Judge tosses out lawsuits seeking billions from U.S. companies (Apartheid)

[Khephra]

NEW YORK -- Lawsuits seeking more than $400 billion in damages from U.S. corporations for victims of apartheid in South Africa were tossed out Monday by a federal judge who said the claims bordered on the frivolous.

U.S. District Judge John E. Sprizzo called the actions of the apartheid regime "repugnant" and said decisions by the corporations to do business with the regime may have been "morally suspect or embarrassing."

But he said there was no meaningful assertion by plaintiffs that actions by U.S. corporations directly caused the alleged murders, tortures, crimes against humanity and other heinous acts in South Africa from 1948 until a decade ago.

In his ruling, Sprizzo said the history of apartheid was marked by "hatred, racism and inhuman treatment" as whites making up 14 percent of the population enacted laws assuring the African majority remained in a state of near-enslavement.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--apartheidlawsuits1129nov29,0,3051786.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire

[struggle4progress]

1. Apartheid would have collapsed years earlier without international ...

... corporate support. That's why the ANC wanted the boycott. The Nationalist thugs got tons of stuff abroad: crowd control equipment, armaments, information technology to make the repression bureaucracy run smoother ...

So I naturally suspect Sprizzo is a wingnut hack. And waddya know, lookie here:

Racist float OK
Originally published on June 25, 2003

Two firefighters and a cop who disgraced the Bravest and the Finest by mocking a lynching on an infamous racist parade float in Queens were wrongly fired, a judge ruled yesterday. <snip>

Their crass display parodied the racially motivated dragging death of Byrd in Jasper, Tex. - with Walters hanging from the back of the float. The float was titled "Black to the Future 2098." <snip>

Sprizzo, who was appointed to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan, has been involved in several other controversial decisions.

In 1997, he ruled that two protesters who blocked access to an abortion clinic should be acquitted because they were acting on a "conscience-driven religious belief." The appeals court struck down his decision. <snip>

http://nydailynews.com/front/story/95465p-86481c.html

[w4rma]

2. These corps need to be punished. They were unethical then and are

unethical, now.