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Comment by mark_l_watson | Hacker News Reader

Even though I have had an easy and fun career in tech, I have enormous amount of sympathy for farmers, truckers, train workers, and other groups that have held very large scale strikes. Collectively, they are crucial for ‘keeping the lights on’ in society.

I was amused by the media quotes in the article that dissed on the strikers. I think that the global elite, Wall street, intelligence agencies, big pharma, military industrial complex, etc. all have way too much control over what topics reach the news and what the tone is of news.

I consider myself middle of the road politically and I am grateful to live where I live, but in re-reading my above comments I wonder what fraction of the people living in my country (USA) would consider me radical?

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I am a bit surprised that this story hasn't made the news in America. Or the earlier farmer strike in the Netherlands.

I don't know if you are aware that American farmers also get a discounted tax free diesel fuel which has red coloring added to it. That way if a mechanic works on a non-farm vehicle and notices that the fuel is colored red then they can report the owner.

https://www.ricochetfuel.com/blog/dyed-diesel-fuel-vs-regula....

... or your truck stops at a weight station.

It’s not just farmers as your link shows, it’s for off-road usage. The road taxes shouldn’t apply for all the equipment that doesn’t touch a public road, no?

Edit: I see why you posted that info now that I looked at the pics - the farmers are using their tractors on public roads

The current political zeitgeist that most of the major media organizations endorse in this country is not conducive to covering those subjects, lest the wrong people get ideas.

Well said. Its a travesty we have to dance around clear influences in these discussions even here.

I sympathise with the rail workers, annoying as their actions are to my daily routine, and I do think that Germany should just borrow more like other countries to keep their core worker base happy....

... but my sympathy for the farmers goes only so far. In my region, most of them are land owners, and most of them are landlords getting very pretty rents. No other class of worker has it so good except other landlords.

Have you looked at the laws lately? Many farmers are no longer allowed to sell any land by law except through a price defining local authority , which reduces the value. At the same time many are deep in debt using the land as collateral. You can take everything from someone with some law constellations. So I would not envy what is basically the banks janitor for land.

I haven't, just felt the loopholes in the law twice now; as farmers rented out a large apartment to us, promised us that we could stay there for however long we wanted, used the money to improve the value of the house, and then 1-2 years later gave us the Kündigung due to "eigenbedarf" (read: they want to sell the now lavish house)

These protests are organized by conservative organizations. They represent the big farms and the export industry. I'm not sure why the "World Socialist Website" thinks this is some grass root resistance to austerity politics.

> The coalition in Berlin will stop at nothing to suppress this movement and defend the bankrupt capitalist social system against any opposition.

Actually, the government already gave into some of the demands of the protesting, subsidies-receiving land owners.

But well, maybe that's because the "World Socialist Website" has their own Putin-politics to push:

> This is underlined by the brutality with which it is fuelling the punitive war against Russia in Ukraine, supporting the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza

Both the left and the right in Germany are pro putin. DACH countries have a peculiar relationship with Russia for some reason. Switzerland and Austria being quite favourable despite their “support” for Ukraine. Austria being the worst.

An article in a Trotskyite paper is like a church service in that there are parts of it that change and other parts that stay the same. Both do it because it is good pedagogy, but introducing a bunch of unrelated points just gives the critical reader opportunities to find refutations.

I was very happy that peace activist Howie Hawkins in the U.S. denounced the Russian invasion from the very beginning. He travels with a crowd that doesn't like NATO in a rather reflexive and dogmatic way which I would not be so opposed to so long as Russia could prove NATO was unnecessary through its actions.

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