Workers Solidarity Movement

This educational discussion was based around a text that says “We believe the most important division in today’s left is between those that hold to a folk politics of localism, direct action, and relentless horizontalism, and those that outline what must become called an accelerationist politics at ease with a modernity of abstraction, complexity, globality, and technology.” from Manifesto for for an Accelerationist Politics

We tended to disagree, the audio of what is a relatively informal introduction and chat covers a range of issues we have with this approach.

A chat about the Manifesto for for an Accelerationist Politics- WSM Dublin by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud

Geo-strategically the Al Qa’ida leadership (Azzam, bin Laden, Zawahiri) are products of the Cold War, specifically the Afghan Mujahidin war against the USSR. Rather like their American neo-con previous employers, Al Qa’ida view the end of the Cold War as a victory over the USSR by their own side. The Al Qa’ida perspective is that, having “defeated” one superpower, the global jihad now needs to turn its offensive against the remaining superpower.  Al Qa’ida worry that the Zarqawists of ISIS may be restricting the struggle to a parochial Mesopotamian sectarian struggle that could fail to engage Muslim jihadists around the world, outside the MENA region, say in West Africa or Indonesia and the Philippines  where the US is a more credible #1 enemy than Iran.

Following on from the rapid spread of Isis in Iraq & Syria Paul Bowman presented an update intended to inform on the contemporary politics of Jihadism and its entanglement with regional and global imperialist power plays.

He starts by looking in detail at the ideological / religious background of the Salafist movements including ISIS and how such movements differ from those of the Muslim Brotherhood / Ikwanite.

It is a confusing time to be on the revolutionary left as everything that was once certain turns to smoke.

Technology has overturned and remade what constitutes effective communication and the construction of networks.

Quite how to organise is no longer clear, while old reference points of 1917, 1936 or even 1968 no longer provide definitive models.

Talk by Mark Bray, author of Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street followed by an hour of discussion.

Translating Anarchy tells the story of the anti-capitalist anti-authoritarians of Occupy Wall Street, who strategically communicated their revolutionary politics to the public in a way that was both accessible and revolutionary.

Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street - talk by Author Mark Bray in Dublin by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud

The text below is translated from the poster at the centre of this image of the destruction of Gaza by the Israeli state. But it refers not to this horror but another in 1943 when the Nazis crushed the Warsaw ghetto, wiping out the poorly armed organised resistance that operated out of a warren of bunkers & sewers hidden beneath the ghetto. This poster was by one of the armed factions that defended the Ghetto, the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB)

All people are brothers;
Yellow, brown, black, and white.
Talk of peoples, colors, races -
Is all a made-up story

The Jerusulem Post carried an opinion piece today with the sub-heading: 

"The only durable solution requires dismantling Gaza, humanitarian relocation of the non-belligerent Arab population, and extension of Israeli sovereignty over the region." 



This echoes the words of Moshr Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Knesset, and a member of the ruling Likud Party, who, only two weeks ago said that "Israel must attack Gaza even more mercilessly, expel the population and resettle the territory with Jewish settlers". 

The expression of these views are not isolated, they represent a significant section of mainstream Zionist thinking and could not be freely aired if they did not. In reality they are the honest expression of the Zionist project to create an ethnically pure state, permanently rid of the native people. 

Over the last couple of months we have witnessed an unprecedented wave of large demonstrations. Across Australia people have risen in opposition to the current administration’s escalation of attacks on worker’s rights and conditions, erosions of living standards and civil liberties.