Has anyone here ever read Adbusters?

[..] this book represents everything that is creative and beautiful about anarchism. Days of War, Nights of Love is a collection of discourse and images on a variety of subjects that affect the ways in which we think, act and live. The material is presented in an A to Z format which could be likened to that of a surrealist encyclopedia, with subject headings including Sex, Plagiarism, Gender, Death, Media, History, Hygiene, and Technology--to name just a few. Each section [..] consists of writings from various members [..] interspersed with cartoons, photographs and other assorted images [..]

Unlike many theoretical/political works, the material does not advocate a specific political position or a prescribed code of conduct/activism. Rather, the lack of a rigid agenda [..] encourages readers to think for themselves. The material is presented to the reader as a set of tools to help challenge and reevaluate the ethical, religious and political beliefs implicit within our society and our cultural practices.

All in all „Days of war, nights of love“ is a beautiful book, with lots of beautiful ideas. If you don’t take it too seriously, it is well worth reading as a sort of a guideline or an introduction into how things could be. It is a lot of fun as well. Take the thinks you like for your life, scorn the things you think are stupid, laugh at what is really stupid, puzzle about the naïve stuff and then put it next to your CDs

Less of a novel and more of an exploded manifesto [..] The past four centuries are all fodder for this new manifesto, everything—from the Unabomber to the Smiths, Henry Miller to the German J2M movement, Kalahari bushemn to Natural Born killers—finds its way on the pages. Such voracious stealing from history and applying as needed becomes not just a practice, but a saving grace. By never labeling themselves punks or new Dadaists and instead stealing all manner of praxis and pranks, CrimethInc. remains elusive, avoiding pitfalls that toppled previous revolutionaries.

The subtitle on this book is “Crimethink for Beginners” and that’s just what it is. So if you know someone young trapped in the suburban box, this is pages that might get them to see life from a different doorway. If you know someone young and suburban who has heard the word “anarchism” but knows nothing else about anything, lay this on them. [..] An introduction that’s not too heavy and might be a gust of fresh air. Maybe they’ll get a subversive laugh, a hint of rebellious spirit, maybe a seed planted in their mind.

And “Days” is real easy to slide into, since it’s not really a long book. It’s like fifteen short essays on breaking with boring, regimented capitalist life. There’s tons of pictures, funny sarcastic cartoons, little boxed examples of this or that from what some rebels actually did. And you don’t even have to take it that reverentially (it isn’t as though the authors were doing something real, like fixing the brakes on your truck). Start reading it anywhere, skip pages, go backwards, don’t worry, it’s all the same. The CrimetInc people who put this together really designed a clever “book” [..]

To me, the thing I like best about “Days” is that it brings out how barren the life of the spectator is. It challenges the spectatorism, the viewerism of passive virtual life in middle class capitalism. With its passive anti-sports (ten chemical-saturated dicks play, ten million overweight dicks sit and watch) and video game “challenges” and televised “relationships”. At its best, “Days” is provocative and thought-provoking, happily starting trouble for straight, middle class goal-seeking suburban youth.

“Whatever each [of] us may be looking for, we all tend to pursue our desires by purchasing images: symbols of the things we desire. We buy leather jackets when we want rebellion and danger. ..When we want to live in a different world, we buy political pamphlets and bumper stickers. Somehow we assume that having all the right accessories will get us the perfect lives. And as we construct our lives, we tend to do it according to an image, a pattern that has been laid out for us...At our jobs, we exchange our time, energy, and creativity for the ability to buy these symbols...Rather than satisfying our needs, these products multiply them: for to get them, we must sell our lives away.”