The Theory of Class Conflict Began Before Marx

From Mises Daily: Thursday, June 07, 2012 by Murray N. Rothbard

[Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, volume 2, chapter 3: "James Mill, Ricardo, and the Ricardian System." An MP3 audio file of this chapter, narrated by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.]

The theory of class conflict as a key to political history did not begin with Karl Marx. It began, as we shall see further below, with two leading French libertarians inspired by J.B. Say, Charles Comte (Say's son-in-law), and Charles Dunoyer, in the 1810s after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. In contrast to the later Marxist degeneration of class theory, the Comte-Dunoyer view held the inherent class struggle to focus onwhich classes managed to gain control of the state apparatus. The ruling class is whichever group has managed to seize state power; theruled are those groups who are taxed and regulated by those in command. Class interest, then, is defined as a group's relation to the state. State rule, with its taxation and exercise of power, controls, and conferring of subsidies and privileges, is the instrument that creates conflicts between the rulers and the ruled. What we have, then, is a "two-class" theory of class conflict, based on whether a group rules or is ruled by the state. On the free market, on the other hand, there is no class conflict, but a harmony of interest between all individuals in society cooperating in and through production and exchange.

James Mill developed a similar theory in the 1820s and 1830s. It is not known whether he arrived at it independently or was influenced by the French libertarians; it is clear, however, that Mill's analysis was devoid of the rich applications to the history of western Europe that Comte, Dunoyer, and their young associate, the historian Augustin Thierry, had worked out. All government, Mill pointed out, was run by the ruling class, the few who dominated and exploited the ruled, the many. Since all groups tend to act for their selfish interests, he noted, it is absurd to expect the ruling clique to act altruistically for the "public good." Like everyone else, they will use their opportunities for their own gain, which means to loot the many, and to favor their own or allied special interests as against those of the public. Hence Mill's habitual use of the term "sinister" interests as against the good of the public. For Mill and the radicals, we should note, the public good meant specifically laissez-faire government confined to the minimal functions of police, defense and the administration of justice.

Hence Mill, the preeminent political theorist of the radicals, harked back to the libertarian Commonwealthmen of the 18th century in stressing the need always to treat government with suspicion and to provide checks to suppress state power. Mill agreed with Bentham that "If not deterred, a ruling elite would be predatory." The pursuit of sinister interests leads to endemic "corruption" in politics, to sinecures, bureaucratic "places" and subsidies. Mill lamented:

Think of the end [of government] as it really is, in its own nature. Think next of the facility of the means — justice, police, and security from foreign invaders. And then think of the oppression practised upon the people of England under the pretext of providing them.

Never has libertarian ruling-class theory been put more clearly or forcefully than in the words of Mill: there are two classes, Mill declared, "the first class, those who plunder, are the small number. They are the ruling Few. The second class, those who are plundered, are the great number. They are the subject Many." Or, as Professor Hamburger summed up Mill's position: "Politics was a struggle between two classes — the avaricious rulers and their intended victims."[1]

The great conundrum of government, concluded Mill, was how to eliminate this plunder: to take away the power "by which the class that plunder succeed in carrying on their vocation, has ever been the great problem of government."

The "subject Many" Mill accurately termed "the people," and it was probably Mill who inaugurated the type of analysis that pits "the people" as a ruled class in opposition to the "special interests." How, then, is the power of the ruling class to be curbed? Mill thought he saw the answer:

The people must appoint watchmen. Who are to watch the watchmen? The people themselves. There is no other resource; and without this ultimate safeguard, the ruling Few will be forever the scourge and oppression of the subject Many.

But how are the people themselves to be the watchmen? To this ancient problem Mill provided what is by now a standard answer in the Western world, but still not very satisfactory: by all the people electing representatives to do the watching.

Unlike the French libertarian analysts, James Mill was not interested in the history and development of state power; he was interested only in the here and now. And in the here and now of the England of his day, the ruling Few were the aristocracy, who ruled by means of a highly limited suffrage and controlled "rotten boroughs" picking representatives to Parliament. The English aristocracy was the ruling class; the government of England, Mill charged, was "an aristocratical engine, wielded by the aristocracy for their own benefit." Mill's son and ardent disciple (at that time), John Stuart, argued in a Millian manner in debating societies in London that England did notenjoy a "mixed government," since a great majority of the House of Lords was chosen by "200 families." These few aristocratic families "therefore possess absolute control over the government … and if a government controlled by 200 families is not an aristocracy, then such a thing as an aristocracy cannot be said to exist." And since such a government is controlled and run by a few, it is therefore "conducted wholly for the benefit of a few."

It is this analysis that led James Mill to place at the centre of his formidable political activity the attainment of radical democracy, the universal suffrage of the people in frequent elections by secret ballot. This was Mill's long-run goal, although he was willing to settle temporarily — in what the Marxists would later call a "transition demand" — for the Reform Bill of 1832, which greatly widened the suffrage to the middle class. To Mill, the extension of democracy was more important than laissez-faire, for to Mill the process of dethroning the aristocratic class was more fundamental, since laissez-faire was one of the happy consequences expected to flow from the replacement of aristocracy by the rule of all the people. (In the modern American context, Mill's position would aptly be called "right-wing populism.") Placing democracy as their central demand led the Millian radicals in the 1840s to stumble and lose political significance by refusing to ally themselves with the Anti-Corn Law League, despite their agreement with its free trade and laissez-faire. For the Millians felt that free trade was too much of a middle-class movement and detracted from an overriding concentration on democratic reform.

Granted that the people would displace aristocratic rule, did Mill have any reason for thinking that the people would then exert their will on behalf of laissez-faire? Yes, and here his reasoning was ingenious: while the ruling class had the fruits of their exploitative rule in common, the people were a different kind of class: their only interest in common was getting rid of the rule of special privilege. Apart from that, the mass of the people have no common class interest that they could ever actively pursue by means of the state. Furthermore, this interest in eliminating special privilege is the common interest of all, and is therefore the "public interest" as opposed to the special or sinister interests of the few. The interest of the people coincides with universal interest and with laissez-faire and liberty for all.

$15.00$14.00

But how then explain that no one can claim that the masses have always championed laissez-faire? — and that the masses have all too often loyally supported the exploitative rule of the few? Clearly, because the people, in this complex field of government and public policy, have suffered from what the Marxists would later call "false consciousness," an ignorance of where their interests truly lie. It was then up to the intellectual vanguard, to Mill and his philosophic radicals, to educate and organize the masses so that their consciousness would become correct and they would then exert their irresistible strength to bring about their own democratic rule and install laissez-faire. Even if we can accept this general argument, the Millian radicals were unfortunately highly overoptimistic about the time span for such consciousness-raising, and political setbacks in the early 1840s led to their disillusionment in radical politics and to the rapid disintegration of the radical movement. Curiously enough, their leaders, such as John Stuart Mill and George and Harriet Grote, while proclaiming their weary abandonment of political action or political enthusiasm, in reality gravitated with astonishing rapidity toward the cozy Whig centre that they had formerly scorned. Their proclaimed loss of interest in politics was in reality a mask for loss of interest inradical politics.

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Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was dean of the Austrian School. He was an economist, economic historian, and libertarian political philosopher. See Murray N. Rothbard's article archives.

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Copyright © 2012 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided full credit is given.

Notes

[1] Joseph Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 44.

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Forgiving Siemens: Unraveling a Tangled Tale of German Corruption in Greece

From Corpwatch:

by Lena Mavraka and Vasilis Papatheodorou, Special to CorpWatch June 11th, 2012

Cartoon by Khalil Bendib After almost two years, the traffic lights in the city of Athens are finally being fixed without delay or makeshift solutions. For Greece - a country that appears to be rushing headlong off a financial cliff and bringing down the rest of Europe with it - this small miracle might seem to like an omen that things are changing for the better or at least, the correction of a bureaucratic mistake. The truth is that this simple act reveals the enormous power that one single company holds over the country of Greece: Siemens from Munich, Germany, a manufacturing behemoth with $96 billion in 2010-2011 sales. On November 11, 2010, Siemens turned off 35 traffic lights in central Athens in protest against Greek government fines as high as €500 million ($650 million) to settle allegations of bribery to win contracts. In April 2012, the Greek government agreed to settle with Siemens for €270 million to settle the charges. In return the state issued the company a €41 million contract to work on an extension to the Athens metro and fix the city's traffic lights. It is a stunning turnaround for the company whose name has been tarnished for its role in what many consider the greatest corporate scandal in postwar history of Greece. Millions of Euros have allegedly been paid into secret Swiss bank accounts of high-ranking politicians of the two parties that have run Greece since collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974 - Pasok (the Social Democratic party) and New Democracy on the right. All told the bribery is estimated to have had a cost of €2 billion to the Greek economy, according to a high level parliamentary investigation - and Siemens had a starring role. "In Greece Siemens has spend the most black money (bribes) than in any other country of the European Union between the late 1990s and 2004," says Tassos Telloglou, author of "The Network: File Siemens." The tale came to a dramatic head in June 2009 when Michael Christoforakos, the former CEO of Siemens, was arrested in Rosenheim, a southeastern suburb of Munich, after disappearing when Greek judicial authorities began investigating the charges. Building the First Telephone Exchanges Siemens has had a long history in Greece dating back to the founding of the German company by Werner von Siemens in 1847 when he pioneered the building of the first international telegraph lines. In the 1920s Ioannis Voulpiotis, a Greek engineer who married the daughter of Werner von Siemens, was appointed head of the Athens office of AEG-Siemens-Telefunken. As a member of the board of directors of Greek Telephone Company Limited (AETE) and Greek Radio Company Limited (AERE), Voulpiotis was uniquely placed to win contracts for the German company. In 1926 AEG-Siemens-Telefunken installed the first telephone networks in Greece and won the contracts to install new telephone exchanges and new radio facilities. According to the Biographical Encyclopedia of Modern Hellenism 1830-2010, Voulpiotis paid a fee of three to five percent of the contract to Greek politicians and government officials. This money was called the "extra fee" and it was paid into bank accounts in Switzerland, according to the Archives of Greek Bibliography (Metron Publications, 2011, Volume A) During the Nazi occupation of Greece (1941-1944), Voulpiotis was put in charge of all German business in the country as well as the Greek radio authority. When the Nazis were defeated, Voulpiotis was tried at the Special Court for Nazi Collaborators together with his “colleague”, Dr. Nikolaos Christoforakos, father of the future and fugitive CEO of Siemens Greece. The two men were acquitted and moved to Germany. Voulpiotis returned to Greece in the 1950s to represent Siemens and to bid again telephone and radio contracts as well as for railway tenders. Spyros Markezinis, then minister of economic coordination, allegedly cut a deal with him for contracts to modernize the telephone and radio network installation across the country. On April 3, 1954 Markezinis resigned as a minister when news of the deals became public. Months later the German government forced the Greek government to uphold the contracts or risk losing German aid. In the following months Voulpiotis accused Konstantinos Karamanlis and Konstantinos Papaconstantinou, the minister and deputy minister of Public Works respectively, of asking for bribes. The two politicians counter-attacked and accused Voulpiotis of demanding $1 million in payments to be technical advisor to OTE (the Greek Teleommunications Authority) for 10 years. The case ended up in the courts and Voulpiotis was sentenced to 18 months for slander. In 1956, Konstantinos Karamanlis became prime minister, and granted Siemens a no-bid contract to provide the lion's share of supplies of telecommunication equipment of the Greek State. Dizzying Array of Government Contracts For the next 50 years, Siemens continued to get Greek government contracts with a dizzying variety of ministries and Greek government institutions ranging from the Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE) to the ministry of culture. For example, in December 1997, OSE and Siemens signed seven contracts totaling 705 million marks ($397 million). (The contracts ended up in court in May 2010 for failing to meet deadlines). Siemens also had a number of major contracts with the ministry of defense such as the €300 million ($390 million) Hermes telecommunications program with the Greek Army signed in 1999. In February 2007 Siemens won a 14 month contract with the ministry of culture to supply portable information systems for visitors to museums and archaeological sites. In October 2008, Michalis Liapis, then Culture Minister canceled the contract for failure to deliver. (The role of Liapis became controversial when the media revealed that he had traveled to Germany in the summer of 2005 to attend major football matches at the expense of Michalis Christoforakos, then CEO of Siemens Greece.) Perhaps the most controversial contract with Siemens was the $325 million joint venture with San Diego-based SAIC in 2002 to set up a security system for the Olympic Games of 2004. The Command, Control, Coordination, Communication, Integration system (referred to by the acronym C4i) never “got off the ground” in the time. The Scandals Break In late April 2005, Greek authorities began to investigate the C4i case. At about the same time the U.S. Department of Justice also began to investigate Siemens for bribery, working closely with the Munich public prosecutor's office. The sprawling U.S. investigation that would eventually encompass Siemens activities in Argentina, Bangladesh, Iraq and Venezuela. A second Siemens contract quickly came under scrutiny from the Greek authorities: the supplies of telecommunications equipment material to the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE) notably a December 1997 agreement with Siemens to digitize the network for €464.5 million (known as the 8002 agreement). In April 2006, Prodromos Mavridis, the head of the telecommunications' department of Siemens Greece suddenly left the company after 18 years of work, without any public explanation after receiving a €300,000 payoff from the company. In November of that year, lawyers for Siemens sued Mavridis in Greek courts accusing him of embezzling €8 million. But it was too late. A year prior, Swiss authorities had opened an investigation into Mavridis for a network of "extensive money laundering." The investigators zeroed in on a company called Martha Overseas Corporation, registered in Panama that was receiving money via Liechtenstein from Eagle Invest & Finance SA, registered in the British Virgin Islands, from Reinhard Siekaczek, a Siemens executive in Germany. Siekaczek was arrested in November 2006. He told the Munich prosecutors of dozens of bribery schemes around the world and he named Mavridis as the man in charge of handling payments to Cyprus, Bulgaria and parts of the former Yugoslavia. Siekaczek also told Greek investigators at the Munich public prosecutors office that he was responsible for the payment of €10 million in "black funds" to individuals in the ministry of defense and the Greek army. Among then high level names be mentioned was Akis Tsochatzopoulos, minister of defence in the Pasok government from 1996 - 2001. The payments were also mentioned by Rainer Niedl, a retired anti-corruption officer for Siemens, in a November 2007 apology for his role in the Siemens' bribery scandals. Some of the payments were subsequently found in the accounts of two of Tsohatzopoulos' associates: Anthony Cantas, deputy general director of the directorate general for infrastructure, and Paul Nicolaides, the vice president of Greek Arms Industry. On December 17, 2007, Siemens announced that Michalis Christoforakos was no longer with the company. One year later, the U.S, announced that Siemens was pleading guilty to paying out $1.36 billion on bribes around the world. "Today's filings make clear that for much of its operations across the globe, bribery was nothing less than standard operating procedure for Siemens," said Matthew Friedrich, acting U.S. assistant attorney general. "(We) and our international colleagues will continue our efforts to level the business playing field, making it free from corruption and fair to those who seek to participate in it." Greek authorities were not part of the settlement. In May 2009 Christoforakos disappeared from Greece. The following month he was arrested in Germany. He immediately invoked his German citizenship (acquired from the time his father had lived in the country after the Second World War).  His lawyers argued that the allegations were for activities that took place before 2003 so he could not be prosecuted under German law which has a five year statute of limitations. The attorneys also pleaded that Christoforakos be allowed to take refuge in the country. "Dozens of senior Greek politicians are hanging on this case," said Stefan Kursawe, a lawyer hired by Christoforakos. "I fear for the life of my client as soon as he sets foot on Greek soil." It was a shameful moment for the high-flying executive who owned a series of properties on the islands of Antiparos, Paros and Tinos via offshore companies, and once hob nobbed with senior politicians like Konstantinos Mitsotakis, honorary president of New Democracy, and his daughter Dora Bakogiannis, former minister of foreign affairs. On August 11, 2009, the Munich prosecutor jailed Christoforakos for a year, stating that he had paid money to the treasurers of the major two parties (Pasok and New Democracy) in order to win contracts for Siemens from the two parties. (German authorities set him free two months later after he paid a huge fine. Christoforakos has not appeared in public since) Paying Off The Political Parties Tassos Mandelis was a director of OTE from 1985 to 1988, who also served as minister of transport and communications for Pasok from 1997 to 2000. During his tenure in the government, Mandelis advocated abolishing the state company that provided technical solutions to OTE. Other German BribesSiemens is not the only German company to pay large bribes in Greece. For example Athens spends a lot on military equipment ostensibly because of the threat posed by Turkey, its neighbor to the east. In reality, it seems, the purchases actually have more to do with propping up politicians and making money for Greek businesses and their foreign partners. Critics note that if Athens cut defense spending to levels comparable to other European states, ie by €150 billion ($195 billion), it would not have needed a bailout. One of the biggest scandals in this arena is a €2 billion contract that Greece signed in 2010 for four Class 214 submarines from Ferrostaal of Germany. This past April Akis Tsochadzopoulos, the former Pasok defense minister, was arrested at his luxurious neoclassical mansion opposite the Acropolis and sent to jail for allegedly taking an €8 million bribe from the company. Ferrostaal has also agreed to pay a €140 million fine. (Only one submarine has been delivered so far and even that has proven to be faulty) The Ferrostaal and Siemens cases suggests that the symbiotic system of German bribery in Greece is one of the key reasons why the country is in such bad financial shape. Ironically Germany is now making even more money from the bailout. The German finance ministry estimated that Greece has paid Germany €380 million in interest alone on the €15.17 billion in loans that it took out under the first bailout for the country in 2010, according to documents obtained by Reuters. To date Mandelis is one of the few politicians who has publicly admitted that he had received money from Siemens. "At the end of October 1998 an employee of Siemens, called me and told me in English: "We want to help you on your election campaign," Mandelis told a parliamentary investigation. "How much are you talking about?" I asked him and he replied: "As much as we usually give out." Money was then deposited in a Swiss in November 1998 in a Swiss bank under the name "A. Rokos". Greek investigators later found almost 200,000 German marks ($112, 600) in the bank account. A withdrawal of of €35,000 had been made in favor of Mandelis' son (identified only by the initial H) for his studies at Columbia university in New York. (The son now works for Siemens in Cyprus while a daughter of Mandelis now works for OTE.) Mandelis was convicted for failing to declare his assets to the tax authorities. He was fined €7,500 and given a suspended sentence of three years in prison. Media reports suggest that is now working as a consultant in Azerbaijan. Theodoros Tsoukatos, a close associate of Kostas Simitis, the former Greek prime minister, has also admitted publicly that he received one million German marks in 1998 from Christoforakos, to be used to re-elect Pasok, but he insists that he gave all the money to the party. Nor were Pasok politicians alone in taking money from Siemens. Giannis Bartholomeos, the former treasurer of New Democracy, was revealed to have received money from Siemens after he was murdered by the husband of his mistress in February 2007. All is Forgiven? A 19-person multi-party Greek parliamentary inquiry committee was established on January 28 2010 to investigate the Siemens bribery cases, headed by Sifis Valirakis of Pasok. The committee dug up the names of the brokers and businessmen that were connected to New Democracy as well as links to a number of other scandals that shook Greek political life – such as the €100 million cost of the real estate scandal at the monastery of Vatopaidi in Mount Athos. But in May 2010, when the financial crisis began, the investigation was jettisoned and a final report was published on January 24, 2011 that called for further investigation. In early April this year, Siemens signed a reconciliation agreement with the Greek government that was approved by a majority of the Greek parliament. Under the terms of this deal, Siemens is required to pay a sum of €170 million to the government and it also required to invest €100 million in Greece in 2012. Siemens is also obliged to consider investing another €60 million for a factory that employs at least 700 employees. Why did Siemens agree to pay? And why did the parliament halt its investigation and fail to ask for judicial help? No one knows for sure but evidence points to an audit of the company's finances conducted by KPMG, the global audit firm, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice in 2006. The sealed report, which has not been made public, allegedly contains the names of 20 of the leading Greek politicians who have together received more than €100 million in recent years to "promote" the company, according to Greek press reports. It is surely significant that as soon as the ink was dry on the April agreement that absolved them of past blame, Siemens was given millions in new business for more work on the metro. Under the terms of the new contract, Siemens will be paid to provide signaling and other equipment for a new line to be built from Athens airport to the port of Piraeus. The contract will be financed mostly by European Union subsidies. All, it seems, is forgiven for Siemens in Greece. But because the new agreement was negotiated in secret, we will have to wait for next parliamentary investigation to find out if there was yet another shady deal cut to get Athens traffic and metro working again. __ Related: Asking price for organs on the black market in Greece

[False Flags]: Terrorist Groups in Syria Armed with Chemical Weapons

From Farsnews, 09.06.2012 

TEHRAN (FNA)- Terrorist groups in Syria are now armed with chemical weapons, media reports disclosed on Saturday, adding that these groups receive the needed trainings on how to use such lethal weapons in Turkey.


According to a report by Syrian DamPress, these chemical weapons have been transferred to Syria from Libya. 

The news agency pointed to the growing number of media reports on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and warned, "Any report released or to be released on the Syrian Army's alleged use of the chemical weapons is meant to pave the ground for the terrorists to use these weapons against the people and accuse the Syrian army and government of that crime." 

Meantime, the report expressed the hope that the Syrian army would foil the very dangerous plot against the country. 

The revelation came after the Western states and armed rebel groups embarked on butchering pro-government civilians in two separate areas and intended to project the blame on President Bashar al-Assad's government, but they failed. 

The opposition Syrian National Council claimed that forces loyal to President Assad "massacred" about 100 people, including 20 women and 20 children, in the village of al-Qubeir, in province of Hama, on Wednesday. 

The massacre of the civilians in Hama came days after similar events in Houla. 

The May 25 assault on the central area of Houla was one of the bloodiest single events in Syria's 15-month-old unrests, and gruesome images of dozens of children killed in the attacks prompted a wave of international outrage. 

The UN said 32 children under the age of 10 were among the dead. 

While investigations into massacres and terrorist bombings prove opponents of Bashar al-Assad government are to be blamed for these crimes, the western media outlets always rush to accuse Damascus for all crimes in Syria without presenting substantiating evidence. In few cases when they release a supportive image or footage, it always later comes to be known that the evidence has been fake and distorted. 

This has caused deep suspicion among not just political observers and analysts, but also the people, specially those in the Middle-East. 

Middle-East analyst and Tehran University Professor Mohammad Marandi said the West and the Saudis are responsible for continued crimes and killings in Syria. 

"Every time there is a terrorist attack in Syria, a suicide bombing or any other atrocity the western media and western governments immediately put the blame on the Syrian government, thus encouraging western and Saudi-backed terrorists to carry out such attacks because they will not be held accountable," Marandi told FNA late May. 

"Therefore, in addition to the fact that they support terrorist organizations at all levels, they have additional blood on their hands for blindly attributing all violence to President Bashar al-Assad government, thus white-washing the crimes or terrorist organizations," he added. 

In a clear case of forgery which turned into a scandal for the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC used a photo taken from Iraq in 2003, showing the corpses of Shiite Iraqi children killed during the Saddam era, atop a report on the events in the Syrian city of Houla. 

Marco Di Lauro, an Italian photographer who took the shocking photo announced that he was shocked to see the photo on BBC website atop a report from the recent massacre in Syria. 

"Somebody is using illegally one of my images for anti Syrian propaganda on the BBC website front page," Di Lauro said. 

"Today Sunday May 27 at 0700 am London time the attached image which I took in Al Mussayyib in Iraq on March 27, 2003 was front page on BBC website illustrating the massacre that happen in Houla the Syrian town and the caption and the web site was stating that the image was showing the bodies of all the people that have been killed in the massacre and that the image was received by the BBC by an unknown activist. Somebody is using my images as a propaganda against the Syrian government to prove the massacre," he added. 

The picture taken from Iraq shows an Iraqi child jumping over a line of hundreds of bodies, in a school where they have been transported from a mass grave, to be identified. They were discovered in the desert in the outskirts of Al Mussayyib, 40 km south of Baghdad. It has been estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 Iraqis had been reported missing in the region south of Baghdad. People have been searching for days for identity cards or other clues among the skeletons to try to find the remains of brothers, fathers, mothers, sisters and even children who disappeared when Saddam's government crushed a Shiite uprising following the 1991 Persian Gulf War. 

Marco di Lauro had published the image on his website as part of his story "Iraq, the Aftermath of Saddam". 

He is a photographer for Getty Images picture agency and his works have been published across the US and Europe. However, di Lauro thinks that the BBC got his image from the Internet and not from official stock, which worries him. 

He told the Daily Telegraph, "What I am really astonished by is that a news organization like the BBC doesn't check the sources and it's willing to publish any picture sent it by anyone: activist, citizen journalist or whatever. That's all." 

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country. 

Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes. 

The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad. 

In October, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of increasing unrests in Syria. 

The US daily, Washington Post, reported that the Syrian rebels and terrorist groups battling the President Bashar al-Assad's government have received significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, a crime paid for by the Persian Gulf Arab states and coordinated by the United States. {Syrian: I've confirmed from soldiers on the field that the terrorists are now armed with the latest anti-tank and short range portable missile system like America's Javelin missile} 

The newspaper, quoting opposition activists and US and foreign officials, reported that Obama administration officials emphasized the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the Persian Gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure. 

According to the report, material is being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border. 

Opposition activists who two months ago said the rebels were running out of ammunition said in May that the flow of weapons - most bought on the black market in neighboring countries or from elements of the Syrian military in the past - has significantly increased after a decision by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Persian Gulf states to provide millions of dollars in funding each month.
___-


Related:
Unconfirmed reports warn of possible plot to deploy chemical weapons, then blame Syrian government.

Israel Sending Weapons to Syria Throught Iraq: Sources

Russia Slams Saudi Arabia, Qatar For Funding Syria Terrorists

PROPAGANDA ALERT: Syria Allegedly Threatens NATO Heavyweight Turkey

Russia: West Purposefully Sabotaging Peace in Syria

France backs new Syria ‘Contact Group’: foreign ministry

[Fake Revolutions] Avaaz: Empire Propaganda Mill Masquerading as Grassroots Activism

By Martin Iqbal | Empire Strikes Black | June 9, 2012

‘Activism’ and ‘human rights’ foundation Avaaz blames the Houla massacre on Assad and calls for foreign intervention. A peek into the background of Avaaz explains its pro-empire position, and who is really behind it.

The ultra-shadowy Avaaz Foundation is purportedly a non-governmental organisation that seeks to⁽¹⁾ “close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.”

A mere three days after the Houla Massacre in Syria, while all parties were clamouring to figure out what had happened and who was responsible, Avaaz took the opportunity to speculatively blame the Assad regime as part of an online petition campaign. What is even more disconcerting is that this ‘human rights’ organisation also made a thinly-veiled call for foreign intervention – something which would undoubtedly result in astronomical human suffering.

Using emotive and crafty language,⁽²⁾ Alice Jay (Avaaz’s Campaign Director) blames Assad for the Houla massacre indirectly, by alluding to the decision of several Western governments to expel Syrian diplomats:

Dozens of children lie covered with blood, their faces show the fear they felt before death, and their innocent lifeless bodies reveal an unspeakable massacre. These children were slaughtered by men under strict orders to sow terror. Yet all the diplomats have come up with so far is a few UN monitors ‘observing’ the violence. Now, governments across the world are expelling Syrian ambassadors, but unless we demand strong action on the ground, they will settle for these diplomatic half-measures.

This is immediately followed by a thinly-veiled call for an invasion of Syria by foreign powers:

The UN is discussing what to do right now. If there were a large international presence across Syria with a mandate to protect civilians, we could prevent the massacres while leaders engage in political efforts to resolve the conflict. I cannot see more images like these without shouting from the rooftops. But to stop the violence, it is going to take all of us, with one voice, demanding protection for these kids and their families. Sign the urgent petition on the right to call for UN action now and share this campaign with everyone.

The background of Avaaz sheds light on its unequivocal pro-war and anti-Syrian position.

Avaaz – Shadowy Beyond Belief

Avaaz’s latest 990 form,⁽³⁾ from 2010, raises a number of questions. Avaaz has only 16 employees, and is listed as a ‘corporation’ for the purposes of the 990 submission. Oddly, for an organisation that receives no governmental or corporate funding,⁽¹⁾ Avaaz received over $6.7 million in 2010, and paid its President over $180,000 as a salary (still feel good about donating?). On top of this, in 2010 Avaaz gave Res Publica (more on them later) a $100,000 grant. Avaaz is doing extremely well considering this and the fact that it was established relatively recently, in 2006. Where is all of this money coming from?

Avaaz is “incorporated as a non-profit 501(c)4 organization in the state of Delaware, USA“.⁽⁴⁾ The foundation’s office is based in Manhattan, at 857 Broadway – the same address as Res Publica⁽⁵⁾ – an entity which co-founded Avaaz along with Ricken Patel.

The background of Res Publica offers a glimpse into the nature of Avaaz. 24 Hours for Darfur and Darfurian Voices (using the same etymology of “Avaaz”, which means “voice” in Farsi and several middle eastern dialects) are two projects of Res Publica. These projects⁽⁵⁾ are aimed at drawing international attention to Darfur – with a view to demonising and vilifying the Arab government of Sudan:

This is part and parcel of a long-standing Israeli policy to split Sudan along ethnic, racial, and religious lines.

The Israelis have been dug into Sudan like ticks ever since the 1950′s,⁽⁶⁾ fomenting conflict and orchestrating the secession of South Sudan – effecting the policy of separation of all sovereign (especially Arab) states along ethnic lines.

The funders and partners of Darfurian Voices, 24 Hours for Darfur, and Res Publica are incredibly revealing, and constitute a who’s who of Zionist, globalist, pro-empire organisations and bodies, even including the US State Department.⁽⁵⁾

One such partner, Genocide Intervention, boasts amongst its Board Rabbi Steve Gutow, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs who insists that the government should “support Israel”.⁽⁷⁾ Gutow was also the founding regional director of AIPAC’s Southwest Region, and was the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Another Board member is Ruth Messinger – president of American Jewish World Service, and member of Barack Obama’s Task Force on Global Poverty and Development.

Sitting alongside Gutow and Messinger is Joan Platt, who also serves on the board of Human Rights Watch – a prolific propaganda mill that has underpinned the NATO narrative of the wars on Libya and Syria. Human Rights Watch was also funded by Zionist heavyweight George Soros who contributed $100 million in 2010.⁽⁸⁾

Needless to say, George Soros’ Open Society Institute is also listed as one of Res Publica’s partners.

The Zionist ‘democracy promotion’ outfit known as the National Endowment for Democracy – which has been linked to the fraudulent atrocity reports disseminated against Muammar Gaddafi⁽⁹⁾ – is also listed as a partner, as is the US State Department. No further comment should be necessary.

Ricken Patel, co-founder of Avaaz, has consulted for the International Crisis Group⁽¹⁰⁾ – another pro-war ‘think tank’. The ICG boasts Israeli war criminal Shimon Peres and former Saudi ambassador to the US as senior advisers,⁽¹¹⁾ and George Soros as an Executive.⁽¹²⁾ The ICG is peppered with such names at the highest levels such as: Shlomo Ben-Ami – Former Foreign Minister of Israel, Zbigniew Brzezinski – Former U.S. National Security Advisor, Stanley Fischer – Governor of The Bank of Israel, Matthew McHugh – Former U.S. Congressman and Counselor to the World Bank President, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen – Former Secretary General of NATO, Morton Abramowitz – Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and Ambassador to Turkey, and Wesley Clark – Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander (Europe).

The Chair of the ICG, Thomas R Pickering, is Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Russia, India, Israel, Jordan, El Salvador and Nigeria, and Vice Chairman of Hills & Company.

The President & CEO of the ICG is Louise Arbour – Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

What do these people have to do with the prevention of crises? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing. The ICG is a body that exists to further the aims of its benefactors, which notably include NATO, the United States Government, and Israel.

Res Publica’s ‘About Us’ page also reveals⁽¹⁰⁾ that Patel has consulted for the Rockefeller Foundation and the UN.

Akin to the ICG, Res Publica’s advisory board⁽¹³⁾ features financiers, economists, and a former Clinton Chief of Staff.

The fraudulent ‘humanitarian intervention’ concept is built upon atrocious lies and emotive propaganda peddled by these networks of closely interconnected ‘human rights’, ‘democracy promotion’, and ‘crisis prevention’ groups. Before having an emotional knee-jerk reaction to these issues, we must inspect the people behind these voices. Avaaz’s recent petition feverishly entitled “Protect Syria’s Children Now!” currently has over 780,000 signatures. Orwellian ‘human rights’ outfits such as Avaaz have become adept at manipulating well-meaning activists and liberals into supporting the very agenda they purport to oppose – placing them firmly in the same camp as the most virulent Zionists, Neoconservatives, and war hawks one can imagine. This makes the illusory nature of the left-right dichotomy clearer than ever before, but even more worryingly it expedites the march of the NATO-GCC-Israeli war machine that now has Syria in its crosshairs.

Notes

(1) Avaaz.org – ‘About Us’

(2) Avaaz Petition: ‘Protect Syria’s Children Now!’

(3) Avaaz Foundation – Form 990: Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax, 2010

(4) Avaaz.org – ‘Avaaz Expenses and Financial Information’

(5) DarfurianVoices.org – ‘About Us’

(6) ‘Israelis can tell the whole story of Sudan’s division – they wrote the script and trained the actors’ by Fahmi Howeidi

(7) Genocideintervention.net – ‘Board’

(8) HRW.org – ‘George Soros to Give $100 million to Human Rights Watch’

(9) ‘Lies, Damned Lies, and Wikipedia’ by Martin Iqbal

(10) Therespublica.org – ‘About Us’

(11) Crisisgroup.org – ‘Crisis Group Senior Advisers’

(12) Crisisgroup.org – ‘Crisis Group’s Board of Trustees’

(13) Therespublica.org – ‘Advisory Board’

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[Libe-Rat-ion] Libyan elections postponed amid mounting violence

By Jean Shaoul 

WSWS, 7 June 2012

Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) has postponed elections scheduled for June 19 amid continuing militia clashes, kidnappings and arrests. The elections are unlikely to be held before mid-July at the earliest.

On Wednesday, the US Consulate in Benghazi came under bomb and grenade attack, although no one was injured. It was reportedly in retaliation for the killing of Libyan-born cleric Abu Yahya al-Libi by a US drone strike in Pakistan hours before.

Earlier in the week, a brigade of al-Afwiya militiamen briefly took over the capital’s international airport in Tripoli and grounded all flights to pressure the NTC to release their leader, Abu Ajila al-Habshi.

The al-Afwiya is only one of more than 500 “rebel” armed outfits that fought Gaddafi’s forces. During the NATO war, they seized different parts of Libya and its vital and most lucrative infrastructure and funds and set up checkpoints along the major highways. Many of these rival gangs have yet to disband or be integrated into the national army, itself little more than another militia. There have been constant reports of fighting between these armed groups as they carve up Libya’s towns and cities into “zones of influence.”

The continuation of these conflicts exposes as a lie the justification for the NATO-led war for regime-change—that it would bring democracy and human rights. Rather than “liberation”, the country faces violent break-up and civil war.

The elections, when and if they are held, will themselves be a travesty of democracy. They will choose a 200-seat constituent assembly whose primary task is to draft a new constitution, which is then to be put to a referendum. Electoral legislation states that only those with a “professional qualification” can stand as a candidate, making it impossible for workers to stand. Virtually everyone who worked at any level in Gaddafi’s government is also barred, unless they can demonstrate “early and clear support for the February 17th revolution.”

The interim government has also introduced controversial new laws making it a crime to glorify the former regime or “insult the aims of the February 17 revolution.”

Taken together, the laws restrict candidature to a relatively small number, and even these are subject to approval by the Electoral Commission.

The postponement of the vote has elicited little comment from the Western powers. Their real intention in Libya was to install a pliant administration that would enable them to secure control of the country’s lucrative oil reserves, bolster their geo-strategic position in North Africa, and increase their penetration of the entire African continent. To this end, they gave their backing to the NTC—an amalgam of former regime stalwarts, CIA assets and Islamic fundamentalists.

Having assumed power, the NTC has little credibility and its control over the country remains fragile. It has been forced to outsource security and the criminal justice system to various militia groups which, according to a United Nations report last January, are holding more than 7,000 detainees. International human rights groups have accused some of these groups of gross human rights abuses against their prisoners.

The Berber tribes in the west of the country have complained of official indifference and neglect by the NTC. In March, tribal fighting broke out in the south of the country, killing at least 150 people. Armed gangs are fighting for control of the smuggling routes into Chad and Sudan, leaving hundreds dead. Clashes around Tripoli have frequently led to closures of the border with Tunisia. Last month, an armed gang broke into the prime minister’s office demanding back pay.

As the US Consulate bombing makes clear, even in Benghazi, the centre of the uprising against Gaddafi, the situation is unstable. Construction in the city is at a standstill since almost all of Libya’s 3.5 million foreign workers left last year. Unemployment is rife and those jobs that remain go to lower paid migrant workers from Bangladesh and Sudan.

The interim government set up the Supreme Security Committee (SSC) under the Interior Ministry to take control of security from the militia. The SSC says that 32,000 of Gaddafi’s 88,000-strong police force have returned to work, providing the bulk of some 50,000 men it claims it can field. A further 28,000 are in training, including some 13,000 in Jordan.

The NTC was able to take control of the international airport in Tripoli from a Zintan Brigade only in April. It has also wrested control of the inner-city airport Benita from Souq al-Juma, which had been “guarding” the airport since August last year. But at Benghazi airport the insignia of the Free Libya Martyrs Brigade is still displayed.

When the ministry tried to deploy SSC units it provoked the ire of the most powerful armed forces in the country, the militias controlling Misrata and Zintan. Their city councils insisted that the militia should be under regional control.

The brigades fear that they will lose their income under a national security regime, under conditions where the NTC is recruiting from the old regime and handing out security contracts to private companies from the NATO countries that toppled Gaddafi. Britain’s Aegis, which made huge profits from its post-Iraq War contracts, is seeking $5 billion to police Libya’s borders.

While UN representative Ian Martin told the Security Council last month that SSC had registered 60,000 to 70,000 militiamen, he voiced concerns, saying, “It was essential, however, that the committee not become a parallel security.”

The Guardian cited a horrific example of surgeon Salem Forjani, who was sent to Tripoli’s main medical centre by the health minister to remove the hospital director, who was accused of misusing public funds and having close links to the Gaddafi regime. Forjani was kidnapped, detained and tortured by the SSC. After five days, he was released without charge. The health minister could get no explanation from the NTC. The NTC neither arrested the kidnappers nor launched an investigation as the minister requested.

Last month, Amnesty International cited the case of 20 detainees who were stripped and beaten repeatedly until they became unconscious, then revived and beaten again in Ain Zara Prison. They were left for two days on a concrete floor without mattresses or blankets.

The NTC has expanded from 9 to 86 members, but no one even knows who they are or how they are appointed. Its meetings are held in secret, its votes are not published, and its decisions are announced only irregularly on television broadcasts. No one knows how the estimated monthly oil revenues of $5 billion or the $200 billion of Libyan investments are dispersed.

NATO’s war on the Gaddafi regime was only the herald of a US offensive to bring Africa under its control. Immediately after Gaddafi’s lynching, the US announced it was sending troops to four more African countries--the Central African Republic, Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. AFRICOM, the US military's African command, is set to carry out 14 major joint military exercises in African countries in 2012, an unprecedented number.

This could not have been achieved without Gaddafi’s ouster. Gaddafi was an obstacle to US penetration of Africa. He wielded considerable influence through the African Union (AU), playing a major role in establishing it in the 1990s, serving as its biggest donor and chairing the organization in 2009-10. Libya also provided about $150 billion of investments in Africa and had proposed an African Union Development Bank that would have reduced Africa’s financial dependence on the West.

Because of Gaddafi, who offered cash and investment to African governments, the US was unable to find a headquarters for AFRICOM in Africa and had to base it in Stuttgart, Germany. Now the AU is being lined up to carry out Washington’s colonial ventures, as its forces are integrated with AFRICOM.
_____


Related:

International Court Team Is Held in Libya

Libya arrests ICC lawyer over ‘dangerous’ mail for Gaddafi son

Understanding Bitcoin

From AlJazeera,  09 Jun 2012

By Nicolas Mendoza

Bitcoin is at the forefront of 'hacktivism', giving its users a free alternative to contemporary financial mechanisms.

Bitcoin is an online decentralised economic system bypassing traditional infrastructures of modern finance [zcopley]

The above image is licensed under Creative Commons, and can be found here. Hong Kong - The term "hacktivism" has been grossly misconstrued by the media. The image of masked saboteurs attacking from the darkness has romantic appeal but this spectacular narrative of sabotage ultimately misinforms, other-ising hackers and distorting hacking itself. Richard Stallman defines hacking as "exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness". Real hacktivism, then, is less about denial of service attacks, which are acts of digital protest, than about the clever creation or intervention of software forms for social change. It is less about sabotage than about alternatives. Hacktivism allows dissent to overcome the limitations of protest, actually implementing alternatives and making them widely available without asking for permission from the status quo. It gives wings to the possibility for gradual peaceful revolution: alternatives no longer need to remain dreams, but can become real options for real people. Hacktivism often opens real spaces by "selling the idea" first to the machines, after which people realise other ways are possible and allow themselves to think in new ways. This is what the work of a programmer known as Satoshi Nakamoto did for economics. In 2008 he coded a critique of the world's monetary system into a P2P computer protocol he called Bitcoin. Bitcoin started running on January 3, 2009, and is now a working decentralised monetary system with thousands of users around the world. The Bitcoin protocol is based on a fundamental critique of the world's monetary system: that it demands undeserved amounts of trust from us. Nakamoto thought that it would be better to place trust outside the monetary system itself and back into social life: The Stream - Brazil's Freedom March & Bitcoin Digital Currency (Starts @ 24m00s) "The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible." Through a clever use of encryption technology, the Bitcoin protocol enables this move. In networked storage systems, Nakamoto explains, strong encryption technology affords end users peace of mind because they no longer need to trust the system admin with their privacy. He argues that if money could be similarly encrypted, middlemen who provide trust (e.g. banks) could be bypassed: "It's time we had the same thing [strong encryption] for money. With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless. (…) [Bitcoin] takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread but hard to stifle. The result is a distributed system with no single point of failure. Users hold the crypto keys to their own money and transact directly with each other, with the help of the P2P network to check for double spending." The result is Bitcoin. It is not controlled by any state nor owned by any company; neither is it a company in itself. It is merely an open source computer protocol that runs over the internet. Finite fiat, if I may Strictly speaking, I would argue, Bitcoin is a fiat currency. The term "fiat" is Latin for let it be done: it designates systems where an entity (eg the Federal Reserve) summons new money into existence by saying, in a god-like way, "let it be done". In the case of Bitcoin new "coins" are brought into existence across the network by the algorithms in the protocol. No entity or individuals are entitled to new bitcoins on merits other than their standing among the sum of active nodes in the network in terms of computing power. Of course, anyone can also earn already-existing bitcoins through work, through the exchange of goods and services, or (in the case of social organisations) through the trust the public places on their ability to do good. In short, bitcoins are created through a transparent and distributed process determined by mathematics. Bitcoin is finite post-Westphalian fiat, a monetary system where currency is indeed created, but through an algorithm driven by the logic of the network of distributed - rather than concentrated - power. Bitcoin does a better job than central entities (like the Fed) at creating new money because it does so in a decentralised way and without the need to create debt; it does a better job at storage than banks because it does so for free; and it does a better job at transfer than SWIFT because it is faster, cheaper, available to anyone, and not subjected to the control of Western powers: SWIFT's ability to blockade Iranian banking transactions shows the ultimately unilateral nature of global financial channels. What we have here is radically different from the current system where money creation is based on debt, politically motivated, surrounded by secrecy, inflationary, unilateralist, colonialist, and exploitative of powerless nations, etc. The flaws in the design of modern currency are at the roots of the social and ecological disasters we face today. Alternative currencies in general hold the promise of a way out, and the emergence of a vibrant Bitcoin economy in particular is one of the most interesting developments in recent times. Money not owed  Counting the Cost - Final flight or flights of fancy? (Starts @ 21m14s) Bitcoin, I think, is revolutionary especially because it distributes the creation of money. The current system, based on national and personal debt, insidiously concedes obscene yet hard to object power to rich nations and global banks. Debt-based money not only provides exorbitant privileges to powerful nations and threatens collapse in Europe and the US under its own absurdity; it also deforms the nature of human sociality. The disastrous social consequences of placing debt at the root of the creation of money cannot be understated. A society whose currency is backed by debt (aka the modern world) is a society where freedom is just a word because the reality of everyday life, even for the middle classes of so-called rich countries, tends toward sublimated forms of slavery or debt peonage. An economy built on debt-based currency can only "grow", the 2008 economic collapse showed us, by putting more people deeper into debt. Inevitably, this leads to a society where the many always owe more and more to the few, eventually making democracy a farce. Bankers, as Robert Fisk puts it, are the dictators of the West. The whole world's "formal" economy is backed by debt, and debt is backed by violence. This can be verified by defaulting, and subsequently resisting eviction: state force will be used sooner rather than later. Anthropologist David Graeber, one of the most prominent scholars in the Occupy Wall Street movement, articulates in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, how debt embeds our culture and our very selves into an inhuman, unsustainable, condition of iniquity: "…by turning human sociality itself into debts, they transform the very foundations of our being since what else are we, ultimately, except the sum of the relations we have with others into matters of fault, sin, and crime, and making the world into a place of iniquity that can only be overcome by completing some great cosmic transaction that will annihilate everything." The P2P money creation system that Bitcoin proposes is truly something else as it deflates the dark power of debt-based money in society; it allows envisioning a world where the wheels of debt are no longer at the origin of economic activity. This does not mean that Bitcoin is necessarily the final and perfect answer to our needs, but it is an important step in demonstrating that it can be done. Ten years It has already been over three years since the Bitcoin protocol started running, and yet these are still the very early days. What Nakamoto created is really just an open and autonomous backbone for global finance. Several layers of complementary technologies and services will need to be developed around this backbone before Bitcoin can aspire to really become an operational global currency for the 21st century. Cleverly, he devised a system in a way that planted the incentive to take over this extremely complex task in individuals likely to have intimate knowledge of technology and an understanding of the nature of networked sociality. The first miners joined the network out of intellectual curiosity when it was nothing more than an experiment posted to an obscure cryptography forum. Bitcoins were easy to mine in the beginning, and as the network grew they gained real value. Suddenly many realised they had run into small fortunes, that they could potentially become larger fortunes if Bitcoin succeeded, and that it was really up to them to make it happen. They understood that their success depends on making Bitcoin useful, safe and easy for the largest possible amount of people. Bitcoin entrepreneurs have already developed an impressive, if experimental and imperfect, ecology of operational support infrastructures. Available services include exchange, escrow, arbitrage, transfer, storage, consulting, investment, auction, payment, mobile support, etc. A lot of things can already be paid for using Bitcoin. These services are autonomous initiatives, driven by no authority other than that which emanates from the needs of Bitcoin users and the nature of the Bitcoin protocol "It takes ten years to get a disruptive technology from inception to becoming so easy to use that it reaches mainline adoption." - Rick Falkvinge, Swedish Pirate Party On a larger scale, Bitcoin's neutrality also gives it the potential to be a good national reserve currency as well as a low-friction medium for international trade. Governments, especially in "poor countries", could start their own Bitcoin mining operations and make Bitcoin an acceptable means of tax payment: a Bitcoin reserves strategy could shield vulnerable economies from global currency cycles and provide increased autonomy from foreign powers. If Bitcoin is to become a widely used everyday currency, it will not happen overnight. Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, believes that it will take Bitcoin about eight more years to reach the level of usability required for wide adoption: "I predict that Bitcoin will reach usability sometime around 2019. I base that prediction on earlier disruption technologies, where blogging started appearing in 1994 and reached mainstream adoption in 2004; file sharing started in 1989 over the net and Napster hit in 1999. You had streaming video 1995, mainly porn sites streaming animated gifs, what was then tip of the spear technology; Youtube was founded 2005 and just swept the floor with everyone else just because they were usable. This is not something bad; it is just an observation that it takes ten years to get a disruptive technology from inception to becoming so easy to use that it reaches mainline adoption." When it comes to money, people are understandably reluctant towards experimentation. Either it works, meaning it provides clear advantages, or it doesn't. No part of the Bitcoin economy will last unless it is objectively a better deal for the end user than the flawed-but-known ways of today. In this sense Bitcoin is perhaps one of the hacktivist revolution's greatest tests: can the network itself actually handle the globe's finance? Can it really deliver better money for this incredibly complex world? It could very well be that it actually will. It seems to be advancing in that direction, slowly, step by step. Nicolás Mendoza is a scholar, artist and researcher in global media from The University of Melbourne and a member of the P2P Foundation. His recent work can be found here. Follow him on Twitter: @nicolasmendo The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

Nicolas Mendoza Nicolas Mendoza is a scholar, artist and researcher in global media from The University of Melbourne.