Mutualist journal club

US Army might break Goodyear strike - Financial Times - MSNBC.com

Interesting interplay of national security, domestic production, and labor-management-state relations.

NPR : American Airlines 'Insources' Maintenance Work (audio)

American was on the verge of bankruptcy, so the workers traded a chunk of their wages in return for an equal say in management. It seems to have worked...

"When I have my union meetings now--I've got 200 guys in there--instead of complaining about management, they sound like business people"

The 9/11 Truth Movement's Dangers: Dishonest Government Leads To Cynical Theorists - the Nation via CBS News

A good article, assuming that the facts are straight. The author starts off by reporting on a poll that found that ONE THIRD of Americans believe that the Federal Government was involved in the attacks of September 11, 2001, and then ponders why Americans find the conspiracy theory so believable.

I don't quite buy this conspiracy theory, but it doesn't really matter to me since I already believed that the government was full of liars, thieves, and murders. The documentary movie TerrorStorm was designed to promote this conspiracy theory--I believe that TerrorStrom does a good job of setting up the issue by arguing that our government is capable of such acts (see Operation Ajax, for starters), but it's really not possible to draw a conclusion about the 9/11 attacks themselves due to a lack of information.

Before recently, I've only heard of this conspiracy theory through fringe websites and a single friend (who is intelligent, but very excitable). However, recently I've seen suggestions of conspiracy theory published in Salon.com (in a rabid hit-piece against Giuliani)

Sudan | Glittering towers in a war zone | Economist.com:

"AT THE confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile in Khartoum lies Africa's largest commercial construction site. Across 1,500 acres, at a place called Alsunut, Sudanese and Chinese workmen are working in shifts around the clock to build a new Dubai: a vast complex of gleaming offices, duplexes and golf courses that will turn Khartoum, it is hoped, into the commercial and financial hub of Islamist east Africa."

I previously thought of Sudan as just some desert country in East Africa with constant warfare between a tyrannical government and secessionist movements that are probably equally tyrannical (but closer to the people, at least). However, it seems that there's a lot of oil in Sudan, meaning that international capital has gotten involved. Foreign finance and engineers are preparing to extract the natural resource, while government thugs clear the land of the native population.

Warmonger rationale - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

I was surprised to find this anti-state tirade in the local daily paper -- the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. In this opinion piece, a professor at a local college briefly views the ideas of a few libertarian theorists about the exploitative nature of the state, and how "war is the health of the state".

The Trip is the local "conservative" paper, owned by Richard Mellon Scaife to provide a conservative platform in the city. While some stupid, nasty conservative shit gets published here (Ann Coulter, for example), it also targets libertarians and is willing to publish some pretty radical stuff.