Eleven-hundred workers in eastern Ohio are trying to regain their jobs because AEP is increasing unaffordable rates to electrical consumers like Ormet, the company where these workers had jobs. Workers shouldn’t be caught in the middle of corporate greed.

Will you join us at our phone banks at the Ohio AFL-CIO (395 E. Broad St, Columbus) to call Union members and working families, to demand fairness for workers, from AEP?

Good jobs---with family-sustaining pay, retirement security, and healthcare---are at risk, and AEP, the Public Utilities Commission, and Gov. Kasich all have a hand in this. Politicians who are attacking jobs with so-called right to work are not even acting to save good, Ohio jobs. Our phone banks will talk with union members and allies about keeping these workers on the job and we will connect them by phone with an AEP office to leave a message that working families and electricity users don’t accept this.

What: Phone banks to Save Ohio Jobs & Beat Back Right to Work
When: Tuesdays & Wednesdays: 4:00pm - 6:00pm and 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Where: Ohio AFL-CIO, 395 East Broad St, Columbus

Not many citizens of Columbus are aware that if the police think you report too many crimes – or complain about them – Columbus’ finest will put you on a “list” and simply ignore your complaints.

The history of how a whistleblower or concerned citizen becomes a “chronic complainer,” blacklisted by the Columbus Police, is well-documented in public records.

Take for example Bernadine Kennedy Kent, the woman who initiated the federal investigation into vendor theft and fraud in the Columbus City Schools system. At the same time Kent was acting as a whistleblower and igniting a federal investigation into the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) funds, she was being blacklisted by the Columbus Police.

How to become a chronic complainer

Iraq vet Ross Caputi’s film opens with a fleeting synopsis of the American heartbreak — and the bandage we tape across it.

His documentary, Fear Not the Path of Truth, is about the U.S. devastation of Fallujah, in which he participated as part of Operation Phantom Fury in November 2004, but the first couple minutes give us an overview of his hometown, the “former industrial city” of Fitchburg, Mass.:

“But the factory jobs are long gone, so there’s really only two types of people that live here. They’re the people with good-paying jobs in Boston or Wooster who come out here to build big houses at relatively cheap prices. Everyone else gets by doing work on those houses, doing their lawns, putting additions on them, painting them.

“If there was a point of unity among all the racial and economic divisions in this little city, it had to be the troops. Everyone respected the troops.”

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Bangkok's political violence worsened on Sunday (Jan. 19) when grenades and gunfire injured 29 people at an anti-government protest, two days after a grenade killed one protester and injured 36 others who were marching to force the prime minister's resignation and stop an election scheduled for Feb. 2.

About 10 people in total have died in scattered shootings, explosions and clashes during the massive street protest which began on Oct. 31, and security officials are bracing for more attacks.

Sunday's (Jan. 19) first explosion occurred downtown during lunchtime at Victory Monument, where hundreds of protesters were peacefully camping in tents in the street next to their huge makeshift stage, to block traffic and disrupt Bangkok's economy in a bid to destabilize the government.

An unidentified man threw a grenade near a media tent erected for journalists, injuring at least 28 people including a Thai reporter, medical officials said.

Witnesses chased the suspect who then threw a second grenade and fired a gun at his pursuers, injuring one more person.

On January 17, the Guardian.uk revealed startling new information about National Security Agency (NSA) bulk collection of mobile phone users’ text messages.

The Guardian published heavily redacted portions of a slide presentation made by the NSA for their British counterpart agency, the Government Communications Security Headquarters (GCHQ). The slide show detailed a series of programs known as DISHFIRE, SPYDER, and MILKBONE that collect not only metadata but also so-called meta-content. Meta-content refers to location, time and user data collected by examining content. This direct revelation of meta-content collection proves without a doubt that President Obama was lying when he claimed “No one is reading your emails.”