• L’Inde a vécu la plus grande grève de l’histoire humaine
    http://www.directmatin.fr/monde/2016-09-03/linde-vecu-la-plus-grande-greve-de-lhistoire-humaine-737701

    Selon les syndicats, ce seraient ainsi près de 180 millions de travailleurs, hommes et femmes, qui ont manifesté pour s’opposer à la politique économique du gouvernement. L’Inde comptant environ 1,250 milliards d’individus, ce serait donc un septième de la population qui a arrêté le travail pour une journée. Mais ces chiffres n’ont toutefois pas pu être vérifiés de façon indépendante.

    The Biggest Strike in World History ? No Thanks, We’re Focusing on the New iPhone
    http://fair.org/home/the-biggest-strike-in-world-history-no-thanks-were-focusing-on-the-new-iphone

    And yet there was virtually no coverage of the strike in commercial US media, according to searches of the Nexis news database. Not a word on ABC, CBS or NBC. No mention on the main cable news networks—CNN, Fox and MSNBC—either. (The Intercept‘s Zaid Jilani—9/6/16—noted that there was one mention on CNN International, when “the CEO of the human resources consulting firm ManpowerGroup cited the Indian strike as part of global concerns about technology suppressing wages.”) Neither the PBS NewsHour nor NPR touched the story.

    Not a single US newspaper found in the Nexis database—which includes most of the major papers, like the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today—reported an original story on the strike. (Associated Press had a brief, 289-word report, which ran on the New York Times‘ website and was doubtless picked up by other papers.) The Wall Street Journal, whose full text isn’t on Nexis, also skipped the Indian strike story.

    That’s an example of the kind of story US corporate media don’t care about. What do they care about? Well, Apple is planning to release a new version of the iPhone next week. That’s already making news: CBS did a segment on its Money Watch program (9/7/16) previewing the phone, as did NPR‘s Morning Edition and All Things Considered (9/7/16); the product was front-page news in USA Today (9/8/16) and the Wall Street Journal (9/8/16), while you had to turn to page A12 in the Washington Post (9/7/16) or the first page of the business section in the New York Times (9/8/16) to get your future cellphone news.

    A hundred million or more workers striking for their rights hold no interest for the news managers in US corporate media. But a new gadget from a prominent advertiser? Now, that’s the news that’s fit to print.

    La « #réalité » telle que façonnée par les #MSM

    • citons la source des autres articles:

      India Is Making Labor History With the World’s Largest General Strike | Alternet
      http://www.alternet.org/world/india-worlds-largest-strike

      Trade unions leaders are reticent to say how many people struck work on September 2, 2016. They simply cannot offer a firm number. But they do say that the strike – the seventeenth general strike since India adopted its new economic policy in 1991 – has been the largest ever. The corporate news media – no fan of strikes – reported that the number of strikers exceeded the estimated 150 million workers. A number of newspapers suggested that 180 million Indian workers walked off the job. If that is the case, then this is the largest reported general strike in history.
      ...
      A leading international business consultancy firm reported – a few years ago – that 680 million Indians live in deprivation. These people – half the Indian population – are deprived of the basics of life such as food, energy, housing, drinking water, sanitation, health care, education and social security.
      ...
      Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ..., did not pay heed to these workers. His goal is to increase India’s growth rate, which – as judged by the example of when he was Chief Minister of the State of Gujarat – can be accomplished by a cannibal like attitude towards workers’ rights and the livelihood of the poor. Selling off state assets, giving hugely lucrative deals to private business and opening the doors of India’s economy to Foreign Direct Investment are the mechanisms to increase the growth rate. None of these strategies, as even the International Monetary Fund acknowledges, will lead to social equality. This growth trajectory leads to greater inequality, to less power for workers and more deprivation.

      La conclusion de l’auteur d’Alternet

      Class Struggle.

      Only four per cent of the Indian workforce is in unions. If these unions merely fought to defend their tenuous rights, their power would erode even further. Union power has suffered greatly since the Indian economy liberalised in 1991, with Supreme Court judgments against union democracy and with the global commodity chain pitting Indian workers against workers elsewhere. It is to the great credit of the Indian trade unions that they have embraced – in different tempos – the labour conditions and living conditions of workers and peasants in the informal sector. What power remains with unions can only grow if they do what they have been doing – namely, to turn towards the immense mass of the informal workers and peasants and draw them into the culture of unions and class struggle.

      L’auteur

      Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013) and The Death of a Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016). His columns appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.

      #lutte_des_classes #syndicalisme #privatisation