ANARCHIST HUMOUR:

IS YOUR JOB A BLAST OR A BOMB ?

AMERICAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT:

THE ICEMAN COMETH:

Looking south towards the USA from the comfort my cold little igloo up here in the frozen north I am all too often filled with despair at the flagrant stupidity, held in the most rigid ideological way possible, of the way that that country seems capable of degrading anything, even anarchism, into self-referential cults. But then I often get surprised, delightfully surprised. The USA is, after all, the third most populous in the world. Its anarchist movement,though chronically disorganized, goes far beyond the bizarre ("abolish civilization") and the petty thuggishness. It is the land of creativity, can-do and gadgets, and in true American tradition the vast majority of American anarchists are going about their business in a way less likely to serve the interests of the media and the police by giving out spectacles and reasons to increase budgets. Not as flashy and well reported, but much more effective in the end.

Here's an item from the New York Times about the "anarchist ice cream man". It brings a smile to my and a song to my heart.

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Selling Ice Cream, With Sprinkles of Anarchism:
By Corey Kilgannon
The Anarchist Ice Cream Truck’s menu is divided into “Treats for the Streets” and “Food for Thought.” (Photos: Corey Kilgannon/The New York Times)

There was something odd about the ice cream truck that pulled up to the curb on Park Avenue near 67th Street on Friday, with its proletarian color scheme and its overdressed driver with the subversive grin.

He was offering free ice cream in the middle of a rainstorm. The ice cream flavors were fudge, cherry, grape and tropical. But the right side of the menu offered flavors like Know Your Rights, Anarchy, Protest Tips, Black Panthers and Graffiti Liberation. There were also fact sheets on Halliburton and the Patriot Act.

Inside, the ice cream shared freezer space with emergency gas masks, and the condiment shelves held equipment for protesters at demonstrations to use when confronted by the police. The ice cream inventory is limited, because cabinets are used to store rolls of film for documenting police action, Ibuprofen for billy-club headaches and rain ponchos in case of fire hoses and water cannons. There were pepper spray treatment kits and the counter-weapon of choice: water balloons. There is an ample supply of work gloves.

“These are for throwing tear-gas canisters back at police so you don’t burn your hands,” explained the driver, Aaron Gach, 34, who wore a skinny bow tie and black-and-white saddle shoes, and a uniform with “Art” on the name tag and the words “Tactical Ice Cream Unit” on his white captain’s hat. He was not wearing his usual big fake mustache.

Mr. Gach calls the Anarchist Ice Cream Truck “the alter ego of a police mobile command unit.” Mr. Gach is a co-founder of the Center for Tactical Magic, an arts group based in Oakland, Calif., that advocates “positive social transformation” and “actively addressing power on individual, communal and transnational fronts.” The group says it uses tactics taken from “the ways of the artist, the magician, the ninja, and the private investigator.”

The truck is part of a weeklong exhibition organized by the arts group Creative Time.

The truck distributes literature developed by neighborhood progressive groups and works to “confront the rhetoric of ‘Big Brother’” and “provoke thought about political engagement,” according to Mr. Gach. It is appearing this week around New York City and will be on display next week at the Park Avenue Armory on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, as part of a weeklong exhibition called Democracy in America: The National Campaign, featuring dozens of artists’ works. It is produced by the arts group Creative Time and the armory.

The truck is the perfect tool for monitoring police action at a demonstration, and protecting and replenishing protesters, Mr. Gach said. The ice cream attracts protesters and even some police. Often the police wave them through blockades, fooled by the truck.

There is a police scanner on the dashboard, and there is a GPS unit, and the cameras are digitally recorded and can broadcast the video to media outlets, in case of a newsworthy demonstration, or police action, Mr. Gach said.

Since it first took to the streets in 2005, the truck has been across the country (never before to New York), stopping a various events. Sometimes it is on the perimeter of demonstrations, and sometimes helping conduct them. Mr. Gach said he has never been arrested, but has had many standoffs with the police. Customs officials have searched the freezers at borders, and at one demonstration, undercover officers asked him if he was distributing weapons and explosives to demonstrators.

In Vancouver, he said, he was pulled over by Canadian Mounties who wanted to search the vehicle but finally relented after Mr. Gach insisted on his rights to privacy.

“They got no ice cream,” he said, smiling.

In Riverside, Calif., he said, the police threw a man to the ground, but stopped roughing him up after a member of the Tactical Ice Cream Unit ran out with a video camera and informed the officers that he and the truck were filming them.

Mr. Gach said, “At a demonstration in Chicago, the police told us, ‘You can’t sell ice cream here — it’s a protest.’”

Inside, the truck is done in sleek red upholstery, and there is a repeating loop of dance tunes and musical samples with ice cream themes. There is a poster on the truck condemning war. The freezer bears the socialist-looking insignia showing a fist thrust in front of a red star, holding an ice cream cone with a cherry and a lighted fuse. Tacked above it was a flier — “Free the San Francisco 8” and “Resist the police state” — and a lyric sheet for protesters. Mr. Gach sat in front of a bank of screens and a laptop showing a radar sweep of the area. The truck has 16 surveillance cameras and ultrasensitive microphones monitoring the exterior.

Somehow, all of these surveillance tools managed to miss the parking agent that slapped a ticket on the truck almost as soon as it arrived. Another blow in the fight against “The Man” — a $115 penalty for parking in a No Standing zone.

Elizabeth Winn, 31, a counselor at a neighborhood homeless shelter, walked up to the truck seeking ice cream, but became interested in the literature. Asked about her political activism, she said she was interested in sweat shop conditions and keeping “Wal-Mart out of New York.” She suggested to Mr. Gach that he would get more interest in places like Williamsburg, Brooklyn, than the Upper East Side.

Then Gregory Belton, 26, a construction worker from East New York, Brooklyn, ordered a tropical-flavored ice pop and three pieces of propaganda: Know Your Rights, the Patriot Act, and Black Panthers.

“I want to learn about this stuff because I hate being stopped by cops,” he said. “I got a ticket for being in the park late one night playing chess. I get stopped and searched by cops just walking down the street.”

Two electricians walked up and ordered ice cream. The men, Ralph Camoia, 35, and Matt Schulz, 32, were unaware of the truck’s political function, and ordered Protest Tips from the propaganda menu, thinking they were some exotic type of sprinkles. Mr. Shulz laughed and said, “Ah, give me the stuff on Halliburton.”

Mr. Gach said: “My first customer was a little old lady who got an ice cream, and I asked if she wanted a piece of propaganda. She said: ‘Only one? I’ll take Anarchy, Black Panthers and Earth First.’ I was like, ‘Right on.’”

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The whole is actually awe inspiring. If there ever was an example of "taking the word to the people" this is it, and while a I may disagree with some of the items on the ideological side of the menu I have to give Aaron Gach a 125% rating for dedication, creativity and intelligence.

One wonders what anarchist songs could be fitted into the music of an approaching ice cream truck. The mind boggles. "Ba,ba,ba,ba baba baba baba kunin"

FROM THE SATIRICAL POLITICAL REPORT (SEE OTHER INTERESTING LINKS SECTION):
CITING CHINESE ANTI-SATELLITE TEST, BUSH INVADES SPACE:
In direct response to China's recent and successful test of an anti-satellite system, President Bush today announced a sudden and complete redeployment of all U.S. troops out of Iraq, and into space.
Bush said that the biggest threat faced by the country is now WSD-weapons of space destruction. Consequently the administration is implementing a plan called The New Way Upward.
The President also indicated that he would immediately bring back Donald Rumsfield to head the invasion, since Rumsfield was always considered the in-house space cadet. Bush further explained that "Rumsfield's favourite strategy of 'quick and light' is particularly well suited to a battlefield where there is no gravity."
Bush therefore announced that the tours of all active duty forces would be extended to three light years, to accommodate the long travel involved. In addition, due to the shortage of military resources caused by the lengthy war in Iraq, all U.S. space troops will be required to purchase their own heat shields.
To try to scare up public support for this venture, Bush has dispatched Vice President Cheney to the Sunday morning talk show circuit, to claim that in 2001, the Chinese had met with Mohammed Atta on the third ring of Saturn. Tim Russert did his damnedest to challenge Cheney's account, but could only extract a promise from the VEEP not to attack Buffalo.
Critics of the President point out that the Bush administration, prodded by the neo-moons, itself caused this arms race by refusing to negotiate a treaty regulating the weaponization of space. There is also speculation that Bush's true motive is to prevent the Chinese from shooting down the FOX NEWS satellite, which accounts for the 19% of "Cling-ons" who mysteriously still support the Administration.
To express their outrage over this latest belligerency, the Democratic Leadership is seeking a non-binding resolution that suggests Bush watch all episodes of Star Trek, in order to develop a healthy respect for outer space.
However, Ted Kennedy plans to introduce more ambitious legislation to "boldly send Bush where no man has gone before".

NEWS FROM SCARY SQUIRREL WORLD:
The ever expanding critique of the dialectical, post modernist praxis that aims to supersede all previous critique of the WCI- the Workers Comedic International brings you this latest bulletin from the masterful theoreticians at Scary Squirrel World( http://www.scarysquirrel.org ). As good post leftists the comrades at Scary Squirrel deny all connections with any previous material in other communiques and indeed deny that they mean anything they say. If anyone tries to pin them it must have been the other guy who said it. But anyways, here is something from SSW, people who know they're being funny:
WHERE DO SKWERLS COME FROM ?????
Patriots, do you ever wonder where skwerls come from ? Hard to believe, many people do not. Some compare their disinterest to wondering where super-conqueror-President Bush gets his swell ideas; it's enough that he has ideas.
But every Patriot understands the need to know the enemy, and chitterbox origins is an important part of that knowledge.
WHAT THE "EXPERTS" SAY...
Science tells us that the bushytail horde evolved out of the primeval ooze beginning with Paramys in the late Paleocene (about 55 million years ago). Paramys sported a mostly squirrel-like skeleton but without the arboreal adaptions. It also had a primitive jaw musculature which modern squirrels still retain.
The first critter we would recognize as a skwerl was Protosciurus . It had the unique ear structure of modern squirrels and looked little different than today's slavering, over-agitated, arboreal nutzys. The first fossilized Protosciurus bones were found in North America and date to the early Oligocene (23-37 million years ago). Thus, experts theorize that skwerls originated in North America, possibly in the Pacific Northwest. From there, they spread around the world culminating in a frenzied gambol into South America about 3-4 million years ago.
Sciurus, the modern squirrel genus, arose in the Miocene and has not changed since then. Among the rodents squirrels are considered living fossils.
THE PROBLEM...
Scientific theory on the drooling nutcrunchers origins is all well and good. It paints a historical picture of the spread of skwerlian debauchery around the globe. However, it fails to identify who or what is responsible for the bushytail horde. Consider this: the so-called experts are mute on what proceeded pre-protoskwerlian Paramys . They'de have us believe that it simply "evolved" from some other pre-protoskwerlian skwerlian.
More significantly, Paramys happened upon the scene in the Paleocene and Protosciurus during the Oligocene...but there appears to be no evidence of any skwerlian anywhere during the intervening time period, the Eocene. This strongly suggests that someone or something pulled Paramys from the market, came up with a better model, and released it back into the environment an epoch later. Thus, the evidence indicates that skwerls are the result of an Intelligent Designer with an intelligent design.
THE WHO AND THE WHAT...
Of course the design, or plan if you will, is no mystery. Every patriot knows it as the bushytail horde's plan for squirrel world domination. This nefarious plan was set in motion eons ago. It's historically seen in the sudden appearance of modern skwerls and their systematic rampage around the world using global shifts in land masses as platforms for conquest. Squirrel world domination is evidenced today by the maniacal skwerlballs' continuous attacks on the people, places and things important to human civilization. Unfortunately, defining who or what is responsible for unleashing the skwerlian menace in the first place remains a matter of conjecture. Currently, there are three competing theories. They are:
The Natural Theory: using "why ask why" reasoning, some simply believe that skwerls evolved as the evolutionary theorists suggest. In other words, they crawled out of the ooze with the rest of us and who cares where the ooze came from. A variation of this theory suggests that skwerls grow on trees and/or metamorph from some innocuous life form.
The Preternatural Theory: supporters of this theory think that skwerls are alien life forms from outer space. The theory solves the problem of how nutsys got to Earth, but not necessarily where they came from in the first place. Preternatural theory is very popular with the unfortunate victims of skwerlian abductions. Some claim that their chitterbox abductors imprisoned them in a giant tree on the far side of the Sun. NASA has been unable to confirm this.
The Supernatural Theory: a belief favoured by pathetic skwerlhuggers and espoused by the heresy of Orthodox Skwerlhugery. It claims that there is a mystical, immortal Nice Squirrel: The Nice Squirrel Planted the Tree of Delicious Nuts; and skwerls sprang forth from the Tree. The Tree supposedly grows in the Pacific Northwest where it is guarded by the immense Skwerlfoot. It should also be noted that common citizens often say that a benevolent non-skwerl deity is responsible, and Patriots frequently blame it all on a non-skwerl Devil.
Go to Scary Squirrel World for much more on this ultimate conspiracy theory. Read it in the light of so many other American toxic cultural exports, from fundamentalism to academic gobbledegoop, to primitivism, to post-leftism, to new age religion to neo-conservativism. All of these post- industrial wastes share one thing. They don't realize they're being funny. Scary Squirrel World knows it.
Much Fun,
Molly