Today's Topics:
1. France, Alternative Libertaire AL - Against attacks from the
extreme right, Orleans, December 9 (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Class War London take responsibility for devastating
indiscriminate flood sabotage in posh area (UK)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. wsm.ie: Saoradh, Irish republicanism and the politics of
Unfinished Revolution (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Greece, against state and capitalist barbarism (gr) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. France, Alternative Libertaire AL Novembre - Migrants and
migrant: Hunt réfugié.es such that I can not see (fr, it, pt)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Today, in the Loiret and Orleans in France as in the rest of Europe, xenophobic and
reactionary forces are gaining ground and electorally progressing to threaten our rights
and freedoms. The ideas of the extreme right plague largely public debate, imposing his
themes in the media and inspiring policies of discrimination and stigmatization. ---- The
extreme right is racist, extreme right is violent: it is the enemy of all! ---- The
extreme right attacks the rights of women by challenging the right to dispose of her body
or wishing to return housewives. It tackles the workers and workers, dividing them with
racist criteria, promising unprecedented trade union rights violations ... and faithful
ally of business, she never speaks of social progress!
Racism is her business is to divide us rather than unite to end oppression, unemployment
and exploitation. Of course, it also attacks migrant.es and réfugié.es, fleeing war and
misery: and even if she dares to take to the streets in many cities today to express
racist ideas (like "demo for all" took the streets to express his homophobia and
transphobia), it runs every time resistance of progressive forces (associations, unions,
political organizations, simple citoyen.ne.s).
With the establishment of the permanent state of emergency and the nauseating debate on
the deprivation of nationality, the government also bears responsibility in the rise of
the extreme right.
Leaflet in PDF for download
Orléans on the extreme radical right attempts to impose
On Orleans, a small group of far-right radical linked to the fundamentalist Catholic
movement, taking advantage of this context to try to win. This group has already
threatened and physically assaulted young militant.es He recently tried to intimidate a
feminist event. And in the evening, especially after night games, he wanders rue de
Bourgogne in search of isolated targets.
But our vigilance has increased and we will not let the parade more: we say it is
necessary today to end the authentically fascist ambitions of this group. These sinister
individuals not disrupt our initiatives and we call everyone attaché.es those rights and
freedoms to denounce with us their actions, including publicly if you see them do.
Determined to fight extreme right is that our organizations collectively respond.
Gather us and many many
Friday, December 9 to 20 hours,
instead of the Temple (rue de Bourgogne)
The FB event is here
First signatories Abraysie open, Alternative Libertaire, Common Acid, Anarchist
Federation, Communist Youth League of Human Rights, the New Anti-Capitalist Party, Union
syndicale Solidaires Loiret ...
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Contre-les-agressions-de-l-extreme
------------------------------
Message: 2
"CLASS WAR hit watermain outside Foxtons Islington... and flood Boris Home in COLBROKE
ROW................ WE SAID WE'D BE BACK!" ---- Class War London opened up a water main
outside gated estate agents Foxtons, which flooded dozens of expensive multi-million pound
homes in a posh area. 100s of people had to be evacuated and the cost of the damage is
extensive. Boris Johnson, the ex-mayor and now foreign secretary also had his basement
flooded by waters which were reported to be up to 2 metres deep in the surrounding
streets. The rich people were reported to have been taken to some kind of refugee camp for
the upper class. ---- Tags: Class War (UK), London, Sabotage, UK ---- This entry was
posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2016 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Direct Action.
https://325.nostate.net/2016/12/06/class-war-london-take-responsibility-for-devastating-indiscriminate-flood-sabotage-in-posh-area-uk/
------------------------------
Message: 3
The launch of Saoradh in the Canal Court Hotel in Newry is the latest republican project
to have emerged but is it a fresh departure a break from past mistakes or just simply a
re-packaged version of the pre ceasefire Provies? ---- Since its inception, Saoradh has
faced increasing state repression on both sides of the border as it has attempted to
establish itself. Many will look upon this crackdown as evidence of a real threat to the
status-quo and therefore acclaim the revolutionary potential of Saoradhs' version of
republicanism, confusing revolution with the reality that the state will always repress
those who they perceive question their monopoly over violence. ---- With the exception of
the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and Republican Sinn Fein (RSF), most new
republican groups emerged after the historic signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement or
the decision by Sinn Fein endorse the PSNI, so it remains unclear whether they offer
anything new on the table in terms of learning from past mistakes in relation to
militarism, organization and long term goals.
Organisation:
The dominance of authoritarian, statist and hierarchal organizational praxis on ‘dissident
republicanism' that have emerged from the Provisional movement where loyalty and
discipline was placed more highly than critical debate and internal democracy is a
re-occurring legacy within all shades of republicanism.
As Bernadette McAliskey learned during with her brief involvement in the IRSP in the late
1970s - she resigned after failing to make the army subordinate to the party, "The
building of a working-class movement requires mass organization on an open basis, with
decisions being reached by rational argument and full discussion, policy coming from the
rank and file and being reflected by the leadership. Because of its clandestine and
militaristic nature, participation in ‘the Movement' demanded the exact opposite. Since
the survival of the organization, the safety, at times, of its members, depended on
personal loyalty, secrecy, unquestioning acceptance of directives from above, it was
virtually impossible to envisage the development of a democratic mass organization from
within."(1) After all there is a short distance between the ‘democratic centralism' of the
Leninist model to the military centralism of the IRA.
These problems flow from the failure to build of a different type of organization built on
popular self-management and direct democracy from below that removes top down centralized
control. This is linked to an analysis of the transformation of the Provisional Republican
Movement from poachers to gamekeepers as the result of a ‘sell-out' or a ‘betrayal' of
republican objectives implying that a better set of leaders could of done better.
Something Alexander Berkman rejected when he argued, ‘nothing is truer than the means you
use to attain your object soon become your object... There is a deeper reason for this
constant and regular betrayal[than individual scoundrels being elected]... no man turns
scoundrel or traitor overnight.
"It is power which corrupts... Moreover, even with the best intentions Socialists[who get
elected]... find themselves entirely powerless to accomplishing anything of a socialistic
nature... The demoralization and vitiation[this brings about]take place little by little,
so gradually that one hardly notices it himself...[The elected Socialist]perceives that he
is regarded as a laughing stock[by the other politicians]... and finds more and more
difficulty in securing the floor... he knows that neither by his talk nor by his vote can
he influence the proceedings... His speeches don't even reach the public...[and so]He
appeals to the voters to elect more comrades... Years pass...[and a]number... are elected.
Each of them goes through the same experience...[and]quickly come to the
conclusion...[that]They must show that they are practical men... that they are doing
something for their constituency... In this manner the situation compels them to take a
‘practical' part in the proceedings, to ‘talk business,' to fall in line with the matters
actually dealt with in the legislative body... Spending years in that atmosphere, enjoying
good jobs and pay, the elected Socialists have themselves become part and parcel of the
political machinery... With growing success in elections and securing political power they
turn more and more conservative and content with existing conditions. Removal from the
life and suffering of the working class, living in the atmosphere of the bourgeoisie...
they have become what they call ‘practical'... Power and position have gradually stifled
their conscience and they have not the strength and honesty to swim against the current...
They have become the strongest bulwark of capitalism."
Behind this logic is the idea that a new leadership or small armed groups can take on the
might of the British state which has the military power and technology to wipe out a whole
cities in hours. This fails to examine the strategic paralysis that republicanism finds
itself in between a hard rock and insanity which Albert Einstein describes as, ‘doing the
same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' While any serious
revolutionary movement should have the capacity to defend itself, armed struggle in the
current context is counter-productive and strategically futile playing into the hands of
the status-quo and their partners in crime Sinn Fein.
An armed minority with a minority simply cannot take on two states-or even one. Only by
building up explicitly socialist, working class organisations, that engages a wide variety
of tactics and is the champion of the oppressed in preparation and as a catalyst for a
revolution can socialism win and Imperialism be uprooted.
Ideology:
Irish Republicanism remains a significant tradition and a attractive mobilizing force
within a limited section of Irish society compared to other left forces offering short
term solutions to global capitalism, its cross-class nature and battle between two
tendencies remains a significant shortcoming.
Although historically militant, the republican movement does not offer a radical approach
to politics or solutions to the crisis that is capitalism. National Liberation is the sole
common denominator of the republican movement, meaning all other concerns, those of
labour, womens' rights ect, must be pushed to the side under the call for ‘unity'.
Effectively this means that the status quo of the capitalist order will be maintained even
in the highly unlikely event of a successful national liberation struggle.
Republicanism has ideologically and intellectually exhausted itself due to its flexible
contradictory nature and constant competing tension between group/personal identities
based on Irish nationalism and Catholicism to more of an anti-capitalist angle. In other
words, stuck between a more universal internationalist outlook and more conservative
insular aspect of its communal base which poses significant questions regarding its
viability as a revolutionary project.
To date, left republicanism has failed to fully articulate and implement the struggle for
national and social liberation. While left republican forces participate in everyday
struggles of the class, too often this merely been a ‘populist' measure thrown in to make
the republican project relevant again during times of crisis, a means to an means to an
end rather than a central component of revolutionary struggle. When push comes to shove
the call for ‘unity' among republicans is heard and ‘labour must wait'-again,social and
economic issues are pushed to the side in favour of the lowest common denominator-
national liberation.
Eoin O'Brien shines a light on this contradiction in his book, Sinn Féin and the Politics
of Left Republicanism when he discussing the politics of the influential left republican
activist Liam Mellows during the War of Independence, 'His radicalization did not come
from an understanding of the relationship between capitalism and Empire, from readings of
socialist literature or involvement in working-class struggle, but from the disappointment
at the outcome of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. What became clear to Mellows, while in jail, was
that when the independence movement split, it split as much on class lines as anything
else. His response was to encourage the mobilization of the country's dispossessed to the
cause of the republic. For Mellows, socialism was a means to an end, namely nationalist
revolution." (3)
The 1960s also represented another leftward turn within Irish republicanism with the
Provisionals originally rejecting the leftward turn of the Official Republican movement.
As conflict erupted on the streets in the North, sections of republicanism to some extent
drifted into a ‘catholic deferenderist' mode, the protestant working class were merely
labeled as dupes of Britain and completely dismissed as reactionary with ‘Brits Out' was
back on the agenda and everything else recuperated under nationalism. The weakness of
republicanism is not in its failures but in its successes because success requires
building nationalist unity, whether that be military as during the War of Independence or
political as in the Peace Process. The price of such unity is constant - the
marginalisation and removal from the agenda of any prospect of social revolution.
While the Provisional movement has shifted on this framework of struggle to a more ‘rights
based agenda' based on ‘equality' and ‘national reconciliation' depending on a Northern or
Southern context, other sections of republicanism has gravitated towards left
republicanism again. Apart from ambiguous references to the political objective of a
‘Socialist Republic' it remains unclear whether this is a genuine attempt to forge the
struggle for national and social liberation or just another means to an end. How do we
make the ‘unity of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter' of the 1798 United Irishmen
relevant in the 21st Century? How relevant or practical is ‘national self-determination'
in the true meaning of the word in a globalized capitalist system run by Imperialist powers?
Means and Ends:
For anarchists the means in terms of how we organize in the present must be consistent
with the principles with the society want to create in the shell of the old.
Revolutionaries that embrace "means" that are in contradiction with the kind of society
they wish to create will consistently fail to create that society. Instead of wasting
time, money and resources on elections, we believe it is essential to build and cultivate
a culture of resistance because an organized and empowered community based on direct
action and self-management in all aspects of struggle is stronger than depending on some
party or leader to fix things for us.
We should have learnt by now that political parties may say they are fighting for your
rights and your interests, but their central aim is to build for their own interests and
election campaigns resulting in a pervading cycle of disempowerment and powerlessness.
Direct action such as the rent and rates strike in the North in the 1970s, to the more
recent campaign against the water charges in the South teaches us to control our own
struggles while building a culture of resistance that links with others in struggles in
struggles. Solidarity and mutual aid find real expression and as our confidence grows so
too does our ability to change our society.
Central to this debate is whether the state can be utilized as an instrument of
working-class emancipation and liberation. As the last century proves the state cannot be
captured by the popular classes, used by the working class to revolutionary transform
society, because it is a centralized institution of minority class rule, inextricably
allied to the private corporations and a bureaucracy with its own in interests. This means
that any left-wing republican party, aiming at state power, is a dead-end, no matter how
well-intentioned, no matter its size, no matter its program or rules. Imagine if all the
time, resources and finances wasted into a getting a few crumbs from the masters table was
instead put into building a our own institutions of mass, collective self-organisation in
our housing estates, communities and workplaces replacing the rule of governments,
landlords and bosses. Afterall, the establishment of No Go Zones in the early 1970s when
entire communities took back control for a short time was probably considered more of a
threat to the authority of the British state than armed struggle.
Unfortunately, the outdated Leninist mode of organization and vision continues to dominate
some anti-imperialist movements and the republican left but this is slowly changing.
Movements like YPG show an important way to fight for national autonomy and a social
revolution of radical, participatory-democratic and progressive programme, where
dominating relations based on gender and ecology are equally challenged.
We need to recognize Imperialism is not only rooted in capitalism but is a particular mode
of the state structure. Thus, most left nationalist movements that have achieved their
goals have turned on the working class once in power, crushing leftists and trade
unionists with equal vigor like their former masters because using bourgeois methods
simply results in bourgeois ends.
Like Cuba and the former USSR, the ‘workers state' won't and can't wither away as held by
classic marxist jargon. All ruling minorities have an interest in maintaining their
position as such and the failure of previous left republican projects to recognize this is
apparent. A newly installed ruling minority will use its power and authority to further
justify and entrench its own power and authority. As Ron Taber states, "The very
revolutionaries who claim that they are against the state, and for eliminating the
state...see as their central task after a revolution to build up a state that is more
solid, more centralized and more all-embracing than the old one."(2)
Key to the neutralizing of radical movements and institionalization process is the
deployment of ‘soft power' and ‘manufacturing consent' in a Gramscian manner. This has
been particularly successful in the North through the enormous ‘peace industry' and the
funding of community groups where republican activists were gradually pulled into
state-funded community projects and recast as ‘political entrepreneurs,' resulting in the
movement gradually becoming materially invested in the perpetuation of the status-quo. A
process that does not just take place overnight rather the logical conclusion of trying to
use the master's tools to bring down the master's house.
As one former member of Sinn Fein described, "How many good sincere activists will be
destroyed, buried in the bullshit of parliamentary politics, trying to get the odd
pot-hole filled whilst the whole show goes on as before and past dreams of social
revolution slowly ebb away to "a favour here or there" and a few dry empty commemorations
of past deeds."(4)
What's the alternative?
Anarchists don't have all the answers or a blueprint, but as a former republican I believe
it offers a rich revolutionary tradition from across the world that built mass movements
of social transformation involving millions of people, that disaffected republicanism can
learn from in terms of organization, strategy and vision.
While there are many republican activists doing great work on the ground and involved in a
range of progressive struggles, remaining more influential and numerically stronger in
Ireland than anarchism, it has no revolutionary outlook in terms of fundamentally changing
the oppressive conditions of capitalist society in the 21st century. After all, anarchist
communism emerged from the historical limitations of Republicanism and took its core
tenets to the next level.
As Mikhail Bakunin correctly pointed out well over a century ago, "while we prefer the
republic, we must recognise and proclaim that whatever the form of government may be, so
long as human society continues to be divided into different classes as a result of the
hereditary inequality of occupations, of wealth, of education, and of rights, there will
always be a class-restricted government and the inevitable exploitation of the majorities
by the minorities. The State is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well
regulated and systematized..... The fundamental difference between a monarchy and even the
most democratic republic is that in the monarchy the bureaucrats oppress and rob the
people for the benefit of the privileged in the name of the King, and to fill their own
coffers; while in the republic the people are robbed and oppressed in the same way for the
benefit of the same classes, in the name of "the will of the people" (and to fill the
coffers of the democratic bureaucrats). In the republic the State, which is supposed to be
the people, legally organised, stifles and will continue to stifle the real people. But
the people will feel no better if the stick with which they are being beaten is labeled
"the people's stick."(5)
Anarchists wish to create a free and equal society where no one person can exploit another
for their own gain, and so the stepladder to power that is the state must be knocked over
so that it can't be reassembled - Not left to stand, and certainly not used to govern with
a pessimistic fear that the people necessary to the revolution's success are incapable of
creating a new society through their own organizing efforts.
Any unfinished revolution must include the struggle to remove all forms of relations based
on domination and exploitation because if there is anything we should take from the last
century is that those who make a half revolution dig their own graves.
1) McDonald and Holland 2010, pp. 103-4
2) Taking a Critical Look at Leninism by Ron Taber.
3) Ó Broin 2009, pp. 294-5
4) http://www.wsm.ie/c/after-nationalism-sinn-fein-anarchism
5)state and anarchy
WORDS guest writer: Sean M
Subject: Saoradh, Republicanism
Topics: The Left
Geography: National
Source: Opinion
Type: Analysis
Author: Sean Matthews
http://www.wsm.ie/c/saoradh-irish-republicanism-unfinished-revolution
------------------------------
Message: 4
The all-out attack of the state and the bosses and the constant introduction of new
burdensome conditions of exploitation and oppression express overall violent restructuring
of the state and the capitalist mode of societal organization. - Today's political
management of power, has undertaken both seamless continuation of political subjugation
and impoverishment of society and the restoration of the regime in crisis conditions,
promising a capitalism with a human face while aiming at neutralizing resistances through
kapilefsi , assimilation and integration. ---- ORGANIZATION AND STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL
REVOLUTION AND THE ANARCHY libertarian communism ---- From our side, the side of the
unemployed, the workers, the poor, the plebs, the story of our social and class struggles
shows that proletarians are not expecting anything from the institutions, parliaments,
elections, bureaucratic trade union leaderships, their hope traders and intermediaries of
the class struggle.
They have to earn it is a result of the broad, organized on the base, militant and radical
struggles. Only the total subversion of the state and capitalism, social expropriation of
wealth that we ourselves produce and sucks a caste of rulers and the social revolution for
a new common ownership society, solidarity and freedom can vindicate their aspirations and
actual social needs oppressed and exploited.
CONCENTRATION-COURSE: THURSDAY 8 DECEMBER 10.30 TO ANNEX
anarchist group "restive horse" - a member of the Anarchist Political Organisation
------------------------------
Message: 5
The ads jostle in this beautiful autumn on the plight of migrants and migrants who survive
in the jungles. There is nothing to worry about, both for the treatment meted out to them
for the general drift of the political class in terms of migration policies. ---- Monday,
September 26, the final dismantling of the Calais jungle was announced by François
Hollande for October 17. Far from responding to the imperative of humanity put forward by
the government, but rather of dressing generously launched at the approach of the
presidential campaign of 2017. The objective is twofold: to manage what is renamed
"humanitarian crisis" to satisfy both touched es voters by the plight of refugee
populations, and those who simply want to see more of migrants and migrant under their
windows. To meet this goal is only that of the government, are set up excessive measures.
It is in full communication operation.
Although since the "dismantling" ( "expulsion" in Newspeak) has been postponed by a week,
and we have not yet seen the way things were done at the time of going to press, we
already know how to place the preparations. The cops, equipped with paraphernalia worthy
of the civil war, spent several weeks harassing camps, to call at random, and detaining
dozens of people arrested around the jungle. It is thus 80 arrests per day that were
ordered in the days before the eviction, as reported StreetPress.
And when the eviction will begin, it will disperse migrants and migrants who benefit from
accommodation and coaching. Those and those will have no other choice than accept a home
in CAD (reception and guidance centers), where we will offer the them, even being away es
their families and networks solidarity they have created, and regardless of projects they
may have built. For others, the expulsion may be the rule, to the country of origin or to
other European countries crossed before arriving in France, if it is to control. When the
thousand isolated minor-es-es-es identified in the jungle by the activists present on
site, it is unclear what will happen to them, the Government has not announced anything
about them; and saw the welcome them already booked by social assistance to children, we
doubt they access a supported. The logic is not protected, you are told, but disperse!
Paris: the town hall in a bubble
A little further south, Hidalgo follows the same logic, with the establishment of a camp
in Paris: the "bubble", the name of the future shape of the structure. If the stated
objective of the device is to "reduce the informal settlements" we are already wondering
if its capacity of 400 seats will be enough to receive all the migrants and migrants in
Île-de-France, much of which remains to street, wiping every day evictions makeshift camps
in the north of the capital. Above all, these are not all migrants and migrants who will
benefit from the devices. The reception will undoubtedly conditioned the continuation of
administrative procedures, and those who have had the misfortune to be identified-are in
another country of the Schengen area before arriving in France may be subject to
Regulation Dublin, which provides for their deportation to the country in question, which
sometimes hovers the most complete uncertainty about their fate.
background canvas include these actions rhetoric of the distinction between refugees, and
migrants, protect, others undesirable and suspected fraud. As if misery and the political
climate of countries in East Africa or the Middle East were not valid reasons to hit the
road. And as always, the government shows a total refusal to design the refugees as they
become actresses, emitting fears and forming projects, but continues to manage as a
anonymous and dehumanized flow, shameful poverty that should be hidden and disperse. Small
issue new context of the moment: the persons refused asylum are fast becoming the new
category of adverse perceived as illegitimate and away quickly.
The worst is to come?
Product of this same logic, the right of foreign recast as a whole by the Law of March 7,
2016, the imminent implementation (November 1), will come endorse xenophobia grime of the
left in power. Among the innovations, note the issuance of bonds to leave the territory
for systematic Those whose application for asylum rejected, or the prohibition of movement
of nationals and EU nationals who are considered to or they abuse their right of residence
(you see that it is? Roma again and again). The children, who can already follow their
parents in detention then the plane will always be more likely to be locked up in
detention centers.
All these hosting features, laws and muscled evacuation can only lead to the creation of
new camps, probably smaller, more precarious. It demonstrates that France is washing his
hands of responsibility in conflicts in many regions from which those who reach France. Es
drowned in the flood of xenophobic discourse, our only response should be the total
solidarity with migrant women, migrants, asylum and asylum seekers, not just with a view
to humanitarian support day to day, but in the construction of struggles and collective
defense of their rights. The only solution: freedom of movement and settlement for all.
More than ever, from Calais to Lampedusa, we will support all migrants. Nobody is a
stranger, no one is illegal!
Rosa (AL Paris-Nord-Est)
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Migrants-et-migrantes-Chassez-ces
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