photo credit France24.com

(This is the first of two posts regarding the recent industrial dispute on a tea plantation in India in which 1,000 tea workers set fire to their employer’s bungalow, killing both him and his wife.)

“We all came and attacked the bungalow and set it on fire. They deserved to be killed as the planter has exploited us for a long time and tortured us for petty things.” Unidentified tea estate worker on News Live local TV.

Two days ago 1,000 tea workers (mainly women and children) in Assam state in India surrounded the bungalow where their employer, Midral Bhattacharya, and his wife were staying and set fire to it, resulting in their deaths. There has been pitiful little US coverage of this industrial dispute. What little there has been is disjointed and devoid of context. The event is portrayed as yet another (ho-hum) senseless act of violence. Whatever is the world coming to?

A few (British) corporate media outlets mention that Assam tea plantations have been plagued by recent labor disputes. Most neglect to mention that the vast majority of “tea pluckers” are women and children. They also fail to describe the cause of the women’s grievances. Although local Indian papers specify that the women hadn’t been paid in two months, the western media only makes vague references to “cruelty and abuse.”

In a World Have Your Say broadcast the following day, the BBC World Service gives a bit more background on this tragic event. Calcutta journalist Subir Bhaumik, the author of the singe article on the BBC website, is featured, as well as the general secretary of India’s largest tea workers union. Interestingly Bhaumik mentions a number of details about the labor dispute that have been edited out of the website article. Like the cause of the dispute (Bhattacharya’s non-payment of wages and overall brutal treatment of tea workers) and the fact he was arrested two years ago on another tea plantation after opening fire on workers protesting his alleged sexual abuse of one of his workers. He was arrested for murder after a fifteen year old protestor died.

An anarchist website Libcom.org provides the most complete coverage of this event, based primarily on local coverage. They describe how a delegation of workers went to Bhattacharya two weeks ago demanding their back pay. In response, he ordered ten of them evicted from plantation premises (with their families) and had local police arrest three of the women for refusing to leave. The police in Assam state are known for their eagerness (presumably based on bribes) to support plantation owners in enforcing labor discipline.

This version of events is confirmed by at least three on-line Indian news sites Tea estate MD and wife burnt to death by workers, Guwahati/Tinsukia tea estate MD burnt to death, and Tea estate MD burnt to death.

According to a statement an angry woman made to local reporters:

“Some workers met Bhattacharya Wednesday morning and requested him to get the arrested labourers released. He, however, did not pay any heed to the request and threatened the workers of dire consequences. This angered the labourers and they took the extreme step.”

Libcom.org also mentions Bhattacharya was released on bail after his arrest for murdering the fifteen-year-old. Despite the elapse of more than two years, the case has never gone to trial.

Why Aren’t Tea Pluckers at the M.K.B Estate in the Union?

Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS) is the largest tea workers union. Their general secretary Dileshwar Tanti also appeared briefly on the BBC World Have Your Say broadcast. He indicated that the workers at the M.K.B. tea plantation aren’t unionized, though most tea workers are. I feel the comment, which is puzzling, also deserves more scrutiny. Most of the reader commentary on the BBC Facebook site and elsewhere strongly condemns the women for resorting to violence, rather than going to the union or the authorities to resolve the back pay dispute.

To be continued.

Washington's idyllic San Juan islands

While some anti-GMO legislation like Prop 37 was shot down via a deceptive “No” campaign that received massive corporate funding, San Juan County in Washington State thumbed their nose at Monsanto et al by passing Initiative Measure No. 2012-4. The initiative effectively bans the growing of all genetically modified organisms within the county.

Photo credit http://www.examiner.com/article/what-the-secession-petitions-mean

According to the Daily Caller, the day after Obama was re-elected, the White House website received a petition asking the administration to allow Louisiana to secede.

If 25,000 people sign the petition by Dec. 7, it will “require a response” from the Obama administration, according to published rules of the White House’s online “We the People” program.

The Louisiana petition has collected more than 12,300 signatures in four days. A separate effort from Texas has 15,400 supporters.

Similar petitions from 18 other states began arriving Nov. 9, bringing the total to 20. According to an article in the Examiner, only three states (Washington, Maine and Vermont) don’t have active secession petitions

The White House website publicly displays petitions that have attracted at least 150 signers.

Surprisingly not all of the petitions originate from red states. Other than Louisiana and Texas, states with secession-related petitions pending on the White House website now include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Three states — Georgia, Missouri and South Carolina are each represented by two competing petitions.

John Kiriakou

Another excellent reason not to vote for Obama relates to his refusal to prosecute any CIA or Pentagon military involved in torture at Guantanamo, Iraqi and Afghan prisons or secret CIA prisons in countries where torture is legal. This is despite a review of 101 torture cases begun in 2007 under George W. Bush and two full criminal investigations of torture victims who died under interrogation. Ironically the only person to be arrested in the whole torture scandal is the former CIA analyst who was the first to publicly confirm that the CIA was engaging in “water boarding” of al Qaeda detainees.

In late 2007, John Kiriakou*, an ex-CIA analyst (1998-2004), became a sought-after media personality after he described the Agency’s use of waterboarding on ABC News. His initial stance on waterboarding was that “it worked” in preventing future terrorist attacks.

The government originally charged Kiriakou under the Espionage Act, but dropped these charges after he agreed to plead guilty to “outing” a CIA torturer named Thomas Donahue Fletcher. Fletcher was the chief of the Headquarters Based Rendition Group and was personally responsible for the rendition of a number of high value detainees to a CIA black site in Thailand, where he witnessed and played a role in their torture. Although Kiriakou never disclosed Fletcher’s name publicly, he allegedly confirmed his identity in an email to Matthew Cole, formerly of ABC News.

All this despite a claim by an anonymous government official that Fletcher’s identity was already known by at least 10 human rights activists before his alleged “outing” by Kiriakou. Moreover, given that Fletcher had retired from active service,  it’s hard to argue that Kiriakou’s confirmation of his identity jeopardized on-going CIA intelligence operations in any way. Especially as the operations Fletcher oversaw violated both US and international law.

As part of his plea bargain, Kiriakou will receive a six year sentence in January, of which he will serve 2 ½ years. Read more here.

The Greek Government Takes a Page From Obama

Kostas Vaxevanis

Meanwhile Greek authorities have arrested magazine editor Kostas Vaxevanis for publishing the names of 2,000+ tax avoiding Greeks alleged to have Swiss bank accounts. The list includes numerous prominent members of Greece’s political and business elite. Police officials claim that Vaxevanis illegally published personal details without proof that the people named had broken the law. However Vaxevanis and other government critics portray his arrest as part of a cover-up intended to obscure claims that the finance minister has had the list in his possession for more than two years without acting on it.

The case has triggered a parliamentary inquiry and could result in the prosecution of major government figures, during a period where systematic tax evasion by the Greek elite has necessitated painful austerity cuts for Greece’s middle and lower classes – which, in turn, has triggered massive political unrest. Read more here here,

***

*Who is John Kiriakou: After resigning from the CIA in 2004, Kiriakou, author of The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror, worked as an intelligence/security consultant in the private sector, as well as serving as a counter-terrorism consultant for ABC News. After John Kerry (D-MA) assumed the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, Kiriakou became the Committee’s senior investigator until 2011, when he became managing partner of Rhodes Global Consulting, an Arlington, Virginia-based political risk analysis firm.

Catchy little rap number by Lowkey that questions why the ruling elite should have a monopoly on gun violence.

If video won’t play go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBNeD57-RVg

Walmart strikers in LA

Officially Walmart, a notorious anti-union company, isn’t unionized. All efforts by employees to form legal unions have been crushed. This makes it all the more significant that a recent strike by Walmart employees has spread to 28 stores in 12 cities. Walmart is America’s largest employer, with 1.4 million employees. According to the BBC, there are only two entities in the world employing more workers than Walmart, and they are the U.S. and Chinese militaries. The walkout began October 4^th at a Los Angeles Walmart and quickly spread across the county. In mid-September warehouse workers at a Walmart-owned facility undertook successful strike action in Illinois. On October 6^th they declared victory after management agreed to their demands and went back to work.

The uniformity of strikers’ current demands suggests the same issues exist in every store. They want Walmart to end retaliatory practices against employees who attempt to organize, as well as better pay and working conditions. They have warned management to meet their demands by “Black Friday” (November 23), or Walmart workers nationwide will walk out. Black Friday is the nation’s largest and busiest shopping day of the year.

The Art of Union Busting

The Huffington Post has accessed a seven-page internal memo Walmart management issued to supervisors October 8th with instructions on how to respond to the walkouts. The memo is peppered with Walmart management jargon, such as TIPS (Threaten Intimidate Promise Spy). However many of Walmart’s infamous anti-labor policies are conspicuously absent. This may reflect management concern over the 20 plus charges of unfair labor practices that Walmart workers have filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The NLRB complaint includes dozens of allegations from employees who claim they were subjected to harassment, cut hours and other disciplinary action when Walmart higher-ups learned that they supported “OUR Walmart,” the United Food and Commercial Workers-backed worker group that organized the recent strikes. According to a 2007 Human Rights Watch report, prior internal documents instructed managers to remind employees that they could be permanently replaced if they went on strike, as well as providing talking points on the false guarantees unions make to workers. Both are violations of current labor law.

Nevertheless the new memo contains remnants of the strategies that made Walmart notorious as a union-buster. Examples include “Coaching By Walking Around” (CBWA). According to management, this is when managers walk through their department to visit with “associates” (i.e. hourly workers). According to workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Walmart managers routinely use CBWA as a surveillance tactic to monitor and deter labor organizers.

Statement From A Resister – Leah-Lynn Plante from Because We Must on Vimeo.

Last week Plate was given 18 months for refusing to snitch on fellow activists. She hasn’t committed or been charged with any crime.

Go to Green is the New Red for what you can do to help.

Assange at Ecuadorian embassy

According to the New Zealand Herald, Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino proposed on Friday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be Ecuador’s embassy in Stockholm. In this scenario, Assange would remain under Ecuadorian protection while undergoing questioning about sexual assault allegations. Patino also hinted to “new” developments in the Swedish case, stating “several elements of proof have been dismissed.”

At the moment, the governments of Britain and Ecuador are at an impasse. Despite granting him diplomatic immunity, Ecuadorian authorities can’t transport him out of the country, owing to a threat by British authorities to arrest him if he steps foot outside the embassy. According to the Business Recorder, British and Swedish officials have refused to comment on the proposal .

Assange took shelter in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in June after exhausting all appeals against extradition from Britain to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sexual assault allegations. His biggest fear is that Sweden will hand him over to the US, where he could face prosecution over the release of a vast cache of leaked Iraq and Afghanistan war reports and diplomatic cables.

According to Andrew Kreig, Director of the Justice Integrity Report, Wikileaks reported back in February on hacked emails they obtained from Stratfor, a Texas political intelligence company with ties to Karl Rove. The cables discussed a secret federal indictment against Assange.

Kreig’s article also provides interesting background on various Swedish civil servants with CIA credentials, as well as Rove’s links to Swedish officials pursuing Assange’s extradition.

As Kreig writes in The Huffington Post, Rove began advising Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt – referred to as the Ronald Reagan of Europe – in 2008.

On November 6^th, California voters will have the opportunity to pass into law a “right-to-know” initiative that would make it mandatory for all genetically modified (GMO) foods to be so labeled. Proposition 37 would also ban the fraudulent, but highly lucrative practice, of many food manufacturers of labeling foods tainted with GMO ingredients as “natural.”

Recent polls show Proposition 37 leading by a 3 to 1 ratio. This is despite $22 million Monsanto and major food manufacturers have spent on publicity opposing the citizen’s initiative. The Organic Consumers Cooperative is calling for a boycott against all the food companies (see below) that oppose consumers’ right to know what is in their food. In contrast, the “Yes on 37” campaign has only raised $3 million.

Despite mounting scientific evidence linking GMO foods with cancer, birth defects and serious food allergies, nearly 80% of non-organic processed foods, including so-called “natural” foods, contain genetically engineered bacteria, viruses, antibiotic-resistant genes, and foreign DNA. Yet none of these foods are labeled.

Mislabeling GMO Foods as Natural

Health-minded and environmentally conscious consumers buy more products marketed or labeled as “natural” ($50 billion a year) than they do “organic foods” ($32 billion), in large part because they don’t understand the major difference between “organic” and “natural” foods. Two-thirds of the foods sold in Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe’s aren’t “organic,” but rather “natural.” Polls indicate that consumers are confused about the qualitative difference between organic and natural products, with a near majority believing that “natural” means “GMO-free” and “almost organic.” As a result 70% of Americans are totally unaware that they’re regularly consuming GMO-containing processed foods.

Prop 37 organizers call for an end to the massive fraud of mislabeled, so-called “natural” foods. They believe mandatory labeling laws in California, the eight largest economy in the world, would result in GMO labeling across the US and Canada. Food manufacturers are highly unlikely to use separate packaging in other jurisdictions. In fact many companies are expected to follow the example of food processors in Europe, where GMO labeling has been mandatory for ten years, and where consumers consistently choose non-GMO or organic foods. Many European manufacturers simply removed GMO ingredients from their foods, rather than risk tarnishing their brand image with a GMO label on their packaging.

How California Law Affects the Other States and Canada

From the massive amounts they are spending to defeat Prop 37, Monsanto and Food Inc would appear to share this view – that mandatory GMO labeling will greatly decrease consumption of GMO foods.

Monsanto, which holds the patent on most GMO crops, has donated $4 million to the “No on 37” campaign.

Ironically all the major food manufacturers trying to defeat Prop 37 have organic/natural food lines, as health-conscious consumers place a high premium on “organic” and “natural” foods. This is why the Organic Consumers Cooperative is so keen to expose their hypocrisy in trying to defeat an initiative that would force them to disclose the GMO ingredients in their processed foods. They urge health-minded consumers to boycott all the brands listed below, as well as commenting on their Facebook pages about their rank hypocrisy.

In the past few weeks Kashi/Kellogg and Muir Glen/General Mills have been deluged with complaints on their Facebook pages. Most of these companies also have consumer lines. People who aren’t on Facebook need to call them to complain.