William Dodge on Nestle Slave Labor, Michael Ratner on Donald Rumsfeld

Child chocolate worker in the Ivory Coast (Fortune, 3/1/16) (photo: Benjamin Lowy) This week on CounterSpin: Nestle CEO Mark Schneider told investors in February that “2020 was a year of hardship for so many,” yet he was “inspired by the way it has brought all of us closer together.” And also by an “improvement” in Nestle’s “profitability and return on invested capital.” “The global pandemic,” Schneider said, “did not slow us down.” You know what else didn’t slow them down? Ample evidence that their profitability relies on a supply chain that includes literal slave labor in the Ivory Coast.  The US Supreme Court recently heard Nestle USA v. Doe, a long-running case that seemed to get at how much responsibility corporations have for international human rights violations, but in the end may have taught us more about what legal tools are useful in getting to that accountability. We got some clarity on the case from William Dodge, professor at University of California/Davis School of Law. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin210709Dodge.mp3 Transcript: ‘US Companies Can Be Sued for Involvement in Child Slavery’ AP (6/30/21) Also on the show: Donald Rumsfeld launched wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and approved torture at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. But to hear elite media tell it, the former Defense secretary should be remembered as “complex and paradoxical.” The New York Times described his arrival in Washington as “like an All-American who had stepped off the Wheaties box,” and AP suggested that all those dead Iraqis were mainly a thorn in Rumsfeld’s side, with the headline, “Donald Rumsfeld, a Cunning Leader Undermined by the Iraq War.” Obituaries noted that Rumsfeld expressed no regrets about his decisions; media appear to have none of their own. CounterSpin talked about Rumsfeld’s media treatment back in 2008 with the Center for Constitutional Rights’ Michael Ratner, whose book The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld had just come out from the New Press. We’ll hear that conversation on today’s show. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin210709Ratner.mp3 Transcript: ‘The Techniques Rumsfeld Was Using Were Designed to Get False Information’ Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the New Cold War. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin210709Banter.mp3