Study: Internet Racism Has Strong Affect on Black Teens

Black teens experience numerous racial assaults daily. Source: Rutgers

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I was talking with a friend in Ireland recently and she was telling me about the image that is perpetuated about the working class Irish male; the drinker, the failed family man pumping out the kids. A hard worker sure, but a failure, even consciously or not a failure in ones own mind. Up until the early 1960’s when I was a young teenager, Ireland was basically an economically backward country, its development held back like most of the former British colonies, and Ireland was the first. The six northern counties Britain kept after partition in 1921 as industry, particularly shipbuilding, was there as well as the majority of the country’s Protestant population. 

“This greater failure, to save Ireland from British domination weighed heavily on the conscience of the Irish male” my friend told me, as family, responsibility, country are all woven in to one. I have written before that the racist assault on the Irish included the women who I remember hearing on more than one occasion that they were either “Nuns or whores.” There is much similarity between the Irish in relation to England and the Mexicans and other immigrants from the US south. The Irish did most of the building of the roads and infrastructure in the UK and many great songs were written about that.

What we think of ourselves is not just some individual whim. It is not something independent of the world around us, of society. When I flip through the few channels I have, I sometimes stop for a second or two at some old cowboy movie just in time to capture the dialogue between two cowboys, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” says one white man to the other. “What would I think about that if I were a Native American?”, I ask myself. Rage? Sadness? Surely a sense of despair for many of them, as they too were not able to save their land and way of life from the invaders and many of them died trying  All workers are victims of class oppression, but capitalism doesn’t stop there, the dominant ruling class must rest on some section of society at the expense of others.

If you watch the Beatles when they came to the US and all the young girls screaming and crying at them, I see that they are all white girls, daughters of European immigrants. Black folks weren’t listening to that music were they? Even if they liked it, racism would have kept them from venues. Look what happened to Allan Freed. He may well have been guilty in the Payola Scandal but the real threat he posed was that the music he was playing, the mixture of blues, R&B and jazz brought Black and white youth in to the same halls. They came by the thousands. Ben Fong Torres wrote of him:

“He did it by way of his show, and by concerts he staged in New York and elsewhere, events that began to draw white as well as Black youth. For this, he was called a race-mixer and worse. The recording industry’s establishment feared his championing of the independent labels that dominated rhythm & blues, blues, and jazz music. Freed began making enemies.

Soon, parents groups, church leaders, and the press who deemed much of the music obscene and got much of it banned from radio.

The New York Daily News called the music “an inciter of juvenile delinquency” and pointed to Freed as a chief offender.”

More proof that, Racism Does Not Begin in the Home or the Individual

Like Martin Luther King but in a different way, Freed was uniting Blacks and whites. “In 1958, Freed faced controversy in Boston when he told the audience, ‘It looks like the Boston police don't want you to have a good time.’ As a result, Freed was arrested and charged with inciting to riot, and was fired from his job at WINS.”  Wikipedia. He was right. The police, as an arm of the state, didn’t want Blacks and whites mixing. The whole basis of white skin privilege and the total exclusion of Black people from all aspects of society (not even citizens) was the boat that kept US capitalism afloat and the masters at the helm.

Imagine you are a part of a section of society, a distinct group, Catholic, Muslim, Black, Indian, Asian, gay and so on, and in film, art, mainstream music, you never see people that look like you that have your experience or express it. You produce you own, but it is outside of society as a whole. I am thankful people like Freed were instrumental in ensuring Blues, the music of Black America came to the UK. Like Peter Norman, who supported Carlos and Smith in the 1968 Olympics and was shut out of sport for it, Freed was destroyed for his actions. They were both alcoholics when they died young.

When I go downtown, or especially when I go to Oakland, the vast majority of the people that are homeless and sleeping rough or in tents are Black folks. What do young Black kids think when they walk around in their neighborhoods or elsewhere and pretty much everyone living like that is Black like them? It has to have an impact. That is why the election of Barack Obama as US president was so important for Black Americans. I know friends that voted for him though they had no illusions in his politics or the idea that he would do much if anything at all about the economic crises that affect Black working class communities. “I just want my son to see a cultured, educated Black family in a powerful position in America and who is not a gangster.” a woman friend told me.

I believe that Jesse Jackson’s tears at that huge rally in Chicago as Obama became the Democratic candidate for the highest office in the land, were real. Like Jackson or not, he was next to Martin Luther King on that balcony in 1968 supporting a strike of Janitors, members of my former union. Compared to Trump, George W Bush or Obama, Jesse Jackson deserves some respect.

Black Teens Face Racial Discrimination Multiple Times Daily, Suffer Depressive Symptoms as a Result

I thought about this because a friend In Kentucky brought to my attention the effect racism has on Black teenagers. He has experience working with them and understands them as he was one of them.  He shared a new Rutgers University Study the title above, that found, “The rise in hate crimes against Black U.S. American youth since the 2016 presidential election (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2018) provides a stark indicator that anti-Blackness continues to be deeply woven into the U.S. societal fabric.” Those white workers that support Trump, the ones who have some semblance of critical thinking, should reflect on that rise in racist attacks on blacks and immigrants when they justify their support on the basis he's added a few bucks to their 401K.

The study concludes that the Internet is a “major” source of discrimination directed at Black youth and one of the causes of the frequency of this racial discrimination is that the Internet is anonymous. We all experience that; people who call all sorts of vile names, make all sorts of ridiculous claims and so on because they’re safe behind a computer screen.

This is particularly harmful for Black youth, according to the study, as they spend more time on the Internet than,”…. kids of other races and ethnicities.” Consequently, these microaggressions occur on a daily basis and many times throughout the day. Hair, skin tone, and physical appearances are aspects of mockery and teasing. “…discrimination happens, whether it is being teased by peers, asked to speak for their racial group in class or seeing a racist post on social media,”says the author of the study.

“Racial teasing is important….” The study claims, “… because it is one of the most common ways adolescents communicate about race,” The study is published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology.

For young children, coupled with all the other social aspects of institutionalized racism that I touch on above, the damage can be significant. It is not just Black children of course, we are all sickened by this system in which everything is a commodity, including our bodies and our life activity (labor power).  But there is no doubt that in the history of the United States it is this division, this use of color to undermine solidarity between the oppressed, throwing the exploited white worker a bone while excluding an entire race of people from even the most rudimentary benefits of class society that has been the dominant means of social control and the maintenance of the capitalist system of production and the class that governs it.

In his introduction to volume one of Theodore W Allen’s The Invention of the White Race, Jeffrey B Perry details the four “defining characteristics” of racial oppression as Allen saw it. These are: “a) declassing legislation, directed at property holding members of the oppressed group; b) the depravation of civil rights; c) the outlawing of literacy; and d) the displacement of family rights and authorities.”

Studies like the one quoted here are useful, but tell the victims of racial discrimination nothing they don’t already know; the same with the oppression of women or of labor in general. The reason official government panels on poverty are dominated by academics and others committed to capitalism and in its pay, rather than poor folk, is that poor people know more about poverty than academics and also are very clear about what policies would solve it. It's not rocket science.

Poverty, racism, sexism, war, environmental catastrophe, are an integral aspect of the capitalist mode of production. Recognizing this reality is a first major step to eradicating them.

CIA, Longhorn and Vault 7

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Most of us not too tech savvy grunts might not have heard of Longhorn, or we associate the term with cattle; the famous breed of the American West.

But Longhorn, as the techies and cyber warriors are aware, is a hacking group. Longhorn, is the name Internet security firm Symantec has given to a “sophisticated cyberespionage operation” it has been tracking for some time.  Symantec describes Longhorn’s behavior as, “… consistent with the activity of state-sponsored groups -- and operating in an American time zone.”

More revealing is that Symantec claims the tools and techniques used by Longhorn were described in documents released by Wikileaks last month under the name Vault 7.  Symantec research has revealed the CIA tools were used to hack “40 organizations across 16 countries” according to the Financial Times.* Much of this activity was in the Middle East but also Europe and Asia.

Semantec, unlike Wikileaks, has not openly identified the CIA as Longhorn but the evidence is overwhelming. “We quickly realised that some of the tools and techniques described in the Vault 7 documents almost exactly matched the tools being used by a group we call ‘Longhorn’, There is enough evidence to form a definite link between the two.” FT.

Apparently there was another “dump of malware” last weekend that was stolen from US intelligence agencies according to the Times. A group called Shadowbrokers released the information to the public, a new set of hacking tools it claims have been developed by US spies.  US intelligence spokespersons are claiming the latest release is in response to the US strikes on Syria and likely come through Wikileaks which the US believes is being manipulated by the Kremlin. Doesn't Donald Trump "love" Wikileaks? He changes his mind so much we can't be sure.

It is clearly evident that in this age of the Internet, social media and the millions employed by the vast US state apparatus, it is almost impossible to keep information from the general public. The sentence meted out to Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley) who allegedly released files to Wikileaks and in particular the Collateral Murder video , was a warning both to state department employees, military personnel and all would be whistleblowers to keep their mouths shut.

Another interesting aspect of this modern day warfare and political activity is that corporations and government agencies are encouraging hackers to hack them as a means of learning the weaknesses of their internet security systems. These are called, “Vulnerability reward programs” and “big bounty programs”. Hackers get rewards, financial payment, even free travel miles to reveal security flaws. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, the Pentagon, millions is spent getting independent hackers to help the corporations and their state apparatus protect their interests.

These developments, as we have pointed out on this blog, reveal the insanity of the traditional left groups and their sectarian approach to the movement. Their refusal to discuss and share differences openly with the working class and each other so that workers can hear and participate, to dialogue with the working class and learn from it, help build the movement of the working class. The idea that a tiny, insignificant so-called revolutionary group can keep its internal discussions and debates from the bourgeois is nonsense. The state can listen in when it wants. The only forces kept out are other competing left groups and more importantly, the workers movement the force that can actually change things

I recall making arguments over the years about the huge trade union apparatus in the US, the AFL-CIO, and the national structure, money and resources it has along with millions of members. Instead of human resources and the billions given to the Democratic Party over the years in cash and for advertisements for example, I argued, the AFL-CIO should have had its own television network, it’s own mass media as a counter to the ideology of the capitalist class and the benefits of the capitalist system that dominates the mass media and wages a daily war on the conscious of the working class.

We have explained why they won’t do that of course, there is no point as the heads of organized labor are ardent supporters of capitalism and the so-called free market, and encouraging millions to question it, to challenge its legitimacy as an economic and political system, can only lead to chaos. The working class is not seen as a force for change, as a force that can govern society and the only force that can change it and build a truly democratic socialist alternative.

Many cyber activists (terrorists according to the ruling class and its media) would place their services, their knowledge and skills, at the service of such a powerful working class movement were they able to. We have pointed out that people like Julian Assange, and there are many like him, who do not see the working class as force at all, as an independent force for change, would welcome such a force, and will welcome it when it arises and arise it will. I would urge the cyber warriors to use their unique knowledge to assist the working class movement, help unify that movement as it rises to its feet. Serve that movement for the revolutionary transformation of society

The leaders of the workers’ movement, the trade unions and political parties, are to blame for the delay of a mass movement of the working class in the US and globally and for the recent rise of right wing elements and parties.  But they can’t stop it.

*CIA hacking tools used on 40 groups research claims, FT 4-11-17

See also: Silicon Republic

Read also : When Google Met Wikileaks

Assange, Trump and the US Elections

order here

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

Additional note added 1-04-17

We are adding this comment to this blog posting that was originally published December 24th in light of the interview of Assange by Sean Hannity and recent praise he is getting from anti-worker, bigots like Trump and the imbecile Sarah Palin.

While strong supporters of Assange, we have commented in the past and do so below, on some of his weaknesses. His failure to have a historical materialist view of the world and consequently his inability to see the working class as the force for change in society. He does refer at times to the "multitudes" in his excellent book, When Google Met Wikileaks, but this is a term devoid of class content.

We caution Julian Assange that he is making a mistake in being connected to or being seen to be connected to, the likes of Palin, Trump or Hannity.

Both he and Wikileaks will lose credibility among workers and left forces if he is too closely associated with these right wing characters. It is regretful that he allowed the notorious anti-worker individual Hannity to interview him. We hope that Julian Assange will consider these comments that we offer in solidarity.

“Hillary Clinton and the network around her imprisoned one of our alleged sources for 35 years, Chelsea Manning, tortured her according to the United Nations, in order to implicate me personally.” Julian Assange to Stefania Maurizi

Julian Assange was recently interviewed by Stefania Maurizi of Republica.it

What Assange says in relation to Trump’s electoral victory is interesting:

"Hillary Clinton's election would have been a consolidation of power in the existing ruling class of the United States. Donald Trump is not a DC insider, he is part of the wealthy ruling elite of the United States, and he is gathering around him a spectrum of other rich people and several idiosyncratic personalities. They do not by themselves form an existing structure, so it is a weak structure which is displacing and destabilising the pre-existing central power network within DC. It is a new patronage structure which will evolve rapidly, but at the moment its looseness means there are opportunities for change in the United States: change for the worse and change for the better".

Those of us that run this blog and have raised similar issues and discussed them in our weekly conference calls.  We have discussed what could be a historic shift in US political and economic life and the affects this will have on the situation globally. Will Trump make a deal with Putin? Will he make a deal with the Chinese and is it conceivable that he envisages in his mind a tri-polar world headed by the US, China and Russia?  The Syrian developments have clearly increased Russia’s influence in the Middle East in a major way. Is it possible that traditional US support for Saudi Arabia is waning and if so, will this thaw relations between the US and Iran?  What about Israel?

Is there a changing of the guard and a different section of the US bourgeois recognizing this and using Trump to advance its agenda including foreign policies and alignments?  Or is trump simply an accident of history and completely uncontrollable. This does not seem likely but we are in interesting times. The preferred candidate of the big bourgeois in the US was defeated this is certain. They did not get their first choice.

We have recommended to our readers that they read Assange’s book, When Google Met Wikileaks and also The Wikileaks Files. The latter is now out in paperback and can be ordered at Verso books for $9.98 with free shipping. In both his excellent account of his meeting with Google’s Schmidt and also in the interview and quote we share here, Assange leaves out one major issue, and that is the role of the working class. He is not alone of course. The US working class especially has been relatively quieted by global standards with the help of the heads of organized labor. But this will not last and Trump will likely help in that regard as he intensifies the assault on the US worker.

But for people like Assange and the example in the quote below, Stephen Hawking, why would they see the working class as a significant force to be reckoned with? They are not from the working class or connected to it in any major way.  And while there are sporadic and regional struggles in every continent the working class has been on the defensive in the main. Hawking suggests that the only hope for humanity is to emigrate to another planet and while Assange does talk of capitalism, the market and revolutionary movements and the multitudes rising up at times, he clearly does not see the working class as the driving force in this process, as the force that can change society and build an alternative system.  But there is another major factor why individuals with brilliant insight in to certain aspects of life make this omission.

We explained this in a posting back in October, that the reason such learned people cannot see the class issue clearly is that they do not understand the world and human history from an historical materialist perspective.

In a post back in October, Sean O’ Torain wrote:

Historical materialism sees the world in this way. The human species clawed its way out of the swamps of pre history and in the process established and overthrew system after system, one following the other. First there were the were primitive hunting and gathering societies, then slavery, then feudalism and today capitalism. While there was some overlap here and there, some steps forward and some steps back here and there, this was roughly the process.  Each of these systems was replaced by a new system when the old system could no longer take society forward, and when a new system which could take society forward came into being. So in this way society was changed. The establishment of these new systems was led by the new progressive classes of the time. This does mean these new “progressive” classes were gentle entities, in a kindly way nudging society into a new form. Far from it they were ferocious new forces which, with as it has been said, emerged out of the old systems with blood dripping from every tooth and claw and fang.

Where no class or force existed the old societies collapsed in on themselves or were overthrown by more backward societies which in turn themselves collapsed. The ruins of these old societies can be seen in the pyramids in the deserts and the old cities and magnificent ruins in the deserts and jungles. There was no class or force that could take these societies forward so they collapsed. It is in this context that we have to look at capitalism today. As it hurtles towards the cliff edge of its own destruction: is there a class or a force that can prevent this taking place? This is the issue. Not un-realizable speculating about the human species emigrating to other planets. Is there a class that can end capitalism and take society forward? This is the question.” Read this blog post in its entirity here

Assange referred to Jared Cohen, who co-wrote with Eric Schmidt, The Digital Age, as “Google’s head of regime change”.   He wrote of how Google’s Schmidt and he and Wikileaks sees the future, as "  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.

and

“For Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with US foreign policy objectives and is driven by connecting non western countries to western companies and markets . These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet’s future that has only gathered force subsequently.”

It is clear that people like Assange and many of the tech and cyber warriors that have come in to conflict with the capitalist state apparatus, in the case of Assange, held to house arrest by it, are huge potential allies of the working class and can play a crucial role in ensuring the victory of the working class in the struggle against capital and the filth that accompanies it.

Here is a link to more information we have put together on this subject

When hacking is an act of war. Guccifer extradited to US.

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By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

We all know that the US capitalist class has a policy. This policy allows the US military industrial complex to take out any individual or group of individuals that even think of harming US corporate interests no matter where they are in the world.  These assassinations are normally carried out by unmanned drones that are necessary to avoid the loss of US lives as US capitalism’s global violence is not really popular with its own citizenry. But at least their attention won’t be unduly affected if their sons and daughters aren’t killed and the media can keep us occupied and the news censored or presented in such a way that we feel threatened enough to stay put.

The US bourgeois is the most violent of all of them and have the military might to prove it. But there is a problem.  The cyber warriors, those dissenters, a mixture of anarchist, libertarian, socialist leaning types (it’s hard for me to define their actual political character) are making it difficult for the ruling class to get on with business.

One of their main enemies is Julian Assange and Wikileaks. This organization has tapped in to their private conversations revealing their phony diplomacy for what it really is, a whole system of lies and deceit.  But capitalism cannot exist without lies and deceit. It is built on lies and deceit.  From the history books they publish to the media they control they construct a world that serves their interests.

Modern history, which is a history of the daily struggle between the oppressed classes and the class that has state power in its hands, a struggle that breaks out periodically in open violent clashes and at times a change in how society is structured, appears as a series of events and dates unconnected to each other until we arrive at the present, the end of civilization as Francis Fukuyama once told us.

Their politicians that we elect every four or so years cannot possibly tell us the truth, that they are continuing to take back from the working class all that we have won over a century or more, that their mass murder in foreign lands is all about profit and plunder as opposed to the defense of freedom and other such nonsense. Who would bother to vote at all? In fact this is what happens as more and more people withdraw from the process, we know they’re lying but many people attribute this to personality traits, to character flaws, this too is part of their lies and deceit.  We are not supposed to think in terms of a social system, a system of production except when we talk about the collapse of Stalinism. Then they refer this monstrous system as a failure of the “communist” system. When capitalism fails the word "crony" is placed in front of it.

But the hackers and cyber warriors are a problem.  A social system that functions through lies and deception cannot allow organizations like Wikileaks and individuals like Assange, Manning and Snowden to do what they did, we have already commented on this. But it is Wikileaks and Assange that is the biggest threat. 

And while Assange is not a socialist as far as I can tell, it is not hyperbole to compare his

situation to that of Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Russian Revolution who was hounded by

Stalin and eventually murdered by a Stalinist assassin. Assange has been given asylum in Ecuador but is being prevented from leaving that country’s embassy in London by the British government under pressure from the US. There is no doubt that the US would assassinate Assange at the first opportunity. US politicians have made that known publicly.

So what we have termed a cyber class war is being fought and socialists in particular must recognize the importance of this.  In May of this year, Mike Rounds, a Republican Senator from South Dakota writing in the Wall Street Journal called for policies to deal with, “a new type of warfare in cyberspace…” and that it is, “…emerging as a top threat to America.”

Rounds calls for the policies presently in place for responding to a military attack to be “broadened to include the cyber domain.” He wants to define a cyber attack as “An act of war” . “I think that would be extremely helpful.”, Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency says of the suggestion.

Rounds has introduced the Cyber Act of War that will require the government to define what constitutes and act of war. We know the danger in this as a man on a camel in Yemen can apparently be declaring war on the US merely by thinking about how nice it would be if the US government would stop interfering in his county’s affairs.

I see that the hacker Guccifer, who allegedly hacked in to Hillary Clinton’s account as well as the Bush family Colin Powell and others and allegedly shared the information with the public has been identified and sentenced to four plus year in prison. His name is Marcel Lazar and he was extradited from Romania by the US. He was a cab driver with no connection to the Russians from what I understand. We have to ask: Is Kissinger to be extradited to Vietnam for his mass murder there: Bush to Iraq, Obama, Rumsfeld Cheney, et al to Afghanistan?

The NSA spies on the rest of us at will. We are hounded through every sort of media by companies that want to sell us their services and other crap. Facebook complies data on us and personal profiles. Companies find out about our likes and dislikes through social media and communicate with us whether we like it or not.

Naturally, myself along with most people reading this would believe in a person’s right to privacy. I for one am not interested in the consensual sex lives, or goings on between private individuals. But that’s not what bothers them. What bothers them and why Assange and Wikileaks is such a threat is that the class nature of society is exposed from beneath the cloak of obscurity that hides it. What we already believe in the abstract becomes social fact and when this happens it increases the likelihood that people will act on it.

US ruling class in a crisis as cyber warfare heats up.

Stein and the GP should be commended for this

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Member Green Party USA

“By all appearances, Google’s bosses genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgment of the ‘benevolent superpower”. They will tell you that open mindedness is a virtue, but all perspectives that challenge the exceptionalist drive at the heart of American foreign policy will remain invisible to them. This is the impenetrable banality of ‘don’t be evil.’ They believe that they are doing good and that is the problem.”  Julian Assange When Google Met Wikileaks P35

I see that "Guccifer 2.0" the renowned hacker, or hackers has released the personal information of 200 Congressional Democrats.

What we are witnessing here is a cyber war. The cyber warriors are at war with the US ruling class, creating havoc among the worlds’ most ruthless and violent ruling clique.  Not only are the two parties of US capitalism in disarray and in danger of splitting, they are fielding to the American electorate the two most hated candidates in US history. They are in extreme political crisis and the techies are a formidable opponent.

It’s not that I support publicizing the details of a person’s private life but we are talking here about the people responsible for the death of millions of people through their predatory wars in defense of US corporations and profits. People whose whole existence is based on lies and deceit. The people responsible for designing and implementing policies that leave millions of their own citizens homeless, without health care, work, and a secure future.

We have a situation where right wing Republicans, and the misogynists among them are supporting the dreaded Hillary Clinton, the Democrat.  As we say here in the US, “You can’t make this shit up”. But it also shows that the ruling class is united as a class. It’s useful to have two parties, even if they’re both in crisis.

Wikileaks, the news agency headed by Julian Assange who is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for fear of being extradited to the US where public figures have called for his murder, has already released some 20,000 e mails related to Clinton and the DNC and says there are more to come.  The authors on this blog have said that it cannot be ruled out that the US bourgeois may not be able to get their first woman president if further damage comes to light. It could not be ruled out that another terrorist attack might occur in the US to take our minds off the political crisis and have us focus on foreigners. Or they might have to find another candidate. Who can tell these days?

I am not prone to conspiracies as a means of explaining events, the bourgeois still rule,  but conspiracies do occur. In a war people die, and we cannot rule out that the recent string of deaths, people associated with or suspected of being journalists or lawyers friendly to Wikileaks, Internet freedom and transparency in media, is just a coincidence.  One only has to listen to the vitriol aimed at Assange in the mass media. The ruling class is in a political crisis and they will kill to defend their interests. Even the Green Party and its presidential Candidate and Vice Presidential candidate are being targeted; if the GPUSA can take advantage of this situation, a task made harder by the fact that it has not really acted like a real party and is not prepared to govern in many ways, the working class can make gains as well.  But there is real fear among the 1% and a scared animal is a dangerous one. The GP candidates can expect more slander in the media.

It might not be the correct term but the cyber warriors are proving to be a formidable opponent for the cabal that runs US society. Assange talks of the cyber warriors in his book, When Google Met Wikileaks. We don’t read much about it in the 1%’s media but there has been an ongoing war against those heroic tech savvy types who are fighting for Internet freedom and right of the population to know.  The young guy Aaron Swartz, the Internet activist and computer whiz who committed suicide, was facing 35 years for downloading academic papers with the intent of distributing them to the public. He had been caught distributing documents before for free.

Assange talks of Gottfried Svarholm, another Internet activist facing trial and hounded by the US as Assange himself is. Svarthholm also collaborated with Wikileaks on the video, Collateral Murder, the video Chelsea Manning has been accused of sending to Wikileaks. Manning is also serving 35 years. Phil Zimmerman is another as well as Edward Snowden and Raja Petra.

Wikileaks and these cyber warriors are heroic figures and workers owe them a debt of gratitude as I have said many times before. They are not socialists, Assange is not a socialist as far as I know and clearly does not see the working class as the force that can change society. And why would he? The US working class is not on the scene in a major way here. There are scattered and isolated groupings and struggles against various market driven crises from environmental degradation (fracking, Flint) to BLM and the protests against mass incarceration and other issues. But in the main the US working class has yet to enter the scene in a major way. This too will change as the capitalist offensive at home intensifies.

US capitalism is driven by the laws of the market to attack its own working class further. It has to maintain its global dominance, bribe its despotic gangster friends, bomb its enemies, those who want a larger share of the loot than Washington is prepared to give.   And as Assange points out in his book, its partners in this are the new tech bourgeois, the Eric Schmidt’s and others.

Wikileaks has pulled the veil from the face of the ruling clique, their phony diplomacy and murderous political scheming all in the interests of profits and the rule of capital and the market. It is this activity that gives birth to terrorism and in its most barbaric form, groups like ISIS. There is without doubt a cyber war going on and it’s a serious fight. The hackers won’t go away.

As we have pointed out before on this blog, the socialist left has underestimated the importance of these forces that are fighting the unelected clique that governs society. The trade union leadership on the other hand are criminal in their cowardly absence from this fight. As connected to technology as the Snowdens, Assanges, and Anonymous and these cyber warriors are, this doesn’t mean their understanding of society and how capitalism arose and what forces will bring its demise is as clearly thought out. The Assanges and Snowdens of the world, and whoever or whatever "Guccifer 2.0" is, can be powerful allies of the working class in the class war, a war not of our choosing or of our creation, but a natural struggle between the producers of wealth in society and those who appropriate that wealth for their own ends.

We have the numbers, we have the experience, we have the brains and we have the technology. What we lack is the leadership. That is what we must build and Wikileaks and those courageous tech warriors can help us; we are natural allies.  The future of life on earth depends on it.

“The issue of preserving politically salient intellectual content while it is under attack is central to what Wikileaks does, because that’s what we’re after. We’re after those bits* that people are trying to suppress because we suspect, usually rightly, they they’re expending economic work on suppressing those bits because they perceive those bits are going to induce some change.” When Google Met Wikileaks P. 83

*Information

Media Shield Law: another attack on free speech and whistle blowers

The government/big business wedding

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

"The worst thing that ever happened to journalism was that it became the professionalized province of the educated." Charles P Pierce

The LA Times reported on the passing of the new "media shield Law" passed by a Senate Committee earlier this month. The new law would protect "journalists and bloggers" who report news to the public from being forced to testify about their work.  The bill is supported by some major media organizations, you know, the ones that regurgitate the official line that comes out of government press agencies.  The likes of Wikileaks and other unfavorable sources are not protected.  Dianne Feinstein wants to define exactly what a journalist is, "Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) insisted on limiting the legal protection to "real reporters" and not, she said, a 17-year-old with his own website." the LA Times states.  "I can't support it if everyone who has a blog has a special privilege … or if Edward Snowden were to sit down and write this stuff, he would have a privilege. I'm not going to go there," Feinstein said.

Feinstein introduced an amendment to the bill that defines a "covered journalist" as someone who gathers and reports news for "an entity or service that disseminates news and information."  According to the LA Times, "The definition includes freelancers, part-timers and student journalists, and it permits a judge to go further and extend the protections to any 'legitimate news-gathering activities.'"

Feinsten, a wealthy woman in her own right is married to Richard Blum, a speculator and coupon clipper who made a lot of his money through sweat shops in Asia, US government contracts, and through his lucrative position as a regent of the University of California.   In 2009,  Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to provide $25 billion in taxpayer money to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, the government agency that insures bank deposits.  The FDIC had awarded her husband's real estate firm, CB Richard Ellis, what the Washington Times called "a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms." (Wikipedia )  I was a shop steward for 25 years and always told my co-workers who asked how I could defend a worker that I knew was guilty that no worker could steal as much in a lifetime as these people steal in an day.

Blum is also Chairman of the Board of the CBRE Group and CBRE Group Inc. was awarded the government contract to be the sole marketer of USPS properties as the capitalist class moves to privatize the most efficient post office system in the industrialized world. This is the world in which we live, a public university board having so many investment bankers and other coupon clippers on it and the plundering of society's wealth by these characters.  The 1% keep their snouts buried deep in the public trough.

Naturally, the increased dismantling of the gains US workers have made over 150 years and the intention of the 1% to place us on rations is not a popular development and the increased surveillance, attacks on our rights and beefing up of the state security forces by their representatives in Congress are in preparation for the mass movements against these policies that we will see in the US in the years ahead.  The US capitalist class has no alternative but to attack the living standards of US workers and the middle class, the laws of their system; the global struggle for profits and endless wars to maintain them demands it.  Capitalism was dragged form the edge of the abyss by public funds and its continued crises ensure further cliffs are around the corner. The assault on workers cannot be avoided from their point of view.

Along with more police brutality and hi tech security and surveillance, we see increased oppressive legislation as Dianne Fenistein and her class colleagues are attempting to enact a law that defines what a journalist actually is. The "embedded" sycophants are "real journalists", Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden etc. are not. This is an anti-whistle blower law and an attempt to control information on the Internet and keep what they're doing under wraps.

Charles P. Pierce wrote a great piece on the media shield law and I urge readers to read it. He is not too pleased with the billionaires attacks on free speech:
"Hey, Dianne, here's the thing on that First Amendment business. I get to define what you do for a living. And if I decide to define what you do for a living is to be a mewling apologist for the national-security community and a lapdog for the surveillance state, I get to do that, and I get to do it in a newspaper, or video, or on-line, or on a pamphlet stapled to a telephone pole outside your door, if I so choose. You get to sit there, collect your government salary, raise money from plutocrats, and shut...the...hell...up."

Julian Assange on War with Iran

While Assange fails to see the role of the working class in the struggle against global capitalism and putting faith in "decent" people to do the right thing and become whistleblowers, this is an interesting and valuable contribution. The previous blog showed the map of Iran and its encirclement by the US military. Assange correctly points out the fear and paranoia that must arise from such a situation and having the crazed Israeli's threatening to attack all the time. It's worth watching.
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Mass movements, social media. Changes for activists?

The new technology plays a major role in the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.

Some years ago I saw that there were over 100 million people on the Internet in China. Then more recently I see that just about everybody here in the US where I live walks around with a cell phone. And a central part of the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East was the use of cell phones and the Internet. As I said those years ago when I saw the figures from China any left or radical group that is working the same today as they were ten years ago are idiots. I am sorry I cannot be more diplomatic but that is the way I see it. They are idiots.

But it is not only that. There are also the developments in the working class especially in the advanced capitalist countries. The bureaucratic leadership has clamped down on the rank and file even more than they have in the past. They have recruited young inexperienced student staffers in some cases to help them in this sabotage of the movement. Look at the massive movement in Madison. It looks like it is defeated. It has been run into the sand by a leadership determined not to fight. A leadership which kept holding tightly on to its head, kept it marching up and down, kept relying on the Democrats, and at the same time gave away pay and benefits and then expected people to fight to keep negotiating to give away more wages and benefits. Incredible. Why would anybody fight to stay in a union which was demanding the right to give away wages and benefits in negotiations?

You would be forgiven for thinking these leaders are idiots. But they are not. It is that they are completely committed to capitalism, they can see no alternative, they do not believe the working class can build an alternative and so they see no alternative but to go along with capitalism. And this is what they do. They go along with capitalism and this means cutting wages and benefits and rights. Working people naturally do not like this so they have to be put down by the leadership. This is what the leadership do. They suppress any opposition to their strategy of going along with capitalism in their ranks. This believe of the leadership in capitalism is the source of the problem. They also of course get their perks from capitalism, higher wages and more secure jobs than their members.

The question is how will this change? I do not know. There can be spontaneous explosions such as the Middle East and North Africa where the system becomes just too much to bear any longer. This is one possibility. And given the leadership and the crisis of the left and radical movement probably the most likely. But what about this left and radical movement? Can this movement, can we not, do something to set in motion, to accelerate the new movement.

I see that many new movements in the recent past have been started by the youth using new "tricks." I was thinking about this the other day. One of the biggest crooks in the US is Alan Greenspan and he is walking around like he owns the place. Working people should know how central a role he played in wrecking their lives. We can picket his house, give out flyers etc. identify him everywhere he goes, follow him everywhere he goes, organize workers to take strike action against him, that is do no services for hum of any kind. . But how about something else, something more imaginative and taking into account the new technology and also which would involve some political thought. How about organizing a competition on the internet for which musical group in the US can write the best song savaging Greenspan? Have concerts and gatherings all over the country to see the country's youth compete. We can do the same thing with other capitalist crooks and this would begin to create a new genre of music. Not protest songs and music. But fighting and combative anti capitalist songs and music. A new genre.

I read recently that young people in Florida have taken up the issue of teenage smoking in the state. They created a series of fierce commercials showing how the tobacco companies manipulate young people into addiction. One showed two young people in an ad agency promoting cigarettes. They tried then went on and tried to give the ad agency which promoted the cigarettes a prize for the most kids killed. this had an affect.

Then there is the prank phone call development. Walker in Wisconsin was already caught in this thinking he was talking to the right wing billionaire Koch who bank rolls him. He gave away some secrets such as he was thinking of putting provocateurs into the workers demonstrations.

Anyway the main point is that things have changed and the movement must change. A revolutionary once said that we need to have a sense of history, a sense of proportion, a sense of humor to be a revolutionary. I would add now that more than ever before we need a sense of imagination.

Sean.

Internet and struggle.

I am extremely unskilled on the Internet. But along with one other friend we run a successful blog. It is weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com Please check it out. But here is my frustration. The left and radical movement seem to have just about missed the opportunity that exists for spreading ideas and building a movement using the Internet. Sending each other messages is a different thing from building a movement. Of course a movement cannot be built with the Internet alone. But use of the Internet, which gives access to millions, is absolutely essential in this period. I would go as far as to say that any group or individual who is working the same today as they were ten years ago has completely missed the boat. Or to express my frustration in the way I would if we were talking face to face and to use more of my Irish vernacular, I would say anybody or any group which is working the same today as they were ten years ago is a "f...... idiot." I am trying to make some progress here by stating things sharply. Readers who like this blog, and our readers have gone up by six fold in the last year, please contact us and see what is possible. We have more and more readers but we need help in terms of writing.

I think it was Marx who said that all human life was of interest to him. I am not sure if it was Marx or not. Or maybe I made it up myself and said it was to Marx. Well it is only fair. Did he not give me a few good quotes. I am only returning the favor. Clinging on to quotes just because you happened to think of them yourself is a bit individualist, a bit bourgeois, don't you think. We should share them around or as the man said in that movie who was using another guy's poetry to woo his girl friend, poetry does not belong to those who wrote it but to those who need it. A good one. You would have to watch that boy alright.

Anyway here is what I want to say. For all those people out there who have good Internet skills we need your help. As a first step please spread the contents of our blog far and wide and please link it to as many other blogs as possible. Also any other ideas to spread word of our blog would be very much appreciated. Please help us with this.

But back to writers. We want all human life to be covered on our blog. Did you see today that google has millions of books in its digital library. These contain two billion words and phrases drawn from 5.2 million books published during the past 200 years. Incredible. Wee Joyce would have been beside himself when he would have realized what he could have done with all these words. And on top of that he made up his own in Finnegan's Wake. 129 million books have been published since the invention of the printing press. In 2004 Google began making electronic copies of them. So far it has 15 million comprising more than two trillion words in 400 languages. Staggering.

Researchers are going through this gigantic data base and they are seeing all sorts of trends. For example the word enemy increases dramatically during the second war, the word god drops dramatically from its peak usage in the 1840s. And in terms of other more mundane things the word sausage peaks in the 1940s and sushi takes off in the 1980s.

I have not the skills but what would be great would be to go through this data base for words related to workers' struggle. For example, trade unions, socialism, shop stewards, strikes, solidarity, and on and on and on. This data base also contains short phrases of up to five words and how often they were used in each year going back to 1,500. This data base if properly approached can give a living picture of society and therefore also of the class struggle. I would appeal to our readers with skills. Check this out and send us your conclusions.

Looking forward to getting some help with our blog.

Sean.