Human Rights Watch releases a damning new report on child labor in El Salvador’s sugar plantations:

Businesses purchasing sugar from El Salvador, including The Coca-Cola Company, are using the product of child labor that is both hazardous and widespread, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Harvesting cane requires children to use machetes and other sharp knives to cut sugarcane and strip the leaves off the stalks, work they perform for up to nine hours each day in the hot sun. Nearly every child interviewed by Human Rights Watch for its 139-page report , “Turning a Blind Eye: Hazardous Child Labor in El Salvador’s Sugarcane Cultivation,” said that he or she had suffered machete gashes on the hands or legs while cutting cane. These risks led one former labor inspector to characterize sugarcane as the most dangerous of all forms of agricultural work. “Child labor is rampant on El Salvador’s sugarcane plantations,” said Michael Bochenek, counsel to the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. “Companies that buy or use Salvadoran sugar should realize that fact and take responsibility for doing something about it.”

El Salvador’s sugar mills and the businesses that purchase or use Salvadoran sugar know or should know that the sugar is in part the product of child labor. For example, Coca-Cola Co. uses Salvadoran sugar in its bottled beverages for domestic consumption in El Salvador. The company’s local bottler purchases sugar refined at El Salvador’s largest mill, Central Izalco. At least four of the plantations that supply sugarcane to Central Izalco regularly use child labor, Human Rights Watch found after interviewing workers. When Human Rights Watch brought this information to the attention of Coca-Cola Co., the soft-drink manufacturer did not contradict these findings. Coca-Cola has a code of conduct for its suppliers, known as the “Guiding Principles for Suppliers to The Coca-Cola Company,” but it is narrowly drawn to cover only direct suppliers, which includes sugar mills but excludes plantations. The guiding principles provide, for example, that the Coca-Cola Co.’s direct suppliers “will not use child labor as defined by local law,” but they do not address the responsibility of direct suppliers to ensure that their own suppliers do not use hazardous child labor.

Looks like democracy may be messier than Donald Rumsfeld imagined:

In an early test of its imminent sovereignty, Iraq’s new government has been resisting a U.S. demand that thousands of foreign contractors here be granted immunity from Iraqi law, in the same way as U.S. military forces are now immune, according to Iraqi sources. The U.S. proposal, although not widely known, has touched a nerve with some nationalist-minded Iraqis already chafing under the 14-month-old U.S.-led occupation. If accepted by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, it would put the highly visible U.S. foreign contractors into a special legal category, not subject to military justice and beyond the reach of Iraq’s justice system.

More trouble for Halliburton – and for us:

A Halliburton subsidiary is under investigation by the US stock market regulator over allegations it paid bribes for Nigerian gas contracts. Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) and three other partner firms allegedly paid $180m (£99m) in bribes, the SEC says. US Vice President Dick Cheney was head of oil services conglomerate Halliburton at the time. Halliburton says it has become a political target and insists it did nothing wrong. The Nigerian government ordered the investigation in February and lawyers have since been studying the payments.

The Supreme Court, with equal measures of wrong-headedness and cowardice, overturns the Circuit Court’s decision on the pledge on the grounds that Newdow doesn’t have standing:

The Supreme Court at least temporarily preserved the phrase “one nation, under God,” in the Pledge of Allegiance, ruling Monday that a California atheist could not challenge the patriotic oath while sidestepping the broader question of separation of church and state. The decision leaves untouched the practice in which millions of schoolchildren around the country begin the day by reciting the pledge. The court said the atheist could not sue to ban the pledge from his daughter’s school and others because he did not have legal authority to speak for her. The father, Michael Newdow, is in a protracted custody fight with the girl’s mother. He does not have sufficient custody of the child to qualify as her legal representative, eight members of the court said.

No need to “sidestep the broader questions.” Let’s face them head on. Solicitor General Ted Olson is right that forcing children to recite a pledge which describes our nation as “under God” is comparable to putting “In God We Trust” on the money. We shouldn’t be doing that either. But compelling our children daily to recite a pledge distinguished our god-loving and divinely-beloved nation from the godless heathen communisits is particularly outrageous.

To whoever got here looking for “Greg Palast” and “Jew”: I don’t think he is one, but if he’s not he’s certainly on the list of gentiles I’d like to claim as part of the tribe (not on the list: Christopher Columbus, who several Jews I know have tried to claim as one of our own)…

And speaking of self-identification, whoever it was that was looking for “Busty Latinas,” you I suspect were also disappointed here, but let me at least commend you on having a firmer grasp of the Spanish language than whoever was looking for “Busty Latinos.”

As for “sex maryland graduate indian,” I think I’ll reserve comment…

Nick Confessore on the elevation of Dinesh “There’s no White racism, only justified fear of pathological Blacks” D’Souza to CNN commentator:

Such are the rewards of working the refs.

Indeed. Afterall, everyone knows CNN’s a crazy left-wing news outlet…

Wal-Mart Watch: David Moberg on beating Wal-Mart:

Taming the Wal-Mart beast will require a massive, broad-based crusade. Organizing unions against such a huge, implacable corporation is daunting without a commitment of the entire labor movement, perhaps starting in Canada (where there is the possibility of a small breakthrough), focusing first on distribution centers or organizing a union that functions without a majority of workers, as advocated by Wade Rathke, chief organizer of the community organization, ACORN, and a Service Employees International Union local. Fighting Wal-Mart one store at a time often makes sense locally and educates the public, but it also risks antagonizing consumers looking for bargains or residents of poor neighborhoods, especially if labor and community opponents can’t offer better development options, argues local labor leader John Dalrymple, a key figure in a narrowly defeated effort to block Wal-Mart in Contra Costa County, California. There’s a need for a broader strategy to hold Wal-Mart accountable and to promote the “high road” alternative of skilled, well-paid retail work advocated in Chicago by the nonprofit Center for Labor and Community Research.

For example, newly proposed legislation in Los Angeles would make approval of a big box store depend on the city government’s evaluation of its economic impact. A 2003 California law—contested in an upcoming fall referendum partly financed by Wal-Mart—would require big employers to provide affordable health insurance for all employees. Wal-Mart faces hundreds of legal challenges, including the largest class action suit for discrimination against female employees, and some strategists are considering anti-trust action to curb Wal-Mart’s economic and political power. “We want development but development that contributes to building community,” argues Madeline Janis-Aparicio, director of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. “If Wal-Mart wants to come on those terms, they have a place.”

More on the amazing buck which seems never to stop at all:

The CIA wanted authority to conduct more aggressive interrogations than were permitted prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The interrogations were of suspected al Qaeda members whom the CIA had apprehended outside the United States. The CIA asked the White House for legal guidance. The White House asked Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel for its legal opinion on the standards of conduct under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Apparently, according to the memo, torture “may be justified.”

Atrios suggests a culprit for Rush’s latest divorce.

A bad day at the polls for incumbent parties in Europe:

In Germany, in what looked likely to be the worst showing in a national vote in postwar election history, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrat Party polled only 21.6 percent, well below the 30.7 percent it scored in 1999 and short of already pessimistic forecasts, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls. In France, the center-right party of President Jacques Chirac appeared to be in for another drubbing, after its humiliating defeat in regional elections in March, as turnout was projected to reach the all-time low in the Parliament’s history…While Euroskeptic parties from Britain to the Czech Republic gained ground, Austria’s Freedom Party, known for the anti-immigrant oratory of some of its leaders, might have lost four of its five seats in Parliament…Spain and Greece, where voters overturned their governments earlier this year and looked set to confirm their choices today, were the exceptions.

Another conservative attempt to reduce organized religion to social conservatism, this time on behalf of George “Jesus Day” Bush:

In a column posted Friday evening on the paper’s Web site, John L. Allen Jr., its correspondent in Rome and the dean of Vatican journalists, wrote that Mr. Bush had made the request in a June 4 meeting with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state. Citing an unnamed Vatican official, Mr. Allen wrote: “Bush said, ‘Not all the American bishops are with me’ on the cultural issues. The implication was that he hoped the Vatican would nudge them toward more explicit activism.” Mr. Allen wrote that others in the meeting confirmed that the president had pledged aggressive efforts “on the cultural front, especially the battle against gay marriage, and asked for the Vatican’s help in encouraging the U.S. bishops to be more outspoken.” Cardinal Sodano did not respond, Mr. Allen reported, citing the same unnamed people.

You bet not all the American bishops are with you on “cultural issues.” And even fewer are with you on anything else. As Errol noted recently more and more of them aren’t gonna take it anymore (thanks are due to Errol, by the way, for the sweet but totally undeserved compliment…).

Taiwanese workers hunger strike against Continental Carbon’s lock-out of workers in Oklahoma:

Five members of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union (PACE) announced that they will begin their hunger strike to protest the three-year lockout of PACE members at the Continental Carbon plant in Ponca City, Okla. Continental Carbon is a subsidiary of Taiwan Cement Corporation and China Synthetic Rubber Company, two companies controlled by the Koos Group of Taiwan. The three-year lockout in Oklahoma is the longest lockout in U.S. history by a foreign corporation.

The hunger strike will commence immediately after Taiwan Cement’s shareholder meeting that will take place on June 11, 2004 in Tapei, Taiwan. Three locked-out workers and two PACE officials will participate in the hunger strike. The Asian secretary for the International Federation of Chemical, Energy and Mine and General Workers’ Unions, whose affiliates have over 20 million union members, will join the hunger strike next week.