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Privatizing Asylum Housing: Serco and G4S Get UK Contracts
Lily Smith
May 8th, 2012
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.
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 | | Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees rally. Photo: Gareth Harper. Used under Creative Commons license |
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Sweatships at Sea: Carnival Cruises Pay Below International Standards
Pratap Chatterjee
May 1st, 2012
Carnival Cruise staff on UK ships are paid $1.20 an hour or $400 a month in basic wages, according to the Guardian newspaper. These workers lose their tips, ie roughly 15 percent of wages, unless they get at least a 92 percent favorable rating from customers.
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 | | Worker clears table on a Carnival Cruise line ship in the Caribbean. Photo: opticbluebear. Used under Creative Commons license |
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Cashing in on Terrorism
Anna Feigenbaum
April 24th, 2012
"Is Rioting a Form of Urban Terrorism?" The headline for a press release was a provocative introduction to the annual Counter Terror Expo in Olympia, London, which opens this week. (April 25 & 26) Eight thousand visitors are expected to descend on 400 exhibitions of counter-terrorism technologies and services.
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Glencore Allegedly Buys Copper From Ten Year Old Miners
Pratap Chatterjee
April 17th, 2012
Children as young as ten in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, dig for cobalt and copper which they then sell to Switzerland-based Glencore, the world’s largest commodities company, according to a new BBC investigation.
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 | | Children in Katanga Show Off Copper Finds. Photo: FairPhone. Used under Creative Commons license |
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Renewable Energy Projects Generate Opposition in Puerto Rico
Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
April 8th, 2012
Puerto Rican citizen groups are protesting two renewable energy projects: a 30 megawatt solar energy project in Yabucoa by Western Wind Energy corporation from Vancouver and a 75 megawatt windmill array in Santa Isabel by Pattern Energy of San Francisco. The reason: these projects will threaten scarce farm land on the food dependent island.
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 | | Protest at the windmill construction site, March 25, 2012. Photo: Rosemarie Vasquez, Agricultural Rescue Front (FRA) |
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Chiquita Banana To Face Colombia Torture Claim
Pratap Chatterjee
March 30th, 2012
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.
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 | | Chiquita bananas. Photo: Dawn Huczek. Used under Creative Commons license |
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Emerald Energy Exploits Colombian Andes
Elias Cabrera
March 18th, 2012
Emerald Energy, a UK company owned by Sinochem of China, is exploring for oil in the eastern Colombian Andes in the high altitude tropical mountain tundra ecosystem known as páramo. Local communities say that the company's underground explosions have caused landslides and ground collapses that have destroyed homes, crops and contaminated the local water supply.
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 | | Emerald Energy oil well in Colombia. Photo by Elias Cabrera |
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Thorny Business: Ethiopian Rose Exports To Europe
Pratap Chatterjee
March 5th, 2012
Karuturi Global and Saudi Star have leased thousands of hectares of land from the Ethiopian government for agricultural development. Critics says these projects have displaced traditional farmers and subsistence crops.
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 | | Photo: Ethiopian Roses. Planète à Vendre (used under Creative Commons license) |
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