April 27, 2012
Those of you who follow the news and international events will recognize the name.  It pops up at least every six months in relation to some massacre of civilians or another… occupyallstreets: The 15 Deadliest Corporations: #15 Dyncorp This privatized military company is often hired by the U.S. government to protect American interests overseas — and so the government can claim no responsibility for Dyncorp’s actions.  Dyncorp is best known for its brutality in impoverished countries, for trafficking in child sex slaves, for slaughtering civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for training rebels in Haiti. Among some stiff competition, mercenary Dyncorp may be the deadliest and most evil corporation in the United States. Source

Those of you who follow the news and international events will recognize the name.  It pops up at least every six months in relation to some massacre of civilians or another…

occupyallstreets:

The 15 Deadliest Corporations: #15 Dyncorp

This privatized military company is often hired by the U.S. government to protect American interests overseas — and so the government can claim no responsibility for Dyncorp’s actions. 

Dyncorp is best known for its brutality in impoverished countries, for trafficking in child sex slaves, for slaughtering civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for training rebels in Haiti. Among some stiff competition, mercenary Dyncorp may be the deadliest and most evil corporation in the United States.

Source

1:01pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZiWeSyKQSQGV
(Notes: 49)
  
Filed under: Dyncorp united States Capitalism Imperialism Military State Human Rights Abuse 
April 20, 2012
While obviously this could be an issue here as well, I’d pitch issues like this as a HUGE part of why New Yorkers should eat locally from one of the dosens of local greenmarkets in the city.  These practices are, at the very least, MUCH LESS widespread in local agriculture than elsewhere.occupyallstreets: Whistleblowing Wednesday: Children As Young As Six Harvest 25 Percent of U.S. Crops Knowing the farmer who grows your food has become an important tenet of the modern food movement, but precious little attention is paid to the people who actually pick the crops or “process” the chickens or fillet the fish. U Roberto Romano’s poignant film, The Harvest/La Cosecha (2011), being screened across the country for Farmworker Awareness Week (March 24-29), informs us that nearly 500,000 children as young as six harvest up to 25 percent of all crops in the United States. What’s illegal in most countries is permitted here. Child migrant labor has been documented in the 48 contiguous states. Seasonal work originates in the southernmost states in late winter where it is warm and migrates north as the weather changes. Every few weeks as families move, children leave school and friends behind. If you’ve had onions (Texas), cucumbers (Ohio or Michigan), peppers (Tennessee), grapes (California), mushrooms (Pennsylvania), beets (Minnesota), or cherries (Washington), you’ve probably eaten food harvested by children. This isn’t a slavery issue, or an immigration issue per se. What’s remarkable is that most of the migrant child farmworkers are American citizens trying to help their families. This is a poverty issue and it gets to the heart of what we, as consumers, see as the “right price” to pay for food. Children earn about $1,000 per year for working an average of 30 hours a week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. When you consider that the average annual pay for a migrant family of four is $12,500-$14,500, it’s apparent why some families feel they have no choice but to bring their children into the fields with them. Half of these kids will not graduate from high school because they’re always moving around, perpetuating the cycle of poverty that caused them to be day laborers in the first place. Read More

While obviously this could be an issue here as well, I’d pitch issues like this as a HUGE part of why New Yorkers should eat locally from one of the dosens of local greenmarkets in the city.  These practices are, at the very least, MUCH LESS widespread in local agriculture than elsewhere.

occupyallstreets:

Whistleblowing Wednesday: Children As Young As Six Harvest 25 Percent of U.S. Crops

Knowing the farmer who grows your food has become an important tenet of the modern food movement, but precious little attention is paid to the people who actually pick the crops or “process” the chickens or fillet the fish. U Roberto Romano’s poignant film, The Harvest/La Cosecha (2011), being screened across the country for Farmworker Awareness Week (March 24-29), informs us that nearly 500,000 children as young as six harvest up to 25 percent of all crops in the United States.

What’s illegal in most countries is permitted here. Child migrant labor has been documented in the 48 contiguous states. Seasonal work originates in the southernmost states in late winter where it is warm and migrates north as the weather changes. Every few weeks as families move, children leave school and friends behind. If you’ve had onions (Texas), cucumbers (Ohio or Michigan), peppers (Tennessee), grapes (California), mushrooms (Pennsylvania), beets (Minnesota), or cherries (Washington), you’ve probably eaten food harvested by children.

This isn’t a slavery issue, or an immigration issue per se. What’s remarkable is that most of the migrant child farmworkers are American citizens trying to help their families. This is a poverty issue and it gets to the heart of what we, as consumers, see as the “right price” to pay for food.

Children earn about $1,000 per year for working an average of 30 hours a week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. When you consider that the average annual pay for a migrant family of four is $12,500-$14,500, it’s apparent why some families feel they have no choice but to bring their children into the fields with them. Half of these kids will not graduate from high school because they’re always moving around, perpetuating the cycle of poverty that caused them to be day laborers in the first place.

Read More

12:53pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZiWeSyJz_NZ4
(Notes: 2,674)
  
Filed under: Human RIghts Child Labor United States of America Labour Exploitation Agriculture 
April 13, 2012
occupyallstreets: theatlantic: Living Cadavers: How Bangladesh’s Poor Are Tricked Into Selling Their Organs After they agree to donate, sellers are tissue tested, and if there is a match, the broker will offer the seller around $1,150. But in most cases, the sellers do not receive anywhere near that amount. The organ brokers tack on extra fees for travel and other logistics, and the sellers make sometimes only half the initial amount — and even then only after the surgery is completed. The brokers forge fake passports and legal documents to make it appear plausible that the seller is donating to a blood relative. In one case, Michigan State anthropologist Monir Moniruzzaman found a 38-year-old Hindu seller who had to get circumcised to donate to a Muslim recipient. The circumcision was done crudely and only with local anesthesia. “When I was coming back home, the anesthesia stopped working,” he told the anthropologist, “and I felt like it was a nightmare.” Most of the sellers Moniruzzaman spoke to were taken to India for the surgery, and upon arrival they had their passports confiscated so they could not leave. “One case I found [was] a 23-year-old college student,” he says. “He went to India and realized that he was making a mistake. So he wanted to come back without giving his kidney. The broker hired two thugs — Indian thugs — and they basically beat him and forced him to go to the operation room.” This man, like all the other sellers, woke up from surgery with a 20-inch long scar around his torso — a constant reminder that he sold part of his body for a few hundred dollars. “We are living cadavers,” another told Moniruzzaman. “By selling our kidneys, our bodies are lighter but our chests are heavier than ever.” Read more. [Image: Monir Moniruzzaman] This is sick, the people of Bangladesh have been exploited for too long. The protests last week was massive (100,000 protested in Dhaka). Hopefully they’ll keep it up.

occupyallstreets:

theatlantic:

Living Cadavers: How Bangladesh’s Poor Are Tricked Into Selling Their Organs

After they agree to donate, sellers are tissue tested, and if there is a match, the broker will offer the seller around $1,150. But in most cases, the sellers do not receive anywhere near that amount. The organ brokers tack on extra fees for travel and other logistics, and the sellers make sometimes only half the initial amount — and even then only after the surgery is completed.

The brokers forge fake passports and legal documents to make it appear plausible that the seller is donating to a blood relative. In one case, Michigan State anthropologist Monir Moniruzzaman found a 38-year-old Hindu seller who had to get circumcised to donate to a Muslim recipient. The circumcision was done crudely and only with local anesthesia. “When I was coming back home, the anesthesia stopped working,” he told the anthropologist, “and I felt like it was a nightmare.”

Most of the sellers Moniruzzaman spoke to were taken to India for the surgery, and upon arrival they had their passports confiscated so they could not leave. “One case I found [was] a 23-year-old college student,” he says. “He went to India and realized that he was making a mistake. So he wanted to come back without giving his kidney. The broker hired two thugs — Indian thugs — and they basically beat him and forced him to go to the operation room.”

This man, like all the other sellers, woke up from surgery with a 20-inch long scar around his torso — a constant reminder that he sold part of his body for a few hundred dollars. “We are living cadavers,” another told Moniruzzaman. “By selling our kidneys, our bodies are lighter but our chests are heavier than ever.”

Read more. [Image: Monir Moniruzzaman]

This is sick, the people of Bangladesh have been exploited for too long. The protests last week was massive (100,000 protested in Dhaka). Hopefully they’ll keep it up.

12:52pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZiWeSyJbUNPY
(Notes: 248)
  
Filed under: Human Rights Equality Capitalism Exploitation Bangladesh India Indian Subcontinent South Asia Wanderlust 
April 1, 2012
mothernaturenetwork: The tragic irony of the island nations that are struggling against encroaching seas is that most of them don’t have much of a carbon footprint. Many residents live without cars or electricity and subsist on food they catch or grow themselves. In fact, countries at the greatest risk from rising seas, such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives, account for less than 0.1 percent of the total output of carbon dioxide emissions. (Combined, the U.S. and China account for nearly half.) Still, some of these nations are leading the world in reducing carbon emissions. How nations are coping with rising seas

mothernaturenetwork:

The tragic irony of the island nations that are struggling against encroaching seas is that most of them don’t have much of a carbon footprint. Many residents live without cars or electricity and subsist on food they catch or grow themselves. In fact, countries at the greatest risk from rising seas, such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives, account for less than 0.1 percent of the total output of carbon dioxide emissions. (Combined, the U.S. and China account for nearly half.) Still, some of these nations are leading the world in reducing carbon emissions.
How nations are coping with rising seas

(via occupyallstreets)

6:00pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZiWeSyIwf6ir
(Notes: 151)
  
Filed under: Green Sustainable Environment Climate Change Equity Equality Human Rights 
March 30, 2012
"

An audit of Apple’s Chinese factories details “serious and pressing” concerns over excessive working hours, unpaid overtime, health and safety failings, and management interference in trade unions.

In the most detailed public investigation yet into conditions at Foxconn factories in China, which assemble millions of iPhones and iPads each year, the independent Fair Labor Association found that more than half of employees had worked 11 days or more without rest.

More than 43% of workers reported experiencing or witnessing an accident at the three plants audited.

Health and safety breaches found by auditors and published on Thursday included blocked exits, lack of or faulty personal protective equipment and missing permits, which the FLA said was remedied when discovered.

Despite several suicides, which raised the alarm two years ago, and an explosion that killed three workers last year, Foxconn still failed to consult workers on safety, with the committees “failing to monitor conditions in a robust manner”, the report found.

The management was found to be nominating candidates for election to worker committees, with the result that “committees are composed not by those who need representation, but instead are dominated by management representatives”. This left workers feeling “alienated” and lacking confidence in safety procedures.

"

— http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/30/apple-factories-china-foxconn-audit

1:24am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZiWeSyInbQEV
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Apple FoxConn Human Rights China Capitalism Exploitation 
March 29, 2012
occupyallstreets: Whistleblowing Wednesday: Human Rights Group Exposes Secret CIA Torture Prisons Human rights campaigners welcomed on Wednesday a report that prosecutors had charged the former head of Poland’s intelligence service for helping set up CIA prisons for al Qaeda suspects in the country at the height of the U.S.-led “war on terror.” Daily Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish newspaper, said on Tuesday that Zbigniew Siemiatkowski was charged as part of a classified investigation into the matter launched in 2008. At least two prisoners of the U.S. military jail in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, have said they had been held by U.S. agents in Poland. Rights groups say detainees were kept there without court orders and often tortured. “Poland deserves credit for this step, as the first European state to begin to deal with CIA torture on its own soil,” London-based human rights group Reprieve said and urged Romania and Lithuania to follow Poland’s lead. Poland’s smaller neighbor, Lithuania, was the first country in Europe to acknowledge it had worked with CIA in establishing two secret detention facilities in 2002-2006. “Every state that has signed the (United Nations’) Convention Against Torture has an obligation not just to prevent torture but to hold accountable officials who authorize or facilitate it,” said Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union. Poland has traditionally been one of the staunchest U.S. allies in Europe and has taken part in missions both in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Polish constitution bans torture and imprisonment without court order. Politicians who authorize such activity could be tried in regular courts as well as the State Tribunal, a special court set up to try senior state officials. Read More

occupyallstreets:

Whistleblowing Wednesday: Human Rights Group Exposes Secret CIA Torture Prisons

Human rights campaigners welcomed on Wednesday a report that prosecutors had charged the former head of Poland’s intelligence service for helping set up CIA prisons for al Qaeda suspects in the country at the height of the U.S.-led “war on terror.”

Daily Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish newspaper, said on Tuesday that Zbigniew Siemiatkowski was charged as part of a classified investigation into the matter launched in 2008.

At least two prisoners of the U.S. military jail in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, have said they had been held by U.S. agents in Poland.

Rights groups say detainees were kept there without court orders and often tortured.

“Poland deserves credit for this step, as the first European state to begin to deal with CIA torture on its own soil,” London-based human rights group Reprieve said and urged Romania and Lithuania to follow Poland’s lead.

Poland’s smaller neighbor, Lithuania, was the first country in Europe to acknowledge it had worked with CIA in establishing two secret detention facilities in 2002-2006.

“Every state that has signed the (United Nations’) Convention Against Torture has an obligation not just to prevent torture but to hold accountable officials who authorize or facilitate it,” said Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Poland has traditionally been one of the staunchest U.S. allies in Europe and has taken part in missions both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Polish constitution bans torture and imprisonment without court order. Politicians who authorize such activity could be tried in regular courts as well as the State Tribunal, a special court set up to try senior state officials.

Read More

1:00pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZiWeSyIlJhkU
(Notes: 516)
  
Filed under: Human RIghts Abuse Imperialism Torture Terror United States of America Poland CIA Eastern Europe 
March 22, 2012
Algerian dissident silenced by France

This is outrageous.  France’s imperialist attitudes will never stop…

Mourad Dhina, a leading democracy and rights activist has been detained at request of Algeria, in run-up to elections.

1:00pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZiWeSyION3hA
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Algeria North Africa Arab World Democracy Human RIghts Abuse France French Government Imperialism 
March 18, 2012
sexdrugsandhonorroll: pozmagazine: Medical Marijuana and HIV Meds Could Put a Defendant in Jail AIDS activists who were arrested during a peaceful protest in Washington, DC, are speaking out against the U.S. Attorney’s new policy of drug-testing people charged with nonviolent crimes such as civil disobedience. Specifically, the attorney allows defendants to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement, meaning the charges will be dropped once they meet the conditions of the agreement—such as performing 32 hours of community service in DC and having three consecutive negative drug tests. The government does not take into consideration whether defendants have a prescription for medical marijuana or whether they take medications that may result in a false positive, as some HIV meds might do. Because of the drug testing requirement, at least two AIDS activists now face possible jail time and a criminal record for their nonviolent protest. They are asking the U.S. Attorney to drop the charges.  Click here for more. Protest this unfair treatment and urge DC Attorney Ron Machen to drop the charges! HIV+ activists must not be silenced with discriminatory arrest practices. Click here for a link to the protest: https://www.change.org/petitions/us-attorney-dont-unfairly-prosecute-aids-activists

sexdrugsandhonorroll:

pozmagazine:

Medical Marijuana and HIV Meds Could Put a Defendant in Jail

AIDS activists who were arrested during a peaceful protest in Washington, DC, are speaking out against the U.S. Attorney’s new policy of drug-testing people charged with nonviolent crimes such as civil disobedience. Specifically, the attorney allows defendants to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement, meaning the charges will be dropped once they meet the conditions of the agreement—such as performing 32 hours of community service in DC and having three consecutive negative drug tests. The government does not take into consideration whether defendants have a prescription for medical marijuana or whether they take medications that may result in a false positive, as some HIV meds might do. Because of the drug testing requirement, at least two AIDS activists now face possible jail time and a criminal record for their nonviolent protest. They are asking the U.S. Attorney to drop the charges.  Click here for more.

Protest this unfair treatment and urge DC Attorney Ron Machen to drop the charges! HIV+ activists must not be silenced with discriminatory arrest practices. Click here for a link to the protest: https://www.change.org/petitions/us-attorney-dont-unfairly-prosecute-aids-activists

(via occupyallstreets)

3:30pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZiWeSyIByTj4
(Notes: 143)
  
Filed under: hiv aids human rights government repression united states of america 
March 13, 2012
Bradley Manning's treatment was cruel and inhuman, UN torture chief rules

3:31pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZiWeSyHx9u6C
Filed under: Bradley Manning United States of America Imperialism Human Rights Abuse Military Police State Hostility 
March 7, 2012
"Anyone uncertain about the hypocrisy of Washington’s claimed human rights concerns (regarding Syria), as well as its willingness to embrace the Assad regime in the wake of 9/11, need only look to the case of Maher Arar. A Canadian engineer arrested at JFK airport, Arar was accused of “links to terrorism” and subjected to extraordinary rendition by US security agencies that sent him to Syria for almost a full year of interrogation and torture. A two-year Canadian investigation found him innocent of any terror links, and paid him $10 million in compensation for Canada’s role; but for the US, Arar remains a suspect prohibited from entering the country.)"

— http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/201221510012473174.html

3:30pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZiWeSyHdK7kZ
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Assad Syria United States Imperialism Hypocrisy Capitalism Obama Rendition Human Rights Politics 
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