MicroHawk's NewsScan

The Revolution Will Be Published - The ITT List

The 43rd annual Cairo International Book Fair was supposed to take place last January, but there was a revolution instead. So it's back this year, having opened this week for a 15-day run.

How is the post-revolutionary book fair different? Unlike previous years, there is no list of banned books that publishers may not display. Tunisian publishers were named guests of honor, to pay homage to the country that began the wave of revolutions across the Arab World last year, and the fair's opening ceremonies were led by the Egyptian and Tunisian ministers of culture.

via inthesetimes.com

93-Year-Old Tennessee Woman Who Cleaned State Capitol for 30 Years Denied Voter ID | Truthout

A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations.

via www.truth-out.org

Class Consciousness Is Back -- In These Times

Class position affects everything: access to healthcare, education, where you live, careers, income, tax breaks, who you marry (and when), who fights and dies for our country, and on and on.

via www.inthesetimes.com

The invisible sex | Economic Policy Institute

A focus on the average retirement age misses the bigger story of how much more Americans are working and contributing to Social Security over the course of their lifetimes, thanks to women. It also ignores the fact that Social Security’s full retirement age is already increasing, so the ratio of working years to covered retirement years is roughly the same as it was in the early 1980s when the system was in balance. Last but not least, it ignores the fact that people are encouraged to continue working after claiming benefits. If you exclude people still working for pay as well as those who weren’t in the workforce to being with, such as full-time caregivers, the average retirement age is 65.5, not 62 as is often claimed.

via www.epi.org

'Occupy Wall Street' Fighting Bankster Greed and the Surveillance State | | AlterNet

The crackdown on the Wall Street protesters this weekend seems to have backfired. The campsite-cum-experiment in radical democracy is still there, holding general assemblies just shouting distance from Goldman Sachs and the Wall Street bull. It even appears to be growing.

via www.alternet.org

Why the Kochs Want to Make Chris Christie President | | AlterNet

Neither Romney nor Perry has done the one thing that truly excites the Koch brothers and their fellow deep-pocketed Christie fans: take on the public sector unions in a big way.

via www.alternet.org

t r u t h o u t | Federal Judge Bars Enforcement of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Earlier today, Judge Virginia Phillip — the California federal judge who ruled that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and freedom of speech under the First Amendment — granted the Log Cabin Republican’s request for a broad injunction against further discharges: read more...

Utah Paper’s Stance on Immigrants Causes Clash - NYTimes.com

The News’s push for a more liberal embrace of undocumented immigrants has led to a collision between its editorial mission and its conservative, mostly Mormon, readers. But if this issue seems to stray from the reliably conservative politics of The News, Utah’s second-largest paper behind The Salt Lake Tribune, that may be in part because it is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

via www.nytimes.com

t r u t h o u t | Garment Strike in Cambodia Reaches Critical Mass

Will Adidas, Gap, and Puma Pay Workers A Living Wage?

Friday 17 September 2010

by: Anne Elizabeth Moore, t r u t h o u t | Report

On Monday, following a wave of strikes across Asia, around 60,000 textile workers in Phnom Penh walked off factory lines, protesting pay that stands at around half the living wage. By Wednesday, according to Kong Athit, Secretary General of the Cambodian Labour Confederation, the number of strikers had swelled to over three times that. By some estimates, around two thirds of the 297,000 garment workers and 48,000 athletic-shoe makers refused to work in protest of low wages.

via www.truth-out.org

Eugene Robinson - Gov. Barbour's civil rights fairy tale

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who may seek the Republican nomination for president, is trying to sell the biggest load of revisionist nonsense about race, politics and the South that I've ever heard. Ever.

He has the gall to try to portray Southern Republicans as having been enlightened supporters of the civil rights movement all along. I can't decide whether this exercise in rewriting history should be described as cynical or sinister. Whichever it is, the record has to be set straight.

via www.washingtonpost.com