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E-NEWS BULLETIN 1 September 2017 A week’s links to the making of the world

SOUTH AFRICA

COSATU National Strike on 27 September 2017cosatu-logo

COSATU’s Central Executive Committee released a statement this week announcing a National Day of Action against state capture, corruption and job losses. cosatu.org.za/


Integrate informal waste pickers into the mainstream economy

Gauteng province has identified the waste economy as one with enormous potential to create employment and generate entrepreneurial opportunities for thousands of unemployed people in our communities. dailymaverick.co.za/


#WomensMonth: Women still discriminated against in the workplace

A report released by the Commission for Gender Equality has found that women are still victims of harassment and other forms of discrimination in the workplace. iol.co.za/


Platinum for the Worldmarikana 2012

Report by Benchmarks Foundation and Bread for the World looking at Marikana 5 years after the massacre. (pdf 5.5MB)


ICASA to Act on Multichoice Monopoly

ICASA has listed a range of possible market interventions, particularly related to the acquisition and management of sports rights by broadcasters, as it moves to break MultiChoice’s dominance in South Africa’s pay-television industry. techcentral.co.za/


Reflections on South Africa: whose capital, whose state?

zumaEven if embattled President Zuma were to leave (and replaced by, say, Cyril Ramaphosa), the country is nowhere near getting out of its political crisis. Why not? It is because the problem lies, essentially, in the captured polity of the South African state and economy. pambazuka.org/


Attempts to foster a Black capitalist class in South Africa in co-operation with white capital have failed spectacularly. The price that white capital extracted for their co-operation was a neoliberal state that trapped the Black working class and poor. pambazuka.org/

Local news from Khayelitsha, East London, Port Elizabeth, Alexandra and Orange Farm in English and isiXhosa


Install the app for your phone: android /com.elitsha iphone /elitsha/

INTERNATIONAL

doxxing demo SFHow ‘Doxxing’ Became a Mainstream Tool in the Culture Wars

Online vigilantism has been around since the early days of the internet. So has “doxxing” — originally a slang term among hackers for obtaining and posting private documents about an individual, usually a rival or enemy. nytimes.com/


Backed By Police Union, Legislators Stand By Laws To Protect Drives Who Kill Protesters

charlottesvilleA swath of bills had been proposed around the country, largely in the South and primarily in response to Black Lives Matter and Dakota Access Pipeline related protests. The bills targeted leftist demonstrators who have increasingly shut down traffic by blocking roads and highways to bring attention to their cause. theintercept.com/


isisIslamic State is the cancer of modern capitalism

The brutal ‘Islamic State’ is a symptom of a deepening crisis of civilisation premised on fossil fuel addiction, which is undermining Western hegemony and unravelling state power across the Muslim world. middleeasteye.net/


silkway350 diplomatic flights carry weapons for terrorists

Silkway Airlines (an Azerbaijani state-run company) transported weapons to conflicts across the globe for the last three years under the cover that these were diplomatic flights. trud.bg/


Long Hours Lead to Labor Disputes for China’s Startups

Culture of overtime dominates country’s tech industry, but report finds young companies aren’t familiar with labor rules.

UBER, Lyft, Taxi Workers, Deregulation and Independent Contractors

This forum on Uber, Lyft, Taxi Workers, Deregulation and Independent Contractors was held as part of LaborTech.net. on July 30, 2017. Speakers included:
  • Richard Meghoo: President SF Taxi Workers Alliance
  • Peter Miller: Exec. SF Taxi Workers Alliance & SFLC delegate
  • Edward Escobar: The Alliance For Independent Workers

NEW TECHNOLOGIES / NEW FORMS OF WORK

New America Foundation Head Anne-Marie Slaughter Botches Laundering Google’s Money, Fires Anti-Trust Team at Eric Schmidt’s Behest

Anne-Marie Slaughter, who runs the New America Foundation, fired all ten members of its Open Markets initiative for praising the $2.7-billion EU fine against Google for anti-trust abuses and calling for US anti-trust officials “to build upon this important precedent, both in respect to Google and to other dominant platform monopolists including Amazon.” nakedcapitalism.com/


Google’s Disturbing Influence Over Think Tanks

“Google had directly funded 100 papers written by academics and 100 papers that came through think tanks funded by Google. These papers make their way to the congressional committees and regulatory agencies that are charged with overseeing Google’s business, like the Federal Trade Commission.” nytimes.com/


How the CIA made GoogleDick

Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’ medium.com/


fb data storage bank swedenSilicon Valley siphons our data like oil. But the deepest drilling has just begun.

Personal data is to the tech world what oil is to the fossil fuel industry. That’s why companies like Amazon and Facebook plan to dig deeper than we ever. theguardian.com/


AT&T California: Billions Charged for Broadband that Never Showed Up

Virtually no one knows the history of fiber optic broadband in America, much less what happened in their state, even though they were charged thousands of dollars per household. Instead, in 2017, we get embarrassing proposed laws. huffingtonpost.com/

WRITING

Tips for Aspiring Op-Ed Writers

A wise editor once observed that the easiest decision a reader can make is to stop reading. This means that every sentence has to count in grabbing the reader’s attention, starting with the first. nytimes.com/