Dangerous Ideas

I just got a message from a friend at the Chinese Progressive Association about a new blog supporting the workers Monster Cable laid off. The site has background on the case … here’s an excerpt:

Background On Oct. 20, 2006, Monster Cable Products, Inc. laid off over 120 production workers from their Brisbane facility, outsourcing their jobs to low-wage labor overseas to increase profits. The company is a highly profitable company which sells high end audiovisual cables, home theater equipment, etc. The laid-off workers are mostly monolingual middle-aged Chinese, Vietnamese, Latino, and Eastern European immigrants who worked an average of over 8 years and as many as 20 years for the company.

The campaign is asking people to link to the blog, maybe using Monster Cable in the link text, so that it’ll come up higher in search rankings.

Monster Cable makes audio and video cables that are sold at places like the Apple store (there’s a blog post about a protest that was organized at this week’s Mac World conference), Circuit City, the Good Guys, etc.

This sounds almost like a humor piece, but it’s true and so it’s just really sad and horrible:

Idaho’s governor said Thursday he will support public hunts to kill all but 100 of the state’s gray wolves after the federal government strips them of protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter told The Associated Press that he wants hunters to kill about 550 gray wolves. That would leave about 100 wolves, or 10 packs, according to a population estimate by state wildlife officials.

The 100 surviving wolves would be the minimum before the animals could again be considered endangered.

”I’m prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself,” Otter said earlier Thursday during a rally of about 300 hunters.