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Jack Heyman, a recently retired business agent for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union local 10, drove through the Port of Oakland and called in the following statement to Truthout at 9:25 AM Pacific time:"The port of Oakland is effectively shut down. None of the ships are being worked. There is limited trucking activity by non-union workers but the port is effectively shut down. Trucks waiting to pick up containers are backed up over a mile," Heyman said. The truck backup was confirmed by the Oakland Tribune.According to Heyman, this partial shutdown was initiated by the rank-and-file workers at the port, in solidarity with the call for a general strike by the Occupy Oakland protesters. The union's official position on the strike call was to work in the morning and then join the demonstrations in the evening, but according to Heyman, the rank and file decided to vote with their feet and not fill key jobs at the port this morning.

Chokri Belaïd, a secular, anti-Islamist member of the National Constituent Assembly, was assassinated last week. The backlash of the assassination is causing strife in Tunisian politics. His widow has accused Ennahda of playing a role in the assassination, "which sparked mass demonstrations, attacks on Ennahda headquarters and clashes with security forces throughout the country." The Prime Minister, a high-ranking official in Ennahda, has declared his wish to form a non-partisan government of technocrats to manage the socio-political crisis. He has also declared that he will resign from his position if he's not allowed to do so. So things really are deteriorating. qt: Four opposition groupings-Belaïd's own Popular Front bloc, the Call for Tunisia party (Nidaa Tounes), the Al Massar party, and the Republican Party-announced that they were pulling out of the National Constituent Assembly and called for a one-day general strike last Friday, the day of Belaïd's funeral. The principal Tunisian trade union federation, the UGTT (Tunisian General Union of Labour) backed the call, resulting in the first general strike in Tunisia in 35 years. Reportedly, over one million people took part in Belaïd's funeral procession in Tunis on Friday, many calling for the fall of the Ennahda government and a second revolution. ... Much of the bourgeoisie, both secular and Islamist, has swung behind Jebali's proposal. The business journal l' Economiste asserts that "the prime minister's initiative and his proposal to form a non-political government of technocrats is a minimum response, but salutary. The rejection of this reasonable solution by his own party is evidence of the internal divisions that are eating away at Ennahda..." ... The revolutionary uprising of 2011 was channeled into parliamentary manoeuvring and constitutional wrangling by the Tunisian bourgeoisie, with the aid of the petty-bourgeois "left" parties and the UGTT. Underlying the present

THIS IS ISLAM

New York - Iraq and Afghanistan rank near rock-bottom in an index of corruption in 178 countries that found that nearly three- quarters of the countries surveyed showed serious corruption problems.

Adam Smith observed in 1776 that economies work best when governments keep their clumsy thumbs off the free market's "invisible hand." Two generations later, in 1817, the British economist David Ricardo extended Smith's insights to global trade. Just as market forces lead to the right price and quantity of products domestically, Ricardo argued, free foreign trade optimizes economic outcomes internationally. Reading Adam Smith in Copenhagen -- the center of the small, open, and highly successful Danish economy -- is a kind of out-of-body experience. On the one hand, the Danes are passionate free traders. They score well in the ratings constructed by pro-market organizations. The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index ranks Denmark third, just behind the United States and Switzerland. Denmark's financial markets are clean and transparent, its barriers to imports minimal, its labor markets the most flexible in Europe, its multinational corporations dynamic and largely unmolested by industrial policies, and its unemployment rate of 2.8 percent the second lowest in the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). On the other hand, Denmark spends about 50 percent of its GDP on public outlays and has the world's second-highest tax rate, after Sweden; strong trade unions; and one of the world's most equal income distributions. For the half of GDP that they pay in taxes, the Danes get not just universal health insurance but also generous child-care and family-leave arrangements, unemployment compensation that typically covers around 95 percent of lost wages, free higher education, secure pensions in old age, and the world's most creative system of worker retraining. Does Denmark have some secret formula that combines the best of Adam Smith with the best of the welfare state? Is there something culturally unique about the open-minded Danes? Can a model like the Danish one survive as a social democratic island in a turbulent sea of globali

In March, 2002, American citizen Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago and publicly accused by then-Attorney-General John Ashcroft of being "The Dirty Bomber."  Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to a military brig in South Carolina, where he was held for almost two years completely incommunicado (charged with no crime and denied all access to the outside world, including even a lawyer) and was brutally tortured, both physically and psychologically.  All of this -- including the torture -- was carried out pursuant to orders from President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials.  Just as the Supreme Court was about to hear Padilla's plea to be charged or released -- and thus finally decide if the President has the power to imprison American citizens on U.S. soil with no charges of any kind -- the Government indicted him in a federal court on charges far less serious than Ashcroft had touted years earlier, causing the Supreme Court to dismiss Padilla's arguments as "moot"; Padilla was then convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig said U.S. regulators should avert another crisis by breaking up large financial institutions that pose a threat "to our capitalistic system." 

In the next week the action moves from Wisconsin to Washington, where the deadline looms for a possible government shutdown over the federal budget. President Obama has to take a more direct and personal role in that budget battle - both for the economy's sake and for the sake of his re-election. But will he? Don't count on it. Worried congressional Democrats say the President needs to use his bully pulpit to counter defections in Democatic ranks, such as the ten Democrats and one allied Independent who on Wednesday voted against a Senate leadership plan to cut $6.2 billion from the federal budget over the rest of fiscal year 2011. They want Obama to grab the initiative and push a plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies and for companies that move manufacturing facilities out of the country, and a proposal for a surtax on millionaires. Most importantly, they're worried the President's absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year - large enough to imperil the fragile recovery. But Obama won't actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail. Shortly after the Democrats' "shellacking" last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. "It's 1994 all over again," he said. "Now we move to the center."

President Obama -- who has presided over lethal civilian-killing attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and Somalia -- announced: "we will not tolerate aggression across borders."  That instantly ranks among my favorite political statements ever.

I've written before about the crisis of inequality in the United States and about the quasi-religious abhorrence of "wealth redistribution" that causes many Americans to oppose tax increases, even on the ultra rich. The conviction that taxation is intrinsically evil has achieved a sadomasochistic fervor in conservative circles-producing the Tea Party, their Republican zombies, and increasingly terrifying failures of governance. Happily, not all billionaires are content to hoard their money in silence. Earlier this week, Warren Buffett published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he criticized our current approach to raising revenue. As he has lamented many times before, he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary is. Many conservatives pretend not to find this embarrassing. Conservatives view taxation as a species of theft-and to raise taxes, on anyone for any reason, is simply to steal more. Conservatives also believe that people become rich by creating value for others. Once rich, they cannot help but create more value by investing their wealth and spawning new jobs in the process. We should not punish our best and brightest for their success, and stealing their money is a form of punishment. Of course, this is just an economic cartoon. We don't have perfectly efficient markets, and many wealthy people don't create much in the way of value for others. In fact, as our recent financial crisis has shown, it is possible for a few people to become extraordinarily rich by wrecking the global economy. Nevertheless, the basic argument often holds: Many people have amassed fortunes because they (or their parent's, parent's, parents) created value. Steve Jobs resurrected Apple Computer and has since produced one gorgeous product after another. It isn't an accident that millions of us are happy to give him our money. But even in the ideal case, where obvious value has been created, how much wealth can one person be allowed to keep? A trillion doll

A whopping 70,000 questions poured into Change.gov over the past week, in response to the Obama transition team's call for citizen queries to the President-Elect. After votes from about 100,000 people, the top ranked question asks Obama whether he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of torture and illegal surveillance by the U.S. government. I've been working with activist Bob Fertik to organize support for the question, and several progressive bloggers urged readers and Obama supporters to vote for it last week. Digby, who has written extensively about the Bush administration's abuse of the rule of law, recently reported on the progress:

top Obama administration official on Thursday questioned the scope of the state and federal investigations into alleged mortgage abuses and "illegal" foreclosures perpetrated by the nation's largest mortgage companies, marking the first time a senior White House official publicly broke ranks with the administration over the issue and raising fresh questions about the wisdom of the government's rush to settle with the firms.

Opponents of hydraulic "fracking" say it pollutes water and causes illness. Actor, activist (and newly-minted Countdown contributor) Mark Ruffalo joins Keith to discuss the lucrative practice that potentially threatens supplies of drinking water, and why so many have their heads in the sand. "This is an industry that is the dirtiest, slimiest, most arrogant, and negligent that you can imagine," Ruffalo says. Ruffalo also talks about rumors of blacklisting actors who speak out on political matters, and ponders why he was singled out by CNN to comment on it.  "You can do what's right or you can put your head in the sand," Ruffalo tells Keith, shortly before Keith bestows the ultimate Countdown honor -- welcoming Ruffalo into the ranks of official on-air contributors.

Geoffrey sent me this in a message on fb.

The account balances of all countries on earth as of 2007

Check out what nation has the LOWEST account balance. Not surprising.

A gripe site that incorporates a company's entire trademark into its domain is still protected under the First Amendment, a US District Judge has ruled. In the case of Career Agents Network v. careeragentsnetwork.biz, the judge said that the gripe site made no effort to bolster its own business and was noncommercial, therefore protecting it from Career Agents Network's trademark claims and cybersquatting accusations.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has written a letter to members of the House telling them that voting for federal contractors to be more transparent about their political spending will negatively impact their legislative scorecard. "The U.S. Chamber of Commerce strongly supports legislative proposals to ensure that political spending -- or the lack thereof -- continues to play no role in federal contracting decisions," the Chamber's R. Bruce Josten wrote in the letter sent on Wednesday. "Therefore, the Chamber supports amendments that have been offered by Rep. Cole to several Fiscal Year 2012 appropriations bills considered by the full House, and any similar amendments should they be offered to the remaining FY 2012 appropriations bills," he wrote. Meanwhile, more than sixty members of the House signed a letter sent to the White House by Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA) which expressed strong support for a draft executive order which would require companies that get taxpayer dollars to disclose their political expenditures. Disclosure, the letter says, "will not politicize the procurement process -- it will improve it." "Political expenditures are already well-known to those that make them and to the officials who benefit," the letter states. "With disclosure, the public will have access to this information as well, allowing them to judge whether contracts were awarded based on merit. A meritorious procurement system is the only responsible use of taxpayer money, making this a deficit reduction effort as much as a campaign finance reform issue." Both the Chamber and House Republicans have argued that the proposed executive order -- first leaked in April -- is a plot by the Obama administration to silence political opponents. Supporters of the measure have said the executive order -- by bringing donations out into the open -- would actually discourage federal contracting officials from doing favors for contractors based on their donations to third-party political groups