Yes! Colombian labor has a friend.

“AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent a letter to President Obama on Monday expressing his labor federation’s opposition to the pending free-trade deal with Colombia.

“Included with the letter was a list of names of the 22 union leaders who have been killed in Colombia, 15 of those after the United States agreed to a labor action plan with the South American country in April to improve its labor rights record, according to the AFL-CIO. Labor has long vehemently opposed a trade deal with Colombia because of its record of violence against union activists.”

Looks increasingly like we’re going to need all kinds of communication alternatives.

Fear of Repression Spurs Scholars and Activists to Build Alternate Internets

Meanwhile, we won a skirmish in the War on Women.

“An Idaho woman prosecuted for terminating her own pregnancy with abortion pills she ordered online won a temporary court order on Friday barring enforcement of the decades-old law under which she was charged.”

A great labor win in Long Island!

“In a major breakthrough, members of TWU Local 252 have confirmed the right to preferential hiring and union recognition with Veolia Transportation, selected by Nassau County to be the new private-sector contractor for LI Bus routes and operations.”

Happy birthday to my sister. This stands in for a card or gift certificate.

Cheapskate.

Or: This’ll teach her for the all the teasing she did when you two were kids.

I did actually send a card. This is just an extension of the teasing!

Fast and Furious/Gunwalker should be a serious scandal for every American. The DOJ suborning U.S. gun stores to sell weapons to Mexican drug lords, and with a corresponding body count in the hundreds from those same guns, there should be people from the various LE agencies being dragged from their offices and put in the dock.

one of your best finds.

says he fears that some day repressive measures could be put into place in the United States.

too late, they already monitor emails, and know all about what you read and write.

some great things in that article, specially the “freedom box”

thanks

The ACA goes to the Supreme Court. Leaving our black robed corporate master to decide whether to strike ACA in order to stick a fork in Obama or to let it stand, in order to stick a fork into everybody else.

IRS liens for people who can’t afford to buy crap insurance that won’t insure them? Bring ‘em on.

I like the idea about Bloomberg running for the WH. Maybe he can strike a deal with Nader, and they’ll toss for who get’s the top slot.

And from China:

Tallying the Toll of U.S.-China Trade
Study Sees Americans Bearing High Economic Cost of Imports as Labor Market Struggles to Adapt
Link.

Brave, desperate people:
“Hundreds of protesters attacked a police station in southern China and ransacked vehicles, leaving dozens injured in the latest unrest to hit China’s industrial heartland, authorities said on Friday.
. . .
“Rioters angered by a government land deal and rumours that police officers had killed a child wrecked vehicles and attacked police at the station in Guangdong’s Lufeng city, local authorities said in a statement.
. . .
“One insider with close knowledge of the incident, who refused to be identified, told AFP by phone that villagers took more than 20 government and public security officials hostage in the police station.
He said they were angry about the detention of four other residents, and only when these were freed did they let the officials go.”

Read all about Obama’s good friend, Jamie Dimon’s hissy fit while visiting Canada.

wow.

hard to comprehend that level of arrogance and selfishness.

• I’m with Maxine Waters, the pitch of President Obama’s speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, at times hectoring, was seriously off.

I don’t know what her problem is. It’s completely typical for O to show utter contempt for the base.

Thank you for the mention of Wangari Maathai, DDay, she was a most remarkable person.

DW

Thanks for the link.

I want me one of them “freedom boxes”.

Poor things! They’re all on edge these days.

‘Mawnin’.

Good morning. There is an absolutely devastating BBC interview over at Yves’ place this morning, in which a trader exposes the deep rotten core of our financial masters. It is one of those ‘emperor has no clothes’ moments, or perhaps more accurately an Adolph Eichmann ‘I was only following the market’s orders’ moment.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/trader-on-bbc-sounds-alarm-about-market-crash.html

This is a spectaclur gem of a link, fatster. “The Doctor” is “in”. Both the article and the comments are more than well worth a read … a close and very thoughtful read.

I hope some tech savvy person, here at FDL, might do a diary on this, as my guess is that there will, very, very likely, be need …

Just can’t thank you enough, fatster, you are the absolute best link provider on the threads.

DW

what happens in europe is the key

bottom line: there isn’t enough money to pay off all the national debts and the debts are increasing

so europe is hoping: 1) get sign off on the current greek bailout tranche to buy some time 2) AFTER the latest tranche is approved move to “solve” the longer-term problem by leveraging the ecsf

the approach gets the european people to sink more money into greece right now and then puts the citizens on the hook for all the leverage in the ecsf

in essence, the “rescue” plan has two components: 1) use derivatives to pretend the risk is gone (sound familiar?) and 2) put the middle class throghout the eurozone on the hook when it all blows up

just as the u.s. has done, use middle class and public wealth to absorb the losses incurred from the global finanical elite’s megatheft

will the european democracies allow this to happen? i’d like to say no but

I’m sorry, but the Joe Nocera piece on Solyndra you recommended is covering up some very important things:

The facts show that the dishonest activity here was mainly done by Barack Obama:

~After accepting their donation, the Obama Administration fast-tracked federal money to them;

~Took part in a giant ad for them by putting solar panel on the White House;

~Continued to lie about the horrific impact on global warming that Solar Panels are having:
`Emissions of Nitrogen Trifluoride (NF3) are caused by solar panels;
`NF3 is the second-strongest Greenhouse Gas known;
`NF3 is the Greenhouse Gas that’s increasing the fastest in our atmosphere;
`One pound of NF3 warms the globe as much as 9 tons of Carbon Dioxide;
`No one regulates it;
`It was never manufactured here in the US before Obama.

Got links?

Robert Ford is supposed to be the architect of the Iraqi civil war. He’s good at identifying and exploiting social fractures. He’s more than a diplomat. That inhofe has decided he likes him isn’t a good thing.

Healthy San Francisco has the best PR anywhere, and they’ve clearly captured Ezra Klein. Three-month wait time for appointments? Two-hour wait time to register with the receptionist once you’ve shown? Surrounded by people coughing and bleeding in the clinic waiting room? The program might generate pretty charts and graphs for DC wonks to drool over, but I don’t know a single person in the program who thinks it has improved their care.

Not one.

Alessio Restani is a lower-level sociopath, like those whom he admires, Goldman Sachs and others, he perceives “opportunity” in chaos … thinking, or more honestly “believing” that the “confusions” of a new DEPRESSION will enrich him … yet this presupposes that such wealth as he siphons off or finagles will have “value”. Money, in very short order, when civil society has been deliberately destroyed, becomes VERY useless.

If humankind is to be reduced to a bare minimal existence, then such clever thugs as Restani had better figure out how to grow food and do real, practical things, like build a shelter and procure potable water.

It will not be long before these titans of capital, these men AND women who know how to do NOTHING of value and only how to cleverly “game” the systems around them will not be able to buy anything, especially trust. And without trust, they will not be able to hire thugs, yes, even thugs rely upon “honor” of a sort, to “enforce” the violence which these sociopaths, ultimately have to resort to when “fear” no longer may have any effect …

For far too long, the epiphytic elite have believed their own garbage while failing to realize that they, like everyone else … depend upon others, for things which they disdain and make mock of.

Things are going to become VERY bad for the rest of us … however, at some point … things will become VERY MUCH worse for those who have engineered the collapse of civil society. The numbers AND time are on our “side”, Knut … and even those who “practice” the legal profession are going to have to acknowledge those essential truths … and then, if the polite legal system cannot or will not mete out justice … justice will, of a grim certainty, be done.

And the measure of such justice will be premised upon how much vile and inhumane destruction has been wrought.

This “clever” new Dark Age will not turn out as the Masters imagine … not THIS time.

DW

~Fast Track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGBc7ROxKi4

~Giant Ad: You must have hear or heard of Obama glowing and gloating that he would help the environment by installing solar panels on the White House. Here’s one example: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/05/solar-panels-on-white-hou_n_750525.html

~Here’s the official White House announcement, including the bogus claim that polluting with the second worst Greenhouse Gas is good for the environment: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/Press_Releases/October_05_2010

`NF3 emissions caused by Solar Panels: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/11/17-4

`Here the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change shows that NF3 is the second-strongest Greenhouse Gas manufactured, after Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6 of Wind Farm fame), but there IS one “known” but not manufactured gas (a byproduct of SF6) called Trifluoromethyl Sulfur Pentafluoride, which the UNFCCC lists with a 17,700 GWP. I should have said it is “the second-worst Greenhouse Gas manufactured.” Still, the UN report confirms its destructive potential: http://unfccc.int/national_reports/annex_i_ghg_inventories/items/4624.php

`This article confirms that it is the Greenhouse Gas whose prevalence in our atmosphere is increasing the fastest: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/11/17-4

`Wikipedia confirms that it warms the Globe as much as 9 tons of CO2, but uses 17,200 as the Global Warming Potential, instead of the 17,900 used by others, but still, 17,200 means that it warms the globe as much as 8.6 tons of CO2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trifluoride#Greenhouse_gas

`This article confirms that no one regulates it (one reason is that its Global Warming Potential wasn’t known at Kyoto, another is that there is so much money in it, another is that DuPont holds its patent and DuPont has supported Joe Biden throughout his career and its CEO regularly meets with Obama like she did before he went to the climate meeting in Denmark in Dec. 2009): http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/11/17-4

`I can’t find info that it wasn’t made here before Obama (since it was invented by DuPont and its dangers were unknown, it is likely that it was manufactured here before its dangers were known. But in 2009, I read in a chemical industry trade journal that the first US plant to manufacture NF3 would open in North Carolina that year.

Thanks for the info – one more item to help with the list of things I do not know enough about.

he said/she said articles

yep – no information – the media is as informative as a reality show.

More on NF3′s dangers and prevalence: http://geology.com/nasa/nitrogen-trifluoride/

Didja see this?

Share Traders More Reckless Than Psychopaths, Study Shows
‘”Naturally one can’t characterize the traders as deranged,” Noll told SPIEGEL. “But for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test.”‘

More here.

Aw, shucks, DWB, many thanks. I just have a voracious appetite for information. Probably a result of growing up in a very isolated, insulated place that was mighty confusing to me. (I do try and temper my impulse to share, as I certainly don’t want be an irritant.)

Pls see link @ 30.

Your ability to intuitively discover pertinent information is a true gift, fatster, and your desire to share is a gift to the rest of us. Your capacties and proclivities exemplify my conviction that humanity has among its members, in fact everyone of its family members, the means of solving virtually all of its problems and addressing virtually all of its difficulties. If the free minds and interests, those things to which we each are drawn, are encouraged, then I propose that we will not only experience a new golden age … but an ongoing Renaissance.

You are, fatster, beyond being a wonderful, thoughtful, and loving human being, one of those who may have a major, if, “possibly”, unintended, effect upon human understanding and possibility … you represent the best of the present and offer a vision of the future which will enhance humankind and lead to a better world for all living things.

It is a pleasure to follow along as you explore and ponder this world and ANYTHING within, or around, or about it, as you educate, explain, and embrace.

I nominate you for: The Fatster Award for Profound Awareness and the Sharing of Necessary Information.

DW

I think there is terrible truth within this “study”, fatster.

Some human beings should NEVER be allowed great power, in fact NO human beings should ever be allowed the power too many have, politically, millitarily, and “financially”.

By now, after some ten thousand years of recorded “history”, humankind ought be clear as to the “profiles” of those who are reckless of life and shared possibility … that we are not, suggests that “education” has been designed to fail us … that such notions as “democracy” are being cynically manipulated to gain the willing acceptance and assistance of those being manipulated and destroyed for the gain of a few. It is estimated that somewhat fewer than two thousand people control the fate and destiny, not merely of all other human beings, but of all life on this planet and the future of the planet itself.

If ever there was an age when humankind needed to awaken from its timid slumbers of being too little to matter, then such a time is now … for if humankind does not awaken and step boldly into the reality of full-fledged being, then the future of human beings and the fate of the world are, indeed, precarious.

DW

my dad was around wall street, he worked there as an errand boy in the late twenties. He said that before the market opened, and after it closed, the traders played poker.

also, booze, drugs, and prostitutes.

all decorated with a fancy haze of expensive clothes, and unintelligible gibberish. “The markets reacted to” is at this point so thin, that it fools almost nobody.

to what extent is the stock market used to raise financing for new businesses?

what would happen if it closed?

Oh, DWB, you establish a goal that would take me a few life-times to achieve. I appreciate deeply your kindness and confidence. Heart-felt compliments are rare and I am keenly aware of that. Yours are in a class by themselves. Many thanks.

Your dad’s keen observation and judgment skills live on in you, mafr. Congratulations!

When it closes, we’ll have to get rid of that bull (the statue I mean; we’d need Hercules to cleanse us of the bull offal). What do you suggest?