Transcribing the Past

    Translated from Esperanto, original article can be found at Esperenta Retradio What we lose when cars silence the neighbourhoods When we criticise cars, the conversation typically focuses on issues of pollution, accidents and the vast amount of space occupied by cars in cities. These are all true and important consequences of car dominated societies, but there is still another problem which is discussed far less often. Cars do not just change the air and the streets, they also change relations between people. The car makes our lives more isolated, more closed off and less human. When we travel on foot or by bicycle, or using public transport we see the world differently. We notice the vendors at the street corners. We meet familiar faces, we muddle through a conversation with a neighbour, we see children playing, dogs walking and people sitting on park benches. Even a short trip can become a small social experience. But, in a private car we sit alone or nearly...

    "No social ideal, from the point of view of anarchism, could be referred to as absolute in a sense that supposes it’s the crown of human wisdom, the end of social and ethical quest of man." Alexei Borovoj Anarchism , 1918. Alexei Borovoi was a Russian Anarchist, teacher and writer. Born in 1875 he spent much of his life articulating an individualist anarchism and giving lectures on anarchist thought. During the Russian Revolution he remained active and was a founding member of the Unions of of Workers of Intellectual Labour, a union for doctors and teachers and the Union of Ideological Propaganda of Anarchism a group whose purpose was the spreading of Anarchist ideas. He edited both organisations newspapers. The Bolsheviks shut both organisations down, Borovoi continued to teach until 1922 when he was stripped of his professorship and banned from teaching. In 1929 he was arrested and exiled to Vyaltka, he spent the last years of his life in minor clerical posts. He died...

    Vadimas his friends would like to remember him  El Libera Folio English Version Vadim Bikov was killed in the last days of May while serving at the front in Ukraine, he was 54 years old. He voluntarily joined the Ukrainian army immediately after the start of the war, and for over two years served in several dangerous hotspots along the frontline. He is mourned by his Esperantist wife, Julia Dmitrieva. Vadim Bikov was born on the 30th of November 1969 in Soviet Qazaqstan, and spent his childhood in Uzbekistan. He grew up with Russian language media and completed his education in Donbas in the east of Ukraine, and settled there.  When conflict erupted in Donbas in 2014 Vadim fled to unoccupied territory and joined the Ukrainian army to defend the country whose citizenship he had obtained after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  In February 2022 after Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine, Vadim joined the Territorial Defence and spent...

    Shifu's gravestone. Photos courtesy of the Chinese Anarchist Front .   This notice first appeared in the Esperanto language journal La Ondo de Esperanto (The Esperanto Wave) in July 1915 and can be viewed online here .  Shifu was an influential Chinese pioneer of Anarchism. He changed his name on several occasions and was known as Shifu at the end of his life, though in English he's remembered under the name Liu Shifu. He was also an active Esperantist and used the pen name Sifo for Esperanto writings. I translated a short biography of his life earlier, which may help explain some points.  Sifo Shifu (Liu Shifu) the editor of the Esperanto and Chinese language weekly newspaper The Voice of the People, died in Shanghai from tuberculosis. We take some biographical details about Shifu from his publication's 23rd issue. Sifo was born in 1884 in Hongsang* in the province of Canton. He was an extraordinarily talented boy in his youth. At the age of fifteen, he ...

  The ISK [Militant Socialist  International] and its relationship to  Vegetarianism and Esperanto   Text of a lecture for the Vegan Meeting in Castle Gresilion Paris on the 2018-05-11. ISK Vegetarianism in the ISK: History according to End the Slaughter! ISK, Esperanto and SAT Sources [Note; While translating the first section of Gary Mickle's text I discovered that most of the first section had already been translated into English and was being used as the English wikipedia page entry for the ISK. So I used that and translated the parts that were not in it. Section 1's Political ideas through to the end is my translation. Reddebrek] 1. ISK The Internationale Sozialistische Kampfbund (ISK) was a socialist split from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) during the Weimar Republic period, and it was active in the resistance against National Socialism (Nazism). Internationally it used the names Militant Socialist International (in English), Internat...

  Stop the Barbarism! Once again the flames of war have sparked into life in the Palestine/Israel region. This time Hamas took the inciative to start the atrocities. They did not act alone in this attack, militants from the PFLP also took part in the armed assaults. The pictures are unbearable: civilians murdered in the streets, and in their homes, the taken of hostages etc. Although the Israeli government conducts a system of political Apartheid, which has even been acknowledged by Tamir Prado, the ex-director of Israel's Intelligence service. But that does not justify the conscious murder civilians. That is as condemnable as the murder of Palestinian civilans by the Israeli army! Without a doubt the response of the Israeli government will be just as terrible as it is blind. Already buildings in Gaza are being bombed and electricity has been cut throughout the whole territory.  We can only express our deepest fears and concern for the civilian inhabitants, Palestinian and Isr...

  Russia, the mirage of support for the war Source article .     Unmanned drones over the Kremlin, evacuation of civilians in the region of Belgorod, an attack on the nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin: In May, Kyiv intensified its operations on the territory of Russia. Will these symbolic actions really undermine the credibility of the government? Although the effect of the wave of patriotism still exists, criticism of the elites is also increasing and does not only concern opponents of the war... At first glance, the Russian ship of state appears to be weathering the storm the Kremlin unleashed when it invaded its Ukrainian neighbour. More than a year after the start of the war, the country's economy is in recession but has not collapsed (-2.1% in 2022). If we believe the results of opinion polling companies, even those independent of the state(1) 1 , a majority of the population still favours continuing the "special military operation". But the cracks in Russi...