Maoo [none/use name]

  • 0 Posts
  • 18 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 17th, 2023
  • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoWorld News@lemmy.ml•China courts Germany's far-right populist AfDEnglish
    4510·
    11 months ago

    They’re a target of the US Empire and folks that can’t do media criticism gladly take the bait.

    The first rule of propaganda is emphasis, which is what you’re astutely picking up on. Why are stories about X and not A, B, C? When they’re about X, what context is emphasized, what is fact and what is allusion, who is interviewed and given the opportunity to comment and who is not? “World news” stories are very frequently just stenography of various think tanks, often ones that are more or less in agreement with one another.

    The entirety of China’s actions reported in this story are that China (exactly who isn’t stated, not even a group) invited an AfD delegation to meet with them. No source is cited, but maybe it’s Weidel. From this they create an entire narrative by retelling past articles about AfD’s foreign policy statements and ask one person to comment: “political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder from the University of Kassel”. They don’t mention that he’s also an SPD politician and associated with a government-funded research institute with a dodgy past. Maybe his takes are good, but why they asked him and not others isn’t stated, of course.

    This is just folks getting easily hoodwinked by a propaganda push. Same as folks were suddenly very concerned about WMDs in Iraq or the political powers in Afghanistan and so on. They weren’t, not organically - a network of think tanks, government stooges, etc all rally to provide jobs for these kinds of nerds to write these kinds of articles and have these kinds of takes. Several think tanks in Washington have converted from focusing on Syria or Iraq to focusing on Russia or China, as they know who butters their bread.

    Anyways that’s a long ramble in response to a simple question.

  • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.nettochapotraphouse@hexbear.net•Just found out my Union IS NOT ALLOWED TO STRIKE. And they agreed to it!!English
    32·
    11 months ago

    Very common in the US. You can still strike, but it’s restricted to after your contract expires. This makes the contract periods restricted to legalistic enforcement of said contract, recruiting, and training.

    Some unions can avoid the no-strike provision, but they have top be strong: high engagement, large membership, good leverage, militant leadership. American unions are usually weak and driven by a collaborationist, bureaucratic leadership. It takes a lot of work to run a proper union and the larger unions have figured out that you get a higher return on investment by raking in dues and then going through the motions with little staff or effort. Many will not even accept shops that are 100% ready to unionize, all the organizing done, because they think it won’t bring in more dues than justifies staff time (really, they are working in a large overhead for the higher-ups).

    On the positive side, you can always create a reform movement within your union. Get like-minded folks together, memorize your union bylaws, and begin strategizing about how you’re going to (1) take over union leadership and/or (2) use your own power and narrative-creating abilities to force leadership to do what you want. Make your own demands leading up to the next contract fight! Print your own flyers and signs. Talk to friendly media about what you want.