Iraqi officials have found three mass graves containing the bodies of about 1,000 people thought to have been executed by US soldiers during their occupation of the country.
The graves were uncovered in Iraq’s western province of al-Anbar. The remains are believed to be from victims killed by US forces during 2004 and 2005 in the city of Fallujah, located roughly 69 kilometers (43 miles) west of Baghdad.
omg… rip to those souls lost
setfabulazerstomaximumcaptain:
Prison Labor Exposed: From Starbucks to Microsoft - A sampling of what US prisoners make & for whom
May 21, 2013Tens of thousands of US inmates are paid from pennies to minimum wage—minus fines and victim compensation—for everything from grunt work to firefighting to specialized labor.
The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners. At the UnionCorrectional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products for sale through contracts with private companies, from eyeglasses to office furniture, to be shipped from a distribution center in Florida to businesses across the US. PRIDE boasts that its work programs are “designed to provide vocational training, to improve prison security, to reduce the cost of state government, and to promote the rehabilitation of the state inmates.”
And Each month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs (from 160,000 inmate-raised hens).Starbucks subcontractor Signature Packaging Solutions has hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees (as well as Nintendo Game Boys). Confronted by a reporter in 2001, a Starbucks rep called the setup “entirely consistent with our mission statement.”
Texas inmates produce brooms and brushes, bedding and mattresses, toilets, sinks, showers, and bullwhips.
In Texas, prisoners make officers’ duty belts, handcuff cases, and prison-cell accessories. California convicts make gun containers, creepers (to peek under vehicles), and human-silhouette targets.
A stitch in time: California inmates sew their own garb. In the 1990s, subcontractor Third Generation hired 35 female South Carolina inmates to sew lingerie and leisure wear for Victoria’s Secret and JCPenney. In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace “Made in Honduras” labels on garments with “Made in the usa.”
Open wide: At California’s prison dental laboratory, inmates produce a complete prosthesis selection, including custom trays, try-ins, bite blocks, and dentures.
Constructive criticism: Prisoners in for burglary, battery, drug and gun charges, and escape helped build a Wal-Mart distribution center in Wisconsin in 2005, until community uproar halted the program. (Company policy says, “Forced or prison labor will not be tolerated by Wal-Mart.”)
On call: Its inmate call centers are the “best kept secret in outsourcing,” Unicor boasts. In 1994, a contractor for GOP congressional hopeful Jack Metcalf hired Washington state prisoners to call and remind voters he was pro-death penalty. Metcalf, who prevailed, said he never knew.
Federal Prison Industries, a.k.a. Unicor, says that in addition to soldiers’ uniforms, bedding, shoes, helmets, and flak vests, inmates have “produced missile cables (including those used on the Patriot missiles during the Gulf War)” and “wiring harnesses for jets and tanks.” In 1997, according to Prison Legal News, Boeing subcontractor MicroJet had prisoners cutting airplane components, paying $7 an hour for work that paid union wages of $30 on the outside.
AND THIS
IS WHY
THE WAR ON DRUGS
AND REAGAN
CAN FUCKING BURN FOREVER
FOR FUCKING EVER
i’ll go on leaving my print on sidewalks, pretending our conversations were ever anything more than just small talk. thats nice? anything else you’d like to add, i’m sorry my friend it was never quite like that. you see i’d like to think of it more than just a transaction that never went through, like the words i was speaking to your ears were sound proof, and i’m sorry that i never got on two knees, was that all you ever wanted this to be? a quick yet pleasureable feeling, and do tell me what your own two eyes are revealing, because i felt nothing more than silently sitting, and wishing that just maybe i would come off as appealing, not just physically to you but to any sudden boy who walks through and tells me the same old words you once did, youre beautiful inside and out please listen to this….
jim morrison
(Source: chicken420)
its not the way we see darling cus we’ve touched so much today showing nothing more than lies ive tried to get away to get in touch with feeling the best part of this life reeling in the anchors that fell too far in tides well ive lost all sense of focus from searching way too deep been blindfolded by water underneath these sheets
Nina Montenegro
amen
Stocks and profits are up, but wages aren’t growing.Stock markets and corporate profits are breaking records. The economy suddenly looks brighter after the government’s surprising report Friday that employers added 635,000 jobs the past three months.
But instead of celebrating, many working Americans are borrowing a line from the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire: “Show me the money.”
… The roaring market is making the richest Americans richer, and giving them more money to spend. But in 2010, only 31% of U.S. households had stock holdings of $10,000 or more, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). During the first two years of the recovery, average net worth rose for the top 7% of households but fell for the other 93%, the Pew Research Center says…..Productivity, or output per labor hour, has risen an average 1.5% a year since the recovery began. Companies are squeezing more out of each worker even as inflation-adjusted wages have stagnated.
i’d be safe and warm if i was in la
(Source: michasliwa)
There won’t be a Lotus Festival again this year, but here’s a bit of good news!
Echo Park Lake — set to reopen next month after a two-year, multi-million dollar rehab that included a massive cleanup, draining and replanting effort — is showing signs of life after a prolonged dry spell.
The “Lady of the Lake” statue returned in January, the bridge is in place and in recent days Echo Park Lake passerbys have documented their delight in seeing the fountains turned on, reports the Eastsider LA.
via 89.3 KPCC
Listen/purchase: “No Wonder I” by LAKE
This beautiful song from LAKE premiered last night on Adventure Time, and now we can’t stop listening to it.
