New Developments

The Swonden controversy gets stranger and stranger. When Edward Snowden was traveling globally from Hong Kong to Moscow, and other places, there is the advancement of PCLOB. This is called the Privacy Liberties Oversight Board. It was recreated and running at the time when Edward Snowden talked to Glenn Greenwald about his leak. It was created back in 2004. The PCLOB was supposed to the agency reporting to Congress about our civil liberties and mass spying by agencies like the NSA. The White House says that they want to have the right balance between privacy and security (they want to include the private sector in handling the situation). Folks have the right to have a discussion about who exactly is Edward Snowden. There are still those that want CISPA to be passed as well. Many of the newly reconstituted PCLOB members are allied with big business, the Chamber of Commerce, and a single law firm (that contracts with major corporations that helped them get legislation passed in Congress).  The PCLOB was never formed under Obama yet they were supposedly our protectors, being the only real oversight of the massive spying program. Under CISPA, they are again our ONLY protectors standing between us and the corporations with their new authority to do whatever they want with our most intimate information. The PCLOB is up and running and being tasked by Obama to formulate the response to the Snowden psyop. One goal of this incident by the establishment is the passage of CISPA. This bill is supported by corporations and lobbying groups like Microsoft, Facebook, IBM, etc. The bill gives a broad definition of information that can be shared by private Internet companies with government agencies. It overrides existing federal or state privacy laws according to Meeks. The bill can cause backdoor wiretap program. The reason is that the information being shared is not limited specifically to issues of cyber security, but it could be used for any other purpose as well. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is similar to the 2004 9/11 Commission. That commission did nothing to prevent the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act from ending. Many members of the PCLOB are reactionaries. One of them like Rachel Brand worked for corporations in trying to fight regulations that limit their profits. Now, we see that Edward Snowden did not released no massively new information, he repeatedly exaggerated or lied about his background, he dropped out of high school, and was made to have huge experience in the NSA. Jon Rappaport claims that Snowden is being used as a turf war between the CIA and the NSA. While this is going on, the Congress is still trying to pass the evil CISPA bill. It is illegal and against our constitutional rights to allow the spying agencies access to our personal data as a broad sweeping generality AND it’s certainly against our constitutional rights to have them recording everything we say for future use or blackmail. Now, this doesn't mean that we should ignore real issues. We should follow the real issues. We should continually oppose the illegal NSA spying program and advance our civil liberty rights. We should disagree with the terrorist actions of the FBI and the CIA that have existed for decades. We should continue to protest for justice and advocate solutions to our issues. For solutions are some of the ways that we can truly have a better society. We should go out and speak truth to power.

We know of the hypocrisy that is found in the U.S. government. One example is how Congress did something. They exempted itself form the prohibition against trading on inside information. This is the law that got Martha Stewart and other human beings thrown into jail. Washington reactionary politicians claim that we have to slash basic services. Yet, they waste hundreds of billions of dollars on counterproductive boondoggles. These waste spending actions are geared to corporate welfare, military and security wasteful projects, other pork, harmful quantitative easing, unnecessary nuclear subsidies, the failed war on drugs, and other wasted expenses. That is why we don't need to impose austerity on the people who are trying to literally survive in the world. The D.C. hypocrite politicians did not want giant failed banks to be nationalized since they claimed that that would be socialism. Yet, these agents from Congress bailed them out to billions of dollars each year and created a system where all of the profits are privatized and all of the losses are socialized. You can temporarily nationalized the failed banks and then spin them off to the private sector. You can break them up even instead of bailouts. Even recent bills claiming to rescue homeowners did little and bail out the banks. The big banks are not being accountable for their actions. There has been the expansion of the Bush era spy programs now. China is doing cyber warfare, but the U.S. government is doing the same thing. White House administrations for years have been very secretive. Glenn Greenwald or the Guardian reporter broke the NSA spying scandal and others has done so for years. Many journalists who criticize the administration or the establishment have been prosecuted or harassed. The U.S. is directly supporting Al Qaeda terrorists in Syria, Libya, Mali, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iran, and other nations before and after 9/11. Some government documents from the DHS, etc. falsely label American citizens as similar to terrorists if they protest, complain, or do normal actions in America. The White House leaks classified information all of the time as a means to gain public opinion, glorify the President, or to help advance the war on terrorism. The state just hates when the leaks expose their wrongdoing or embarrasses them. There are many laws that violate human civil liberties all of the time too. The state has illegally monitoring peacefully anti-war groups via fusion centers all of the time. The Swonden controversy continues as he escaped Hong Kong and he is inside of Moscow, Russia. This is especially hypocritical given that liberals like Noam Chomsky and conservatives like the director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan (Lt. General William Odom) all say that the American government is the world's largest purveyor of terrorism. It is hypocritical for the U.S. government to talk about fighting terrorism when the CIA and other state entities have funded terrorists for years and decades. 

 

Gun history is definitely important to study indeed. Some gun control laws back in the day and recently were made to restrict the rights of minorities and the poor. In 1803, the planters in New Orleans wanted to have the existing free black militia disarmed and exclude free blacks from owning arms. This was after the Haitian Revolution of the 1790's when black men, women, and children defeated French imperialists. Back in the early 1800's, the New Orleans city government also stopped whites form teaching fencing to free blacks and blacks were banned from teaching fencing. Arms restrictions were common among free blacks in the South and the North. This accelerated after the 1831 Nat Turner rebellion. Irrational fears among some whites caused more restrictions on blacks owning weapons. In response to Turners Rebellion, the Virginia Legislature made it illegal for free blacks "to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead." Even the 1834 Tennessee Constitution only allowed free white men to own arms while the Article XI, Section 26 of the 1796 Tennessee Constitution read: "That the freemen of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence." Certain gun control laws of the past have been straight up racist. During the Civil War, numerous human beings used arms to end the oppressive system of the Confederacy. Arming former black slaves helped to defeat the gray enemy during the Civil War that lasted from 1861 to 1865. “Men of Color, To Arms!” was Frederick Douglas' slogan as he campaigned for black volunteers for such famous regiments as the 54th Massachusetts. Many black Union forces were definitely instrumental in the Union victory. In concurring opinion narrowly construing a Florida gun control law passed in 1893, Justice Buford stated the 1893 law “was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State….The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers….The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied…”. Watson v. Stone, 148 Fla. 516, 524, 4 So.2d 700, 703 (1941) (GMU CR LJ, p. 69). The Deacons for Defense did not just provide armed resistance. They provided several other services to the community. Their model was duplicated by the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (the original party, not the New Black Panther Party. The NBPP is more controversial and it has warriors among brothers and sisters in them too regardless if you agree with everything that they stand for or not). Even Dr. King believed in the following ideas: “As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of “self-defense.” In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one’s home and one’s person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.” (Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Chapter II, Black Power, Page 55, Harper & Row Publishers Inc., First Edition, 1967). The 1967 arms law in California banned open carrying of firearms in the cities of California. This law was passed easily after the Black Panthers demonstrated against it by walking into the Assembly Chamber carrying pistols, rifles, and at least one sawed off shotgun. This law was called the Mulford Act. The Crime Bill of 1994 was wrong too for many reasons. Bill Clinton back then agreed with unreasonable searches or unwarranted searches in Chicago housing projects. The Crime Bill of 1994 was passed after hard debate in Congress. It was opposed by an unlikely coalition in the House. The opposition came from most Republicans, some conservative Democrats, and many African American Democrats. The first two groups disagreed with it for gun rights issues (like the assault weapons ban) and many Black Democrats opposed it since they believed that the death penalty provisions would disproportionately affect blacks. It passed and the rest is history. It is also important to note that we need to improve our socioeconomic conditions as well. We need universal health care. We need real jobs, affordable housing, and we need justice in the world. These actions in conjunction with other solutions can reduce gun violence in the world.

 

1968 was one of the most revolutionary years in human history. It was a year of class struggle and revolutionary upheaval in the world. It was during that time when Dr. Martin Luther King led his last fight for human liberation. Dr. King knew that legal equality means little without economic equality. That is why he said that African Americans still live in the basement of the Great Society. He wanted human beings to have power. He wanted the SCLC to focus on giving power as a means to provide a guaranteed annual income for all Americans. He rejeceds the notion of blacks getting themselves up by their own bootstraps, which is a common mantra of reactionaries. He believed that reparations are deserving of African Americans and he was highly critical of capitalism. In 1968, Dr. King fought for billions of dollars to be spent as a means to end poverty once and for all. He told a New York Times reporter in 1968 that: "...In a sense, you could say we’re involved in the class struggle..." This was exemplified in his Poor People’s Campaign. He faced challenges, because even the middle class clergy wanted to focus on political power in the ballot box without organizing to help the poorest of the poor. The FBI tried to disrupt the campaign. They or those in the FBI planted false stories as a means to demonize Dr. King. He died in trying to give labor rights to sanitation works in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1968, a revolutionary spirit captivated Americans. Back then, many of the youth wanted change to give justice to the poor and to give the bankers accountability for the legacies of exploitation and oppression. There were demonstrations for liberation found in London, Paris, Berlin, Poland, Mexico, Argentina, the rest of Latin America, Africa, and throughout the world. This modern radicalization occurred in the USA for centuries, but it went into another level by the 1960's. Students fought for rights and antiwar ideologies in May of 1968 inside of France as well. The middle class in Paris was shocked by the police brutality against middle-class students that they had witnessed in the Latin Quarter and they became supportive of the students.  Many workers joined in protests with the students. The protesters occupied factories all over France. It was the largest general strike ever attempted in France. For some, May 1968 meant the end of traditional collective action and the beginning of a new era to be dominated mainly by the so-called new social movements. All side agreed to an election by July of 1968. The criminal justice system in the states in 1968 was just as racist and evil as Jim Crow segregation. Massive police brutality existed in August 1968 at the Democratic Party national convention. Human beings were tortured and assaulted by Chicago police officers. Richard J. Daley or the mayor of Chicago back then wanted no demonstrations or other likeminded actions at the convention. The National Mobilization Committee to End the War and the Students for a Democratic Society want social change. The violence was so bad in the streets of Chicago that one speaker denounced Daley's actions as a part of Gestapo tactics. The outcome of this whole affair was that it splintered the Democratic Party power base for decades to come (and it ended an era. It caused the growth of political divisions that persists to this very day). The world was changing indeed. Many minorities wanted freedom and justice. The antiwar movement believed that the Vietnamese people have the right to their own independence and self-determination excluding Western occupation or imperialism. Thousands of the Black Panther Party movement organized as a means to try to liberate black human beings from oppression. The BPP ultimately wanted freedom for all oppressed human beings of the world. 

 

 

There are numerous mysteries with the Superman story indeed. Superman tries to assimilate into Earth like many immigrants in real life try to assimilate to American society while maintaining their immigrant identity. Ironically, the creators of the Superman comics were second generation Jewish kids back in the day. Howard Jacobson of the London Times has called Superman "the boy with the Kabbalistic name, the boy from the shtetl. Superman might be Jewish, but it's only so long as no one knows he's Jewish that he is capable of performing wonders. And you can't get more Jewish than that." Superman wants to perform wonders and repair order and balance in the world. He believes in duty and justice. He wants to serve the human race in the dira b'tachtonim or the physical world. In we life, we have recognize that we have a body and a soul and developing our spirituality is key to respecting our true nature in the Universe. Also, Jor-el means God will uplift in the Hebrew language. The El is a suffix in Jewish tradition that signifies power and great importance. The three legs of the Superman myth — truth, justice and the American way — are straight out of the Mishnah. “The world,” it reads, “endures on three things: justice, truth and peace.”  The explosion of Krypton according to scholars is similar to the Kabbalah tradition of the divine vessel being shattered and Jewish human beings have the responsibility to enact tikkun haolam as a means to repair the vessel including the world. Many Jewish new immigrants back in the early 20th century were torn between the Old and New World identities psychologically (as portrayed in the fundamental personality of Superman). Larry Tye is an author that wrote on the mysteries of Superman indeed.

 

 

 

By Timothy