The book features an article about the Stop Firestone campaign by Robtel Pailey which was featured on Pambazuka News and this blog in April.

The Washington Post quoted political commentator Daniel Coronell on this: "This proves what human rights groups and the United Nations had long reported, that some sectors of the army had the practice of killing civilians and passing them off as guerrillas."

So let’s celebrate this victory over Labor Day in the US.  It may be a cheap ploy by the Colombian government to push for a Free Trade Agreement with the US (this was a high profile case that was frequently referenced in the US Congress as an argument against an FTA), but we have to take the victories we can get in this work.

Background: Workers' Rights Violated; Critics gagged Since July 2006, the Garment and Textile Workers Union (GATWU), the New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI), the Civil Initiative for Peace and Development
(CIVIDEP), the Women Garment Workers Front Munnade and the CCC Task Force Tamil Nadu have been subject to a local court injunction, prohibiting them from distributing information inside and outside of
India about the working conditions at international jeans suppliers Fibres and Fabrics International and its subsidiary Jeans Knit Pvt Ltd (FFI/JKPL). Through this court order labour support organisations are

Pakistani activists face deep-seated challenges, such as an unequal,
essentially feudal division of land (cemented under British rule) and the decades-long decline of the
country’s trade unions.  But there is much, too, in the terms of
Pakistan’s international trade relations that must be altered if
workers are to share fully in their nation’s extraordinary economic
boom—a boom which has seen the economy go from 5 percent GDP growth in
2003 to over 7 percent today.