Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/30/23 BP Partners: LastPass, Billionaire Censorship and The French General Strike!

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

All the best segments from our Breaking Points partners this past week!Timestamps:LastPass (Matt Stoller): (0:00 - 5:51)Billionaire Censorship (The Lever): (5:52 - 17:04)French General Strike (Max Alvarez): (17:05 - 44:16)AUSTIN LIVE SHOW FEB 3RDTickets https://tickets.austintheatre.org/9053/9054Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. What are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Hi, I'm Matt Stoller, author of Monopoly-focused newsletter, Big, and an antitrust policy analyst. I have a great segment for you today on this big breakdown. It's about how Wall Street and passwords intersect. Now, passwords are an inescapable part of our lives. I have a lot

of passwords, and so do you. I actually have a list, and I tried to count the number I have, and I counted 19, just for the sites and apps that start with the letter A. Of course, I can't remember them all because I try to have different passwords for different sites. Now, a cottage industry of solutions has come and gone in waves, all trying to help us safely create, store, and use dozens of different passwords, while only having to remember one to unlock them all. And in the past few years, a handful of startups competed to be the leader in cross-platform password protection and storage. A very popular password management program is called LastPass. In 2019, the software provider

that owns LastPass, which is called LogMeIn, was purchased, however, by two private equity firms, Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corporation. Now, two weeks after the purchase, LastPass raised prices on those who are basically locked into its system. So who are Elliott Management and Francisco Partners? They are what are known as private equity firms, which are giant pools of money run by financiers who buy stakes in private companies in hopes they

can sell those stakes for a profit later on. That seems fine. It's just investment. But for a variety of legal reasons, the financiers behind private equity buy companies without putting themselves at risk. If anything goes wrong, the company might go bankrupt or lose money, but the financiers themselves don't. They are protected by corporate law. And that creates an incentive for destructive behavior because financiers can make a lot of money if things go well, but can't really lose that much if things go badly. They're really losing other people's money and they're blocked from even losing too much of that. So private equity firms are very short-term oriented and tend to make their money by buying companies, then raising prices on customers, cutting workers, or undermining the quality

of the product. And this might long-term hurt the enterprise value of the company, but in the short term, it increases the amount of cash it generates and so the amount that they could flip that company for. In this case, Elliott Management and Francisco Partners made LastPass unusable unless customers paid. And this was active, making it slightly less annoying to pay than to move all your passwords to a different firm's products. Okay, so then late last year. So that's one thing, right? That's pretty annoying, but it kind of happens. Here's the real problem. Late last year, information began to trickle out regarding new management or lack thereof at LastPass. Apparently, hackers had stolen encrypted password vaults from the company, and this hack was all over the internet. Here's what one security pundit said about the

breach, but there were many of them who were talking like this. LastPass has effectively suffered the worst breach possible for a password management company. Like it could get a little bit worse if they were truly negligent, like willfully malicious. But in terms of not wanting it to happen, it's pretty much as bad as it can get. LastPass employees fell victim to a phishing attack in which hackers successfully obtained proprietary information. Now, phishing, which is spelled with a PH, is when a hacker sends an email or message purporting to be from a reputable source in order to induce someone to reveal personal information, to click on a link and then often get access to an entire system. So, they did this to LastPass employees, and it worked.

Now, months later, the hackers then used this knowledge to launch an even more sophisticated phishing attack, which subsequently led to a data breach, during which they took almost all LastPass user data, though much of it is encrypted. Or so it would seem. LastPass management is under no requirement to tell us exactly what happened.

And with the data hackers fished from LastPass, scammers are going to try and trick users into giving them their passwords for years to come. Now, LastPass itself recommended some extreme measures, including, in some cases, changing every password you stored in LastPass. Kind of defeats the whole point of having a password manager. Okay, so the situation can look like a simple hack, something that happens all the time. But let's not lose sight of the root cause here, which is not hackers or poor IT practices, but a business model focused purely on financial extraction. LastPass is one of dozens of examples, since poor quality is common in

private equity-owned software, which means cybersecurity vulnerabilities quickly follow. For instance, the New York subway was hacked through commercial software it used called Pulse Connect Secure. This software was owned by Ivanti, a software roll-up owned by private equity firm Cheer Lake Capital Group and TA Associates. A few years ago, thousands of companies and government agencies were hacked through the software of a private equity-owned company called SolarWinds, which was controlled by the private equity giant Tomah Bravo Partners. And now there's LastPass. Now, every one of these private equity transactions makes the world ever so slightly worse.

And at this point, it's time to recognize that ownership and management of software firms by private equity itself is a security risk. We can't eliminate hackers trying to do bad things, trying to steal passwords, trying to steal identities and money. But we can change the law to stop Wall Street from burning down the companies who build products designed to protect us. Thanks for watching this big breakdown on the Breaking Points channel. If you'd like to know more about big business and how our economy really works, you can sign up below for my market power focus newsletter, Big, in the description. Thanks and have a good one. Joining us now on CounterPoints is the Lever News' David Sirota. David, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And so we wanted to have you on to talk about

some of the latest reporting from Lever, particularly this piece that we can put up here now, the lawsuit that could freeze speech against billionaires by Jordan Yule of Lever News. And so this is about a kind of a defamation case that has been filed against Beto O'Rourke that could have dramatic implications for the role of money in politics going forward. Can you talk a little bit about this lawsuit? Sure. During the course of Beto O'Rourke's gubernatorial campaign, he criticized Republican Governor Greg Abbott for accepting a $1 million donation from a major oil and gas company CEO, a pipeline company CEO, weeks after the legislature and Abbott signed a bill that included basically a loophole in weatherization mandates for fossil fuel infrastructure. This was after the storm

that shut down the Texas power grid. So a bill comes through the legislature. It includes language to exempt various parts of the natural gas infrastructure from its mandates, which would require those companies to make more investments in weatherization. And soon after that happened, the CEO of the company made a $1 million donation to Governor Abbott. Beto O'Rourke criticized that, insinuating that it was corrupt, that it was essentially a quid pro quo. It was a reward for the legislation that moved through the Texas legislature. And now the CEO is suing Beto O'Rourke, saying this is defamatory, saying that criticizing and insinuating that the donation is corrupt is essentially libelous.

And what's important here to understand is that this case revolves in part around whether the legal system sees the CEO of this company, Energy Transfer, and the CEO's name is Kelsey Warren, whether the legal system sees people like him as public or private citizens. Basically, a private citizen, it's easier for that person to prove liable. A public citizen, the threshold is much, much lower. The idea being that if you're in the public arena, the back and forth over your political activity has much more flexibility. There's much more allowed for a much more wide ranging debate. This is a huge free speech case because ultimately, if the courts rule for the plaintiff and say that effectively criticizing money in politics as

corrupt, money goes in, legislation comes out, you could face, political candidates across the country could face financial ruin and financial punishment for saying that in the context of an election. Yeah, I was just going to ask David, what's on the line here if we extend this to potential hypotheticals and other campaigns in the future, depending on how this case is ruled, what might that look like going forward? This example, we have a gas executive, but what would that look like in another case, or how might that come up in campaigns if the decision goes in a bad direction? Sure. Look, I mean, I think you look across the country and there's big debates about where pipelines can be built, whether fracking and drilling happen.

Lots of money goes into the political system from the fossil fuel industry. And what this could do is say to political candidates campaigning in the context of that, that if you criticize big donors from the fossil fuel industry, or really any industry, and you suggest that the money that's going into the political system is buying something, is going into that system to influence anybody, that you could face a situation where you are not only sued, look, anybody can sue anybody in America, but you're not only sued by the donor, but that the courts have created a precedent making it easier for the courts to side with the plaintiff and punish you as a candidate. So essentially, it's a message to candidates that talk about money in politics

at your peril. And the term gaslighting is overused in our discourse, but I actually think it really does apply here in this way, in that you're being asked to look at something and see it for what it obviously is, but then being told that you can't describe what it so very obviously is. And so forget politicians. What about the public here? And what about the press? I would think half of my reporting over my career would constitute defamation if this actually goes through. Well, that's for other reasons. The other half would be defamation for different reasons. But yours is probably 100 percent of the reporting you've done throughout your career is connecting the dots between money going in and legislation coming out.

So what is what does this do to shows like this or journalism like the kind that you do over at The Lever? It's a great question. I mean, yes, the media writ large, no matter what side you're on, should be concerned about this, about the precedent that it could set. If we say, if the legal system says that the CEO, a billionaire CEO of one of the largest pipeline companies in the country, making million-dollar donations, if the legal system says that person, for the purposes of the law, is a private citizen, not a public figure, that creates a precedent saying that, you're right, not only political candidates, but news organizations, advocacy groups, and the like, on all sides of any issue, can face punishment for connecting the dots. It really is a way to freeze free speech

against the powerful. And here's the thing. This case is in a court in Austin where most of the, if not all of the justicesices are elected, they were Democrats. It's an elected court. But it moves to a Texas Supreme Court that is chock full of Republicans. So the case can be appealed by the plaintiff to a much more Republican dominated Supreme Court, a Texas Supreme Court. And if you want, it can be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. To me, this is the biggest free speech case,

or at least one of the biggest free speech cases in the country, in the society right now. And there's been a lot of talk about free speech with Elon Musk, social media. This is a direct assault on free speech, on the ability. And I wanna be clear. I know there are some conservatives say, oh, I'm excited that Beto O'Rourke

is potentially in legal trouble here. That's the wrong way, in my view, to look at this. This is not only about Beto O'Rourke. This is about the entire discourse that how are conservatives going to feel the next time they criticize a Democratic billionaire and a Democratic billionaire can use this precedent, if it's set, to go after them. It is a way to chill speech against or criticizing billionaires, wealthy corporations that have unlimited legal resources to file these kinds of cases. I was just going to ask that as well next with this question of as conservatives have tried to sort of squeeze all the juice out of the populist moment and populist rhetoric and level all kinds of potentially defamatory accusations against, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, if this case were to go in a certain direction, it absolutely would

affect their ability to make those arguments. Have you seen any pickup from anyone on the right that's concerned about the implications of this case? I haven't. And I think part of it, though, is that there's not a lot of awareness of this case. And I think maybe there's a presumption that the courts will throw it out. I don't presume that knowing that while it is in a Democratic-dominated court right now, a lower court, it can move up to a Republican court. And the question with our courts now are, are they going to behave in a partisan way? I mean, on its face, look, let's be honest, on its face, the idea that the CEO of one of the largest pipeline companies in the country who's made a million dollar donation into the political system, the idea that that person is just a private citizen is just preposterous

and absurd. But this is a politically active company, a politically active billionaire. I think this is not, in my view, I'm speculating here, that this is not just about, as the plaintiff said, he experienced mental anguish when O'Rourke was criticizing him. And I think it's less about his individual feelings and more about an effort to try to set a precedent about what can be said and what can't be said about the rich and powerful. He can afford the therapy. Yes. And they also, they bring up mean tweets in reply. Like you said, when you look at the

lever quotes, his attorney saying, when you look at the comments that his followers put in on his tweets, they believe O'Rourke. They believe that Mr. Warren is a criminal that has engaged in profit over lives of Texans. So literally citing mean mentions, replies, saying that this has created mental anguish. Yeah, and it's no fun to get ratioed, right? I'm sure. You're sure. I mean, I kind of enjoy it sometimes. Shutting down free speech because you don't like getting ratioed is insane. Yeah. Completely insane. And also for any conservatives who are happy that O'Rourke

might be out a million dollars, really bad news for them. Guy is super rich. He married into a very wealthy family. So nobody likes to lose. And again, that's why I go back to it. That's why I think this is not necessarily only about this case. I think it's about trying to create a larger legal precedent. Yeah. And billionaires fund these attacks on other billionaires. So I'm curious to see how those who discourse around this, sometimes they fund these attacks. Last question, did your reporting turn up any indication that this is one of those politically strategic lawsuits that's funded by kind of an organization that is trying to create legal crimps on political speech for the benefit of billionaires? Or is this just a mentally anguished billionaire who just wants to lash

out at Beto O'Rourke? Well, I'll say this. We haven't discovered that yet, but there are definitely motives that this particular billionaire has that we're going to be reporting in a couple of other stories. In other words, engagements and entanglements that he's been in before. So it's not just he randomly kind of popped up and did this. So stay tuned for our reporting on that. Which will, I'm sure, wind you in court next right after that overwork. David, thanks so much for joining us. Great reporting. Thank you.

Thanks to both of you. All right. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor-in-chief of The Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, and this is the art of class war on breaking points. France was rocked this past week when well over a million working people across the country took to the streets to protest President Emmanuel Macron's proposed changes to the country's beloved pension system. Macron, who is in his second and final term,

is pushing to raise the official retirement age from 62 to 64 years. And this is not the first time that Macron has pushed for such reforms. In true diehard neoliberal fashion, Macron managed to piss off practically the entire country three years ago by attempting to force through drastic changes to the French pension system, prompting a general strike that brought everyone from railroad workers to teachers to even museum workers and ballet dancers to the streets in one of the largest mass demonstrations that the country has seen in a generation. Now, that was right before COVID-19 turned our world upside down.

And I actually published a special episode of my podcast, Working People, in January of 2020, in which I interviewed eight French workers who were on strike at the time about why they were hitting the streets and why they were fighting so hard to maintain the existing pension system. One of those workers was Mathieu Boll-Redat, a train operator and general secretary of the Versailles branch of the CGT Union, or the General Confederation of Labor in France. In this Breaking Points exclusive segment, I'm honored to be joined by Mathieu once again, who is calling in from France as we speak. Now, due to the time sensitivity of this interview and the time difference between the East Coast of the United States and France, I could not make it down to

DC to the Breaking Points studio to record this interview. So we're recording it today on Sunday, January 22nd, from the Real News Network studio here in Baltimore. Mathieu, thank you so much for joining us today on Breaking Points, brother. It's great to see you again. Thank you very much, you again thank you very much max thank you very much to call me again well i know you got a lot going on uh and i really appreciate you calling in uh it's been a busy week and uh before we get to the strike uh this past week, I wanted to actually take us back to that moment before COVID-19 in December of 2019 and January of 2020, when you and your fellow workers hit the streets once again in opposition to Macron's proposed changes to the pension system. Now, I imagine a lot of folks who are watching this

may not remember that too well, or maybe don't know about it at all. So can you just give our viewers and listeners a little background on what the size of the strikes three years ago and what they were really about. Yes, of course. First of all, I owe you an apology. Excuse me for my bad English, of course, because I'm French, so I'm lazy. And especially about my bad accent, my ugly accent. But I think my English is better than your French, so you have to figure it out. So, yes, thank you for this question about 2020, because it's very important.

It's the root of this situation now. President Macron was very December, okay? Just like, I think, three weeks before Christmas, okay? And so we start an unlimited strike for our stronger sector, unionist sector. So, for example, the transport workers. You mentioned the opera. It was very important. Of course, there are not plenty, but it's very symbolic. The postmen, the firemen, including the comrades from refinery or from electric power.

And so we start this unlimited strike the December 5th. And the other sector, less strong, they joined us every Tuesday for a general strike and massive demonstration in Paris. So it was a huge moment because it was like, for example, for me me i do literally 53 days of strike you know so with two pay because we have a pay by months not by weeks two pays uh with zero euro literally but so it was a huge adventure you know a, a huge fight. And finally, we won. We won against him. He took back his bill and he put it in his natural place, in natural space, the baskets, the trash garbage. So it's, for example, the people from collecting garbage in Paris, in Marseille, the second city of France,

was on strike during three or four weeks. So can you imagine the bourgeoisie finally smells the real life on Paris because they have a mountain, the hill of garbage in all the streets in Paris. The tourist was gone. The Palace of Versailles was closed. The Eiffel Tower was closed. The underground was stopped, et cetera, et cetera.

Because we fight to defend the legacy of our grandfather who fought against the Nazi fascist occupation. And after the war, they built our social security system. I know in the USA, a lot of politicians call us socialists. And one of the targets, one of the things they hate is our social security system. Because it's the efficientest in the world. And it's the system that guarantees the less number of pensioners poor in all over the world. Less than in the USA, of course, but less than in Germany, in England,

in Italy, et cetera, et cetera. Because we have a very generous system. For example, the common law is the pension in the common law is 62 for everybody. Okay. And for the railway, for example, our system

is 57. But for the drivers, as me, our system is the pension in 52

years old. So, basically, in eight years, I will be pensioner, man. And I can do a good travel to meet you in Baltimore and visit your great country.

So that's a great legacy. You understand? Okay. I insist because I know in USA is definitely not the same system. Okay. So that's a big legacy. And we want to keep it.

And after there is this crazy COVID pandemic situation in all over the world. So Macron stopped his attacks. And now he was reelected. And guess what? He did it again. He tried again to attack our pension system. So the new

bill planned in next July two more years for everybody. So for me, it will be not 52, it will be 54. For the common people, it will be not 62,

it will be 64. And the other things, because there is a troll in the bill, you have to work until 62, but in 62, you have not the full pension. You can go become pensioner, but very poor. And if you want the full pension, you have to choose to be a poor pensioner in 62 or a grandpa, an old man at work in 67. That's the choice for us. The statistics, the studies from the university, from the public organism, from the government,

they claim that 64 is the point where the majority of the manual workers, of the poor people, of the people with casual jobs, dying or start to die. So this pension bill, it's really a retraitment for the dead people. That's very important. Because if you walk outside on the cold weather or the hot

weather, if you walk during the night, very early in the morning, if you walk with asbestos or with magnetic laser, etc., etc., etc., all these difficult conditions of work for the majority of the poor people of the working class, you lose between 7 and 12 years of life.

That's the point. So it's why it's important to have a system who guarantee for we, the working class, an early retreatment because we will die soon. That's the problem. So we fight for this principle. We fight for our, by respect to our grandfather, who fought for this system against Nazi fascists, we fight for us and we fight for the next generation. Even for the working class, they are not born now. We fight for them. We fight for a principle. That's very important.

So three days ago, we were on a general strike. There is 70% of the schools were closed in the entire country. The train, the buses, the metro, the airport was paralyzed. The factory was closed. The refinery was, the pipes was turned off, et cetera, et cetera. And we was about 2 million people in the street, in the entire country, including half a million people in Paris. And we claim not one year more, not one euro less.

That was our claims. And because the government doesn't want to negotiate with us, we decide a new day of general strike for January 21.

No, 31, sorry January 31. So in two weeks, 10 days, basically. And if they still not want to negotiate, we will start in the beginning of February an unlimited strike like in 2019. I'm sorry, maybe I was long and confused. No, no, that was, that was great brother. I mean, again, it's, it's really important for folks watching and listening to this to have that context. And I wanted to kind of ask you if we could, if we could talk a little bit more before I let you go about that principle at the heart of everything, because I know there are going to be a lot of folks here in the United States who are thinking, well, I don't have a pension system that allows me to retire at age 62. So why should the French have one? Right. And the French, you and your, and your fellow workers are looking at our system where people like my parents will never be able to

retire where they work until they die often in debt. Um, the, the, the, the, even the notion of retirement is becoming a thing of the past. And you guys are saying we don't want what you in the United States have. We want the system that we fought for after World War II because we believe there is more to life than work could you could you could you like i guess if you could talk directly to people in the united states and beyond about why that is such a sacred principle that it would bring millions of people to the streets yeah you know it's uh it's tricky uh the history has many tricks the working class of the United States

United States sorry was the lighthouse of our fight in France our mayday it's coming from your martyrdom in Chicago ok we followed you

followed you. You gave the start of the struggle all over the world. The beautiful strike in Chicago, the beautiful strike, for example, in Paterson, New Jersey, a lot of fight in Massachusetts, etc. And I know this joke from the Republican Party, they call Massachusetts Texas. And it's very important to fight as working class because, and I know it's difficult, but I think you are you have the age

to listen to that you are a growing up guy Santa Claus doesn't exist I know it's difficult to hear but Santa Claus doesn't exist we don't have

collective agreements we don't have good wages we don't have collective agreements. We don't have good wages. We don't have pension system. We don't have free school and education for all people because a sovereign, a president, a good prime minister,

a good congress give it to you, to us. We have that because our grandfather, father, fight for this. That's very important. And they fight for this. And the majority of them, they don't, they could not profit

of the benefits of that. They fight for that, for the future, for the children. And we have this legacy in our hands. So who the fuck are we if we don't fight to keep it and to give this legacy

to our children? You know, that's the point today. For example, in 2019, you know that's that's a point today you know for example in 2019 just an example

about this principle in 2019 they they asked to us an agreement okay we pass the bill but not for you

for the the workers in two years. So you can keep it. And they call that the grandfather clause, you know, the grandfather agreement. But if we accept that, if we have accepted that which grandfather we are not a very good not a very cool grandfather a very bad grandfather

a grandfather who said to his grandchildren forgive my profits I cut yours no no no forgive my benefits I cut yours so I'm a father no, no, no. For keep my benefits, I cut yours. So I'm a father.

I hope one day I will be a grandfather. And I fight for me, but for my daughter. And I'm proud of that. And I'm proud of that. And so to the American people, I will tell to you, we are workers and we are proud to be workers because we create

all the beautiful things in the world. The trader, they create nothing. The CEO, they create nothing. But we, the workers, the working class, we have gold in our hands from nothing from the nature we create buildings train wheat a bread especially in france because i know you

you have not bred uh good like in france I'm sorry about that. And we create all the wealthy thing, all the beautiful thing in the world. And we prove that when we are on strike because we prove when we stop the works, the France collapse. So we prove that we are the only class, the working class, we are the only class who create something. So they have to respect us and they have to share with us

all the profits we create for them, for the companies. So we won't, as Margaret Thatcher said, give me my money back. I create the profits. I want my share. And I want it now. Hell yeah. I think that's beautifully put, man.

And yeah, let's make Margaret Thatcher proud. It was an unexpected word, I think. Exactly. Unlikely comrade, Margaret Thatcher. Well, and I know I got to let you go, but I just wanted to stress for people watching and listening how important what you said is, right? Because this is something that I see all the time

in the reporting that I do for the Real News, for Breaking Points, for my podcast, Working People. So often I talk to workers who are going on strike, not because they want a better contract for themselves, but because they know that if they accept a contract that a company is offering, that every worker who comes in after them is going to get screwed, right? This is what happened when Kellogg's, the cereal company, went on strike. They knew that the contract was going to protect the benefits and wages of workers who had been there for a long

time. But for new workers, they were going to get shit. And the old workers said, we're not going to take the benefits for ourselves and leave everyone else out to dry. We're going to go on strike for everybody. And that's what you all are doing in France is you, you want to keep a system that allows people to retire with dignity, that allows people to enjoy some of their life without having to work until they die. And you're doing that not just for yourselves, but you're doing it to carry on the legacy of the generations that came before you and you were doing it to pass that legacy on to the generation that the point and uh how you can explain you have to work until 70 and there is a uh alpha there is like 6 million, 10 millions of young people

from the next generation, they are unemployed. How you can explain that? How you can accept this system? If you have your new life, pensioner life, you give your job to a young guy. And that's great. That's a cycle of the life. May I just please, before I go, just say a big hello to all

my brothers and sisters in the USA, especially the comrades from the Roofer and Waterproofer Local 36 Union in LA. My comrades, brothers and sisters from a school job teacher from Minneapolis and from my very great comrade I met in the last Congress

of the World Federation of Trade Unions. The new comrades organized from the Starbucks coffee, big up to you you are great, you are beautiful, especially in your country I love you, really and like Joe Hill said it's better than Thatcher

like Joe Hill said don't mourn, organize don't mourn, organize I think that's beautifully put baby, and I um the final question like you said uh there is a new date um the end of this month january 31st where you and workers are going to be hitting the streets again uh what can folks inside and outside of France, what can working people do to show solidarity with you and your fellow countrymen on January 31st?

That's an important question because since we created the May Day in the 19th century, the international solidarity between workers was very, very important to help us to win. Because I think your worst enemy when you are on strike during days and days, weeks and weeks, is the feeling of loneliness. That's a big enemy. Because it's a psychological war. You need to be supported. So the buses, they have no borders So the bosses, they have no borders. The bosses, they have no borders.

They could be nationalists, but they have no borders. They work together to break us. So we have to be no borders between working class and support each other. So we can just make a sign, take a picture, put it on the social media. That's very important. We can make a meeting in university or in your union or in your district to support us. And maybe we can have a Zoom connect to exchange.

That's possible. We can collect money and send it to support people. That's a solution too. And there is another thing. You can come. You can come to meet us, fight with us. Max, you are my guest. I tell you, you are my guest.

We will host you. We will feed you. You will demonstrate with us. You can interview but in South America, in India, in Bangladesh. In the UK. In the UK right now. In the UK, this movement whose name Enough is Enough is a beautiful movement. And we go in the picket line to support them the 31 of march there is a people from britain and from greece coming in paris to demonstrate with us i think it's very important to show uh to uh to the brothers and sister the the message the the the sentence you are not alone alone. Oh yeah. So I couldn't have said it better myself and that

is Mathieu Boulradat a train operator and General Secretary of the Versailles branch of the CGT Union in France. Mathieu, thank you so much for joining me today on Breaking Points brother. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

We're sending all of our love and solidarity from here in baltimore thank you all for watching this segment on breaking points be sure to subscribe to my news outlet the real news network with links in the show notes see you soon for the next edition of the art of class war take care of yourselves take care of each other. Solidarity forever. This is an iHeart Podcast.