Anarchist Writers

An issue of Linchpin I helped edit

As anarchists we hope to help build communication between people engaged in struggle and inform a growing proportion of the real facts of such struggles. The other related aspect of an anarchist newspaper will be articles that sketch out what anarchism aims to achieve and what the history and current reality of that struggle

Indigenous protesters block rail line

Normally the settlement of claims to property are something the court system takes very seriously. The very foundation of capitalism after all is that some person can claim ownership of a piece of land, and through that ownership charge others rent to use it.

This article looks at how direct action had forced one military airline out of Shannon in the context of how dependent modern wars are on long supply chains. This is used to argue that similar actions across Europe and the US could prevent the war from taking place.
"In this war our rulers do not need us to fight as soldiers, they would like but do not require our support for the war. They do however need us to remain passive, for if we turn our disgust at this war into action against it then their war machine will grind to a halt."

The WSM has always said socialists should not support any intervention by the UN anywhere. What is currently happening in Bosnia and Rwanda demonstrates the reasons why we should not call on the UN to intervene.

THE WAR in what was Yugoslavia continues to drag on, with an ever increasing toll of people terrorized from their homes, killed or imprisoned. Most ordinary people are disgusted at the failure of the EC to do anything about it. Yet is EC or UN involvement any sort of answer or would it just make the situation worse.

Although you wouldn't know it from the media, anti-war demonstrations have been growing in size right across the world. But the number attending the demonstrations are still only a fraction of those who oppose the war, perhaps because many believe there is nothing we can do. This is because the history of successful resistance to war has been deeply buried by the ruling class.

Polls show most people in Ireland oppose the war, and refuelling at Shannon, yet the government continue to provide support for the US and British war drive. This is yet another demonstration of how meaningless parliamentary democracy is. Unless we are talking of marches of tens or hundreds of thousands we won't frighten the government into a change of policy. If the Iraq war is like other recent imperialist ones - where the actual fighting happens over a period of weeks rather then years - then its unlikely we will see tens of thousands mobilised. There is one way we can stop the war - this is mass direct action.

The September 11 attacks, the Afghan war that followed from it and the ongoing war in Israel/Palestine have once again raised the issue of Islam in the minds of many anarchists in Ireland and Britain. Not just because of the role Islam has in shaping those conflicts but also because militant Islam has become a far more noticeable presence on solidarity demonstrations.

The virgin of the barricades

The Epic Struggle for Another Oaxaca Has Not Finished, says David Venegas.
May 15, 2008, Oaxaca City, Mexico.

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake."
Stephen Daedalus, in Ulysses, James Joyce 1922

Kropotkin's Mutual Aid is usually, and rightly, called his masterpiece. While the high quality of all his work makes it hard to say whether this classic can be considered his best, it is fair to say that it is probably his most famous and one of his most widely read. Suffice to say, that it is rarely out of print testifies to its importance as well as the quality and timelessness of its message.