Jail employers who exploit migrants, profit from slave labor – Miliband
RT | December 15, 2014
UK employers responsible for flagrant exploitation of migrant workers by violating their rights, paying them paltry wages and offering them poor working conditions, could face jail sentences under a Labour government, Ed Miliband warned on Monday.
During a speech in Norfolk, the Labour leader pledged to introduce a new law to tackle unsatisfactory and inhumane working conditions, which many migrants face in Britain. Legislation change would also help curb wage cuts for local workers, he said.
The proposed law would hold to account those that exploit migrants’ difficult situations. It would focus on criminalizing servitude, slavery, bonded labor, and toughen sentencing for those who force their staff to work under conditions that breach UK requirements. Offenders could face up to 10 years in jail, Miliband said.
To illustrate the acute crisis many migrant workers in Britain face, the Labour chief highlighted a damning case, where immigrants’ human rights were badly violated on British soil.
Some 29 immigrants claimed their wages had been stolen, and they were forced to live in cramped, unsanitary conditions. The immigrants said they were beaten, attacked by dogs and incarcerated in a van for 6 days.
Miliband pledged to clamp down on such rogue employers, particularly those who engage in slave labor or lure workers to Britain under false pretenses.
“This new criminal offence will provide protection to everyone. It will help ensure that when immigrants work here they don’t face exploitation themselves and rogue employers are stopped from undercutting the terms and conditions of everyone else,” he said.
Slave labor in Britain
Earlier this year, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) published research that revealed forced labor is a “significant” problem in Britain. The anti-poverty NGO’s report entitled ‘Forced Labour in the UK’ found the phenomenon was largely hidden, but most likely on the increase in Britain.
Drawing from a wide body of evidence, the JRF said the number of those experiencing forced labor in Britain “may run into thousands.” More recent estimates suggest the figure is even higher.
Some 10,000-13,000 victims are thought to be scratching a living in the UK, a review of police sources, the UK Border Force, charities and other bodies revealed in November.
This sobering statistic outweighs last year’s figure by the National Crime Agency’s Human Trafficking Centre, which put the number at 2,744, including 600 children.
“Likely elements within forced labor include low-skill manual and low-paid work; temporary agency work; specific industrial sectors; and certain non-UK migrant workers,” the report stated.
While the JRF’s research acknowledged the criminalization of forced labor in Britain would signal progress, the paper warned it was not a viable substitute for “an effective multi-agency, cross-departmental strategy” that includes measures to address the link between forced labor and human trafficking.
Baseless rhetoric?
While Miliband’s speech in Norfolk addressed social and ethical concerns about immigration in Britain, reports surfaced on Sunday evening that Labour MPs had received a pre-electoral strategy paper saying they should simply “move the conversation on,” should voters express explicit fears about Britain’s border control policies.
Labour aides dismissed the leaked quotes, however, arguing they were taken out of context from a strategic document focusing on how to minimize the threat of Nigel Farage’s Euroskeptic UK Independence Party (UKIP).
But the document leaks, published by the Telegraph, suggested members of the Labour party were instructed not to dispense pamphlets on immigration to all electoral voters, as such a move risked “undermining the broad coalition of support we need to return to government.”
Miliband gave his speech in the Norfolk district of Great Yarmouth. While Labour lost its seat there in 2010, with the constituency now considered a Conservative Party stronghold, it has been identified in recent times as increasingly UKIP-friendly.
In a pre-electoral bid to sway voters to back Labour in 2015, Miliband warned on Monday neither the Tories nor UKIP were prepared to address the underlying causes of immigration.
“They turn a blind eye to exploitation and undercutting because it is part of the low-skill, low-wage, fast-buck economy they think Britain needs to succeed,” he said.
But in light of Sunday’s leaked document, questions have arisen over Labour’s smoke-and-mirrors stance on immigration. Whether Miliband’s pledge is a manifestation of clever electioneering or a solid mandate remains to be seen.
The $7 Million University President
By Lawrence Wittner | CounterPunch | December 15, 2014
In a recent article about Shirley Jackson, the president since 1999 of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)–a private university located in Troy, New York–the Chronicle of Higher Education revealed that, in 2012 (the latest year for which statistics are available), she received over $7 million from that institution. Like many modern campus administrators, President Jackson was also given a large mansion, first class air travel, and a chauffeured luxury car to transport her around the campus.
Thanks to the fact that Jackson also serves on at least five corporate boards, including those of IBM and Marathon Oil, she supplements this income with more than a million dollars a year from these sources.
Despite repeated complaints about Jackson from faculty and students, RPI’s board of trustees has invariably expressed its total confidence in her. Indeed, the board chair recently declared that she is worth every penny of her substantial income. This unwavering support appears to be based not only upon Jackson’s fundraising prowess, but upon the corporate approach that she and the board share.
A key component of this corporate approach is embodied in Jackson’s development and implementation of the Rensselaer Plan, a venture that includes an enormous construction program at a staggering cost. Worried about their institution falling behind rivals in the race to build a high-powered, modern campus, trustees found this university expansion deeply satisfying. But it also meant that RPI ran up its debt to $828 million–over six times its level when Jackson took office. As a result, Moody’s downgraded RPI’s credit rating twice, and describes the financial outlook for RPI as “negative.”
Of course, when operating as a business, there are many ways to pay a top executive’s hefty salary and recoup huge financial losses. As is the practice on other campuses, RPI employs a considerable number of adjunct faculty members–part-timers paid by the course, with pitiful salaries, no benefits, and no guarantee of employment beyond the semester in which they are teaching. One of these adjuncts, Elizabeth Gordon, was paid $4,000 a course–about $10 an hour by her estimates. “Because the pay was so low,” she recalled, “it was like being a volunteer serving the community.” But, as the size of her RPI writing classes grew, she became concerned that the pace of grading, student meetings, and course preparation was undermining her health, which she lacked the insurance to cover. So she quit. Many other adjuncts, however, are still at RPI, scraping by on poverty-level wages and enriching President Jackson.
RPI’s adjuncts once had a voice on campus, as some of them served on RPI’s Faculty Senate. But that came to an end in 2007, when Jackson abolished that entity. From the administration’s standpoint, the abolition of the Senate had the welcome effect of not only depriving adjuncts of their minimal influence, but of crippling the power of regular faculty, as well. The previous year, a faculty vote of no confidence in Jackson’s leadership had been only narrowly defeated. Thus, the administration’s abolition of the Faculty Senate served as a pre-emptive strike. Asked by irate faculty to investigate the situation, the American Association of University Professors condemned the administration’s action as violating the basic principles of shared governance. The administration responded that RPI “has never recognized the role of the AAUP in what we regard as an internal issue.” Ultimately, faculty resistance collapsed, leaving faculty powerlessness and demoralization in its wake.
The Jackson administration, using what union organizers charged were tactics of intimidation, also succeeded in defeating efforts to unionize RPI’s downtrodden campus janitors and cafeteria workers. During one union campaign among janitors, the lead organizer recalled, security guards threw him off campus and the administration fired a janitor on the organizing committee.
In a further effort to cover the administration’s costly priorities, student tuition was raised substantially during the Jackson years. In 2013-14, it reached $45,100–$25,608 above the average tuition at New York’s four-year colleges. Of course, beyond tuition, there are expenses for college fees, room, board, and books, placing RPI’s own estimate of student costs for attendance in 2014-2015 at $64,194. Perhaps to soften the blow to students of this enormous price tag or to signal them about what type of school this is, the RPI web page remarks helpfully that “many of our professors have close ties with top global corporations.”
Having created the very model of an undemocratic, corporate university, President Jackson is appropriately imperious. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, she has a series of rules that are clear to everyone. These include: 1) Only she is authorized to set the temperature in conference rooms; 2) Cabinet members all rise when she enters the room; 3) If food is served at a meeting, vice presidents clear her plate; and 4) She is always to be publicly introduced as “The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson.” Falling into rages on occasion, she publicly abuses her staff and frequently remarks: “You know, I could fire you all.” In 2011, RPI’s Student Senate passed a resolution criticizing her “abrasive style,” “top-down leadership,” and the climate of “fear” she had instilled among administrators and staff. It even called upon RPI’s board of trustees to consider Jackson’s removal from office. But, once again, the board merely rallied in her defense.
Perhaps, though, the response of the board of trustees is not surprising. After all, developments at RPI are very much in line with trends at institutions of higher education: inflating administration salaries; exploiting adjunct faculty, regular faculty, and other workers; strengthening administration power; raising tuition to astronomical heights; and, above all, running colleges and universities like modern business enterprises. RPI actually presents us with a glimpse of the future of higher education―a future that we might not like very much.
Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is “What’s Going On at UAardvark?” (Solidarity Press), a satirical novel about campus life.
Israeli crimes continue in al-Quds
Israel continues its widespread crackdown on the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem al-Quds. The rights groups have dubbed Israel’s crackdown an act of “collective punishment” against the Palestinian population.
More than 1,300 local residents have been arrested since summer, 40 percent of them children, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, an advocacy group.
Over the past weeks, the al-Aqsa Mosque has been the scene of clashes between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli settlers and troops.
Israel has tried over the past decades to change the demographic makeup of al-Quds by constructing illegal settlements, destroying historical sites and expelling the local Palestinian population.
BOMBSHELL INTERVIEW: Eric Garner’s Death a Retaliatory Move by NYPD
By Matt Agorist | Free Thought Project | December 15, 2014
New York, NY — The Free Thought Project has been given exclusive information as to why Eric Garner may have been killed by the NYPD. This new information paints an entirely different picture as to why police were harassing Garner that fateful day back in July.
The information comes from an interview that took place last Thursday with Benjamin Carr. Benjamin Carr is Eric Garner’s stepfather, who was in the media recently peacefully resolving a situation with an angry protester.
The brief clip, obtained exclusively by the Free Thought Project, is part of a much larger collection of video which is going to be part of a documentary on police misconduct, which is why the videographer who gave it to us, has placed a watermark over it.
In the interview, Carr tells us that police didn’t show up that day because Garner broke up a fight or sold loosey cigarettes; they were there because police had a history of harassing Garner.
Carr explains that police had actually stolen money from Garner, who subsequently planned to file charges against the NYPD for this theft. Police were there that day, Carr says, not to shake Garner down for selling smokes, but to retaliate against him for filing charges against them.
When the interviewer asks Carr if he thinks that the police singled out Garner because he was black, this is what he said,
“I wouldn’t really say [he was killed] because Eric was a black man. It’s due to the fact that they stole money from him and refused to give him his money, and he filed charges against them. This is why they had a vendetta against him.”
The Free Thought Project tried multiple times to confirm this complaint against the NYPD by reaching out to their Staten Island precinct. However, after being placed on hold by the NYPD for long periods of time, hung up on, and eventually ignored, we were unable to get a statement from them in regards to this case. The recordings of these calls will be put up on our Radio Show youtube channel for review.
However, we did confirm with a member of Garner’s family that Eric Garner was frequently harassed by these officers, and it goes much deeper than money. Garner had actually been sexually assaulted by the NYPD, on multiple occasions, according to our sources.
Of course, this sounds ridiculous. How would the NYPD sexually assault a man like Eric Garner, and why? But if we dig a little deeper we see that officer Daniel Pantaleo, the man who was responsible for Garner’s death, has been sued three times for violating the constitutional rights of other black males in the area, by performing humiliating strip searches and fondling the genitalia of his victims, some of them in public view.
The most recent of these lawsuits was just filed in November and comes from Kenneth Collins, who says in the lawsuit that he “was subjected to a degrading search of his private parts and genitals by the defendants.”
The NYPD paid out a settlement last year to two men who sued the city because Pantaleo forced them to strip naked in public as he “touched and searched their genital areas, or stood by while this was done in their presence.”
According to another lawsuit, victim Rylawn Walker, was charged with marijuana possession and underwent similar rights violations by Pantaleo. The charges were dismissed against Walker and the case sealed on a motion from prosecutors. His lawsuit against the NYPD stated that Walker “was committing no crime at that time and was not acting in a suspicious manner.”
Defense lawyer Michael Colihan summed up this atrocity when he wrote a letter in August 2014 to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos. In his letter, Colihan said:
“To put it mildly, many police on Staten Island have been playing fast, loose and violently with the public they seem to have forgotten they are sworn to protect,” wrote Colihan. “After litigating about 200 of these civil rights matters in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York since 1977, I have seen no interest by the managers of the New York City Police Department, or anyone employed by the city of New York, in doing anything to stop this.”
After knowing what the NYPD is capable of, these allegations by Benjamin Carr are not surprising in the least. In fact, just 2 months ago, an NYPD officer was actually caught on film stealing over $1,000 in cash from victim Lamard Joye, during a “stop and frisk.” The entire incident was caught on film and we were told that it’s “under internal investigation,” yet nothing has happened.
How many incidents like this one happen daily without consequences for the perpetrators?
Is it any surprise now, seeing why Garner reacted to police with such contempt and non-violent resistance? We are looking at a man being shaken down by people, who’ve allegedly sexually assaulted him multiple times, as well as stolen money from him. And from the video of the incident, it appears that they wished to cause him harm as well.
Would you have been as cordial if armed men with a history of stealing from you and feeling up your private parts, were there to do it all again?
Denver Cops Arrest Man who Exposed them Beating Man on Video While Promoting Cop who did the Beating
By Carlos Miller | PINAC | December 14, 2014
A man who video recorded Denver police repeatedly punching a man in the face, causing his head to bounce off the pavement, before tripping his pregnant wife and causing her to fall on her face – sparking an FBI investigation into the department – was arrested Thursday in what appears to be a case of retaliation.
After all, Denver police not only arrested him on what they called a “newly activated traffic warrant” from a nearby county after he had just left the FBI office with whom he is cooperating on the federal investigation, they refused to allow him to bond out of jail, even though the warrant was regarding a measly missed court date over failure to provide proof of insurance and registration during a traffic stop a few months ago.
Denver police are obviously upset that upset Levi Frasier managed to recover the footage from his Samsung tablet after they had deleted it, which led to them being investigated by the feds.
Not that it stopped them from promoting the cop, Charles “Chris” Jones IV, seen on video punching the suspect to sergeant earlier this month.
Denver police officer Charles “Chris” Jones IV was recently promoted to sergeant despite being under a federal investigation for beating a man on camera.
According to FOX 31:
Frasier was reportedly arrested after leaving the FBI office and before he arrived at FOX31 Denver studios for a schedule interview.
Frasier was not allowed to bond out and was spending the night in jail.
We emailed DPD for a comment and other clarifications after hours.
Cmdr. Matt Murray replied, “I would check with the jail. They could provide the most accurate information about why Mr. Frasier is in jail.”
Frasier is a key witness in an ongoing DPD internal affairs investigation. After recording an arrest on his electronic device, Frasier accused officers of seizing his Samsung tablet without a warrant and scrolling through his video files without permission.
Frasier reported that when the tablet was given back to him, the video was missing, but he restored it with a cloud application.
FOX 31 has been doing a great job on keeping up with this story, dedicating more than six minutes in the previous segment, which you can see below along with the latest segment on his arrest.
They also published a piece that cops have no legal right to seize phones and delete footage, something the mainstream media has always had trouble addressing:
In an exclusive interview with FOX31 Denver, Frasier said, “I didn’t give it to them at all. I went back to the van and grabbed it and as I was walking up — it was taken out of my hand.”
Frasier claimed Denver officers violated his civil rights and federal law when they searched his personal photos file without a court order.
Legal experts said Frasier has a right to be angry. Police cannot, except in rare circumstances, seize your mobile devices without a search warrant.
A June Supreme Court ruling, Riley v. California, greatly limits under what circumstances police can look into a persons cellphone or tablet digging for evidence.
“They crossed the line – absolutely!” said Flores’ attorney Benjamin Hartford.
The incident has prompted the Denver Police Department to turn on the Police PR Spin Machine by issuing a four-page release justifying the behavior of the cops in punching the suspect and tripping his wife, but also putting Frasier’s character into question because he has served time in prison years earlier.
But that letter led to the Citizen Oversight Board, whose seven members are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council, to issue its own letter, criticizing the four-page press release, accusing them of lacking objectivity, an excerpt which you can read below, or read in its entirety by clicking here.
The press release also made statements to attack the credibility of the witness who came forward with the video. It stated that the witness has a criminal record, and listed several crimes that he was allegedly imprisoned for in another state. It stated that he was recently released after a “lengthy” prison sentence, and that the witness has “six aliases,” which occurs as a result of a legal name change or “the illegal use of someone else’s name or lying about one’s identity to the police.”
We strongly believe that it was not appropriate for the DPD to make these statements. There is already significant community concern and distrust of the DPD and IAB. Instead of thanking the witness who came forward to share information, the DPD publicly attacked his character. It is very likely that the DPD’s attacks on this witness will only reinforce fears in the community, and inhibit other members of the public from cooperating with DPD or IAB if they witness possible officer misconduct in the future.
We are aware that the stated purpose of IAB investigations is to fairly determine the facts so that decisions can be made about whether any officers engaged in misconduct. There should be no predetermined conclusions at the beginning of an IAB investigation. In this case, however, the DPD has publicly stated that the force was appropriate before IAB has even conducted its investigation. In the news story, the DPD Commander admitted that the Department had not yet viewed the witness’ full video of the use of force. Isn’t that a very important piece of evidence that would have to be viewed before deciding that repeatedly punching the man and tripping his pregnant girlfriend was appropriate?
‘America needs a Perestroika’ – Gorbachev to RT
RT | December 15, 2014
The US needs reforms similar to those during Perestroika in the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev told RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze. The former Soviet leader also spoke about Washington’s policy of pressure and intervention into conflicts.
Gorbachev stressed the need for political and economic reforms in the US, saying “they need a Perestroika” (translated from Russian as “restructuring”), referring to the political movement carried out during his rule in the 1980s.
“They can call it any name they want, the American way,” he said, adding that “Americans do not want a war. But it is not easy for them, with the society that they have.”
The US uses tensions and instability to intervene into a conflict, then creates an enemy to enable their “policy of pressure” and shift responsibility, he said.
“Whenever tensions are high, whenever there’s instability in a certain country or throughout the region, it’s an opportunity for [the US] to intervene,” said Gorbachev.
“I am quite familiar with this policy from my own experience,” added the former Soviet leader. Gorbachev has come into the spotlight in recent months, warning Western and Russian leaders against dragging the world into a new Cold War amid the Ukraine crisis.
During his interview with RT, Gorbachev explained that there were always two sides to the conflict in the 20th century – “one was supported by the United States, and the other by the Soviet Union.”
“The US needs an enemy in order to return to their old policy of pressure. They can’t live without it. They are still enslaved by their old policy,” he elaborated.
Speaking on the Ukraine crisis, he said that the current situation is similar, with the US looking for “some pretext to interfere…they need an enemy figure, and they are doing it again.”
Watch the full interview with Gorbachev on RT’s SophieCo on Friday.
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From the Archives
Jack Ruby: Israel’s Smoking Gun
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 13, 2021
By a strange paradox, most Kennedy researchers who believe that Oswald was “just a patsy” spend an awful lot of time exploring his biography. This is about as useful as investigating Osama bin Laden for solving 9/11. Any serious quest for the real assassins of JFK should start by investigating the man who shot Oswald at pointblank in the stomach at 11:21 a.m. on September 24, 1963 in the Dallas Police station, thereby sealing the possibility that a judicial inquiry would draw attention to the inconsistencies of the charge against him, and perhaps expose the real perpetrators. One would normally expect the Dallas strip-club owner Jack Ruby to be the most investigated character by Kennedy truthers. But that is not the case.
Of course, it is perfectly normal that Chief Justice Earl Warren, when Ruby told him on June 7, 1964, “I have been used for a purpose,” failed to ask him who had used him and for what purpose.[1] But what about independent investigators? Are only readers of the Forward (“News That Matters To American Jews”) worthy of being informed that “Lee Harvey Oswald’s Killer ‘Jack Ruby’ Came From Strong Jewish Background,” and that he told his rabbi Hillel Silverman that he “did it for the Jewish people”? … continue
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