Showing posts with label Revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revolution. Show all posts

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Revolution, FBI, Encryption, Apple



THE ABSURD TIMES










We have launched the New Absurd Times Television Network. In accordance with the most accepted American news practice, everything is labeled "BREAKING NEWS,' no mater what it is, if you already knew about it, or, quite frankly, do not care one bit. It is abailable on You Tube and updates will be posted on You Tube, probably on Sundays, if we really feel like it. Just search on Absurd Times or, perhaps Czar Donic.

Justice Scalia is dead, BTW. So much is made of him being a "textualist," meaning one who read the actual text of the constitution and interprets it the way it was meant to be understood. This is all very well and good if you understand the people who wrote the text. Now this was the Revolution, folks, the time of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the French Revolution as well. In fact, the French invited our leaders over there for advice during their revolution. If Scalia bears any resemblance to the thinking of that period it is to be found in the character of Pangloss in Candide. He certainly was no Tom Paine.

You can find out what you need to know about the miracle of American Capitalist "Privatization" by visiting flintwatersupply.org .

Since this is a Political season, people around the world are wondering what the hell is really going on here. We had one President who served out his full term in only 39 days, William Henry Harrison. A great model and he was even more short-lived as a leader that the underesitmated Shapoor Baktiar, who served as President of Iran between the rule of the Shah and the Ayatollah. 41 days, I believe it was. No statues were erected for him, whereas we cling to our images of Jefferson Davis on the Confederacy. Actually, if might have been a wise idea to simply let those states go and allow any slaves to immigrate, but then we do need our Consititution with his prohibition against "involuntary servitude," a point important these days in the battle between Apple and the FBI.

Obama will visit Cuba soon, the first President to do so since Calvin Coolidge. The great Depression soon followed. More about Cuba soon.

But first, Apple. The FBI is trying to force Apple to write code to break its own encryption, just once, for the San Bernadino terrorists, both dead. Now, a warrant can be issued for things that exist, but to force someone (and thanks to Citizen's United, remember that?) including corporations to do work against their will is unconstitutional. It amounts to Involuntary Servitude. So did the draft, but that was a different issue. When Viet Nam began to be a real internal cause, the first complaint was why guys had to be in the Army to get killed if they couldn't drink. So the drinking age was lowered. Then the complaint was about voting. So Nixon lowered the voting age. Then people sentenced themselves to marriage rather than be in the army. Eventually, Nixon said "What the Hell," held a lottery, and got rid of the draft, or conscription, or legalized involuntary servitude.  One does wonder, however, why the FBI doesn't simply ask the NSA for the information?

An attempt to close Guantanimo is being attacked by Republicans (you know, those people). Donald Trump says he is going to keep it open and put a whole bunch of "bad Dudes" in there. Rubio and Cruz are essential the same, although Cruz says that Obama should stay in Cuba because he wants a "Socialist Heaven" and would feel right at home.
Now, as absurd as all that sounds, we also have an greement with Cuba to return that property to them. After all, it is in their country and hence is "occupied territory". Of course, as we see on the West Bank, the concept of "occupied" is quite slippery when used in American politics.

Oh, yes, we forgot about abortion. All these laws prohibiting abortion unless the clinic has admitting privileges is nothing more that a way to enforce anti-women legislation as "sanctity of life," beliefs which are religiously motivated, clearly a violation of the First Amendment. So far, I think we have at least three, probably more, violations of the constitution here.

Actually, though, religion is a force for ill right now in the world. One might be tempted to say that God saw the Republican Primaries so far and decided we already were in Hell so there was no need to bother about it anymore.

Here is some more on the Apple controversy.



As the government continues to take a bite out of Apple, Apple CEO Tim Cook says the FBI's request to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters is the "software equivalent of cancer." In an interview on ABC, he explained why the tech giant is resisting a court order to help unlock the phone. TheFBI says Apple is overstating the security risk to its devices, and argues the litigation is limited. "It won't be unique to this one phone. It would be something that the government can use against any phone. And even if you think that it's OK for the government to be able to break the encryption of anybody's phone … what backdoor is accessible to the U.S. government would also be accessible to whatever is the American enemy du jour," says our guest Barry Eisler, who has written about government surveillance in fictional form. He is also a former CIA agent. Eisler is the author of several books, most recently, "The God's Eye View."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to the ongoing dispute over privacy and encryption between the FBI and the computer giant Apple. In an interview last night on ABC, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained why his company is resisting a court order to help unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino attackers. In December, Syed Farook—Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife killed 14 people and injured 22 others. The two attackers were killed in a shootout with police. Cook said what the U.S. government was asking Apple to do was the, quote, "software equivalent of cancer."
TIM COOK: This case is not about one phone. This case is about the future. What is at stake here is: Can the government compel Apple to write software that we believe would make hundreds of millions of customers vulnerable around the world, including in the U.S.? The only way we know would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the software equivalent of cancer. We think it's bad news to write. We would never write it. We have never written it. And that is what is at stake here.
AMY GOODMAN: The FBI says Apple is overstating the security risk to its devices, and argues the litigation is limited. In an open letter earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey wrote, quote, "The particular legal issue is actually quite narrow. ... We don't want to break anyone's encryption or set a master key loose on the land," he said. Apple phone systems have a function that automatically erases the access key and renders the phone permanently inaccessible after 10 failed attempts.
To talk more about the case, we're joined by Barry Eisler, who has written about government surveillance—in fictional form. But he's also a former CIA agent. Eisler is the author of a number of books, most recently, The God's Eye View.
It's great to have you with us.
BARRY EISLER: Thank you, Amy. Good to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let's talk about what the government is doing and the pushback of Apple.
BARRY EISLER: Yeah, I like Tim Cook's metaphor. It's nice to see someone hitting back linguistically this way. You would expect the FBI to say what it's saying: It's only about one phone. This is the kind of thing the government always says. And I'm reminded of the time the CIA acknowledged that it had made two torture tapes. Fifteen months later, it acknowledged that it was in fact 92. In this case, the government said this is only going to be about one phone, and it took them only a day to say, "Did we say one phone? Actually, we're talking about 12." If you talk to any encryption or security expert anywhere, they'll all tell you that what the FBI is asking for is impossible. You can't create a backdoor for one phone without making all phones vulnerable. So that's one important issue here.
But there's another one that I think is not adequately understood. As Julian Sanchez, a guy I follow pretty closely because he knows a lot about these things, works with the Cato Institute, put it, this just isn't about encryption, it's about conscription. And I wish people would understand this a little bit better. It's unprecedented for the government to be telling a private company what products it can create and what features it has to include in those products. As Tim Cook pointed out, where does this stop? What if the government said, "We want to have a feature on the iPhone that enables the FBI to turn on the iPhone camera, to turn on the iPhone microphone, anytime we want? Would that also be OK?" So, I hope this isn't going to happen. It's sort of odd have to be championing the world's richest corporation in its fight with the government.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, they're asking the Apple to write a program, which would then create a backdoor.
BARRY EISLER: Exactly. And it won't be unique to this one phone. It would be something that the government could use against any phone. And even if you think that the U.S. government—it's OK for the government to be able to break the encryption of anybody's phone, even if you trust the U.S. government and think the U.S. government has never lied anyone, never abused its powers, even if you believe anything like that, what backdoor is accessible to the U.S. government would also be accessible to whatever is the American enemy du jour—could be the Chinese government, Russia, Iran, and, of course, not just to state actors, but also to criminal groups and hackers. A vulnerability in a phone is not accessible to just one actor. It becomes vulnerable to everyone.
AMY GOODMAN: But he killed 14 people, he and his wife.
BARRY EISLER: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And they just want access to see if there's other plans. I mean, who knows what would be?
BARRY EISLER: So this is another thing the government is typically good at. It tries to find the most attractive fact pattern it can to use as the thin edge of a wedge that it can then use in other less obvious fact patterns. And I see this again and again. People don't remember that well now, but José Padilla—I'm sure you guys remember—the so-called dirty bomber, I mean, José Padilla was accused of trying to create a radiological bomb and detonate it in Chicago, and a whole lot of people were going to die. And so, to keep us safe from that kind of thing, the government arrested him, held him on a Navy ship, offshored him—no due process, no charges, no trial, no access to a lawyer. It was unprecedented. But they were careful to choose what for them was an attractive fact pattern, before doing something so unprecedented. They picked a scary-looking guy and accused him of doing scary things. And people didn't protest the way they would have if they had chosen someone a little bit different.
So it's the same thing here. They're not doing this in the name of, I don't know, preventing someone from shoplifting or something like that. They've chosen a very attractive fact pattern so that they can say the talking points that you were just parroting, which is like, "Come on, this is just to keep us safe from the really scary people who want to kill us all in our beds," and who indeed did kill a lot of people in San Bernardino.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, to what extent do you think that accounts for public opinion? Because a recent Pew [Research] Center poll found that 51 percent of Americans think Apple should comply with the FBI and unlock the iPhone of one of the perpetrators of the attacks, and only 38 percent said that the FBI should not, and the rest had no opinion.
BARRY EISLER: Yeah, which is not actually—which is not a bad response to anyone who thinks that Apple is doing this as some sort of publicity stunt. I mean, for the moment, anyway, more people think that Apple should comply than think that it shouldn't. I think the fact that so many people, actually, that 38 percent, think it's a really bad idea for Apple to be forced to do this is, in part, a tribute to the educational value of the Snowden revelations and all the journalism that's been built on them, because I'm pretty sure—can't really conduct this experiment, but I'm pretty sure that if it hadn't been for Snowden's revelations, the public would be focusing entirely on the keep-us-safe-from-the-terrorists aspect of this whole thing, and not on the but-this-is-going-to-destroy-privacy aspect.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, interestingly, Apple has made the iCloud available. It's not like they haven't done that. I mean, there have been many requests of these different phone manufacturers to get access to the iCloud.
BARRY EISLER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: And, I mean, the government can't just get access to it; they have to get permission.
BARRY EISLER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: So they're making a distinction between the actual physical phone—
BARRY EISLER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Apparently they turned off the iCloud at some point—
BARRY EISLER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —so it's what's remained on that phone since the point they turned it off.
BARRY EISLER: Right. So, the idea here is that some of your data is not accessible even by the company that created the product. It's on your local device, and no one else should have access to it but you. Apple has, in fact, complied with the government in the government's request to turn over data to which it has access. Maybe people might like that, they might not like it. My own feeling is, look, as long as it's pursuant to a warrant and it's not secret and it's out in the open, I can live with it. But the notion that now Apple is going to crack encryption that its users have come to rely on to keep their data private is—is an entirely new thing.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to turn to comments made by Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft. He was asked about the ongoing dispute between Apple and the FBI, and said it was important to strike a balance between privacy and government access. Gates was speaking to Bloomberg.
BILL GATES: The extreme view that the government always gets everything, nobody supports that; having the government be blind, people don't support that. ... I do believe that—that with the right safeguards, there are cases where the government, on our behalf, like stopping terrorism, which could get worse in the future, that that is valuable, but striking that balance. Clearly, the government's taken information historically and used it in ways that we didn't expect, going all the way back, say, to the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. So, I'm hoping now we can have the discussion. I do believe there are sets of safeguards where the government shouldn't have to be completely blind.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Bill Gates speaking to Bloomberg News. Your response?
BARRY EISLER: It's interesting. He's so close to an epiphany. He talks about J. Edgar Hoover. Maybe he knows about COINTELPRO. He acknowledges that the government has abused powers that it's been given in the past. And so, you think he's going in a certain direction with this, and then he just comes up with this platitude, which is we have to strike a balance. Like who doesn't think that we shouldn't strike a balance? It's just meaningless. There's no one who would say, "I don't think we need a balance. I think it's just one or the other." So, I don't know. Maybe it's not a coincidence that Microsoft is a fading technology company and Apple is a premier one.
AMY GOODMAN: Microsoft has said that in the past, that 80 tech companies have cooperated—I mean, WikiLeaks has said that 80 tech companies in the past have cooperated with the NSA, the National Security Agency, including Microsoft.
BARRY EISLER: Yeah, so much of the—of Snowden's revelations were about this very thing. And the fact that the public knows about corporate cooperation with the government now is in part, I think, what has emboldened Apple to push back, because, again, if we didn't know about these things, I would expect that Apple would be quietly cooperating. There would be no cost to their doing so. But they realize now that there's a significant constituency among their customers that wants robust privacy features in Apple products, and to please those customers, Apple realizes that in this public battle with the FBI, it can't just roll over and serve the FBI; otherwise, it might turn into the next Microsoft.

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Monday, September 14, 2015

The Western Revolution: Tarik Ali, Our Ruminations



THE ABSURD TIMES





Illustration: Israel and its view of Religion.  They celebrated one of their many holidays by attacking a Mosque.  By Latuff

The Western Revolution

by

Zarathustra



            Clearly the corporate oligarchy has been exposed despite its power and influence.  It is obvious that people are aware of it and don't like it.  Beyond that, many are not clear as to how to express it or how to act properly.  There is no easy or glib answer to this other than to avoid any action suggested by that elite.

            Even though David Cameron was elected as boss of Britain as head of the Conservative Party, that "victory" actually revealed some other real signs.  For example, Scotland is now governed by a Socialist, or at least "liberal" party and this was the result to a great extent by people deserting the Liberal Democrat Party which seemed to be a somewhat effete group at best, the "Yuppie Liberals", so to speak.

            In the United States, a bright force is Bernie Sanders who brags that he is "socialist,' (whatever that means anymore.  He first gave a twelve hour speech in the U.S. Senate elaborating on his principles, especially on the inequality of distribution of wealth.  While the corporate drums away at the evils of mentioning the "Redistribution of Wealth" as "Communistic" and thus frightening ill-informed people in the country, they actually did engage is a vast redistribution of wealth, only upwards to the point where jot only the top 1%, but the top 1% of the 1% has gained most of the wealth in this country.  Sanders' popularity is an expression of peoples' anger and disaffection with the corporate state and politicians owned by it (including Hilary Clinton).  The best one can say about her right now is that she is not a Republican! 

            That brings us to the Republicans.  The popularity of Donald Trump is extremely misguided because that only virtue he has is that he is not a politician and politicians are seen as instruments of the corporate party.  The same is true of Ben Carson, another alternative who can also speak in complete and coherant sentences.  He will never be nominated for the Republicans because he is African-American and much of the rabble that supports that party thinks of people with different hued skin as enemies who are trying to take things from them (so they have been taught by the corporate party).  Also, the country did elect an African American President and despite his late found abilities, most of the opposition to him is based on his color.  Also, a woman will not be nominated because an African American did not work out and no more "first" people -- we want real people, which actually means people how will do good for society, or, in other words, 'socialists;.  So far, at least, it must be clear that all of the support from voters in the country are fed up with the Corporate Elite.

            The current uprising about immigration is spreading world-wide and, insofar as possible in German, Merkel is showing a conscience.  In the United States, it is one more tool used to keep the disaffected and uneducated in line.

A fine example is an anecdote: Seems a woman was speaking on her cell phone in a different language down in Texas when the redneck behind her said, after her call was finished, said "Lady, if'n youal wanna be in this country, yall should use the language, English"

            She replied, "I was speaking Navajo -- if you want to speak English, go to England."  [We refrain from a linguistic analysis at this pont.]

            Now we come to the next revolution, a very real one: the Labour Party in England.  Leremy Corbin was overwhelmingly elected head of the party.  He is decidedly in favor of the people, insisting on the people owning the transportation system, free higher education, free health care, and so on: in other words, socialism.  Rather than attempt to correctly describe him here, Tarik Ali, who has known him for over 40 years, has explained and his entire interview follows:


MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2015

In Upset, Socialist Jeremy Corbyn Elected as U.K. Labour Leader on Antiwar, Pro-Refugee Platform

Longtime British socialist MP Jeremy Corbyn has just been elected leader of the opposition Labour Party after running on an antiwar, anti-austerity platform. When Corbyn first announced his candidacy three months ago, oddsmakers put his odds of winning at 200 to one. But on Saturday, Corbyn won in a landslide, receiving 59 percent of the vote. He will succeed Ed Miliband, who quit after the Conservatives retained power in May's election. Corbyn addressed supporters at a victory celebration on Saturday. "Let us be a force for change in the world, a force for humanity in the world, a force for peace in the world, and a force that recognizes we cannot go on like this, with grotesque levels of global insecurity, grotesque threats to our environment all around the world, without the rich and powerful governments stepping up to the plate to make sure our world becomes safer and better," said Corbyn during his victory speech. Corbyn then left the celebration to attend the #RefugeesWelcome rally in London.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today's show in Britain, where a longtime socialist MP, Jeremy Corbyn, has just been elected leader of the opposition Labour Party after running on an antiwar, anti-austerity, pro-refugee platform. When Corbyn first announced his candidacy three months ago, oddsmakers put the odds of his winning at 200 to one. But on Saturday, Jeremy Corbyn won in a landslide, receiving 59 percent of the vote. He'll succeed Ed Miliband, who quit after the Conservatives retained power in the May elections. Corbyn addressed supporters at a victory celebration on Saturday.
JEREMY CORBYN: This week, the Tories will show what they're really made of. On Monday, they have the trade union bill, designed to undermine even the ILO conventions and shackle democratic unions and destroy another element of democracy within our society. We have to oppose that. They're also pushing the welfare reform bill, which will bring such misery and poverty to so many of the poorest in our society. I want us, as a movement, to be proud, strong and able to stand up and say, 'We want to live in a society where we don't pass by on the other side of those people rejected by an unfair welfare system; instead, we reach out to end the scourge of homelessness and desperation that so many people face in our society.' We're strong enough and big enough and able to do that. That is what we're about.
There are many, many issues we face, and many people face desperation in other parts of the world. And I think it's quite incredible the way the mood in Europe has changed over the past few weeks of understanding that people fleeing from wars, they are the victims of wars, they are the generational victims of war, they're the intergenerational victims of war, end up in desperation, end up in terrible places, end up trying to gain a place of safety, end up trying to be—exercise their refugee rights. They are human beings just like you, just like me. Let's deal with the refugee crisis with humanity, with support, with help, with compassion, to try to help people who are trying to get to a place of safety, trying to help people who are stuck in refugee camps, but recognize going to war creates a legacy of bitterness and problems.
Let us be a force for change in the world, a force for humanity in the world, a force for peace in the world, and a force that recognizes we cannot go on like this, with grotesque levels of global inequality, grotesque threats to our environment all around the world, without the rich and powerful governments stepping up to the plate to make sure our world becomes safer and better, and those people don't end up in poverty, in refugee camps, wasting their lives away when they could be contributing so much to the good of all of us on this planet. We are one world. Let that message go out today from this conference center here in London.
AMY GOODMAN: After his victory speech, Jeremy Corbyn went to the #RefugeesWelcome rally in London, where he called on the British government to do more to help refugees seeking safety in Europe.
JEREMY CORBYN: The refugees move on and on. And there are whole generations of refugees around the world that are victims of various wars. So those desperate people in camps in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Libya and so many other places, desperate people trying to cross into Turkey and other places, they are all, in a sense, victims of wars. So, surely, surely, surely, our objective ought to be to find peaceful solutions to the problems of this world.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2015

"A Political Insurrection in Britain": Tariq Ali on Election of Jeremy Corbyn as New Labour Leader

Jeremy Corbyn has been a member of the House of Commons since 1983 and has a long history of voting against his Labour Party, which had moved considerably to the right under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Corbyn's victory presages the prospect of a return to the party's socialist roots, championing the renationalization of public transportation, free university tuition, rent control, and a national maximum wage to cap the salaries of high earners. We speak to longtime British editor and writer Tariq Ali, who has known Corbyn for 40 years. He calls Corbyn the most left-wing leader in the history of the British Labour Party.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Corbyn has been a member of the House of Commons since 1983. He has a long history of voting against his Labour Party, which had moved considerably to the right under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Corbyn's victory presages the prospect of a return to the party's socialist roots, championing the renationalization of public transportation, free university tuition, rent control, and a national maximum wage to cap the salaries of high earners.
Well, for more, we go to London, where we're joined by Tariq Ali, who has known Corbyn for 40 years. Tariq Ali is a British-Pakistani political commentator, historian, activist, filmmaker, novelist and editor of the New Left Review. His latest book is The Extreme Centre: A Warning.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Tariq. Can you talk about this 200—what did the oddsmakers put it at?—200-to-one odds, three months ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would win the Labour Party leadership?
TARIQ ALI: Amy, I would have agreed with them, actually. I'm just sort of cursing I didn't put 10 or 20 pounds on it—I'd be rolling in it if I had. In fact, nobody expected Jeremy to win, including Jeremy himself. What happened was a political insurrection in Britain, that young people poured out after hearing him speak on television and radio, packed his rallies, and what we saw was an English version of the Scottish uprising that swept the Scottish National Party to power earlier this year. So it's been a very exciting campaign, and it's grown and grown and grown. And it wasn't 'til, I think, a few weeks ago that we realized that he really was going to win. And even still, we couldn't believe it.
But his victory marks a huge shift in English politics. And the big problem here now is the following, that we have the most left-wing leader in the history of the British Labour Party in power as leader, and we have a very right-wing parliamentary Labour Party, which has been effectively created by Blair and Brown, by ending democracy in the party, by parachuting office boys and office girls to become members of Parliament, so that they have no one of note in Parliament today. That's the contradiction that Jeremy faces. And I think one of the things he will have to do is to restore democracy in the party, give party conferences once again real meaning, and move forward. But, you know, that will happen, and it will take some time. In the meantime, we are all rejoicing, those of us who have been participating in progressive politics for years, that we have a leader of the opposition, that for—after many, many decades, England, or Britain, has a leader of the opposition. And that is a huge step forward.
AMY GOODMAN: For our American audience, Tariq, is Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party with these 200-to-one odds about three months ago equivalent to Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic nomination for president, the socialist senator from Vermont?
TARIQ ALI: Well, it is very similar, Amy, except that Jeremy is very good on foreign policy issues. I mean, he has been very strong attacking all the imperial wars. He has been very strong on the right of the Palestinians to national self-determination. He has denounced wars, and, as we heard earlier, he has linked the refugee crisis to the wars that are creating refugees. And Bernie has, of course, been very good attacking the corporations and the oligarchic aspects of American political and social life, so in that sense he is similar, but he has been very reluctant on foreign policy issues. Nonetheless, it would be the equivalent, you're right, that if somehow Bernie Sanders became the official candidate of the Democratic Party to take on the Republicans, I mean, they would be—people would be squealing with anger, the traditional elites, but it would be a step forward. And that step has already been taken now in England.
AMY GOODMAN: Tariq, we're going to break, then come back to this discussion. Tariq Ali is British-Pakistani political commentator, historian, activist, novelist, editor of the New Left Review. We'll be back with him in a moment.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Billy Bragg singing "The Red Flag," the semi-official anthem of the British Labour Party. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, as we talk about the shocking election victory of MP Jeremy Corbyn as head of Britain's opposition Labour Party. Let's turn to some voters who supported Corbyn in Saturday's election.
CORBYN SUPPORTER 1: I grew up to Blair. That was my—I'm 23 years old, so my—you know, my entrance into adulthood, all of my kind of conscious life was Blair and New Labour. And I think it's incredibly exciting that we have a meaningful alternative in mainstream politics. I think that's something that I think is extraordinary.
CORBYN SUPPORTER 2: I'm just—just I'm very, very, very, very happy that he's won. I feel like it's the start of something new and something much fairer and better for the world.
CORBYN SUPPORTER 3: He is able to engage with young people, because he's a conviction politician. I think there's a lot of young people who have become disengaged with politics, and I think he's someone that young people can relate to.
CORBYN SUPPORTER 4: I think it's a change for the Labour Party. I think it's a change for Britain. I think it's a positive change. I think it's positive politics, which I can identify with. It's not the—you know, it's not the politics of envy. It's not the politics of fear. It's the politics of hope. And it's somebody that I think we seriously have a chance with in the Labour Party.
AMY GOODMAN: Some of the people who supported Jeremy Corbyn. He got an overwhelming 59 percent victory in the election that makes him now the leader of the Labour Party. Our guest is Tariq Ali, the British political commentator, activist, historian, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review. His latest book, The Extreme Centre: A Warning. Tariq, talk about who he beat, who he ran against, and also then Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and what the Labour Party had become. He often opposed his own Labour Party.
TARIQ ALI: Yes, Jeremy was a very consistent member of Parliament. As a lawmaker, he voted against all the wars. He voted against any attempt by Labour to support the austerity policies of the current Conservative government. He didn't succeed in winning the party [inaudible], because the bulk of them—most of them, I would say—agree with austerity and have not opposed Cameron. So, Jeremy has been, you know, all the time I have known him—and I say this about very few politicians, Amy, as viewers will recall, but he has been one of the most honest politicians I know. He has got integrity. He has been consistent. And he has fought for the causes which large numbers of progressive people all over the world believe him—believe in. And he's been like this for 40 years. I mean, the causes he's espoused and spoken for, he has attended meetings where there were only 30 or 40 people present, just to make sure that there was a lawmaker there to explain to them what was actually going on. So he's a very impressive guy, and he's completely different from these spin-doctor-tutored politicians. That's what people like about him, that he says it. He just gives it to you straight. There's no [bleep]. He goes on and tells people what he believes in. And I think he's been amazed himself by the response, because there's no demagogy, it's fairly straightforward stuff.
And the big question now is: Can he, or can Labour under Corbyn, win the next election? His enemies are all saying he can't, and this is a disaster, the Labour Party has committed suicide. I'm not so sure. I believe that if the campaigns he has espoused continue, especially taking back the railways into public ownership, and some of the utilities, instituting free education so that people with, you know, small amounts of money don't have to pay tuition fees for their kids, improves public housing, gets rid of Trident—these are nuclear missiles, part of Britain's NATOresponsibilities, and they've created a huge panic, because the prime minister, David Cameron, has said that Jeremy Corbyn's election has made Labour a national security risk, which is outrageous. What's the logic of that? I mean, a few weeks ago, British drones killed their own citizens in the Arab world. So what? Are we going to have the Labour Party droned? I mean, it's bad, unpleasant, irresponsible talk, trying to seal off a debate, which is only beginning. The candidates who opposed him were visionless, unimaginative, people created by a system which didn't believe in politics or democracy anymore. That's, in my opinion, who they were. And that's why lots of people rejected them. I mean, the day Corbyn was elected, 14.5 thousand people, just on that day, joined or rejoined the Labour Party. So he has energized Labour's base like no one has been able to do for a very long time. I mean, Blair was a warmonger. Brown was a neoliberal supporting the banks and the corporations. Jeremy Corbyn represents a huge break with that. And we will see how he proceeds.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn back to January 2003, when British MP Jeremy Corbyn spoke at an antiwar rally here in the United States in Washington, D.C. We featured a part of his address on Democracy Now!
JEREMY CORBYN: And I have to say, as a member of the British Parliament from the Labour Party, that there is overwhelming public opposition to British involvement in a Bush's war over Iraq, because we recognize this war for what it is. It's not about peace. It's not about democracy. It's not about justice. It's a war about oil, and it's a war where the main beneficiaries will be the arms manufacturers, who have made so much out of so much misery for so long.
We are in one of the richest countries in the world, and I also represent another very rich country in the world. If all we can say to the poorest people in the poorest parts of the world, suffering water shortage, health shortage, a pandemic of AIDS and so many other injustices, all we can offer is weapons of mass destruction and further wars, all we do is spawn the conflicts of the future. A world—a world at peace can only be achieved if we are a world based on social justice. So our message to the Capitol, to the White House, to Downing Street in London and all the others is: Pull back! Bring the troops home! Bring about peace in the region! No more wars for oil!
AMY GOODMAN: That was Jeremy Corbyn, a British MP, in 2003 in Washington, D.C., at a major antiwar protest. Again, it was just a few months before the U.S. attacked Iraq. Now, well, there are thousands of refugees coming from Iraq and Afghanistan, joining Syrians and Nigerians and others. Tariq Ali, yesterday—or this weekend, Saturday, right after Jeremy Corbyn won as leader of the Labour Party, he said he had to go, in giving his acceptance speech, because was racing off to the #WelcomeRefugees rally, where he also spoke. Can you talk about his position on refugees right now and what is Britain's official position, David Cameron's position?
TARIQ ALI: Well, David Cameron has limited the number of refugees allowed into Britain, compared, for instance, to Germany. Though Germany, too, we should recall, has now ended free entry into that country. I think the European Union is in a huge crisis on the refugee question.
And Jeremy's position, as stated by him at the rally, is very clear: You make wars, you bomb other parts of the world, you destroy their social infrastructure, you make life so miserable for them that they have no alternative but to leave their countries; and when they knock on your door, you pat them on the back and say, "Not so many of you." Why didn't you think about that when you were dropping bombs on them, that created the refugees? So he has linked the imperial wars waged by the United States and its European allies, or some of them, to the refugee question, and that is absolutely correct, Amy. And he has argued strongly against any new wars or bombing raids on Syria or Iraq or whoever and on whatever pretext, because he knows it will make things worse. So, his position has been very strong on these questions.
And, you know, just what you showed on the screen, a newly elected leader of an opposition party in a European country immediately going and joining a huge demonstration, welcoming refugees, that has not happened for a very long time, not just in Britain, but in the whole of Europe. So the impact Jeremy's election as leader of the Labour Party, in Europe, will be worth watching, to see how they're going to react to this.
AMY GOODMAN: Your book, Tariq Ali, is called The Extreme Centre: A Warning. Explain what you mean.
TARIQ ALI: What I mean is, Amy, that people have often talked, you know, about the extreme left, the extreme right, or the populist left, the populist right, without discussing what has become a huge problem in global politics, but especially in the European Union and North America and Australia, which is that it doesn't matter which party you elect. When it comes down to it, on the fundamentals of the day—waging war, imposing austerity, helping out the big corporations, sucking up to the rich—there's no big difference between them. They might use different language, but their politics are the same. And that this is no longer acceptable to large numbers of people, which is why, when the young see possibilities of an alternative, whether in Greece or Portugal or Spain or Ireland and now Scotland and England, they do something about it. And Jeremy really has broken with extreme-center politics. He was never part of that mess. And this is what is so exciting in this country today.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Jeremy Corbyn talking about socialism. The election of Jeremy Corbyn as the new leader of Britain's Labour Party has many believing this will mean a return to the party's socialist roots. This is Corbyn debating at the venerable Oxford Union in November of 2013 that socialism works.
JEREMY CORBYN: If you want to live in a decent world, then is it right that the world's economy is dominated by a group of unaccountable multinational corporations? They are the real power in the world today, not the nation-state. It's the global corporations. And if you want to look at the victims of the ultimate of this free market catastrophe that the world is faced with at the moment, go to the shantytowns on the fringes of so many big cities around the world. Look at those people, migrants dying in the Mediterranean trying to get to Lampedusa. Why are they there? Why are they dying? Why are they living in such poverty? I'll tell you this: It's when the World Bank arrives and tells them to privatize all public services, to sell off state-owned land, to make inequality a paragon of virtue. That is what drives people away and into danger and poverty.
And I will conclude with this thought: Think about the world you want to live in. Do you want the dog to eat the dog, or do you want us all to care for each other, support each other, and eliminate poverty and injustice? A different world is possible. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Jeremy Corbyn. By the way, his argument won.


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