#Offshore workforce

[why-rock-look-tasty-if-no-eat]

I love it so much!

this is so stupid but here’s a little comic i made for a little bingo au me and @twisted-tales-told came up with a few weeks ago. pretty much just the idea that jason needed a cover at some point and stumbled in on bingo night and was quickly adopted by the little old ladies there. now he plays every friday and has beef with dora and gets sent home with banana bread :) clara is trying to set him up with her grandson and all of her problems with her land lord have mysteriously been solved :))

being involved in his community is very important to jason and he loves seeing them host community events bc it feels like his home is healing

bonus: none of the bats have the faintest idea what Jason does in his spare time aside from babs and dick is so butthurt he wasn’t invited (not pictured: nightwing outside the bingo hall window looking in look a kicked puppy while jason flips him off)

(this is my first comic pls be nice it’s just a sketch)

[ranjith11]

Quality Control for offshore staff | Future Accounts Proof

Welcome to an enlightening journey into the world of offshore excellence! In this video, we unravel the significant role of quality control for offshore staff in shaping a thriving future. With a keen focus on future accounts proof, we delve into strategies and insights that pave the way for seamless offshore operations. Join us as we explore how quality control acts as the linchpin in harnessing success and efficiency among offshore teams. Discover the core tenets that empower offshore staff to be future-ready and deliver exceptional outcomes in the dynamic landscape of tomorrow.

[xbsoftware]

A workforce management system for companies that focus on high volume staffing. This web-based workforce management software is an example of a flexible scheduling tool that can be used by both small and large teams. The system helps to make the management of a complex workforce easier and more efficient.

Industry: Customer Services

Tech stack: Backbone.js, Optaplanner

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #32

August 30-September 6 2024.

President Biden announced $7.3 billion in clean energy investment for rural communities. This marks the largest investment in rural electrification since the New Deal. The money will go to 16 rural electric cooperatives across 23 states Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Together they will be able to generate 10 gigawatts of clean energy, enough to power 5 million households about 20% of America's rural population. This clean energy will reduce greenhouse emissions by 43.7 million tons a year, equivalent to removing more than 10 million cars off the road every year.

The Biden-Harris Administration announced a historic 10th offshore wind project. The latest project approved for the Atlantic coast of Maryland will generate 2,200 megawatts of clean, reliable renewable energy to power 770,000 homes. All together the 10 offshore wind projects approved by the Biden-Harris Administration will generation 15 gigawatts, enough to power 5.25 million homes. This is half way to the Administration's goal of 30 gigawatts of clean offshore wind power by 2030.

President Biden signed an Executive Order aimed at supporting and expanding unions. Called the "Good Jobs EO" the order will direct all federal agencies to take steps to recognize unions, to not interfere with the formation of unions and reach labor agreements on federally supported projects. It also directs agencies to prioritize equal pay and pay transparency, support projects that offer workers benefits like child care, health insurance, paid leave, and retirement benefits. It will also push workforce development and workplace safety.

The Department of Transportation announced $1 billion to make local roads safer. The money will go to 354 local communities across America to improve roadway safety and prevent deaths and serious injuries. This is part of the National Roadway Safety Strategy launched in 2022, since then traffic fatalities have decreased for 9 straight quarters. Since 2022 the program has supported projects in 1,400 communities effecting 75% of all Americans.

The Department of Energy announced $430 million to support America's aging hydropower. Hydropower currently accounts for nearly 27% of renewable electricity generation in the United States. However many of our dams were built during the New Deal for a national average of 79 years old. The money will go to 293 projects across 33 states. These updates will improve energy generation, workplace safety, and have a positive environmental impact on local fish and wildlife.

The EPA announced $300 million to help support tribal nations, and US territories cut climate pollution and boost green energy. The money will support projects by 33 tribes, and the Island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. EPA Administer Michael S. Regan announced the funds along side Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in Arizona to highlight one of the projects. A project that will bring electricity for the first time to 900 homes on the Hopi Reservation.

The Biden-Harris Administration is investing $179 million in literacy. This investment in the Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant is the largest in history. Studies have shown that the 3rd grade is a key moment in a students literacy development, the CLSD is designed to help support states research, develop, and implement evidence-based literacy interventions to help students achieve key literacy milestones.

The US government secured the release of 135 political prisoners from Nicaragua. Nicaragua's dictator President Daniel Ortega has jailed large numbers of citizens since protests against his rule broke out in 2018. In February 2023 the US secured the release of over 200 political prisoners. Human rights orgs have documented torture and sexual abuse in Ortega's prisons.

The Justice Department announced the disruption of a major effort by Russia to interfere with the 2024 US Elections. Russian propaganda network, RT, deployed $10 million to Tenet Media to help spread Russian propaganda and help sway the election in favor of Trump and the Republicans as well as disrupting American society. Tenet Media employs many well known conservative on-line personalities such as Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Dave Rubin, Tayler Hansen and Matt Christiansen.

Vice-President Harris outlined her plan for Small Businesses at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. Harris wants to expand from $5,000 to $50,000 tax incentives for startup expenses. This would help start 25 million new small business over four years.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Boeing’s deliberately defective fleet of flying sky-wreckage

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (May 2) in WINNIPEG, then Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Boeing's 787 "Dreamliner" is manufactured far from the company's Seattle facility, in a non-union shop in Charleston, South Carolina. At that shop, there is a cage full of defective parts that have been pulled from production because they are not airworthy.

Hundreds of parts from that Material Review Segregation Area (MRSA) were secretly pulled from that cage and installed on aircraft that are currently plying the world's skies. Among them, sections 47/48 of a 787 – the last four rows of the plane, along with its galley and rear toilets. As Moe Tkacik writes in her excellent piece on Boeing's lethally corrupt culture of financialization and whistleblower intimidation, this is a big ass chunk of an airplane, and there's no way it could go missing from the MRSA cage without a lot of people knowing about it:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-30-whistleblower-laws-protect-lawbreakers/

More: MRSA parts are prominently emblazoned with red marks denoting them as defective and unsafe. For a plane to escape Boeing's production line and find its way to a civilian airport near you with these defective parts installed, many people will have to see and ignore this literal red flag.

The MRSA cage was a special concern of John "Swampy" Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who is alleged to have killed himself in March. Tkacik's earlier profile of Swampy paints a picture of a fearless, stubborn engineer who refused to go along to get along, refused to allow himself to become inured to Boeing's growing culture of profits over safety:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

Boeing is America's last aviation company and its single largest exporter. After the company was allowed to merge with its rival McDonnell-Douglas in 1997, the combined company came under MDD's notoriously financially oriented management culture. MDD CEO Harry Stonecipher became Boeing's CEO in the early 2000s. Stonecipher was a protege of Jack Welch, the man who destroyed General Electric with cuts to quality and workforce and aggressive union-busting, a classic Mafia-style "bust-out" that devoured the company's seed corn and left it a barren wasteland:

https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis

Post-merger, Boeing became increasingly infected with MDD's culture. The company chased cheap, less-skilled labor to other countries and to America's great onshore-offshore sacrifice zone, the "right-to-work" American south, where bosses can fire uppity workers who balked at criminal orders, without the hassle of a union grievance.

Stonecipher was succeeded by Jim "Prince Jim" McNerney, ex-3M CEO, another Jack Welch protege (Welch spawned a botnet of sociopath looters who seized control of the country's largest, most successful firms, and drove them into the ground). McNerney had a cute name for the company's senior engineers: "phenomenally talented assholes." He created a program to help his managers force these skilled workers – everyone a Boeing who knew how to build a plane – out of the company.

McNerney's big idea was to get rid of "phenomenally talented assholes" and outsource the Dreamliner's design to Boeing's suppliers, who were utterly dependent on the company and could easily be pushed around (McNerney didn't care that most of these companies lacked engineering departments). This resulted in a $80b cost overrun, and a last-minute scramble to save the 787 by shipping a "cleanup crew" from Seattle to South Carolina, in the hopes that those "phenomenally talented assholes" could save McNerney's ass.

Swampy was part of the cleanup crew. He was terrified by what he saw there. Boeing had convinced the FAA to let them company perform its own inspections, replacing independent government inspectors with Boeing employees. The company would mark its own homework, and it swore that it wouldn't cheat.

Boeing cheated. Swampy dutifully reported the legion of safety violations he witnessed and was banished to babysit the MRSA, an assignment his managers viewed as a punishment that would isolate Swampy from the criminality he refused to stop reporting. Instead, Swampy audited the MRSA, and discovered that at least 420 defective aviation components had gone missing from the cage, presumably to be installed in planes that were behind schedule. Swampy then audited the keys to the MRSA and learned that hundreds of keys were "floating around" the Charleston facility. Virtually anyone could liberate a defective part and install it into an airplane without any paper trail.

Swampy's bosses had a plan for dealing with this. They ordered Swampy to "pencil whip" the investigations of 420 missing defective components and close the cases without actually figuring out what happened to them. Swampy refused.

Instead, Swampy took his concerns to a departmental meeting where 12 managers were present and announced that "if we can’t find them, any that we can’t find, we need to report it to the FAA." The only response came from a supervisor, who said, "We’re not going to report anything to the FAA."

The thing is, Swampy wasn't just protecting the lives of the passengers in those defective aircraft – he was also protecting Boeing employees. Under Sec 38 of the US Criminal Code, it's a 15-year felony to make any "materially false writing, entry, certification, document, record, data plate, label, or electronic communication concerning any aircraft or space vehicle part."

(When Swampy told a meeting that he took this seriously because "the paperwork is just as important as the aircraft" the room erupted in laughter.)

Swampy sent his own inspectors to the factory floor, and they discovered "dozens of red-painted defective parts installed on planes."

Swampy blew the whistle. How did the 787 – and the rest of Boeing's defective flying turkeys – escape the hangar and find their way into commercial airlines' fleets? Tkacik blames a 2000 whistleblower law called AIR21 that:

creates such byzantine procedures, locates adjudication power in such an outgunned federal agency, and gives whistleblowers such a narrow chance of success that it effectively immunizes airplane manufacturers, of which there is one in the United States, from suffering any legal repercussions from the testimony of their own workers.

By his own estimation, Swampy was ordered to commit two felonies per week for six years. Tkacik explains that this kind of operation relies on a culture of ignorance – managers must not document their orders, and workers must not be made aware of the law. Whistleblowers like Swampy, who spoke the unspeakable, were sidelined (an assessment by one of Swampy's managers called him "one of the best" and finished that "leadership would give hugs and high fives all around at his departure").

Multiple whistleblowers were singled out for retaliation and forced departure. William Hobek, a quality manager who refused to "pencil whip" the missing, massive 47-48 assembly that had wandered away from the MRSA cage, was given a "weak" performance review and fired despite an HR manager admitting that it was bogus.

Another quality manager, Cynthia Kitchens, filed an ethics complaint against manager Elton Wright who responded to her persistent reporting of defects on the line by shoving her against a wall and shouting that Boeing was "a good ol’ boys’ club and you need to get on board." Kitchens was fired in 2016. She had cancer at the time.

John Woods, yet another quality engineer, was fired after he refused to sign off on a corner-cutting process to repair a fuselage – the FAA later backed up his judgment.

Then there's Sam Salehpour, the 787 quality engineer whose tearful Congressional testimony described more corner-cutting on fuselage repairs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP0xhIe1LFE

Salehpour's boss followed the Boeing playbook to the letter: Salehpour was constantly harangued and bullied, and he was isolated from colleagues who might concur with his assessment. When Salehpour announced that he would give Congressional testimony, his car was sabotaged under mysterious circumstances.

It's a playbook. Salehpour's experience isn't unusual at Boeing. Two other engineers, working on the 787 Organization Designation Authorization, held up production by insisting that the company fix the planes' onboard navigation computers. Their boss gave them a terrible performance review, admitting that top management was furious at the delays and had ordered him to punish the engineers. The engineers' union grievance failed, with Boeing concluding that this conduct – which they admitted to – didn't rise to the level of retaliation.

As Tkacik points out, these engineers and managers that Boeing targeted for intimidation and retaliation are the very same staff who are supposed to be performing inspections of behalf of the FAA. In other words, Boeing has spent years attacking its own regulator, with total impunity.

But it's not just the FAA who've failed to take action – it's also the DOJ, who have consistently declined to bring prosecutions in most cases, and who settled the rare case they did bring with "deferred prosecution agreements." This pattern was true under Trump's DOJ and continued under Biden's tenure. Biden's prosecutors have been so lackluster that a federal judge "publicly rebuked the DOJ for failing to take seriously the reputational damage its conduct throughout the Boeing case was inflicting on the agency."

Meanwhile, there's the AIR21 rule, a "whistleblower" rule that actually protects Boeing from whistleblowers. Under AIR21, an aviation whistleblower who is retaliated against by their employer must first try to resolve their problem internally. If that fails, the whistleblower has only one course of action: file an OSHA complaint within 90 days (if HR takes more than 90 days to resolve your internal complaint, you can no have no further recourse). If you manage to raise a complaint with OSHA, it is heard by a secret tribunal that has no subpoena power and routinely takes five years to rule on cases, and rules against whistleblowers 97% of the time.

Boeing whistleblowers who missed the 90-day cutoff have filled the South Carolina courts with last-ditch attempts to hold the company to account. When they lose these cases – as is routine, given Boeing's enormous legal muscle and AIR21's legal handcuffs – they are often ordered to pay Boeing's legal costs.

Tkacik cites Swampy's lawyer, Rob Turkewitz, who says Swampy was the only one of Boeing's whistleblowers who was "savvy, meticulous, and fast-moving enough to bring an AIR 21 case capable of jumping through all the hoops" to file an AIR21 case, which then took seven years. Turkewitz calls Boeing South Carolina "a criminal enterprise."

That's a conclusion that's hard to argue with. Take Boeing's excuse for not producing the documentation of its slapdash reinstallation of the Alaska Air door plug that fell off its plane in flight: the company says it's not criminally liable for failing to provide the paperwork, because it never documented the repair. Not documenting the repair is also a crime.

You might have heard that there's some accountability coming to the Boeing boardroom, with the ouster of CEO David Calhoun. Calhoun's likely successor is Patrick Shanahan, whom Tkacik describes as "the architect of the ethos that governed the 787 program" and whom her source called "a classic schoolyard bully."

If Shanahan's name rings a bell, it might be because he was almost Trump's Secretary of Defense, but that was derailed by the news that he had "emphatically defended" his 17 year old son after the boy nearly beat his mother to death with a baseball bat. Shanahan is presently CEO of Spirit Aerospace, who made the door-plug that fell out of the Alaska Airlines 737 Max.

Boeing is a company where senior managers only fail up and where whistleblowers are terrorized in and out of the workplace. One of Tkacik's sources noticed his car shimmying. The source, an ex-787 worker who'd been fired after raising safety complaints, had tried to bring an AIR21 complaint, but withdrew it out of fear of being bankrupted if he was ordered to pay Boeing's legal costs. When the whistleblower pulled over, he discovered that two of the lug-nuts had been removed from one of his wheels.

The whistleblower texted Tkcacik to say (not for the first time): "If anything happens, I'm not suicidal."

Boeing is a primary aerospace contractor to the US government. It's clear that its management – and investors – consider it too big to jail. It's also clear that they know it's too big to fail – after all, the company did a $43b stock buyback, then got billions in a publicly funded buyback.

Boeing is, effectively, a government agency that is run for the benefit of its investors. It performs its own safety inspections. It investigates its own criminal violations of safety rules. It loots its own coffers and then refills them at public expense.

Meanwhile, the company has filled our skies with at least 420 airplanes with defective, red-painted parts that were locked up in the MRSA cage, then snuck out and fitted to an airplane that you or someone you love could fly on the next time you take your family on vacation or fly somewhere for work.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/01/boeing-boeing/#mrsa

Image: Tom Axford 1 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_sky_with_wisps_of_cloud_on_a_clear_summer_morning.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

--

Clemens Vasters (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:N7379E_-_Boeing_737_MAX_9.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[probablyasocialecologist]

Israel, pound for pound, is the best investment the US has ever made. Israel is the purest expression of Western power, combining militarism, imperialism, settler colonialism, counterinsurgency, occupation, racism, instilling ideological defeat, huge profitable war-making and hi-tech development into a manticore of destruction, death, and mayhem. From Israel’s victory in the 1948-1949 war, US planners saw the country as a regional military power that could contain Arab military and political ambitions. Amidst France’s imperial sunset in the Arab region, the country aligned with Israel – trying to deliver a blow to Nasserist Egypt through the 1956 Tripartite Aggression with Britain and Israel, and armoring Zionism for its successful 1967 war against radical Arab nationalism in the frontline states. Green-lit by the US, the war left the Syrian Ba’athist fusion of Arab nationalism and Marxist-Leninism in shambles and slammed the Nasserist national development project. Israel also became a useful assassin, eliminating Arab radical luminaries from Mehdi Ben Barka to Ghassan Kanafani. From 1970 onwards, US military aid into Israel turned the country into a unique asset: an offshore arms factory; a regional irritant to Arab peace, stability, and popular regional development; a destructive gyro of world-wide counterinsurgency; a black hole drawing in regional surpluses and devoting them to endless defensive and offensive armament, away from social-popular welfare spending and non-military development. Uniquely, the US allowed Israel to keep the military aid partially within the country, slowly and steadily building up a massive military industrial capacity. Meanwhile, US-based capital inflows accelerated, taking advantage of Israel’s highly educated workforce in the defense sector, resting upon super-exploiting the Palestinian colonial underclass in other sectors. In return, Israel armed reactionary forces world-wide: from Argentina to Brazil to Chile, helping evade Congressional restrictions on arms shipments to the Nicaraguan Contras and advanced armaments to the South African apartheid regime. On a world scale, Israel has protected the political architecture of global capitalism. And its US domestic adjunct, the Anti-Defamation League, presaged wider Zionist capitalist investment in repression by carrying out wide-ranging spying on anti-racist, anti-Zionist, Arab-American and anti-apartheid movements.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

"imprisoning the baddies and then forcing or practically forcing them to work for free or practically free is good and just bc it means they are paying back their debt to society" what a completely reality-untethered sentiment!

how is the joint act of, say, incarcerating a thief and forcing him to pick soy for cargill inc supposed to benefit "society" at large? the sheriff in the article says its "saving taxpayers money," but thats some obvious duplicity: the free labour is saving them taxes bc its helping recoup the tax-funded govt costs of imprisoning him. its the state taking a bunch of money from you and having the thief pay back a little bit of it out of his end, its a net negative from yr point of view and the benefit of the tax relief from the free labour is only made possible by the original taking of the money. the taxpaying citizen is effectively making an investment with a roi <1. its like an escher staircase, the logic only makes sense if you refuse to look at the whole thing

its certainly not helping workers outside of prison, either, in general. its injecting a bunch of cheap competition into the labour market to undercut non-imprisoned workers and unemployed. its effectively offshoring jobs to puppet dictatorships with lax labour laws within ones own country

nor is it even helping american capitalists in general in any obvious meaningful sense to imprison a bunch of men of working age and then force a few of them into shit-paid work! the costs of imprisonment (including those involved in removing much of the incarcerated population from the workforce—for profit labour is hardly universal among us inmates, especially factoring in those in jail still awaiting trial!), again, vastly outweigh any productivity that can subsequently be squeezed out of the captive workforce. you sometimes hear the number $11bn trotted out in terms of the value of goods produced by prisoners; this has to be contrasted with the almost 190bn$ price tag of mass incarceration. cargill in particular might stand to benefit from this but from the pov of gdp or any other economic metric you might convince yrself in a particularly bourgeois mood stands in for societal welfare at large prison is going to be a massive economic sink

the whole thing is a bamboozling sophism

[allthecanadianpolitics]

In the winter of 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, the Immigrant Workers Centre where I’m an organizer brought together a group of migrant workers for a Zoom meeting. It was a snapshot of the precarious lives of those who make Canada’s economy run.  [...] These stories are not an exception but the norm for temporary foreign workers. These racialized workers generate great wealth for the corporate class inside countries like Canada because they’ve been made exploitable through a restrictive immigration regime designed to ensure they remain vulnerable, docile, deportable and disposable.  Capitalists tend not to be fundamentally anti-migrant but rather seek to control and manage migration for the needs of business. They envision migration to be a kind of kitchen faucet that can be turned on and off according to labour market fluctuations. [...] Corporations in critical sectors like logistics, warehouses and distribution rely on the same strategies in the Global South as they do in the Global North: when the industries cannot be offshored, they rely on a precarious workforce of migrants. 

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[zedtiae]

happiness takes time, time is my life, if I have no time, am I still alive?

gooooooooood morning toontown!!!

meet the Lampshade, your plucky Lawbot Secretary Intern who's raring to assist those Managers in need! While some may find her methods to be suspicious, she's got a burning passion for helping others and a radical degree of patience that helps her do just that. Just... try not to peek underneath the shade without her permission...

hi hello welcome to my ref post for Pylar lmao

I def plan on posting lots about her, so here's a small bio to get folks started :-)

Honorifics: Ms. (she/her)

Full Name: Pylar Cassandra Flow

Employee ID: #25052

Suit Name: Lampshade

Position: Secretary Intern

Date of Hire: 18 months ago

Current District of Employment: Offshoring & Drilling

Likes: Conspiracies, groovy artwork, moving with the flow

Dislikes: The cold, "squares," being face-to-face

Backstory: A bright individual built by two light-casting Suits out of spare parts and a whimsical dream, Pylar was never intended to have a specific intention — she was simply made. While this was fine in her initial few years of operation, Suit society inevitably collapsed in on the young construct and the pressure to conform grew from deep within, leading to her first lampshade during her third year of school. Now a Suit of the workforce, Pylar carries on at C.O.G.S Inc. with a hidden face and personality, positively hellbent on maintaining her facade atop the workflow as to prevent others from ostracizing her like she had experienced so long ago before.

Personality: To know this Suit would be to know two different sides of the same construct: the Lampshade and Pylar herself. The former is a clever, conniving little shadow who pulls strings until the best outcome is inevitably produced. For some Managers, her interference is nothing short of a Cog-send; to others, she's a fiend against all that is laid-back and relaxed. Meanwhile, the latter personality — Pili's true identity — is far more complex. While generally playful and boisterous, she continues to hide a softer, more glass-like core that frets first and foremost after the comfort of her loved ones. Hardworking and loyal all around, there's very little Pylar wouldn't do on both sides of her veneer for the constructs that she cares for.

[amtexsystemsblogs]

How to Leverage Offshore Staffing to Boost Business Efficiency" This article from Amtex Systems explores the strategic advantages of offshore staffing, such as cost savings and access to a global talent pool, while addressing common challenges like communication barriers and cultural differences. It provides practical tips for businesses to effectively manage offshore teams and ensure successful collaboration.

[mariacallous]

In Africa, one doesn’t need to look hard these days to spot crises.

Case in point: the broad swath of the continent known as the Sahel. There, in recent years, one country after another—Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Guinea—has seen ineffectual elected governments fall to military juntas.

In Africa, soldiers face constant and seemingly irresistible temptation to step into political power vacuums. But since the 1960s, military regimes have been unable to offer cures for the problems of the continent’s struggling nations. Their record of instilling stability and economic health has been remarkably dismal.

Crises have arisen in many directions, from the deadly civil war in Sudan, to the spread of Islamic insurgencies in Nigeria and other coastal nations, to the seemingly endless fiddling with constitutions in countries such as Ivory Coast. Although less brutish than classic coup d’états, “constitutional coups” are closely related and allow leaders to perpetuate their rule, often for life.

In recent days, Cameroon has offered the sad spectacle of a country whose leader has so completely dropped out of public view during an extended stay in Europe that rumors of his death spread widely. That 91-year-old president, Paul Biya, has been in power since 1982. In an absurdist bid to quell speculation about Biya’s condition, his government forbade media discussion about his health or whereabouts on “national security” grounds.

As different as each of these countries’ circumstances might seem, there is a common underlying denominator: a state’s inability to assure even the basic well-being of its citizens. This includes services almost taken for granted on other continents, from universal access to electricity and clean water to decent and affordable schools.

The causes of Africa’s economic woes are, of course, complicated. South of the Sahara, nearly all African countries have gained their independence, beginning with Ghana in 1957, as heirs of the abject exploitation and neglect of their colonial rulers. Despite the West’s self-ennobling rhetoric of the white man’s burden, imperial powers did little to spread literacy on the continent, and even less to train people at a university level. The physical infrastructure that colonialism left behind was similarly scant, and in most instances, had been built to simply move raw products to ports, where they could be shipped to Europe.

In the decades since independence, Africa has also been hobbled by its Balkanization, including an imperial legacy of 16 landlocked countries, almost all of which are poor and unstable today. Less obvious, but just as insidious, is the structure of the global economy. For all the reasons just cited, Africa was spectacularly ill-prepared to profit from the globalization that swept the world beginning in the 1980s.

That era’s biggest winner by far was China, which by virtue of its large market, literate and experienced workforce, and low wages, captured a huge portion of the international investment in cheap offshore manufacturing. China’s prodigious successes in building industries, such as plastics, textiles, and basic assembly, left little room for poorer, smaller countries hoping to industrialize in its wake.

Meanwhile, over the decades, Western-led international financial institutions—especially the World Bank—have frequently shifted directions in their lending and economic strategies toward the African continent, often with little regard for Africans’ own priorities and economic needs.

By now, to state that Africa has often been ill-served by its foreign partners should not be controversial. Beyond the realm of economics and development, the West—especially the United States—has long talked up the virtues of democracy while sustaining some of its deepest partnerships in Africa with starkly undemocratic countries, from Ethiopia and Rwanda to Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Even China’s emergence as a powerful economic player on the continent has begun to look like something of a false dawn. Enthusiasm ran sky-high in Africa after China went on a construction spree in the early 2000s, building modern railways, ports, highways, and airports across the continent. There was never any deliberate debt trap involved, as many critics have alleged, but hopes of a Chinese-fueled African takeoff have since dimmed, as Beijing has cut back on its lending to the continent and African countries have faced difficulties in servicing their debts with China and other creditors.

What this all means to me is that Africa must look inward, to its own resources—intellectual, social, cultural, and even economic—to fulfill its people’s desires for healthy development. The good news is that there are signs this is beginning to happen. Above all, I see these in the civil society groups that are fighting against official corruption and the capture of African states by political elites, against electoral and constitutional chicanery and wanton human rights violations.

There is evidence of rapidly growing civil pushback in countries as far-flung as Ghana and Nigeria in West Africa and Kenya on the opposite coast. Since June, Kenyans have braved police bullets to resist their government’s efforts to raise taxes, which are used in opaque—and, many people believe, corrupt—ways. In Nigeria, people have also taken to the streets in large numbers to fight government policies that are driving falling living standards; these include the end of long-standing state subsidies for gasoline prices and a stark decline in the value of the national currency, the naira. And in Ghana, thousands have protested the widespread devastation of the country’s land and waters by illegal gold mining, which they consider closely linked to official corruption.

In and of themselves, these are not revolutions. Far from it. But the goal that underpins them is revolutionary: the normalization of citizens holding their governments accountable. This is something that the nominal democratization of many African countries through the regular holding of elections has clearly failed to achieve.

Africa’s newly invigorated civil societies have many heroes, even if they still labor in relative obscurity or isolation, often at considerable risk to themselves. One of the most interesting figures in recent months has been Bright Simons, a Ghanaian gadfly whose social media presence on X and other platforms is something like a running public-policy seminar on transparency and corruption. From one day to the next, his investigations and disquisitions can cover everything from real-estate speculation in shopping malls, to routine corruption in government procurement and contracting, to the murky ins and outs of oil leases signed with foreign exploration companies.

Simons is under no illusion about how much more needs to be done to ensure that the Ghanaian state delivers better results for its people. He would also be the first to say that this cannot be the task of a few intellectuals such as himself, however well-intended. Instead, to be successful, these movements must include much of the middle class and broader citizenry.

Still, Simons sees hope in the spread of transparency and anti-corruption efforts around the continent, and he believes that Africa’s fragile civil societies can advance faster toward these goals by building much stronger bridges between disparate citizens’ movements.

“Individual [African] countries are very weak, and finding critical mass for anything in them is difficult. So how do you acquire critical mass in such a context? You unite civil society efforts across the continent,” Simons said. “If there was, you know, 20 people [on transparency and corruption] in Ghana, 20 people in each of the other countries, you’d have a thousand people all of a sudden, which is more like a critical mass, and that’s what we need for quality governance and accountability to become culture … If we can’t find it in individual countries, we need to build it in a pan-African way.”

[argumate]

offshoring includes a lot of things, let's get more specific. Would you agree that American car manufacturers putting their factories in Mexico border cities, in stead of in the US, is primarily for cheap labor?

good question! cheap labour definitely seems to be the major factor:

but also skilled labour, and free trade agreements that make it a convenient intermediary for other countries like Japan and China:

Mexico attracts foreign automakers through low labor costs, low energy costs, free trade agreements, and other incentives, and then uses US-made parts to build these vehicles. [link]

The country's strategic location, skilled workforce, and favorable trade agreements have made it an attractive destination for automakers seeking to expand their reach and optimize their processes. ... One of Mexico's most significant advantages lies in its abundant supply of skilled labor. The workforce is well-trained, adaptable, and capable of handling complex manufacturing processes. Furthermore, compared to labor costs in developed countries, Mexican labor is more cost-competitive, providing substantial savings to manufacturing companies. [link]

Since June 2022, 29 Chinese auto parts manufacturers and car makers like native brand Chery and MG Motors (SAIC Motors of Shanghai bought the iconic British car company in 2007) have announced a combined $7.06 billion in investments in Mexico. Of the $14.2 billion in Chinese corporate investment in Mexico in 2022 and 2023, for example, a little less than half came from companies that make cars and car parts, based on a collection of local news articles and data from J.P. Morgan analysts led by Rebecca Wen. [link]

Mexico appears to have much more balanced trade than countries like Germany, Japan, and China that run perpetual surpluses, so offshoring US manufacturing to Mexico should boost growth in both countries as its imports rise in tandem with its exports.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the Associated Press (AP):

New Jersey hit the pause button Wednesday on an offshore wind energy project that is having a hard time finding someone to manufacture blades for its turbines.

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities granted Leading Light Wind a pause on its project through Dec. 20 while its developers seek a source for the crucial components.

The project, from Chicago-based Invenergy and New York-based energyRE, would be built 40 miles (65 kilometers) off Long Beach Island and would consist of up to 100 turbines, enough to power 1 million homes.

Leading Light was one of two projects that the state utilities board chose in January. But just three weeks after that approval, one of three major turbine manufacturers, GE Vernova, said it would not announce the kind of turbine Invenergy planned to use in the Leading Light Project, according to the filing with the utilities board.

A turbine made by manufacturer Vestas was deemed unsuitable for the project, and the lone remaining manufacturer, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, told Invenergy in June that it was substantially increasing the cost of its turbine offering, Invenergy said.

That left the project without a turbine supplier.

“The stay enables continued discussions with the BPU and supply chain partners regarding the industry-wide market shifts,” Invenergy said in a statement. “We will continue to advance project development activities during this time.”

Christine Guhl-Sadovy, president of the utilities board, said the delay will help the project move forward.

“We are committed in New Jersey to our offshore wind goals,” she said. “This action will allow Invenergy to find a suitable wind turbine supplier. We look forward to delivering on the project that will help grow our clean energy workforce and contribute to clean energy generation for the state.”

The delay was the latest setback for offshore wind in New Jersey. The industry is advancing in fits and starts along the U.S. East Coast.

[aflamethatneverdies]

Israel, pound for pound, is the best investment the US has ever made. Israel is the purest expression of Western power, combining militarism, imperialism, settler colonialism, counterinsurgency, occupation, racism, instilling ideological defeat, huge profitable war-making and hi-tech development into a manticore of destruction, death, and mayhem. From Israel’s victory in the 1948-1949 war, US planners saw the country as a regional military power that could contain Arab military and political ambitions. Amidst France’s imperial sunset in the Arab region, the country aligned with Israel – trying to deliver a blow to Nasserist Egypt through the 1956 Tripartite Aggression with Britain and Israel, and armoring Zionism for its successful 1967 war against radical Arab nationalism in the frontline states. Green-lit by the US, the war left the Syrian Ba’athist fusion of Arab nationalism and Marxist-Leninism in shambles and slammed the Nasserist national development project. Israel also became a useful assassin, eliminating Arab radical luminaries from Mehdi Ben Barka to Ghassan Kanafani.  From 1970 onwards, US military aid into Israel turned the country into a unique asset: an offshore arms factory; a regional irritant to Arab peace, stability, and popular regional development; a destructive gyro of world-wide counterinsurgency; a black hole drawing in regional surpluses and devoting them to endless defensive and offensive armament, away from social-popular welfare spending and non-military development. Uniquely, the US allowed Israel to keep the military aid partially within the country, slowly and steadily building up a massive military industrial capacity. Meanwhile, US-based capital inflows accelerated, taking advantage of Israel’s highly educated workforce in the defense sector, resting upon super-exploiting the Palestinian colonial underclass in other sectors. In return, Israel armed reactionary forces world-wide: from Argentina to Brazil to Chile, helping evade Congressional restrictions on arms shipments to the Nicaraguan Contras and advanced armaments to the South African apartheid regime. On a world scale, Israel has protected the political architecture of global capitalism. And its US domestic adjunct, the Anti-Defamation League, presaged wider Zionist capitalist investment in repression by carrying out wide-ranging spying on anti-racist, anti-Zionist, Arab-American and anti-apartheid movements.  Throughout this period, the US-Israeli ‘Special Relationship’ grew ever-more-intimate as relentless imperial proxy warfare and sanctions – from Libya to Lebanon – tarnished developmentalism, degraded republican aspirations, and often evaporated regional Marxism. Class inequalities widened as the Gulf, Egypt, and Lebanon became nodes of regional and global accumulation. The Israeli option for boosting world-wide accumulation through wars on republicanism and revolution served the US ruling class well. The ‘peace process,’ known as Oslo, imposed after the fall of the USSR and the encirclement of Ba’athist Iraq, sought neo-colonial neoliberalism under military occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as part of the post-Soviet attempt to crystallize ‘the end of history’ through neutralizing or evaporating remaining sources of friction or strategic obstacles to the US project.  Incoming Palestinian diaspora capital alongside a corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA) was the US’s junior partner in the state-building agenda. Israeli capital became a seamless transnational component of the US’s globalization project, with large elements in burgeoning hi-tech counterinsurgency. 

[lordzannis]

There are several serious concerns regarding DreamWorks Animation in recent years:

Shifting Production Away from In-House

DreamWorks is shifting away from fully producing animated films in-house at its Glendale, California studio. The studio is partnering with Sony Pictures Imageworks to handle asset builds and shot production for an upcoming 2025 film. This reflects a new cost-cutting model where DreamWorks will outsource some work to partner studios in lower cost locations to reduce production costs by 20%[1]. This has raised concerns among DreamWorks staff about job security and the studio's commitment to in-house production.

Significant Layoffs

In March 2024, DreamWorks announced huge layoffs across multiple departments. Reddit users commented that the studio won't be recovering from this round of layoffs, blaming the outsourcing strategy[2]. The exact number of jobs lost is unclear, but it seems to be a major blow to the studio's workforce.

Questionable Leadership Decisions

DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has made some decisions that have raised eyebrows. In 2013, President Obama visited DreamWorks and joked about Katzenberg's large ego[4]. More concerning is Katzenberg's history of overseeing the shift of production from Culver City to Vancouver at Sony Pictures Imageworks to take advantage of tax credits[1]. This suggests a willingness to prioritize cost savings over maintaining jobs in Los Angeles.

Outsourcing Threatens Local Economy

The animation industry is a major economic engine for Southern California, similar to how finance is to New York or tech is to Silicon Valley[4]. By shifting production overseas, DreamWorks is putting local jobs at risk and threatening the viability of the local animation ecosystem. This could have ripple effects on the broader economy of the region.

In summary, DreamWorks appears to be making decisions that prioritize short-term cost savings over maintaining a robust in-house production workforce. While some outsourcing may be necessary to stay competitive, the scale and speed of the changes raise serious concerns about the studio's long-term commitment to its Los Angeles workforce and the local economy. Significant layoffs and the CEO's history of prioritizing tax credits over local jobs add to the sense of unease among DreamWorks employees and the surrounding community.

Citations: [1] https://www.cartoonbrew.com/studios/dreamworks-shifting-away-from-in-house-production-in-los-angeles-sony-imageworks-is-new-production-partner-233466.html [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/1bdemof/dreamworks_layoffs/ [3] https://www.thegamer.com/things-wrong-dreamworks-movies-choose-ignore/ [4] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/26/remarks-president-economy-dreamworks [5] https://www.watchmojo.com/articles/top-10-times-dreamworks-movies-tackled-serious-issues

Here are some potential solutions for holding DreamWorks Animation accountable and ensuring they pay their fair share of taxes:

Advocate for Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes

DreamWorks and other large corporations often exploit loopholes and tax havens to minimize their tax burden[3]. Employees should urge lawmakers to close these loopholes and ensure companies like DreamWorks pay their fair share. This could involve measures like:

Eliminating deductions for offshoring jobs and profits

Imposing a minimum tax on corporate book income

Increasing IRS funding for auditing large corporations

Requiring public country-by-country reporting of taxes paid

Push for Transparency Around Tax Practices

DreamWorks should be more transparent about its tax practices and lobbying efforts related to taxes[3]. Employees can demand the company publicly disclose its effective tax rate, tax credits and incentives received, and political contributions. Greater transparency would allow stakeholders to hold the company accountable.

Support Unionization to Increase Bargaining Power

Unionizing gives workers more leverage to demand that DreamWorks invest in its workforce rather than prioritizing tax avoidance[2]. Unions can negotiate for higher wages, better benefits, and more training that improves productivity and reduces the need for tax breaks. Collective bargaining power is key to rebalancing the scales.

Collaborate with Community Organizations

DreamWorks employees should partner with local community groups, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations that are pushing for corporate tax reform and responsible business practices[3]. By pooling resources and amplifying each other's voices, workers and activists can build a powerful movement for change.

Engage with Shareholders

As a publicly traded company, DreamWorks is accountable to its shareholders. Employees who own stock should engage with the company's leadership and other investors to voice concerns about tax avoidance and demand more responsible corporate citizenship[3]. Shareholder resolutions and proxy voting can influence company policies.

By pursuing these solutions, DreamWorks Animation employees can help ensure the company contributes its fair share to society through the tax system. Closing loopholes, increasing transparency, unionizing, collaborating with allies, and engaging shareholders are all important levers for driving accountability. Responsible corporate tax practices are key to funding public services and infrastructure that benefit workers and communities.

Citations: [1] https://dreamworkstaxsolutions.com [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/1bdemof/dreamworks_layoffs/ [3] https://filmstories.co.uk/news/dreamworks-animation-set-to-outsource-work-to-tax-advantaged-lower-cost-geographies/ [4] https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/how-to-manage-taxes-as-an-indie-developer [5] http://www.filmstrategy.com/2015/04/production-tips-filmmaker-and-taxes.html