|
|
The goal of anarchistnews.org is to provide a non-sectarian source for news about and of concern to anarchists. It is also to provide a location for discussion about such news.
| From Anarcho's blog
This year marks the 170th anniversary of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's classic work "What is Property?" Within its pages two short expressions, a mere seven words, transformed socialist politics forever. One, only four words long, put a name to a tendency within the working class movement: “I am an Anarchist.” The other, only three words long, presented a critique and a protest against inequality which still rings: “Property is Theft!”
To mark this event, AK Press is publishing "Property is Theft!", the first comprehensive anthology of Proudhon's work. Find out more about the ideas of the leading French socialist of his time, the man Bakunin called "the master of us all" and his own ideas as "Proudhonism widely developed and pushed right to these, its final consequences."
The Proudhon Anthology should be out in November this year. It contains extracts from all of Proudhon's key works already available in English, including articles never before included in book format. In addition, substantial new material has been translated specifically for this anthology including articles from the 1848 Revolution, letters and chapters from important works like Confessions of a Revolutionary, The Political Capacity of the Working Classes and Solution of the Social Problem. |
 |
| From Slingshot - by Kermit
Is there a way to articulate at once the beauty, anxiety, pride and profound sadness of living without falling into an intense self reflection that does not communicate? Expression, authentic expression, with the power to find resonances with other minds, other bodies, is a continuous struggle against banality, against the nihilism that rushes in when we find it impossible to express ourselves in a way that will be understood.
Online social networks like facebook appear to offer us vast opportunities to express ourselves and they do change the way that people interact. They give us more options for how to package and deliver information about ourselves and reshape the way we think about privacy; making our interests and social connections more transparent and enabling people to reveal pieces of themselves in online profiles that might otherwise be known only by intimate friends.
The consequences of this are not neutral. When the world is conceived of as a global marketplace, every interaction can seem to be about buying and selling. People are encouraged to blur the distinction between self expression and creating a marketable image. The forms of expression supported by social networking technology are one recent example of this, but all of our communication is potentially affected by this posturing. When every post you make might be read by your mother, boss, or potential customer, what someone is willing to say can become highly artificial. |
 |
| From Raw Story - by Daniel Tencer
Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions -- or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.
The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states that "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State."
There's even a $5 filing fee. |
 |
From Phoenix Class War Council
Last Sunday was our biggest Beer & Revolution yet. Somewhere around seventy people or so managed to come out, pack themselves into the upstairs at Boulders on Broadway and listen to Eugene's John Zerzan and Tucson's Dan Todd speak on primitivism and the many problems with anarchist practice and presentation in the era of mass society. I'd like to thank John for coming up and delivering the goods, and for being, as expected, such an uncompromising, provocative speaker. I'd also like to thank Dan for both making the night possible, but also for being a supportive comrade and presenting such an interesting talk. We'll have our audio up soon (along with, hopefully, the audio from last November's B&R with Crudo from Modesto Anarcho) so others can appreciate the insightful comments and questions that, as usual, came from B&R's thoughtful anarcho-population.
In a way, it was a great climax to what has been a little more than a year of organizing under the Phoenix Class War Council banner. Has it been only a year?! Many people expressed to me their excitement at the event and the sense that, after the stress of the last few weeks, something like this was needed. I find myself in that same camp. Sunday was a good time and a great success and it was wonderful to look around the room and see so many comrades, both old and new -- people I've shared the pen with, people I've taken the streets with, people I've handed out flyers with, people I've faced down the cops with, people I've traveled with, people I've talked with, people I've read books with and people I've tasted pepper spray with.
|
 |
| From BANA - by Andrew Yeoman
There comes a time in the career of every activist when they want to give up. Luckily I was somewhat prepared for these feelings of resignation from my experiences with activists in the anti-globalization movement who devoted years to protests and organizing to see not one of their issues being successfully implemented. I knew what the dejected distant look of a persons eyes whose enthusiasm for life has been all but burned out. I felt that what we were trying to do was going to be just as useless as the anti-globalization movement. At most it would be a letting out of steam of peoples conscious, aware but hopeful that one day a critical mass would care about these issues and change would happen.
That, essentially, we were casting pearls before swine and if our truths had no one capable of actively supporting us then damn it all to hell. |
 |
| From The Spectator - by Harry Mount
We are so overwhelmed by petty laws that it has become impossible to get through the day without committing a crime, says Harry Mount
If Gordon Brown really wants to start appealing to the middle-class vote, he could start by picking up my rubbish. The bin bags outside my flat in Kentish Town, north London, weren’t collected for four weeks over Christmas because of the snow. When the foxes started to rip them apart and left a trail of chicken carcasses and half-chewed bread across my front garden, I cracked.
Patching up the most damaged bag and strapping it to my handlebars, I pedalled along the snowy roads — if my bike could negotiate the streets, so could a rubbish truck, by the way — to my local park. There, I poured the rubbish into a large, metal-mesh bin. As I did so, a plump, unshaven man in an official council fleece stopped casually scattering grit on the park footpaths and accelerated towards me.
|
 |
| From Matt Weidner Law
Courts Are Overwhelmed With Foreclosures
Across the country, circuit court judges and their staff are becoming overwhelmed and frustrated by the total avalanche of foreclosure cases that have been dumped in their courtrooms. In Pinellas County, Circuit Court judges who used to handle like 400 foreclosure cases are now handling something like 3,000.These judges still have one judicial assistant and the same limited resources the had before the crisis. When the judge’s loan JA sits down to start the day, they are bombarded with phone calls and mail and people in their face every single second….it’s chaos, its a burden and it is completely untenable for the long run.
Things have gotten so bad for the judges that I’m told at least two Circuit Court Judges in Pinellas County (Linda Allan and Douglas Baird) have announced they were no longer going to hear Motions to Dismiss filed by Defendants in foreclosure cases, but were going to start just denying them across the board without even having a hearing on the matter. Now that’s one way to deal with the crisis. It’s an unconstitutional, unfair and totally biased approach that completely ignores the law and the rights of the citizens these judges took an oath to serve, but it is one way to deal with the crisis. (Look for Appeals To Come If This Practice Really Begins to Take Hold.)
|
 |
| From Yorkshire Anarchist - by Peter Good
The launch of the Yorkshire Anarchist Group was held on 6th February 2010 in Bradford’s 1in12 Club.
In what has become known as the “Bradford Manner” people were invited to take part in a gourmet meal. White table cloths, wine glasses, red and black serviettes, complimentary beer-mats, YAG badges and little black flags flying from the olive dishes. 19 bottles of red wine were consumed.
The meal was created and served by a catering collective taken from the para-military wing of Age Concern, Hebden Bridge Class War, The Cunningham Amendment and the 1in12 Club. |
 |
| From Libcom
The fascist anti-immigration demo called for Saturday noon at Propylea in Athens was thwarted by a massive counter-demo of anarchists and antifascists.
The racist demo against immigration had been called by the Secret Services controlled pro-junta weekly paper Stohos, various ultra-Orthodox christian groups as well as a melange of other fascist groups and parties. A week after another fascist march, that time in commemoration of some greek soldiers killed during a short-lived melee between greek and turkish naval forces in 1996, this time the fascist scum had decided to desecrate the most central academic asylum grounds of Athens: Propylea, the place where all protest marches start, a high symbol of left-wing and anarchist struggles. The provocation was too much to be left unanswered and as early as Friday afternoon anarchist and other antifascist comrades moved to occupy the Rectorial Headquarters of Athens University which preside behind the Propylea. In its announcement the assembly formed in the building declared: |
 |
| From Barefoot Bum
An important element of anarchism is voluntary cooperation. As with "authority", I think it's useful to examine precisely what we mean or could rationally mean by this term.
It seems clear that under modern economic circumstances, there's a substantial material benefit to cooperation. No individual can create all the material stuff she needs to live a "good life". Other people made the house I live in; other people grow the food I eat, other people built the electric generators and other people operate them to provide the electricity I use, etc. Furthermore, regardless of the infrastructure, very few of the material things we can create today can be created by just one person working alone. We have created a world full of "irreducible" complexity (which we know can evolve through the use of scaffolding). |
 |
|
Check out the Anarchist News newsletter.
It is intended for printing and dispersal.
|