Naomi Wallace’s genre (and gender) blending Slaughter City is a cross between a Clifford Odets type of play about the working class and a Rod Serling TV episode set in “a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man… as vast as space and as timeless as infinity… the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge… the dimension of imagination.”

 

Today an anti-worker majority of justices on the United States Supreme Court struck down 40 years of precedent permitting public sector unions to collect a fair share fee from workers who receive the benefits of collective bargaining and representation in the workplace. The ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, like similar legislation in Congress and so-called right to work initiatives in Ohio, is the result of a multi-year campaign by corporate interests and wealthy individuals who oppose the very idea that workers should have freedom of association, economic power and a voice in our system of government.

Under the high court’s decision, unions must still negotiate for and represent all workers in a bargaining unit, including those who refuse to pay a fee for the benefits and services they receive from the union. The Court’s decision also forces loyal union members who voluntarily pay dues to subsidize anti-union co-workers who refuse to pay while receiving the same wages, benefits and working conditions as union members. But the Janus decision is about more than the “free-rider” problem.

1. The 2014 Mount Polley Environmental Disaster (British Columbia, Canada)

 

Aerial view of the outlet of tiny Hazeltine Creek (normally 6 feet wide) as it empties into Quesnel Lake (a once world-famous salmon fishery) at the head of the 600 mile-long Fraser River estuayr that is now contaminated with 2.5 billion gallons of toxic sulfide mine waste (including sulfuric acid) that was discharged in 2014. The brown color represents the trunks of the huge trees that were up-rooted during the deluge. The diameter of some of the trees measured half the width of the original creek.

 

The US Supreme Court has approved Donald Trump’s presumed dictatorial power to ban and imprison any would-be immigrant group he does not like.   The decision is ostensibly about banning Muslims coming into America from certain countries.   But the Court’s ruling clearly grants the power to any US president to ban any immigrant group for any reason.  And it, by default, approves their detention in concentration camps, as Trump is now doing along the Mexican border.   Trump supporters should now understand that this and future presidents can now certainly use it against THEM.     The Court’s 5-4 “conservative” majority made the expected fake genuflection against Franklin Roosevelt’s horrifying 1942 Executive Order #9066 forcing some 10,000 Japanese-Americans into concentration camps during World War 2.  That decision has been widely denounced ever since, even by former right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat has been taken by Neil Gorsuch, who approved this ban.  Trump cited FDR’s order in justifying his own.   During the war First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt actually visited those camps.  She was not wearing a jacket that said “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?”