Author Archives: OTHLeannez

Purina Pet Food Is So Much More Disgusting Than We Even Knew

by OTHLeannez Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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If you’ve ever purchased seafood or pet food from Nestlé, you may have unwittingly contributed to the abuse of migrant workers in Southeast Asia.

On Monday, Nestlé admitted that it had found indications of forced labor, human trafficking, and child labor in its supply chain in Thailand, where the Switzerland-based company sources some of the seafood that it sells in supermarkets around the world, including in the United States. The findings came after an internal investigation that was launched by Nestlé in December last year, following reports by media and NGOs that linked the company’s shrimp, prawns, and Purina brand pet foods with abusive working conditions.

Many of the workers in question are migrants from Thailand’s less developed neighbors, Burma and Cambodia, who are tricked into laboring on fishing boats after fleeing persecution and poverty at home, according to the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Verité, which at Nestlé’s request interviewed workers at six of the company’s production sites in Thailand. Workers “had been subjected to deceptive recruitment practices that started in their home countries, transported to Thailand under inhumane conditions, charged with excessive fees leading to debt bondage in some cases, exposed to exploitative and hazardous working conditions, and, at the time of assessment, were living under sub-par to degrading conditions,” Verité wrote in its report.

But Nestlé isn’t the only one with a tainted supply chain: The mistreatment of migrants is systematic in Thailand’s fishing sector, Verité found, meaning that other American and European companies that buy seafood from the country are likely complicit in similar labor abuses. These abuses have been highlighted by the US State Department, which last year downgraded Thailand to the lowest level in its annual report on human trafficking, and they underpin several lawsuits that have been filed recently against retailers including Nestlé and Costco Wholesale Corp. Steve Berman, managing partner of the law firm Hagens Berman, which in August filed a class-action lawsuit against Nestlé, told the New York Times that the company’s report on Monday was “a step in the right direction,” but added that “our litigation will go forward because Nestlé Purina still fails to disclose on its products, as is required by law, that slave labor was used in its making.”

For its part, Nestlé has vowed to publish a strategy to protect workers in Thailand, including by bringing in outside auditors and training boat owners about human rights. “This will be neither a quick nor an easy endeavour, but we look forward to making significant progress in the months ahead,” Magdi Batato, Nestlé’s executive vice president in charge of operations, said in a statement.

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Purina Pet Food Is So Much More Disgusting Than We Even Knew

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Chill Out, GOP: Medical Marijuana Laws Won’t Turn America’s Teens Into Stoners

by OTHLeannez Posted on June 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Concerned parents and conservative lawmakers, fear not: Laws legalizing the use of medical marijuana won’t be your child’s gateway into drug use, according to new research published on Monday.

By now, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of medical marijuana. The peer-reviewed study in the Lancet Psychiatry found that legalization of medical marijuana at the state level does not increase recreational pot use by teens.

Eight researchers, headed by Dr. Deborah Hasin, an epidemiology professor at Columbia medical school, analyzed the marijuana use of more than 1 million kids. The random sample was selected from respondents to Monitoring the Future, a national census that has surveyed thousands of teens about their behaviors and values annually for the past 24 years.

The team compared pot use by teens before and after their states legalized medical marijuana and did not find a significant change in use pre- versus post-legalization. Adolescent use in states where medical marijuana is legal is higher, but the study’s authors point out that this disparity can be deceiving: The same states already had higher adolescent marijuana use before legislation was passed. The fact that teenage pot-smoking stayed consistent after legalization suggests that there is no causal relationship between legal medical marijuana and teens lighting up, write the authors. If anything, fewer kids are using weed: Last year, a different Monitoring the Future study reported that teen marijuana use has been trending downward since 2014.

The Lancet study also found that after states made medical marijuana legal, there was a two percent decrease in pot use among eighth graders. This might be because “eighth graders had more modifiable attitudes and beliefs about marijuana, and were less likely to view marijuana as recreational after states authorized its use for medical purposes.”

But as attitudes and laws regarding marijuana continue to evolve, so might adolescent use, the authors write, encouraging researchers to conduct additional studies over time.

In 2015, laws to legalize medical marijuana use have failed in 17 states. So, this debate is far from over, but if this research is any indication, it may be time to put the youth corruption angle to rest.

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Chill Out, GOP: Medical Marijuana Laws Won’t Turn America’s Teens Into Stoners

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Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s Fog of Sound

by OTHLeannez Posted on June 8, 2015

Mother Jones

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
The High Country
Polyvinyl

Modest to a fault, the understated Missouri band Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (aka SSLYBY) has quietly compiled a stellar catalogue of state-of-the-art pop over the past decade. Briskly dispatching 11 songs in under a half-hour, SSLYBY’s fifth studio album is an entrancing fog of sound, highlighted by buzzing guitars and blurry-yet-insistent vocals, with drums adding to a sense of hazy urgency. While numerous groups use interesting textures to compensate for a lack of solid material, the tunes on The High Country are smart and catchy, and could be covered in any number of styles. Although it’s possible to hear echoes of R.E.M. in the intertwined guitars and voices, and the taut melodies sometimes evoke Spoon (who sound jaded and weary by comparison), SSLYBY seems to be getting more original, and younger, by the album.

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Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s Fog of Sound

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4 Key Takeaways About Scott Walker’s Alleged "Criminal Scheme"

by OTHLeannez Posted on June 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, a federal judge unsealed a batch of documents shedding light on a secret investigation that has dogged Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and some of his conservative allies since the summer of 2012.

Prosecutors are probing whether Walker and two of his aides illegally coordinated with outside groups—including the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity—to fend off a wave of recall elections in 2011 and 2012. This kind of probe, conducted in secret, is known in Wisconsin as a “John Doe.” It is spearheaded by Francis Schmitz, a former federal prosecutor who was on George W. Bush’s shortlist to be US attorney in Wisconsin’s Eastern District. The investigation was initiated by the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office, which is led by Democrats.

Here are four key takeaways from the newly released documents:

1) Walker and two aides allegedly ran a “criminal scheme”

Prosecutors allege in the documents that Walker, his campaign committee, and two close aides, RJ Johnson and Deborah Jordahl, ran a “criminal scheme” using dark-money nonprofit groups to evade state election laws. Their goal: Defend Walker and a group of state lawmakers facing recall elections in 2011 and ’12.

The documents describe a web of 12 nonprofit groups that closely coordinated their fundraising and spending. Prosecutors say Walker, Johnson, and Jordahl presided over this web of groups. The documents quote a May 2011 email sent by Walker to GOP operative Karl Rove about the coordination plans: “Bottom-line: RJ Johnson helps keep in place a team that is wildly successful in Wisconsin. We are running 9 recall elections and it will be like 9 congressional markets in every market in the state (and Twin Cities).”

In a statement, Walker said: “The accusation of any wrongdoing written in the complaint by the office of a partisan Democrat district attorney by me or by my campaign is categorically false. This is nothing more than a partisan investigation with no basis in state law.”

2) A conservative leader voiced concerns about coordination between outside groups and Walker

The documents show that the Wisconsin Club for Growth acted as a conduit for funneling dark money to pro-Walker and pro-GOP groups. It also ran its own ads defending Walker and his policy agenda, which included a controversial budget-repair bill that limited bargaining rights for public-sector workers.

Wisconsin Club for Growth’s activities had at least one conservative leader worried. “Notably, prior to the 2011 Wisconsin Senate recall elections, the national Club for Growth organization raised concerns about coordination or interaction with Wisconsin Club for Growth and Friends of Scott Walker as early as 2009.”

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The documents cite a comment by the national Club for Growth’s then-director, David Keating, who said he had “legal concerns” about Wisconsin Club for Growth ads that featured Walker.

3) Walker’s alleged coordination scheme was an expansive, all-hands-on-deck effort

A quick bit of history: In early 2011, Walker introduced Act 10, the anti-union bill that curbed workers’ rights. Democrats and labor unions reacted by organizing massive protests, then sought retribution by recalling state lawmakers who’d voted for the bill.

The documents reveal, in the clearest detail yet, the extent to which Walker, Wisconsin Republicans, and a slew of dark-money nonprofit groups rallied to fend off those recall efforts. RJ Johnson, a Walker confidant and a central player in the coordination probe, used the Wisconsin Club for Growth to coordinate with the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, the national Club for Growth, the Republican Party of Wisconsin, the Republican State Leadership Committee, and the Republican Governors Association. It was a murder’s row of conservative players who all pitched in to help preserve the GOP majorities in the Wisconsin legislature and to keep Walker, a rising GOP star, in office.

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4) All of this information may be for naught

Something to remember amidst the frenzy surrounding the release of the new documents: The John Doe probe into Walker and his allies is almost dead.

The pushback has been led by Eric O’Keefe, a director with Wisconsin Club for Growth who has fought the probe every step of the way, selectively leaking documents to the Wall Street Journal editorial board and suing in court to halt the investigation. And he’s having success: The probe is temporarily on hold while a federal judge studies his lawsuit. O’Keefe say their activities zeroed in on by prosecutors weren’t illegal because the groups in question coordinated on issue-based activities, not expressly political work. He also argues that the John Doe probe violates his First Amendment rights to free speech.

So far, a state judge and a federal judge have sympathized with O’Keefe’s argument, saying that prosecutors have failed to make the case for illegal coordination. The investigation of Walker and his allies is still alive, but its prospects don’t look good.

Read the documents:

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4 Key Takeaways About Scott Walker’s Alleged "Criminal Scheme"

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 4 Key Takeaways About Scott Walker’s Alleged "Criminal Scheme"