How Prisons Ripoff and Exploit the Incarcerated (1/2)

Just astonishing to see the depravity of people; exploit anyone anywhere. As I always say in my blogs, that slavery has not been abolished from Western societies, it's been transformed in another format, & the world thinks that Western countries & the "White man" is so fair & honest.

This exploitation of prisoners is one of the major reasons that American governments keep harping that crime is increasing because they need to be tough on crime. They want so many restrictions on the general public that the general public needs to, eventually, get permission to even move an inch. The American government officials, who are in bed with people who are profiteering from this prison-industrial complex, want to pack prisons with latinos & African-Americans, just so, those people can be used, & abused, by the prison system, to help make obscene profits for the shareholders of the private prison owners. Of course, a country's GDP will increase & it will develop when the labour costs are virtually nil for producing products.

Prisons are supposed to be places where an individual, who has committed a crime, & needs to be punished, or sort of given a time-out from society, just so that person can think what he / she has done wrong to the society, & how he / she can become a better person. Instead of rehabilitating that criminal, the prison system of America is actually making those criminals even more hardened criminals. Prisons of third-world countries are in much more abysmal conditions, but, at least, the world knows about it & even the developing countries are transparent about it. Ironically, Americans tout their human rights record a little too much, considering how they treat their own citizens during their incarceration.

A decent person won't even treat an animal this bad in a "developed" country, but these actions are taking place, with official knowledge & assent, in the most powerful, & supposedly, "democratic" & "developed" country of the world. Wouldn't this be called corruption of the mind & body of the general public & their elected leaders? Wouldn't this be called injustice when a person is not given decent food & clothes when that person is wholly dependent on you, since he / she cannot earn a dime by himself / herself, due to the restrictions placed on him / her by society? Wouldn't this be called exploitation of the poor & needy when these people are put into prison system, & then taken advantage by being charged to call family, receive things from family, or never allowed to visit family at the time of their death?

Where's that so-called humanity of the "white man" or good, honest, Americans? As I always say, that the biggest lie the "white man" told to the world that he is fair, honest, & hardworking.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p62BF1apkyY

EDDIE CONWAY, FMR. BLACK PANTHER, BALTIMORE CHAPTER: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Eddie Conway from Baltimore.

Today in the studio with me I have a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. Please join me in welcoming Chris Hedges.

CHRIS HEDGES, JOURNALIST, SENIOR FELLOW AT THE NATION INSTITUTE: Thank you, Eddie.

CONWAY: Okay. I have been talking to you earlier about the business of the prison-industrial complex and how it’s impacting the lives of prisoners and their families. And you shared that you had some experience. Can you share a little bit of that with me now?

HEDGES: Yeah. Well, I’ve been teaching in prisons in New Jersey for a long time, almost ten years. And what I’ve watched over the last decade–and it’s probably something you saw when you were incarcerated–is how they increasingly prey on the prisoners and their families to make money. And that occurs by turning commissaries over to private corporations. And because it’s a captive market, they can charge anything they want. So, for instance, we got commissary prices from 1996. We compared them with prices today. And we’re talking about basic staples–toothpaste. We were talking earlier about noodles. What people don’t know is most prisoners live on those noodles that they have to heat up. Price increases as high as over 100 percent, almost everything at least over 50 percent, and yet what they earned has remained the same. So the minimum wage–I’m talking for eight hours of work. And in many of these prisons we have for-profit corporations exploiting prison labor, the neo-slavery under the 13th Amendment, which permits prisoners to work for far below reasonable wages. So their minimum wage is $1.30 for eight hours of work, which is roughly $28 a month. But their commissary prices–and we’re talking about things that they need–deodorant, toothpaste–have risen by over 100 percent.

The other way that they exploit the people under the system of mass incarceration is turning phones over to private corporations. So in New Jersey it’s $0.15 a minute, plus the premium that you have to pay in order to put the money on your account, the surcharge tax that the state puts on all commissary items of 10 percent. So if you have a $0.05 comb–this is an actual example–it costs you $0.06. And then the removal of items that people who, when they were incarcerated, used to get–jackets, blankets–they used to give you two blankets; now they give you one. They don’t give you thermals anymore; you have to buy them from the commissary. And, most importantly, shoes.

CONWAY: Well, I’m just–you know, because I personally have experienced that myself in terms of seeing young guys in the population that are just arriving in the last two, three years no longer get the things that we used to get when we came in the prison. So I see guys walking around in the dead of the winter without coats and without, actually, boots. They’re running around in summer tennis shoes and stuff. Why? What’s this cutback? I thought that the prison-industrial complex was making a lot of money. Why is this happening?

HEDGES: Well, because it forces those who are incarcerated to go to the commissary and buy the item. So let’s talk about shoes. And I don’t know what your experience was, but this is how it is in New Jersey. You’re not issued shoes anymore. You have to buy them. You pay $45. Now, remember, these people are making $28 a month. And we haven’t even spoken about the fines. So a lot of those people get into the system and they owe thousands of dollars of fines, which are chipped out of their monthly salary. So, for instance, one of the students that I teach, who was incarcerated when he was 14–he’s now 39–still owes $6,000 of fines. So if they want to buy a pair of Reeboks, it costs–if they don’t have the $45–and most people don’t get–80-plus percent do not get money from the outside on a monthly basis. They may get over the holidays or something, but they’re kind of on their own. If they can’t afford the $45 Reeboks or the boots, they sell these sneakers with cardboard soles. It’s like something out of Dickens that as soon as you got out into the yard, they’re shredded. Because many of these prisons are quite old, they need the thermals.

And then we haven’t even spoken about bereavement, so that if you want to visit with a dying member of your immediate family, a mother or father or whatever, you can do so for 15 minutes, either a deathbed visit or you can go for viewing, but you have to pay for the guards to accompany you, which is $800. And that immediately–. So what I have seen over the last few years–.

CONWAY: Woah. Woah. Let me just [incompr.] this. That’s happening in New Jersey. In Maryland, they don’t even allow you to do that anymore. They actually cut that out completely.

HEDGES: You mean the bereavement visits?

CONWAY: Yeah, the bereavement visits. And that’s very harmful to the prisoner, because you don’t get a chance to kind of, like, make your peace with that person that you love who’s departed. So you end up suffering that loss and no way of figuring out how to grieve, right? But go ahead. I’m just curious.

HEDGES: Well, it’s just all the ways they have found mechanisms to economically exploit prisoners and their families. It used to be that you could send up to 50 pounds, I think it was, a year of goods like sneakers and stuff, which they’ve now abolished. And that, of course, makes it harder, because now the prisoner has to buy the items from this kind of in-house Walmart. And it also hurts the families, who are unable to feel, in a way, that they can care for their sons or their daughters or their husbands or wives or whatever.

But what I find most disturbing is there seems to be every year some new mechanism to squeeze more money out of the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. And I think that probably is something you saw within the system as well.

CONWAY: Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that they turned–the state, the state of Maryland, actually was responsible for supplying all the items in the commissary. So toothpaste, deodorant, food, something to drink, that kind of stuff, they turned all of that commercial stuff over to a company that–it’s out of Ohio, I believe, called Keefe. And that company operates commissaries in several states, including Florida. And they were up, in fact, for a class-action suit because of the way they changed the prices.

And one example is the envelopes. We used to get a pack of 50 envelopes for $0.99. They would come in a box. If you want to write, you would buy a box of envelopes, and it would last you for 50 letters. What Keefe took over, you could only get single envelopes, and they cost $0.10 apiece, so that the price of that 50 envelopes turned into $5 just automatically and you did not have a choice. You either buy from them or you didn’t send out any mail. And they did that time and time again with the basic foodstuff that they knew we needed to eat. They upped the price 200, 300 percent. You know. So yeah, that, and the state of Maryland in turn gets a fee for that.

HEDGES: Right.

CONWAY: You know. So just like they get a fee from the phone company that, as you were saying, exploits the families and the prisoners because if a prisoner calls home and the person accepts the phone call, it’s extra money for accepting that phone call above and beyond what it would be if it was [incompr.]

HEDGES: Well, and they have to put money on the account, and they have to pay a fee. So if you’re putting–I can’t remember the exact figure, but if you’re putting $10 on the account, you’re paying $3 or $4 just for the privilege of putting the $10 on.

And then we get the whole issue of privatizing the way money is sent into the prison. So it used to be that you could send a money order or something in and you could put it on a prisoner’s account. Now it is all done through a company in Florida, where, again, if you want to put $20 on the account, you’re charged quite a draconian fee. And, again, I don’t have figures right in front of me, but again, I think it’s up to $5. And that $5 evaporates, at least from your pocket, into the pocket of the for-profit company that’s handling this. So this has been a kind of momentum that we’ve seen internally within the prison system. I think it reflects the kind of predatory nature of unregulated capitalism throughout the society, because those corporations, which are in essence kind of squeezing all of us, will squeeze the defenseless. And that’s what prisoners are, in essence, a captive society. They will squeeze the defenseless in ways that are just inhuman, because they can.

CONWAY: And let’s look at it from the other side, because while I was in the prison system, they made chairs, they made clothes, they trained dogs. There’s all kinds of industries or, obviously, the license tags. There’s–.

HEDGES: Military industries. Kevlar.

CONWAY: Yeah. Yeah. So while they’re squeezing the prisoners and fleecing the population for whatever pennies they can get, aren’t they making a tremendous amount of money by using that slave labor to produce stuff? I mean, what’s–.

HEDGES: It’s neo-slavery, which under the 13th Amendment is legal. You can force people under the 13th Amendment to work without adequate wages as part of your punishment, in essence. And so we have seen, along with this exploitation, a growth of for-profit industries, private companies that are going in there and exploiting the prison labor. So, on the one hand, they’re using the prison labor to make profit, and on the other hand they’re taking that underpaid–you know, I mean, we can’t even call it underpaid when you’re making $1.30 for an eight-hour day. They’re taking that. And they’re taking what little money they have. And that’s not a new phenomenon for African Americans. It replicates precisely what sharecroppers went through, where they had to borrow to buy the seed and often the farm implements and pay the rent. And by the end, especially if the crop didn’t do well, they can work a whole season and end up in debt. So now you’re seeing people released from the prison system and they owe money to the state. And if they can’t pay that money, they get picked up again.

CONWAY: Yeah. You know. And there’s something–even as you were talking, there was another aspect that I was thinking of. Early on, several decades ago, I can clearly remember that there was this huge campaign to stop prisons from being built in certain neighborhoods, in certain counties, and there was a desperation. The population was exploding in the prison system, and the state needed places in which to build prisons, and they went to different counties and whatnot, and they could not get authorization to build prisons. And so at some point they start de-industrializing America and jobs disappeared, not only just out of the black community, but jobs disappeared out of the rural communities. And then, all of a sudden, in all of these counties, there were requests like put a prison here. And when you talk about that economic slavery thing, just remind me of Hagerstown and it reminds me of Cumberland. And in Cumberland, Maryland, there’s a massive prison complex up there now, and it’s the source of jobs and economics in that region. And inside those prisons is population from the urban centers, a black–the population is mainly black, the guard forces mainly white, and it’s an economic arrangement similar to slavery that you were saying.

HEDGES: Right. Of course. Well, the students that I teach often refer to prison as being a plantation, having the dynamics of a plantation, including which is something writers like Richard Wright, Baldwin, and others talk about, understanding the demeanor by which you can comport yourself in front of the guards who are all-powerful. And when you get up to these communities–and Mumia Abu-Jamal is up in Frackville, Pennsylvania. And when you go into the prison, you will see on the list of the corrections officers who work in the prison three, four, maybe up to eight of the last names, because their brother’s in there, their cousin’s in there, maybe even their spouse is in there.

CONWAY: Their sons.

HEDGES: Their son’s in there. It’s–.

CONWAY: And daughters.

HEDGES: And daughters. It’s the only business going. And I think what’s so heartbreaking–I’ve driven up and see Mumia a couple of times–is those buses that leave at about midnight or one in the morning from places like Newark or wherever or Philly, you know, bringing the families and bringing the kids. And we haven’t even spoken about how visitors are treated.

Capitalism's Stunning Contradiction

A good discussion on how capitalism & capitalists keep exploiting the general public. Of course, politicians are in their pockets, too, which means that these capitalists also control the government, which is supposed to look after the general public in a democracy.

Capitalism is only going to concentrate the wealth in a few hands & make the general public poorer & poorer. After all, there's no limit to the human greed. Greedy capitalists will keep taking money from the public, & keep making it poorer & poorer, without any regard to general living standards to their workers. At the same time, I am not defending the communism because we have seen its problems in Russia & China; far too much inefficiency & control when everything is handed over to the government.

The root cause of world's modern problems with resource depletion, poverty, & mass unemployment is this continual & increasing greed of capitalism. It is an unstoppable train, which will continue on, until & unless, the world put back religion & ethics in its economic system.

This Earth can definitely support a lot more people compared to current population, but it cannot support people when the resources are being depleted to make a few people on the top of the pyramid richer & richer. This world cannot support more people when those rich people keep hoarding cash & splurging on expensive, but useless, items, like buying football clubs, billion-$$$ mansions, whole islands, etc. With religion (any religion for that matter) & ethics, instead of throwing away their money on these useless materialistic things, they could invest in improving people's lives by investing in medicine, food, agriculture, & alleviating poverty.

Essentially, the world has not changed in the past millennia or so. Brutal monarchs, then, used to forcibly take their public's money & spend on themselves. Monarchs of current times are these super-rich elites (the "one-percenters") who keep hoarding money by drip-feeding their workers & spending that money on themselves. Instead of spending the money on charities, it would be better to not cut costs so much that the general public suffers cuts in paycheques & unemployment, in the first place. Those monarchs were the government themselves & current "monarchs" control the government.

The world is only going to get worse & worse, unless & until, people start involving religion & ethics in their daily lives & businesses, instead of a weekly attendance in a place of worship. Religion & ethics will help putting the fear of death & answering to a higher authority in the people's hearts, & let them think hard before brutally cutting down jobs, & costs, to ultimately make themselves even more super richer, & spend money frivolously on completely unnecessary items in their lives.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xglK2rdPmg4

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: I think it's getting clear to a lot of people that capitalism is out of solutions within its own framework. I mean, first of all, in terms of financial reform, there's been nothing serious enough. It's pretty clear there are still enormous financial institutions that are still speculating wildly, and the same stuff that happened in '07 and '08 is likely to happen again. It's kind of a question of when rather than if.

RICHARD WOLFF, PROF. EMERITUS OF ECONOMICS, UMASS AMHERST: That's right.

JAY: The issue of demand in the economy, low wages and such, nothing's changed. And climate change, capitalism, so far, at least, does not consider it a threat to capitalism to have global warming, and they're not really getting serious about it. So, I mean, are you finding that there's this sense of that, that there aren't solutions here anymore?

WOLFF: I think two things are happening. The one that's most important is that as the crisis since 2007 lingers and lingers, this crisis that was not supposed to happen, that was not supposed to cut so deep, continues to do all of that and to last and last and resist government efforts to change it, that people are shifting and beginning to want to look beyond the crisis years since 2007 and ask the question whether maybe we're not in a bigger, longer-term dilemma for capitalism. And I think we are. And if I could sketch it for a moment, think it would help people to see this as a momentary downturn within a longer crisis.

And here's how I would summarize it. For the first 200, 250 years of capitalism, which begins in England, goes to Western Europe, and then to North America and Japan, the capitalist system, it concentrated in those countries, concentrated its factories, its offices, and stores there where it began. And it turned the rest of the world--Asia, Africa, Latin America--into a hinterland to provide the people, to provide the food, to provide the raw materials. And that was how the world was globally organized.

Then in the 1970s something radically changed. With a jet engine, you could get anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. With modern telecommunications and the computer, you could monitor a factory in Shanghai from Cincinnati as easily as you could manage a factory down the street in Cincinnati. And so capitalists--and I want this really to be driven home if I can--capitalists in the 1970s in Western Europe, North America, and Japan have basically said to the United States and Western Europe and Japan, goodbye, we're leaving, we are abandoning you. You are not where the profit is. The profit is in those places we can now go to where we pay a small fraction of those wages, where we can operate with impunity, where the poverty of these societies, itself a product of all of this, makes them desperate to have the jobs that we can provide. It's a perfect scenario. We made a lot of money for 200 years in the West, and now we're leaving.

And I think the emblematic city that kind of shows this is Detroit, a place that was the apogee, the peak of capitalist efficiency in the 1960s, sustaining 2 million people population, today 700,000, a city that has been literally ripped apart and destroyed because three corporations decided, for profit, to leave that place and say goodbye and leave behind the desolation, the unemployment, the collapsed housing, and all the rest of a city and now has to be the largest bankruptcy of any American urban area in our history.

I think the capitalists of the world are saying to Western Europe, North America, and Japan, we were willing to give you higher wages because we were able to reorganize the planet for 200 years. Now our future is in the areas that are cheap for us--the rest of the world--and we're abandoning you.
...

... So basically they're saying to the West, we're leaving. Now, of course, if you make it worth our while not to leave by bringing the wages and the costs, well, we might reconsider. But then what they're saying to the American people is, you can have a choice of a slow decline as we leave or a rapid decline to slow our departure. This is an unbelievable proposition to present to Western Europe, Japan, and the United States and I think will shape the basic political struggles in all these places for years to come.

JAY: But it's so self-destructive even for capitalism, because now you've taken a market that was the consumer of last resort for the world and turning people into increasingly low-wage workers. You're going to sell your profits where? The places that are already low-wage workers? I mean, it's really completely--.

WOLFF: You know, it's wonderful, 'cause as you introduced me as a Marxist, Marx was fond of saying that capitalists are caught in a stunning contradiction. Every capitalist tries to lower the wage costs, reduce the workers, substitute a machine, cut the wages, never wanting to face the fact that if all capitalists are trapped in a system where they're systematically reducing the wages, then they won't be able to sell what those wage workers are producing. And if you don't face that, you're caught in the contradiction that what the system makes you do undoes you by the absence of anyone to buy this stuff. And there we are, back to the naked, basic contradiction of a system that doesn't want to face that it has these kinds of internal problems.

JAY: So in terms of long-term decline, why isn't this cyclical? We've seen these things over the last century. Why is this any different?

WOLFF: Well, I think that we have the cyclicals, but the one thing that I find so interesting is that this one has certain unique characteristics. It was really out of the blue in the sense that almost nobody saw this kind of thing coming. Everyone assured us, not just the president and the politicians, but the economists, that it wouldn't last long. That was wrong. That it wouldn't cut deep. That was wrong.

But I think the thing that really strikes me is the kind of utter failure of anyone in this system to cope with this other than the 1 percent. The politicians can't figure out a solution. The bankers can't, as you rightly put it--for example, the banks that were too big to fail without exception are now bigger than they were then. Nobody is solving it. And even the mass of people are like deer caught in the headlights not knowing which way to go. In the '30s, after all, they joined unions, they joined socialist and communist parties, and that made a difference. At this point, there is the behavior of a system that kind of knows that this isn't just a temporary crisis, there's something fundamental shifting. And yet no one quite knows what to do.

JAY: ... I've always been struck that one of the things that Marx and Engels said that I think gets completely underestimated is that socialism isn't just some good idea. It's not a better policy that we could adopt. It's something that actually grows within capitalism. You get these massive enterprises, and they're fabulously well-planned. Like, you take Walmart, you get a toothpaste off of a shelf in Walmart, they know to get another toothpaste thing going somewhere in China. But the individual, as you say, the individual enterprises try to drive down wages, but they also get extremely efficient, and especially with computerization and digitization. Walmart is a planned economy.

But it's, like, the biggest private employer. I mean, Marx's whole point is this is actually--this is the seeds of socialism, except they're privately owned.

WOLFF: That's right. They're privately owned. They're driven by the maximization of profit for a tiny fraction of the population. And then you can't be surprised that the capacity, what they're capable of doing, which is a staggering saving of labor for the community, ends up not saving the labor for the community at all, because the whole point of it is to gather absurd wealth in the tiny number of hands. And Marx's point was this is an irrationality that even the best public relations cannot forever cover over.

And I think we're in a moment where, both in the short-run crisis and this longer-run decline, the irrationalities, the contradictions--. Look, basically capitalism is saying to particularly the American working class, for 200 years, we really exploited you on the job, but we gave you rising standard of living. Compensation of an awful day was that you could go someplace at the end of the day and have something called a happy hour to console you for the unhappy hours prior. Now capitalism is saying to you, we're going to exploit the hell out of you, but we're not giving you a rising standard of living. We're actually giving you a falling one. We're condemning your students to debt they can't handle. We're taking away the benefits. We're taking away all of the job prospects and hopes for the younger generation. We're going to work you on the job more hours than ever, and we're going to give you less for it. Whatever you think about the past, I'm not clear that the American working class will find that an acceptable offer.

How Kidnapped Nigerian Schoolgirls became Propaganda for Imperial Policy

A good interview to explicitly state that US "makes war ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, and when a tragedy ... occurs, it is a blessing to the Pentagon."

As we may all know that US invades a country citing humanitarian reasons, but the real reasons are always clandestinely something else & that invasion usually further destabilize the political & economic situation of that country or region. US invasion makes that country, region, & the world much more worse. Period.

The world has forgotten about these Nigerian school girls & moved on to other disasters. Boko Haram & other groups of its sorts are still operating in the region. 2 years onwards & US has again started bombing Libya to apparently get rid of ISIS there. By the way, Libya is also an oil-exporting country, & similar to Nigeria & Iraq, has a large oil reserve. So the question is once again that just like invasions of Iraq (to get rid of Saddam & his brutal government) & Afghanistan (to get rid of Taliban & Al-Qaeda), & a much-more subdued "invasion" of Nigeria (using Boko Haram as an excuse), is US now trying to invade Libya to control its oil riches & further expand the reaches of its AFRICOM unit?

Nigeria, on the other hand, under its new leader, Mr. Buhari, is spending billions on new arms & weapons, & foreign military trainers to further train its military to get rid of terrorist groups. Those billions, instead of being invested in the country to further improve the infrastructure & living conditions of Nigerians, are flowing through Western military-industrial complex to countries like US & France etc. If poor countries spend those billions on their own people, the so-called "terrorism" would die out by itself. The public join these kinds of groups out of frustration & anger at the political, economic, & social inequality & injustices in their countries.

US & European countries were, & still are, looking at Chinese influence increasing at a fast pace in the whole continent of Africa -- the continent which has always been exploited for its human & mineral riches -- & just couldn't sit on the sidelines. So, using excuses like Qaddafi's brutal government, terrorism, & rebel groups of Kony & the like, US & European countries are trying to "retake" Africa from Chinese hands. In this struggle of power & this wave of neocolonialism, Africans will surely lose big because there's nothing beneficial for them in this struggle, but the Western power elites (political & financial) will make big gains.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5b9j_XEvHk

JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: So, Glen, we've seen a lot of press about the kidnapping of an estimated 276 girls in Nigeria. ...

You recently wrote an article titled "Kidnapped Girls Become Tools of U.S. Imperial Policy in Africa". Can you just walk us through your argument?

GLEN FORD, EXEC. EDITOR, BLACK AGENDA REPORT: Well, you know, this deal with the Boko Haram, this terrible kidnapping of the Nigerian school girls, is for the United States manna from Heaven. It has allowed them to make a huge breakthrough, in terms of penetration of West Africa. Just recently it was announced that a meeting -- which was actually called by France, but France said it was the Nigerians' idea -- a meeting has resulted in an agreement between Nigeria and its four neighbors, who are colonies of the French (Nigeria was a British colony), that these countries will share intelligence and will be provided with training expertise and, we can assume, money by the West. Well, the West means AFRICOM plus France.

So already we're seeing structural changes in the region, bringing it even more tightly into the AFRICOM web. We're seeing structural changes in terms of how tightly the United States and France have become. They at some points were competitors for influence in Africa. Now they work hand-in-glove, AFRICOM working with what is still in effect the French Foreign Legion in Africa after the operation in Niger, now that kind of cooperation deepening in Nigeria. So the noose is tightening.

And when we're talking about new and improved groupings, alliances, configurations in West Africa as a response to this Boko Haram threat, we're really talking about a situation in which Africa is permitted no defense except those defenses that are approved by the Americans and Europeans. And, of course, that is not a defense against European and American neocolonialism, but only a defense against other Africans. Africans can only then defend themselves against each other, but not against their former colonizers and the great danger presented by the United States.

DESVARIEUX: But then, Glen, it's clear that this is pretty horrific. Your heart can't help but want to try to help these nearly 300 girls that were kidnapped before their final exams. How do you think the United States could be of assistance in a more positive way?

FORD: Let's make this real clear. The United States can be of no assistance to Africa. All assistance that would be beneficial is totally theoretical and, in a practical sense, will never be forthcoming. We know what the United States is about in Africa. It is setting up networks of bases and relationships with the military class in order to control the political and therefore the economic destiny of Africa. It does not have good intentions for Africa. So a conversation about what can the United States do to help is counterproductive.

What the United States did do is launch a war against Libya, which as a net result has set the northern part of the continent ablaze, destabilized the region. It has resulted directly in the strengthening of Boko Haram. The weapons that just spilled across Libya's border with the fall of Gaddafi's regime, which was a bulwark against jihadism, are now in all kinds of hands that do pose threats to the stability of governments. And when those governments feel unstable, they run to the Europeans and the United States to bolster their stability and become even more neocolonial in nature.

DESVARIEUX: So, Glen, if I'm understanding you correctly, if the United States can't be of any assistance in a positive way, then how do we resolve this issue? How do we get back these girls?

FORD: Africa has to resolve its own issues. Everyone has compassion for the Nigerian schoolchildren. But remember, this is an internal African affair, a Nigerian affair, and those fighters from Boko Haram are Nigerians. The United States does not have any legitimate interest here. Every human being of course empathizes with children in distress. Africa's full of children in distress. Six million people have died in the eastern Congo since 1996, many, many of them children. The United States is complicit in those deaths. The United States's intentions are not good. If it is able to locate through its intelligence apparatus the location of these girls, that does not mean that the United States will prevent them from being killed. In fact, U.S. and French involvement, this war-making machinery, the pressures that are being put on all the governments, may make it more likely that the girls are killed. We don't know that, but we do know one thing: the United States doesn't really care. It benefits from the almost universal outrage at Boko Haram, because it provides a unique and almost miraculous opening for the further expansion of AFRICOM.

DESVARIEUX: Okay. Let's talk some more specifics here. Like, who are we talking about when we're saying interests are concerned with the U.S. getting more involved in Africa. Who's going to benefit here?

FORD: Oh, the oil companies benefit. And, of course, they are interlocking. Some of them are American. Others are European. They are quite concerned not just about guerilla activity in Nigeria, the golden location for oil in Africa; they're also concerned about Nigerians wanting their legitimate share of oil revenues, and the people in the surrounding regions which also have lots of oil. This is the main concern of big oil companies, and therefore the main concern of the governments that protect them.

And so they want to create domestic situations in Nigeria, in Benin, in Cameroon, in Niger, in which the civil society is unable to make demands of the multinational corporations that exploit their resources. The United States, of course, with AFRICOM, will be there to lend its weight to the multinational corporations. Schoolgirls are really not at the center of U.S. policy in Nigeria today. What's at the center of U.S. efforts today is to weave these five nations, Nigeria and its four neighbors, into a more malleable bloc for manipulation by the Americans and the French.

DESVARIEUX: Now let's talk about the resistance. Is there actually any resistance behind the president's plan to get more involved in Nigeria? Is there any opposition coming from Congress or any political leaders?

FORD: No. And, in fact, the Congressional Black Caucus has made it quite clear through its individual members that President Obama has a blank check as far as they're concerned, that all they're worrying about is the safety of the girls. That is the blank check that the United States government sought in Central Africa when Obama, two years ago, used the mere presence of Joseph Kony and his much-diminished Lord's Resistance Army to justify sending in about 100 special forces troops on permanent duty in Central Africa. Earlier this year he doubled the size of that contingent, all based upon humanitarian grounds. This country makes war ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, and when a tragedy such as with the schoolgirls in Nigeria occurs, it is a blessing to the Pentagon.

Ontario employers get slap on wrist for mistreating employees

Another one of those articles highlighting how employers are exploiting workers, & the government is dragging its feet in actually doing anything to stop this open exploitation. Employers are not stopping at merely forcing workers to work more hours or work while they are injured or sick but they are also stealing workers' wages by either not paying them outright or delaying their wages.

As I always mention that keep in mind that this is happening in Canada & not in a developing country (where it would be most expected). People all over the world are same; after all, we all have red blood. Corruption & taking from others what's not rightfully ours (out in the open) is considered bad everywhere but it happens everywhere the same.
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http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/24/ontario-employers-get-slap-on-wrist-for-mistreating-employees.html

Scarborough resident Sylvia Buchanan was owed thousands by her former employer, who fired her the day after she asked to be officially put on the books as an employee.

Instead, what she got was a nine-month runaround from the Ministry of Labour, the department supposedly meant to protect her against workplace violations.

9 months of waiting for money she was legally owed. 9 months of stress & anguish as the bills piled up. All to get the wages she was entitled to by law.

Buchanan’s assessment of trying to navigate the system?

“It was horrible.

“If I had not pressured the ministers, if I had not constantly called my MPPs, I honestly don’t think this would be resolved,” she says. “I think it would still be in the system somewhere.”

When it comes to enforcing Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, critics say it is workers — not the government — doing the heavy lifting.

Complicating matters is the fact that, by law, workers are supposed to confront their employer about possible mistreatment before filing a complaint with the Ministry of Labour.

When a complaint is lodged, employers are immediately notified & are given the employee’s name, often leading to immediate dismissal.

The employment act offers no protection against unjust dismissal.

“The strongest condemnation of the model is the fact that virtually no employees file complaints, only former employees do,” says David Doorey, an employment law expert & professor at York University.

“People have to make a choice about paying the rent or making a complaint. So people will choose to pay the rent,” adds Deena Ladd of Toronto-based labour rights group the Workers’ Action Centre.

“I think that’s a real indication that the system is not working at all.”

Sylvia Buchanan, who has 3 degrees & more than a decade of teaching experience, began working with private college Oxford Education Group in April 2013, hired to create an English curriculum for the school.

But for more than a year, her boss refused to recognize her as an employee, she says, treating her instead as an independent contractor. Independent contractors have no rights under the Employment Standards Act.

Buchanan says she had no idea that she was hired as a contractor until she was first paid, receiving a mysterious cheque that bore little information instead of the official pay stub she was expecting.

She also says she was treated like any other employee: she worked predominantly from the college’s premises, used its equipment, had her hours set by her boss, & represented the college at conferences.

She says she was fired the day after she told her employer she was considering filing a formal complaint.

But because she was classified as a contractor, she did not receive termination or holiday pay.

In June 2014, Buchanan lodged a complaint with the Ministry of Labour, asking for those wages & claiming that she was the victim of reprisal for standing up for her workplace rights.

The process, she says, was riddled with frustrations.

By August 2014, Canada Revenue Agency had already ruled that Buchanan had rightfully been an employee of the college.

It took until October 23 for the Ministry of Labour to agree that she was owed holiday & termination pay.

It wasn’t until March 2015 that Buchanan finally received the $2,500 she was entitled to.

Mohammed Azharuddin, vice-president of Oxford College of Arts, Business & Technology, says his organization began Oxford Education Group as a “startup” & says he told Buchanan upfront that she would be hired as an independent contractor.

He told the Star that Buchanan’s termination had nothing to do with her complaint to the ministry, & that she was let go because “there was no progress happening” with her work.

He also says his organization paid the money owed to Buchanan on time, via the Ministry of Labour, & that the ministry was responsible for the delay.

“We definitely paid within the 30 days (required by law). There was a discrepancy at the Ministry of Labour end of it.”

The ministry refused to say whether Buchanan’s employer paid on time. In an email to the Star, it confirmed that it did receive the college’s cheque, but said the “the regional program office was not aware of this.”

That “clerical error,” as the ministry called it, added 4 months to Buchanan’s already agonizing wait time.

At 54, she is still living with her aunt & uncle in Scarborough because she can’t afford rent.

“I don’t feel like I have any protections,” says Buchanan. “They make it so difficult to get through these claims that I suspect that a lot of people just give up.”

The system designed to enforce the Employment Standards Act is increasingly under fire for being inaccessible, inefficient & — for workers such as Buchanan — infuriating.

Under the current model, employers have almost no incentive to obey the law in the first place.

The Ministry of Labour has a team of just 180 enforcement officers to look into employment standards violations across the entire province — less than half the number devoted to Occupational Health & Safety inspections.

Figures requested by the Star show that the 15,485 complaints made last year prompted 2,768 proactive workplace inspections. Only 8 resulted in prosecutions with serious financial penalties.

A further 321 tickets of less than $360 were issued for violations from failure to give regular pay, to denying overtime pay & not paying minimum wage.

York University’s Doorey says those penalties do little to deter lawbreakers, who are unlikely to be caught unless workers risk their job to speak out.

“The model depends on vulnerable employees learning the law, & then starting a legal fight with their employer, & that model will never be effective,” he says. “Violations of the ESA are treated as minor monetary infractions not deserving of a heavy hand of justice.”

“If you just slap (employers) on the hand & give them a fine of $200 or something, how is that going to stop them from exploiting people again?” asks Buchanan, whose former employer faced no penalties for firing her without pay.

In 2009, the government did commit $10 million to employment standards enforcement, allowing the Ministry of Labour to significantly reduce its backlog of more than 17,000 claims.

The ministry also operates an employment standards call centre in 24 languages, which last year received more than 265,000 calls about possible violations. But the hotline doesn’t offer any assistance in filing complaints, which must be done online. ...

The action centre’s Ladd says the process can be challenging for vulnerable workers who may struggle to understand the Act’s confusing exemptions, and may not have ready access to a computer or speak English as a first language.

And while employers can afford lawyers, the majority of workers cannot.
...

The province’s Open for Business Act, passed in 2010, includes a provision that can force complainants to first approach their employer about possible employment standards violations.

While the legislation says exceptions can be made in the case of vulnerable workers, experts say the measure still discourages employees from speaking out.

“I would say 99.9% would not file a claim until they decided to leave employment or they have been fired or laid off,” says Avvy Go, director of the Metro Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. “The employer will know who filed the claim & that person will lose their job.”

Figures requested by the Star show that in the year before that Act was passed, workers submitted 20,365 formal complaints. But since the Act’s implementation, the number of claims has fallen to an average of 15,500 a year.
...

Recognizing that relying on vulnerable workers to enforce their own rights makes little sense, many jurisdictions have moved to a more proactive model of enforcement.

In California, the state can slap embargoes on goods made by companies who violate labour laws. In Wisconsin, the government can place a temporary hold on employers’ property until they pay workers what they’re owed. And under New York State’s wage theft law, guilty employers can be forced to pay up to triple the amount of wages owed.

In a move welcomed by campaigners, the Ministry of Labour has started conducting so-called proactive inspection blitzes aimed at high-risk sectors, where inspections are done even if no complaint has been made. Its current blitz focuses on vulnerable & precarious workers.

But of Ontario’s 442,000 workplaces, just 2,694 were inspected in such investigations last year. There are only 35 enforcement officers dedicated to this proactive enforcement, & employers are given notice that their workplace will be inspected.

“It kind of defeats the whole purpose of the audit,” argues Go.

“I understand you will never have enough resources to investigate every single complaint,” she adds. “That’s why you need to look at how to change the system to ensure there is enough incentive for the employers to obey the law.”

In the meantime, Buchanan says, it is workers who are suffering.

“You’re putting people’s lives on the line. If I didn’t have family support, I’d be living on the streets.”

“I think it takes a very strong-willed person to go through this process,” she adds. “I expected the government to work on my behalf.”


Proposed solutions

A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre makes a number of recommendations to improve enforcement of the Employment Standards Act. The proposed reforms include:

• Develop an expanded, proactive system of enforcement to improve compliance

• Increase enforcement team staffing

• Enact a “hot cargo” provision that would enable inspectors to impose embargos on goods manufactured in violation of the Act

• Revoke the requirement that forces workers to approach employers before filing an ESA claim

• Authorize the Ministry of Labour to place holds on employers’ property when a complaint is filed for unpaid wages

• Increase fines to double or triple the amount of wages owed

• Establish set fines for all offences, even when employers voluntarily agree to pay worker wages owed

UN peacekeepers sexually abused hundreds of Haitian women & girls

Another one of those articles highlighting how UN "peacekeepers" took advantage of vulnerable people in vulnerable situations. Regardless of who stoops so low in the society, helping someone to gain sexual favours is always wrong. However, if this would've been done by non-UN & some groups in Middle East or Africa, not only that group of people is maligned but the whole religion is dragged through the mud & dirt. But when UN "peacekeepers" do the same thing, it's a back-page news (assuming it's considered news at all in the first place). Western hypocrisy at its peak !!!

When the 2011 movie, "The Whistleblower," showed how UN "peacekeepers" sexually abused girls in war-torn Bosnia, & how UN tried to cover up the whole scandal, the world didn't demand answers from UN for what it has done wrong. UN "peacekeepers" realizing that their actions carry no adverse consequences for themselves or for UN, carried on, business as usual. Now, although, the allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers have spread out from Cambodia to Central African Republic to Haiti; thanks to Western media, UN & the world public still won't take any substantive corrective measures & punish those who did wrong.

Well, UN "peacekeepers" will keep doing what they do best; sexually abusing women, girls, & boys in countries where they are sent to serve & protect the vulnerable general public. Doesn't it seem like that UN is starting to become better in hiding scandals nowadays than to actually prevent wars & chaos in the world?
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https://www.rt.com/news/266179-un-peacekeepers-haiti-sexual/

According to a new UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report obtained by the news agency, a third of alleged sexual exploitation & abuse involved minors under 18.

The shocking conclusions were revealed after investigators interviewed 231 people in Haiti who claimed they were forced to perform sexual acts with UN peacekeepers in exchange for basic necessities.

“For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication & household items were frequently cited as the 'triggering need,'" the report says. Those living in the city or in its vicinity had sex in exchange for “church shoes, cell phones, laptops & perfume, as well as money,” report says.

“In cases of non-payment, some women withheld the badges of peacekeepers & threatened to reveal their infidelity via social media,” the report says.

The UN explicitly bans the “exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex,” & discourages relationships between UN staff & those who are under their care. However, only 7 of the interviewed victims “knew about the United Nations policy prohibiting sexual exploitation & abuse,” the report states.

The report ... makes no reference to the time frame of the alleged violations, but the 7,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti started in 2004. The investigation also does not mention the number of peacekeepers involved.

The report says that the lack of any clear action is “demonstrating significant underreporting,” while noting that assistance to those that suffered is “severely deficient.” The average investigation by OIOS takes more than a year, according to AP.

Sexual abuse by peacekeeping troops, some 125,000 of which are currently deployed around the world, has undermined the credibility of their missions. A rapid increase in prostitution & abuse in Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Sudan & Kosovo were documented after UN peacekeeping forces moved in.

Earlier this year it was revealed that UN peacekeepers raped & sodomized starving & homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as 9.

However, the number of documented cases of sexual abuse & exploitation by members of UN peacekeeping missions was 51 in 2014, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general's latest annual report on the issue.

Ontario allowing employers to fire workers without cause

Another one of those stories shining a bright light on millions of Ontarians precariously employed & how they are exploited by employers in Ontario. This story is not telling about people working in some far off developing country in Africa or Asia but right here in Canada.
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http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/17/ontario-allowing-employers-to-fire-workers-without-cause.html

Show up to work one day & get fired for no reason?

Sorry about your luck.

In Ontario, not a single worker is protected from wrongful dismissal under the Employment Standards Act.

Hit with the flu & can’t make it into the office?

Consider sucking it up, because chances are you won’t get paid. You’ll be lucky to keep your job, in fact.

Have to put in extra hours one week to get the job done?

Whatever you do, don’t expect overtime pay. Or even to get paid at all.

Ontario’s outdated employment laws, currently under review, were designed to create basic protections for the majority of the province’s non-unionized workers.

Instead, millions are falling through the gaps created by a dizzying array of loopholes, from the dangerous to the downright bizarre.

Construction workers have no right to take breaks on the job.

Care workers aren’t entitled to time off between shifts.

Vets aren’t entitled to vacation pay.

Janitors have no right to minimum wage.

Cab drivers aren’t entitled to overtime pay.

And dozens of occupations, some that you’ve never even heard of, are exempt from basic rights entirely.

“Keepers of fur-bearing mammals” have no right to minimum wage.

Sod layers have no limits on their daily hours of work.

Shrub growers don’t get a lunch break.

The system is so complicated that the Ministry of Labour has developed a special online tool to help decipher who’s entitled to what.

But as the province reviews its antiquated Employment Standards Act, critics argue that its confusing web of exemptions makes it harder for the so-called precariously employed to defend their rights — & easier for bosses to ignore them.

“When you distil it down to what these exemptions are seeking to achieve, really they are to give employers more control over work & more control over wages,” says Mary Gellatly of Parkdale Community Legal Services.

“It sends the message to employers that they can get away without complying.”

The Act was first introduced in Ontario in 1968 to set basic work standards, especially for non-unionized employees who don’t have a collective agreement to provide extra protections.

But there are at least 45 occupations in Ontario that are exempt from a variety of its fundamental entitlements, many of them low-wage jobs in industries where precarious work is rife.

The Ministry of Labour says many of the exemptions are “long standing” & related to “the nature of the work performed.”

But York University professor Leah Vosko, who is leading research into employment standards protections for the precariously employed, says exemptions have come at least in part from industry pressure, leaving the Act a “complex patchwork that is difficult for workers & even officials to comprehend.”

Even when there are clear violations, speaking out can come at a cost.

Reprisal is illegal under the Act, meaning bosses can’t penalize employees for exercising their workplace rights. But the Act gives workers no protection against wrongful dismissal. Employers do not have to give cause for firing someone.

Unionized employees are generally protected by their collective agreements, & workers can sue employers if they think they have been unfairly terminated.

But most precarious, low-income employees are not unionized, & most do not have the money to take legal action against an employer, says Parkdale’s Gellatly.

“It’s the big reason why many people can’t do anything if they’re in a workplace with substandard conditions, because they can get fired without cause.”

Linda Wang, who worked at a Toronto cosmetics manufacturer for 4 years, was fired less than 2 weeks after she asked her employer for the extra pay she was owed for working a public holiday. She says no reason was given for her termination.

Wang, a mother of two, claims her employer repeatedly bullied her & her colleagues, & that she believes she was dismissed for asking for the wages.

She has filed a reprisal complaint with the Ministry of Labour, but Wang cannot afford to take her employer to court.

“I feel the system is against workers,” she says. “It’s in favour of employers.”

“Whatever job you have you put so much of yourself into it,” adds Gellatly. “The fact that employers can just fire you without a reason is incredibly devastating for folks.”

The Act also contains significant gaps when it comes to sick leave & overtime.

The legislation provides most workers with 10 unpaid days of job-protected emergency leave, which means they can’t be fired for taking a day off due to illness or family crisis.

Critics call this measure subpar by most standards, since it still causes many workers to lose a day’s income for being ill. An estimated 145 countries give employees some form of paid sick leave.

“Unfortunately, we stand out for our inadequacy,” says Brock University professor Kendra Coulter.

But the 10-day protected leave doesn’t apply to almost one in three of the province’s most vulnerable workers. An exemption that excludes employees in workplaces of less than 50 people from that right means 1.6 million workers in Ontario are not even entitled to a single, unpaid, job-protected sick day.

Fast-growing, low-wage sectors such as retail, food services & health care are most likely to be exempt according to a recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre.

While many small businesses voluntarily give their employees paid sick days, the loophole leaves many workers — especially the precariously employed — exposed.

Toronto resident Gordon Butler asked his employer, a small construction company in Markham, for one day off work after he sliced his thumb open on the job. He says his boss told him not to come back.

“I didn’t believe him,” says Butler, 44, who has an 8-month-old child. “I tried to plead with him, & he said ‘No, too bad.’ ”

“The way it’s stacked up right now is there are very few options for people who are in low-wage & precarious work to actually take sick leave when they’re sick,” says Steve Barnes, director of policy at Toronto’s Wellesley Institute, a health-policy think tank.

“They not only have to worry about lost income, but the potential for losing their jobs,” adds Brock’s Coulter. “It’s unkind & unnecessary.”

The stress caused by the province’s meagre sick leave provisions are compounded by exemptions surrounding overtime pay, to which around 1.5 million don’t have full access.

As a rule, employees should get paid time & a half after 44 hours a week on the job, according to the Employment Standards Act.

But in 2014, more than one million people in the province worked overtime, & 59% of them did not get any pay whatsoever for it, Statistics Canada data shows.

This, experts say, is partly because enforcement is poor. But in Ontario, a variety of occupations don’t even have the right to overtime pay, including farmworkers, flower growers, IT workers, fishers & accountants. Managers are also not entitled to overtime.

Vladimir Sanchez Rivera, a 45-year-old seasonal farmworker in the Niagara region, says he has worked 96-hour weeks doing back-breaking labour picking cucumbers & other produce.

“We don’t have access to protections when we are working in agriculture,” he says. “And our employers tell us that.”

Low-wage workers are even more likely to be excluded from full overtime pay coverage, according to the Workers’ Action Centre’s research. Less than one third of low-income employees are fully covered by the Act’s overtime provisions, compared to around 70% of higher earners, because they are more likely to work in jobs that aren’t eligible.

Workplaces can also sign so-called “averaging provisions” with their employees, which allow bosses to average a worker’s overtime over a period of up to 4 weeks.

That means an employee could work 60 hours one week & 50 the next, but not receive any overtime as long as they don’t work more than a total of 176 hours a month.

Critics say the measure means more work for less pay, & paves the way to erratic, unpredictable schedules.

“That’s a huge impact on workers & their families in terms of lost income & having to work extra hours,” says Parkdale’s Gellatly.

“It’s certainly not good for workers, for their families, & it’s not good for creating decent jobs in terms of rebooting our economy,” she adds.

For many of the precariously employed, falling through the gaps ruins lives.
...


Proposed solutions

A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre makes a number of recommendations to rebuild the basic floor of rights for workers. The proposed reforms include:

• Amending the ESA to include protection from wrongful dismissal

• Eliminating all occupational exemptions to ESA rights

• Repealing overtime exemptions & special rules

• Repealing overtime averaging provisions

• Repealing the emergency leave exemption for workplaces with less than 50 people

• Requiring employers to provide up to 7 days of paid sick leave