Some activists are years or decades ahead of their time.
Arundhati Roy is one of these visionaries.
Her words were mocked years ago.
Now she wins!
Click here for a documentary called We by Arundhati Roy
Cheers on your pleb weekend activities….
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFXMQ7Ot-k 450 300] Comments »Beth Wilkinson was the prosecutor for the Oklahoma City Bombing and she represents the seriousness of the FTC to take Google to court….
Comments »The definition of insanity and greed can be found on K street. The pesticide industry is lobbying to change America’s 130 year old clean water act via a sneaky farm bill.
Comments »Big banks are up to their old tricks….and we the tax payer, unfortunately, helped it to happen by giving money without demands or stipulations. It reminds me of no bid contracts and the wild west mentality of the Iraq & Afghan wars.
Comments »S&P to assess the effect of Spain’s two notch sovereign downgrade to BBB+ on Spanish issuers/banks
Comments »“(NaturalNews) An independent scientific panel has determined that perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C-8, a commercial substance produced by chemical giant DuPont, causes kidney and testicular cancer in humans. And because of how pervasive this chemical is — more than 99 percent of Americans have PFOA in their blood — the consumer advocacy organizationEnvironmental Working Group(EWG) is calling for the government to take action and stop ignoring the problem.
For more than 50 years, DuPont has been producing PFOAs for use in non-stick cookware, grease-resistant food packaging and stain-resistant furniture, carpeting and clothing. But this pervasive chemical continues to be exposed as a deadly toxin that can cause very serious health problems, especially since it is now also being found in drinking water supplies nationwide.
In 2009, individuals living near DuPont factories where PFOA was being produced filed a class action lawsuit against the company for poisoning their water. After ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, a U.S. District Court judge ordered that DuPont establish a scientific assessment panel to appraise the environmental and human health damage caused by PFOA exposure….”
Comments »The SEC and the justice department have their work cut out for them as they plan to investigate dozens of U.S. companies….
Comments »[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDzlZCCNgrU 450 300]
“Shrimp has been hovering near the bottom of the list of things I will eat for a while. Unless you make a point to get it wild, chances are very good it has been raised in a crowded pond and treated with loads of antibiotics. Factor in itsmammoth carbon footprint, and the fact that many of the developing world’s mangroves have been displaced in recent years to make room for shrimp farms, and my appetite for these crustaceans all but disappears.
Now we can add labor abuse to shrimp’s laundry list of problems.
A group of shrimp workers has been protesting dismal conditions in a Thai factory for weeks. The factory, Phatthana Seafood, is one of several brands under a corporate umbrella called PTN Group, and is distributed by Rubicon, a major supplier to Walmart here in the U.S.
Not only is Phatthana being accused of skimping on the pay they’ve promised to workers (and keeping a percentage of it against the debt workers incur to travel to the factory — a practice described in the human rights community as “debt bondage”), but they’ve also reportedly been keeping the workers’ passports and releasing them only for a (steep) fee.
Sok Sorng traveled from Cambodia to Thailand to work in a large, industrial seafood factory and is now regretting the choice to leave home. According to the Bangkok Post, the 20-year-old was told he “would have the job for two years and would receive living arrangements and a food allowance.” But when he arrived, he found that fees for both living expenses and passports not mentioned in the original contracts had been deducted from workers’ salaries. The Thai paper also reports:
He found he had to work 26 days a month. He got his salary every two weeks, but half was withheld to ensure he did not run away. “Most of the workers wanted to go home, but we will be in debt from preparing to travel and an unknown amount we are told to pay to get passports and transportation,” he said.
All this might explain why Sorng has become a spokesperson for the protest. And while the Asian news outlets covering the story don’t pretend the seafood processor is using practices unheard of for Thailand, the mere fact that so much of the product is being distributed globally — and to Walmart, no less — has helped raise the profile of the protests.
To put this in context, shrimp is America’s top-selling seafood. Walmart, meanwhile, is our biggest grocery retailer. Put the two together and you can picture how the massive global stream of frozen, cooked shrimp pours into American households. (This also explains how the shellfish went from being a rare, expensive delicacy to a $1.99 fast-food menu add-on.) There are still a few sources of domestic shrimp in the U.S. (the Gulf of Mexico being one of the largest), but around 90 percent of the shrimp we eat comes from abroad, and most of that comes from Thailand, Vietnam, and South America. (China is also a large producer, but they eat much of what they produce.)
In other words, this is not an obscure story about one of those less important foods. And if the recent media spotlight on Foxconn Technology and its relationship with Apple have taught the American public anything, it’s that most things made for the U.S. travel en masse a convoluted path from one closed-door operation to another. And it’s never easy to access the truth about the way workers are treated behind those doors. The foreign factories producing our food are no different.
Organizers for Making Change at Walmart — a project of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union — have been helping the shrimp workers at Phatthana Seafood raise their profile and put pressure on the multinational retailer. The group recently senta letter to Walmart [PDF] detailing the abuses in the factory (as well as a second factory in Thailand that ships over 70 percent of its canned pineapple product to Walmart).
In their letter, the American labor union references Walmart’sstandards for suppliers, which states that “all labor must be voluntary” and “workers must be allowed to maintain control over their identity documents.” The union’s letter reads:
As you know, the confiscation of documents is a violation of Thai law as well as Walmart’s Standards for Suppliers. Receiving half the hours and pay promised to them and without promised lodging and transportation, many of the workers face malnutrition because they are unable to even afford enough to eat.
Walmart, meanwhile, has spent the week promoting the company’sprogress on its sustainability milestones (which they presented to the public in a glitzy meeting that was webcast around the world). The company’s goals, as it describes them, are: “To be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain people and the environment.”
Meanwhile, around 300 of the migrant workers at the shrimp factory must rely on a donated rations from an NGO because they can’t currently afford to eat. As organizer Sok Sorng told The Phnom Penh Post: “They need food so much because [they have received] no money from work.”
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Read here:
With two of Europe’s biggest economies (UK and Spain) sliding back into recession in the past two days, there’s a growing concern that the region’s economic problems will spread far beyond its own borders. Add in the fact that there’s an uptick in nationalist rhetoric from places like France and the Netherlands (as well as the likelihood that street protests will resume as we hit May Day next week), and the European saga demands our attention and respect all over again.
As much as we can count on our economic leader (Bernanke, not Obama) to take action sooner rather than later, data points, like durable goods, had their sharpest drop in 3 years, making the waiting that much more uncomfortable.
“So much of economics is sentiment,” says Jeff Macke, in the attached video. “People just don’t spend when they feel bad.”
And neither do companies, I might add, a response that may have already started to materialize, given the shocking drop in durable goods.
The tricky question is, when does all of this become too big to ignore? And if we do, indeed, start paying closer attention to Europe’s descent, how much of an impact will it have on the global economy, as well as our own and China’s?
So far, stocks in the U.S. and Europe appear to be immune to such worries and are galloping higher on the heels of strong results from Apple (AAPL) and Boeing (BA). In reality, a sizable portion of the pop is predicated on the belief that bad economic news will garner more prompt service from the Stimulator in Chief, Ben Bernanke.
Yet amidst this relative domestic bliss and short-term appetite for stocks and risk-taking, the fact cannot be ignored that the S&P 500 is on track to post its first losing month of the year—it’s biggest dip since September—and that the mighty Tech Sector (XLK) is actually leading the way down.
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Comments »“If you’re concerned with how some factory farms might be handling their livestock, two US states have made it illegal to conduct undercover investigations — and now animal rights activists and whistleblowers alike have a bone to pick with lawmakers.
Only four months into 2012, Utah and Idaho have passed legislation that outlaws going undercover to investigate conditions and conduct inside the confines of factory farms — and now authorities in Missouri are coming close to approving a similar “Ag-gag” act. If passed before the end of April, the Show Me State will become the third state in only two months to tell investigative journalists and whistleblowers alike to forego following leads concerning agricultural operations or else face the consequences.
Last month Iowa approved House File 589, a legislation advertised as outlawing “agricultural production facility fraud.” Once Governor Terry E. Branstad signed the act into law in early March, police and prosecutors in Iowa were allowed the power to bring criminal charges against anyone who enters farming facilities by means of deception. The act was touted as a way of keeping agriculturists within the state from having outsiders infiltrate harm to their businesses, however, opponents of the law say that farmers were upset over how video footage and other information captured from their facilities were introducing information to the public that would cut profits by way of revealing the real conditions that livestock are subjected to.
Mercy for Animals, an advocacy group, is opposed to House File 589 on grounds that it makes anyone who “expose cruelty to animals, corporate corruption, dangerous working conditions, environmental violation, or food safety concerns at factory farms” a criminal in the eyes of the state. The American Veterinary Medical Association explains in their own report that in the last three years, Mercy for Animals has released footage that shows abuse within Iowa farming facilities, which means that the state can now prosecute journalists that obtain that footage by surreptitious means with the alleged intent of harming business.
Those trying to overturn these new Ag-gag laws say they are only trying to prevent the harming of animals. State leaders seeking approval of an Ag-gag act in Missouri insist they are fighting a politically-motivated agenda waged by activists that are only trying to disrupt the business.
“Unfortunately we live in a society where these activists are becoming more and more of a problem to agriculture,”Missouri State Rep. Casey Guernsey, R-Bethany, explains to the News-Leader while supporting the proposed measure in his state. “We cannot afford to allow these groups to target our industry of agriculture in Missouri like they have in Iowa.”
Comments »The question is, on what is Soros betting to make him rich-er once he achieves his much sought-after Euro collapse? Answer that, and you too might be rich-er.
Comments »‘WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — On July 1, the interest rates on student loans subsidized by Uncle Sam will double to 6.8%.
The upshot? Students taking out loans for the next school year will have to dig deeper in their pockets to pay them off. Unless Congress steps in to stop the increase from going forward.
The issue has become a political talking point. President Obama, who called for congressional action in his State of the Union speech in January, is using the issue to stump for votes.
His Republican rival Mitt Romney says he, too, believes Congress should step in.
On Tuesday, Senate leaders said they will take up a bill within days to extend the lowered interest rates. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said Republicans are willing to consider the measure as long as there is a way to pay for the extension….”
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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c1sadZCO60 450 300]
Comments »“Oh the irony! As our right to a fair trial, our right to live without possibly being assassinated by an out of control government, and our last shreds of privacy (if we indeed have any privacy in America today, which is highly debatable when one does the research) could be thrown out the window if over 3,000,000 corporations have their way, the glorious Obama administration is worried about the rights of those abroad.
Now, I don’t mean to be overly nationalistic, but shouldn’t we be a bit more concerned about the massive surveillance state being created in the United States?
With the National Security Agency (NSA) building a ludicrously massive data center the likes of which the world has never seen, the largest digital spying campaign in history to begin on July 12 thanks to our wonderful internet service providers and troubling technological developments like chips allowing mobile phones to see through walls and others which allow collection of location data with unprecedented precision, I think it is quite clear that the Obama administration (if they actually served us, which they clearly do not) should be focusing on the disturbing trends here at home.
Instead of working for the American people, our government is now setting their sights on the Syrian and Iranian governments for further destabilization and sanctions.
Obama outlined his new policies on April 23 during a lengthy 25-minute speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
During this address he claimed that these policies would help the U.S. government respond to the threat of genocide around the globe in a more effective manner.
“National sovereignty is never a license to slaughter your people,” Obama said, which was already self-evident and painfully obvious. Even the staunchest proponents of national sovereignty (myself included) do not think that it is somehow a free license to commit genocide. Such a notion is patently absurd.
Indeed, if the U.S. government started using those hundreds of millions of rounds they recently acquired in a genocidal attack on the American people, I would hope that someone would step in. Although it is likely the case that in such a situation the government would rapidly become rabidly pro-sovereignty in an attempt to defend themselves.
However, does this mean we should intervene military every time someone is allegedly killed by a government across the entire earth? No, and our government clearly has no interest in doing so as they only step in when it is beneficial to them in one way or another.
During his speech, Obama also announced the formal creation of the “Atrocities Prevention Board,” which has a name fashioned in what has become the typical Orwellian fashion of the U.S. government (think the wholly un-patriotic USA PATRIOT Act and the “war on terror” which creates more terrorism than it fights).”
Comments »The ocean is vast and seemingly limitless when it comes to our dietary needs; but their may be a tipping point coming soon due to our gross negligence.
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