Cyberunions Podcast Episode 59: How Palestine is the Global Struggle

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0:29 It’s been 2 Weeks!?

• Stephen is busy and Walton is busy and feel the show is suffering
• We can keep the quality and passion alive as we struggle to push the show together
• We are changing the format of the show in that we will be recording every 2 weeks
• Stephen says people can always listen to a rerun

2:10 September 11th

• Neoliberalism celebrates 39 years after the CIA overthrew the democratically elected Allende in Chile
• Up until the last 4 or so years the economic crisis in the marginal countries is starting to impact the wealthier seats
• How the US used the Labor seat in the US embassies was used against revolutions

4:10 Stephen left something something in San Francisco

• Phenomenal weekend that lasted 3 days that Stephen was paying attention every minute
• Hearing the connections and stories of the Palestinian struggle was amazing
• Quite literally a cool place but rather chilly, Stephen liked it a lot
• Oakland is buffered by the bay and is much warmer
• Stephen stocked on vegan food

6:10 Walton has been busy

• Met with a delegation from Vietnam
• The TUC had their annual congress, interesting as the congress is slowly becoming more radical
• Interesting note of TUC is a general strike agreement is put forward first time since 1926, General Strike in the UK is very hard to pull together
• The three biggest unions are behind the General Strike as well as many independent and small unions
• Health and Safety issue…the Tory government mock health and safety and say it restricts the economy
• The law has changed, the day before of 300 workers in Pakistan dying…before in the UK big industrial accidents caused the deaths cause of unsafe conditions
• Hillsborough Football Disaster case is coming forward, massive campaign of coverups and a big inquest now to get to the bottom of it…top newspapers, politicians and police fabricated the coverup, the establishment lies

10:35 Walton continues to rant

• Chicago teachers strike first time in 25 years
• Corporate education is being pushed forward to turn schools into businesses and students into products
• Teacher strikes in Melbourne Australia as well
• Stephen goes into details of the conditions of the strike
• Democratic party is not so different than the Republican party
• The Democrats are not backing labor…Mayor Rahm Emanual wants to extend the work day, connect teacher performance to student tests, test prove that tests work but not what people learn
• Education cuts to promote charter schools which are private/public schools that has a different school board that are by default not allowing unions.
• Charter schools are becoming the model of teaching, which is no consistent method of funding or curriculum to remove tenure and  job security
• Stephen having taught, feels the importance of job security cause teaching always changes an one year should not be impacting another as the dynamics of the students changes
• In Melbourne the government is going against promises made

17:10 We were hacked the verbal explanation

• Out site got hacked or cracked…it happened or came to light after the last show
• Towards the end of the day Stephen got the error, felt at first it was a google spoof, but it turns out to be real
• Stephen went on the IRC of mayfirst and put together support ticket
• This is a fluke or flaw with the theme of WordPress, it was from the bueno theme that is a free theme given when you first install, but we were not using it
• WordPress uses a lot of PHP for themes and other add-ons but there are security flaws
• The person cracking the site on August 21, the thumb.php file was not updated for bueno, but it was for the theme we use, but they probed for the specific vulnerable thumb.php was found and then exploited the site
• The thumb.php was writable by any visitor and that is how the site was hacked but bueno never updated the file
• The code found on the site was taking the IP of visitors and sending the IP back to ID the browser/user agent they were using and logging IPs of the vulnerable browsers
• YOUR IP MAY HAVE BEEN TRACKED BETWEEN AUGUST 21 TO SEPTEMBER 3
• Eventually they visited the server to get the IPs. We wiped the entire install and reinstalled the site
• The vulnerability is not just WordPress, but the flaw is that WordPress does not have a security team to update the add-ons for security reasons. Drupal community has the security team
• This was not a political hack, but leads to vulnerabilities. If you are not using a theme uninstall it…any third-party add-on can make your site vulnerable to cracks

28:38 San Francisco treat…

• The point of the weekend was to meet with organizing a US/North America delegation to Port Alegre, Brazil
• Stephen recaps when he became Pro-Palestine including sourcing materials that were not from Israel
• Never had been activist within the Palestinian Struggle but finally have an opportunity
• One group name in particular is Punks Against Apartheid
• Darryl connected the struggle in African-American communities to the struggles of Palestine as many churches tend to be pro-zionist. Many churches in South Africa have a similar perspective on Zionism, as in in support of it
• Pro-Zionist current in Latino communities in the US as well in support Zionism
• The connection of the activists historical connections, in the past it was much easier to make the connections. Solidarity concept is not the same it is today as in the past so we discussed the idea of Joint Struggle
• To see how the same dynamics are at work in all the world are connected to Israel, such as the training of police forces to incarceration as well as the companies involved in building walls say in the US Mexico border
• Zionism is being exported, both for profit and justifying the existence of Israel
• Where Israel and Palestine are now is what South Africa would have been if the struggle against apartheid was never successful
• To eradicate an entire people…the hypocrisy is ridiculous cause Israel is great at speaking about peace but the peace they want is the Palestinians to stop fighting and give in
• The BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions) movement is growing but taking much longer.
• The economic existence of Israel is propped up by the US foreign aid
• In the US it is hard to talk against Israel when people automatically call it antisemitism when that is not true it is anti-zionism
• The DNC forced a change to the platform to acknowledge Jerusalem is the capitol of Israel. The change was done with a small delegation of delegates, they broke their own rules to pass this platform.
• It is important that the Palestinian struggle connects to labor struggles and social movement all over the world.
• Who Profits and the daily show coverage  of the DNC and Stephen Colbert on God & Jerusalem and a great trailer for an upcoming movie Road Map to Apartheid
• We need to clear the fog and reconnect amongst class as race is used to split the classes apart…need to reestablish the connections

46:45 Tech surveillance

• Activists need to be aware that it is easy to track people and it is just as easy to hide, which we activists need to learn about
• Activist we do not need to make it easy for the authorities or capitalists to read or listen to what we are working on.
• Tor-browser, tails and gpg-keys offer a security level to make it much more challenging to break
• Encryption makes it much harder for those against us to get the information

50:30 Feedback monster

• Paul from Friendica said Walton’s discussion about the details of the miners in South Africa was Walton’s finest moment and encouraged others to listen to the show

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