Crap-Up-de-Mocrapt !!!

Richard Trumka at the Power Shift 2011 rally, April 19, 2011. In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Trumka called for a labor movement focused on workers and families, not political candidates. (Photo: linh.m.do)

Can Unions Break From the Democrats? What a Real Declaration of Independence Would Mean
Thursday 26 May 2011
by: Amy Dean, Truthout

On May 20, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President Richard Trumka issued a warning to those Democratic candidates who rely on labor's resources when running for office but hold social movements at arm's length once in office: become champions for working families, he told them, or don't assume that unions will be there for you in the future.

(Read On)

The-Crap-O-American-Revolution !!!

Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC. President Abraham Lincoln observed in his first inaugural address, "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." (Photo: nolageek)

Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution
Tuesday 24 May 2011
by: Michael Pirsch, Truthout

Our country is in tatters. While more and more of us plunge into official poverty status, our elected leaders, who are in service to the wealthy elite, argue about how much to cut from programs that "promote the general welfare." They squander our exhaustible resources on illegal wars. The rich have stolen so much from us that they comprise the wealthiest 1 percent in well over 100 years, and they are supported in all this by their pet pundits, who dominate the corporate media. And none of our elected leaders from either of the two parties question the morality of shredding the most basic programs "to promote the general welfare."

To imagine that the Democratic Party would provide any leadership to end the "long train of abuses and usurpations" brought upon us is akin to reaffirming our belief in Santa Claus. The time has come to break the chains that bind us and to establish a new government based on true, not humbug, democratic principles.

(Read the Article)

sunday drool

the Crap-o-Banks !

Dominique Strauss-Kahn in Berlin last year. His arrest came at a crucial time for the IMF, which is supposed to be renegotiating the Greek bailout. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/Reuters

The IMF after DSK

Now that Dominique Strauss-Kahn has resigned from his position as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it is worth taking an objective look at his legacy there. Until his arrest last week on charges of attempted rape and sexual assault, he was widely praised as having changed the IMF, increased its influence and moved it away from the policies that – according to the fund's critics – had caused so many problems for developing countries in the past. How much of this is true? (Read the Article)

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the leader of the International Monetary Fund, appears in court for an arraignment over allegations that he had sexually assaulted a maid in New York, May 16, 2011. On Wednesday, May 18, 2011, Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the IMF while denying any wrongdoing. (Photo: Michael Appleton / The New York Times)

May Flowers Booming

An Aboriginal Australian in Sydney, Australia.
(Photo: tunnelarmr)

How the Murdoch Press Keeps Australia's Dirty Secret
Friday 13 May 2011
by: John Pilger, Truthout

The most enduring and insidious Murdoch campaign has been against the Aboriginal people, who were dispossessed by the arrival of the British in the late 18th century and have never been allowed to recover. "Nigger hunts" continued into the 1960s and beyond. The officially-inspired theft of children from Aboriginal families, justified by the racist theories of the eugenics movement, produced those known as the Stolen Generation, and in 1997 was identified as

genocide. Today, the first Australians have the shortest life

expectancy of any of the world's 90 indigenous peoples. Australia imprisons Aborigines at five times the rate South Africa did during the apartheid years. In the state of Western Australia, the figure is eight times the apartheid rate.

(Read The Article)

Crap-O-Capitalism!!

The “Great Moderation” and the International Assault on Labor

May 3rd, 2011
By Noam Chomsky

In most of the world, May Day is an international workers’ holiday, bound up with the bitter 19th-century struggle of American workers for an eight-hour day. The May Day just past leads to somber reflection.

A decade ago, a useful word was coined in honor of May Day by radical Italian labor activists: “precarity.” It referred at first to the increasingly precarious existence of working people “at the margins”—women, youth, migrants. Then it expanded to apply to the growing “precariat” of the core labor force, the “precarious proletariat” suffering from the programs of deunionization, flexibilization and deregulation that are part of the assault on labor throughout the world.

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The state-corporate war against unions has recently extended to the public sector, with legislation to ban collective bargaining and other elementary rights. Even in pro-labor Massachusetts, the House of Representatives voted right before May Day to sharply restrict the rights of police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees to bargain over healthcare—essential matters in the U.S., with its dysfunctional and highly inefficient privatized health-care system.

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