Walk into your nearest Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s store and you may find that the purportedly environmentally and socially conscious chains are selling Chiquita bananas. Why is this surprising? Two concerns come to mind, one specific to Chiquita and the other a more general concern about large-scale banana production.
What is a consumer to do? The lazy answer is to say you should buy “organic” and “fair trade” bananas, but we all know these labels are neither standardized nor regulated enough to put a conscious consumer’s mind at ease.
Fortunately, not all hope is to be lost.
For those of us who work on human rights issues every day, International Human Rights Day can be a bit jarring, as the world’s attention focuses on our work for 24 hours and then swivels away again. We’d all love to see the energy and messages of this day persist around the year. Here are some ways you can help defend human rights.
From learning about Exxon’s knowledge about the devastating impacts of climate change, the removal of any mention to “climate change” on the White House website, Scott Pruitt’s appointment as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the realization that the United States is the only country to opt-out of the Paris Accord, we face some serious hurdles.
But with hurdles comes the opportunity to overcome them – and that’s what we must do. That is what we do.
Donziger, a New York lawyer who doggedly pursued Chevron for its contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon and helped win a multi-billion-dollar verdict in Ecuador, was found to have participated in racketeering. A federal court found that he was involved in a scheme to bribe an Ecuadorian judge. He’s been prohibited, by court order, from receiving any money from the Ecuador verdict.
And yet – when you look at the facts – it appears that Chevron’s lawyers – Randy Mastro’s team at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher – are more likely to have committed a crime.
It’s like 2012 all over again.
A well-reviewed D.C. comics movie is ruling the box office, the Washington Nationals are atop the NL East standings, and the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether corporations can be sued for violating international law.
In a case called Jesner v. Arab Bank, the Supreme Court will again consider whether corporations can be sued for serious violations of international law.
