Starbucks Gives The Middle Finger To Trenton, New Jersey

By Ken Bank

March 21, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.



Predatory Capitalism Triumphs Over People And Community

There is a large sign over the Delaware River Bridge connecting New Jersey’s state capital with Pennsylvania that says “Trenton Makes, The World Takes”. When Starbucks gets through putting the screws to the people of Trenton, they’ll have to remake the sign to “Trenton Makes, Starbucks Takes”.

For several years Starbucks was “taking” lots of money made by the people of Trenton at the store located near the State Capitol Building. It is a very lucrative and profitable location for contributing substantial revenue to the parent company, especially from state employees, politicians and visitors. Starbucks has a virtual monopoly from that location charging exorbitant prices for their coffee and other products with very little competition.

Despite “taking” lots of money from the community, apparently the profits generated from the Trenton Starbucks was not enough to satisfy the greed of Starbucks executives and investors. They decided that the resources for operating at that location could be put to more profitable use in wealthier communities.

Without notice or consultation with community leaders or local officials, the company abruptly announced that it would close the Trenton store without any explanation or reasoning why they chose to do so. The lack of communicating to responsible persons whatever concerns the company had about operating the store at that location clearly indicates that profitability takes precedence over the needs and welfare of the surrounding community.

When Starbucks opened their Trenton store several years ago it was heavily promoted as a “community store” that would service the needs of the community by over-charging lower income residents for coffee and pastries. The store was also hiring unemployed labor from the surrounding neighborhood as a gesture of corporate “goodwill” and service to the community. Starbucks heavily promoted and advertised the opening of their store, along with local politicians and community leaders taking advantage of the free publicity.

Though the store operated profitably for several years, it did not generate as many profits to capitalist investors as other stores in wealthier communities. Evidently, the novelty of a “community store” servicing the needs and welfare of the local community was wearing off, and to the financial predators managing the company’s operations it became less relevant to the goal of maximizing profits for investors.

Despite its highly publicized “commitment” to public welfare and community service, the company quietly and quickly took steps to close the store without notice to its workers or the community. They did issue a public statement in March that the store would close at the end of the month. Hardly adequate time for laid off employees to adjust and find jobs elsewhere.

While the corporate suits with their MBAs were making decisions at Starbucks based on the financial interests of predatory capitalism, they totally ignored or misunderstood human behavior and public perception. Almost immediately after the store closing was announced, public reaction was swift and furious. The idea of a multi-billion dollar corporate giant closing the store in a distressed community and laying off dozens of residents from a poverty-stricken neighborhood sent shock waves that were felt all over the local news media.

Of course, the same politicians and community leaders that welcomed and praised Starbucks for its commitment to public welfare and community service a few years earlier were now condemning Starbucks for prioritizing investor greed over people. This was especially true about the Mayor of Trenton but also the local Congressional Representative, even the Governor of New Jersey Phil Murphy, getting involved and demanding that Starbucks reconsider its decision.

Given all the bad publicity that may do more damage to company profits than keeping the Trenton store open for business there is still a chance that Starbucks will change its policy. But over the years Starbucks has gained a reputation for notoriety when it comes to mistreating its employees and treating them merely as the means to maximize investor returns.

Until recently Starbucks was very aggressive in opposing any attempt by its workers to join a union. Despite numerous violations of established fair labor practices and government sanctions against Starbucks for exploiting and abusing its employees, the company continued to wage an unrelenting campaign in opposition to collective bargaining.

However, as with all the bad publicity generated by its decision to close the “community store” in Trenton, the corporate MBAs at Starbucks are beginning to rethink whether their anti-union, unfair labor practices are not worth the loss of public support and goodwill necessary to maintain profitability. In recent weeks Starbucks has begun the process of bargaining with unions representing their employees to establish what may become a model for the rest of the hospitality industry.

Just as Starbucks is changing its attitude about collective bargaining, there is still a chance, however faint, that they may reconsider and keep their Trenton store open for business. Even predatory capitalists at Starbucks have to recognize that bad publicity does not make for good profitability.

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Ken Bank is a semi-retired business executive, part-time playwright, and freelance writer with masters degrees in business and history. He lives in New Jersey and is active in the local Democratic Party organization in support of progressive policies.

 

“Our Big Push Was for Union Democracy and a Plan to Win”

An Interview with the Amazon Labour Union Democratic Reform Caucus

By Sultana Hossain, Connor Spencer , Luigi Morris

 March 21, 2024

Source: Left Voice

Two years after the historic victory at JFK8, Amazon workers voted in a referendum in their union. They want to hold new elections and revise the constitution, as part of a struggle to make ALU more democratic and militant. Left Voice spoke with two organizers to discuss the struggle in ALU.

In 2022, Amazon workers on Staten Island made history. The JFK8 warehouse in New York voted to unionize, forming the first U.S. union in the company’s history — an independent union known as the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), representing over 8,000 workers.

Since then, Amazon has been intransigently refusing to start contract negotiations. Union-busting tactics, such as the persistent firing of pro-union activists, continue at JFK8 and other facilities. Amazon even filed a case arguing that the National Labor Relations Board, the agency that enforces labor law, is “unconstitutional.”

Two years after the historic victory, the JFK8 warehouse remains Amazon’s only unionized workplace in the United States. ALU lost the elections at LDJ5 in Staten Island and ALB1 near Albany. These results were a product of the intense anti-union activities, but also a reflection of ALU’s approach under the leadership of Chris Smalls.

Under Smalls, the ALU pursued a strategy that relied on a combination of factors: the hatred towards Jeff Bezos, the huge impact of the ALU victory, the image of Chris Smalls, and the support of progressive Democrats. But without rank-and-file organizing, worker’s democracy, direct action, and class independence, it is not possible to win against a trillion-dollar company.

A sector of workers have been expressing discontent about the direction that the new union is taking, especially regarding democracy and militancy. The ALU Democratic Reform Caucus (ALUDRC) called for a referendum about electing a new leadership and revising the constitution. According to ALUDRC, a majority voted in favor of holding the referendum, which is expected to happen in the middle of the year. 

An example that many workers look to is the Amazon Labor Union-KCVG Constitution that “was drafted and democratically adopted by hundreds of KCVG workers, following input from more than 500 workers.”

To hear more about the referendum and the fight for a more democratic and militant union, we spoke with Connor Spencer and Sultana Hossain, who are members of the Democratic Reform Caucus. 

Connor is a founding member of the ALU and is fighting to be reinstated after being fired in December 2023 for organizing. Sultana was also recently fired for her union organizing after four years of working for Amazon.

What led the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus to call for a referendum to have internal union elections?

Connor: Shortly after our election in 2022 at JFK8, ALU kind of stumbled and was failing to make progress. We had serious disagreements with the direction the union was going: we thought that organizing wasn’t being done on a level that needed to be done, and the structure of the union was severely flawed. 

There were a lot of internal disputes that resulted in the forming of a reform caucus within ALU, which is comprised of most of the original ALU organizers and a lot of rank-and-file leaders from the building, like Sultana, who originally didn’t really want to be part of ALU because of the way that it was representing itself to the workers. When the reform effort came about, it attracted a lot of people like Sultana. Our big push was that there needed to be more democracy in the union — workers need to be in control of the decision-making, there needs to be more transparency, and we need a credible plan to win. And that was the platform of our caucus. 

We also wanted what was originally promised during the campaign: that there’d be elections for the leadership positions in ALU. Right after the JFK8 victory, when all the leadership was interim, the promise was that they would have to fight for their positions again in another election with a much larger pool of voters than the first time. But that never happened. 

Eventually, we did reach a settlement with our union’s executive board that created this framework for how we could have elections. And the first part of that process was to have a referendum among the JFK8 workers. The question was: should ALU have officer elections? The choices were yes or no. We just had that referendum last week, and a majority of the people who participated voted yes, in favor of having elections. Now we will have elections in June or July, depending on certain logistical barriers. 

Why is it important to put up this fight for basic union democracy?

Sultana: I think the core of the caucus, in our ideology, is that union democracy is very important. We believe the rank and file should have a say in everything that happens in the union. Without union democracy, you can’t really serve the interests of the members. Meanwhile, you also don’t have a framework for fighting corruption within the union or ousting self-serving officials. So it’s important to have union democracy. It’s everything that this caucus stands for and fights for. This referendum is a testament to that. We gave workers, the members of ALU, an opportunity to say whether or not they want democracy in this union, and we got an overwhelmingly supportive vote. 

That is something we have been aware was the case at JFK8. You know, we had hundreds of people sign on to a petition last summer on whether to have these elections. So this referendum is just a testament to what the rank and file believes in general, which is that we should all have a say in what happens in our union if the union is meant to represent us.

How is this process to democratize the union connected to the fight for a contract?

Connor: Well, I think that one of the things we have to address is basically what our contract fight with Amazon is going to look like, and what kind of contracts we’re going to try to get from the company. And all those demands, those have to be surveyed from the members. Nobody can just make those up for people. We have to figure out what people feel strongly about. So that’s a democratic process. 

As far as creating pressure to put on the company to get those demands, we’re going to have to engage in collective action. That’s also democratic process, as far as planning what kind of action people want to take, when to start it, and how long to do it. These are all decisions that need to be made by the group of workers that’s participating. It can’t come from the top down. So basically, every aspect of what we do, we have to figure out how to do it collectively, how to do it in a way that all the people participating can have a say. So that means that whatever we do around collective action and collective bargaining, there are a series of democratic steps that need to happen to make those things possible.

Sultana: A lot of the organizing that was required leading up to this referendum was letting workers know that in no way does speaking up for union democracy take away from the contract fight. That argument is something we had to dispel as part of our outreach — [we had to argue] that union democracy is essential to win a strong contract. 

There have been moments where workers have been deterred from being involved in this referendum because they think it’s taking away from the contract fight if we’re focusing on electing union leadership. But it’s been important to us to emphasize that we will never win a strong, fair contract without true union democracy. They go hand in hand; you can’t have one without the other. So that’s what we’ve been saying in our conversations with workers. Organizing involves thousands and thousands of conversations, and fighting misinformation, and educating the rank and file on their rights. And that’s what we do: educating workers on their rights.

Can ALU become again a source of inspiration for the millions of workers who want to fight for better working conditions and union democracy?

Connor: It’s obviously important that we have a successful union fight at Amazon. Our win in 2022 galvanized so many people. A lot of the independent unions that popped up — Trader Joe’s, for instance — saw our win as inspiration. Amazon is the country’s second largest employer, probably soon to be the first. So winning a good contract and getting good working conditions at Amazon is going to be like the tide that lifts all boats. It’s going to show that it’s possible for everyone else. But we also want what we are doing here to be the model of how it can be done in other places.

In order to take on Amazon, we need to basically put an unprecedented amount of pressure on this company. It’s a trillion-dollar company, and the organizing we have to do is going to have to operate at such a high level — we need a high degree of worker involvement and engagement. And there’s simply just no way to do that without forming an organization where the workers are involved in the decision-making process. There’s no top-down union structure that’s going to be able to take on Amazon. That’s our position on what kind of organizing needs to happen.

The fight right now in America with the working class is basically against large corporations like Amazon. It’s Amazon. It’s Starbucks. It’s Trader Joe’s. It’s SpaceX. So in order to take them on, it requires a lot of organization — nationwide campaigns and strike action in a lot of cases. In our view, the only way to achieve that level of organization is through true rank-and-file democracy.

The Sharpeville Massacre And The Persistent Problem Of White Settler Colonialism In South Africa

By Masilo Lepuru

March 21, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

History Stack - The Sharpville massacre, a shooting of South African police began on a crowd of black protesters. Flickr



There is a dialectical relation between colonisation and decolonisation. This dialectical relation is dyadic and triadic. Decolonisation as a process of the undoing of colonisation seeks to negate colonisation. So, in terms of the dyadic dialectical relation the confrontational antagonism between the forces of decolonisation and the forces of colonisation must result in the survival of either the forces of decolonisation or the forces of colonisation. The two antagonistic forces cannot reach a higher unity beyond what they represent. But in terms of the triadic dialectical relation, the forces of decolonisation which embody the antithesis to the thesis in the form of the forces of colonisation can reach a higher negative or positive unity. A negative higher unity which continues to benefit the forces of colonisation is neo-colonialism as formulated by Frantz Fanon and Kwame Nkrumah. A positive higher unity which is in the interest of the forces of decolonisation can take the form of a nonracial society as envisioned by the Azanian political tradition of Robert Sobukwe and Steve Biko in the form of Azanian nonracialism. This Azanian nonracialism is captured by Sobukwe’s metaphor of the African tree and Biko’s African table.

The conservative forces of colonisation which seek to preserve white supremacy are confronted and defeated by the revolutionary forces of decolonisation which pursues the destruction of white power and the restoration of African power. Upon the successful defeat of the forces of colonisation, the triumphant forces of decolonisation seek to integrate the former forces of colonisation on the terms of African power in the form of African culture and democracy. The forces of decolonisation as the numerical majority seek to dissolve the former forces of colonisation by assimilating them as part of the forces of decolonisation. In the case of the negative higher unity of “post-Apartheid South Africa” the forces of colonisation continue to assimilate some forces of decolonisation. This negative assimilation is facilitated by the embrace of negative dialectics by some forces who claim to pursue decolonisation. These treacherous forces internalise the governing value system of the forces of colonisation. Based on this internalisation they discover contradictions in the totality of colonisation. These contradictions can take the form of the proclamation of the principle of equality which is denied to these treacherous forces of decolonisation as “civilized natives”. Instead of destroying the totality with its contradictions, these traitorous forces seek to expose these contradictions and appeal to the forces of colonisation to eliminate them. Naturally, the forces of colonisation reject the appeal until its acceptance is also conducive to the maintenance of white supremacy, in terms of what Derick Bell calls “interest convergence theory”. The 1994 moment marks the triumph of “interest convergence” which resulted in the negative higher unity on the basis of government succession. A black government which serves the interests of the forces of colonisation was allowed to operate in a territory still dispossessed by the forces of colonisation since 1652. The authentic forces of decolonisation failed to negate the forces of colonisation on the basis of State succession because of the connivance of the traitorous forces which benefited through “negotiations” with forces of colonisation. Thus, a positive higher unity in the form of a post-conquest Azania as envisioned by Sobukwe through his African tree metaphor failed to emerge since 1994. This in a nutshell, is the dialectic of settler colonialism and liberation in conquered Azania.

Decolonisation in general entails the process of the undoing of colonisation. Colonisation in conquered Azania fundamentally entailed the dispossession of the land of the natives by settlers. This is because while colonisation can take another form, in “South Africa” it took the form of white settler colonisation. The “historical native” who is indigenous to the land since time immemorial, was through immense violence of conquest in the form of a race war, converted into an “ontological native”. The racist political ontology of white settler colonisation attempted to reduce the historical native to a racist “invention of the kaffir” which is similar to the racist “invention of the negro” in the United States of America as theorised by Cedric Robinson. Jan Van Riebeek captured this moment of “inventive violence” by stating that when the historical natives (the Khoi and San people as Indigenous people of Azania) sued for peace during the wars of conquest in the late 1600s, he informed them that “their land was justly won through a defensive warfare and that the Dutch settlers intend to retain it”. This is how these Dutch settlers became “the defenders of the land” they did not bring from Europe. The “just winning of land through a defensive warfare and the intention to keep it” is what we call “the Van Riebeek doctrine”. This doctrine which embodies the primal violence of white settler colonisation resulted in the dyadic antagonism between the “defenders of the land” (Dutch settlers) and the “restorers of the land” (the Indigenous people).

White settler colonisation entails the staging of the primal scene between the “defenders of the land” and the “restorers of the land”. The fateful date of the 21st of March 1960 marks the confrontation between these “defenders and restorers”. It is important to note that the PAC which represented the “restorers of the land” hence the slogan “Izwe Lethu”, was launched on the 6th of April 1959. The horrible date of the 6th of April 1652 marks the moment of the emergence of the “Van Riebeek doctrine”. According to Van Riebeek the historical natives such as the Khoi and San people are not human but are “stinking dogs”. Thus, to name the 21st of March 1960 as “Human rights day” is to indulge in escapist historical revisionism. The Apartheid regime which massacred the historical natives on the 21st of March 1960 wanted to reaffirm the “Van Riebeek doctrine”. The Indigenous people were massacred not because they were armed but because in the racist eyes of the children of Van Riebeek they were “stinking dogs” which were challenging the “defenders of the land” (Dutch settlers). The confrontation at Sharpeville had nothing to do with human rights since according to the children of Van Riebeek, the historical natives had no rights which they were willing to respect.

At the core of the Sharpeville encounter was the antagonism between the settlers as the “defenders of the land” in terms of the “Van Riebeek doctrine” and the natives as the “restores of the land” in terms of the struggle for national liberation. Eye-witness accounts make it clear that the “restorers of the land” made the PAC signs of “Izwe Lethu”. It is this sense that the PAC under Sobukwe was challenging the “Van Riebeek doctrine” on the 21st of March 1960. Indeed “memory is a weapon” as Don Mattera argued. From the 6th of April 1652 to the 6th of April 1959 and the 21st of March 1960 we have come full circle regarding the antagonism between the forces of colonisation and the forces of decolonisation. Since colonisation in the form of white settler colonisation fundamentally entails the dispossession of the land on which the white settlers settle themselves at the expense of the those who are native to it, decolonisation should of necessity involve the de-settlement of these white settlers. It is in this sense that in terms of the dyadic dialectic of liberation, white settlers never survive true decolonisation. So, how should the “restorers of the land” (Indigenous people) commemorate the 21st of March 1960? They must confront the “Van Riebeek doctrine” and the “defenders of the land”(white settlers) on the basis of the PAC’s battle-cry of “one settler, one bullet”.

Finland’s Right-Wing Government Is Trying to Crush Labor

By Toivo Haimi

March 21, 2024

Source: Jacobin


Finnish Government - Hallitusneuvottelut 9.5.2023. Flickr.

Proposed labor reforms in Finland have sparked strikes, shutting down everything from ports to kindergartens. The right-wing government refuses to negotiate in its drive to dismantle the Finnish model of collective bargaining.

For the past two centuries, Helsinki’s Senate Square has been a symbol of academic, clerical, and government power in Finland. The main campus of the University of Helsinki lies on the western side, and the Government Palace, housing the Cabinet Office, on the east; overlooking the square from the north are the facade and green domes of Helsinki Cathedral.

This February 1, Senate Square saw some thirteen thousand striking workers and their supporters assemble in the midday winter sun, to protest against Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government, a coalition of center-right and far-right parties. A nationwide day of action had been called by SAK and STTK, the largest confederations of Finnish trade unions. Some three hundred thousand workers, from lorry drivers and electricians to kindergarten teachers and white-collar office workers, across the country were on strike.

A month and a half later, the standoff between the trade unions and the Finnish government is ongoing. As of mid-March, seven thousand dockworkers and industrial workers are on strike, grinding the country’s maritime exports and some imports to a standstill.

Even beyond the stoppages themselves, tensions have escalated more widely. Forestry conglomerates Stora Enso and UPM have stopped paying wages to their employees because their products cannot be exported, even though they are not on strike. The unions call this an illegal lockout.

This action is severe — but so are the issues, claims Turja Lehtonen, the vice chair of the Industrial Union. With two hundred thousand members, the Industrial Union is Finland’s biggest. And Lehtonen is surely right to say that the stakes are extremely high for the labor movement. In a sense, the current strikes are a make-or-break moment. If the government succeeds, its reforms will swing the balance of power in workplaces and society away from workers and their representatives and toward business owners and shareholders.

Before the current administration, political strike action against a government was rare in Finland. But provocations by the current administration have made it increasingly common. Indeed, the current government, which took office last June, has already inspired more politically motivated industrial action than all Finnish governments from 1991 to 2023 combined. What’s going on?
Swinging Rightward

In Finland’s general election of April 2023, voters swept the center-left coalition government of Prime Minister Sanna Marin from power. Finnish right-wing parties — namely Orpo’s center-right National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) and Riikka Purra’s radical-right Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset) gained a combined ninety-four seats in the country’s two-hundred-seat parliament.

The theme that dominated the election campaign was Finland’s national debt. The Right claimed that Marin’s government had mismanaged the country’s finances and taken on an irresponsible amount of borrowing.

While it is true that the national debt increased under the Left’s watch, Marin’s government faced two crises unprecedented in their scale since World War II: the COVID-19 pandemic and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Both crises were significant shocks to the national economy and required debt-driven government investment to keep the economy up and running. Nevertheless, the Right argued that spending was out of control, and that drastic budget cuts were now required to keep the debt manageable.

After the election, the large right-wing parties teamed up with the smaller conservative Christian Democrats and the liberal Swedish People’s Party to form a new government with a thin majority of nine seats. The government was sworn in last June 20, after eleven weeks of prolonged negotiations.

When the new government announced its policy program, it was immediately met with resistance by the Left and the unions. The government declared that it would make it easier for bosses to sack employees (though protections are already weaker than the norm for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), abolish legally mandated sick pay for workers’ first day of illness (thus encouraging the ill to come into work), and restrict workers’ rights to political strikes.

Another proposal is to devolve more collective bargaining to the local, company level. This would mean that in the future, every company could negotiate its own collective agreement, clearing a path for the end of multiemployer, sectoral collective bargaining. This has ground the gears of the trade unions because it would undermine the national collective agreements.

Finland does not have a minimum wage law, but sector-wide and universal collective agreements have long been a backbone of Finnish trade unionism. Universal collective agreements ensure fair wages and decent working conditions for all workers, even if their own workplace is not organized.

Furthermore, the government is planning to legislate an “export-driven” model for collective bargaining. If implemented, this reform would effectively set a ceiling for wage increases. This would favor workers in export businesses, such as forestry and mechanical engineering. The Orpo administration and employers’ federations have argued that Finland’s economy cannot withstand higher wage increases for workers in the public sector vis-à-vis the exporting industries. The government also argues that the export-driven model would boost economic competitiveness.

The cap on wage increases would make it practically impossible for workers in industries such as service and care to bargain collectively for better pay rises than those in the exporting industries.

Finland also has one of the most segregated labor markets in the developed world: women work disproportionately in the service sector while men dominate the exporting industries. The trade unions and the main left-wing opposition parties have poignantly dubbed the government’s model a cap on wage increases for women.

These policies, combined with a wholesale slashing of unemployment benefits and social security, were straight from the playbook of the employers’ organizations, who generously financed the campaigns of the right-wing parties in the election. It is worth noting that these policies received very little attention during the election campaign, and some of them were even directly opposed by the Finns Party.

Immigrants in Finland are now facing a double whammy from the government. First, it is making coming to the country and gaining citizenship more difficult. Second, those immigrant workers who are already in Finland are going to suffer more than the average Finn, since they work disproportionately in the service sector, where workers tend to rely more on social security to supplement their wages. The Orpo-Purra government also plans to loosen regulations on collective bargaining, exposing immigrant workers to exploitation and wage theft. It further intends to establish a separate system of social security for immigrants — a proposal incompatible with Finland’s constitution.

The government argues that there is no alternative, and that its policies are absolutely necessary in order to cut the country’s deficit and to regain competitiveness for the Finnish economy. However, this is mostly a pretense: the policies now pursued by the Orpo-Purra government fulfill long-standing dreams of Finnish big business. As historian Maiju Wuokko has pointed out, the employers’ federation EK has argued for similar policies for decades, regardless of the economic cycle.
Unions Out of the Way

Finland’s trade union movement has traditionally been very strong. More than 75 percent of those currently working or looking for work are members of trade unions. This makes the labor movement a significant force in society and a voice to be heard when determining labor policy.

In the past, legislation concerning work had been determined in tripartite negotiations between the trade unions, the government, and the employers’ organizations. The tripartite system was trashed in the 2010s, when the employers’ organizations deemed it outdated and unilaterally broke away from it.

Big business in Finland hoped it could win more by transferring power from the tripartite negotiations to governments and parliament. The logic seems to have been that if the employers could influence future governments by financing the election campaigns of the right-wing parties, businesses could get more favorable policies from right-wing governments than they ever could through negotiations.

Since then, right-wing governments in Finland have taken efforts to strip the unions of their political power. The previous right-wing government introduced the last of the tripartite collective agreements, the so-called “competitiveness pact,” in 2015. It was met with widespread resistance and large protests in 2015, but eventually the unions folded and signed the pact. As a result, working hours were increased by twenty-four hours a year without extra pay, and holiday allowances for public sector employees were slashed by 30 percent.

In parliament, the center-left Social Democratic Party supported the pact, whereas the more radical Left Alliance (Vasemmistoliitto) voted against it. The willingness of the trade unions to comply with the government was met with some contempt by those on the Left of Finnish politics, who saw it as a surrender.

This time, the unions would not be so compliant. When the Orpo-Purra government announced its program amidst many scandals, trade unions swiftly mobilized a campaign of their own against the government. This campaign started with protests and walkouts, and gradually escalated toward mass demonstrations and strikes, the largest of which was in the beginning of February, when thirteen thousand demonstrators packed Helsinki’s Senate Square.

The trade unions chose a method of gradual escalation. the fir’t wave of protests included workplace meetings and walkouts. The second phase had one-day strikes and demonstrations. As of March 2023, the protests are in their sixth wave. In between every phase, the unions paused industrial action to give the government an opportunity to negotiate.

Has the scale of the mobilization been impressive? Yes. Still, it is a disappointment to those who remember past protests, such as those against the previous right-wing government and its “competitiveness pact.” In 2015, over thirty thousand protesters showed up to resist the government. Compared to that, this year’s protests look rather timid.

It is worth mentioning that it is not, nor has it been the unions’ intention to topple the legitimately elected government. They simply want the government to negotiate with them about its policies that directly concern the well-being of workers and their families.

The Right’s counterargument is that the people had already had their say in the general election — and that the government can do whatever it pleases, since it has the support of a majority in parliament.

In the past six months, the strikes have caused roughly €1 billion worth of damage to the Finnish economy. This is significant, but not disastrous for a country with an annual GDP of €279 billion. Despite this, Prime Minister Orpo has repeatedly said that the government will not budge and that the labor reforms will be implemented in full. No negotiations have been started with the unions. Government politicians have stressed that the reforms will be driven through parliament regardless of the unions’ industrial action. This means that the current standoff is not only a policy dispute: it is a test on whether trade unions still have enough strength and popular support to influence policy.
Can the Unions Win?

The protests and strikes against the Finnish government’s policies have gone on and off since September, with no end in sight.

There are two ways this can end. Either the government proceeds with its program despite the widespread strikes, or the unions succeed and bring the government to negotiate.

So far, the sympathies of the general Finnish public seem to be on the unions’ side. Last week, pollster Verian reported that 52 percent of Finns approve of the political strikes, with 42 percent disapproving.

The unions can win if the representatives of Finnish big business determine that the costs of the strikes outweigh the potential profits they stand to gain through the government’s new policies. If that happens, one phone call from EK, the largest federation of businesses, would bring Prime Minister Orpo to the negotiating table.

Another path to victory is through a drastic decline of political support for the government. If the working-class voter base of the far-right Finns Party turns on them, it could force the party to seek a compromise. This, however, is unlikely to happen, since 87 percent of Finns Party voters still trust their party of choice, as pollster Taloustutkimus reported last week.

Moreover, the Finns Party has taken a significant shift to the hard right on economic issues. Party chair and finance minister Purra redefined herself as a “fiscal conservative” at the Finns Party conference last year. In a speech to the Finnish parliament, she declared that the “model of the oversized social state has outlived its purpose.” So far, the working-class voter base of the Finns Party does not seem to care.

The unions have yet to unleash one desperate tool at their disposal: a general strike. General strikes are a rarity in Finland. The last one occurred in 1956, and the previous one before that in 1917, a key moment in securing the country’s independence from the Russian Empire.

A general strike could prove disastrous to the national economy. But it may be the only option if the Finnish government maintains its hard line.

Another unpleasant question looms around the corner. What happens if a general strike is called but the government still refuses to compromise? What remains left for the unions to do when the situation cannot be escalated any further? So far, we don’t know what would follow from a defeat — but the dispute is high-stakes already.

Why Artificial Intelligence Must Be Stopped Now

By Richard Heinberg

March 21, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Mike MacKenzie - Artificial Intelligence & AI & Machine Learning. Flickr.



The promise of AI is eclipsed by its perils, which include our own annihilation.

Those advocating for artificial intelligence tout the huge benefits of using this technology. For instance, an article in CNN points out how AI is helping Princeton scientists solve “a key problem” with fusion energy. AI that can translate text to audio and audio to text is making information more accessible. Many digital tasks can be done faster using this technology.

However, any advantages that AI may promise are eclipsed by the cataclysmic dangers of this controversial new technology. Humanity has a narrow chance to stop a technological revolution whose unintended negative consequences will vastly outweigh any short-term benefits.

In the early 20th century, people (notably in the United States) could conceivably have stopped the proliferation of automobiles by focusing on improving public transit, thereby saving enormous amounts of energy, avoiding billions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions, and preventing the loss of more than 40,000 lives in car accidents each year in the U.S. alone. But we didn’t do that.

In the mid-century, we might have been able to stave off the development of the atomic bomb and averted the apocalyptic dangers we now find ourselves in. We missed that opportunity, too. (New nukes are still being designed and built.)

In the late 20th century, regulations guided by the precautionary principle could have prevented the spread of toxic chemicals that now poison the entire planet. We failed in that instance as well.

Now we have one more chance.

With AI, humanity is outsourcing its executive control of nearly every key sector —finance, warfare, medicine, and agriculture—to algorithms with no moral capacity.

If you are wondering what could go wrong, the answer is plenty.

If it still exists, the window of opportunity for stopping AI will soon close. AI is being commercialized faster than other major technologies. Indeed, speed is its essence: It self-evolves through machine learning, with each iteration far outdistancing Moore’s Law.

And because AI is being used to accelerate all things that have major impacts on the planet (manufacturing, transport, communication, and resource extraction), it is not only an uber-threat to the survival of humanity but also to all life on Earth.

AI Dangers Are Cascading

In June 2023, I wrote an article outlining some of AI’s dangers. Now, that article is quaintly outdated. In just a brief period, AI has revealed more dangerous implications than many of us could have imagined.

In an article titled “DNAI—The Artificial Intelligence/Artificial Life Convergence,” Jim Thomas reports on the prospects for “extreme genetic engineering” provided by AI. If artificial intelligence is good at generating text and images, it is also super-competent at reading and rearranging the letters of the genetic alphabet. Already, AI tech giant Nvidia has developed what Thomas calls “a first-pass ChatGPT for virus and microbe design,” and applications for its use are being found throughout life sciences, including medicine, agriculture, and the development of bioweapons.

How would biosafety precautions for new synthetic organisms work, considering that the entire design system creating them is inscrutable? How can we adequately defend ourselves against the dangers of thousands of new AI-generated proteins when we are already doing an abysmal job of assessing the dangers of new chemicals?

Research is advancing at warp speed, but oversight and regulation are moving at a snail’s pace.

Threats to the financial system from AI are just beginning to be understood. In December 2023, the U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), composed of leading regulators across the government, classified AI as an “emerging vulnerability.”

Because AI acts as a “black box” that hides its internal operations, banks using it could find it harder “to assess the system’s conceptual soundness.” According to a CNN article, the FSOC regulators pointed out that AI “could produce and possibly mask biased or inaccurate results, [raising] worries about fair lending and other consumer protection issues.” Could AI-driven stocks and bonds trading tank securities markets? We may not have to wait long to find out. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, in May 2023, spoke “about AI’s potential to induce a [financial] crisis,” according to a U.S. News article, calling it “a potential systemic risk.”

Meanwhile, ChatGPT recently spent the better part of a day spewing bizarre nonsense in response to users’ questions and often has “hallucinations,” which is when the system “starts to make up stuff—stuff that is not [in line] with reality,” said Jevin West, a professor at the University of Washington, according to a CNN article he was quoted in. What happens when AI starts hallucinating financial records and stock trades?

Lethal autonomous weapons are already being used on the battlefield. Add AI to these weapons, and whatever human accountability, moral judgment, and compassion still persist in warfare will tend to vanish. Killer robots are already being tested in a spate of bloody new conflicts worldwide—in Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Palestine, as well as in Yemen and elsewhere.

It was obvious from the start that AI would worsen economic inequality. In January, the IMF forecasted that AI would affect nearly 40 percent of jobs globally (around 60 percent in wealthy countries). Wages will be impacted, and jobs will be eliminated. These are undoubtedly underestimates since the technology’s capability is constantly increasing.

Overall, the result will be that people who are placed to benefit from the technology will get wealthier (some spectacularly so), while most others will fall even further behind. More specifically, immensely wealthy and powerful digital technology companies will grow their social and political clout far beyond already absurd levels.

It is sometimes claimed that AI will help solve climate change by speeding up the development of low-carbon technologies. But AI’s energy usage could soon eclipse that of many smaller countries. And AI data centers also tend to gobble up land and water.

AI is even invading our love lives, as presaged in the 2013 movie “Her.” While the internet has reshaped relationships via online dating, AI has the potential to replace human-to-human partnering with human-machine intimate relationships. Already, Replika is being marketed as the “AI companion who cares”—offering to engage users in deeply personal conversations, including sexting. Sex robots are being developed, ostensibly for elderly and disabled folks, though the first customers seem to be wealthy men.

Face-to-face human interactions are becoming rarer, and couples are reporting a lower frequency of sexual intimacy. With AI, these worrisome trends could grow exponentially. Soon, it’ll just be you and your machines against the world.

As the U.S. presidential election nears, the potential release of a spate of deepfake audio and video recordings could have the nation’s democracy hanging by a thread. Did the candidate really say that? It will take a while to find out. But will the fact-check itself be AI-generated? India is experimenting with AI-generated political content in the run-up to its national elections, which are scheduled to take place in 2024, and the results are weird, deceptive, and subversive.

A comprehensive look at the situation reveals that AI will likely accelerate all the negative trends currently threatening nature and humanity. But this indictment still fails to account for its ultimate ability to render humans, and perhaps all living things, obsolete.

AI’s threats aren’t a series of easily fixable bugs. They are inevitable expressions of the technology’s inherent nature—its hidden inner workings and self-evolution of function. And these aren’t trivial dangers; they are existential.

The fact that some AI developers, who are the people most familiar with the technology, are its most strident critics should tell us something. In fact, policymakers, AI experts, and journalists have issued a statement warning that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

Don’t Pause It, Stop It

Many AI-critical opinion pieces in the mainstream media call for a pause in its development “at a safe level.” Some critics call for regulation of the technology’s “bad” applications—in weapons research, facial recognition, and disinformation. Indeed, European Union officials took a step in this direction in December 2023, reaching a provisional deal on the world’s first comprehensive laws to regulate AI.

Whenever a new technology is introduced, the usual practice is to wait and see its positive and negative outcomes before implementing regulations. But if we wait until AI has developed further, we will no longer be in charge. We may find it impossible to regain control of the technology we have created.

The argument for a total AI ban arises from the technology’s very nature—its technological evolution involves acceleration to speeds that defy human control or accountability. A total ban is the solution that AI pioneer Eliezer Yudkowsky advised in his pivotal op-ed in TIME:


“[T]he most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in ‘maybe possibly some remote chance,’ but as in ‘that is the obvious thing that would happen.’”

Yudkowsky goes on to explain that we are currently unable to imbue AI with caring or morality, so we will get AI that “does not love you, nor does it hate you, and you are made of atoms it can use for something else.”

Underscoring and validating Yudkowsky’s warning, a U.S. State Department-funded study published on March 11 declared that unregulated AI poses an “extinction-level threat” to humanity.

To stop further use and development of this technology would require a global treaty—an enormous hurdle to overcome. Shapers of the agreement would have to identify the key technological elements that make AI possible and ban research and development in those areas, anywhere and everywhere in the world.

There are only a few historical precedents when something like this has happened. A millennium ago, Chinese leaders shut down a nascent industrial revolution based on coal and coal-fueled technologies (hereditary aristocrats feared that upstart industrialists would eventually take over political power). During the Tokugawa Shogunate period (1603-1867) in Japan, most guns were banned, almost completely eliminating gun deaths. And in the 1980s, world leaders convened at the United Nations to ban most CFC chemicals to preserve the planet’s atmospheric ozone layer.

The banning of AI would likely present a greater challenge than was faced in any of these three historical instances. But if it’s going to happen, it has to happen now.

Suppose a movement to ban AI were to succeed. In that case, it might break our collective fever dream of neoliberal capitalism so that people and their governments finally recognize the need to set limits. This should already have happened with regard to the climate crisis, which demands that we strictly limit fossil fuel extraction and energy usage. If the AI threat, being so acute, compels us to set limits on ourselves, perhaps it could spark the institutional and intergovernmental courage needed to act on other existential threats.



This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute

 

Youth and Memories of Hope in the Age of Disposability

By Henry A. Giroux

March 21, 2024

Source: Breaking The Silos Podcast

Breaking Silos · Episode 4 with Henry A. Giroux: Youth and Memories of Hope in the Age of Disposability

Henry A. Giroux (McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) discusses his essay, “Youth and Memories of Hope in the Age of Disposability: Connecting the Personal and the Political.” The conversation focuses on personal, political, and historical elements shaping identities, empowering young people, corporate power and greed, bearing witness, and more just and sustainable educational futures. 

Assange in Plea Deal Talks

By Joe Lauria

March 21, 2024
Source: Consortium News


Lawyers for Julian Assange and officials of the U.S. Justice Department are engaged in talks for a possible plea deal that could see Assange walk out of Belmarsh Prison in London as a free man, according to a report Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper said the DOJ was considering whether to allow Assange to “plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information,” which is a misdemeanor. He is currently charged with felonies for allegedly violating the U.S. Espionage Act and for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, charges that carry as much as 175 years in prison.

A deal to accept guilt for mishandling classified information could see Assange “eventually” walk free if the five years he has already spent in London’s Belmarsh Prison is counted as time served, the newspaper said.

“Justice Department officials and Assange’s lawyers have had preliminary discussions in recent months about what a plea deal could look like to end the lengthy legal drama, according to people familiar with the matter, a potential softening in a standoff filled with political and legal complexities,” the Journal reported.

Without elaborating. the paper added: “U.S. prosecutors face diminishing odds that he would serve much more time even if he were convicted stateside.”

A red line for Assange in any plea negotiation, according to his brother, Gabriel Shipton, is sealing a deal without having to come physically to the United States, as he fears the terms could be changed once he’s on U.S. soil — and in a U.S. prison.

Constitutional attorney Bruce Afran, speaking on CN Live! in August last year, said:

“Usually American courts don’t act unless a defendant is inside that district and shows up to the court. However, there’s nothing strictly prohibiting it either. And in a given instance, a plea could be taken internationally. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s not barred by any laws. If all parties consent to it, then the court has jurisdiction.”

Afran also said in that CN Live! interview that “mishandling classified information” misdemeanor was a possible way out for both the U.S. and Assange, as the Journal is now reporting.

On both issues the paper said: “If prosecutors allow Assange to plead to a U.S. charge of mishandling classified documents—something his lawyers have floated as a possibility—it would be a misdemeanor offense. Under such a deal, Assange potentially could enter that plea remotely, without setting foot in the U.S. “

The newspaper also said what has become plain, that the Biden administration, during a re-election campaign, does not need a journalist arriving in chains to Washington to stand trial for publishing U.S. state secrets that revealed government wrongdoing.

“An extradition would throw a political hot potato into the lap of the Biden administration,” the Journal wrote. The administration “has long struggled” with the First Amendment implications of the case, the newspaper added.

Awaiting Word From High Court

Assange is now awaiting a decision by the High Court in London on whether he would be allowed to appeal the Home Office’s order to extradite him to the U.S.

The WSJ said talks “remain in flux,” and could “fizzle.” The “highest levels” of the DOJ would have to approve, the paper said, presumably meaning U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The newspaper said Assange’s U.S. lawyer Barry Pollack gave “no indication that the department will take a deal.”

Because of the confirmation by the WSJ, Consortium News can now reveal that it learned off-the-record of the talks in the past months.

Pollack said in a statement to Consortium News:

“It is inappropriate for Mr. Assange’s lawyers to comment while his case is before the UK High Court other than to say we have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case and the United States is continuing with as much determination as ever to seek his extradition on all 18 charges, exposing him to 175 years in prison.”

The DOJ would not comment to the WSJ.

War on Gaza: How Israel’s Leftists Quickly Lost Their Compassion for Palestinians

Liberal Israeli sympathy for Palestinians was based on the colonial mindset that the subjugated are inferior and should be grateful for their support.

By Orly Noy

March 17, 2024

Source: Middle East Eye

Damage in Gaza Strip

The Hamas attack of 7 October and the war that Israel launched thereafter introduced a new conceptual category of persons to the Hebrew-Israeli vocabulary: the “disillusioned” – meaning, the folks who have now “sobered up”.

These people insist that, until 7 October, they were humanistic seekers of peace for whom the Hamas attack changed everything: in its wake, they moulted their former selves and now passionately supported the genocide that Israel was perpetrating in Gaza.

For more than five months, they have continued to flog one another for the sin of their earlier left-wing innocence. After suitable ritual absolution, they enter into the bosom of the tribe and are showered with forgiveness in the name of the people and the nation.

Already tiresomely long, the ranks of these disillusioned persons continue to expand. Many of the newly added are from the entertainment industry and identified with the liberal camp. Everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame to reiterate the formulaic arguments: I believed in peace, I wanted coexistence, but on 7 October I discovered that on the other side, there are no humans, only human animals that must be fought to the bitter end.

The ritual purification is complete with expressions of love and appreciation for “the Israel Defence Forces, the most moral army in the world”, plus thanks and congratulations to our heroic soldiers, and some lip service paid to the plight of the hostages.

As veteran actor Hanny Nahmias has said, “[We] were the most in favour of coexistence” – but now she wants a war “to the finish”.
Legitimate targets

If we pay close attention to the newly disillusioned, the problem does not seem mainly to be their new, changed position – which now often embraces the total extermination of the Palestinians in Gaza.

For example, popular singer Idan Raichel, who is generally associated with progressive values and often collaborates with musicians from the Ethiopian community, is resentful that the residents of Gaza – displaced, brutalised, thirsty and starving – do not enter the tunnels and battle Hamas, even if it costs them thousands of casualties, to effect the return of all the abductees.

Raichel concludes that since they do not do so, they should be viewed as accomplices to the crimes of Hamas and hence as legitimate targets for attack by Israel.

In fact, the problem with these newly disillusioned persons seems rather to be in their interpretation of their “leftist” position prior to their disillusionment.

In an interview on comedian Shalom Assayag’s programme, Stronger Together, actor and TV presenter Tzufit Grant stated that “my leftist side no longer exists; I thought we were all human, but – no”.

On 7 October, in her words, the attackers killed off “some humanitarian part of the brain, of overwhelming compassion, [the idea that] ‘we are all human beings’”.

Grant no longer believes that we are all human. So, now what?

She describes over two million Palestinians in Gaza with an abhorrent vocabulary for someone for whom, until recently, a love for humanity was her guiding light.
Pure narcissism

Grant is not alone. Perhaps the strongest sentiment referenced repeatedly by many of the newly disillusioned folks is disappointment: the Palestinians have “lost them”.

They, the leftists of the past who claim that they were after all completely committed to coexistence and saw every person as a human being – and their “reward” was a criminal attack on 7 October.

Yes, the Hamas attack on the Gaza-adjacent communities was horrifying. But beware of the notion that the overlord’s mere goodwill was supposed to be sufficient to satisfy the Palestinians, who were supposed to be grateful for the mater’s kindness and continue bearing their oppression in silence. (Oh, that longing for the “good old days” when Palestinians in Gaza, by dint of the kindness of Israel, could enter Israel to work as day labourers and be grateful for it.)

This stance was pure narcissism, at best – not a political position based on an analysis of reality and its distorted power relations.

Some observers repeatedly mention that many of the residents from the Gaza-adjacent communities that were attacked on 7 October were peace-seeking people, some even activists who regularly volunteered to drive Gaza’s children from the Erez crossing to Israeli hospitals – a reference meant to portray Palestinians as ungrateful and to justify the shift in their own political positions.

This stance is tainted by the same narcissistic depoliticisation that views everything through the lens of the good intentions of (some) Israelis.

Undoubtedly, volunteering to transport sick Palestinians from Gaza is a noble act and the volunteers are people whose actions were prompted by morality and conscience. But a political position sees the larger context in which this volunteering takes place: that is, Israel’s long-term siege of the Gaza Strip and the destruction of most of its civilian infrastructure.

Such a position inquires into how this reality came about – in which Palestinian civilians in Gaza must rely on the generosity of good Israelis and cannot receive suitable medical care in Gaza itself. It asks why there are no proper hospitals in Gaza, and who prevents Palestinians from building them, and by what right.
Embracing tribalism

Such a position would highlight the significance of such a far-reaching denial of the freedom of movement for millions of people who require the overlord’s permission not only to enter Israel but also to travel to the Palestinian territories in the West Bank. It would also point out the nature of the regime that for decades has controlled every breath taken by millions of disenfranchised subjects, and it would understand that such a regime inevitably must provoke an uprising.

And, contrary to all attempts to control how these realities are framed for public consumption, to understand them accurately is not the equivalent of supporting violence nor its justification, but quite the opposite: a dispassionate analysis of this bloody reality, to enable us to exit from it.

The concept that the most the subject can aspire to is the master’s recognition of his being human, a recognition that can be withheld as easily as it was given if the subject “disappoints”, is the hallmark of the colonial situation.

In this situation, the master deems himself so superior to the subject that the latter should be thankful for every moment in which the master’s grip on his throat remains loose, while any resistance to the ever-present threat of a chokehold is tantamount to ingratitude.

These are the same “leftists of the past” who, alongside their disappointment in the Palestinians, have also suddenly discovered the joys of embracing tribalism – as Tzufit Grant has evidently done.

Since 7 October, she says, she has wanted to walk all day through the streets and kiss Israelis: “I have become very Israeli, very Jewish.”

Lamentably, disastrously, in today’s Israel, this would seem to involve parting not only with the “humanitarian portion” of the brain, but with the brain itself.

Orly Noy is the chair of B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.