freely associating

On the 28th of April 2006 a group of activists dressed in Superhero costumes burst into the insanely expensive Hamburg delicatessen, Frische Paradies and ran out with 1500 Euros worth of expensive food. Despite several police cars and a helicopter rushing to the scene, the culprits they got clean away. Not, however, before they posed for the photo above, which they release along with a communiqué explaining that ...

I went to a really productive meeting at the CommonPlace last night, throwing about ideas on the financial crisis and trying to work out how best we can 'intervene' (ugh, bad word but you know what I mean). I'm slowly coming to terms to with the fact that I'm fairly crap in meetings: I get distracted too easily and lose the thread; plus I have the turning circle ...

As well as being a place to store our half-baked ideas, this blog is also meant to be a place where we can collect, record and circulate interesting stuff. And amidst all the shite that’s been written about the current credit/finance crisis, this piece (by George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici of Midnight Notes) really stands out. Read and think on… “MUST THE MOLECULES FEAR AS THE ENGINE DIES?” –NOTES ...

Seeing as we have our own history of political lego in Turbulence, I couldn't pass this picture without nicking it (apologies to Jane Dark's Sugarhigh). The non-lego version of this image came to represent the Tiananmen square events in the West. It seemed to sum up the narrative that the western press had forced onto the events, of the merciless Stalinist state apparatus being stopped by a symbol ...

I’ve just started reading Naomi Klein’s new(ish) book, The Shock Doctrine, and I came across this quote on page 7: Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the ...

Money and finance don’t normally get much discussed on this site. All that might change. Last summer’s ‘subprime’ mortgage crisis in the United States (and the run on Northern Rock bank-cum-building society over here) has developed into a full-blown ‘credit crisis’: the global financial markets are in what the commentators describe as ‘turmoil’ and ‘catastrophe’ threatens. Last week, the US’s fifth-largest investment bank, Bear Stearns, imploded. In a ...

Ok, seeing as we’re posting quotes about punk this one from “Rip It Up and Start Again” needs flagging up and reflecting on: “Devo had been hippies, of a sort. Gerald V. Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh, the group's conceptual core, were among the anti-war students protesting at Kent State University, Ohio, on 4 May 1970 when the National Guard opened fire. Two of the four slain students - ...

In the news today is the discovery of a tape recording of the 1970 Kent State Massacre. It reveals that the National Guard troopers who shot four students dead were ordered to open fire. This is important because it shows a degree of deliberation in the massacre. The story kept to at the time was of spontaneous shooting triggered by panicking soldiers. The event had a huge effect, ...