24 hours at a time with no overtime pay

According to a recent front-page article in Bloomberg Magazine, Wal-Mart hired a defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, to use military-grade cybersecurity techniques to monitor the social media accounts of labor organizers and Wal-Mart employees. Worse, on at least one occasion, the company’s global security team “began working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces” to counter worker protests.¹

Giant corporations shouldn’t be able to enlist the FBI’s help to crack down on workers simply asking for dignity and respect. So we are joining our friends at OUR Walmart to demand that the Department of Justice investigate the FBI’s relationship with Wal-Mart and whether the agency or company broke any laws.

Tell the Justice Department: Investigate reported FBI spying on Wal-Mart employees. Click here to sign the petition.

Wal-Mart jobs pay so little that some workers go hungry. Most face irregular hours that make it impossible to raise parents or plan ahead, and have few benefits or health care coverage. All Wal-Mart employees are asking for is higher pay, safe working conditions, dependable schedules, and respect in the workplace.² This is not terrorism, and there is no way the FBI should be involved.

The Bloomberg report reveals an intentional and long-running effort on the part of Wal-Mart executives to monitor current and former employees who are involved with OUR Walmart. Wal-Mart organized a “Delta team” of executives tasked with cracking down, staffed up its labor hotline, and hired Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest defense contractors in the world.³ Many of the employees monitored were later fired, potentially violating the law.⁴

In 2014, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a complaint against Wal-Mart, claiming that the company violated labor law in 14 states by engaging in retaliation against workers who organized for better pay and better lives.⁵ The NLRB investigation turned up thousands of documents, some of which detail Wal-Mart’s hiring of Lockheed Martin – and its unacceptable coordination with the FBI.⁶

OUR Walmart has submitted a letter to the Department of Justice demanding an investigation, and we need to show that hundreds of thousands of Americans stand with them.⁷

Tell the Justice Department: Investigate reported FBI spying on Wal-Mart employees. Click here to sign the petition.

We do not know how often the FBI and Wal-Mart have teamed up. The documents unearthed by the NLRB also do not reveal the extent of FBI involvement in monitoring protesters who traveled by bus across the country to the retail behemoth’s Arkansas headquarters. It is also possible that Wal-Mart used information turned over by the FBI to illegally retaliate against employees.⁸

OUR Walmart and Wal-Mart workers have been at the forefront of the "Fight for $15" and their courageous stand has yielded results providing momentum for higher wages across the country. If the FBI’s anti-terrorism team is partnering with Wal-Mart, it may be working with other companies as well. We need to make sure the Justice Department doesn’t turn a blind eye any outrageous and dangerous abuse of authority targeting Wal-Mart workers.

Tell the Justice Department: Investigate reported FBI spying on Wal-Mart employees. Click below to sign the petition:

http://act.credoaction.com/sign/FBI_walmart?t=7&akid=16624.5084505._Fq35q

Thank you for speaking out,

Murshed Zaheed, Deputy Political Director
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Add your name:

1. Susan Berfield, “How Walmart Keeps an Eye on Its Massive Workforce,” Bloomberg, November 24, 2015.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. OUR Walmart, "Letters to the Department of Justice," United4Respect.org, January 14, 2016.
5. Amanda Becker, “U.S. labor board alleges Wal-Mart violated labor law in 14 states,” Reuters, January 15, 2014.
6. Berfield, “How Walmart Keeps an Eye on Its Massive Workforce.”
7. OUR Walmart, "Letters to the Department of Justice," United4Respect.org, January 14, 2016.
8. Berfield, “How Walmart Keeps an Eye on Its Massive Workforce.”

Terrorism in Mexico

As the days roll by it is looking more like the 49 killed in Cadereyta were in fact migrants. Additional information is slowly leaking to the public such as the facial features of the dead were those similar to Central Americans and people in the south of Mexico.

Contrary to early reports, not all victims were decapitated or dismembered, and not all were in black garbage bags, while victims were in bags others were tossed onto the highway without a bag or cover.

Milenio reports that a couple of victims bore tattoos of Santa Muerte , however that has not been confirmed, officially, it is confirmed a few bore tattoos.
There were persistent rumors that the dead included women and children. Since Saturday night it is rumored that 2 of the six women were pregnant.
On Sunday morning I was sent photos that I did nothing with them as the victims were not in bags and although decapitated their limbs were for the most part intact.

This Borderland Beat reporter has long retained the belief that the mass murder displays were constructed, either by majority or entirety, with innocent people unrelated to organized crime. That position was reinforced after the Boca del Rio mass killings of 35.

One story that has been impossible to forget. A mothers account of the last day she saw her 15 year old son, a high school student. He raised chickens and on foot went to purchase feed. Eye witnesses account declared that the child was placed in a municipal poilce car. He was among the carnage in Boca del Rio.

A short time subsequent to the gruesome event, 100% of all the municipal force was fired due to corruption. Many refused to take a polygraph and those who did failed. This is not an isolated circumstance. Cartels control municipalities in the cities and regions they conduct their criminal activities.

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On May 14, 2012 a video was uploaded on Youtube by a user with the name of  "anim trent" and was immediately removed by Youtube due to its violent content. The video was titled "Comandante Diablo y Rey de Reyes Acabando con los Zetas" or "Commander Diablo and King of Kings finishing with Los Zetas." The video starts with a female decapitating a male while the man is still alive. The man is then dismembered. It is very hard to watch. At one point one of the sicarios carves the letter "Z" on the stomach of the victim.

Two older men are executed. One is shot before being beheaded and dismembered. The other man is beheaded while alive and the head is displayed toward the end of the video. It has not been clearly established who Commander Diablo and Rey de Reyes is, but they have targeted victims that are alleged by this group to have links to Los Zetas.

In the last two weeks a video and several pictures surfaced of members with the same exact name that executed several men, it is not certain if the events are relatad.

Though hard to imagine the cruelty of cartels to gather large groups of innocents for shock and attention thereby highlighting messages or a perception of power, another perspective is it is far easier, and efficient in their viewpoint.
By targeting a bus load of migrants, or giving corrupt police the task to collect innocent victims off the streets. Compliant and respectful of authorities, they are easy prey, no bullets, no fighting, no bloodshed sustained on the part of the criminals.

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A man and a woman in their 20s were tortured and hanged from a pedestrian bridge in a border town for denouncing a drug cartel on Internet forums and blogs, CNN reported . The incident took place in Nuevo Laredo, a city of 400,000 just across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. Two notes referencing online activity were discovered at the crime scene, one of them tied to the leg of the male victim.

"This happened for snitching on Frontera Al Rojo Vivo," read that note. Frontera Al Rojo Vivo is a popular online forum where members anonymously post details on drug cartels, and denounce them.

The second message, attached to the bridge, read: "This will happen to all the internet snitches (Frontera al Rojo Vivo, Blog Del Narco, or Denuncia Ciudadano). 

The second note was signed "Z", likely a reference to the Zetas cartel, which operates in the area. The cartel has murdered informants in the past, but this is the first known case where online message boards and blogs were mentioned.

None of the sites singled out appeared to have been intimidated by the grisly murders. "It's very difficult for them to find out who denounced," wrote one poster on Al Rojo Vivo. "They only want to scare society."

This story originally published on Mashable here.

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Police found a woman's decapitated body in a Mexican border city on Saturday, alongside a handwritten sign saying she was killed in retaliation for her postings on a social networking site.