So a hodge-podge of hackers, anarchists, crypto kids, Occupy, Anonymous, ACLU operatives, Electronic Frontier Foundation staff, other Soros-funded non-profiter -- plus a bunch of libertarians, Ron Paulers, Von Mises gold buggers and God-knows-what-else are going to converge on Washington, DC for something called "Stop Watching Us" which is essentially an anti-NSA demonstration.
These are not people who are about "reform" and "making a Better World" within the system, they want to overthrow it. (And the ones claiming they aren't doing that are either stupid or lying and haven't realized who they have in their movement really running things, yet.)
All the usual suspects -- supreme cadre Eli Pariser and the loathsome Internet gatekeeper Anil Dash -- mainly the "progressives" to hard left, with a sprinkling of libertarians -- are listed as individual supporters of the action. Note that "journalists" Laura Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum are on the list and of course Glenn Greenwald is on the leader board! Xeni Jardin, who arguably at least does real journalistic beat covering as distinct from the endless blogging of Greenwald is also on the list.
Not a single one of these people are in local or national politics. They are all radicals. Some of them have really loathsome ideologies -- I've written repeatedly about Anil Dash, who believes himself to be in charge of deciding who gets to keep their job in Silicon Valley and who doesn't, and who gets VC funding and who doesn't -- when he isn't busy policing speech and behaviour to fit the Better World utopianist ideal of political correctness. Gabriella Coleman -- can you imagine! She's not just a griefer-scholar, but a radical demonstration leader -- awful.
John Perry Barlow must be fuming -- he's not listed in the big names at the top of the marquee but put in the list below with the likes of Appelbaum, even though he's likely more famous the all of those people except Tim Berners-Lee - for whom we have to blame for the leaky boat of the Internet in the first place, as he welded into the Internet's architecture: communism (no respect for private property), lack of privacy (which goes along with no private property), and hatred of commerce (without which people don't respect such conduits and trash them).
A lot of the businesses supporting this anti-government rally are of the socialist kind like Upworthy and Ben & Jerry. But there's one business I thought was "real" -- Rackspace, where Robert Scoble is the start-up liaison and the most prolific social media presence. I always thought he and they were more moderate, and since I don't see him jawing that much about Snowden, that they weren't radicals. Yet they're in the list, possibly because they've decided that unless they position themselves with this gang, their cloud business could be hurt, i.e. they have to make customers feel they won't turn them over to the feds.
The letter is never something I could sign -- it calls on Congress to finish the hacking job Snowden undemocratically began by exposing even more. Stupid. It makes completely unverified and even false statements like these:
The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by an intelligence contractor showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments.
Nothing sane here, nothing explaining what really goes on, which is that legitimate activity against intelligence targets, i.e. terrorists, goes on with warrants and with checks and balances, and yes, with the cooperation of American businesses who do so because they are good corporate citizens.
Outwardly (although there's lots behind the scenes), the anti-government action is being coordinated by a quintessential cadre kid, Ben Doernberg, who in the summer ran something called "Restore the Fourth!" which is supposed to be "restoring" the Fourth Amendment that is supposedly "lost" with Snowden's hack. Well, yeah. It is. Because Snowden and his adversarial journo and hacker friends unreasonably searched and seized our national security and hijacked it, bringing enormous sabotage, embarassment misery, expense, damage on the US. And NO, the US is not going to "prove" this to these malcontents because to do so would harm further what little firepower they have left to fight enemies like Al Qaeda. Oh, and the Russian and Chinese. Oh, and spy on the French, who sell weapons to the Russians, and the Germans, who harbour all kinds of radicals in their midst -- including some of Snowden's helpers, like Jacob Appelbaum.
You may have guess how I feel about this demonstration which is: I'm totally against it and call on people not to go to it because it's destructive and stupid.
I'll be interested if these paid-for cadres are able to muster anything like "real people," however. My bet is even with the ACLU and others paying for the buses from New York (and various other rich folk will show up to buy people in from here and elsewhere), and even with lots of media interest and support in certain lefty and progressive quarters, and even with Twitter, it's just not going to do well.
I sense that it's a football weekend, college kids won't care, it's too cold to hang out doors, the Shutdown is over and people have to catch up on their work -- and with any luck at all, it will rain.
I think it will be something like Jon Stewart's rally for sanity or whatever it was called -- supposed to be an antidote to the Tea Party, but itself a flop. I think that the reason the Fifth Estate is flopping in the box office is not because Assange's propaganda against it or for his hacking accomplice enterprises are so successful -- but because they are not. People don't care. It's just too boring. Remember we only counted 27,000 Cryptocat kids around the world, yesterday. Lavabit had only something like 4,000 custeroms, including Edward Snowden and his alts. So meh.
I live in hope -- the Wired State is not yet upon us (because to me, the NSA is not the Wired State, although parts of it may ally with it, and that's what made the wikification of government possible and Manning and Snowden possible.)
The other goods new is that Tom Watson, who has now described himself cleanly as a "social democrat" (socialist) underneath that tag "progressive" they always fakely use, has denounced the organizers' making common cause with the Libertarian goons. Good! A disunited rally is a rally that can't become more of a threat to liberal democracy.
And really, if technocommunism bothers you, even the Lite form that produces Tom Watson, social democrat, who is against DDoSing and writes for the Capitalist Tool Forbes (which is more of a social democrat now, too) -- wait until you see the loons on the libertarian right -- they're like Intlibber Brautigan in Second Life. They're the kind of people who say government should move to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and only take care of roads -- oh, and maybe some missiles to fend off the Russians, but maybe not even that. They are pro-gun but also tend toward other creepy things as we've seen with some of Glenn Greenwald's far-right pals and the folks Julian Assange hooked up with when he ran for election.
I don't like Libertarians, and some of them are blamed for the Shutdown, but ultimately I blame Obama and the hard left for the Shutdown. Obama refused to trim Obamacare and brought this on. And no, I don't accept this silly meme that "it's the law" -- or "you have to pay for what you funded". Just because it's law doesn't mean it will get funded 100% when expenses are greater than income in an ongoing recession. The Farm Bill didn't get funded. And you can't always pay for what you planned to fund, either. Things have to be cut. The refusal to do this and the willingness to keep putting out paper is disastrous. Anyone can tell that if they are normal and not out of touch with reality. This is not "Tea Party"; it's normalcy. That's why there wasn't the outrage about the Shutdown, even from those who don't like Ted Cruz or find others on the Hill to be caricatures. Because Obama caused this from the get-go by swinging to hard to the left for the country's good, which only induced backlash.
Which brings me back to Ben Doernberg. Like all the Saul-Alinsky (Leninist) progs, young Ben claims he is "organizing the grassroots". Because he's so young, like 20 or 21, he may really believe this fiction. But it's an ancient DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) fiction from the 1980s before he was born. Pick single issues. Pick populist issues. Then run campaigns around them, and gradually ease in the full-blown socialist agenda. Soften people up for the socialist shill with their single issues. Use them as cover. Stealth socialism. I really hate it. If you're going to be a socialist, why, say you're a "social democrat" like Tom Watson, I say.
Ben thinks he is organizing "real people" and the "roots" -- but they are the grass tops. The cadres. The nonprofiters. The people in paid-for organizations with organizers' salaries or the children of affluent parents who can pay for their kids to hang out in movements like Occupy. Most Americans are NOT overwrought about the 4th Amendment somehow being "shaken". They got used to being spied on by Google, you know? And the news that the NSA takes too from the big firehose of the Internet doesn't really bother them that much. They keep doing their thing. Their are cameras in buses and at intersections. You wish they were on every one when you have an accident, believe me.
Ben of course is in touch with Occupy, which he covered. So he wasn't born yesterday and didn't spring from a cornfield. He became well known for Storifying Occupy right at the right moment when some lazy editor needed copy and didn't want to have to waste staff running down to Zucotti and covering the mess down there. So Ben's Storify, with its cool graphics and edgy social media look with its embedded tweets appeared just at the needed time. But Ben had an instinct for what sells at a time like this. Obviously *my* storifies exposing the nastiness of Evgeny Morozov or Katrin vanden Heuvel on the left aren't going to be picked up by anybody because the media is primarily liberal/leftist and the battles too arcance even for the right to pick up normally.
Some kids are good in the school play and have a talent, however, and that's Ben. He will go far. He could be another Van Jones or Alec Ross or something. I suspect he will not become more radical as he gets older, but less, and try to get into party/election politics because sectarian politics in little leftist sects like Moveon or EFF or whatever is just too frustrating and wearing. Ben wants to get to power, not sit Storifying for the rest of his life.
But I'm here to explain that Ben is not rounding up the grass-roots. It's Occupy, it's EFF, it's the usual suspects. Perhaps he will pick up some random youths sitting in cafes drinking pumpkin lattes or playing WoW or whatever it is they do and get them on the bus. But as I said, would you want to go on a boring bus ride to DC and then stand in the damp leaves bitching about the government watching you, when -- so what, you knew that?
And really, try to think about it some more. The hackers are really the bigger problem because no one elected them, they have far too much power to undermine our liberal state without our participation, and they are destructive and nasty. You do not want them running your life. Ben will realize this, soon. Unless, of course, he becomes one of them and applies his youthful energy into building the Wired State, in which case, our real freedoms are in danger.
Ben began arguing with me on Twitter, and then started one of those silly lefty gambits of pretending to "engage," then pouting that his target didn't "play" and engage "the way they were supposed to" for his little power trip to work. This is such an old, old story I don't bother to even Storify it anymore LOL.
Then Ben writes a hurt faux polite email to try to "engage" some more:
Ben Doernberg
To MeOct 9If you go back and read the timeline of our Twitter conversation, I felt like I was on the defensive the whole time, which is what I meant by "I'm not interested in fighting." I'd be happy to explain why I don't think I'm being undemocratic by planning a permitted protest in the nation's capitol, or talk about my own issues with Anonymous' tactics. From the way you were wording your tweets, it didn't seem like you were interested in having those conversations, but rather wanted to provoke me. I could be wrong about that, that's how it seemed to me.Hi Catherine,Just wanted to say quickly; I really do find it valuable to read your blog posts, as you're clearly doing excellent detective work and critically analyzing a lot of issues I care deeply about. We may disagree on most issues, but I have no desire to avoid being exposed to others points of view.
Happy to discuss further or meet up for coffee or a drink some time in NYC.
Ben
Answer:
No, Ben. I don't need to sit down and have a cup of coffee and be "brought round" to your "progressive" way of thinking. Not interested.
And I saw what you did there. You turned on your self victim-hood (to try to get an edge with more sympathy) by transforming my comment about the undemocratic nature of hacking and Snowden's and WikiLeak's campaign, converting it somehow to your act of demonstration being undemocratic.
Nonsense. I didn't say anything of the sort. Demonstrations aren't undemocratic; they are the practice of democracy. Peaceful assemblies expressing opinions is obviously the heart of democracy.
But hacking isn't. THAT is what I said was undemocratic, because it is. WikiLeaks' enabling of hacking and anarchist unaccountability and harm to people -- that's all not democratic. Snowden is antithetical to democracy and human rights because none of us get to choose to have our nation undermined and harmed in relations with both friends and enemies; it was coercively imposed on us against our will.
Your ilk keep mounting this fake notion of "the national conversation" -- which is an old socialist sectarian term from the 1980s or even earlier. It means provoking a topic socialists can exploit as a lever to wedge in the rest of their radical agenda. This is an old, old story. It is never about "conversation". It is about taking power.
I am absolutely positive if you put this proposition to a vote, it would lose by a landslide:
Members of Congress, would you like to have our national security severely damaged and reputation undermined, our nation split even more, our secret files spilled out for the view of our enemies from China to Al Qaeda, the trust of our allies ruined, the anger and ridicule of the world, damage to Internet businesses, roiling of international meetings with anti-American resolutions, distraction from real Internet freedom and governance issues everywhere?
See, no one would sign up for that willingly, ever. But that's what was forced on us by WikiLeaks, and that's why its members should be arrested and charged with appropriate offenses for the damage and threat to national security and secrecy which they have caused.
They shouldn't be worshipped and emulated and serve as the galvanizers of protests against the NSA in government.
It doesn't matter if you "have issues" with Anonymous' tactics -- you haven't forthrightly denounced them, called for an end to the DDoS as a tactic, and barred them from your demonstration. You'd be happy to have them fill out your ranks, just like the Libertarians, and if you can round up drunks and bums like Occupy did to fill up the place, you'll do that too.
It doesn't matter even if you denounced Anonymous and its tactics and even obeyed Tom Watson's own version of broader sectarianism -- but still sectarianism in the Democratic Party. I will never march with you, ever.
STOP HACKING US!
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