various stuff from my thawt and life in a news-bedevilled world, word play and semiotic experiments, with Christian intent but in hopefully creative tension with culture of North America, both USA and Canada, both hither in Toronto and yon worldwide ...
The Guardian carried news 9 hours ago that a major wobble has shaken the United Kingdom's Labour Party government. A minister had resigned just before the recent elections, and now after the elections another minister has resigned, going out with a great shout.
James Purnell quits cabinet and calls on Gordon Brown to stand aside now
• Minister tells PM to quit and give Labour 'fighting chance' • Purnell's move sparks furious reaction from Number 10 • Rebels say 75 MPs support email calling for new leader
Yesterday [Background]: Wheels coming off ... Gordon Brown is flailing as cabinet ministers quit Economist.com
Former U.S. commander in Iraq calls for truth commission (CNN.com, Jun2,2k9)
(CNN) -- The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq who retired over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is calling for a truth commission to investigate Bush-era policies behind the abuse and controversial interrogations of detainees. Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez commanded U.S. forces in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib scandal.
"The mechanisms that are responsible for establishing accountability have lost their credibility within the country, and there's a lack of trust in them," retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said in an interview on CNN's "Newsroom" Tuesday. "A truth commission, I believe, is the only way for us to regain that."
The Iraq war, he said, was plagued by "institutional and individual failures" -- both in the execution of the conflict and the interrogation tactics, and in the policies from Washington that were implemented in the field.
Sanchez, in charge of combat operations from 2003 into 2004, has been a harsh critic of the war in Iraq, calling it in 2007 a "nightmare with no end in sight." His leadership has been criticized because the mistreatment of prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison happened during his command.
Pictures of detainees caused outrage around the world when they were leaked to the news media in May 2004 -- photos showing naked prisoners stacked on top of each other, or being threatened by dogs, or hooded and wired up as if for electrocution. Critics say such tactics amount to torture.
Two officers -- Army Col. Janis Karpinski, then a brigadier general and commander of Abu Ghraib, and Col. Thomas Pappas, the commander of the military intelligence unit assigned to Abu Ghraib -- were punished over the aggressive interrogations. Seven low-ranking guards and two military intelligence soldiers -- described by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz as "bad apples" -- were disciplined.
Karpinski in April told CNN she was ordered by Sanchez not to discuss the photographs or the subsequent investigation with anybody.
A federal investigation cleared four other senior officers in 2005, including Sanchez. But the scandal was hard to shake off, and he retired the following year after more than three decades of Army service.
"You know, I can't get away from this," Sanchez told CNN Tuesday. "The fact is that I am associated, and will always be associated, with Abu Ghraib. ... It doesn't bother me. I think it's something I've learned to live with. But I also live with the fact, as I've stated before, that I've never compromised my integrity or my honor in the course of this ordeal."
Recently released Bush administration Justice Department memos condone the use of such tactics as keeping a detainee naked and in some cases in a diaper, and putting detainees on a liquid diet. One memo said aggressive techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and slapping did not violate laws against torture absent the intent to cause severe pain.
A Senate Armed Forces Committee report released in April, when the memos surfaced, found that senior Bush administration officials authorized aggressive interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists, despite concerns expressed by military psychologists and attorneys.
The report points to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval of such techniques -- including stress positions, removal of clothing, use of phobias (such as fear of dogs), and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli -- in December 2002 for detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His OK prompted interrogators in Afghanistan and Iraq to adopt the aggressive techniques.
"We had different departments that faltered in developing the guidance for executing those policies," Sanchez said. "And then I think we also had a dereliction of duty at those levels when we were faced with the reality and the facts that abuses were occurring on the ground as early as 2002 and we refused to do anything about it."
He said the lack of oversight and guidance from Washington and top brass left his troops "abandoned on the battlefield."
Last year he published his memoirs titled, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story," and he has continued to be a vocal critic of the war.
"Until America can really understand what has happened and look at it objectively and truthfully, we will still continue to be mired in the past," Sanchez said. "We've got to learn the lessons and never go this way again."
"GM’s New Owners -- USA and Labor -- Adjust to Roles" by Steven Greenhouse (Jun 1,2k9 NYT)
Labor activists marched in Lansing, Mich., Monday. In the past, the United Automobile Workers has been by turns a hard-charging adversary and a strategic partner of the automakers.
For decades, the United Automobile Workers had a simple strategy for getting what it wanted from the carmakers — it would go on strike. The tactic proved so successful that the mere threat of a walkout often won better wages, benefits and job security.
Now, with General Motors and Chrysler in bankruptcy and the union a major shareholder in both through its retiree health fund, life has become a lot more complicated for the United Auto Workers.
The union, which was born of labor strife, has pledged not to go on strike against the two companies before 2015, as part of the rescue plan hammered out by the Obama administration. Whether this brokered peace helps end the antagonistic relationship between union and management could determine the future not only of GM and Chrysler, but also of the UAW itself.
With the union’s health fund set to own 17.5 percent of GM’s shares and 55 percent of Chrysler’s, the UAW will both represent workers and be an owner, a novel dual role.
The entire article is worth your attention, but in his news report Steve Greenhouse is also largely bloviating a selection of facts, while missing entirely a structural analysis of GM and UAW during this period of restructuration.
First, let me say that I a have strong respect for the history of the union in the auto industry. However, UAW was from the outset, religiously and philosophically, a unitary autoworkers union, maintained as unitary in part by ideologizing solidarity in a majoritarian way, the slogan "solidarity" became a hammer to ensure a single union that could have no other goal than "getting what it wanted from the carmakers." It must be said in the union's favor, as far as I know, the secret ballot has always been respected by the UAW, while many unions today are trying to end secret ballots.
Unitary, faux solidarity. Repression of freedom of association, denying a multi-union system, in which several unions may be elected proportionately to provide representation and negotiate the new contract, provide a proportion of the union stewards on the shop floor. Instead, as each contract came to its termination date, the UAW would prepare itself for an annual contract-renewal strike. To get what it wanted this institutional enemy of freedom of association forced all would-be workers into its dues-paying ranks and then " — it would go on strike. The tactic proved so successful that the mere threat of a walkout often won better wages, benefits and job security. The UAW has been part of the problem with the Big Three original members of the USA auto industry. Management has also been part of the problem. As to but one facet of management's culpability, the year-after-year cave-in to union demands for "getting what it wanted from the carmakers" was only a facet of the car-makers' managerial mismanagement.
I think the Christian Labor Association in the USA since 1934, and certified by the National Labor Relations Board, should be put on the ballot of a special restructuring of workforce/workplace representation by proportionality, each worker able to choose that union on the ballot which best appeals to his convictions, worldview, or maybe just curiosity. The point being that worker -- women and men, all races, religions, etc -- chooses which professional labor organization wil represent him or her. Along with the UAW, the CLA should be on the ballot competing for votes, and proposing an integral choice.
Reformational philosophy does not prescribe, but it very strongly supports in principle an endeavor like CLA-USA. American labor needs an inner reformation, even if it must be told so by some outside voices in the culture. Reformationals in the USA should realize what time it is in the country, in the American culture in regard to over-all labor relations. The reformational movement in the USA sometimes seems stagnant -- one could be overly bold to say, all it is now is philosophers, reverends, scholars, and electromagnetic digitators (bloggers and webs+ters). There is no visible support from American reformationals for the Christian Labor Association. Whereas in the Netherlands the CNV has an affiliate for artists, CNV-Kunstenbond
35 minutes ago, AP via USAToday: "Sources: OAS votes to readmit Cuba."
It's history-making, even if the "mechanisms" toward democratization are presently ignored in Cuba, perhaps for a long meanwhile. The vote to readmit the island-state "without conditions," at the same time apparently "does set mechanisms for Cuba's return — including its agreement to comply with OAS conventions on human rights and other issues."
For the Castro Brothers regime of Cuban Communism and suppression of free labor would necessarily mean releasing the independent non-communist labor union/s in Cuba to function publicly and normally -- not as in China (which is more like Cuba and North Korea), but as in Europe where multi-union systems prevail in most countries -- with secret ballot voting for certification as a represented workforce within a firm. Cuba's present unitary labor organization of the country is parallel to the politically-unitary political representation of the Communist Party as the sole source of government. Admitting Cuba to the OAS lowers the standard for democracy within OAS, which Castro the Hero and his brother-heir have derided unconscionably.
On the other hand, USA and Canada do not have plural representation of competing unions within a given workforce or firm. The USA and Canada are among the few countries that suppress worldview plurality within a workforce; we are unitary in our rationale for monopoly unionism, which Obama is enshrining in his establishment of Government Motors the United Auto Workers forever.
Update: Times of London UK, "China cracks down on mourners on Tiananmen massacre anniversary" (Jun4,China) 'Crackdown' here seems to mean 'detained' more than anything approaching clubbings or shootings. I've read no report of either.
Dan Martin reports for Agence France Presse, "China t+tens information controls for Tiananmen anniversary"
BEIJING (AFP) — China on Wednesday kept a tight lid on content related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, blacking out foreign TV reports about the 20th anniversary of the incident and expanding curbs on websites.
News reports about the bloody June 3-4 crackdown that ended seven weeks of pro-democracy protests at the square were abruptly cut off with screens periodically going black on the BBC and CNN in China, as they have all week.
China's censors also appeared to be blocking sites such as Microsoft's new search engine Bing, social networking service Twitter, photo-hosting website Flickr and others.
The dates mentioned hark back 20 years to June 1989. "...most Chinese young people are completely unaware of this event."
Paula Wolfson reporting for Voice of America (VOA) today tells of his leisurely visit with an approving monarch who put an apparently gold chain around Obama's neck as part of the Order of Merit recognition bestowed on him by the Saudi King, Abdullah. Besides a series of intense discussions, the USA Prez is getting a breather for what may be the most important public-speaking event of his term so far. Tomorrow, he will be addressing the world, especially the Arab and Muslim world (the latter extending as far east as Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim population, while Egypt has the largest Arab population).
White House officials say they will talk about prospects to end decades of Arab-Israeli conflict. They will also discuss Iran's nuclear ambitions, as well as the impact rising oil prices are having on the world economy.
In Cairo, at the university, the USA Prez "will try to ease decades of tensions h+tened by decades of tensions between Muslims and the United States, tensions hy+tened by war in Iraq, and a lack of progress in the Middle East peace process.
"Netanyahu defies Obama call for settlement freeze," by Jeffrey Heller and Adam Entous, Reuters (Jun1,2k9).
The title and contents of the Heller/Entous late-breaking-news report needs to be parsed.
I broke apart (by the semiotic digital means of a clickable link to their Reuters article), the link-word itself appearing in blue, thereby making "Netanyahu defies Obama call for settlement freeze" separate sememically into two semantic distinct-units: "Netanyahu defies Obama" (blue, clickable) from "call for settlement freeze" (dull black usually) Netanyahu|Obama. Netanyahu (David) | Obama (Goliath). ISSUE: "natural growth" of the settlements, means slow and steady expansion.
But a trade-off has been proposed by a nameless third-party, whereby the Jewish settlements politically affiliated to Israel may grow, while the state of Israel opens its southern border-crossings to Gaza, to permit construction supplies to enter the Hamas enclave.
Trust and Power on the Shop Floor examines the shop floor processes of modern factories through two case studies. Maarten Verkerk draws on ethnography, organizational theory, and philosophy to offer an insightful analysis of how high-trust and high-power relations between management and labor are the keys to successful organizations. Verkerk ultimately offers a masterful study of the dynamics of the modern industrial organization. (Delft, the Netherlands: Euboron,2005; paperback) Amazon USA: $57 USA. -- text is largely from the Amazon sales pitch.
An important recent book articulates an uptodate horizon of normativity for Christian labor unions and movements, reaching from level of generality down to depth-levels of particularity -- such as, most importantly, the perennial industrial problem of tension and even class-warfare on the shop floor.
Dr Maarten Verkerk's Trust and Power on the Shop Floor: An Ethnographical, Ethical, and Philosophical Study on Responsible Behaviour in Industrial Organizations (Paperback) impresses me as unique (it's available from Amazon).
Dr. Verkerk is now Prof of Reformational Philosophy at the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands. In one of his current activities, Dr Verkerk provides in English a brief personal autobio for an upcoming conferemce. Here's my expanded version of the resulting bio, the orignal published online as part of a digital-brochure for 2k9 summer's Christian Artists conference in the Netherlands (see Upcoming Events in the rW's frontpage sidebar). Held every four years, the conference is sponsored by a sectoral unit within the Christian labor union of the Netherlands CNV, the every-4-years conference is sponsored by CNV's affiliated Christian Artists trade-union (CNV-Kunstenbond). Verkerk's thumbnail bio:
After my chemistry study in Utrecht [presumably BS level], I worked for four years at the Technical University of Twente to write a thesis [PhD level]. After that I worked as a senior researcher at Philips National Laboratory in Eindhoven.
Then, for more than fifteen years, I performed a number of management functions in the industrial sector of Philips [publicly-traded private-sector megacorporation with an active multi-union system of representation of labor]. I worked in The Netherlands, Germany, and Taiwan. The size of the organisations varied from 30 to 850 employees.
A general characteristic of the technical sector is:
stress, focus at the primary process, continuous improvement, motivating and training of employees, complex interactions with marketing and development, and interaction with customers.
In 2003 - 2007 I worked in a psychiatric hospital. I started as a division manager; and after one-an-a-half years, I became the director. In this period I have reorganised the hospital, made it financially sound, implemented important innovations and led a merger with another hospital.
In April 2008 I became a member of the board of VitaValley, an innovation network in health care. Since August 2008 I have been and presently am the chairman of the board.
In September 2004 I was appointed as [a national-foundation's] "extraordinary professor" of reformational philosophy at the Technical University of Eindhoven. Amongst other subject-matters, I was teaching
philosophy of technology, ethics of technology, and ethics of management and organisation.
In July 2008 I was appointed [by the Special Chairs Project's trustees, of the Dutch Foundation for Reformational Philosophy" (about 600 members), appointed to be] an extraordinary professor of reformational philosophy at the University of Maastricht.
Professorships for special chairs at state universities. : Dutch universities can also appoint Extraordinary Professors on a part-time basis. This allows the University to bring in specialized expertise that otherwise would not be available. An extraordinary professor usually has his main employment somewhere else, often in industry or at a research institute or University elsewhere. Such a professor has all the privileges of a full professor (gewoon hoogleraar), may give lectures on special topics, or can supervise graduate students who may do their research at the place of his main employment. Due to this system, many university research groups will have several professors. There is however a clear distinction between bijzonder hoogleraar and buitengewoon hoogleraar. The bijzonder hoogleraar does not get paid by the university, but receives his salary from an external organization, such as a company, an organization or a fund [ -- like the 8 or so Special Chairs of Reformational Philosophy at state universities in the Netherlands, sponsored by the trustees for this purpose, of the Foundation for Reformational Philosophy]. The buitengewoon hoogleraar on the other hand is under a direct contract with the university. The same person may be both. Both types of extraordinary professor allow using the title prof., but contrary to full professors, they are not allowed to keep it after their contract ends.
Some Dutch universities have also instated Institute Professorships, which sometimes carry special rights, e.g. the absence of any obligation to teach undergraduate students.
Several topics of my management career are:
• the start-up of an actuator factory in Roermond. In a participative process a new organisation model was developed in which continous improvement, customer orientation and workers satisfaction were in the centre.
• the start-up of a new capacitor factory in Roermond. In the design a lot of attention has been given to the 3 P’s of corporate social responsibility: People, Planet and Profit. Total budget about 150 M Euro.
• the implementation of innovations in a psychiatric hospital (clinical path ways, community based psychiatry).
Over the years, I've taken on leadership responsibility in several different societal activities: (1.) in the local church (management, pastoral, liturgical), (2. in societal organisations (politics, workers unions), and (3.) in scientific functions (management, study, lectures, articles). At this moment I am the chairman of the board of the Prof. Lindeboom Institute, an institute for medical ethics.
On the second day of the congress August 3, 2k9, Dr Maarten Verkerk will workshop on "Why are those workers not employers. Why the trade-unions have to take care for the self-employed (including all the artists). The blessings of being selfemployed and the dangers. Measures to take. Timepressure of employers leading to unsafety and unhealthy and unsocial conditions. How is that in the cultural sector. Analyses and paths for directions. Testimonials."
While attack ads against him flood the airwaves, Liberal parliamentary leader, Dr Michael Ignatieff hurls abuse at Conservative govt for following Ig's & cohorts demand that the Tories spend more, stimulate the economy which is in the dullards, not really a recession. Also Ig demands that the govt estimate "how much more the deficit could grow in the coming months." But to determine how much anything could grow, is a fool's errand."
Harper said the Liberals have been demanding increased spending on Employment Insurance, but they aren't prepared to deal with the final budget costs. Still, Harper declined to give an exact figure for the deficit and said it "will depend, obviously, on the performance of the economy."
The Unholy Alliance -- Liberal Party, New Democrat Party, and the separatist Bloc Quebecois -- aside from breaking the principle that Federalist parties do not enter coalitions with Separatist parties, are asking the impossible because they have incoherent self-contradictory demands. This is not policy leadership.
Flaherty told CTV's Canada AM that this is a "difficult year" but said he had no qualms about assisting the unemployed and bailing out the struggling auto sector. "We're spending billions more because we have more unemployment and we're helping out the auto sector to save jobs," Flaherty said.
"Ignatieff is already the subject of several Tory attack ads, which focus on comments he made before entering politics, and the decades he spent outside of Canada. One ad features an old video interview in which Ignatieff refers to America as 'his country' [hence the accompanying pix]. In another Ignatieff is quoted as saying the 'the only thing he missed about Canada was Algonquin Park.' "
All credit to the credit-card holders' liberation from cruel oppression of usurious card companies, specialist companies devoted exclusively to their own h+end results required for profit monetization, misprioritization, and damn every other societal sphere of appropriate influence (any other "stakeholder"). They were proven to have planned the financial entrapment and ultimate ruin of holders addicted to debt by over-purchase.
would eliminate secret ballots for union elections. When she went before Congress for confirmation hearings, Obama’s choice to head the Department of Labor, California Congresswoman Hilda Solis, was grilled about her position on EFCA and other laws of interest to the labor movement.
But significant changes in White House policy can occur administratively as well as legislatively. Our cabinet-level departments, in particular, wield important administrative powers, and often what is done, or undone, by a new cabinet officer without the slightest legislative initiative is as significant as what gets debated and passed in Congress.
The new disclosure rules fall into that category. Since organized labor spent about $100 million of members’ dues helping to elect Obama and supporting Democrats in Congress, the AFL-CIO and other unions have provided Obama with a lengthy list of things they would like done for them in Washington. And high on that list is undoing some of the disclosure requirements put in place during the Bush years. Without any debate in Congress, an Obama Labor Department could rescind them. Or it could simply not enforce them. As any investigative reporter will tell you, businesses and nonprofit groups often fail to file their required documents without being held accountable.
How the Obama administration treats the disclosure requirements will say a lot about what kind of Labor Department it will run. The Bush administration liked to accuse the DOL of becoming the Department of Organized Labor during the Clinton years because of its pro-union rulings. Union groups, by contrast, accused the Bush DOL of acting like a tool of big business.
Left out of this debate were the interests of ordinary workers.
This piece in the r+twing USA websitesfeer WorldNetDaily: Prez Obama's appointment of Rep. Hilda L. Solis -- another Ayres-type case? Apparently she has close ties to US communist and socialist organizations. All of which opens before the investigator certain lines of questions to determine what this may mean for certain labor formations alrealdy existing the USA, such as the Christian Labor Association (see below).
There is no denying that the big beneficiaries of the government's involvement are the active workers who will get to keep their jobs and the retirees who will keep their pensions and health insurance. But any fair analysis would also show that the net present value of wage, benefit and job-security concessions agreed to by the United Auto Workers amounts to tens of billions of dollars.
It is also not the case that the workers' gains have come at the expense of bankers and bondholders who had the bad judgment, or the bad luck, to lend money to these companies.
It is the job of the bankruptcy court to ensure that these financial creditors receive at least as much from any restructuring plan as they would have from a long and messy liquidation -- and they will. But there is nothing in the bankruptcy law, or the common law, requiring a government volunteering to finance a bankruptcy restructuring to divide its largess evenly or fairly between bondholders and assembly-line workers. That is a political choice that properly rests with the government.
The CLA-USA does not spell out the idea of labour representation where no one in the workforce is forced to be a member of a union. All unions, with legality within and loyalty to the USA, may be represented proportional to the number of workers in a given workforce who vote with individual particularity by means of a secret ballot for that particular union (pluralist workforce democracy -- not monophilosophical, not monoworldview, not monoreligion nor monononreligion -- but may be founded on the basis of a religious creed, better perhaps it should be termed a religious workview expressed secularly in the workaday world by a founding community of religious particularists gathered explicitly to revitalize the witness of 1934 regarding the necessity of a christian labor movement in America. In Canada, a sister union bases itself simply on "the Gospel social principles," is a founding member of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and welcomes members of any religion and "none."
These thawts bespeak only to recognize a "sphere sovereignty of the workforce" as a single and particular societal-entity composed of an ethically-bonded workforce-membership to constitute a work-community, related to a particular management, and ultimately to owners of the firm or company, whether thru publically traded stocks perhaps offered on the stock market or privately-held ownership, even communally-owned work co-ops perhaps (but represented by plurality, not a single union unless the workforce is 100% unanimous for one union representation with a monopoly on the workview representation of workers).
Therefore, having an interest in the firm, good communications all around. The latter contributing to healthy labour relations between management and the workers of the workforce, again represented plurally and proportionately, constituting an honest work-community that doesn't stiffle differences of workview -- viewpoint tolerance sufficient to the purpose of the fullest representation possible. Harmonious work relations lead to stability, thus vice versa contributing to stability of the workforce, even the workers financially -- if (1.) the banks, (2.) the lurid luring-loaners to buy-now-pay-later people who cannot keep up mortgage payments (credit cards too, etc) and must eventually be foreclosed upon, as the loaners planned / foresaw at the outset; but (3.) there's a third prime evil force in labor relations > misstepping government. The nation has the r+t to open elections in labor unions, via secret ballots, by all the unions that the nation's government certifies, not a government that enables and otherwise supports the herding of workers into a single union per workforce and, sometimes, divided by trade / guild with a h+ level of presumably tradeskill-based exclusivity.
As soon as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certifies a given union (of which CLA is only one small national labour association among many bohemoth such-organizations, associations, unions thru-out the nation); each particular union gets the responsibility of representing its proportion of the secret-ballot vote.
Unionization is an ethical bond of members of the workforce, recognizing as a principium that to be a force they must associate together in the implied ethical bond of that particular relation, that particular societal-sphere > labour-relations, a sphere uniquely situated within society (the societal relative-totality) to require healthy interaction between management and each union selected in a secret free vote of the members of the entire workforce (other than management) and each particular union represented proportionally in the all-union, pan-union, or multi-union committee (it may be again a single union, if the workforce is unanimous in a secret ballot), for its overall relations on behalf of all workers in the workforce, collectively, communally within a single sphere, with that firm's management; negotiations would include contract negotiations for salaries and wages, general labour standards of compensation for the workers.
Those in the workforce who exercize their r+t to representation by a union of their choice (according to differing world-, life-, and work-views) -- freedom of association within the workforce, for life-is-religion motives perhaps --these have a logically-reciprocal r+t (juriscientially speaking) not to pay union dues, thereby not belonging to any union and eschewing a work-relations representation, both negatives that go along with letting the represented (proportionately) do all the organizing, communal thinking, a kind catechumentate for work within the work-community of this firm somehow in tandem with this management.
Instead, these self-chosen non-represented workers outside the union system almost entirely must nevertheless contribute the equivalent of basic union dues to a charity acceptable to both that self-chosen non-member individual worker and the all-union committee representing the various unions of the membership-affirming institution of the workforce of different workviews but comitted nonetheless to interactive dialogue and decision-making, with certain proportionality. The individual unions represented may further charge their own members more than the all-union committee's standard of dues (which covers otherwise-freeloaders who would on these corrective terms still pay out the same monetary value compared to the basic dues of the workers who belong to one union or another, represented proportionately on the all-union council in dialogue with each other and with the management of the firm. The unions may charge more than basic dues, but not less. In the end, every worker pays (or charitably contributes the equivalent of) basic dues.
For instance, an all-union committee (for a firm with a total workforce, aside from management, of 100 employees upon a secret ballot of individual members of the work-community, may have a 30% of employees vote for representation by the CLA, not by the UAW; but of course the UAW-supporting union's membership by secret ballot proves to be 70%. The two unions split the committee memberships: 7 UAW to 3 CLA. There are, in our story, 10 members total on the all-unions committee. Shop stewards are further selected by the remaining 90 shopfloor- or secretarial-workers -- again, 70% of whom in both previous categories vote UAW and 30% of whom parallely vote CLA. The CLA's 3 members on the all-union committee, liaise with the CLA's shop stewards and elected negotiating committee members at contract renewal time.
I leave these matters for now.
Obama said he would bring change. Let him do so in labor reform that gives workview meanings in a plurality for unions each distinctively to develop their own social principles should conscience dictate. In any case, the quest for a christian workview that enriches the inter-unions dialogue is a most important one, that must not shy away from the fundamental theory of represenation in a plurality of worldviews in the civic situation. The Christian Labor Association, having been founded in America in 1934 (if memory serves), has been able to stir itself some in recent years; but seemingly, growth has not accrued in the percentages for new members under contract or negotiating at present that were projected as national CLA goals a couple of years back. A sad of example of stagnation is the latest date for a digital issue of CLA's Christian Labor Herald, if I recall correctly, that last date was 2k7 aka 2007.
As this Memorial Day 2009 arrives, aside from the great ceremonies that have been dominating much of TV and myriads of events across the USA, David Guttenfelder's camera catches a moment of humour among the grim realities of war being waged this very day. HT: AP.
COLOMBO, (Reuters) - With a quarter-century civil war in the history books, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa will now put to the test his theory of using a military victory over terrorism as the first step to tackling its root causes.
Flush with the success of victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a 25-year war once dubbed unwinnable, Rajapaksa offered compromise and reconciliation with the Tamil minority in a victory speech on Tuesday.
"At this victorious moment, it is necessary for us to state with great responsibility that we do not accept a military solution as the final solution," said the president, who is Sinhalese.
"It is necessary that we give these people the freedoms that are the right of people in all others parts of our country."
In a nation scarred and divided after one of the world's longest-running and bloody civil wars, with extremists on both sides often calling the shots, Rajapaksa, 63, now faces what may be Sri Lanka's greatest post-independence challenge.
Aussie press analyzes election results reported from India.
India's Congress party is putting together a government, after steering the ruling alliance to victory in the nation's staggered general election.
The main task is to decide which parties to approach, in order to secure a parliamentary majority, having just fallen short of the 272 seat majority required to rule alone. The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP [a Hindu nationalist party regarded as anti-Muslim and anti-Christian] managed a mere 159 seats. ... the election was a big surprise for everyone. We were expecting a tie between the Congress-led group and the BJP-led group, two weeks of horse trading. The Congress has now got a big majority with its group in its own right. It can pick and choose [which political parties among its campaign partners will become cabinet partners in the governing coalition]. It's going to be a far more stable coalition, because it will not be dependent so much on support from outside -- from the left groups, especially the Communist Party marxist.
Toronto streets today became an extension of the civil war in Sri Lanka, now apparently in its own death throes. According to reporters Mike Funston and Dale Anne Freed of Toronto Star,
Several thousand Tamil demonstrators occupied parts of downtown Toronto for several hours last night prior to a planned candlelit vigil outside the United States consulate on University Ave.
For a time, the demonstrators blocked part of the intersection of Yonge and Dundas Sts., refusing to move until they could be addressed by a federal Conservative MP.
"All we want is for Canadians to help us," said Gowrishangar Kamalanphan, 25, the apparent leader of the demonstration.
Shouting "Stop genocide!" and carrying a banner "Democratic Society! Stop Sri Lanka's State Terrorism on Tamils," the group wants Canada and other western nations to impose economic and political sanctions on Sri Lanka until the government and the Tamil Tiger rebel group agree on a ceasefire.
At the moment, the Federal Government of Canada, under the Conservative party and led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper is concentrated on the politics and economics of the Arctic, such that a terrorist organization in the steamy isle of the Lankans is only a nasty mirage on the horizon, despite Tiger command over thousands of Torontonians. Civil r+ts for Tamils is not the equivalent of Tiger terrorism.
UK"s Telegraph (unsigned) "Suffering in Sri Lanka: the defeat of the Tamil Tigers will bring a terrible episode in Sri Lanka to a close? (May14,2k9).
The long agony of civilians trapped inside the inferno of Sri Lanka's northern war zone may, at last, be easing. Some 2,000 are reported to have escaped this ruined enclave, ironically named a "no-fire zone", where a devastating bombardment has claimed hundreds of lives and struck the only working hospital in the last week alone.
If this terrible episode is drawing to a close, with the final defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels, that is wholeheartedly to be welcomed. The Tigers have cynically maximised human suffering by trapping innocent people inside the only territory still under their control.
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in final battle with Tamil Tigers
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Yet President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government [Sri Lanka] cannot escape its share of responsibility. ... Instead, Mr Rajapaksa has brazenly ignored outside concerns. There is a simple reason for his confidence: China has given Sri Lanka its full support. ...
China has taken a lead in foreign influence on the Government of the island; it is building a massive harbour for its oil sea-lane to Myanmar or more probably Thailand, where many ships will disgorge into refineries, while some raw oil will be trucked to the border with China for refining in the mother country.
Emma Harley writing in Telegraph UK, "Ang Suu Kyi's biggest fan gets her arrested" (May14,2k9)
So some idiot Yank has swum across the lake surrounding the home of Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader of Burma, and given the junta that has usurped her office the ammunition it needs to renew her detention if it chooses.
The American was uninvited. No one asked him to splash his way over and then drip on her carpet until men with guns came to take the object of his political desire away - the lady herself apparently asked him to leave. Acquaintances of Vietnam veteran John Yettaw, who at 53 is described as "a psychology student", say he is "a nutty fellow". No kidding. Let's hope he's not also given to self-recrimination because he has done something terminally, criminally stupid.
It is tempting to see this manic foreign intervention as a metaphor for the ill-focused good intentions lavished on Mrs Suu Kyi by the West. But for the regime to jail her for the actions of this selfish lunatic would be akin to jailing someone for being stalked. Or deselecting an MP for receiving the inevitable letters written in green and purple ink with the extra important addendums written sideways in the margin (such letters are always written on lined paper for some reason). It would be like killing a goat for being too seductive after it had been buggered by a goatherd. To jail her for this would demonstrate, if further proof were needed, that the regime in Burma is unreceptive to any kind of logic as the rest of the world understands it. It makes you wonder why they need a pretext at all?
Read the irreplaceable Garma Chang on Buddhist Logic (in trans 1969? Pennsylvania State University Press).
This is a regime that murdered thousands of students in 1988 when Burma had its own Tiananmen Square moment, which is consistently described by those in a position to know as one of the worst five regimes in the world, and which is currently jailing its own citizens for periods of 34 years and more for doing what the government itself failed to do and helping each other after 140,000 people died as a result of Hurricane Nargis - then having the timerity to speak about it to each other.
Think of the lack of paths to uppper mobility in Burma today. The military is like an established Buddhist order, with lifetime formation once you join up and rise in rank a little or a lot over time as you prove your ability and loyalty. A general has first of all his ranks and then the Sanga of Buddhists priests to secure first of all. Democracy? Instability, they think.
The French oil company Total is in Burma, as is US-owned Chevron. So the sanctions are patchy, to say the least. Brad Adam, director of Human Rights Watch's Asia operation, says that the only pressure that would make any conceivable difference to the Burmese junta would come from India, Thailand and most of all China.
"China is holding out against action on the UN Security Council. If anyone wants to help counteract the damage that has been done to Aung San Suu Kyi's democracy movement, they could usefully write to the Chinese embassy and tell them how angry they feel that China could fail to speak out to Burma, disregarding this brave woman's actions. There is a feeling that Burma is getting very close to the end of what China is prepared to put up with on this issue."
So, the point seems to be that People's Republic of China may have grown weary of Burma's rightwing generals and Buddhist h+ priests, with China preparing to pull the plug on them. I doubt it.
the militants agreed to disarm if sharia courts were made the exclusive form of justice in Swat.
According to reporters Constable and Khan (May7,2k9), the militants are Taliban armed forces the forward units of whom are holded-up in several emerald mines. More, they "looted three banks and occupied police and civil administration buildings in Mingora. The military reported that an additional 50 militants had been killed in Bruner" [another NorthWest terrritory of Pakistan, an active operation of the Taliban but outside their main thrust in Swat; Bruner has numerous Sufi-mystics shrines that the oncoming Talibani will have to destroy as anti-Wahabbist in the extreme; Sufi Islam is not immune from the barbarian fanatics of the Taliban].
The United Nations humanitarian office in Islamabad said it has already registered more than 2,200 families in new camps, "many of them arriving with little more than the clothes they are wearing." In a statement, the office said it would also increase assistance to help about 6,000 additional families in existing camps for Afghan refugees.
This area of Pakistan, in two territories of the NorthWest, Swat and Buner, is the area at which the jihadist eruptions in several countries over the last some years are now again cresting into a frenzy of violent activity of the kind that constitutes a "civil war" where civility is being uprooted and refugeed . To establish a fair electoral system, and a shelf of ordinary r+ts, the parliamentary government must pursue the Taliban and ... and ... what?...destroy them?
Re-educate? What of the wives and children? And the worst of them ... re-develop Guantanomo to receive new "enemy combatants" ?
While the provinces of Swat and Buner are geopolitically strategic for the parliamentary govt, nearby in Islamabad, the Pakistan territories of Waziristan
R+t now (May12,2k9), UN Ambassador John Bolton (under Prez Bush II) is talking on TV (FoxNews, Greta's On the Record show) about the situation in Pakistan, adding his analysis that the Taliban / Al Quaeda axis in Afghanistan and now most especially in Pakistan, this axis now dominates in Pakistan's Intelligence Corps (which is a part of the Army and has a lot of clout among the non-Intel regulars, among whom conversions to Sunni Wahabbi Talibani Islam and its warriors is a small noticeable trend, apparently. Bolton painted a scenario where a whole section of the Army breaks off, not to disarm, but to f+t in alliance with Taliban / Al Quaeda against the Pakistan parliamentary government and its governing coalition of parties and its Prez Asif Ali Zardari. It's best hope for an eventual democratic peace.
By the way, Zardari ... "insisted that his country's nuclear arsenal is 'definitely safe,' despite growing concerns about recent gains by the Taliban along the country's border with Afghanistan, reports CNN (May6.2k9).
The Tribal Areas comprise seven Agencies, namely Khyber, Kurram, Bajaur, Mohmand, Orakzai, North and South areas of Waziristan and six FRs (Frontier Regions) namely FR Peshawar, FR Kohat, FR Tank, FR Banuu, FR Lakki and FR Dera Ismail Khan. The main towns include Miranshah, Razmak, Bajaur, Darra Bazzar, Ghalanai as Head Quareters of Mohmand Agency and Wana.
The 7 tribal areas lie in a north-to-south strip that is adjacent to the west side of the 6 frontier regions, which also lie in a north-to-south strip. The areas within each of those 2 regions are geographically arranged in a sequence from north to south.
The geographical arrangement of the 7 tribal areas in order from north to south is: Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan, South Waziristan. The geographical arrangement of the 6 frontier regions in order from north to south is: Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Tank, Dera Ismael Khan.
About 3.5 million people live in the 7 tribal areas and 6 frontier regions.
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The Tribal Areas comprise seven Agencies, namely Khyber, Kurram, Bajaur, Mohmand, Orakzai, North and South areas of Waziristan and six FRs (Frontier Regions) namely FR Peshawar, FR Kohat, FR Tank, FR Banuu, FR Lakki and FR Dera Ismail Khan. The main towns include Miranshah, Razmak, Bajaur, Darra Bazzar, Ghalanai as Head Quareters of Mohmand Agency and Wana.
