Working was pointless at best and 'degrading, humiliating and exploitative' at worst, says Reddit moderator behind the influential 'antiwork'

sjones@insider.com (Stephen Jones)

© Provided by Business Insider The reasons driving the Great Resignation transcend much more than simply a desire to work less. SrdjanPav/Getty Images

The moderator of a viral, "anti-work" Reddit thread said most work is pointless, and humiliating.
Doreen Ford is a moderator of r/antiwork, which has gained 1.4 million users since October 2020.
"There's a lot of positions that just don't make any sense," Ford told the FT.

A moderator of a viral "anti-work" Reddit thread has said she left traditional employment because much of her work was "degrading, humiliating and exploitative."

The thread – r/antiwork – has nearly 1.6 million members and is part of a movement towards the "antiwork" rejection of the traditional idea of a nine-to-five job in favor of more leisure and fulfilment.

"I think there's a lot of positions that just don't make any sense, that do not have to exist," Doreen Ford, a moderator of the channel, told the FT.

"You're just pushing around papers for no good reason. It doesn't really help anybody," she said.

Ford, 30, spent 10 years working in retail, but left her job in 2017 after her grandmother advised her to follow her passion for dogs.

She now walks dogs part time and has never been happier, she told the FT.

"Usually, at best, [working was] pointless," said Ford. "And at worst it was degrading, humiliating and exploitative."

She added: "Most of us are just normal people. We have jobs that we don't like, which is the whole point of why we're in the movement to begin with."

The thread, whose the full name is "Antiwork: Unemployment for all, not just the rich!", was started in 2013.

For years its membership numbered in the low thousands, before growing exponentially since the onset of the pandemic, which fueled a reassessment of work and its value and prompted a "Great Resignation" of resignations.

The Reddit thread now receives an average of 1,500 posts a day, in which members – so-called "Idlers" – share accounts of bad bosses and encourage each other to quit, similar to the Tang ping movement in China.

 

© Subreddit Stats Membership of r/antiwork has grown exponentially since the beginning of the pandemic. Subreddit Stats

Insider's Hilary Hoffower reported how Gen Z and millennial workers were leading the way by trading in bad jobs for careers that offer greater purpose and meaning — while many older workers are choosing to switch to self-employment or early retirement.

A record 4.5 million Americans quit their job in November.

The reasons driving the great resignation transcend much more than simply a desire to work less.

Kentuckians, whose state is at the epicenter of America's Great Resignation, outlined fears over the Omicron variant, a dearth of accessible childcare and social inequalities as among the reasons to Insider's Juliana Kaplan, Hillary Hoffower, and Madison Hoff.

The Right To Be Lazy - The People
www.slp.org/pdf/others/lazy_pl.pdf · PDF file
The Right To Be Lazy BEING A REPUDIATION OF THE “RIGHT TO WORK” OF 1848 By Paul Lafargue Translated and adapted from the French by Dr. Harriet Lothrop. Published by the

By work we mean what Bob Black says in his classic essay, The Abolition of Work, “Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick.” In other words, we are against the notion that people should be structurally limited and optioned out of a better, more peaceful and playful life by the powers that be.
About - Abolish Work
abolishwork.com/about/

The Abolition of Work - The Anarchist Library

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work

2020-11-28 · Bob Black The Abolition of Work No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from

The Right to Be Greedy: Theses on the Practical Necessity of Demanding Everything

by For Ourselves: Council for Generalized Self-Management

Publication date 1974The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything is a book published in 1974 by an American Situationist collective called "For Ourselves: Council for Generalized Self-Management". 

Post-left anarchist Bob Black describes it in its preface as an "audacious attempt to synthesize a collectivist social vision of left-wing origin with an individualistic (for lack of a better word) ethic usually articulated on the right".

Its authors say that "[t]he positive conception of egoism, the perspective of communist egoism, is the very heart and unity of our theoretical and practical coherence". It is highly influenced by the work of Max Stirner. A reprinting of the work in the eighties was done by Loompanics Unlimited with the involvement of Bob Black who also wrote the preface to it.

Most libertarians think of themselves as in some sense egoists. If they believe in rights, they believe these rights belong to them as individuals. If not, they nonetheless look to themselves and others as so many individuals possessed of power to be reckoned with. Either way, they assume that the opposite of egoism is altruism. The altruists, Christian or Maoist, agree. A cozy accomodation; and, I submit, a suspicious one. What if this antagonistic intedependence, this reciprocal reliance reflects and conceals an accord? Could egoism be altruism's loyal opposition? Yes, according to the authors of this text. What's more, they insist that an egoism which knows itself and refuses every limit to its own realization is communism.

Contents:
Preface by Bob Black
1. Wealth
2. Individualism and Collectivism
3. The Dialectic of Egoism
4. The Resonance of Egoisms
5. Communist Society
6. Radical Subjectivity
7. Pleasure
8. Sexuality
9. Authority
10. Morality
11. Revolution
Appendix: Preamble to The Founding Agreements of For Ourselves: Council for Generalized Self-Management

A Google exec reportedly said the tech giant's secret antiunion project was supposed to convince employees 'that unions suck'

insider@insider.com (Katie Canales) 

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, on January 20, 2020.

 REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

A Google executive reportedly said the firm's "Project Vivian" was to convince employees "that unions suck."
The news surfaced as part of an NLRB court ruling.
The case kicked off after four Google employees were fired in 2019 after organizing.

New details have surfaced about Google's secret anti union campaign, dubbed Project Vivian.

The tech giant ran the project between late 2018 and early 2020 to convince employees not to unionize, per a new report from Vice, which viewed court documents not yet available to the public.

Google's director of employment law, Michael Pfyl, in the documents called the initiative an opportunity "to engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck," Vice reported.

Another Google attorney also reportedly wrote that the company should select a "respected voice to publish an OpEd outlining what a unionized tech workplace would look like, and counseling employees of FB (Facebook), MSFT(Microsoft), Amazon, and google (sic) not to do it."

And Google's HR director, Kara Silverstein, said she supported the idea but said it would be best if "there would be no fingerprints" and wouldn't be "Google specific," per the report.

A Google spokesperson told Insider: "The underlying case here has nothing to do with unionization, it's about employees breaching clear security protocols to access confidential information and systems inappropriately."

Four Google employees, who were fired in 2019, filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging they were illegally terminated for organizing. In response, the company claimed the group — which came to be known as the "Thanksgiving Four" — was fired for violating security rules by sharing confidential information, which the former employees deny.

Google employees then discovered in 2019 that the company had hired a company called IRI Consultants that is known for helping employers squash organizing efforts. That decision wasn't made by Google's lawyers but by higher-ups like Silverstein and Danielle Brown, the company's vice president of employee engagement, Vice reported, citing court documents.

The series of court documents surfaced as part of a ruling last week involving the National Labor Relations Board and comes after an NLRB judge directed Google to hand over 180 pieces of internal material involving the project late last year. The tech giant, however, has since refused, citing attorney-client privilege, per Vice.

An NLRB judge, however, said that doesn't apply to some of the documents.

"Many of these documents are, or involve the development of, campaign materials in which IRI provides antiunion messaging and message amplification strategies and training tailored to [Google's] workforce and the news and social media environment," NLRB judge Paul Boas wrote in 2019.

Google pushed back on that argument at the time, telling Insider that the firm disagrees with the "characterization of the legally privileged materials referred to by the complainants."

Insurance isn't enough: Governments need to do better on natural disaster resilience

Anne E. Kleffner, Professor, Risk Management and Insurance, University of Calgary

 and Mary Kelly, Chair in Insurance and Professor, Finance, Wilfrid Laurier University 

The massive floods in British Columbia in November 2021 demonstrated the devastation that natural disasters can cause in Canada. Prior to 2010, it was rare for annual insured losses from natural disasters in Canada to exceed $1 billion, but now insured losses of $3 billion are not uncommon.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck 

A woman and children who were stranded by high water due to flooding are rescued by a volunteer operating a boat in Abbotsford, B.C., in November 2021. The Insurance Institute of Canada forecasts that annual insured losses from natural disasters could increase to $5 billion within the next 10 years.

Canada is expected to become wetter, stormier, warmer and to experience more severe connective storms and wildfires. The Insurance Institute of Canada forecasts that annual insured losses could increase to $5 billion within the next 10 years.

Private insurance plays an essential role in supporting the resiliency of communities by providing financial compensation for losses that aid in recovery. Insurance company Munich Re notes that, after accounting for per capita income, countries with greater insurance coverage are more resilient to natural disasters.

However, insurance works best protecting households and communities against idiosyncratic low-frequency, high-severity events. As extreme weather events become more common, relying on insurance alone to protect Canadians against severe weather is not sustainable. It is critical that an integrated and holistic approach to mitigate and manage losses from natural disasters is developed.

Communities and property owners need to be partners in reducing losses by undertaking mitigation activities to reduce the severity of wind, water and wildfire events. However, the largest role falls upon all levels of government to protect Canadians against the impact of catastrophic weather events.
Land-use planning and mitigation

To create more resilient communities, governments need to invest in mitigation, adaptation and risk-prevention activities. Climate change, expanded development and population growth have resulted in the need for updated risk assessments, especially up-to-date flood maps.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks over maps as he surveys the damage left behind from the flood waters in Abbotsford, B.C. in November 2021. Governments need to invest in risk-prevention activities to create communities that are more resilient to natural disasters.

In high-risk areas, future development must be prohibited, and governments should buy out existing properties. Better flood maps will enable governments to purchase high-risk properties before a devastating flood, and the land could be transformed to help minimize flooding in adjacent areas.

To withstand future extreme weather events, building codes and standards need to be revised. Whether it’s new construction of buildings or infrastructure, retrofitting property or repairing property after a loss, building codes need to be forward-looking.
Insurance and disaster financial assistance

After an extreme weather event, a province or territory may declare the event to be eligible for disaster assistance, with funding available from the province via Disaster Financial Assistance (DFA). DFA is available to property owners and communities for losses that are not covered by insurance companies — DFA does not pay for losses for which insurance is “reasonably and readily” available.

Prior to the flooding events in both Calgary and Toronto in 2013, Canadian homeowners could not buy insurance for overland water damage, but now most insurers offer some level of flood insurance, except in very high-risk areas.

This introduces inequity among homeowners — those who live in the highest risk areas cannot purchase insurance and therefore can receive DFA after a loss, but those living in moderate to high-risk areas where insurance is “reasonably and readily” available may not be able to afford coverage and therefore not be eligible to receive DFA.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS 

A woman gets back into her flooded car on Lakeshore Boulevard, Toronto in July 2013. The floods from that year resulted in insurance companies offering overland flood insurance, in addition to standard sewer backup policies.

Because the term “reasonably and readily” is not well-defined, ambiguity exists regarding who can receive DFA and who cannot. If the limitations around DFA are not fully understood by property owners, or if governments do not clearly define “reasonably and readily,” the incentive to purchase flood insurance is reduced.

Property owners need information regarding the value of purchasing flood insurance and insurers can provide important information about how to mitigate losses from flooding.

Furthermore, owners need to be counselled very carefully on the consequences of not purchasing flood coverage, and the provincial and territorial governments need to remain committed to not pay DFA for losses that could have been insured.
Private-public partnerships

The private insurance market, which has an important role to play in financing losses from natural disasters, has its limitations. The risks associated with some properties exceed the appetite of insurers and some perils have the potential to cause losses too large for the Canadian insurance market to cover.

To achieve sustainable flood insurance coverage, a public-private partnership is needed, whereby the government’s role is to support an insurance risk-sharing pool for high-risk properties that, otherwise, would not be able to purchase coverage. This will help reduce the reliance on DFA and provide information to homeowners regarding the risk they face.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward 

A man walks through rising flood waters crossing into Canada from the United States in Abbotsford, B.C in November 2021.

Governments also have an important role in providing a safety net for very large losses. The industry guaranty fund, the Property and Casualty Insurance Compensation Corporation, has determined that a catastrophic loss exceeding $35 billion in insured losses would overwhelm the Canadian insurance industry and require government intervention. Such intervention could take the form of providing a layer of insurance coverage for catastrophic losses, or a liquidity or solvency backstop.

Ultimately, insurance and adaptation will not solve the problem of severe weather losses. We need to commit to sincere and strong action on climate change to reduce the frequency and severity of weather events. Some of the tools discussed here — insurance, strengthening building codes, effective mitigation and creating public private partnerships — can be leveraged to build a more resilient society.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Anne E. Kleffner receives funding from SSHRC, Alberta Finance.

Mary Kelly receives funding from SSHRC and is a director at Heartland Farm Mutual Insurance Company.

Red Lobster staff say they work when they're ill because of a lack of paid sick leave and pressure from managers, according to report

gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean) 

In a Shift Project survey, just 12% of Red Lobster staff said they had access to paid sick leave. Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Some Red Lobster staff say they work while ill, Popular Information and More Perfect Union reported.

They say it's down to a lack of paid sick leave and pressure from managers.
In a Shift Project survey, just 12% of Red Lobster staff said they had access to paid sick leave.

Current and former staff at some Red Lobster restaurants say they've worked while they're ill during the COVID-19 epidemic – in some cases because of a lack of paid sick leave or because they were unable to meet management requests to find cover, according to a report by Popular Information and More Perfect Union.


James Swartz, a former Red Lobster bartender in Pennsylvania, said he told management he wasn't coming to work after he developed COVID-19 symptoms. He said that management told him he'd have to either work or find cover for the shift, otherwise he'd get written up.

Swartz said that ultimately he stayed at home for two weeks but had no paid time off.

He isn't alone – 12% of Red Lobster staff said they had access to paid sick leave, according to a fall 2021 survey by Harvard University's Shift Project, which collects data on work scheduling for hourly-paid service workers in the US. Popular Information and More Perfect Union shared data from the survey.

Having no paid sick leave has huge effects on the company's staff. Sixty-three percent of Red Lobster workers who said they've been sick in the past month said in the survey that they'd worked while sick. Of that group, two-thirds said it was because they didn't have paid sick leave and needed the income.

"If we don't work we don't get paid," one anonymous Red Lobster worker told the Shift Project. "I worry that co-workers who have been in contact with a confirmed COVID-19 family member would still come to work."

Average hourly income for Red Lobster staff in 2021 was $13 an hour, including tips, Popular Information and More Perfect Union reported. In Shift Project's fall survey, 29% of Red Lobster employees said they'd struggled to pay essential bills over the past month.

"We live paycheck to paycheck," the employee said. "We can't sit at home without pay."

"Managers let employees work sick and do not send them home," another Red Lobster worker told the Shift Project. "Managers also won't let an employee call out sick, they insist they come in unless they find a replacement."

As well as a lack of access to paid sick leave, survey respondents cited being unable to find cover for their shift, worries about getting in trouble, and pressure from supervisors as reasons for showing up to work while they were ill.

The publications reported the restaurant chain directs staff who have to take unpaid sick leave to the RL Cares Employee Emergency Assistance Fund. This is funded by the staff, rather than the company itself: "Our employees voluntarily donate to the fund," Red Lobster says.

Red Lobster didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, but a spokesperson told Popular Information and More Perfect Union: "Red Lobster's paid time off policies are consistent with our industry, in which the vast majority of our workforce are hourly employees with flexible scheduling options. There are some states that have paid sick leave requirements, and where that is the case, we follow the law and honor and pay it.

"We take health and safety very seriously and have an Ill Employee Health Policy in place that is designed to keep both employees and our guests safe. No one is allowed to work sick. Employees who violate this policy are subject to disciplinary action, including termination of employment."

Survey finds oilsands environmental monitoring ineffective after 10 years

 Alberta doesn’t have a good grasp of the overall environmental impacts of the oilsands a decade after implementing monitoring that was supposed to provide it, internal government documents suggest.

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Suncor's base plant with upgraders in the oilsands in Fort McMurray, Alberta, on Monday June 13, 2017.

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

EDMONTON

In July, Alberta Environment and Parks surveyed dozens of scientists and other participants in the Oilsands Monitoring Program, a joint federal-provincial program that has run under various names since 2012 and is funded by an annual $50-million levy from industry. A copy of that survey was obtained by The Canadian Press.

Of the 112 people surveyed, 26 responded. They expressed concerns from a lack of overall direction to poor communication to an arbitrary and inadequate funding cap being gradually nibbled away by inflation.

“We still have significant concerns with the … program’s ability to develop a robust, world-class monitoring program as intended,” said a response from the Alberta Environmental Network, which has delegates on several of the program’s technical committees.

It points out that funding has remained unchanged since 2012 despite inflation, amounting to a nearly nine-per-cent cut.

“We know of no independent analysis suggesting $50 million is adequate,” the network said.

As a result, it says, crucial questions are going unanswered.

Despite the fact wetlands cover about a quarter of the oilsands area, funding for wetlands research was more than halved in 2021-22 after being cut two-thirds the previous year. Terrestrial monitoring, which looks into the status of plants and animals, was cut by two-thirds for the coming year after a 50 per cent cut last year.

The network said no research has been funded into the risk posed by industry’s toxic tailings ponds.

No one from Alberta Environment and Parks responded to a request for comment on the survey.

Most survey respondents reported there was little communication and co-ordination between different scientific groups.

“Communication in the (program) sucks,” one respondent wrote.

“It is clear that members of committees have no clear direction on the purpose and priorities of the program,” wrote another.

Several said the program gathered useful data, but did nothing with it.

“There were a significant number of work plans that included monitoring activities, but no analysis,” said one.

Most respondents said decisions on which research would be funded were inconsistent and came too late to prepare for that year’s field season.

“To fund an employee’s position one year but not the next, but possibly the year after that is poor management,” said one comment.

The survey did not include numerical breakdowns of its responses.

Mandy Olsgard, who represents Indigenous communities on several program committees, said in an interview that no overall plan guides research decisions. Instead, funds are granted based on proposals from individual researchers.

“We see arbitrary cuts to work plans or technical components that aren’t based on science,” she said. “It’s just trying to get to that ($50 million) number.

“It’s not to say the data’s not there. It just hasn’t been brought together … to say what the effect on the environment is. We don’t understand the cumulative effects of oilsands mining right now, full stop.”

Kelman Wieder is a biologist from Pennsylvania’s Villanova University who has been studying oilsands region wetlands for decades and has published several papers showing how development has affected them. His funding has been entirely cut.

“The approach is, let’s go out and collect some data, bottle-dipping or bug-counting or whatever, put those data into notebooks, stick it on a shelf and call it good,” he said.

Alberta’s monitoring is set up backwards, said Wieder.

“My approach would be let’s design the best program and see what it’s going to cost and see if the money’s there. And if the money’s not there, let’s go back and take a look at the design and see what we can do.

“That doesn’t seem to be the approach.”

He said Alberta seems to be trying to monitor its environment on the cheap.

“I have heard repeatedly that the goal … is to have a monitoring program that is quick, easy and cheap and can be done by people with minimal expertise. That’s just a bizarre set of goals.”

Wieder was firm when asked if the industry’s environmental impact is well understood.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Not even close.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 9, 2022.

Hate crimes trial in Arbery killing will put racism up front
By RUSS BYNUM

1 of 8

Ahmaud Arbery's mother Wanda Cooper-Jones, center, walks out of the Glynn County Courthouse surrounded by supporters after a judge sentenced Greg McMichael, his son, Travis McMichael, and a neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan to life in prison, Friday, Jan. 7, 2022, in Brunswick, Ga. The three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery were sentenced Friday to life in prison, with a judge denying any chance of parole for the father and son who armed themselves and initiated the deadly permute of the 25-year-old Black man. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)


BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Sentenced to life in prison for murder, the three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery will soon stand trial on federal hate crimes charges in which jurors will have to decide whether the slaying of the running Black man was motivated by racism.

The sentences imposed by a judge Friday in Glynn County Superior Court concluded the state of Georgia’s criminal case in the slaying of 25-year-old Arbery, in which a jury returned guilty verdicts the day before Thanksgiving.

A month from now, on Feb. 7, a federal judge has scheduled jury selection to begin in the three men’s second trial in U.S. District Court. And evidence of racism that state prosecutors chose not to present at the murder trial is expected to be front and center.

An indictment last year charged father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan with violating Arbery’s civil rights when they pursued the running man in pickup trucks and cut off his escape from their neighborhood. Bryan recorded cellphone video of the chase’s deadly end, when Travis McMichael blasted Arbery at close range with a shotgun.

The Feb. 23, 2020, killing just outside the port city of Brunswick became part of a greater national reckoning on racial injustice when the video leaked online two months later. Though an investigator testified at a pretrial court hearing that Bryan said he heard Travis McMichael utter a racist slur as Arbery lay dying in the street, state prosecutors never presented that information to the jury during the murder case.



That evidence should be key in the federal trial, where the McMichaels and Bryan are charged with targeting Arbery because he was Black.

At a hearing Friday, Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley sentenced both McMichaels to life in prison with no chance of parole. The judge sentenced Bryan to life with a possibility for parole once he’s served 30 years.

Despite those severe penalties, Arbery’s family said the hate crimes case remains important. At the time of his death, Arbery had enrolled at a technical college and was preparing to study to become an electrician like his uncles.

“They killed him because he was a Black man,” Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery, told reporters outside the Glynn County courthouse Friday.

Lee Merritt, an attorney for Arbery’s mother, said it’s important for federal case to expose racist motives behind the killing because “there is an issue of race taking place in this country. It has come front and center and it needs to be discussed.”

Georgia Bureau of Investigation Agent Richard Dial testified in June 2020, more than a year before the state trial, that Bryan told investigators he heard Travis McMichael say “f----ing n---er” after shooting Arbery. Attorneys for Travis McMichael have denied he made the statement.

State prosecutors and investigators never mentioned that during the murder trial. Georgia law doesn’t require establishing motive to convict someone of murder. It merely requires proving a victim was killed with malice or during the commission of another felony.

Regardless, issues of race loomed large in the murder trial over Arbery’s death. The McMichaels and Bryan weren’t charged with crimes in the Black man’s killing until the shooting video became public two month later.

“Today your son has made history, because we have people who are being held accountable for lynching a Black man in America,” Benjamin Crump, a civil attorney for Arbery’s family, told the slain man’s parents after the sentencing hearing.

Defense attorneys during the trial contended the men pursued Arbery because they reasonably believed he had been committing burglaries in the neighborhood. Travis McMichael took the witness stand to testify that he opened fire in self-defense after Arbery ran at him and tried to grab his shotgun.

“He and Greg McMichael thought they were helping their community, thought they were helping police catch someone,” said Robert Rubin, an attorney for Travis McMichael.

Defense attorneys said they planned to appeal the convictions for murder and other state crimes within 30 days.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley called the killing “callous” and noted that when Arbery fell bleeding in the street the McMichaels “turned their backs, to give a disturbing image, and they walked away.”

Biden’s low profile on Guantanamo rankles as prison turns 20

1 of 10

In this June 5, 2018 photo, reviewed by U.S. military officials, troops stand guard outside Camp Delta at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, in Cuba. The 20th anniversary of the first prisoners' arrival at the Guantanamo Bay detention center is on Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022. There are now 39 prisoners left. At its peak, in 2003, the detention center held nearly 680 prisoners. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Advocates for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center were optimistic when President Joe Biden took office. And they were relieved this summer after the U.S. released a prisoner for the first time in years. Many are now increasingly impatient.

In the months since that release, there have been few signs of progress in closing the notorious offshore prison on the U.S. base in Cuba. That has led to increased skepticism about Biden’s approach as the administration completes its first year and the detention center reaches a milestone Tuesday — the 20th anniversary of the first prisoners’ arrival.

“President Biden has stated his intention to close Guantanamo as a matter of policy but has not taken substantial steps toward closure,” said Wells Dixon, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has long taken a leading role in challenging the indefinite confinement without charge at the base

“There’s a lot of impatience and a lot of frustration among advocates and people who have been watching this,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of the security with the human rights program at Amnesty International USA.

Without a more concerted effort, those who want the center to close fear a repeat of what happened under President Barack Obama. Obama made closing Guantanamo a signature issue from his first days in office, but managed only to shrink it in the face of political opposition in Congress.

“We can’t forget what this country did 20 years ago and is continuing to do today,” Eviatar said. “This administration has a lot on its plate, certainly, but this is such an egregious human rights offense.”

There are 39 prisoners left. It’s the fewest since the detention center’s earliest days, when the initial groups, suspected of having a connection to al-Qaida or the Taliban, arrived on flights from Afghanistan — hooded, shackled and clad in orange jumpsuits — to what at the time was a sleepy U.S. outpost on the southeastern coast of Cuba.

Guantanamo became the focus of international outrage because of the mistreatment and torture of prisoners and the U.S. insistence that it could hold men indefinitely without charge for the duration of a war against al-Qaida that seemingly has no end. The critics grew to include Michael Lehnert, a now retired Marine Corps major general who was tasked with opening the detention center but came to believe that holding mostly low-level fighters without charge was counter to American values and interests.

“To me, the existence of Guantanamo is anathema to everything that we represent, and it needs to be closed for that reason,” Lehnert said.

At its peak, in 2003, the detention center held nearly 680 prisoners. President George W. Bush released more than 500 and Obama freed 197 before time ran out on his effort to whittle down the population.

President Donald Trump rescinded the Obama order to close Guantanamo, but largely ignored the place. He pledged during his first campaign to “load it up with some bad dudes” but never sent anyone there and said the annual cost of operating the detention center was “crazy,” at around $13 million per prisoner.

Of the remaining prisoners, 10 face trial by military commission in proceedings that have bogged down for years. They include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Two others still at Guantanamo have been sentenced and one of them, former Maryland resident Majid Khan, is expected to complete his sentence next month.

The other 27 include 13 who have been cleared for release, including eight under Biden who could now be returned to their homeland or resettled elsewhere. Two dozen have not been cleared and have never been charged, and likely never will be, a status that some Republicans continue to defend, including in a Senate hearing last month.

“We’re not fighting a crime. We’re fighting a war. I don’t want to torture anybody. I want to give them due process consistent with being at war, and, if necessary, I want to hold them as long as it takes to keep us safe or we believe that they’re no longer a threat,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy, said the National Security Council is “actively” working with the Defense, State and Justice departments and other agencies to reduce the population within restrictions imposed by Congress. The restrictions include a ban on returning prisoners to certain countries, including Yemen and Somalia, or sending any to the U.S., even for further imprisonment.

The official said the administration is committed to closing the detention center, an effort it “jump-started” after four years of inaction under Trump.

One sign of progress is the eight approved for release through a review process created under Obama. Under Trump, just one detainee was cleared and the only release was a Saudi sent back to his homeland as part of an earlier military commission plea deal.

Critics want the Biden administration to get busy repatriating or resettling the detainees who have been cleared and to restore a State Department unit devoted to the effort that was eliminated under Trump.

“Until I see some visible signs that the administration is going to do something about it, I am not heartened,” said Lehnert, the retired Marine Corps general. “If there is somebody in charge of closing Guantanamo, I have not talked to anybody that knows who they are.”

Advocates argue the administration could resolve the fate of the rest through plea agreements with those charged in the military commission cases and releasing the rest.

Biden’s low-key approach could be a smart strategy considering the political opposition encountered by Obama, argues Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York who with his students has represented 14 Guantanamo prisoners since 2005.

“President Biden appears to have learned from Obama’s missteps, transferring one prisoner and clearing many without being too loud about it and painting a target on his own back,” Kassem said. “Still, the administration must up the pace because, at the rate of one prisoner a year, it won’t come close to shuttering the prison.”

Sri Lanka 'technically bankrupt', seeks Chinese debt restructuring amid economic crisis

By KRISHAN FRANCIS 

(Associated Press) Jan 10 2022

Fertiliser at the centre of a dispute between Sri Lanka & China

A dispute between Sri Lanka and China is escalating, and it all centres around organic fertiliser.

The president of debt-ridden Sri Lanka has asked China for the restructuring of its loans and access to preferential credit for imports of essential goods, as the island nation struggles in the throes of its worst economic crisis, partly due to Beijing-financed projects that don’t generate revenue.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa told visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that it would be "a great relief to the country if attention could be paid on restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic,” according to a statement from his office.

Rajapaksa asked Wang for a concessionary credit facility for imports so that industries could run without disruption, the statement said. He also requested assistance to enable Chinese tourists to travel to Sri Lanka within a secure bubble.

Wang and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president's brother, later visited Colombo’s Port City, a reclaimed island developed with Chinese investment, where they opened a promenade and inaugurated the sailing of 65 boats to commemorate the 65 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

In his speech at the Port City on Sunday, Wang said a persistent and unchecked pandemic had made economic recovery difficult and the two countries must use the anniversary to work closer together.

He did not elaborate nor announce any relief measures.

Wang arrived in Sri Lanka on Saturday from the Maldives on the last leg of a multinational trip that also took him to Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros in East Africa.

ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, poses for media before his meeting with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka faces one of its worst economic crises, with foreign reserves down to around US$1.6 billion, barely enough for a few weeks of imports. It also has foreign debt obligations exceeding US$7b in 2022, including repayment of bonds worth US$500 million in January and US$1b in July.

The declining foreign reserves are partly blamed on infrastructure projects built with Chinese loans that don’t make money. China loaned money to build a seaport and airport in the southern Hambantota district, in addition to a wide network of roads.

Central Bank figures show that current Chinese loans to Sri Lanka total around US$3.38b, not including loans to state-owned businesses, which are accounted for separately and thought to be substantial.

“Technically we can claim we are bankrupt now,” said Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, principal researcher at the Point Pedro Institute of Development.

“When you have your net external foreign assets have been in the red, that means you are technically bankrupt.”

ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, left, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, center, inspect the Chinese funded sea reclamation Port City project in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

The situation has left households grappling with severe shortages. People wait in long lines to buy essential goods like milk powder, cooking gas and kerosene. Prices have increased sharply, and the Central Bank says the inflation rate rose to 12.1 per cent by the end of December from 9.9 per cent in November. Food inflation increased to over 22 per cent in the same period.

Because of a currency shortage, importers are unable to clear their cargo containing essentials and manufacturers are not able to buy raw materials from overseas.

Expatriate remittances have also fallen after the government ordered the mandatory conversion of foreign currency and exchange rate controls.

Ratings agency downgrades have resulted in Sri Lanka losing much of its borrowing power. In December, Fitch Ratings noted an increased probability of credit default.

The Central Bank has added a currency swap in Chinese currency worth US$1.5b to the reserves, but economists disagree whether it can be part of foreign reserves or not.

Wang’s visit has again highlighted the regional power struggle between China and India, Sri Lanka’s closest neighbour that considers the island part of its domain.

ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
A Chinese national who lives in Sri Lanka photographs the surroundings of Chinese funded sea reclamation Port City project during a ceremony held to mark the visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Before Wang spoke with Sri Lankan leaders, the top Indian diplomat in the country on Sunday morning inaugurated a train service from a station near Colombo to the north using compartments provided through an Indian loan facility.

An Indian embassy statement quoted Vinod Jacob recalling “the priority placed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on ties with Sri Lanka in line with the ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy.”

He said that a recent statement by India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar that India would support Sri Lanka in difficult times was an affirmation of that policy in the current context.

“We can see Sri Lanka being saddled between India and China for a potential bailout package,” said political analyst Ranga Kalansooriya.

“India is dragging its feet for some time while China is trying to manipulate the situation to the maximum,” he added.

China considers Sri Lanka to be a critical link in its Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative. Relations were recently strained over a shipment of Chinese fertiliser that allegedly contained harmful bacteria, and business agreements that were inked with China’s rivals, the United States and India.

Kalansooriya said that China was unlikely to bail Sri Lanka out of its economic crisis. “They will look for more business opportunities, fishing in the troubled waters of economic doldrums in the country,” he said.

Bukharin on State Capitalism and Imperialism - Leftcom
https://www.leftcom.org/.../bukharin-on-state-capitalism-and-imperialism
2020-08-21 · As we have already noted, for Bukharin, imperialism and state capitalism were linked to militarism and the inevitability of more wars. As he says in the article which follows, “Imperialism, militarism, state capitalism – this holy trinity of capitalist barbarism must be blown apart by the proletariat”.
 Imperialism was written in the first half of 1916 and published in mid-1917; Imperialism and World Economy was not published until several months later, but it was …

Ossinsky on Bukharin's Imperialism and the World …
https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2019-09-11/ossinsky-on-bukharin-s...
2019-09-11 · For Bukharin the key features of the new phase of capitalism were imperialism and state capitalism. Lenin borrowed freely from Bukharin in his own “popular outline” in Imperialism – the Highest Stage of Capitalism but did not see that state capitalism was not a stage on the way to socialism. Bukharin made it quite clear in several places that for him state capitalism …

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism ...
https://socialistworker.org/2008/12/02/imperialism-the-highest-stage...
2008-12-02 · According to Bukharin, imperialism is the result of two conflicting tendencies in modern capitalism. Competition tends to give rise to the concentration and centralization of capital, and as this...

Nikolai Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/index.htm
World Economy and the "National" State. Part 3 - Imperialism as the Reproduction of Capitalist Competition on a Larger Scale. 9. Imperialism as an Historic Category 10. Reproduction of the Process of Concentration and Centralisation on a World Scale 11. Means of Competitive Struggle, and State Power. Part 4 - The Future of Imperialism and World ...

Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State - Marxists
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1915/state.htm
Thus, state capitalism is the completed form of a state-capitalist

Stay home or work sick? Omicron poses a conundrum
By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO and DEE-ANN DURBIN


FILE - A medical technician performs a nasal swab test on a motorist queued up in a line at a COVID-19 testing site near All City Stadium Dec. 30, 2021, in southeast Denver. Millions of workers whose jobs don’t provide paid sick days are having to choose between their health and their paycheck as the omicron variant of COVID-19 rages across the nation. While many companies instituted more robust sick leave policies at the beginning of the pandemic, those have since been scaled back with the rollout of the vaccines, even though the omicron variant has managed to evade them. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

As the raging omicron variant of COVID-19 infects workers across the nation, millions of those whose jobs don’t provide paid sick days are having to choose between their health and their paycheck.

While many companies instituted more robust sick leave policies at the beginning of the pandemic, some of those have since been scaled back with the rollout of the vaccines, even though omicron has managed to evade the shots. Meanwhile, the current labor shortage is adding to the pressure of workers having to decide whether to show up to their job sick if they can’t afford to stay home.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” said Daniel Schneider, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. “As staffing gets depleted because people are out sick, that means that those that are on the job have more to do and are even more reluctant to call in sick when they in turn get sick.

Low-income hourly workers are especially vulnerable. Nearly 80% of all private sector workers get at least one paid sick day, according to a national compensation survey of employee benefits conducted in March by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But only 33% of workers whose wages are at the bottom 10% get paid sick leave, compared with 95% in the top 10%.

RELATED COVERAGE
– A glance at who's getting paid sick days

A survey this past fall of roughly 6,600 hourly low-wage workers conducted by Harvard’s Shift Project, which focuses on inequality, found that 65% of those workers who reported being sick in the last month said they went to work anyway. That’s lower than the 85% who showed up to work sick before the pandemic, but much higher than it should be in the middle of a public health crisis. Schneider says it could get worse because of omicron and the labor shortage.

What’s more, Schneider noted that the share of workers with paid sick leave before the pandemic barely budged during the pandemic — 50% versus 51% respectively. He further noted many of the working poor surveyed don’t even have $400 in emergency funds, and families will now be even more financially strapped with the expiration of the child tax credit, which had put a few hundred dollars in families’ pockets every month.

The Associated Press interviewed one worker who started a new job with the state of New Mexico last month and started experiencing COVID-like symptoms earlier in the week. The worker, who asked not to be named because it might jeopardize their employment, took a day off to get tested and two more days to wait for the results.

A supervisor called and told the worker they would qualify for paid sick days only if the COVID test turns out to be positive. If the test is negative, the worker will have to take the days without pay, since they haven’t accrued enough time for sick leave.

“I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting my co-workers,” said the worker, who is still awaiting the results and estimates it will cost $160 per day of work missed if they test negative. “Now I wish I just would’ve gone to work and not said anything.”

A Trader Joe’s worker in California, who also asked not to be named because they didn’t want to risk their job, said the company lets workers accrue paid time off that they can use for vacations or sick days. But once that time is used up, employees often feel like they can’t afford to take unpaid days.

“I think many people now come to work sick or with what they call ‘allergies’ because they feel they have no other choice,” the worker said.

Trader Joe’s offered hazard pay until last spring, and even paid time off if workers had COVID-related symptoms. But the worker said those benefits have ended. The company also no longer requires customers to wear masks in all of its stores.

Other companies are similarly curtailing sick time that they offered earlier in the pandemic. Kroger, the country’s biggest traditional grocery chain, is ending some benefits for unvaccinated salaried workers in an attempt to compel more of them to get the jab as COVID-19 cases rise again. Unvaccinated workers enrolled in Kroger’s health care plan will no longer be eligible to receive up to two weeks paid emergency leave if they become infected — a policy that was put into place last year when vaccines were unavailable.

Meanwhile, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, is slashing pandemic-related paid leave in half — from two weeks to one — after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced isolation requirements for people who don’t have symptoms after they test positive.

Workers have received some relief from a growing number of states. In the last decade, 14 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or ballot measures requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

On the federal front, however, the movement has stalled. Congress passed a law in the spring of 2020 requiring most employers to provide paid sick leave for employees with COVID-related illnesses. But the requirement expired on Dec. 31 of that same year. Congress later extended tax credits for employers who voluntarily provide paid sick leave, but the extension lapsed at the end of September, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

In November, the U.S. House passed a version of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan that would require employers to provide 20 days of paid leave for employees who are sick or caring for a family member. But the fate of that bill is uncertain in the Senate.

“We can’t do a patchwork sort of thing. It has to be holistic. It has to be meaningful,” said Josephine Kalipeni, executive director at Family Values @ Work, a national network of 27 state and local coalitions helping to advocate for such policies as paid sick days.

The U.S. is one of only 11 countries worldwide without any federal mandate for paid sick leave, according to a 2020 study by the World Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

On the flipside are small business owners like Dawn Crawley, CEO of House Cleaning Heroes, who can’t afford to pay workers when they are out sick. But Crawley is trying to help in other ways. She recently drove one cleaner who didn’t have a car to a nearby testing site. She later bought the cleaner some medicine, orange juice and oranges.

“If they are out, I try to give them money but at the same time my company has got to survive,” Crawley said. ″If the company goes under, no one has work.”

Even when paid sick leave is available, workers aren’t always made aware of it.

Ingrid Vilorio, who works at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Castro Valley, California, started feeling sick last March and soon tested positive for COVID. Vilorio alerted a supervisor, who didn’t tell her she was eligible for paid sick leave — as well as supplemental COVID leave — under California law.

Vilorio said her doctor told her to take 15 days off, but she decided to take just 10 because she had bills to pay. Months later, a co-worker told Vilorio she was owed sick pay for the time she was off. Working through Fight for $15, a group that works to unionize fast food workers, Vilorio and her colleagues reported the restaurant to the county health department. Shortly after that, she was given back pay.

But Vilorio, who speaks Spanish, said through a translator that problems persist. Workers are still getting sick, she said, and are often afraid to speak up.

“Without our health, we can’t work,” she said. “We’re told that we’re front line workers, but we’re not treated like it.”

___

D’Innocenzio reported from New York and Durbin reported from Detroit.

FILM
Babelsberg: World's oldest large-scale film studio

Many of cinema's greatest names worked in the legendary Babelsberg film studio, located just outside Berlin. In early 2022, it was acquired by a US investment firm.



The birth of a film studio

While independent US producers were already establishing their studios in Hollywood, German filmmakers were shooting in the center of Berlin. Because the hot spotlights kept triggering fire alarms, they were asked to find a more remote location. Film pioneer Guido Seeber picked new premises in Potsdam-Babelsberg, at the southwest outskirts of Berlin, where a first studio was built in 1911.

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