July 14, 2007

UNITED NATIONS — The UN Human Rights Council, meeting in Geneva mid-June, voted unanimously that neither Cuba nor Belarus need “human rights rapporteurs,” special UN investigators who look into alleged human rights abuses.

Supreme Court slaps workers
Clean up your dirty laundry!

With the release of Gardasil, Merck’s new vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV), public health providers were ecstatic. HPV, an extremely common sexually transmitted virus, can cause genital warts and cancer — most notably cervical cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States.

HOUSTON — Four women who used to work for KBR, formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, have filed suit against KBR and Halliburton, alleging they were sexually harassed and, in two cases, raped while on the job in Iraq.

In a small still mostly segregated section of rural Louisiana, an all-white jury heard a series of white witnesses called by a white prosecutor testify in a courtroom overseen by a white judge in a trial about a fight at the local high school where a white student who had been making racial taunts was hit by Black students.

The Supreme Court, now led by far-right Bush appointee Chief Justice John Roberts, chose the last day of its 2006-07 term to issue a decision on school integration that denies the basic American principle that all persons are created equal. The ruling turns history on its head.

Brother Quy will be missed
Air travel? A revolting experience
Remembering Vilma Espin
Organizing support for HR 676

The signs are everywhere — war in the Middle East, drought in Australia and here at home, threatened famine in several regions of the world, more powerful hurricanes and floods, and now the pardoning of evildoers (“Scooter” Libby, of course).

If this is a democratic country, then how do you explain the fact that 80 percent of the people oppose this war and yet more and more troops are sent? I’ll tell you why, from a working-class perspective. When you wake up and go to work, where you spend most of the waking hours of your life, you move into a democracy-free zone.