The cost of low prices
Topic: Development
The BBC reports that "US retail giant Wal-Mart has been hit with a lawsuit that claims it ignores sweatshop conditions at many of its suppliers' factories around the world." I wish I had it in me to be gleefully happy that someone is finally attempting to stick it to Wal-Mart on their overseas labor practices, but the most I can manage is a "good for you" sort of feeling toward the people who have put this lawsuit together.

Wal-Mart is a symbolic target, really. I hope that by saying that, I don't sound dismissive of the efforts that the workers behind this lawsuit engaged in to file it, because I'm guessing that they're not thinking of it in symbolic terms. But looking at the larger picture, even if the plaintiffs go to court and win the case, it won't change the fact that essentially, almost any major American retailer is going to be implicated in supply relations with overseas suppliers who provide employment under exploitative circumstances. For example, when I was in Honduras in 1999 with a group from college, we visited a garment-making maquiladora in an export processing zone. This was one of the "good" ones -- clean, brightly lit, minimal crowding. And yet their workers were doing repetitive, potentially hazardous labor for wages that wouldn't allow them to afford the garments they were making, even if they were available for sale in Honduras. It wasn't a horror show, and I'm not saying that the workers might not have been glad to have the jobs, but it didn't make me feel good about the clothes that I had on my back.

It's really frustrating to me that the best that I can do, short of making my own clothes (and even then, how would I know what conditions the cloth was made under?), is to try to dance with the devil who's doing a lesser degree of damage. Everybody I know who's aware of the issues has their own strategy for coping with the situation (patronize particular retailers, buy secondhand, never pay full price for clothes), working within the constraints of limited time and money. Its not easy, though -- sometimes you just want to buy the cute shirt and not think about the exploitative systems behind its production.

So, even though I'm not as happy about the news as I might like to be, if this lawsuit makes a positive change in the lives of the workers on whose behalf it was filed, that would be one good outcome. Another would be if the case gets people thinking about the systems that Wal-Mart practices support, and whether they want to encourage the continuation of those practices by shopping there. Not that that's a simple issue either: Wal-Mart is a major employer, it may (now) be the only significant retail provider in some non-urban areas, and cheap goods are all that some people can really afford. It's not like Wal-Mart has created the system, it's just sort of the biggest, ugliest exploiter of it.

I've got no solutions. I don't even really have any suggestions, beyond saying: think about it, be aware of the issues, decide what level of participation in the system you can live with and what you can realistically do to minimize the harm that your spending habits might be causing. Just, you know, pay attention, decide what the best you can do is, and then try to stick to it.

Looooooong overdue
Topic: Events
Bush: "I take responsibility"

My reaction? "Oh, sure you do." And that was before I actually read the article, and found this little qualifier: "To the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility." See, in my opinion, the extent to which the government didn't do its job right is so vast that no qualification is acceptable, and what's needed, even more than "accepting responsibility" is an apology.

"I want to know what went right and what went wrong." Well, one wrong thing that leaps to my mind, Mr. President, is your little update of Nero. Actually, since historical evidence has refuted the story that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Bush has, in effect, managed to one-up a depraved Roman emperor. So how about an apology for not cutting your vacation short, Mr. Bush? For not deciding to pass up a photo op or two to go see, or to at the very least create the impression that you were focused on, what was happening in Louisiana and Mississippi?

How, how, HOW can anyone be expected to take a statement like this seriously when its offered practically two weeks after the fact, after the decline of Bush's approval rating has been in the headlines for at least a week, and by the figurehead of an administration that has attempted to weasel out of accepting responsibility for everything from manipulating intelligence to exposing undercover CIA operatives? I'll freely admit up front that I wouldn't have been uncritical even if this statement had been made a week ago, but I think I can honestly say that I would've been substantially less irate.

*deep breath*

I'm going to throw it over to TINO, because I really shouldn't be working myself up to a fit of inarticulate rage before I've even gotten out of my pajamas, and they've got a rack of good writers over there:

• "To the extent" this, (uncomplimentary gendered term that I'm uncomfortable repeating) [this is what a gender studies program will do to you -- who would've thought that a couple months of postgrad study would clean up my language?]: Sars says, "But no, you've got to throw that "to the extent" in there to let us know that, as usual, you're basically admitting nothing."
• Here's What Gets Me: Miss Alli says, "My problem with Bush -- and here, I do indeed address Bush individually, as a guy -- is that during the time that the crisis was developing, from Monday to Friday, he never seemed to experience any actual sense of urgency as a result of the simple fact that people were, minute by minute and hour by hour, dying."
• God Bless the CRS: Miss Alli, again, "FEMA had the authority, it had the signatures it needed -- it had, in short, all the authority it needed. It just didn't do anything. There was no red tape, there was no bureaucracy, and there is no excuse. Go and read the report for yourself."

Unsettling local news
Topic: Politics

"An American peace activist detained in a Melbourne jail cell will leave the country within days but his legal team says they will continue the fight to clear his name."

...

We don't have any idea why this assessment has been made ... and he has been given no information on why he has been detained other than that he supposedly poses a risk to national security."

(from The Age)

Synopsis: Houston peace activist Scott Parkin comes to Australia on a tourist visa, spends three months here, helps stage a protest (described here as "anti-war street theatre") outside Halliburton's Sydney offices a couple weeks ago, is subsequently interviewed by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), has his visa revoked by the Department of Immigration, and is arrested in Melbourne on Saturday while on his way to a workshop on the Iraq war. He is now being held in jail at his own expense ($125 per day) and apparently will be deported within days (at his own request, as apparently he doesn't care for indefinite incarceration), and will be charged the cost of his own ticket, plus those of two escorts.

Note to self: At all costs, avoid being seen in vicinity of any Halliburton offices in Australia.

See also, Barista.

Update: For a funny, full-on, illustrated rant employing language of which your mother (well, maybe not your mother, but definitely my mother) would not approve, see Reasons You Will Hate Me.

Update, of sorts, since it's more like filling in the back story, but I just found this article from earlier today in which one of Parkin's lawyers says that the immigration department was refusing to deport Parkin, and that "Mr Parkin had been told by immigration officers that his deportation would be brought forward if he dropped his appeal to the Migration Review Tribunal to find out why his visa was revoked."

Also, the Australian Attorney-General had this to say about the case:

"The reason he's in custody is because his visa has been cancelled. The reason his visa has been cancelled is because he's received an adverse security assessment," Mr Ruddock said.

"ASIO is responsible for protecting the Australian community from all forms of politically motivated violence, including violent protest activity, and they've made an assessment in relation to those matters."

Yet none of the articles mention any sort of violent activity engaged in by Parkin during his time in Australia. Apparently, no one was even detained during the protest in Sydney.

And, finally, nice sign.

You do the math
Topic: Events
Add this:
Reuters story on CNN Money: "President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage." (full story here, link via TINO and Barista*)

To this:
Reuters story on CNN proper: "Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina." (full story here, link via Talking Points Memo)

And, at least to me, you get one hell of an illustration of crony capitalism at work.

What I'm curious about is, does CNN's left hand not know what the right is doing? I was rather expecting to see a "related stories" link between the two on the site, but there's no direct link from one story to the other.



-----
*I'm starting to feel a bit like blogstalker where Barista is concerned, but I can't speak highly enough of his posts on New Orleans and the hurricane. He has an eye for compelling images and moving stories.

Multitasking
Topic: Whatever
Procrastinating, engaging in self-indulgent silliness and inflicting my opinions on others. If only I could bring this sort of productivity to, you know, the stuff I ought to be doing.

Picked this meme up from Kate on Moment to Moment: You go here and enter the year you graduated from high school in the search box to find the top 100 hits of that year. Cut and paste the top ten (or the whole list, if you're feeling ambitious) and add commentary. Highlight songs you liked from the rest of the list.

And now, 1995:

1. Gangsta's Paradise, Coolio
   This song was *that* popular? Yeah, well, now that I think about it, Weird Al wouldn't have parodied it if wasn't. Overwrought, yet not totally insufferable. As I recall, even when it was most overplayed, I didn't hate it.
   
2. Waterfalls, TLC
   Meh.
   
3. Creep, TLC
   Double meh.
   
4. Kiss From A Rose, Seal
   Overwrought and insufferable.
   
5. On Bended Knee, Boyz II Men
   No recollect... oh, no, I do remember this one. Also overwrought. I seem to recall fairly mercilessly mocking someone who did like it.
   
6. Another Night, Real McCoy
   I wish I didn't remember this one. Insipid and obnoxious and prone to becoming a relentless earworm.
   
7. Fantasy, Mariah Carey
   Don't remember, wouldn't want to, dislike on principle.
   
8. Take A Bow, Madonna
   '95 appears to have been a banner year for overwrought pop songs. Bleh.
   
9. Don't Take It Personal (Just One Of Dem Days), Monica
   No memory of this one.
   
10. This Is How We Do It, Montell Jordan
    Sort of remember being vaguely annoyed by this song.

Well, it appears that the only good thing to be said for 1995's top ten is that at least there's no Celine Dion. Let's see how far down the list we have to go to find a song I can both recall, and recall liking.

Surprisingly enough, not far:

11. I Know, Dionne Farris, which I still rather like. I bought the album this song was on, and still listen to it every once in a while. There's something about her voice that I find really appealling.

13. Freak Like Me, Adina Howard, which I *ducks head, mumbles* also like the Sugababes' cover of.

*continues down the list* Ugh, '95 was not a good Top 40 year. Bryan Adams ballad, Bon Jovi ballad, two Hootie and the Blowfish ballads, and it was the year Sheryl Crow inflicted "Strong Enough" on the world. *gags*

39. As I Lay Me Down, Sophie B. Hawkins, I don't know why I liked this song. I remember thinking that the lyrics were pretty pedestrian, which usually puts me off, but not in this case. Maybe it just stood out because all the other popular music was such utter crap.

55. Roll To Me, Del Amitri, so relentlessly likeable that I should've hated it, but didn't, and don't. I'm a sucker for boys with guitars singing in harmony. Possibly because of the insidious influence of my parents' love of Simon and Garfunkel.

Aaaaaaand that's all folks. Wow. I really was expecting that there would be a few more songs I liked - it's not like my taste in music is way out of the mainstream - but the bottom half of the list is a wasteland, with occasional appearances by artists that I usually like singing songs that I don't. I'm trying to remember what I was listening to in 1995. I think I had just discovered Tori Amos. I know I was still into Pearl Jam. I think I might've been in a fairly serious Chris Isaak phase at that point, as well. And if the radio was on, it was only on the late lamented WDRE. Wasn't I such a stellar little nonconformist, with my penchant for "modern rock"?

Who's next: I want to see what Dave, DamselFish, and agnoiologist think of their high school top 100 list. Oops: Didn't mean to overlook blancheflor. Sorry!

"I knew him before he was famous."
Topic: Whatever
I've always wanted to be able to say that. And Paul says he wants to be famous. So, in the interests of promoting both goals, I suggest you read his recently published story, "Taking Care of the Boat". It's good (and if you don't believe me, believe the people who shortlisted it for the Raymond Carver Awards). It's short. It might make Paul an international celebrity, thereby enabling me to fulfill a lifelong dream. It's a win-win situation all around. Don't you want to do your part to help make all this happen?

For the folks back home
Topic: Ranting
A few bits from today's Age:

So this is why the night sky has been so gorgeous lately . . . I have three evening classes that finish well after dark, and all this week as I've left uni, I've seen the crescent moon hanging low in the western sky, with a cascade of bright stars around it. It's captivating - I'm lucky I haven't walked into any lampposts while staring at the sky.

I'm really curious about why the writer/editor of this story chose to focus on the one "star" (it's really Venus) that, in conjunction with the moon, purportedly "resemble[s] the star and crescent of Islam", because myself, I never once looked at the sky this week and thought, "that looks Islamic". So I'm not entirely sure what's going on there.

There has been a recent debate around Muslim girls wearing hijab to school. I'm not at all sure how I feel about the hijab. Actually, it's one of those rare issues that I almost feel I'm not entitled to have an opinion on, because I have absolutely no experience with anything comparable. So I found Liz Conor's op-ed piece on the hijab, Western women's dress, and the male gaze very interesting. Conor sounds as conflicted about the hijab as I feel, and there aren't any easy conclusions drawn in her essay.

I would really love to have more time to sit here and think through this essay and my response to it. Particularly my response to Conor's observation that "[she] found it a relief to hit my later 30s and come out from under the scrutinising gaze that many men level at young women in public." That really resonates with me. At the same time that I resent the implication that women bear responsibility for men's sexual response to their dress, I've definitely made a conscious decision to adopt relatively modest dress myself, and part of that decision was driven by my need to feel like I might be able to have some control over how I am perceived and responded to by others.

I remember that one of my most unexpected responses to Egypt when I visited a few years ago was the sense of relief that came from not being bombarded with sexualized images of women in public advertising. (That, of course, was balanced against an elevated level of attention directed toward me, personally, but when you've been a tourist in enough places, you start to get accustomed to that. For example, I didn't feel like I was under any more scrutiny in Cairo than in Istanbul, which I found felt more "Western", but where I was still identifiably not local. A certain level of attention is just to be expected when you're a tourist.) What really struck me was that I hadn't realized until then how much time I spend in public looking at images of women and cringing inside. I'm cringing now -- I've got so much emotion wrapped up in questions of choice, attention and modesty that I don't know that I can write rationally or coherently about them right now, when I'm deeply sleep deprived and totally pressed for time.

So, I think I may just leave this for the time being and maybe come back to it again in the future. Sorry to abandon this post unconcluded, but I'm suddenly very aware of the fact that I really really really need to get some more work done today if I'm going to retain any sort of grip on my life. I probably should leave this post in the "draft" file, but I really wanted to point out Conor's article and say something about while its fresh in my mind. I'm just sorry it didn't work out better. I promise more coherence in my next post.

*takes deep breath, burrows into massive stack of books*

Requiem
Topic: Events
This was the first headline I read this morning: New Orleans Left to the Dead and Dying.

Then I read this story on Crooked Timber (via Barista, who has generally had excellent posts on the hurricane): Red Cross not Allowed into New Orleans. The rationale being, apparently, that feeding people will somehow interfere with evacuating them from the city? I don't understand. I keep reading about decisions being made in the course of the disaster and I try to believe that there were good reasons for them, or at least that people were in shock and overwhelmed and not able to think things through fully. I want to believe that people are doing their best under the circumstances, and I'm certain that many are. But decisions like refusing to allow the Red Cross to offer aid to the survivors are stretching my belief to the breaking point.

Am I reaching too far in saying that this all seems much of a piece with Dennis Hastert's sentiments that rebuilding the city isn't desirable (ripped to shreds in The Nation, here)? I feel as if I'm being told to say goodbye to New Orleans; that it won't be back. The thought makes me incredibly sad. I loved what little I saw of the city when I visited it last year. Well, I didn't really love Bourbon Street, but I adored the rest of the French Quarter and the Garden District. I had every intention of returning to get to know the city better. I'm still holding on to the hope that I will have that chance, but it's dimming.

Hiatus: I'm going to have to take a break from the internet for a while. I've got a lot to do over the next two weeks and I'm trying not to burn out before the mid-semester break. I'll be back once my schedule isn't quite so ridiculous.

Okay, seriously this time: Right, that break didn't last long. I'll be giving it another go right after I:

• recommend this article from Slate, which draws parallels between Katrina and the deadly Chicago heat wave of 1995. It points out a critical problem that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere so far: survivors in New Orleans had to rely on radio broadcasts to get emergency information, but only one local station had its own reporters on the air, which meant that the information available was much more limited than it could have been.
• point out this editorial by Anne Rice, Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans (NYT), because whatever your opinion of her a novelist might be, she has always written about New Orleans with great respect and affection.
• note that the reporting I've been waiting for on hurricane survivors outside New Orleans is starting to come in through the mainstream news outlets (AP on Yahoo).
• attempt to process my reaction to the news of Chief Justice Rehnquist's death, which went: sympathy, drawn-out expletive, sense of impending doom. But sympathy most strongly, because it's so hard to be with someone you love as they go through a prolonged battle with cancer, and I hope that Mr. Rehnquist's family and friends find the support they need to get through the coming days.

The Superdome
Topic: Events
My mother sent me a link to this video (39 MB download, unfortunately, no longer appears to be available, sorry), which simply but effectively presents a series of still photos from New Orleans. I haven't been looking at a lot of images from the city -- I've mostly been relying on text accounts, and these pictures hit me hard.

In the middle of the video, a short sequence of photos from the Superdome had me in tears. The series opens with a picture of an elderly woman in a housecoat sitting in the stadium, with the playing field behind her and other refugees visible around her. The next image is an overhead shot of a couple rows of people trying to sleep in the stadium seats. That was the one that broke me -- there are kids trying to sleep on those seats, and the adults taking care of them must have been absolutely beside themselves. That picture pulls back to show an entire section of the stadium, and it was then that I started to fully recognize how many people were there. To be packed in like that for days is just unimaginable. And judging from the condition of the field, these pictures were taken before the roof of the dome was ripped off in the storm. The final photograph is of a boy, I'd guess maybe 10 years old, collecting emergency rations in the stadium. His face is quiet and serious, and it looks like he's very conscious of a need to behave calmly. The man leaning down to hand him the rations, who appears to be a member of the National Guard, looks as if this might be one kid too many that he's seen that day. His eyes are in shadow, but his mouth is pressed into a tight line, and the feeling conveyed by the scene is one of people trying very hard to keep control of themselves under incredible pressure. I was sobbing by that point. I can't, or maybe I don't even want to imagine how everyone - the people who took refuge in the stadium and the people who were there trying to assist them - must have felt.

So I was relieved to see this headline on Yahoo News: Guardsmen Evacuate Refugees from Superdome. Then I was utterly horrified to read about the conditions that the people who took shelter in the Superdome had to endure: trash a foot deep, bathrooms that couldn't be used because they had no lights and the toilets were clogged and fetid. People were so eager to get out that they lined up on concourses with no shelter from the sun, and no relief from the heat and humidity, to wait to get on a bus to leave.

Meanwhile, 700 guests and employees of the nearby Hyatt hotel, who were stranded in less appalling conditions, were moved to the front of the evacuation line, presumably so that the vacated hotel could be used as a base of operations by police, firefighters and city officials. While I guess I can understand the desire to get critical services coordinated in one location as quickly as possible, people were collapsing from heat exhaustion trying to get out of the Superdome. I can't believe that no one thought to say, "Maybe we should evacuate the people who have been living without a roof over their heads before we empty out the hotel." And it really seems to me like there ought to have been some way to work around the people stranded in the Hyatt until everyone was out of the stadium. Seems like there must have been a critical breakdown in the decision-making process somewhere.

MaryAnn from Geek Philosophy wonders "if one of the biggest affects of Katrina won't be a new recognition of and willingness to do something about the appalling poverty that so many Americans live in" (see the comments section of this post). I would like nothing better than to be able to think so, but actions like pre-empting the evacuation of the Superdome in order to clear out the Hyatt seem to indicate that decision makers are still unwilling or unable to give priority to the needs of the have-nots. Talking Points Memo has a number of good posts (this one for example) that illustrate how a lack of consideration for the poor and powerless, combined with other major gaps in planning, preparation, and funding, contributed to the scale of the disaster.

If you want to contribute to the recovery efforts, This Is Not Over is polling its readers in the affected areas for advice about local organizations that need support. Click here for their recommendations.

Update: Just wanted to add a plug for Slate's coverage of the hurricane, and this post on Uncommon Sense, which addresses the government's seeming inability to recognize and acknowledge that major structural injustices were and are at work in the tragedy taking place in the hurricane-affected areas.

New Orleans on my mind
Topic: Events
Been staying up late reading on-line coverage of the aftermath of Katrina. The stories generally fall into two major categories:

Sad:

• "Katrina scatters a grim diaspora" (BBC)
  
• Photoblogging from Guardian Unlimited and BARISTA
  
• "Mourning My New Orleans" and "Unwatering the Crescent" (Slate)

Scary:

• "Shots disrupt US storm evacuation" (BBC)
  
• "The Geopolitics of Katrina" (Stratfor report)
  
• "Katrina and the economy" (Crooked Timber)

There are the occasional outliers, like Jack Shafer's article in Slate about why TV coverage of the disaster has neglected to address issues of race and class, which means that there has been no meaningful analysis of who did not (or was not able to) evacuate the city ahead of the hurricane, and why. The Metafilter thread that I linked to in my previous post continues to grow, and to defy easy categorization, as people add links, snips, opinions, and first-hand accounts.