#anti union tactics

[thatrandomblogsays]

I’m so happy for them

[Image Description: Castiel from Supernatural is saying I love you, underneath is an image of Dean Winchester with the caption: “After four months of striking the WGA has a reached a tentative agreement & finalizing the contract. If all goes well writers will get to return to work with better pay and protections. They did it. Go unions”]

(Source)

[russenoire]

@looz-ard NOPE. this is all we've got.

from anime news network's encyclopedia page. all other seasons of this show have a full and substantiated cast list in english... just not this one. i can't find another listing anywhere else...

You said you wouldn’t explain something re: the dub of MP100 s3. Why?

oh i don't mind explaining, i just figured most people were already aware!! the reason i don't rlly wanna advocate the dub of s3 is because of a dispute between mob's (original) english voice actor, kyle mccarley, and crunchyroll. i reccomend watching his own video on it!!

around the time of production, kyle tried to negotiate a sag-aftra contract with cr, but they completely refused. after that he was pretty much ghosted even though he tried to reach out to the company several times, suggesting that they just hold a meeting with union representatives to discuss it first. kyle was then officially fired and replaced by jason liebrecht for s3. i know he wasn't the only one who got replaced after that, i think tome and serizawa got new vas as well, but i don't know the details of that too well.

it's also worth noting from his own statement that this clearly wasn't about the money (they were willing to pay him just as much, if not more, for his original contract compared to if he had gotten a union contract). crunchyroll was just so against the idea of their actors unionizing that they hurriedly replaced a bunch of main roles, including the titular protagonist whose va has been a huge part of the fandom since the beginning 🙃🙃🙃

so yeah, i feel it would only be hypocritical of me to host it in my drive folder, considering this situation was what inspired me to make it in the first place lmao

[skeletonmob]

Transcript & Alt ID: Poster labeled 'Israeli Propaganda' that details various types of propaganda tactics, each with a color coordinated label.

Greenwashing - Israel appeals to environmentalism in order to deflect attention from or mask its harmful practices. EX: JNF tree-planting campaigns of invasive species.

Redwashing - Israel appeals to the image of progressive politics on order to deflect attention from its harmful practices. EX: Historic exclusion of non-Jewish workers from unions

Bluewahing - Israel uses humanitarian aid campaigns in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices. EX: 'Water infrastructure upgrades' that divert 6x more water to settlers than to Palestinians

Pinkwashing - Israel appeals to LGBTQ+ rights in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices. EX: blackmailing queer Palestinians into being informants under the threat of being outed to their communities. (transcriber's note: I don't feel this is a good example of pinkwashing, I think that mentioning that Israel has a habit of promoting itself as a safe haven for LGBT+ folks, and promoting Palestine solely as homophobic, in order to justify their actions is a more appropriate example)

Purplewashing - Israel appeals to women's rights and feminism in order to deflect attention from its harmful ideals. EX: Israeli Occupation Force drafts woman to military service by law to participate in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Faithwashing - Israel appeals to interfaith dialogue in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices. EX: conflating Zionism and Judaism in order to accuse all criticism of Zionism as anti-semitic.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The unexpected upside of global monopoly capitalism

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TODAY (Apr 10) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Here's a silver lining to global monopoly capitalism: it means we're all fighting the same enemy, who is using the same tactics everywhere. The same coordination tools that allow corporations to extend their tendrils to every corner of the Earth allows regulators and labor organizers to coordinate their resistance.

That's a lesson Mercedes is learning. In 2023, Germany's Supply Chain Act went into effect, which bans large corporations with a German presence from using child labor, violating health and safety standards, and (critically) interfering with union organizers:

https://www.bafa.de/EN/Supply_Chain_Act/Overview/overview_node.html

Across the ocean, in the USA, Mercedes has a preference for building its cars in the American South, the so-called "right to work" states where US labor law is routinely flouted and unions are thin on the ground. As The American Prospect's Harold Meyerson writes, the only non-union Mercedes factories in the world are in the US:

https://prospect.org/labor/2024-04-08-american-workers-german-law-uaw-unions/

But American workers – especially southern workers – are on an organizing tear, unionizing their workplaces at a rate not seen in generations. Their unprecedented success is down to their commitment, solidarity and shrewd tactics – all buoyed by a refreshingly pro-worker NLRB, who have workers' backs in ways also not seen since the Carter administration:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

Workers at Mercedes' factory in Vance, Alabama are trying to join the UAW, and Mercedes is playing dirty, using the tried-and-true union-busting tactics that have held workplace democracy at bay for decades. The UAW has lodged a complaint with the NLRB, naturally:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/alabama-mercedes-benz

But the UAW has also filed a complaint with BAFA, the German regulator in charge of the Supply Chain Act, seeking penalties against Mercedes-Benz Group AG:

https://uaw.org/uaw-files-charges-in-germany-against-mercedes-benz-companys-anti-union-campaign-against-u-s-autoworkers-violates-new-german-law-on-global-supply-chain-practices/

That's a huge deal, because the German Supply Chain Act goes hard. If Mercedes is convicted of union-busting in Alabama, its German parent-company faces a fine of 2% of its global total revenue, and will no longer be eligible to sell products to the German government. Chomp.

Now, the German Supply Chain Act is new, and this is the first petition filed by a non-German union with BAFA, so it's not a slam dunk. But supermajorities of Mercedes workers at the Alabama factory have signed UAW cards, and the election is going to happen in May or June. And the UAW – under new leadership, thanks to a revolution that overthrew the corrupt old guard – has its sights set on all the auto-makers in the American south.

As Meyerson writes, the south is America's onshore offshore, a regulatory haven where corporations pay minimal or no tax and are free to abuse their workers, pollute, and corrupt local governments with a free hand (no wonder American industry is flocking to these states). Meyerson: "The economic impact of unionizing the South, in other words, could almost be placed in the same category as reshoring work that had gone to China."

The German Supply Chain Act was passed with the help of Germany's powerful labor unions, in an act of solidarity with workers employed by German companies all over the world. This is that unexpected benefit to globalism: the fact that Mercedes has extrusions into both the American and German political spheres means that both American and German workers can collaborate to bring it to heel.

The same is true for antitrust regulators. The multinational corporations that are in regulators' crosshairs in the US, the EU, the UK, Australia, Japan, South Korea and beyond use the same playbook in every country. That's doubly true of Big Tech companies, who literally run the same code – embodying the same illegal practices – on servers in every country.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has led the pack on convening summits where antitrust enforcers from all over the world gather to compare notes and collaborate on enforcement strategies:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077

And the CMA's Digital Markets Unit – which boasts the the largest tech staff of any competition regulator in the world – produces detailed market studies that turn out to be roadmaps for other territories' enforces to follow – like this mobile market study:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

Which was extensively referenced in the EU during the planning of the Digital Markets Act, and in the US Congress for similar legislation:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2710

It also helped enforcers in Japan:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And South Korea:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-considers-505-mln-fine-against-google-apple-over-app-market-practices-2023-10-06/

Just as Mercedes workers in Germany and the USA share a common enemy, allowing for coordinated action that takes advantage of vulnerable flanks wherever they are found, anti-monopoly enforcers are sharing notes, evidence, and tactics to strike at multinationals that are bigger than most countries – but not when those countries combine.

This is an unexpected upside to global monopolies: when we all share a common enemy, we've got endless opportunities for coordinated offenses and devastating pincer maneuvers.

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/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

[alwida10]

Ugh. I hate getting political, so have some bullet points.

- Putin laments the fact that the Soviet Union has vanished. One of his major goals is to re-establish it. This has been said openly.

- the Soviet Union included regions young people from today know only as autonomous countries, including Armenia, Aserbaidschan, Estland, Georgia, Kasachstan, Kirgisien, Lettland, Litauen, Moldawien, Tadschikistan, Turkmenien/Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Usbekistan, Belarus. (Countries in bold are the countries I remember evidence of Russia has tampered with. Might be more, since my memory sucks.)

- to ensure the comeback of the Soviet Union, Putin (Russia) uses war tactics to destabilize, control and manipulate the countries to make it more likely to re-unite with Russia. Remember how Belarus’s elections have been tampered with and the bloody crushing of the protests? Moldavia has been calling for help regarding the Russian troops in their country. If you haven’t heard about Ukraine, this post isn’t for you.

- if you are able to read Russian, it’s easy to find the war plan Russia has developed to ensure this goal, including the annexation of Ukraine, Moldavia up to attacks on Poland and east-Germany.

- the biggest problem for Russia to reach this goal is the NATO, and that mostly because the USA had the NATO’s back.

- as long as the nato stands together it’s almost impossible for Putin to reach his goal.

- “devide and conquer”

-by now it’s well documented that Russian involvement led to Trump’s victory.

- the same people, who organized Trump’s campaign, later campaigned for the pro-Brexit side.

- Trump (being right wing) wanted the US to leave the NATO. Brexit has weakened the cohesion in the EU.

- the right wing parties have been growing in Europe. Italy and Netherland have already elected right wing parties as their leadership. The right wing party in Germany is most likely the second strongest party in the eu elections right now. (Yes, the modern day Nazis. Yes, Nazis.)

- right wing parties are more likely to say “what do I care about my neighbors getting bombed? I’m caring about MY people.” They support getting big (hence powerful) positions such as the NATO getting divided into smaller, easier to beat fractions. Poland does not stand a chance against Russia on its own. The NATO does.

- both Iran (because of the conflict in the Middle East) and China (because of their intend to annex Taiwan) love and support Putin’s tactic to divide and weaken the NATO. The USA are madly powerful, but not even they are able to take on three nuclear powers at the same time.

——

k, why am I talking about this?

-> if you come across anti-Biden, anti-EU, anti-democrat, pro-segregation posts or opinions you NEED to ask yourself if this might be political manipulation to weaken your country. It had been the young voters who put Trump out of office. It’s the young voters Russia and other manipulative powers have on their radar now. YOU are the target to reach their goals.

-> yes, this includes pro-Palestine messaging if it leads into a “don’t vote for Biden” narrative.

[laughingcatwrites]

Well, that person you quoted about coffee shops not hiring everybody does have a point. In order to be hired, the candidate first has to apply.

I don’t understand why people hate baristas so much or especially why we’re often trashed as some kind of “cultural elite” by fashy (including and especially post-left) types.

Anytime there’s a discussion about tipping in the US people crawl out of the woodwork and talk about us like we’re some privileged class of people trying to shake them down for their hard earned salaries and dilute the meaning of real labor (whatever the fuck that means).

Shit like this

Or

Like one of my coworkers is currently homeless and crashing with our manager until he finds a new apartment. Another brings free coffee to the dentists office next door (and comps the Dr.’s espresso drinks) in exchange for affordable dental work. What about this screams privilege?

Just like any physically demanding job we’re facing a high risk of disabling repetitive motion injuries and yet the industry standard is zero health benefits unless your shop is part of a corporate chain and it’s legally required at which point benefits are technically available but functionally near impossible to access.

Don’t get me wrong the coffee industry is fucked from farm to table. The perception of the “not just anyone” that gets to be a barista is accurate to an extent. But that has more to do with the type of person who owns coffee shops. The trope of the Owner/Manager who only hires baristas they would drink with or fuck is not without merit but in what world is the barista benefiting from that? Short shifts and the promise of flexible hours attracts grad students and artists but I assure you the Queer Studies PhD candidate waiting for their big break as an adjunct and the bassist spending their nights playing in a rotation of 5 local punk bands bc they love the scene have no systemic power over you.

People hem and haw about servers and bartenders too but it seems like baristas specifically are the scapegoat of the food service industry and i genuinely do not understand what kind of bath salts these people are smoking.

[txttletale]

Sorry if you posted about this before and I've missed it but are you arguing with anti-AI Art people (Specifically the ones deliberately ignoring or misrepresenting material facts) just on the basis that they're wrong? Or are you doing it to try to show that AI is going to be used anyway and they need to change the way they argue about it if they actually want to be productive with their goal of not having AI be harmful?

I suppose in truth I already seem to believe you're doing both at once, which is fine, but I guess what I'm really getting at is trying to prompt you for more of your own interpretation of the AI art discourse as a whole and how you feel about people calling you "Pro-AI" despise the fact that your economic beliefs inherently make you (from my very biased perspective) "more" "Anti-AI" than they are!

Sorry for the messy ask lol, you're just getting at a lot of thoughts I've been having trouble putting to words and want to see more!

yea i would absolutely describe my critiques of 'anti-AI' as coming from three separate but related places because there are three separate types of 'anti-AI art' talking points:

talking point type 1 is all the 'not real art / soullless / no effort' bullshit. i'm mostly critiquing these because they are fundamentally reactionary and profoundly silly and because i like talking about art and what art is and how it's made and shit.

type 2 is, to borrow a phrase from marx, "the economic shit". it's here that i think my critiques are more 'positive' than 'negative', as in, i think that these talking points are mostly coming from a reasonable place but are tactically misaimed -- my critiques here mostly amount to 'stop whining about midjourney and start unionizing your workplace because one of those will make a difference when AI comes for your job and the other won't"

type 3 is IP/copyright-brained petty-bourgeois mindset, arguments centering on ridiculously expansive concepts of 'theft' or 'plagiarism' and 'ownership'. they are superficially similar to type 2 arguments but instead of the fundamentally sympathetic and reasonable "i am worried i am going to be fired by my boss / no longer taken on by clients because of this new technology" they are instead arguing that they are either owed the hypothetical lost profits or royalties for every generated image. this is the type of argument i'm most vehemently against, because i think that all of these arguments essentially end in campaigning to strengthen copyright and IP law, something which i'm profoundly and fundamentally against.

sometimes people will make type 1 arguments when they fundamentally have type 2 concerns, but that just makes their type 2 concerns seem weaker and less worth taking seriously by association, which isn't good for us organized labour fans out there. but yeah these are all separate talking points -- i think i try to approach The Economic Shit with the 'you need to change how you think to achieve something productive' mindset, because of the three positions that's the one i have a fundamental political commonality and nominal shared goals with.

[gay-jewish-bucky]

With a lot of the media coverage of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes being incredibly anti-union, as well as intentionally twisting the words of those participating in or supporting the strikes, you can easily tell which news agencies are financially tied to the studios and the AMPTP. If you can't tell at a glance, look it up. (It's not a conspiracy, and I won't stand for people treating it as such, it's publicly available information with a quick internet search.)

This is an intentional act to turn the wider public, often people who don't know what the industry is like, against the strike and the workers asking for a fair contract, posing it as a greedy and irresponsible tantrum by entitled divas who are already overpaid.

This is not the reality of working in the film or television industry, the majority of union members in creative fields are underemployed and barely scraping by. They are frequently taken advantage of by studios, who care more about cutting costs to increase their bottom line, than they care about the people whose hard work they get rich off of.

That's not to ignore that this exploitation still applies to those big names, it does. There are many horror stories out there from actors about how they've been treated on certain productions. Even if it didn't happen to them, those workers standing with the little guy is an incredible show of cross-class allyship and solidarity, it should be respected.

It's also important to be aware that the same tactic is taken against every labour union, even ones where there is no chance of reaching the level of fame and wealth as Hollywood actors. Look at how the media treats sanitation union strikes, and postal workers strikes, and teachers union strikes etc, etc. This isn't any different.

It's important, as the audience for the film and television industries, that we are very cautious with what sources we are relying on for information and are wary of those pushing an anti-union or union-critical stance. Don't let yourself be fooled into siding with the studios.

Stand with WGA

Stand with SAG-AFTRA

Support unions

Support all workers

[probablyasocialecologist]

Degrowth cannot be achieved without an internationalist, anti-imperialist solidarity to be carried out through a variety of tactics. While a plethora of labor unions have issued statements in support of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, unions as a whole have yet to adopt more militant strategies toward disrupting the war machine and challenging genocidal capital at the point of production. An end to weapons production is directly tied to the project of degrowth, whose basic principle is to sustain life through a reconfiguration of the social relations of production rather than to destroy life for the sake of profit and economic growth.

Erica Jung and Calvin Wu, A Mirror of Our Immediate Future: On Green Imperialism and Palestine

[diamond-rings-and-gutter-bones]

[ID: Tags reading #he should but we know that Tory doesn't know how a strike works #that's the problem with having a union leader who is politically and socially conditioned against unions /End ID]

I am so serious when I say that the GPDA needs to take some actual organized union action

[mesetacadre]

Aviation in the USSR

A collection of excerpts from Anna Lousie Strong's The Soviets Expected It, compiled for @czerwonykasztelanic

[...] Or the guerrilla detachment which captured six German planes, destroyed five of them, and sent the sixth to the Red Army, piloted by an amateur air enthusiast, who was a tractor driver in ordinary life. Lt. Talalikhin’s initiative is already a Soviet aviator’s tradition. Exhausting his ammunition in a fight with three enemy planes, he rammed the tail of one enemy with his propeller, smashed the tail of another enemy plane with his wing tip, and then bailed out of his own plane safely. Moscow parks displayed the wreckage of the German planes, and other Soviet pilots quickly copied the tactics. An aviation technician, Konikov, won renown by attaching the fuselage of a plane he was repairing to the front platform of a military train whose locomotive had been bombed by the enemy; he thus pulled the most necessary parts of the train to safety.

pg. 14

The Soviet people glimpsed and felt victory. For the first time they began to feel that they were no longer “backward Russians.” They were beginning to challenge the world. With this went a proud sense of their unity as a nation. Cotton growers in Turkestan exulted, “We have conquered the Arctic,” though they themselves would never see the snow. Bearded peasants, who had never sat in an airplane, began to talk about “our conquest of the air.” Young Nina Kameneva expressed the mood of the country’s young people when she broke a world’s altitude record in parachute jumping and remarked on landing: “The sky of our country is the highest sky in the world.”

pg. 46

Moscow can make all the implements of war, including planes and motor trucks, inside the city. [...] Moscow’s sky is covered by an air defense that was the marvel of the London experts who visited it after the war began to make suggestions and found it far superior to London’s. Anti-aircraft shells make a thick blanket at four distinct levels to London’s one, and observation planes patrol the heavens night and day. Moscow’s four million people also offer a night-and-day defense.

pg. 51

Alma Ata, the capital of this area, has grown from a town of 60,000 to a proud young city of 260,000 in the ten years since the railroad reached it. Its life has leaped at once from the nomad epoch to the airplane. The railroad is too slow to tame the wastes of Kazakstan. From Alma Ata Airport the planes shoot forth, east, west, south, north, on new discoveries. [...] Kazakstan is only one of the energetic regions behind the Urals. South of it lie the lands of the Uzbeks and Tadjiks, where some of the largest textile mills of the U.S.S.R. work up the locally grown cotton and where automobile and airplane parts are produced by mass production in the historic city of Samarkand.

pg. 58

I have traveled many times on the Trans-Siberian. In the spring of 1935, I went from Vladivostok to Moscow with a stop-over in the Jewish autonomous territory whose capital is Birobidjan. The train was crowded with pioneering people in warm woolen clothes and padded leather jackets, engineers, Army men, developers of the Far East. [...] An army engineer who shared my table at dinner was celebrating his return by airplane from the northern wilderness by consuming a whole bottle of port and bragging about the Far Eastern pioneers.

pg. 59

According to Pierre Cot, the French Air Minister, who visited Moscow in 1933, the Soviet air arm was at least equal to the best in Europe in numbers, technical equipment, and, above all, in the productive capacity of the aviation industry.‡ Thus, by the end of 1932, which ended the first Five Year Plan, the Soviet Union had reached the level of Western Europe in armaments – a fairly modest level judged by standards of later years.

pg. 65

Other official indications of the extent of the Red Army’s mechanization come from Voroshilov’s report in 1934 [...]. Five years later [...]. He claimed that the “bomb salvo” of the Soviet air force (the number of bombs that can be dropped by all planes at once) had tripled in five years and had reached more than 6,000 tons.

pg. 66

Soviet airplane pilots also hold many world records, both in altitude and long-distance flights. Their conquest of the Arctic and its difficult weather has accustomed them to the severest conditions. Americans well remember the Soviet pilots who twice made world records by flying from Moscow to America. These were individual exploits, but the development of Arctic aviation on which they were based was the work of large numbers of pilots and implies a whole air tradition

pg. 67

Parachute jumping has become a national sport in the Soviet Union. Soviet people are probably the most air-minded people in the world. Training for air-mindedness begins in the kindergarten. Small tots play the “butterfly game” and jump around with large butterflies pinned on their hair, gaining the idea that flying is fun and a natural activity. Children in their teens make jumps from “parachute towers” which are far rougher and more realistic than the parachute tower in the New York World’s Fair, which was copied from them. The sport is popular not only in the cities but on the farms. Several years ago a Ukrainian farmer told me of his trip to the nearby city with a group of farm children, all of whom immediately formed in line in the recreation park to go up in a tall tower and jump off under a parachute. “I thought it very terrifying,” he said, “and wondered why the park authorities allowed it. Then I saw that my own thirteen-year-old daughter was at the head of the line. These children of today aren’t afraid of anything.” At an older age, Soviet young people jump from airplanes, learn to operate gliders, or even become amateur pilots in their spare time. Every large factory, government department, and many of the larger collective farms have “aviation clubs,” which are given free instruction by the government. Probably a million people in the Soviet Union have made actual jumps from parachutes. It is not surprising that the Red Army was the first to use parachute troops in active service several years before the Germans adopted them. In 1931 a small detachment of parachutists surrounded and cleaned up a bandit gang in Central Asia. The making of airplane models by young people is taken seriously in the U.S.S.R. In 1937 over a million school children were spending after-school hours in aviation model stations. At a later stage, young people of talent create real airplanes and demonstrate them at Tushino aviation exhibitions. Owing to the wide interest in aviation and the public ownership of factories, a bright Soviet youth who invents a new type of airplane may get it constructed by his factory sports club and show it off. At one of the aviation festivals I attended, I saw a score of different amateur planes, including every possible shape of flying object – short, stubby ones, long thin ones, others shaped like different kinds of insects. They added greatly to the gaiety of the occasion. Whether or not they produced any really valuable new invention, they at least encouraged the inventiveness of their makers.

pg. 72

In the past two years, especially, all this training has been given a very realistic turn. [...] Only a month before the Germans attacked the Soviet borders, 7,000 Moscow citizens practiced a special drill in repulsing parachute troops over the week end. The large numbers of such trained citizenry, both among recruits entering the Red Army and among the older citizens assisting it, greatly add to the Soviet Union’s total defense.

pg. 73

[warsofasoiaf]

What do you think of the Longshoreman union strike? I'm all for higher wages and better benefits, but limiting automation, when our ports are some of the least productive in the developed world, and that could make things actually safer, I think is a bridge too far. Maybe it is just a negotiating tactic though.

It's not a negotiating tactic. The ILA and their sister organization on the West Coast the ILWU have had a long-standing opposition to automation, even to the point of the ILWU causing an illegal shutdown when the port switched from clipboards to barcodes. This has been a position held for decades.

Frankly, I have no sympathy for the ILA - their anti-automation position is a tax they place on the public to subsidize their inefficiency. The cost in the ports is passed on to the end consumer and ends up causing higher prices for everyone. Moreover, this opposition to automation is unfounded. Rotterdam is the most heavily automated port in the world and saw little loss of human employment and a massive boost in efficiency. And I'm not even sympathetic to higher wages and better benefits - they are already highly-paid for terrible productivity. Plenty of their members make $200,000 a year so that the US can enjoy ports that are the least productive of the developed world. We aren't getting our money's worth.

They have a legal monopoly on a critical supply chain and are now extorting the public. Longshoreman's unions already have a nasty reputation for corruption (On the Waterfront and Goodfellas showed us that), and many of their senior leadership faces racketeering charges, and this just cements it for me.

So I have a quite negative opinion of the strike and the corruption that has enabled it.

Thanks for the question, Bruin.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[mariacallous]

The collapse of the Assad regime in Syria took the whole world by surprise, but Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine was among the first to react. After nine years of relentlessly demonizing all anti-Assad forces as “terrorists,” Kremlin TV suddenly began describing them in far more respectful tones as “armed opposition groups.” Meanwhile, Moscow officials were also soon suggesting that the newly ascendant rebels were not in fact dangerous religious radicals, but perfectly respectable potential partners who Russia could do business with.

This shameless shift in the Kremlin narrative is hardly surprising. After all, Putin is desperate to negotiate a deal with Syria’s new rulers that will allow him to retain control over naval and air bases that are vital for Russian interests throughout Africa and the Middle East. Nevertheless, the significance of Russia’s dramatic change of tune cannot be overstated.

Russia’s Syrian intervention was the country’s first major military operation beyond the boundaries of the former USSR since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It did not come cheaply, with Putin investing tens of billions of dollars on a mixed force of military advisers, mercenary units, naval assets, and air power tasked with propping up the Syrian regime. For a long period, the gamble appeared to have paid off handsomely. Putin was widely recognized as the savior of Bashar Assad, and was able to use this newfound prestige to project Russian influence throughout the wider region.

Russia’s Syrian exploits were afforded blanket coverage throughout the country’s carefully curated information space. The Kremlin media spent much of the past decade trumpeting the war in Syria as a symbol of Russia’s return to Great Power status, with Moscow pundits routinely positioning the country’s military campaign as a righteous crusade against Western intrigues and Islamist forces of darkness. There have been endless documentaries, propaganda tours, and even a classical concert amid the rubble of a country devastated by Russian aerial bombardment. All this is now seemingly forgotten as the Kremlin seeks to ingratiate itself with the new powers that be in Damascus.

Putin’s readiness to surrender his entire propaganda position in Syria and quietly accept new military realities should now help the West to overcome its crippling fear of Russian escalation in Ukraine. Ever since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began almost three years ago, the Western response has been hampered by concerns that support for Ukraine could provoke Russia into escalating its aggression and lead to a broadening of the conflict. Putin has skillfully exploited these fears, using a combination of nuclear threats and warnings of Russian red lines to limit the delivery of Western military aid to Kyiv and impose absurd restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

This excessive Western caution has infuriated many in Kyiv, not least because Ukraine has repeatedly exposed Russia’s threats as empty. When Putin threatened to defend his Ukrainian conquests with nuclear weapons in September 2022 and declared “I’m not bluffing,” Ukraine promptly called his bluff and liberated the strategically vital southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. Instead of reaching for his nuclear briefcase, Putin simply ordered his defeated troops to retreat across the Dnipro River. Likewise, when Ukraine disregarded Kremlin bluster and proceeded to sink or damage around one-third of the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet, Putin did not go nuclear. On the contrary, he instructed his remaining warships to withdraw from Russian-occupied Crimea to the relative safety of Russian ports.

The biggest blow to the myth of inevitable Russian escalation came in summer 2024, when Ukraine crossed the reddest of all Russian red lines by invading Russia itself. As Ukrainian troops flooded across the border and began occupying swathes of Russia’s Kursk Oblast, Putin’s response was telling. He made no attempt to rally his compatriots against the foreign invader or warn of impending nuclear war. Quite the opposite, in fact. Rather than raising the stakes, Putin consciously chose to downplay the entire Ukrainian offensive, referring to it as a mere “provocation.”

Putin’s underwhelming response to the fall of his Syrian ally Bashar Assad serves as a timely reminder that Western fears of Russian escalation are wildly exaggerated. In reality, whenever Putin finds himself confronted by a resolute opponent, he is inclined to retreat. Like all bullies, he seeks to overwhelm his victims with intimidation. However, as we have seen repeatedly in Ukraine, his threats are almost always hollow.

This is good news for advocates of a “peace through strength” strategy, including those within the incoming Trump administration. Putin’s ability to intimidate the West has been his greatest success of the entire war in Ukraine, but it should now be abundantly clear that Russia’s saber-rattling is built on bluff.

The Kremlin’s inability to rescue its Syrian ally has revealed the humble reality behind Putin’s Great Power posturing. The Russian military is now obviously overextended by the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, while Putin is in a far weaker position than he would like us to believe. Crucially, he is also more than capable of completely rejecting his own propaganda and rewriting history when necessary. If confronted with the prospect of military defeat in Ukraine, there is every reason to believe he will retreat again, while ordering his media machine to save his blushes.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine at LGBTQ Nation:

The Bulgarian parliament voted to enact a law prohibiting the “propaganda” of “non-traditional” sexual orientation and gender identity in schools last Wednesday. Their vote triggered mass protests and public opposition. The proposed law states, “It is the educational function of the Bulgarian school that such a state institution should not be allowed to promote or incite, in any way, directly or indirectly, ideas and views related to non-traditional sexual orientation and/or identification of gender identity other than that which is biological.” The law, an amendment to the Pre-School and School Education Law, emerged after the 17-member Parliamentary Committee on Education and Science overwhelmingly approved it. The committee’s approval led to a four-hour debate last Wednesday that culminated in the bill passing through parliament. This bill was proposed previously, however, it failed in committee.

Of the 240 parliament members, 159 voted in favor of the first section of the bill, while 22 voted against and 13 abstained. For the section defining “non-traditional sexual orientation,” 135 voted for it, 57 against, and 8 abstained. Members of the more liberal parties were unable to vote for the first section for unknown reasons. The law was especially popular among the increasingly politically dominant pro-Kremlin Revival/Vazrazhdane Party, which was the party to introduce it.

[...] Over 7,000 citizen signatures and nearly 80 non-governmental organizations were sent to the government to plead that Bulgarian President Rumen Radev does not sign this bill. Belgian LGBTQ+ rights organization Forbidden Colors said in a statement, “It is deeply troubling to see Bulgaria adopting tactics from Russia’s anti-human rights playbook. Such actions are not only regressive but are also in direct contradiction to the values of equality and non-discrimination that the European Union stands for.”

A protest was announced the same day in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Since then, there’s been widespread protests throughout the capital and Varna, a port city. There have also been petitions sent to the Bulgarian government asking them to oppose the measure. The bill defines “non-traditional sexual orientation” as “different from the generally accepted and the concept of emotional, romantic, sexual or sensual attraction between persons of opposites.” Bulgarian news site Clubz, as well as Parliament member Eleonora Belobradova claimed that this section of the bill was actually copy/pasted from the Bulgarian Wikipedia. Additionally, the bill only recognizes “biological sex,” completely writing trans people out of the law and ignoring intersex individuals entirely.

Protests erupt over Bulgarian parliament’s passage of Russia-style Don’t Say Gay or Trans law.

[stupidsexymecha]

Horus Hydra

Like many newer HORUS “frames”, there is no standardized Hydra model. Instead, the designation is a title given to chassis that meet the specifications of the Hydra pattern group – as outlined in Union’s Universal Threat Assessment Manual. The Hydra, like many other pattern-group HORUS mechs, is particularly dangerous in the field, as its precise function is concealed until hostilities begin in earnest. The Hydra is capable of tactically dismembering itself into multiple independently controlled drones, an unnerving phenomenon frequently utilized to deadly effect. With the manifestation of HORUS’s Balor pattern group, the Hydra’s place in HORUS history is clear: a precursor to the Balor virus, the Hydra relies on larger sections of disarticulated chassis rather than nanite clouds for its differentiated battlefield advantage. Despite its more conventional appearance, the Hydra presents a sobering threat to non-HORUS pilots, as its disarticulated drones field a compliment of powerful anti-armor weaponry.

[dailyanarchistposts]

A.3.4 Is anarchism pacifistic?

A pacifist strand has long existed in anarchism, with Leo Tolstoy being one of its major figures. This strand is usually called “anarcho-pacifism” (the term “non-violent anarchist” is sometimes used, but this term is unfortunate because it implies the rest of the movement are “violent,” which is not the case!). The union of anarchism and pacifism is not surprising given the fundamental ideals and arguments of anarchism. After all, violence, or the threat of violence or harm, is a key means by which individual freedom is destroyed. As Peter Marshall points out, ”[g]iven the anarchist’s respect for the sovereignty of the individual, in the long run it is non-violence and not violence which is implied by anarchist values.” [Demanding the Impossible, p.637] Malatesta is even more explicit when he wrote that the “main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations” and that anarchists “are opposed to violence.” [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 53]

However, although many anarchists reject violence and proclaim pacifism, the movement, in general, is not essentially pacifistic (in the sense of opposed all forms of violence at all times). Rather, it is anti-militarist, being against the organised violence of the state but recognising that there are important differences between the violence of the oppressor and the violence of the oppressed. This explains why the anarchist movement has always placed a lot of time and energy in opposing the military machine and capitalist wars while, at the same time, supporting and organising armed resistance against oppression (as in the case of the Makhnovist army during the Russian Revolution which resisted both Red and White armies and the militias the anarchists organised to resist the fascists during the Spanish Revolution — see sections A.5.4 and A.5.6, respectively).

On the question of non-violence, as a rough rule of thumb, the movement divides along Individualist and Social lines. Most Individualist anarchists support purely non-violent tactics of social change, as do the Mutualists. However, Individualist anarchism is not pacifist as such, as many support the idea of violence in self-defence against aggression. Most social anarchists, on the other hand, do support the use of revolutionary violence, holding that physical force will be required to overthrow entrenched power and to resist state and capitalist aggression (although it was an anarcho-syndicalist, Bart de Ligt, who wrote the pacifist classic, The Conquest of Violence). As Malatesta put it, violence, while being “in itself an evil,” is “justifiable only when it is necessary to defend oneself and others from violence” and that a “slave is always in a state of legitimate defence and consequently, his violence against the boss, against the oppressor, is always morally justifiable.” [Op. Cit., p. 55 and pp. 53–54] Moreover, they stress that, to use the words of Bakunin, since social oppression “stems far less from individuals than from the organisation of things and from social positions” anarchists aim to “ruthlessly destroy positions and things” rather than people, since the aim of an anarchist revolution is to see the end of privileged classes “not as individuals, but as classes.” [quoted by Richard B. Saltman, The Social and Political Thought of Michael Bakunin p. 121, p. 124 and p. 122]

Indeed, the question of violence is relatively unimportant to most anarchists, as they do not glorify it and think that it should be kept to a minimum during any social struggle or revolution. All anarchists would agree with the Dutch pacifist anarcho-syndicalist Bart de Ligt when he argued that “the violence and warfare which are characteristic conditions of the capitalist world do not go with the liberation of the individual, which is the historic mission of the exploited classes. The greater the violence, the weaker the revolution, even where violence has deliberately been put at the service of the revolution.” [The Conquest of Violence, p. 75]

Similarly, all anarchists would agree with de Ligt on, to use the name of one of his book’s chapters, “the absurdity of bourgeois pacifism.” For de Ligt, and all anarchists, violence is inherent in the capitalist system and any attempt to make capitalism pacifistic is doomed to failure. This is because, on the one hand, war is often just economic competition carried out by other means. Nations often go to war when they face an economic crisis, what they cannot gain in economic struggle they attempt to get by conflict. On the other hand, “violence is indispensable in modern society… [because] without it the ruling class would be completely unable to maintain its privileged position with regard to the exploited masses in each country. The army is used first and foremost to hold down the workers… when they become discontented.” [Bart de Ligt, Op. Cit., p. 62] As long as the state and capitalism exist, violence is inevitable and so, for anarcho-pacifists, the consistent pacifist must be an anarchist just as the consistent anarchist must be a pacifist.

For those anarchists who are non-pacifists, violence is seen as an unavoidable and unfortunate result of oppression and exploitation as well as the only means by which the privileged classes will renounce their power and wealth. Those in authority rarely give up their power and so must be forced. Hence the need for “transitional” violence “to put an end to the far greater, and permanent, violence which keeps the majority of mankind in servitude.” [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 55] To concentrate on the issue of violence versus non-violence is to ignore the real issue, namely how do we change society for the better. As Alexander Berkman pointed out, those anarchists who are pacifists confuse the issue, like those who think “it’s the same as if rolling up your sleeves for work should be considered the work itself.” To the contrary, ”[t]he fighting part of revolution is merely rolling up your sleeves. The real, actual task is ahead.” [What is Anarchism?, p. 183] And, indeed, most social struggle and revolutions start relatively peaceful (via strikes, occupations and so on) and only degenerate into violence when those in power try to maintain their position (a classic example of this is in Italy, in 1920, when the occupation of factories by their workers was followed by fascist terror — see section A.5.5).

As noted above, all anarchists are anti-militarists and oppose both the military machine (and so the “defence” industry) as well as statist/capitalist wars (although a few anarchists, like Rudolf Rocker and Sam Dolgoff, supported the anti-fascist capitalist side during the second world war as the lesser evil). The anti-war machine message of anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists was propagated long before the start of the first world war, with syndicalists and anarchists in Britain and North America reprinting a French CGT leaflet urging soldiers not to follow orders and repress their striking fellow workers. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were both arrested and deported from America for organising a “No-Conscription League” in 1917 while many anarchists in Europe were jailed for refusing to join the armed forces in the first and second world wars. The anarcho-syndicalist influenced IWW was crushed by a ruthless wave of government repression due to the threat its organising and anti-war message presented to the powerful elites who favoured war. More recently, anarchists, (including people like Noam Chomsky and Paul Goodman) have been active in the peace movement as well as contributing to the resistance to conscription where it still exists. Anarchists took an active part in opposing such wars as the Vietnam War, the Falklands war as well as the Gulf wars of 1991 and 2003 (including, in Italy and Spain, helping to organise strikes in protest against it). And it was during the 1991 Gulf War when many anarchists raised the slogan “No war but the class war” which nicely sums up the anarchist opposition to war — namely an evil consequence of any class system, in which the oppressed classes of different countries kill each other for the power and profits of their rulers. Rather than take part in this organised slaughter, anarchists urge working people to fight for their own interests, not those of their masters:

“More than ever we must avoid compromise; deepen the chasm between capitalists and wage slaves, between rulers and ruled; preach expropriation of private property and the destruction of states such as the only means of guaranteeing fraternity between peoples and Justice and Liberty for all; and we must prepare to accomplish these things.” [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 251]

We must note here that Malatesta’s words were written in part against Peter Kropotkin who, for reasons best known to himself, rejected everything he had argued for decades and supported the allies in the First World War as a lesser evil against German authoritarianism and Imperialism. Of course, as Malatesta pointed out, “all Governments and all capitalist classes” do “misdeeds … against the workers and rebels of their own countries.” [Op. Cit., p. 246] He, along with Berkman, Goldman and a host of other anarchists, put their name to International Anarchist Manifesto against the First World War. It expressed the opinion of the bulk of the anarchist movement (at the time and consequently) on war and how to stop it. It is worth quoting from:

“The truth is that the cause of wars … rests solely in the existence of the State, which is the form of privilege … Whatever the form it may assume, the State is nothing but organised oppression for the advantage of a privileged minority … “The misfortune of the peoples, who were deeply attached to peace, is that, in order to avoid war, they placed their confidence in the State with its intriguing diplomatists, in democracy, and in political parties … This confidence has been deliberately betrayed, and continues to be so, when governments, with the aid of the whole of the press, persuade their respective people that this war is a war of liberation. “We are resolutely against all wars between peoples, and … have been, are, and ever will be most energetically opposed to war. “The role of the Anarchists … is to continue to proclaim that there is only one war of liberation: that which in all countries is waged by the oppressed against the oppressors, by the exploited against the exploiters. Our part is to summon the slaves to revolt against their masters. “Anarchist action and propaganda should assiduously and perseveringly aim at weakening and dissolving the various States, at cultivating the spirit of revolt, and arousing discontent in peoples and armies… “We must take advantage of all the movements of revolt, of all the discontent, in order to foment insurrection, and to organise the revolution which we look to put end to all social wrongs… Social justice realised through the free organisation of producers: war and militarism done away with forever; and complete freedom won, by the abolition of the State and its organs of destruction.” [“International Anarchist Manifesto on the War,” Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth, pp. 386–8]

Thus, the attraction of pacifism to anarchists is clear. Violence is authoritarian and coercive, and so its use does contradict anarchist principles. That is why anarchists would agree with Malatesta when he argues that ”[w]e are on principle opposed to violence and for this reason wish that the social struggle should be conducted as humanely as possible.” [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 57] Most, if not all, anarchists who are not strict pacifists agree with pacifist-anarchists when they argue that violence can often be counterproductive, alienating people and giving the state an excuse to repress both the anarchist movement and popular movements for social change. All anarchists support non-violent direct action and civil disobedience, which often provide better roads to radical change.

So, to sum up, anarchists who are pure pacifists are rare. Most accept the use of violence as a necessary evil and advocate minimising its use. All agree that a revolution which institutionalises violence will just recreate the state in a new form. They argue, however, that it is not authoritarian to destroy authority or to use violence to resist violence. Therefore, although most anarchists are not pacifists, most reject violence except in self-defence and even then kept to the minimum.