Back From the Abyss

Bit of a silence here on the ol' blog lately, as I've been fighting against a bad a flu for the past several days. I'm cautiously optimistic today that I'm in the clear, but it was a bad one. The kind where even reading was really out of the question, so I got so very little done. But I did watch two entire seasons of The Office, so I guess it wasn't an entire loss.

But in the meantime, it seems as if the political world was blowing up. Coolest news item from over the long weekend: the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has voted, over protest of leadership, to strike on May 1st in a call to end the war.

This is a pretty big development, as it will not only mean that the entire West Coast will be effectively shut down, but they are also the first union to move toward taking bold and effective strike action in effort to stop the war.

I'm embittered and cynical enough to know that this may never even actually happen; the leadership could find a way to call it off, the Feds could invoke any number of injunctions to prevent it, etc. But it could be a watershed moment in this war. If other rank-and-file union members could push their slow and complicit leadership into taking similar actions, it would be a huge step toward finally pushing the federal government to enact the will of the people. Afterall, when 70% of the populace is against the war and all candidates for election merely talk strategy, not withdrawl, the only step left is to take radical action to force and end to the war.

So keep your eye on this one. It may not amount to anything, but it may also signal a radical shift in an American populace increasingly fed-up with the many, many downsides of neo-liberal hegemony. Either way, it's a pretty keen development.