Who’s Behind the Economic Meltdown?

The Center for Public Integrity

The top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or backed by giant banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money — including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges. The banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending threatening the financial system...

Dark Days for University Presses and Journals

Utne.com
5/18/2009
by Katie Leo

Difficult economic times have caused universities across the country to turn their budget pruning knives on some of the most prestigious journals and presses in history, all in the name of preserving “core” academics...

DemocracyNow!.org
May 15, 2009

Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein documented the struggles of Argentine workers occupying their factories in the 2004 film The Take. We play an excerpt of the film and speak to Argentine journalist Sergio Ciancaglini, co-author of Sin Patrón: Stories from Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories...

So What Does the Inside of a Factory Farm Look Like Anyway?

TreeHugger
May 8, 2009

At the slaughterhouse, chickens are hung up by their feet fully conscious. Although some slaughterhouses stun the birds by passing them through an electrified bath of water, US federal law specifically excludes chickens from the Humane Slaughter Act mandating that animals be stunned before being killed. However, often times the birds are not rendered unconscious by the shock and proceed, still hung by their feet, to have their necks cut by a mechanical blade. Unfortunately if the bird is not sufficiently stunned, the blade may not actually kill it and the animal proceeds to the next stage in the process while still alive. The birds are then submerged in boiling water to scald them and remove feathers. It's estimated that millions of chickens a year in the US are ultimately killed in the slaughterhouse by this last step, being boiled alive...

May Day Fails its Promise to Workers

Labor is Not a Commodity
The International Labor Rights Forum, STITCH, SweatFree Communities and U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project work together in a collaborative space for international labor rights solidarity.
May 1, 2009
By Bama Athreya, Executive Director, International Labor Rights Forum

Virtually no one in the US celebrates May Day, International Workers’ Day – yet it all started here, and we continue to export the violence faced by the workers it commemorates. Workers who sew our clothes, our flowers and mine the metals used in our cars and cell phones are still experiencing the same problems confronted by US workers a century ago...