Category - Vol 13

The Safety Factor: Tampons — Looking Beyond Toxic Shock

On October 20, 1980, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a regulation requiring warning labels on all tampon packages, and notices on shelves in the market place where tampons are sold. Unfortunately they have not made it mandatory. The voluntary efforts of the manufacturers in warning the public on the hazards...

Earth Day at Livermore is Like Brotherhood Week at Auschwitz

I went to Livermore looking for some lessons in reality, and came away alarmed. Hoping to find the advocate's defense of radiation, I found discussions of Communication, of Good Works, of Hazards, and of Fate — probable themes for a medieval morality play, but hardly what one expects from an ultra-modern scientific...

More Than Better Pay: If the Swedes Can Do It…

It wasn’t paradise, but the work environment in the Anebyhus Company’s sawmill was much better than in mills in North America. And it was just one of many impressive work sites visited by eight IWA members and staff and two government officials during a two-week study tour of the wood products industry in Sweden.

Experiment in Development: Update from Grenada

In Grenada, we have members in the present government who were members of the opposition in the past government. These people were elected even during Gairy’s reign when he massively rigged elections. So, these people represent a vast number of the people in our country. Another thing that people might not be aware of...

Technology and Productivity

The introduction of NC processes in metal machining has affected the class struggle. It alters the skills required of production workers, but it is not clear that the skills required are lesser or greater than those needed for conventional machining processes. The major purpose of NC technology is to increase...

Supporting Repression: U.S. Military Supplies Salvadorean Regime

The success of the Salvadorean revolution — the overthrow of the present regime, the abolition and replacement of the existing state apparatus by a popular-democratic one, the elimination of repression and the end of U.S. domination over the lives of the people of El Salvador — will show the popular liberation...

Attitudes Towards the Disabled: “Disabled Doesn’t Mean Unable”

Although negative attitudes towards the disabled constitute ominous barriers, changing those attitudes is not easy, and is not enough. Those attitudes have a long history and they are the consequence of economic and political decisions. Eliminating requirements to make transportation systems and buildings accessible...

Agricultural Research and Social Conflict

The two scenarios just developed were (1) science as it is – researchers engaged in basic and applied research aimed at the mechanization of the tomato harvest – and (2) science as it could be – researchers engaged in basic and applied research aimed at the improvement of farmworkers' jobs. The first is science in...

The Politics of Alternative Technology

One of the most significant by-products of the economic recession currently affecting almost all industrialized countries is that it has eclipsed much of the concern expressed at the beginning of the decade about the destructive impact of current patterns of technological growth. It is almost ten years since a set of...