Tin Foil Theater: May Day! May Day!

(Alcoa can’t wait! – promoted by kestrel9000)

I love it when a plan comes together, especially when its some real A-Team geopolitical jive. While I don’t believe this will happen, the mere fact that it is plausible should make any citizen, left or right of the aisle, question their faith in the imperial executive. I give you the May Day Conspiracy:

This all started shaping up in the beginning of the February. Most people in America, politicos included, could really give a rat’s ass about unions. Sure, John Edwards pretended to care about unions, so other politicians did as well, but when he was sent packing, not a single one has even been seen within 50 miles of a picket line. That is why this announcement went completely under the radar:

http://www.indybay.org/newsite…

In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. The action announced by the powerful West Coast dock workers union, to stop work to stop the war, should be taken up by unions and labor organizations throughout the United States and internationally. And the purpose of such actions should be not to beg the bourgeois politicians whose hands are covered with blood, having voted for every war budget for six and a half years, but a show of strength of the working people who make this country run, and who can shut it down!

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There should be no illusions that this will be easy. No doubt the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) bosses will try to get the courts to rule the stop-work action illegal. The ILWU leadership could get cold feet, since this motion was passed because of overwhelming support from the delegates despite attempts to stop it or, failing that, to water it down or limit the action. And the U.S. government could try to ban it on the grounds of “national security,” just as Bush & Co. slapped a Taft-Hartley injunction on the docks during contract negotiations in the fall of 2002, saying that any work stoppage was a threat to the “war effort,” and threatened to occupy the ports with troops!

Don’t underestimate the willpower of the ILWU, they refused to load bombs for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1978 and military cargo to the Salvadoran military dictatorship in 1981. They are serious. They will shut the western ports down.



Now, the catch is the ol’ Taft-Hartley Act:

   [T]o promote the full flow of commerce, to prescribe the legitimate rights of both employees and employers in their relations affecting commerce, to provide orderly and peaceful procedures for preventing the interference by either with the legitimate rights of the other, to protect the rights of individual employees in their relations with labor organizations whose activities affect commerce, to define and proscribe practices on the part of labor and management which affect commerce and are inimical to the general welfare, and to protect the rights of the public in connection with labor disputes affecting commerce.

This will definitely effect commerce. The Western ports of the USA handle about 42 percent of U.S. waterborne trade as of 2002. That’s when they struck last time over the lack of contracts. That  10-day shutdown of West Coast ports may cost the U.S. economy as much as $19.4 billion. This is because the mad spending US consumer could not purchase their Asian-made goods including electronics, clothes and household items.



In 2006, Los Angeles alone accounted for $225,907,139,126 and a nickel in U.S. Waterborne Foreign Trade by U.S. Custom Ports. Long Beach did $79,276,844,181 and Oakland brings up the rear with $34,393,010,821. A few hundred billion here and there and that quickly starts to add up.

So the draconian Bush Administration is surely to enforce the Taft-Hartley Act, except there is one small problem: enforcement.

Few states’ National Guard is over leveraged like California’s. The Guard there has been severely depleted and almost all of its equipment is overseas in Iraq. When asked what would happen if called on for a domestic issue, Lt. Col. John Siepmann said “You would see a less effective response (to a major incident).”

I know what you are thinking, posse comitatus. Suckers, The Posse Comitatus Act  does not apply to the National Guard in its role as state troops on state active duty under the command of the respective governors.



And there is no way they are going to go with their plan in 2002:

http://www.ilwu.org/dispatcher…

One police officer, using a barely audible bull horn, declared the demonstration an illegal gathering and ordered everyone to disperse. Then the police moved in formation toward the demonstrators with rifles drawn and aimed head high. Suddenly shots rang out and concussion grenades arced overhead and boomed. Protesters and longshore workers alike fell to the fire. Others were run into by cops on motorcycles, beaten and arrested. Local 10 Business Agent Jack Heyman, rushing to help his members get out of harm’s way, was pulled out of his obviously marked ILWU Business Agent car, thrown to the ground, handcuffed and arrested.

“The documents we got from the police in this case show without a doubt how today’s employers still turn to the police to enforce their power over workers just as they did in 1934,” Heyman said. “We won’t forget that.”

Ah, brings back memories of Bloody Thursday. And this was with 24 protesters! What are they going to do when 10,000 strong, flanked by the anti-war passions of the West Coast, who love a good protest, descend on the ports of call and shut them down?



They will need the National Guard, but there is no National Guard left. This is quite a pickle. Let’s see what Bush can pull out of his hat, or America’s hat!

http://sunlituplands.blogspot….

Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.

Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.

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The U.S. military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

Trew said there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.

Or ports! That’s right, the military force that will put down the May Day Protest will be Canadian Mounties who are also exempt from posse comitatus. I know it sounds absurd, but it is extremely plausible. The wheels are in  motion, the dies have been casted and Britney was on “How I Meet Your Mother”! No one sees the machine lumbering to its sardonic end.

May Day, America! May Day!!!!!