The Great Internship Scam: Free Labour Dressed Up In The Fancy Cloak Of Reciprocity

As a recent university graduate and new member of Ireland’s massive 14% + unemployed club, I have been eagerly scouring the internet looking for work. Of course this task was never going to be easy with over 400,000 others on the dole queues, but the task is not being made any easier by the government’s promotion of free labour for employers through the normalisation of internship schemes. A cursory glance over any jobs website with show that many companies are no longer hiring for real jobs and it is only internships on offer. I mean one can't blame the companies can they? If you run a for-profit business and there is free labour on offer, you would be mad not to take advantage of it.

A Comparison Between the Great Depression and the Global Crisis

The 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent ‘great depression’ was the biggest economic crisis that the world has experienced. The depth and length of the crisis and the suffering that it caused is legendary. Therefore when the global financial crisis struck in 2007, many rushed to proclaim that we were about to experience another depression on a similar scale, or at least what some have termed a ‘great recession’. This paper will compare and contrast the two economic crises to analyse the key similarities and differences between the two. To do this, the paper will firstly provide an outline of the conditions that led to the 1929 crash in the economy. Moving on from here the paper will then look at the policy responses that were implemented to tackle the crisis before analysing the conditions that precipitated the 2007 financial crisis and the policy responses, to draw out the similarities and differences of each of the crises, and to ascertain were any lessons learned during the current global crisis from the policies of the great depression era. Finally the  paper will conclude with a discussion of the main points raised by the analysis of both crises and a look at the future prospects for recovery.

Emigrate Or Flip Burgers!

“Emigrate or work in a fast food outlet.” That is the extraordinary threat made to graduate nurses by Minister for Health, Dr James Reilly. It is aimed at those who do not wish to accept the slave wages on offer under the new graduate nurse recruitment scheme. The scheme, which intends to recruit 1000 nursing graduates on 80% of the standard minimum pay, has been widely condemned by opposition politicians and nursing unions.

The Different Political Paths Of The 'Two Koreas'

This paper will begin with a brief overview of the breakup of Korea and the ensuing war before explaining the two different political systems that emerged in each state. The paper will then undertake a comparative discussion of the different regime types in North and South Korea since 1953 to provide some context to the political developments that have occurred in each state since then. Following on from this the paper will assess the literature on each state before going on to apply different regime typology theory to both cases to assess what Korean style dictatorship and democracy have meant for the citizens of North and South Korea respectively. Finally the paper will conclude with a summary of its findings and some recommendations for future policy.

Do Left Or Right Governments In Latin America Achieve Better Results For Their Citizens?

To discover if ‘left’ or ‘right’ governments achieve better results for their citizens, this article will analyse a range of data on two left-leaning governments, Venezuela and Brazil,  and two right-leaning governments, Colombia and Mexico, focussing on the timeframe from 2002 to 2010. The analysis of these governments will centre on their performance in a number of social and economic indices and will include data on gross domestic product (GDP), unemployment and inflation as well as Human Development Index (HDI) values, life expectancy, child mortality, health and education spending as well as homicide rates. 

The Media During The NATO Interventions In Kosovo And Libya

What were the dominant themes within media narratives during the UN sanctioned NATO intervention in Libya and the non-UN sanctioned NATO intervention in Kosovo? 

An analysis of print media discourses.

The recent NATO intervention into Libya had many similarities and some key differences to the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999.  Both interventions were justified by NATO and its allies and also in the Western media as ‘humanitarian’, as necessary to prevent a ‘genocide’ or ‘massacre’ from occurring and to remove an undemocratic dictator from power. Both interventions involved an aerial bombardment on the enemy, and the support of a non-state actor in an internal conflict. The differences lay in the fact that the NATO intervention into Libya had UN Security Council sanction, whilst the intervention into Kosovo had not received the same sanction. Since the Kosovo intervention, the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) had come into being, in many ways as the direct result of the controversy of NATO’s illegal intervention into Kosovo. R2P as a growing international norm had now legitimised an intervention into Libya. 

The Truth About Tech

This is a very interesting graphic that was sent to us at We Only Want The Earth recently (Thanks Jen).  The graphic takes a closer look at the labour conditions behind our everyday tech gadgets.

Take a look and feel free to comment and tell us what you think!