Action Aid UK: Corporate abuse in India – stop Vedanta

We need your help to stop Vedanta, a British mining company, threatening the home of thousands of the world’s most vulnerable people.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2997262350966752303&hl=en

The Kondh tribe have lived a self sufficient life in the Niyamgiri hills in Orissa, India for generations. The hills provide their food, water and medicines and they worship the Niyamgiri mountain as their living God, the supreme Deity NiyamRaja. But now Vedanta wants to build a mine in  the area.
Official reports suggest it will lead to massive deforestation, threaten water sources and destroy local ecosystems (home to endangered animals such as the tiger, leopard and elephant).
It will also end the Kondh’s ancient way of life.
We were really inspired by the amazing women in the above video. Vedanta is a huge corporation with a lot of power but they refuse to be bullied.
We especially love the woman at the end who says she’ll beat Vedanta with her broom – what a legend!
The below video tells the full story. 

Your voice is powerful. Use it to get them heard. Email the Indian High Commissioner in London.

 In the words of 16 year old Rapna Majhi:

“We don’t know how to take forward our struggle in London. We can not take this struggle on our own – but we will fight here til we die”.

 

Want to know more? Click here
 

Aussie Burgers: McDonald$ lifting prices in working-class areas

McDONALD’S will charge more for Happy Meals and at “high-demand” stores, including at the Royal Children’s Hospital. Most of the outlets where prices will rise are in the city and working class suburbs, because McDonalds believes those consumers are more likely to accept the higher charges, while diners in more affluent areas would complain. The cost of menu items was previously based on restaurant overheads and ingredient prices.

But the multinational fast-food chain is now using socio-economic factors to determine charges under a new “demand-based pricing” scheme.

A confidential corporate document seen by the Australian Herald Sun reveals McDonald’s Australia has identified an “opportunity to introduce more aggressive price increases” at 52 of Victoria’s 214 outlets.

Melbourne’s CBD restaurants on Collins, Elizabeth, Swanston and Bourke streets will be among those to charge the highest prices.

The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne airport and select restaurants from areas such as Airport West and St Albans through to country Victorian restaurants in Traralgon and Echuca will all be hardest hit.Suburbs such as Werribee and Avondale Heights and country towns such as Benalla will only incur moderate increases.A McDonald’s franchisee, who asked to remain anonymous, said the biggest price rises were concentrated in low-income areas.”If you take the time to analyse the different restaurants, in general the poorer suburbs will pay more,” the franchisee said.

“In essence, areas that the franchiser thinks will pay more for our products will have to. This is so wrong.”

The document says the objective of the new system is for individual stores “to maximise the potential for a price rise” while minimising the risk consumers that will go elsewhere or choose a cheaper meal.The biggest price rise will be for children’s Happy Meals, which will increase by 16.5 per cent from $4.25 to $4.95, at all locations.Other items will rise in two stages by between 1.8 per cent and 3.3 per cent, depending on the location of the restaurant.

McDonald’s corporate communications manager Bronwyn Stubbs denied the prices were forced on franchise owners.”The company’s licensed restaurants have always, and continue to have, the power to set their own pricing based on individual factors,” she said.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur Tells Americans To Squat In Their Houses And F**k Off The Banks!

By Mark Ames

Although it’s more fun to trash the villains and suckers who dominate our dying empire, if the rare hero appears and says something courageous and decent, then it becomes our professional duty to salute her. That hero is Ohio congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Toledo), who recently called for distressed homeowners to squat in their houses and fuck off the banks who have fucked over the country.

 Here’s Kaptur speaking like the only true representative of the people out there:

“I’m saying to them possession is 99 percent of the law; you stay in your house,” Miss Kaptur said yesterday, continuing a crusade she started several weeks ago in Congress and CNN picked up Thursday night.

“I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don’t you leave,” she said during a speech in Congress earlier this month.

She said she believes that many so-called predatory and subprime loans – those made to borrowers who did not qualify for a conventional mortgage – may have been illegal.

She urged homeowners not to panic and leave their home just because they receive a foreclosure notice from their lender, and she said they should demand that the mortgage-holder produce a mortgage audit.

Naturally, she’s been targeted by the Republican rightwing for destruction. This kind of talk is way too dangerous to be tolerated–after all, for 30 years or more now, the rich have grown used to plundering a passive middle-class and working-class America. So guess who the Republicans are considering running against Kaptur in 2010? Yep, the biggest weapon in their pseudo-populist arsenal, none other than child-molester-lookalike Joe The Plumber. Already there’s a draft-Joe-the-Plumber website concocted by a group of elitist Amherst Republicans.

“Hi there son, want some candy? Come inside my van, I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

Meanwhile, as expected, the Republican rightwing and their real estate sponsors are trying to make Kaptur’s pro-people proposal seem crazy, which is usually how they characterize anything that doesn’t enrich the plutocracy. Their local spokesman/attack dog is realtor Jim Moody, a Republican running for mayor of Toledo:

“I think those are dangerous statements,” Mr. Moody said. “What’s she going to say when the sheriff comes and puts all their stuff on the street when they didn’t leave because Marcy Kaptur said they could stay and become a squatter?

“I think she’s clueless. This is goofy. Of course, the attorneys file the proper paperwork,” Mr. Moody said.

Here’s one example of something Kaptur could say, Jim: “You, sheriff, are fired, because I write the fucking laws here.” Or better yet, “Okay, since I write the laws, I decree that everyone who loses their house should squat in Jim Moody’s master bedroom. How you like them apples, fuckhead?”

Incidentally, you can find Moody’s personal cellphone here on this ad for his real estate company, Flex Realty. The number, just in case, is 419-392-4444. Call him and tell him you’re really interested in buying one of the shitty overpriced houses he’s listing. Tell him you’ll meet him in 5 minutes at a house that’s 25 minutes away, so that he’ll total his car trying to close a deal. Or tell him you’ll meet him at 4:30 a.m. because you’re an early riser and you only respect a man who does business at that ungodly hour.

Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine. You can reach him at ames@exiledonline.com.

Ominous Signs for the US economy

Economists have many ways of gauging the temperature of the economy. Now, a lawyer has one, and it’s not encouraging.

Garry Mathiason is 37-year veteran of Littler Mendelson, a leading employment-law specialist with 800 attorneys and 30,000 clients. Mr. Mathiason estimates that the firm is consulted on roughly half the layoffs in the U.S.

When Littler’s layoff-related business surged last fall, Mr. Mathiason conducted an informal survey of his colleagues and found the firm was handling around a million prospective job cuts. That suggested two million for the nation as a whole, though Mr. Mathiason knew some of the prospective layoffs might not materialize during the quarter. When the government released its official numbers in January, U.S. employers had eliminated 1.5 million jobs in the fourth quarter – close to what Mr. Mathiason had expected.

Now the bad news. Mr. Mathiason says Littler is working on roughly two million additional prospective layoffs this quarter. Applying his admittedly unscientific methodology, Mr. Mathiason estimates the U.S. could lose around three million jobs from January through March, or one million a month. That’s equivalent to all the job losses in 2008. The government estimates that 600,000 jobs were lost in January.

To be sure, not all the layoffs Littler is working on this quarter will come to pass, says Mr. Mathiason. Some may be pushed into future quarters. Some numbers may be trimmed. Managers are planning for worst-case scenarios, Mr. Mathiason says.

Still, the size and speed of these cuts has surpassed those of previous downturns, says Mr. Mathiason: “You go back to other recessions, there was a slower reaction time on the part of employers. Historically, it hasn’t been like a light switch going off.”