Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account. Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power have created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers, which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders.

Though it isn't easy, we can check the power of corporations—and citizens around the world are stepping up to do it. Global Exchange developed this list of some of the world's worst corporate abusers to illustrate that on issues as diverse as assassination, torture, kidnapping, environmental degradation, abusing public funds, violently repressing political rights, releasing toxins into pristine environments, destroying homes, discrimination, and causing widespread health problems, familiar companies like Dow Chemical, Coca Cola, Caterpillar, Lockheed, Philip Morris, and Wal-Mart play a big role. Now we need you to take action!

Please check this link to Flavour's site and read...

Whatever, it is certainly not about promoting Peace and Unity.

Yesterday I was puzzled by the sudden advent on some peoples' blogs by a cartoon that had been printed and discussed to death a year or two ago; I refer of course, to the cartooned head of a man whose turban is drawn to resemble a bomb. I gather from reading some people's blogs that yet again some ignorant insensitive oaf who purports to be human has reprinted these cartoons again and so once again the image is being reproduced on blogs as a representation of "free speech" - one person going as far as to reproduce the image six or eight times. I have removed myself from a group that person owns.

The message seems to be, "lighten up Muslims, we find it funny so you should", an attitude reminiscent of nasty cartoons or pornography from the past that degraded women; remember when women objected and they too were told "lighten up ya tight ass bitches, are ya frigid or something". It seems that some people know no boundaries, that they think they can exploit and walk all over and trample through other peoples' spaces and that this is even their right to do so, and have you noticed how they always seem to pick on the most vulnerable while using the language of the moral right, "Hey ya'all, we got free speech, ya know"!

Wake up fools. Free speech was always about being able to criticise governments without the risk of being executed, free speech was about being able to discuss ideas, free speech is intended to enable progress. It was never intended as a right to put down or to grind other human beings faces into the dirt with your great clumping heels. Moreover the concept of "free speech" is a concept expected to be tempered with using responsibility, an opportunity to weigh your words and think first before you speak, to think about whether what you might have to say would be unreasonably hurtful to another or whether your verbal diarrhea may in fact inflame an already bad situation.

To print and then reprint those cartoons is not "free speech", it is in fact "hate speech" and yet more bigotry trying to disguise itself as free speech.

We are still at the beginning of a new century. All of us in this world face enormous problems together and now more than ever we need to learn not to manufacture issues to further divide ourselves but rather to learn how we can work together. And we need to do it sooner rather than later.