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From the LabourStart mailing list, I heard about the quixotic battle of New Zealand fast food workers in the organisation called Unite to organise a union for minimum-wage workers at McDonalds, as well as KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut and a call centre. The group has already coordinated the first ever strike at Starbucks.
McDonalds is represented in negotiations by the infamous union-busters Teasdale Associates. They successfully busted a service-workers union attempt to organise fast-food workers in the 1990s, but the government of New Zealand is likely to be more supportive of labour than was the US government at any time in the last thirty years. An attempted strategy of giving exclusive pay-rises to non-union members backfired when Unite won a legal challenge against it. See, in America they probably would have got away with that.
In related breaking news, a journalist was assaulted by a McDonalds negotiator. See the Unite website, supersizemypay.com, for more on that and other Unite issues and campaigns.
The Twin Cities' weekly newspaper City Pages tells the story of yet more underestimated and underfunded support for US soldiers in Iraq through the story of one Iowa man, grievously injured in Iraq, hurriedly retired from the National Guard and now receiving care at the VA hospital in Minneapolis. The Minneapolis VA is one of four new "polytrauma" treatment centers set up to handle the new complexes of injuries that soldiers are experiencing (and surviving) in 21st century warfare. But how are they going to cope with the incoming flood of veterans from this war on the one hand, and massive funding cuts on the other?
Could we be seeing the beginning of the end for the Bush administration? Could there be a premature departure in deepest shame, a la Nixon? We can but hope. It feels like the tipping point is just around the corner, and the feverish comment on the ins and outs is very alluring.
DH asked: what the heck kind of a name is "Scooter" for a grown man? "Frat boy," I answered.
This article from the Washington Post details how the current US administration is gradually coming to realise that their initial "plans" for post-war Iraq were based on a very faulty understanding of Iraqi history and politics. With all the government officials being quoted anonymously, it appears that they are still rather skittish about openly admitting the unrealistic and even naive nature of the original ambitions for a unified, secular, pro-western government to emerge after the "liberation" from Saddam Hussein. U.S. officials now acknowledge that they misread the strength of the sentiment among Kurds and Shi'ites to create a special status. The Shi'ites' request this month for autonomy to be guaranteed in the constitution stunned the Bush administration, even after more than two years of intense intervention in Iraq's political process, they said. The US administration is giving up such hopes as the enshrinement of women's rights in the constitution, a totally secular government and the complete integration of Kurds and Shi'ites into a unified Iraq. Instead, they are now focusing limiting the failures by influencing the constitutional process to make it easier to amend in the future, and establishing some credibility and order in an accelerated withdrawal of coalition troops and advisers.
 While I was in temporary retirement, as I said below, strange things were in the news. This, of course, is the other big story in the UK for the past couple of weeks. In fact, much bigger than the fall from grace of the Sikhs, one of Britain's most respected minority communities. For those who live in outer space, or the US, the story thus far:
- Home Secretary David Blunkett is exposed as having had an affair with a married woman, Kimberley Quinn, just as it falls, very messily, apart.
- Blunkett initiates a paternity suit to prove that Quinn's two year old son and unborn child are both his.
- When the simple fact of adultery is not proving salacious enough to end a brilliant career, allegations of special favours through his office for the Quinn's nanny begin to surface . . .
- . . . and allegations of Mrs. Quinn being transported by rail at government expense under the guise of being Home Secretary's spouse(-to-be, according to him).
- PM stands by Blunkett. (No link necessary; he always does that.)
- Oh, did I mention that the lover was pregnant when all this started to unravel?
- With exquisitely poor timing, Blunkett's biography is published, in which he rips holes out of almost every one of his cabinet colleagues, thus leaving himself more friendless, precisely when he most needs support.
- Government starts investigation of Nanny-gate and train ticket scandals
- Multi-millionaire husband of Quinn defends her as she is taken into hospital suffering from stress.
- Blunkett resigns, claiming he is willing to sacrifice all "for the sake of that little lad".
- Blunkett's defenders say he is a working-class victim of a cabal of rich people.
- Oh, did I mention that Kimberley Quinn is the publisher of prominent Conservative magazine? Yes, that's the opposition party, e.g., "sleeping with the enemy" with bells on.
- By a few days ago, many could not decide whose behaviour was most disgusting, Mr. Blunkett's or Mrs. Quinn's.
- Political columnist and radio host is revealed to be also a lover of Mrs. Quinn, along with possibly a mysterious "fourth man".
- Mrs. Quinn has apparently kept a detailed diary of the whole affair.
Do you think I am capable of making stuff like this up?
I am just sad that I am too old to offer to bear Steve Bell's children. This man is an effing genius.
What I struggle to say is articulately stated by John Pilger. What will be the aftermath of this surreal election? I can see one of two scenarios, and both are equally violent, though one is far preferable. They actually do not depend at all on who wins the election, but on the state of consciousness of the American electorate. The metaphor of sleeping giant is often used about America, but it's usually used mistakenly. Pilger gets it right when he nails our previous waking up episodes as the civil rights campaign and the ultimate revulsion against our actions in Vietnam. The question is - will there be such a waking from the slumber on the 3rd of November? If Bush is re-elected and such a reaction does occur, it will be inevitably violent, because of the instant repression of the triumphant administration. If Kerry is elected and the anti-war crowd try to hold his feet to the fire, and it turns out that his wimpy pronouncements about the war are what he really believes and not just what he said to get elected, well, that could go almost any way.
The less preferable outcome, and the one I fervently hope is not inevitable, is that whether it is Bush or Kerry who is elected, it means that the majority, slight though they may be, actually support this imperial project that both candidates tout, only pausing to criticise each other's competence as a warlord-emperor. And then as Pilger says, we will see the American war on Terra unleashed.
It's the sound of chickens coming home to roost. Text of a letter from 52 former senior British diplomats to Tony Blair, objecting to his government's foreign policy moves. Bush faced similar criticism from diplomatic circles some months ago but it was more low-key, largely ignored by the press, and not taken very seriously by American pundits. They do take this sort of thing seriously here, though, despite the government's attempts to pin it all on "understandable frustration".
Joel of Pax Nortona sent via e-mail a link to this editorial in the NYT on "How to Hack an Election." It tells of the pitifully bad security rating given to a proposed online voting system in Maryland; and are you surprised to learn that the state officials gave the negative report a very positive spin and are going to proceed to use the system? Easily picked locks on hardware, the ability to change vote counts in the voting booth by attaching a keyboard, and the ability to change vote counts remotely were all picked up in the report, and even if these glaring deficiencies are fixed, the system has no audit trail to fall back on if better hackers appear (which they always do.)
The Guardian's daily comment section today has a total of nine comment articles and every one is about the Hutton inquiry, the BBC, the Government's response to the Hutton inquiry or the response of David Kelly's friends and family to the Hutton inquiry. And a Guardian poll shows that three times as many Britons believe the BBC than believe the government. So, there, Tone, gloat all you want.
Here is another scathing indictment of the process leading up to the Iraqi war, followed by a suspicious look at the Hutton report (these seem to be filling up the news spaces just now, with the general verdict being that it is a whitewash) but this one has an added twist - a Northern Ireland connection.
The sexing up of absolutely everything, by Catherine Bennett of the Guardian, sums up what a lot of us are feeling today. Blair was "staring into the abyss" and suddenly now he is strutting and preening himself and tongue-lashing all who dared to criticise him. Yeccchhh. What with the snow and all, I sort of want to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head.
When I went out (into the snow!) this morning and saw the headlines, Blair 'furious' at Hutton leak, I knew I was in big trouble. Just because they know about the Hutton report website in California is no reason to report it in Great Britain. The Sun only leaked the story a half day before the official report, but I leaked it the previous night! Oh, wait, I think my link didn't actually have the Hutton report itself. It does now, though.
Ya gotta love the way the UK does these things. All your questions are answered at the Hutton Inquiry Web Site. (Note to Americans - this is not a joke. This is the actual government website. No, really.) Thanks to Joani - in California - for sending me this link. She wishes her own government was half this forthcoming on its "9-11" investigation.
How to Save the World's Dave Pollard has a recent post about four under-reported stories in the media, and I was particularly taken by the last one. It concerns a battle for the board of the Sierra Club that is pitting a new influx of anti-immigration activists and radical animal-rights activists against the longer-term, mainstream environmentalists and their new ally. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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