Portside

States Throw Out Costly Electronic Voting Machines By DEBORAH HASTINGS August 19, 2008 http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jej6XIWrQn6-gw5O5bJa1ELx78DgD92LLDO00>The demise of touch-screen voting has produced a graveyard of expensive corpses: Warehouses stacked with thousands of carefully wrapped voting machines that have been shelved because of doubts about vanishing votes and vulnerability to hackers.

In Memory Of Charles Dannin, Public Servant by Ellen Dannin Tuesday 19 of August, 2008 http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=9091 [submitted to Portside by the author]Had you been in Dayton, Ohio, Monday evening, August 18, from 5-7 pm you could have seen hundreds of people lined up to pay their last respects for Charles Dannin, aged 54. Person after person, on and on, stopping only when they were told to take their seats as his memorial service began. [...]

How To Burn The Speculators NEWS: Why is the price of oil so high? Because the Bush administration did to the commodities market what it did to housing. By James K. Galbraith Mother Jones September/October 2008 Issue http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/09/exit-strategy-how-to-burn-the-speculators.html

The US Missile Defence System Is The Magic Pudding That Will Never Run Out Poland is just the latest fall guy for an American foreign policy dictated by military industrial lobbyists in Washington George Monbiot The Guardian August 19 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/19/usforeignpolicy.russia

The Legacy Of The Clinton Bubble By Timothy A. Canova Dissent Summer 2008 http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1229

Tidbits - August 19, 2008* SEIU - A Tale of Two Unions (Lee Swift) * Re: South Ossetia and the Remaking of the Post-Soviet World (Georgia)==========* SEIU - A Tale of Two UnionsThe SEIU story line could be the basis of a book titled "A Tale of Two Unions". This is the best of times and the worst of times for SEIU. They certainly have grown. Much of it by affiliation, but a healthy amount by traditional and non-traditional methods of organizing. The revelations of corruption in the huge L.A. based local are another side of [...]

Congressmen Gutierrez and Baca denounce Bush, call on ICE to stop raidsMr. President, Stop These Raids on Our CommunitiesBy Luis Gutierrez and Joe BacaChicago Tribune - August 6, 2008http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0806raidaug06,0,3894335.storyAs members of Congress, we have traveled to remote corners of the world and had our eyes opened to some of the worst human suffering imaginable - abject poverty, meager wages, poor working conditions, paltry access to legal counsel and a jarring lack of fairness in the courts. [...]

Immigrant Rights Are Labor Rightsby Peter RachleffMRZine - August 19, 2008http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/rachleff190808.htmlToday's critical labor struggles revolve around immigrants' rights, while today's struggles over immigrants' rights are grounded in workplace and labor organizing. Global, national, and local histories have woven these issues tightly together. In the U.S. we are seeing the beginnings of a multifaceted movement which engages these dynamically linked histories. [...]

This is a tale of US expansion not Russian aggressionWar in the Caucasus is as much the product of an American imperial drive as local conflicts. It's likely to be a taste of things to comeBy Seumas MilneThe Guardian (UK) -- August 14 2008http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/14/russia.georgia

Obama: Transformational President or Another Disappointment?'Whether he wins or loses, the vast movement inspired by Obama will become the next generation of American social activists'By Tom Hayden 18 August 2008http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/tom-hayden-on-obama-transformational.htmlBarack Obama, it is true, is a transformational leader. But he needs a transformational movement to become a transformational president.

South Ossetia and the Remaking of the Post-Soviet World An interview with Ronald Suny August 16, 2008 By Khatchig Mouradian and Ronald Suny Znet http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18457

No Wonder Our Hospitals Are a Disaster -- People with Marketing Degrees Are Running Them By Maggie Mahar,Health Beat Posted on August 15, 2008, Printed on August 18, 2008 http://www.alternet.org/story/94797/This article originally appeared on Health Beat.

The Old Man's Technical Foul The Old Scoutby Garrison Keillor August 6, 2008It's a simple, cheerful life but with occasional grim complications that one simply ignores, such as mortality or the Seventies or the demise of the downtown department store. I love my downtown store, a block from the old stone courthouse where Alvin (Creepy) Karpis of the Ma Barker gang was tried for kidnapping in 1936, near a fine old popcorn shop, just down the street from a haberdashery where the other day I got fitted for a seersucker suit and was shown how to tie a [...]

Is Obama's Energy Plan Change We Can Believe In?By Ted GlickFuture Hope column, August 18, 2008On August 4th the Barack Obama Presidential campaign released a comprehensive program for reform of the U.S. energy system. In the words of Obama supporter and climate blogger and author Joe Romm, it was "easily the best energy plan ever put forward by a nominee of either party." The critical question, however, is this: is it an energy plan that will actually do the job of giving U.S. leadership to the world in a way which gives us a decent chance of [...]

How Long Before the Military is Back at the Helm? Pakistan After MusharrafBy TARIQ ALICounterpunchhttp://counterpunch.org/tariq08182008.html

Progressives in the Obama Moment By Robert L. Borosage & Katrina vanden Heuvel The Nation August 13, 2008 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080901/borosage_kvh

Let There Be Light A Long-Suffering Border Colonia Powers Up With Renewable Energy. Forrest Wilder Texas Observer August 08, 2008 http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2817

Some Prisoners Declared Innocent, But Not Free Maya Schenwar t r u t h o u t 15 August 2008 http://www.truthout.org/article/some-prisoners-declared-innocent-not-freeDue to endless litigation, conflicting legal technicalities, or inadequate transitional facilities, prisoners who are innocent may find themselves behind bars indefinitely.

Liberian Rubber Workers Sign Historic Labor Agreement James Parks AFL-CIO Now Blog August 11, 2008 http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/08/11/liberian-rubber-workers-sign-historic-labor-agreement/After a struggle that lasted for eight decades, the 4,000 workers at one of the world's largest rubber plantations will receive wage increases, an improvement in work conditions and upgraded housing and educational facilities after signing a historic agreement. [...]

Let's Get Down To Gas Tax Cracking Down On Oil Speculation Could Prove Tricky - A Tax On The Sale Or Purchase Of Commodity Futures Is The Practical Solution By Dean Baker The Guardian Unlimited August 11, 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/oil.commodities?gusrc=rss&feed=global