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For Immediate Release
June, 03 2016, 12:00pm EDT
Contact:
Perry Wheeler, Greenpeace Media Officer, P: 301-675-8766
Greenpeace Storms Walmart Shareholder Meeting to Call Out Failures on Human Rights
Greenpeace flew its thermal airship and drove a mobile billboard truck around Walmart's annual general meeting this week to highlight the company's failure to address ocean destruction and potential human rights abuses in its tuna supply chain. The airship featured banners that read, "Walmart: Clean up needed in the tuna aisle" and "Save oceans.
FAYETTEVILLE, AR
Greenpeace flew its thermal airship and drove a mobile billboard truck around Walmart's annual general meeting this week to highlight the company's failure to address ocean destruction and potential human rights abuses in its tuna supply chain. The airship featured banners that read, "Walmart: Clean up needed in the tuna aisle" and "Save oceans. Protect workers." The mobile billboard truck broadcasted graphics about Walmart's destructive Great Value canned tuna, which is supplied by Thai Union -- the largest tuna company in the world and owner of Chicken of the Sea.
"Walmart can no longer hide the very real threat of labor abuse and ocean destruction with its insufficient policy statements and greenwashing," said Greenpeace Senior Oceans Campaigner David Pinsky. "Shareholders and customers now know that Walmart is ignoring the possibility of horrific abuses of workers throughout its supply chain as it continues selling cheap canned tuna from seafood predator Thai Union."
Greenpeace is campaigning against Walmart for its sale of destructive and unethical canned tuna. Walmart has shirked its responsibility to adopt improved procurement policies and address the potential human rights abuses and rampant ocean destruction connected to Thai Union seafood. Greenpeace is calling on Walmart to demand more sustainable and ethical tuna from Thai Union or reject its products entirely.
"Walmart represents roughly one quarter of U.S. canned tuna sales and must use its buying power to clean up the exploitative tuna industry," said Senior Oceans Campaigner Jackie Dragon. "Walmart has a responsibility to take care of its own workers and ensure the fair and ethical treatment of those who bring products to store shelves. Ignoring the treatment of Thai Union tuna industry workers raises concerns about Walmart's standards throughout its entire supply chain."
Walmart has faced increasing pressure to address labor issues in stores and throughout its supply chains. United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) was also in Fayetteville to call on Walmart to provide a $15 living wage, predictable schedules, accommodations for health needs, and respect for all workers. Greenpeace stands in solidarity with the labor union in urging the retail giant to treat workers fairly from sea to factory to stores.
"Walmart is the world's largest retailer," said Randy Parraz, UFCW Campaign Director for Making Change at Walmart. "It is unacceptable that some workers in the US are paid so low they struggle to put food on tables and workers in Thai Union's supply chain abroad are subject to abuse. Walmart can and should do better."
A Walmart employee working with UFCW's Making Change at Walmart campaign who has encountered difficulties moving up and getting paid what she is worth spoke to a resolution on the AGM floor today. She urged Walmart to take responsibility for human rights abuse of workers and environmental impacts throughout its supply chains. The resolution, noting Walmart's connection to Thai Union, asked investors to vote for strong public commitments and policies from the retailer on canned tuna.
Over the last month Greenpeace activists have disrupted Thai Union's operations at multiple points in its supply chain. At Walmart stores in the U.S. and Canada, activists removed all Great Value and Chicken of the Sea canned tuna products from store shelves and interfered with their sale by hiding and pushing the products in carts around the store. Activists on Greenpeace's Esperanza ship removed and destroyed dozens of fish aggregating devices (FADs) -- destructive fishing gear that damages entire ecosystems -- from boats that supply Thai Union in the Indian Ocean. The ship crew also confronted a controversial vessel at the heart of Thai Union's supply chain and used spray paint to black out high-powered lights used for a fishing method linked to overfishing. And activists in France shut down and rebranded a Thai Union factory for 14 hours to prevent trucks from coming or going.
Walmart failed Greenpeace's 2015 U.S. canned tuna ranking for its sustainability and labor issues. The retailer also scored a mediocre 5.47/10 in Greenpeace's ninth edition of Carting Away the Oceans, which ranks retailers on seafood sustainability.
Greenpeace on Wednesday sent an investor briefing to top Walmart shareholders to detail concerns over Thai Union tuna. To access a media briefing on Walmart's canned tuna issues, please click here: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Walmart-Thai-Union-Canned-Tuna-Briefing.pdf
For photos and b-roll footage of the airship and billboard truck in Fayetteville, please click here: https://photo.greenpeace.org/collection/27MZIFJJ42LZ1
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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Warning Against Taxpayer Bailout for Big Tech, Critics Fume Over OpenAI Execs' Talk of Government Loans
"Big Tech is building a mountain of speculative infrastructure," warned one critic. "Now it wants the US government to prop up the bubble before it bursts."
Nov 06, 2025
Tech giant OpenAI generated significant backlash this week after one of its top executives floated potential loan guarantees from the US government to help fund its massive infrastructure buildout.
In a Wednesday interview with The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar suggested that the federal government could get involved in infrastructure development for artificial intelligence by offering a "guarantee," which she said could "drop the cost of the financing" and increase the amount of debt her firm could take on.
When asked if she was specifically talking about a "federal backstop for chip investment," she replied, "Exactly."
Hours after the interview, Friar walked back her remarks and insisted that "OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for our infrastructure commitments," while adding that she was "making the point that American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity, which requires the private sector and government playing their part."
Despite Friar's walk-back, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a podcast interview with economist Tyler Cowen that released on Thursday that he believed the government ultimately could be a backstop to the artificial intelligence industry.
"When something gets sufficiently huge... the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort, as we've seen in various financial crises," he said. "Given the magnitude of what I expect AI's economic impact to look like, I do think the government ends up as the insurer of last resort."
Friar and Altman's remarks about government backstops for OpenAI loans drew the immediate ire of Robert Weissman, co-president of consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, who expressed concerns that the tech industry may have already opened up talks about loan guarantees with President Donald Trump's administration.
"Given the Trump regime’s eagerness to shower taxpayer subsidies and benefits on favored corporations, it is entirely possible that OpenAI and the White House are concocting a scheme to siphon taxpayer money into OpenAI’s coffers, perhaps with some tribute paid to Trump and his family." Weissman said. "Perhaps not so coincidentally, OpenAI President Greg Brockman was among the attendees at a dinner for donors to Trump’s White House ballroom, though neither he nor OpenAI have been reported to be actual donors."
JB Branch, Public Citizen’s Big Tech accountability advocate, said even suggesting government backstops for OpenAI showed that the company and its executives were "completely out of touch with reality," and he argued it was no coincidence that Friar floated the possibility of federal loan guarantees at a time when many analysts have been questioning whether the AI industry is an unsustainable financial bubble.
"The truth is simple: the AI bubble is swelling, and OpenAI knows it," he said. "Big Tech is building a mountain of speculative infrastructure without real-world demands or proven productivity-enhancing use cases to justify it. Now it wants the US government to prop up the bubble before it bursts. This is an escape plan for an industry that has overpromised and underdelivered."
An MIT Media Lab report found in September that while AI use has doubled in workplaces since 2023, 95% of organizations that have invested in the technology have seen "no measurable return on their investment."
Concerns about an AI bubble intensified earlier this week when investor Michael Burry, who famously made a fortune by short-selling the US housing market ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, revealed that his firm was making bets against Nvidia and Palantir, two of the biggest players in the AI industry.
This has led to some AI industry players to complain that markets and governments are undervaluing their products.
During her Wednesday WSJ interview, for instance, Friar complained that "I don’t think there’s enough exuberance about AI, when I think about the actual practical implications and what it can do for individual."
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, meanwhile, told the Financial Times that China was going to beat the US in the race to develop high-powered artificial intelligence because the Chinese government offers more energy subsidies to AI and doesn't put as much regulation on AI development.
Huang also complained that "we need more optimism" about the AI industry in the US.
Investment researcher Ross Hendricks, however, dismissed Huang's warning about China winning the AI battle, and he accused the Nvidia CEO of seeking special government favors.
"This is nothing more than Jensen Huang foaming the runway for a federal AI bailout in coordination with OpenAI's latest plea in the WSJ," he commented in a post on X. "These grifters simply can't be happy making billions from one of the greatest investment manias of all time. They'll do everything possible to loot taxpayers to prevent it from popping."
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Senate Dems Aim to Stop Trump 'From Dragging This Country Into War' With Venezuela
"Congress needs to assert its constitutional power to prohibit use of military force," stressed one of the war powers resolution's co-sponsors.
Nov 06, 2025
As the Trump administration argues that it can continue its extrajudicial assassination spree of alleged drug runners on the high seas without congressional approval, the US Senate is set to vote Thursday afternoon on a bipartisan war powers resolution that would block military action against Venezuela absent lawmakers' assent—as required by law.
Last month, Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced a resolution to block US military "hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress," citing the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and Congress' sole ability to declare war under the Constitution.
Posting on X ahead of Thursday's vote, Schiff said that the measure's co-sponsors "are forcing a bipartisan vote to block the administration from dragging this country into war in South America."
"Congress needs to assert its constitutional power to prohibit use of military force," he added.
Trump has PUBLICLY threatened land strikes in Venezuela—after already killing at least 66 unknown people on boats in the Caribbean—unnecessarily putting the U.S. at risk of war. Here’s what @schiff.senate.gov, Senator Paul, and I are doing about it:youtube.com/shorts/TQKsF...
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— Senator Tim Kaine (@kaine.senate.gov) November 6, 2025 at 8:29 AM
Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, a Washington, DC-based think tank, said Thursday that President Donald Trump "talks about himself as a historic peacemaker while continuing to order reckless military strikes and threatening to invade countries around the world."
"His actions violate both the Constitution and his own promises to be an anti-war president," he added.
This is the second time Kaine and Schiff have tried to introduce a Venezuela war powers resolution. Last month, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman joined his GOP colleagues in voting down a similar measure. Paul joined Democrats and Independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine) in voting for the legislation.
Since September 2, Trump has overseen 16 reported attacks on vessels allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America, killing at least 67 people. Venezuelan and Colombian officials, as well as relatives of some of the slain men, assert that some victims were fishers and condemned the attacks as war crimes.
Trump—who deployed an armada of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of Venezuela—has also approved covert CIA action and, along with senior administration officials, threatened to attack targets on land inside the oil-rich country, which has long been subjected to US meddling, regime change, and deadly sanctions. Late last month, the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said that his country’s security forces captured a group of CIA-aligned mercenaries engaged in a "false-flag attack" against the nation.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973—also known as the War Powers Act—was enacted during the Nixon administration at the tail end of the US war on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos to empower Congress to check the president’s war-making authority. The law requires the president to report any military action to Congress within 48 hours and mandates that lawmakers must approve troop deployments after 60 days.
That 60-day door closed on Monday. However, according to The Washington Post, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel T. Elliott Gaiser told lawmakers this week that Trump is not bound by the War Powers Resolution, as the administration does not believe that the boat strikes legally meet the definition of "hostilities" because the victims of the attacks aren't fighting back.
The dubious argument that acts of US military aggression aren't hostilities isn't new—the Obama administration asserted similar immunity from the War Powers Resolution when it decided to attack Libya in 2011, leading to the ouster of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi and over a decade of enduring conflict and division.
As Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser who is now a senior official at the International Crisis Group, wrote for Just Security this week:
There are many flaws with the Trump administration’s reported interpretation of hostilities. As indicated in the legislative history, Congress understood the term “hostilities” to apply broadly, more broadly than “armed conflict.” The Obama administration’s prior attempt to restrictively interpret the term garnered strong bipartisan congressional opposition...
That the Trump administration would resort to creative lawyering to circumvent the limits of the War Powers Resolution is hardly a surprise... It nonetheless is yet another legal abuse and arrogation of power by the executive. And it is a power grab in the service of killing people outside the law based solely on the president’s own say-so.
"Congress needs to push back against this attempt by the White House to further encroach upon its constitutional prerogatives on the use of military force," Finucane added. "The legislative branch should reject the executive’s strained legal interpretation of the War Powers Resolution, including possibly in legislation. Congress should also continue efforts to halt these killings at sea and block an unlawful attack on Venezuela."
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'Long-Overdue': Pelosi to Retire After Four Decades in Congress
Pelosi's progressive challenger called it the start of a "generational shift" in the Democratic Party.
Nov 06, 2025
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling it quits after nearly four decades in Congress. On Thursday, the longtime Democratic leader announced that her 20th term in Congress will be her last and that she will not run for reelection in 2026.
"For decades, I've cherished the privilege of representing our magnificent city in the United States Congress," Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a video tribute to her constituents in San Francisco. "That is why I want you, my fellow San Franciscans, to be the first to know I will not be seeking reelection to Congress. With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative."
The departure of the 85-year-old Pelosi, the first and only woman to ever hold the speaker's gavel, comes at a critical crossroads for the Democratic Party, when the brand of corporate-friendly centrism she came to embody faces a crisis of credibility after failing to withstand the return of President Donald Trump, and an increasingly muscular progressive flank seeks to reshape the party in its image.
"Starting out as a progressive, Pelosi has steadily drifted to the center over the decades, coinciding with her rise up the party ranks, the gradual rise of her net worth, and even San Francisco’s transformation into an unaffordable playground for the rich," wrote Branko Marcetic in Jacobin when she stepped down from the role as the Democratic leader in 2022.
Once a proponent of universal healthcare, Pelosi will likely be remembered as one of the foremost obstacles to achieving Medicare for All, which she fought tooth and nail to block, with the support of the health insurance industry, during her final four years as speaker.
As the climate crisis grows more urgent and increasingly destructive, Pelosi will be remembered as the person who derided the nascent "Green New Deal" effort to transition America's economy toward renewables as "the green dream or whatever they call it."
As the Democratic Party's base reckons with its near-total shift against Israel following more than two years of genocide in Gaza, Pelosi—who previously backed funding for the Iraq War against the grassroots of her party—will be remembered as the person who, suggested that Democrats protesting for a ceasefire were spreading “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s message” and should be investigated by the FBI.
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rampages through American cities—including her beloved San Francisco—tormenting immigrants and citizens alike, Pelosi will be remembered for her role bending to Republican demands during the last government shutdown in 2019, to hand the agency more funding as part of a power play against the progressive "Squad" members who wanted to see the agency abolished or defunded.
And at a time when Americans struggle with a surging cost of living, Pelosi will be remembered as one of the people who profited most from her position at the heights of power. In 2024, she and her husband raked in more than $38 million from stock trading, more than any other member of Congress in either party, and remained a persistent defender of the humble elected representative's right to use their immense wealth of insider knowledge for personal gain.
Pelosi's retirement announcement comes at a moment when the Democratic establishment, particularly its congressional leaders—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Pelosi's successor, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)—face historic unpopularity with their own voters.
A survey published by Pew Research at the beginning of October found that 59% of self-identified Democrats disapprove of the job their leaders are doing. A previous poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that Democrats believe there was a large gulf between their governing priorities, like universal healthcare, affordable childcare, and higher taxes on the rich, and those of the party.
Pelosi's announcement comes just two days after the most significant triumph in decades for the progressive movement she tried to crush, with the democratic socialist state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani being comfortably elected as New York City's next mayor despite Pelosi's refusal to endorse.
"This is an appropriate response to Mamdani’s win," New Republic writer Indigo Oliver said of Pelosi's retirement on social media. "Chuck Schumer should follow Pelosi’s lead."
Even prior to her retirement becoming official, momentum was building behind a more progressive candidate to take Pelosi's seat as well: Saikat Chakrabarti, the former chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who some have described as a "clone" of Mamdani, though he too has been met with criticism for his coziness with San Francisco's powerful tech sector.
"Pelosi’s retirement marks the end of an era in San Francisco politics and the beginning of a long-overdue generational shift," said an email from the Chakrabarti campaign.
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