Slaughterhouse Sweatshop: Filmmaker exposes US dirty secrets

[Joanne98]

Guatemala filmmaker tells story of stories of the ICE raid in Postville, Iowa

By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- Americans want to go to the supermarket and find their meat neatly packaged. They don't want to hear about the 14-year-old girl from Guatemala who worked 12 hours a day, or the woman who was raped by her supervisor at the meat packing plant. They don't want to hear about the mothers who have "kill" water thrown on them or hear a young girl crying from the pain in her hands from operating power meat cutting shears.

Americans don't want to hear about Postville, Iowa, or how the US spent $5.2 million on a raid that revealed the underbelly of not just the meat packing industry, but of the abuse of migrant workers by US companies and the sinister justice delivered by the US Justice Department.

Guatemalan filmmaker Luis Argueta is telling this story. On Monday night at the University of Arizona, Argueta previewed thirty minutes of his work in progress of the feature documentary film, "abUSed: The Postville Raid." It is just a portion of the 350 hours of testimonies and interviews he has conducted in Postville and Guatemala over the past 20 months.

Argueta's film is a story of stories, revealing aspects ranging from the violation of US child labor laws, to malnutrition in Guatemala and the fear that followed 9/11. That fear offers US authorities an excuse to carry out widespread violations of human rights.

Continued>>>>
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2010/02/slaughterhouse-sweatshop-filmmaker-exposes-us-dirty-secrets

[dipsydoodle]

1. I'm speechless

x(

[ensho]

2. kick

nt

[pleah]

3. K&R

[whathehell]

4. Thanks for posting this.

[proudohioan]

5. Disgusting.

We, as Americans, need to start becoming more socially aware. We all kind of know, in the back of our minds, that when we buy cheap, exported goods from third world countries, that some child was probably chained to a table to make that product. What we are hearing now about these exploitive conditions in our OWN country, while horrifying, should not really come as a surprise due to the corporate mentality of huge, short term profits and unbridled greed, all in the name of "competition".

I recently read the book "Cheap - The High Cost of Discount Culture" by Ellen Ruppel Shell. She touches on some of these very issues, without being preachy. It has changed my way of thinking before making a purchase and hopefully will make me a "smarter" consumer. It is well worth the read.

[Aristus]

6. It's important to remember that when corporations say they want "free and unregulated markets",

that this is what they mean.

This is what they want. The legal right to be slaveowners...

[xchrom]

7. Recommend

[prairierose]

8. Americans do not want to face how they enable the would be slaveowners...

of industry and transnational corporations. They watch good jobs disappear and do not protest. They watch labor unions being broken and cheer. They see people who do not look like them brought in to do the jobs they used to do and turn away so that they do not have to face reality. They pretend that jobs at walmart are real jobs and that the products walmart sells are worth buying.

They have no idea what is happening in their own country and have no interest in what might be happening in other countries. They keep hearing from the corporate media that we are the best and they choose to believe rather than question or research the veracity of those reports.

They will cheer for free trade even though free trade is what is killing their jobs and the economies of so many countries. And they have no idea that those free trade agreements gave so much power to those entities that would do away with their freedoms in a heartbeat.

But at least there are some courageous film makers who are taking the place of what used to be real journalism.

[midnight]

9. Child labor laws are not part of NAFTA, CAFTA, ETC..... The brilliance of doing

business where money trumps peace..... Those business men/women and their attorney's thought of everything....