Re: [Marxism] The Truth About the WikiLeaks C.I.A. Cache

[Jeff via Marxism]

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Wouldn't we trust Snowden more on this?


Yes I would. I wasn't eager to reply concerning the article by Zeynep 
Tufekci which Louis posted, because I felt a political agreement with 
him about Wikileaks, from what I could gather. More on that below.


But on technical matters, I believe he's wrong. Or more specifically 
he's wrong about what is being claimed. He displays that 
misunderstanding where he says:
   "this turned out to be misleading. Neither Signal nor WhatsApp, for 
example, appears by name in any of the alleged C.I.A. files"


But he later shows that he does understand the underlying technical 
issue:
"techniques for hacking into individual phones. That way, they could 
see the encrypted communications just as individual users of the apps 
would.. That is about the vulnerability of your device. It has 
nothing to do with the security of the apps."


This is exactly right: the alleged (probably true) malware did exactly 
that: it wormed its way into the device deeply enough that it could 
observe any data within it. That would include whatever was input into 
the keyboard, microphone, or videocamera, and whatever was received (and 
decoded by the secure application!) destined for the screen, keyboard, 
or saved on the harddrive. FOR THAT REASON, there was no reason to 
mention any specific application that had been compromised, because it 
didn't involve any application and didn't break any encryption. It 
snoops from inside the device. That makes it the optimum way for an 
attacker to spy WHEN POSSIBLE.


Zeynep Tufekci points out that snooping of this sort is not at all new. 
It is one reason that people (in addition to normal security measures) 
would want to cover their portable device's camera and microphone (the 
latter being difficult) when not using them. But although such malware 
has existed (last time, I heard that the Chinese government was using 
such malware against enemies in the west), the hard part is placing the 
malware on the device, and that ability is what was being alleged about 
the CIA. To install malware you have to employ one of 3 vulnerabilities:


- A physical vulnerability; breaking into your house (etc.) and 
tampering with your computer without leaving a noticeable trace.


- A vulnerability in another trusted program, especially part of the 
operating system. But these are the sorts of things that are discovered 
and then quickly repaired by the annoying "updates" your computer 
frequently undergoes.


- A human vulnerability: in recent years this has proven to be the 
weakest link, and is why people are constantly warned (but not 
sufficiently in all cases!) not to install applications from untrusted 
sources, to make sure the URL of the trusted website they are connected 
to shows it is really the one it claims to be, and not to respond to 
"phishing" emails where people are tricked into giving up their 
passwords.


Again, Zeynep Tufekci seems to understand that but is wrong where he 
starts about "If the C.I.A. goes after your specific phone and hacks 
it" but that's where he might be mistaken. He seems to be suggesting 
a PERSON at the CIA had to "go after" someone's computer. But no, it 
could as well be a "bot", a computer program, told to try to install 
this on every device it can find connected to the internet. And the CIA 
could have a hundred such computers working at the same time. Even worse 
is a true "virus": it knows how to replicate so that when it takes over 
a computer it spreads itself to others, through one or another means 
(including human vulnerability, sending a dangerous email to the 
person's contact list). In either case, the CIA could spread the malware 
without making demands on their poor overworked staff.


Now on the political side, though, it appears that the Wikileaks 
disclosure may have about the same motives that Assange has shown 
himself to be generally pursuing. Taking attention off of Trump, and 
directing it on the CIA which Trump has a (somewhat) antagonistic 
relationship to. Trump isn't at all implicated in anything the CIA has 
been doing before he took power (which is when this capability was 
developed), so he isn't affected. Glen Greenwald was interviewed on BBC, 
lauding Wikileaks for the revelation. The interviewer, somewhat 
antagonistically asked him though something like: "But Wikileaks has now 
released the CIA's computer code they hacked, and now ANY ENEMY of ours 
[US, UK, etc.] can just use it to spy on US TOO!!" Greenwald's response? 
I almost puked. Greenwald assured the reporter that Wikileaks is 
RESPONSIBLE and wouldn't just give this to "our enemies." Greenwald 

[Marxism] Why Trotskyists have the greatest opportunities to complete World revolution?

[Anthony Brain via Marxism]

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 What the Walter Kronkie film produced in the 1950s and 1960s gives clues for 
the relatitionship of the forces between Imperialism and the workers’ states 
and Colonial revolution! by Anthony Brain

  
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What the Walter Kronkie film produced in the 1950s and 1960s gives clues f...
 Due to the dual nature of Stalinism they sometimes work with Imperialism to 
derail world revolution and gain som...  |   |

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[Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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I read with interest the comments of Joseph Green on the Revolutionary
Socialists of Egypt. (I urge people to write out the full name before using
abbreviations, by the way.) I was in Egypt, in Tahrir Square, shortly after
Mubarak was driven from office and I had quite a few conversations with the
Revolutionary Socialists (RS), who had a tend there. Two things of note:

During the occupation of Tahrir Square - and in similar occupations
elsewhere in Egypt at the time - the occupiers had established committees
to run the occupation. These committees concerned themselves with
sanitation and similar issues, according to the RS comrades I spoke with.
According to them, a conscious decision was made that these committees
would not discuss politics. The explanation given me was that this was
because there were so many diverse groups there that any political
discussion would have led to huge debates. The RS supported this decision.

I questioned this at the time, and I'm now more convinced than ever that
this was a mistake. All of Egypt was in turmoil in those days; the
beginnings of a revolutionary process was under way. Inherent and necessary
to any revolutionary process is debate over different views, over what is
the way forward. It seems to me that there was the potential for these
occupation committees to become the beginnings of workers councils and the
beginnings of dual power to have emerged. Take one example:

At the time I was there a group of workers in a factory had a case in court
against a boss who was shutting down the plant. Suppose the RS had demanded
that the occupation committee hear the case and rule on it. Suppose the
committee had refused so, instead, the RS established a public forum to
hear the case in Tahrir Square. Then, a decision could have been  made as
to how to come to the aid of those workers.

Something like that would have had the potential to spread like crazy
throughout the area, to other work places and working class communities.

Instead, the revolutionary moment was lost.

Subsequently, when Morsi ran for president the RS supported him. They
argued that if he were elected it would give more time for the revolution
to develop. We see how well that worked out.

In addition, as one aspect of a growing counter revolution, we saw the
increase of mass sexual assaults on women. In response, some women
organized armed self-defense groups. To my knowledge, no revolutionary
force, including the RS, took this up and helped build and publicize it.
Imagine if they had, and such armed self-defense groups also were
integrated into the strike wave that followed.

So, my general point is that there were some huge opportunities for some
genuine revolutionary socialists in Egypt. it is very unfortunate that the
"Revolutionary" Socialists were not up to the task.

John Reimann

-- 
"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."
Asata Shakur
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com and //
www.facebook.com/WorkersIntlNetwork?ref=stream
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[Marxism] Fwd: The Left's great Russian conspiracy theory | Coffee House

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Ex-Trotskyist Brendan O'Neill, leader of libertarian Spiked online sect, 
writes piece for Tory magazine calling out American left for hysteria 
over Russia. It makes your head spin...


http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/03/lefts-great-russian-conspiracy-theory/
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[Marxism] Fwd: This is the Most Detailed Map of the Universe to Date

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://futurism.com/videos/detailed-map-date-place-universe/
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[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-War]: Schneider on Hudson, 'Army Diplomacy: American Military Occupation and Foreign Policy after World War II'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message --
From: H-Net Staff 
Date: Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 2:19 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-War]: Schneider on Hudson, 'Army Diplomacy:
American Military Occupation and Foreign Policy after World War II'
To: h-rev...@h-net.msu.edu


Walter M. Hudson.  Army Diplomacy: American Military Occupation and
Foreign Policy after World War II.  Battles and Campaigns Series.
Lexington  University Press of Kentucky, 2015.  416 pp.  $50.00
(cloth), ISBN 978-0-8131-6097-9.

Reviewed by Benjamin M. Schneider (George Mason University)
Published on H-War (March, 2017)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

Walter M. Hudson's Army Diplomacy is a well-written, thoughtful
treatment of the origins of the military governments that the United
States established to rule much of Europe and Asia in the aftermath
of the Second World War. Meticulous in his presentation of the
formative experiences that shaped the American army's approach to
military government and the doctrine created to institutionalize that
knowledge, Hudson falters only in grappling with the admittedly
sprawling literature on the conduct of the occupations themselves.

Hudson sets his study of the American occupations apart from previous
works on the subject by flipping the usual narrative on its head.
Rather than treating the occupations as the beginning of something
larger--often the Cold War writ large or decolonization in
Asia--Hudson examines them as the culmination of the US Army's
efforts to place postwar planning under its purview and
institutionalize the practice of military government. Therefore, the
work is organized around two central questions: how did the army come
to be the organization with primary responsibility for postwar
government and how did it learn to conduct those operations?

These questions dominate the first half of _Army Diplomacy_, which
covers the development of the army's thinking and doctrine on
military government from the Civil War up to the creation of
positions for staff officers exclusively devoted to military
government and civil affairs in 1944. Hudson argues that three major
factors influenced the army's doctrinal approach to military
government during this period. The first of these was the
professionalization of the army in the late nineteenth century. The
army developed a "separate, independent sphere of expertise" for its
officer corps in which they were seen as experts by civilian agencies
(p. 19). Second was the body of law related to military government
developed by the US government and the international community that
delineated what an occupying force was legally allowed and expected
to do. The 1863 Lieber Code--developed to govern the US military
during the Civil War--served as the kernel of this body of law, which
would find fruition in the later Geneva Conventions and the Rules of
Land Warfare. Hudson argues that the code served both to place the
conduct of occupation under the purview of the army instead of a
civilian agency and to make an occupation a means of furthering
military ends by stipulating that all allowances made to the occupied
territory were subject to the constraints of "military necessity."
Third, the army developed a practical doctrine for field commanders
conducting an occupation around the abovementioned body of
international law and the experiences of the army in the field,
particularly, says Hudson, in the occupation of the Rhineland after
the First World War. As laid down in the 1920 Hunt Report and later
formalized in army field manual (FM) 27-5 (1940), this doctrine
emphasized the need for a unified military command of the occupation
zone, and the creation and use of units specifically trained and
tasked with military government, and "assumed functioning civil
structures, unquestioned authority of the military government, and a
benign environment free of partisan guerrilla activity" (p. 43).

The second half of _Army Diplomacy_ is devoted to three case studies
examining the occupations of Germany, Austria, and Korea. While at
first glance this trio comes across as odd--Hudson feels the need to
defend the omission of Japan and the inclusion of Austria--the
selection is intended to offer a selection of cases that illustrate
how the army occupied nations it conquered (Germany), those it
liberated (Korea), and those in between (Austria). Across these three
studies, Hudson argues that the army was most successful where
conditions on the ground met the optimistic assumptions laid out in
FM 27-5. Driven by "a narrow focus on military goals" and believing
in "prolonged occupations beyond its ability and expertise," in
Hudson's 

Re: [Marxism] The Truth About the WikiLeaks C.I.A. Cache

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

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> Wouldn't we trust Snowden more on this?
 
Yes, and no. Both can be true. I had a similar issue with the headlines
that the NYTimes article is talking about, but wouldn't take it as far
as the article to act like it encompasses the actual information
contained in the leaks.

The headlines made it sound like Signal and others were compromised.
This isn't the case, the phones are compromised. 

There is actually another NYTimes article that sort of explains this,
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/03/11/technology/ap-us-tec-wikileaks-cia-tech-encryption.html

It is important both to not claim such methods "break Signal" or to give
the false sense of security that you are 100% safe just by using Signal.

Tristan
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Re: [Marxism] Canada and aboriginal peoples

[Jeff via Marxism]

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Thanks Ken for this, but it's behind a paywall and difficult to access. 
I managed anyway so I'll share it with all:





ABATHA SOUTHEY
Senator scores Canada a late-game medal in the Wingnut Olympics

Tabatha Southey

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Mar. 10, 2017 1:16PM EST

Last updated Friday, Mar. 10, 2017 3:20PM EST


This week, breaking with perceived wisdom on the way to finalizing her 
bitter divorce from reality, Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak decided to 
present an emotional defence of Canada’s residential-school system. It’s 
difficult, times being what they are, for Canada to stand out in the 
Wingnut Olympics currently in full swing, but Senator Beyak seems 
determined to own the podium.


Down in America, Ben Carson kicked off this week’s event by describing 
slaves as “immigrants” – just a bunch of crazy kids in the bottom of a 
boat with a dream (seemingly of being used as whippable farming 
equipment) as Ben would have it – high scores from all the judges. It 
was not looking good for Canada – Kellie Leitch’s video submission 
having been disqualified for presumed use of a malfunctioning robot 
body-double, or possibly animal cruelty. There did seem to be a lot of 
distracting cats in that room.


Word is Leitch is dropping her plan for a long-form values test and will 
simply ask prospective newcomers, “Yes, but can you direct?”


Then, on Wednesday, up stepped Senator Beyak with a little number I’ll 
call “Homage to the Real Victims of Residential Schools: The 
Hypothetical Descendants of the People Who Taught at Those Schools, 
Whose Feelings Might Be Hurt If They Stumbled Across a Copy of the Truth 
and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report and Read It.”


She did this, she said “mostly in memory of the kindly and 
well-intentioned men and women and their descendants – perhaps some of 
us here in this chamber – whose remarkable works, good deeds and 
historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged.”


It’s true, A Child’s Garden of Beating, Starving and Raping Children in 
the Indigenous Residential School System never did find a publisher. Nor 
did The Secret Burial Garden.


All those “historical tales” lost. All those “remarkable works” so 
uncharitably documented as crimes.


To hear Senator Beyak tell it, there were just a few bad apples working 
in Canada’s residential-school system. We do know for a fact the 
children, around 150,000 of them, mostly ripped from their homes and 
sometimes literally from their parent’s arms, would likely have 
appreciated getting their hands on a few bad apples, as some of them 
were indisputably, and often deliberately, with the knowledge of the 
government and – in the name of “science” – starved.


These kids often worked in the fields to produce food that never made it 
to their plates but, enthused, Senator Beyak spoke in the Standing 
Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples: “Nobody meant to hurt anybody, 
the little smiles in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are real, 
the clothes are clean and the meals are good. There were many people who 
came from residential schools with good training and good language 
skills, and, of course, there were the atrocities as well.”


Just try putting that on the end of everything, “Yeah, we went camping, 
saw a beautiful sunset, roaring fire, roasted marshmallows. Of course, 
there were the atrocities as well.”


“Lovely dinner last weekend, walked through the city streets, wore my 
new skirt. Of course, there were the atrocities as well.”


There is no context in which “of course, there were the atrocities as 
well” sounds good.


I’m not sure what report Senator Beyak read (I’m going to keep calling 
her “Senator” because I want that to sink in, this woman is charged with 
providing our nation with sober second thought). She may have mistakenly 
picked up a Madeline book and believed that from the years 1876 to 1996, 
Canada operated a system whereby First Nation, Inuit and Métis children 
were removed from their communities and sent to an old house in Paris 
that was covered with vines where the nuns only spoke lyrically, in 
rhyme.


The 2015 report that emerged from Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 
in-depth, thoroughly researched six-year study of the system is a 
horrifying read. To take chuckles, fine-dining and fresh laundry away 
from that document requires a truly superhuman level of myopia. I’d say 
it was a Herculean task, except Hercules would take one look at the 
Senator’s fact-bending mission and say “Whoa man. Wrestling a lion is 
one thing, but even I can’t twist the truth that hard. That Senator from 
Dryden, formally in 

[Marxism] Canada and aboriginal peoples

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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The Truth and Reconciliation Committee was established in 2008 and reported in 
2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_(Canada)
The column below appears the Globe and Mail.  This paper is not the largest 
newspaper in Canada, but it is the most authoritative   in English Canada.
ken h

Senator scores Canada a late-game medal in the Wingnut Olympics

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/senator-scores-canada-a-late-game-medal-in-the-wingnut-olympics/article34266112/

These kids often worked in the fields to produce food that never made it to 
their plates but, enthused, Senator Beyak spoke in the Standing Senate 
Committee on Aboriginal Peoples: “Nobody meant to hurt anybody, the little 
smiles in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are real, the clothes are 
clean and the meals are good. There were many people who came from residential 
schools with good training and good language skills, and, of course, there were 
the atrocities as well.”

Just try putting that on the end of everything, “Yeah, we went camping, saw a 
beautiful sunset, roaring fire, roasted marshmallows. Of course, there were the 
atrocities as well.”

* * * * * *

Mental abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse, were endemic to the 
residential-school system. The “students” were often kept in substandard 
conditions and 6,000 children died while in what is farcically called “care,” 
largely because of malnourishment and disease. The schools had graveyards, and 
many graves were unmarked. But let’s be clear about this: Even had the 
schooling been adequate – hell, had these kids been given top-notch education 
and wonderful care, had the Canadian government sent thousands of Indigenous 
children to the equivalent of Trinity College School – it would still have been 
the wrong thing to do.



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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June,

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Thank you, Michael Karadjis, for your comments of March 5 on this thread. 
Although we don't agree on various questions, I appreciate your long-running 
work in defense of the Syrian uprising and on a number of other issues. 

I realize this response has been delayed. But I not only was distracted by 
other work, but spent some time reviewing the history of RS.

> Let's try and have this debate calmly. Andy is right about the RS 
> comrades fighting for democratic demands and getting brutally repressed 
> for it. Joseph is right that they made other serious errors. But he 
> should also mention that they fixed them very fast, and that in itself 
> raises questions about his interpretation of concrete errors in Egypt.

The issue isn't whether RS has serious and dedicated activists. The issue is 
whether RS's astonishing blunder about the Egyptian coup is partly due to the 
influence of the theory of permanent revolution.

More generally, the point is that the experience of the Arab Spring shows the 
bankrupcy of PR.  When the Arab Spring began, there were groups that wrote 
fervent articles applying PR to various of the struggles.  In the main, we 
now see silence.  This is not a serious approach.

An-Nar wrote in his article "The Democratic Wager" about the difficulties the 
left had dealing with democatic struggles that should be supported even 
though they wouldn't lead to socialism.  He said that these theoretical 
difficulties "have generally been based on some return to Trotsky's theory of 
Permanent Revolution", and he then gave his analysis of PR. But I don't think 
his points have been dealt with seriously.

An-Nar used the term "democratic wager", because he  believed that currently 
the main theories on the left were either PR or Stalinism.  The term 
"democratic wager" has some useful connotations, in that it brings out that 
we should support democratic struggles even when the masses don't have all 
the positions that the left would prefer they have. That's an important 
point, and one I have also raised in articles supporting the struggles of the 
Arab Spring. But an-Nar was apparently unaware of the Marxist-Leninist theory 
of the distinction between democratic and socialist movements.

Michael,  you write that RS fixed its errors very fast.  Even if that were 
so, it's no reason to avoid examining why they blundered at the crucial 
moment. But I have gone back to reread various of RS's writings of the time, 
and I think they tell a different story.
 
> Here's what I think. On the broad theoretical questions, I've long been 
> in agreement with much of what Joseph Green says (on the question of 
> Assad an-Nar's article in Khiyana, less so: I agree with some points but 
> it seemed to be greatly over-stated). I agree that permanent revolution 
> is too narrow a lens through which to understand world politics and 
> revolution (and in particular the Arab Spring, as Joseph notes), in as 
> much as we mean the particular aspects of Trotsky's theory that were 
> different from Lenin's views - though in my opinion they are 
> fundamentally similar. 

This is interesting, but it would be helpful if you elaborated it. When you 
say permanent revolution is too narrow a lens, what are you referring to? And 
if PR is too narrow a lens, what is needed to supplement it?

>The main advantage of Trotsky is that he put it 
> all together in a couple of highly readable volumes, whereas Lenin's 
> views are written on the rush in various articles, big and small, 
> throughout 1905-6 and later (not only Two Tactics).

We disagree on this.

> For the record I 
> view Lenin's April Thesis as perfectly consistent with his 1905-6 views. 
> I agree with many of Joseph's comments about the broader sweep. But we 
> can discuss all this calmly.
> 
> Where I don't agree with Joseph is in his attempt to somewhat 
> mechanically explain the actions and errors of small Trotskyist groups 
> as being caused by the Original Sin of PR.

 I don't agree with blaming everything on the activists who tried to carry 
out PR, rather than the theory. To explain away the errors, you refer to 
small groups, the more caricaturish kinds of Trotskyists,  sectarians, and so 
forth. But sooner or later, one has to deal with the theory itself.

> As I see it, the problem with 
> this is that Joseph in a way is doing what the more caricaturish kinds 
> of Trotskyists do: they seek to explain everything on the basis of the 
> need for the "correct program" (and everyone messes up because they 
> don't have it), and Joseph is kind of saying the same about those who do 
> have the PR view. I think in both cases it is an idealist