Assange: Green Party Convention Hails a Hero

The clip above is Julian Assange speaking to the Green party Convention in Houston Texas via Skype.  Those of us who have a developed this blog have consistently supported Julian Assange, Wikileaks as well as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and those like them. We believe they are heroic figures in the struggle against capitalism and for a better world.

We have promoted Assange’s recent books especially When Google Met Wikileaks, an account of his meeting with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Assange references this book in his comments and we strongly urge our readers to read it.

In it Assange explains the relationship between the new and increasingly powerful tech bourgeois and the state. As he does in his comments, he points out that the conglomerates like Lockheed as an example, were the power of the 20^th century and the new tech bourgeois the force of the 21^st. This is made very possible given the ability of firms like Google to enormously influence ideas and mass consciousness. They are fighting desperately to control information and how we talk to each other.

We commend the Green Party USA for inviting Assange to speak to us. And we commend it's presumptive presidential nominee, Jill Stein for publicly announcing she would appoint him to a cabinet position as opposed to Sanders, who said he should be tried as he committed a crime.

We cover these issues briefly in a document we send to activists and readers. Below, is the introduction to the document and you can read more and/or download it to share at the link below.  Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in these ideas and building around them as the ideas Assange expresses in the video need further discussion.  It is no fault of Assange's for example that the working class does not feature prominently in his thinking; is not seen as the only force that can change the world.

Lastly, as the person that shot the video I did not edit it as time is short and I haven't watched it all, I apologize for the quality. Also, my skills are limited in this field and if there is anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area who could donate some hours to help me improve my skills with video, in particular getting it from the camera, to I movie, that would be very much appreciated. If you can donate money for classes, that would not be rejected.

Here is the document.

Less than 1% of the world's population was connected to the Internet in 1995. Today, 2016 it is 40%.  Facebook was set up in 2004. Today it has over 1 billion subscribers on its worldwide network. This is the most explosive growth in communications and sharing of information in the history of the human species. The Internet is also the most democratic of form of mass media that has ever existed. It is so because it is the cheapest and most accessible to the greatest number of people. One of the results of this has been an explosion of information and knowledge. This has opened up great cracks in the wall of secrecy of the doings of imperialism and begun to smash the wall behind which it has sought to hide its crimes and workings. It has begun to pull the wool from the eyes of the working class about how imperialism works, it has increasingly opened up cracks in the wall of ignorance behind which imperialism has attempted to keep the working class.

For those who oppose capitalism the question is this. How has this explosive change in communications and information and the sharing of knowledge, this opening up of cracks in the wall of secrecy of imperialism, changed our work? If it has not done so in a qualitative way then these forces are being left behind by the most explosive development in science and technology in history. The comments and quotes and articles below are amongst some the authors of this small text have been reading and discussing.

We wish to engage with other Comrades in this process. We wish to engage with the movements and individuals such as Assange who are against the system but who are not clear on the alternative and the role of the progressive class in history at this time, the working class. Please read the materials below. We are interested in establishing a think/do/tank to seek to discuss and absorb and bring the lessons of past revolutions into the present world and integrate the best of these, the correct principles and ideas of these with the new world in which we live. 

This is not a complete document not even a document, it is a series of articles intended to provoke discussion. We are interested in such discussion in an effort to bring our revolutionary experiences, both correct and incorrect into consonance with the world of today. We are not interested in a discussion filled with sectarianism and bile and over inflated egos and people and organizations who will not openly admit to their own mistakes and will not openly face up to the fact that the self-styled revolutionary left has failed to put down roots in the working class. We are only interested in discussions where we all look at our own pasts and see the wrong perspectives we had and also the right perspectives we had and where we openly acknowledge these and discuss these. We are only interested in a new culture of democratic discussion and exchange of ideas.. Comrades please have a read at these.

To begin such a discussion we would like to suggest that Comrades read the Book: When Google met Wikileaks by Julian Assange. Consider the following quotes from this book. In this book Assange speaks of "Technocratic imperialism" which he says is how US and imperialism in general sees the Internet and contrasts this to how he sees it. Assange writes of the two differing philosophies behind Wikileaks which draw from his discussion with the head of Google and US state department agents.

He writes
" The discussion contains strong and previously uncommunicated descriptions of the philosophy behind Wikileaks and how technology affects power dynamics and social structures. It includes concepts for how to use decentralized technology to protect revolutionary activities I would love to see taken and implemented. And at the level of symbolism, the discussion sees two different futures of the internet in conversation with each other: the one, a pervasive Internet of centralized corporate power and the other a vibrant decentralized Internet, fit for the emancipation of human history and human beings."  R. M. and S.O'T. (J.T.)

Read and/or download this document in pdf form here.