| The State Department's MEXICO Human Rights Controversy; SWEAT SHOPS; First Lady Obama to Visit Mexico; US Customs: Mexican Cartels Corrupt Border Agents & Pelea Por Guerrero Deja 28 Muertos: El Universal |
| Saturday, 13 March 2010 09:29 |
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SecurityCornerMexico.com Recommended READING: United States Department of State 2009 Human Rights Report: Mexico Also, USA: Federal Scandals, Local Scandals and (political) Sex Scandals by Wikipedia, THE JOSE ESPARZA CASE, SWEATSHOPS USA & The American Way of Life
Permanent Agression: War on the Horizon in Latin America
March 12, 2010, by Eva Golinger
In January, U.S. Army officials announced four separate court-martial charges against Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother who missed her deployment to Afghanistan in early November 2009 when her childcare plans for her infant son, Kamani, fell through at the last minute. Hutchinson was jailed and threatened with a court-martial if she did not agree to deploy to Afghanistan. Kamani was placed into a county foster care system. Hutchinson, in accordance with the family care plan of the U.S. Army, had been allowed to fly to Oakland, California to leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes. However, after a week, Hughes realized she couldn’t care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister. She told Hutchinson and her commander, Captain Gassant and the Army granted a Hutchinson an extension so that she could find someone else to care for Kamani. In the meantime, the boy came back to Georgia to be with his mother. More, HERE. America's Child Soldiers: US Military Recruiting Children to Serve in the Armed Forces
by Sherwood Ross
 In violation of its pledge to the United Nations not to recruit children into the military, the Pentagon “regularly target(s) children under 17,” the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) says. The Pentagon “heavily recruits on high school campuses, targeting students for recruitment as early as possible and generally without limits on the age of students they contact,” the ACLU states in a 46-page report titled “Soldiers of Misfortune.” This is in violation of the U.S. Senate's 2002 ratification of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. More, HERE. Also,
Funding Sweatshops Globally by Stephen Lendman
 In July 2008, SweatFree Communities (SFC) released a report titled, "Subsidizing Sweatshops: How Our Tax Dollars Fund the Race to the Bottom, and What Cities and States Can Do" in which it studied 12 factories in nine countries that produce employee uniforms for nine major companies.
Widespread human and labor rights violations were revealed, including child labor; illegal below-poverty wages; few or no benefits; forced or unpaid overtime; hazardous working conditions; verbal, physical, and sexual abuses; forced pregnancy testing to be hired and while employed; excessive long working hours causing physical ailments, stress, and harm; denial of free expression, association, and collective bargaining rights; and elaborate schemes to commit fraud and deceive corporate auditors. In April 2009, Subsidizing Sweatshops II followed to provide more evidence of a global problem. It tracked developments in four factories from the first report and four new ones in five countries on three continents producing uniforms for nine major firms in China, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and America. More, HERE.
Obama wants to reshape No Child Left Behind law Michelle Obama to visit Mexico on first solo trip China blames U.S. for tensions: Comments underscore China's growing self-confidence after coping with financial crisis Israeli PM voices regret The world's second-largest defense contractor, BAE Systems, agreed on Friday to pay nearly $450 million in penalties to settle U.S. and British charges related to a long-running bribery scandal.
The British company had been accused of making payments, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, to foreign authorities to illegally win defense contracts in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Hungary. The company agreed to pay $400 million in fines and to plead guilty to one count of conspiring to make deceptive statements -- about whether the firm had created an anti-corruption program -- to the U.S. government. The charge was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
More, HERE.
Guatemala arrests show drug corruption to the core US questions Jamaica's reliability in drug fight US Customs: Mexican cartels corrupt border agents
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, The Associated Press, March 11, 2010
McALLEN, Texas -- Mexican drug cartels are infiltrating federal law enforcement agencies along the southwest border and those charged with weeding them out say they don't have the money to catch all the corrupt agents, homeland security officials told a U.S. Senate panel Thursday.
James Tomsheck, assistant commissioner with U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Internal Affairs, told a Senate homeland security subcommittee in Washington that only about one in 10 of the new hires for agency jobs are given polygraph tests, and of those, 60 percent are deemed unsuitable for employment.
Salesman in chief : President Obama talks up U.S. exports. Is that enough? Thirteen killed in crime wave at Mexico's Acapulco Obama says he's committed to immigration overhaul New border violence erupts with Mexico cartel rift © Copyright 1996- 2010 The Washington Post Company
 Mexican military copter over U.S. neighborhood By Lynn Brezosky and Gary Martin - Express-News March 12, 2010 BROWNSVILLE — The Zapata County sheriff Thursday was questioning why a Mexican military helicopter was hovering over homes on the Texas side of the Rio Grande. It was one of the more jarring incidents of the fourth week of border tensions sparked by drug killings, and rumors of such killings, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said he'd reviewed photos of the chopper flown by armed personnel Tuesday over a residential area known as Falcon Heights-Falcon Village near the binational Falcon Lake, just south of the Starr-Zapata county line. He said the helicopter appeared to have the insignia of the Mexican navy. More, HERE. © 2010 San Antonio Express-News. All rights reserved.  SWEATSHOPS USA
*Haitian workers earn only 6 cents for every pair of Disney “101 Dalmatians” outfit that Disney sells for $20. Disney pays its workers in Haiti about 28 cents an hour. A woman in Salvador working in a sweatshop makes 12 cents sewing a GAP T-shirt that sells in the US for $20. (Sources: In These Times; National Labor Committee; Jobs with Justice)
*Almost half of all toys sold in the US are produced in China, Thailand, and other Asian countries. “China is the champ in the low wage sweepstakes. With minimum wages that hover around 80 cents a day, China is forcing a further decline in the already hideous working conditions in neighboring countries. Naturally, Western executives are flocking to China to do business.” (Bob Herbert, The New York Times) *In 1995, Mattel CEO John Amerman made $7 million and held an additional $23 million in stock options - more than the combined annual salary of the 11,000 Mattel workers making Barbie dolls in China. (Eyal Press, The Nation)
*There are sweatshops in the US, too. One worker at a Los Angeles garment factory making clothes for Guess was paid 40 cents for his labor on a blouse that sold in a New York department store for $58. (Source: American Teacher)
*Myth: It’s OK to pay workers in poor countries lots less than workers are paid here because living expenses are so much less. Milk: in Haiti, 75 cents; in NY, 65 cents; eggs: in Haiti, $1.50, in NY, $1.39; cereal: in Haiti, $1.90, in NY, 1.69; gas: in Haiti, $2.20, in NY, $1.26. (Source: Newsday)
*In Indonesia, the minimum wage is $2.36 per day. The Suharto dictatorship admits that in Jakarta and other urban centers it takes $4 a day to meet subsistence needs. If Nike took just 1% of its annual advertising budget ($280 million), it could raise the income of all its Indonesian workers above the poverty line. (Source: Counterpunch, Global Exchange)
*Almost all soccer balls used in the US are imported. Major soccer ball manufacturing countries: Pakistan, China, and Indonesia. Between 1985 and 1995, the soccer ball industry greatly increased production in countries where children make leather hand-stitched balls. In countries like Pakistan, children may work 12 hour days for very little pay. (Source: International Labor Rights Fund) *Nike CEO Phil Knight is the sixth richest man in the United States. He owns 100 million shares of Nike stock. His dividend income alone for the third quarter of 1996 was $80 million dollars. More than 75% of Nike's shoe production occurs in countries where it is illegal to form independent trade unions. (Source: Counterpunch, Press for Change). More HERE by Library of HALexandria.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A History of American Sweatshops, 1820-Present
by Peter Liebhold and Harry Rubenstein
1940-Present: The Resurgence of Sweatshops Sweatshop production came out of hibernation in the late 1960s. A combination of forces at home and abroad contributed to their reappearance: changes in the retail industry, a growing global economy, increased reliance on contracting, and a large pool of immigrant labor in the U.S. The focus of public, government, and media concern remains centered on problems in the apparel industry, although, as in the past, sweatshops continue to be found in a variety of industries.
Sweatshops Today In the United States, sweatshops produce garments for the domestic market, primarily items that require short delivery times. These clothes are often indistinguishable from garments produced in legal shops and can be found in stores ranging from discount houses to fashionable boutiques. Foreign sweatshops are harder to define. Widely varying standards of pay and workers' rights make it difficult to compare practices in the United States with other countries. Demand for reform has lead to many initiatives from government, unions, public interest groups and the industry itself.
More, HERE.
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| Last Updated on Sunday, 14 March 2010 23:10 |
