Image by Trevor Hoyle

Death of Anna Campbell of Bristol IWW

 NORTHERN VOICES wishes to note the tragic death of the Bristol IWW member Anna Campbell,  a 26 year-old plumber formerly from Lewes, East Sussex, who was killed by a Turkish air strike along with 100 other Y.P.J. volunteers on the 15th March.

We publish below the statement from her Bristol Branch

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IWW BRISTOL BRANCH STATEMENT:

It is with great sadness that we learn of the passing of Fellow Worker Anna Campbell, killed by Turkish forces while fighting alongside Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in the defence of Afrin.
 
Anna was a dedicated feminist, social justice and environmental campaigner known to members for her activism around the student occupation movement, ecological and community outreach projects in Bristol and Sheffield.  She was a key organiser in the IWW’s IWOC group, also being involved with the Empty Cages Collective, Smash IPP and Bristol ABC.

Anna travelled to Syria last May to participate in the grassroots feminist and socialist revolution that continues to grow in Rojava (the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Syria). Anna spent her first months in the country fighting in Deir ez-Zor, Isis’s last major stronghold. However when Turkey launched an assault on the city of Afrin in late January. Anna insisted that she be redeployed there. She gave her commanders an ultimatum, ‘Either I will go home and abandon the life as a revolutionary or you send me to Afrin. But I would never leave the revolution, so I will go to Afrin’.

A spokesperson from the YPJ said of Anna (who took the nom de guerre ‘Helîn’ in Rojava): “comrade Helîn will always be a symbol as a pioneering internationalist woman.  We will live up to her hope and beliefs. We will forever pursue her aim to struggle for women, for oppressed communities.”

Our thoughts and condolences are with Anna’s family, friends and comrades at this time.
Rest in Power Fellow Worker.

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Coup at Freedom?

IT seems that there has been a kind of coup at Freedom, with Simon Saunders (the acting editor of Freedom) getting rid of Andy [Meinke].  It's not easy to follow what's going on, but on his Facebook page on the 8th, June, Andy [Meinke] writes:

'
If the saga of my suspension was a sign of Freedom taking misogyny and patriarchy seriously it would be worth it.  In fact the majority of people involved in Freedom have just abdicated any responsibility for dealing with these issues.
  Meantime Freedom has another issue which illustrates perfectly what's wrong with the group at the moment.  Someone wrote an article for the Freedom website about the disruption of a pro Syrian government meeting at the Marx Memorial Library.  The acting Freedom editor (Simon Saunders) refuses to put it on the website saying attacking the far left is not what Freedom is concentrating on....   However the Editors paid job is for the Morning Star newspaper.  That should be something that he is aware of and reflects on his own potential and perceived bias however when this conflict of interest is pointed out by her he responds by saying she's "internet stalking him"....   Comrades are entitled to know what the Editor of Freedom does for a living.'

There's more, much more, but it just looks like a cheap power struggle between Andy Meinke and Simon Saunders.  We'll just have wait and see if the Friends of Freedom can do anything to improve things.

An Alternative View:

My own feeling is Andy wouldn't have been deposed by just one person. Others must have at the very least provided Simon with tacit support.

Simon shouldn't have any problems with either the CPB or the Morning Star. They're on fairly good terms with senior people in the Greens (esp those who have an anarchist bent), Stop the War and Corbyn's Labour.

To take a public position on Syria can invite intense harassment and denunciation from opponents.
Chances are the event at the Marx Memorial Library referred to is the one in this article. https://bsnews.info/bravo-marx-memorial-library-workers-school/

Juan Goytisolo: his ideas on politics & literature

by Brian Bamford

 Juan Goytisolo

1931-2017

THE Catalan writer Juan Goytisolo died last Sunday in Marrakesh.  Goytisolo, though born into a privileged family in 1931 - his father was imprisoned by the republican government during the Spanish Civil War, he had a difficult relationship with the Franco regime which censored his books, and he went to live in Paris permanently in 1956.

All his works had been banned in Spain until after Franco's death.

In France, mainly through his wife who was a writer and editor, he came to know the anarchist film director Luis Buñuel, as well as Sartre and de Beauvoir, Guy Debord, Camus, Raymond Queneau, Marguerite Duras and – especially – Jean Genet, who became a ‘moral, rather than literary’ mentor. Goytisolo has published over forty books, in various genres; his fiction, certainly since the 70s, is modernist in style and difficult to classify.  He is best known for his journalism, memoirs, and the novels that make up the ‘Alvaro Mendiola’ trilogy published between 1966-75.

He went into exile in France due to his 'total disagreement' with the Franco regime and the censorship it imposed.

He flirted with the communist party during the late 1950s, which brought him a four-month jail term, but he was inspired more by his opposition to the Franco dictatorship than by proletarian conviction.

He began writing at the age of 11, encouraged by his uncle Luis, and his first novels were published after attending law school.

His book Count Julian (1970, 1971, 1974) takes up, in an act of outspoken defiance, the side of Julian, count of Ceuta, a man traditionally castigated as the ultimate traitor in Spanish history.  In Goytisolo's own words, he imagines 'the destruction of Spanish mythology, its Catholicism and nationalism, in a literary attack on traditional Spain.'  He identifies himself 'with the great traitor who opened the door to Arab invasion.'  The narrator in this novel, an exile in North Africa like Goytisolo at the end of his life, rages against his beloved Spain, forming an obsessive identification with the fabled Count Julian, dreaming that, in a future invasion, the ethos and myths central to Hispanic identity will be totally destroyed.

In November 2014, Juan Goytisolo gave an online interview to the White Review with J.S. Tennant, in which he was asked about his attitude to Franco's Spain and his family background as well as questions on his view on the contempoary literature and the political situation: 
THE WHITE REVIEW—  Your works, and those of your two brothers, have continually recreated episodes from your family history to give a window onto Spain and Barcelona of the 1930s and ’40s. Has this semi-obsession with the period ever surprised you?

JUAN GOYTISOLO:
—  Well, the Civil War cast a long shadow and the death of our mother was a great shock. Later, I hated the Francoist regime and from the age of about 18 decided that this Spain was not my Spain. I lost my faith, became obsessed with the idea of escape, and read only banned books, which I sought out from among my mother’s shelves or in the back rooms of bookshops. 
 THE WHITE REVIEW:
—  You’ve written before that there’s no better reading experience than that of a banned book…
 JUAN GOYTISOLO:
—  Oh yes, a book by Cabrera Infante has a lot more worth in Cuba than outside the country, for example…Censorship has the Midas touch – everything it infects turns to gold. Everything becomes politicised; censorship exists to get rid of politics, but in fact it achieves the reverse.
THE WHITE REVIEW:
—  You taught yourself Catalan when living in Paris, but did your mother speak it?
JUAN GOYTISOLO:
—  She was bilingual Spanish/Catalan, and mostly read books in French. When she disappeared, Spanish became the only language of the house. I was taught practically nothing in the religious colleges I was sent to – I learnt French and English on my own, after I’d moved away.
 THE WHITE REVIEW:
—  When the Arab Spring started in Tunisia you were one of the first to publically predict the same would happen in Egypt…
JUAN GOYTISOLO:
—  It was like all revolutions, which start with a great yearning for freedom. All those young people on the barricades, thinking they were going to create a democratic state within a short period, I said to them, ‘Look at Spain, from the first Constitution in 1812 until 1879 there was an absolutist monarchy, then a liberal monarchy, three civil wars, four dictatorships…’ In France it was the same, it started with the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’, then came the Terror, the Directorate, and Napoleon as emperor. Creating democracy is a slow and circuitous process.
THE WHITE REVIEW:
—  Do you see any solution to what’s happening in Syria?
 JUAN GOYTISOLO:
—  No, and for a very simple reason (as things tend to be) that it is not in the United States’ interest for either side to win. So they are waiting for each to exhaust itself –sacrificing, in the process, the Syrian people. The mistake was not arming the opposition forces when they could have made a difference, and before their radicalisation.
 THE WHITE REVIEW:
—  Could popular uprisings happen here in Morocco, or Algeria?
 JUAN GOYTISOLO:
—  Algeria suffered a terrible civil war in the 1990s. People don’t want anything to do with extremism. There were a few reforms here, some of them cosmetic, and free elections were allowed which were won by an Islamist party, but the king still holds most of the power.
 THE WHITE REVIEW:
—  Do you believe that literature created from the margins is always better than more popular, visible, forms?
JUAN GOYTISOLO:
—  I’ve always found a perspective from the periphery more interesting than one from the centre.  I learnt this from the Christian converts in Spain, the Jewish conversos, who maintained a critical view of society because they were marginalised.  (But of course there are also those who situate themselves at the centre of things are still great writers.)  In spite of what they say, I’ve never promoted heterodoxy for its own sake, but to widen the traditional Spanish canon by rescuing what Arab culture, that of the Jews, the Enlightenment, the Illuminati, the freemasons and encyclopédistes have bestowed us.  My mission has been to rescue all that’s been excluded for religious or ideological reasons.

He went into exile in France due to his "total disagreement" with the Franco regime and the censorship it imposed.

Hey! Hey! Stop the War!

  'How Many Kids Have You Killed Today?'

THE 'STOP the War Coalition' was founded in September 2001, after US President George W Bush announced a 'war on terror'.

Now 'Stop the War' has become little more than a tin pot cheer-leader for Bashar Hafez al-Assad of Syria and the former Soviet KGB operative Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; to become a smelly little orthodoxy with little moral compass.
This week a video of an encounter at a 'Stop the War' protest was shared widely online, in which the Syrian refuge, Mr Hassan Akkad, told the BBC:  'I didn't see them protesting against the chamical weapons, I didn't see them protesting against Putin bombing Syria for the last two years.
'I wanted to go to that protest and I wanted to observe.
'I went to the protest and I saw a group of 30 people with placards, not a single mention of Assad.
'All the placards are against Donald Trump and they're repeating baseless slogans with their megaphones.'

Mr. Hassan Akkad added:
"They [President's Assad's forces] have killed hundreds of thousands, we've lost our home, we were displaced, we were made refugees all because of the Assad regime," he said.
"People were tortured to death, chemical attacks, all sort of attacks barrel bombs shredding children and flattening down entire cities.'
 Hence 'bombing Assad's war machine is in our favour because that means less Syrian civilians will die, less children will die.'
After the 'Stop War' group would not let Mr Akkad speak, he said:
'I felt oppressed, it was like being back in Syria. Like how the Syrian police used to mute our voices.
'I'm not going to be silenced I have the right to say what I believe.
'I left the protest. I was angry, I was livid.'

The BBC contacted 'Stop the War' for a response.  On its Facebook page before the protest, it said:
'The Stop the War Coalition​ condemn​s Donald Trump's decision to launch attacks against Syrian targets.  
'This action will only increase the level of killing in Syria, and inflame the terrible war that has already caused untold misery for the people of the country.'

This kind of moral and intellectual bankrupcy seems to be commonplace now on the British left. They say that they are against 'intervention' but what they really mean is that they are against intervention by the West, and that they are objectively pro-Putin and objectively pro-intervention when comes to Russia and Assad.

Syria: Carry-On 'Stop the War'!

Corny Carryings-On of Stop War Coalition

Bring on the Mustard Gas Comrades!

A CRACK-POT Coalition of 'Stop the War' devotees last night ran into opposition from what the Huffington Post described as 'an enraged Syrian refugee' Hassan Akkad, who accused 'Stop the War' of trying to shut him up. 
Mr. Akkad said that he shouted 'Assad is our enemy', when he was appalled by the absence of 'a single placard or slogan' condemning the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad or indeed his Russian backers.
The highly hypocritical 'Stop the War Coalition' these days makes Donald Trump look like an enlightened Scrooge following his conversion by Little Tim, the youngest son of Bob Cratchit, in 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens.
Not since the Soviet Union in the last century served to make Capitalism, by comparison, seem positively benevolent has a political movement behaved in such a barmy way as the 'Stop the War Coalition'.
Trump commanded the missile bombing of an Assad regime air base following a nerve gas attack last Tuesday killed many civilians including 30 children.
The Stop the War Coalition is now being accused of double standards owing to its silence about the Russian interventions which helped to prop-up the Assad regime.
Last night, the 'Stop The War Coalition' was challenged on social media for choosing to demonstrate outside Downing Street as opposed to an international embassy such as the United States, Russia or Syria.

Twitter user Josh The Duke said:  'Stop the war coalition should be protesting outside Russian Embassy - not Downing Street.'

Rohullah Yakobi added:  'Stop the War Coalition to hold a demo about Syria. No, it isn't to condemn Assad's atrocities.' 

The Stop The War Coalition issued the Newsletter yesterday, which we publish below:

Stop the War Newsletter - 7 April 2017

---

London Emergency Protest Tonight Downing Street 5-7pmThe Stop the War Coalition​ condemn​s Donald Trump's decision to launch attacks against Syrian targets. This action will only increase the level of killing in Syria, and inflame the terrible war that has already caused untold misery for the people of the country.

​​This is the worst possible way to respond to the indefensible attack at Khan Sheikhun. As well as ​deepening​ the tragedy of the Syrian people, ​this utterly​ irresponsible act ​threatens to widen the war and lead the West into military confrontation with Russia. ​

​It is shameful that​ Theresa May​ has rushed to support this act by the most xenophobic and reactionary US president in history. ​

​Stop the War calls for protests today against th​is​ or any further attacks and against British support or participation. The protest in London will take place today at​ Downing Street​ from 5 to 7pm.

London Anarchist Bookfair Collective Statement

 6th November 2016 Via Kurdish Solidarity Network, by e-mail.

AMIR Taaki contacted us a week or so before the Bookfair asking that he be given space to speak about Rojava.  Below is the statement we sent out in respect of this on the Friday before the Bookfair. 

Leila Al Shami would define herself as an anarchist. Robin Yassin-Kassab would not. They co-wrote a book “Burning Country, Syrians in Revolution and War” and it was because of the issues in this book that we asked them to speak at this year’s London Anarchist Bookfair. We stand by this decision. Leila and Robin also asked Shiar Neyo, a Syrian Kurdish anarchist, to speak as well.

Amir Taaki and around 15 others decided to occupy the stage at the start of this meeting. We are still unsure if this was on the false accusation that we wouldn’t let him speak or his accusations that Robin Yassin-Kassab supports fascist groups.

There were a large number of people present who wanted to hear the speakers, so to progress the meeting those present let Amir could speak for 10 minutes at the start of the meeting. This he did. But this wasn’t enough for Amir and his followers. They still refused to let the meeting continue and silenced anyone who tried to speak except for Amir. Robin left the room although Leila stayed.

The Bookfair has a policy of “no filming” at the Bookfair and when we saw one of Amir’s group filming we asked her to stop. This she constantly refused to do even though people in the room were asking her to stop as it could compromise some people’s security. Eventually someone took the filming equipment from the woman which led to a very short scuffle lasting no more than a few seconds.

We asked Amir and his associates if they would now leave the stage and let Leila speak and the meeting continue. Amir refused stating that Leila is also tainted as she is connected to Robin. As it was obvious Amir considered himself to be the only legitimate voice of what’s happening in Rojava we, as the Bookfair organisers, cancelled the meeting and asked people to leave. We left the room to Amir, his group of (we assume) supporters and 2 or 3 other people.

We are disgusted by the way that Amir and his associates behaved. Firstly, a number of people wanted to hear what Leila and Robin had to say. Many were Kurds, Arabs and Syrians and some had travelled to the Bookfair specifically to be part of this discussion. We apologise to all these people and to Leila, Robin and Shiar.

Secondly, we know some people wanted to ask Robin about the accusations being made against him by Amir.

Thirdly we find it ironic that in the end the only people who heard from Amir were a load of people who he already knew. Amir and his friends left the Bookfair immediately after the meeting and did not participate in further meetings.

The meeting about Rojava did happen later on at the Bookfair, as scheduled, and over 100 people participated in a good debate. The Bookfair collective welcomes this debate (as we have in previous years) and will do so again in future years if it’s appropriate.

We have seen emails stating that Amir and co’s actions could damage support for the Kurds and/or Rojava. From the London Anarchist Bookfair’s perspective we in no way blame any sections of the Kurdish community. These were the actions of a very small group of people (some Kurdish – some not) who decided (1) they wanted to close down any free discussion on the issues, and (2) only the word of Amir could be heard. Likewise, we hope our Kurdish comrades do not see the actions of Amir and co as having the support of most anarchists. He does not represent anarchism as we perceive it.

There were over 70 meetings at this year’s Bookfair and over 100 stall holders. Amir and co disrupted one meeting which most of those at the Bookfair didn’t even realise had happened. We need to keep this in perspective.

Many discussions were had with Amir before the event explaining he wasn’t being stopped from contributing – which was his initial request. At no time initially did he say Robin shouldn’t be allowed to speak. He only made this demand when we explained to Amir he couldn’t speak from the stage and the meeting wouldn’t be “his meeting”. We wonder just how much of this story those who supported Amir on the day knew.

Statement from the London Anarchist Bookfair Collective, 28th October 2016 (the day before the Bookfair)

The London Anarchist Bookfair has Leila Al Shami and Robin Yassin-Kassab speaking at this year’s Bookfair. As the description on our website states “Leila and Robin will discuss the current situation in Syria with a focus on grass-roots resistance to all forms of authoritarianism.” Leila would describe herself as an anarchist and we know Robin wouldn’t. However we have often had non anarchists speaking when we think they have interesting things to say. Amir Taaki has made allegations against Robin both to us and to Robin & Leila. Robin categorically denies these allegations.

Amir contacted us about a week ago telling us we needed to let him speak signing off by saying “I’d love to speak at the anarchist book fair, only if you give me a good speaking slot and advertise it properly”.

We explained to him that the programme was fully booked, all the publicity had now gone out and the programme printed but he, like anyone else, is welcome to attend the Bookfair and any meeting to participate in the debates. His reply to us was “I want 1 hour to talk from the Syrian and technology talks”. Again we explained that at this late stage it just wasn’t possible but again said come and take part in the discussion. We have also had a friend of Amir’s call us telling us we must let Amir speak. We have never said he can’t speak. We have said we are not going to change the main speakers but that doesn’t stop him participating from the floor as the meeting will be a general discussion. We have discussed this with Amir as well by phone. It is now that Amir is making allegations against one of the speakers.

Amir is also claiming “This event is not having anything about Rojava, even though their main talk is about Syria. They’re trying to sideline Rojava”. He also calls Robin “the main speaker” at the Anarchist Bookfair. Both of these points are untrue.

Firstly, we do have a meeting about Rojava and this is a separate meeting to the one we are having about Rojava. We also have a meeting about the situation in Turkey. Amir has been told this but decides to say something completely different.

Robin is not the “main speaker” at the bookfair. We have 70 meetings and as the organisers we see all the meetings and discussions have equal billing. We have a number of speakers coming in from outside the UK and we feel it is an insult to these and speakers from within the UK to describe one person, as Amir does, as the “main speaker”. We would question why anyone who would define themselves as an anarchist would “rank” speakers in order of importance.

We cannot, and would not, stop Amir expressing his views. However we don’t agree with them for the reasons stated above.

Syrian Talk at Bookfair silenced!

N.V. Editor:  The report below has not been confirmed but it available on the Blog of Leila and we are reproducing it here.  I did hear from Roger Ball on the Bristol Radical History stall that there had been a dispute during this talk, but wasn't aware of the details.  While we understand that organizing a bookfair is a thankless job, it does reflects badly on the Anarchist Bookfair organisers in so far as they seemingly failed to protect free speech on this occasion.  This is not the first occasion this kind of thing has happened at one of these bookfairs.


https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/london-anarchist-bookfair/
https://leilashami.wordpress.com/author/leilashami/

Report from London Anarchist Bookfair;  October 29, 2016 by Leila Al Shami  

TODAY I was invited to speak at the London Anarchist Bookfair, an event I was excited to attend, to talk about the situation in Syria. Unfortunately the event did not take place.  We were shut down by a guy called Amir Taaki (a British-Iranian who claims to be a developer of Bitcoin and someone who apparently Forbes magazine considered ‘their top 30 under 30 list for 2014’ as he had previously proudly told me by email) along with around seven of his friends (one dressed in full military garb, a real revolutionary maybe?) 
Firstly, I would like to apologize to those who attended the event and had wanted to learn about the situation in Syria, an issue of critical importance. Some had come from as far afield as Birmingham to hear myself and Robin Yassin Kassab speak. Unfortunately as we were about to begin, Amir and his friends stormed the event chanting “PKK”, “YPG” and accusing myself and Robin of being “fascists”, “Arab nationalists” and “supporters of jihadi groups such as Ahrar Al Sham which advocate stoning women to death”. I will not respond to the claims as anyone who is familiar with mine or Robin’s work will know they are absurd. And for those not familiar, I refer you to our book ‘Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War’ (Pluto Press); make up your own minds. 
Amir had previously contacted me by email demanding (not asking) that he be given 30 minutes of our talk to talk about Rojava, as he had spent some time there fighting for the YPG and working with various committees. (He had previously been refused a platform by the Bookfair). I responded that we already had a Syrian Kurdish anarchist, Shiar Neyo, invited to come and talk about Rojava for the second half of our talk (he was  speaking at the No Border’s session for the first half) and that our talk was not just about Rojava, but about Syria as a whole, plus there was another talk organized at the Bookfair for 5pm which focused specifically on Rojava. He responded claiming he “is probably the person who knows the most about Rojava at the moment” and that he is “qualified to speak about Syria more than anyone else right now.” Such arrogance epitomizes everything that is wrong with egotistical western solidarity. That he – a foreigner who has spent a few months in the region – believes he is more qualified to speak on Rojava than a Syrian-Kurd from Rojava himself. 
So, as a result of his bullying, he was given a 10 minute platform to speak, even though the organizers had tried to get him off the stage. He used his time to talk about “Mesopotamia” and “pyramids” and then refused to leave the platform. It then descended into a physical punch-up between Amir and his cronies and audience members who had come to hear myself, Robin and Shiar speak about Syria – both Arab and Kurdish struggles. We had in particular wanted to focus on anti-authoritarian struggles, self-organization as well as issues of militarism, sectarianism and the rise of Islamist extremist groups. There would have also been one hour for audience questions and discussion, to learn from each others views and perspectives. But we were met with aggressiveness. I have spoken at events with Shabiha in attendance where we were treated with more respect. In the end the audience, myself and Robin left. And Amir remained talking to his seven friends …
Amir and his friends did a great disservice to the Kurdish struggle today by claiming to represent it and shutting down open debate. Myself, Robin and Shiar had gone in the spirit of mutual solidarity across Kurdish and Arab struggles and we were faced with blind sectarianism by people who rudely and aggressively prevented our event from taking place. If anarchism is about cult-like chanting the name of a political party and preventing Syrians from talking about Syria, then I am not an anarchist.

Anarcha-feminism & all things exotic

In contrast to the ideas of Bailey Lamon on everyday struggles of poor folk today, Loughborough University is hosting a conference below on something more exotic:  'Anarcha-feminism & queer theory'.  Readers must judge on whether it might be better to save your money and to stop at home and listen to The Archers.

Loughborough University, U.K. – 14-16 September 2016

Central theme: Anarcha-feminism

Call for Papers and Sessions : 

The global resistance faces turbulent times, as the balance of hope teeters between inspiring mobilisation and reactionary retrenchment. In Rojava, Kurdish communities are implementing libertarian socialism and feminist leadership on a scale unseen since the Spanish civil war, while world powers bomb the democratic Syrian opposition alongside ISIS. The mobilisation of African Americans against police brutality goes beyond liberal platitudes to highlight systemic racism, while competitors for the Republican candidacy outdo one another in barefaced bigotry and misogyny. And while anarchists were encouraged by the resurgence of popular protest in the wake of the global financial crisis, much of that energy has been absorbed by electoral initiatives from Greece and Spain to the UK and US, vindicating longstanding concerns about the co-optation of movements who expect too much of the state. In these uncertain days, the elaboration of anarchist analysis which bridges theory and practice and speaks to the needs of social movements assumes increasing importance

The 4th International Conference of the Anarchist Studies Network will be held at Loughborough University between 14-16 September 2016. Proposals are welcome for individual papers, panels, and streams of several panels. We especially encourage panel proposals, to include 3-4 presentations drawn together around a common theme, although individual paper proposals are of course also welcome.

Contributions from both within and outside the official academic sphere are invited from any scholarly discipline(s), on any topic relevant to the study of anarchism.

The central theme for the conference is anarcha-feminism. The purposes are twofold: to stimulate discussion of a form of oppression that anarchists oppose but which continues to be felt in anarchist organising; and to welcome individuals, groups and communities who have not previously participated in ASN events. By recognising the legacy of anarcha-feminists/anarchist feminism and women's activism in anarchism we want to strengthen the ties between contemporary anarchists and feminists in the struggle against oppression and use the recognition of misogynist practices and hierarchical gender structures to open up the event to other marginalised peoples. We therefore particularly encourage submissions from women, trans and non-binary people, queer activists, collectives, people of colour, people with disabilities and we strongly encourage panel and panel stream organizers to overcome exclusion. We are also especially interested in presentations that are concerned with anarchism and one/more of the following:

· Anarcha-feminist and queer theory

· Anarcha-feminist critiques of the state

· Anarcha-feminist histories

· Ecofeminism, individualist anarcha-feminism, anarcho-primitivist feminism, posthuman, cyborg and sci-fi anarcho-feminism

· Feminist critiques of anarchism and anarchist engagement with feminism

· Intersections between gender, sexuality, race, class, abilities and anarchism

· Local anarcho-feminist struggles / experiences

· Love, sex, relationships (or resistance to)

· Masculine and feminine representations and the movement between them

· Sex work and reproductive rights

· The role of women and non-binary people in the struggle against capitalism

In addition, we welcome contributions on any other topic relevant to the study of anarchism, with or without connection to anarcha-feminism.

ASN conferences aim to breach new frontiers in anarchist scholarship, and encourage cross-pollination between disciplines. As well as submissions that bridge the gap between ‘academic’ and other forms of knowledge, we also welcome proposals for workshops, art events/performances and experimental pieces and are happy to discuss ideas that you might have.

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words per paper (multiply for panel/stream proposals) to ASN Co-convenor Uri Gordon at  u.gordon@lboro.ac.uk by 14 March 2016

Anarchist Studies Network:  http://anarchist-studies-network.org.uk/

Eccles Lad Alan Henning Murdered

Head Severed in Horrific Execution!

 

DESPITE appeals from the family of Alan Henning, and Muslims in this country, was killed by his  Islamic State captors yesterday.  A video showed Alan kneeling in the desert in a jump suit.

 

The taxi driver from Salford was delivering aid to Syria last December when he was kidnapped.  It seems that two sharia courts in the north of Syria had also demanded his release.

 

Earlier this week Mrs Barbara Henning had asked for 'mercy' for her husband, saying his family was continuing their attempts to communicate with the group.  She said she had received an audio message of her husband pleading for his life.  Mrs Henning had said some people thought her husband was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but she said:  'He was in the right place doing the right thing.'



Dr Shuja Shafi, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, tweeted:
'Saddened by reported murder of Alan Henning. A despicable and offensive act. He helped Muslims. My thoughts and prayers with his family.'

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, said:
'This barbaric killing is an attack against all decent people around the world.'

 

The suspicion is that the killing is an attempt to provoke the western powers into making a greater effort to defeat Islamic State, and to draw the west into a Holy War.  The urge the do something is powerful when such obscene acts are committed.  But it is difficult to see that any action by Britain will help resolve the situation, and the present involvement by the UK has been described as largely cosmetic.

 

Local people interviewed this morning were calling for action to tackle the situation but more involvement in either Iraq or Syria may easily encourage more support for Islamic State throughout the world.  The best that can be expected is that the Kurds and others forces in the region can get their act together to defeat Islamic State. 

Chomsky's Speech: !0th Anniversary of Iraq War

IN the early days of the Bush administration, Robert Jervis, then president of the American Political Science Association, observed that �In the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States,� reiterating a similar warning by Samuel Huntington shortly before. As if to prove the point, Bush and associates soon joined with Britain to invade Iraq, a textbook case of aggression, �the supreme international crime� in the familiar words of the Nuremberg Tribunal, �differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.� The conclusion would hold even if the fanciful pretexts had not quickly collapsed.

Iraq had already been devastated by the US-UK sanctions, administered via the UN, condemned as �genocidal� by the two distinguished international diplomats, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who directed their �humanitarian� components, and successively resigned in protest. Von Sponeck�s valuable study, A Different Kind of War, provides extensive details. He writes that �the per capita value/day of humanitarian goods actually benefitting Iraqis amounted to 51 US cents - a shameful reality for which the US & UK Governments were largely responsible.� The sanctions strengthened the tyrant and compelled the population to rely on him for survival, perhaps saving him from the fate of others like him who were overthrown from within.

Then came the war, and the �accumulated evil� that followed: hundreds of thousands of corpses, millions of refugees, torture and humiliation, murderous ethnic conflict that has since inflamed the region, destruction of cultural treasures and of the intellectual and professional classes so severe that many Iraqis compare the outcome to the Mongol invasions. In 2005, the UN determined that 84% of Iraq�s education institutions had been looted, burnt or destroyed. Before the sanctions were imposed, Iraq had the highest educational standards in the Arab world, approaching the developed societies. Today, its illiteracy rates are some of the highest in the region, reflecting the devastation of the culture and the society by sanctions and war.

Iraq's Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (2011) reports that some 4.5 million Iraqi children have lost their parents, 70% of them since the invasion, many living in the streets or the few orphanages, something new in Iraq.

Intelligence agencies had predicted that the invasion would increase terror. So it did, far beyond what had been anticipated. A study by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank on the �Iraq effect� found that war �generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks.� The head of Britain�s MI5 informed the Chilcot Commission investigating the war that �the invasion radicalised part of a generation of Muslims and increased terrorist threat to Britain.� Much the same has happened elsewhere.

Correspondents who have kept a close eye on developments throughout have summarized the �Iraq effect� on the tenth anniversary. In the London Independent, Patrick Cockburn writes that �The US and the UK have sought to play down overwhelming evidence that their invasion and occupation has produced one of the most dysfunctional and crooked governments in the world.� David Gardner extends the observation in the Financial Times: �The bigger impact of the invasion was to catapult the Shia minority within Islam (a majority in Iraq) to power in an Arab heartland nation for the first time since the fall of the Fatimid caliphate in 1171. As well as leading to a sectarian bloodbath in Iraq, this reignited with a millenarian spin the simmering conflict between Sunni and Shia, from the Levant to the Gulf and across to the Indian subcontinent.�

The United States suffered a major defeat, not only because of the enormous cost of the war and the abandonment of all war aims. The defeat for Iraq and much of the region is far worse. But there have been some victors. The main one of course is Iran � and another, at least temporarily, is Syria�s Bashar al-Assad.

A fitting tribute to the brilliance of those who instructed the world that �we create our own reality� while lesser mortals can only observe in wonder. So they did.

The Bomber Always Gets Through!

THERE was a slogan, or perhaps it was a truism, going around during the Second World War that 'The Bomber Always Gets Through!'   I think it came from Baldwin originally.  Then, Miss Vera Brittan wrote a pamphlet, 'Seed of Chaos', which was an attack on 'obliteration' bombing.  She was not playing the pacifist card, but was arguing that in order to win the war we should stick to legal methods of war and abandon civilian bombing, which would blacken the reputation of the British in the eyes of humanity in the years to come. 

It is impossible to view bombing, or owt else about war, as anything other than repugnant.  I've always been suspicious of them who want to 'legalise' or 'humanise' war.  In a way this makes war more acceptable to the general public by creating a fancy catch-phrase.  But though killing civilians by bombing in wartime may be bad, it is not necessarily worse than killing them by ground warfare, though it is assumed that air bombing does more of this than street fighting. 

It is not clear why it is worse to kill civilians than soldiers?  The killing of children should be avoided, but not necessarily civilians as  a whole.  Why?  Because among the civilians in cities will be a disproportionately large section of the middle-aged.  Is it better to sink a submarine with say 50 young men or bomb a textile mill full of young women workers?    In this age of Feminism and the New Woman, why should the young lads be the first to die?  For this reason, if no other, we ought to be welcoming the fact that the U.S. Marine Corps is about to let women take the Infantry Officer Course, a punishing test that prepares lieutenants to lead infantry platoons into combat in the marines.

Today, Syrian state TV confirmed the death of Assef Shawkat, Assad's brother-in-law and the deputy head of the armed forces, and his closest security adviser, as well as Daud Rajha, the minister of defence and the regime's most senior Christian figure. Several others, including the interior minister, Mohammed Shaar, were wounded.  Now while some folk will object to the suggestion that civilians, particularly women, ought to suffer in wartime alongside young men, I doubt that many will object to the idea that political leaders should die at the hands of the bomber alongside the young lads they send out in battle to die.  Thus, the death today of some of this ruling clique in Syria ought to be welcomed.

Strong Stomachs & Narrow Minds

Intellectually & Morally Bankrupt: British Left

IN the January issue of Freedom, the anarchist paper, Dave Douglass a former miner wrote: 'Sunday 6th November 2011 I am confronted out of the blue, by a political development in anarchism which has knocked me off my feet. Surrounded by comrades in a fairly well attended meeting of the Northern Anarchist Network (NAN), and the North East Anarchists last Sunday at The Bridge Hotel Newcastle I listened with my jaw dropping to the item on the agenda marked Libyan Solidarity Campaign.' He added: 'The Support NATO bombing tendency is how I would roughly designate it ...' and he went on to claim that Ian Bone’s blog was the origin 'of this absurd and reactionary viewpoint'.

As I write this the shells of the security forces of the Syrian army fall on Homs for the 19th consecutive day of a bombardment that activists say has claimed the lives of hundreds of trapped civilians. Meanwhile, at CND and Stop the War meetings white skinned and left-wing militants on these islands of ours, urge that there be no intervention despite the bloodshed. One supporter of the NAN even told me that we must always oppose our own British forces no matter what the cause.

If anything could illustrate the utter moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the British left these conflicts in Syria and Libia bring it into focus. Dave Douglass admitted that Gaddafi's agents may have marched with Stop the War supporters in London last year but claimed that he understood why they were there.

To support his argument Dave Douglass quoted from the Morning Star: 'The Morning Star Thurs Nov 10th (p13) reported on the Al-Qaida flag flying over the main Benghazi Courthouse, not that having the flag flying next to the new ‘official’ Libyan flag of the former kind, demonstrates the level of political support, but the fact no-one dared take it down might.' Dave trusts the Morning Star as his authority, but Barry Woodling who spoke at the Northern Anarchist Network conference last November has taken the trouble over the last few years to contact Libian exiles and address this matter empirically. He may still get it wrong, he may still develop a faulty analysis, it may be that Libya could turn out to be another tragedy but at least he is doing some homework which is more than I can say for Dave Douglass and those cookbook politicians in the Stop the War movement.
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NORTHERN VOICES 13
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The next issue of Northern Voices, NV13 out in February, will include an interview between Barry Woodling and a member of the Libyan community in Manchester: this Libyan lad has now returned to Benghazi to participate in the unfolding events there.

Also in the Northern Voices 13 will be an article by the Jim Petty on the militant pacifist Philip Morrell, MP for Burnley 1910-1918, who almost alone in the House of Commons opposed the First World War forcing a debate.