to watch the 9-minute video of Greg Palast confronting the WTO director, click on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKqJmEPuBgc&feature=player_embedded

Larry Summers

and the Secret "End-Game" Memo

By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine

When a little birdie dropped the End Game memo through my window, its content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn't believe it.

The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak's fantasy: that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet. When you see 26.3% unemployment in Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears.

to read the whole article for Vice Magazine, click on

http://www.gregpalast.com/

Nike has long been criticized for utilizing sweatshops with low labour wages. Nike constructed a program to deal with labour issues in its 900 factories, in which they denied owning them. Annually, 97 staff members inspect the factories, grade them on labour standards, and then work with managers to help improve the working conditions. This action prevents human rights groups and protesters from spreading propaganda against Nike sweatshops. However, the monitoring systems set up by Nike has only addressed problems mainly associated with locked doors and dangerous chemicals. The main sweatshops issues are still present; underpaid workers, unionization, environmental safety, and health issues.

Nike’s workers are paid so minimally they barely make enough money to sustain their daily expenses. Many workers are still getting paid only 20 cents an hour.

Nike’s sweatshops still face numerous problems, such as falsification of payroll records and child labour. Nike claims that they do not run or own the sweatshops, but only dictate the price, design the product, and select the materials for the factories to manufacture the goods for Nike. So has Nike really taken social responsibility for their actions? Probably not.

Here’s a short video that illustrates what workers must endure to overcome the challenges they face in Nike sweatshops.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nAe4_b9itk

http://blogs.ubc.ca/vivianip/2010/11/30/nike-sweatshops/