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The Day the World Fought Back

Danny O'Brien Common Dreams
The Day We Fought Back: Hundreds of digital rights and privacy groups, thousands of individual Net users, in dozens of countries, have come together to protest surveillance by governments at home and abroad.

Will Chattanooga workers vote in UAW?

Harley Shaiken SFGate.com
A union victory would be the beginning of an ambitious attempt by Volkswagen and the UAW to build a new model for the United States to compete globally. The election itself concludes one of the most innovative and important union-organizing drives in decades.

Why Bill Nye Won the Creationism Debate Last Night

Chris Mooney Mother Jones
In the debate, Nye allowed Ham to undermine himself before the audience. By in effect preaching, rather than sticking to scientific assertions, Ham demonstrated what we've always known about creationism, and what many canny anti-evolutionists have sought to conceal: It's a religious doctrine, not a scientific one.

1. Do We Ever Actually Learn Anything from History?; 2. The Militant Mystery of World War II.

William Astore; Clancy Sigal History News Network; portside
1. Our decision makers have no respect for the lessons of history. They think the lessons don’t apply to them. They think they can make history freely: that history is like a blank canvas for their creative (and destructive) impulses. They figure they are in complete control. Hubris, in other words. 2. Opposing War - Lessons of WWI.

U.S. Sailors Sick From Fukushima Radiation File New Suit Against Tokyo Electric Power

Harvey Wasserman EcoWatch
Reagan crew members reported that in the middle of a snowstorm, a cloud of warm air enveloped them with a “metallic taste.” The reports parallel those from airmen who dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima, and from central Pennsylvanians downwind from Three Mile Island. Crew members drank and bathed in desalinated sea water that was heavily irradiated from Fukushima’s fallout.

How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine

Moshe Z. Marvit The Nation, Feb. 24, 2014
Since 2005, Amazon has helped create one of the most exploited workforces no one has ever seen. Mechanical Turk is the innovation behind “crowdworking,” the low-wage virtual labor phenomenon that has reinvented piecework for the digital age. Created by Amazon in 2005, it remains one of the central platforms—markets, really—where crowd-based labor is bought and sold.

Fears over human rights in Cambodia as crackdown on protests continues

Kevin Ponniah The Guardian
After months of protests, which were largely tolerated by the government, human rights in Cambodia have deteriorated rapidly this year.Global unions have announced a worldwide day of action in support of the detainees before a bail appeal hearing this week, while local unions have threatened another mass walkout.

Obama Pressured Over Drone Policy Amid Reports US Citizen Targeted

Jon Swaine The Guardian
Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) National Security Project, said the Obama administration “continues to fight against even basic transparency” about how it justifies the executions of thousands of people under the programme.