Must See Video: Honduras to New Orleans to New York

Film report from The Nation. Naomi Klein connects the dots -

Special Report: Honduran Teachers get Shock Treatment

Here are some comments from Arjun Janah:

Do watch this video. It's an indication of what's coming next. The workers will be put back in their traditional place, including the teachers. Of course, in many countries, teachers and their students are active in social movements in an organized way. Here, it has been less so.


The current movement, backed by global finance, including the IMF but also private financiers, corporations and their surrogates in government, is to roll back whatever little is left of organized labor, and to increase the opportunities for private profit from what have been public concerns -- such as water supply and education. The movement has its tireless pundits and advocates in the media, and their ideological gurus are the economist Milton Friedman and the visionary Ayn Rand.


Workers are useful only so long as they produce surplus value by their labor. After that, they are utterly discardable, belonging to the class that the elite, by virtue of innate abilities and practiced virtues, is meant to rule. Anything that disturbs this order causes inefficiency and must be eliminated. In particular, any attempt of the working class to act in its collective interest must be crushed, and individual aspirations and achievements celebrated.


Job security, pensions, health benefits, access to higher education that is not necessary for economic productivity, all of these are unnecessary for the working classes. And those who are poor and unproductive are best left to perish. So forget about things like access to clean water and basic necessities for such.


Of course, in more affluent places, the masses are still needed as consumers who will purchase the goods and services that produce the profits. And to pay taxes. So we need to grow or maintain a mindless consumer class that is ever hungry for these goods and services and willing to keep running (at low wages) for these -- including housing.

Arjun