First off, a couple of new posts. The first is an interview I conducted with Mark Leier for Black Flag (issue no. 229). Mark recently published a very good biography of Bakunin (Bakunin: The Creative Passion) which I thoroughly recommend. As an anarchist, he manages to avoid the major problem inflicting books by academics on anarchism – he gets it.
Archives: Blog entry
A <em>blog entry</em> is a single post to an online journal, or <em>blog</em>.
We’d a national Shell to Sea meeting in Dublin this Saturday at the end of which we had a talk from Heather Milton Lightening of the Indigenous Environmental Network about the struggle against Tar Sand extraction in Alberta, Canada. This is a filthy process that involves vast open cast mines, tailing ponds that can be seen from space and the use of huge quantities of water and energy making it a major cause of climate change. Back in 2006 I mentioned the dangers it posed in the conclusion of the article ‘The politics and reality of the peak oil scare‘ I wrote with Chekov Feeney.
We recently hosted Jonathan of the South African Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) in Dublin. He was doing a speaking tour of Ireland and Britain on the subject of ‘After Apartheid: Social struggle in South Africa’. I’ve just uploaded the audio of his Dublin talk, its linked below. Jonathan is another person I’ve ‘known’ online for quite a long period so it was good to meet him IRL at the London anarchist bookfair which provided the first date for his talk.
Dos golpes de Estado. Dos países. Una misma agenda política. Tanto el golpe de estado en Honduras, como el golpe contra el sindicato mexicano de electricistas (SME) parecen confirmar que el estado de excepción es la norma, y que tal como lo propone James C. Scott, el capitalismo se caracteriza por el desequilibrio que genera la persistente resistencia de las clases subalternas, en todas sus manifestaciones: de la pasiva a la activa, de la espontánea a la organizada, de la efímera a la permanente.[1]
Or the frustrations of social research
In Europe the pilots are arguing in favour of shorter hours on the basis of health and safety. In contrast, I came accross a report of surgeons in the UK represented by the Royal College of Surgeons in England were using health and safety of patients to argue against working time reductions. This is what they want
Noam Chomsky was in Dublin again last week and five WSM members met up with him over breakfast for a conversation about anarchism and social struggles. I finished editing the audio of this earlier today and have now posted it to indymedia.ie. Chomsky has a huge reputation in Ireland; he talks to halls packed with 1000’s of people and appears on the main chat shows so its nice that on his last couple of visits he’s made time to meet with the local anarchist movement. This time we could only grab a breakfast slot with a few people (last time we had an invitation only Q&A with 100) so some time was spent working out what was the best use of that time and how that decision should be made. In the end it was left in the hands of the Dublin branch secretaries to make a final decision and select which members to send.
I’ve been watching downloads of "The Death of Yugoslavia", the 6 part BBC documentary about the break-up of Yugoslavia. This was made in 1995 and if fascinating as a large number of key players on both sides of the war gave extensive interviews. It’s triggered memories of a trip through Yugoslavia in 1990 and my more recent visit to Croatia in June.
Well, the London Anarchist bookfair was good. The new Black Flag (no. 230) sold well – we had the best stall takings for ages. So hopefully that will have an impact on our printing debts (looks like we may not only pay off this run but also make a small dent in outstanding monies owned!).
If anyone in the UK is interested in subscribing to Black Flag, it is £10 for 4 issues – but remember we come out bi-annually just now. Our address is:
I’ve been bold of late and allowed procrastination to result in a back log of audio material I should have published. This audio recorded in September is of a WSM branch educational given by Paul Bowman on class classification. In it he looks at the various systems that have been used before arguing that this is perhaps the wrong appraoch to the question and that we should look on class as more of a relationship then a distinct thing. Anyway here is the first of the missing audio’s I should get a good few more up in the next couple of weeks.
El Gasna es un viejo punk originario del DF. Después de años de vagar por el mundo aterrizó en el aeropuerto internacional de Cancún en Enero de éste año. Decidió festejar el regreso a su país con unos tragos en la zona turística. Recobró el conocimiento en una sala de emergencia de la Cruz Roja, con veinte puntos de sutura en el cráneo y varios policías estatales fuertemente armados custodiándolo.