Strikes and elections in Europe

• The weather in Scotland is miserable
• Stephen moved to a new apartment in Mexico city and is very excited
• Walton just started working for Union Solidarity International
• 30,000 cops marched in the public sector strike
• 400,000 people took action – pictures here
• The Tories have broken their contract with the police – could spell trouble
• When the police unionised in apartheid South Africa it undermined that organisation as an instrument of oppression
• POPCRU was formed by Lieutenant Gregory Rockman

6:30 Tech update

• IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat
• We’re going to try to integrate the #cyberunions IRC channel into the web page
• Forums are taking off nicely – thanks

9:20 It’s election time in Greece and France

• Stephen is not keen on voting when there’s no alternative
• France: Hollande is no radical, but his election could represent a sea change in Europe
• People are rejecting austerity
• Radical left party Syriza have come from nowhere to dominate the Greek elections
• Centre left parties need to realise that the centre is collapsing and it’s time to articulate a left alternative
• The Democrats are distancing themselves from the unions
• Parliament is the management system of the status quo
• We need to contest power in the workplace and on the streets
• It’s impossible to get structural change through the ballot box – there needs to be outside pressure
• Voting can change the terrain that struggles happen in – there are strategic reasons for voting
• Another world is possible!

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1:30 May Day updates

• Good day in Mexico City
• Good article about the new and old left coming together in the US
• Interesting times across Europe
• Elections in the UK (local), France and Greece

6:00 Tech update

• Apple finally credits Open Street Maps
• Duckduckgo searches Open Street Maps if you search !osm

8:00 Interview with Smári McCarthy

• International Modern Media Institute builds media freedom best practice
• Makes Iceland the best country in the world to host information
• Time to go on the offensive to assert net freedom
• In the US, free speech is easy to suppress at local level
• Free speech laws are 200 years out of date and not fit for the information age
• Never waste a good crisis – it’s an opportunity for change
• Birgitta Jonsdottir helped promote media freedom in the Alþingi
• The financial crisis means Iceland can no longer rely on is finance sector
• Data services become a new economic sector, which is diversified and encourages entrepeneurship
• ACTA is a threat to a large portion of human endeavour and must be stopped
• Lobbyists have succeeded in entrenching intellectual monopoly protections into the Kenyan constitution – allows them to leverage East Africa
• How do unions fit into this? Where is the digital labour movement?
• the labour movement is paralysed by hierarchy – the internet challenges this and can unlock union power
• The industrial revolution was a tragic mistake
• How do you protect whistleblowers?
• You can get hosting in Iceland through Ecodis

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Intro track: Take the Bastards Down by Dropkick Murphys

3:00 Updates

• Walton and Stephen talk about the weather in Glasgow and Mexico City
• Stephen has taken up sewing
• Walton was at the STUC Congress in Inverness
• The STUC voted to support the BDS campaign against Israel
• The Cooperative Group became the first major supermarket chain in Europe to join the boycott – the Guardian and HaAretz

10:20 It’s May Day

• We discuss different traditions in different countries
• Why does the US celebrate Labor day in September? Depoliticised and turned into a shopping day
• The Occupy movement is planning a lot of events

14:20 The history of May Day

• 1886 Haymarket riots in Chicago
• Demonstration for an 8 hour day – a bomb was thrown
• Seven anarchists were sentenced to death
• Worldwide protests against the execution lead to the founding of May Day as a day commemorating workers’ sacrifice
• Workers’ memorial day on 28 April commemorates workers who die on the job

20:00 How do we organise the digital proletariat?

• David Bacon wrote a seminal article about organising tech workers
• See also
• New management techniques are piloted in the high tech sector first, before being applied to other work places
• Comment on the forums!

29:00 Feedback

• Good comments from BostonGeorge on IRC
• Coming soon – how to make a podcast!

0:28 We missed a week

• Stephen is back in Mexico after a week in Boston dealing with storage and other errands
• Walton is busy with Union Solidarity International and will be attending the Scottish Trade Union Congress
• Stephen wanted to achieve more when in Boston but was too busy

4:10 Let’s hear the tech Updates

• We’ve been using DuckDuckGo cause it doesn’t track your searches like google does
• Great search abilities to use the bang (!) to do specific searches
• Stephen first learned that ! is called bang when he used CrunchBang (#!) Linux
• Walton doesn’t have that growing sense of paranoia that google knows everything, discovered it in Linuxmint

8:35 Internet Freedom infringed by the FBI

• Mayfirst was approached by the FBI about access to a server in relation to one email that was tracked by IP through a Mayfirst server that is administered by Riseup Network that the European Counter Network (ECN) uses with an Anonymous Remailer
• What is an anonymous remailer
• FBI went to the housing location and took the server from the housing company
• Mayfirst/Riseup/ECN released a statement

16:24 Return of SOPA/PIPA

• The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is the new SOPA/PIPA
• What is CISPA? information provided by EFF
• Allows companies to give personal information from emails to the federal government without a court order
• Governments realize that activism is becoming powerful online and doing what they can to cut it down
• The UK version is similar to CISPA is the Communications Capabilities Development Programme

22:00 We search for a cheery note to end on

• Stephen has nothing, Walton brings us back to the potential of Union Solidarity International

We see the light: disappointed at spending another birthday on a train, Walton complains that Cyberunions hasn’t made any money. How can we monetise this project?

Making this gig pay

• Sell web services to Occupy?
• Create an affiliate marketing programme selling Microsoft packages to unions?
• Punting proprietary databases programmes that keep unions locked in to expensive contracts

Disciplining workers and extracting the maximum surplus value

• We are tired of working. Maybe we can outsource the production of the podcast
• Employing people is so 21st Century – we can use unpaid interns
• Better yet, who needs people – maybe we can get a bot to do it all

What organisational framework will fit our production schedule best?

• Question is, do we favour libertarian or authoritarian capitalism?
• Walton’s Stalinist tendencies means he fetishises the firm hand of State power to keep production on schedule
• Stephen prefers a more subtle, ideological method, convincing our workers they are free
• Maybe a compromise is in order – absolute State brutality beneath a thin veneer of freedom

There’s more money to be made in the financial markets than in producing

• In fact, making things is so last century! We need to financialise
• Maybe we can develop a market for credit default swaps on whether the show is released on time]
• Stranger things have happened – and it would be perfect insider training

• Join us and get wealthy!
• Think and grow rich!
• We have the secret!

0:32 Walton is in London

• Working with a newly formed Union Solidarity International
• For some reason grassroots is a good idea with the labor movement
• Stephen camped out with MXtomalacalle at the Monument to the Revolution
• Believe it or not Stephen can dance late into the night and finished the night with a talk about the Paris Commune

7:05 The closure of the Johnny Walker factory

• The existing plant was profitable but they still decided to close it
• Walton shed a tear watching the factory workers leave for the last time
• Walton took video footage of the last day
• Capital taking advantage of the economic crisis to close and extract more profits
• Disturbing what capital can do with so much power, bribing the government to give them money to stay

13:00 A more cheerful tech update

• MXtomalacalle has adopted Free Software as part of the movement
• Free Software working group has been created and starts to meet this week.
• Trying to handle volunteer info and Stephen tried out CiviCRM we had done a show with Keir about it in episode 20
• CiviCRM install was pretty easy on the WordPress site
• Ability to develop social connections between relationships of people involved
• A learning process, and a good support group on IRC

17:58 Labor Unions and their IT proprietary ways

• From our IRC channel came a discussion of IT at labor unions being more supportive to Microsoft and mainstream
• Connects to the Marxist critique that you use the capitalist tools against itself
• Very rare to run into labor activists that understand the politics of software, network and the power structures involved
• Labor union strategy tends to be a Broadcast and not focusing on their strengths to organize community

22:00 No risk strategy to use LibreOffice

• Probably could start with LibreOffice
• Stephen ducked and went or goed or something to research connections to anti-law firm
• Stephen happen to find a connection between Microsoft and a Jackson-Lewis and why unions shouldn’t use Microsoft
• Trying to figure out a way to build committees in a union to demand Free Software

27:15 Stephen is a Trot and some how a tank is involved

• There are lots of trots and tankies in Britian
• Tankies are stalinists, and the name comes from the Stalin invasion to worker revolutions that were being oppressed
• In Mexico tankies are stalinistas

0:30 Locals calling him Esteban

• Everything is good! Apologize for the audio error from Episode 39, lesson learned details here
• Stephen’s edits don’t matter cause Walton is our sole listener
• St. Patrick’s Day (o San Patricio) in Glasgow every day is St Patrick’s Day, Walton instead went Rock Climbing on a “very high wall“
• Stephen had a Mexican St. Patrick’s day with a new drink called pulque

5:54 What did Walton do in Tech yesterday

• ssh Walton learns server stuff and shared a screen with Stephen on the server to learn the backend
• Stephen puts the listeners to sleep…Walton thinks we split our audience
• Researched the XMPP for a possible mayfirst project.
• Walton has his cyberunions email and Stephen’s email

15:25 Call to action to support labor activists

• Stop the execution of Abdolreza Ghanbari take action!!!
• TOR support for activists and journalists in Iran
• Find a techie and use this new TOR feature to help people in Iran and Syria

26:51 Participate on cyberunions site

• Listener and podcaster discusses news and a lo about news that is not covered well take a listen Talk Geek To Me

Stephen’s updates

• Stephen teaches students to be GIMPs
• Stephen has been fiddling with the Cyberunions site and has added Vanilla Forums
• Add a comment!

06:00 Walton’s updates

• Walton visits the Ruskin College MA programme
• Great MA programme in International Labour and Trade Union Studies
• This is where I learned to theorise cyberunions
• Interview with programme director Ian Manborde
• If you’re interested in the course, email Ian.

15:30 Ruskin students talk about their research

• Students are researching interesting things
• Gender, BME representation, sex work, migration, solidarity unionism and more
• Dek was interested in our show on solidarity unionism

25:30 Interview with Mary Compton of Teacher Solidarity

• Teachers should check out Mary’s site Teacher Solidarity