UnionBook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXXBCFnhsUc

John Sweeney (President, AFL-CIO) welcomes delegates.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWTcGHbBPYI

Jimmy Hoffa JR. (President, IBT)at Teamster reception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nitWtjarais

http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/prsptm/sp08172009.cfm

Welcome LabourStart

Opening Remarks by AFL-CIO President

CWA/TNG President on the Crisis in the American News Indust

Day 3 in Washington, a bit of sightseeing before the LabourStart conference begins.

I cannot say 'hi' to an American without being asked about the Canadian medicare system. I can't remember anything since perhaps the Meech Lake referendum (and mebbe not even then) that would compare to this.

The Big Lie approach alive and well. Some truly bizarre TV adverts, and while news from the politically-biased or affiliated networks like Fox is quite bizarre at the best of times I gather, it has now have gone quite loonie. After watching Fox for an hour you begin to wonder if the bit of Canada you live in is the only part where you need government approval to take a leak or get out of bed in the morning, where people aren't camped out at hospitals begging for treatment.

'Town Hall' meetings where people show up wearing handguns or waving rifles, making the point that they will defend their right to live (and die) without state-supplied medical care, stories about 'militias' (not really, more like private armies made up of right-wing loons with automatic weapons) getting ready to defend their communities against forced euthanasia and more. One such was interviewed about his 'preparedness' while he was making bombs out of dynamite.

I'm hoping and assuming much of this is the news media focussing on the nutters, but it's hard to tell and there's so much of it...

Hard time yesterday at the liquor store convincing people that government committees don't order euthanasia when the cash register is empty or to a quota set by some committee of bureaucrats somewhere, that politicians, budgets and bureaucrats don't decide whether I get my tonsils pulled. All the opposed had stories that (a) were quite crazy, and (b)they were convinced were true.

Our beer got warm while I tried, and failed, to explain how we see medical care as a civic right, like voting or freedom of expression or garbage collection, fire and police services.

Sad. And very odd.

One fun thing: most white Americans we have spoken with are opposed to Obama's anemic plan, all Black and Latina/os either in favour or are curious about how our system works.

Holy snappin' arseholes! It takes a lot to get me off one of my fave activities (Geri thinks of it as a manifestation of my OCD): travel planning at 0500 in a strange city.

Day 2 in Washington (hello housebreakers, we have a housesitter!) and I should be planning today's walking, but am flummoxed by the intensity of the spammer attack on UnionBook. I have never seen this from the inside before. Astounding.

Amazing. Really. If a crowd on a streetcorner (like the Jews for Jesus loon we ran into yesterday at the White House, only a herd of them) came after me like these spammers are at UnionBook, I'd lose patience right quick and whack them. Or at least give them a sharp elbow. Hopefully in the neighbourhood of a deep hole with sharpened poles stuck in the bottom.

All that energy and time in the cause of making me happier with the state of my nether region or getting me connected with a Canadian pharmacy (I can walk from home to ten or so, thanks very much).

Trying to get a fix on this with some U. of Oxford Internet Institute podcasts on security and spammers and by heading to our hotel's gym to work out with a punching bag.

The following is from US Labour Against the War and is directed at the US government, but the online petition it asks us to sign is open to all, regardless of nationality.

Almost immediately after the fall of the dictatorship, a vibrant, independent, democratic and pluralistic trade union movement sprang forth. Soon after the invasion in 2003, the U.S. tossed out most of the repressive Saddam-era legal code. But there was one law it kept on the books and enthusiastically enforced – the 1987 law that Saddam Hussein imposed making it illegal for public sector and enterprise employees to join unions or negotiate the terms of their employment. The subsequent Iraqi Interim Governing Authority continued to enforce this undemocratic denial of worker rights.

The new Iraqi government imposed additional restrictions on worker and union rights. It seized union bank accounts and froze their assets. U.S. and Iraqi forces have raided and ransacked union offices and assaulted and detained union leaders. Management of public enterprises, including the oil industry, was directed not to recognize or bargain with unions.

But the Iraqi labor movement continues to grow despite harassment, beatings, kidnappings, detention, torture and even murder of trade union activists.

Sign the petition HERE.