TYSON HAS LONG BEEN IDENTIFED WITH THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.
Tyson Foods Faces Boycott After Firing 1,200 Americans, ‘Would Like to Employ’ 42,000 Migrants - AND BIDEN - MAYORKAS - SCHUMER HAVE USHERED OVER THE BORDER 15 MILLION TO PICK FROM.
As much of the conscious world laments having manufacturing tied to Communist China, one global retailer has decided to take an actual stand.
H&M, a Swedish clothing retailer and mainstay in city shopping districts across the globe vowed this week to sever ties to its primary yarn producer in the Xinjiang region of China over serious concerns about human rights transgressions. The retailer said that allegations of the forced labor of Uighur Muslims and other miniorites have motivated them to take a stand in cutting out the region from their manufacturing chain.
The Swedish clothing giant H&M cuts all ties with its Chinese supplier in Xinjiang due to alleged use of the forced labor of Uighur Muslims--a serious threat for any company operating from Xinjiang. H&M won't source any more cotton from Xinjiang. https://t.co/B0UdGQp1x6pic.twitter.com/wdNd91S7Cl
The proclamation specifically ended H&M's relationship with Chinese yarn producer Huafu Fashion and an "indirect" relationship with a Huafu-owned clothing mill. That mill is located in Shangyu, which is in the province of Zhejiang. Currently, far more evidence exists to back the claim that forced labor of Uighurs is specific to the Xinjiang region but, out of an abundance of caution H&M says, they will suspend any relationship with the mill due to their association with Huafu.
"While there are no indications for forced labor in the Shangyu mill, we have decided to, until we get more clarity around allegations of forced labor, phase out our indirect business relationship with Huafu Fashion Co, regardless of unit and province, within the next 12 months," a statement from H&M said.
Huafu owns another clothing mill in the Anhui province, but H&M says they have never done any kind of business with that location.
H&M also stated they will no longer source any cotton from Xinjiang because of concerns over the region in general, not just related to Huafu Fashion. Further, the retailer said, they will launch "an inquiry at all the garment manufacturing factories we work with in China aiming to ensure that they are not employing workers … through what is reported on as labor transfer programs or employment schemes where forced labor is an increased risk."
The Chinese Communist Party has been under fire from many countries across the globe in recent years for their treatment of Uighur Muslims and other minorities in the country. It is currently estimated that millions of minorities have been detained, forced into labor camps, abused, forced to sterilize and have abortions, and even murdered. Deep concern about the ethics of Chinese-made products has been prevalent, but few retailers and organizations have stepped up to make significant changes.
The move by H&M this week serves as a juxtaposition to the NBA and Disney, who have both been excoriated in the United States for kowtowing to China while lecturing Americans about "inherent racism" and "white privilege."
The live-action Disney film Mulan has been blasted since its release as the company specifically thanked Chinese Communist government agencies suspected of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, where the movie was partially filmed.
Several of the agencies thanked by Disney, including Turpan Bureau of Public Security, have been directly accused of genocide.
Disney acknowledged that the association has caused them some problems, but offered no apology.
"It has generated a lot of publicity," Disney CFO Christine McCarthy said. "Let’s leave it at that."
This Billionaire Governor’s Coal Company Might Get a Big Break From His Own Regulators
West Virginia environmental regulators are proposing fine reductions for water pollution violations from a coal company owned by Gov. Jim Justice, even after the company promised to clean up its mines.
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This story was co-published with Mountain State Spotlight, a new nonprofit newsroom covering West Virginia.
West Virginia environmental regulators are proposing to reduce the fines that a coal company owned by the state’s governor could pay for water pollution violations that are the focus of a federal court case. The move comes after the company stopped paying penalties required as part of a settlement four years ago to clean up its mines across the Appalachian coalfields.
Environmental groups allege that the Red Fox Mine, a large strip-mining site in southern West Virginia owned by Gov. Jim Justice’s Bluestone Coal Corp., continues to exceed discharge limits for harmful substances. The suit could result in substantial payouts — the maximum potential federal penalties are nearly $170 million — that would go to the U.S. Treasury.
In the weeks before a trial in the case, lawyers for Bluestone filed documents detailing a draft deal worked out separately with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. The state agency, whose administrator is appointed by Justice, has agreed to settle the violations for a fine of $125,000, according to a court filing by the environmental groups’ lawyers. (State and federal governments share the authority to enforce water pollution rules.)
Lawyers for Bluestone are asking the judge to throw out the federal case, saying the state settlement and hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal fines the company already paid for the same violations should resolve the matters.
Lawyers for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and other groups say the state settlement doesn’t moot their suit, and they urged a federal judge not to grant Bluestone’s request to throw out the case. They called the state action “a self-dealing administrative order” and said the proposed penalties “are insufficient to deter future violations, leaving a realistic prospect of continued noncompliance.” At best, the lawyers say, the amount paid would offset potential fines in the federal court action.
The fight to force Justice’s empire to follow pollution rules, the groups say, symbolizes the larger ongoing fight over how aggressively to regulate an industry that remains politically powerful, even as its economic influence declines.
The state’s environmental regulators are seen as friendly to coal companies, so the reduced fines are in keeping with prior actions. In one significant example from a decade ago, a $20 million federal settlement with Massey Energy revealed that West Virginia officials were not even reviewing disclosures that Massey had filed reporting thousands of water pollution violations.
“Coal companies pollute,” said Vivian Stockman, executive director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “There seems to be little consequence to carrying on business in disregard for the law. This has been the case over decades.”
The proposed settlement is the latest in which government agencies overseen by Justice have had to regulate businesses owned by Justice, a billionaire whom Forbes has labeled the richest person in the state. He owns a vast array of businesses, including coal mines, resort hotels and agricultural interests, many of them regulated by the state agencies that report to him.
An investigation this year by ProPublica found that companies run by the governor’s family have accumulated $128 million in judgments and settlements in cases brought by vendors and other businesses and government entities over unpaid bills. Justice companies that own or are affiliated with the historic Greenbrier Resort have said in court filings that they are “near financial insolvency.”
Mike Carey, a lawyer for Bluestone Coal, called any suggestion that the company is getting preferential treatment “completely baseless.”
The court records filed in the federal case indicate that state regulators first proposed the settlement more than a year ago, and that it then included a suggested penalty of $883,000. But in its new proposal, which must face public comment before it is finalized, WVDEP proposed a $2.1 million fine, but then dropped that to $125,000. The agency noted that’s the maximum allowed under state law but did not explain why it had earlier proposed a larger amount.
While Justice’s adult children have day-to-day control over the family’s business operations, the governor continues to guide the empire. Justice has repeatedly said his role as governor poses no conflict, and he wants nothing from the state for his businesses or his family.
The last tussle over the governor’s coal mines came to a head in 2016, when weeks before Justice won that year’s general election, his company agreed to pay a $900,000 fine for past violations, penalties for future violations and millions of dollars for new pollution control measures.
The deal resolved more than 23,000 water pollution violations between 2009 and 2014 by Justice mines in West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama, then under the umbrella corporate parent, Southern Coal Corporation, according to court records filed as part of that settlement. (Southern Coal, like Bluestone, was also owned by the Justice family.)
“This settlement is designed to bring the companies into compliance with the Clean Water Act and requires actions that should prevent future violations,” Assistant Attorney General John Cruden said at the time.
But hundreds of times since that 2016 federal deal, those mines discharged more solids, iron, manganese, aluminum and other pollutants than allowed by their environmental permits, the company’s own public reports show.
Justice’s companies have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for those violations, which are fairly common and seen as a cost of doing business in the coal industry. In August 2019, the environmental groups filed suit against Bluestone, alleging excess discharges of selenium, which can be toxic to fish and other aquatic life.
State and federal agencies have somewhat overlapping authority to regulate coal industry pollution. Federal law also allows citizens to file suit over Clean Water Act violations, both to seek fines, payable to the government, and to force measures to stop further violations.
Then, this year, the Justice companies “apparently stopped paying” some of the stipulated penalties, citing the lawsuit, according to a court filing by the plaintiffs. In a May report to federal regulators, Bluestone Coal marked a list of some of those selenium violations as “in litigation payment not applied.”
A federal judge has cited that report and noted unpaid stipulated penalties for 40 selenium violations that date back to July 2018.
A spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency said that the earlier settlement does not allow Bluestone to stop paying stipulated penalties, but she declined to say what action, if any, federal officials might take “because this is an active enforcement case.”
Carey said that the report indicating those fine payments were being held back because of the litigation “was an error.”
In a court filing Tuesday, Carey indicated that a $35,000 payment for some of the fines was made on Sept. 4. Carey also alleged that the environmental groups had offered during settlement negotiations to resolve their lawsuit, and give the company three years to come into compliance, if Bluestone Coal would donate $600,000 and 850 acres of land near the New River Gorge, a scenic area, to the West Virginia Land Trust, a group that tries to protect wilderness in the state.
Bluestone Coal lawyers had earlier tried to have the selenium case dismissed, arguing that it was preempted by the 2016 settlement.
But in a ruling in June, U.S. District Judge David A. Faber in Bluefield, West Virginia, declined to throw out the case, saying that the continuing violations, and Bluestone Coal’s failure to comply with a timeline for installing a treatment system, showed the need for the citizen suit. Then, in July, Faber issued a second ruling that found Bluestone liable for the selenium violations. The judge noted that Bluestone Coal could be liable for more than 3,000 days of water permit violations, which could amount to a maximum fine of $169.2 million, according to the citizen groups.
On Tuesday, Faber postponed a Sept. 23 bench trial meant to determine a remedy for the violations. Instead, he scheduled a hearing that day on Bluestone’s request to have the case thrown out.
Like his political ally President Donald Trump, Justice has been clear that he wants to curb government regulations meant to protect the environment, especially as those apply to the coal industry and other fossil energy operations.
In his first State of the State address in February 2017, Justice said that, under his administration, the state Department of Environmental Protection would stop saying “no” to business and industry. A week later, he belittled WVDEP inspectors when he told a natural gas industry group that they would have to stop showing up for work with “a tank top and flip-flops on” and looking like they “haven’t shaved in three months.”
At the WVDEP, Justice put in charge a former coal company executive and energy industry consultant, Austin Caperton. In an early speech once he took office as WVDEP secretary, Caperton said he “doesn’t trust” the science that says human activities such as burning fossil fuels are warming the planet, a position that puts him at odds with mainstream science.
As recently as 2017, the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement issued a report outlining continuing failures by the state to police water pollution by coal companies. OSMRE has said it is continuing to monitor WVDEP’s efforts to improve oversight of the coal industry.
Over the years, selenium pollution has been especially tricky for coal companies to deal with, presenting expensive and long-term treatment challenges. Violations have prompted other citizen group lawsuits like the one against Bluestone and scientific studies that warned of stream damage from the selenium discharged by mining operations.
In response to questions about Bluestone Coal and its policing of the coal industry more broadly, the WVDEP provided a statement that indicated it was considering a change in the selenium limits for the Red Fox permit that, if approved, would “resolve that component of the enforcement action for the site.”
Border Patrol agents in South Texas continue to arrest gang members and previously deported sex offenders after they illegally cross the border from Mexico into the United States.
Laredo Sector agents assigned to the Brackettville Station on September 13 arrested a man shortly after he illegally entered the U.S., according to information obtained from Laredo Sector Border Patrol officials. During processing, the agents identified the man as Edson Jimenez-Chaires, a 31-year-old man from Mexico. A records check revealed a criminal history that includes theft of property in Houston, Texas. Records also indicate that ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers removed the man in September 2019.
A further search confirmed Jimenez-Chaires is a member of the violent transnational criminal gang known as Sureños.
That same day, Del Rio Sector agents assigned to the Eagle Pass Station arrested a man after he illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico. During processing, the agents identified the man as 33-year-old Jose Ernesto Villalta-Arevalo, a Salvadoran citizen. Court records indicate a court in Prince Georges County Maryland convicted the Salvadoran man for aggravated sexual assault of a child in 2018, officials reported. The court sentenced the man to one year in prison. ERO officers deported him from the U.S. earlier this year.
Rio Grande Valley Sector agents assigned to the McAllen Station on September 14 arrested a group of migrants who illegally crossed the border near La Joya, Texas. During processing, agents identified one of the men as Hector Granados-Calales, a Salvadoran national, information obtained from Rio Grande Valley Sector officials states. A criminal background check uncovered an arrest by the Stafford County (Virginia) Sheriff’s Department for “rape-strong arm.” A court convicted the illegal alien on the charge and the judge sentenced him to 15 years confinement. The sentence was later reduced to four years, officials reported.
Later that day, Kingsville Station agents assigned to the Javier Vega, Jr. Immgration Checkpoint on U.S. Highway 77 arrested a Mexican national during a failed human smuggling attempt. During processing, agents identified the man as Felipe Antonio Salazar-Garcia, a.k.a. Felix Anthony Parada. Police in Greensboro, North Carolina, arrested the man for indecent liberties with a child. The court convicted the man and the judge sentenced him to 16-20 months confinement and 60 months probation.
Police in Gregory, Texas, contacted Border Patrol agents at the Corpus Christi Station on September 15 and requested assistance in identifying a man they found during a traffic stop. Agents responded to the request and identified the subject as Guillermo Antonio Barrera-Vasquez, a Guatemalan national illegally present in the U.S. During processing, the agents learned the man is a member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang.
The previously deported criminal aliens could face federal charges for illegal re-entry after removal. If convicted, each could face up to 20 years in federal prison.