How the War on Piracy Became Big Business
Pirate hijackings off the coast of Africa have spawned a lucrative protection industry. With private security guards taking to the oceans in ever increasing numbers, is this really the way to safer seas?
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The Low Pay Behind America’s Fast Food: Strike Puts Fast-Food Workers’ Struggle in Spotlight
Recently fast-food workers have forced the issue of their low-paying jobs into the public spotlight with what has been called the largest strike by fast-food workers in US history. In the process of making demands for livable wages, fast-food strikers are challenging customers to consider the lives of the human beings behind the counters.
The Great Eviction: Wall Street’s Creative Destruction
Source: The Nation
We cautiously ascend the staircase, the pitch black of the boarded-up house pierced only by my companion’s tiny circle of light. At the top of the landing, the flashlight beam dances in a corner as Quafin, who offered only her first name, points out the furnace. She is giddy; this house—unlike most of the other bank-owned buildings on the block—isn’t completely uninhabitable.
It had been vacated, sealed and winterized in June 2010, according to a notice on the wall posted by BAC Field Services Corporation, a division of Bank of America. It warned: “entry by unauthorized persons is strictly prohibited.” But Bank of America has clearly forgotten about the house and its requirement to provide the “maintenance and security” that would ensure the property could soon be reoccupied. The basement door is ajar, the plumbing has been torn out of the walls and the carpet is stained with water. The last family to live here bought the home for $175,000 in 2002; eight years later, the bank claimed an improbable $286,100 in past-due balances and repossessed it.
Walmart’s Summer of Discontent: Retail Empire Faces Worker Dissent in US and Bangladesh
As Walmart shareholders continue to gorge on the mega-retailer’s stock, up 12 percent from the beginning of this year, the empire is experiencing a summer of discontent as a growing number of low-wage Walmart workers continue to fight a labor war that’s winning small yet significant victories.
Mankind: Death by Corporation
Source: Truthout
The word “corporation,” derived from the Latin corporare, means to physically embody. In his History of the Corporation, Bruce Brown notes how in the first thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, “the world’s most powerful corporations were all trying to embody the Christian God.” In 1534, Saint Thomas More spoke of Jesus Christ as the ultimate corporation. “He [Jesus] doth . . . incorporate all christen folke and hys owne bodye together in one corporacyon mistical.”
What the Empire Didn’t Hear: US Spying and Resistance in Latin America
US imperialism spreads across Latin America through military bases and trade deals, corporate exploitation and debt. It also relies on a vast communications surveillance network, the recent uncovering of which laid bare Washington’s reach into the region’s streets and halls of power. Yet more than McDonald’s and bullets, an empire depends on fear, and fear of the empire is lacking these days in Latin America.