Wikileaks has come to an agreement with a Turkish newspaper to publish information gained from US state department cables about what the blog, "Wikileaks World" describes as "interference by the Turkish Military in civilian affairs". The newspaper, Taraf, has been the victim of harassment by the Turkish government for its publications. Wikileaks World describes the paper, as a whistle-blower journal. "Taraf holds a very good reputation worldwide, the journal was quoted by Der Spiegel, Times Online and such others as "Courageous," "independent," "plucky," and "scrappy". the blog writes, saying that Assange calls the paper the “the bravest newspaper in Turkey”.
Along with the momentous events in North Africa and the Middle East, it is also true that there are momentous changes taking place in access to information. The rise of the Internet and the emergence of groups like Wikileaks and others have transformed the information age. It is now harder for the capitalist controlled mass media to control the flow of information. Wikileaks is not going away and support for it and Bradley Manning is growing, millions of others are sharing information from the streets, you don't have to have the acceptance of the bourgeois to be a journalist. Manning is the heroic young soldier held in solitary confinement by the US government as a warning to other young military personnel to keep their mouths shut about the crimes of the US military industrial complex abroad. The American people owe him a debt of gratitude.
The two of us that do most of the writing for this blog are limited in our technical abilities but it is obvious that along with the historic change in information technology, the historic economic crisis, the equally historic uprisings throughout the world and the catastrophe in japan, that 2011 is an exceptional year and there is more to come. We have argued in the past that a global uprising of the working class could initially begin around an environmental catastrophe. With the discovery of higher radiation levels in food and milk products in Tokyo, it cannot be entirely ruled out that if things worsen in Japan, it could open up a revolutionary situation there. Tokyo is a city of some 40 million people.
While social change also has comes with some cost in terms of lives and suffering. It is sacrifice that is made in the struggle for a better world and hopefully, as we learn through struggle, the understanding that capitalism, the way society is organized, is the root of the crisis; of environmental and social crisis. Poverty, disease, environmental catastrophe are all by products of the market. Capitalism cannot be made human and environmentally friendly. By its very nature it is driven to destroy the natural world and all life as we know it if it is not stopped.
So we can be optimistic in the face of these events. How many times do we hear the naysayers and pessimists say that humans are selfish, greedy, that we don't care about the world in which we live etc. This is bourgeois propaganda. Humans are inherently gregarious and collective creatures. We have advanced the way we have due to collective struggle and cooperation, not through individualism and selfishness.
Workers and the middle class have risen up against some of the most oppressive regimes. Women, who face the most vicious abuse by these regimes have played leading roles and laid their lives of the line for their children, our children and humanity; just look at some of the pictures from the struggles in North Africa.
Nothing is guaranteed, that is true. We must learn from our past, from past struggles and revolutions against oppression. We must understand what worked and what didn't. Why revolutions were thrown back and why some failed and others didn't. This is the responsibility we have to face up to. The great lesson in the present is that we need an international untied working class movement. What is lacking in the face of all the uprisings is a leadership and organized movement that can link all the struggles together internationally. As science says, nature abhors a vacuum and if such a movement is not built that can transform the way human society is organized on an international scale and fill this vacuum, then vicious and violent counterrevolutionary forces will.
Workers around the world and here in the United States are on the move, so there is a lot to be optimistic about these days. History is opening a door of opportunity for us.
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