Is IBM About to Fire 150,000 Employees?
May 5th, 2007Via: pbs.org:
The IBM project I am writing about is called LEAN and the first manifestation of LEAN was this week’s 1,300 layoffs at Global Services, which generated almost no press. Thirteen hundred layoffs from a company with more than 350,000 workers is nothing, so the yawning press reaction is not unexpected. But this week’s “job action,” as they refer to it inside IBM management, was as much as anything a rehearsal for what I understand are another 100,000+ layoffs to follow, each dribbled out until some reporter (that would be me) notices the growing trend, then dumped en masse when the jig is up, but no later than the end of this year.
LEAN began last week with a 10-city planning meeting for Global Services, which wasn’t, by the way, to decide who gets the boot: those decisions were apparently made weeks ago, though senior managers have been under orders to keep the news from their affected employees.
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LEAN is about offshoring and outsourcing at a rate never seen before at IBM. For two years Big Blue has been ramping up its operations in India and China with what I have been told is the ultimate goal of laying off at least one American worker for every overseas hire. The BIG PLAN is to continue until at least half of Global Services, or about 150,000 workers, have been cut from the U.S. division.
CRYPTOGON READER CONTRIBUTES $501
May 5th, 2007Over the last couple of months, it seems like some of you have been in a race to see how fast you could get us to the minimum monthly goal of $500.
Dagobaz wasn’t taking any chances in May. She sent $501, along with the following message:
Kevin;
i want to join pookie. 🙂 expect bi-annual contributions of this amount from me going forward for as long as possible. Ironically, like you I am also a farmer / trader. I will try to hold out here as long as it is tenable [state deleted for privacy] … but I do have my escape plotted.
great service ! keep it up as long as you can !
btw: i am ex military intel [branch of U.S. Military deleted for privacy] and u are spot on. keep exhorting the deadbeats to pay up. 🙂
i am,
Dagobaz [Codename used for privacy]
Wow. Becky and I were both shocked by this. We looked at each other and didn’t quite believe it at first. But there you have it; the monthly goal for April has already been exceeded.
Becky and I would like to thank Dagobaz for her incredible and generous contribution. We’d also like to thank Pookie for, as they say here in New Zealand, rattling the chook house, back in January. I think that the shockwaves from that event are still being felt throughout the realm.
As you guys know, Becky and I like to share our good fortune with others who are doing great work. I will be sending a contribution to the TrueCrypt team this month. If you can’t bring yourself to support Cryptogon, consider helping out TrueCrypt instead. Their software is outstanding.
Cheney Hosts Queen’s Tour of Jamestown
May 4th, 2007I wonder if anyone in these crowds has ever heard of the Declaration of Independence?
Via: CNN:
Several hundred people rose early Friday to position themselves at Jamestown Settlement for a glimpse of Queen Elizabeth II.
The British monarch is visiting the site of the first permanent English settlement in America to commemorate Jamestown’s 400th anniversary.
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Accompanied by Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, the monarch and her husband, Prince Philip, planned to tour the archaeological site where remains of the original fort have been found. Cheney also is expected to attend a lunch in the queen’s honor in Williamsburg.
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She also mentioned the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32 people and then himself.
“My heart goes out to the students, friends and families of those killed and to the many others who have been affected,” the queen said. “On behalf of the people of the United Kingdom, I extend my deepest sympathies at this time of such grief and sorrow.”
Afterward, she met briefly with students and faculty from Virginia Tech, including three who were wounded.
Potential Padilla Jurors Unsure of Who to Blame for 9/11 Attacks
May 4th, 2007Even the troglodytes sense a disturbance in the force farce on this one. If they even know the official story—many of them freely admit that they’re clueless—they don’t seem to buy it.
I wonder how many of them have heard the one about Satam al-Suqami’s magic passport! HAHA
On a different point, I’m slightly jealous of the total state of oblivion in which some of these people are living. Is life better/easier for people who make a point of being totally clueless about politics and world events? I know that people like this have a vague sense that, “something isn’t quite right,” but they just play video games, or buy a new purse, or watch TV, or get stoned, etc. But people like you and me… We’ve got thousands of citations ready, on a full spectrum of doom related issues. We’ve got blogs, manifestos, documentaries, tomes of every description…
Now, which group is better off?
I don’t know about you, but I can admit that to have looked at this crap for nearly twenty years somehow doesn’t seem like the most cunning use of time.
Via: International Herald Tribune:
A significant number of potential jurors in the terrorism case against alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla say they are not sure who is responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, many because they do not trust the news media or U.S. government pronouncements.
“There are too many ifs, too many things going on,” one male juror said. “I don’t know the whole story.”
Others say they just do not pay close enough attention to world events to be certain.
“I’m oblivious to that stuff,” one prospective female juror said during questioning this week. “I don’t watch the news much. I try to avoid it.”
As of Thursday, more than 160 people had been questioned individually since jury selection began April 16 for the trial of Padilla and two co-defendants on charges of being part of a North American support cell for Islamic extremists. A jury is expected to be seated next week, with testimony to begin May 14.
Padilla, a U.S. citizen held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant, was previously accused of an al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in a U.S. city, but that allegation is not part of the Miami case. Padilla is accused of filling out an application to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan.
Before they came to court, each of the jurors filled out a 115-question form asking about a wide range of legal, political and religious topics, particularly their views of Arabs, Muslims and Islamic radicals. Question No. 60 asks for an opinion about responsibility for the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and many people said they do not know.
April Earnings
May 4th, 2007Combined Cryptogon and Farmlet earnings in April came to: $876.84. As I’m sure you know by now, the minimum goal to keep things from getting too weird is $500.
Amazon commissions in April blew away the old record. We hit the 7% payout tier for the first time. More of you are remembering to order your Amazon stuff via Cryptogon, and it shows. Commissions ranged from a few cents for used paperback books to $14 for a very serious Kitchenaid mixer. (Wow! That looks like a nice mixer!)
Thanks to everyone who helped out in April!
Wheat Super-Blight
May 4th, 2007Keep the “glorified bread-and-water diet” quote from the bee dieoff story in mind as you read this one.
Via: New Scientist:
“This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction.” Startling words – but spoken by the father of the Green Revolution, Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, they are not easily dismissed.
An infection is coming, and almost no one has heard about it. This infection isn’t going to give you flu, or TB. In fact, it isn’t interested in you at all. It is after the wheat plants that feed more people than any other single food source on the planet. And because of cutbacks in international research, we aren’t prepared. The famines that were banished by the advent of disease-resistant crops in the Green Revolution of the 1960s could return, Borlaug told New Scientist.
The disease is Ug99, a virulent strain of black stem rust fungus (Puccinia graminis), discovered in Uganda in 1999. Since the Green Revolution, farmers everywhere have grown wheat varieties that resist stem rust, but Ug99 has evolved to take advantage of those varieties, and almost no wheat crops anywhere are resistant to it.
The strain has spread slowly across east Africa, but in January this year spores blew across to Yemen, and north into Sudan (see Map). Scientists who have tracked similar airborne spores in this part of the world say it will now blow into Egypt, Turkey and the Middle East, and on to India, lands where a billion people depend on wheat.
There is hope: this week scientists are assessing the first Ug99-resistant varieties of wheat that might be used for crops. However, it will take another five to eight years to breed up enough seed to plant all our wheat fields.
Honeybee Die-Off Threatens Food Supply
May 3rd, 2007Via: Yahoo / AP:
Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation’s honeybees could have a devastating effect on America’s dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.
Honeybees don’t just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.
In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture.
Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being “stuck with grains and water,” said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA’s bee and pollination program.
“This is the biggest general threat to our food supply,” Hackett said.
FDA ORDERS DETENTION OF ALL VEGETABLE PROTIEN PRODUCTS FROM CHINA
May 3rd, 2007The “Typical American Diet” amounts to a perpetual, slow moving genocide. But that’s on the best of days.
What you have here is a cluster f*&% of unimaginable proportions.
Via: U.S. Food and Drug Administration:
IA #99-29, 4/27/07, IMPORT ALERT #99-29, “DETENTION WITHOUT PHYSICAL EXAMINATION OF ALL VEGETABLE PROTEIN PRODUCTS FROM CHINA FOR ANIMAL OR HUMAN FOOD USE DUE TO THE PRESENCE OF MELAMINE AND/OR MELAMINE ANALOGS”
TYPE OF ALERT: Detention Without Physical Examination (Countrywide)
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For the vegetable proteins and finished products that have been found to be contaminated, it is unknown who the actual manufacturers are, how many manufacturers there are, or where in China they may be located.
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The source of the contamination problem is currently unknown and FDA has been unable to isolate the scope of the problem.
Higher Education Conformity
May 3rd, 2007Via: Alternet:
My theory is that employers prefer college grads because they see a college degree chiefly as mark of one’s ability to obey and conform. Whatever else you learn in college, you learn to sit still for long periods while appearing to be awake. And whatever else you do in a white collar job, most of the time you’ll be sitting and feigning attention. Sitting still for hours on end — whether in library carrels or office cubicles — does not come naturally to humans. It must be learned — although no college has yet been honest enough to offer a degree in seat-warming.
Or maybe what attracts employers to college grads is the scent of desperation. Unless your parents are rich and doting, you will walk away from commencement with a debt averaging $20,000 and no health insurance. Employers can safely bet that you will not be a trouble-maker, a whistle-blower or any other form of non-“team-player.” You will do anything. You will grovel.
Research Credit: Life After the Oil Crash
China: America’s Banker
May 3rd, 2007Via: CNN:
China, Long recognized as the world’s factory, is earning a new distinction: America’s banker. As it continues to suck in foreign investment and crank out exports, the world’s fastest-growing economy is piling up foreign currency, mostly dollars, at an astonishing rate.
In April, China’s central bank stunned economists with the disclosure that, in the first three months of the year, China had added $136 billion to its official foreign-currency reserves, more than double the increase in the previous quarter. The influx boosted China’s foreign reserves to $1.2 trillion – an Everest of money that towers over reserves held by any other nation.
