Tom Hayden : Julian Assange and the Lynch-Mob Moment

The lynch mob in Frankenstein. Is Julian Assange next?
The lynch-mob moment:
The frenzy over Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / December 15, 2010

We know that conservatives are extremists for order, but why have so many liberals lost their minds and joined the frenzy over Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? As the secrets of power are unmasked, there is a growing bipartisan demand that Julian Assange must die.

Once-liberal Democrat Bob Beckel said on FOX that someone should "illegally shoot the son-of-a-bitch." A few days ago center-liberal legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said on CNN that Assange is "absurd, ridiculous, delusional, and well beyond our sympathy." The Washington Times called for treating him as an "enemy combatant"; Rep. Peter King of the Homeland Security Committee wants him prosecuted as a terrorist; and of course, Sarah Palin wants him hunted down like Osama Bin Ladin or a wolf in Alaska.

This is a lynch mob moment, when the bloodlust runs over. We have this mad overreaction many times since the witch burnings and Jim Crow, including the Palmer Raids of the 1920s, the McCarthy purges of the 1950s, the Nixon-era conspiracy trials, the Watergate break- ins, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11.

Most Americans know now that those periods of frenzy and scapegoating did nothing for our security but damaged our democracy and left in their wake a secretive National Security State.

There's wisdom in expecting calmer heads to prevail in the WikiLeaks matter, but what can be done when the calmer heads are going nuts or hiding in silence?

Do the frothing pundits remember that we have a legal system in which the accused is entitled to due process, legal representation, and the right to a defense? The first obligation of our threatened elected officials, bureaucrats and pundits is to calm down.

No one has died as a result of the WikiLeaks disclosures. But the escalation by the prosecutors in this case could lead to an escalation, with more sensitive documents being released in a retaliatory spiral of this first cyber-war. Imprisoning the messenger will amplify his message and further threats of execution.

I can understand the reasonable questions that reasonable people have about this case. It is clearly illegal to release and distribute the 15,652 documents stamped as "secret." Why should underground whistleblowers have the unlimited right to release those documents? There is a risk that some individuals might be harmed by the release? There is a concern that ordinary diplomatic business might be interrupted.

All fair questions. These concerns have to be weighed against two considerations, it seems to me. First, how important is the content of the documents? And how serious is the secrecy system in preventing our right to know more about the policies -- especially wars -- being carried out in our name? And finally, is there a reasonable alternative to letting the secrets mount, such as pursuing the "transparency" agenda, which the White House purports to support?

Let me weigh these questions with regard to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and the "Long War" scenario that has occupied my full attention these past nine years.

It will be remembered that the Iraq War was based on fabricated evidence by U.S. and British intelligence services, the Bush-Cheney White House, and even The New York Times through the deceptive reporting of Judith Miller. The leading television media invited top military officials to provide the nightly narrative of the war lest their be any doubts in the mesmerized audience.

Secrecy and false narratives were crucial to the invasions, special operations, renditions, tortures, and mass detentions that plunged us into the quagmires where we now are stranded. The secret-keepers were incompetent to protect our national security, even when cables warned of an immanent attack by hijacked airliners.

The secrecy grew like a cancer on democracy. Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported in "Top-Secret America" that there were 854,000 people with top- security clearances. [William Arkin, Dana Priest, "Top Secret America," Washington Post, July 19, 2010] That was the tip of the iceberg. The number of new secrets rose 75% between 1996 and 2009, to 183, 224; the number of documents using those secrets has exploded from 5.6 million in 1996 to 54.6 million last year. [Time, December 13, 2010] The secrecy cult appears uncontrollable: the Clinton executive order 12958 [1995] gave only 20 officials the power to stamp documents top-secret, but those 20 could delegate the power to 1,336 others, while a "derivative" procedure extended the power to 3 million more officials and contractors. [Time, December 13, 2010]

The 1917 U.S. espionage statute requires that Assange received secret documents and willfully, with bad faith, intended to harm the United States by releasing "national defense information." That's a tough standard. Perhaps in order to close what U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder describes as "gaps in our laws," the State Department sent a letter demanding that Assange cease the releases, return all classified documents and destroy any records on WikiLeaks databases. [Washington Post, November 30, 2010]

These are difficult legal hurdles for the Justice Department under the First Amendment, but, according to a source close to the defense with experience in such cases, it seems clear that the U.S. government will prosecute Assange with every tool at their disposal, perhaps even rendition.

"What President Obama needs is a photo of Assange in chains brought into a federal court," the source said.

[U.K. prosecutors seeking to overturn a ruling granting bail to Assange will have their appeal heard by a London judge tomorrow, December 16.]

Should there be an attempt to extradite Assange, he has the right to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Assange has a very strong base of support in London where public anger over the fabrications that led to war still runs high. An extradition fight in London could carry on for weeks, providing an important platform for the defense. Or the UK government could take the risk of an accelerated emergency deportation process to send him to Stockholm, or even the U.S. in the most extreme scenario.

If Assange winds up in Stockholm, it could take several weeks to fight his way through a bizarre and complicated sexual harassment trial. Anything is possible there, from all charges being dropped, to the finding of a technical infraction, to jail time. Or Sweden could make an emergency finding to extradite him straight to the U.S., risking an adverse public reaction for serving as to a handmaiden of the Pentagon.

In the atmosphere of hysteria ahead, it is important for peace and justice advocates to remember and share what Americans owe to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

1. WikiLeaks has disclosed 390,136 classified documents about the Iraq War and 76,607 about Afghanistan so far. No one died as a result of these disclosures, one of which revealed another 15,000 civilian casualties in Iraq which had not been acknowledged or reported before;
2. Fragmentary orders [FRAGO] 242 and 039 instructed American troops not to investigate torture in Iraq conducted by America's allies;
3. The CIA operates a secret army of 3,000 in Afghanistan;
4. A secret U.S. Task Force 373 is assigned to nighttime hunter-killer raids in Afghanistan;
5. The U.S. ambassador in Kabul says it is impossible to fix corruption when our ally is the corrupt entity;
6. One Afghan minister alone carried $52 million out of the country;
7. U.S. Special Forces operate in Pakistan without public acknowledgment, apparently in violation of that country's sovereignty;
8. America's ally, Pakistan, is the chief protector of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
9. Following secret U.S. air strikes against suspected al-Qaeda militants, Yeme's President Ali Abdullah Saleh told General David Petraeus, "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours."

The secretive wars exposed by WikiLeaks will cost $159.3 billion in the coming fiscal year, and several trillion dollars since 2001. The American death toll in Afghanistan will reach 500 this year, or 50 per month, for a total of 1,423, and 9,583 wounded overall -- over half of the wounded during this year alone. The Iraq War has left 4,430 U.S. soldiers dead and 32,000 wounded as of today. The civilian casualties are ignored, but range in the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis.

Is it possible that Julian Assange is the scapegoat for arrogant American officials who would rather point the fingers of blame than see the blood on their own hands? What else can explain their frenzy to see Assange dead?

It may be too late to prevent an escalation. The lynch mob is rabid, terrorized by what they cannot control, completely out of balance, at their most dangerous. If they realize their darkest desires, they will make Assange a martyr -- a "warrior for openness" -- in the new age now beginning. A legion of hackers are fingering their Send buttons in response, and who can say what flood they may release?

The trial of Julian Assange is becoming a trial of secrecy itself. Wherever the line is drawn, secrecy has become the mask of power, and without new rules, the revolt of the hackers will continue.

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. This article was also published at The Nation and Progressive America Rising.]

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John Naughton : The WikiLeaks Backlash and the Culture of the Internet

Political cartoon from The Young Diplomat.
Killing the messenger:
The attack on WikiLeaks

It represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet...

By John Naughton / December 6, 2010

"Never waste a good crisis" used to be the catchphrase of the Obama team in the run-up to the presidential election. In that spirit, let us see what we can learn from official reactions to the WikiLeaks revelations.

The most obvious lesson is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.

And as the backlash unfolds -- first with deniable attacks on internet service providers hosting WikiLeaks, later with companies like Amazon and eBay and PayPal suddenly "discovering" that their terms and conditions preclude them from offering services to WikiLeaks, and then with the U.S. government attempting to intimidate Columbia students posting updates about WikiLeaks on Facebook -- the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured.

The response has been vicious, coordinated and potentially comprehensive, and it contains hard lessons for everyone who cares about democracy and about the future of the net.

There is a delicious irony in the fact that it is now the so-called liberal democracies that are clamouring to shut WikiLeaks down.

Consider, for instance, how the views of the U.S. administration have changed in just a year. On 21 January, secretary of state Hillary Clinton made a landmark speech about internet freedom, in Washington, DC, which many people welcomed and most interpreted as a rebuke to China for its alleged cyberattack on Google. "Information has never been so free," declared Clinton. "Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable."

She went on to relate how, during his visit to China in November 2009, Barack Obama had "defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity." Given what we now know, that Clinton speech reads like a satirical masterpiece.

One thing that might explain the official hysteria about the revelations is the way they expose how political elites in western democracies have been deceiving their electorates.

The leaks make it abundantly clear not just that the U.S.-Anglo-European adventure in Afghanistan is doomed but, more important, that the American, British, and other Nato governments privately admit that too.

The problem is that they cannot face their electorates -- who also happen to be the taxpayers funding this folly -- and tell them this. The leaked dispatches from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan provide vivid confirmation that the Karzai regime is as corrupt and incompetent as the South Vietnamese regime in Saigon was when the U.S. was propping it up in the 1970s. And they also make it clear that the U.S. is as much a captive of that regime as it was in Vietnam.

The WikiLeaks revelations expose the extent to which the U.S. and its allies see no real prospect of turning Afghanistan into a viable state, let alone a functioning democracy. They show that there is no light at the end of this tunnel. But the political establishments in Washington, London, and Brussels cannot bring themselves to admit this.

Afghanistan is, in that sense, a quagmire in the same way that Vietnam was. The only differences are that the war is now being fought by non-conscripted troops and we are not carpet-bombing civilians.

The attack of WikiLeaks also ought to be a wake up call for anyone who has rosy fantasies about whose side cloud computing providers are on. These are firms like Google, Flickr, Facebook, Myspace, and Amazon which host your blog or store your data on their servers somewhere on the internet, or which enable you to rent "virtual" computers -- again located somewhere on the net.

The terms and conditions under which they provide both "free" and paid-for services will always give them grounds for dropping your content if they deem it in their interests to do so. The moral is that you should not put your faith in cloud computing -- one day it will rain on your parade.

Look at the case of Amazon, which dropped WikiLeaks from its Elastic Compute Cloud the moment the going got rough. It seems that Joe Lieberman, a U.S. senator who suffers from a terminal case of hubris, harassed the company over the matter. Later Lieberman declared grandly that he would be "asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with WikiLeaks and what it and other web service providers will do in the future to ensure that their services are not used to distribute stolen, classified information."

This led the New Yorker's Amy Davidson to ask whether "Lieberman feels that he, or any senator, can call in the company running the New Yorker's printing presses when we are preparing a story that includes leaked classified material, and tell it to stop us."

What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the U.S., and UK in not regulating banks); corrupt (all governments in relation to the arms trade); or recklessly militaristic (the U.S. and UK in Iraq). And yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied, or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger.

As Simon Jenkins put it recently in the Guardian, "Disclosure is messy and tests moral and legal boundaries. It is often irresponsible and usually embarrassing. But it is all that is left when regulation does nothing, politicians are cowed, lawyers fall silent and audit is polluted. Accountability can only default to disclosure." What we are hearing from the enraged officialdom of our democracies is mostly the petulant screaming of emperors whose clothes have been shredded by the net.

Which brings us back to the larger significance of this controversy. The political elites of western democracies have discovered that the internet can be a thorn not just in the side of authoritarian regimes, but in their sides too. It has been comical watching them and their agencies stomp about the net like maddened, half-blind giants trying to whack a mole. It has been deeply worrying to watch terrified internet companies -- with the exception of Twitter, so far -- bending to their will.

But politicians now face an agonizing dilemma. The old, mole-whacking approach won't work. WikiLeaks does not depend only on web technology. Thousands of copies of those secret cables -- and probably of much else besides -- are out there, distributed by peer-to-peer technologies like BitTorrent.

Our rulers have a choice to make: either they learn to live in a WikiLeakable world, with all that implies in terms of their future behavior; or they shut down the internet. Over to them.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

[John Naughton is professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University. This article was originally published in The Guardian, UK, and was distributed by CommonDreams.]

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Comcast-NBC Merger : Controlling Content and Delivery

Image from ZeroPaid.
The Comcast-NBC marriage:
The importance of Net Neutrality

With a monopoly on delivery, what’s to stop a new breed of ISPs/cable providers from dictating content to customers?

By Jared Moya / December 10, 2009

See 'Internet war: The fight for free access,' Below.

A scary thing happened last week when the Comcast Corporation, the largest cable provider in the U.S. and ISP to some 15 million customers, decided to to purchase NBC Universal in order to delve further upstream from the pipe that simply delivers content to the world where’s it created.

“We believe this venture represents a natural evolution in the world of communications and entertainment, a marketplace that becomes more open, more competitive, and more global every day,” it says. “The opportunity to combine these assets makes possible some innovative programming opportunities that will permit the new company to better serve the interests of many key segments of the viewing audience, including local viewers in the markets served by NBCU’s owned-and-operated stations, and the particular interests of Hispanics, African Americans, children and families, and other key audience segments. This combination also permits us to hasten the arrival of the multiplatform, ‘anytime, anywhere’ future that Americans want.”

In other words, it has seen the writing on the wall in terms of streaming video-on-demand services. Consumers increasingly want to watch content when and where they want.

However, the move means Comcast will control every step of the system from content creation to delivery, and could easily begin preventing customers from accessing competing content or charging them more to do so than they would normally as a sort of a penalty.

“While we believe that this transaction is, and will be determined to be, pro-competitive, pro-consumer, and strongly in the public interest, we recognize that competitive concerns will be raised about the combination of such significant multiplatform assets in a single company,” it adds. “Therefore, we also intend to make a number of affirmative voluntary commitments in our applications for approval that we believe will effectively address any such concerns.”

It leaves out the fact that none of its “commitments” say anything about guaranteeing online access to its competitors or allowing competing streaming services to exist on its network. Since streaming is the future of content delivery it’s important that equal access be guaranteed to all, especially since ISPs enjoy regional monopolies around the country (try finding more than one broadband provider in your area).

“I am not exaggerating when I say that Comcast’s proposed acquisition of NBC Universal poses a genuine threat to free expression and diversity of speech in our democratic society,” says Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a non-profit law firm and free speech advocacy organization that promotes freedom of expression, independent media, and low-cost, universal access to communications services.

“I believe that the sale should not be permitted. The deal is the first attempt at vertical integration of content and delivery in the broadband era. It presents antitrust and communications regulators with the challenge of addressing whether any one company should be allowed to hold dominant positions in both video and Internet delivery,” he says.

Exactly.

The easiest manifestation of the harm it could do to competitors is the simple withholding of NBC content from both standard cable and online competitors. It also has an inherent interest in making sure that competing video streaming services don’t succeed.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts says that “today NBC makes certain content available online and I can’t imagine we will change that process,” but we all know that could change with time. The primary concern of a business will always be profits, and it’s only a matter of time before Comcast begins attempting to maximize the potential of of NBC content by dictating the price and availability.

Gigi Sohn, executive director of Public Knowledge, a public interest advocacy organization dedicated to promoting the public interest in access to information, warns that the deal will ultimately harm consumer choice and result in higher fees for services.

“With all that programming under its control, Comcast will have every incentive to take its shows off of the Internet and force consumers to buy a cable subscription to get online access to that programming,” she said. “Want to watch reruns of 30 Rock? Buy a Comcast subscription.”

The whole affair makes Network Neutrality even more important. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski has already emphasized that we need to “safeguard the free and open Internet” by ensuring, among other things, that consumers must be able to access the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice.

Without it, Comcast will have a free hand to do as it pleases.

Stay tuned.

Source / ZeroPaid

Graphic from techrepublican.

Internet war:
The fight for free access

There is a silent battle occurring in Washington, D.C., over our ability to freely access and exchange information through our last unbiased medium, the Internet. The telecom industry is feverishly buying up policy-makers in an attempt to block new, unanimously approved FCC regulations on Internet service providers.

The new plan would ensure Internet users' equal rights to its content, while prohibiting broadband providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from selectively blocking or slowing content and discriminating against competitors.

In retribution, the big telecom interests are sending a message using their highest paid member of Congress, Sen. John McCain, to submit the Internet Freedom Act, which is anything but. The act states the FCC "shall not propose, promulgate or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services."

So the FCC would not be allowed to be the FCC, giving service-providers freedom to control, without checks, any and all bandwidth, connection speed, content and applications.

Misleading policy makers and scare tactics should be ignored. FCC regulations would only affect the big Telecom interests and not the Internet itself. Opponents mistakenly claim regulations might slow innovation. Does this include censoring, blocking or stifling applications such as VoIP, Google Voice and legal peer-to-peer networking applications by companies such as AT&T and Comcast?

Regulation preventing such acts, according to a number of studies, will not only lower prices and guarantee higher performance overall, but open the web to more users -- allowing people to share ideas and programs and accelerating innovation and investment. AT&T's own two year experiment in 2006 with neutrality rules brought about greater increases in investment than any other ISP in America.

What deregulation means to these companies is not freedom from some fictitious dictatorial power but immunity from having to answer for their own irresponsible and inevitably oppressive actions. What has deregulation really given us, besides robbing us of laws designed to protect the environment, worker safety and consumer rights?

Michael A. Burger / CJOnline

• For previous Rag Blog articles about Net Neutrality, go here.

Thanks to Media Reform Daily / The Rag Blog

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Net Neutrality : Next Target of Astroturf Groups?

"WWIII Propaganda Posters: Support Net Neutrality" by Brian Moore / Flickr.
Will ‘Astroturf’ groups block Net Neutrality reform?

It's no secret the five biggest telecom companies want Net Neutrality to disappear. All just happen to be members of a 'pro-consumer' group.

By Megan Tady / September 3, 2009

Chris, McGreal, a reporter for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, took to the road last month to report on how Americans living along Route 66 -- made famous in John Steinbeck’s fictional Grapes of Wrath journey -- are faring during the recession.

You might think McGreal quickly encountered “real Americans” protesting President Obama’s “socialist” healthcare agenda by hurling insults at town hall meetings. Cable news channels are full of these images, which together portray the United States as a giant angry grassroots rally against reform-minded policies.

Odd, then, that McGreal reports this:

The outbursts against President Obama’s healthcare plans filling television screens, with opponents calling him a Nazi and accusing him of planning death committees to do in old people, are to a large degree manufactured by the same people who use similar tactics to oppose abortion.

McGreal has it right: There is no genuine mass uprising against healthcare reform or climate change legislation. But the industry groups and corporations who benefit from the status quo—and thus have the most at stake in these debates—want us to think otherwise. And they’ve developed a slick way of manufacturing dissent: creating fake grassroots -- ”astroturf” -- organizations to do their bidding in our name.

Jim Hightower describes astroturf organizations as “the corporate version of grassroots…well-orchestrated PR efforts that put real folks out front, but are instigated, organized and funded by corporate interests and right-wing front groups.”

Astroturf groups like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks rent themselves out to combat policies that hurt major corporations, from ExxonMobile to AT&T. They were behind April’s Tea Bag rallies, which protested tax increases, and flew hot air balloons as part of a campaign to discredit climate change.

Now corporations -- AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Qwest -- are paying astroturf groups to derail one of the most important public policy initiatives of our time: Net Neutrality. The cable and telecom lobby is spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to become the Web’s new gatekeepers.

What is Net Neutrality?

Astroturf groups have set their sights on blocking the passage of a valuable new bill called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. The bill, introduced into the House in early August, would protect the Internet from telecommunications and cable companies who want to control access to online content—and thereby make more money.

The principle that protects the Internet freedom we now enjoy is Net Neutrality, which leaves us free to visit any website and create and share anything we can imagine. This “open” platform allows us to bypass the old corporate gatekeepers to create our own entertainment, and organize for social change without fearing that an Internet service provider like Comcast or AT&T will block our messages because they disagree with our politics.

Net Neutrality as a baseline rule for the Internet was stripped away by a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (PDF link) that effectively allowed phone and cable companies to discriminate against websites, applications or services that they didn’t like.

We must restore this guiding principle to protect and ensure a free-flowing Web for all. The new legislation would mandate that all ISPs adhere to Net Neutrality and refrain from controlling, blocking or slowing down online content.

Rolling out the astroturf

So who exactly is shilling for industry? Let’s connect the dots.

It’s no secret the five biggest cable and telecommunications companies want Net Neutrality to disappear. All five just happen to be members of the “pro-consumer” (read: astroturf) group NetCompetition.org, which is trying to make this nasty problem go away for them. Scott Cleland, who heads the operation, has made it his job to bash Net Neutrality, even likening it to socialism: “Just like the Soviet socialists, the net neutrality movement blatantly misrepresents the facts.”

And when FreedomWorks isn’t throwing a tea party, they’re throwing a tantrum about Net Neutrality. Take it from Dick Armey, the former House majority leader who leads the group: “The proponents of Net Neutrality have some very nice sound bites and flowery talking points that would lead you to believe that it’s about keeping the Internet free,” he writes. “I assure you nothing could be further from the truth.”

Who has paid FreedomWorks bills? AT&T.

Meanwhile, the American Consumer Institute -- doesn’t that sound innocuous -- is questioning the new Net Neutrality bill for consumers. Stephen Pociask, a telecom consultant and former chief economist for Bell Atlantic, is behind the site.

In 2006, when a similar Net Neutrality bill was introduced, this group actively worked to get lawmakers to vote against it.

Speak out or cede control

What’s the difference between a real grassroots organization and a fake one? Astroturf groups are paid shills who don’t openly disclose their funding sources, pretend they’re taking a stance in the public’s interest and manufacture events to make them appear to be backed by a public majority.

For too long, special interest money has polluted the waters of public discourse in America. And unfortunately, our entrenched corporate media system is all too willing to repeat astroturf messages, thereby legitimizing them and stifling genuine debate.

The open Internet lets us speak for ourselves—unlike nearly all other media platforms. If we speak out in support of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act and drown out the din of astroturf groups and industry lobbyists, it will remain that way.

[Megan Tady is a campaign coordinator and writer for Free Press, the national, nonprofit media reform organization, and a former National Political Reporter for InTheseTimes.com.]

Source / In These Times

Also see Unmasking Astroturf: Smear Campaigns Threaten Health Care and Net Neutrality by Timothy Karr / Free Press / AlterNet / August 21, 2009

And Astroturf Groups Try to Enlist Conservatives to Oppose Net Neutrality by Philip Dampier / Save the Internet / August 5, 2009

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Ridenour Reports on Cuban Freedom of Expression

“It is not a question of luxury, an alternative which one can choose or not: worker democracy is a condition sin qua non for the normal unfolding of a socialist economy.”
Cuba: Freedom of Expression & Socialism
By Ron Ridenour / The Rag Blog

How much freedom of expression and real (active) power the Cuban working class and the population as a whole, possess and exercise is a vital matter for the very survival of socialism and its development, a question that is being addressed by a few hundred university students, professors and professionals in Havana since November 2007.

Over the last 50 years, the Communist party and government strategy for survival has focused on unity: unity in decision-making, unity around the top leaders, and unity in the media. This strategy has enabled the country to resist the United States and allied efforts to smash it.

However, this approach has prevented leaders and the bureaucracy from believing that it can afford the “luxury” of allowing any significant active participation on the part of the population to discuss and decide what the nation’s politics and economy ought to be. Nor do the media question decisions taken.

When questioned about the wisdom of this control, officials either ignore the question or respond with examples of how the US intelligence apparatuses intervene in other countries´ processes when they are not in what Washington perceives as its interests.

Suffice it here to note the successful interventions in media organs during the Allende government in Chile (1970-73), and in Nicaragua during the first Sandinista government from 1979-1990.

The University of Havana. Photo by Maycgx.
Hunger for More Information

Cuba’s leadership has maintained that broader freedom of expression can place the nation’s very sovereignty in peril. While there is some truth to this historically, strict government control of the media and other channels of information and debate cripple the ability of the common man and woman from acquiring adequate information and ideas necessary for them to become empowered.

This had led a sizeable segment of the population, and especially the younger generations, to be, disbelievers of what they are told by the media. They hunger for more and open information.

Cuban historian and professor of the University of Oriente, Frank Josue Solar, recently wrote:

“It is not a question of luxury, an alternative which one can choose or not: worker democracy is a condition sin qua non for the normal unfolding of a socialist economy. Without this it is deformed, and finally perishes.”

In the past two years or so some leftist voices have begun to hold indoor workshops to discuss these questions. There are also handfuls of students at the University of Havana and the Cujae University who meet to discuss socialism’s future.

This is the first time in decades that the government has allowed such open critique, albeit confined indoors until now.

A group of university students, professors and professionals formed the Bolshevik Workshop to pay homage to the Russian revolution, at the 90th year anniversary in November 2007, and to discuss its trajectory and collapse.

Some 500 people assembled at the University of Havana. One of the workshop organizers, Ariel Dacal Diaz, a professor of law, delivered a paper on the subject. The English translation is available at: http://www.marxist.com/cuba-october-youth-future.htm

A sizeable segment of the population is hungry for more and open information. Photo by Caridad.
Revitalizing Revolutionary Marxism in Cuba

At this assembly, and at a subsequent workshop, participants viewed the need to revitalize revolutionary Marxism, also in Cuba. The dozen coordinators of the original workshop continued writing but did not organize other meetings in 2008 although they did create a lively Spanish language website, http://www.cuba-urss.cult.cu/. They propose to “contribute to the empowerment of persons and groups in their practice as citizen-subjects within the Cuban revolution as a process and with socialism as its project.”

The website has hundreds of essays and articles by readers and past and current theoreticians and leading activists such as: Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, Luxemburg, and Che…

At the end of January this year, the coordinators organized another workshop by the name: “To live the revolution 50 years after the triumph.” They now meet monthly at the Ministry of Culture’s Juan Marinello Center, close to the Plaza of the Revolution.

The Ministry’s Antonio Gramsci Department and the Superior Art Institute (ISA) are cosponsors. The meeting hall allotted can hold just under 100 persons. It was full at the initial workshop where the theme was: Sentidos y significados de la revolucion en la vida de nosotros. (The significance and meaning of the revolution in our lives).

This lay the basis for the following workshop- “The political system of the revolution: participation, popular subject and citizenship”–which I attended.

In its announcement folder, the coordinators wrote: “This workshop seeks to contribute to the analysis on the place of citizen participation in the political system, its forms of expression concerning sovereignty, the necessity of a political and legal culture consistent with the social protagonism at the moment to create, control, limit and enjoy the political and the law.”

Specific topics were: how does socialism reformulate the concept of citizenship; mechanisms of actual popular participation; how to contribute to empowerment, all within the context of Hagamos nuestra la revolución (Making the revolution ours).

After a brief introduction and a short Cuban film, “The revolution we make,” the filled meeting hall broke into four groups to discuss what experiences we had with active participation and with forced participation, and how we felt as subject-citizens. (My participation was mainly as an observer since I do not currently live and work in Cuba, which I did from 1987 to 1996.)

Paulo Freire: “If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.” Photo by Distant Camera.
Frustrations and Impotence

Diverse expressions surfaced regarding active and “obligatory” participation. When people had felt they could participate and, perhaps make a difference they felt positive. The reverse was the case when their experiences were not truly voluntary.

A student said that it was possible “to participate but `they´ make the decisions”. A young woman student spoke enthusiastically about this workshop initiative, which allowed her to feel as an active subject, “hoping it can lead to making a difference for the society.”

A Colombian studying here said he felt more as a subject in Cuba than in Colombia but hoped for greater active participation.

An older woman, who classified herself as an ordinary worker, said she felt isolated. “`They´ don’t give me a chance to participate in any real sense. `They´ don’t take our commentaries seriously, so I feel like a crazy old woman.”

During a break, she said she believed the revolution has stood still since the mid-60s. A couple of older professional men, remembering those activist days when peasants and militia still carried weapons to defend the nation-which they did at the Bay of Pigs invasion and against counter-revolutionary groups infiltrated and financed by the CIA (Operation Mongoose)-believed the revolution died after that.

The walls were covered with handwritten quotations by Bertolt Brecht, Roque Dalton, Silvio Rodriguez and others. On one wall were posted words by Paulo Freire: “If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.”

Summaries of each group’s discussion were read during the last plenary session. The experiences and sentiments were similar. Bureaucratic mechanism’s of control were outlined and criticized during the discussion period.

There was ample self-critique as well. We must overcome self-censorship. We must not yield to the fear of losing what we may have or hope to obtain, such as a better position, and thereby remain silent in face of unfairness or wrong decisions.

One young man said each of us should find ways to improve our own behavior. For example, we must stop throwing trash anywhere we feel like it. We should intervene in all our surroundings with a positive spirit that we can make change.

He said we can make “them” listen to us, because we are the producers, the people for whom the political structure serves. An older professor suggested we invite bureaucrats to meet with us, “because they are Cubans too and we could learn from one another”.

A young professor of law, Julio Antonio Fernandez, gave a brief talk, first giving a brushstroke of revolutionary political and legal history. He then defended the constitution of 1976 as a revolutionary one, and one legalizing an active citizenry for socialism, one that establishes popular control of all mechanisms for sovereignty. The audience was so attentive a pin could be heard to drop.

“We do not seek to regress to before the revolution: we must be designers and controllers… What is most important now is a critique of current state organisms and not the possible creation of ideal institutions,” said Fernandez.

He continued by asking: If a dominating regime is necessary how can it act without alienating the people? How can we democratize power?

We have formal rights of control, Fernandez said, but need to actualize them. The law is not that of the state but that of and for the people. Citizenry duty must be restored. He also spoke against continuing discrimination both of race and gender. The individual and the collective must recognize and confront these ills.

“The danger of imperialism is real and we must find forms to act taking this reality into account,” he concluded.

Participation Leads to Solutions

Following his well received analysis, the body was asked for comments, especially concerning the question of how one can participate in a revolutionary manner. One-fourth of the audience-25 people-made comments and offered ideas to further the revolutionary process, and some called for action.

Several people young and old said that the workshop process and its ideas should go public. There must be ways of involving workers, vital producers. Some said that while laws protect the right to associate and to organize associations, and no law prohibits strikes, the reality is something different.

No one dare try to organize strikes, and many who petition for permission to organize associations are ignored or denied their right.

An older lawyer said he was still waiting, now ten years, for a reply from the Ministry of Justice to his several petitions to organize a harmless, social association of descendants of Slavic people in Cuba.

A sociology professor said that while some professions were allowed to form associations, those in sociology-a study prohibited in Cuba for three decades, which the government reinstated in the mid-90s-were not. Yet no reason was given.

A history professor said it was necessary to define what socialism really is and what it should be. Among other things, socialism must be personal as well as collective. One must feel that he/she is a decision-maker. Without that sense, what occurred in Russia and Eastern Europe could well occur in Cuba.

“Participation leads to solutions and that is liberating,” he concluded.

Another person said that Internet is a liberating tool. The Cuban Ministry of Telecommunications has repeatedly said that broader access will be technologically possible when the Venezuelan undersea cable reaches Cuba later this year or next.

One participant raised doubts about whether a dominating state power was any longer a necessity, especially one in which many leaders retain power positions for many years, even decades.

A young female student said she felt stimulated by these workshops and was optimistic that positive changes could be made. Several youths echoed her sentiment. The last speaker, a Brazilian student, said that it was most important that the group not degenerate into sectarianism as do so many left groups around the world.

Originally published in the Havana Times, 12 March 2009.

Source / Havana Times

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Group Seeks Web-Savvy, More Open Government

'First and foremost, the group wants Obama to reverse the policies of the Bush administration regarding the handling of public records.'
By Lyndsey Layton / November 12, 2008

The incoming Obama administration needs to use the Internet to publish reams of new information about federal spending, policies and performance as well as other records that have been increasingly shrouded from public view, a coalition of conservative, libertarian and progressive groups is recommending today.

The group, which has been studying government secrecy and ways to fix it for 20 months, called on Congress to invest in technology to bring federal record-keeping and communication into the 21st century.

"This was a group with very different political agendas, but we have enormous common ground on the view that government should be open and we should all have the same information to work with," said Gary D. Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a nonpartisan group that organized the effort.

"We view the government as operating in the 20th century -- some would say the 19th century," said Bass, who presented the report to President-elect Barack Obama's transition team. "But we're living in the 21st century."

The report said federal agencies should embrace the Internet and all its possibilities, allowing the public to review pending policies and comment online or through interactive dialogues, tap into extensive databases, and get e-mail updates and RSS feeds.

But first and foremost, the group wants Obama to reverse the policies of the Bush administration regarding the handling of public records.

The Bush White House set the tone early when Vice President Cheney rebuffed lawmakers and environmentalists who requested records from his energy policy task force, a battle the administration eventually won in the Supreme Court.

But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, efforts to shield government decision-making from scrutiny went into overdrive.

In early 2002, then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft issued a memo to government agencies urging them to reject requests for access to public documents allowed under the Freedom of Information Act if they could find a legal argument against the release. It was a reversal from the Clinton administration's stance, which assumed that records were public unless government proved otherwise.

Later, then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. directed agencies to restrict access to "sensitive but unclassified" information, removing tens of thousands of documents from public view. Some records that previously were publicly available ended up being reclassified and shielded from scrutiny.

"On the national security side, it's almost become a reflexive response," Bass said. "The theme was: Secrecy makes us safer. And none of us agree with that."

The impact of the directives over time is clear.

From 1998 up to when Ashcroft issued the memo, the federal government fully granted 51.3 percent of FOIA requests, according to the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government. Last year, the figure was 35.6 percent. Meanwhile, agencies are taking longer to respond to FOIA requests. From 1998 to 2002, 14.4 percent of FOIA requests were backlogged. By last year, the figure had jumped to 33 percent.

The report said the Obama administration should instruct all agencies not to wait for FOIA requests but to proactively publish records, searchable databases, policy information and performance data.

The report also recommended launching a searchable accountability database on the Internet that includes who gets money from the federal government, how it is spent, who is lobbying the executive branch and who is working in high-level government posts -- including their prior jobs and their employment after government service.

The group says it thinks Obama will be receptive to its recommendations, citing his advocacy of opening government to greater scrutiny and his co-sponsorship of a law that requires the Office of Management and Budget to put government contract information online. The site, http://www.usaspending.gov/, was launched this year.

"That was a precedent, an example of the kind of change we need," Bass said. "With the click of a mouse, you can find out who is getting how much money and for what. We know what Obama is thinking. There's a clear sense that he believes in the Web 2.0 model of government. There's a clear sense he thinks there should be much more transparency."

Obama also ran a tech-savvy campaign, exploiting the Internet and new technologies in ways never before seen in national politics.

Among the group's other recommendations for Obama:

* Define public information as broadly as possible, including audio, photos and video.

* Rescind an executive order signed by President Bush that limits access to the records of former presidents.

* Make greater use of redaction to release partial records when the administration cannot provide full disclosure, as opposed to making entire documents unavailable.

* Make exemptions from disclosure as narrow and specific as possible.

To read the complete report, go here.

Source / Washington Post

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