Clear It with Sidney | Hillman Foundation

Clear It With Sidney

The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein

Clear It with Sidney

Bangladesh Clothing Factory Swept By Fire Made Merch for The Bay and Walmart

A blaze swept through the Aswad Composite Mills factory in Bangladesh, Tuesday, killing 9 workers and injuring at least 50 others. The factory made merchandise for the Hudson’s Bay Company and WalMart. This is the latest in a series of deadly industrial accidents in the garment sector in Bangladesh. Most garment workers die in fires. These deaths could easily be prevented by improving the wiring and fire evacuation systems in clothing factories. 

The 2013 Hillman Award for Broadcast Journalism went to Brian Ross and his investigative team at ABC News for reporting on garment industry deaths in Bangladesh. That same year, a special Hillman Officers’ Award was presented posthumously to Aminul Islam, a Bangladeshi labor leader who was probably murdered for his activism on behalf of garment workers. 

 

[Photo credit: Iconic Hudson’s Bay Blanket, by Whimsie Dots, Creative Commons.]

Rhode Island is Famous for You, Public Pension-Stealers

Rhode Island is a national trendsetter when it comes to schemes for stealing public sector pensions and funnelling the spoils to Wall Street, Matt Taibbi reports. 

Thanks to Carol in DC for the tip. 

#Sidney's Picks: Walmart, Obamacare, and Attempted Murder-for-Hire on the Silk Road?

  • But relax, Obamacare is not going to take your house.
  • Turns out, when everything is for sale, everything is for sale. The founder of the online marketplace/libertarian paradise known as the Silk Road is alleged not only to have trafficked tens of millions of dollars worth of drugs, but also to have solicited murder for hire.

 

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Government Shutdown...

…and Now Find Yourself Sitting at Home on Furlough With Plenty of Time to Ask About.

 

 

[Photo credit: Pandabrand, Creative Commons.

Pseudo-Cure Made By Pseudo-Company

Hillman Prize-winner Alison Young exposes another dodgy dietary supplement for USA Today:

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — A Mexican dietary supplement called Reumofan has gained a loyal following in the United States as a “100% natural” treatment for arthritis and joint pain. It’s supposedly made by a company called Riger Natural from ingredients such as shark cartilage, white willow and glucosamine, or so the labels say.

But consumers who buy Reumofan products are risking dangerous side effects and trusting their lives to a company that uses fake addresses, lies about the ingredients in its products and may not even exist, a USA TODAY investigation has found.

The newspaper set out to find Riger Natural and the people responsible for producing and selling the supplement, searching corporation records and visiting addresses in Mexico where it had been listed on the Web as having a lab. Those addresses are fake and there’s no evidence the company ever had facilities in the locations. Some Mexican retailers who once distributed the product say their contacts have simply disappeared. Even Mexican health authorities have been unable to track down the company.

Riger Natural? As in Riger Mortis? Reumofan is marketed as a dietary supplement but some of these pills contain potentially toxic prescription drugs and the FDA has received reports linking the pills to bleeding, strokes, and death. 

 

[Photo credit: U.S. FDA.] 

#Sidney's Picks: Arrested for Calling 911 on Her Batterer

The Best of the Week’s News

  • “LoveInt”: NSA employees have used their eavesdropping powers to spy on their intimate partners on at least 12 occasions since 2003.
  • Michael Grabell’s wife gave birth to the couple’s second child in July (the same week he won a Sidney Award). The little boy’s life was saved by a simple blood oxygenation test that revealed a correctable congenital heart defect. Grabell wants the test made available to all newborns. 

Half of All CO Parolees Who Committed Murder Spent Time in Solitary

 Of the thirty-three Colorado prisoners who committed murder on parole, half had spent time in solitary confinement, the Denver Post reports:

The Colorado prison system is struggling to manage prisoners like Bassett — a fact laid bare when police say a parolee released directly from his solitary cell to the streets rang the doorbell at former Department of Corrections chief Tom Clements’ home in March and assassinated him.

Clements, ironically, had been pushing Colorado to reduce the number of prisoners in solitary as well as the number released straight to parole. The percentage of the prison population in solitary has dropped from 7 percent to 4 percent since 2011 — though that’s still double the national average — and the share of those in segregation who went straight to parole decreased from 48 percent to 23 percent. But it remains a problem many in the public are unaware of, and one with dangerous consequences.

Is solitary making prisoners more violent, or are the most violent prisoners most likely to find themselves in administrative segregation? Probably both. Worryingly, the Post found that there are no safeguards in place to make sure that prisoners who are released directly from solitary into the community receive extra supervision. 

 

[Photo credit: Bohemian Dolls, Creative Commons.]

Modern-Day Slavery in Qatar as World Cup Workers Drop Dead From Exhaustion

Migrant workers in Qatar are literally being worked to death as the Gulf State prepares to host the World Cup in 2022:

Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar’s preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.

This summer, Nepalese workers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, many of them young men who had sudden heart attacks. The investigation found evidence to suggest that thousands of Nepalese, who make up the single largest group of labourers in Qatar, face exploitation and abuses that amount to modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation, during a building binge paving the way for 2022. [Guardian]

According to documents obtained by the Guardian from the Nepalese embassy in Doha, workers are alleging wage theft, forced labor, and brutal living and working conditions. Some say they were denied free drinking water while toiling in the dessert heat. Many report having their passports confiscated. Some say they are forced to beg in the streets for food after work because their wages are being withheld. At least forty-four Nepalese workers died between early June and early August, mostly from heart attacks and workplace activists, according to embassy statistics. Thirty Nepalese workers sought refuge in their embassy in Doha. 

 

[Photo credit: Fatboyke, Creative Commons.]

100,000 Garment Workers Strike for a Living Wage in Bangladesh

Garment workers in Bangladesh, galvanized by a series of deadly accidents and police brutality, are demanding a three-fold increase in their wages:

Workers are demanding an almost threefold increase to their monthly salaries – from the current 3,000 takas ($38) to 8,114 takas ($100). Factory owners recently offered a 20 percent pay rise to employees.

Workers rejected the offer, calling it “inhuman and humiliating.” Employees then resorted to vandalism, blocking major roads, damaging vehicles, hurling stones at factories, and burning furniture taken from nearby buildings.

One worker, Laizu Akhter, also called for the body of a co-worker purported to be missing to be returned to his family, AP reported. “Our major demand from them is to return the dead body. We demand their punishment. Additionally, we demand an increase of our monthly wages,” she said. [AFP]

 Strikers closed over 100 factories. Dozens of strikers were injured in clashes with police. 

[Photo credit: Rajiv Ashrafi, Creative Commons. Shows a Shabag protest in Bangladesh, not a labor protest.] 

Our Crumbling Federal Public Defender System

Rachel Monroe investigates the crumbling federal public defender system for Al Jazeera America. As Sam Stein reported in his Sidney-winning coverage of sequestration, the federal public defender system is rapidly become a casualty of the across-the-board budget cuts imposed by Congress in the name of deficit reduction. The constitutional rights of defendants are suffering as a result. 

 

[Photo credit: Sal Falko, Creative Commons.]

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