music there, from folkloric to protest to even baroque. The latest trend, generated by indigenous youths, is rap, and it's catching on in Latin America's largest indigenous city.