Category Archives: human rights

Workers at Chinese factory making clothing for Ivanka Trump’s brand earn just $1 an hour: Shanghaiist

Ivanka Trump is continuing to be criticized for failing to live up to her father’s creedo of “Buy American, Hire American” after an audit revealed the poor conditions present at a Chinese factory that manufactures clothes for her personal fashion line.The 80 workers at the Chinese factory work nearly 60 hours a week while making only $62 for their efforts, according to a Fair Labor Association report released on Monday that was based on an independent audit of the factory carried out last October, just before Ivanka’s dad won the US Presidential election.Workers at the factory are contracted to make clothes for the New York-based G-III Apparel Group which has an exclusive license to manufacture Ivanka Trump-branded dresses, blouses and other clothing items. Auditors discovered some two-dozen violations of international labor standards during a two-day tour of the factory.In order to meet manufacturing targets, workers at the factory worked anywhere from 42 to 82 hours of overtime per month, far exceeding the legal limit in China of 36 overtime hours per month. Meanwhile, workers made between 1,879 to 2,088 yuan a month, which would fall below minimum wage in some parts of China. The report does not state the name of the factory or its location.

Source: Workers at Chinese factory making clothing for Ivanka Trump’s brand earn just $1 an hour: Shanghaiist

By nixing German FM meet, Netanyahu ups Israel’s tyranny a notch | +972 Magazine

While Netanyahu’s move appears to be extreme and quite dumb, it actually fits coherently with his government’s orchestrated campaign against Israeli human rights organizations over the last two years. In recent months Netanyahu has called on European governments to stop funding and cooperating with Breaking the Silence, and Israel’s education minister Naftali Bennett has already effectively banned Breaking the Silence from giving presentations in high schools.Netanyahu’s move is situated well within the context of an increasingly tyrannical government that has now upped its authoritarianism a notch. Israel has been censoring and restricting the freedoms of Palestinians since 1948, it has been applying similar tactics to Israeli leftists for years and is now taking that strategy to its biggest European ally. And Netanyahu knows he will not have to pay any consequences for it. Gabriel has already said cancellation of the meeting would be “regrettable” but would not hurt or affect Israel’s ties with Germany in any way.The ultimatum and refusal to meet with a German diplomat is reminiscent of the tactics used by the Israeli government against peace activists who began meeting with PLO representatives in the 1970s. In this sense, Israel is now treating Israeli organizations who document occupation as if they were Palestinians: Persona non grata.  Now, anyone who wants to merely meet with or listen to these persona non grata is also an enemy. And just like in 1975, when Israel decided to legislate a law banning Israelis from meeting with PLO members, don’t be surprised if the Israeli government’s next move is to outlaw B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence.

Source: By nixing German FM meet, Netanyahu ups Israel’s tyranny a notch | +972 Magazine

For Indians, Trump’s America Is a Land of Lost Opportunity – The New York Times

Generations of Indians have admired the United States for almost everything. But many are infuriated and unnerved by what they see as a wave of racist violence under President Trump, souring America’s allure.The reaction is not just anger and anxiety. Now, young Indians who have aspired to study, live and work in the United States are looking elsewhere.“We don’t know what might happen to us while walking on the street there,” said Kanika Arora, a 20-year-old student in Mumbai who is reconsidering her plan to study in the United States. “They might just think that we’re terrorists.”

No Bernie, There’s No Economic Justice Without Abortion Access

Here’s the catch: Heath Mello is a longtime opponent of abortion access who sponsored a 20-week abortion ban in 2010. It contained no exceptions for rape or incest. Mello has also co-sponsored legislation requiring doctors to perform medically-unnecessary ultrasounds, and he voted for a bill to ban insurance plans in the state from covering abortion, which would dramatically restrict access for low-income women. That’s not just “personal opposition”; it’s a clear, concerted campaign to restrict access to abortion.

Under heavy criticism, Sanders doubled down on his support of Mello, telling NPR that Democrats “can’t exclude people who disagree with us on one issue.”

But of course, Sanders is willing to deny his support to candidates who don’t support his economic justice agenda. Just this week, he bluntly panned Jon Ossoff, a pro-choice Democrat in a tight race to flip Tom Price’s Georgia House seat, as “not a progressive.”

In his fight to define what it means to be progressive and to “radically transform the Democratic Party,” Sanders has drawn an unspoken but clear distinction between the economic issues that animate him (on which he says we must not compromise) and reproductive freedom (on which, he says, we should). It’s a vision in which single-payer and free college are essential parts of the progressive, economic justice agenda, while a woman’s right to choose is not.

 

Source: Inoreader – No Bernie, There’s No Economic Justice Without Abortion Access

Fairfield mother of four deported back to Mexico – Trump is so proud to have sent this 15 year resident packing to where she cannot see her children! #loserTrump, #TraitorTrump

Maribel Trujillo Diaz has been placed on a plane bound for Mexico, lawyers for the Fairfield mother of four, who has lived illegally in the U.S. since 2002,

Source: Fairfield mother of four deported back to Mexico

Save

Woman Punched By White Supremacist In Berkeley Speaks Out: SFist

Fairly soon, the 5-foot, 1-inch Rosealma, who weighs 95 pounds, says she found herself cornered near a wall, and she says “I was just trying to block myself away from different people who were just pushing me and attacking other people.”Then, she says, “From the corner of my eye I saw this fist coming at me,” and she says “[Damigo] punched me on the bridge of my nose. It cut it a little bit. I got thrown down and I’m pretty sure he just ran [away]. I got right back up. I was punched twice more by two other people. People kept trying to throw me down to hit my head on the rocks that were in the planter. I was just trying to not get my skull cracked open.” She soon found her boyfriend nearby covered in blood.Rosealma was likely targeted because she was wearing all black and sported dreadlocks, trademarks of the “antifa” as the alt-right calls them, though it’s unclear if anything occurred prior to the moment caught on video to provoke the attack.And she wants to set the record straight about a Facebook post she wrote that the alt-right has taken out of context to prove that she was there to do harm. She wrote, “Heading to Berkeley to disrupt the neo-Nazi / white supremacist jerk circle today. Nervous af but determined to bring back 100 nazi scalps.” This was a reference to a line from Inglorious Basterds, she explains. “I guess no has seen Quentin Tarantino movies. I thought that was going to be obvious, but I guess not.” (The line, delivered by Brad Pitt’s character, is “Each and every man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps!”)

Source: Woman Punched By White Supremacist In Berkeley Speaks Out: SFist

Nabila, yo te creo – Cosecha Roja

Nabila Rifo sufrió un brutal intento de femicidio. Su pareja la golpeó con un bloque de cemento y le arrancó los ojos. Hoy comienzan los alegatos en el juicio contra el único imputado, Mauricio Ortega. En todo Chile habrá movilizaciones de apoyo a Nabila, en un contexto en el que desde la defensa -y

Source: Nabila, yo te creo – Cosecha Roja

Inoreader – Friday Open Thread | The Man Who Broke America – True This: McConnell is a first class traitor!

By rights, McConnell’s tombstone should say that he presided over the end of the Senate. And I’d add a second line: “He broke America.” No man has done more in recent years to undermine the functioning of U.S. government. His has been the epitome of unprincipled leadership, the triumph of tactics in service of short-term power.After McConnell justified his filibuster-ending “nuclear option” by saying it would be beneficial for the Senate, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said this: “Whoever says that is a stupid idiot.”McConnell is no idiot. He is a clever man who does what works for him in the moment, consequences be damned.McConnell is a vile man. He’s a traitor to this country.I don’t fault President Obama for much….but, I do fault him for believing in any way, that Mitch McConnell is a patriot, when, in fact, he made the decision, on January 20, 2009, in the midst of the greatest economic downtown since the Great Depression, to commit ECONOMIC TREASON against this country, by refusing to help President Obama bring this country out of that darkness. He didn’t help. He didn’t lift one finger to help this country recover.

Source: Inoreader – Friday Open Thread | The Man Who Broke America

Trump Models Is Closing Down As Staffers And Models Flee: Gothamist

The Trump Organization sold the Miss Universe Organization, which runs the international beauty pageant as well as Miss USA, in September 2015 as some of then-candidate Trump’s business partners had cut ties with him over his inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants. The following year, recordings surfaced in which Trump boasted about walking in on beauty pageant contestants as they changed in dressing rooms, and 1997 Miss Teen USA contestants said they recalled him doing the same in dressing rooms with girls as young as 15. Similar allegations arose during Trump’s time in the modeling business. During a short-lived partnership in the early ’90s with a company called American Dream Calendar Girls, a pageant-to-pinup-calendar business, Trump allegedly groped the company’s cofounder under a restaurant table, then later in the night forcibly kissed and groped her in the Mar-a-Lago estate bedroom of his daughter Ivanka, then 11. Another woman, a model contestant in the pageant, accused Trump of appearing uninvited in her bed that same night. Trump denied the allegations, and the American Dream cofounder, Jill Harth, withdrew the lawsuit outlining them as a condition of settling a separate lawsuit about money he owed.

Source: Trump Models Is Closing Down As Staffers And Models Flee: Gothamist