Tragic result of demand for cheap clothes

From an investigative report on Gap, in the Guardian:

'I was bought from my parents' village in [the northern state of] Bihar and taken to New Delhi by train,' he says. 'The men came looking for us in July. They had loudspeakers in the back of a car and told my parents that, if they sent me to work in the city, they won't have to work in the farms. My father was paid a fee for me and I was brought down with 40 other children. The journey took 30 hours and we weren't fed. I've been told I have to work off the fee the owner paid for me so I can go home, but I am working for free. I am a shaagird [a pupil]. The supervisor has told me because I am learning I don't get paid. It has been like this for four months.'

The derelict industrial unit in which Amitosh and half a dozen other children are working is smeared in filth, the corridors flowing with excrement from a flooded toilet.

Behind the youngsters huge piles of garments labelled Gap - complete with serial numbers for a new line that Gap concedes it has ordered for sale later in the year - lie completed in polythene sacks, with official packaging labels, all for export to Europe and the United States in time for Christmas...

In recent years Gap has made efforts to rebrand itself as a leader in ethical and socially responsible manufacturing, after previously being criticised for practices including the use of child labour.

With annual revenues of more than £8bn and endorsements from Madonna and Sex and The City star Sarah Jessica Parker, Gap has arguably become the most successful brand in high-street fashion. The latest face of the firm's advertising is the singer Joss Stone.

Founded in San Francisco in 1969 by Donald Fisher, now one of America's wealthiest businessmen, Gap operates more than 3,000 stores and franchises across the world. In Britain Gap, babyGap and GapKids are very successful, their own-brand jeans alone outselling their retail rivals' lines by three to one.

Last year, the company embarked on a huge advertising campaign surrounding 'Product Red', a charitable trust for Africa founded by the U2 singer Bono and backed by celebrities including Hollywood star Don Cheadle, singers Lenny Kravitz and Mary J Blige, Steven Spielberg and Penelope Cruz. As part of the fundraising endeavour, Gap launched a new, limited collection of clothing and accessories for men and women with Product Red branding, the profits from which are being channelled towards fighting Aids in the Third World.

On its website the company states that all individuals who work in garment factories deserve to be treated with dignity and are entitled to safe and fair working conditions and not since 2000, when a BBC Panorama investigation exposed the firm's working practices in Cambodia, have children been associated with the production of their brand.

Gap has huge contracts in India, which boasts one of the world's fastest-growing economies. But over the past decade, India has also become the world capital for child labour. According to the UN, child labour contributes an estimated 20 per cent of India's gross national product with 55 million children aged from five to 14 employed across the business and domestic sectors.

...'This may not be what they want to hear as they pull off fresh clothes from clean racks in stores but shoppers in the West should be thinking "Why am I only paying £30 for a hand-embroidered top. Who made it for such little cost? Is this top stained with a child's sweat?" That's what they need to ask themselves.' [saysBhuwan Ribhu, a Delhi lawyer and activist for the Global March Against Child Labour]

How middle-class is the green movement?

Photo of Van Jones. Source: Ella Baker Center

I'm not a big Thomas Friedman fan, but his column today is interesting. It's about Van Jones, Yale law graduate and head of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California, which helps kids avoid jail and secure jobs, trying to bring America's underclass into the green movement.

“We need a different on-ramp” for people from disadvantaged communities, says Mr. Jones. “The leaders of the climate establishment came in through one door and now they want to squeeze everyone through that same door. It’s not going to work. If we want to have a broad-based environmental movement, we need more entry points.”

...One thing spurring him in this project, he explained, was the way that the big oil companies bought ads in black-owned newspapers in California in 2006 showing an African-American woman filling her gas tank with a horrified look at the pump price. The ads...tried to scare African-Americans into thinking that the tax on the companies would be passed on at the pump.

...Using his little center in Oakland, Mr. Jones has been on a crusade to help underprivileged African-Americans and other disadvantaged communities understand why they would be the biggest beneficiaries of a greener America. It’s about jobs. The more government requires buildings to be more energy efficient, the more work there will be retrofitting buildings all across America with solar panels, insulation and other weatherizing materials. Those are manual-labor jobs that can’t be outsourced.

...“You can’t take a building you want to weatherize, put it on a ship to China and then have them do it and send it back,” said Mr. Jones. “So we are going to have to put people to work in this country — weatherizing millions of buildings, putting up solar panels, constructing wind farms. Those green-collar jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty for someone who has not gone to college.”

Let’s tell our disaffected youth: “You can make more money if you put down that handgun and pick up a caulk gun.”

...The blue-collar, stepping-stone, manufacturing jobs are leaving. And they’re not being replaced by anything. So you have this whole generation of young blacks who are basically in economic free fall.” Green-collar retrofitting jobs are a great way to catch them.

History is a weapon

Today I visited the website of Linda Martín Alcoff, whose work I read a bit at Syracuse University, and with whom I wish I'd been able to take a class (I can't remember why I didn't, probably a schedule conflict). On her website, I found a link to this website, which seems interesting! (I mean the content of course, but also design). Intro page text:

History isn't what happened, but a story of what happened. And there are always

different versions, different stories, about the same events. One version might revolve mainly around a specific set of facts while another version might minimize them or not include them at all.

Like stories, each of these different versions of history contain different lessons. Some histories tell us that our leaders, at least, have always tried to do right for everyone. Others remark that the emperors don't have the slaves' best interests at

heart. Some teach us that this is both what has always been and what always will be. Others counsel that we shouldn't mistake transient dominance for intrinsic superiority. Lastly, some histories paint a picture where only the elites have the power to change the world, while others point out that social change is rarely commanded from the top down.

Regardless of the value of these many lessons, History isn't what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include. The very selection of

which histories to teach in a society shapes our view of how what is came to be and, in turn, what we understand as possible. This choice of which history to teach can never be "neutral" or "objective." Those who choose, either following a set agenda or guided by hidden prejudices, serve their interests. Their interests could be to continue this world as it now stands or to make a new world.

We cannot simply be passive. We must choose whose interests are best: those who

want to keep things going as they are or those who want to work to make a better world. If we choose the latter, we must seek out the tools we will need. History is just one tool to shape our understanding of our world. And every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

How not to use technology

I can't believe people would be so ridiculous as to consider virtual office hours as a serious option for a non-online course. When students are paying hundreds of dollars per credit, they have the right to face-to-face time. And when professors are getting paid to teach, they are obliged to interact with students. And if they can't stand to do this in person, they should do their students a favor and take up another profession. Just my humble opinion. Below, an excerpt from a report in the Daily Collegian, followed by excerpts from Daniel Goleman's article in The New York Times:

Web chat can't replace office visit

Using "virtual office hours" is the new trend in academia nationwide and at Penn State.

Being able to ask a professor or teaching assistant questions while sitting at work or while doing homework is a major time-saver.

But, while it is technologically savvy, it reduces some feedback that can only be achieved face-to-face.

...It would be nearly impossible to have a dialogue of feedback about a term paper, a homework assignment or an upcoming exam via a chat room.

...Maybe, it's old-fashioned, but there's something important about talking to a professor in person -- an understanding that no emoticon can express.

Why email often makes things worse -- excerpt from a New York Times report:

Email is easy to write (and to misread)

...social neuroscience, the study of what happens in the brains of people as they interact. New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.

Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.

Most crucially, the brain’s social circuitry mimics in our neurons what’s happening in the other person’s brain, keeping us on the same wavelength emotionally. This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instantaneously and out of our awareness.

In contrast to a phone call or talking in person, e-mail can be emotionally impoverished when it comes to nonverbal messages that add nuance and valence to our words. The typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone.

Image source: The New York Times

The word: catastrophe

Stephen Colbert explains why the US should attack North Korea at once -- to "snatch military success from the jaws of diplomatic victory". Because otherwise, "this triumph of diplomacy could make people think that diplomacy can triumph."

As Colbert so rightly observes, "Back in 2003 we could have tried one of these cash-for-peace negotiations with Iraq, but we went first class. We went with a full-scale invasion. Half a trillion dollars."

Immediate invasion of North Korea by America "might make might look right".

China's future drying up

Excerpts from a frightening report in The New York Times about a week ago:

SHIJIAZHUANG, China - ...The underground water table is sinking about four feet a year. Municipal wells have already drained two-thirds of the local groundwater.

...A new upscale housing development is advertising waterfront property on lakes filled with pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points in the city’s water table.

“People who are buying apartments aren’t thinking about whether there will be water in the future,” said Zhang Zhongmin, who has tried for 20 years to raise public awareness about the city’s dire water situation....

For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened...

...trade deals cannot solve water problems. Water usage in China has quintupled since 1949, and leaders will increasingly face tough political choices as cities, industry and farming compete for a finite and unbalanced water supply.

...The Communist Party, leery of depending on imports to feed the country, has long insisted on grain self-sufficiency. But growing so much grain consumes huge amounts of underground water...

the immediate challenge is the prosaic task of forcing the world’s most dynamic economy to conserve and protect clean water. Water pollution is so widespread that regulators say a major incident occurs every other day....

By the 1970s, studies show, the water table was already falling. Then Mao’s death and the introduction of market-driven economic reforms spurred a farming renaissance. Production soared, and rural incomes rose. The water table kept falling, further drying out wetlands and rivers....

“Maybe we are like America in the 1920s and 1930s,” he said. “We’re building the country.”

China’s disadvantage, compared with the United States, is that it has a smaller water supply yet almost five times as many people. China has about 7 percent of the world’s water resources and roughly 20 percent of its population.

For years, Chinese officials thought irrigation efficiency was the answer for reversing groundwater declines. Eloise Kendy, a hydrology expert with The Nature Conservancy who has studied the North China Plain, said that farmers had made improvements but that the water table had kept sinking. Ms. Kendy said the spilled water previously considered “wasted” had actually soaked into the soil and recharged the aquifer. Efficiency erased that recharge. Farmers also used efficiency gains to irrigate more land.

Ms. Kendy said scientists had discovered that the water table was dropping because of water lost by evaporation and transpiration from the soil, plants and leaves. This lost water is a major reason the water table keeps dropping, scientists say.

Farmers have no choice. They drill deeper.

...Water in Shijiazhuang, with more than 800 illegal wells, is as scarce as it is in Israel, he said. “In Israel, people regard water as more important than life itself,” he said. “In Shijiazhuang, it’s not that way. People are focused on the economy.”

Oye!

I'm not a huge fan of Gloria Estefan, but I like this song.

I don't know Spanish except through song lyrics, but thought I knew enough to understand "mi cuerpo pide salsa". Well, I was wrong! According to babelfish, it translates to "my body requests sauce".