“I’m a propagandist, I’ll twist the truth, I’ll put forward only my version of it if I think that’s going to propagandize people to believe what I need them to believe.” – Palmer Luckey
While average Ukrainians suffer amid NATO’s proxy war against Russia, business is booming for the surrogate baby industry, which requires a steady supply of healthy and financially desperate women willing to lease their wombs to affluent foreigners.
When we speak of concepts like “totalitarianism” and “corporatism,” it is often assumed that fascism stands very far from the liberal market society that went before it, and which we are still experiencing today. But if we pay closer attention to Italian fascism’s economic policies, especially during the 1920s, we can see how some combinations typical of both the last century and our own were experienced already in the first years of Benito Mussolini’s rule. A case in point is the association between austerity and technocracy. By “technocracy,” I refer to the phenomenon whereby certain policies that are common today (such as cuts in social spending, regressive taxation, monetary deflation, privatizations, and wage repressions) are decided by economic experts who advise governments or even directly take over the reins themselves, as in several recent cases in Italy.
CORE staff complained that they were forced to work 18-hour days, six days a week, without the opportunity to take breaks. Responding to the staff concerns, Penn excoriated the employees, writing in an email that “in every cell of my body is a vitriol for the way your actions reflect so harmfully upon your brothers and sisters in arms”. Penn suggested that employees leave their work instead of complaining about conditions.[16] In October 2021, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint that Penn and CORE violated federal labor law. According to the charge, Penn “impliedly threatened” his employees with reprisals.[17] A 2021 California lawsuit sought civil damages, claiming that CORE failed o pay overtime and minimum wges, provide rest periods, reimburse for business expenses, provide detailed wage statements, and timely pay employees. [18]
In 2022, a former CORE worker who provided support during COVID relief efforts in Georgia sued CORE for unpaid wages. According to the complaint, CORE deliberately misclassified staff as contractors to avoid paying overtime. CORE’s contracts require binding arbitration, which prevents a collective action by multiple employees and keeps the proceedings private.
Georgii Sandul surveys the anti-labor effects of laws passed in the last year and notes that they do not bring the country any closer to joining the E.U.
Attempts by the alliance of foreign powers, domestic right-wing parties and the military junta to consolidate an authoritarian state in Sudan will be defeated by mass-movements, insists the Sudanese Communist Party
A former top railroad union official has floated the idea of union bureaucrats forcing through a sellout contract even if workers vote it down, either by unilaterally declaring it passed or having it enforced by the government by sending it to binding arbitration.
Notwithstanding the Biden Administration basking in the political sunlight of tentative agreements being reached, the threat of an economy-jolting nationwide rail shutdown remains—and will be pinned on Biden and Democrats if it occurs prior to mid-term elections in November. Hence, there’s chatter as to whether rail labor leaders, very much invested in Democratic success in mid-term elections, might override a membership rejection of the tentative agreement or, alternatively, seek binding arbitration so as to avoid a work stoppage damaging to Democratic candidates.
The people of Jackson, Mississippi, have toxic sludge coming out of their kitchen faucets. In some neighborhoods, there isn’t enough water pressure to flush toilets. They’ve gotten, at most, the distracted attention of President Joe Biden.
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One joker suggested that if the city of Jackson declared itself a part of Ukraine, the $2 billion check would be in the mail tomorrow.
Ukraine’s Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky opened the New York Stock Exchange telling Wall Street his country is “open” for foreign corporations to exploit it with $400 billion in state selloffs.
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