The strike ended with both sides agreeing to mediation through the country's Labour Court. That process ended in May when the court-appointed mediator announced a deadlock. And for the moment, Tesco has dropped its efforts to force the pre-'96 workers onto new contracts.

But it has, according to Mandate General Secretary John Douglas, "engaged in a deliberate campaign of retribution and penalization against Mandate members and activists who legally and peacefully participated in industrial action." Workers who picketed have been suspended for arbitrary reasons and had their hours cut. The company has also refused to provide pre-'96 workers with the 4 percent pay raise other employees got.
[...]
Since Ireland has no collective bargaining legislation, employers have no legal obligation to bargain. Forcing companies to the negotiating table is a big challenge. Private sector union density is currently at 17 percent, though that number is inflated since it includes workers--like those at Dunnes--who have joined a union but don't have a contract.

Welcome to Fascist Beach

Why are existing laws so rarely enforced?

Madrid will push for a eurozone budget and eurobonds

Spanish Finance Minister Luis de Guindos ...

in June urged deep reform of the eurozone to include the creation of a "European monetary fund" and decide on "a certain percentage of national budgets["].

De Guindos told the Financial Times that Brexit and the Trump presidency were both factors pushing Europe and the single currency zone towards greater integration, although the proposed reforms would require amending existing treaties.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has indicated she would support the proposals although there is strong public resistance in Germany and she is up for re-election in September.

:: comment history
leading with 2011 diary "EC proposes Eurobonds"

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

before WWI
A Short History of Presidential Bad Starts

The Trump presidency in six months has been the worst in U.S history but other presidents  also had bad starts, not on the same level as Trump but, near enough. ...

after WWII, Truman
Trump's "Fire and Fury" Wouldn't Be the First for North Korea
(Earlier this week I encountered a question about DPRK "paranoia" on a US-Eng. language reddit thread that chilled me to the bone: (para) "What did South Korea and Japan ever do to North Korea?")

How many know that, quoting historian Bruce Cumings, "far more napalm was dropped on Korea [than on Vietnam] and with much more devastating effect, since the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) had many more populous cities and urban industrial installations than North Vietnam.... By late August [1950] B-29 formations were dropping 800 tons a day on the North. Much of it was pure napalm. From June to late October 1950, B-29s unloaded 866,914 gallons of napalm." It was also known as "jellied gasoline." Regarding its effect on the human body, Cumings quotes the survivor of a "friendly fire" attack on Americans: "Men all around me were burned. They lay rolling in the snow. Men I knew, marched and fought with begged me to shoot them.... It was terrible. Where the napalm had burned the skin to a crisp, it would be peeled back from the face, arms, legs ... like fried potato chips...."

Egypt Curtails Access to Subsidized Food as Part of Reforms

Under a government decree, which was published in the official gazette on Tuesday, people earning more than 1,500 Egyptian pounds (about $84) a month would be excluded from getting ration cards. Beneficiaries were also limited to families with up to four members. The decree did not make clear what happens to impoverished families with five or more members.

The Egyptian government is looking to bring down its budget deficit to 9.1 percent in the current fiscal year, from 10.9 percent in the previous one by cutting spending and lifting subsidies.
[...]
Among the key measures undertaken within efforts to fulfill International Monetary Fund conditions for a $12 billion loan, Egypt devalued and then floated the national currency. ...

This working paper provides ethnographic evidence that bots affect information flows in two key ways: 1) by "manufacturing consensus," or giving the illusion of significant online popularity [?] in order to build real political support, and 2) by democratizing propaganda through enabling nearly anyone to amplify online interactions for partisan ends.

Like a  Hootsuite boss! This remarkable "manufacturing" device infests uh hidden networks of digital marketing managers across the nation. 1 user/3 profiles! Scalable! Just $99 per individual license!

More amazing is the authors' sociopathic research bias: tweet simulation of democratic participation satisfices examination of voters' preferences or prejudices("misinformation") AND institutional barriers (electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression, closed primaries, illiteracy) to an expected majoritarian outcome.

(Sumbuddy must have paid them a mint to stab each other in both eyes with blunt pencils.)

We supplement these findings ith a quantitative network analysis of the influence bots achieved within retweet networks of over 17 million tweets, collected during the 2016 US election. The results of this analysis confirm [!] that bots reached positions of measurable [!] influence during the 2016 US election.

But, wait. Co-author lays this incredible, dubious research design at the feet of The Zuck, .ru double agent?

Unfortunately, we're having trouble studying other platforms. Twitter's Application Programming Interface (API) is the most accessible, and that's why we spend the most time on Twitter. Facebook's API is less accessible, they don't share data, they don't work well with academics, they don't really respond to queries, and they never provide replication data. We know that they hire many data scientists who conduct experiments internally, but we assume those are used to improve the delivery of advertising or the user experience and are not designed to improve public life [?!].

jhfc. V for Vendetta premiered in 2005. Britain will prevail.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

While [Nissan Europe] has trials with more than 100 cars across Europe, only those in Denmark are able to earn money by feeding power back into the grid. There, fleet operators collected about 1,300 euros ($1,530) a year using the two-way charge points, said Carranza. Restrictions on accessing the market in the U.K. means the company needs to reach about 150 cars before they can get paid for power sent back to the grid. That could be achieved by the end of this year, he said.

Go, quadriatic equation, go negative.
Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?

United Nations projections indicate that between 1995 and 2050, the population of Japan and virtually all countries of Europe will most likely decline. In a number of cases, including Estonia, Bulgaria and Italy, countries would lose between one quarter and one third of their population. Population ageing will be pervasive, bringing the median age of population to historically unprecedented high levels.

The EUs need for more power from sparsely populated "North Africa" depends on it!

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Weak Power Grids in [South] Africa Stunt Economies and Fire Up Tempers, 2015

The demand for power in Africa has become a major international issue. China has taken the lead in financing many power projects across the continent -- mostly hydroelectric dams, but also solar power plants and wind farms. Private companies from Asia, the United States and Europe are also supplying power to an increasing number of countries.

source: gain.org, 2015

World Bank | Access to electricity (% of population), table, 2014

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

[T]he group expects harvests of prosecco, primitivo and pinot grigio to be of great quality, partly thanks to the fact that heat and dryness protect vines from disease and contribute to a greater concentration of nutrients in the fruit.

Climate change threatens European wine production

"It is entirely paradoxical," vineyard owner and Confagricoltura official Guido Folonari told Reuters. "Everything bad that could have happened, happened and yet we are heading for good if not excellent quality."

:: Previously in "As the Worm Turns"
The Brexit effect: 'Sudden drop' in Italian food and drink exports to the UK: "Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson reportedly explicitly threatened Italy's economic development minister with a drop in prosecco sales if the UK was not allowed to stay in the single market."

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Google Censors Block Access to CounterPunch and Other Progressive Sites

Under its new so-called anti-fake-news program, Google algorithms have in the past few months moved socialist, anti-war, and progressive websites from previously prominent positions in Google searches to positions up to 50 search result pages from the first page, essentially removing them from the search results any searcher will see.

But of course the GOOG has been overtly "curating" search results since the first notifications of embargoed duplicate results --regardless of rank-- began appearing.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

The English-language magazine also includes an article written by a Pakistani female doctor describing her decision to shun her western education and embrace Islam, titled "My journey from ignorance to guidance".

What else does zeenews.india.com publish? Typical westworld topical "content" with streaming TV!

Subaltern or subcontinental "insurgency"? You be the judge.

DISCLAIMER: No GOOG search results were mined in order to discover this URL.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Now that Russia's political prisoners have been released, returning Siberian exiles are being feted and showered with gifts, leading, inevitably, to people like Catherine Smirnov, who made out like a bandit assassin when she claimed in Minsk that she had assassinated Ivanov, the governor of Odessa. ...

Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google [Updated]


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.