Guerrilla Warfare.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Lenin: Guerrilla Warfare

"The iron fist of the workers"

On Guerrilla Warfare; Mao

"Power grows from the barrel of a gun."

The Che Reader

"A revolution without guns? Don't be ridiculous!"

Red Army Faction

"They’ll kill us all. You know what kind of pigs we’re up against. This is the Auschwitz generation. You can’t argue with people who made Auschwitz. They have weapons and we haven’t. We must arm ourselves!"

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzkQg...eature=related

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Left-wing groups pay tribute to Marulanda in Caracas

(Sunday 28 September 2008)






COMMUNISTS and socialists from across Latin America paid tribute to recently deceased Colombian guerilla leader Manuel Marulanda in Caracas on Friday.



Representatives of the Communist Party of Venezuela, delegates from member organisations of left-wing Latin American umbrella group the Continental Bolivarian Coordinator and Caracas mayor Freddy Bernal gathered in the shanty town of 23 de Enero for the unveiling of an 18-inch bust of the founder of the Revolutionary Armed Foces of Colombia.

Participants sang FARC anthems beneath flags representing Palestine, Cuba, Bolivia, Basque separatist group ETA and the legendary guerilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

"The insurgent fight is crossing Latin America!" shouted a group of young people, burning a US flag to cheers from onlookers.

Chilean Communist Party secretary general Carlos Casanueva was among those present. He said that it was "logical" that Mr Marulanda had been commemorated in Venezuela.

"Venezuelans and Colombians have great brotherhood and solidarity," he said.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

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  Cities and Insurrections - Eric J. Hobsbawm
  Hobsbawm discusses the potential and limits of cities as sites of riot and insurrection.
  
  

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

The Baader Meinhof Complex Movie Trailer

The underlying message in this enticing teaser trailer for The Baader Meinhof Complex seems to be that young idealists who cross the chasm into full-blown terrorism are undeniably sexy. So, rest assured that many German critics feel the film doesn’t glorify sexy terrorism. Moreover, they have selected the movie for Best Foreign Film consideration in this year’s Oscar race.
In what is being reported as a comeback of sorts for German director, Uli Edel (the grim Christiane F., Madonna’s Body of Evidence), his feature film explores the early years of the region’s Red Army Faction, a group of young, far-Left protesters turned “guerillas” who wore sunglasses and organized bombings, bank robberies and kidnappings in the ’70s. Their acts resulted in many civilian casualties and a still-controversial (romanticized?) place in history that zig-zags into current global politics.


The cast has been noted as a “who’s who” line-up that includes Moritz Bleibtreu (Run Lola Run, Speed Racer), Martina Gedeck (The Good Shepherd), Bruno Ganz (Youth Without Youth), and Alexandra Maria Lara (Control, Miracle at St. Anna). The film is currently without a U.S. distributor (hopefully not for too much longer given the buzz), and there’s a “why haven’t I seen it” critic controversy nicely explained over at Hollywood Elsewhere, with further embargo-tales offered at GreenCine. I already have a random and unwarranted crush on this movie.
Full Length Trailer

[ZingPao]

I don't speak German, but I think I fully understood what was going on. I don't mean to be a critic, but I would have liked the trailer better if more politicians and government employees got wasted. I hope to see this film in the US.

[ajit8]

Go to Main WebsiteContinuing our series on aspects of Marxist thinking
Guerilla Struggle

WORKERS, OCTOBER 2009 ISSUE

Guerrilla struggle, irregular warfare, or as the US now calls it “asymmetrical warfare”, was developed as a successful strategy to win power, by Chinese communists, Cuban revolutionaries and Vietnamese national liberation fighters. In 1973, a time of intense working class action in Britain, our Party wrote a pamphlet that sought to apply the tactics of guerrilla war to civil political action, civil strife and industrial action in Britain.
Classic tactics include “hit and run”, avoiding full frontal warfare, maximising your strengths and knowing your enemy’s weakness; maximising the damage to your enemy whilst minimising your losses. “When the enemy attacks, we retreat; when the enemy retreats, we harry them; lure the enemy in deep so we can surround them or attack their supply lines,” were all famous tactical quotes from the Chinese revolution. Guerrilla struggle is a strategy developed by Communists and successfully used by resistance and liberation movements.
A well-known use of guerrilla struggle applied to industrial struggle in Britain was the flying pickets of the striking miners in 1972 and 1974 that closed other strategic sites such as the Saltley coke works in the West Midlands when engineers joined the miners. The remainder of the seventies saw guerrilla action by engineers playing off one employer against another, with rail workers, teachers and white collar workers joining the fray, and concluded with the Winter of Discontent that brought down the Callaghan government.
The key was to hit the powerful employer where he was weakest and where workers were strongest, to take the employer by surprise but not to be adventurous, to avoid all-out confrontations that might lead to casualties, to know when to withdraw and strike the employer somewhere else, to spread solidarity, but most importantly to ensure control of the struggle was in the hands of local organised workers. The Governments of the seventies could not control these struggles and consequently organised workers brought down two governments.
This is why Thatcher, after her election in 1979, made her priority destroying trade unions and outlawing anything that smelt of guerrilla struggle such as solidarity action, local strikes based on a show of hands or instantaneous walkouts. In the eighties, workers had to use their heads to avoid the Government stealing their unions’ assets.
Today, with those laws still in place, guerrilla struggle is even more the key to victory. The construction workers at Lindsey Oil Refinery who walked out this year over the use of foreign labour and who organised phenomenal solidarity strikes across the country are a good example. It’s time to use our heads again because only workers who know their employer well can determine these tactics.
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