NorthEastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists

Reports on Baltimore Conference

The 5th semi-annual conference of the NorthEastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists was held in Baltimore, MD from Friday, February 22 to Sunday the 24. Well over 50 people were in attendance at the conference, which saw a significant expansion of NEFAC's membership as well as a conscious move to develop a serious long-term strategy centered around the strategic interventions in concrete areas of the class struggle.

Anonymous Comrade writes "The new English web pages of the Czechoslovak Anarchist Federation and Czechoslovak Anarchist Association monthly magazine A-kontra are now
on-line:

http://a-kontra.csaf.cz

New web pages include regulary updated anarchist news service from Czechia in English.

zeroworkaholic writes "An audio interview with Japanese microradio pioneer and leftist Tetsuo Kogawa is available here: Tetuso Kogawa interview"

Sakhra-l'Assal Interviews Peter Lamborn Wilson

SA: Can you tell us something about the current state of affairs in the
USA? What do you make of this general idea that the "world will never be
the same"?

PLW: That's practically the first thing I heard on Sept. 11th --
"Everything has changed -- now, everything's going to be different."
Everyone was saying that (except me, I wasn't saying that...) I'm still
not convinced that that's true. I mean obviously, in some way it's true,
it has to be, it's a big event, so things change. But in a broader
s ense, a philosophical sense, if you want to put it that way, in a
philosophy of history sense, is anything different? Has anything
changed? It's not clear to me that it has. For example we can say that
in 1989 and '91, with the fall of Communism, that history came to a
stop. This is the expression of people both on the left and the right
who saw the dialectic of the social as essentially synonymous with
history. So when that came to an end, history came to an end. Alright,
let's accept this for a moment as a hypothesis and ask -- I mean,
obviously there's some truth to it, whether you take it literally or
not, some sort of history came to an end -- so, let's look at the event
of 09/11 and ask whether history begins again. As someone said to me,
'Oh, I guess you'll agree that history has started up again.' No, I'm not
sure I do agree.

AFI-Anarchist Federation Ireland

*******************************************************

Hi all

MFR is an anarchist internet radio station run
by w@g (Walthamstow Anarchist Group in London) people
and others. The site is live and can be found at
Middle Finger Radio

Right now it includes a policy statement and explains
how the site will work. There is also a big archive of
spoken word by various interesting people. The station
'programs' will contain anarchist only stuff (tho' the
archive is a bit broader) and will consist of
anarchist music and poetry as well as articles on
what's going on of interest politically in Britain and
Ireland.

We want a variety of formats (reports,interviews,
discussions, rants, etc) so if you are involved
in anything locally why not make a recording for
us?

So far we have lined up, amongst other things: A
debate between an Anarchist and a Marxist, an
interview with the Wombles, a talk on the Anarchist
Youth network, some French anarchist songs, an
article on Anarchism in Northern Ireland... get the
idea?

We'll consider anything and everything. Unfortunately
we don't have the technology (or rather the money to
get the technology) to broadcast live, so the station
will consist of downloadable recordings.

Hope you can contribute in some way to help get this
project up and running.

Solidarity

w@g

Edward Said, "Thoughts About America"

Counterpunch

I don't know a single Arab or Muslim American who does not now feel that he or she belongs to the enemy camp, and that being in the United States at this moment provides us with an especially unpleasant experience of alienation and widespread, quite specifically targeted hostility. For despite the occasional official statements saying that Islam and Muslims and Arabs are not enemies of the United States, everything else about the current situation argues the exact opposite.

Hundreds of young Arab and Muslim men have been picked up for questioning and, in far too many cases, detained by the police or the FBI. Anyone with an Arab or Muslim name is usually made to stand aside for special attention during airport security checks. There have been many reported instances of discriminatory behaviour against Arabs, so that speaking Arabic or even reading an Arabic document in public is likely to draw unwelcome attention. And of course, the media have run far too many "experts" and "commentators" on terrorism, Islam, and the Arabs whose endlessly repetitious and reductive line is so hostile and so misrepresents our history, society and culture that the media itself has become little more than an arm of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere, as now seems to be the case with the projected attack to "end" Iraq.

Full story continues at: said america

nomadlab writes "From what I just read on the web archive of an indymedia.org mailing list, it seems that some folks at Indymedia.org tried to register the name media.coop (one of the new domain endings that has some restrictions as to who can use it) and they were denied.

Now, I have some problems with how indymedia.org is run, but I still think that everyone should get behind them on this one.

Send an email to dotcoop@communicate.coop the folks who run the .coop registration http://www.communicate.coop/.

more details can be found at:

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-nyc/ 2002-February/009542.html "

"Chilling Effects" Clearinghouse for Free Speech & Fair Use Announced

Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the EFF, and law school
clinics at Stanford, Berkeley, and USF today announced the launch of the
Chilling Effects clearinghouse: Chilling Effects

Chilling Effects aims to protect free expression and fair use online.

Chilling Effects will be a collection point for Cease and Desist notices
concerning online activity -- we invite visitors to enter C&Ds they have
received or sent. The website will collect the C&Ds in a searchable
database and hyperlink them to explanations of the legal issues. As it
gathers data, we'll begin to analyze trends in the use and abuse of legal
threats. How much legitimate activity is stopped by baseless claims?

I hope you'll browse the site and add any notices you've received. We cover
topics including anticircumvention, the DMCA safe harbor for ISPs,
trademark, and anonymity.

Press release follows.

--Wendy

The Nestor Makhno Archive has undergone an extensive
update with the addition of many pages which previously
were linked off-site together with many new additions.

There are now 47 on-site documents in 14 different languages
including the new Anarchist FAQ section on the Makhnovists.

As always, additions in any language are gratefully received
and the URL is, as ever:

makhno

Italian Indymedia and Florence, Torino and Bologna Social Centers Under Attack

This morning around 7.00, police knocked at the doors of a few social
centers: Gabrio in Torino, Cecco Rivolta in Firenze, TPO in Bologna,
as well as those of the Cobas offices in Taranto. The huge
mobilitation (a lot of cars, vans, and riot cops) was due to an order
from Genova's attorney.

The attorneys Andrea Canciani and Anna Canepa ordered to seize audio
and video material referring to Genova facts, focusing on what could
deal with the police raid at the Media Center and the massacre at the
Diaz-Pertini school.

The search warrant explains that such material would have been
collected through the Italy Indymedia website, and would be situated
in the social centers Gabrio, TPO, Cecco Rivolta, and in Cobas
offices in Taranto, and in other places (using an aleathory form
which allows them to search and seize at their pleasure).

Searches are still going on. Police is seizing computers, archives,
and all of the stuff that hundreds of italian activists need for
their daily cultural and political activities.