Rachel Maddow: Corporations Are "Child Labor-Endorsing, Pro-Slavery Freaks" for Trying to Skirt Trade Laws

see www.unicor.gov for corporations preying prison labor in the United States.

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"How will the corporations save themselves from that onerous rule that you can‘t use slaves and prisoners and children to make your products"?

Automation.

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At the rate our economy is going adults will be working for room and board ...

The Company Store

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This nation was all about slavery, maybe it still is.

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It is eaxy to deal with those who are engaged in immoral behaviour. They are reachable because they know what is right but are choosing to behave in contravention of those standards.

Big business, and the politicians whose support has been bought by big business, however are entirely different. There is no point in trying to shame them because that only works with those who are capable of understanding that their behaviour is wrong.

The two most difficult types of person to deal with are the psychopaths and the amoral. The difficulty arises from the same condition, namely the abscence in these people of any notion that their behaviour is unacceptable. They lack any central reference point from which they may evaluate their behaviour. The two differ in that the psychopath lacks any such centre and the amoral is totally ego-centric,. that is all they have but it lives in isolation and is incapable of empathic relations with anyone else.

The only way to manage them is to institute a set of rigid regulations backed with strictly enforced punishments for any transgressions.

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Banning products made by prisoners or children under 17 from entering the U.S. would be a windfall for domestic industries. No product should be imported whose manufacturer did not provide a 40 hour work week and health coverage. Enacting those laws would put unemployed Americans back to work. It would starve third world nations, but let them eat crow.

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With newpapers faithfully reprinting slanted agency material, radio (my old medium) hopelessly self-mutilated, CNN in the toilet, Fox an entertainment network for fraidycats and MSNBC trying to be all things for everyone, Rachel stands head and shoulders above the US journalism fray. Both her radio and tv shows bring much-needed news, reports no other outlet will touch, interviews with friend and foe, always fair but often going to the heart of things and calling a spade a spade.

If there were ten more Rachel Maddows on the air, electronic journalism would once again be a profession even the doubters could love.

So, Rachel, you have every right to be admired. And you have every right to go after the thugs. We've got your back.

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What has PETA got to do with the promotion of slavery? you might ask. Everything, it is the culture war.

Tony Gonzalez's Nude PETA Ad PHOTO: Naked With Wife October

- KindOne

It is easy to criticize what you don't understand.

Yeha-Noha (Wishes of Happiness & Prosperity)

- xypher0725

where is their outrage on leather? (let's see the ladies support PETA when they're reminded that leather is an animal product too)


- ask0

I only have leather - shoes and handbags. I eat meat. I love meat.
My logic - leather is a by product - and we are part of nature - we all feed on something living. That is the reality. I will not wear fur as its cruel and not a by-product. I avoid eating animals that have been raised cruelly

AND I support PETA 100%. I am not conflicted in supporting them. Even if they disagree with my thinking.

I admire PETAS principles. they are the ideal. And Im not conflicted in my support for them.

- KindOne

This comment is pending approval and won't be displayed until it is approved.

I think the actual 'offense' PETA takes is over native American culture and especially over our religion. We do wear fur. Plus, teeth, feathers, bones, etc. And yeah, we are meat eaters. We like to BBQ.

I have noticed there are special interest people or groups against every single manifestation of native American culture and religion - but each of them appears to be acting independently. Hmm...

It creates a very effective wall of ethnic cleansing against Native American culture. Why don't they ever talk about our moral perspective our Native American religion?

THEY DON'T WANT ANYBODY TO TALK ABOUT IT!!!

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Slave labor is how we got here. It is our US corporations that have not only passively made it profitable to use slave labor by importing their products, but have actively engaged in it themselves.

Such passive companies are Walmart. Can you imagine if this bill passes, walmart is out of business. Then Dyncorp, HANES UNDERWEAR are the active promoters and users of Slave and child labor overseas. IN FACT, DYNACORP is also a promoter of the SEX SLAVE TRADE. Their own corp execs engaged in it in Bosnia.

Here is an example of our defense depts complicity in slavery.

U.S. stalls on human trafficking
Pentagon has yet to ban contractors from using forced labor

Excerpt:

".... She also had called for creation of an internal Pentagon watchdog after investigating the military's links to sex trafficking in the Balkans.

The Tribune retraced the journey of 12 Nepali men recruited from poor villages in one of the most remote and impoverished corners of the world and documented a trail of deceit, fraud and negligence stretching into Iraq.

And this:

"media reports detailing the alleged involvement of DynCorp employees in buying women and girls as sex slaves in Bosnia during the U.S. military's deployment there in the late 1990s."

This article supports the Sex slave trade issue:

US: DynCorp Disgrace

by Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Insight Magazine
January 14th, 2002

and this one:

American firm in Bosnia sex trade row poised to win MoD contract

Jamie Wilson and Kevin Maguire

or this article:

UNMIK, KFOR Fueling Sex Slavery In Kosovo, Amnesty Says

You can see how long this has been going on. I hope this bill isn't another "POSTURING" bill to show what good guys these reps are.

Here is a personal story we should all read to see just how horrible and degrading this process is .

Theresa Flores was an unlikely sex slave.

Even after all that posturing, nothing has ever been done about it, in fact, China has built an entire industry and their entire GDP off of prison labor and slave labor. Does this bill she talks about INCLUDE SEX SLAVERY?

Here is the one on WalMart....

Unpaid Teens Bag Groceries for Wal-Mart

or this one....Its appalling...

The COLD HARD FACTS; Child slave labor; 246 million world wide

Excerpt:

"246 million children are involved in this dangerous practice of child slave labor. They are involved in child trafficking, domestic labor, armed conflict, mining, agriculture, and manufacturing. These children are virtually robbed of their childhood, forced to work under the harshest of conditions, and endure what no human being should ever have to endure. "Child labor ranges from four-year-olds tied to rug looms to keep them from running away, to seventeen-year-olds helping out on the family farm"

No wonder our nation is dying economically. I REMEMBER LAST TIME THE ROBBER BARONS DID THIS, WAS BACK IN THE 20'S AND WE WENT TO WAR ON THE STREETS OVER THIS AND WON. Its how labor unions were born. No more child labor.

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worried? well they damn-well should be worried. A functional economy is NOT just about profits, it's about quality of life. As is and has been roundly demonstrated, it's about improving the quality of life for EVERYONE. The idea that many must be exploited for a few to prosper arises from an age of sufficient natural resources that they could be wasted and looted. We don't live there anymore. The bail outs proved that true wealth and strength emanates from the great body of people, not of, by, and for some few elites. The Robber Barons, though they remain plentiful, are done - plutocracy is dead.
The argument that there is "too much law" is crap. These are the people who have the resources to not only cope, but banks and banks of lawyers and number crunchers to confound the law. The greater number of people do not have any kind of access like that.
We have the highest percentage and greatest number of prison residents in the developed world, and what for, pot smoking and the like. So many that we cannot afford space there for the perpetrators of more serious offenses against society.
What are we about anyway?

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Slavery is the normative state for labor by and large. If you need to spend more than you earn to live (basic, decent necessities), how can it be described as free? The only freedom is to join the other side of this filthy equasion as overseers and masters. The following quote is not meant to minimize or trivialize the situations here or in other countries which utilize slavery as we typically imagine it, child labor, or prison labor. It is meant to draw parallels toward the point that the majority of us are not as free as we imagine ourselves to be:
"...there is less difference between the slave and the “free” worker than appears. Slaves, though they seem to be paid nothing, are provided with the means of their survival and reproduction, for which workers (who become temporary slaves during their hours of labor) are compelled to pay most of their wages. The fact that some jobs are less unpleasant than others, and that individual workers have the nominal right to switch jobs, start their own business, buy stocks or win a lottery, disguises the fact that the vast majority of people are collectively enslaved."- i copied this quote recently, but forgot where i read it...

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Thanks for the alert on corps planning to break even those laws.

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To summarize this state of affairs,

1) The post-WWII development initiatives in Europe aimed at rebuilding industry and democracy across the region were fairly successful at first, before the Cold War took off.

2) During the Cold War era, the British and French Empires were wiped away by American and Soviet maneuvering. Each empire expanded its economic sphere of influence, often using proxy armies.

3) The empires were able to acquire goods and services from their colonies, but the American version was far more loosely structured and was based on reciprocal economic exchanges - the most famous example being the Saudi-American petrodollar recycling via military-infrastructure investment, which is why Saudi Arabia is such a major trading partner of Britain and the U.S.

Slavery is legal in Saudi Arabia, isn't it? For the aristocrats only, of course. Guess who is jealous?

4) When the communist empire collapsed under the weight of pollution, corruption, arrogance, greed and war, the Cold War ended and the Soviet empire was largely dismantled - but not before many pictures were taken of the worker's paradise:

"After 74 years of Communist mismanagement, the country that once spanned a sixth of the globe has become an environmental cesspool that is threatening its neighbors in Europe and Asia."

5) Now, here the U.S.-British leadership had two choices - grasp for empire, or take the peace dividend and invest domestically. The military-industrial complex balked at the latter plan, as did corporations looking to recover resources from puppet countries (as well as find cheap labor).

6) The choice was made to go with Empire. There were two camps backing this: the neoliberal corporate Democrats and the neoconservative corporate Republicans. Soft power based on economic pressure and covert action, vs. hard power based on aerial bombardment and Marine landings.

7) The working American public? Those plebes don't matter, give them Oprah and Limbaugh and American Idol, that's all they need. Tell them their homes are like banks, set them up with subprime loans, foreclose on the homes, sell them off to landowner conglomerates who rent them or turn them into condos, stick them with ridiculous health insurance costs and then deny coverage, push drugs on them that they don't need or that even kill them - fatten the hog and lead it to the slaughter - or is that an exaggeration of the mentality here?

What was that Daily Show quote from Larry Wilmore?

"Let's party like it's 1899!"

8) Empire falls due to overextension and greed, and let's be honest - in extremis, one more last gasp of military aggression is not beyond the real of the possible, especially if the military industrial clowns (Liebermann and cohort, for example) get their way.

Solution? Rapid clean energy, clean agriculture and clean manufacturing reinvestment and FDR-scale programs for infrastructure and jobs.

Problem? Wall Street doesn't care if the world burns and the nation collapses, and so the government has to force them to do it with incentives and regulations.

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The smartest fairest JOURNALIST on TV or RADIO!!!

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In Nazi Germany's demise, the "military" part of the military/industrial complex were the front men! The present, more subtle form of fascism has the "industrial" part out front!

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Cheap labor, child labor, prison labor, illegal migrants.

When was it you didn't understand that multination corporations exploit people and manage the mass media?

A corporation as a legal entity is a sociopath. It has no conscience, simply a PR mechanism to obscure its inherently exploitative goals.

Most large corporations in the U.S. pay no taxes, but get direct or indirect (armed force) subsidies from taxes.

The troops in Afganistan arn't hunting Osama, there too taxed protecting the pipeline that goes thru the country.

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rachel maddow and her crew give us excellent journalism. and then there's the comments. i read them both and gain from both. thanks everyone.

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Rachel Maddow is a breath of fresh air. Sometimes you do not realize just how much until you watch her show and compare it to the dribble that comes out of the mouths of other snoozescasters. I hope she continues to put the rest to shame. Imagine actually giving real news out......she may start a trend.

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What a fantastic human being!! Whenever I watch Rachel's delivery, I can't decide whether it's her wit and intelligence, or her beautiful and expressive eyes that turn me on. I know she is of the lesbian persuasion but she's still the only female that has had such an attraction to me in years. There must be something to that old bullshit line, that some guys use, when they swear that they're attracted to a gal for her mind. I believe it!! I'd sure like to give her a big hug! What a gal!

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"You know, since the last period of them not having rules worked so well for them. "
Right so there weren't litterally thousands of pages of financial regulation prior to the crisis? Seriously read something Rachel. And the claim that the new rules "are a start" is just that - a claim. You haven'tproven that they will not be harmful, and a good case can (and has) been made that they are.

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I would LOVE to see a list of the companies involved and the products that they make. Wouldn't it be great to put them out of business?! I would cheerfully organize protests for this!

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The law against the importation of items made by prison labor has been on the books for years. Unfortunately, it is simply not being endorced. In the post-Regan era, laws are circumvented by starving the agencies tasked with enforcing them. US Customs has two agents enforcing this law for China, and they are based in HongKong. Two people to cover a nation the size of the USA with a geography immensely more complicated. There is no enforcement of any laws the fat cat corporations don't like.

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Globalization is destroying the concept of nationhood. On Veterans Day I wondered if all those who pledged their allegiance to the USA, and in too many cases lost their lives while doing so, still thought their sacrifices were justifiable by what this nation has become. Corporatism will destroy America if it hasn't already.

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We really have to reject the insane consumerism that has been foisted upon us - it is a kind of slavery and amoral. Who in the hell needs "stuff" if it entails people suffering like this? I like France's take - anti-advertising (have you seen recent protests against large billboards in France - they are graffitied by citizens). In France there is a healthy distrust of consumerism and advertising and a rejection of this as a lifestyle. But not here.

Being ripped off by Wall Street as we have been, we regular joe consumers don't have any more money as it's all been stolen in the name of "profits" by depressing our wages, laying people off, rewarding poor decision making by CEOs, offering usury credit so we can "keep up" (as if that were some kind of need)....and falsely inflating assets such as housing to make us think we are rich.

The only good thing about this recession - or depression as one might more honestly experience it, is a re-thinking of priorities (we can only hope)....and seeing how manipulated and used we have been by rogue capitalism which is an empty, amoral and spiritual vacuum. Capitalism needs regulation - but more than that, we need humanism as our guide - and hurting human beings so we can buy millions of cheap purses or shoes - what in God's name have we become? Lastly, in America, it has been quantity over quality (that is in everything - work time, eating, things we buy). This needs to be reversed for us to revive our society and most importantly, for us to stop hurting others.

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Though there are unscrupulous companies fighting child labor laws, there are yet others in industries ranging from chocolate to sports balls to rugs who are voluntarily opening their factory doors to inspection to assure consumers their products are child-labor-free. Nearly 70 North American handmade rug importers manufacturing in South Asia, where child slavery is rampant, are members of the GoodWeave certification program. GoodWeave aims to eliminate child labor through a comprehensive program that includes rescue, education and rehabilitation of former child laborers. Please see our website at GoodWeave.org for more information and support those companies taking a stand against child labor.

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Reagan killed the unions. That's why he is Cheap Labor Capital's undying hero. He started with voiding the contracts of the Air Traffic Controllers, and then encouraged companies to abuse union protections, by simply not enforcing them (wish they'd do that for marijuana and "speeding"!).

Ever since then, the unions have gotten the starvation treatment, with their contract negotiations typically stalled until the cycles run out. Presto! No contracts; no union protections. You still have the union sitting there, in name only, and it's still taking the worker's dues; but with a guaranteed zero-return to the workers, for paying those dues, all the dues get you is increasing worker resentment toward the unions. Game over, for the unions.

This is Cheap Labor Capital's explicit plan: to drive down the commonality of the workers; to separate them into camps of one worker each, with no power to bargain for better conditions. The CLC's act like this because "their" profits (that we workers earn "for" them) are understandably threatened by worker power. They think the unions are "stealing" "their" profits, and they're not about to let that happen -- not while they have the power.

Let's be clear about this behavior. It's based on the false premise that being the "owner" of a profit-making facility means that it's really okay to short-change those who actually do the work for you, and skim off their share of profits, give them less than a pitance to live on, so they are addicted to pennies and debt. This is a vehemently anti-Christian attitude, along the lines of God "wanting them to be rich" -- another common attitude. Not only is it unChristian, but it's immoral as well. Those who do the work SHOULD get MOST of the recompense for doing it. Period. And any scheme that limits the power of those who work for compensation is a corruption.

Right after WWII, in the midst of the best economy we've EVER had, the very richest were taxed at 90 percent, and labor had power. But the rich have now established their sway over Congress, the richest of them are now taxed at below 20 percent effective rates, labor is out of power, and we are in economic free fall. See a pattern yet?

Anyone?

The pattern is that the rich are sharks. They can't stop moving -- or stop eating. If no one steps in, they will continue to eat up our livelihoods, until we die -- or until we kill them.

It's stark, but that is the choice. Die or kill.

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Bravo Rachel Maddow. I wrote an article a couple of day after your segment on Child - Prison - Slave labor aired. Without having seen it at that time, I was doing some research for an article I writing on Newsvine and uncovered the smoking gun that backs up the very reason why these multi-nationals are worried. This stuff goes back to the Apartheid days in South Africa and perhaps even to the time in which Slavery existed in the United States before the Civil War.

The victims of Apartheid have just gotten clearance from the U.S. Supreme Court to bring a 400 billion dollar lawsuit against the multi-national corporations and large banks that were involved in the Apartheid exploitation. You can read my article clicking here. You can read the BBC article about the lawsuit by clicking here.

Again, Great Job Rachel. Keep up the fight.

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