blessed britons

Robin Cook's first trip abroad included Indonesia, where he shook hands warmly with Suharto...
[He] knew of course. Amnesty filled cabinets with evidence of Suharto's grisly record. Milosevic and Saddam Hussein were wimps by comparison. Shortly before Cook flew in, an exhaustive investigation by the foreign affairs committee of the Australian parliament concluded that Suharto's troops had caused the deaths of "at least" 200,000 East Timorese, a third of the population. In New Labour's first year in office, Britain was the biggest weapons supplier to Indonesia.

— John Pilger

mad world

The only thing that keeps the system working at all is that the United States, the richest country in the world, has become the 'deficit of last resort'. As other countries strive to eliminate their deficits, as Japan and China continue to run huge surpluses, America is willing and able to run the huge deficits that make the global arithmetic add up. This is the ultimate irony. The financial system allows the US to live year after year far beyond its means, even as the US Treasury, year after year, lectures others on why they should not.

— Joseph Stiglitz

The Roaring Nineties

Gap child slaves

Submitted by antarchi on November 3, 2007 - 14:59.

Jivaj, who is from West Bengal and looks around 12, told The Observer that some of the boys in the sweatshop had been badly beaten. 'Our hours are hard and violence is used against us if we don't work hard enough. This is a big order for abroad, they keep telling us that.
'Last week, we spent four days working from dawn until about one o'clock in the morning the following day. I was so tired I felt sick,' he whispers, tears streaming down his face. 'If any of us cried we were hit with a rubber pipe. Some of the boys had oily cloths stuffed in our mouths as punishment.'

mostly nuggets

blessed britons

mad world

Gap child slaves