Help for Haiti

I'm linking this from Direct Relief International. Please contribute if you are at all capable of doing so at this time. Direct Relief is a medical aid organization based in my home town of Santa Barbara. As mentioned on their home page, "A recent bequest has enabled Direct Relief to cover all fundraising and administrative expenses from its own funds. All contributions will be used for programmatic work."

In the long run, Haiti will also need to rebuild its highly-degraded ecology to become self-sufficient. I believe that permaculture is the best way to accomplish this goal. Permaculture Haiti is a portal (still under construction) for coordinating efforts and sharing ideas on how to restore Haiti. Please take a look at it and contribute if you can.

Miller-McCune article on the Cyberwar for Iran's Future

Interesting article from Miller-McCune on the flexibility and limitations of electronic dissent. While in some ways it is more difficult for authorities to restrict, text messaging and the like are not necessarily a match for an authoritarian regime with a bit of technological knowledge. There are some examples in the article of popular movements that benefited greatly from new media technology. Most of the detail covers the events following Iranian election of 2009, as the title might indicate.

Here is the link:

Politics Articles | Inside the Cyberwar for Iran's Future | Miller-McCune Online Magazine

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AFL-CIO report on H1B hiring

According to this report from the AFL-CIO, American companies are using a non-existent labor shortage of high technology workers in order to justify H1B hiring. In turn, this depresses wages for American workers. In reality, the only shortage of American high technology workers is in the segment of the labor force willing to work at below-market wages.

http://www.dpeaflcio.org/pdf/Gaming_the_System_Report_.pdf

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