#Workplace Retaliation

[employment-lawyer]

How to Recognize, Prevent, and Address Workplace Retaliation

[fatehbaz]

patience being tested. being forced by a bizarre unfortunate situation to adhere to university requirement technicality by taking this simple basic elementary "introduction to environmental history" class.

this class is from facilitators/program which do, like, "history of the American frontier" or "history of fishing and hunting" and still basically subscribe to that old-school twentieth-century idealization and celebration of characters like Teddy Roosevelt and reverence for a mythical arc-of-history-bent-towards-justice narrative of the often-clumsy but ultimately-benevolent US federal government and its mission to "save nature" through the miracle of "sustained yield," while heroic federal land management agencies and "heritage" institutions lead to way, staffed by exceptional individuals (appeals to nostalgia for the frontier and an imagined landscape of the American West; ego-stroking appeals to flattering self-image that center the environmentalist or academic). where they invoke, y'know, ideas like "ecology is important because don't you enjoy cross-country skiing in The Woods with your niece and nephew? don't you like hunting and fishing?" which makes it feel like a time capsule of appeals and discourses from the 1970s. and it invokes concept of "untouched wilderness" (while eliding scale of historical Indigenous environmental relationships and current ongoing colonial violence/extractivism). but just ever-so-slightly updated with a little bit of chic twenty-first-century flair like a superficial land acknowledgement or a reference to "labor histories" or "history from below," which is extra aggravating when the old ideologies/institutions are still in power but they're muddying the water and diluting the language/frameworks (it's been strange, watching words like "multispecies" and "Anthropocene" over the years slowly but surely show-up on the posters, fliers, course descriptions, by now even appearing adjacent to the agri-business and resource extraction feeder programs, like a recuperation or appropriation.) even from a humanities angle, it's still, they're talking at me like "You probably didn't know this, but environmental history is actually pretty entangled with political and social events. In fact, we can synthesize sources and glean environmental info from wacky places like workers' rolls in factories, ship's logs, and poetry from the era." and i'm nodding like YEP.

the first homework assignment is respond to this: "Define and describe 'the Anthropocene'. Do you think 'the Anthropocene' is a useful concept? Why or why not?" Respond in 300 words.

so for fun, right now in class, going to see how fast i can pull up discussion of Anthropocene-as-concept solely from my old posts on this microblogging site.

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ok, found some

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I think that the danger in any universal narrative or epoch or principle is exactly that it can itself become a colonizing force. [...] I’m suspicious of the Anthropocene as concept for the very reason that it subsumes so many peoples, nations, histories, geographies, political orders. For that reason, I think ideas like the Anthropocene can be a useful short-hand for a cluster of tangible things going on with the Earth at the moment, but we have to be very careful about how fluid and dynamic ideas become concretized into hegemonic principles in the hands of researchers, policymakers, and politicians. There’s so much diversity in histories and experiences and environmental realities even between relatively linked geographies here in Canada [...]. Imagine what happens when we try to do that on a global scale - and a lot of euro-western Anthropocene, climate change and resilience research risks doing that - eliding local specificities and appropriating knowledge to serve a broader euro-western narrative without attending to the inherent colonial and imperial realities of science and policy processes, or even attending to the ways that colonial capitalist expansion has created these environmental crises to begin with. While we, as a collective humanity, are struggling with the realities of the Anthropocene, it is dangerous to erase the specific histories, power-relations, political orders that created the crisis to begin with. So, I’m glad that a robust critique of the Anthropocene as a concept is emerging.

Text by: Words of Zoe Todd, as interviewed and transcribed by Caroline Picard. “The Future is Elastic (But it Depends): An Interview with Zoe Todd.” 23 August 2016.

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The Great Acceleration is the latest in a series of human-driven planetary changes that constitute what a rising chorus of scientists, social scientists, and humanists have labeled the Anthropocene - a new Age of Humans. [...] But what the Anthropocene label masks, and what the litany of graphs documenting the Great Acceleration hide, is a history of racial oppression and violence, along with wealth inequality, that has built and sustained engines of economic growth and consumption over the last four centuries. [...] The plantation, Sidney Mintz long ago observed, was a “synthesis of field and factory,” an agro-industrial system of enterprise [...]. Plantation legacies, along with accompanying strategies of survival and resistance, dwell in the racialized geographies of the United States’ and Brazil’s prison systems. They surface in the inequitable toxic burdens experienced by impoverished communities of color in places like Cancer Alley, an industrial corridor of petrochemical plants running along the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, where cotton was once king. And they appear in patterns of foreign direct investment and debt servitude that structure many land deals in the Caribbean, Brazil, and sub-Saharan Africa [...]. [C]limatologists and global change scientists from the University of London, propose instead 1610 as a date for the golden spike of the Anthropocene. The date marked a detectable global dip in carbon dioxide concentrations, precipitated, they argue, by the death of nearly 50 million indigenous human inhabitants [...]. The degradation of soils in the tobacco and cotton-growing regions in the American South, or in the sugarcane growing fields of many Caribbean islands, for example, was a consequence of an economic and social system that inflicted violence upon the land and the people enslaved to work it. Such violent histories are not so readily evident in genealogies that date the Anthropocene’s emergence to the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago, the onset of Europe’s industrial revolution circa 1800, or the Trinity nuclear test of 1945. Sugarcane plantations were already prevalent throughout the Mediterranean basin during the late middle ages. But it was during the early modern era, and specifically in the Caribbean, where the intersection of emerging proto-capitalist economic models based on migratory forced labor (first indentured servitude, and later slavery), intensive land usage, globalized commerce, and colonial regimes sustained on the basis of relentless racialized violence, gave rise to the transformative models of plantations that reshaped the lives and livelihoods of human and non-human beings on a planetary scale. [...] We might, following the lead of science studies scholar Donna Haraway and anthropologist Anna Tsing, more aptly designate this era the Plantationocene. [...] It is also an invitation to see, in the words of geographer Laura Pulido, “the Anthropocene as a racial process,” one that has and will continue to produce “racially uneven vulnerability and death." [...] And how have such material transformations sustained global flows of knowledge and capital that continue to reproduce the plantation in enduring ways?

Text by: Sophie Sapp Moore, Monique Allewaert, Pablo F. Gomez, and Gregg Mitman. "Plantation Legacies." Edge Effects. 22 January 2019. Updated 15 May 2021. [Bold emphasis added by me.]

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Geologists and other scientists will fight over [the definition of the beginning start-date of the Anthropocene] in scientific language, seeking traces of carbon dioxide that index the worst offenses of European empire which rent and violated the flesh, bodies, and governance structures of Indigenous and other sovereign peoples in the name of gold, lumber, trade, land, and power. [...] The stories we tell about the origins of the Anthropocene implicate how we understand the relations we have with our surrounds. In other words, the naming of the Anthropocene epoch and its start date have implications not just for how we understand the world, but this understanding will have material consequences, consequences that affect body and land.

Text by: Heather Davis and Zoe Todd. On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME An International Journal for Critical Geographies. December 2017. [Bold emphasis added by me.]

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From Aime and Suzanne Cesaire, C. L. R. James, Claudia Jones, Eduoard Glissant, through Sylvia Wynter, Christina Sharpe, and so many others, critical anticolonial and race theory has been written from the specific histories that marked the Black Atlantic. [...] Glissant also reminds us, secondly, of how cunning the absorptive powers of [...] liberal capitalism are - how quickly specific relations are remade as relations-erasing universal abstractions. [...] This absorptive, relations-erasing universalism is especially apparent in some contemporary discourses of […] liberalism and climate collapse - what some call the Anthropocene - especially those that anchor the crisis in a general Human calamity which, as Sylvia Wynter has noted, is merely the name of an overdetermined and specific [White] European man. […] [T]he condition of creating this new common European world was the destruction of a multitude of existing black and brown worlds. The tsunami of colonialism was not seen as affecting humanity, but [...] these specific people. They were specific - what happened to them may have been necessary, regrettable, intentional, accidental - but it is always them. It is only when these ancestral histories became present for some, for those who had long benefitted from the dispossession [...], that suddenly the problem is all of us, as human catastrophe.

Text by: Elizabeth Povinelli. “The Ancestral Present of Oceanic Illusions: Connected and Differentiated in Late Toxic Liberalism.” e-flux Journal Issue #112. October 2020.

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The narrative arc [of White "liberal humanism"] [...] is often told as a kind of European coming-of-age story. […] The Anthropocene discourse follows the same coming-of-age [...] script, searching for a material origin story that would explain the newly identified trajectory of the Anthropos […]. Sylvia Wynter, W.E.B. DuBois, and Achille Mbembe all showed how that genealogy of [White subjecthood] was [...] articulated through sixteenth- through nineteenth-century [historiographies and discourses] in the context of colonialism, [...] as well as forming the material praxis of their rearrangement (through mining, ecological rearrangements and extractions, and forms of geologic displacements such as plantations, dams, fertilizers, crops, and introduction of “alien” animals). […] As Wynter (2000) commented, “The degradation of concrete humans, that was/is the price of empire, of the kind of [Eurocentric epistemology] that underlies it” (154).

Text by: Kathryn Yusoff. “The Inhumanities.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Volume 11, Issue 3. November 2020.

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As Yarimar Bonilla suggests in regard to post-Irma-and-Maria Puerto Rico, “vulnerability is not simply a product of natural conditions; it is a political state and a colonial condition.” Many in the Caribbean therefore speak about the coloniality of disaster, and the unnaturalness of these “natural” disasters [...]. Others describe this temporality by shifting [...] toward an idea of the Plantationocene [...]. As Moore and her colleagues write, “Plantation worlds, both past and present, offer a powerful reminder that environmental problems cannot be decoupled from histories of colonialism, capitalism, and racism that have made some human beings more vulnerable [...].” [W]e see that contemporary uneven socioecologies associated with the rise of the industrial world ["the Anthropocene"] are based [...] also on the racialized denial and foreshortening of life for the sacrificial majority of black, brown, and Indigenous people and their relegation to the “sacrifice zones” of extractive industry. [...] [A]ny appropriate response to the contemporary climate emergency must first appreciate its foundations in the past history of the violent, coercive, transatlantic system of plantation slavery; in the present global uneven development, antiblackness, and border regimes that shape human vulnerability [...] that continues to influence who has access to resources, safety, and preferable ecologies [...] and who will be relegated to the “plantation archipelagoes” (as Sylvia Wynter called them) [...].

Text by: Mimi Sheller. “Thinking Beyond Coloniality: Toward Radical Caribbean Futures.” Small Axe (2021), 25 (2 (65)), pages 169-170. Published 1 July 2021. [Bold emphasis added by me.]

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Indigenous genocide and removal from land and enslavement are prerequisites for power becoming operationalized in premodernity [...]; it was/is a means to operationalize extraction (therefore race should be considered as foundational rather than as periphery to the production of those structures and of global space). [...] Wynter suggests that we […] consider 1452 as the beginning of the New World, as African slaves are put to work on the first plantations on the Portuguese island of Madeira, initiating the “sugar-slave” complex - a massive replantation of ecologies and forced relocation of people […]. Wynter argues that the invention of the figure of Man in 1492 as the Portuguese [and Spanish] travel to the Americas instigates at the same time “a refiguring of humanness” in the idea of race. [...] The natal moment of the 1800 Industrial Revolution, […] [apparently] locates Anthropocene origination in […] the "new" metabolisms of technology and matter enabled by the combination of fossil fuels, new engines, and the world as market. […] The racialization of epistemologies of life and nonlife is important to note here […]. While [this industrialization in the nineteenth century] […] undoubtedly transformed the atmosphere with […] coal, the creation of another kind of weather had already established its salient forms in the mine and on the plantation. Paying attention to the prehistory of capital and its bodily labor, both within coal cultures and on plantations that literally put “sugar in the bowl” (as Nina Simone sings) […]. The new modes of material accumulation and production in the Industrial Revolution are relational to and dependent on their preproductive forms in slavery […]. In 1833, Parliament finally abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, and the taxpayer payout of £20 million in “compensation” [paid by the government to slave owners for their lost "property"] built the material, geophysical (railways, mines, factories), and imperial infrastructures of Britain and its colonial enterprises and empire. [...] A significant proportion of funds were invested in the railway system connecting London and Birmingham (home of cotton production and […] manufacturing for plantations), Cambridge and Oxford, and Wales and the Midlands (for coal). Insurance companies flourished [...]. The slave-sugar-coal nexus both substantially enriched Britain and made it possible for it to transition into a colonial industrialized power […]. The slave trade […] fashioned the economic conditions (and institutions, such as the insurance and finance industries) for industrialization.

Text by: Kathryn Yusoff. "White Utopia/Black Inferno: Life on a Geologic Spike". e-flux Journal Issue #97. February 2019. [Bold emphasis added by me.]

[010710s]

i haven’t even been working at this place for 3 weeks before the universe decided to thrust another attractive man in my presence…. about to bang my head into the goddamn wall

[infamousbrad]

I don't often get C-PTSD flashbacks from reading ProPublica news articles. I'm going to have to spend some time breathing deliberately and/or take a sleeping pill and go back to bed.

I'm autistic. Job hunting was hell for me at the best of times because I've never met a Human Resources employee who wasn't bigoted against the mentally ill. "You're perfectly qualified for the job, but I just don't think you'd be a good fit." So every job hunt I've ever had, even in boom times, has taken me a year or more to find someone who knew me, personally or professionally from a previous job, who had an opening and could pull rank on H.R. to get me in. And every job ended the same way: I got transferred to a disability-hostile manager ("it's not fair to everyone else if I treat you differently") and almost immediately fired. So threatening to fire me is only one step down from threatening to try to kill me.

And I've been threatened with being fired way more times than I've actually been fired. I'm a naturally scrupulous person, especially when safety issues are involved because I can't not worry, but also I know I'm really bad at telling when the people around me think the rules matter and when they don't (and worse at caring about their feelings about it being okay to break the rules this time). And I have long-since lost track of how many times I've been confronted with the choice:

Either commit a crime that puts people in danger ...

Or else we'll fire you, and you'll have to explain to every human resources department you apply at that you were fired for disobeying an order.

God, I hate this species. "I don't care if it's unsafe or illegal, I need it done." "Everybody cheats, if you don't cheat you can't make money." "We've gotten away with it before, it'll be fine." And "if other people die, they die; it's more important to get the job done." Fuck fuck fuck, I hate it. 'Cause it's real cheap of them to say when they're not going to be the one who gets hurt, isn't it? It's not like their families are going to get killed when (not if) a train derails, so who cares?

Some outlet I read (I think it was the WaPo?) did a long series about whistleblowing a little while back and concluded that most of us won't even say we want more whistleblowers, and most of the people who say they do don't mean it, certainly not when it comes to their own misdeeds. In one of the articles in the series, they cited moral foundations theory and suggested that that's because almost half of us rank "loyalty" above most or all other virtues. As in yes honesty and safety are virtues, but loyalty to your employer, your team, whatever is a more important virtue.

Fuck that. If I've let myself get peer pressured or tricked or bullied into doing something (or worse, ordering something) illegal and unsafe, I want subordinates who'll call me on my bullshit, hold me accountable. I need backup, everybody needs backup! Retaliate against whistleblowers? Fuck that noise; if I were in a position to hire, I'd offer extra to hire people who'd blown the whistle on misconduct to the point where they got fired for it -- I may not be able to trust them to "have my back" (which I don't even want when I'm in the wrong!) but I can trust them to tell the truth and protect others.

Obviously this means I've never worked in H.R. And it probably overlaps heavily with why my last real, professional employer finally told me I'd never make management. And shortly thereafter fired me. In a straight-up case of whistleblower retaliation. And then went so far as to lie to every potential employer I applied to that I was fired for "making terroristic threats," a straight-up frame-up that guaranteed that I'd never work in my industry again.

[captain-noir]

just got off a conference call with the fam and by fam i mean cousins and grandparents and great uncles all coz my baby sister (22) rang my mother up, in tears coz her bitch ass manager yelled at her in front of customers. murder was plotted. an entire smear campaign was launched. doxxing was considered. my brother is on his way to the shop with the intention to get her fired. madness. literally spent the last hour of my work in the toilet trying to talk various family members off the ledge.

[knollawgroup]

Distinguishing Workplace Bullying and Harassment: Recognize and Address Both

Workplace bullying and harassment are significant issues that can create hostile environments. Although they may appear similar, each carries specific behaviors and consequences. Knowing how to identify and address both can help maintain a respectful workplace.

 Understanding Workplace Bullying and Harassment

Workplace bullying and harassment often overlap but differ in important ways. Bullying includes repeated, aggressive behavior that undermines an individual’s performance or self-worth. Harassment, on the other hand, involves unwelcome conduct based on protected characteristics like race, gender, or age. Both can harm employee well-being and productivity.

 Identifying Workplace Bullying

Workplace bullying typically involves behaviors that are persistent and intended to intimidate or isolate. Common examples include unfair criticism, excessive work assignments, and social exclusion. Bullying often escalates gradually, making it difficult for the targeted employee to recognize the behavior’s impact early.

 Recognizing Harassment in the Workplace

Harassment is generally defined as unwelcome conduct based on protected categories such as ethnicity, religion, or disability. This behavior can include derogatory remarks, unwanted physical contact, or offensive jokes. Consulting lawyers that handle workplace harassment can help employees understand their rights when facing such situations.

 Key Differences Between Bullying and Harassment

While bullying focuses on personal attacks and workplace power dynamics, harassment targets specific characteristics. Bullying may or may not be illegal unless it crosses into harassment. However, both behaviors can create a toxic work environment, affecting the targeted individual’s performance and mental health.

 Legal Implications of Harassment

Harassment has legal implications under various employment laws. Individuals experiencing harassment based on protected characteristics have the right to file complaints. In such cases, contacting an attorney for employment retaliation can provide guidance on steps to report incidents without fear of reprisal.

 Signs of Bullying and Harassment to Watch For

Employees should watch for signs like:

Unjustified criticism or public humiliation

Isolation from projects or meetings

Offensive comments related to protected characteristics

Threats to job security or career growth 

Recognizing these signs can empower individuals to address harmful behavior early.

 Documenting Incidents of Bullying and Harassment

Documentation is critical when dealing with workplace bullying and harassment. Employees should note specific incidents, including dates, times, and any witnesses. This record can serve as valuable evidence when reporting to HR or consulting with legal professionals.

 Steps for Addressing Workplace Bullying

When experiencing bullying, employees should first address the issue directly, if possible, with the individual involved. Reporting to HR or management is also an option. It’s essential to follow the company’s procedures for handling such incidents to ensure fair treatment and accountability.

 Addressing Harassment Through Legal Channels

Legal avenues offer protection and recourse for employees facing harassment. The best wrongful termination lawyer, for instance, can assist individuals wrongfully dismissed after reporting harassment. Legal advice helps employees understand their rights and the next steps for filing a formal complaint.

 Creating a Respectful Workplace

A culture of respect starts with clear anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies. Managers and employees alike benefit from training on respectful behavior, open communication, and conflict resolution. This proactive approach can prevent issues from escalating, creating a more positive work environment.

Conclusion

Understanding and addressing bullying and harassment help foster a respectful and supportive workplace. By recognizing the signs, documenting incidents, and consulting professionals when needed, employees can take active steps toward a fair work environment.

[markmcole]

How to React When Wronged: Insights from an Ancient Proverb

In life, we all face moments when we are wronged. Whether it’s a harsh word from a colleague, an unjust decision at work, or a betrayal by a friend, the immediate instinct might be to seek revenge or retaliate. However, an ancient piece of wisdom offers a different perspective on how to respond in such situations: “Don’t say, ‘I will get even for this wrong.’ Wait for the Lord to handle the…

[hrconsultancy]

Uncovering Retaliation - How to Recognise Signs in Employee Complaints

[hugsandchaos]

I’m writing this in the perspective of the citizens of Amity Park, just an fyi

Rules for interacting with Phantom

1. Don’t go looking for him. Phantom knows when someone is looking for him and will avoid you at all costs.

2. It’s suggested to learn a little sign language since Phsntom with randomly switch from English to ghost speak. This change seems uncomfortable in most cases and causes him distress when he can’t communicate what he’s trying to say.

3. If he picks you up or grabs your hand and starts pulling on you, don’t freak out. He’s trying to move you out of harm’s way. Follow him until he lets go.

4. If he approaches you at night and asks if he can stargaze with you, say yes. You won’t be in trouble if you say no, but we’re trying to get him used to humans.

5. If you spot him, don’t go out of your way to approach him. He doesn’t like that. He’ll notice you coming.

6. If you spot him and he’s near something you need, such as the entrance to your workplace or your campfire, simply say hi to him and continue to avoid startling him. He’s been reported to conjure up ice spikes from the ground around him or shoot ectoplasm when he’s startled, so avoid doing so if you can.

7. If you notice the Fentons near where Phantom is, try to redirect them. Phantom is our only real line of defense against other ghosts who want to cause harm.

8. If you hear a loud, haunting wail, don’t worry. That’s possibly Phantom’s most powerful weapon, and it’s highly effective against other ghosts. This is usually taken as a sign that the town is now safe again. Do not approach Phantom after he uses this power unless you want to get punched in the face. This power takes up most of his strength and leaves him vulnerable, which makes him extra cautious and scared of both humans and ghosts. If he’s injured and you want to help, it’s best to go in preparing for retaliation. (Extra warning: Phantom’s saliva contains ectoplasm, which is essentially acid for anything living. Be VERY careful, because he will try to bite as a last resort. Try to make sure he knows you’re there to help before touching him.)

9. If you’re a ghost hunter and you harm Phantom, and you hear a loud groan in the distance that oddly reminds you of a broken grandfather clock, apologize and do what you can to fix your mistake immediately. Phantom isn’t all alone. He has allies, and some of them, you never want to meet.

10. If he approaches you and strikes up conversation, it’s your choice to respond or not.

[mesrianilawgroup]

No Googling! I'll post the answer when the poll closes.

[brandonbankslaw]

Understanding Whistleblower Protections in California: A Guide for Employees Seeking Justice

As a specialized employment law attorney in Oakland and San Francisco, we fight for the rights of employees throughout California. We offer expertise in addressing workplace misconduct, discrimination, and retaliation. If you're dealing with wrongful termination, harassment, or wage violations, we are your go-to source for representation. We stand committed to promoting workplace justice and ethical conduct. 

Whistleblower Protections in California: An In-Depth Analysis

California's strong legal framework offers robust protection for employees against workplace misconduct and discrimination. Our San Francisco-based whistleblower attorney champions the rights of workers in the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout the state. Defending whistleblower protections, we provide comprehensive legal counsel and representation to those who have experienced or witnessed wrongdoing at work. Whether you're reporting financial fraud, safety hazards, or other illicit activities, our legal services aim to hold employers accountable and maintain ethical, safe workplaces. 

Unpacking Whistleblower Protections in California

California is home to some of the nation's most robust whistleblower protection laws. These laws not only incentivize employees to report misconduct but also offer legal shields against retaliation. The California Whistleblower Protection Act, for instance, forbids employers from retaliating against employees who disclose suspected violations of state or federal statutes. This ensures that if you expose unethical or illegal behavior at your workplace, you're legally safeguarded from retaliatory actions by your employer. 

Types of Misconduct Covered by Whistleblower Protections

Whistleblower laws in California cover a broad spectrum of wrongdoing, including but not limited to financial fraud, safety infringements, environmental violations, and other illegal conduct. The bottom line is that if you observe any wrongdoing, you are empowered to speak up without fearing repercussions. 

Addressing Financial Fraud: A Stand Against Unethical Practices

Financial fraud is a grave matter that can adversely impact individuals and businesses. This could range from embezzlement and insider trading to financial statement manipulation. Thanks to California's whistleblower laws, employees who uncover such fraud can safely report it without facing retaliation. These laws not only hold perpetrators accountable but also serve to protect the financial well-being of employees and the general public. 

Safety Violations: Protecting Workers and the Public

Whistleblower protections in California extend to safety violations that could pose a risk to employees and the public. Whether it's non-compliance with safety regulations, ignoring hazardous conditions, or cost-cutting at the expense of safety, such violations can have dire consequences. The protections in place empower you to report unsafe conditions without the fear of retribution, thereby ensuring employers are held responsible for a safe work environment. 

In summary, whistleblower protections are vital because they not only protect employees but also serve public interest by encouraging the reporting of unlawful activities. Without such protections, employees might hesitate to speak up, putting everyone at risk. If you're an employee in Oakland, San Francisco, or anywhere in California seeking to exercise your rights, our employment law and whistleblower attorney is here to assist you. To know more about Oakland Whistleblower Attorney, visit our site https://www.brandonbankslaw.com/employment-law/

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Keith Edwards at No Lies Detected:

Fascism doesn’t come for every generation, but it has come for ours.  This is not a fight on the beaches of Normandy, but in our own country. This article begins a series on what opposing Donald Trump and his movement can look like. I hope you will join me as these progress.

[...]

Do not leave. Faced with the might of the United States government aligned against you, you might consider resigning preemptively to avoid the humiliation of inevitable termination. This is counterproductive for at least two reasons: If you leave, you save Trump Administration officials the time and effort of identifying you, which otherwise could have taken months or years. Second, your principled stand would likely only result in your replacement by an unprincipled Trump loyalist. By staying on, you may find yourself helping to implement policies you find hateful, but by refusing to leave, you can ensure that you have some influence on those policies, because then you can...

Delay. Delay. Delay. Waiting out the enemy until he moves on, gives up, or forgets is a time-honored strategy not just among civil servants but also history’s best generals. That email about a proposed rule change to healthcare protections? Bury it in everyone’s inbox by sending it late. A meeting on reviewing the U.S. government’s foreign aid commitments to a region you oversee? Oops, you’ll be out that day! That agency conference your political-appointee boss requested you arrange? Next month didn’t fit everyone’s schedule, so you had to push it to after the new year! Slow-walking is the classic tool in any bureaucrat’s toolbox, and in the next Trump Administration, you can use it in defense of the Constitution.

Be intentionally incompetent. As a career employee, you likely have always had the advantage of knowing your workplace better than your politically appointed overlords. This is perhaps your most potent weapon against Trump. Draft rules unlikely to survive judicial review. Favor lengthy rulemaking or review processes over expedited ones. Complete tasks sequentially rather than in parallel to draw out timelines. Add complexity, stakeholders, and process wherever possible. In short, exploit the knowledge gap you hold over your bosses to diminish, defuse, and defeat their plans.

Leak. Federal employees have the right to report what they believe to be illegal or abusive of authority to their agency’s inspector general (IG) without fear of retaliation. Trump however has singled out IGs for replacement after one played a pivotal role in his first impeachment, so the availability of this option may depend on how politically prominent your agency is. Fortunately, you can anonymously tip prominent news outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post, which boast extensive investigative units and employ rigorous safeguards to protect sources’ identities. You can also seek out sympathetic elected officials, such as Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee, whose main function is investigation of the federal government. (If you choose disclosure, be sure that the information is not classified, the unauthorized disclosure of which carries stiff federal penalties.)

Disregard and refuse. When you have exhausted all other options, you may want selectively to resort to riskier behaviors. These include going behind political appointees’ backs to subvert their activities, say by picking up the phone and countermanding their directions. In extreme cases, you may have outright to refuse direct orders to the appointee’s face. Though such actions seem like a fasttrack to termination, you may still be protected by the fact that overwhelmed political appointees might hesitate to go through the onerous process of finding a politically reliable replacement. Remember, the longer you stay in, the harder you make it for Trump to do what he wants. Know your rights. If the worst happens and your agency moves to terminate you, you can still fight back. There are multiple avenues an employee designated for dismissal can pursue to delay, reduce, or reverse agency penalties against them.1 The beauty of these options is that they can take months or even years to resolve and may be appealed to higher bodies, further extending the process. All the while, you are collecting a salary and occupying a full-time equivalent (FTE) position that your agency can’t fill until you finally depart. (This is not legal advice. If you find yourself in this situation, please seek a lawyer.)

Keith Edwards writes in his No Lies Detected Substack on how civil servants can show resistance to the tyrannical Trump 2.0 Regime from within.

[iww-gnv]

Trouble is brewing in America's strip club capital, where dancers from one bar have been on strike for nearly four months as they attempt to become the second unionized strip club in the country. Most of the 33 strippers employed by Portland's Magic Tavern launched their strike on April 4, citing "dangerous working conditions," Willamette Week reported. "We’re fighting for basic safety and respect in the workplace, just like any other industry expects," Nyx, one of the dancers on strike, told the outlet. The dancers say a slew of safety concerns spurred the strike, ranging from a lack of security cameras, an unstable pole, unmarked and uneven stage flooring, the scent of gas and more. They accuse management of retaliating against dancers who complained, and naming an official club group chat "Anus Tarts."

[tierra-paldeana]

☠🌏– Gosh darn what is she doing? Perrin's words give her thoughts that bring all sorts of sensations in her body. At some point she notices what she's doing with her own hair and lets it go, trying to stay cool. But it's too late, she's already shakey in the knees for that, adoring the feeling of being cornered.

So the next logical step is to walk over to Perrin and corner her herself against the tree they were standing under, kabedon style. Mind you, even while she's doing that she looks super flustered, her face a deep hue of red. Usually she's great at concealing her own thoughts and emotions but this was Perrin she's dealing with. Of course she's gonna let a bit loose with such a cutie.

''Y- Yer mean, nena... Real mean. Y'know what yer doin' to me, don't ya?'' She leans down to bring herself face to face with the shorter girl, almost rubbing noses with her. ''I know I said I don't bite but... keep teasin' me n' you might get some~ Grr.''

Rika was usually so smooth and charming. She was the one that would practically sweep Perrin off her feet with her words. To be the one more in control of the situation was kind of exhilarating. And that flustered expression was... really cute actually.

She'd never seen Rika hug her hair like that either.

"Yeah? Well, if that's the case why not come out with me?" Perrin hummed, arms behind her back. "I'm sure we can find something to do let all that energy out."

Yes, she was being very deliberate with her words right now. She'd let Rika fill in the blanks on this one.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Canada shouldn’t retaliate with its US tariffs

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Five years ago, Trump touted his "big, beautiful" replacement for NAFTA, the "free trade agreement" between the US, Mexico and Canada. Trump's NAFTA-2 was called the USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada Agreement) and it was pretty similar to NAFTA, to be honest.

That tells you a couple things: first, NAFTA was, broadly speaking a good thing for Trump and the ultra-wealthy donors who backed him (and got far richer as a result). That's why he kept it intact. NAFTA and USMCA are, at root, a way to make rich people richer by making poorer people poorer. Trump's base hated NAFTA because they (correctly) believed that it was being used to erode wages by chasing cheaper labor and more lax environmental controls in other countries. Neither NAFTA nor USMCA have any stipulations requiring exported goods to be manufactured by unionized workers, or in factories with robust environmental and workplace safety rules.

The point of NAFTA/USMCA is to goose profits by despoiling the environment, maiming workers, stealing their wages, paying them less, all while poisoning the Earth. Trump's "new" NAFTA was just the old NAFTA with some largely cosmetic changes so that Trump's base could be (temporarily) fooled into thinking Trump was righting the historic wrong of NAFTA.

However, there was one part of USMCA that marked a huge departure from NAFTA: the "IP" chapter. USCMA bound Canada and Mexico to implementing brutal new IP laws. For example, Mexico was forced to pass an anti-circumvention law that makes it a crime to tamper with "digital locks." This means that Mexican mechanics can't bypass the locks US car companies use to lock-out third party repair. Mexican farmers can't fix their own tractors. And, of course, Mexican software developers can't make alternative app stores for games consoles and mobile devices – they must sell their software through US Big Tech companies that take 30% of every sale:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva

Shamefully, Canada had already capitulated to most of these demands. Two Canadian Conservative Party politicians, Tony Clement and James Moore, had sold the country out in 2012, throwing away 6,138 negative responses to a consultation on a new DRM law (on the grounds that they were "babyish" views of "radical extremists"), siding instead with the 54 cranks and industry shills who supported their proposal:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

When Canadian politicians are pressed on why these anti-interoperability policies are good for Canada, they'll say that it's a condition of free trade, and the benefits of being able to export Canadian goods to the US without tariffs outweigh the costs of having to pay rents to American companies for consumables (like car parts or printer ink), repair, and software sales.

Sure, when Canadian software authors sell iPhone apps to Canadian customers, the payments take a round trip through Cupertino, California and return 30% short. But Canadian consumers get to buy iPhones without paying tariffs on them, and the oil, timber, and minerals we rip out of the ground can be sent to America without tariffs, either (oh, also, a few things that are still manufactured in Canada can do this, too).

Enter Trump, carrying a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods, which he has vowed to impose on his first day in office. Obviously, this demands a policy response. What should Canada do when Trump tears up his "big, beautiful" trade deal and whacks Canadian exporters? One obvious response is to impose a 25% retaliatory tariff on American exporters:

https://mishtalk.com/economics/canada-says-it-will-match-us-tariffs-if-trump-launches-trade-war/

After all, Canada and the US are one another's mutual largest trading partners. American businesses rely on selling things to Canadians, so a massive tariff on US goods will certainly make some of Trump's business-lobby backers feel pain, and maybe they'll talk some sense into him.

I think this would be a huge mistake. The most potent political lesson of the past four years is that politicians who preside over rising prices – regardless of their role in causing them – will swiftly feel the wrath of their voters. The public is furious about inflation, whether it comes from transient covid supply chain shocks, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, or cartels using "inflation" as cover for illegal, collusive price-gouging.

Canadians are very reliant on American imports of finished goods. That's another legacy of NAFTA: it crashed Canada's manufacturing sector. Canadian manufacturing companies treated the US as a "nearshore" source of non-union labor and weak environmental and safety rules, and shipped Canadian union jobs to American scabs. Canada's economy is supposedly now all about "services" but what we really export is stuff we tear out of the Earth.

Countries that are organized around resource extraction don't need fancy social safety nets or an educational system capable of producing a high-tech workforce. All you need to extract resources is a hole in the ground surrounded by guns, which explains a lot about shifts to the Canadian political climate since the Mulroney years.

Since Canada is now substantially reorganized as an open-pit mine for American manufacturers, cutting off American imports would drive the prices of everyday good sky-high, and would be political suicide.

But there's another way.

Because, of course, Canada – like any other country – has the capacity to make all kinds of things, including high-tech things. Sure, it's unlikely that Canada will launch another Research in Motion with a Blackberry smart-phone that will put the iPhone and Android in the shade. The mobile duopoly has the market sewn up, and can use predatory pricing, refusal to deal, and other anticompetitive tactics to strangle any competitor in its cradle.

But you know what Canada could make? A Canadian App Store. That's a store that Canadian software authors could use to sell Canadian apps to Canadian customers, charging, say, the standard payment processing fee of 5% rather than Apple's 30%. Canada could make app stores for the Android, Playstation and Xbox, too.

There's no reason that a Canadian app store would have to confine itself to Canadian software authors, either. Canadian app stores could offer 5% commissions on sales to US and global software authors, and provide jailbreaking kits that allows device owners all around the world to install the Canadian app stores where software authors don't get ripped off by American Big Tech companies.

Canadian companies like Honeybee already make "front-ends" for John Deere tractors – these are the components that turn a tractor into a plow, or a thresher, or another piece of heavy agricultural equipment. Honeybee struggles constantly to get its products to interface with Deere tractors, because Deere uses digital locks to block its products:

https://honeybee.ca/

Canada could produce jailbreaking kits for John Deere tractors, too – not just for Honeybee. Every ag-tech company in the world would benefit from commercially available, professionally supported John Deere jailbreaking kits. So would farmers, because these kits would restore farmers' Right to Repair their own tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Speaking of repair: Canadian companies could jailbreak every make and model of every US automobile, and make independent, constantly updated diagnostic tools that every mechanic in the world could buy for hundreds of dollars, rather than paying the five-figure ransom that car makers charge for their own underpowered, junk versions of these tools.

Jailbreaking cars doesn't stop with repair, either. Cars like the Tesla are basically giant rent-extraction machines. If you want to use all the "features" your Tesla ships with – like access to the full charge on your battery – you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in subscription fees over the life of the car, and when you sell your car, all that "downloadable content" is clawed back. No one will pay extra to buy your used Tesla just because you spent thousands on manufacturer upgrades, because they're all downgraded when you sign over the pink slip.

But Canadian companies could make jailbreaking kits for Teslas that unlock all the features in the car for a single low price – and again, they could sell these to every Tesla owner in the world.

Elon Musk doesn't invent anything, he just takes credit for other people's ideas, and that's as true of bad ideas as it is for good ones. Musk didn't invent the extractive Tesla rip-off: he stole it from inkjet printer companies like HP, who have used the fact that jailbreaking is illegal to turn printer ink into the most expensive fluid in the world, selling for more than $10,000/gallon.

Canadian companies could sell jailbreaking kits for inkjet printers that disconnect them from "subscription" services and disable the anti-features that check for and reject third party ink. People all over the world would buy these.

What's standing in the way of a Canadian industrial policy that focuses on raiding the sky-high margins of American monopolists with third-party add-ons, mods and jailbreaks?

Only the IP laws that Canada has agreed to in order to get tariff-free access to American markets. You know, the access that Trump has promised to end in less than a week's time?

Canada should tear up these laws – and not impose tariffs on American goods. That way, Canadians can still buy cheap American goods, and then they can save billions of dollars every year on the consumables, parts, software, and service for those goods.

This is hurting American big business where it hurts – in the ongoing rents it extracts from Canadians through IP laws like Bill C-11 (the law that bans jailbreaking). Canada could become a global high-tech export powerhouse, selling "complementary" goods that disenshittify all the worst practices of US tech monopolists, from car parts to insulin pumps.

It's the only kind of trade war that Canadian politicians can win against Americans: the kind where prices for Canadians don't go up because of tariffs; where the price of apps, repair, parts, and upgrades goes way down; and where a new, high-tech manufacturing sector pulls in vast sums from customers all over the world.

Canada can win this kind of war, even against a country as big and powerful as the USA. After all, we did it once before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CK3EDncjGI

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham