Those bent on eroding the rights of the workers know no boundaries – so those fighting on behalf of workers can’t either. One doesn’t need to know the leaders of Canada and Mexico to know that the leaders of the three North American counties (ie Three Amigos) getting together with 30 CEOs (including Walmart) is not a good thing – especially if union leaders and environmental scientists are not invited to the party. Since unions are not like Nixon, the only way to figure out what went on in those meetings is either to compare notes (different leaders letting different things slip) or by lucking out on Freedom of Information. The same goes for the G8 and G20 (though the recent pre-G20 meeting with labour leaders included seems promising). Canada and the UK and Australia) are good for comparing notes because they speak pretty much the same language as Americans. So, what makes going beyond boundaries so that you can compare notes difficult? Pretend that you are a couple of Martians and all you know about earthlings is that somehow your TV gets The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Jon starts talking about this Weiner guy who took pictures of the front of his pants. The First Martian can’t understand what this is about because they have never heard of this Weiner guy. The second Martian surmises that Weiner is some sort of Earthling politician who did something embarrassing and lied about it to try to cover it up – and would be thinking about Martian Politicians who have engaged in similar acts of stupidity. The second Martian would also be asking herself why this was such a big deal when this sort of stupidity had nothing to do with job performance – unless Weiner was actually scaring someone by his actions. The first Martian got confused because she was focusing on what she did not know (this Weiner guy) rather than what she did know – politics, scandal and stupidity. An American reading Harry Potter can probably surmise that “trainers” are a form of footwear just by the contextual cues, and not knowing that they are the same thing as running shoes (ie runners) or sneakers doesn’t really take away that much from their understanding of the story. However, in articles about politics, people sometimes get tripped up unnecessarily if they see an unfamiliar word or name. Someone reading an article about Canada or the UK may think – that is about Canada or the UK – it has nothing to do with what is going on in the States – when the person would not be sharing it if they actually believed that. As a kid, I learned from watching Good Times about The Pill, but, because I only heard about it on the show, I mistakenly thought that The Pill was only available in the ghettos in the States and that one had to go there if one actually wanted to get some. I was thinking like the first Martian. A couple years later, I heard somewhere that The Pill was also available in Canada. Finally, most articles one shares from other countries do make reference to the United States, sometimes marginally, and sometimes they go back and forth to the point where the only way you can follow is to assume that, for 90-95% of it, what applies to one country is pretty much also happening in the other country. One should not be afraid to ask questions – I am not. Arab League = G8 / G20 etc During Arab Spring, lots of tweets referred to a “Dictator’s Handbook” because all the dictators seemed to be using the same strategies – these are the only two I can find in Word doc. We are all Khaled Said: I can definitely tell you I will vote against Amr Moussa, head of Arab league, or what we call: The secretary of the dictators club. That is: Arab kings & presidents. RT @spedralbes: yesRT @ChangeInLibya: Did EVERY SINGLE ARAB DICTATOR use snipers against his people so far? Good God... #libya #syria #tunisia #egypt #yemen
Posted on: Fri, 23 May 2014 00:22:03 +0000
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