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The Bitcoin Foundation is TOXIC and must dissolve, plus a call to action

[ *** If you like this, please click through to Reddit here, upvote the post, and post a reply either there or on bitcointalk.org. Thanks. *** ]

My apologies for the length of this post, but I believe that it sums up what is broken with the Foundation, shows it is essentially unfixable, and includes at the end a call to action to form a new, democratically-constituted umbrella organization for the advancement and defense of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin first and foremost among them. I also believe you will find it valuable reading, if you’re not already closely familiar with the matters at hand.

“Outgoing” Bitcoin Foundation Executive Director Peter Vessenes, aka “vess” here, @vessenes on Twitter, states in video from Bitcoin 2013 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I6jfPXFAToM) at 5:23 that the Foundation will be hiring a lawyer to lobby regulators in Washington DC:

https://twitter.com/mikegogulski/status/335820053926797312

As I wrote:
Quote:

#BitcoinFoundation is DEAD TO ME. Lobbyists? Fuck you @Vessenes shyster sellout! Give my BTC 25 back! http://ow.ly/lai8e #Bitcoin2013

Then:
Quote:

Is that why you sold me http://app.bitlaundry.com/ @vessenes? So you could look squeaky clean while cozying up to politicians?#Bitcoin2013 (https://twitter.com/mikegogulski/status/335822417400324097)

And:
Quote:

I got into #Bitcoin to improve this miserable planet and ESCAPE the iron grip of privileged moneyed interests, not JOIN THEM! #Bitcoin2013

And:
Quote:

And @Vessenes sues @MtGox for $75m. Send the king’s swordsmen! I need more money! #Bitcoin2013 #Bitcoin #betrayal #rat #statist #sellout

Plenty more follows in my tweet stream, and includes a conversation with Smári McCarthy of the International (formerly Icelandic) Modern Media Institute (http://www.immi.is/).

I provided more of my reasoning (after a nice barbiturates-and-vodka cocktail and a bit of sleep) on Google+, in comments on Declan McCullagh’s article (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57585151-38/winklevoss-twins-on-bitcoin-time-to-work-with-the-feds/) from today:

Quote:

TL;DR: Sending Bitcoin to DC is like sending My Little Pony to the veterinarian.+Jon Matonis Despite my rantings, for me it’s not about purity either, but about the Foundation running off in a direction starkly counter to the motivations of a good many members, without any consultation at all. I believe I also heard +Peter Vessenes say, in that opening pitch, that there would be a Bitcoin Foundation members’ meeting during the conference. I guess that means that I’ll be getting an invitation with a teleconference number soon(?).

+Jerry Brito and +Declan McCullagh Yes, the exchanges are a vulnerable point, almost a “systempunkt” in John Robb’s terminology, the resiliency of the underlying protocol aside. At the same time, it’s already widely recognized that the best solutions to that sort of risk in the Bitcoin ecosystem involve peer-to-peer fiat/BTC exchange on the lines of #bitcoin-otc, localbitcoins.com and/or some kind of price discovery and exchange mechanism, with market actor reputation tracking, working in distributed fashion either in the BTC blockchain itself or as part of some kind of complementary system based roughly on the same principles. It’s into those kinds of solutions that I’d like to see funding from whatever replaces the now toxic Bitcoin foundation and where I’d like to see the massive amounts of human energy that will otherwise be sucked into the interdimensional tentacle-monster maelstrom of KYC/AML/FinCEN/FATF/make-it-play-in-Peoria compliance (vendor AND customer side) spent.

As +Nick Weaver alludes to, Bitcoin really is fundamentally incompatible with the pharaonic pyramids of the legacy banking system, or, in my parting words from last night, sending Bitcoin to DC is like sending My Little Pony to the veterinarian. Even though we lot on this thread may share similar ideas about the ideal end state for Bitcoin, I think we all agree that the means to reach those ends are important as well. There is clear disagreement about what sorts of means are the most efficient in bringing us all to shiny happy crypto-ponycoin utopia, and that’s fine. I’m asking folks to consider the entire picture very carefully, and especially not with America-centric blinders on.

I could go on to complain (but won’t do so here, hehe) that the Bitcoin core dev team — and, by extension, the Foundation which pays +Gavin Andresen — are, in my opinion, spending a disproportionate amount of time/energy on work which primarily benefits a small number of mining pool operators (taken collectively, another systempunkt!) and on work which tends more and more to support centralized and institutionalized structures such as BitPay and BitInstant — with all due respect to those teams — and to toward the deprioritization of work support independent merchants and the actual peer-to-peer future. Perhaps this is simply a disagreement regarding how to sequence priorities, but I can’t help but think it points to the same sort of issues I mention above, which actually turn out to be key ones as indicated by others.

+Jerry Brito “Allowed” is a hobgoblin. Bitcoin doesn’t need permission from the existing state/corporate financial system. In fact, it presents an existential threat to both. Fine, though, send some “diplomats” out to spread confusion in the enemy’s ranks.

And to +Jeffrey Tucker, it is indeed sad that freedom itself is simply unthinkable, where in a proper society it would be the reflexive, unconsidered default posture and where that society would react swiftly and forcefully to deviations from its principles. Alas, even with several thousand years of thought and experience to guide us, we have not yet collectively made the freedom posture the default.

(https://plus.google.com/u/1/112961607570158342254/posts/YLe37k7vonQ)

CLEARLY, Bitcoin no longer needs the Bitcoin Foundation as it’s currently constituted, and it is probably too toxic to be salvaged in any form. The conflicts of interest among directors should make this perfectly clear. Plus, we now have Vessenes suing Karpeles over the MtGox/Coinlab deal while they are both on the same board. They both should have resigned immediately at the time the suit was filed and served.

Even worse, and utterly inexcusably, Peter Vessenes hired Patrick Murck as the Foundation’s general counsel. This of course is the very same Patrick Murck who serves as Coinlab’s General Counsel, and who is therefore Coinlab’s top litigator in the suit against MtGox.

And, worse still, this is yet the same Patrick Murck who drew up the Coinlab/Bitcoinica/Bitcoin Consultancy deal which turned into such a massive clusterfuck that exactly none of the players involved emerged in any other manner than smeared with shit from head to toe. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196150.0;all)

Note also that NONE of these highly controversial acts and omissions were placed before votes of the Foundation’s membership, in radical contravention of the founding spirit of the organization if not the language of its founding charter.

THUS, IMHO, and as a Foundation Life Member, I hereby move that the Foundation dissolve itself, immediately, and enter into a binding legal plan to reimburse all donors proportionately, once legitimate expenses and outstanding debt incurred to date is covered. Additionally, I move that the Foundation immediately terminate all relations with Peter Vessenes, Mark Karpeles (sorry, dude) and Patrick Murck, and that Jon Matonis be appointed interim Executive Director, to serve during the company’s receivership and through it’s final dissolution as a legal entity.

And I am ready to support a new organization which actually serves the interests of Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies, as appropriate), with such egregious conflicts of interest excluded from decision-taking power and with a broad umbrella missing to accommodate ALL of the Bitcoin community, not just those who are only too delighted to cuddle up to regulators and politicians on the little-guy donor’s coin. The new organization shall operate democratically from day zero. I move that Jon Matonis be named custodian of founding donations and that he shall serve, once and only once, as Chairman of the founding, general meeting of the entire membership, at which a full charter and a full set of by-laws shall be adopted and a new slate of directors and executives elected, such meeting to be held not less than 60 days from now and not less than 120 days from now, and to include the technical capacity for as many voices as possible to participate and be heard (that is founding-donors-only google hangout, IRC channel, toll-free teleconference linked to a skype teleconference, etc.).

Who’s with me?

Jesus, Aldous Huxley, Jim Morrison and Dick Nixon: Debugging the regexes near the heart of the human condition

On the title: “regex” is short for “regular expression”, a basic tool in computer science, programming, linguistics and a variety of other fields. A regex is a tool for elaborating and concretizing patterns which a pattern-matching engine can then locate in the input data and apply further processing to.

In response to my previous post, “Bitcoin, Anonymous and the death of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius” on Facebook, an old friend asks:

To be clear, are you suggesting that those 6 people were killed by the US government? If so, how do you explain the currently accepted accounts, particularly for MLK and Lennon?

To which I responded, perhaps rather verbosely:

Hi Jeff,

I’m a conspiracy nut, sure, but not your typical one at all. I guess I would say that, as might not be crystal clear here, when I say “FBI” and “CIA” and all the rest the way I did, it’s a sarcastic reference to conspiracy theories in general and a specific reference to the work of Robert Anton Wilson (RIP) in the Illuminati! novels and other volumes.

“Bob” and the Fightin’ Jesus take on the Conspiracy Hydra

The Conspiracy is nothing like a unified group of heredity- and secret-society-lineage-linked anemic global bankers bent on word domination, and the Conspiracy’s program certainly isn’t a secret plan aimed at securing its future sovereignty in its much hoped-for Hell on Earth hatched at a meeting at some filigreed Schloss in Bavaria back ’round the 17th or 18th Century with blood sacrifice and references to the Temple of King Solomon. The program, rather, is more like bits of old DNA programming — code once essential for we higher monkeys to thrive and evolve and eventually write novels and epic-length FactBook comments, but code firmly grounded in its original pre-novel-writing world where the wrong shape or sound or smell meant instant death by snake or tiger scorpion for us and our families. Mostly obsolete today, with our effective mastery and dominance of land and creatures, the code tells us things like “tiger face death pain enemy; monkey face maybe family friend mate but strange unfamiliar monkey face want steal/kill/eat/rape me family baby wives nest”.

And if you think this is tricky, try debugging the mind.

Better put, we carry today a kind of pattern recognition and reaction mechanism along the lines of “Pay attention to survive: The creature you see now that you know you saw yesterday and who is part of your mating/huddling/nesting/grooming circle, and other creatures like it, is somewhat predictable, it may be your friend and you may need it to fill your belly and the wives’ and babies’ bellies, too. When you see a completely different type of creature and never saw it before, the best thing to do is hide or run, but be ready to fight if you must. Watch the creature very closely, especially when you see it watching you. Learn to spot the threat and react. And it is better to overreact, with swift and extreme violence, than to underreact, because if your pattern-matching and attention-paying and so on are less than perfect, you only get one chance to fail at protecting your life and all that is important to you and your world.”

As a result, we don’t worry too much any more about tigers and snakes, but we’re graced through our genetic heritage with almost instinctual behavior patterns which, in some less sensitive or perhaps less learned, give rise to the modern joys of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, nationalism, linguistic chauvinism, religious intolerance and on and on. And since we are modern and philosophical, and because we grasp history in its broad strokes, we know that the foreigner, the stranger, the wierdo, the one who says strange and unfamiliar things in public, the queer and the deviant must be paid very close attention, for they may well be harbingers of more to come, and we don’t know WHAT might happen then to the people, places and things we love and that our families have cherised for generations if not millennia.

So I suspect, assuming you take the original post and this reply seriously, you find some shred of truth in the thing and start evaluating possible parallels between this and your own knowledge of people, your knowledge of history and even between this and your own religion, spirituality or absence thereof, whichever flavor they may be.

I don’t think it’s crazy to think that when, for example, a carpenter from Nazareth, AWOL for 20 years and remembered for little more than a massive temper tantrum at the temple, smashing tables and scattering coins, then coming back from the desert saying things like, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, “love your enemy as yourself; what you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me also”, “render unto Ceasar that which is truly Caesar’s”, and “I have put away childish things; come, follow me, for I will give you rest and point the way to the Kingdom” and breathing life into a two-millenium flavor of the same quest and question which unites every thinking creature with a full belly, a warm fire and eyes to see the stars above, it’s no real surprise that the run/hide/kill program in the local chiefs and many of their dependents and wards runs with this utter strangeness unlike any pattern in the cache as input and produces “kill” as output. And so the wacko carpenter goes to his death in glory beyond measure while his own people scream for his blood and for the release of some pesky-but-familiar thief whose name is remembered only because he was on the rota that day too and because his name contains the funny letter “B” a few times.

Or when, for example, a druggie scrawls, “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite,” awakening the poetry and brilliance inside a rough beast like Jim Morrison who, as the going got weird took the weird pro, it’s no great shock that Sauron’s eye focused on him for a moment before moving away and that the very people inspired by his poetry then pick him apart at every turn until someone yells “show us your cock!” at a poetry reading. Nor is it outlandish that the poet, trying to artistically and instructively engage even the stinkiest orcs among us, gets triaged in a cage before being fed into the “welcome” end of the meat grinder some call justice and comes to believe that he’ll never have enough Windex to polish the glass on those doors, and chooses to just surrender, not his spirit and not to spirit, but to the agony of beauty and purity mocked and defiled.

By anabertol @ deviantart.com, used without permission

So, no, I don’t think the US government really killed anyone, because, like a mind virus, that entity doesn’t actually exist outside the minds of humans. It was humans that ruined and destroyed and killed those Faces, sometimes acting through governments, sometimes through private debating societies, sometimes through business but most often and most importantly due to the old software now become is malware still running strong in the depths of the monkey brain. One divine messenger or one lucky cur or one challenging artist or one scientist at the nonexistent frontier between Mind and Reality shows a few just a tiny peek through the Veil of Maya, and then morphs instantly in the minds of some fraction of us poor creatures into the extradimensional chaos monster from some the shrieking outer maelstrom of insanity. OF COURSE that fraction MUST kill, harry to suicide, subjugate, irrevocably and powerfully bind, discredit through slander and libel or otherwhise neuter that Other, that Monster, that Great Beast right away, burn the flesh, crush the bones, drop the ashes down the darkest hole and deliberately forget what happened so that the monster could never harm the children. After all, that’s how they came to survive a period which ended just a shake of a lamb’s tail back in the almost imponderable immensity of geological time, not only alive but with minds and societies they could reflect upon and know to protect.

I could go on. There’s that president-monkey, a particularly vile specimen of Politicus vulgaris vulgaris, taking the paper from the speechwriter and setting the capstone on the hopes and aspirations all the mean mind creatures on this one rock without any conception of the depth of truth and beauty he was reading:

“All the people on this Earth are truly one.” — Tricky Dicky

“[T]he heavens have become a part of man’s world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one; one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.” — Richard Motherfucking Nixon

But this sort of thinking also challenges, existentially, the cringing monkey brain which, even as it tears out the messenger’s living heart, ignores that messenger’s message itself. For too many, what comes after is too often a perverted caricature of the simple inspiration that triggered the kill button.

(BTW, you already know this stuff. I’m sure you saw the books I was reading, in Calculus II, during the free time that I, Dave, Brian, Paul, and you had after we finished all the classwork in 20 minutes and then rushed to set up the chess boards. But since were five, one was always out, and I read some books that I know you looked at and maybe borrowed from me or from Ellis or someone else. No real news here.)

Peace,
Mike

Bitcoin, Anonymous and the death of the dawning of the age of Aquarius

(UPDATE: Footnote[*] below, 18 May 2013)

(originally published as a Facebook note: https://www.facebook.com/notes/mike-agorizmus-gogulski/bitcoin-anonymous-and-the-death-of-the-dawning-of-the-age-of-aquarius/10152824936625232)

Not this…

In the late 1950s to late 1970s, The Establishment, aka The Man, aka The Conspiracy, aka the FBI (Fucking Bavarian Illuminati) and the CIA (Cocksucking Illuminati Assholes) identified, targeted and destroyed the leading lights of a nascent, shining movement toward global illumination: MLK. Leary. JFK. Morrison. Malcom X. Lennon. And on and on. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius was strangled in the crib.

… but THIS!

The failure of that time, which culminated worldwide in ’68, was that the movement had FACES, and faces are targets. Destroy the faces, destroy the movement. Take all of the trappings of the new consciousness and recast them as cheap marketing gimmicks: subversion complete. The Hippie pioneers did not drive Volkswagen Beetles because they were some kind of status symbol or mass-consumer-culture signifier. They drove them because they were cheap, simple, minimalistic, trivial to repair and infinitely customizable. It was only later that the cultural imperialists sucked everything good out of the times and pushed it through the marketing meat grinder, until: Fahrvergnügen.

Today, I believe, a few of the surviving “secret chiefs”, if you will, who were active back in ’68 and before are working as cleverly as they can, before they die, to levitate the Pentagon shift global consciousness in much the same way, but with a fundamentally different and more effective strategy: No more faces. Anonymous. Alan Moore’s Guy Fawkes mask. The unknown hero, the nameless brother, the faceless Samaritan. When The Man can’t target a Face, it doesn’t know what to do, and the field is open for massive gains on the side of the regular people. Today, we don’t venerate the Faces. We don the mask. And this Face Book? Oh! Do you jest, or do you not feel the power you have lost?

Whoever or whatever Satoshi is or was knew this, and acted right from the start on that knowledge. No face, no target. Produce brilliance, show some people, fade away into legend.

There is a teaching in Zen Buddhism which I will paraphrase here: If you meet Satoshi on the road, KILL HIM.

###

* My friend Arto posted this post to reddit under the title of the last statement: If you meet Satoshi on the road, kill him. What’s clear to me certainly isn’t clear to everyone, so I wrote a clarifying note about the meaning of that somewhat shocking phrase, which I now include here.

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” is an ancient teaching from Zen Buddhism. Like most things written in and through and about Zen, it can be interpreted in many ways. In my post, I use it in the following sense:

In Zen, seekers after enlightenment (true knowledge) are presented, many times, with leaps of insight accompanied by degrees of spiritual awakening. The stories are many of students, perceiving a truth or emerging from meditation, running excitedly to their gurus, exclaiming “I see! I get it!”. The roshi’s (guru’s) response often looks very odd: “great, now do the dishes”, or the roshi may even strike the seeker, up the the point of breaking one of his limbs. The point here is that, having achieved some mastery over the subject/object distinction, having seen beyond the Veil of Maya, the seeker has immediately collapsed back into error by his exclamation.

Likewise, there is a tendency among seekers to perceive the divine in their teachers, whether roshi or random strangers, and then fall immediately into the error of venerating the teacher instead of understanding that, as Tolstoy titled his book, “the kingdom of God is within you”. Thus, if the seeker meets someone while he is on the path (road) to enlightenment who he identifies as a being greater than himself, a Buddha, he should kill that being — meaning not to actually murder anyone, but to recognize the impulse toward erroneous veneration, acknowledge it, grin at it, and let that misidentification slide on by, taking away a lesson in the process.

That may not explain, exactly, the title under which the OP shared my post, but, I pray, may point you in the right direction.

In loving memory and in belated honor of C. Jan Gogulski, Col. US Army (Ret.), * 1933 – † 2000.

My dad kept this beautiful teaching on the wall of his office (“the den”) from before the time I could read. My mother, Joan Carol Gogulski, keeps it there now, and it is to her that I dedicate this posting, along with my sorrow at the 12 1/2 years it has taken me to begin mourning.

Obituary — December 27, 2001 — The Orlando Sentinel (link)

CASIMIR “JAN” GOGULSKI, 68, Bradford Drive, Winter Park, died Monday, Dec. 24. Mr. Gogulski was an electrical engineer for Lockheed-Martin. Born in Grand Rapids, Mich., he moved to Central Florida in 1972. He was a member of St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church. Survivors: wife, Joan; son, Michael, Santa Cruz, Calif.; daughter, Karen, Orlando; brother, Paul, Las Vegas; one granddaughter. Baldwin-Fairchild Funeral Home-Oviedo Chapel.

Be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. The universe is unfolding as it should.

– Spocken by Leonard Nimoy, 1967
– Conceived and Written by Max Ehrmann, 1927.
– VIDEO FOLLOWS BELOW!

~*~ Desiderata ~*~

Go placidly
amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
~*~
Found at the Old Saint Paul’s Church, Baltimore A.D. 1692.

Farewell, toward the final frontier.

RT broadcast: Renouncing US citizenship, for tax and political reasons

RT segment from April 15, 2013 in “honor” of US income tax day. Features noted figures Jet Li and Eduardo Saverin, who recently quit their American citizenship for tax reasons. Freddi M. Weintraub, a tax attorney, provides insight into the law surrounding expatriation. Segment concludes with an interview with Mike Gogulski (me), who renounced his US citizenship in 2008 for political reasons and has lived without any nationality since — a stateless person.

Berlin segment filmed 12 April 2013.

Berlin crew:
Correspondent: Peter Oliver, @petergoliver_rt
Producer: Tatiana Bochkareva
Camera: Stanislav Mandryka

Copyright (c) 2013 by RT. Posted with permission.

Bitcoin exchange rate drops 50%! MtGox fail! And more…

Bitcoin down 50% today! THE SKY IS FALLING!!! But what’s really going on?

MtGox screwup causes Bitcoin market crash

The problem, I believe, is that MtGox’s websockets API stopped working a few hours ago. This took any and all automatic traders out of the market, particularly those who were pursuing a “slow accumulate” trading strategy. MtGox has another API called socketio, which is working, but fewer trading bots use it. So, liquidity disappears, particularly from those trying to build up Bitcoin positions without pushing the market higher. Meanwhile, traders using the website trading interface see the price slide, panic, and sell.

This is certainly a problem with MtGox’s business operations, diligence, competence, etc. That the problem has not been addressed as I write this, some 3 hours after it began, is testament to an inadequate monitoring and response system — in business practice terms, not necessarily tech. I don’t care that it’s 4:30am in Tokyo, MtGox owes it to its users to either support the exchange 24/7 or to automatically shut it down when such a fault is detected.

But the MAJOR problem here isn’t MtGox itself, it’s the aggregate behavior of traders to date. MtGox enjoys an early-mover advantage in the marketplace which is very hard to justify given its performance issues in the past weeks. The BTC/USD price may recover straight off, or it may not. The one thing for sure is that MtGox MUST lose market share — both as a result of this screwup, and so that Bitcoin may prosper.

Bitcoin does not have a “market capitalization”

Great news today via Bitcoin Magazine:

Bitcoin Market Capitalization Hits $1 Billion: The New Era of Institutional Investors

Of course, I’m happy with this news, but the terminology being employed in so many places is simply incorrect.

Market capitalization is defined as the market price of a publicly-traded company’s outstanding shares of stock multiplied by the number of outstanding shares.

Bitcoin is not a publicly-traded company, and has no “shares”. Therefore, by definition, Bitcoin cannot have a “market capitalization”.

Better terminology might be: “Market value of all Bitcoins in circulation hits US$1 billion”.

The distinction is important because the use of the term “market capitalization” reinforces the erroneous notion that Bitcoin has some kind of central issuing authority, which it does not.

Is America still a democracy? Who cares? It’s DANGEROUS!

On 6 March 2013 I participated in a panel discussion in Bratislava on the Bradley Manning case and on the question, “Is the United States still a democracy?” The event took place at the office of the Open Society Foundation – Bratislava and was hosted by Slovakia’s Inštitút ľudských práv – Human Rights Institute. The other guest was Michal Havran, Editor-in-Chief of Slovak politico-economic news and commentary website jeToTak.sk. The discussion was moderated by the Institute’s Director, Peter Weisenbacher, and English-Slovak interpreting support was provided by Institute Program Director and Media Spokesperson Alena Krempaská.

My (sometimes glossed and possibly faulty) transcript of my statements follows the video. I would welcome a transcript of the Slovak portion.

“Do you think Bradley Manning should have done something other than what he did?”

According to Bradley’s testimony in the court, I picked out a few things that motivated him, first of all. One of them was the cruelty, the callousness and the criminality displayed by the soldiers who were captured in the video that was released called “Collateral Murder” shooting people in the streets of Baghdad. Also there was one experience he detailed where he pointed to a pattern where people were being killed and captured simply to kind of “make the numbers”, and the people in command were just focused on eliminating names from a list rather than seeking justice. He also mentioned the treatment of detainees in Guantánamo and elsewhere, and that in many cases there was no good reason for holding them. He talked about the financial crisis as it affected Iceland and how the US and the EU were trying to pressure Iceland into accepting an IMF-style bailout which would have been disastrous for the citizens. And he also mentioned what’s come to be called the Garani massacre in Afghanistan, where 150 people were killed, most of them women and children.

Bradley did try to do several different things before he released the information to WikiLeaks. First he attempted to raise some of these issues with his chain of command, and also tried to get the attention of his member of Congress to investigate. Those requests were ignored, essentially, “go back to work,” so he decided he had to do something else. He also attempted to make contact with the Washington Post and the New York Times and the website politico.com and was also ignored in those cases. So, finally he went and gave the information to WikiLeaks and later he told his correspondent and “confidante” online — in testimony that later became ground for his arrest — “well, it was forwarded to [WikiLeaks] – and god knows what happens now – hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms – if not, then we’re doomed – as a species – i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens [...] I want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” So, Bradley for himself determined that somethign had to be done with the information he was in possession of, no other avenue was available to him, so he did what he thought justice demanded.

“Why did you, as an American, decide to start the support network for Manning?”

Well, first I’d like to point out that I’m an ex-American since 2008. In 2010 the news came out through Wired magazine’s online website that Bradley Manning had been arrested. I looked at the story and said “Oh my god. Here’s the guy who released this shocking and awful video of the helicopter murders in Baghdad.” My first reaction was less about Bradley than it was about Adrian Lamo, the person he had been chatting to about what he had done, and who would be his “confidante”. Lamo betrayed Manning by turning him in to the police and the military authorities, and my reaction and really the reason that I got into this was saying: “Adrian Lamo, you dirty motherfucker!” So, over the next three days, as I read more about the story, as it was starting to come out, and thought more about it I became angrier and angrier about the situation and realized that Manning was facing the full weight of the American “justice” system, so I registered bradleymanning.org. Over the next couple of months, by operating that website myself as a blog, I attracted the attention of other people who were interested in the case and eventually the Support Network was born.

(responding to a comment from Michal Havran, where he points out that it’s unfair to say the Post and the Times “ignored” Manning)

Because of the way the traditional media operate, Manning wasn’t able to develop the kind of relationship that “Deep Throat” developed with Bob Woodward, back in the day. Manning was a guy who hung out on the internet. He met WikiLeaks by hanging out in IRC chat rooms. The technological landscape of journalism is changing to some degree, and whereas the Post and the Times weren’t able to respond to someone used to communicating in the way that Manning does, an organization like WikiLeaks and now other organizations like that are developing the technology and the culture to support a new kind of journalism.

The other point related to this charge of “aiding the enemy”. “Nepriateľ” neexistuje. There is no “enemy”. In order for the term “enemy” to be properly applied under American constitutional law, as I understand it, if there is no Congressional declaration of war, there can be no “enemy”, and the United States hasn’t had a Congressionally-declared war since World War II. [...] In short, the situation with the United States being at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, in Yemen, Somalia, god knows where else, constitutionally, under the Constitution, all of it is criminal behavior for the last 60 years. So, even by its own declared standards, it’s not justified in putting this “aiding the enemy” charge against Manning. However, the United States administration has, for a long time, simply ignored the sections of the law that it doesn’t find convenient.

“Why did you renounce your American citizenship?”

I have a little thing here that I wrote back in 2008, which I’ll just read. “I renounced my American citizenship in protest of what has become an American Empire, a nation that I see riding an express train to police state dictatorship with flags flying, anthems blaring and deluded, complicit masses cheering it along the track.” And this was not a new phenomenon I suddenly saw in 2008. I’d wanted to leave the US since around 1998, until I finally did in 2004, but I had seen already this trend toward greater and greater control — fascism — in America as early as 1990. My good friend Vinay Gupta wrote something a few days ago which I think is very powerful: “America is raising a generation for whom America has always been the world’s great fascist power.”

“What do you, as an ex-American citizen, given this case, think about the US justice system?”

The American “justice” system is critically broken, and it’s not going to be fixed. That’s something that’s been building for quite a long time. The constitutional guarantees to a fair, public, speedy trial obviously are being pushed aside in this case. In fact, we’ve even got notification in the last few days that four of the government’s witnesses against Manning are going to be anonymous, which at least on the face of it goes against the rule that you have the right to know who your accuser is. One of those four, in fact, is so classified and so secret — because, it’s believed, he’s the person who actually shot Osama bin Laden — that the defense will not be allowed to interview him prior to trial.

In my opinion, all of the treatment of Bradley Manning, fundamentally, from the side of the United States government, is not about Bradley Manning. It’s about the demonstration of the naked exercise unlimited, unaccountable power. In my mind, there is a very strong motivation that goes all the way up beyond the president to the people who actually own America and who the president works for, and what they’re thinking is: “Let’s do everything we can to make Bradley Manning the poster child, the great example, for why you don’t leak information from inside the government. And, when we have the chance, we’ll make the process go as slowly as possible. In fact, we’ll screw up the prosecution at the first instance and at the appeals level so that it eventually goes to the Supreme Court, and then Manning’s been in prison for 15 years before the case is finally disposed of. And we can always point to this, to people inside the government, as an example of what you don’t do.” So, American justice? Sure, if you’re privileged, and if you can afford it. I could go on…

“Would the 1000 days detention be different if this were before the USA-PATRIOT Act came into effect?”

I’m not a legal expert but I believe that in this case the PATRIOT Act does not apply to the length of time that he’s been imprisoned before trial. My understanding is that some portion — some smaller portion — of the 1000 days is due to the defense requesting additional time for preparation of the case. However, the bulk of the 1000 days is claimed by the defense as being foot-dragging and delay on the part of the government. This goes to the kind of thing I was saying before, where, “hey, we can screw up the prosecution so much as we like so long as it draws things out and continues hanging Bradley out there as a counterexample.”

“What do you think Manning’s actions will mean, for further releases of information via WikiLeaks, for the US and for democracy?”

Julian Assange came up with a great quotation after WikiLeaks began publishing the Bradley Manning material, which was “courage is contagious.” The only reason why Manning was caught and why Manning has now been in prison for a thousand days and faces a life sentence is that he trusted somebody who betrayed him. It was not necessary that the state would ever find him, because the means that he employed, with the assistance of WikiLeaks, and allegedly of some other people, were technologically secure. So, I hope that Manning’s example serves as an inspiration to other people who might leak governmental, corporate or church secrets that those organizations would rather keep hidden, because they point to bad behavior. The modern state, the modern corporation — the big corporation, particularly — can’t function without some level of legally-privileged secrecy. I’d be very happy to see that disappear.

“Is the US still a democracy?”

I must qualify my answer first. In one sense, I don’t care. I’m an anarchist. I think democracy is a terrible way to organize society. As H.L. Mencken wrote: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” (laughter)

America is not a democracy. The American political system maintains the forms of a republican democracy, it maintains the institutions of a republican democracy, but this is much like putting perfume on a pig. It’s window-dressing. While it’s true that anybody can run for the legislature and get elected, in order to actually wield power in the legislature and retain it one must placate the corporate and other interests that actually own the country. And, in the case of the highest reaches of the administration, in particular the presidency, one does not — by virtue of good character, charisma and great plans for the country — get elected to the presidency. One gets elected to the presidency because the people who own America allow you to be, and because you’ve already sold your soul to the devil.

There are many other things that could be said about this, but one of them worth mentioning is that in the American electoral system there are really only two parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. It’s been said more than once that the Republicans and the Democrats are just like two wings of the same evil bird. So in fact there is no real choice between Democrats and Republicans in the US, they’re both two faces of the same entity, whereas in Slovakia, you actually do have a choice: you get to vote for Penta, or J&T.[1] (laughter)

And further, if you look at the visible signs of how the country has been developing for the last 25 years, the signs of the emergence of a police state are obvious and everywhere. The Department of Homeland Security recently purchased something like one billion rounds of high-powered rifle ammunition. These are not to be used in wars. The US government has just purchased three bullets for every man, woman and child inside the country. When you add to these things the endless American wars that have been going on since “peace” after World War II, the question becomes: “Is America a democracy? Who cares? It’s DANGEROUS!”

[1]: Two large Slovak investment banks

Tear down the old myths and preconceptions!

“I have come to the conclusion that there is no hope for humanity or our world if we do not violently tear down the old myths and preconceptions which plague our species with demon gods and imaginary karmic enslavement.”

– Vinay Gupta, "Dynamic Tension", 4 March 2013

It’s your duty as an oppressed worker to steal from your exploiters.

King Missile, “Take Stuff from Work”, Fluting on the Hump, 1987.

Take stuff from work.
It’s the best way to feel better about your job.
Never buy pens or pencils or paper.
Take ‘em from work.
Rubber bands, paper clips, memo pads, folders-take ‘em from work.
It’s the best way to feel better about your low pay and appalling working conditions.
Take an ashtray-they got plenty.
Take coat hangers.
Take a, take a trash can.
Why buy a file cabinet?
Why buy a phone?
Why buy a personal computer or word processor?
Take ‘em from work.
I took a whole desk from the last place I worked.
They never noticed and it looks great in my apartment.
Take an electric pencil sharpener.
Take a case of white-out; you might need it one day.
Take some from work
It’s your duty as an oppressed worker to steal from your exploiters.
It’s gonna be an outstanding day.
Take stuff from work.
And goof off on the company time.
I wrote this at work.
They’re paying me to write about stuff I steal from them.
Life is good.