Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Lebanese government resigns amid mounting anger over port blast
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/11/leba-a11.html
By Jean Shaoul
11 August 2020
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced his government’s resignation in a televised address to the nation yesterday evening.
The move came amid mounting fury over last Tuesday’s catastrophic explosion in one of Beirut’s port warehouses storing 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate.
There were angry demonstrations over the weekend leading to violent clashes when security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters and injured more than 700 people.
Announcing the government’s resignation, Diab said he had come to the conclusion that corruption in Lebanon is “bigger than the state.” He added that “This crime” was a result of endemic corruption and called for the trial of those responsible for the deadly blast. He said he was taking “a step back” so he could stand with the people “and fight the battle for change alongside them.”
Diab laid the blame for the “earthquake” that had hit Lebanon on his government’s corrupt predecessors, saying, “They [the political class] should have been ashamed of themselves because their corruption is what has led to this disaster that had been hidden for seven years.”
It is reported that Diab will stay on in a caretaker role. On Saturday, he had announced early parliamentary elections, saying he would stay on for two months.
The government’s resignation followed the resignation of several ministers, including his closest ally, Environment and Administrative Development Minister Damianos Kattar, who cited the government’s inability to carry out reforms.
While the blast’s immediate cause has not been confirmed, the disaster was the result of the criminal neglect and callous indifference displayed by successive governments and the ruling elite. For years, they ignored repeated warnings about the dangers of storing such a powerful chemical without proper safety controls so near to residential areas.
According to Beirut’s Governor Marwan Abboud, the death toll from the explosion has risen to 220, with 110 people still missing, many of whom are believed to be foreign workers and lorry drivers, making identifying them more difficult. More than 6,000 people have been injured. The army has called off the rescue operation at the port because no survivors had been found.
Fully twelve percent of the city’s population—300,000 people—have seen their homes destroyed or damaged by the blast that blew up buildings, shattered windows and set neighbourhoods ablaze. Officials have estimated losses at $10 billion to $15 billion.
With no other shelter available, people are being forced to sleep in severely damaged homes, many without windows or doors. Speaking to the BBC, Rona Halabi, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said, “These people need shelter, they need food… they also need cleaning detergents, they need help in picking up what is left of their homes.”
She pointed out that the blast had caused heavy damage to two water and electricity stations, under conditions where lengthy power outages were already a daily occurrence.
Last week, President Michel Aoun announced an investigation into the cause of the blast, including whether any “external interference” in addition to negligence was a factor. A report is to be forthcoming within four days. Some 20 leading officials are reportedly under house arrest, while others have had their bank accounts frozen.
A judge has begun questioning Maj. Gen. Tony Saliba, who heads State Security. Apparently State Security had compiled a report about the dangers of storing the material at the port and sent a copy to the offices of the president and prime minister on July 20.
Diab, an engineering professor, was installed as a “technocrat” to head the government in January after mass social protests against economic hardship, government corruption and the country’s sectarian political setup forced the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Washington, Paris and Riyadh’s man in Lebanon.
Diab’s cabinet, many of whom were professional people not politically aligned with the main political parties, had the support of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, which with its allies has the largest political bloc in Parliament.
This earned his government the undying hatred of the Christian and Sunni plutocrats allied with Harari’s Future Movement, which refused to cooperate with the government, leading to the eruption of small but violent clashes between the two rival blocs in recent months. Last June, President Aoun warned that this could spark another civil war in a country that saw a bitter armed conflict between shifting alliances backed by external forces from 1975 to 1990.
The port explosion comes amidst an unprecedented economic and financial crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that has seen tourism revenues and remittances from the Gulf and the Lebanese diaspora plummet. The ensuing lockdown caused untold suffering among workers, refugees and migrants. The only limited social safety net is provided by sectarian-based parties, and health care is dependent upon the ability to pay exorbitant prices.
In March, the government defaulted on a $1.2 billion Eurobond, later extending it to all its overseas debt, as the collapse of the lira wiped out the foreign currency reserves of the heavily indebted country, fuelling inflation and widespread poverty.
Days later, after declaring a state of emergency, the government announced that the central bank would pump dollars into the market to prop up the currency and that it was preparing an appeal to the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan. Any such loan would be tied to the usual demand for “free market reforms” that would plunge millions into destitution and cut across key and conflicting interests of the ruling elite.
But above all, an IMF loan would be contingent upon political alignment with the Sunni oil states, with whom relations have cooled over the last six years. Such an alignment would be directed against Iran and, by extension, Syria, conditions that are anathema to Hezbollah. Without acceding to the IMF’s terms, loans pledged at an aid conference by the European and regional powers in 2018 would not be forthcoming.
In addition, last year the US widened its sanctions against Hezbollah, which it has designated as a terrorist organisation, targeting legislators as well as a local bank, forcing it to close, thereby adding to Lebanon’s already severe financial and economic crisis.
Last June, the US’s Caesar Act came into effect, imposing sanctions against the Syrian government and those dealing with it, thereby further undermining Hezbollah’s finances and preventing Lebanon from purchasing Syrian oil.
Washington, Riyadh and Paris have sought to exert “maximum economic pressure” on Beirut, implementing what amounts to a blockade against the country for the purpose of eliminating Hezbollah as a political and military force in Lebanon and Syria as part of their broader campaign against Iran. Their aim is to engineer a return to power by their local agents, the Sunni Future Movement of Hariri and his allies.
On Sunday, French President Macron continued the pressure. Co-hosting a virtual conference with the UN that pledged nearly $300 million in emergency humanitarian aid to Beirut, mainly for health care, education, food and housing, he warned that “it would be strictly monitored.” He added that no money for rebuilding the city would be made available until Lebanon committed itself to implementing political and economic reforms . The forces organising the demonstrations of recent days include the Christian and Sunni parties and ex-generals around Hariri’s US-aligned Future Movement. They are calling for the formation of an interim “salvation” government, “potentially headed by the military” and including bankers and other business figures, to “resolve the humanitarian and economic crisis,” and prepare the way for elections on the basis of a new electoral law—in as much as three years’ time. Their aim is to restore the direct rule of the plutocracy, in the service of imperialism, and limit or eradicate the influence of the “mobsters” in Lebanon and Syria—a euphemism for Hezbollah.
This points to the very real dangers that the legitimate anger of workers, youth and middle-class layers engulfed by the ever-widening crisis will be channelled behind yet another bunch of kleptocrats, this time possibly headed by military generals, and directed against the impoverished supporters of Hezbollah and its allies.
What is absolutely decisive in the present situation is the building of a new revolutionary leadership, advancing a perspective for unifying the working class across all religious, sectarian, national and ethnic divisions, not just in Lebanon but across the region, in the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the building of the United Socialist States of the Middle East as part of a world federation of socialist states. This requires building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout the region.
Why is the US doing less and less COVID-19 testing?
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/11/pers-a11.html
11 August 2020
On June 20, US President Donald Trump boasted of having told public health officials to reduce the number of tests for COVID-19, the disease that has infected 5.2 million Americans and killed over 166,000 since the start of the year. “I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down,” Trump declared.
Three days later Trump added, “Cases are going up in the US because we are testing far more… With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!”
Top US public health officials immediately sought to downplay Trump’s comments, declaring that the US policy was to expand, not decrease, the amount of testing. But without any serious explanation by the government, the number of tests being done every day in the United States has dropped significantly over the past two weeks.
On July 24, the United States conducted 926,876 tests, according to the COVID Tracking Project. But that figure had dropped to just 668,546 last Saturday. The average number of daily tests conducted fell from 809,200 in the week ending July 26, to 712,112 last week, a decline of 12 percent.
At the same time, tests are often taking over a week to return, making them all but useless in tracking down and isolating those that are infected before the pandemic spreads even further. According to internal data from Quest diagnostics obtained by CNN, “the total average turnaround time for results was 8.4 days.”
Public health experts say the level of testing in the US is far too low to contain the disease. An analysis from Ashish Jha and his team at the Harvard Global Health Institute recently showed that it would take 1.2 million tests per day, with results back in time to act on them, to stop the number of daily new infections from increasing.
It would take 4.3 million tests per day, according to Jha, to actually suppress the pandemic. This is more than six times the current level of testing and more than four times the proclaimed goal of the Trump administration, which had been to reach one million coronavirus tests per day.
Amid this massive shortage, US officials have admitted they are prioritizing tests for “certain people.” In particular, the wealthy and well-connected are able to take tests and get results within a day, while for ordinary workers results can take up to a week or more, if they are able to get them.
Federal funding for testing and contact tracing, the only measures known to contain the pandemic, stands at less than one percent of total federal spending on the pandemic response – with the vast majority going to bailouts for major corporations. Nationwide, there were just 28,000 contact tracers last month, less than one-tenth of the number called for by former Centers for Disease Control Director Tom Frieden.
Trump has boasted, “Over the past seven days, nationwide cases declined by 14 percent,” but this decline is driven by the decline in testing.
Moreover, last month the administration ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and prevention and send all COVID-19 data to a centralized database in Washington, raising fears that the figures are being manipulated.
Reports have abounded of discrepancies in state statistics. Last week, the state of California disclosed that as many as 300,000 health records, mostly related to COVID-19, had not been processed, leading the state’s top health official to resign.
For workers, there is no systematic testing, even as they are forced into the factories in unsafe conditions. Autoworkers report being left in the dark by management about outbreaks at their plants, with workers who test positive simply “disappearing” without their co-workers being notified. A statement by the Rank-and-File Safety Committee Network gives a sense of this disaster:
Work is becoming a daily horror movie. At Ford Dearborn Truck in Michigan last week, two people got sick, and they were whisked away and people on the line didn’t know what was going on. At Fiat Chrysler’s Belvidere plant in Illinois, someone tested positive, and they were also snuck off the line by management.
Amid the nationwide testing shortage, officials from both parties are pressing ahead with the drive to reopen schools, which is all but guaranteed to lead to a further escalation of the pandemic. While Trump is leading this campaign, it is supported by governors from both parties. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, demanded this month that schools reopen throughout the state.
The fall in US testing is part of a policy of “malign neglect.” As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in March, the US government is “making a deliberate decision to minimize their response, to adopt an attitude of indifference to the spread of the virus.”
From the beginning, the US political establishment saw the pandemic as an economic, not a health problem. In late March, Congress passed, on a nearly unanimous basis, the so-called CARES Act, which sanctioned the multi-trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street by the Federal Reserve.
Once the bailout was passed, the US political establishment demanded that workers get back on the job, despite the fact that the pandemic was raging throughout workplaces and the US lacked the testing and contact tracing infrastructure to contain the disease. As predicted by public health experts, this led to a major resurgence of the pandemic.
Now, this campaign is entering a new phase with the reopening of schools, threatening another wave of infection and the lives of thousands of teachers, students and parents. As epidemiologist Michael T. Osterholm warned last week, “[T]he next six months could make what we have experienced so far seem like just a warm-up to a greater catastrophe. With many schools and colleges starting, stores and businesses reopening, and the beginning of the indoor heating season, new case numbers will grow quickly.”
Serous public health experts are unanimous on how to stop the pandemic: Non-essential businesses must be closed, testing and contact tracing must be massively expanded many times over, and workers must be given the economic resources to stay away from workplaces.
But all of these basic public health demands are contrary to the prerogatives of the ruling class, whose only concern is to get workers back into the factories and workplaces. If they die, they can be replaced with others desperate for work. The capitalist class and the politicians, media and police that defend it are ruthless in the defense of profits over human lives.
The trillions that have been transferred to the super-rich must be seized back and the resources made available for mass testing and contact tracing, to protect doctors and nurses as they care for the sick and to provide aid for those forced to isolate and quarantine. Factories must be mobilized to make the necessary medical materials as part of a broader socialist program to meet the essential needs of working people for health care, housing, education and jobs.
Bryan Dyne
14 Tech Organizers and Labor Experts Share Their Ideas For Re-empowering American Workers
Business Insider spoke to 14 tech organizers and labor experts about what obstacles the movement faces as well as the changes they'd like to see in American workplaces to empower workers once again.
August 10, 2020 Tyler Sonnemaker and Allana Akhtar BUSINESS INSIDER
https://portside.org/2020-08-10/14-tech-organizers-and-labor-experts-share-their-ideas-re-empowering-american-workers
Over the past half century, workers' wages have stagnated, their rights have been eroded, and whistleblowers have faced frequent retaliation for calling attention to the problems.
But in the tech industry, a new alliance of workers from warehouses to cubicles — bolstered by the pandemic and anti-racism protests — is speaking with a louder and more unified voice than ever.
They're demanding everything from better pay and workplace protections to a bigger say over how the products they build are designed and put to use.
Business Insider spoke to 14 tech organizers and labor experts about what obstacles the movement faces as well as the changes they'd like to see in American workplaces to empower workers once again.
All is not well for workers in Silicon Valley.
Amid a devastating pandemic that has left millions of Americans jobless, the four largest US tech companies blew past Wall Street's expectations, reporting quarterly earnings that pushed their combined net worth past $5 trillion and boosted their CEOs' personal fortunes by billions.
But as the tech industry soared to unprecedented heights, many of the workers fueling its rise have seen their wages and benefits stagnate, grueling job environments have become more dangerous, and efforts to call attention to workplace inequities have been met with retaliation.
Despite this, the tide is shifting. Last week, the top executives of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google faced a grilling from lawmakers that focused on their companies' outsized power.
Over the past few years, the experiences of rank-and-file employees have become increasingly at odds with those of the wealthy executives at the top — both on the job and in how they see their employers' impact on society. Bolstered by the pandemic and sweeping protests against systemic racism, tech workers from warehouses to corporate office buildings have been speaking up with a unified voice for the first time.
Their demands: Better pay, benefits, and working conditions. But there's a broader agenda in place. They want to shift the balance of power at their organizations so they can have more control over how their work gets done, how products are built, and who their companies do business with.
And now they're inspiring others across the country to do the same at their own workplaces.
Business Insider spoke with 14 tech organizers and labor experts who said the industry has reached an inflection point and that things aren't going back to the way they were before. Here are their thoughts on how to empower workers once again and the obstacles that still lie ahead.
Chris Smalls — organizer and former Amazon warehouse worker
Chris Smalls.
Lucas Jackson/Reuters
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: Smalls said Amazon and other companies' self-interest and antagonism toward workers continues to jeopardize their safety. "Everything [Amazon's] doing doesn't benefit the employees, everything they're doing benefits the company and the company only," he said adding that companies like Amazon "smear the lower class people, they intimidate the working class people."
How can we improve American workplaces: Amazon needs to be taxed and workers need better pay, Smalls said. "You're telling me at $25 an hour I'm working for the richest man in the world and I'm capped out," he said, referring to the salary limit he hit after five years with the company.
What organizers should focus on now: "What we need is for the families who actually lost somebody [to COVID-19] to actually come out to the public," Smalls said. Concerns about coronavirus exposure were raised as early as March and he said Amazon's response fell short. "This could have been prevented ... somebody needs to be held accountable."
Oriana Leckert — former Kickstarter outreach team member and organizer for the Kickstarter United employee union
Oriana Leckert.
Oriana Leckert
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: "There's a strain of individualism that runs through tech for sure, Leckert said. Convincing workers who have good jobs now to organize on behalf of their coworkers — and their future selves — can be challenging at times, she said.
How can we improve American workplaces: Leckert said companies should start "listening to workers and giving the people who are doing the work some more influence over how and when and why the work gets done." Executives should trust their employees to have good ideas instead of dictating everything via "opaque, top-down hierarchical management," she said.
What organizers should focus on now: "Talk to everybody in your workplace, talk to everybody outside of your workplace. Get advice from other folks," Leckert said. "There are lots of people who are having a struggle at the same time and who have done it before," she said, and people looking to organize at their workplaces can learn from others' efforts.
Grace Reckers — organizer at the Office and Professional Employees International Union
Grace Reckers.
Grace Reckers
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: "The lack of hardened geographic bounds is an important component of the tech organizing movement, and it mirrors the structures of the tech companies themselves," Reckers said. "Unlike nurse unions that represent RNs in a few distinct hospitals, typically in one region or city, organizers in the tech industry have to take into account the growing number of remote workers, international employees, contract workers, and vendors that are all affiliated with their companies."
How can we improve American workplaces: "The biggest change I would like to see is for workers to have unobstructed rights to form unions at their workplaces," she said. "Employers need to be swiftly disciplined and employees need to be reinstated when organizers are fired in retaliation for their union activity. I also believe that the amount of money companies spend on anti-union consultants and 'union avoidance' law firms should be publicized, called out, and eventually redistributed to workers' paychecks."
What organizers should focus on now: "Going forward, I imagine that the remnants of these fears around job security will remain for a lot of workers in the tech industry. My hope is that employees will continue to organize around these issues and recognize that as long as you are an at-will employee, you can be fired for any reason or no reason at all—without any guarantee of severance pay or continued healthcare coverage. It's only with a union contract that workers have the right to negotiate terminations and the safety nets that come with them."
Laurence Berland — organizer and former Google engineer
Laurence Berland.
Tyler Sonnemaker/Business Insider
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: "In the pandemic, with so many out of work, a lot of people might have the attitude they are lucky to even have a job," Berland said. "But workers should remember that despite high unemployment, their experience and institutional knowledge is valuable, and not so easily replaced by a new hire, especially if they act collectively."
How can we improve American workplaces: Berland said people need to fight for coworkers "across class and roles," especially those who have to work in person or whose jobs are jeopardized by the remote work surge during the pandemic. "Workers who are able to work from home need to fight for those workers and stand in solidarity with them," he said.
What organizers should focus on now: "Make those connections with the most vulnerable workers — the Black and Brown essential workers, the unemployed service workers. Ask them what you can do to be a part of what they need," Berland said. "They know what they need and if you are genuinely showing up for them, they will tell you exactly what they need. Listen to them."
Jacinta Gonzalez — organizer at Mijente
Jacinta Gonzalez.
Jacinta Gonzalez
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: "Office tech workers are recognizing that their technologies are inherently political and are never 'race neutral,'" Gonzalez said, pointing to the growing surveillance state and "the insidious relationship between tech corporations and law enforcement." Gonzalez said that at companies like Google and Microsoft, "tech workers have made clear demands that all contracts with law enforcement be dropped, a necessary and long overdue step."
How can we improve American workplaces: Gonzalez said that "while office tech workers today may not be underpaid, they are recognizing that the cushy benefits they currently receive does not mean they have a voice in the types of technologies and contracts their companies engage with, even if workers recognize that their technologies are harmful." She added that giving workers more power would create "more accountability within the companies creating the technologies that are actively harming Black and Brown communities."
What organizers should focus on now: "The revolving door between government contractors and corporations must end and the curtain must be pulled back to reveal the full impacts of the growing surveillance state," she said. "As Naomi Klein said on a recent Mijente panel with Edward Snowden, we have a right to live illegible lives. It is time for technology to be transparent, human focused and end the growing surveillance and ownership of our data."
Wesley McEnany — organizer at CODE-CWA
Wesley McEnany helped launch CODE-CWA, which supports organizing efforts by tech and gaming workers.
Wesley McEnany
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: "Workers are seeing the use of their labor for immoral or unethical reasons as cause to organize because these issues are fundamentally working conditions as much as wages or benefits are," McEnany said. "These are also workers, especially at the big 5, who potentially hold a lot of structural power."
How can we improve American workplaces: "Tech companies have a serious responsibility to end systemic and structural racism. They are uniquely positioned to use technology for good and lead on issues of diversity and inclusion."
What organizers should focus on now: To make money, tech firms are incentivized to "take on nefarious projects, whether it's facial recognition software for oppressed governmental agencies or upgrading the technological infrastructure of local police departments surveilling Black Lives Matter activists," McEnany said. "[Tech companies] aren't going to be moral institutions without worker input."
Dania Rajendra — director of Athena, a coalition of activists and Amazon workers
Dania Rajendra.
Athena
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: The "sheer size and utter disregard for transparency or accountability" of companies like Amazon lets them get away with mistreating workers, Rajendra said. "Amazon's outsized power and its impunity about wielding it is the obstacle."
How can we improve American workplaces: Rajendra said she'd like to see "more elected officials — at every level — start to use their investigative and regulatory power to prioritize everyday people." She pointed to France, where a court ruled in April that Amazon wasn't doing enough to protect workers and would have to shut down or take stronger precautions.
What organizers should focus on now: "We'll continue to see more bridges built between the issues workers deal with on the job and the issues people — including those very same workers — deal with in their communities," Rajendra said. "Both COVID and the uprising [against systemic racism] expose the fact that the risks working people face on the job don't just end at the warehouse exits."
Ben Gwin — data analyst at HCL Technologies and organizer for the United HCL Workers of Pittsburgh
Ben Gwin.
Jared Alan Smith
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: "Corporate-friendly labor laws," Gwin said. "Companies would rather pay lawyers and union busters, break the law, and pay a fine than honor workers' rights to organize and bargain in good faith."
How can we improve American workplaces: "Medicare for All," Gwin said. Nearly half of Americans get health insurance through their employers, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the pandemic has shown gaping flaws in the US' approach. A study from Health Management Associates said 35 million could lose coverage due to layoffs.
What organizers should focus on now: Gwin said a change in the White House is needed before things improve for workers. Under Trump, the National Labor Relations Board, the top federal agency tasked with protecting workers, "is awful, and we need at least nominally pro-labor appointees in there," he added.
Nicole Moore — Lyft driver and volunteer organizer for Rideshare Drivers United
Nicole Moore.
Scott Varley/Getty Images
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: For gig workers, Moore said the biggest challenge is not having the same rights and labor protections as employees. "If we want safe industries where people aren't dying to put a box on your porch, people aren't becoming homeless as they buy a new car so they can drive you and anybody else with an app around, then we have to put these basic things in place," she said.
How can we improve American workplaces: "We need to see a reform of labor law that makes that easier for groups of workers to organize," Moore said. Workers should be able to band together to negotiate contracts that guarantee fair wages, she said, "so that when you wake up in the morning, you know what kind of money you're going to make, it's not going to change overnight."
What organizers should focus on now: Moore said she's focused on getting "fair pay and a voice on the job, more PPE for drivers, and "somebody in the White House who actually is going to have a Labor Department that's worried about the welfare of workers, not just how much profit companies can make off of them."
Y-Vonne Hutchinson — CEO and founder of ReadySet and cofounder of Black Tech For Black LIves
Y-Vonne Hutchinson.
Y-Vonne Hutchinson
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: While "a lot of people are waking up to the reality of racism in the tech sector and racism in this country," said Hutchinson, "there are still people who are invested in keeping things the same who are going to push back, and we have to be prepared to face those people."
How can we improve American workplaces: "When it comes to anti-racism, we do need to hold people accountable," Hutchinson said. "People don't change their behavior if they're not incentivized to change their behavior." She said employees who serve on diversity and inclusion committees and managers who hire, promote, or mentor diverse workers should be rewarded, not forced to sacrifice their work toward these goals in order to accomplish others.
What organizers should focus on now: Within tech, Hutchinson said Black Tech For Black Lives wants to "make sure that Black people are hired and promoted and supported and really able to thrive" in a way she said hasn't happened so far, even as companies have said they want more diversity and inclusion.
Steve Smith — communications director at the California Labor Federation
Steve Smith.
Steve Smith
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: "Tech CEOs have become very adept at employing anti-union strategies to crush organizing," Smith said. While executives' opposition to unions isn't new, Smith said the difference now is that tech companies have "some of the wealthiest and most powerful CEOs on the planet with vast resources to fight organizing at their disposal."
How can we improve American workplaces: Companies need to follow existing labor laws, Smith said. "Provide workers with the basic protections and pay they deserve."
What organizers should focus on now: Smith, who works closely with rideshare and food delivery drivers, said they're focused on defeating Proposition 22, a California ballot measure backed by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Postmates, that would permanently make drivers independent contractors. If it passes, Smith said it will hurt drivers "who have few basic protections" as well as "small businesses who are at a competitive advantage when these large tech companies cheat the system."
Erin Hatton — associate professor of sociology at the University of Buffalo
Erin Hatton.
Erin Hatton
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: "Labor movements — like all social movements — require an incredible amount of work," Hatton said. Keeping up the momentum while trying to support families, survive a pandemic, and fight for civil rights will be "a Herculean task" for workers, she said.
How can we improve American workplaces: Hatton said "all workers who perform labor from which others profit" should be covered by all labor and employment laws, not be forced to work in unsafe work environments, and should be protected from "coercion and abuse" by their employers. That includes diverse groups such as "Uber drivers, student athletes, incarcerated workers, graduate students, Instacart drivers, meatpacking workers, grocery store workers, and doctors and nurses," she said.
What organizers should focus on now: Worker rights as well as basic civil rights for Black people, immigrants, and transgender people should be top priorities, Hatton said. "As a country, as a democracy, and as an economy, we are only as strong as our most vulnerable population."
Clair Brown — professor of economics at the University of California Berkeley
Clair Brown.
Clair Brown
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: "Right now the problem is at the national level," Brown said. "The Department of Labor was set up to speak for workers, to protect workers, to represent workers. And right now it doesn't. Right now, it really represents employers under Trump."
How can we improve American workplaces: Brown said unemployment programs in the US should look more like those in Europe, which "focus less on payments directly to individuals once they're thrown out of work" and instead on "how can we actually pay to keep them on the job."
What organizers should focus on now: "We have to get back to this question of: 'what kind of social safety net do we want to provide people in the United States?'" Brown said workers who are laid off or can't work have no way to "just basically get through life, pay their mortgage or their rent, pay their health insurance, pay their kids' bills."
Tom Kochan — professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tom Kochan.
MIT
What's the biggest obstacle workers face: "Employer opposition, and that hasn't changed at all," Kochan said. "Any employer that wants to defeat a union organizing campaign can do so because the penalties are so weak and so slow to be enforced."
How can we improve American workplaces: "We have to open up our labor law to new forms" in order to give workers more voice, Kochan said. That could include creating works councils or putting rank-and-file employees on corporate boards, "not to control it, but to bring a worker's perspective to these issues and the knowledge and the information that workers can bring."
What organizers should focus on now: Kochan said the upcoming election will have huge implications for workers. "If we get a change in government, both in the presidency and in the Congress, then we are going to see a massive debate around the future of work and how we learn from this crisis and fill the holes in the safety net that have been temporarily filled."
Israel lobby group deletes call to blackmail Lebanon using aid
Ali Abunimah Lobby Watch 10 August 2020
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lobby-group-deletes-call-blackmail-lebanon-using-aid
On Sunday, various governments pledged almost $300 million in aid to Lebanon, following last week’s catastrophic explosion at Beirut’s port.
The death toll has risen to more than 200 people.
As leaders gathered for the virtual pledging conference organized by France, one powerful Israel lobby group made clear its agenda.
“International donors are assembling an aid package for Lebanon. Assistance must be conditioned on the long-promised, long-avoided disarmament of Hizballah,” the American Jewish Committee tweeted.
“Unless the malignant role of Iran’s terror proxy is addressed, there will never be meaningful change for the people of Lebanon.”
I made a point of commenting on the tweet on Sunday.
But by Monday morning, the AJC had deleted its tweet:
Why?
After all, using the basic health and humanitarian needs of civilians as a weapon against them in violation of international law is a well-established Israeli policy, no more so than in Gaza.
Israel humiliated
Just as Israel hopes that depriving Palestinians in Gaza of their basic needs and rights will induce them to surrender, the same calculus undoubtedly applies in Israel’s approach to Lebanon.
Hizballah, it should be recalled, was founded in the early 1980s as a response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon and the siege of its capital.
A formidable resistance force, Hizballah expelled Israeli occupation forces and their collaborator militia from Lebanon in 2000 and humiliated Israel again when it invaded Lebanon in 2006.
Israeli forces, unable to effectively counter Hizballah’s well-trained fighters, resorted instead to indiscriminate bombing of civilians.
That strategy hasn’t changed. On 6 August, The Jerusalem Post’s editor-in-chief Yaakov Katz outlined what Israel would do if another full-scale war broke out: “This would mean bombing the airport, the soccer fields, the port, private homes, office buildings, schools and more.”
In an even more chilling sentence, Katz added that “the constraints we usually see in Gaza operations would have to be lifted.” Given Israel’s repeated mass destruction in Gaza, it’s difficult to know what “constraints” he is referring to.
Targeting Hizballah
Israel knows that while it can inflict untold suffering, it would pay a very heavy price for such an attack – precisely because of Hizballah’s deterrent capability.
So Israel, through its lobby, has been trying to achieve politically what it cannot do on the battlefield: defeat Hizballah.
Given the large number of attacks Israel has launched against Lebanon since the 1950s – including repeated attacks on Beirut airport and the many car bombs for which it was responsible since the 1970s – it is not surprising that many in the region and in Lebanon suspect Israel had a hand in last week’s catastrophe.
But even if Israel did not have any role in detonating the huge stock of ammonium nitrate warehoused at Beirut port, the explosion presents an opportunity that Israel and its allies are eager not to waste.
“The question for Israel now is can this unfortunate disaster be used to change the balance of power in Lebanon, and encourage/inspire the Lebanese people to turn against Hizballah and remove it from power,” The Jerusalem Post’s Katz observed.
The first stage, apparently, is a campaign of baseless rumors and outright lies that Hizballah was responsible for the port explosion.
This tweet, for instance, came from a propaganda organization linked to Israel’s strategic affairs ministry:
There is absolutely no evidence for its claim that “the explosion stemmed from a storehouse of Hizballah munitions.”
Israeli and pro-Israeli social media accounts have continued to spread similar propaganda:
Outlawing support for resistance
To be sure, Israel has allies within Lebanon and in the region: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are both firmly on Israel’s side.
And European states – under Israeli and American pressure – are edging towards making it illegal to even support the notion that Lebanese people have a right to resist invasion and occupation by Israel.
When Germany recently outlawed what it claims is Hizballah activity on its territory, its interior ministry justified this by asserting that the group opposes “the concept of international understanding.”
Hizballah “openly calls for the violent elimination of the State of Israel and questions the right of the State of Israel to exist,” the ministry said.
In other words, disagreeing that Israel has a “right” to invade and occupy your country is now a thought crime in Germany.
Israel’s campaign to push for more political persecution of those who question its “right” to invade, occupy, colonize and kill as it pleases will continue.
And there is no doubt that European countries, especially France, will be partners in the effort to re-colonize Lebanon.
So why then did the American Jewish Committee delete its tweet?
According to a tweet it put out Monday, AJC claimed that the deleted tweet had not met the Israel lobby group’s “standard of nuance.”
It is more likely however that the tweet was simply too harshly honest about Israel’s agenda.
It was not in tune with the current propaganda message that Israel – which has killed and injured tens of thousands of people during its repeated efforts to destroy Lebanon – now only wants to help.
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