Bring Me Home

A Global Exchange Report Posted on December 12, 2005

Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account. Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power have created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers, which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders.

Several of the companies below are being sued under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a law that allows citizens of any nationality to sue in US federal courts for violations of international rights or treaties. When corporations act like criminals, we have the right and the power to stop them, holding leaders and multinational corporations alike to the accords they have signed. Around the world--in Venezuela, Argentina, India, and right here in the United States--citizens are stepping up to create democracy and hold corporations accountable to international law.
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What really happened to Wesley Everest?

The Ghost of Hangman's Bridge 

I recently finished reading The Wobby War: The Centralia Story (thanks Steve for recommendation), so I'm pleased to see that we have a new OlyBlog member who is working on a film about those times.  

From the Olympian:

A new nonprofit organization in Thurston County will provide two community services in one: saving perfectly good furniture from taking a trip to the dump, and providing free furniture to homeless people who have gotten into affordable housing but can't afford much else.

The Thurston County Furniture Bank officially will start today. Volunteers will pick up used furniture for free and deliver it to peo-ple who have called in or been referred to the organization because they can't afford furniture.

All Ways Travel Service up on the westside has currently on their sign:

Ready to boil?

Uncoil

on the Victoria hydrofoil 

Since this rhyme is now stuck in my mind, I thought I would share the wealth.  

Silencing Dissent: Paul Robeson and the Peace Arch, 1952-55

Professor and author Bob Keller traces the life of Paul Robeson, the controversial black American actor, film star, athlete, scholar, attorney, and activist. After the U.S. state department banned the great singer from traveling to Vancouver, B.C., in 1952, an estimated 30-50,000 people gathered at Peace Arch Park to hear him perform across the border from American soil.

This is a Humanities Washington Inquiring Mind presentation. Sponsored by the Friends of the Olympia Timberland Library.

If a crime happens outside your bar, on a night you are closed, but the people involved in the crime all mention your bar by name, should you be held accountable?

Or is this not even really the issue for the Bar Code downtown? Is the Bar Code simply an attractant for trouble, and so should be closed?  

The results?

70% said their own personal situation was good!

"Despite the daily violence there, most living conditions are rated positively, seven in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going well, and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve in the year ahead."

"Across Iraq, most local conditions are rated positively — and more so than in early 2004. This survey finds 10- to 13-point gains in ratings of local crime protection, security and medical care, as well as in the still-problematic areas of electric supply and jobs."

Of course, we're far from perfection. If you add it up, about 45% of the people would like to see the US leave in the very near future. The situation there, however, would hardly appear to be as dire as some in this country continue to portray it. It would almost appear we're inching closer to an exit with Iraq as a reasonable level of success.

Link: http://abcnews.go.com/International/PollVault/story?id=1389228