Over 30 years of anarchist writing from Ireland listed under hundreds of topics
International
ISIS Jihadism and Imperialism in the post Arab Spring period- an anarchist analysis ( Audio & Video )
Date: Wed, 2014-09-17 14:51
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.
Revolutionary organisation in the digital age - audio from a speaking tour of Norway
Date: Thu, 2014-09-11 16:32
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.
Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street - talk by Author Mark Bray
Date: Fri, 2014-08-22 11:52
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
Kurdish "Terrorists" Rescue Yezidis
Date: Thu, 2014-08-14 22:43
The US special forces finally sent to Mount Sinjar in Northern Iraq to assess a mission to rescue the threatened Yezidis this morning, reported that most of the displaced population had already been rescued in the previous days. What is not being widely reported is the identity of the Kurdish forces who secured the northern side of the mountain and opened a safe passage for the threatened Yezidi civilians, through the Syrian territory they control to Dohuk in the north of the Kurdish Autonomous region in Iraq.
Embarrassingly for the US, arriving on its white charger to save the day, only to discover they are far too late, the saviours of the Yezidis are the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and their Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) allies. The PKK are officially on the US and EU “terrorist” lists and the autonomous Syrian region defended by the YPG is subject to blockade by ISIS to the South and West, Turkey to the North and the corrupt Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) regime in Kurdish Northern Iraq to the East. The PKK’s pariah status dates from the war which it fought in the 1980s and 90s against the Turkish state, first under the the dictatorship, then the civilian government, for independence for the mainly Kurdish region of South East Turkey. Since late 2012 peace talks began with the Turkish government and a ceasefire was declared in March 2013.
Iraq, Syria and the Islamic State
Date: Thu, 2014-08-14 19:34
The desperate plight of tens of thousands of Yazidi people stranded for the past week and a half on Mount Sinjar in Northern Iraq, having fled their homes in the nearby city, has focussed the world’s attention on what has been happening in that region.
Threats of airstrikes from U.S. president Barack Obama in a region where U.S. intervention in such recent memory has already been responsible for the killing of up to a million people and the injuring and displacement of many more causes alarm bells to ring in the minds of all who care about a fair and just world. This is further exacerbated by the knowledge that it is the stoking of sectarian tensions as a result of U.S. policy in Iraq that is largely responsible for the emergence of the fundamentalist and ultra-reactionary Islamic State organisation.
The Warsaw Ghetto and the assault on Gaza - is there anything in the comparison?
Date: Tue, 2014-08-05 15:45
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
Siberian craters - Yet another reason that we need action to stop Climate Change
Date: Tue, 2014-08-05 15:32
Rather worrying news about those mysterious sink holes that have appeared in Siberia. It now appears they were giant methane releases - long forecast by climate change scientists as a likely positive feedback occurrence as permafrost in Siberia melted and released trapped methane. Worrying because methane is a 20 times more potent climate change gas than CO2 because it is more efficient at trapping radiation.
Mainstreaming Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in the Israeli Media
Date: Sat, 2014-08-02 12:32
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.
Rallies, ‘Black Bloc’ and the Meaning of Direct Action
Date: Fri, 2014-08-01 17:10
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.
The Zionist Project, Anti-Semitism and Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine
Date: Thu, 2014-07-31 20:39
We published the map (insert in graphic) and accompanying text on our facebook page four days ago as a commentary on Israeli expansionism in Palestine. It's proved massively popular, some 400,000 people have now seen it. There are also many comments and in one of those, a WSM supporter said "I do think that you've very lazily reproduced an image that is borderline anti-semitic by back dating the problem of israeli expansionism to before Israel existed when the "problem" was not Israel, but Jews"
We take the issue of continuing to oppose anti-semitism while opposing the Israeli state's massacre in Gaza very seriously. That has involved deleting blatantly anti-Semitic comments and banning repeat offenders (and the same with Islamophobes) and debting with and educating those making softer versions of such comments. So this criticism coming from a supporter concerned us, had we, albeit accidentally, stepped over the line?
Another supporter (David Landy) responded to that accusation and we found that response so educational we asked if he might write it up in more detail.
Below David discusses the difficult question of the nature of Zionist colonisation prior to the creation of the state of Israel.
