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Rights, Freedoms and Repression

Germany cannot give up it's Nazi past - Germany orders Holocaust survivor institutionalized over Cov... 23:31 Jan 14 1 comments

Crisis in America: Deaths Up 40% Among Those Aged 18-64 Based on Life Insurance Claims for 2021 Afte... 23:16 Jan 06 0 comments

Protests over post-vaccination deaths spread across South Korea 23:18 Dec 26 0 comments

Chris Hedges: The execution of Julian Assange 22:19 Dec 19 0 comments

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Anti-Empire

Ukraine Buys Huge Amounts of Russian Fue... Fri Jan 20, 2023 08:34 | Antonia Kotseva

Turkey Has Sent Ukraine Cluster Munition... Thu Jan 12, 2023 00:26 | Jack Detsch

New Israeli Government Promises to Talk ... Tue Jan 10, 2023 21:13 | Al Majadeen

Russia Training Iranian Pilots Ahead of ... Tue Jan 10, 2023 15:19 | The Times of Israel

Lukashenko Abolishes Copyright Protectio... Tue Jan 10, 2023 15:05 | Nikki Main

The Saker

A bird's eye view of the vineyard

Alternative Copy of thesaker.is site is available Thu May 25, 2023 14:38 | Ice-Saker-V6bKu3nz
Alternative site: https://thesaker.si/saker-a... Site was created using the downloads provided Regards Herb

The Saker blog is now frozen Tue Feb 28, 2023 23:55 | The Saker
Dear friends As I have previously announced, we are now “freezing” the blog. We are also making archives of the blog available for free download in various formats (see below).

What do you make of the Russia and China Partnership? Tue Feb 28, 2023 16:26 | The Saker
by Mr. Allen for the Saker blog Over the last few years, we hear leaders from both Russia and China pronouncing that they have formed a relationship where there are

Moveable Feast Cafe 2023/02/27 ? Open Thread Mon Feb 27, 2023 19:00 | cafe-uploader
2023/02/27 19:00:02Welcome to the ‘Moveable Feast Cafe’. The ‘Moveable Feast’ is an open thread where readers can post wide ranging observations, articles, rants, off topic and have animate discussions of

The stage is set for Hybrid World War III Mon Feb 27, 2023 15:50 | The Saker
Pepe Escobar for the Saker blog A powerful feeling rhythms your skin and drums up your soul as you?re immersed in a long walk under persistent snow flurries, pinpointed by

Lockdown Skeptics

Are You Demiboy, Genderfluid or Questioning? Patients Asked to Choose Gender Identity by NHS Trust Sun Dec 03, 2023 09:00 | Richard Eldred
Guy's and St Thomas's NHS Trust has come under scrutiny for introducing a form that asks patients to choose their gender identity from a list of 13 options.
The post Are You Demiboy, Genderfluid or Questioning? Patients Asked to Choose Gender Identity by NHS Trust appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

French Ghetto Clashes: Brutally Beaten Young ?Ultra? Was Not Even Part of Protest March Sun Dec 03, 2023 07:00 | Robert Kogon
The harrowing case of a 20 year-old, abducted and savagely beaten by residents of a French housing project during a clash with protestors after the deadly Crépol knife attack, is more alarming than initially thought.
The post French Ghetto Clashes: Brutally Beaten Young ?Ultra? Was Not Even Part of Protest March appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

News Round-Up Sun Dec 03, 2023 00:28 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the virus and the vaccines, the ?climate emergency? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

History Lecturer Claims Britain Did Not Abolish Slavery Sat Dec 02, 2023 19:00 | Richard Eldred
UCL lecturer Dr Jenny Bulstrode has stoked outrage with her ?historically stupid? suggestion that Britain did not end the slave trade.
The post History Lecturer Claims Britain Did Not Abolish Slavery appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Scientific Modellers Have no More Clue About the Future than Historians do About the Past Sat Dec 02, 2023 17:00 | Guy de la Bédoyère
Historian Guy de la Bédoyère says the SAGE scientists didn't have a clue about whether to lock down or not in March 2020, any more than historians know much about what went on in the past.
The post Scientific Modellers Have no More Clue About the Future than Historians do About the Past appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network

Voltaire, international edition

The New York Times seeks to demonstrate that Netanyahu and Hamas are not complic... Fri Dec 01, 2023 02:40 | en

What lies behind Benjamin Netanyahu's lies and Hamas's evasions, by Thierry Meys... Tue Nov 28, 2023 06:58 | en

Netanyahu fired defense minister in July because he warned of a Hamas attack, by... Mon Nov 27, 2023 06:56 | en

Voltaire, International Newsletter N°63 Sun Nov 26, 2023 07:26 | en

Israel arrests director of Al-Shifa hospital Thu Nov 23, 2023 12:56 | en

Voltaire Network >>

Ireland in breach of UN Forced Labour Convention

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Saturday February 20, 2016 10:07

by Vince McGreal

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In 1932, Ireland ratified the United Nations’ Convention Concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour (1930). The Convention defines forced labour as "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”
Eighty-four years later, Ireland is in breach of that convention.

In 2012, Pathways to Work policy statement, largely copied from the UK, was adopted and signed, among others, by Enda Kenny and Joan Burton. Apart from providing training and education for the unemployed, which have been available long before 2012, the activation system offers them not real jobs but year-long JobBridge “internships” and “apprenticeships” as cleaners and porters. Such offers of practically unpaid (a little more than one euro an hour) work disguised as training now cannot be refused, because they are backed up with sanctions: it can be either a cut of €44 from the weekly €188, or even the suspension of payments for up to nine weeks, which exposes people to starvation, hypothermia and debt. These are the penalties for not volunteering to do unpaid work for businesses, or an analogue of community service on the Gateway and Tús schemes that include cleaning and renovating council-owned buildings and parks. One previously had to commit an offence to be sentenced to this!

Incredibly, this matter hasn’t yet become a major issue in the general election campaign. The mainstream politicians are seemingly happy to allow such treatment of their own countrymen to continue. We are about to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising, but the society plagued with forced labour is not exactly what the heroes of 1916 fought for. Officially, people pressed into doing unpaid work are classed as employed, so the unemployment rate falls. One may think that we are trying to imitate the Roman Empire where all were happily employed – as either slave owners or slaves.

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