GREEN ANARCHIST:
forum, submissions, letters

Here are details for sending letters or submitting articles. Also information for people wanting to discuss matters arising from articles in the magazine.

Discussion Forum

We have removed the discussion forum previously hosted on this site. Apart from the fact that maintaing a useful forum is a lot of work, it can be said that web-based fora are as transient as the hosts maintaining them. It can also be said that 'services' like yahoo groups are pretty useless for the following reasons:

• Yahoo puts advertising directly into users' mailboxes.
• "Web bugs" --small unobtrusive images which plant cookies and harvest other information--are prevalent in yahoo, appearing in all messages.
• Yahoo is a huge corporation whose overwhelming priority is to serve its shareholders, not the desires of its customers.
• They censored messages duing the "gulf war".
• Loads of other reasons.

Long before yahoo et al were even a twinkle in Big Brother's eye, there existed a thing called usenet, or newsgroups. We think we should use this instead of proprietary systems because:

• An international usenet system, accessible by anyone with a normal service provider is a better forum to reach a wider spectrum of people that an insignificant little google ghetto.
• It is searchable -- at the moment by using google, another behemoth corporation. the difference here is that the database google bought from deja is worth a lot of money and is unlikely to disappear with the misfortunes of one company. Anyone with web access can do a search and turn up your message if they want to. Yahoo has a search facility but it rarely works, and is restricted to yahoo's own groups.
• It is not owned by anyone
• Its structure is closer to anarchic than pretty much anything else in this society, and must not be allowed to be made obsolete by the yahoo-driven herd.
• that's enough reasons, the last two reasons should be enough on their own really.

Eventually we would like to get ourselves a moderated newsgroup solely for GA discussion and stuff. To do this we need to show the usenet-using 'community' that there is good reason for this. So we should first discuss things in newsgroups that already exist. We suggest alt.society.anarchy for a start. If you only have web access (ie can't use a newsreader, go to google.com, click on the 'groups' tab and either search for "green anarchist" or go to that newsgroup. It might be a good idea to put green anarchist in the header of your message, but not essential. To post from Google you need to register with them, but it isn't as invasive as yahoo.

Article submission

You can submit articles for inclusion in the next GA by sending them to BCM 1715, London WC1N 3XX. If you think your writing isn't good enough, don't worry, just take a look at any national newspaper to see what passes for journalism. Sometimes it's a good idea to start a discussion on a mailing list or newsgroup to get some ideas and common arguments to include in the article. Try the newsgroups for this.

Letters for publication

Send your letters to Oxford Green Anarchists, BCM 1715, London WC1N 3XX, but remember:-

• We print all letters received on a “no censorship, no endorsement” basis. Your letters are your responsibility, not ours. We think readers are grown up enough to think for themselves, so won’t usually comment on letters we print—even those we don’t agree with—unless asked. The only exception to this are letters from fascists and other such bigots and piss-takers. These will be binned, though we will note their arrival.
• We will ruthlessly edit all letters we think too long or boring. So keep Ôem short so everyone can have their say too. Cut letters are marked with a [ ] with the original number of words inside the bracket.
• If you don’t want your letter, your name or your address printed, let us know.