[tiamat]

GladesGuru wrote: "Unless there is someone here who thinks it is good that little kids work 16 hour days for a pittance in sweat-shops in SE Asia so that Walmart can sell cheap T-shirts?" Have you considered that in those 'turd world' "nations" (term used loosely) there is no other job available for those children? Or do you think being a child worker in the sex industry to be an improvement on the sweat shop?

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Actually I spend rather a lot of time fighting the child-sex industry as well.

There is no need for these countries to be doing what they do with their kids. And no reason at ALL for OUR corporations to be doing business there .

We and our children just do not NEED that many cheap toys and t-shirts.

Has it occurred to people that maybe Christmas wouldn't be the commercial mess that it is if children did not expect a mountain of cheaply produced thngs from SE Asia every year? I simply will not have a Mattel toy in the house.

As far as what these other countries do, it is nothing new, but that does not make it right. This is just war-lordism in the traditional sense: corruption and greed ensure that a few people have WAY too much at the top, some folks manage pretty well, and the vast majority of the population suffers due to indifference and mismanagement. All too often that vast majority is kids and the elderly. Life in these places is very cheap.

Tia

[GladesGuru]

Tia,

I still wonder about the wisdom, even the morality, of trying to break someone else's rice bowl. To attempt to so do for moral reasons important to the one depriving the 'victim' of their livelihood - however tenuous that livelihood may be, seems inherently questionable to me.