I'm withholding my opinion on this lest I be taken out by a drone.

http://news.yahoo.com/zambian-miners-kill-chinese-supervisor-over-pay-100110409.html

LUSAKA (Reuters) - Zambian miners killed a Chinese supervisor and seriously wounded another on Saturday in a pay dispute at the Collum coal mine, labour minister Fackson Shamenda said on Sunday.

Chinese companies have invested more than $1 billion in copper-rich Zambia but animosity towards them is growing as Zambian workers accuse firms of abuses and underpaying.

Workers at the Collum mine, situated 325km (200 miles) south of the capital, attacked the Chinese men demanding wage rises in line with those stipulated by the government in July.

Zambia last month raised minimum wages to 522,000 kwacha for maids and household servants, and to 1.1 million kwachafor shop workers without unions.

"We are yet to establish the exact circumstances but the report I have is that one Chinese was killed and another injured as the workers demanded the new minimum wage," Shamenda told Reuters on Sunday.

Workers get berated on here for fighting back against 110 degree temperatures at an Amazon warehouse.

We're utterly awash with people who feel extrajudicial executions are okay as long as it only involves pesky Middle Eastern brown people who are accused of being terrorists.

And now it's okay to hate on Unions?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1075300

I can't wait until global warming deniers and supporters of privatized schools start calling themselves Democrats. Every other seller of Republican political positions has come into the tent...

Protectionism works for China, and it works for us.

If China can do this, we can do it.

http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16031596,00.html

Chinese exports crushing German solar industry

Tough competition, price pressure and dwindling subsidies - these are the woes facing the German solar technology production sector. While the outlook seems grim, some believe that things will improve.

The golden era of the German solar energy sector is over. At its peak, Germany had a 20-percent share of the global solar energy market, but now the figure stands at just 6 percent. After a rapid decline in recent months, more job cuts are expected to hit the industry.

"It has never been this bad," said German Solar Industry Association head Carsten Körnig at the opening of Intersolar, the world's largest solar energy trade fair, in Munich. And this despite the fact that last year, more photovoltaic systems were installed around the world than ever before.

Price dumping blamed
The main reason for these losses is a dramatic price decline.

"Despite growing demand in recent years, production capacity has increased even faster, and this of course leads to huge price pressure," Körnig told DW.

Germany is doing it now, making large scale switches to solar power. This is happening relatively quickly, and it is why Germany produces more solar power than most of the world COMBINED. Moreover, Germany's plan strongly empowers communities, instead of major corporations - this means their solar power infrastructure is far more decentralized than America's.

This is happening. If American Exceptionalism really existed, we would outpace Germany. We can outpace Germany... if we have the will.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/03/19/small-town-solar-revolution-has-created-jobs-galore-driven-down-price-of-power-in-germany/

Small-Town Solar Revolution Has Created Jobs Galore & Driven Down Price of Power in Germany
MARCH 19, 2012 BY ZACHARY SHAHAN

Solar energy policies in Germany have resulted in a jobs boom and have driven down the price of power on the EPEX Power Exchange. More people work in Germany’s solar energy sector than in its coal and nuclear sectors combined. (Don’t tell this year’s GOP candidates — they somehow think clean energy and green jobs is all just talk.) But there’s a lot more to get excited about than just jobs (even though those are pretty sweet).

Solar Energy Is (or Can Be) Community Energy
Solar energy can allow “the little guy” to power the country (well, a lot of little guys). “A small-town energy revolution is going on in Germany, with more than 100 rural communities becoming 100% renewable,” Craig Morris of Renewables International writes. The result? Money for electricity goes back into one’s own community, rather than out to some mega energy company. Even if that electricity were to cost you a bit more, it would go back into services and people in your community who would improve your life in other ways.

“Yes. Germany is replacing central-station plants that can only be run by large corporations with truly distributed renewable power. While Germany’s Big Four utilities make up around three quarters of total power generation, they only own seven percent of green power. Roughly three quarters of renewable power investments have been made by individuals, communities, farmers, and small and midsize enterprises.”

Or, actually, mother nature does.

How's the war on global warming doing? In which direction are we making small, incremental steps? Anyone wanna hazard a guess?

We need major, sudden, drastic changes. NOW.

Or Mother Nature will make them for us.

Time to choose.

Do we really have that right to ultra cheap computers and clothes even if it means perpetuating the slave labor, child labor, barely subsistence-level pay, and rampant water and air pollution that occurs in other nations SPECIFICALLY to make our cheap goods possible?

Really? Is that what globalism boils down to?

Do we have a right to THIS?


http://www.thenation.com/article/161057/wikileaks-haiti-let-them-live-3-day#

WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3 a Day
Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives June 1, 2011

Contractors for Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked in close concert with the US Embassy when they aggressively moved to block a minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest-paid in the hemisphere, according to secret State Department cables.

The factory owners told the Haitian Parliament that they were willing to give workers a 9-cents-per-hour pay increase to 31 cents per hour to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica.

But the factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.

To resolve the impasse between the factory owners and Parliament, the State Department urged quick intervention by then Haitian President René Préval.

Murders abound and bodies aren't found, the police aren't around to do anything about it, cities crumble and standards of living implode.

Funny how these Dark Age perks are already emerging under the shadow of a growing PLUTONOMY.

We're entering into an era of chaos and ruin for the 99% and absolute naked opulence for the Plutocracy. What's happening in the story below will eventually become a nationwide thing.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/vacant-detroit-dumping-ground-dead-16915318#.UBt46LSe6TZ

Vacant Detroit Becomes Dumping Ground for the Dead

By COREY WILLIAMS Associated Press
DETROIT August 2, 2012 (AP)
From the street, the two decomposing bodies were nearly invisible, concealed in an overgrown lot alongside worn-out car tires and a moldy sofa. The teenagers had been shot, stripped to their underwear and left on a deserted block.

They were just the latest victims of foul play whose remains went undiscovered for days after being hidden deep inside Detroit's vast urban wilderness — a crumbling wasteland rarely visited by outsiders and infrequently patrolled by police.

Abandoned and neglected parts of the city are quickly becoming dumping grounds for the dead — at least a dozen bodies in 12 months' time. And authorities acknowledge there's little they can do.

"You can shoot a person, dump a body and it may just go unsolved" because of the time it may take for the corpse to be found, officer John Garner said.

Or, better yet, steal it back, electronically?

I want to see all the Plutocrats who hide their money offshore, taken from their homes and put in prison.

I don't care if every CEO in the world quits and flees to their little Gulch in Colorado. Go for it! You can be replaced. Let the workers take over your companies and take a greater share in the profits they generate.

Steve Jobs would have never put any Macintoshes to market without the workers. But his still-living peers sure love to think they're the be all and end all of society, and now they're draining society dry of money? Naw. Hell naw. Lock them up and seize everything they own down to their great grandpappy's buckskin rubbers.

$21 trillion hidden offshore. There's no way we should allow that. The Plutocrats are a dog that forgot the length of their chain.

Time to start outlawing knives.

I posted this here because I'm sure that it'll get closed down on the GD. But it REALLY needs to go on the GD. Gun control laws don't stop murders.

Fine, outlaw guns. What do we do now about knives?


http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-teen-kills-eight-knife-attack-reports-102629246.html

A teenager has been arrested after killing eight people and wounding five others in a knife attack in northeast China, state media reported Thursday.

The 17-year-old, which was identified only by his surname Li, barged into the home of his girlfriend armed with a knife following an argument and killed two relatives of the girl, the Legal Daily said.

As he left his girlfriend's home in Liaoning province's Xinbin county, he stabbed six more people to death and wounded five, it said.

He was arrested at the scene of the attack, late on Wednesday night, and was taken into custody, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Economic Reality:
[img][/img]

The next time a conservative spreads these fairy tales, be sure to ask them if they can come up with a counter to the above graph.