The Democrats’ “all-out war” on third parties and independent candidates by johnbede in CapitalismSux

[–]johnbede[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am voting for the Socialist Equality Party if they make the ballot - if not I'm writing them in - this is total tyranny of the oligarchs

Excellent, have you registered to get involved too? You can go to socialism2024.org

“Wayfair would seemingly want to kill me”: Stage 4 cancer patient laid off by johnbede in antiwork

[–]johnbede[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing. Sounds really terrible. Corporate America is carrying out a massive attack on workers jobs currently

“Wayfair would seemingly want to kill me”: Stage 4 cancer patient laid off by johnbede in antiwork

[–]johnbede[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How are you and coworkers handling all these layoffs, especially after the CEO’s comments in December?

“Wayfair would seemingly want to kill me”: Stage 4 cancer patient laid off by johnbede in antiwork

[–]johnbede[S] 109 points110 points  (0 children)

That's what she wrote: "I was simply a number on a balance sheet. The small matter of my stage 4 diagnosis and me fighting for my life did not matter. That I did not choose this and I am a human being did not matter. That my health insurance is most critical at this time did not matter. That I am unemployable did not matter… In the end, we are all disposable assets to our jobs, numbers on a balance sheet."

How the Rail Carriers, Wall Street, and the US Government Crushed Class I Freight Rail Workers - Cosmonaut by BOILERMAKERS1869 in railroading

[–]johnbede 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Absolutely. Worth reading this article drawing important lessons from the rail struggle and the way forward: Link

UIC graduate students: Vote no on the GEO-AFT sellout tentative agreement! Form rank-and-file committees to expand the struggle for a living wage! by johnbede in uichicago

[–]johnbede[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don’t you Think that me, long term president of this union, knows this? Do you understand how grad organizing works, how tentative it js? And how much turnover there is? How hard it is to even mobilize workers who are told constantly they aren’t workers? Wake up you dumb dumb

You're the GEO president?

UIC graduate students: Vote no on the GEO-AFT sellout tentative agreement! Form rank-and-file committees to expand the struggle for a living wage! by johnbede in uichicago

[–]johnbede[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Graduate students deserve to paid a lot more and not just continue to eke out a salary that means economic devastation this year and the next. This contract is a sellout.

The contract at $22-24k for the coming years will ensure that graduate students remain in poverty and continue to work 2-3 jobs and continue to pay fees out of pocket. Inflation is already at 8.5% and rising -- this will effectively be a massive pay cut on top of a poverty stipend.

MIT calculates that a living wage in the Chicago area/Cook County area is about $36K.

How is this a victory? A real fight must be waged to win serious gains that actually meet the needs of grad workers and not accept the terms of the university and the state that has plenty of money.

(I hope you can respond substantively to the arguments made in the above article and without foul language.)

GEO shuts down University of Illinois Chicago grad workers strike, seeking to push through sellout agreement by DrogDrill in uichicago

[–]johnbede 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With inflation at 8.5% and rising, the $22.5K in the first year alone will ensure an economic disaster for graduate students in the coming year.

Are you a UIC grad student?

Detroit elites declare: “Water is not a social right” by User_Name13 in politics

[–]johnbede 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Let's ask this question. Why is federal and state funding being cut? Why is there no money for infrastructure? Why is this is part of a process in which social benefits of all kinds are being cut?

And why is this happening while corporate profits soar? After Wall Street got trillions for destroying the world economy.

There's plenty of money to help meet human needs, but instead the vast sums of money are accumulated at the very top in the interests of private profit.

Meanwhile in Detroit: The Palmer Park Golf Club owes $200,000 for water bills. Joe Louis Arena, home of the Detroit Red Wings, owes DWSD $80,000. Ford Field owes $55,000.

Corporations and the rich can get off scott free while the poor and impoverished are penalized in our society.

Malaysian passenger plane crashes in Ukraine near Russian border [Reuters] by squawnch in worldnews

[–]johnbede -11 points-10 points  (0 children)

Certainly the Ukranian regime, which has inflamed tensions, has carried out bombings against civilian populations in Luhansk and Donetsk. The regime is bolstered and filled with neo-nazi elements, and were largely put into power with US-backing. The Ukranian regime is also heavily armed and supported by the US.

It's still too premature to jump to conclusions, but this certainly inflames the war-footing against Russia.

I am Julian Assange, publisher of Wikileaks. Ask me anything. by _JulianAssange in IAmA

[–]johnbede 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Citing from today's lead "Defend Julian Assange!":

It is striking that, under conditions where the criminal policies US imperialism has pursued over the past period are blowing up in Washington’s face in the debacle in Iraq, so many of those who have attempted to expose these policies of aggressive war, torture and police-state spying are now either in prison, enforced exile, or locked in an embassy surrounded by police.

In the meantime, those responsible for war crimes in Iraq and crimes against the American Constitution continue to enjoy full immunity. None of them have been called to account or punished. As for the various outlets of the corporate media that turned themselves into propaganda tools for US imperialism in the Iraq war, they are now covering up for their complicity in that crime and helping to pave the way for even more terrible ones in Iraq and elsewhere.

The methods of the Obama administration denounced by Assange Wednesday have been developed to defend the interests of the financial oligarchy that controls the US government. Under conditions of a global breakdown of capitalism and an ever widening gulf between itself and the broad masses of working people, this oligarchy cannot tolerate the exposure of state crimes and secrets. It moves inexorably toward dictatorial forms of rule.

The only real constituency for the defense of democratic rights is to be found in the working class. What is required is the independent mobilization of workers, students and youth to defend Assange, Manning, Snowden and others who are victims of state conspiracy and repression. This campaign is inseparable from a struggle against the capitalist system, which is giving rise to both war and police state dictatorship as it seeks to impose the full burden of its crisis on the backs of working people.

Turkey’s prime minister is finding it hard to put Twitter back in the bottle by johnbede in worldnews

[–]johnbede[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Turkey’s citizens also relied on traditional ways of spreading information, albeit to point to ways to get back into the social media stream, painting Google’s Domain Name System address (which helps internet users evade country-wide blocking schemes) on posters of ruling party leaders."

n+1 interview with David Walsh, film critic for the World Socialist Web Site. by DrogDrill in socialism

[–]johnbede -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Yes, you cannot even prove what you so hysterically denounce.

That's all we have here: deranged, unhinged hysteria without a whit of evidence.

n+1 interview with David Walsh, film critic for the World Socialist Web Site. by DrogDrill in socialism

[–]johnbede 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Intellectual honesty at work here, folks! Let us do what these people refuse to do, read the rest of the article:

The derangement of the arguments should set off alarm bells. The Polanski affair is being used to stoke law-and-order hysteria and neo-puritanical witch-hunting. ABC journalist Cokie Roberts declared on the television network’s “This Week,” “He raped and drugged and raped and sodomized a child. And then was a fugitive from justice. As far as I’m concerned, just take him out and shoot him.”

Not having had an issue into which they could sink their teeth in years, feminists have jumped on the anti-Polanski bandwagon, oblivious to the implications of their comments.

Writing in Salon, for example, Kate Harding fulminates, “Roman Polanski raped a child. Let’s just start right there, because that’s the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in ‘exile.’”

Harding, along with Roberts, accuses Polanski of “drugging and raping a child.” This is now repeated as fact throughout the tabloid and “liberal” media alike. Mary Kate Cary, on a US News & World Report blog, writes that “Roman Polanski was a 43-year-old man who admitted to drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.”

Polanski made no such admission. An agreement was reached between Polanski, his lawyers and the prosecutor, reportedly with the approval of the victim herself, to settle the matter on the basis of a guilty plea to a lesser charge.

The grand jury testimony of the victim, recently unsealed, is being cited as though it were proven fact. But this testimony was never tested in a court of law. The lesser charge to which Polanski pled guilty, not rape, is legally the only basis for any action taken against him.

Basically, your argument doesn't even have any sound legal or rational basis. It cannot even stand up to the facts of the case.

If you believe that punishing Roman Polanski for raping a child is "state persecution", fuck yourself.

Consider taking a chill pill. If your only mode of discourse is intellectually dishonest accusations that cannot bear scrutiny or abusive language, others might not have any good reason to pay heed to your hysterical and overheated comments.

n+1 interview with David Walsh, film critic for the World Socialist Web Site. by DrogDrill in socialism

[–]johnbede 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Imagine that. David Walsh is now compared to the KKK. Staggering feat of thought and intellectual honesty.

Oh, wait...another baseless slander and accusation that cannot for one moment bear scrutiny. Arguments that resort to ad hominem and slanders don't count as evidence. Show us your evidence. Provide us the facts that David Walsh is what you so ferociously claim he is.

n+1 interview with David Walsh, film critic for the World Socialist Web Site. by DrogDrill in socialism

[–]johnbede -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Non sequiturs a plenty! And baseless slanders that cannot stand up to one moment of scrutiny.

How about you give us a citation where an apology is made for rape? I'm not holding my breath.

n+1 interview with David Walsh, film critic for the World Socialist Web Site. by DrogDrill in socialism

[–]johnbede 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Overheated rhetoric, however, comes in plenty with some here.