Black Flag 223 (2003)

Editorial

So, once again a year has passed and we've only managed to produce this one issue. Black Flag, unless something truly wonderful happens (like a couple of people decide to get involved), now looks set to be an annual event. So any attempt for us to cover 'news' is pointless. This is not such a disaster now that Freedom are producing a relevant and worthwhile fortnightly paper (see 'Thoughts on Freedom' on page 34) libertarians with access to the Internet can also keep up to date with news and events using sites such as Indymedia and Urban 75. We hope that any news shorts that are submitted to us can be (with the author's permission) passed on to Freedom. In return, we'll probably pick up some of the longer, more analytical articles submitted to Freedom when space is tight.

We believe that Black Flag is still a worthwhile project. There are few (if any) other non-aligned national anarchist magazines being published in the UK and Black Flag has a wide national and international readership. We believe there is a need for a forum for anarchist and libertarian practice and theory to be debated and for our ideas and the way we put them into practice to be analysed. We hope that Black Flag can be such a forum (but if anyone has ideas for a better way of achieving this, which will make Black Flag redundant, then go for it - the magazine is not and should not be an end in itself).

We also believe we have lots to learn from non-anarchists, especially where they are working in areas where we are weak. In the past we have covered the work of anti-racist and women's groups working with issues where our movement barely scratches the surface. In this issue we look at the work of the IWCA with communities trying to take back some control in the face of crime, poverty and gentrification.

Talking of communities taking control, the new London bid for the 2.012 Olympics prompted us to look back at successful campaigns by citizens of other cities across Europe to ditch their Olympic bids, The autonomist Berlin campaign in the early nineties, which we cover, was, in addition to being spectacularly successful, a lot of fun too. Get inspired. The deadline for the next issue is 26th of January, 2004.

Contents

NATIONAL NEWS

• Disarm DSEi Report on action against Europe's largest arms fair

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Anarchy in Iraq? Where now for the people of Iraq
• 'Anti terror' crackdown. In Spain
• Direct Action against War - the battle for Shannon airbase

FEATURES

• Fighting on Hometurf – IWCA
• Mayday - where now?
• Strange Defeat - Chilean revolution
• Yes we have no bannanas - sectarian politics in Northern Ireland
• Ditching the Olympics – Berlin resistance in the 1990s
• Democracy Is Undemocratic
• Thoughts on Freedom

PRISONS

• Wage slavery in prisons
• The Salonika Eight
• Update on the prisoners arrested at the EU summit in June

REVIEWS

• Is the emperor wearing any clothes? A review of Negri and Hardt's Empire from an anarchist perspective
• Bending the Bars by John Barker
• The Angry Brigade by Gordon Carr
• No War but the Class War: Libertarian Anti-Militarism Then and Now
• Anarchy: An Anthology of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth
• Attitude by Tony Allen
• May 68 and its afterlives