[Marxism] Iranian General Soleimani: Neither Anti-Imperialist nor Pro-People

[RKOB via Marxism]

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Iranian General Soleimani: Neither Anti-Imperialist nor Pro-People

An article by Michael Pröbsting, 14 January 2020

https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/iranian-general-soleimani-neither-anti-imperialist-nor-pro-people/


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[Marxism] French workers show how to strike

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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by John Edmundson

Starting on December 5th, 2019 workers in the Parisian rail network
commenced an open-ended strike in opposition to French President Emmanuel
Macron’s proposed changes to their pension scheme. Rail workers in the
Metro Underground have, for decades, had retirement conditions that
compensate them for the low wages, unhealthy work environment and
antisocial hours that come with their jobs. Driving trains in the
Underground rail network means spending hours of every workday under the
ground and so the workers are seldom able to even see the sun. It is well
documented that this is not good for human health. In addition, working in
the Metro means frequently working antisocial hours due to the requirement
for shift work. Shift work is of course, another contributor to poor health
outcomes.

Macron, who ran for office as a “political outsider”, neither right nor
left and uncontaminated by the mistrust many French workers have for the
dominant mainstream Parties, came into politics from the world of finance,
claiming that he would surmount traditional political divisions and lead
France from the centre, devoid of the ideology he claimed cripples the
French political system. Since assuming office, Macron has continued the
sort of austerity policies familiar to many throughout the Western world,
attempting to shift more costs onto French workers, while forcing them to
work longer into what should have been their retirement years.

French Metro drivers can, in theory, retire at 50.8 years because for
decades, the drivers’ union has protected early retirement as a means of
compensating the drivers for the poor working conditions that they endure.
Despite this, low pay means that often the drivers work almost five more
years than that, retiring on average at 55.5 years. Most other employees of
RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens, the state owned transport
provider) are eligible to retire at 55.8 years, administrative staff at
60.8 years. This is not acceptable to the employer (the State) or the
government. Macron wants to push through a “one size fits all” pension plan
that would raise the retirement age for all workers to 62 years,
irrespective of the working conditions or previously negotiated terms and
conditions.

The strike has continued well into January, making it

https://rdln.wordpress.com/2020/01/13/french-transport-workers-take-on-macron-over-pension-reform/
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[Marxism] Obsessing over ‘geopolitics’ dehumanizes Middle East freedom struggles - +972 Magazine

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.972mag.com/geopolitics-dehumanize-freedom-struggles/
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[Marxism] 1917 | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Unlike WWII, films about WWI tend to be bitter antiwar commentaries. 
This includes the 1930 “All Quiet on the Western Front, the 1937 “The 
Grand Illusion,” one of the greatest films ever made, and Stanley 
Kubrick’s 1957 “Paths of Glory.” Since WWI was such an obviously 
imperialist affair, it would be difficult to represent it as a heroic 
defense of freedom—even if the propaganda surrounding the war tended to 
make the “Huns” a demonic force.


Since  as Alexander Pope put it, fools rush in where angels fear to 
tread, it was no surprise that Sam Mendes would make a film titled 
“1917” that, while not nearly an attempt to turn the two British 
soldiers it features into freedom-fighters, does make their efforts to 
warn off their comrades from a surprise German trap look like a noble 
sacrifice.


full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/01/12/1917/
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[Marxism] The yellow vests and the erosion of trade union strength | Ben Chacko | The Morning Star

[Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo via Marxism]

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/yellow-vests-and-erosion-trade-union-strength


Sent from my iPhone

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[Marxism] Report: US used Swiss backchannel, urges Iran not to respond strongly - Business Insider

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.businessinsider.com/us-swiss-intermediaries-backchannel-communicate-iran-2020-1
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[Marxism] The Merchants of Thirst

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Jan. 12, 2020
The Merchants of Thirst

In Nepal and many other countries, private tanker operators profit from 
growing water scarcity.


By Peter Schwartzstein

KATHMANDU, Nepal — It had been 11 days since a ruptured valve reduced 
Kupondole district’s pipeline flow to a dribble, and the phones at 
Pradeep Tamanz’s tanker business wouldn’t stop ringing.


A Malaysian embassy residence had run perilously low on water, and the 
diplomats wanted to shower. They’d pay extra for a swift delivery. A 
coffee processing plant was on the verge of shutting down production 
after emptying its storage tank. It, too, would shell out whatever 
amount of money it would take. Across the neighborhood and other parts 
of the city, the calls were coming in so feverishly that Sanjay, a 
tanker driver, jokily wondered if he might get carjacked. “This is like 
liquid gold,” he said, jabbing at his precious cargo, large amounts of 
which seeped from every hatch. “Maybe more than gold.”


Dashing from filling stations to houses and factories and back, Mr. 
Tamanz tried to meet demand. His three tanker crews slept in one or 
two-hour spurts, often in the cramped, refrigerator-sized truck cabins, 
and kept the tankers on the road for up to 19 hours a day. He fobbed off 
business to competitors, an unusual practice in the cutthroat world of 
Kathmandu tanker men, and even sounded out a mechanic about converting a 
flatbed truck into a new tanker. With fat profits pouring in, the young 
businessman figured it might soon repay its cost.


But no matter how hard the crews worked or how furiously they pushed 
their lumbering vehicles over the potholed roads, there was no 
satisfying the city’s needs. The going was too slow. The water shortage 
too severe. By the time the pipeline was fully restored, some households 
had subsisted on nothing but small jerrycans for almost an entire month. 
“You know it’s not even peak season, but this is what happens here,” Mr. 
Tamanz said. “Just imagine what things would be like if we didn’t 
exist?” He trailed off as his phone rang once more.


In Kathmandu, as in much of South Asia and parts of the Middle East, 
South America and sub-Saharan Africa, these men and their tanker trucks 
sometimes prevent entire cities from running dry. Without them, millions 
of households wouldn’t have sufficient water to cook, clean or wash. Or 
perhaps any at all. And without them, an already deteriorating 
infrastructure might break down completely, as the tanker men know well. 
“The city depends on us,” said Maheswar Dahal, a businessman who owns 
six trucks in Kathmandu’s Jorpati district. “There would be disaster if 
we didn’t do our work.”


Yet there’s another side to them, too, one that is less pleasant and 
sometimes outright nasty. Tankers frequently deliver poor quality water, 
which can sicken. They usually charge much more than the state, 
devastating to the poor. Tanker water costs on average 10 times more 
than government-supplied pipeline water, according to a World Resources 
Institute study of water access in 15 cities across the developing 
world, a figure that rises to 52 times more in Mumbai.


Greedy, uncompromising and fearful of being knocked from their perch, 
some tanker operators even conspire among themselves to fortify the 
conditions that contributed to their emergence in the first place. 
Locals tell tales of frequent underhand deal making, pipeline sabotage 
and egregious environmental destruction. “They’re all thieves, rotten 
thieves, who should be hanged,” said Dharaman Lama, a landlady who rents 
out rooms alongside the Bagmati River in the Nepali capital. “It’s 
disgusting what they do to us.”


Leaky Beasts

In some ways, these tankers are just another phase in a decades-long 
global process of water privatization. Many authorities believe the 
private sector is better at eking results out of overwhelmed utilities 
and have given up control of key resources. Tankers have piggybacked off 
that trend to secure contracts, or simply muscle in, across dozens of 
cities — even as officials elsewhere have concluded that water is best 
kept in public hands and reined in corporatized services.


The tanker fleet in Karachi, Pakistan, might have doubled over the past 
decade. The number in Lagos, Nigeria, has quadrupled during that time, 
two researchers there estimated to me, though, like in many other 
cities, its tankers operate in such administrative shadows that not even 
ballpark estimates exist. In Yemen, tankers have cornered much of the 
urban market since the Saudi-led intervention began in 2015. And 
throughout the Indian subcontinent, in particular, 

[Marxism] Response from Green Party MP to loss of airliner

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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Elizabeth May is no longer the leader of the Green Party of Canada.
She remains a Member of Parliament, one of three Green MPs.
ken h

> A Hard Morning!
> 
> It is not possible to write a cheery “Good Sunday Morning” after the multiple 
> tragedies of this week. As a country, we are in mourning with deep pockets of 
> grief in ever widening circles around each victim. We grieve with increasing 
> intensity as we learn more of the individual lives cut short by the missile 
> strike against a civilian airliner.
> 
> We know who was innocent. Every life lost on the ill-fated Ukrainian Airlines 
> flight was innocent, from the Ukrainian flight attendants to the 
> Canadian-Iranian newlyweds, to the brilliant graduate students heading back 
> to Canada, to the babies.
> 
> It is harder to know who was individually guilty, but many decisions led to 
> this tragedy.
> 
> The proximate causes start with President Trump’s reckless decision to 
> assassinate General Qassem Soleimani. In our media, I have heard it compared 
> with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that led to the First World War. 
> That comparison struck me as false from the outset. This was no rogue 
> element, no individual radical with a hand gun as the Bosnian separatist who 
> killed Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. This was the President of the United 
> States, a man with access to the most powerful and deadly of military 
> arsenals, launching a drone to kill. Whether General Qassem Soleimani was a 
> nice man or a deadly murderer himself is irrelevant in international law. 
> When the West found it convenient to enlist his help in the fight against 
> Daesh (ISIS), he was a U.S. ally. The question is not, as a disturbingly 
> large number of Canadian commentators would have it (Conrad Black “the world 
> is a better place without him” and John Robson “killing Soleimani was a 
> no-brainer” among others) was he a terrible human being? The question is: did 
> the US government have a legally defensible rationale for a deliberate 
> murder? Was it legal under US law, a question with which the US Congress is 
> now grappling? Was it legal under international law?
> 
> To be legal under the United Nations Charter, there would have had to be 
> proof of an imminent threat, that the actions were necessary and 
> proportionate. That test may still be met by evidence which - at this point - 
> no one has seen. I am grateful, at least, that Canada has not taken an 
> official view on the legality of the assassination.
> 
> The wide support for an extra-judicial targeted assassination of a foreign 
> country’s official because he was “bad” is beyond dangerous. We can all think 
> of brutal killers and dictators and dangerous people globally. Some of them 
> lead countries with which the US is on cozy terms. But any international 
> stability requires respect for international law.
> 
> The assassination of General Soleimani was at least reckless. What were 
> Trump’s motivations? It is premature to insist the president did not have 
> valid security intelligence to justify his actions. But it is also naïve to 
> dismiss the domestic political scene – the pending impeachment and the fall 
> election -- as factors. In fact, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that 
> Trump was influenced to assassinate Soleimani to secure support from his 
> Republican allies in the Senate. Senator Lindsay Graham appears to have been 
> the only, or at least one of a handful, of people briefed in advance. (Link 
> )
> 
> Iranian reaction to the assassination in the form of very targeted missile 
> strikes on the US base in Iraq was deemed “proportionate” and careful by most 
> commentators. And just as Trump was tweeting out “all is well” and that no 
> American military had been killed in that missile strike, the Iranian ground 
> to air missile was launched – by mistake – killing all on board Ukraine 
> International Airlines flight 752.
> 
> The Iranian regime is also brutal and anti-democratic. Nevertheless, it had 
> been honouring the agreement with the U.S. negotiated under former President 
> Obama’s administration. That agreement was a significant step toward security 
> in the region. In May 2018, Trump denounced the deal and launched new 
> economic sanctions against Iran. Many other world leaders urged the US to 
> re-engage. France’s 

[Marxism] Brexit, Scottish Nationalism and Socialism (excerpt)

[bonnieweinstein via Marxism]

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Brexit, Scottish Nationalism and Socialism
By John Blackburn

Nationalism is one of the most powerful political forces in history and remains 
so today. It has dictated the patterns of voting in the recent British general 
election which is the product of the three years of chaos that have followed 
the EU referendum of 2016. 
In that referendum the percent of the vote for leaving was: 
England as a whole, 54.2; Wales, 52.5; Scotland, 38.0; Northern Ireland, 44.2.
The leave campaign is fundamentally an English nationalist movement while the 
Conservative and Unionist Party (Tories) has transformed into the “English 
national party” with Brexit representing the longing to return to the glory 
days of the English empire. The population of England is 80 percent of the UK, 
greater than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland taken together, so this 
skewed the whole UK result of the vote towards leave. When seen in this light 
England is imposing Brexit on Scotland and Northern Ireland against their will.
The general election results have given Johnson’s Conservatives an unassailable 
78 majority in Parliament. This is due to large numbers of former Labour 
supporters in the devastated industrial and mining communities of England 
voting for Conservative and Brexit Party candidates. The utopian Tory campaign 
of “Get Brexit Done!” with little else of substance but a subtext that 
immigration is the real problem, together with an unrelenting campaign of 
vilification of Jeremy Corbyn by the right-wing media has successfully 
attracted the votes of many working-class people.
In Scotland the vast majority of the working class which has also suffered the 
consequences of the deindustrialization, austerity and social deprivation that 
their English counterparts have did not fall for the Brexiteers’ reactionary 
propaganda. The Scottish National Party (SNP) campaigned to “Stop Johnson,” 
remain in the EU and for Scottish independence, together with a left-wing 
reformist program. They took 48 of the 59 Scottish Parliamentary seats. The 
Tories have only six (having lost seven) and Scotland where the British Labour 
Party began has now only one Labour MP. The SNP has taken on the radical mantle 
in Scotland. The Scottish people have overwhelmingly rejected Johnson’s Tories 
and their Brexit program. Johnson has said that he will not countenance 
Scottish independence so the imposition of the will of the English Tories on 
the Scots will be a major political issue for the whole term of this government.
UK background
“United Kingdom” is the creation of the English ruling class. Wales was 
conquered, Ireland was colonized and after six centuries of conflict Scotland 
was finally subdued in 1746. The Union Flag is meant to symbolize the union of 
these equal partners (though Wales is left out.) The history of all four 
countries is characterized by ebb and flow in the popularity of nationalist 
movements with armed conflict featuring frequently between rebels and the 
British state.
Attempts to crush Scotland began with Edward I, known as the “Hammer of the 
Scots” for his unbridled brutality. With the defeat of his son, Edward II, by a 
Scottish part-time army, led by Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn, 
in 1314, independence was secured for a time. The first defeats of the English 
invaders were by Scots led by the then commoner William Wallace and that 
egalitarianism was to be consolidated in the Declaration of Arbroath (1320):
“As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions 
be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor 
honors, that we are fighting, but for freedom—for that alone, which no honest 
man gives up but with life itself.”
The Magna Carta was about equal rights for barons while the Declaration of 
Arbroath is about freedom for all Scots. (Most Scottish people know of the 
Magna Carta but few English people know of the Declaration of Arbroath, which 
is just as important.)
The Reformation occurred in Scotland in 1560 nearly 30 years after England. 
However, the forms that the respective Protestant religions took were 
fundamentally different. In 1534 Henry VIII basically substituted himself for 
the Pope and, provided the clergy came to heal, they were relatively safe. As 
head of the Church of England, Henry would appoint the bishops and they, with 
the local aristocracy, would select the local clergy. The religious and 
political conflicts triggered by Henry would not be settled in England for 
nearly two centuries with hundreds-of-thousands of lives destroyed on and off 
the battlefield.
In Scotland, the leader of the 

[Marxism] Capitalism vs. Life Itself By Bonnie Weinstein

[bonnieweinstein via Marxism]

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Capitalism vs. Life Itself
By Bonnie Weinstein
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org
In a December 9, 2019 New York Times article by Sarah Almukhtar and Rod 
Nordland titled, “What Did the U.S. Get for $2 Trillion in Afghanistan?”:
“The Taliban are gaining strength. Opium production has quadrupled. Osama bin 
Laden is dead. Most Afghans live in Poverty…More than 2,400 American soldiers 
and more than 38,000 Afghan civilians have died. …the cost of nearly 18 years 
of war in Afghanistan will amount to more than $2 trillion dollars.”
And according to the Watson Institute Costs of War, U.S. military emissions 
since the beginning of the Global War on Terror in 2001 has produced “1.2 
billion metric tons of greenhouse gasses.”1
These figures are a drop in the bucket if you consider the human and 
environmental costs of the U.S.’s massive war industry and trillions of dollars 
necessary to keep the threat of the destruction of the planet for profit on the 
agenda.
War is a top priority of capital. The U.S. war machine is the most profitable 
industry in the world. 
In a February 21, 2019 USA Today article by Samuel Stebbins and Evan Coman 
titled, “Military Spending: 20 Companies Profiting the Most from War:”
“…the United States is the world’s largest defense spender by a wide margin. 
…The United States’ position as the top arms-producing nation in the world 
remains unchanged, and for now unchallenged. …The United States is home to five 
of the world’s ten largest defense contractors, and American companies account 
for 57 percent of total arms sales by the world’s 100 largest defense 
contractors…. Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in 
the world, is estimated to have had $44.9 billion in arms sales in 2017 through 
deals with governments all over the world. The company drew public scrutiny 
after a bomb it sold to Saudi Arabia was dropped on a school bus in Yemen, 
killing 40 boys and 11 adults. Lockheed’s revenue from the U.S. government 
alone is well more than the total annual budgets of the IRS and the 
Environmental Protection Agency, combined.”
Life in service to the war machine of capital
The commanders of capital protect their wealth through the threat of war. They 
not only protect themselves through war but enrich themselves as well—all by 
utilizing our labor and our lives to accomodate their rule by threat of death 
over us.
But, what about us? How are we, the toilers, faring under the rule of profit 
for the few above all else?
In an October 27, 2019 Alliance for Sustainable Communities article by 
Elizabeth Oram, titled, “Dollar Meals and Diabetes,” (also appearing in this 
issue of Socialist Viewpoint):
“Public health indicators between the rich and the poor continue to diverge, 
but now it is chronic illness, not infection, that is the killer. Insidious and 
poorly understood biologic processes are driving accelerating rates of cancer, 
heart disease, stroke and diabetes. And, like the infectious pandemics of the 
18th and 19th centuries, these illnesses claim more victims among the poor…. 
The number of people diagnosed with diabetes has skyrocketed since 1980, 
increasing more than fourfold. The global prevalence has doubled. …when we 
analyze maps of diabetes incidence, it is zip code, not genetic code, that 
appears to confer risk.”
Our health is the “collateral damage” of capital’s quest for profits. The food 
industry also targets the health of the poor because they, along with the 
medical insurance and pharmaceutical industries, profit off of our illnesses 
caused by the poverty and pollution capitalism creates:
“The modern western diet is high in sugar, denatured white flour, vegetable 
oils, and meat; it is low in fresh vegetables, fruits and whole grains. More 
importantly, it is spiked with hidden sugar and fats, highly processed, and 
laced with chemicals to make it feel good in your mouth. …The tax-subsidized 
food industry spends billions on saturation marketing, chemical flavor 
manipulation, and portion creep—this expenditure has been highly effective in 
changing eating behavior over the years. Opting out is a luxury that takes time 
and money.”
Capitalism profits in every way it can
Capitalist economic exploitation of the working class and our environment 
sustains a vicious cycle of poverty and pollution that can only be broken if 
the system itself is eradicated from the planet. 
By its very nature, the drive to increase the rate of profit is supreme. It is 
the driving force of war, poverty, sickness and environmental destruction. 
It can’t continue, of course. The planet is dying and the human and material 
resources to maintain 

[Marxism] [UCE] a question

[george snedker via Marxism]

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Does anyone on this list have the email address for John Levin? Please send his 
address to me at george.snede...@verizon.net

Thanks,
George
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[Marxism] Macron Scraps Proposal to Raise Retirement Age in France

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Jan. 12, 2020
Macron Scraps Proposal to Raise Retirement Age in France
By Adam Nossiter

PARIS — With tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators once 
again coursing through the streets of Paris and other cities and clouds 
of tear gas and smashed store windows punctuating the urban landscape, 
the French government made a major concession on Saturday to unions 
protesting its pension reform plan.


It agreed to scrap, for now at least, a proposal to raise the 
full-benefits retirement age from 62 to 64. Unlike in the United States, 
the French government plays a huge role in the retirement plans of 
individuals in France, both as a source of funds and as overseer and 
guarantor of the pension system.


The raised age had infuriated moderate unions that the government of 
President Emmanuel Macron badly needs on its side. Mr. Macron has 
insisted the French need to work longer to strengthen a generous 
retirement system that is one of the world’s most generous but may be 
heading toward a $19 billion deficit.


On Saturday, with a crippling transport strike already in its sixth 
week, Mr. Macron’s government backed down, announcing that it would 
“withdraw” the new age limit, and put off decisions on financing the 
system until it gets a report on the money problem “between now and the 
end of April.”


But the government did not entirely rule out the idea of reintroducing a 
new retirement age if funding solutions to the pensions deficit are not 
reached.


And the government’s concession is unlikely to end either the strike or 
the demonstrations. The more militant unions — and the ones most heavily 
represented in the railways and the Paris subway — are demanding that 
Mr. Macron abandon his entire reform plan.


The demand in the streets Saturday was for precisely that. The mood was 
militant, and the more violent demonstrators once again clashed with the 
police, even as they sowed a trail of damage through eastern Paris. A 
bank branch was sacked, and bus shelters smashed and fires set. Unions 
said 150,000 protesters were in the streets of Paris on Saturday.


“We’ve got to continue to mobilize, until they pull the whole plan, pure 
and simple,” Eric Coquerel, a representative in Parliament and a leading 
voice in the far-left France Unbowed party, told French television 
Saturday afternoon, as police sirens blared in the background


The moderate French Democratic Confederation of Labor, or CFDT, which 
has long been calling for the withdrawal of the new retirement age, 
welcomed the government’s move on Saturday, which it said had shown “the 
government’s willingness to compromise.”


The far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, called the government’s move a 
“dishonest” negotiating tactic.


“You introduce something that’s unacceptable, and then you withdraw it,” 
she told French media. Like other opposition figures, Ms. Le Pen has 
been demanding the government withdraw its whole plan. “Nothing 
justifies this reform,” she said.


Mr. Macron has insisted that his retirement plan represents a fair, 
rational response to the new world of work, where careers are 
interrupted and French citizens no longer stay in the same job for life.


The plan would replace the current system of 42 different pension 
regimes, most tailored to match individual professions, with a single, 
points-based system that will be the same for everybody. Workers would 
accumulate points, then cash them in at the end. Bus drivers in Toulouse 
would get the same retirement benefits as those in Paris — not now the 
case, as the Paris system has some of the country’s most generous benefits.


Now, workers in the private and public sector get pension benefits based 
on the salaries of their best working years. That system would end.


The French, though, are uneasy with Mr. Macron’s proposals. Although 
polls show they support some form of universal pension plan, they are 
also deeply attached to a system which has achieved among the lowest 
old-age poverty rates in the world.


Faced with weeks of strikes and mass demonstrations that have ripped 
into the economy, Mr. Macron’s government has been forced to carve out a 
series of concessions to individual professions in recent days — the 
police, dancers at the Paris Opera, nurses, airline flight attendants, 
pilots — moving back toward precisely the same type of tailored 
retirement structure his reform sought to end.


On Saturday crowds of strikers, unionists and hard-core demonstrators 
began gathering early, with the sprawling Place de la Nation in eastern 
Paris packed by early afternoon. Revolutionary hymns from Latin America 
blared over the 

[Marxism] Binge and Purge: The Rise of Extreme Film Criticism | Noah Gittell | Los Angeles Review of Books

[Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo via Marxism]

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https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/binge-and-purge-the-rise-of-extreme-film-criticism/


Sent from my iPhone

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[Marxism] Gerald Horne on Africa Today – January 6, 2020 Discussing WSWS & WSJ attack on 1619 project

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/africa-today-january-6-2020/id76959008?i=1000461858683


Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
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[Marxism] NZ workers' stories

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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*This interview is from Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM
) and is the first of an ongoing series of interviews
they plan to do with workers from various sectors who are having their well
being and livelihoods damaged. They begin with an educator in Southland.
Due to the attitude and actions of his employers, he has asked to remain
anonymous.  Thanks to AWSM for sharing this with us.*

*Introduction*

Workers in Aotearoa (like workers everywhere) are under attack from those
who own and control the undemocratic places where we are employed. The
corporate media have little interest in bringing this to light. So, its up
to us at the bottom of this system to highlight the reality we are
experiencing.

*AWSM*: Thanks for agreeing to this interview.  Would you like to tell us
something about your work.

*WORKER*: Hi, I’m an educator with adults, young and the not so young,
looking to upskill their literacy

*AWSM*: Do you enjoy your work?

*WORKER*: Immensely. It’s making a useful contribution to society, and
while I am aware really the main demands of my job are to make people fit
for capitalism, in terms of being upskilled to join the employment force, l
like to embed a lot of critical thinking skills around, for example,
checking sources of news articles and what bias may come from them,
interpreting the difference between facts and opinions, and seeing through
advertising. In this way I like to think at least I’m giving people tools
to deal with the capitalist media system, or at least attempting to.

*AWSM*: Is there anything you don’t like?

*WORKER*: Well yes, my terms and conditions leave a lot to be desired. For
example. . . .

full at: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2020/01/12/23156/
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