276

rivista anarchica
Year 31 no.276
November 2001

summAry

Just as issue 275 inevitably had to focus on the events in Genoa, the central theme of 276 is bound to be September 11 and the subsequent attacks on Afghanistan. The remarkable cover photo, an Afghan soldier and a young child both obviously delighting in touching an automatic rifle, already sets the tone.
Carlo Oliva's article discusses Berlusconi's "foot-in-mouth" statement about Western supremacy over Islam, and suggests that it is perhaps inequality within societies rather than between societies that we should be addressing; likewise, Francesco Codello places anarchism's continuous tension towards freedom within this context. Antonio Cardella's piece finds neither heroism in the attack on the Twin Towers nor righteousness in Bush's response.
To provide useful background to the emergence of the west's current hate figure, Usama bin Laden, we have an extract from the Saudi millionaire's biography by John K. Cooley. Things American also find their way into Marco Pandin's musical column; he talks of his America, that of Dylan and Ginsberg, and specifically a CD that is a revisitation of Mickey Newbury's "Frisco Mabel Joy".
"Nomads by Choice" is an interview by Cristina Valenti with Alessandro Berti about the "Agenda di Seattle" theatre project.
The central part of this issue is a "pull-out" dossier on the subject of food, by Adriano Paolella and Zelinda Carloni, looking at how we eat, what we eat, who makes it and what's in it, focusing particularly on multinationals, fast food, transgenic food and alternative distribution networks.
This is followed by another dossier, this time focusing on Latin America, specifically Brazil and Bolivia, by roving reporter Massimo Annibale Rossi. He discusses the Global Social Forum in Porto Alegre, coca production and the campesino movement in Bolivia, and engages in a "horror tour" around the (in)famous Potosí mines.
In his "Smoke Signals" column, Carlo E. Menga looks at the chemical of evil in advertising, which is not adrenaline, but morphine.
The series, "Ritratti in piedi", on anarchist texts by writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, continues with Massimo Ortalli's consideration of the work of the great Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, with an extract from Durruti's writing, plus short pieces on Barcelona 1936 by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Gaston Leval and Enrique Castillo.
Finally, the mailbox contains letters from Alfio Nassaro asking for more information on the 5 anarchists killed in 1970, featured in issue 273, and from Andrea Perrone from Spoleto prison about the nature of time in prison.