The Wobblies take on Starbucks:

New York, NY- Starbucks workers here have organized a union with the Industrial Workers of the World IU/660 and have submitted union cards today to the NLRB for a certification election. The workers are poised to become the first Starbucks Baristas union certified in the country.

(Via Zach)

Sonia Gandhi to push for Manmohan Singh, a Sikh, rather than herself as India’s next Prime Minister:

Rajiv Desai, a longtime adviser to the Gandhi family, said Mrs. Gandhi had never wanted to be prime minister. Rather, she had wanted to revive the Congress party and defeat the Hindu nationalists, whom she saw as a threat to India’s secular identity as it had been defined by her husband’s grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Before her announcement in Parliament, hundreds of party members flocked to her home at 10 Janpath to try to persuade her to change her mind, signing letters to her in blood and threatening to commit suicide. The frenzied scenes were matched by anguished comments from senior party members and allies, who said they would try to make her relent. It was not clear if they would accept her substitution of Dr. Singh without protest.

Today is also, very fittingly, the fiftieth anniversary of another civil rights landmark: the Brown versus Board Decision. In today’s New York Times, Michael Klarman rightfully chastens those who would credit desegregation to the prescience of a few judges rather than the power of broad mobilization:

Thousands of African-American soldiers became civil rights pioneers, reasoning that if they were good enough to risk their lives for democracy, they should enjoy some of it at home. During the 1940’s, one and a half million African-Americans moved from the rural South, where they had been almost universally disenfranchised, to the urban North, where they not only voted without restriction but often tipped the balance between evenly divided political parties. As the cold war dawned, the United States government identified racial discrimination as a potentially crippling liability because it “furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills.”

The Supreme Court justices who decided Brown were aware of these developments. Sherman Minton detected “a different world today.” Felix Frankfurter noted “the great changes in the relations between white and colored people since the First World War,” and remarked that “the pace of progress has surprised even those most eager in its promotion.” Robert Jackson went the furthest: “Negro progress under segregation has been spectacular. His rise is one of the swiftest and most dramatic advances in the annals of man.”

That said, the Supreme Court decision represented a huge leap forward nonetheless. Among the lessons of the unfinished struggle for integration for the newly-progressed struggle for gay marriage, perhaps, is the urgency of combining legislative and judicial advocacy with broad-based organizing which challenges and mobilizes the public. Such is key to the successes of the civil rights movement, and to the failures in the further realization of its goals.

Today marks a civil rights landmark as Massachusetts became the first state to legally recognize gay marriage:

Before today’s ceremony at Boston City Hall, Ms. Salerno told Mr. Weikle and Mr. Rogers: “You really are married already. The only thing that has been wrong, if I may put it that way, is that it hasn’t been public.” She added that she would try not to make a mistake in this first legal ceremony, but allowed that “I might call one of you the bride.” The couple were eager to get married quickly because of family events. Mr. Roberts’s father died on Sunday and his daughter was expected to give birth later today.

…the Provincetown Town Council is one of a few municipalities in Massachusetts that has declared that it will marry out-of-state couples regardless of where they may live, making the gay-friendly, seaside vacation town a destination for many couples hoping to take advantage of the Massachusetts law.

And what’s that sound you hear? That’s right: Heterosexual marriage, stronger than ever. I’d say by now it’s safe to declare that, contra James Dobson, the sky has not fallen after all. Perhaps if he’s really concerned with strengthening heterosexual marriage, he’ll invest his time and energy in fighting for childcare, healthcare, and living wage jobs.

The head of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council is assassinated:

Ezzidin Salim was the second member of the American-appointed council to be assassinated. He was killed while waiting in a Governing Council convoy at a checkpoint leading to the Green Zone, the coalition headquarters in central Baghdad.

…The bomb wounded five other civilians and two soldiers in the American-led military coalition, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said. The killing of Mr. Salim, a low-profile council member who held the rotating and largely ceremonial position of council president, is another blow to the American-led coalition, which is also grappling with a tenacious insurgency and the fallout from the prisoner-abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison.

…Soon after the blast, the Governing Council selected Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, a civil engineer from the northern city of Mosul, to replace Mr. Salim as head of the council, a position that rotates monthly. Mr. Yawer will serve as the council’s chief until the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.

Ha’aretz reports on a deeply troubling poll of Israeli Jews:

Some 46 percent of Israel’s Jewish citizens favor transferring Palestinians out of the territories, while 31 percent favor transferring Israeli Arabs out of the country, according to the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies’ annual national security public opinion poll.

In 1991, 38 percent of Israel’s Jewish population was in favor of transferring the Palestinians out of the territories while 24 percent supported transferring Israeli Arabs.When the question of transfer was posed in a more roundabout way, 60 percent of respondents said that they were in favor of encouraging Israeli Arabs to leave the country.

This is the tragic parallel to the more frequently-conducted polls demonstrating Palestinian support for suicide bombings. Majorities on both sides, polls continue to show, would support a similar negotiated settlement, but majorities on each side, convinced that there is no partner for peace on the other, are willing to justify horrendous acts of violence in the interim.

The New York Times joins the call for academic visa reform:

Security measures enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks are impeding the
inflow of scientific talent that helps energize American universities and
industries. Heightened security reviews required before visas can be issued
to foreign students, scientists and engineers have generated massive
backlogs of applications and discouraged some of the best and brightest. If
the red tape is not untangled soon, it could cause long-term harm to
America’s universities and high-tech industries.

Labor strife strikes Cannes:

“I am here today in solidarity with the French workers who are here to seek a living wage,” [Michael] Moore shouted through a megaphone as he stood next to French anti-globalisation protester Jose Bove.

Cannes has been plagued by labour protests this year. The entertainment workers had threatened to torpedo the world’s top film showcase but struck a last-minute deal with organisers which gives them a chance to air their grievances without disrupting events. Despite the agreement, they have staged daily protests on the sidelines of the festival. Staff at the luxury Carlton hotel, where Cannes jury president Quentin Tarantino is a guest, have also gone on strike over pay and conditions at a time when 5,000 journalists are in town, offering them a perfect publicity platform.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney will visit China for the purpose of “on-the-spot” judgement of its treatment of workers, at the invitation of China’s Vice Premier:

During a press conference while visiting Washington for trade talks, Wu Yi dismissed the AFL-CIO petition as “completely groundless” and said that trade and economic issues should not be politicized. She said the AFL-CIO “did not have a clear knowledge of the actual situation in China” and invited the union’s leaders to her country for “on the spot investigations” and discussions with workers’ representatives.

In his letter, Sweeney requested that in addition to meeting with Wu Yi and other government officials, the AFL-CIO delegation should be “given the same freedom of movement in China afforded the numerous delegations from China that visit the United States each year.” The AFL-CIO offered to travel to China as early as August “We would certainly appreciate any assistance your government can provide, such as helping us to obtain visas,” Sweeney told Wu Yi. “We would like the freedom to develop our own itinerary, make our own travel arrangements and bring our own interpreters,” he said.

Should not be politicized? Come on. As long as some of us want trade and economic policies which protect and advance the livelihood of workers, and others don’t, expect a political fight.

Should be an interesting visit. They should blog it.

Seymour Hersh:

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

Looks like more and more of the faithful are joining the godless – or finding they have better things to do (like, say, trying to find healthcare) than trying to stop them:

…the opponents of gay marriage say they are puzzling over why such a volatile cultural issue is not spurring more rank-and-file conservative Christians to rise up in support of the amendment. They are especially frustrated, they say, because opinion polls show that a large majority of voters oppose gay marriage. “Our side is basically asleep right now,” Matt Daniels, founder of the Alliance for Marriage, which helped draft the proposed amendment, said in an interview last week. The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, said: “I don’t see any traction. The calls aren’t coming in and I am not sure why.”

Some conservatives warn that the Christian leaders rallying behind the amendment may now face a loss of credibility.

God forbid.

Alexander Cockburn considers the sordid history of American torture, and its apologists, since September 11:

Within in a few days of the Trade Towers going down in September, 2001, a vacationing FBI agent told an acquaintance of mine in Puerto Vallarta that torture was being used on detainees in the US. On May 3, 2004, two such detainees, a Pakistani called Javaid Iqbal and an Egyptian, Ehab Elmaghraby, filed a civil complaint with a US court describing their beatings in the Brooklyn Detention Center, being forced to walk naked in front of female guards, put in a tiny cell lit 24 hours a day without blankets, mattress or toilet paper. Both were expelled from the US, pleading guilty to charges unrelated to terrorism. The Detention Center was harshly criticized in a 2003 DOJ report for serious maltreatment of inmates.

Jonathan Alter, Newsweek’s in-house liberal pundit, confided to his readers in the weekly’s edition for November 5, 2001, that something was needed to “jump-start the stalled investigation.” His tone was facetiously upbeat, in line with the “just hazing” approach now promoted by the pain-averse Rush Limbaugh.