Sunday, March 1, 2020

Slave Labor Being Used to Make Stuff for Us

As if the epidemiological news out of China weren't bad enough, now there's a revelation that tens of thousands of Uighur's are being forcibly relocated to factory towns and coerced into working in factories, making consumer goods for multinational corporations. This is the next phase in China's ethnic cleansing campaign against this ethnic and religious minority, an ethnic cleansing campaign couched in the terms of 'national security' and 'the war on terror'.

The really disturbing thing about this story is the sheer number of American-based corporations that are benefiting from this forced labor. You probably have a product made by one of these corporations in your home... I have one in my pocket right now, and I'm typing this post on another. I'm not big into consumerism, but even I have stuff. The use of slave labor is unacceptable, even if it is hidden overseas and covered up with bland corporatespeak. With our silence, and our buy-in, we are complicit- I'm not exempting myself from guilt. It's time to make our outrage known, let's hope that we can shame our 'Masters of the Universe' into acting like human beings.

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