D
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Guest
Chinese workers lose their lives producing goods for America
By Loretta Tofani
Special to the Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune Special Report
The Salt Lake Tribune
www.sltrib.com/china
Guangzhou, China -- The patients arrive every day in
Chinese hospitals with disabling and fatal diseases,
acquired while making products for America.
On the sixth floor of the Guangzhou Occupational Disease
and Prevention Hospital, Wei Chaihua, 44, sits on his iron-
rail bed, tethered to an oxygen tank. He is dying of the
lung disease silicosis, a result of making Char-Broil gas
stoves sold in Utah and throughout the U.S.
Down the hall, He Yuyun, 36, who for years brushed
America's furniture with paint containing benzene and other
solvents, receives treatment for myelodysplastic anemia, a
precursor to leukemia.
In another room rests Xiang Zhiqing, 39, her hair falling
out and her kidneys beginning to fail from prolonged
exposure to cadmium that she placed in batteries sent to
the U.S.
"Do people in your country handle cadmium while they make
batteries?" Xiang asks. "Do they also die from this?"
'Big problem for Americans' With each new report of lead
detected on a made-in-China toy, Americans express outrage:
These toys could poison children. But Chinese workers
making the toys -- and countless other products for America
-- touch and inhale carcinogenic materials every day, all
day long: Benzene. Lead. Cadmium. Toluene. Nickel. Mercury.
Many are dying. They have fatal occupational diseases.
Mostly they are young, in their 20s and 30s and 40s. But
they are dying, slow difficult deaths, caused by the
hazardous substances they use to make products for the
world -- and for America. Some say these workers are paying
the real price for America's cheap goods from China.
"In terms of responsibility to Chinese society, this is a
big problem for Americans," said Zhou Litai, a lawyer from
the city of Chongqing who has represented tens of thousands
of dying workers in Chinese courts.
The toxins and hazards exist in virtually every industry,
including furniture, shoes, car parts, electronic items,
jewelry, clothes, toys and batteries interviews with
workers confirm. The interviews were corroborated by legal
documents, medical journal articles, medical records,
import documents and official Chinese reports.
And although these products are being made for America most
Chinese workers lack the health protections that for nearly
half a century have protected U.S. workers, such as correct
protective masks, booths that limit the spread of sprayed
chemicals, proper ventilation systems and enforcement to
ensure that their exposure to toxins will be limited to
permissible doses measured in micrograms or milligrams.
Chinese workers also routinely lose fingers or arms while
making American furniture, appliances and other metal
goods. Their machines are too old to function properly or
they lack safety guards required in the U.S.
In most cases, U.S. companies do not own these factories .
American and multinational companies pay the factories to
make products for America. From tiny A to Z Mining Tools in
St. George to multinational corporations such as Reebok and
IKEA, companies compete in the global marketplace by
reducing costs -- and that usually means outsourcing
manufacturing to China. Last year, the U.S. imported $287.8
billion in goods from China, up from $51.5 billion a decade
ago, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Those
imports are expected only to increase.
Never even visit the factories Worker health and safety are
considered basic human rights. But in the global economy,
responsibility to workers often gets lost amid vast
distances and international boundaries.
"This is a big-picture problem," said Garrett Brown, an
industrial hygienist from California who has inspected
Chinese factories that export to America. "Big-picture
problems don't have quick or easy solutions."
The International Labor Organization (ILO) publishes
international standards for workplaces. China agreed to
many of those standards and also enacted a 2002 law setting
its own rigorous standards. Under Chinese law, workers have
the legal right to remain safe from fatal diseases and
amputations at work.
But the law has not been enforced, Chinese and
international experts agree. Economic growth has been a
more important goal to China than worker safety.
Even the World Trade Organization, which maintains some
barriers to trade to protect consumers' health, does not
concern itself with issues of workers' health. As a result,
enforcement of health and safety standards has been left to
the governments of developing countries and the companies
that outsource to those countries.
Often, smaller companies never even visit the factories
where their products are made. Larger companies try with
only limited success to audit operations, often complaining
that their efforts are failing. Records are falsified and
unsafe machines are used after audits. Safety guards are
removed so workers can produce faster.
"Through auditing tours, we can make good improvements and
changes, but those changes are not sustainable," complained
Wang Lin, a manager for IKEA based in Shanghai. "Chinese
government law enforcement is greatly needed," added Wang.
"Without that, companies cannot sustain a good compliance
program."
In 2005, 390,000 died The Chinese Ministry of Health in
2005 noted at least 200 million of China's labor force of
700 million workers were routinely exposed to toxic
chemicals and life-threatening diseases in factories. "More
than 16 million enterprises in China have been subjecting
workers to high, poisonous levels of toxic chemicals," the
ministry said at a conference on occupational diseases in
Beijing, which was reported by the state-controlled media.
The ministry particularly blamed "foreign-funded"
enterprises that exported goods.
China has more deaths per capita from work-related
illnesses each year than any other country, according to
the ILO. In 2005, the most recent year for which data are
available, 386,645 Chinese workers died of occupational
illnesses, according to Chinese government data compiled by
the ILO and cited in the July 14, 2006, Journal of
Epidemiology. Millions more live with fatal diseases caused
by factory work, other epidemiologists estimated in the
article.
The number of workers living with fatal diseases does not
include those who suffer amputations. Primitive, unsafe
machines with blades that lack safety guards have caused
millions of limb amputations since 1995, according to
lawyers for Chinese workers.
The scale of the fatal diseases, deaths and amputations
challenge the common wisdom -- recited in both the Chinese
and American press -- that U.S. trade with China has helped
Chinese factory workers improve their lives and living
standards. "If I had known about the serious effects of the
chemicals, I would not possibly have taken that job," said
Chen Honghuan, 40, who was poisoned while handling cadmium
to make batteries for export to Rayovac, EverReady,
Energizer and Panasonic in the U.S.
China's 2002 Occupational Disease and Prevention Control
Act established limits on workplace poisons, which in most
cases are as strict or nearly as strict as U.S.
regulations.
But Chinese and foreign experts agree enforcement has been
lax. After the law was enacted, for example, the average
benzene level in Chinese factories reported in 24
scientific journals from 2002 through 2004 was more than 11
times the allowable level, according to scientists from
Fudan University of Public Health in Shanghai, writing in
the November 2006 Journal of Regulatory Toxicology and
Pharmacology.
Scientists reached the same conclusion about workers'
exposure to lead in the manufacture of paint, batteries,
iron and steel, glass, cables and certain plastics.
"The data demonstrated that many facilities in the lead
industries reported in the literature were not in
compliance with the OELs [occupational exposure limits],
wrote Xibiao Ye and Otto Wong in a 2006 medical journal
article. "Similarly, there appeared to be only a minor
impact of the 2002 Act on the reduction of occupational
lead poisoning in China. The current overall occupational
health-monitoring system appears inadequate, lacking the
necessary enforcement."
The visitors never see Most American businesses that import
from China are small and medium-sized, U.S. shipping
records show. Unlike large companies, they ordinarily do
not visit the factories or check on factory conditions.
"I found the factory on the Internet two years ago,"
Michael Been, owner of A to Z Mining Tools in St. George,
said of a factory he uses in Guizhou Province. "They have
someone who writes English."
Been has never been to the factory and has no plans to
visit.
Some larger companies, however, pay auditors to monitor
conditions in the factories they use. But auditors' visits
provide merely a "snapshot in time," business owners say.
Chinese workers suggest those snapshots often are staged,
with the number of toxins reduced before the visits and
workers reassigned to new and safer tasks. The glimpse that
visitors get of Chinese factories often is incomplete for
other reasons: Many large factories have small satellite
"workshops," which are much smaller factories nearby that
visitors never see, according to Chinese workers
interviewed for this story.
"These Americans visited the large factory, but never
visited the workshop where I worked," Chen Faju, 31, said
as she pointed to numerous photos in her factory's
magazines of visiting Americans. "If they had visited, they
would have smelled the poisons."
Chen and colleagues from the workshop were hospitalized for
chronic anemia and myelodysplastic anemia, beginning in
2002, a result of brushing toxic glues for years onto the
soles of New Balance and other sport shoes sold in the U.S.
The shoes were made by 30,000 workers in the Yue Yuen
industrial park in the city of Dongguan.
Chen's medical record, dated Feb. 14, 2007, advises that
she be removed from a job of "working with organic
chemicals." A manager from Chen's workshop, Du Masheng,
said toxins are not used anymore.
In addition, auditors typically have been more concerned
with fair wages than worker safety.
Derek Wang, a former auditor for Reebok, recalls that he
and his former boss lurked outside factories at night to
see if workers were working overtime so they could make
sure they were paid for the additional work.
But asked for the ingredients of glues the factories used
to make the shoes, Huang said he did not know. He never had
glues tested for carcinogenic benzene or n-hexane.
No incentive to reform Chinese provincial governments are
responsible for checking compliance with Chinese law. But
too often, officials have a financial stake in businesses,
leading to corruption and 24-hour warnings before rare
inspections occur, said Liu Kaiming, executive director of
the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a Chinese think
tank.
There are too few inspectors in China to monitor safety,
experts say. There is one inspector for every 35,000
Chinese workers, Brown, the American industrial hygienist,
calculated in a journal article. Local governments in China
also do not fully understand the "adverse effects on
workers' health" of occupational hazards, according to an
article this year in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and
Pharmacology.
"Chinese labor law is not that bad," said Dominique Muller,
the Hong Kong director of the International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions. "The problem is the implementation."
Added Guo Jianmei, a law professor at Beijing University
who represents workers injured in factories: "The problem
is that the Chinese government does not have an incentive
to reform the enterprises."
Unions outlawed In most countries, trade unions help ensure
that employers abide by occupational health and safety
regulations. The unions also help train workers in proper
use of machines and protective equipment.
China has only one trade union, controlled by the central
government. Its function is to enhance production and
maintain labor discipline. Workers who try to organize or
establish their own free trade unions are arrested and face
lengthy prison sentences. Lawyers who have tried to help
them also have been imprisoned.
"In China, there is absolutely nothing you can do," said Au
Loong-yu, a researcher for the nonprofit organization
Globalization Monitor in Hong Kong. "Workers have been
robbed of the basic tool of self-defense, forming
independent unions. And the government is biased in favor
of the business sector, so it cracks down on workers who
try to speak up for themselves."
Indeed, the Chinese government treats issues related to
workers' rights as sensitive matters of state security.
Even those workers with diseases or amputations who try to
help other workers with similar conditions -- by forming
independent non-government organizations (NGOs) -- have had
their organizations shut down by state security police,
they said in interviews.
"Now we pose as a business, as a consulting firm," said Zhu
Qiang, an underground NGO leader in Shenzhen who lost his
arm in a crude machine while making plastic bags for
America.
Savings and profits for Americans China's failure to permit
free trade unions translates into additional cost savings
for American consumers and profits for American companies,
reducing the cost of manufactured imports from China from
11 percent to 44 percent, according to Columbia University
law professor Mark Barenberg.
The lack of unions also makes it even more lucrative to use
Chinese workers to make goods.
"In the U.S., if you are a manufacturer, you have to
contribute to unemployment insurance and worker
compensation insurance, you have to buy workplace
environmental insurance and liability insurance, and you
have to comply with the occupational health and safety
law," said David Welker, research coordinator for the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Washington, D.C.
U.S. businesses, while adamant they don't want Chinese
workers to get sick or hurt, know their costs are lower
because the regulatory environment is more lax.
Meanwhile, the shipping containers from China arrive every
day.
More at:
www.sltrib.com/china
Jai Maharaj
http://tinyurl.com/24fq83
http://www.mantra.com/jai
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
Om Shanti
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not
have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the
poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for
fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,
considered or answered if it does not contain your full legal name, current
e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are
not necessarily those of the poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of
which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democratic, scientific, social, and cultural, etc., issues. It is believed
that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research, comment, discussion and educational purposes by
subscribing to USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more information
go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of
your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the
copyright owner.
By Loretta Tofani
Special to the Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune Special Report
The Salt Lake Tribune
www.sltrib.com/china
Guangzhou, China -- The patients arrive every day in
Chinese hospitals with disabling and fatal diseases,
acquired while making products for America.
On the sixth floor of the Guangzhou Occupational Disease
and Prevention Hospital, Wei Chaihua, 44, sits on his iron-
rail bed, tethered to an oxygen tank. He is dying of the
lung disease silicosis, a result of making Char-Broil gas
stoves sold in Utah and throughout the U.S.
Down the hall, He Yuyun, 36, who for years brushed
America's furniture with paint containing benzene and other
solvents, receives treatment for myelodysplastic anemia, a
precursor to leukemia.
In another room rests Xiang Zhiqing, 39, her hair falling
out and her kidneys beginning to fail from prolonged
exposure to cadmium that she placed in batteries sent to
the U.S.
"Do people in your country handle cadmium while they make
batteries?" Xiang asks. "Do they also die from this?"
'Big problem for Americans' With each new report of lead
detected on a made-in-China toy, Americans express outrage:
These toys could poison children. But Chinese workers
making the toys -- and countless other products for America
-- touch and inhale carcinogenic materials every day, all
day long: Benzene. Lead. Cadmium. Toluene. Nickel. Mercury.
Many are dying. They have fatal occupational diseases.
Mostly they are young, in their 20s and 30s and 40s. But
they are dying, slow difficult deaths, caused by the
hazardous substances they use to make products for the
world -- and for America. Some say these workers are paying
the real price for America's cheap goods from China.
"In terms of responsibility to Chinese society, this is a
big problem for Americans," said Zhou Litai, a lawyer from
the city of Chongqing who has represented tens of thousands
of dying workers in Chinese courts.
The toxins and hazards exist in virtually every industry,
including furniture, shoes, car parts, electronic items,
jewelry, clothes, toys and batteries interviews with
workers confirm. The interviews were corroborated by legal
documents, medical journal articles, medical records,
import documents and official Chinese reports.
And although these products are being made for America most
Chinese workers lack the health protections that for nearly
half a century have protected U.S. workers, such as correct
protective masks, booths that limit the spread of sprayed
chemicals, proper ventilation systems and enforcement to
ensure that their exposure to toxins will be limited to
permissible doses measured in micrograms or milligrams.
Chinese workers also routinely lose fingers or arms while
making American furniture, appliances and other metal
goods. Their machines are too old to function properly or
they lack safety guards required in the U.S.
In most cases, U.S. companies do not own these factories .
American and multinational companies pay the factories to
make products for America. From tiny A to Z Mining Tools in
St. George to multinational corporations such as Reebok and
IKEA, companies compete in the global marketplace by
reducing costs -- and that usually means outsourcing
manufacturing to China. Last year, the U.S. imported $287.8
billion in goods from China, up from $51.5 billion a decade
ago, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Those
imports are expected only to increase.
Never even visit the factories Worker health and safety are
considered basic human rights. But in the global economy,
responsibility to workers often gets lost amid vast
distances and international boundaries.
"This is a big-picture problem," said Garrett Brown, an
industrial hygienist from California who has inspected
Chinese factories that export to America. "Big-picture
problems don't have quick or easy solutions."
The International Labor Organization (ILO) publishes
international standards for workplaces. China agreed to
many of those standards and also enacted a 2002 law setting
its own rigorous standards. Under Chinese law, workers have
the legal right to remain safe from fatal diseases and
amputations at work.
But the law has not been enforced, Chinese and
international experts agree. Economic growth has been a
more important goal to China than worker safety.
Even the World Trade Organization, which maintains some
barriers to trade to protect consumers' health, does not
concern itself with issues of workers' health. As a result,
enforcement of health and safety standards has been left to
the governments of developing countries and the companies
that outsource to those countries.
Often, smaller companies never even visit the factories
where their products are made. Larger companies try with
only limited success to audit operations, often complaining
that their efforts are failing. Records are falsified and
unsafe machines are used after audits. Safety guards are
removed so workers can produce faster.
"Through auditing tours, we can make good improvements and
changes, but those changes are not sustainable," complained
Wang Lin, a manager for IKEA based in Shanghai. "Chinese
government law enforcement is greatly needed," added Wang.
"Without that, companies cannot sustain a good compliance
program."
In 2005, 390,000 died The Chinese Ministry of Health in
2005 noted at least 200 million of China's labor force of
700 million workers were routinely exposed to toxic
chemicals and life-threatening diseases in factories. "More
than 16 million enterprises in China have been subjecting
workers to high, poisonous levels of toxic chemicals," the
ministry said at a conference on occupational diseases in
Beijing, which was reported by the state-controlled media.
The ministry particularly blamed "foreign-funded"
enterprises that exported goods.
China has more deaths per capita from work-related
illnesses each year than any other country, according to
the ILO. In 2005, the most recent year for which data are
available, 386,645 Chinese workers died of occupational
illnesses, according to Chinese government data compiled by
the ILO and cited in the July 14, 2006, Journal of
Epidemiology. Millions more live with fatal diseases caused
by factory work, other epidemiologists estimated in the
article.
The number of workers living with fatal diseases does not
include those who suffer amputations. Primitive, unsafe
machines with blades that lack safety guards have caused
millions of limb amputations since 1995, according to
lawyers for Chinese workers.
The scale of the fatal diseases, deaths and amputations
challenge the common wisdom -- recited in both the Chinese
and American press -- that U.S. trade with China has helped
Chinese factory workers improve their lives and living
standards. "If I had known about the serious effects of the
chemicals, I would not possibly have taken that job," said
Chen Honghuan, 40, who was poisoned while handling cadmium
to make batteries for export to Rayovac, EverReady,
Energizer and Panasonic in the U.S.
China's 2002 Occupational Disease and Prevention Control
Act established limits on workplace poisons, which in most
cases are as strict or nearly as strict as U.S.
regulations.
But Chinese and foreign experts agree enforcement has been
lax. After the law was enacted, for example, the average
benzene level in Chinese factories reported in 24
scientific journals from 2002 through 2004 was more than 11
times the allowable level, according to scientists from
Fudan University of Public Health in Shanghai, writing in
the November 2006 Journal of Regulatory Toxicology and
Pharmacology.
Scientists reached the same conclusion about workers'
exposure to lead in the manufacture of paint, batteries,
iron and steel, glass, cables and certain plastics.
"The data demonstrated that many facilities in the lead
industries reported in the literature were not in
compliance with the OELs [occupational exposure limits],
wrote Xibiao Ye and Otto Wong in a 2006 medical journal
article. "Similarly, there appeared to be only a minor
impact of the 2002 Act on the reduction of occupational
lead poisoning in China. The current overall occupational
health-monitoring system appears inadequate, lacking the
necessary enforcement."
The visitors never see Most American businesses that import
from China are small and medium-sized, U.S. shipping
records show. Unlike large companies, they ordinarily do
not visit the factories or check on factory conditions.
"I found the factory on the Internet two years ago,"
Michael Been, owner of A to Z Mining Tools in St. George,
said of a factory he uses in Guizhou Province. "They have
someone who writes English."
Been has never been to the factory and has no plans to
visit.
Some larger companies, however, pay auditors to monitor
conditions in the factories they use. But auditors' visits
provide merely a "snapshot in time," business owners say.
Chinese workers suggest those snapshots often are staged,
with the number of toxins reduced before the visits and
workers reassigned to new and safer tasks. The glimpse that
visitors get of Chinese factories often is incomplete for
other reasons: Many large factories have small satellite
"workshops," which are much smaller factories nearby that
visitors never see, according to Chinese workers
interviewed for this story.
"These Americans visited the large factory, but never
visited the workshop where I worked," Chen Faju, 31, said
as she pointed to numerous photos in her factory's
magazines of visiting Americans. "If they had visited, they
would have smelled the poisons."
Chen and colleagues from the workshop were hospitalized for
chronic anemia and myelodysplastic anemia, beginning in
2002, a result of brushing toxic glues for years onto the
soles of New Balance and other sport shoes sold in the U.S.
The shoes were made by 30,000 workers in the Yue Yuen
industrial park in the city of Dongguan.
Chen's medical record, dated Feb. 14, 2007, advises that
she be removed from a job of "working with organic
chemicals." A manager from Chen's workshop, Du Masheng,
said toxins are not used anymore.
In addition, auditors typically have been more concerned
with fair wages than worker safety.
Derek Wang, a former auditor for Reebok, recalls that he
and his former boss lurked outside factories at night to
see if workers were working overtime so they could make
sure they were paid for the additional work.
But asked for the ingredients of glues the factories used
to make the shoes, Huang said he did not know. He never had
glues tested for carcinogenic benzene or n-hexane.
No incentive to reform Chinese provincial governments are
responsible for checking compliance with Chinese law. But
too often, officials have a financial stake in businesses,
leading to corruption and 24-hour warnings before rare
inspections occur, said Liu Kaiming, executive director of
the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a Chinese think
tank.
There are too few inspectors in China to monitor safety,
experts say. There is one inspector for every 35,000
Chinese workers, Brown, the American industrial hygienist,
calculated in a journal article. Local governments in China
also do not fully understand the "adverse effects on
workers' health" of occupational hazards, according to an
article this year in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and
Pharmacology.
"Chinese labor law is not that bad," said Dominique Muller,
the Hong Kong director of the International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions. "The problem is the implementation."
Added Guo Jianmei, a law professor at Beijing University
who represents workers injured in factories: "The problem
is that the Chinese government does not have an incentive
to reform the enterprises."
Unions outlawed In most countries, trade unions help ensure
that employers abide by occupational health and safety
regulations. The unions also help train workers in proper
use of machines and protective equipment.
China has only one trade union, controlled by the central
government. Its function is to enhance production and
maintain labor discipline. Workers who try to organize or
establish their own free trade unions are arrested and face
lengthy prison sentences. Lawyers who have tried to help
them also have been imprisoned.
"In China, there is absolutely nothing you can do," said Au
Loong-yu, a researcher for the nonprofit organization
Globalization Monitor in Hong Kong. "Workers have been
robbed of the basic tool of self-defense, forming
independent unions. And the government is biased in favor
of the business sector, so it cracks down on workers who
try to speak up for themselves."
Indeed, the Chinese government treats issues related to
workers' rights as sensitive matters of state security.
Even those workers with diseases or amputations who try to
help other workers with similar conditions -- by forming
independent non-government organizations (NGOs) -- have had
their organizations shut down by state security police,
they said in interviews.
"Now we pose as a business, as a consulting firm," said Zhu
Qiang, an underground NGO leader in Shenzhen who lost his
arm in a crude machine while making plastic bags for
America.
Savings and profits for Americans China's failure to permit
free trade unions translates into additional cost savings
for American consumers and profits for American companies,
reducing the cost of manufactured imports from China from
11 percent to 44 percent, according to Columbia University
law professor Mark Barenberg.
The lack of unions also makes it even more lucrative to use
Chinese workers to make goods.
"In the U.S., if you are a manufacturer, you have to
contribute to unemployment insurance and worker
compensation insurance, you have to buy workplace
environmental insurance and liability insurance, and you
have to comply with the occupational health and safety
law," said David Welker, research coordinator for the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Washington, D.C.
U.S. businesses, while adamant they don't want Chinese
workers to get sick or hurt, know their costs are lower
because the regulatory environment is more lax.
Meanwhile, the shipping containers from China arrive every
day.
More at:
www.sltrib.com/china
Jai Maharaj
http://tinyurl.com/24fq83
http://www.mantra.com/jai
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
Om Shanti
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not
have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the
poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for
fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,
considered or answered if it does not contain your full legal name, current
e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are
not necessarily those of the poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of
which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democratic, scientific, social, and cultural, etc., issues. It is believed
that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research, comment, discussion and educational purposes by
subscribing to USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more information
go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of
your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the
copyright owner.