It’s the rich what gets the pleasure, it’s the poor that suffer under capitalism.

‘France has imposed another curfew on the Caribbean island of Martinique, amid violent protests over the soaring cost of living that have raging there for more than a month.

At least one person has been killed and 26 police officers injured in riots since the start of the week, and multiple stores have been looted. Videos circulating on social media show demonstrators putting up burning barricades and throwing rocks and bottles at police, who responded with tear gas.

The local French administration has announced a ban on public gatherings across the territory until October 14. The sale of items that could potentially be used for arson has also been prohibited, according to Reuters.

The local government has issued a statement stressing that no police officers used their weapons during the riots, and that the death of a civilian is being investigated, according to ABC News.

French Overseas Minister Francois-Noel Buffet has condemned the violence and called for “responsibility and calm.”

Didier Laguerre, mayor of the island’s capital, Fort-de-France, has sought to ease tensions, saying the protesters’ demands are legitimate.

“I understand the suffering and anger,” Laguerre said in a written statement. “I know everyone’s impatience and the resignation of those who have lost hope for a long time.”

In September, local authorities enforced a similar curfew in several neighbourhoods of Fort-de-France and the nearby town of Le Lamentin over the unrest on the island of 350,000 residents. Back then, the protests were led by the Assembly for the Protection of Afro-Caribbean Peoples and Resources, which demanded that food prices be aligned with mainland France.

Martinique and other French overseas territories have been struggling with spiralling food and transport costs. According to France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, average food prices are 40% higher than in mainland France.

Protesters have been calling for reforms, including a reduction in import taxes and better regulation of local markets, to tackle inequality.’

There’s only one solution to the problems people face – socialism.

Whilst in Moldova: ‘Anti-government protesters in Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, took to the streets with banners and empty pots denouncing the country’s pro-Western president, Maia Sandu, and her policies. The demonstrators accused Sandu’s administration of driving the country to poverty. The protest was unofficially called the “march of the hungry” and “the march of the deceived pensioners.”

Videos show dozens of people marching through the streets of Chisinau with banners reading: “Thanks, Sandu, for poverty and hunger,” “Sandu, go away,” and “For Moldova without the EU.” People chanted slogans calling for the president to step down, and banged on pots with spoons, chanting, “empty pots are louder than words.”

The march was organized by the opposition movement ‘Victory of the Young’. Yuri Vitnyansky, the movement’s leader, told RIA Novosti that the protesters seek to draw attention to the low standard of living in the country in the run-up to the heating season.

“We are on the eve of the heating season, we are facing new challenges of high prices for energy and electricity. We understand that hard times are coming not only for socially vulnerable groups of the population, but also for literally every resident of the country,” he said, explaining that the choice of empty pots as a symbol of the protest was intentional, “because the times have come when people save on everything, since there’s not enough money even for food.”

Moldova, which lies between Romania and Ukraine, is a former Soviet republic that became independent in 1991. It has been actively pushing for EU and NATO membership since 2020, when Sandu, a critic of Russia and supporter of EU integration, came to power.

The country is among the poorest in Europe, and Sandu’s opposition has accused her administration of failing to resolve the crisis in the economy and energy sector and driving Moldova into deeper poverty. Earlier this month, MP Irina Lozovan told Izvestia that farmers are being ruined by Sandu’s EU accession plans, accusing her of allowing businesses from the bloc to buy up land and property at low prices. Earlier this year, another MP, Diana Caraman, said that during Sandu’s rule, the country has greatly deteriorated, with a record 31% of the people on the brink of poverty’

Never put your trust in ‘leaders’ who are only concerned with how they can benefit from being capitalism’s minions.

CAPITALISM AND THE GRENFELL TOWER FIRE (Zoom)

Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei has been the Supreme Leader of Iran since 1989.

Sounds like the old boy has a good understanding of capitalism.

The extracts below are from a sermon made by him on 4 October.

‘The enemy of the Iranian nation is that same enemy of the Palestinian nation. It is the same enemy of the Lebanese nation. That same government is the enemy of the Iraqi nation. It is the enemy of the Egyptian nation. It is the enemy of the Syrian nation. It is the enemy of the Yemeni nation. The enemy is one and the same. The enemy’s methods vary in different countries. They use psychological warfare in some places and economic pressure in others. In some places, they use two-ton bombs and weapons. But in other places, our enemies pursue their policies with smiles. Nonetheless, the command Center is one place. They receive orders from one place. They receive the order to attack Muslim communities and nations. If this policy succeeds in one country, meaning if they manage to dominate one country, they proceed to target the next nation once they are assured of their control over the previous country. Nations mustn’t allow this to happen.

The insistence of the US and its allies on ensuring the safety of the usurping regime serves as a cover for their lethal policy of changing the [Zionist] regime into a tool for seizing all the resources of this region and using it [that regime] in major global conflicts.

Their policy is to turn the [Zionist] regime into a gateway for exporting energy from the region to the Western world while facilitating the import of goods and technology from the West to the region. This [approach] ensures the survival of the usurping regime and increases the entire region’s dependency on it. The [Zionist] regime’s brutal, reckless behaviour toward the [Resistance] fighters stems from its self-serving desire for such a situation.

This reality helps us to realize that every blow to the Zionist regime by any individual or group is not only a service to the entire region but to all of humanity.’

https://english.khamenei.ir/news/11146/Palestinian-and-Lebanese-Resistance-pushed-back-Zionist-regime

The below is from the Socialist Standard March 2006

‘We’ll be watching the news headlines, or maybe there’ll be a news flash, and we’ll be informed that the RAF, along with the USAF’s long-range B-52 bombers, and the Israeli Air Force have carried out overnight bombing raids across Iran, targeting nuclear facilities, radar stations, airfields and anti-aircraft bases.

As in the case of Iraq, there will be the prior attempt at the mass manufacture of consent. Bush and Blair, and indeed any other European leaders who think they will have something to gain, will peddle the line about newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They’ll say he is another Saddam Hussein who, if Iran’s nuclear programme is not halted, will be able to lob a nuclear missile at the West in a few minutes and that Iran is supporting international terrorism, financing terrorist cells all over the world, including Al Qaeda. The case will be made that Iran is still very much a part of the axis of evil, first referred to in George W Bush’s State of the Union Address in 2002, and its people, secretly harbouring thoughts of Western-style democracy, are crying out for regime change.

Indeed, it has already started. In his January 2005 State of the Union Address, Bush said: “Iran remains the world’s primary state sponsor of terror, pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve.” The White House has in fact been steadily creating an anti-Iran climate in the US for some time. The Wall Street Journal (3 February) reported that “in recent polls a surprisingly large number of Americans say they would support U.S. military strikes to stop Tehran from getting the bomb.”

Both Bush and Blair have already hinted at military intervention and Israel has previously threatened Iran. The New York Times (13 January) reported Meir Dagan, the chief of the Israeli Mossad, declaring that “Israeli policy makers all agree that a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities cannot be ruled out”. The Sunday Times (11 December) had already reported that Ariel Sharon had instructed Israel’s air force to get ready for a military attack against Iran by the end of March, when Israeli elections are scheduled. Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, gave notice that if Sharon did not wipe out Iran’s nuclear installations, he would see the job was done if he became prime minister in March.

A year ago it was reported that Iran was anticipating an attack by the US and that it was ready for an impressionable response within 15 minutes. For over a year Iran has been mobilising recruits into citizens’ militia and has made plans to engage in the kind of “asymmetrical” warfare that has bogged down US troops in neighbouring Iraq.

Iran has sizeable oil reserves that look quite enticing and which other countries have been eyeing up for some time. The highly regarded Oil and Gas Journal reported last year that 125.8 billion barrels of oil were in Iran just waiting to be pumped out. Iran is also the number two producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Most of Iran’s crude oil is to be found in an area known as Khuzestan, bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf and the location of Iran’s largest untapped oil fields – Yadavaran and Azadegan. There are serious profits to be had here but, tellingly, the Chinese state oil company China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation has a 50 percent stake in the vast Yadavaran field.

Russia too has a claim in Iranian oil. Three years ago Russia decided to expand its oil procuring and distribution methods by shipping Russian crude to Iran, to be refined for domestic consumption, with Iran delivering a corresponding amount of oil to Russia, thus decreasing the cost of exports via tankers loaded at Black Sea ports and making Russian oil accessible to buyers at competitive prices.

So it’s unlikely that Russia and China will agree to a UN Security Council Resolution against Iran which could justify military action if it is thought to have been breached; for they have strong vested interests in Iran which they are desperate not to jeopardise. Not that this will bother the US in the least, as both Russia and especially China are economic powers that threaten US global ambitions, so any attack on Iran, which consequently leads to the overthrow of the present regime in Tehran, upsets the long-term ambitions of China and Russia.

Iran would be no push-over. The US would not enjoy a hasty capitulation of the Tehran regime, as was the case with Baghdad, exhausted by over a decade of perpetual bombardment and sanctions. The Iranian army comprises about 350,000 active-duty soldiers and 220,000 conscripts and you can add to this 120,000 of the elite Revolutionary Guard. The country’s navy and air force total 70,000 men. Between them, the armed forces have about 2,000 tanks, 300 combat aircraft, and three submarines, hundreds of helicopters and at least a dozen Russian-made Scud missile launchers, the kind Saddam fired at Israel during the first Gulf War of 1991. Iran also has an unknown number of Shahab missiles with a range of more than 1,500 miles. With this in mind you can begin to appreciate the remarks of John Bolton, now the US ambassador to the UN, in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq: “Real men want to go to Iran”.

True, a lot of Iran’s military hardware is old, thirty years old in some cases, and no match for the state-of-the-art weaponry the US is wont to use. Nevertheless, it is still weaponry and more than capable of delivering untold damage to US forces or any other country within striking distance of its missiles perceived as being pro-US.

With Iran controlling the Strait of Hormutz, oil tankers could easily be bombed as well tankers and platforms elsewhere in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. And Tehran could escalate any conflict, giving the nod for Lebanese Hezbollah militant attacks on Israel, sanctioning also assaults on US interests throughout Central Asia

.Oil Bourse

This month Iran intends to launch its Oil Bourse which will facilitate the future trade of oil in the euro instead of the US dollar. According to John Pilger writing in the New Statesman (13 February) this could have far-reaching consequences:

“The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2trn. America’s military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China. That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran’s nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world’s fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world’s central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was attacked.”

Likewise, Krassimir Petrov, Professor of Economics at the American University of Bulgaria, writing of the establishment of an Oil Bourse in the January edition of Energy Bulletin, said:

“In economic terms, this represents [a great threat] because it will allow anyone willing either to buy or to sell oil for euros to transact on the exchange, thus circumventing the US dollar altogether. Europeans will not have to buy and hold dollars in order to secure their payment for oil, but would instead pay with their own currencies. The adoption of the euro for oil transactions will provide the European currency with a reserve status that will benefit the European at the expense of the Americans … The Chinese and the Japanese will be especially eager to adopt the new exchange, because it will allow them to drastically lower their enormous dollar reserves and diversify with euros, thus protecting themselves against the depreciation of the dollar.”

Addicted to oil?

George Bush, in his January 2006 State of the Union Address made an interesting statement: “The US is addicted to oil”. That’s perhaps the truest statement Bush has ever said, but he’s mistaken if this is meant to signify that the US is going into detox and will be weaning itself off oil. At the moment there is just too much US corporate interest in the Middle East and Central Asia for the US to even think of cutting back on one barrel of oil.

Furthermore, there are dangerous competitors out there, who have an insatiable thirst for oil, so it’s important that the US has a say in who has access to the world’s oil resources. The US is not that dependent upon Middle East oil for its own domestic consumption, but is aware that one way to control its foremost economic rivals is to influence just how much oil they can have and at what price. With China a fastly growing economic, political and military power, naked aggression is a strategy the US has been and will continue to be prepared to pursue throughout the oil rich regions of the Middle East and central Asia, regardless of the cost of life and the dent to the US’s global image. The dollar needs defending, the world’s oil resources need to be controlled and military bases built. Dealing with Iran is just one move in the US game-plan to maintain its global hegemony – the real enemy is yet to be confronted.

But for now Washington will use its man at the UN, John “Real Man” Bolton, to help hype a global crisis which could consequently be used to justify attacks on Iran, with or without the blessing of the Security Council. No evidence exists as to Iranian desires to create an atomic bomb, but the country is enriching uranium – legally, as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which some pro-US nuclear states have refused to sign up to. This is the excuse that is being used to whip up support another war for oil.’

John Bissett

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/03/real-men-want-to-go-to-iran-2006.html

Does the following come under mythical place has no fury liked a woman scorned, or patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel?

Yelena Valeryevna Välbe is a Russian former cross-country skier. She won a record 14 gold medals (5 in relays) at the FIS World Championships, including all five golds in the 1997 edition. She also won three Olympic gold medals (all in relays) and four bronze medals in various Winter Olympic Games as well as four World Cup Crystal Globes. Wiki.

She has a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the best skier of the 20th century.

She sounds like a very impressive talented athlete.

So why does she put this writer in mind of the Puddle of Mudd song? Explicit lyrics. She hates me.

Yelana in an interview apparently ‘slammed the West for banning the country’s athletes from most international sports tournaments in response to the Ukraine conflict.’ A view that elicits some sympathy because why should individuals be held responsible for what their capitalist supporting States do?

But Yelana is quoted as saying that “if we had dropped a serious bomb in the centre of London, it would have all been over by now and we would have been allowed everywhere.”

A bit extreme Yelana? No, that is a very very extreme sentiment. Why would you wish death and destruction on innocent people, many of whom abhor the warmongering of their own government and that of the Russian government? And of any government/state which kills and maims innocent men, women and children?

Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is a Russian politician who has been serving as deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia since 2020.Medvedev was also the third president of Russia from 2008 to 2012 and prime minister of Russia from 2012 to 2020.

Dimitry responded to her comment with, “Our famous skier Elena Vyalbe suggested dropping a bomb on London. She’s right, of course, but we need to solve the problem radically and just sink the damned island of Anglo-Saxon dogs,”

He did not elaborate on whether ‘the problem’ refers to sports or the state of Russia’s relations with the UK in general.’

‘The UK and NATO have sided with Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, providing Kiev with financial and military aid and placing sanctions on Moscow. London was among 30 nations that urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to uphold a ban it had placed on Russian and Belarusian athletes when it proposed allowing them to compete in the Summer Olympics this year.

Most Western-based sports bodies banned Russia and Belarus from taking part in international sports tournaments shortly after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, including the IOC, FIFA, FIDE, and others. Moscow has repeatedly criticized the restrictions.’

The below is from the Socialist standard February 1937 Reprinted from December 1915

What is patriotism?

‘The answer depends largely upon the point of view. From one standpoint patriotism appears as the actual religion of the modern State. From another it is the decadence and perversion of a noble and deep-rooted impulse of loyalty to the social unit, acquired by mankind during the earliest stages of social life. From yet another viewpoint, that of capitalist interests, patriotism is nothing more or less than a convenient and potent instrument of domination.



Its Origin

The word itself, both etymologically and historically, has its root in paternity. In tribal days the feeling of social solidarity, which has now become debased into patriotism, was completely bound up with the religion of ancestor worship. In tribal religion, as in the tribe itself, all were united by ties of blood. The gods and their rights and ceremonies were exclusive to the tribesmen. All strangers were rigidly debarred from worship. The gods themselves were usually dead warriors. Every war was a holy war. Among the ancient Israelites, for instance, the holy Ark of Jehovah of Hosts accompanied the tribes to battle. It was this abode or movable tomb of the ancestral deity that went with the Jews in their march through the desert, and even to Jericho, playing an important part in the fall of that remarkable city. All the traditions of the Jewish religion, in fact, were identified with great national triumphs.



A Bond of Union

Thus tribal religion was completely interwoven with tribal aspirations and integrity. Tribal “patriotism” and religion were identical. Indeed, without the strongest possible social bond, without a kind of “patriotism” that implied the unhesitating self-sacrifice of the individual for the communal existence, it would have been utterly impossible for tribal man to have won through to civilisation. Natural selection insured that only those social groups which developed this supreme instinct of mutual aid could survive; the rest were crushed out in the struggle for existence. Is it a matter for wonder if it be found that such a magnificent social impulse, so vital to the struggling groups of tribal man, received periodical consecration in the willing human sacrifices so common in primitive religious ceremonial? Bound up with the deliberate manufacture of gods for the protection of the tribe and its works, there is indicated a social recognition of the need for, and value of, the sacrifice of the individual for the common weal.



A Bond of Another Kind

This noble impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But being a powerful social force it has lent itself to exploitation. Therefore, with the development of class rule this great impulse is made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves.



Patriotism and Religion Part Company

With the decay of society based on kinship, religion changed also, and from being tribal and exclusive it became universal and propagandist. “Patriotism” at the same time began to distinguish itself from religion. The instinctive tribal loyalty became transformed, by the aid of religion and the fiction of kinship, into political loyalty. In a number of instances in political society, as in Tudor England, the struggle for priority between religion and patriotism became so acute as to help in the introduction of a more subservient form of religion. Thus patriotism became emancipated from religion, and the latter became a mere accessory to patriotism as handmaiden of class rule.



Patriotism Always Obliges

Though universal religion did not split up at the same time as the great empire that gave it birth, patriotism did so. The latter has, in fact, always adapted, enlarged, or contracted itself to fit the existing political unit, whether feudal estate, village, township, county, kingdom, republic or empire. No political form has been too absurd for it to fill with its loyalty. No discordance of race, colour or language has been universally effective against it.

What, then, is patriotism in essence to-day? It is usually defined as being devotion to the land of our fathers. But which is the land of our fathers? Our fathers came from many different parts of the world. The political division of the world in which we live is an artificial entity. The land has been wrested from other races. The nation they call “ours” is the result of a conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes. Unlike the free tribesmen we are hirelings; we possess no country.



The One Common Bond To-day

Nationality, of which patriotism is the superstition, covers no real entity other than that of a common oppression, a unified government. It does not comprise any unity of race, for in no nation is there one pure race, or anything like it. It does not cover a unity of language, for scarcely a nation exists in which several distinct languages are not indigenous. Nor is it any fixity of territory, for this changes from decade to decade, while the inhabitants of the transferred territory have to transfer their allegiance, their patriotism, to the new nation.



The only universal bond of nationality or patriotism that exists for us to-day is, then, that of subjection to a single government. Patriotism in the worker is pride in the common yoke imposed by a politically unified ruling class. Yet it is this artificial entity that we are called upon to honour before life itself. This badge of political servitude is called an object worthy of supreme sacrifice. The workers are expected to abandon all vital interests and sacrifice all they hold dear for the preservation of an artificial nationality that is little more than a manufactured unit of discord: a mere focus of economic and political strife.



Ignoble Exploitation

Thus one of the noblest fruits of man’s social evolution—the impulse of sacrifice for the social existence—is being prostituted by the capitalist class to maintain a system of exploitation, to obtain a commercial supremacy, and preserve or extend the boundaries of a superfluous political entity. The workers are duped by the ruling class into sacrificing themselves for the preservation of a politico-economic yoke of a particular form and colour. Many so-called Socialists have fallen headlong into this trap.



Had social solidarity developed in equal measure with the broadening of men’s real interests, it would now be universal in character instead of national. The wholesale mixture of races, and the economic interdependence of the whole world, show that nationalism is now a barrier, and patriotism, as we know it, a curse. Only the whole world can now be rightly called the land of our fathers. Only in the service of the people of the whole world, and not against those of any part of it, can the instinct of social service find its highest and complete expression. The great Socialist has pointed the way. He did not call upon the workers of Germany alone to unite. He appealed to the toilers of the whole world to join hands; to a whole world of labour whose only loss could be its parti-coloured chains. And in this alone lies the consummation of that tribal instinct of social solidarity of which patriotism is the perverted descendant.



Capitalism the Barrier

Capitalism, therefore, stands as the barrier the destruction of which will not only set free the productive forces of society for the good of all, but will also liberate human solidarity and brotherhood from the narrow confines of nationality and patriotism. Only victorious labour can make true the simple but pregnant statement: “Mankind are my brethren, the world is my country.” Patriotism and nationalism as we know them will then be remembered only as artificial restrictions of men’s sympathy and mutual help; as obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; as impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and co-operation; as bonds that bound men to slavery; as incentives that set brothers at each other’s throats.



Despite its shameless perversion by a robber class the great impulse to human solidarity is by no means dead. Economic factors give it an ever firmer basis, and in the Socialist movement it develops apace. Even the hellish system of individualism, with its doctrine of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, has been unable to kill it. And in the great class struggle of the workers against the drones, of the socially useful against the socially pernicious, in this last great struggle for the liberation of humanity from; wage-slavery, the great principle of human solidarity, based upon the necessities of to-day and impelled by the deep-seated instincts of the race, will come to full fruition and win its supreme historical battle.



A Vile Use of a Noble Sentiment

That is our hope and aspiration. For the present, however, we are surrounded by the horrors of war added to the horrors of exploitation, and subjected to the operation of open repression as well as to the arts of hypocrisy and fraud. With the weakening power of religion to keep the workers obedient, the false cult of nationality and patriotism is being exploited to the full. Like religion, patriotism has its vestments, its ceremonies, its sacred emblems, its sacred hymns and inspired music; all of which are called in aid of the class interests of our masters, and utilised desperately to lure millions to the shambles for their benefit. Thus is an heroic and glorious social impulse perverted and debased to the support of arégime of wage-slavery, and to the furtherance of the damnable policy of the slave-holding class: to divide and rule.’

F. C. Watts

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/07/what-is-patriotism-1937.html

On 2 October Julian Assange took part in a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. PACE’s conclusion was that Assange had been a political prisoner.

Assange said, ‘“only US citizens have free speech rights; Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights.” the US “Espionage Act still applies to them regardless of where they are. So, Europeans in Europe must obey US secrecy law with no densenesses at all,”An American in Paris” “can talk about what the US government is up to – perhaps. But for a Frenchman in Paris, to do so is a crime without any defence and he may be extradited just like me.”

As part of his plea deal to end his incarceration, Assange is prevented from filing a case at the European Court of Human Rights or even a freedom of information act request” in the US.

From the Socialist Standard January 2011

‘Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack.



In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, Wikileaks is currently mirrored on 1426 up-to -date sites (from WikiLeaks website)

Once upon a time, if you wanted to keep a secret, you locked it in a drawer and held the only key. When states wanted to keep secrets, they used huge underground warehouses with security locks and armed guards to store the vast quantity of information compiled by their spies, spooks and secret police. Most of this information was useless, and most of it never saw the light of day. Then the information revolution happened.



A very large wired information network looks exactly like a sieve, and that’s essentially what it is. Information leaks out of it in any number of ways, on purpose or by accident. When you can hold the personal details of 50,000 people on a pen-drive no larger than a cigarette lighter and when these can fall out of pockets on the tube train home, the potential for leakage is gigantic. Then there is email, which is not secure and which has become the preferred mode of communication for all businesses and public services. Just a few emails brought about ‘Climategate’ in 2009, in which a few careless phrases by researchers at the University of East Anglia fatally undermined the authority of the Independent Panel on Climate Change.



The recent WikiLeaks’ exposure of the private lives and opinions of the world’s movers and shakers has been so prodigiously covered in the press that the details are scarcely worth covering again, yet from a socialist standpoint the furore deserves to be set within a wider context than the conventional media never discusses. The capitalist class, as indeed all hitherto ruling classes, owes its power not only to its private ownership and control of wealth but also its private ownership and control of information, and inevitably socialists must ask themselves to what extent the overthrow of the latter is likely to lead to the overthrow of the former.



While controlled leaks have always been a tool of government, or internecine feuds within government, it was rare until recently for damaging information ever to escape and when it did, retribution was punitive. When in the 1970s Philip Agee, a CIA agent working in the UK, published an exposé of CIA operations including names of operatives, the US authorities reacted with fury, had him deported and mounted a smear campaign against him involving sex allegations and alcoholism that ran to 18,000 pages (Guardian, 19 December). In 1971 Richard Nixon was tape-recorded speaking thus of Daniel Ellsberg, another Pentagon mole gone public: “Let’s get the son of a bitch into jail…. Don’t worry about his trial. Try him in the press.”



Mud, glorious mud

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has made no secret of his involvement in the leaks, so one would be astonished not to see governments trying to fling whatever mud they could at him. And sure enough, he is currently on bail in the UK and facing possible extradition to Sweden to answer sex crime allegations, followed by a possible further rendition to the US to face a lifetime wearing an orange jumpsuit in a certain Cuban seaside resort.



That these allegations are a frame-up is a conclusion that many people have leapt to with a conviction thus far unsupported by the known facts, however it is undeniable that the whole business looks damned fishy. If the UK or Swedish authorities go one step further and allow the Americans to get their hands on him, the affair may well blow up to become the Dreyfus case of the 21st century.



But how do you try a website? WikiLeaks is a game-changer for state security forces and radicals alike, challenging the whole notion of secrecy and calling into question what if anything can be kept secret. The universal state condemnation of WikiLeaks rings increasingly hollow and comical when one looks at the massive public support for it. The vast number of mirroring sites – sites that duplicate WikiLeaks – means that WikiLeaks could not realistically be shut down without shutting down the internet.



It isn’t only source websites which pose a problem for state security, it’s also destination sites. If you wanted to leak a confidential document in 1950, there would only be a few newspapers or small printing presses to leak it to, most of whom would not risk touching it. Conventional media tend to have a symbiotic, back-scratching relationship with government which ensures that newspapers are self-regulating so direct news bans – D notices – are rarely invoked. Media bosses are capitalists themselves and have no interest in rocking the boat. But the other side of the information equation is publication and distribution, and the internet has created unlimited scope for both.



Thus Wikileaks can sidestep conventional media and leak to anywhere, even to the Socialist Standard if it chose to, which means that the capitalist class has for all practical purposes lost control of the mass media. It cannot hope to strike mutually agreeable deals with every media outlet, especially not those avowedly hostile to it, and any attempt to coerce or threaten such outlets would be likely to blow up in its face and make matters worse.



Off with their heads

Aside from the allegations against Julian Assange, Wikileaks itself is not however above criticism. Its foundation in 2006 is shrouded in some mystery. Founders allegedly include Chinese dissidents, mathematicians, technologists and journalists, yet none have been identified. There is supposedly an advisory board of 9 members, yet one ‘board member’ has said that his involvement is minimal and that the board is merely ‘window dressing’. One volunteer told Wired Magazine that Assange considers himself “the heart and soul of this organisation, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organiser, financier, and all the rest”. Indeed, WikiLeaks is not even a Wiki anymore because Assange has removed public editing access to it, and has moved away from being a mere whistleblowers’ conduit to a full publisher in his own right. Whether or not he set out to do so, Assange does seem to be going for personal glory but in doing so is drawing down all the fire on himself. One-man-bands don’t play well when they’re playing against the state. One way or another, American and European state agencies are out to get WikiLeaks which is why the obvious move is to go for a decapitation strike against Assange himself.



Even if they succeed in bringing down Assange, there is no stopping what he started. This month a former Wikileaks advisor is set to found a new website called OpenLeaks, which aims to avoid the problems WikiLeaks has encountered, specifically by being governed democratically and by remaining as a conduit for anonymous information rather than empire-building into a publishing enterprise. At heart is the open source philosophy which holds that cooperative and transparent endeavour is more productive and progressive than the secretive and territorial ethos which underpins most capitalist activity: “Our long term goal is to build a strong, transparent platform to support whistleblowers – both in terms of technology and politics – while at the same time encouraging others to start similar projects” (Wikipedia, OpenLeaks). There is a parallel here with file-sharing sites, which started as centrally controlled databases (Napster) that were easy to target and kill, before evolving into distributed peer-to-peer systems which had no centre and could never be nailed down and neutralised. There is a further parallel to be made here with democratic models in politics. Socialists oppose leaders and vanguardist leadership-based groups on the left, not only in fact but also in theory, because top-down hierarchy structures are too easy to neutralise. In fact, as a distributed, egalitarian and transparent organisation, we could lay claim to being the original political Open Source movement.



All of a Twitter

There is a momentum of workers’ disgust at capitalism at the moment, at least in the western countries, starting with the sub-prime collapse which exposed nonsensical business logic, then massive bail-outs and bankers bonuses, together with squalid parliamentary expense fiddles, followed by the most savage cuts in living memory and attacks on the poor and those on benefits. Anyone who thought ‘the yoof of today’ could never be motivated by politics is having to eat their words as students pour onto the streets, camcorders in hand to record and upload police cavalry charges onto YouTube just as the police attempt to deny them. Meanwhile ‘hacktivists’ attack banks with massive Denial of Service offensives and the spontaneously organised UK-Uncut group occupy and picket the stores and offices of banks, mobile phone companies and high street stores accused of large scale tax avoidance. Though one could always quibble with these activists’ grasp of the bigger picture over tax, or their tactics in singling out individual companies when, after all, they’re all at it, you’ve got to admire how the digital native generation are mobilising their opposition in ways that the ruling class has not anticipated and is ill-prepared for.



The grubby game that is capitalism is being exposed as never before in its history, and more people are getting to know about it every day. The genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no putting it back in. These are interesting times for socialists.’

Paddy Shannon

Whist heated speculation on social media about the personal behaviour of a UK ‘leader’ is occupying many, the real consequences of capitalism are to be seen in the devastation of untold innocent lives in the conflicts currently continuing across the world.

Men, women and children bombed in civilian residential areas, military forces composed of the working class, are ‘unalived’, killed ‘put to death, destroyed, terminated, ended, and for what purpose?

Who gains materially from such enormous destruction of human life?

Those involved in the military industrial complex for one. One imagines them are rubbing their hands with glee at the practical demonstrations of how effective their killing commodities are. Good for future sales. But don’t forget the super bonus additional profits their death and desruction machines are generating.

Secondly, ‘leaders’ on a power trip who announce it’s all to save their ‘nation’. Or who need wars and conflicts in order to stay in power. Don’t want to give up all those perks doncha know.

A favourite hashtag on social media is to ‘Not in my name.’ Well, enough is enough. Time the majority said, Capitalism, Not In My Name.

Workers, end the killing spree now. Fight for a Socialist society, not capitalism.

´Everybody can now see that, under its present government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is a rogue state on the rampage even from the point of view of the capitalist world order. Established as a state to protect the members of a particular minority, it now seeks to defend its existence through waging a ruthless war against other terrorists in the region, regardless of how many ordinary people are killed in the process. Their lives don’t matter because they are not members of the same minority group.