Archive for February, 2010
Posted by Irresponsibility Nothing quite like rank worker exploitation in the name of character development — a specialty of the mind-boggling corporate evil known as the Southwestern Company. This erstwhile Bible-sales corporation is in fact a finely honed exploitation machine, using vulnerable students — especially immigrants — to line the pockets of a bunch of [...]
Posted by Irresponsibility It started off well, Tony Naylor’s Guardian blog about vegetarian restaurants. Yes, yes, I nodded, let’s recognise vegetarian food as its own taste experience, expand menus beyond gardenburgers and goats cheese salads. Then it went and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like This conflation of vegetarianism with healthy eating just [...]
Irresponsibility I recently read John Steinbeck’s ‘The Murder’ and ‘The Fall and Rise of Mrs Hapgood’ by Martha Gellhorn. The former debuted in 1934; the latter some thirty years later. Encountering the pair was coincidence; I was looking for the author’s respective travel memoirs and wound up with short story volumes instead. This piece of [...]
Posted by Irresponsibilty Apparently Pope Benedict is in a snit because British equality legislation is curtailing Catholic’s sacred prejudices. Tragically the UK’s progressive thinking has “forced the closure of half the Roman Catholic adoption agencies because [of] the law making it illegal to discriminate against gay applicants.” I particularly like the use of the word [...]
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Meatpacking Industry still a Jungle
6 February, 2010 in abuse, America, corporations, corruption, disease, economy, employment rights, food, health, human rights, industry, journalism, safety, U.S., work, worker's rights
Tags: America, capitalism, close but no cigar, food, immigration, journalism, literature, meatpacking, social commentary, socialism, The Jungle, working class
Posted by Irresponsibility Upton Sinclair’s masterwork The Jungle is essentially contemporary investigative journalism in period costume. It follows the misfortunes of a Lithuanian immigrant family as they are systematically cheated, exploited, and abused by the meatpacking industry. The grim expose didn’t have quite the impact Sinclair hoped for, however. Middle-America, with its penchant for “we’ll [...]