1. The left needs to use the Net far more – and more effectively – than at present. That does NOT mean abandoning other methods entirely.
2. The Net is useful for spreading ideas, connecting people, and promoting activities happening offline. It should not be a substitute for activity in the ‘real world’ – it reports on, helps organise, and promotes that activity.
3. Most people are now online – it is therefore no longer credible to claim emphasising it as a political tool is elitist or middle class. It simply isn’t.
4. Conservatism in resisting online activism is linked to conservatism in other ways. Bending the stick (in Leninist terms) towards using the Net properly goes together with overcoming conservatism and inertia inside a revolutionary party more generally.
5. It’s not enough to bung printed material online. We have to utilise the particular strengths of the web – it’s more dynamic, immediate, interactive, audio-visual, etc.
6. We should utilise the Net’s potential to enable people to be participants not just readers, feeding in their own reports, stories etc and offering own comments. It is interactive not one-way. This is consistent with Lenin’s Pravda, but with modern tools.
7. Any active socialist who isn’t on Facebook should be. Simple as that!
8. Many non-socialists in anti-capitalist and other movements have been far quicker at getting hang of all this. The left has to catch up. Poor use of the Net is one reason for marginalisation of the left in some campaigns and movements.

Delicious is still an important social network, even when it’s not as advanced as Diigo, so I recommend to use the cross posting function available on Diigo, which allows your bookmarks to appear on Delicious as soon as they are bookmarked on Diigo..

We microblog demos and strikes always, but not as much when it comes to lectures. I think it’s a good idea to encourage the audience to live-microblog events, if no wireless or laptops are available, using their mobile phones.

We can tweet or Jaiku quotes from the talks or debates we are attending, say, every five minutes, to update and share the event with a much bigger audience on the net.

So keep tweeting and Jaikuing ya shabab, but please make sure your mobile phones are on silent mode…

The Lenosphere blog will be solely devoted to Web 2.0 related themes. My target audience, to be honest, is primarily the International Solidarity Tendency activists. After months of correspondence, discussions and chats with Comrade Ady, we both found ourselves in full agreement that, unfortunately, despite the successes and growth of the IST over the past few years in some parts of the world, the movement is still lagging behind when it comes to internet activism. Let’s be frank, most, if not all, the IST groups haven’t yet absorbed or realized the implications of the internet evolution and development of Web 2.0 on organizing for a workers revolution, missing out on an ever growing potential audience for socialist propaganda and agitation, as well as consuming logisitical resources that could have been optimized using the latest internet technological innovations…

Make no mistake, the real action at the end of the day happens on the ground, not in the cyberspace. And any regular reader of this blog should be fully aware I was, have been and am still a strong opponent of these moronic schemes about online strikes and revolutions… But that does not mean socialists should not use Web2.0 tools. The latter should constitute a sizable factor in planning our strategy and tactics in the fight against our governments.

The developments in the forces and relations of production, as Marx said, lead to changes in the superstructure. Well, with a quick google search on the implications of Web 2.0 on “business”, you get tons of results–articles, postings and books. But you don’t get the same amount of literature on what these changes mean for revolutionaries. We have not tackled the subject enough, neither organizationally nor ideologically.

If all our enemies and super-reactionaries from Israel and Obama to the Vatican Pope are embracing the Web 2.0 tools and strategies, doesn’t that arouse our interest if not ring alarm bells…? They have understood the potential of social networks in terms of outreach and mobilization. Shouldn’t we counter that? Shouldn’t we come up with a strategy and aggregate our efforts instead of continuing to act on individual initiatives?

While 3arabawy will continue to exist and get updated, as part of the Arabist Network, the Lenosphere and Ady’s Leninism 2.0 will serve as platforms for addressing Web 2.0-related themes, from news and multimedia productions (Videos, audios, etc..), to tutorials, tips, hacks and longer political essays.

The Lenosphere is still in the beta version. The layout design and a bunch of other tweeks are still undone, due to time constraints, but I thought of waiting no longer, especially when the Arabist blogs were down these past few days. So kindly be patient, and I hope I finish these layout changes and plugins by next week.

The next step will involve setting up an aggregator for the IST activists’ blogs, photos, Tweets, Jaikus, bookmarks and videos… So comrades, if your blog is not included on the original Lenosphere list, please submit your links in the comments section. To be clear, the aggregator is only for IST activists, but if you are an independent socialist or belong to other tendencies, feel free to submit your blog for review. I’ll be setting up an aggregator for “fellow travelers” blogs as associate members of the Lenosphere… That will take some time, probably weeks, so again kindly be patient as I compile the links to be posted…

And if any IST activist is reading this and he/she are neither bloggers, nor maintain presence in any of the social networks (Jaiku, Twitter, delicious, YouTube, flickr or Vimeo), then it’s about time!!