Workers Solidarity Movement

The campaign against double taxation bin charges is reaching a critical point. As the number of people joining the non-payment campaign continues to grow, and as an election grows ever nearer, councillors from all political parties are jumping on the bandwagon of opposition to the charges. No doubt by the time of the election, they'll all be proclaiming their steadfast opposition to the charges, and hoping that the voters will have forgotten their past actions in voting for them.

Media coverage of the murderous pogroms unleashed by the Israeli state against Palestinians leaves out some of the story. The so-called 'peace process' like that of Northern Ireland is based on institutionalising sectarianism rather than overcoming it. There are citizens of Palestine and Israel, from both Jewish and Muslim backgrounds, who seek something other then two rival sectarian states. Ironically the ideology behind the pogroms is Zionism - the belief that Jews will only be safe from pogroms in a country run by Jews.

It may come as a surprise, but the mystery around aeroplane crashes isn't what it used to be. In the mid- 1980s, research by the US navy on its fighter aircraft picked up on a problem with the electric wiring that was used, known as Kaptan. Kaptan was once thought to be safe but US Navy investigations discovered otherwise.

In certain circumstances - not uncommon in aircraft flying conditions - Kaptan can actually explode in a ball of fire. So what did the US Navy do?

The big event of the Autumn was in Prague when the fat cats of the World Bank gathered for a jamboree, and thousands of anti-capitalist protesters took to the streets. In Ireland the WSM helped organise the Carnival for Global Economic Justice which included events in Belfast, Cork, Derry, Dublin and Galway. The following week saw the WSM host public meetings in Belfast, Cork, Dublin (and at the Anarchist Bookfair in London) which were addressed by Vadim Barak of the Czech Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists-Solidarita and Andrew Flood, a WSM member who took part in the protests.

Issue 4 of Red & Black Revolution

Contents Include:

• Anarchism with a future - The Czech Republic
• Anarchism & Environmental Survival
• Racism: Where it comes from, How we should fight it?
• The 1798 Rebellion

Anarchist organisations that have been influenced by the Platform are well aware that it is no Bible full of absolute truths. There is no grouping anywhere that would be so stupid to treat it as one. Anarchists have no need of such things. It is just one of the signposts pointing us in what we believe is the direction of making anarchism the most realistic and desirable alternative to both the present set-up and the authoritarian alternatives served up by most of the left.

A guide to 'The Organisational Platform of the libertarian communists'

The Friends of Durruti organisation, which arose from the ranks of anarchist militants during the Spanish Civil War, condemned the CNT and FAI members who joined the anti-Franco government. For their pains they were accused of wanting to establish an "anarchist dictatorship". Alan MacSimóin reviews the first English language book about them, and looks at the lessons to be learnt from Spain. The 'Friends of Durruti' appear in just about every book on the Spanish Civil War, especially in relation to the 1937 May Days in Barcelona. They get mentioned but we are told very little about their politics or activities. Some organisations, like the Workers Solidarity Movement, see their political stance as important to the tradition of revolutionary anarchism. Other anarchists, most notably sections of the syndicalist movement, condemn them for 'flirting with Bolshevism/Leninism/Trotskyism' or for 'advocating an anarchist dictatorship'. So who were they, where did they come from, what did they say, and what did they do?

Readers views on some controversy generated with the last issue

Purchase's proposal for more ecologically integrated communities usually meets with most scepticism when it is imagined applied to cities. Even a relatively small city, like Dublin, is almost completely dependent on food from neighbouring regions, and its ecosystem is made up of cars, people and concrete. If a city like New York or Mexico was sealed off from the rest of the world, it would die within days; the only question is whether it would be from starvation or asphyxiation. Given the number of such large cities around the world, and the fact that, even if it were possible, given the size of the earth's population, for everyone to live in small towns and rural communities, many would not want to, how can cities be accommodated within an environmentally sound anarchist society?