socialist | trade unionist | legal academic | foghlaimeoir Gaeilge | denouncing the abyss | ✊@This_is_Rise
Joined September 2016
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I’m really proud to be part of this new initiative - we desperately need independent working class organisation and power, get involved and help build the better world we need and deserve ✊
On International Workers’ Day, we are proud to launch Rise! A movement dedicated to building independent working class power to change the world - on this May Day we must recommit ourselves to building a better world for all, find out more here: risemovement.co.uk/the-time-…
Paul O’Connell retweeted
In the lead up to next years Durham Miners’ Gala @This_is_Rise will be running a political school for working class activists and trade unionists - you don’t have to be a Rise member to attend - save the dates for now and look out for updates coming soon 👇✊
It shouldn't need saying, but extending support and solidarity to an occupied people is the bare minimum, and absolutely right (internationalism 101) – making the form in which a national liberation struggle develops a moral litmus test in another country is cosplaying nonsense
Paul O’Connell retweeted
1. Debate made sense 20 years ago. Oslo is dead. Israel is expanding. 2 States Solution is as unrealistic and utopian as any one state alternative (other than the existing one state apartheid). So, yes, distraction.
Paul O’Connell retweeted
The liberal fantasy of the disinterested creative, professing to be aloof from the society and politics around them, all while of course needing and seeking its approbation and support
‘Second-rate artists and mediocrities can take a stand. Real artists don’t take a stand on anything’ — John Banville buff.ly/HSmql5q
Paul O’Connell retweeted
Reminds me of Ellen M. Wood: "discursive construction has replaced material production as the constitutive practice of social life. There may never be a revolutionary reconstruction of society, but there can always be a ruthless deconstruction of texts."
“most British Marxists have long ceased to attend to British actualities and, at a time of unparalleled socialist opportunity, play to each other their amateur revolutionary theatricals” - E.P. Thompson in 1975 - I'd say "Marxists", but otherwise, plus ça change ...
Paul O’Connell retweeted
The debate on one state/ two state is a political distraction. And it is even more so when debated within a British political party. I wrote about this in 2016 (in Arabic, link below).
The focus should be on an anti-colonial struggle for freedom and equality.
Ashok Kumar replies to criticism made by two-state supporters that promoting one democratic Palestinian state in all of Palestine is “speaking over Palestinians” who might favor two states.
“Marx, ends famously, the Communist Manifesto by saying: ‘Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.’ What he means by that is many things [including this:] … “No matter what our differences, no one, anywhere, throughout history, wants to live in chains.’ … Nobody demands to live in a ghetto. Nobody demands to live in permanent dispossession. Nobody demands to live in a Bantustan.”
That isn’t a demand anyone is making. That’s a demand to be in chains. And [the two-state supporters, who say we’re talking over the Palestinians are] saying ‘No, no. Some people want to be in chains.’”
Support for a decolonized democratic Palestine which recognizes all people as equal, regardless of their ethnic or religious identity, is a call for “a universal claim” for freedom from oppression and discrimination.
youtube.com/watch?v=-nlRDJKT…
Paul O’Connell retweeted
Manchester Saturday: Zionism is the ideological belief that Israel should have a homeland by ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Palestine. They stole a whole country in 1948, violently and brutally stole 79% of the land to create Israel, then in the decades since occupied and forced out as many Palestinians as they could from the last part of the land remaining in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Zionism is what zionism does.
Ask yourself one question. What does Zionism mean to the Palestinians living in Palestine? The answer is the last episode of Zionism - the abominable genocide in Gaza, destroying 90% of the houses and schools, bombing all 36 hospitals in Gaza, murdering over 1000 medics, and killing over 20,000 children, with many more tens of thousands left under the rubble. Zionism can only be described as what it is in practice - Israel's ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people and shame on all those here in Britain who turn their backs on the Palestinians and pretend it was ever anything else.
Paul O’Connell retweeted
An Introduction to Zionism: Your Sunday reading list:
1. Walid Khalidi, “Introduction”, in: From Haven to Conquest (1971), yplus.ps/wp-content/uploads/…
Paul O’Connell retweeted
6️⃣ Days Away! We’re so excited to share The Complete Shorter Works of James Connolly.
Crafted to support the resistance of those fighting imperialism everywhere, this indispensable collection shows why Connolly is considered required reading for revolutionaries around the globe.
Paul O’Connell retweeted
A reminder:
29 October, 7pm, @SOAS
Centre for Palestine Studies @SOAS, 29 October 2026
The Genocide in Gaza and Israel’s Deliberate Targeting of Children
with Chris Sidoti, @maynard_nick, and Michelle Kelsall
Register: soas.ac.uk/about/event/genoc…
Paul O’Connell retweeted
Uncritical mainstream media hyped it. The government uncritically accepted all its 27 recommendations. Yet the Bell report is a travesty of thin research and bad methodology. This uncritical rubber-stamping is now triggering a massive assault on free speech.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Paul O’Connell retweeted
This is not impartiality. This is anti-Palestinian racism:
"The Department for Education has previously flown the Ukrainian flag and encouraged pupils to do so"
Palestine? "Education Secretary Lucy Powell: "Schools are a place to be impartial." middleeasteye.net/news/uk-sa…
Paul O’Connell retweeted
Really can’t wait for this. It will be just the tonic we need. Save the date! Applications open early 2027. 🌱
In the lead up to next years Durham Miners’ Gala @This_is_Rise will be running a political school for working class activists and trade unionists - you don’t have to be a Rise member to attend - save the dates for now and look out for updates coming soon 👇✊
In the lead up to next years Durham Miners’ Gala @This_is_Rise will be running a political school for working class activists and trade unionists - you don’t have to be a Rise member to attend - save the dates for now and look out for updates coming soon 👇✊