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"billions of men who can't get laid and have nuclear weapons scare me." Not as much as they scare the Tibetans. Yes, sometimes I have to break down and buy a product from "China Incorporated," but to keep myself honest, I just remind myself that I am, in a way, buying into the 50-year rape of Tibet, among other things. To me, this is an even bigger deal than the sweatshop issue. One of my friends verbally assailed me for my Amnesty International membership, saying it was a culturally imperialist conceit to apply Western standards to Asia, to which I replied "What utter bullshit! Are you implying that an Asian person does not feel pain?!? You wouldn't be talking this smug "realpolitik" crap if it was YOU being abused!" Then I took a deep breath and FELT MUCH BETTER (LOL) (To be consistent, let me also say that ALL of those responsible for the Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo horrors should have the proverbial book thrown at them. They have brought shame to my country and I hate them for it.) ~Tim -----Original Message----- From: Suit & Tie Guy <erwill@suitandtieguy.com> Sent: Jan 20, 2005 1:23 PM To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com Subject: Re: Chinese Slave Labor (was Re: say no to urban skydiving Re: AW: Aunti Behringer) On Jan 20, 2005, at 9:08 AM, Douglas Baldwin wrote: > than fill up the LD group with this thread, but... Does anyone know > how many > of China's workers are in fact slaves and how many are willingly > seeking i know nothing about chinese labour other than it's cheap and theres 50 billion of them. there are two reasons i have a problem with this: A) american companies need to stop this offshore factory migration. yes i shop at wal-mart thank you for asking, but i'm often in Peoria when it is too late to shop anywhere else and they would probably have my money if everything cost a bit more. if we had a one-page tax code instead of a one-million page tax code maybe these corporations wouldn't find tax incentives to move offshore (factories to china, "home office" to bermuda ... pretty soon they aren't even in your country anymore). this is an international list, i don't really mean to sound so US-centric but know nothing about the situation in germany or other countries. B) chinese factories are more likely to use people instead of robots because there are plenty of people, even though robots are better for alot of things. this is one of the reasons Mackie SR1530s have a 50% return rate for lack of functioning from the local Guitar Center. the other reason is they fill a container up with unpadded tightly formed boxes of speakers with no packing material and put them on a boat, and then have Gigantor drop-kick the container across the dockyard for shits and giggles just to make sure that when Suit & Tie Guy opens up his box of brand-new SR1530s the grilles are all bent out of shape and the horn drivers don't work. and the cabinet is CRACKED. > My perception of the media and public voices who use the term "slave > labor" is 1) They are people who are pissed that we are losing jobs to > offshore labor, 2) They are right wing and often overtly fundamentalist > Christian, and/or 3) They equate lower costs with lower quality. I used the term "slave labor" because someone else did. if i were to talk about third-world labour i would use the term "sweatshop", not "slavery". that doesn't mean i think Nike is a cool company. china doesn't scare me because of sweatshops and walmart. billions of men who can't get laid and have nuclear weapons scare me. --- Eric Williamson www.suitandtieguy.com