Slashdot Mirror

Oh yeah, now I remember. It was something about Florida and tomatoes.

Here's the pertinent excerpt from the above link:

In March 2005 the Coalition of Immokalee Workers pressured Yum!, a company selling agricultural goods to businesses such as Taco Bell to increase worker' wages. Workers were given 40 cents per 32 pound bucket of tomatoes. These wages are the same as they were 30 years ago. Many workers were incarcerated, and beaten. The CIW was able to free 1,000 workers by forcing an increase in wages and rewriting the terms of slavery in Yum!'s supplier code of conduct.

I just figured you might want to know.

Slavery in India

I always complain when I am on a tech support call with someone whose primary language is not American English. I may be an asshole for doing it but a number of customer complaints is what caused Dell to move jobs back from India.

Unless and until India starts playing by the same rules the US plays by, anything is fair in this battle.

Slavery, India does much to keep their wages low.

I believe that one of the reasons that labour is significantly cheaper in India is because the socioeconomic system is vastly different. India has government sanctioned bonded child workers. And whenever you can introduce virtual slaves into an economy, you can dramatically drive down the price of everything else.

Bonded child labour? Slaves? In India?

Yes:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/11/22/60II/mai n71386.shtml

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/India3.htm

http://www.anti-slavery.org/global/india/

The argument that we should be more efficient, smarter, better, more competitive against our foreign counterparts -- that's just a red herring until more fundamental human rights issues are addressed.

I'll consider outsourcing to another country economically fair and ethically legitimate when that country meets some minimum (I admit this to be somewhat fuzzy) world standard of human rights.

Dear Candidate:

Much has been made in the current presidential debates about the foreign policy of the United States, and whether it is the role of the U.S. military to intervene in humanitarian crises around the globe. This was hotly discussed at the time of the Kosovo atrocities, of course, but "humanitarian concerns" have been cited as the reason for U.S. military intervention in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, and elsewhere.

Some of you have called for a "compelling national interest" before committing U.S. troops; others have rejected the use of U.S. troops for humanitarian intervention--or indeed for any purpose at all. One of you, in particular, has decried the "interventionist" policies of American presidents since Roosevelt, who interfere abroad in the affairs of other sovereign nations.

It is 11 o'clock Eastern time as I write this. It is not quite dawn in Khartoum, in the Sudan. In just a few hours there will be Dinka slaves sold in the marketplace. 137 years after the Emancipation Proclamation--135 years after the end of the American Civil War--there is an active, vibrant slave trade in Africa today. Black Africans from the southern part of the Sudan are being captured and sold into slavery by Arabs from the northern Sudan--according to many sources they act with tacit approval of the Sudanese government. Several freed Sudanese slaves have made moving presentations in the media, but to date there has been little or no official comment by the Clinton Administration. To date, the most effective voice in the U.S. has been a class of fifth graders from Colorado that have raised $50,000 to buy slaves and set them free.

I ask you--is the worldwide traffic in human slaves a compelling humanitarian interest of the United States? Is the capture, sale, and breeding of black Africans cause to consider U.S. military intervention?

If your answer is "no", what can you say to the millions of American citizens whose ancestors were brought to these shores in chains? If your answer is "yes", what--precisely--do you propose to do?

Dear Candidate:

Much has been made in the current presidential debates about the foreign policy of the United States, and whether it is the role of the U.S. military to intervene in humanitarian crises around the globe. This was hotly discussed at the time of the Kosovo atrocities, of course, but "humanitarian concerns" have been cited as the reason for U.S. military intervention in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, and elsewhere.

Some of you have called for a "compelling national interest" before committing U.S. troops; others have rejected the use of U.S. troops for humanitarian intervention--or indeed for any purpose at all. One of you, in particular, has decried the "interventionist" policies of American presidents since Roosevelt, who interfere abroad in the affairs of other sovereign nations.

It is 11 o'clock Eastern time as I write this. It is not quite dawn in Khartoum, in the Sudan. In just a few hours there will be Dinka slaves sold in the marketplace. 137 years after the Emancipation Proclamation--135 years after the end of the American Civil War--there is an active, vibrant slave trade in Africa today. Black Africans from the southern part of the Sudan are being captured and sold into slavery by Arabs from the northern Sudan--according to many sources they act with tacit approval of the Sudanese government. Several freed Sudanese slaves have made moving presentations in the media, but to date there has been little or no official comment by the Clinton Administration. To date, the most effective voice in the U.S. has been a class of fifth graders from Colorado that have raised $50,000 to buy slaves and set them free.

I ask you--is the worldwide traffic in human slaves a compelling humanitarian interest of the United States? Is the capture, sale, and breeding of black Africans cause to consider U.S. military intervention?

If your answer is "no", what can you say to the millions of American citizens whose ancestors were brought to these shores in chains? If your answer is "yes", what--precisely--do you propose to do?