#boycott glaceau

[news4dzhozhar]

[gcintheme-blog]

Five Free Ways Westerners Can Help Women in the Middle East Now

1. Go green. It is not a secret that climate change disproportionately affects poor people and that women are disproportionately poor (go figure) so that is one good reason right away, but I have another one. The Wahhabist Gulf States, which include Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, etc), Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, rely on the oil underneath them for their royal families to function and to spread their patriarchal propaganda, including funding ISIS. So if given a choice between something more fuel efficient or with a different power source and a product that depends on a lot of oil, if you can afford it please try to go green! Even recycling uses less plastic and therefore less petroleum and it is free to reuse things!

2. Boycott the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and its sponsors. This is a venture that Middle Eastern feminists have gotten off the ground but we are having a really difficult time spreading this message. Thousands of migrant workers are dying building that FIFA stadium and the entire system of labor is basically human trafficking:

The name of the current system is kafala, a system forcing all migrants to be sponsored and subsequently tied to an employer. This employer controls housing, wages, travel, and the well being of each employee. The kafala system has been frequently described as modern day slavery due to its exploitative nature. Forced labor, unpaid work, confiscation of documents, and withholding food and water to the migrants are a few of the mechanisms of control the employers enact over the migrants under the kafala system.

Workers mainly from South and Southeast Asia travel to Qatar with the hope of a securing a job in order to send remittances back to their families, but the kafala system traps them under the purview of their employer. The 2022 World Cup announcement has seen a significant rise in migrant workers coming to Qatar, creating a larger humanitarian crisis for the living and working conditions of the laborers. Qatar has not changed its policy of the kafala system since it became host of the 2022 World Cup, even with the additional international scrutiny towards its government. If Qatar does not change its policy before 2022, an estimated 4,000 migrant workers will die, making this event the deadliest in sporting history.

Most of the workers dying building that stadium, but almost all domestic workers in the Gulf States who work under the kafala system are women, and they are treated horribly. Boycotting the 2022 World Cup sends a message that the kafala system is abusive and unacceptable, and it helps women AND men. If you can afford to buy other products instead of these, please help. A list of the current 2022 World Cup sponsors:

Adidas

Anheuser-Busch which includes Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois

Coca-Cola which includes Sprite, Fanta, Dasani, Minute Maid, Powerade, Simply Orange, Glaceau Vitamin Water and Smart Water, and Fuze

Gazprom

Hyundai

Kia

McDonald’s

Sony

Visa

If you can, please encourage your national teams not to play. I know most people do not have any sort of power over this, but if even a few teams boycotted to send a message then it could make a big difference!

3. Be aware of issues that specifically affect Middle Eastern women and be ready to talk to other about them. Some of these issues are very sensitive for some people and nobody is obligated to psychologically torture herself. If you feel safe and comfortable you can consider studying one of these topics and talking to other people who might not be aware. Please keep in mind these are issues in the Middle East or parts of the Middle East but many are also problems in other places and in diaspora communities:

Honor killings (I also wrote on honor killings in Iraq here.)

Female genital mutilation

Modern-day slavery and human trafficking, especially with domestic workers

Laws that protect rapists and force victims to marry their rapists

Child marriage, especially the new trend of taking advantage of Syrian refugees

Extremely unsafe conditions in refugee camps including sexual violence

Bans on women basically being independent in any way in Saudi Arabia

Women jailed for reporting rape in Qatar or in Dubai (and these women are European so imagine how many of these cases are not reported in international news)

Assassinating women who speak out in Bahrain

Forced marriage and the mahr (dowry) system

High rates of domestic and intimate partner violence and no punishments for abusers

4. Let Middle Eastern feminists speak. I will give a short recommendation list here but please explore for yourself and form opinions! Many Middle Eastern women write about our lives but for some reason people do not want to listen to us speak and would rather listen to what other people have to say about us. Of course other people are not always inherently wrong but many times, they ignore us and share their own ideas that aren’t very accurate. Here are some works I enjoy that you might be able to find free online:

The works of Inaam Kachachi. Of course because I am Iraqi I will start with an Iraqi woman! I believe her books and other pieces are translated into many languages and she writes about the rise of religion in Iraq and how it has affected women.

Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

Beyond the Veil by Fatema Mernissi. (She is Moroccan which is in North Africa but I think the piece is very important for everyone to read.)

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal Al-Saadawi.

The poetry of Rafeef Ziadah is available on YouTube and Spotify.

Please stop silencing Middle Eastern women or being condescending if you don’t like what we have to say. If one more Westerner tells me they know more about being an Iraqi woman than I do I am going to lose it!

5. Stay aware and critical of what you read and hear. Countries all around the world are active in the Middle East and this directly affects the women who live here. Of course we understand that people might only have very limited control or no control over their governments and large private companies and most rational people do not generalize Westerners as being war-hungry monsters.

Sometimes Western governments insist they are helping when we are screaming that they are not. For example, did you know that the UN Security Council sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s directly or indirectly led to the deaths of half a million children?

According to Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, the death rate of children under five is more than 4,000 a month - that is 4,000 more than would have died before sanctions. That is half a million children dead in eight years. If this statistic is difficult to grasp, consider, on the day you read this, up to 200 Iraqi children may die needlessly. "Even if not all the suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors," says Unicef, "the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivation in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."

Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator but by punishing him this way, the UN also punished many of the most helpless people in Iraq. I understand there are no easy answers in these situations. How can the West fight against ISIS in Iraq? (Cutting ties with the Gulf States would help but nobody listens to Middle Eastern feminists!) These are complicated problems but solutions that cause so many children to die are probably not good solutions.

Please be wary of what you are told about the Middle East and how your government’s actions actually affect the people here. Some questions to ask yourself might be:

Is this news source reliable regarding the Middle East? For example Al Jazeera is Qatar state news. This does not automatically mean all their news is false or propaganda or should not be read, but when you read it you should ask critical questions and stay aware of the source.

Where can I read a different opinion about this topic? What do I think when I read this different idea?

How does this action by my government affect the average person in the Middle East? What are people there saying about this?

How does this issue specifically affect women?

What are the differences in reporting or in ideas between people in the West and people in the Middle East? Where could those differences come from?

Can oppressing women ever be a feminist act? For example some people cheer women soldiers that directly oppress and kill women civilians as feminists for serving alongside men when the entire system is imperialist and deadly.

[ohsoethical]

A Can’t of Coca Cola

I used to be addicted to coca cola as a child and teen. I had to drink it almost everyday probably. I’m pretty sure my milk bottle as a baby was filled with coke instead of milk (lol jk). I weened myself off coke and if I ever have it now it’s so disappointing. To be honest that happens with everything that I’ve reduced eating. You have very high expectations of how unethical food should taste if you haven’t had it in while.

But anyway!!!!!! This isn’t about how Coca Cola tastes (rubbish). 

This about how Coca Cola acts (Rubbish).

So let’s get straight into it, shall we?

WATER RESOURCES

In India, farmers have protested against Coca Cola and more than a million traders are boycotting Coke and Pepsi. It takes 400litres of water to make a bottle of coke which is about 1690 cups of water in layman terms. Although who can comprehend that.

Well lets see.

If we should drink 8 cups of water a day, its about 211 days of water people!!! Please consider this the next time you order one with your meal.

Considering that India is having one of the worst droughts in 140 years this is not something to be brushed under the carpet. The low levels of water have caused a thermal power station to shut down in February, wilted harvests have led to higher food prices, water has had to be delivered to homes and tens of thousands of people queue daily for water.

It’s not just coca cola that have to clean up their act. Hotels in India are being judged on the type of shower heads they use to conserve water. But Coke and Pepsi are fiercely opposed with hundreds of farmers demonstrated against them when they planned to build a $75 million bottling plant. The authorities approved cokes request to withdraw 4 million litres of groundwater a day. After 4 months of opposition the plan was cancelled. But when Pepsi proposed a plant and were authorised to draw 1.5 million litres a day, not only was it approved but protesters were beaten by the police.

In the past Coca cola bottlers have been closed for extracting groundwater above legal limits and because of water pollution and for violating mandatory environmental requirements.

Protesters have rightly accused the authorities for “acting as agents to foreign capitalists” and that “the common good was being sacrificed to foreign corporations” while “farmers were flying from water shortages and crop failures”.

“Coke and Pepsi are the best-known agents of water privatization and commodification of water,” said Nityanand Jayaraman, a journalist and activist in Chennai. “It is unethical and immoral for a resource that is so vital to life to be commodified. The two companies also stand accused of questionable practices. They make excellent poster boys, framing the issue of water scarcity as an actionable one of private greed causing the decline of a valuable public resource.”

SLAVE LABOUR YOU CAN KEEP

Brazilian government officials have recently accused two coca cola production and distribution centers for treating workers like slaves according to a Reporter Brazil. The following discoveries were made after a 7 months inspections:

179 truck drivers were forced to work 80-140 EXTRA hours per month

They were often denied sleep between shifts 

This led to “a variety of physical and mental health related issues, such as “body aches, stress, lack of interaction with family members and almost no leisure time.”

in 2013 and 2014 truck drivers successfully sued Spal (a licenced manufacturer of Coca Cola).

Boycott Divestment Sanctions

The BDS movement has placed a priority on boycotting coca cola because of the factories that are in illegal settlements in occupied Palestine lands, breaking international law. “Coca cola has at large ignored calls to abide by international law.”

“In 2009 the company had also hosted a special reception at the Coca-Cola world headquarters to honour Brigadier-General Ben-Eliezer. Under the presidency of Ariel Sharon, Ben-Eliezer served as Israeli Defence Minister presiding over 2002 storming of Jenin, a refugee camp, leaving hundreds of Palestinians dead.’

Coca Cola’s water and electricity demands are likely to be given preference over the needs of Palestinian people based on reports from around the world which show that their bottling plants usually adversely affect the communities living around them. People in Gaza only have access to 30% supply from the only power plant in Gaza, hospitals run on emergency generators and Palestinians in Gaza face a chronic shortage of fresh water. “Access to water is limited on average to 6-8 hours for 1-4 days a week for the population of Gaza.”

“The settlements help to sustain Israel’s illegal occupation making it impossible to create peace and an independent Palestinian state. The settlements are also considered illegal under international law. Israel’s yearly expansion of settlements has created an extremely difficult situation on the ground for Palestinians. Settlers get away with land theft while attacking and harassing Palestinians on a daily basis for simply being Palestinians.”

Be careful of buying coke disguised as another brand

Here’s a list of coca cola drinks:

sprite

lilt

schweppes

glaceau smartwater

oasis

fanta

minute made

roses 

5 alive

dr pepper

powerade

appletiser

honest

kia ora

Further reading and sources http://www.circleofblue.org/2017/world/right-life-water-drought-turmoil-coke-pepsi-tamil-nadu/ http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazilian-Coca-Cola-Manufacturer-Accused-of-Slave-Labor-20160826-0007.html https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/society/2017/5/7/coca-cola-donated-thousands-of-dollars-to-extremist-zionist-group http://www.foa.org.uk/campaign/notinmyfridge/ http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/drinks