Free Republic

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Fifty years ago, Jack Kilby, who grew up in Great Bend, Kan., took the electrical engineering knowledge he acquired as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois and a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin to Dallas, to Texas Instruments, where he helped invent the modern world as we routinely experience and manipulate it. Working with improvised equipment, he created the first electronic circuit in which all the components fit on a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. On Sept. 12, 1958, he demonstrated this microchip, which was enormous,...

BEIJING (AFP) - China bluntly told the world Olympics chief Thursday to keep out of politics, in a tart exchange on human rights following days of protests that have shadowed the Olympic torch around the world. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said the Games were in "crisis" following the demonstrations, and urged China to respect its pledge to improve its rights record before the event begins in August. China fired back that Rogge should keep politics out of the Olympics, which Beijing hoped would showcase its much-touted "peaceful rise" to power -- but which have instead become a public...

By Germany's wealthy and reclusive Quandt family, a major BMW shareholder, has gone on the defensive. For decades the family repressed its Nazi past, but a new documentary film provides new photos of old revelations that have prompted the Quandts to confront their own history of using slave laborers in factories during World War II.It is difficult to ignore the stories of former forced laborers during the Nazi era. Their memories are painful to listen to, even when they are presented calmly and without any finger-pointing. One former forced laborer telling his story today is Carl-Adolf Soerensen, a former Danish...

Reaping The Fruits Of A China-Dependent Economy http://www.tfp.org/TFPForum/TFPCommentary/reaping_the_fruits_of_a_china-dependent_economy.html For decades, American businessmen have been outsourcing production and setting up factories in Communist China. They cite a large and industrious work force with minimal labor costs as the reason that supposed allows them to manufacture a product at the lowest possible costs. American manufacturers employing American workers are hard-pressed to compete. Behind the façade of Asia’s industrial powerhouse, however, is the tragic reality of a society without morals. Chinese labor conditions are notoriously horrible with little or no provisions for worker safety. Wages are low, free trade unions not allowed and...

British authorities have revealed their involvement in the rescue this year of 15 teenage boys working in Stockholm as "slave labourers". A Foreign Office spokesman told the Sunday Telegraph that the boys were threatened with beatings if they made any attempt to leave the prison-like conditions in which they were kept. They are desperately underpaid and often resort to stealing from supermarkets to make ends meet. "Lots of the boys come from a weak social situation. Some were born and raised in children's homes, with no education, no parents. Some were picked up in pubs or on the street," Robert...

Those of us in the conservative movement have always been friendly to the business community. We believe in low taxes, a light touch on regulation, and we're stalwart champions of the free market. When liberals start talking about limiting CEO pay, harassing Wal-Mart, beating up on oil companies, or generally trying to place new burdens on the businesses, it's always movement conservatives who rise to their defense, even though it's sometimes not in our best political interests. Yes, we probably do fight a little harder because we view businessmen as political allies, but we genuinely, in our hearts and souls,...

There is a certain ritualistic aspect to stories in China like the one this past week about the hundreds of people, many of them teenagers or even younger, who were forced to work under slavelike conditions in the brick kilns of Shanxi Province. First, Chinese readers are horrified by a picture of their country that many say they hardly recognize, then a villain is rounded up, and finally, after a torrent of unusually blunt and emotionally charged news reports and editorials, the matter drops from view, ensuring that the larger issue goes unresolved.

Few police are seen at bustling Zhengzhou train station in central China, where people traffickers are believed to have abducted young boys and others for use as slave laborers at brick kilns. There is no shortage of tough-looking men approaching passengers with offers of work and accommodation, offers that frequently turn out to be a ruse to entrap people into forced labor. Uneducated and grindingly poor, China's 200 million migrant workers are among the most vulnerable to exploitation by phony job offers, and they are easily picked out by the animal feed or fertilizer bags they carry as improvised luggage....

Washington, D.C. – Before adjourning for the year, the U.S. House of Representatives today unanimously passed legislation authored by Congressman Duncan Hunter (CA-52) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) that provides assistance to former American POWs who were forced to endure slave labor in Japan during World War II. S. Con. Res. 158 expresses the sense of Congress that U.S. government agencies should work on behalf of these veterans in their efforts to receive compensation from Japanese businesses which profited by forcing POWs to perform slave labor under inhuman conditions. Several of these businesses have become prominent multi-billion dollar companies, including...

WASHINGTON - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told Congress on Wednesday that overhauls of the nation's schools and immigration laws are urgently needed to keep jobs from going overseas. "The U.S. cannot maintain its economic leadership unless our work force consists of people who have the knowledge and skills needed to drive innovation," Gates told the Senate committee that oversees labor and education issues. Gates, whose charitable foundation has given away more than $3 billion since 1999 for educational programs and scholarships, noted that about 30 percent of U.S. ninth-graders fail to graduate on time. "As a nation, we should start...

DENVER, March 3 — As migrant laborers flee Colorado because of tough new immigration restrictions, worried farmers are looking to prisoners to fill their places in the fields. In a pilot program run by the state Corrections Department, supervised teams of low-risk inmates beginning this month will be available to harvest the swaths of sweet corn, peppers and melons that sweep the southeastern portion of the state.

WAPATO, Yakima County — Heinz Humann was late this year. Later than he's ever been. His workers finished thinning out apple and pear trees to prepare for the harvest in mid-August. But they should have been finished a month earlier. The past few months, it's been tough for Humann to find enough workers for what he can afford to pay. He's had plenty of work, he says. But it seems there's no one willing to do it. Add to that the other issues that hurt his bottom line, such as taxes and environmental regulations, and "I can see the writing...

Last Updated: Wednesday, 14 June 2006, 12:22 GMT 13:22 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version iPod 'slave' claims investigated Designed in California. Made in China. Apple is investigating a newspaper report that staff in some of its Chinese iPod factories work long hours for low pay and in "slave" conditions. The article in the Mail on Sunday alleged that workers received as little as £27 a month, doing 15-hour shifts making the iconic mp3 player. Employees at the factory lived in dormitories housing 100 people and outsiders were banned, the paper said. Apple said it did not...

The NAFTA marketplace unrestrained in the pursuit of cheap labor has driven an increasing volume of manufacturing off-shore to Communist China, where slave prison camps offer a cost of labor that is hard to beat. Chinese made goods ranging from electronics to toys and clothes are daily sold in mass marketing retailers such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, K-Mart, Target, Lowes, and dozens of other U.S. corporations. Cheap goods from Communist China increasingly line the shelves of the NAFTA marketplace under marquee product trade names that bear no relationship to the Chinese slave labor that manufactured, produced, or otherwise assembled the...

Just before leaving for the August recess, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) introduced separate bills to compensate World War II veterans captured by the Japanese and used as slave laborers in several factories. The legislation, introduced with little fanfare, will likely stoke a decades-old and at times painful debate over how those veterans should be repaid for their sacrifice. In the past, attempts to compensate these veterans have failed in Congress. While Hatch is calling on the Pentagon to provide financial compensation to the prisoners of war (POWs), Hunter, the chairman of the House Armed Services...

CENTENNIAL — A Saudi woman was sentenced to two months in state jail Tuesday for theft after essentially stealing the services of an Indonesian woman whom prosecutors said was held as a virtual slave for four years. Sarah Khonaizan, 35, also was ordered to pay $90,000 in restitution and ordered not to have any contact with the 24-year-old woman. The judge credited her for 15 days of jail time already served. Last week, a federal judge sentenced her to five years of probation and ordered to pay $26,275 in restitution after pleading guilty to harboring an illegal immigrant. Her attorney,...

CAIMITO, Cuba (Reuters) - They do not come to Cuba for the beaches and tropical mystique that draw more than 2 million other visitors each year. Instead they come to spend their vacations working in the countryside under a blazing sun, eating rice and beans and sharing a room without air-conditioning or toilet with seven others. They are so-called revolutionary tourists who arrive each year from about 50 countries for a "total immersion" in one of the world's few remaining socialist countries. "I call it a revolutionary vacation. I dedicate my free time to doing something concrete for the Cuban...

Does your kid have an iPod? Does he or she want one? Don't even answer that question. Every kid in America either has one or wants one. The demand for these little devices is amazing – and so is the price, between $200-$300. "What's wrong with that?" you ask. "Commerce is good for America. It creates jobs and stimulates the economy." Jobs? Stimulated economy? Do you know where your iPod was made? Do you know by whom? The London Sunday Mail wanted to find out. It sent reporters to "iPod City," where most of the Apple music players are...

ANSHA, China (AP) -- Toyota Motor Corp. on Tuesday rolled out its first made-in-China Camry from a new factory that the Japanese automaker hopes will help it to catch up with rivals in the world's fastest-growing car market. click here Hundreds of Japanese and Chinese dignitaries were on hand for an elaborate ceremony as the Camry, the best-selling car in the United States and a top import in China, rolled off a line at Toyota's 3.8 billion yuan ($475 million) plant in Nansha, north of Hong Kong. The company says the spic-and-span facility brings its most advanced technology to China...

George W. Bush on Immigration President of the United States, Former Republican Governor (TX) Our economy could not function without the immigrants We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy, even though this economy could not function without them. All these are forms of economic retreat, and they lead in the same direction, toward a stagnant and second-rate economy. Source: 2006 State of the Union Address Jan 31, 2006 Support a humane guest-worker program that rejects amnesty Keeping America competitive requires an immigration system that upholds our laws, reflects our values and serves the interests of our...

MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINARunning time: 74 minutes. Not rated (nudity). At the Cinema Village, 12th Street, east of Fifth Avenue. ONE of the more kinky aspects of New Orleans' Mardi Gras involves young women exposing their breasts (think "Girls Gone Wild") in exchange for colored necklaces. It seems like innocent fun until you learn the tacky trinkets are manufactured in sweatshops in China. David Redmon's revealing documentary "Mardi Gras: Made in China" - shot pre-Katrina - takes us inside one of those factories, where teenage girls work 12-hour shifts, six days a week (sometimes even seven), for all of...

Advocates on both sides of the immigration debate said President Bush missed an opportunity in his State of the Union address Tuesday night to direct Congress on immigration reform, weeks before Senate lawmakers begin to tackle the divisive issue. Breezing by the issue in just a few sentences, Bush endorsed a program that would allow foreigners to work temporarily in this country, saying the nation needs orderly and secure borders but that the economy couldn't function without immigrants. His brief mention drew a disappointed rebuke from Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who has led an effort to tighten the nation's borders...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - US immigration authorities said they discovered 25 undocumented migrants from Latin America being "held hostage" by human smugglers in a Los Angeles neighborhood. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents went to a home in Riverside, some 90 kilometers (56 miles) east of downtown Los Angeles, where they found 25 migrants crowded into two of the upstairs bedrooms. The migrants, who came from Ecuador, Guatemala, and El Salvador, said they had been held for more than a month and fed only once a day, said ICE spokesman Virginia Kice. "They make people enter the US illegally,"...

BOISE -- A federal judge today tossed out Canyon County's lawsuit against local employers who were accused by the county of hiring illegal immigrants. U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge rejected the southwestern Idaho county's claim that it was damaged through having to provide increased social services for illegal immigrants, saying that was simply the cost of being a government entity. The lawsuit had been championed by Canyon County Commissioner, Robert Vasquez, who is seeking the Republican nomination for Idaho's open First District Congressional seat. The lawsuit had claimed that four major agricultural businesses in Canyon County had conspired to hire...

Have you ever noticed how self-righteously outraged liberals become if you DARE to accuse them of being sympathetic to communism? They will accuse you of trying to smear them as well as go into a "How dare you question my patriotism?" mode. However, if you actually READ what the DUmmies and their leftist cohorts actually say to each other on the subject of communism, you will see not only sympathy but flat out LOVE for communism as you can see in this DUmmie THREAD titled, "Why do some people (DU'ers too) think that Communism is the worst?" As usual,...

LOS ANGELES -- A federal lawsuit filed Thursday accuses tire maker Bridgestone Firestone of employing slave labor and child labor on its massive rubber plantation in Liberia. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, seeks class action on behalf of 12 adult workers and 23 children who work and live on the "Firestone Plantation" in Harbel, Liberia. The suit claims the workers are trapped in a "gulag of misery" and forced to work under conditions that have changed little since the plantation was founded in 1926. "The plantation workers are modern day slaves, forced to work by the coercion of...

In a major boost to information technology professionals from India hoping to emigrate to the US, the Senate has voted in favour of increasing the cap on H-1B visas by 30,000 to 95,000 from next year. The Senate has also voted to increase the number of legal immigrants besides increasing the cap on H-1B visas favoured by Indian IT specialists, as part of a broad budget deficit cutting bill that was passed on Friday by a margin of 52 to 47 votes. With a view to meeting its deficit reduction target, the Senate Judiciary Committee had last month called for...

GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- A woman died of exhaustion after working a 24-hour shift at a Chinese handicraft factory, following weeks of 15-hour days, state media reported Thursday. The 30-year-old migrant worker, He Chunmei, fell into a coma and died last Friday after working for 24 hours at the Guangzhou Huaxin Handicraft Factory in southern Guangdong province, China Daily reported. A co-worker said factory employees had been ordered to work 15 hours a day since Oct. 24, to complete orders ahead of a planned move to a new location. He's brother, He Maojun, who also works at the...

ET A lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of failing to monitor labor conditions at overseas factories that allegedly maintained sweatshop conditions. The suit seeks class-action status and claims Southern California grocery workers were harmed because Wal-Mart's low prices -- made possible by alleged substandard overseas factories -- force competing grocery chains to cut wages and benefits. Beth Keck, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said the Bentonville, Ark.-based company had not seen the lawsuit but had begun researching the issues it raises. "It's too early for us to talk in detail about this case," Keck said. "It's complex." The lawsuit was...

Greed is apparently infecting some of our best known American-based internet and computer comnpanies to the extent they may be becoming the enablers of fascism. First we learned Microsoft was cooperating with Chinese authorities in suppressing words like "democracy" in Microsoft's new blogging software. Now we learn the once-trendy Yahoo may be also helping out the Beijing Apparatchiks in an even more insidious manner. According to Reporters Without Borders, they have been aiding the Chinese government in revealing the identities of dissidents! The text of the verdict in the case of journalist Shi Tao - sentenced in April to 10...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Even with the economy adding jobs last year, the number of Americans who fell into poverty in 2004 rose to 37 million, up 1.1 million from 2003, according to Census Bureau figures released August 29. It marks the fourth straight increase in the government's annual poverty measure, indicating that the recovery from the 2000 recession has not "trickled down" to everyone. Indeed, the Census Bureau also reported that "2004 marked the second consecutive year in which real median household income showed no change." These new statistics put a damper on the...

Engaging in philosophical economics can be very exciting for those with the right charts and graphs, which is why it can be vexing for those who only care about bottom lines. Your ability to explain the superiority of supply-side whatever will only go so far with a businessman whose eye is fixated on his ledger. Moral arguments, let alone nationalistic ones, won't register. Which is why China's attempt to purchase UNOCAL, an American oil company, is such an interesting story. Who for a moment could believe that our good friend China (good enough to have high trade status with, anyway)...

EAST PALATKA, Fla. -- Federal agents raided a migrant farm labor camp where homeless men and women were kept in what labor officials called a version of modern-day slavery. Four people, including the camp's owner, Ronald Evans, face federal charges in a case that officials said is likely to grow. Investigators are looking into alleged environmental violations and drugs found at the camp in Friday's raid. "The word is out that we are concerned about human trafficking, and we will leave no stone or camp unturned," said Steve Cole, a spokesman for Jacksonville U.S. attorney Paul I. Perez. Officials said...

ASSOCIATED PRESS The U.S. Capitol was built with the labor of slaves who cut the logs, laid the stones and baked the bricks. Two centuries later, Congress has decided the world should know about this. Congressional leaders yesterday announced the creation of a task force to study the history of slave labor in the construction of the Capitol and suggest how it can best be commemorated. "It is our hope that the work of the task force will shed light on this part of our history, the building of our nation's greatest symbol of democracy," said House Speaker J. Dennis...

Widespread falsification of factory records is undermining western companies' efforts to enforce their corporate social responsibility standards in China. ADVERTISEMENT Factory managers' forgery of payroll documents and time cards is increasingly sophisticated, according to auditors and western buyers who work with Chinese factories. Some estimate that more than half of the factories surveyed in social compliance audits have falsified at least some of their records. “A few years ago, we were able to detect when records were altered by simply interviewing workers. Now workers are coached,” said Daryl Brown, vice-president for global ethics and business practices at Liz Claiborne. The...

Two survivors of the North Korean prison camps spoke at the UN Commission on Human Rights, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and at the EU, a UK-based a Christian human rights charity reported Monday. The two survivors, both Christians, were imprisoned at the Yodok Political Prison Camp and suffered “appalling abuses,” according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide. “In a political prison camp in North Korea, one must forget that he or she is a human being,” said 49-year-old Tae Jin Kim, initially defected to China in 1986 to escape North Korea. “I had to do many things to survive. I...

Those low-cost goods at Wal-Mart ultimately come at a high price: lost jobs, lower wages and unsupportable U.S. trade deficits. Wal-Mart is the single largest importer of foreign-produced goods in the United States, and the majority of its private-label clothing is manufactured in at least 48 countries around the world—and almost none in the United States. Wal-Mart’s biggest trading partner is China. The world’s largest retailer bought some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002, from China, nearly 10 percent of all Chinese goods sold in this country that year. Through November 2004, the United States was running a $147 billion...

Wal-Mart faces a class-action lawsuit that claims it knew full well its cleaning contractors were hiring illegal immigrants, paying them slave wages and locking them inside the stores at night. All in the name of everyday cheap prices by Brita Brundage - December 23, 2004 Wal-Mart. That boxy behemoth with its neatly stacked rows of toilet paper and DVDs, trampolines and hooded sweatshirts, cheese balls and wrapping paper. With its employees wearing the signature bright-blue smocks emblazoned with sunny yellow smiley faces. Here, shoppers push carts piled high with discount electronics, cookies and XXL T-shirts along endless waxed aisles that...

Here’s a shocker. I love Wal-Mart. I know it’s almost always on the receiving end of bad press. It ruins neighborhoods. It puts small businesses out of business. It wrecks the balance of trade. It pays its workers poorly and treats them mean. It makes overseas workers into slaves. That's what the news says. The truth is that Wal-Mart is a major blessing for most Americans who live close enough to one to shop there and for the people who work at them. My smart friend C.L. Werner in Omaha made the point really clearly. When a Wal-Mart opens in...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, will pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it broke child labor laws, the Labor Department said Saturday. The 24 violations, which occurred at stores in Arkansas, Connecticut and New Hampshire, had to do with teenage workers who used hazardous equipment such as a chain saw, paper balers and fork lifts. Wal-Mart denied the allegations but agreed to pay the penalty. A spokeswoman for the Bentonville, Ark., company said Wal-Mart was preparing a statement Saturday. Child labor laws prohibit anyone under 18 from operating hazardous equipment. The company also agreed...

Horlick voter drive will proceed By Phyllis Sides RACINE - Horlick High School students will still help get out the vote next week, despite the decision to pull the plug on a similar program in Milwaukee. Jose Martinez, Racine Unified's assistant superintendent for secondary education, said students' efforts are part of a service learning project that is nonpartisan. The participating students are part of social studies classes that have been studying presidential elections and the democratic process. Students will spend the entire school day Tuesday going door-to-door, in all of the city's 35 wards, providing information on how people can...

RACINE - The get out the vote project planned by Horlick High School students has been canceled. Racine Unified School District Superintendent Thomas Hicks said what started out to be a class-related activity last week turned out to be a partisan event. The decision to cancel the event was made Monday morning after he learned the facts had changed and it was no longer a bipartisan endeavor. "At one point it appeared it was going to be bipartisan and reach out to all of the community. But some groups decided they didn't want be part of it. Not everyone was...

Abused and neglected, migrants are the muscle of China's economic miracle. They build the skyscrapers and expressways, they make the cheap export goods, they drive the trucks and lug the steel and cement that has lifted China into its boom years. They do the toughest and dirtiest jobs that nobody else will do. It is their labour that allowed China to become the factory to the world. CHINA'S SLAVE LABOURERS They have no social or medical insurance, no unemployment or housing benefits, no trade unions, no education rights for their children, and no written contracts with employers. They live in...

Warning that youth unemployment, which has skyrocketed to a record level, is dragging down the world economy, the United Nations has called for concerted and targeted measures to the tackle the problem. "We are wasting an important part of the energy and talent of the most educated youth generation the world has ever had," International Labour Organization (ILO) Director General Juan Somavia said. "Enlarging the chances of young people to find and keep decent work is absolutely critical to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals." These goals, set by the UN Millennium summit of 2000, call for achieving a set...

At least 2,000 inmates nationwide work in call centers, and that number is rising as companies seek cheap labor without incurring the wrath of politicians and unions. At the same time, prison populations are ballooning, offering U.S. companies another way to slash costs. David Day has a bounce in his step and a glint in his eye unexpected in someone who makes nearly 400 telemarketing calls a day for less than $200 a month. That's because he has a coveted job where few exist: behind bars. Day, 43, is one of 85 inmates who arrange business meetings from a call...

A suburban Seattle printing-press signed an $11 million deal with China's Communist Party organ, the People's Daily newspaper. The agreement was touted by Washington governor Gary Locke, who spoke to reporters via teleconference from Beijing Monday where he was concluding his third trade trip to China since 1997, reported the Olympian newspaper in the state's capital. Banner from China's People's Daily newspaper online, English edition The trip yielded potential deals for more export of Washington potatoes and Boeing airplanes, but the biggest catch was WebPress Corp.'s agreement with China's most-read newspaper to sell printing materials. Greg Palmer, president of the...

NK Ships $110,000 Clothes to US for 1st Time (Korea Times) By Kim Sung-jin Staff Reporter North Korean-made apparel has been exported to the United States for the first time, bringing excitement to South Korean companies that are making inroads to the reclusive communist state. According to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), U.S. trade records show that a New York trader bought more than $110,000 worth of clothing made in North Korea. The New York trading firm run by an ethnic Korean named Park arranged the deal which covered two separate shipments _ each shipment was worth around $59,000...

Would you intentionally buy products made with slave labor? Would you intentionally buy products knowing that innocent men, women and children are dying to make them? That's what each of us does when we buy fireworks made in China. Ironically, we do this each year to celebrate our own freedom. Every year in late June and early July – at least in areas where selling fireworks is still legal – groups like churches, service clubs, schools, etc. raise money by selling fireworks to the public. Annual sales in the U.S. are approaching $1 billion. Yet these products are manufactured in...

This is basically a response to those moral cretins who are waging an anti-Nike campaign urging people to place 'personalized' shoe orders with the company and when doing so to "use words like 'Slavelabor', 'Sweatshop', 'Childslave', or other appropriate names that my strike your fancy." The Left has a number of ideological hobby horses that it mounts when the opportunity presents itself — or when it creates one, as in this case. This phoney moral crusade against Nike accuses it of exploiting 'cheap' Asian labour, especially child labour. That many journalists cheerfully joined this ideologically corrupt campaign came as no...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -The California Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to review the validity of a state law allowing people to sue companies that forced them into slave labor during World War II.</p> <p>The justices, without comment, decided at its weekly private conference here to examine a January decision by a Los Angeles appeals court allowing a Korean-American man to sue the former Onoda Cement Co. and its successor, Taiheiyo Cement Corp. of Japan, which has a Los Angeles-based subsidiary. Jae Wan Jeong is seeking back wages, unspecified damages, an apology and establishment of a trust fund to benefit victims of forced labor.</p>