When It Comes To Iran, It's About Oil Dummy! (AUDIO) | Air America Media

http://airamerica.com/lionel/blog/2009/sep/25/iran-its-about-oil-dummy-audio
Interesting perspective. "Think of the middle east as a vagina, and Iran is a yeast infection"
Seriously.

Report: Georgia Triggered War With Russia - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125431087432152321.html
BRUSSELS--A nine-month European Union investigation into the 2008 war in the Caucasus has concluded that Georgia triggered the conflict, but that Russia prepared the ground for war to break out and broke international law by invading Georgia as a whole.

Conclusions to the roughly 1,000 page report, released on Wednesday by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, also found that Russia-backed South Ossetian militias committed atrocities and "ethnic cleansing" of Georgian villages during and since the war. It faulted Russian forces in control of the territory that either "would not or could not" control the South Ossetians.

The report found no evidence to back Russian claims that Georgia committed genocide on the night of Aug.7-8.

The conflict, which briefly brought the United States and Russia into Cold War-style confrontation, left some 850 people dead, 35,000 permanently displaced and Europe's security infrastructure severely weakened. Russian forces remain in occupation of the two territories, while Moscow has recognized them as independent states.

U.S. Child Labor [sic] Laws

With thanks to my contact @ Human Rights Watch

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/09/15/us-adopt-stronger-laws-child-farmworkers

US: Adopt Stronger Laws for Child Farmworkers

Proposed Legislation Would Eliminate Double Standard in Child Labor Laws

September 15, 2009

The US Congress should amend outdated labor laws that allow even young children to work in commercial US agriculture, Human Rights Watch said today. Legislation introduced today by Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard of California would for the first time apply the same age and hour requirements to children working in agriculture as for children working in other occupations. Hundreds of thousands of children under age 18 work in US agriculture.

In states including Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Michigan, Human Rights Watch has found that child farmworkers work longer hours, at younger ages, and under more hazardous conditions than other working youths. This summer, Human Rights Watch interviewed children hoeing cotton and sorghum in scorching heat, cutting collard greens and kale with sharp knives, hitching and driving tractors, and stooping for hours picking cucumbers.

Pay was, at best, minimum wage, but was often far lower. Many employers provided no drinking water or toilets. Children described smelling and, in a few instances, being sprayed with pesticides. Many left school in April or May, or were still working elsewhere when their schools started in August.

"Children as young as 11 and 12 are working 10 or more hours a day in one of the country's most dangerous occupations," said Zama Coursen-Neff, deputy director for the Children's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. "It's time to update antiquated laws and make sure that children harvesting food in the fields receive just as much protection as the teens serving that food at McDonald's."

Agriculture is one of the most dangerous types of youth employment in the United States. In 2000, the Department of Labor reported that the risks of work-related fatalities for youth working in agriculture were four times as high as the average for all working youth.

The Roybal-Allard bill, the "Children's Act for Responsible Employment (CARE)" would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to prohibit the employment of children ages 13 and younger in agriculture, except for those working on farms owned and operated by their parents. It would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work only for limited hours, outside of school hours, and would raise the age for hazardous agricultural work to 18.

Currently, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, any agricultural employer can hire children ages 12 and 13 to work unlimited hours, outside of school hours with parental permission. On small farms, there is no minimum age for children who work outside of school hours with their parents' consent. In contrast, employers outside of agriculture are prohibited from hiring children below age 14, and can employ 14- and 15-year-olds for no more than 18 hours in a school week, and not more than 40 in a non-school week. No such restrictions apply to children working in agriculture.

 "The long hours and low wages of child farmworkers undermine their education and perpetuate cycles of poverty," Coursen-Neff said. "US practices also violate international law."

In 1999, the US ratified the International Labour Organization's Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, which prohibits work that is likely to harm the health, safety, or morals of children. The guidelines that accompany the convention recommend that prohibited forms of child labor include work with dangerous machinery, equipment or tools, and exposure to hazardous substances and temperatures.

In a letter sent on September 15, Human Rights Watch urged members of the House of Representative's Committee on Education and Labor to support the bill and act quickly to ensure its passage.

Roybal-Allard announced the introduction of the bill in advance of a September 16 US Department of Labor event focusing on the plight of migrant farmworker children. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is the host.

*****************************************************************

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/14_million/poor3.shtml

Children in the Fields

By John Biewen - Correspondent

Part of 'The Forgotten Fourteen Million'


When Americans talk about the problem of child labor, they're usually talking about other countries. The U.S. banned most kinds of work by young children decades ago – and certainly dangerous work - except in the nation's orchards and fields. Farmworker advocates say agriculture is the last big stronghold of dangerous child labor in the United States. Much of that labor is legal. And most of the children doing it are poor.

SANTIAGO AND EMMA MATA work side by side inside a natural tunnel formed by overlapping branches of Granny Smith apple trees. They wear gloves and surgical masks to guard against dust and pesticide residue. It's a crisp, perfect October day near Mattawa, in south-central Washington State. The Matas are not migrants. Like thousands of farm workers in this part of Washington, they live here year-round.

"I work all the time," Santiago says through an interpreter. "Picking cherries, picking apples, trimming and pruning the trees ... "

The Matas pluck the green apples with smooth, rapid motions, quickly filling the canvas bags strapped over their shoulders. Every few minutes, each of them climbs down to lay a bagful into a squat, wooden bin the size of a big freezer chest – very gently, to avoid bruising.

Together, the husband-and-wife team can fill a 900-pound bin in half an hour. This orchard pays 12 dollars a bin, so it's a good day; the Matas are each making about $12 an hour.

"But it depends," says Emma, as she empties her sturdy canvas bag. "Sometimes, when there's a good, long row with lots of fruit on the trees, we make good money. But if there are other workers near us and not much fruit, we don't make much."

Economists who study the industry say on average, hired farm workers make $6 or $7/hour, with no health coverage, workers' compensation coverage, or overtime pay. Between seasons, farm workers live through long stretches of unemployment. So the average farm worker in the US earns about $7,000 a year.

"I strive to pay a fair wage, and I believe that we do, I believe that we do," says Larry Knudson, 59, who owns a midsize orchard outside of Yakima.

Knudson is blunt but amiable; he wears a wide-rimmed leather hat and scuffed canvas jacket. "Our base wage on this operation is $6.75 an hour," he says proudly. His speech grows halting, though, when he's asked how his workers get by. "All my year-round people, they're all raising families and ... are living ... fine."

Helping Pay the Bills

"I sleep [on] the floor, because I feel better on the floor," explains 13-year-old Luis Hernandez, giving a tour of the small house where he lives with his parents and five siblings in Toppenish, Washington. "My big older brother, he sleeps right there, in the bed."

The bed is right. It's the only one in the house. The four younger children sleep on thin mattresses on the living room floor, Luis says matter-of-factly. "And my dad and my mom, too."

Luis's parents, Juan and Antonia, are Mexican immigrants. Their children were all born in the U.S. The Hernandez' don't work for Larry Knudson, but, like his year-round employees, they make more than the average farm worker family – $18,000 last year, they say. That's still $10,000 below the federal poverty line for a family of eight.

To ease the burden slightly, Luis and his 14-year-old brother, Jose, work sometimes, too. Jose picked cherries last summer, then kept working after school started, harvesting apples on weekends through mid-October.

"Not all day, but in the morning [until] 3 p.m.," he says in an adolescent's shy monotone. "To help my parents get money to pay the bills and all that."

Antonia and Juan Hernandez seem sensitive to questions about their sons doing farm work. They say they don't require the boys to work.

"No, they wanted to come and help us," Antonia says in forceful Spanish. "It was their idea."

The eldest boy, Jose, goes to the orchards, Juan explains, "so [Luis] wanted to go too. Because he wanted to make some money. We let them keep some. Only a little, but some."

Media reports often focus on illegal child labor in agriculture. But it's legal for 14-year-old Jose to work in the orchards. Thirteen-year-old Luis broke state law by picking cherries last summer; cherry orchards are off-limits in Washington until age 14. But at 13, he could work legally in cucumber, berry, and spinach fields. Agriculture's child labor laws vary from state and state and crop to crop, but as a rule they're more lenient than in any other industry. That's true in most states, and it's strikingly true at the federal level. That despite the fact that farming ranks with mining and construction as one of the most dangerous industries.

"It's OK for a kid under 14 to work in the fields using knives and machetes and other sharp cutting instruments, but they can't work under 14 in an air-conditioned office collating paper," says Diane Mull of the Washington D.C.-based Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs.

Mull estimates 800,000 children work legally and illegally in agriculture. Hard numbers aren't available. One census bureau estimate says 155,000 minors work on farms, but that survey didn't count kids under 15. A recent survey in Wisconsin found 92% of farm workers' children over the age of 12 worked in the fields.

Farm leaders insist their industry has the most relaxed labor laws for good reason.

"The average agricultural producer is a very, very small business," says Bryan Little, chief lobbyist for the American Farm Bureau Federation. "And family farms by and large cannot succeed without relying on the efforts of family and friends and extended family and anybody else you can find to try to come and drive the truck, drive the combine ... and do stuff like that when you're trying to get the harvest in before it rains."

But that communal picture of child labor is largely outdated, statistics show. The Census Bureau says only a quarter of kids working on farms are the children or neighbors of farm owners. Three-fourths are hired laborers.

A report last fall by the National Research Council's Institute of Medicine called on the government to tighten restrictions on child labor – especially on farms. Working on farms can be healthy for children if the work is safe and doesn't go on too long, says commission member Barbara Lee, a rural Wisconsin physician. "But if you put them into a situation where they're actually taking the place of an adult laborer, you have to ask the question: Would it be acceptable in any other industry? And if it is not, then we have to say we've got a problem here," Lee says.

Children At Risk

Luis Hernandez worked on the cherry harvest for just a few days last summer. That's because in the first week, just before his 13th birthday, he took a break to play, and got seriously hurt.

"I was standing on a ladder," he recalls. "When I got off, I was playing with the guy, a friend, that was on a tractor. I was playing with him, throwing cherries. Then I tripped, and when I tripped, the tire, it ranned over me and stopped right here on the middle of my stomach."

Luis's mother, Antonia, was working on a ladder nearby. She screamed when she saw the tractor's flat-bed trailer, loaded with bins of apples, knock Luis down and roll onto his chest.

"[The driver] heard me and he stopped and looked down," Antonia says. "The wheel had come up just short of Luis's head. The driver then backed off him."

Luis was flown to a hospital in Seattle with a bruised heart and blood in his lungs. He's O.K. now. But a 17-year-old boy picking peaches in Utah last summer was not as lucky; he died of a brain hemorrhage after being sprayed accidentally with pesticides twice in one week.

Teenage farm workers make up just 4% of all employed teens, but a much higher 25% of those killed on the job.

Farm groups say those figures overstate the danger to young hand laborers. Most of the kids killed on farms are those who live there, says Mike Gempler of the Washington Growers League; they are far more likely to handle dangerous machinery and pesticides.

"But for somebody who is involved in a fieldwork position, who's not working around concentrated forms of pesticides, who is handling a piece of fruit that is going to be sold and marketed the next day, the threat is not there at all," Gempler says. "The hard evidence doesn't stack up."

But critics counter that there's no hard evidence either way. Federal officials acknowledge that the long-term effects of pesticide exposure on field workers have never been studied. Farm worker advocate Diane Mull points out federal standards for when workers can enter a field after pesticides have been sprayed are based on the estimated risk to an adult male – not a child.

"We're using these kids, we're using farm workers, as guinea pigs, to really look at what intensive pesticide exposures are," she says. "If you look at that population and you know that they're largely minority, that's an even more egregious form of discrimination."

Farm worker advocates say the best way to curb child labor in agriculture is to reduce the need for children to work, by raising the wages paid to adult farm workers. Farm employers reply that they couldn't compete in global markets if they had to pay much more.


Related:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/kids-in-the-garden/

NATO / Media Lies in Former Yugoslavia

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6386/
I've begun digging on this topic, following this claim by a friend, elsewhere:

"Remember the ex-Yugoslavia? Remember all those front page articles about the supposed "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs? That demonised sovereign nation which was likened by those "erudite" broadsheets as akin to Nazi Germany?

Remember?

Let me tell you a little "secret"... one which your [US] newspapers failed to reveal.

The Serb "holocaust"? The one which lead NATO (the gendarmes of the USA) to bomb a country for 78 days non-stop? You know how many "mass graves" were found?

Yeah... I didn't think so.

The FBI failed to find a single mass grave. Uh huh. Funny how that "little" secret failed to get mentioned.

The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines". That's right.

Del Ponte's tribunal announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA.

2,788. That's less casualties than the American Civil War. And an entire nation was smashed to smithereens because of a US lead PR campaign. The war mongers at work. Tell me which one of your great newspapers spilled the beans regarding THAT little secret?

So, forgive me if I take what you say with the proverbial pinch of sodium chloride."

**********************************************************************************************

My co-moderator here, Diio, remarked that he was unable to find much online to back up this statement, so I'm looking...

Here's one or two to start us off...

The Rise of The Laptop Bombardier

March 2009

"Journalists and editors did more than simply cheer NATO’s bombing of Belgrade: they wrote the script for it."

Full article at link


Meanwhile... Gurcan, if you will, I remember a great piece you wrote (for yourself) on the Balkans in general... would you mind posting it here?

Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia etc.... I still don't think I've quite got my head around it all


Don't Forget Yugoslavia

by John Pilger

The secrets of the crushing of Yugoslavia are emerging, telling us more about how the modern world is policed. The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, this year published her memoir, The Hunt: Me and War Criminals. Largely ignored in Britain, the book reveals unpalatable truths about the West's intervention in Kosovo, which has echoes in the Caucasus.

The tribunal was set up and bankrolled principally by the United States. Del Ponte's role was to investigate the crimes committed as Yugoslavia was dismembered in the 1990s. She insisted that this include NATO's 78-day bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, which killed hundreds of people in hospitals, schools, churches, parks, and television studios and destroyed economic infrastructure. "If I am not willing to [prosecute NATO personnel]," said Del Ponte, "I must give up my mission." It was a sham. Under pressure from Washington and London, an investigation into NATO war crimes was scrapped.

Readers will recall that the justification for the NATO bombing was that the Serbs were committing "genocide" in the secessionist province of Kosovo against ethnic Albanians. David Scheffer, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes, announced that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" may have been murdered. Tony Blair invoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War." The West's heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose murderous record was set aside. The British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him anytime on his mobile phone.

With the NATO bombing over, international teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume the "holocaust." The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines." A year later, Del Ponte's tribunal announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide in Kosovo. The "holocaust" was a lie. The NATO attack had been fraudulent.

That was not all, says Del Ponte in her book: the KLA kidnapped hundreds of Serbs and transported them to Albania, where their kidneys and other body parts were removed; these were then sold for transplant in other countries. She also says there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the Kosovar Albanians for war crimes, but the investigation "was nipped in the bud" so that the tribunal's focus would be on "crimes committed by Serbia." She says the Hague judges were terrified of the Kosovar Albanians – the very people in whose name NATO had attacked Serbia.

Indeed, even as Blair the war leader was on a triumphant tour of "liberated" Kosovo, the KLA was ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Serbs and Roma from the province. Last February the "international community," led by the U.S., recognized Kosovo, which has no formal economy and is run, in effect, by criminal gangs that traffic in drugs, contraband, and women. But it has one valuable asset: the U.S. military base Camp Bondsteel, described by the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner as "a smaller version of Guantanamo." Del Ponte, a Swiss diplomat, has been told by her own government to stop promoting her book.

Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent and multi-ethnic, if imperfect, federation that stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to dominate its "natural market" in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991, a secret deal had been struck; Germany recognized Croatia, and Yugoslavia was doomed. In Washington, the U.S. ensured that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans and the defunct NATO was reinvented as an enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo "peace" conference in France, the Serbs were told to accept occupation by NATO forces and a market economy, or be bombed into submission. It was the perfect precursor to the bloodbaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Link:

http://www.antiwar.com/pilger/?articleid=13303


Related:

http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2007/03/carla-del-ponte-slams-muted-response.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/12/warcrimes.kosovo


Pictured: Carla Del Ponte

Typhoon Ondoy leaves 106+ Dead in Manila, Philippines

http://swerver.multiply.com/journal/item/299/MANILA_NEEDS_OUR_HELP?replies_read=6
http://otsopya.multiply.com/journal/item/728/Ondoys_Wrath

http://otsopya.multiply.com/notes/item/35 (List of Relief Centres)

Targeting Pakistan and silencing the critics

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=196326
It is a strong sign that we (the US and NATO) need to get the hell out of Afghanistan AND Pakistan when the US ambassador starts getting Pakistani press freedom suppressed, and when we find that Xe, formerly known as Blackwater is still being used for anything at all by our government, let alone in a country that doesn't want it there, for understandable reasons. No company whose owner is an avowed anti-Islam holy warrior should be used anywhere near a Muslim country.
(link from http://multiply.com/gi/elephantsmemory:journal:508)

US Gets Pakistani Column Pulled Over Blackwater Report

Taken from here.

US Ambassador Pressed Pakistani Paper to Pull Column
by Jason Ditz, September 06, 2009

The United States embassy in Pakistan reportedly managed to get the weekly column of a top critic of US policy pulled from the major English-language newspaper in Pakistan “The News International,” following a secret letter from Ambassador Anne Patterson to the newspaper earlier in the week.

The US embassy confirmed sending the letter but would not discuss its content. The newspaper’s editorial team said they were open to publishing the column at a later date, and indeed the article, entitled “Targeting Pakistan and Silencing the Critics” was made available on their website. Still, Pakistani media are saying that the embassy’s ability to block an article it found objectionable from a long-time critic of US policy is a sign of the enormous power the US wields in the nation.

Dr. Shireen Mazari, the author of the article, was interviewed on Iranian state media regarding what she called US censorship, and appeared to be not particularly surprised by the turn of events, though she insisted all the claims she made in the article also appeared in Western media sources, including Deutsche Presse-Agentur. She also vowed to continue her criticism of US policy, insisting “the Americans can’t gag me in my own country.”

Though Ambassador Patterson’s specific objections have not been made public, and she told The News not to publish her letter of complaint, it is widely assumed that Dr. Mazari’s references to Blackwater contractors being used on Pakistani soil was the source of the most vociferous objections.

A member of the opposition Tehreek-e Insaf party, Mazari was the director of a top foreign policy think-tank funded by the Pakistani government, though she was eventually removed from the position after what many in the Pakistani media believe was growing US pressure and warnings from the embassy that so long as she held the position they would treat her comments as official policy.

Following the furore over Dr. Mazari’s column, the Pakistani government officially denied that any Blackwater personnel were in the country, and insisted rules were in place to prevent such a thing happening. The US embassy declined comment, but last month former CIA officials revealed that the company had in fact been providing security on a Pakistani air base from which CIA drones were flown.


September 7, 2009 -- US Ambassador Accuses Pakistan’s Jang Media Group of Endangering Americans
August 21, 2009 -- CIA’s Ties With Blackwater Run Deep
September 24, 2009 -- US Mulls Increasing Drone Strikes in Pakistan