junk and crap, amen

Unlike the sisters in this picture, who have voluntarily (and inexplicably) given their lives to what they earnestly believe is god and embraced poverty (although not really, since the church provides them with all they need) and so happily toil away for no pay, the sweatshop workers in China who manufacture religious icons for sale in the US, slaving for 15 hours a day at 26 cents an hour (before deductions), didn't.

At the Junxingye factory in China, the mostly-young women—including several 15 and 16-year-olds—making crucifixes are forced to work 14 to 15 ½ hours a day, from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 or 11:30 p.m., seven days a week. There are also frequent 18 and 19-hour shifts ending at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. Before shipments of crucifixes must leave for the U.S., there are even mandatory, all-night 22 ½ to 25-hour shifts from 8:00 a.m. straight through to 6:30 or 9:00 a.m. the following morning. Workers are routinely at the factory over 100 hours a week, including being forced to work 51 hours of overtime, which exceeds China’s legal limit by 514 percent. Young women go for months on end without a single day off.

And:

Workers paid just 26 ½ cents an hour, less than half China’s legal minimum wage of 55 cents, which is itself set at below subsistence levels. Workers earning just $2.12 a day and $10.61 a week. After mandatory deductions for primitive company dorms and food, the workers’ take-home wage drops to a shocking nine cents an hour, 74 cents a day and $3.70 a week. Workers toiling 91 hours a week are paid just $30.61, which is only 43 percent of the $70.71 they are legally owed.

All so these guys (among others) can make a profit on the average christian consumer's braindead desire to collect as many icons as possible, cuz lord knows the more statues of Jesus and the virgin you've got, the fluffier your retirement cloud is going to be.

Ironically, these Chinese workers would be imprisoned or tortured or worse if found to be participating in the religion they slave for.

Ah, Christianity. Champion of the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden. Unless they get in the way of making some cold hard cash.

Labels: China, poverty, religion, sweatshop

A case study in willful negligence:

The Associated Press reports that veterans comprise 1/4 of the homeless population in the USA.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, a public education nonprofit, based the findings of its report on numbers from Veterans Affairs and the Census Bureau. 2005 data estimated that 194,254 homeless people out of 744,313 on any given night were veterans.

Extrapolate to 2007, with the war in Iraq becoming deadlier every day, the US economy in deep trouble and the chasm between the rich and poor growing to obscene proportions. Things aren't looking any better.

And yet Bush can say (and his speech writer can actually write, and his staff can actually sign off) this with a straight face:

All of America's veterans have placed the nation's security before their own lives. Their sacrifice creates a debt that America can never fully repay.

If you can stomach it, skim over his Veterans Day speech. It has approx. 8 paragraphs about veterans out of a total of, oh I dunno, lots. Over 50. The rest of it is ridiculous and mostly insulting to veterans.

Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence: the Israeli presence on the West Bank, the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago. In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of killers -- and no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder. On the contrary, they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, we will never give in, we will never accept anything less than complete victory.

In one paragraph he rewrites history, denying veterans or their families accurate historical perspective, and insults their intelligence. GODZILLA IS COMING! Then he says he'll never stop sending people to die because there is no hope for any other course of action.

Labels: Bush, poverty, veterans