Global News and Analysis

Source: Democracy Now!

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has announced a major victory in reaching an agreement with the grocery chain Trader Joe’s ensuring humane working conditions for farmworkers harvesting tomatoes sold inside its stores. On Thursday, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers said Trader Joe’s had finally agreed to join the group’s Fair Food Program after a lengthy public campaign that included protests in front of the chain’s locations. Before the deal, the farmworkers said their wages had remained stagnant since 1978, with tomato pickers having to put in 10-hour days just to make the minimum wage. read more

Source: The Progressive

Recent revelations about the deplorable working conditions at an Apple factory in China provide a cautionary tale about globalization and consumerism.

On Jan. 26, the New York Times ran a front-page article that exposed some of the facts of life within Apple’s Foxconn Technology factory in Chengdu, China. These include underage and underpaid workers, excessive overtime, seven-day workweeks, overcrowded dorms and dangerous conditions.

One day last May, a fire broke out in one of the buildings where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day. “Two people were killed immediately and over a dozen others injured,” the story said. read more

Source: Yes Magazine

The Occupy effect? In the last 3 months, Americans switched banks at three times the normal rate.

Two summers ago, at the U.S. Social Forum, I attended a panel discussion about ways to expand the use of credit unions as alternatives to the “too big to fail” banks whose risky investments had helped tank the economy. Each of the speakers—people involved in credit union leadership or advocacy—expressed confusion and frustration that they hadn’t already seen a post-crisis shift away from corporate banks and toward credit unions (which have the advantages of being not-for-profit, owned and governed by their depositors, far more likely than big banks to lend to small businesses, and not responsible for any global economic meltdowns). read more

Source: The Independent

After invading Iraq over weapons of mass destruction, we plan to clap as Israel bombs Iran

If Israel really attacks Iran this year, it – and the Americans – will be more dotty than their enemies think. True, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a crackpot, but then so is Avigdor Lieberman, who is apparently the Israeli Foreign Minister. Maybe the two want to do each other a favour. But why on earth would the Israelis want to bomb Iran and thus bring down on their heads the fury of both the Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas at the very same moment? Along with Syria, no doubt. Not to mention sucking the West – Europe and the US – into the same shooting match. read more

Source: The Nation

On a sweltering afternoon in the heart of bustling downtown Monrovia, Moriba Kamara’s bony, chafed hands shake as he talks about his months inside a Liberian maximum-security prison. “I didn’t sleep. I was always afraid.” He feared he would not make it out alive and was constantly thinking, “Maybe this is the place [I’ll] be taken to be assassinated.”

Kamara’s eyes well up as he remembers how “the whole day we [were] locked up, the whole night we [were] locked up. We had no access to go to recreation, nothing.” He and his fellow prisoners were forced to defecate in a bucket inside their cell, which often overflowed. “I got dysentery,” he recalls. “I tried to talk to the prison director to take me to the hospital, but they said no.” read more

Source: Americas Program

There are many kinds of war. The classic image of a uniformed soldier kissing mom good-bye to risk his life on the battlefield has changed dramatically. In today’s wars, it’s more likely that mom will be the one killed.

The UNDP states that by the mid-1990s, 90% of war casualties were civilians– mostly women and children.
Mexico’s drug war is a good example of the new wars on civilian populations that blur the lines between combatants and place entire societies in the line of fire. Of the more than 50,000 people killed in drug war-related violence, the vast majority are civilians. President Felipe Calderón claims that 90% of the victims were linked to drug cartels. But how does he know? In a country where only 2% of crimes are investigated, tried, and sentenced, the government pulled this figure out of its sleeve. read more