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January
6, 2002
Tariq
Ali
Battleground
Kashmir
January
5, 2002
Mark Schneider
Kifah:
The Movie Star
Israel Killed
Edward
Said
Is
Israel More Secure Now?
January
4, 2002
CG Estabrook
Anti-War
= Anti-Globalization
Jordan
Green
What's
Changed in New York
January
3, 2002
Walt Brasch
Exit
Cheney, Enter Ridge
Mokhiber
and Weissman
The
10 Worst Corporations
of 2001
Robert
Hunter Wade
America's
Empire Rules an Unbalanced World
Shahid
Alam
Is
There an Islamic Problem?
January
2, 2002
Ross Regnart
Patriot
Act Redefines the Mob as "Terrorist Associates"
John Chuckman
The
Republicans' Secret Plan X
David
Vest
Turn,
Turn, Turn
January
1, 2002
Kathy
Kelly
Iraq's
New Year
December
31, 2001
John Absood
An
Alternative to War in Iraq
Ramzi
Kysia
Iraq
Goes Radioactive
December
28, 2001
John Chuckman
Observing
George Bush
Suren
Pillay
Civilian
Bodies
Aaron
Lehmer
Inviting
Future Terrorism
December
27, 2001
Patrick
McNamara
Palestinian
Children Bear Brunt of Mideast Violence
Nelson
Valdés
A
Possible Scenario on the Location of bin Laden
Jensen
and Mahajan
Remember
the Afghan Dead
Philip
Farruggio
A
New Year's Resolution
Ramzi
Kysia
The
People of the Valley
December 26, 2001
John Chuckman
In
Praise of the Unspeakable
Sam Bahour
2002:
Year of the Twos
December 25, 2001
Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's
Human Rights Record
December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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CounterPunch
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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January
6, 2002
Students Put the Heat
on Foreign Sweatshops
By Ralph Nader
It is a long distance from student consumers at
U.S. college and university campus stores to the wretched overseas
factories indenturing sweatshop workers who produce products
for the U.S. market. But the United Students Against Sweatshops
has built a network of students nationwide to bridge that distance
with organized consumer power and citizen pressure.
The companies whose brand names are on
the items in the campus and other stores do not generally put
their brand names on the grim factories with serflike labor
in Central America, Mexico, southeast Asia, China and elsewhere.
These and other authoritarian regimes allow health and safety
conditions that jeopardize workers daily.
Several dozen college and university
administrations, both shaken by or admiring of the students
ethics-in-action have joined a Workers Rights Consortium through
which visitations are conducted to these factories in various
nations. Students return with far more than facts and eyewitness
accounts. They return with the drive to change the status quo.
Some students even arrange for workers to visit the United States
to provide firsthand testimony about their oppressive overseas
factories.
Some of these manufacturing facilities
use child labor to make products for international commerce
-- a situation that is legal under World Trade Organization
rules. You cannot buy anything made by child labor in this country,
because such labor is illegal in the United States; but ironically
our government cannot ban such imports without violating the
WTO trade agreement and subjecting the United States to monetary
fines or other trade penalties.
This is just one reason why a growing
coalition of labor, church, human-rights, environmental, consumer
and student groups oppose corporate globalization.
USAS has been doing more than arousing
the campuses, holding training conferences and enlisting faculty
to their cause. They are pressing U.S. companies to insist that
their contracting companies in foreign countries upgrade their
miserable working conditions and demonstrate proof of that
result. For example, USAS reports a recent victory following
its coordinated effort with organizing efforts of workers at
the large Kukdong factory in Puebla, Mexico, which makes collegiate
apparel for Nike and Reebok. The laborers now have their own
independent trade union.
In the United States, USAS is active
as well.
Students are mobilizing behind factory
workers at the New Era cap factory in Derby, N.Y., a facility
that makes baseball caps for more than 400 universities and
is the exclusive supplier for Major League Baseball. Workers
have been on strike to oppose a 30 percent pay cut, an increase
in workload and unsafe working conditions.
Consumer leaders for decades have dreamed
of organized consumer power -- whether by boycotts or promises
of one through more-intricate networks and corporate campaigns
-- to reshape company misbehavior along more-decent pathways.
These students are pioneering new territory in turning such
dreams into reality.
There are many workers, sweating under
terrible bosses, devoid of any rights or legal protections,
unable to feed their families and exposed to the arbitrary actions
of tyrants and their business partners in these Third World
countries. It is their plight and needs that keep these students
expanding their mission of justice.
USAS has its offices in Washington, where
Rachel Edelman, Amber Gallup and Bhumika Muchhala run a beehive
of activity. Readers who want more information or wish to support
this committed organization with tax-deductible contributions
should contact USAS at Suite 303, 888 16th Street NW, Washington,
D.C. 20006 (http://www.usasnet.org).
Ralph Nader
is a consumer advocate and former presidential candidate.
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