News: Workers Battle Wal-Mart for Living Wage. Coulter Dropped in Georgia, Spys Track CIA through Freq. Flyer Miles.
Posted in H.L. News, Main Blog (All Posts) on July 24th, 2006 8:27 am by HL
Stakes are high in `big box’ clash. Wal-Mart and allies take stand against `living wage’ law
Chicago Tribune
Excerpt:Toni Foulkes tells customers there’s a reason the cakes she sells at a South Side Jewel store cost more than cakes at Sam’s Club.
“They don’t put love in ’em like I do,” she says. “And their employees don’t make what I make.”
She’s on the front lines of a fight to make Chicago the first major city to require retailers like Sam’s Club owner Wal-Mart to pay a “living wage” of at least $10 per hour with $3 in benefits by 2010. For her, the struggle comes down to a simple equation: All workers are threatened unless communities hold big corporations accountable for paying better-than-poverty-level wages.
On the other side is Lisa Cox, a Wal-Mart worker who sees big stores as beacons of opportunity for communities like her West Side neighborhood. “They’re going to run them out of the city instead of bringing in business here” if they single out big stores, she said.
Georgia newspaper drops Ann Coulter’s column
Raw Story
Excerpt:
A newspaper in Georgia has joined the tide of public sentiment against Ann Coulter and dropped her column, RAW STORY has learned.
The Augusta Chronicle of Georgia dropped Coulter’s column from its editorial page last week. A Friday article from its editorial staff claimed that its editorial page “stand[s] for civility,” and noted two reasons to part ways with Coulter. First, it saw “stridency” in her declaration that 9/11 widows were “witches.” Second, it worried that “Coulter herself had become the issue, rather than the topics she was writing about, which is an unhealthy circumstance for a journalist, even a columnist.”
H.L.s Take:
I cannot believe the publicity this b*tch has been getting lately, she is all over the TV, and internet. The MSM Media is desperate to do ANYTHING at this point to try to make it look like Bush isn’t taking this country down the S*it hole in a hurry. Coulter is willing to go on, and they put her on despite her insane kill everyone who doesn’t agree with me wailings. Making the all look more patethic then ever.
Frequent-flier data used to track movements of CIA operatives
Raw Story
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON – The man and woman were pretending to be American business executives on international assignments, so they did what globe-trotting executives do. While traveling abroad they used their frequent-flier cards as often as possible to gain credits toward free flights.
In fact, the two were covert operatives working for the CIA. Thanks to their diligent use of frequent-flier programs, Italian prosecutors have been able to reconstruct much of their itinerary during 2003, including trips to Brussels, Venice, London, Copenhagen, Vienna and Oslo.
The Norway visit has assumed particular importance because it represents the first independent confirmation that CIA operatives were in that country at the same time an Oslo resident named Mullah Krekar was being warned that he was the target of a planned CIA abduction.