Cleveland’s Worker-Owned Boom

An interesting article that in some ways follows on the the work-occupations in Argentina...

This June, the doors will open at the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, a state-of-the-art, nearly $6 million facility in Cleveland, Ohio.

What’s so special about this laundry? In a word, ownership. The business will be 100 percent owned by its 50 employees, virtually all of whom live in the surrounding community. Life is tough in this neighborhood, where the poverty rate exceeded 30 percent and thousands of homes lay stripped and abandoned even before the current recession began. ...

Iraq War: Right Wing War Blogger's Get it Wrong

Back in 2003, the website Right Wing News asked some leading war-cheerleaders for their opinions of the coalition dead in the upcoming war. This is what they said:

John Hawkins: "Probably 300 or less"
Charles Johnson:"Very few"
Henry Hanks: "Less than 200"
Laurence Simon: "A Few hundred"
Rachael Lucas: "Less than three thousand"
Scott Ott: "Dozens"
Glenn Reynolds: "Fewer than 100"
Tim Blair: "Below 50"
Ken Layne: "a few hundred"
Steven Den Beste: "50-150"

Well they were all totally wrong as currently it stands at around 4600.

Right Wing News didn't bother to ask them about civilian casualties, I guess like the US military, they didn't do body counts. Well for the record the number is around 100,000 to 1,000,000.

They also didn't ask about the financial cost of the war. Prior to the war the Bush people has estimates from $0 (Paul Wolfowitz, "really finance its own reconstruction") to $50 billion (Rumsfeld) to $200 billion (Larry Lindsey - Bush sacked him for this view).

At time of writing; $685,000,000,000 (which might rise to as much as $3 trillion).

Wolfowitz went on to run the World Bank for a bit.
Bliar went on to launch the Tony Blair Faith Foundation to promote peace.

You couldn't make it up...

Overseas Development: $2 Trillion in 50 Years - Banks: $18 Trillion in 1 Year

Says it all really:

"Since the inception of aid (overseas development assistance) almost 50 years ago, donor countries have given some $2 trillion in aid. And yet over the past year, $18 trillion has been found globally to bail out banks and other financial institutions. The amount of total aid over the past 49 years represents just eleven percent of the money found for financial institutions in one year.

The UN Millennium Campaign is urgently calling on rich countries gathering at this week's high-level summit on the economic crisis to make no further excuses that they lack resources and to urgently deliver on their aid commitments."

more at: http://www.endpoverty2015.org

Afghanistan News: Not to Inform but to Recruit

There was an interesting comment in an interesting article on the MOD trying (as always) to control the story on the failing war in Afghanistan. Buried in the article was this:

The Guardian's James Meek, embedded in Helmand in 2006, says he was allowed to speak freely, and had no problems with minders. However, he was sent to a relatively quiet zone, and his requests to visit bases where soldiers were engaged in combat were refused. "I was told quite candidly that the priority was the tabloids and television because it was important for recruitment," he says.

Wow - so the reports on the front line of a war done in our name and paid for with our money, is being controlled to create a story of excitement and combat, 'because it was important for recruitment'. Nice; reminds me of the line in the Young Ones when Neil is looking for a job and the ad in the aper says; Join the Army: It's great you can have a gun if you want one.

Watching the Right

There is an interesting comment on GNN placing the recent spate of shootings in the US in the context of a far right-wing backlash over the modest gains of the centre-left with the victory of Obama.

One could only imagine the media frenzy and fear mongering had these acts been committed in the name of Allah; or had been committed by an Arab-looking person. The recent attack at Washington D.C.‘s Holocaust Memorial Museum was again committed by a Christian Nationalist. The murderer of Dr. George Tiller said via telephone interview that this was only the beginning, and that many more attacks are planned.

It was the third recent shooting involving a gunman with ties to the white nationalist/christian fundamentalist movement following last month’s slaying of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and the shooting of three police officers in Philadelphia in April. Our corporate media hasn’t really put the recent events into perspective, and continues to ignore America’s own home grown terrorists.

It is also interesting to note that the guy who did the shooting of the holocaust museum also had links to our own far-right nut bags, the BNP.

There is also the great blog, Daily Mail Watch, that keeps a beady eye on our own right-wing hate rag. Take this choice example:

It seems simple enough, in Mail land. If you complain about people’s attitudes towards homosexuality, then you are a ‘Nazi’. A ‘Nazi’ in the Littlejohn/Gaunt mould, that is, ie someone who has views that you don’t can be called a Nazi. As the man who led to the end of Gaunt’s career in radio pointed out, though, you need to put something in front of ‘Nazi’ to be able to get away with it - the Mail has chosen ‘adoption’ this time. Because the Nazis were so fond of homosexual people, weren’t they? So fond of them they gave them nice pink triangles to wear in the concentration camps. It’s a really good analogy, Mr Mail.

Great stuff.
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