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France! OMG!
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locustinferno's and dobrovolets' LJs.From
frandroid: Layton=Lenin?And more on immigration: Great post. (Hat tip:
aaronfreed.)A funny video about the obstacles that face neo-Nazis.
More on
locustinferno's and dobrovolets' LJs.From
frandroid: Layton=Lenin?And more on immigration: Great post. (Hat tip:
aaronfreed.)A funny video about the obstacles that face neo-Nazis.
yeah, I can't see Americans spraypainting "death to wage" on the wall
I didn't know that, interesting. I heard recently that Germany has some even more different approaches to labor than what I'm familiar with. (I'm American)
Please, save yourself some trouble and use a scanner with OCR software. 8)
Yes. Shift-B will bring you the brightness/contrast screen!
Yeah, in Germany the union leaders serve on the boards of the companies, and there are "works councils" in several factories with joint union and management representation to deal with disciplinary and production issues. It means that on the one hand German unions don't give management the kind of absolutely free reign over production issues that their U.S. counterparts conceded after World War II, but it also means that they're even more tightly incorporated into the notion of "pitching in for the common good," i.e., for the health of shareholders' profits. The whole system is an odd hybrid of survivals of the workers' councils that arose in the 1918 revolution that overthrew the Kaiser and ushered in the Weimar Republic, the corporatist measures devised by the Nazi regime, and efforts by postwar Social Democrats to ensure industrial peace and business growth.
How's that?
I need to encourage French immigration to Chicago
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locustinferno.livejournal.com
2006-03-29 05:57 pm (UTC)(link)
I need to see some of that in Chicago. The last time we had a good riot here was the same year as the '68 rising in France. I'd like to see the words of the second picture on some window in Chicago. It would tickle me to no end.
But if nothing else, France is the place to go, if you want to get on a good riot, out all of the Western core nations at the moment.
But if nothing else, France is the place to go, if you want to get on a good riot, out all of the Western core nations at the moment.
Re: I need to encourage French immigration to Chicago
locustinferno.livejournal.com
2006-03-29 06:32 pm (UTC)(link)
This why I need to establish a junta, capture the city, purge the city, and then remake Chicago as a Francophone city on par with Paris or Montreal.
my god am i the only one who watched the nazi video? it makes me wish i knew some neo nazis so i could email the link to them... i wonder if they'd get so uptight over it that their heads would explode? totally priceless.
"guerre au travail" = "war on work", right?
I'm heartened by both the sentiments and the fact that I can read most of those slogans - my French is a little better than I thought, apparently.
I'm heartened by both the sentiments and the fact that I can read most of those slogans - my French is a little better than I thought, apparently.
I alluded to one possibility in my essay "Got Gaul? Why Francophobia Matters."
Excerpt:
We should start looking at direct, mechanistic connections that hide in plain sight like the one between general strikes and decent social services or more than two choices on election day. We could also examine indirect, cultural ones such as the one between making France-bashing our bi-partisan, national pastime and passing travesties like draconian "welfare reform" or still more tax cuts for the rich. These connections aren't visible to many Americans and have to be pointed out. Folk singer Utah Phillips illustrates the first connection pretty succinctly:
"I never had to work underground in Pennsylvania at the age of 12 in a coal mine. My sister never had to work at the age of 8 or 9 at the looms in Lawrence Massachusetts or anywhere else. None of us have had to do those sorts of things. And why? Why do we have that 8-hour day? Why do we have those mine safety laws? Why do we have those laws busting the sweatshops? Were they benevolent gifts from an enlightened management? No. They were fought for, bleed for, died for by people a lot like us. They died not on the battlefield to fight another dumb bosses' war; they died on the picket line to give all of us a better future."
The French get this and it shows. They remember; we forgot.
Few working people can watch footage of French farmers shutting down Paris and conceal their entertained admiration. Parked tractors blocked highways and city streets were clogged with flocks of sheep and other livestock(!) In an oft-screened scene that does not delight animal rights advocates, the farmers hurled said sheep into phalanxes of plastic armored riot squads.
Those French farmers were not wealthy vineyard owners: they were ordinary working Joes – small family farmers who are also getting squeezed by agribusiness. Only they are fighting back. It wasn't until Seattle 1999 that Americans recaptured the spirit of the Boston Tea Party, but the French had never forgotten and know how to throw a great party. Sometimes civilization can't advance without breaking things, and the French are very advanced. Unions in France don't take any crap from capitalists. By contrast, unions in the U.S. give their members' dues to counterfeit liberals who in turn sell them out by passing NAFTA and joining the WTO. Who looks foolish now?
From there, I go on to argue that conservatives have worked hard to make Americans forget about our shared revolutionary heritage.
Excerpt:
We should start looking at direct, mechanistic connections that hide in plain sight like the one between general strikes and decent social services or more than two choices on election day. We could also examine indirect, cultural ones such as the one between making France-bashing our bi-partisan, national pastime and passing travesties like draconian "welfare reform" or still more tax cuts for the rich. These connections aren't visible to many Americans and have to be pointed out. Folk singer Utah Phillips illustrates the first connection pretty succinctly:
"I never had to work underground in Pennsylvania at the age of 12 in a coal mine. My sister never had to work at the age of 8 or 9 at the looms in Lawrence Massachusetts or anywhere else. None of us have had to do those sorts of things. And why? Why do we have that 8-hour day? Why do we have those mine safety laws? Why do we have those laws busting the sweatshops? Were they benevolent gifts from an enlightened management? No. They were fought for, bleed for, died for by people a lot like us. They died not on the battlefield to fight another dumb bosses' war; they died on the picket line to give all of us a better future."
The French get this and it shows. They remember; we forgot.
Few working people can watch footage of French farmers shutting down Paris and conceal their entertained admiration. Parked tractors blocked highways and city streets were clogged with flocks of sheep and other livestock(!) In an oft-screened scene that does not delight animal rights advocates, the farmers hurled said sheep into phalanxes of plastic armored riot squads.
Those French farmers were not wealthy vineyard owners: they were ordinary working Joes – small family farmers who are also getting squeezed by agribusiness. Only they are fighting back. It wasn't until Seattle 1999 that Americans recaptured the spirit of the Boston Tea Party, but the French had never forgotten and know how to throw a great party. Sometimes civilization can't advance without breaking things, and the French are very advanced. Unions in France don't take any crap from capitalists. By contrast, unions in the U.S. give their members' dues to counterfeit liberals who in turn sell them out by passing NAFTA and joining the WTO. Who looks foolish now?
From there, I go on to argue that conservatives have worked hard to make Americans forget about our shared revolutionary heritage.
Fascinating. I didn't know half this stuff.
My take - which isn't mutually exclusive with yours - is below.
My take - which isn't mutually exclusive with yours - is below.
Fantastic pics from France. Love that "Inaccompli de '68" especially. Can't help hoping there's something really revolutionary going on there...
Great immigration post too. Do wonder though... if you turn his (ironic) argument round: if the immigrants already there in the US were to succeed in unionising themselves and winning decent wages and conditions and forcing employers to keep to them, would that stop or greatly reduce the flow of immigrants because the employers would no longer be able to use them as cheap labour? And if so, what would we reckon to the xenophobes campaigning for union recognition and labour rights as a means of halting immigration???
(Yes, there is some devil's advocacy going on here...)
Great immigration post too. Do wonder though... if you turn his (ironic) argument round: if the immigrants already there in the US were to succeed in unionising themselves and winning decent wages and conditions and forcing employers to keep to them, would that stop or greatly reduce the flow of immigrants because the employers would no longer be able to use them as cheap labour? And if so, what would we reckon to the xenophobes campaigning for union recognition and labour rights as a means of halting immigration???
(Yes, there is some devil's advocacy going on here...)
Hmm. I can't say I know about the situation in the U.S. well enough to predict that. I know that in Canada, non-status immigrants can be deported for joining a union, much to the chagrin of IWW Toronto.
I think at the point that immigrants have unionized and won decent concessions, they're likely no longer illegal. Others will keep fleeing to the U.S. as long as conditions in Mexico are as bad as they are, and employers will hire whoever's on the lowest rung.
I think at the point that immigrants have unionized and won decent concessions, they're likely no longer illegal. Others will keep fleeing to the U.S. as long as conditions in Mexico are as bad as they are, and employers will hire whoever's on the lowest rung.
Yes, pretty much. And of course if you've ever reached the point of denying employers the power to hire the lowest rung at shit wages and conditions, then you're in a totally different political universe anyway. So there's no contradiction between wanting to let people in in search of whatever shit jobs they can find and supporting efforts to improve those conditions.
Well Germany is a leader in engineering, perhaps they're doing something right.
Wow, you know your history! I wish I could say the same for myself.
Wow, you know your history! I wish I could say the same for myself.
It's unreadable still.
Ward Churchill's Pacifism as Pathology is also worth checking out.
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