2. Müntzer Mojo Rising, or: the Castle under Siege (1999-2001)

«They say that they are new, they christen themselves by acronyms: G8, IMF, WB, WTO, NAFTA, FTAA… They cannot fool us, they are the same as those who have come before them: the écorcheurs that plundered our villages, the oligarchs that reconquered Florence, the court of Emperor Sigismund that beguiled Ian Hus, the diet of Tuebingen that obeyed Ulrich and refused to admit Poor Konrad, the princes that sent the lansquenets to Frankenhausen, the impious that roasted Dozsa, the landlords that tormented the Diggers, the autocrats that defeated Pugachev, the government whom Byron cursed, the old world that stopped our assaults and destroyed all stairways to heaven.
Nowadays they have a new empire, they impose new servitudes on the whole globe, they still play the lords and masters of the land and the sea.
Once again, we the multitudes rise up against them.»
- From The Multitudes Of Europe Rising Up Against The Empire, Springtime 2001

The publication of Q was followed by an extended book tour all over Italy (and Ticino, the Italian-speaking canton of Switzerland). We met hundreds of readers in all kinds of venues (squats, libraries, bookshops, festivals etc.), answered their questions and discussed the reception of the book in the literary scene. During that tour we announced that, after the end of the LBP, we’d start a new project, more tight-knit, focused on storytelling and with no deadline ahead. Wu Ming was just around the corner.
We were still travelling when the Battle of Seattle broke out.
It was the thirtieth of November 1999. That evening we arrived at Lodi, a small town in Lombardy, and met readers at the municipal library. Instead of talking about the book, we raved about what had just happened at the WTO summit. We felt it was the beginning of something big.
And big it grew indeed. Very soon, the new movement erupted into a worldwide challenge to the global institutions regulating “free markets” from the top down: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and other bloodsuckers. (more…)

[On May 2nd, 2009, our friend and colleague Valerio Evangelisti sent us a dispatch on the situation he's witnessing in Mexico. As we already told you, he lives half of the year in Puerto Escondido. The text was published on Carmilla, one of the most important Italian multi-author blogs. We quickly translated it into English, and here it goes.]

Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico.
I’m writing from a country that seems to have sunk into madness. The place where I am, in the far south, has so far been spared by the “raging” swine flu which is causing  great outcry in the world after the World Health Organization classified it at a level of dangerousness 5 on a scale 1 to 6. Despite the peace around me, every day I see people on TV traveling with blue masks on their faces, doctors giving advice to the population, politicians having their say (whatever their level of competence), supermarkets assaulted by hordes of customers amassing food supplies in the unlikely case of a famine. (more…)