Volume 114
Volume 113

They tell you to train for high manufacturing jobs...like computer assisted machinists. Then after you complete the training, no jobs. Yet the companies complain that there are no skilled workers.

Companies hire only through temporary agencies. Then they complain about lack of worker loyalty.

The Penultimate Truth,
By Philip K. Dick, 1964

Plot Summary:

What if you discovered that everything you knew about the world was a lie? That's the question at the heart of Philip K. Dick's futuristic novel about political oppression, the show business of politics and the sinister potential of the military industrial complex.

This wry, paranoid thriller imagines a future in which the earth has been ravaged, and cities are burnt-out wastelands too dangerous for human life. Americans have been shipped underground, where they toil in crowded industrial ant hills and receive a steady diet of inspiring speeches from a President who never seems to age. Nick St. James, like the rest of the masses, believed in the words of his leaders. But that all changes when he travels to the surface-where what he finds is more shocking than anything he could possibly imagine.

Full text PDF of the book here... (136 pages)

  1. Fast and Flawed Inspections of Factories Abroad (sickness, corruption, deceit unto death NYT link

   2. This film was shown again on PBS (POV) last night It's a must see.
       Maquilapolis: City of Factories    link

Just over the border in Mexico is an area peppered with maquiladoras: massive factories owned by the world's largest multinational corporations. Carmen and Lourdes work at maquiladoras in Tijuana, where each day they confront labor violations, environmental devastation and urban chaos.

"In an hourlong meeting at the White House, said Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, Mr. Obama gave general support to doing more for [al qaeda], although no specifics were agreed upon. Officials said that in the same conversation, which included Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, Mr. Obama indicated that a covert effort by the United States to arm [al qaeda] was beginning to yield results: the first 50-man cell of [al qaeda] fighters, who have been trained by the C.I.A., was beginning to sneak into Syria."

NYT

Fear of Western airstrikes in the past week was a factor in an exodus that continued to gather momentum, inflicting acute social strain and political tension on receiving countries, António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said in an interview in Geneva on Monday.

It took two years of conflict in Syria for the refugee figure to reach one million, but only six more months to reach two million, Mr. Guterres noted. In addition, at least 4.5 million people have been driven from their homes inside Syria by the destruction and violence, meaning that close to one-third of the country's population has been displaced by the civil war, and about half the population [expects] humanitarian [Tomahawks rained down on them by obama] putting Syria's crisis at a level unseen in recent decades.

LINK

The new east span, which is now the longest self-anchored suspension bridge in the world, is the direct result of the massive damage caused to the old east span -- which is of a cantilever design, and not a suspension bridge -- by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. A comprehensive statewide seismic study of all California bridges recommended that the entire eastern span of the Bay Bridge be replaced in its entirety. Construction on the new span began in 2002, and was finally completed last week. Next comes the demolition of the old east span.

Last year, nature aficionado Robert Martinez posted five high-resolution and motion-sensitive video cameras along the Big Dalton Canyon trail above his hometown of Glendora in the San Gabriel Mountains, and even he was surprised by what he discovered to be passing by with some regularity.

If you've got a few minutes, Martinez's recently posted videos on YouTube are definitely worth a look. Because we're not talking about footage of a handful of squirrels and some quail, but rather any number of black bears, mountain lions, mule deer, bobcats, ringtails, coyotes and grey foxes. It's some pretty fascinating stuff, especially when one considers the close proximity of Big Dalton Canyon to L.A.'s urban environments.