Archives for October 2015

October 31, 2015

Beware the Fine Print (of arbitration clauses in contracts)

Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Robert Gebeloff, Beware the Fine Print: Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice. The New York Times, 31 October 2015. Part I of a three-part series on arbitration clauses in contracts. Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Michael Corkery, Beware the Fine Print: In Arbitration, a ‘Privatization of the Justice System.’ The New York Times, 1 November 2015. Part II of this three-part series on arbitration clauses in contracts. Michael Corkery and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Beware the Fine Print: In Religious Arbitration, Scripture Is the Rule of Law. The New York Times, 2 November 2015. Part III of this three-part series on arbitration clauses in contracts. This three-part series examines “how clauses buried in tens of millions of contracts have deprived Americans of one of their most fundamental constitutional rights: their day in court.”

Winner of the 2015 George Polk Award for Legal Reporting.

October 30, 2015

‘Redlining’ Home Loan Discrimination Re-emerges as a Concern for Regulators

Rachel L. Swarns, ‘Redlining’ Home Loan Discrimination Re-emerges as a Concern for Regulators. The New York Times, 30 October 2015. “In 2014, Hudson [City Savings Bank] approved 1,886 mortgages in the market that includes New Jersey and sections of New York and Connecticut, federal mortgage data show. Only 25 of those loans went to black borrowers.”

October 29, 2015

Insane. Invisible. In danger. Horrific conditions in Florida’s public mental hospitals

Leonora LaPeter Anton, Michael Braga and Anthony Cormier, Insane. Invisible. In danger. Tampa Bay Times and Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 29 October 2015. “Florida’s state-funded mental hospitals are supposed to be safe places to house and treat people who are a danger to themselves or others. But years of neglect and $100 million in budget cuts have turned them into treacherous warehouses where violence is out of control and patients can’t get the care they need.” This is a three-part series about Florida’s state-funded mental hospitals and a documentary by John Pendygraft about “three people whose lives were forever changed by the violence inside.”

October 26, 2015

Lives on the Line: The Human Cost of Cheap Chicken

Oxfam Research Report, Lives on the Line: The Human Cost of Cheap Chicken. Oxfam America, 26 October 2015. “Chicken is the most popular meat in America , and the poultry industry is booming. Profits are climbing, consumer demand is growing, and executive compensation is increasing rapidly. But one element remains trapped at the bottom: the workers on the poultry processing line. Poultry workers 1) earn low wages of diminishing value, 2) suffer elevated rates of injury and illness, and 3) often experience a climate of fear in the workplace. These problems affect the entire industry, but the top four chicken companies control roughly 60 percent of the domestic market: Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s, Perdue, and Sanderson Farms. As industry leaders, these companies can and should implement changes that will improve conditions for poultry workers across the country.

The full report explores industry history and trends in consumption, documents the realities and challenges of life working on the line, and offers concrete recommendations to improve conditions.”

October 26, 2015

The Pentagon’s Missionary Spies

Matthew Cole, The Pentagon’s Missionary Spies. The Intercept, 26 October 2015. “U. S. Military Used Christian NGO as Front for North Korea Espionage…. The revelation that the Pentagon used an NGO and unwitting humanitarian volunteers for intelligence gathering is the result of a months long investigation by The Intercept. In the course of the investigation, more than a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials, humanitarian aid workers, missionaries, U.S. officials, and former HISG [Humanitarian International Services Group] staffers were interviewed. The U.S. government officials who were familiar with the Pentagon operation and HISG’s role asked for anonymity because discussing classified military and intelligence matters would put them at risk of prosecution. The Pentagon had no comment on HISG or the espionage operations in North Korea.”

October 16, 2015

Out of the Darkness: How two psychologists teamed up with the CIA to devise a torture program and experiment on human beings

Noa Yachot, Out of the Darkness: How two psychologists teamed up with the CIA to devise a torture program and experiment on human beings. American Civil Liberties Union, 16 October 2015. From How the ACLU Came to Publish a Powerful Piece of Investigative Journalism, Longreads, 27 October 2015: “‘Out of the Darkness’ is not an easy story to read. It chronicles how two psychologists who had previously devoted their careers to training US troops to resist abusive interrogation tactics teamed up with the CIA to devise a torture program and experiment on human beings.”

October 16, 2015

How Startup Theranos Has Struggled With Its Blood-Test Technology

John Carreyrou, How Startup Theranos Has Struggled With Its Blood-Test Technology. The Wall Street Journal, 16 October 2015. “On Theranos Inc.’s website, company founder Elizabeth Holmes holds up a tiny vial to show how the startup’s “breakthrough advancements have made it possible to quickly process the full range of laboratory tests from a few drops of blood.” The company offers more than 240 tests, ranging from cholesterol to cancer. It claims its technology can work with just a finger prick. Investors have poured more than $400 million into Theranos, valuing it at $9 billion and her majority stake at more than half that. The 31-year-old Ms. Holmes’s bold talk and black turtlenecks draw comparisons to Apple Inc. cofounder Steve Jobs. But Theranos has struggled behind the scenes to turn the excitement over its technology into reality. At the end of 2014, the lab instrument developed as the linchpin of its strategy handled just a small fraction of the tests then sold to consumers, according to four former employees.”

Winner of the 2015 George Polk Award for Financial Reporting. “The award for Financial Reporting will go to John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal whose investigation of Theranos, Inc. raised serious doubts about claims by the firm and its celebrated 31-year-old founder, Elizabeth Holmes, that its new procedure for drawing and testing blood was a transformational medical breakthrough in wide use at the firm’s labs. Carreyrou’s well-researched stories, reported in the face of threats of lawsuits and efforts to pressure some sources to back off of their accounts, led to a reevaluation of Theranos’ prospects among investors and have been followed by regulatory actions against the company and widespread discussion that publications and institutions from Fortune and The New Yorker to Harvard and the White House may have been too quick to hail Holmes, a Stanford dropout whose personal wealth at the height of her startup’s rise was an estimated $4.5 billion, as a success story in the tradition of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.”

October 15, 2015

The Drone Papers

Jeremy Scahill, Josh Begley, Cora Currier, Ryan Devereaux, Peter Maass, Ryan Gallagher, and Nick Turse, The Drone Papers. The Intercept, 15 October 2015. Eight-part series. “The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama’s drone wars…. The articles in The Drone Papers were produced by a team of reporters and researchers from The Intercept that has spent months analyzing the documents. The series is intended to serve as a long-overdue public examination of the methods and outcomes of America’s assassination program. This campaign, carried out by two presidents through four presidential terms, has been shrouded in excessive secrecy. The public has a right to see these documents not only to engage in an informed debate about the future of U.S. wars, both overt and covert, but also to understand the circumstances under which the U.S. government arrogates to itself the right to sentence individuals to death without the established checks and balances of arrest, trial, and appeal.” Eight-part series. [Read more…]

October 15, 2015 Filed Under: National Security, War/War crimes Tagged With: abdul rahman awlaki, afghanistan, al qaeda, american civil liberties union (aclu), anwar al awlaki, barack obama, bilal el-berjawi, bureau of investigative journalism, cia, djibouti (camp lemonnier), drone warfare, enemy killed in action (ekia), hindu kush, human rights watch, jameel jaffer, lt. general michael flynn, nina shamsi, operation haymaker, pakistan, pentagon's intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance task force study of 2013 (isr), signals intelligence (sigint), somalia, taliban, us military's joint special operations command (jsoc), yemen

October 10, 2015

The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election

Nicholas Confessore, Sarah Cohen and Karen Yourish, The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election. The New York Times, 10 October 2015. “Just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House. They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two: finance and energy.”