2020 protests: American Spring? US regime-collapse?

The Trump regime is presiding over a viral outbreak that slaughtered over 100,000 Americans, embarassing the US as the worst-hit country in the world. It is likely to kill even more, and meanwhile the failing regime carries out abductions and killings of its own.

Here are some points to be aware of:

* People from neglected and brutalized African American communities are reported to overwhelmingly be the victims of both the COVID-19 outbreak and also police violence. The infamous killing of George Floyd was only the most public example of the latter, but the rage it unleashed was aimed at avenging all similar such murders. Neglect, as well as living in what is effectively a failed state under a racist military occupation modeled on the armor-plated brutality of Israel, put these communities in desperation and led to inevitable resistance.

* High-level US government insiders from the regime's Republican and Democratic wings (e.g. Susan Rice) are hostile to the protesters, exposing the sham two-party system.

* US media are hostile to the protesters, exposing servile pro-regime media outlets such as CNN.

* Celebrities keep indicating support to protesters but condemn the actions of protesters and offer no substantive criticism of the regime, showing they are stooges who defend the status quo.

* Social media platforms appear to be allowing encouragement of the protests, although this is based on their own sensitivity to their users' wishes and is likely to terminate if the regime comes into danger and decides to put pressure on social media.

* Trump is pursuing labelling the protesters as "terrorists".

* Trump hid in a bunker during protests.

* Trump is considering military action - at the level of the Federal government itself - against the protesters. This could effectively mean a regime crackdown against citizens all across the US.

* Police have stuggled to respond to the protesters, with protesters regularly gaining the upper hand and managing to force even armed security personnel out of buildings and public spaces. Given that the US police are highly militarized, this result is astonishing.

* The ongoing COVID-19 lockdown probably hampers the regime's ability to coordinate a response to its deteriorating situation. Parts of the US government will struggle to meet and coordinate responses as many officials are likely to be self-isolating or unable to attend physical gatherings, whereas protesters are free to take whatever action they wish.

In terms of how technology impacts the future trajectory of this situation (the main topic of this blog), we are in a unique situation. Although the internet was used to disseminate the footage of George Floyd's murder, we are no longer seeing dissidents forced to interact online while the regime takes action in the real world. Instead, members of the regime have to stay at home in front of a screen while protesters and dissidents are the ones who can take action in the real world.

Where this will go is hard to predict. It may continue to escalate to the point that there is a deployment of military force by the US government against protesters - something already being considered by Trump according to some reports. This would be hugely embarassing to the US, a severe stain on its human rights record for decades to come, and potentially seen as a humiliation of America in the ongoing cold conflict with China and Russia. Blaming Russia or China for it will only make this situation even more embarassing to the US, since this only turns the tables on a country constantly funding and leading protests in other countries.

On the other hand, the US government may manage to drain the energy of the protesters through mass arrests and downplay the impact of the protests through its servile mainstream media. Owing to the lack of organizing power of the protesters and the fact this is not a planned but spontanous uprising, such a result seems like the most probable conclusion. If on the other hand the protesters begin attacking sensitive sites in Washington DC like monuments and the White House itself, or if protesters begin storming prisons and the armories of the already overpowered police forces, this story could enter a new chapter - for better or worse.

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UK reform harms the disabled: petition

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A petition started at the UK Parliament's public petitions portal calls on the government to assess the negative impact of benefit reforms on the lives of disabled people in Britain.

Titled "Assess full impact of all cuts to support & social care for disabled people", the petition points out that the UK government has ignored public calls to assess "the impact of Welfare, Social Care & NHS reform on disabled people and their families".

The number of disabled people living in absolute poverty has increased as the Cameron government has revised the benefits system. Many disabled and ill people in the United Kingdom are effectively forced to work (sometimes even with only a few weeks left to live).

The petition can be found and signed at the UK Parliament's petitions portal. The government will have to respond if there are more than 10,000 signatures and Parliament will consider a debate on the issue if there are more than 100,000 signatures.

In many testimonies, disabled people are being arbitrary deemed fit for work by fake medical organizations like "Atos Healthcare" which are paid by the government solely to ignore real doctors' advice and force thousands of ill and disabled people to work. Another area of controversy surrounds similarly fraudulent organizations contracted by the Conservative government to be cheap and incompetent conveyors of the government's "work program". In every case, these fake and parasitic corporations are run by government cronies trying to profit from unemployment and thus allowed to usurp non-competitive public sector work.

Because they are private organizations and not state agencies, private organizations doing government work are allowed to observe no ethics, no credible commitment to government targets, and no commitment to actually end the social problems they are exploiting in their contract with the government. The Conservative government wishes to make the NHS similarly driven by capricious businesses who (rather than competing with other businesses) receive the gift of government contracts for nothing more than being a crony.

#Network technologies will "render the corporate form entirely superfluous": @KevinCarson1 http://t.co/uO8GRozYpX pic.twitter.com/qrTsKkbkKU

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) September 2, 2015

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The throes of transition to a new world

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The arena of global “welfare” can include access to food and healthcare. [53] However, it is also possible that this arena could be extended to include energy security, water and other resources. Wallerstein notes that ideologues of the present world order will congratulate themselves on the triumphs of technology derived from global production through the international division of labor, but the only triumphs they can cite are unsustainable for them. Structural collapses, pending as a result on the issues already discussed in the previous three targets, will surely eliminate this sole redeeming attribute of the world order. [54] The move for technology-powered emancipation would focus on finding ways of sustaining and keeping global welfare intact. Aspects of the world order that appear calculated to preserve the production process by keeping industrial secrets in the hands of the few are really aimed at keeping the production process maximally profitable. As technology races forward in terms of medicine, energy and agriculture, it will only become a scandal that it is being developed and used for purposes of profit rather than humanitarian needs. Techno-liberation actions could include a moral need to violate patents and security concerns to make more medical and food supplies available to the world poor.

“Stability of religious institutions” is the fifth arena, specified by Immanuel Wallerstein for its social significance. We can note that there is said to be a religious revival, and even a resurgence of reactionary beliefs interfering in popular scientific literacy because of this. [55] In fact, in all ways, the various religious revivals are minor in comparison with the ultimately secular debates that have been handed down to religious institutions from the political sphere, e.g. debates addressing human rights. This proves that religious institutions are actually turning towards the progressive side as a result of social commentary, accommodating such things as the search for equality for women. [56] Although religious institutions could become fortresses for reactionary attitudes, on the whole the nation-state is a worse such fortress that needs to be overcome. There is nothing inherently bad about religious institutions and sects, when it comes to uniting humans and eliminating disparities. As implied in the discussion of the first target, religious sectarian identity is possibly a more preferable vehicle than national identity when it comes to overcoming disparities, because at least religious identity can be transnational. This allows religious identity to be available as a cultural clothing to criticize some of the worst and most oppressive aspects of the world system. Religious symbolism and argument can be justified, if they lead towards egalitarian ends, and religious rhetoric always addresses the problem of inequality more willingly and more effectively than archaic nation-state rhetoric. Taking religious identities and doctrines forward using modern communication technologies, and encouraging tolerance among religions in the face of global political injustice, is the best objective regarding religious institutions for the interests of techno-liberation.

Of the five arenas discussed, the fourth (“welfare”) is the most relevant to techno-liberation. On the discussion of how techno-liberation can enhance welfare immediately, the possibility of hacking the real world rather than the information world opens up. The most important techno-liberation mission is incumbent on the people who are privileged enough, by accident of birth and education, to be involved in high-tech production processes. Their charity for the impoverished section of the world should be undertaken, much as people who value freedom of information can become whistleblowers and leakers if they have access to secretive material. While this often has involved unlawful actions, it has also been repeatedly pointed out that moral obligations can ultimately take priority over the law in some cases. If one has access to a very definite industrial secret or technology that could easily be circulated to improve living in deprived parts of the world, then some part of the blame for sustaining gross inequality rests with such a worker and it ought to be gnawing at him. Although items of technology may not yet be futuristic enough to be “compact” sufficiently to be leaked and reproduced by people as information can be reproduced on the internet, we can still await a window in which they will be sufficiently “compact.” It is possible that certain machines will be able to replicate themselves, or that synthetic life-forms could replicate on their own and so only be “leaked” once. The high likelihood that such powerful technology will be sufficiently “compact” for democratic circulation in the future makes the act of leaking these technologies to weaker nations for moral and ethical reasons a very real option. Such “hard-leak” actions, no doubt, would be met with criticism from the powerful, but the vast majority of the world would praise those actions as heroic just as they have praised the leaking of controversial government data.

In sum, we can posit that techno-liberators can approach the throes of transition to a new world system optimistically if they consider the kind of technological opportunities that exist, and if they support a variety of radical options to empower the people. A large amount of the structural oppression in the world can be delegitimized and overpowered through a basically technological form of progress and liberation. Chiefly, the exploitative productive relations between “primitive” parts of the world and the “advanced” parts of the world, responsible for sustaining the global inequality, could easily be lanced by a generation of hard-leakers. It merely requires the courage to stand up for an equal world that will not be divided between people with advanced technology and people who must endure severely deprived and encumbered lives merely because of a sad accident of birth.

Excerpt from Bentham, H. J., Catalyst: A Techno-Liberation Thesis (2013)

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