Good Ol' Walmart...

I was catching up on some of my email, and reading some stories on Alternet, and came upon an article about everyone's favorite loved/hated store. I've got a Walmart Supercenter close to my workplace. That makes it very convenient to stop by after a shift ends, but I feel guilty whenever I do stop, because I know what a behemoth it is. That fact makes America's #1 retailer blatant about short-changing its employees and disregarding common decency along with labor law. This article is one small example.

I laughed my tail off at a $100,000-and-change fine for Walmart. You can read for yourself in the article just how much time that equals for this beast of a store. It reminds me of what my grandmother used to tell us about the company stores in the mining towns of N.E. Pennsylvania, that the miners and their families were so beholden to these company stores that they were always in debt to them. Or another apt comparison might be to the state-run stores in the old Soviet Union. It sure seems like Walmart is the lifeblood of the State here in the U.S., and they sure do seem to have plenty of influence.

February 22: Global Blogger Action Day

This blog entry is dedicated to two imprisoned Iranian bloggers, Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad. They are being detained because of their blogging activities. With the blogosphere expanding at an incredible rate, more and more people have at their fingertips the means to express their opinions and get out facts or occurrences that may not be seen on the mainstream news, and get it out quicker than any traditional news source. This worries governments and people who obtain their power and influence through suppressing others' rights and points of view.

This action was initiated by The Committee to Protect Bloggers, started by U.S. blogger Curt Hopkins, and fired flight attendent blogger Ellen Simonetti is deputy director and started the International Bloggers' Bill of Rights.


The Committee to Protect Bloggers

The Bloggers' Rights Blog

The Tip of the Iceberg

When I read this article while whittling down my always-prodigious email, it hit me like a 2-by-4 over the head. So many things that I have read and seen through the too-numerous years of the BushReich had finally started coming together into a semicoherent whole. Including just why, suddenly, finding Osama bin Laden was WAY down on the list of Bush II's priorities.

Read it and weep.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions