All posts filed under: Publications

American Alliance for Automotive Corporate Social Responsibility (AAACSR) report: The People v. The People’s Car

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The People v. The People’s Car: How Volkswagen’s Corporate Culture is Primed to Deceive As part of its #DefeatTheVice campaign, the American Alliance for Automotive Corporate Social Responsibility (AAACSR) announces the publication of a report analysis: The People v. The People’s Car: How Volkswagen’s Corporate Culture is Primed to Deceive. Download here for free. Earlier this year, the U.S. government “formally labeled the Chinese government’s policies targeting ethnic Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in the northwest region of Xinjiang as ‘genocide,’” constituting serious crimes against humanity. “Malfeasance at Volkswagen in the 21st century did not begin with the so-called ‘dieselgate’ scandal in 2015 but is perhaps what the company is best known for state-side,” reads the report.​​​​​​​ Changchun FAW-Volkswagen worker representative Ai Zhenyu was detained by Chinese police in 2017 for organizing for equal pay. Following his release from police custody, Ai told the China Labour Bulletin: “Volkswagen and Audi have been exposed for their discriminatory practices against Chinese agency workers, they’ve totally disregarded the human rights of Chinese workers.” AAACSR serves as a watchdog to …

Burge Victims Speak Exhibit at Harold Washington Library Center

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Chicago Public Library November 15, 2018   The exhibit Burge Victims Speak photographs + audio by Amanda Rivkin features 17 photographic portraits and audio accounts of men who survived torture by Chicago police commander Jon Burge and his “midnight crew” between 1972 and 1993. The exhibit is on display November 20 to January 25 at Harold Washington Library Center, in the 3rd Floor Exhibit Hall.   The images document the men—many of whom served prison sentences for coerced admissions of crime—in their current-day lives.   Rivkin is a fellow at the Invisible Institute, a journalism production company on Chicago’s South Side. The organization is in the process of developing a public archive of the Burge cases, the future home of Rivkin’s photography and interview series.   The torture came to light when Chicago lawyer Flint Taylor received anonymous letters detailing systemic police torture inside Area 2 and later Area 3 headquarters. Investigation by the police oversight Office of Professional Standards concluded torture had occurred. In 2015, Chicago City Council passed a reparations ordinance that acknowledged the victims of …

Quartz: Russia’s meddling to get Donald Trump elected president is straight out of the old KGB playbook

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Russia’s meddling to get Donald Trump elected president is straight out of the old KGB playbook Quartz December 19, 2016 Mysterious arrests. Disappearances. A far away death in an unknown gulag concealed from family for a generation. These are realities for those of us whose families came to the US from Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the last world war and subsequent Soviet occupation. These are also the reasons why every act against Donald Trump now is an act of patriotism on behalf of the American people. During the 1970s and 1980s, KGB defectors warned Americans to beware Russian interference. Those warnings were mostly buried. Today, however, Trump’s rise should be examined in the context of these methods of Kremlin ideological subversion and psychological warfare. The confluence of evidence suggests Donald Trump was supported, and his campaign efforts bolstered, by Russia this election season (as the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency have concluded). Plucked from the KGB’s (now FSB’s) playbook for installing world leaders sympathetic to Moscow, we are now witnessing …

Best of 2015: Chicago, Poland, Serbia and Germany

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This was a year of terrorist attacks, mass shootings a-plenty, mass exodus from the Middle East, North and East Africa and the AfPak region which does not include India but a small number from Bangladesh, rising xenophobic far right sentiment, and an uptick in hostility towards Muslims unprecedented since immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The far right so far has been kept on the back burner, but the slow slide into what I liken to the Brezhnev years of the Cold War for the Global War on Terror (GWoT) years is upon us. The American presidential elections offer little reason or occasion for hope. The state of affairs in Syria, too, offers little occasion for hope. “Assad must go” has converted into the new “red line,” as US Secretary of State John Kerry concedes Assad can stay because the US has no one else to pluck out of an abyss of alternatives. The whole world has heard of the Islamic State and the international media relishes any opportunity to put the group’s name …

Open Society Foundations Voices Blog: After a Long Haul, Refugees Settle Into New Lives Far from Home

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Voices | Q + A After a Long Haul, Refugees Settle Into New Lives Far from Home October 16, 2015 Antonia Zafieri American photographer Amanda Rivkin has been photographing refugees as they transit from Syria to Europe. Recently, she posted several of these photos to the Open Society Instagram feed. Here, she talks about her experience documenting the refugees’ stories, and what she’s observed of their attempts to settle into new lives far from their original homes. Why did you pursue this story? I pursued the story of the recent exodus to Europe from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere for no reason other than it was there. I lived in Turkey for two years and never covered refugees as an issue per se, although refugees were everywhere in Istanbul at the time. Some were also my friends. If there was a crack between two buildings, it was as if you could find three Syrian families living there. But I think there is so much of this biblical, dramatic imagery that we forget that Syria—emptying out …

For Slovak daily Sme: Ani Nemecko nie je rajom. Utečenci zostávajú bez bytov aj práce

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Ani Nemecko nie je rajom. Utečenci zostávajú bez bytov aj práce September 29, 2015 Utečenci veria, že sa im podarí zarobiť peniaze a dostať rodiny z nebezpečných zón do Európy. Sami majú neľahký život a neistú budúcnosť. Text: Amanda Rivkin Dvadsaťštyriročného Helmyho a jeho mladšieho, trinásťročného brata Jusúfa zaviedli do miestnosti v utečeneckej ubytovni, kde žije ich matka Inajat, žena v stredných rokoch. Ubytovňu na okraji Berlína prevádzkuje súkromná spoločnosť Gierso. Čipkované záclony vpúšťajú dnu trochu svetla. Zapácha to tam ako popolník. Izba je však nad dvorom, vďaka čomu je tu svetlo aj neskoro popoludní. Kerim Öge, ktorý pomáha pri spravovaní piatich zariadení Gierso pre utečencov v Berlíne, vysvetľuje, že najviac, čo môžu urobiť, je poslať písomné varovanie, ak je zápach naozaj zlý. Nemôžu nikoho vyhodiť, inak by sa až príliš veľa ľudí ocitlo na ulici. Öge Helmymu hovorí, že utečencom opakujú, aby vnútri nefajčili. Na dvore sú na asfalte nakreslené dva štvorce, fajčiarske miesta. „Všetko je ťažké, mám 50 rokov,“ hovorí Helmyho matka Inajat. Žila v obkľúčenom palestínskom utečeneckom tábore Jarmúk na okraji sýrskeho …