ILWU to Shut Down West Coast Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan

For Workers Strikes Against the War!

Colorado Independent Media Center
Posted March 1st, 2008 by Fred Bergen

In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. In a February 22 letter to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, ILWU International president Robert McEllrath reported that at a recent coast-wide union meeting, “One of the resolutions adopted by caucus delegates called on longshore workers to stop work during the day shift on May 1, 2008 to express their opposition to the war in Iraq.”

This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. It is doubly important that this mobilization of labor’s power is to take place on May Day, the international workers day, which is not honored in the U.S. Moreover, the resolution voted by the ILWU delegates opposes not only the hugely unpopular war in Iraq, but also the war and occupation of Afghanistan (which Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain all want to expand). The motion to shut down the ports also demands the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the entire region, including the oil sheikdoms of the strategically important Persian/Arab Gulf.

The Internationalist Group has fought from the moment U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in September 2002 for American unions to strike against the war. Despite the fact that millions have marched in the streets of Europe and the United States against the war in Iraq, the war goes on. Neither of the twin war parties of U.S. imperialism – Democrats and Republicans – and none of the capitalist candidates will stop this horrendous slaughter that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The only way to stop the Pentagon killing machine is by mobilizing the power of a greater force – that of the international working class.

More



SYNOPSIS: EYE OF THE STORM (Amie Williams, 2007) depicts the 2002 contract struggle between west coast longshore workers and international shippers who ultimately locked out thousands of workers from ports on the west coast. The film offers interviews and news clips showing all sides and actions in the 2002 struggle, which lasted nine months, and gives a history of the ILWU from its birth during the bloody 1934 west coast maritime strike through today, as a grass-roots-led progressive democratic force within American labor.

Not even wrong

An apparently scientific argument is said to be not even wrong if it is based on assumptions that are known to be incorrect, or alternatively theories which cannot possibly be falsified or used to predict anything. The phrase was coined by the early quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colourful objections to incorrect or sloppy thinking.

The term (or pseudo-skepticism) denotes thinking that appears to be skeptical but is not. The term is most commonly encountered in the form popularised by Marcello Truzzi, through his Journal of Scientific Exploration, where he defined pseudoskeptics as those who take "the negative rather than an agnostic position but still call themselves 'skeptics.

Miscellaneous Controlled Demolitions

Controlled Demolition of The Kingdome



Everglades Hotel Implosion



Landmark Hotel Implosion
not always straight down



Aladdin Hotel Implosion



Building Implosion



Adu Dhabi blowdown



Toryglen Demolition



Sometimes Demolition Fails

Some straight talk about lobbying

What Mark Roberts ignores about Judy Wood?

The cars shown in these pictures are setting in a car lot at a considerable distance from the event, yet some of them are toasted while others are hardly affected. Interestingly there is a line of sight between part of the parking lot, but some of it is in the shadow of WTC6, a 9 story building. It's like a heavy duty energy force was eminating from the direction of WTC1. This is just a small part of the weird stuff that went on that day, and there is plenty of documentation on Judy's site that should raise questions about EMF technology, Boing, and the military.

Parking lot from upper left of above picture

Some cars from the same parking lot. Note paper etc. that did not burn?

Behind WTC7 looking toward WTC1

This is from Judy Woods site: WTC7 looks REALLY good here! (It's the building on the right, a block away from where the camera person is standing.) It looks like those could be body parts on the sidewalk (arm or leg?). I believe this is after WTC1 goes poof, but am not sure. I have pictures from the next block up, next to WTC7, and it didn't look nearly as bad as this! So, I'm thinking that this part of the street got toasted when they did WTC1 and the other one (posted on http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsBeam5.html) was after WTC2 and before WTC1.

Could SAR (synthetic aperture radar) reveal 911 evidence?

NASA TO PROVIDE SHARPER UNDERGROUND VIEW OF WORLD TRADE CENTER AREA

SpatialNews Press Release

Aug 30, 2002 Feb 27, 2003

NASA will apply its image-processing expertise to enhance underground radar images of the area around the World Trade Center in New York, providing a clearer picture of what's beneath the surface.

"Our image-processing techniques will provide the first enhanced subsurface images of the area around 'ground zero,'" said Dr. Amir Fijany, principal scientist and supervisor for the Ultracomputing Technology Research Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. "Our goal is to pinpoint utility lines and improve the overall sharpness of the images."

Witten Technologies, Inc., of Boston, will supply JPL with underground images from lower Manhattan created with ground- penetrating imaging radar in surveys done for Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. (Con Edison) in August 2001 and January 2002.

JPL has been conducting remote sensing and image processing of Earth and other planets for more than four decades. Fijany led a similar assignment in subsurface imaging to detect unexploded ordnance for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. During this assignment, radar data collected by high-altitude airborne ground-penetrating synthetic aperture radar was used for subsurface imaging. Advanced image-processing techniques were then applied to the radar images.

The results from that work showed this type of remote sensing technology could detect very small features below the surface. Similar subsurface imaging technology will be applied to the images collected by Witten to enhance their overall quality.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.


Well, this was about five years ago and who knows if this study was completed or if the results now exist? But it would be really interesting to know if there have been any SAR images released of the World Trade Center after the disaster. Especially those using long wave lengths that in some cases can map all the way to bed rock. In the absence of evidence, most of which was either hauled away to the dump or smelted, the radar images could possibly contain some clues.

Development and Application of Small Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radars (1998)

The Committee on Earth Studies (CES) of the Space Studies Board is a standing committee charged with examining all areas of remote sensing of the Earth from space for civilian and related purposes. The charter includes the satellite-based Earth observation programs of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as the merged polar-orbiting environmental satellites of NOAA and the former Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. In 1995, at the request of NASA's Office of Earth Science (formerly Office of Mission to Planet Earth), the committee began a two-part study on issues related to the development and utility of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR).

The potential of SAR for Earth science commercial and civil applications is being advanced by several satellite systems, including Shuttle-based SAR flights (SIR [Shuttle Imaging Radar]-A, SIR-B, SIR-C/X-SAR1) and the European Space Agency's (ESA's) ERS-1 and ERS-2. Significant contributions are also being realized from Japan's JERS-1 and Canada's Radarsat. Future systems such as ESA's Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) and Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) SAR-2 and Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR), an instrument proposed for the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS), promise to add even more data and processing knowledge to the global pool of SAR experience (Table 1.1). Aircraft support data from NASA's AIRSAR, Germany's E-SAR, and the Netherlands' PHARUS, among others, are used to complement these space measurements but also have helped to advance general understanding of radar reflection from the ground. These airborne systems continue to validate earlier NASA and commercial airborne radar applications and to expand understanding of signal-terrain interactions.

Nevertheless, the development of satellite SAR systems has lagged behind electro-optical systems popularized by the Landsat program inaugurated in 1972. The Landsat paradigm reoriented the remote sensing community toward detection of temporal change and away from the 1960s paradigm of spectral analysis of landscapes. The inertia generated by more than a decade of such focus translates today into a nation whose familiarity with SAR data lags far behind its understanding of data sets derived from sensors operating in the visible near-infrared (VNIR) and thermal infrared (TIR) spectra. Data from all spectral regions, including the microwave region, produce unique and, in some cases, vital information for Earth system science. Determination of the potential information content, however, and means of extracting that information from SAR

Life on Mars?