SLAMBOARD

I have been employed by more than one business that relied on truck drivers from the USA and Canada crossing the border. As an employee of a large lumber mill in the 90s, I took it largely for granted. As a member of a Fair Trade Coffee Roasting Cooperative, there were a few times when the bureaucracy and security measures at the border significantly impacted my working life.

I did not even realize that cross border trucking was not a way of life at the Southern border of the USA until I read his story about the agreements that are being negotiated to allow just that to happen.

The Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and other interested parties have filed a lawsuit against US transportation officials.

I brought the Chinese Cartoon Police thing to the attention of a forum and discussion ensued. That’s what happens when you have intellectual freedoms.

When it became obvious that one of the younger members was unfamiliar with the broader issues in China, I wanted to show her a picture that I had saved a couple of years ago. It is a double exposure of a classic scene of natural an architectural beauty in China AND tanks on Tiananmen Square. I didn’t have a file on the computer thatI was using, but I knew that I had uploaded the image to Bolt.com as part of a slide show. Now I come to find that Bolt.com has executed an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors effective as of August 14, 2007 and as part of this, they have ceased operations. I had quite a bit of content uploaded to their site and embedded on old blog posts. Visitors to those old posts now get a blank space where an image or a movie should be.

If you are interested in buying a failed file sharing social network, they are for sale. If anyone has a link to an image like the one I described, please leave it in a comment. The intent of the image was to slip by Google censors. I really liked that picture. For all the twenty year old people who don’t know, the Chinese government killed peaceful student protestors in 1989.

For certain scales and types of business, bankruptcy has become a strategy, although success it definitely preferable. As an individual, you want to Avoid Bankruptcy if at all possible.

ClearDebt.co.uk is a site that has advice related to the IVA process and they even feature an online application for an IVA. An IVA is a binding legal agreement between you and all of your creditors.

An IVA gives individuals a chance to get out of debt, possibly within 5 years.

I was surprised to see that ClearDebt.com offers strategies to applicants who fail to qualify for an IVA as well. If you are in a dire situation, they might be your go to people.