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BP, the British oil company, is attempting to blame "blue collar workers" for the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, alleges the U.S. government. Federal lawyers say the company is trying to divert attention from management failures of "gross negligence."
Saudi Star Agricultural Development plans to pump $100 million into a rice export project in Gambella region of Ethiopia despite allegations of human rights violations surrounding the "villagization" program under which the land has been taken from indigenous Anuak pastoralists to lease to foreign investors.
Turkmenistan and Oman have been negotiating with a consortium of British, German and Swiss companies to buy "FinFisher" software to spy on phone calls and Internet activity of unsuspecting targets, according to a new trove of documents just released by Wikileaks, the global whistleblowing organization.
G4S and Serco - two private security contractors - have just been awarded multi-million pound contracts by the UK Borders Authority to provide housing to asylum seekers, edging out charities for the work. Activists are protesting, saying that G4S has a history of abusing immigrants and providing poor quality housing.
Chiquita, the global banana producer, was ordered to face a federal court over their role in paying off right wing death squads in Colombia that are alleged to have used "random and targeted violence" against villagers in exchange for financial assistance and access to Chiquita's private port.
Barinem Kiobel was executed on November 10, 1995 by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha of Nigeria. Almost 16 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide whether Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil multinational, can be held responsible for his death.
Technology from a major Silicon Valley company, Blue Coat, is being used by the Syrian government to censor the Internet and monitor dissidents, according to activists. The equipment can be used to monitor users and block access to certain websites, such as social networking applications like Facebook and internet phone sites like Skype, which were key to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia
Serco, a UK company, has a contract to manage the Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre some 1,600 miles off the West Coast of Australia, which houses thousands of asylum seekers. The detainees at the overcrowded facility are experiencing serious mental health problems that union organizers say are a result of poor training and understaffing.
Human Rights Law Foundation, accuses Cisco Systems of tailoring technology for the Chinese government to monitor and apprehend members of the banned Falun Gong organization.
In the rural, tribal lands of Eastern India, protesters are going head-to-head with world steel giant Arcelor Mittal. "We may give away our lives, but we will not part with an inch of our ancestral land," the villagers cry. "The forest, rivers and land are ours. We don't want factories, steel or iron. Arcelor Mittal Go Back."
Originally posted, October 14, 2009 on http://www.ibabuzz.com/politics/2009/10/14/berkeley-oakland-urge-oil-money-transparency/
In an effort to keep business ties with Turkey, five military contractors and one energy company (Chevron) lobby against a U.S. bill that would label Turkey's slaugther of a million Aremnians during WWI genocide.
Royal Dutch Shell agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle a case accusing it of taking part in human rights abuses in the Niger Delta, a striking sum given it has denied any wrongdoing. Ken Saro-Wiwa, Shell's most prominent critic at the time in Nigeria, was hanged in 1995 by that country's military regime after protesting Shell's environmental practices in the oil-rich delta, especially in his native Ogoni region.
Originally posted June 10, 2009, on The Huffington Post.
After thirteen years and
countless hours by lawyers, community members, and activists around the
world, Royal Dutch Shell finally settled the Wiwa v Shell case in a New York court for $15.5 million.
Multinationals accused of human rights abuses can no longer feel safe now that the oil giant is facing allegations of complicity in the execution of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
A new novel, "Eclipse," by Richard North Patterson, is based on the case of the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, executed in November 1995 by the government of General Sani Abacha. The circumstances, along with related incidents of brutal attacks, are getting another hearing. This month the Wiwa family's lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell over its role in those events goes to trial in federal court in Manhattan.