By last count, 1.5 million Iraqis, one million of them children under five, have died as a result of the U.S./U.N. sanctions, either through starvation or from lack of medicine for easily curable diseases. People are dying at a rate …
FE Author: David Watson
Remembering Federico Arcos
by David Watson
Fifth Estate # 395, Winter 2016 - 50th Anniversary
See also: Other remembrances of Federico Arcos (online only) Introduction Federico Arcos (July 18, 1920-May 23, 2015), a lifelong anarchist, participated in the Spanish Revolution and Civil War in the 1930s, and later took part in the antifascist underground there. …
Marx, Thoreau, and Us
by David Watson
Fifth Estate # 367, Winter 2004-2005
From July 1845 to September 1847, Thoreau lived at Walden Pond outside of Concord in a small cabin he built largely from scrap. Uninformed cynics typically criticize him either for staying close to town instead of seeking authentic wilderness—or for …
Post-election post-mortem
by David Watson, Don LaCoss
Fifth Estate # 367, Winter 2004-2005
Editorial 1: Don LaCoss It’s finally over. Now we can get back to work. Over the last seven months a surprising number of our comrades were increasingly distracted by the seductive spectacle of humiliating Bush and Cheney on a grand …
The Vietnam War
by David Watson
Fifth Estate # 394, Summer 2015 - Technology
INTRODUCTION When this essay first appeared in the Fifth Estate in Spring 1985, the Vietnam War already seemed to be receding into ancient history. Central America was at that time being battered with money and proxies, rather than with “American …
Federico Arcos
by David Watson
Fifth Estate # 394, Summer 2015 - Technology
As we go to print, it is with great sadness that we report the passing of our compañero, amigo, padre, and abuelo, Federico Arcos, in Windsor, Ontario, at the age of 94. The last several months were very difficult for …
Looking Back on the Vietnam War
by David Watson, Richard Drinnon
Fifth Estate # 346, Summer, 1995
This article first appeared in FE #320, Spring 1985 under the pen-name George Bradford. It is reprinted on the 20th anniversary of the defeat of the U.S. empire in Vietnam.
Remembering Jim Campbell
by David Watson
Fifth Estate # 377, March 2008
Our longtime friend and comrade Jim Campbell died suddenly last September 17 of heart failure. He was 57 years old. Jim was a mainstay of the Toronto (and larger Canadian and international) anarchist community. Though we had not been in …
For Pat ‘the Rat’ Halley
by David Watson
Fifth Estate # 377, March 2008
“The layman Ho asked Basho: ‘What is it that transcends everything in the universe?’ (another version: ‘If all things return to the one, to what does the one return?’)
Life in the Kali Yuga: Civilization as Tsunami
by Anu Bonobo, David Watson
Fifth Estate # 368-369, Spring-Summer, 2005
The awesome magnitude and incomprehensible physical destruction and human suffering caused by the tsunami that ravaged and rattled the earth in December render any statement about it, any explanation, painfully inadequate. Towns were demolished, villages and whole stands of trees …