Is the donut growth model already here in Detroit?

The Ann Arbor News files a lengthy story today on the ongoing Borders strike: “Stakes high for Borders, strikers as talks resume”

“… The first two weeks of the strike, sales at Shaman Drum Bookshop, around the corner from Borders’ East Liberty Street store, increased 50 percent. Owner Karl Pohrt sells both popular and scholarly books, some of which are sold at Borders as well.

“The book business may be a business model that doesn’t work for anybody very well because the profits are so slim,” said Pohrt, a director of the American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independent bookstores nationwide.” …”

Here’s a juicy conspiracy theory for you: the late Senator Paul Wellstone was assassinated.

A Detroit businessman has been selected by President Bush to serve on a six-member group charged with raising over $350 million for a National Museum of African American History and Culture to be built on the mall in Washington D.C. as part of the Smithsonian Institution:

” … The museum will offer Americans that total experience of both history past and present, of what we’ve done and what we’ve contributed,” he said. “The scope and depth of the museum coupled with the marquee of the Smithsonian will help raise funds for this project.”

But the Smithsonian museum is expected to be much larger. … “

> Freep: “Detroiter gets black museum on track”

From the Ann Arbor News police beat:

“Scuffle with robber leaves man injured

While the victim was lying on the sidewalk, the attacker rifled his pockets and removed his keys and a cell phone, reports said. The victim regained consciousness before the attacker got to his wallet and was able to kick him away, reports said. He was last seen walking away on Washington Street, and was not found in the area by officers, police said.

And this Break-in:
900 block of South State Street, Thursday. Digital camera, value undetermined, taken. Method of entry unknown.

Finally, from now until December 20, the downtown circulator bus “The Link” will be free on Fridays and Saturdays.

United Students Against Sweatshops has started an e-mail campaign in support of the striking Border’s workers.

“Take off your riot gear, there ain’t no riot here.”

What really happened in Miami last week? Aside from the brutal repression of protesters with over $8 million in taxpayer dollars, what happened inside the meeting was more important: FTAA, as envisioned by the Bush administration, failed.

“… And yet, despite the Bush brothers’ best efforts, the dream of a hemisphere united into a single free-market economy died last week. It was killed not by demonstrators in Miami, but by the populations of Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia, which have let their politicians know that if they sign away any more power to foreign multinationals, they may as well not come home.

The Brazilians brokered a compromise that makes the agreement a pick-and-choose affair, allowing governments to sign on to the parts they like and refuse the ones they don’t. Washington will, of course, continue to try to bully individual countries and groups of nations into sweeping trade contracts on the model of the North American free-trade agreement, but there will be no single, unified deal.
…
Our goal was to drown you out,” one Miami-Dade police officer explained to me, and that’s exactly what they did. Small, peaceful demonstrations were attacked with extreme force; organizations were infiltrated by undercover officers who then used stun guns on activists; busses filled with union members were prevented from joining permitted marches; dozens of young faces were smashed into concrete and beaten bloody with batons; human rights activists had guns pointed at their heads at military-style checkpoints.”

> From Naomi Klein in the Globe and Mail: “The War on Dissent”
> Also see Common Dreams Viewpoint on the police tactics: “The Miami Model”