Facebook, Vladimir Putin's Best Buddy

Recently, at the request of Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s internet monitor, Facebook erased an event page created by two Russian dissidents for a peaceful demonstration on January 15 2015 supporting leading opposition figure Alexei A. Navalny (above, courtesy Wikimedia). The page can be seen around the world, just not in Russia. Fat lot of good that does. 

Navalny is one of Putin’s most prominent and vocal critics, currently on trial for alleged embezzlement and fraud. The prosecutors have said they will call for a ten year prison sentence. Judge Yelena Korobchenko will announce the trial verdict on January 15 2015. He started out as an anti-corruption blogger and is now leader of Russia’s Progress Party. Last year he was convicted on another charge and sentenced to 5 years. The sentence was quickly commuted to a suspended one, but then Navalny was arrested again, facing more dramatic charges, and placed under house arrest. This is business as usual for Putin; he gets rid of opponents by trumping up charges against them, seizing their assets and sending them to jail.  

The rally on January 15 is purely in support of Navalny. Ergo, Facebook is directly supporting a corrupt regime. And it’s business as usual for Facebook, which has taken down thousands of pages at the behest of governments; 29 Russian pages in 6 months (only 4 last year in the same period) and 1,773 in Pakistan, up from 162 in the previous six months. But it leaves pages that bully and trash young kids until they commit suicide.

Since I learned that Facebook was a sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2014, along with the likes of Koch Industries and the National Rifle Association, nothing it does surprises me but it increasingly disgusts and alarms me. I don’t know how much Zuckerberg has to do with these decisions but it’s still his business.

Anyone who can create a business as successful as Facebook has my admiration for sheer creativity and gutzpah. But when what you do with your business actively enables corrupt governments admiration turns to disgust and more.

One of the greatest advantages of and most beautiful thing about social media is how it unites people who need group support to be able to protest injustice; how it can be used to bring down a corrupt regime, even peacefully. It’s great for Zuckerberg; it adds an aura of social responsibility to Facebook and makes people want to use it even more. It makes good business sense and it’s decent. But surely a business can’t have that and collusion with a regime as corrupt as Putin’s government and not be affected?

Whether it is affected or not the social consequences are terrifying. In response to the understandable outrage around the world, a New York Times editorial made the point that Facebook isn’t a government; it’s a corporation, so it’s not bound to care about freedom of speech or civil rights. When it does business in a country and earns significantly from that business, it makes business sense to not break the law and risk losing all that lovely moolah. Right now the law in Russia is that rallies (which Roskomnadzor calls ‘unsanctioned mass events’) with more than 3 people are illegal. Hallo apartheid era South Africa. No doubt if Facebook had been around then it would have taken down all ANC pages.

The NYT editorial is right. Facebook owes nobody anything. It’s not a government, so it’s not morally bound to preserve and protect human rights.

But here’s the problem. When a government has huge control over people’s lives there’s always some way of fighting against it. Facebook’s control has developed from Zuckerberg’s insight into how easy it is to manipulate us through our need to connect and our voracious narcissistic tendencies. He’s always seen his ‘subjects’ as idiots. When a corporation has this kind of control then starts colluding with corrupt regimes, who’s going to stop it? We have no socially developed means to counter the ill effects of control that knows no boundaries and has no ethics at all.

Facebook, once mostly a tool for broadening our minds, making connections all over the world and liberating the repressed, is now also a tool for destroying freedom. Don’t take it personally, it’s just business.

I take it personally. What’s to be done? Somebody sarcastically said we get what we ask for. If everybody wasn’t so narcissistically fascinated with themselves and ‘sharing’ every intimate detail of their lives, Facebook wouldn’t have any power over us. So if we don’t want the ill effects we can boycott it. At first I thought, I don’t agree. People can post blogs etc. exposing Facebook for what he is, dismantling the myth that Zuckerberg's the good guy. But the best way to counter unethical Facebook policies is to use it to post original stuff, protect privacy, never subscribe to another site from it and desist from ever clicking on an ad.

Then I gave it a bit more thought and realized that Facebook doesn’t give you the option to block your friends from giving your information away. Which they do every time they subscribe or even just log in to another site with their Facebook details. Gotcha!  

My sarcastic friend also added that it’s none of our business what happens in Russia. That one I definitely disagree with. Not feeling outraged when somebody else suffers isn’t a good thing, which you discover when you’re under threat and somebody who isn’t directly affect by whatever is threatening you says “it’s not my business” and walks on.

Besides, this particular action doesn't directly affect anybody outside of Russia but the driving principle, that corporate money is more important than people's freedom, does affect us all because it underpins all of Zuckerberg's policies, one of which is sponsorship of US conservative politicians. And whether we live in America or not we do need to worry about that. Everything’s connected these days.

I presume the rally will happen. I hope nobody gets arrested and that Alexei Navalny doesn’t spend the rest of his life in jail on more trumped up charges and eventually get his freedom when he’s been destroyed. He doesn't look like a man who'll let himself be destroyed.

Like Mikhail Khodorkovsky (above, courtesy Wikimedia), once Russia's wealthiest man, imprisoned for ten years on trumped up charges, assets seized and now a reformed man. Recently released and living in Zurich, he works towards overthrowing Putin.

As for whoever is making the final decisions on Facebook – and Zuckerberg has to be a part of that – they and he won't suddenly develop integrity. From this point they'll sell more of their soul - and ours - to the devil. I can't think of adjectives strong enough to describe what I think of Zuckerberg for letting this happen. All I can hope is that he gets what he deserves. Loss of business because he and all corporate giants can toss off “don’t take it personally it’s just business” and you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of them all of the time. Not forever. I hope.

Congress Republicans Backed into a Corner as President Obama Stands Firm

On the 8th of October, eight days into the government shutdown, President Obama spoke from the White House about the need for Congress to understand that funding the government and paying the nation’s bills are not bargaining chips, they are part of Congress’s primary role. He said “…members of Congress - and the House Republicans in particular - don't get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their jobs. And two of their very basic jobs are passing a budget and making sure that America is paying its bills."

Obama’s message has been consistent throughout the government shutdown crisis. He will not negotiate with blackmailers. He has said a number of times that if a person blackmails you once, they'll do it again. And again and again. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agrees with him. His stand is ‘open the government, raise the debt ceiling and we’ll negotiate’. Colleagues and aides have said recently that in all his 25 years in the Senate Reid has never been this outraged or aggressively proactive. House Republicans have crossed a line in his opinion. As Democrat Senator Patty Murray said of Reid, “He feels passionately that if we allow our country to be run by hostage-taking - ‘I feel [strongly] about an issue, and I’m going to shut down the government unless I get my way’ - it is bad for today, it’s bad for tomorrow, it’s bad for democracy.”

On October 6 President Obama had spoken at FEMA and challenged Boehner on his stand that he didn’t put a clean CR to a vote because there wasn’t a bi-partisan majority to pass it (despite that Democrats and even some House Republicans having said there was one).

“If [some] Republicans and Speaker Boehner are saying there are not enough votes, then they should prove it. Let the bill go to the floor and let’s see what happens. Just vote. Let every member of Congress vote their conscience and they can determine whether or not they want to shut the government down. My suspicion is, my very strong suspicion is, that there are enough votes there.” That suspicion has been shared by many all along. If Boehner was telling the truth he had nothing to lose by putting it to the vote.

Congress has played this game since Obama began his presidency – of taking a hard line when the stakes were high and pushing Obama and Democrats to making concessions. In the beginning Obama was willing to be flexible because that, he has insisted, is what democracy is all about. But he’s also said that when it matters he knows how to draw his line in the sand.

That’s the part that Congress didn't believe. With the government shutdown and their job approval ratings according to Gallup at 11%, one percentage point higher than their lowest in Gallup history, they blindly tried the same tactic again recently when Obama invited the House to speak with him. John Boehner said last Sunday, after that invitation was issued, that he would not let a default happen, which got him a few kudos for a day or so because most people believed he was saying he wouldn't participate in blackmail again.

But they were wrong. What he didn't say on Sunday was that his idea of not letting the default happen was to continue the blackmail but with the stakes so high that the President and the Senate would have no option but to cave. 

He and his Tea Party backers not only proved Obama to have understood them perfectly, but they also miscalculated badly. Neither Obama nor the Democrats caved and the House has truly backed itself into a corner with the debt default date looming - something that even hard-core members like Ted Cruz have begun to realize. He's not making any grand speeches these days.

Perhaps they've finally looked at the polls and realized where reality lies. They're still whining about Democrats and the President refusing to negotiate but they're sounding embarrassingly pitiful now. With Congress job approval ratings virtually at an historic all-time low, overall favorability is at 28%, down from 38% in September (as opposed to Democrat job approval at 43%). As for the Tea Party, the highest support it’s ever had was 32% in late 2010. That support has dwindled to 22%.

It becomes clearer and clearer that the Tea Party isn't interested in democracy but wants to impose its will on a reluctant American electorate. It seems to have a vested interest in the Republican party imploding, even if it means that the US economy falls apart. They clearly see themselves as David versus Goliath and a new world order emerging with them triumphantly heralding it in. The point they haven’t apparently grasped is that a new world order always has a huge groundswell moving it with a fully representative leader. This group of political bandits hasn’t just taken on Obama, they’ve pit themselves against the voters, actually creating a groundswell - of opposition to themselves. 

It’s very strange in a civilized country to see a political party so blinded by self-delusion and behave so stupidly and self-destructively as this one has since 2008. 

The Republican Party is a rag-tag bunch now, disintegrating at the speed of light. Controlled by a group addicted to blackmail and gambling, unable to see or acknowledge how lousy they are at both. 

It was always going to be difficult for Republicans at the 2016 elections as their main support base – older whites – dies off and as minority groups become increasingly franchised. But they’re making it worse for themselves, actively doing all the dirty work for Democrats, making it even easier for them way ahead of the next elections. It defies belief. If there are any sensible Republican politicians, now is the time for them to show leadership and fiercely lobby for what the American voters really want - a clean CR and to raise the debt ceiling - and show the electorate that not all Republican politicians are gamblers and hostage takers. 

But it doesn’t look as if that’s going to happen. More moderate Republicans in Congress are being more open about their desire to stop the hostage taking but so far none of them seem to have the courage to really take a stand against the Tea Party. No  wonder. Those who have, have lost Tea Party funding and support. The President isn't the only who's been blackmailed. 

All of which casts a pretty optimistic light on 2016; a Democrat President, Democrat Senate, Democrat Congress. 

It’s a tragedy of history that President Obama hasn’t had that kind of support, solely because of an undercurrent of racism and fear of losing status quo that is still embedded deep into the psyche of so many Americans, so deep that it's unacknowledged and hotly denied. But it's an absolute triumph that he has established a legacy that will impact on the US and the world for a long time. He is the man who has truly heralded in a new world order, the leader of a genuine groundswell in America with a genuinely representative leader. When change happens, whether it's in an individual or a nation, all the entrenched, destructive old ways fight to the death. That's what we're seeing here: the death rattle of the old order.

Ultra Right Congress Declares War - On its own Electorate

Congress, controlled by the ultra right, is at war. Their foe? Their own electorate. It's debatable whether they've noticed or not.

The NewYork Times reported today that Republicans in Congress have said they’d agree to raise the debt ceiling if Democrats agreed to, amongst other things:

Delay the health law for a year; Overhaul the tax code; Keystone XL oil pipeline construction; Offshore oil and gas production; Increase permission for energy exploration on federal lands; Roll back regulations on coal ash; Block new Environmental Protection Agency regulations on greenhouse gas production; Eliminate a $23 billion fund to ensure the orderly dissolution of failed major banks; Eliminate mandatory contributions to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Limit medical malpractice lawsuits; Increase means testing for Medicare.

President Obama’s response was to say “No Congress before this one has ever, ever, in history been irresponsible enough to threaten default, to threaten an economic shutdown, to suggest America not pay its bills, just to try to blackmail a president into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with a budget.”

But he isn’t the only one who looks on this madness with disgust.

When the US Government shut down in 1995 after a budget battle similar to the one that’s currently happening, 51% of Americans blamed Republicans in Congress, and 28% blamed Bill Clinton. 

In a recent CBS poll 44% of respondents said if the same thing happened again they would blame Congress Republicans and 35% Obama. Obama has less support than Clinton did but how much of that is attributable to agendas that have nothing to do with budget or even of government is an unknown. Whatever the reason, despite that resistance to Obama, Congress Republicans are still in the firing line and their unpopularity is increasing virtually by the minute.

When asked ‘Who do you trust more to make the right decisions about the nation's economy – Republicans in Congress or Barack Obama?’ 45% of respondents chose Obama, and 33% chose Republicans in Congress.

But when the poll questions focused solely on Republicans in Congress – i.e. the distraction of the Obama-agendas is removed from the picture - then the reality of how much support Congress has even amongst Republican voters is quite shocking. 80% in total (and 75% of Republican respondents) disapproved of the overall job Congress is doing. 80% of respondents said they believed that threatening a government shutdown is not an acceptable way to negotiate.  

In this latest blackmail fiasco the ultra-right Cabal, which appears to control Congress, represents about 25% of the Republican electorate. Yet it continues with the behavior that is destructive to the US as if it has the right to ignore those it represents. Is that even constitutional? It sure doesn't look like democracy.

MugabeGod

Long ago I was warm, charming and generous. Passionate about justice. I led my country to freedom from the worst kind of tyrany. Everybody believed I was the good guy. Time and time again you voted me in. We had the world at our feet and everything going for us.

Over time I surrounded myself with friends who wouldn’t challenge me. I do it even more now. I pay their bills, I buy them nice things, I give them land and important positions. I institute new laws which give me total control. I do what I want. I have the power. I can make up laws and I can break them as I want. If you challenge me I can kill you, throw you in jail, destroy your life. I can hurt you as much as I want, until you learn your lesson. Don't challenge Me. I am MugabeGod.

I can lie, cheat and steal, blame the consequences of my own stupidity on others; I can meddle with lives, destroy property, destroy an economy, create starvation, empty shelves in stores. Then deny that I did it. What are you going to do? Nothing. You have no power. I have it all.

I can do whatever I want with your money and your property. I can do what I want with this whole country. What’s anybody going to do about it? Nobody can touch me. Of course I could step down and let somebody else fix the mess I’ve made but why should I? I like pushing people around. I like the power, it makes me feel big. What are you going to do? Tell me I can't? Start a new party? Write indignant articles in the press? I will just shut you down.

I know how to intimidate you. I know how to kick up so much dust that reality is obscured. I know how to make your life a nightmare. I can do whatever I want. To those who are blind to my evil ways I'm charming, and disarming. They believe me. Because I have power over them. I capitalize on their innate decency. Because I can. I don't give a damn about the truth. I lie when I feel like it. I break the law if I feel like it. If you break my law I’ll break your neck. What are you going to do about it? I'm MugabeGod. I can do what I want. I always have. You can't stop me. I'm the one with the power. You want some of this power? How’re you going to get it? I can rig elections.

But in the dark hours before dawn, I live in terror. Terror that I'm hated, that my enemies are growing in number, that my control is slipping away from me, that my power and money can't keep my soul-consuming paranoia at bay. 

I loathe the sycophants who live like parasites off me and compromise themselves despicably so that I'll keep them in power. Disgusting slugs. Even though they're doing what I demand of them I hate them. I'm fully aware that if they had  any courage they'd admit that they despise me. They might even kill me. They think I don’t know that but I do. 

I see everything. Every glance between conspirators, every whispered conversation. I know they encourage me in my evil ways to increase my dependency on them. I know they are waiting for their chance.

I withdraw further and further into myself, trusting nobody, afraid of everybody, my body being eaten up by cancer, my mind slipping away from me into darkness, as my paranoia grows like a rank tumor in my brain. In the dark hours before dawn I can't keep my terrors at bay. Because no matter what I say to the contrary I know I am a murderer and a thief. I know that I’m evil. I know that I have betrayed and cruelly destroyed innocent people. I know I have single handedly ravaged my beautiful country, the country I so passionately fought to free from injustice. I know that my enemies are getting stronger. And I am getting weaker.

In the dark hours before dawn I know I am condemned and that my punishment is coming and all the power in the world cannot save me. No place to run. No place to hide.

I am a hunted man.