Category Archives: human rights

McDonald’s Has Its Own Employees Arrested In Hamburger University Wage Increase Rally – The Wire

Uber-Throwback Thursday – in 1930’s style union busting move – McDonald’s employees were among the over 100 people arrested for criminal trespass during a protest against the company’s wages.

Anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 people showed up to the protest outside the fast food giant’s Hamburger University campus in Illinois, including 325 employees in uniform. They “stormed through the company’s campus entrance,” Bloomberg reports. About 110 of them were arrested, including several employees, by police wearing riot gear. Also arrested was Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has underwritten the employees’ efforts.

The protest was for increased wages, an issue employees have been trying to organize around (at McDonald’s and other chains) since at least 2012. One employee told Bloomberg that she wanted to earn $15 an hour and be able to join a union. She currently makes $7.50 and is on food stamps (something McDonald’s recommends its employees sign up for). Full-time fast food employees earn a wage of $9.08 an hour and $18,880 a year on average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson earned a base salary of nearly $1 million in 2013. His total compensation was worth $13.8 million.

via McDonald’s Has Its Own Employees Arrested In Hamburger University Wage Increase Rally – The Wire.

Nigel Farage and Ukip’s bigoted populism | @guardianletters | Politics | The Guardian

Nigel Farage continues to insist that we should be worried if Romanians move in next door (Farage remarks branded racist by three senior Labour figures, 20 May), while YouGov finds that 51% of Ukip voters think immigrants and their families (including those born here) should be encouraged to leave Britain. This merely confirms what was already obvious, yet apparently needs to be spelled out: Ukip is a party that spreads and feeds off racism and xenophobia.

For many years the rightwing tabloids have waged a campaign of hysteria about asylum and immigration, while both main political parties have either contributed or pandered to an increasingly fact-free discourse based on the prejudiced assumption that foreigners are a burden on society. The emboldening of Ukip’s bigoted populism is just one of the entirely predictable consequences of this trend.

The class represented by Ukip’s millionaire backers and personified by its leader – a public-school-educated former City trader and professional politician – has a vested interest in diverting social and economic anxieties away from the rich and powerful and towards our friends and neighbours.

via Nigel Farage and Ukip’s bigoted populism | @guardianletters | Politics | The Guardian.

Jean-Marie Le Pen suggests Ebola as solution to global population explosion | World news | theguardian.com

Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far-right Front National, has suggested the deadly virus Ebola could solve the global “population explosion” and by extension Europe’s “immigration problem”.

At a cocktail party before an election rally in Marseille on Tuesday evening, days before the European elections in which the FN is leading the polls in France, Le Pen spoke of the “demographic explosion” in the world.

“Monseigneur Ebola could sort that out in three months,” he said in front of journalists.

Later, addressing supporters, Le Pen, 85, said he feared the French population risked being “replaced … by immigrants”.

“In our country and in all Europe, we have known a cataclysmic phenomenon – a migratory invasion that, my friends, we are seeing only the beginning of today.”

Le Pen, who is standing as MEP for the south-east seat, added: “This massive immigration risks producing a real replacement of populations if we don’t arrive in power soon enough to put an end to the politics of decadence that has been followed for decades.”

He said that religion added an “aggravating factor” to this problem because many immigrants were Muslim and Islam had a “conquering vocation … and even more conquering when it feels strong and they feel numerous”

S.peaking in Marseille, which elected an FN mayor in one of its districts in recent elections, Le Pen was followed on stage by his daughter, party president Marine.

Once again, her father undermined her campaign to convince voters the FN has evolved from its days as a vehicle for the extreme right and Nazi apologists.

via Jean-Marie Le Pen suggests Ebola as solution to global population explosion | World news | theguardian.com.

German reporter leaves Turkey after death threats over mine story | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

A correspondent for Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine has been forced to temporarily leave Turkey after he received thousands of death threats over his article on the country’s worst mining disaster.

“I was not withdrawn” by the magazine, Hasnain Kazim, the Istanbul-based correspondent, told AFP in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

“I am just spending a few days somewhere else to be on the safe side. In a few days I will be back in Istanbul and continue to do my work,” he said.

In his article, Kazim quoted a miner from the western town of Soma saying, “Go to hell, Erdogan,” in a show of anger at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s response to the mining disaster that claimed 301 lives.

Kazim said he has received over 10,000 threats via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, adding that a few hundreds of them were death threats.

“Get out of my country you filthy pig,” one Twitter user wrote.

Kazim said he did not express his or Der Spiegel’s views in the article but just quoted a miner.

“I reported from Soma and quoted one surviving worker with the words: ‘I would not have said this earlier, but now I want to tell Erdogan: Go to hell!'”, he said.

“AKP trolls did not see or did not want to see that this was a quote but considered me and Der Spiegel to have said that,” he added, referring to Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“Unfortunately, several papers and TV channels spread that, too – some close to the government to show Germany’s ‘evil’ character, some critical of the government to misuse me as their spokesperson.”

via German reporter leaves Turkey after death threats over mine story | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.

Finding Common Ground in Our Stand for the Earth

When I am asked who I am and where I come from I am able to answer with one word, Penahwabskek. Penahwabskek is the name of a place, ‘the place where the white rocks come out of the water’, and; it is the name of a people, the tribal nation who makes its home along the waters of the Penobscot River. For me, being Penahwabskek means that my roots are embedded in the land and nourished by the waters of the Penobscot River.

via Finding Common Ground in Our Stand for the Earth.

FAO – News Article: Pope Francis to attend the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2)

Pope Francis will add his voice to the fight against hunger and malnutrition by addressing the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) scheduled to take place from 19 to 21 November at FAO’s headquarters in Rome.

The pontiff’s participation at the conference which is organized by FAO and the World Health Organization (WHO), was today confirmed by the Vatican’s Permanent Observer to the Rome-based UN agencies, Archbishop Luigi Travaglino.

via FAO – News Article: Pope Francis to attend the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2).

The Courageous Career of Slain French Photojournalist Camille Lepage · Global Voices

Conflicts on the African continent claimed another journalist last week. Camille Lepage, a 26-year-old French photojournalist, is the latest reporter to pay the ultimate price for trying to inform the world of the violence against unarmed civilians in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Lepage’s body was found on May 15 by French peacekeepers in a village near the town of Bouar, CAR, in a car driven by Christian militia fighters known as Anti-Balaka.

The Central African Republic has been marred by conflict since 2012 when the Muslim faction Seleka and the Anti-Balaka began warring over control of the territory. Lepage is the first western journalist to be killed in the fighting.

She specialized in photojournalism in Africa, notably in Egypt, South Sudan and the Central African Republic. She explained that her motivation was to cover news stories that mainstream media tend to ignore. “I can’t accept that people’s tragedies are silenced simply because no one can make money out of them,” she said.

Emotions ran high after the news of her death broke, especially among her colleagues in the news industry and in communities with an interest in human rights and African affairs.

via The Courageous Career of Slain French Photojournalist Camille Lepage · Global Voices.

Stop Making Sense – House GOP: Schools Can Opt Out of Unprofitable Healthy Food Programs

GOP against healthy poor children?

House Republicans are proposing to let some schools opt out of healthier school lunch and breakfast programs if they are losing money.

A GOP spending bill for agriculture and food programs released Monday would allow schools to apply for waivers if they have a net loss on school food programs for six months in a row.

Championed by first lady Michelle Obama, the new standards have been phased in over the last two school years, with more changes coming in 2014. The rules set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on foods in the lunch line and beyond.

via House GOP: Schools Can Opt Out of Unprofitable Healthy Food Programs.

Army surrounds Tamil daily’s headquarters in Jaffna – Reporters Without Borders

No peace, no reconciliation, just more conquest and ethnic oppression – Members of the intelligence services were seen among the soldiers who continued to block the Kannarthiddin Road and Navalar Road access to the newspaper until this morning. Some of the intelligence officers carried guns while others noted who was entering and leaving the newspaper.

The military operation appeared to be a response to Uthayan’s publication yesterday of a supplement entitled “Mullivaikkal Thuyar Malar – May 18,” consisting of poems and accounts by survivors of the Sri Lankan army’s massacre of thousands of Tamil civilians in 2009, in the final stages of the civil war between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.

via Army surrounds Tamil daily’s headquarters in Jaffna – Reporters Without Borders.