(page down for the good stuff)
Harv
John Graversgaard wrote:
Dear futureworkers,This illusionary talk about Internet being the future agenda for the fighting poor and workers in a deregulated world with no governing states to intervene in the global market economy, is smart and many people will believe it.
In the neo-liberalistic ideology there is only subjects and corporations.....the ultimate reign of freedom....the capitalist state is no threat to this project, but supporting transnational capital.....unions and workers parties, the defendants of the working population, is offered only a marginal role....!
It is a fist in the eye of fighting unionists and workers parties, which are fighting against neo-liberalism and unfettered capitalism.
Thomas Friedman is cynical person and spokesman for the US imperialism and Doug Henwood calls him precisely "the pop theoretician of the era"....where : "Market freedom is implicitly equated with freedom itself, and free competition among monads given an egalitarian spin"(see Dougs article in Monthly Review, july/august 1999).
This Thomas Friedman is also the person responsible for the words about the hidden hand of the market that will never work without a hidden fist...McDonald`s cannot flourish without McDonnellDouglas, the designer of the F-15.What is needed is a renewed discussion on reform/revolution, not ideological bullshit from an arrrogant academic from his privileged and paid position at New York Times.
John Graversgaard,
labour inspector and psychologist
Aarhus, Denmark
homepage: http://hjem.get2net.dk/graversgaard
Michael Gurstein wrote:
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 23:26:55 +0000
From: Kerry Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [CPI-UA] The Internet Solution for Workers' RightsOccasionally Tom Friedman gets the picture:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/friedman/073099frie.html
July 30, 1999
FOREIGN AFFAIRS / By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The New Human Rights
In this post-totalitarian world, the human rights debate needs an
update. While Americans are focusing on issues of free speech,
elections and the right to write an op-ed piece, people in the
developing world are increasingly focused on workers' rights, jobs,
the right to organize and the right to have decent working
conditions.Quite simply, for many workers around the world the oppression of
the unchecked commissars has been replaced by the oppression
of the unregulated capitalists, who move their manufacturing from
country to country, constantly in search of those who will work for
the lowest wages and lowest standards. To some, the Nike
swoosh is now as scary as the hammer and sickle.These workers need practical help from the West, not the usual
moral grandstanding. To address their needs, the human rights
community needs to retool in this post-cold-war world, every bit as
much as the old arms makers have had to learn how to make
subway cars and toasters instead of tanks."In the cold war," says Michael Posner, head of the Lawyers
Committee for Human Rights, "the main issue was how do you
hold governments accountable when they violate laws and norms.
Today the emerging issue is how do you hold private companies
accountable for the treatment of their workers at a time when
government control is ebbing all over the world, or governments
themselves are going into business and can't be expected to play
the watchdog or protection role."The impulse is to call for some global governing body to fix the
problem. But there is none and there will be none. The only answer
is for activists to learn how to use globalization to their advantage --
to super-empower themselves -- so there can be global
governance, even without global government. They have to learn
how to compel companies to behave better by mobilizing
consumers and the Internet. I'm talking about a network solution for
human rights, and it's the future of social advocacy.[...]
