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Today's
Stories
December 6 / 7, 2003
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
December 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
November 13, 2003
Jack McCarthy
Veterans
for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade
Adam Keller
Report
on the Ben Artzi Verdict
Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time
Vijay Prashad
Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists
November 12, 2003
Elaine Cassel
The
Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?
Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited
Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo
Jonathan Cook
Facility
1391: Israel's Guantanamo
Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home
Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike
John Chuckman
Forty
Years of Lies
Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency
Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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|
December
6 / 7, 2003
Game Playing by "Free
Trade" Rules
Results from Indonesia and
Dominican Republic
By TONI SOLO
"I eat propaganda,
With a side dish of promises.
Guess who am I?
That's me, the Indonesian worker!"
That's what over 200 Indonesian factory
workers sang as they demonstrated in front of the Indonesian
Labor Ministry in January 1991. The workers, mostly women, were
also protesting against army involvement in the settlement of
industrial disputes. Right through the 1990s companies like Nike,
Reebok and Adidas as well as many other North American and European
companies earned extortionate profits by exploiting such workers,
taking advantage of political repression of basic labor rights.
1
Over a decade later, the politics may
have changed but life for these maquila workers stays the same.
In November 2002, Indonesian garment workers called for a boycott
of the Gap company in protest at labor conditions in Asia. One
worker was quoted saying, "We are treated like animals....We
are abused if we do not work the way the supervisor wants."2
What's true in Indonesia is also the
case in Central America and the Caribbean. The apparel companies
are ruthlessly consistent in their unscrupulous efforts to fix
the outsourcing game in their favour. The origins of the game
lie in the 1960s.
Opening moves: heads we win, tails you
get massacred
1965 was a busy year for US foreign policy.
Apart from deepening involvement in Vietnam, in April that year
Lyndon Johnson put marines into the Dominican Republic. Johnson
moved to support the country's military dictatorship against
a popular uprising in favour of President Juan Bosch, deposed
by the military in 1963. Bosch's supporters were on the brink
of victory when the US marines arrived. The intervention enabled
the military dictatorship to survive and implement yet more brutal
repression to wipe out popular opposition.
In October that same year the US supported
General Suharto's military coup in Indonesia, leading there as
well to over twenty five years of corrupt tyranny. US officials
supplied information on opposition targets, facilitating the
massacre of up to a million people perceived to be political
opponents by the US-trained generals leading the coup. Max Frankel
of the New York Times wrote at the time, "the Johnson administration
found it difficult today to hide its delight.... officials were
elated to find their expectations being realized."3
Those successful attempts at murderous,
repressive political pattern cutting are still paying off. Forty
years ago media rhetoric depicted a heroic United States saving
the world from communism. Last year the unfortunate peoples of
Indonesia and the Dominican Republic enjoyed the benefits of
ranking 110 and 94 respectively in the UN's human development
index. Cuba ranked at 55.
Some development numbers
Skewed and failed international development
policies ride on the back of US intervention. International aid
bureaucrats clearly identify the problem. One Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) official was quoted recently saying, "The
role of capital is decisive...Investment in agriculture is a
precondition for growth in incomes of the poor and the food supply."4
But policies imposed by anti-democratic international financial
institutions dominated by the United States prevent poorer countries
investing in agriculture.
Instead they promote manufacturing for
the benefit of wealthy foreign and domestic elites. Agriculture
as a share of GDP in the Dominican Republic has declined by around
45%, falling from from nearly 20% in 1980 to just over 11% in
2001. In Indonesia over the same period, agriculture's contribution
to GDP dropped by over 7% while manufacturing more than doubled.
The effects of these policies appear in income distribution.
In the Dominican Republic, the poorest
20% of the population earn just 5 percent of national income,
the richest 10% earn nearly 40%. Over 30% of the population live
in poverty. In Indonesia, over 50% of people earn less than US$2
a day. The wealthiest 10% of the country receive about 30% of
its income while the poorest 20% of people receive only 8%. These
poverty levels and extremes of income inequality hinder economic
development but provide a happy hunting ground for predatory
foreign businesses looking for cheap labour in a business environment
free of social and environmental responsibilities.
Rules of the game
The effect of US interventions and the
purpose of US-supported repression from the 1960s to the present
has been deliberately to curtail people's fundamental social
and economic rights. In these countries, companies have been
able to take advantage of desperate poverty to pay the lowest
wages possible. They have also benefited from cost-cutting manufacturing
processes that pollute the environment. The local police and
army take care of any protests. For these reasons, impoverished,
politically repressive countries like the Dominican Republic
and Indonesia were among the first to be exploited by foreign
big business using the maquila system. It's true that maquilas
are big employers, with over 140,000 workers in export production
zones in the Dominican Republic for example.
But sourcing their main inputs from overseas,
paying poverty wages and exempt from export duties, benefits
from these export production zones to local economies are few.
Over the last decade environmental problems and the failure of
free market capitalism to deliver sustainable development have
become increasingly self-evident and embarrassing. Neglect of
labor rights has been a prominent feature. In April this year
the ILO issued a report citing 300 workplace accidents a day
in Indonesia, the worst record in South East Asia. This may or
may not be a direct result of the World Bank's notorious East
Asian Miracle report in 1994 which argued openly and forthrightly
for the suppression of free trades unions.5
The Indonesian variation--Dita
checks Reebok
People with the courage to organize and
defend their rights have made some gains. In Indonesia, worker's
rights activists like Dita Sari have been arrested and tortured--presumably
with the tacit approval of the World Bank--for their attempts
to organize labor unions. In 1995, she was defending workers
earning US$2 a day or less, making shoes for companies like Reebok
and Adidas when she was detained and held for three years before
being released following the fall of General Suharto. Suharto's
dictatorship was sustained for decades by Britain and the United
States. Since her release she and other determined workers have
worked hard to defend basic labor rights. 6
People like Dita Sari are very clear
about economic realities. Explaining her rejection of a human
rights award from Reebok in 2002, she stated, "In Indonesia,
there are five Reebok companies. 80% of the workers are women.
All companies are sub-contracted, often by the South Korean companies
such as Dung Jo and Tong Yang. Since the workers can only get
around $1.50 a day, they then have to live in a slum area, surrounded
by poor and unhealthy conditions, especially for their children.
At the same time, Reebok collected millions of dollars of profit
every year, directly contributed by these workers... The low
pay and exploitation of the workers of Indonesia, Mexico and
Vietnam are the main reasons why we will not accept this award."7
How it plays in the
Dominican Republic
In the Dominican Republic too workers
have begun to make gains in the face of repression and intimidation.
In September this year an International Confederation of Free
Trades Unions report detailed cases of attacks on union activists.
"There were eighteen members of the union committee last
year when Grupo M attacked. Only one of them still works in the
factory. After they began to organize, the company brought two
gang members into the factory to begin attacking union supporters.
Union members were chased by the gang members at work, and physically
attacked with metal tubes, hammers, and machetes." 8
Even so, in March this year apparel workers
at the BJ&B factory, one of the biggest maquila plants located
near the capital Santo Domingo, secured wage increases and won
management recognition for their union. The union now has a collective
bargaining agreement. But maquila companies are responding to
those hard won gains by seeking cheaper more vulnerable labor
elsewhere.
The same Grupo M criticised in the ICFTU
report is now beginning to relocate apparel production to Haiti
with help from the repressive-business-friendly World Bank. A
look at international comparative hourly pay (in US dollars)
in the apparel industry for 2002 tells some of the story.
Indonesia $0.21
Vietnam $0.22
Bangladesh $0.28
Ethiopia $0.28
Pakistan $0.31
India $0.38
China $0.48
Haiti $0.49
Russia $0.70
Nicaragua $0.88
Colombia $0.94
Mauritius $1.25
Estonia $1.30
Honduras $1.50
Dominican Republic $1.65
Jamaica $1.83
Poland $2.07
Mexico $2.17
Israel $5.72
Spain $6.66
United States $11.11
Germany $15.20
Japan $17.29
Haitian wages are a third of those in
the Dominican Republic and Honduras, half those in Nicaragua
or Colombia. And while double those of Asian competitors, Haitian
products have only to hop across the Caribbean to Florida to
enter the United States. Finished products from China can take
weeks to ship to the US market. 9
The Haitian gambit
Another part of the story is that World
Trade Organization rules mean that the Dominican Republic will
have to phase out tax exemptions for businesses in 2007. In effect
Haitian quotas and tax exemptions will be taken over by Dominican
Republic owned businesses to prolong their tax holiday. In October,
the International Finance Corporation, a World Bank institution,
agreed to loan over US$20m to Grupo M, to build a factory complex
at Ouanaminthe on the Maribahoux Plain in north-east Haiti.
This business project shows up all that
is wrong with international development thinking. The deal was
cut between local elites in Haiti and the Dominican Republic
and international financial institutions under the influence
of the United States. Support for a volatile manufacturing enterprise
supplanted long term sustainable agricultural production. The
environment is being despoiled to deliver short term benefits
for remote corporate entities while local people are exploited
for their labor, but without basic infrastructure, adequate health
or education services.
The UN has already expressed concern
about desertification in north eastern Haiti. But the Grupo M
project will accelerate it. Around 1200 acres of agricultural
land and woodland will be devastated by the factories, their
supply roads and the effects of the inevitable shanty towns that
will spring up.
The first factory at the new free trade
zone near Ouanaminthe opened in August 2003 with 300 workers
making Levi's Jeans. Grupo M expects to employ a total of 2,500
workers when the project is completed. Other companies hope to
start up plants soon. But as the project develops employees are
finding they are prohibited from organizing. Workers have already
been fired for seeking improvements in working conditions.
The IFC insists that Grupo M received
the loan on condition that it included the right to form labor
unions in its Code of Conduct. But Codes of Conduct have not
helped the Haitians fired for seeking better working conditions.
Nor did they help the hundreds of unionised workers fired by
the Tarrant-Mexico Ajalpan factory. That factory shares clients
like Levi's and Tommy Hilfiger with Grupo M's plant at Ouanaminthe
in Haiti. Liz Claibourne and Ralph Lauren are other brands supplied
by Grupo M.
Umpires and referees--paid
to rig the game?
Multiple labor rights recidivist Nike
has also used advocacy of industry-funded monitoring and Codes
of Conduct to cover up its failure to negotiate fair terms and
conditions for workers producing its goods. Just as Grupo M is
shifting labor intensive production to Haiti so Nike is sourcing
its labor intensive processes in countries like China and Vietnam.
As Jeff Ballinger of Press for Change puts it, "...now that
independent unions have begun to gain some ground in Indonesia,
production is shifting inexorably to China. Simply put, the very
things that anti-sweatshop campaigners put at the top of the
list--defending workers' right to organize and those workers'
demand that Nike contractors sit down in dignity to collectively
bargain--have been obscured by a blizzard of corporate self-reporting
and other Nike-financed artifices aimed at reassuring consumers
about the Nike corporation's high regard for contract-workers'
aspirations."10
These Codes of Conduct and monitoring
schemes stem from pressure on multinationals. As the market model
has failed to meet people's basic needs, local populations have
organized to improve terms and conditions. They have been supported
by consumers in wealthy countries. Companies like Nike, Adidas,
Reebok, Liz Claiborne and others have faced the prospect of either
losing business or doing better on labor rights and care for
the environment. But their response, promoting business-friendly
NGOs along with cosy social audit processes, attempts to lull
unwary consumers rather than seriously address labor rights and
environmental concerns.
The Council on Economic Priorities Accreditation
Agency (CEPAA) based in New York and London approves professional
firms to carry out social audits. Schemes like Social Accountability
8000 (SA8000) offer business standardized packages of training
programs, guidelines and complaints procedures. The packages
are based on International Labor Organization and UN conventions.
But the scheme provides for little or no input from independent
NGOs or workers' organisations. Self-evidently, auditors are
overwhelmingly influenced by the needs of their corporate clients.
Arthur Andersen and Enron are only the most recent worst example
of that. Other monitoring schemes are the Fair Labor Association
in the US which morphed out of the Apparel Industry Partnership
Accord in 1999, the Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code in the
UK, and the Dutch Code of Labour Practices for the Apparel Industry
Including Sportswear.
Have game will travel--Nike
walks off with the board
None of these codes and monitoring procedures
alter the fact that the only worthwhile substantive defence of
workers rights is a direct freely negotiated agreement between
workers and their employers. The recent behaviour of the P.T.Doson
company in Indonesia showed clearly the uselessness of Nike's
adherence to any code of conduct. Nike had outsourced manufacturing
to P.T.Doson who made 7000 workers redundant when production
was cut back. Doson reneged on statutory obligations leaving
thousands of workers without adequate severance pay.
Indonesian voices made the story clear
to the Globalization and Labor Rights Panel in Davos in January
this year. Ida Mustari a garment worker said, "After working
for nine years I earned approximately US$70 per month. That was
not enough to cover basic needs.... In September 2002 about 7,000
workers were laid off from PT Doson when Nike stopped the orders
and the factory was closed. The Doson factory is refusing to
pay workers the full severance pay required by the Indonesian
government. Even if Nike is not required by law to contribute
to workers severance pay, Nike has a moral responsibility. A
lot of these 7,000 workers have families but they can't support
their families any more, while for over 10 years Nike has profited
from our hard work."11
Union representative Yeheskiel Prabowo
explained, "Doson Director Sin Jung Yang, claims that the
factory, which has been producing shoes since 1993, has routinely
filled complex orders that cannot be handled by other subcontractors....
Nike also encouraged Doson to expand and build a new factory.
Yet when the factory was expanded in mid 2001, Nike reacted by
withdrawing its orders, making the expansion pointless."12
Nike's profits are based on the company's
ruthless outsourcing policy, chasing the cheapest wages from
one country to another as soon as workers organize to defend
themselves. Whether it's from Indonesia to China or from Dominican
Republic to Haiti, the story of greed and opportunism stays the
same. In the case of Grupo M, the greed is funded by the World
Bank's IFC.
Nike is big enough not to need any funding
to facilitate its opportunism. Penniless, vulnerable workers
yield all the funds it needs. Yeheskiel Prabowo also said at
Davos, "We are concerned that just as free and democratic
unions are starting to emerge in Indonesia and to campaign for
better working conditions, foreign investors like Nike are reducing
their investment and moving to countries where union rights are
not respected"13, like China and Vietnam.
Hey, this looks like
a good place--heads or tails?
But even within China, having dumped
its long-suffering Indonesian workforce, Nike is pressuring suppliers
to cut costs. The only costs those suppliers can cut are labor
costs and costs incurred manufacturing responsibly so as to protect
the environment. In November this year the Standard and Poor's
rating service assigned a BBB rating to the Yue Yuen company
who supply Nike, Reebok and Adidas. The company supplies around
17% of the world market in athletic and casual shoes. Yue Yuen
have just issued a US$300 million bond to raise capital. The
bond matures in 2008.
Standard and Poor's says, "Yue Yuen
is controlled by Taiwan's Pou Chen Corp., which has a 49.8% stake
in the company, and the Tsai family, which has a 19.9% interest.
The rating reflects Yue Yuen's leading market position, low cost
operations as a result of economies of scale and low cost production
bases, healthy internal cash generation, and strong financial
flexibility. These strengths are partially offset by increasing
pressure on pricing from Yue Yuen's customers and high customer
concentration."14
In plain laguage Standard and Poor's
are saying that Taiwan-controlled Yue Yuen, producing mostly
in South China, grind their workforce as hard as they can but
are still being pressed by Nike, Reebok and Adidas to cut costs
even more. And when the "high customer concentration"
firms like Nike, Reebok and Adidas decide to cut and run, Yue
Yuen will dump its workforce just as P.T.Doson did in Indonesia.
As Congressman Sander Levin stated in
May this year following a visit to Central America, "Efforts
by American retailer-purchasers to promulgate and implement private
business codes will not make up for a lack of a basic governmental
and societal structure.....The solution has to be labor laws
that are adequate, respected, and enforced."15If people
in Congress had been making that kind of speech back in 1965,
millions of people around the world might have avoided penury
and had some chance of a decent life.
Toni Solo
is an activist based in Central America. Contact tonisolo01@yahoo.com
NOTES
1 "INDONESIANS PROTEST PROPAGANDA
DIET WITH PROMISES ON THE SIDE" Reuters. Jakarta. 18 June
1991.
2 "Workers Call for Holiday Gap
Boycott" By IAN STEWART. The Associated Press State &
Local Wire, November 28, 2002
3 "Elated U.S. Officials Looking
to New Aid to Jakarta's Economy", Max Frankel, New York
Times, March 13th 1966
4 Hartwig de Haen, assistant director
of the FAO's economic and social department in Washington. Quoted
in "How the world is getting hungrier each year" By
Paul Vallely, Independent, London 26 November 2003.
5 "The East Asian Miracle".
Report prominently featured on the World Bank's web site, available
in paperback from the bank for $23.95.
6 "Running From Reebok's Hypocrisy"
by Alexander Cockburn, February 7, 2002.Los Angeles Times
7 Statement by Dita Sari of the National
Front For Indonesian Workers Jakarta January 29, 2002
8 "Export Processing Zones: Symbols
of Exploitation and Development Dead-End" International
Confederation of Free Trades Unions Report, September 2003
9 (Includes wages and fringe benefits)
from Consulting Network Jassin O'Rourke Group LLC of New York
City cited in "TROUBLES LOOM FOR CARIBBEAN PRODUCERS WHEN
THE WORLD QUOTAS ARE LIFTED IN 2005, GOODS FROM ASIAN NATIONS
WILL FLOOD U.S. MARKET" By Doreen Hemlock. Sun-Sentinel
(Fort Lauderdale, FL) November 24, 2002.
10 "Spin to Win: How Nike Profits
by Lies and Distortion" By Jeff Ballinger, No Sweat News,
April 21, 2003
11 Yeheskiel Prabowo, FSPTSK Union representative,
Davos Globalization and labour rights panel, 27 January 2003
12 Ida Mustari, Worker at the PT Doson
factory. Davos Globalization and labour rights panel, 27 January
2003
13 OXFAM-Community Aid Abroad Press release
"Footloose Nike leaves workers rights behind" January
27th 2003 -
14 PRESS RELEASE: "S&P Rates
HK Yue Yuen's Convertibles BBB", Hong Kong Standard &
Poor's, November 28th 2003
15"Central America Free Trade Agreement
and Beyond: Seizing the Opportunities and Addressing the Challenges"
Congressman Sander M. Levin Ranking Democrat, Subcommittee on
Trade, Ways and Means Committee. Speech before the Center for
Strategic and International Studies. May 19th, 2003
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
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