A source on politics, war, the Middle East, Arabic poetry, and art.
Monday, June 12, 2006
"Last month, we learned that horrific sweatshops in Jordan were making garments for retailers like Wal-Mart. It turned out that the workers in those sweatshops were not Jordanian but had been flown in from lower-wage countries like Bangladesh and China. The sweatshops were in Jordan for only one reason: to earn duty-free entry to our market under the United States-Jordan trade deal. These sweatshops did nothing for the Jordanian people, nor for the Bangladeshi and Chinese workers, who were forced to work 20-hour shifts, were frequently beaten and cheated even out of their miserable wages. The only ones who benefited were the foreign sweatshop owners and United States retailers."