The Tiny Tips column from the February 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard
The migrants are managed by a Mafia-run employment system, the caporalato, that operates like a 21st century chain gang. Saviano says that those who object to low wages or poor working conditions are simply eliminated — and not just by a pink slip. “It’s a military system. The farm and factory owners employ the Mafia caporali to bring the workers. The immigrants wait on the roads, the caporali pick them up and take them to the work. If they complain, they get killed.”
[Dead Link.]
Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history:
[Dead Link.]
Civil freedoms around the world lost ground for the fourth straight year in 2009 with Iraq improving, Afghanistan falling back and China acting as if it were under siege by its own citizens, Freedom House said on Tuesday. Bahrain, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Yemen moved into “not free” category, raising the total to 47 from 42 in 2008. The number of electoral democracies fell from 119 to 116, the lowest since 1995:
[Dead Link.]
Workers at a Sussex-based electronics firm were today left “devastated” after being told in a video message that manufacturing at their factories is to end and 220 jobs moved to Korea and the Czech Republic:
Zuma famously likes to spend as much time as possible among his cattle in his native homestead at Nkandla, in northern KwaZulu-Natal province, where he is building a huge palace. In South Africa, R3m (£250,000) buys a pretty decent house, but Zuma’s new house there is costing R65m (£5.4m). ..It is a strange sight. Zuma, brought to power with the support of the ANC left, the trade unions and communist party, is ever more imitative of the Zulu monarchy – even down to the leopard-skin attire. It may have nothing to do with socialism, but then nor do, or did, the quasi-royal dynasties of many communist states such as the Kims of North Korea, Romania’s Ceausescus and the Zhivkovs of Bulgaria. And it should not be thought that these contradictions are embarrassing to Zuma. On the contrary, he is having the time of his life:
One of the most callous reactions to the Haiti disaster thus far has come from televangelist Pat Robertson, who told viewers of his Christian Broadcasting Network on Wednesday morning that he knew the real reason for the quake: The country’s long-standing pact with Satan:
[Dead Link.]
It has emerged that Kim Kardashian, the American reality television star, commands at least $10,000 per post. Many of Kardashian’s tweets are mundane - “I must have pinched a nerve in my neck . . . I need a massage” - but when she mentions advertisers such as Nestle or the fast-food chain Carl’s Jr, she receives four-figure sums:
[Dead Link.]
No comments:
Post a Comment