19 May 2005 | AsiaNews.it
Forced labour generates profits worth US$ 9.7 billion. The International Labour Organisation calls on the international community to punish this crime and adopt plans to fight poverty.
Geneva – Some 9.5 million people are working as forced labourers in the Asia-Pacific region, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said.
[ Would you like to mitigate the effects of your participation in the oil economy? Jeff Cohen has an interesting angle on this -- one I like: This is one of the ways to take the "lesser-evil" approach to driving cars; and it's better than altogether ignoring the moral ramifications of driving gas-powered autos. Thanks [...]
17 May 2005 | New York Times
by JOSEPH ROTBLAT
London – FIFTY years ago, I joined Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and eight others in signing a manifesto warning of the dire consequences of nuclear war. This statement, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, was Einstein’s final public act. He died shortly after signing it. Now, in my 97th [...]
ThereItIs.org is a left-oriented political site, and I’m Brendan Lalor, the one who runs it. Starting in 2003, before the Iraq war, I published some of my own political writings here, in large part for my students at the University of Central Oklahoma, and for some right-wing members of my extended family. From January through [...]
11 May 2005 | The Nation
by GREG PALAST
George Bush has someone new to hate. Only twenty-four hours after Ecuador’s new president took his oath of office, he was hit by a diplomatic cruise missile fired all the way from Lithuania by Condoleezza Rice, then wandering about Eastern Europe spreading “democracy.” Condi called for “a constitutional [...]
May 10, 2005 | In These Times
by Nicolas B?rub? and Benoit Aquin
In the ’70s and ’80s, the banana companies Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita used a carcinogenic pesticide, Nemagon, to protect their crops in Nicaragua. Today, the men and women who worked on those plantations suffer from incurable illnesses. Their children are deformed. The companies [...]
27 April 2005 | Christian Science Monitor
by Susan Llewelyn Leach
Convicts on death row can wait for years while appeals are filed and protests lodged. Many never get beyond this limbo. Others are executed.
What determines the final outcome? That is the question two professors, one a criminologist, the other a computer scientist, asked as they took [...]
[ Americans are "trapped" in a dysfunctional culture of work: Why not value leisure and take increases in productivity as time off? --BL ]
2 May 05 | Mother Jones
by Bradford Plumer
A little fodder for those grumbling at the water cooler. The Families and Work Institute just put out a new report (pdf) entitled “Overwork in America” [...]