Eric Lee

With gas prices soaring and food prices at a new high, this seems an odd time to raise the subject of things getting cheaper. But in one small corner of our consumer universe, one commodity that used to be owned only by very rich has suddenly, almost overnight, become very cheap indeed.

I'm speaking about ultra-portable, ultra-light laptop computers.

A year ago, if you wanted to buy a truly portable computer, you'd be looking at a Sony Vaio, for example, weighing in at a couple of pounds. And it would have cost you something like $3,000. Even Apple's latest laptop, the MacBook Air, costs $1,800 in its cheapest configuration.

But in the last six months a new breed of tiny, powerful laptops has become available for $400.

A 90% drop in the price of a tool that can be so useful to unions is something that should make us sit up and take notice.

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It's the morning after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. It now seems pretty clear to everyone that Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee for President. The question now is -- what can we do to ensure that he defeats John McCain in November. And not only defeats McCain, but defeats him decisively.

We need more than a Democratic victory in November -- we need a landslide. We need huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. We can only achieve that if we have the kind of unbeatable team at the top that unites the party and the nation.

It's obvious that Hillary Clinton is not going to be Obama's running mate. Obama has to choose from among many outstanding Democrats, including some who ran against him in the early primaries, to find a great Vice Presidential choice. But one man stands head and shoulders above all the others as the obvious choice: John Edwards.

John Edwards set the agenda for all the candidates in the early stages of the primary battles. He came up with the first and best comprehensive health care plan. He raised the issue of poverty as no leading politician has done for 40 years. His charisma, his abilities and his appeal to those voters Obama must win in November are beyond dispute.

An Obama-Edwards ticket in November is the Democratic party's best chance of winning a resounding victory. If you agree, please visit http://www.ericlee.info/edwards4veep and sign the form there. (That address will soon be http://www.edwards4veep.org.)

We'll make sure that Obama gets this message loud and clear from the many Democrats who we're sure agree with us.

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I wrote my first computer program back in 1985. I was writing in a long-forgotten programming language known as "RPG II" for an IBM System 34 mini-computer. (Mini-computers were not what you think -- they were room-sized devices to which one connected dozens of dumb terminals.) Over the years, I got pretty good at coding and whenever I needed a computer to do something for me, I'd knock off a quick program to do it. Some of the programs I wrote were even sold to professional magazines so that others could copy my code.

But for the last ten years, I've been working on PCs (until a year ago, Windows-based PCs) and have no experience with programming them. I did learn Perl, which I use to write short programs (scripts) on Linux servers for websites. But I've found no easy way to write a useable program on my PC.

I've long thought it would be wonderful if I could use a language I know (Perl) on a platform I use (the PC) and get back to the stage where I was a decade ago, writing programs to meet my needs.

As of yesterday, that problem is solved. I have just written my first application (a small group of programs) -- a powerful task list (to-do list) manager. I am now using this instead of the various programs I have used in the past, such as the Gnome To Do list, KDE Kalendar, and web-based lists such as Remember the Milk, TaDa List and so on.

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Bill Kristol thinks so.

Gosh, you read an article like that and it makes you want to vote for Obama.

Bill's Dad -- himself a graduate of the Trotskyist Left of the 1930s -- should take his son aside for a quiet talk. Or should have done so many years ago.

Trade unionists as much as anyone else need to make the most of their time – and the web is now full of time-management tools that promise to make all of us more efficient.

I've been using web-based tools for years to do several tasks which many of us probably still do with pen and paper – or on desktop PCs.

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A few years ago, LabourStart starting featuring a photo of the week (sometimes, of the day), just to liven up its front page a bit. As its editor, I'd see photos of strikes or picket lines or jailed union activists and put them in a little corner of the front page.

As with most things, after a while it became more work than I had time for, so I asked one of our senior correspondents, Derek Blackadder from Canada, to take on the job of ensuring that we had fresh photos on our front page, at least once every week.

Little did I know that Derek would turn this little project into what may be the largest collection of union photos on the web.

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March 6th 2008 has been declared a global day of action in support of Iranian workers by two leading international trade union bodies. The International Trade Union Confederation, which unites national trade union centres such as the TUC, and the International Transport Workers Federation, a global union whose UK affiliates include Unite, the RMT, Unison and Aslef, are behind the call.

A glance at how those unions are using the Internet in support of the day of action reveals just how far we have come in a few short years.

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Meet "Robbie", the newest member of our family.

Robbie is a Roomba household robot, a product of the iRobot corporation, and something I've wanted to own for a long time. It costs about the same as a decent vacuum cleaner, so I thought -- what the hell.

I bought Robbie home on Friday and charged it (him?) overnight. Yesterday, I set Robbie loose in my carpeted bedroom, went out to do errands, came home and found the robot had shut itself off -- and the floor clean. Wow.

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In three weeks, the international trade union movement is sponsoring a world wide day of action in support of the workers of Iran -- and in particular jailed trade union activists such as Mansour Osanloo and Mahmoud Salehi (pictured).

Please take a moment and send off a message in support of the campaign. Thank you.

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A spectre is haunting American politics -- the spectre of John Edwards. A week after "suspending" his campaign, the former North Carolina Senator received over 380,000 votes in super Tuesday primaries.

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"I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part." - Otter, "Animal House" (1978)

I am about to propose something which is certainly futile and maybe stupid too.

I've been talking in recent days to people who, like me, supported the candidacy of John Edwards.

I've found that most of us are in a bind: we don't really have a clear preference for one or the other Democratic candidate.

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The withdrawal of John Edwards from the contest for the Democratic Presidential nomination on Wednesday has made the race suddenly less interesting. Like many other progressives, I was fascinated by the Edwards candidacy and by its promise to put radical ideas on the national agenda.

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Back in 1974, I was a student in Cornell University's labor relations program working during the summer for a union in New York City. The union's education director (today its president) suggested to me that I quit university and go to work in a factory where I could organize workers. That was the way to get involved in the trade union movement, he told me. I pondered the offer -- it would have involved moving to Indiana -- and eventually decided not to do it.

Thanks to the Internet, that scenario is no longer possible.

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The arrest this week by FBI agents of Chicago real estate developer Antoin "Tony" Rezko made headlines for only one reason. Rezko is Barack Obama's slum landlord best mate, according to Hillary Clinton. According to Obama, Rezko is "a friend of mine, a supporter, who I've known for 20 years."

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With the non-primary in Florida behind them, Democratic Presidential candidates have less than a week to prepare for what some are calling Tsunami Tuesday, when 22 states will hold primaries. A few weeks ago, the conventional wisdom was that the selection process for the Democrats would essentially end on this day with Hillary Clinton's coronation.

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Florida is the fourth largest state in the US, with 27 electoral votes and 210 delegates to the Democratic national convention. It's where George Bush (or Al Gore) won the 2000 elections. And depending on your point of view, it either is or is not holding a Democratic primary today.

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Dick Morris knows something about the way Bill and Hillary Clinton think. In 1996, he managed Clinton's successful campaign for re-election. After having fallen from grace, he's turned against the Clintons and is no longer close to them. Still, people pay attention to things he says. And three days before the South Carolina primary, Morris said something that made people sit up and pay attention.

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"He doesn't know it's a damn show! He thinks it's a damn fight!" - Apollo Creed's trainer, "Rocky" (1976)

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Voters in today's South Carolina Democratic primary are not following the script. They're not playing their part. And it's confusing pundits and pollsters to no end.

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Much of the debate between the presidential candidates will reflect uniquely American issues. But sometimes the arguments will be instantly recognizable to people in Britain. This was certainly the case with Senator Obama's recent comments regarding Ronald Reagan and the Republicans.

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