and if that interferes with the prerogatives and her of those who own and manage this society. i should say said andy union sentiment in the united states among the leads is so strong that the fundamental couper of labor rights the basic principle in the international labor organization is the rate of free association which would mean the right to form unions u.s. has never ratified. but i think the us may be alone among major societies in their respect. it's considered so far out of the spectrum of american politics it literally has never been considered. her number that the us has a lawn a very violent labor history as. society.

but the labor movement had been very strong by the 1920 s. in the period not unlike today it was virtually crushed robert reich. buried. her. by the mincer is beginning to reconstruct. franklin delano roosevelt he himself was rather sympathetic to progressive legislation that would be in the benefit of the general population but he had to somehow get it passed so he informed labor leaders and others forced me to do it. what he meant is to go out and demonstrate urgent. protest to build up the labor movement.

when the popular pressures fission be able to control the legislation i am not for a we're. building that definition number 11 day and hour which many say 3 people were being gradually to read your man into the senate probably feel. i prefer that brought out defamation. so there was a kind of combination of the a sympathetic government and by the mid thirty's very substantial activism. there were industrial actions there were sit down strikes which were very frightening to. ownership. have to recognize a sit down strike is just one step before saying we don't need bush that we can run this but they're still.

in business was told to read the business press in the late thirty's they were talking about to the hazard facing industrialists in the rising political power of the masses which has to be repressed things were on hold during the 2nd world war but immediately after the 2nd world war the business offensive began in force and test partly yack. yack. to restart many ave in labor management relation. to mccarthyism was used for a massive corporate propaganda offensives to attack union. increased sharply during the reagan years and reagan pretty much told the business world if you want to illegally break urbanizing efforts and strikes go ahead they are in violation of the law and if they do not report for work within 48 hours they. have forfeited

their jobs and will be terminated continued the ninety's and of course with george w. bush went through the roof by now less than 7 percent of private sector workers have unions. the effect is that the usual counterforce to an offensive or highly class conscious business class is dissolved. if you're in a position of power you want to maintain class consciousness for yourself but a limited everywhere else here back to the 19th century in the early days of the industrial revolution and ignited states working people were very conscious of this they in fact overwhelmingly regarded that wage labor as not very different from slavery to the different only in that it was temporary effect of such

a popular idea that was a slogan of the republican party. well that was a very sharp class consciousness in the interests of power and privilege it's good to drive those ideas out of people's heads you don't want them to know that they're an oppressed class so this is one of the few societies magicks don't talk about class in fact the national class is very simple who gives the orders who follows them that basically defines class it's more nuanced and complex but that's basically it. the public relations industry the advertising industry which is dedicated to creating consumers it's

a phenomenon developed in the freest countries in britain and the united states and the reason is pretty clear it became clear by a say a century ago that it was not going to be so easy to control the population by force too much freedom and one. labor going to sing parliamentary labor parties in many countries women started to get the french as and so on she had to have other means of controlling people and it was understood and expressed they have to control them by control of. beliefs and attitudes well one of the best ways to control people in terms of attitudes is what the great political economists they're stunned blind called fabricating consumers. if you can fabricate want to. make obtaining things that are just about within your

reach the essence of life they're going to be trapped into becoming a consumer's. and you read the business press say 920 s. it talks about the need to direct people to the superficial things of life like fashionable consumption and that will keep them out of our hair. you find this doctrine all through progressive intellectual thought but walter lippmann the major progress of intellectual of the 20th century. he wrote famous progressive essays on democracy and wishes for you was exactly that the public must be put in their place so that the responsible men can make decisions without interference from the be willed and heard. there to be spectators not participants then you get a properly functioning democracy straight back to madison on to the polls memory and so on and the advertising industry just exploded. with with this as its

goal fabricating consumers. and it's done with great sophistication. many whilst down. as one of the last known while very singular. whom are aware of the kind. of the ideal is which actually seemed to did. we're let's see teenage girls they have a free said area afternoon all go walking in a shopping mall not the library or somewhere else. the idea is to try to control everyone to turn the whole society into the perfect system. perfect system would be a society based on a diet of pair the pair is you and your television set or maybe now you in the

internet. in which that presents you with would. the proper life would be with trying to gauge and you spend your time and effort to gaining those things which you don't need you don't want maybe to throw away. but that's the measure of a decent life. what we see is in say advertising on television if you've ever taken an economics course you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices well if we had a system like that a market system in a television ad would consist of say general motors putting up information saying here's what we have for sale a somber an ad for a car is an ad for occurs a football hero you know an actress in the car doing some crazy thing like going up

a mountain or something the point is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices that's what advertising is all about. and when the same institutions p.r. . system runs elections they do it the same way. they want to create an uninformed electorate which will make irrational choices so often against their own interests and we see it every time one of these extravaganzas take place. right after the election. president obama won an award from the advertising industry for the best marketing campaign and was reported here if you go to the international business press executives were euphoric they said we've been selling candidates marketing candidates like you know toothpaste ever since reagan and this is the greatest achievement we have i don't

usually agree with therapy. and but when she mocks the much she calls the hopi changey stuff she's right 1st of all obama didn't really promise anything that's mostly illusion you go back to the campaign rhetoric and take a look at this very little discussion of policy issues and for very good reason because public opinion on policy is sharply disconnected from what the 2 party leadership and their financial backers want. to tell us even more and more is focused on the private interests that fund the campaigns. who is a public being marginalized.

in the world. what politicians do something. they put themselves on the line and they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. or somehow want to press. you to go right to be press it's like one of 43 in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the wilds in the. u.s. should. i be

facing pewit was an important accomplishment of diplomacy. and it's to it. to talk about the demise but unfortunately the europeans have not been able to put their money where their mouth is they have been stating an additional port for the j.c. pure way but they have not been prepared to take good risks to invest in order to maintain a great achievement of the promise ready ready ready ready. i am sure to stop at the continuing to grow. i just never felt very

good about the idea of bringing children into the world because i didn't feel like things were in very good shape that a life was just going to be a lot of software programs. there's no reason the more. you take things that are to me the. movies on the move something else that. everybody's scared to talk about it certifiable is truly dependent on us addressing this issue and if we can even talk about it if we can even have a conversation of that it then. we're in trouble. ready

the. the leading political scientist martin guillen's came out with a study of the relation between public attitudes and would mostly what he shows is that about 70 percent of the population has no way of influencing. the amount as will be and some other country. and the population knows. what it's led to is a population that angry frustrated and i hate institutions. and it's not acting constructively to try to respond to this. there is popular mobilization and activism but in very self destructive directions. taking the form

of unfocused anger attacks on one another and on vulnerable targets that's what happens in cases like this. it is corrosive of social relations but that's the point the point is to make people to hate and fear each other and look at only for themselves and don't do anything for anyone else. one place you see it strikingly is on april 15th. april 15th as a kind of a measure the day of prayer taxes of how democratic a society is a different city if a society is really democratic april 15th would be a day of celebration it's a day when the population gets together decides to fund the programs and activities that they have formulated agreed upon would be better than that solution celebrated

another way it is needed state it's a day of mourning it's a day in which some. alien power you know has nothing to do with you is coming down to steal your hard earned money and you do everything you can they keep from doing . that is a kind of a measure of the extent to which at least in popular consciousness democracy is actually functioning. not her attractive picture. be . the tendencies that we've been describing within american society unless there are reversed it's going to be an extremely ugly society i'm a society that's based on adam smith's final maxim you know all for myself

nothing for anyone else. a society in which normal human instincts an emotion of sympathy so of their debut to a sport in which they're going driven out. that society is so ugly i don't even know who'd want to live in it i wouldn't want my children to. get the society is based on controlled by private wealth it will reflect the values that in fact does reflect. a value that is green and the desire to maximize personal game at the expense of others any society made a small society based on that principle is a good way to consider. a global society based on that principle is headed for massive destruction. and i don't

think we're smart enough to design in any detail. what a perfectly just and free society it would be like i think we can give some guidelines and more significant we can ask how we can progress in that direction. john dewey the leading social philosopher in the late 20th century he argued that until all institutions production commerce. media unless they're all under participatory democratic control we will not have a functioning democratic society. as he put it policy will be the shadow cast by business over society. it's essentially true.

where there are structures of authority domination and hire somebody gives the orders somebody takes them as they are not self-justifying who they have to justify themselves and their burden to prove to me. will if you take a close look usually you find they can't justify themselves to say can we ought to be dismantling. trying to expand the domain of freedom and justice but dismantling that form of illegitimate authority and in fact progress over the years we'll thankfully recognize as progress has been just that the way things change is because lots of people are working all the time and you know they're working in their communities in their workplace or wherever they happen to be and they're building up the basis for popular movements which are going to make changes and

that's the way everything is ever happening. takes a freedom of speech. one of the real achievements of american society its 1st world and that it's not the bill of rights it's time that the constitution and freedom of speech issues began to come to the supreme court in the early 20th century. the major contributions came in the 1960 s. one of the leading ones was a case involving the civil rights movement well by then you had a mass popular movement which was demanding rights. refusing to back down and in that context the supreme court did establish a pretty high standard freedom of speech or it takes a women's right to women also began identifying oppressive structures refusing to accept them or he'd go their people to join with them well that's her right to

return. to non-trivial extent if also spent a lot of my life in activism into that doesn't show up publicly but you know i should not terribly good at it and not the greatest organizer i think that we can see quite clearly some very very serious defect was an error that error. which you're going to have to be corrected by operating out of. it is commonly accepted i think we're going to have to find new ways. but the activists are people who have created the rights that we enjoy. in the area carrying out proces based on information that they're receiving but also contributing to the understanding remembers or separate process. you try to do things you learn you learn that with the world it's like that feeds back to the understanding of how to go on. there's huge

opportunity it is a very free society still. freest world. government is very limited capacity to coerce corporate business may try to get worse but there are mechanisms. so there's a lot to be done if people organise struggle for the right susan is done in the past and can win many victories commune. and. close friend for many years later howard zinn. to put it in his words that what matters is the countless small deeds of unknown people who lay the basis for the significant events that enter history. there's

a ones who have done things in the past the angelus do it future.

i googled the eggs. in. blue. in.

paris. in. the room. exists is a sticker from the water bottle phone in the stomach of a fish the brand is part of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers there are the bad ones

there the litter bugs are throwing this away industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. that seems cool set their plastic. tank on your own hands at a special projects funded me. on i'm your best bet is the end of a footy team but for now the mountains of waste only grow higher. today there's a. leak here to. please

well you know the fire thing we've kind of adopted because we were called pirate for so long. been there in the small ball and if you don't harp on ships and it's. not up to. the little self to big fish already 90 percent of it daryn caught in a ball in the collar. contemplations. oops 75 times true and they do it several times a day with the big screens oh you get an idea on my own she said. we have to understand we cannot stay still and just. be with miss the news

deal more news or. i'm doing this because i want the future world to the future can generations to have and enjoy the ocean we have. and the day we did our good it is embedded in it's the bad news in yemen the united states deems to be a threat the looked at it is so those who work in syria the cia and the us military were engaged in covert actions really throughout the world. where they were assassinating populist leaders they were backing up right away military windows funding an army just was there's no phones and then more because there's always a small town called for a really good this is a profit. as

the us media outlet claims moscow has been interfering abroad for a whole century we'll look at whether the russian meddling terms could have been used for events in a palace and years ago. part us part of rebellions and threats of a stopped election in the u.k. parliament says for a blockbuster showdown as m.p.'s return from their summer recess. and recovery teams in yemen 88 bodies from the ruins of a prison bombed by the saudi led coalition but the red cross saying the number of dead likely exceeds 100.