Stephen Lendman

A man takes photographs inside a garment-factory where
a fire killed more than 110 people Saturday on the outskirts
of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Nov. 26, 2012.

"Over and over again we see companies have made lovely codes of conduct, but are workers’ rights being respected? - No."

Corporate predators seek cheap labor worldwide. Countries like China, India, Honduras, Jordan, Haiti, and Bangladesh provide it. Global sweatshops supply them.

Workers endure horrific conditions. Some work up to 90 or more hours weekly. They're wage slaves. They earn sub-poverty pay. They're subjected to punishing harassment, beatings, sexual abuse, and rape. Transnational giants are unaccountable.

According to the group Sweatshop Watch a sweatshop is a workplace that violates the law and where workers are subject to:

■ extreme exploitation, including the absence of a living wage or long hours;
■ poor working conditions, such as health and safety hazards;
■ arbitrary discipline, such as verbal or physical abuse, or
■ fear and intimidation when they speak out, organize, or attempt to form a union."

Women are exploited. Around 90% of the workforce is female. Most are aged 15 - 25. Globalization also takes a heavy environmental toll. It includes air pollution, ozone layer depletion, acid rain, ocean and fresh water contamination, and an overtaxed ecosystem. Unsafe living conditions exist worldwide.

Philip Giraldi

There has been considerable debate over who “won” the recent fighting in and around Gaza, though the question itself might lack relevancy as both sides have largely returned to the status quo ante. Hamas has indeed proven itself capable of resisting Israel and has gained the respect of its Arab neighbors while its political opponent Fatah has again looked weak and vacillating. That many of the frequently homemade Gazan rockets were able to penetrate Israeli defenses and even strike near Tel Aviv is also being promoted by some as a game changer, but in reality the actual impact was more psychological than lethal. Israel blinked because it had become clear that there were no real military targets remaining in Gaza and only civilians, many of them children, were being killed. Continuing the air assault or initiating a ground invasion would only lead to a major public relations victory for the Palestinians in the court of world opinion.

Pundits taking their cue directly from the Israeli Foreign Ministry did not necessarily agree, quickly claiming that Israel had won because, suffering minor losses itself of only six killed it inflicted serious damage on the Gazan infrastructure while killing 163 Palestinian “terrorists.” Israeli government sources maintain that “all objectives were reached,” presumably meaning that the ability of the Gazans to continue to fire homemade rockets at Israel had been seriously degraded, which may or may not be true. On a political level, Netanyahu’s tough response to the Gazans had been originally regarded as a vote winner in the lead up to January elections, a consideration that certainly entered into his willingness to go to war, though many Israelis are now dismayed that he did not go far enough.

But stopping the rockets and a display of military prowess before an election might not have been the actual objectives. More ominously, some media both in Israel and the US have described the timing and the nature of the Gaza offensive as a test run for an attack on Iran. If that was the true motivation behind the Israeli attack, it means that a war may have been started just to test Israel’s missile defense system under realistic conditions. If so, “Operation Pillar of Defense” would be comparable to the Germans and Italians using Spanish “live targets” to evaluate the performance of their new weapons in 1937.

Eric Peters

Our rulers will force us to go cashless

It still says, “legal tender for all debts, public and private” – but it’s becoming clear the powers-that-be would much prefer you used something else. Besides cash money, that is. Increasingly, they are insisting.

A few weeks ago, for example, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a motorist on a toll road who tries to pay the toll with cash may be physically detained – and forced to submit to an an interrogation. (PDF of the ruling is available here.)

Last year, Florida residents Joel, Deborah and Robert Chandler were driving on the Florida Turnpike – hilariously named The Less Stressway – when they came upon a toll both, operated by private contractor Faneuil, Inc. for the state of Florida. They attempted to pay the toll with legal tender – cash. A $50 bill. Faneuil, Inc. really wants people to use “SunPass” electronic transponders and has eliminated cash toll lanes on a section of the Parkway between the Exit 1 and Exit 47 interchanges in Miami-Dade County. This happened to be the stretch of road on which the Chandlers were driving that day. They did not have the electronic “Sun Pass” transponder – perhaps because, like many motorists, they don’t like the idea of a government-issued (or corporate issued) electronic transmitter in their vehicle – which can track their vehicle. The transponders make it easy to monitor where a car goes, when it goes – and how quickly it goes. Reasonably, many people – including the Chandlers – prefer not to be so monitored. So, they tried to pay the toll with cash.