Foxconn, the Chinese maker of Apple's iPhone, is investigating the death of a packaging plant worker, following a string of 13 staff suicides at its factories earlier this year.

The 22-year old woman died on Wednesday after falling from a dormitory building at its Kunshan plant in eastern Jiangsu province, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer said on Friday.

Thirteen Chinese employees have committed suicide this year at Foxconn plants and an affiliate by jumping from buildings, including 10 in the southern city of Shenzhen.

It was unclear whether the latest death was a suicide. The company said it was working with local authorities to investigate.

The suicides at Foxconn - which generates revenues of $40bn annually making everything from iPads to desktop computers and televisions - have put the spotlight on working conditions for millions of factory workers in China, the "workshop of the world".

Here I stand

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, "If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years . ." 
The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast -- How long then?" Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years." "But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?" asked the student. "Thirty years," replied the Master. "But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student. "At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?" 
Replied the Master, "When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path."

This is the dilemma I've faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.

Some of you may be thinking, "Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn't you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

How can the Social Services in Great Britain so readily separate loving and caring parents from their children? How can family men Police officers fire 50,000 volts into grannies? How can a group of youths stab a father to death for a supposed insult? The answer in all examples is the same. Lack of spirit. These people are drones (droids) and are a massive threat to your life. You must consider them the platoons of the psychopath banksters. They are your enemy.

The greatest tragedy of the last 40,000 years of human life must certainly be the indifference felt to suffering. The lack of empathy felt by millions towards their starving million fellow sentients on the surface of this blue globe. This is the true story; not that psychopathic and malevolently minded people search for glory and outside happiness by killing, raping, pillaging and conquering. These violent tendencies are easily understood, we feel, for deep down in our darkest corners we can understand rage, misdirected passion, mistakes, and the folly of hate.

What we, as a resistance movement, have a real problem with is the unsympathetic way that our fellow people can disregard a problem, walk past someone struggling in the street; continue to pay taxes to a puppet-murderous government, continue in their finance jobs, and generally be totally indifferent to the suffering of others on a massive scale. We all know them. We have all shared time with those who astonish us with their lack of care. We feel almost as if we are in the company of droids. Of robots.

Janice Wells called the Richland Police Department when she feared a prowler was outside her clapboard house in the rural west Georgia town.

The third-grade teacher had phoned for help. But within minutes of an officer coming to her backdoor, she was screaming in pain and begging not to be shocked again with a Taser. With each scream and cry, the officer threatened her with more shocks.

"All of it's just unreal to me. I was scared to death," Wells said in an interview with the AJC. "He kept tasing me and tasing me. My fingernails are still burned. My leg, back and my butt had a long scar on it for days."

Nearly three months on since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sunk to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the outlook is truly apocalyptic for the region's earthlings. A sure sign that the greedy dwarves are losing their PR campaign to reassure the world that everything is just fine came late June when BP and its government tools tightened media access to the affected areas. We will examine how the Gulf region now resembles a BP-controlled corporate police state and share with you what they are not saying about the real health impact for people and planet.

Little decision-making actually takes place when the G20 heads of state get together for their travelling roadshow, but it gives the perception managers an opportunity to introduce the latest gadgetry designed specifically for breaking down dissidents into compliant serfs. Eyewitness accounts from the people on the streets of Toronto, transformed into an Occupied Territory at a cost of $1 Bln, reveal choreographed violence by agents provocateurs and extreme police brutality 'in response'.

Wall Street's role behind the escalating bloodshed in Mexico and the decision to send 7,000 US Marines to Costa Rica tell us that the US government's War on Drugs™ is indistinguishable from its War on Terror™. Both disguise the same imperial designs and both are fuelled by the CIA's narcotics industry. As Afghanistan became America's longest war this past month, we take a look at the horrific events in Kyrgyzstan and wonder who primed the 'Russian Spy Scandal' just as US-Russian relations were "reset".

Israel once again demonstrated its unnatural ability to thrive in acrimony as it turned global condemnation for its massacre of innocents into UN Security Council support for US-imposed economic sanctions against Iran. Far from relinquishing its death grip on one siege, Israel is now a significant step closer to implementing another. Will Zionism's self-fulfilling prophecy inevitably take humanity down with it? The only thing that will save Israel from itself is a successful international campaign to boycott it at every level and shun it at every opportunity. The Universe is watching, so let's keep flapping those butterfly wings and connecting the dots!

We have never faced anything like what we are facing today. Most of us have planned our lives in terms of a world that is quickly disappearing and we have not set new sails based on the prevailing winds that will blow across our future bows. What will surprise most people is the fact that our true enemies are not terrorists in far away countries but psychopaths that walk among us and populate corporate boardrooms, banks and government chambers.

We have not learned what to do about the world's psychopaths so we will see our civilization ripped asunder. Psychopaths and sociopaths have little choice but to hurt others as well as the environment because it is in their very nature to do so. These vicious individuals and the institutions they manage are at war with the peoples of the world and there is little defense against them. The very nature of our civilization encourages these people to seek the pinnacles of power and they certainly found just that inside the oil companies.

They aren't that rare. In fact millions of people are 'psychopathic enough' to destroy other people's lives.

The concept of "corporate psychopaths" is an emerging realization and has been described by Dr. Robert Hare who is a world-renowned psychiatrist and professor at the University of British Columbia. The 2008 Australian documentary, I, Psychopath, points out that the vast majority of psychopaths are not crazed axe murderers: "Most of them function incognito in high-powered professions, all the way to the very top." These are people who have no conscience. They are described as being manipulative, charming, glib, deceptive, parasitic, irresponsible, selfish, callous, promiscuous, impulsive, antisocial, and aggressive. Their main defect - what psychologists call "severe emotional detachment" or a total lack of empathy and remorse - is concealed and harder to describe than the symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder."

On the day after Thanksgiving, 2008, a holiday season employee died from asphyxiation when he was trampled by some 2,000 bargain hunters smashing through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart store on what is traditionally, and in this case quite appropriately, called Black Friday. A 34-year-old, 6-foot-5, 270-pound giant, Jdimytai Damour had been sent to the vestibule as a crowd control measure because of his size. The throngs, who had had been standing outside or waiting in their cars for the 5 AM opening, and who were in competition with each other to get to the bargains, crumpled a metal portion of the door frame like an accordion as they fought their way into the store. Wal-mart employees scurried atop vending machines to avoid the masses, but Damour was knocked down and trampled while he was trying to shield a pregnant shopper.

Other employees were knocked down as they tried to rescue Damour. Nassau police and paramedics trying to save Damour were also jostled and pushed to the ground. Police and witnesses said shoppers continued to surge inside, simply stepped over Damour, and kept shopping even as the store announced it was closing because of the death. Witness Kimberly Cribbs said "all those people who got in went right on shopping after the worker was run over and was seen gasping for air." Four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured and treated at hospitals.

In the ensuing debate regarding whether Damour's death was a prosecutable crime, experts were divided. "In order to prosecute a homicide, you have to establish that someone caused a death," said one lawyer. "If I stepped on his arm, or chest, or leg, even if you have that on video, how are you going to establish that I caused his death?" ^[1]

Our moral sense finds this legal argument repugnant, and insists on calling a spade a spade: a man was unnecessarily killed as a result of obsessive consumerism in which human beings acted less than human.

Ever hear the one about the little old lady living in an old but paid-off house, with a shoe box full of gold coins in the basement? Across the street lived a big guy, in a big McMansion. It had a special garage for the RV, and another four-car garage for the other four cars. He had a boat at the side and a trailer with two jet skis in front of the boat. Then one day little old lady noticed big guy was gone. The bank had taken back his house.

Most people thought big guy was rich and little old lady was poor. How wrong most people were.

Tiger's Tail

I watched a pretty forgettable movie the other night on TV. It was just so-so from a film-maker's perspective, but it had at least one redeeming quality from my blog-maker's perspective. It highlighted a point I had been thinking about.

The film is called "The Tiger's Tail", and the basic back story is identical twin brothers that were separated at birth when one was given up for adoption. The adopted brother is destitute when he discovers he has a twin who is a very public multi-millionaire businessman. So, filled with envy and anger over being given up as an infant, he hatches a plan to "steal" his brother's identity and life for just long enough to liquidate his assets and make off with the cash.

A girl of five has became the second child to die in a week after being trapped by an electric gate.

The youngster, who is Polish and has been named locally as Carolena, became caught in sliding automatic gates outside a block of flats in Bridgend, south Wales.

Paramedics rushed the little girl to the Princess of Wales hospital after the accident on Saturday evening, but she was dead on arrival.

The girl's death comes just seven days after six-year-old Semelia Campbell was killed by a gate in an almost identical tragedy in Moss Side, Manchester.

Carolena's parents were last night too upset to comment at their nearby three-bedroom semi-detached home. But a relative said: 'We're all devastated.'

Even by the standards of this deficit-ridden state, Illinois's comptroller, Daniel W. Hynes, faces an ugly balance sheet. Precisely how ugly becomes clear when he beckons you into his office to examine his daily briefing memo.

He picks the papers off his desk and points to a figure in red: $5.01 billion.

"This is what the state owes right now to schools, rehabilitation centers, child care, the state university - and it's getting worse every single day," he says in his downtown office.

Mr. Hynes shakes his head. "This is not some esoteric budget issue; we are not paying bills for absolutely essential services," he says. "That is obscene."

For the last few years, California stood more or less unchallenged as a symbol of the fiscal collapse of states during the recession. Now Illinois has shouldered to the fore, as its dysfunctional political class refuses to pay the state's bills and refuses to take the painful steps - cuts and tax increases - to close a deficit of at least $12 billion, equal to nearly half the state's budget.