June 2019 – Alternet.org

The CIA tried to recruit at an American Library Association convention — and the librarians fought back – Alternet.org
▻https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/the-cia-tried-to-recruit-at-an-american-library-association-convention-and

https://www.alternet.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Port.jpg

A group of librarians demanded the American Library Association abide by its values on Friday as they staged a protest of the CIA’s presence and recruitment at the professional organization’s annual conference.

At the convention, which is taking place June 20-25 in Washington, D.C., the CIA is among the hundreds of exhibitors.

Being an exhibitor at one of its gatherings, the American Library Association (ALA) says, “provides the best and most comprehensive opportunity to reach decision makers in the library field.”

The protesters say the CIA’s track record provides ample evidence it should not be provided that opportunity.

“The CIA is recruiting at #alaac19,” said organizer and Library Freedom Project founder Alison Macrina on Twitter. “Everything they stand for is a violation of the values of librarianship, so we protested.”

The protesters laid out their motivation in a statement they handed out at the action. According to the Library Journal, the statement said, in part:

The CIA has participated for decades in the violent overthrow of governments while propping up dictators all over the world. The CIA believes in absolute secrecy for itself, but total surveillance for all others. The CIA makes use of ultra-secretive ‘black sites’ to conduct torture and extrajudicial detention. We need not list their entire history to show that library workers should not be associated with them, that the CIA’s actions are incompatible with the values of librarianship.

“In an era where democracy is in jeopardy, where the government and its agencies are under the control of a dangerous white supremacist regime,” the statement added, “library workers must take a stand against undemocratic forces — particularly those as powerful as the CIA.”

That language builds on and mirrors a call from an open letter released last year.

Authored by Macrina and Dustin Fife and entitled “No Legitimization Through Association: the CIA should not be exhibiting at ALA,” the letter was published right after the ALA’s 2018 annual conference, when the CIA was also an exhibitor.

“We refuse to lend credence to the CIA through association and we ask our fellow library workers to join us,” it said. “We should not allow them space to recruit library workers to become intelligence analysts, which was the focus of their booth.”

“Library workers are powerful,” the statement added. “We have a strong reputation in our local communities and across the world as being steadfast stewards of democracy, intellectual freedom, equity, and social justice. We attempt to honor these values through our collections, programs, and services and we recognize that our libraries need continuous examination in a systemically unjust society. Those values should extend to all that we do. A more democratic world is possible, and we believe that library workers can be at the forefront of this charge.”

At this year’s event, during a Saturday membership meeting, a resolution calling for a ban on CIA recruitment at all ALA conferences and meetings failed over objections that the CIA’s free speech would be violated.

Macrina says that’s “a facile argument.”

The conference, Macrina told Common Dreams, “is a ticketed, private space. We abide by a code of conduct there. It is absolutely reasonable for us to decide who gets to be in such a space. If the KKK wanted to exhibit, I believe we’d reject them. This is not a First Amendment issue.”

#Bibliothèques #CIA #ALA #American_Library_Association #First_amendment

How factory farms could trigger a antibiotic crisis — and what we can do to stop it – Alternet.org
▻https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/how-factory-farms-could-trigger-a-antibiotic-crisis-and-what-we-can-do-to-

https://www.alternet.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/shutterstock_752120836.jpg

In fact, Denny’s joins a growing group of major fast food and fast casual chains (McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC, Chipotle, and others) that have established policies prohibiting the use of medically important antibiotics in chicken. This is not the same as “antibiotic-free” claims, to be clear (“medically important” antibiotics are those used in human medicine; there are other antibiotics only used in animals), but it is a critical change that has been rippling through the food system for the past several years to protect human health. To explain the significance of this trend, a quick history of the problem that companies are trying to address is useful.
PUBLICITÉ

According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic resistance is one of the top 10 threats to global public health in 2019. When antibiotic medications are overused or misused, resistant bacteria can spread, causing treatments for common (and often serious) illnesses to become ineffective. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 2 million Americans contract an antibiotic-resistant infection every year, and 23,000 will die from it.

The use of antibiotics in animal agriculture is a major part of the problem. More than 70 percent of the medically important antibiotics sold in the U.S. are sold for use in food animals. This is not because cows are particularly susceptible to strep throat; the majority of antibiotics used on animal farms are not used as treatment for diagnosed diseases in animals. Rather, most animals raised for food are raised on factory farms, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). To produce animal products cheaply and on a large scale, animals are packed together, creating crowded, stressful and unsanitary conditions. Such conditions are inherently disease-promoting for animals. To deal with the likelihood of infections and disease associated with poor conditions without actually changing those conditions, antibiotics have become a convenient Band-Aid. As factory farming has become the predominant model for raising animals for food, more farmers have resorted to practices of routinely administering antibiotics (sometimes even delivering drugs to chicks still in the egg) to keep animals “healthy” enough to bring to slaughter. As more antibiotics are used in these conditions, more antibiotic-resistant bacteria are released into the environment.

Ultimately, eliminating antibiotics in the rest of the meat supply chain will require real changes in the way conventional farming works. Furthermore, the problem of antibiotic resistance is only one of many negative consequences of the factory farming system. Factory farms are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution, and deforestation; and from a moral standpoint, the quality of life for animals raised in factory farming conditions is shockingly poor.

Antibiotics provide a window into the deep problems in the animal agriculture system that produces the majority of our meat. The current model is broken. At the same time, the progress in reducing medically important antibiotics in the chicken industry over just a few years sheds light on the potential for change. When consumers demand more responsibly raised meat, the market will respond.

#Antibiotiques #Alimentation #Elevage

Robert Reich : Hey Uber, the gig is up – Alternet.org
▻https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/robert-reich-hey-uber-the-gig-is-up

https://www.alternet.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/uber.jpg

par Robert Reich, ancien ministre du travail sous Clinton

Uber just filed its first quarterly report as a publicly traded company. Although it lost $1bn, investors may still do well because the losses appear to be declining.

Uber drivers, on the other hand, aren’t doing well. According to a recent study, about half of New York’s Uber drivers are supporting families with children, yet 40% depend on Medicaid and another 18% on food stamps.

It’s similar elsewhere in the new American economy. Last week, the New York Times reported that fewer than half of Google workers are full-time employees. Most are temps and contractors receiving a fraction of the wages and benefits of full-time Googlers, with no job security.

Across America, the fastest-growing category of new jobs is gig work – contract, part-time, temp, self-employed and freelance. And a growing number of people work for staffing firms that find them gig jobs.

The standard economic measures – unemployment and income – look better than Americans feel

Estimates vary but it’s safe to say almost a quarter of American workers are now gig workers. Which helps explain why the standard economic measures – unemployment and income – look better than Americans feel.

Gig workers are about 30% cheaper because companies pay them only when they need them, and don’t have to spend on the above-mentioned labor protections.

Increasingly, businesses need only a small pool of “talent” anchored in the enterprise – innovators and strategists responsible for the firm’s competitive strength.

Other workers are becoming fungible, sought only for reliability and low cost. So, in effect, economic risks are shifting to them.

Gig work is making capitalism harsher. Unless government defines legitimate gig work more narrowly and provides stronger safety nets for gig workers, gig capitalism cannot endure.

#Travail #Ubérisation #Uber #Gig_economy