I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog weather update I present: From My Dad.
Awesome, and one more reason why Homeland Security is a joke…
(One kilogram of plastic explosive can do a lot of damage.)
Found in my electronic chapbook.
Quit when you get tired. The work I do after a certain point is the work that might better be left undone. p. 106
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
At the turn of the last century, the rich and powerful in the United States rightly feared the growing power of organized workers and their creation of unions that could disrupt the best laid financial plans. A hundred years later workers in Myanmar face similar opposition from the military dictators and their corporate sponsors.
From Green Left:
Workers at Burma”s Taiyi shoe factory and Opal 2 garment factory began a strike on February 8. They are demanding a salary increase, a reduction of working hours and the provision of a clean space for meals.
The strike started in the Mya Fashion garment factory in the No. 3 Factory Zone of Yangon”s Hlaing Thrayar Township.
Now, the workers are being blocked from leaving the factory zone by riot police trucks. At least 50 trucks packed with riot police carrying assault rifles and shields were dispatched. No one has been allowed to enter.
Police are securing roads surrounding the Hlaingtharyar Industrial Zone, about 11 km outside the biggest city, Yangon.
Overall, working condition in Burma are worsening. The Burmese military regime is pro-foreign capital and depends on cheap wages and deplorable working conditions to attract foreign investment.
Like other democratic rights in Burma, the rights of workers, such as the freedom to form trade unions, are also being repressed.
Here in the United States we like to pretend that such struggles are in our past. The struggle continues here, but it has simply become more subtle. Just ask a Walmart worker.
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog weather update I present: From My Dad.
Found in my electronic chapbook.
Don”t assume too much. Most professional writers tend to aim for a daily production quota, one or two or five or ten pages of copy a day. p. 106
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
Tin Oo, 83-year-old vice-chairman of the National League for Democracy, was freed today. He was jailed in 2003 for breaking a draconian anti-subversion law and was transferred to house detention in 2004. A condition of his release is that the 83-year-old former general not take part in politics, a condition he intends to violate.
From The Washington Post:
Tin Oo said that he would resume political activities even though he was warned to desist.
Tin Oo invited reporters into his residence after the departure of a police officer.
“He read out the order lifting the house arrest on me and the order also said I should not be engaged in political activities or create political unrest,” Tin Oo said.
But he added: “I’ll continue my political activities in my capacity as the vice-chairman of the NLD party.”
I wonder what I’ll be doing at 83, if I’m fortunate to live that long?
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog weather update I present: From My Dad.
Found in my electronic chapbook.
Such Men Are Dangerous, took eight or nine days and was similarly written in white heat; a lot of people consider it my strongest novel. p. 106
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
I still have my USS Bainbridge, CGN-25 branded Zippo lighter. During the Vietnam War, however, there was a dark side to the Zippo. When American soldiers destroyed a Viet Cong (or suspected Viet Cong village) they torched the flammable huts using the ubiquitous Zippo.
Soldiers in the the Army of Myanmar are repeating the abuse.
From the BosNewsLife Asia Service:
[More than] 70 houses, a mobile health clinic and two schools in eastern Burma have been burnt down by army patrols stepping up an offensive against predominantly Christian Karen villagers, rights activists said Thursday, February 11.
The Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People said in published remarks that government backed troops set fire to 46 houses in Toe Hta area and 28 houses in Ka Di Mu Der area of Ler Doh township, Nyaunglebin District.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, but at least three Karen villagers are known to have died in previous attacks.
A vital mobile health clinic, a middle school, and a nursery school in K”Dee Mu Der village and
Tee Mu TaVillage were reportedly also destroyed by soldiers Monday, February 8.
In the run-up to the maybe elections this fall, keeping ethnic minorities cowed and powerless is just one of the election-winning strategies employed by the military dictators of Myanmar.
I got a campaign email from Jay Howser, Lee Fisher’s new campaign manager for Fisher’s upcoming Democratic primary election against Jennifer Brunner in the 2010 race to be Ohio’s next United States Senator. The email focuses on jobs creation and, most specifically, how support of small businesses is the solution of Ohio’s in-the-tank economy (despite Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich’s glowing assessment of the business climate in Ohio).
Here’s three questions for Jay (and Fisher).
First, tell me precisely how you define a small business. Is there an annual revenue cap that marks the line between small and not-small businesses? Is the number of employees the defining marker? Is a franchisee of an international mega-corporation like McDonald’s a small business owner? Just how can I tell the difference between a small business that Fisher wants to support and and a not-small business that should stand in line for government handouts behind the small businesses?
Second, if small business is really the key, wouldn’t it make sense to stop shoveling corporate welfare into the coffers of the not-small businesses so that we can truly throw our best efforts and support behind the small businesses Fisher wants to help?
Third, how does Fisher feel about the single largest private employer in Ohio: Walmart? Should Walmart continue to receive tax incentives corporate welfare to put legitimate and very local small businesses out of business and send Ohioans money to Bentonville, Arkansas and, ultimately, China?
I have more, but these are the three most important question I have this morning.
I’ll be emailing a copy of this to Jay. We’ll see if he is as responsive as his counterpart Dave Dettman.
[Update, 1134: I left an abreviated form of this on Fisher’s post about small business.]
From The BBC:
Iceland could become a “journalism haven” if a proposal put forward by some Icelandic MPs aided by whistle-blowing website Wikileaks succeeds.
The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, calls on the country’s government to adopt laws protecting journalists and their sources.
It will be filed with the Althingi – Iceland’s parliament – on 16 February.
If the proposal succeeds it will require the Icelandic government to consider introducing legislation.
Julian Assange, Wikileaks’ editor, told BBC News that the idea was to “try and reform Iceland’s media law to be a very attractive jurisdiction for investigative journalists”.
He has been in Iceland for a number of weeks and is advising MPs on the IMMI.
The hope is that journalist-friendly laws will encourage media businesses to move to Iceland.
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