Posts Tagged ‘Black Friday’
If It Happened There … America’s Annual Festival Pilgrimage Begins
This is the fourth installment of a continuing series in which American events are described using the tropes and tone normally employed by the American media to describe events in other countries.
WASHINGTON, D.C., United States—On Wednesday morning, this normally bustling capital city became a ghost town as most of its residents embarked on the long journey to their home villages for an annual festival of family, food, and questionable historical facts.
Experts say the day is vital for understanding American society and economists are increasingly taking note of its impact on the world economy.
The annual holiday, known as Thanksgiving, celebrates a mythologized moment of peace between America’s early foreign settlers and its native groups—a day that by Americans’ own admission preceded a near genocide of those groups.
Despite its murky origins, the holiday remains a rare institution celebrated almost universally in this ethnically diverse society.
During the holiday, more than 38.4 million Americans will make the long pilgrimage home, traveling an average of 214 miles over congested highways, often in inclement weather.
The more prosperous citizens will frequently opt for the nation’s airways, suffering through a series of flight delays and missed airline connections thanks to the country’s decaying transportation infrastructure and residual fears of foreign terrorist attacks.
Once home, the holiday’s traditions encourage Americans to consume massive quantities of food centered around the turkey, a flightless, and some would say tasteless bird , native to the American continent.
All in all, 46 million of these animals will be slaughtered for the feast, nearly 20% of those raised each year.
The average American will consume an almost unbelievable 4,500 calories, despite ongoing warnings about dangerous obesity rates nationally.
Virtually the only break from the eating comes when Americans gather around the television to watch a special presentation of football, the country’s most popular sport.
If the brutal violence of the game seems at odds with the holiday’s emphasis on thanks and good will, no one seems to mind.
Though rooted in America’s ancient history, the celebration of Thanksgiving today also reflects the transforming values of American society.
One relatively recent tradition is the head of state’s public “pardoning” of a turkey—a sop to animal rights activists made somewhat moot by the fact that the country’s president simply dines on a different turkey.
To outsiders, it can also seem like a somewhat macabre gesture since the United States is one of the last developed countries to employ the death penalty for humans.
Traditionally, the Friday and weekend following Thanksgiving have been set aside for another American institution—intense consumer activity and bargain shopping.
(The availability of deeply discounted goods is increasingly beginning even sooner, sometime on the holiday itself, angering some purists.)
More than $59 billion will be spent over these days, though the exact figure will be watched closely by economists looking for clues about the country’s national mood and economic well-being.
The event is known as “Black Friday,” though contrary to popular belief, this is not due to the injuries and deaths that periodically occur during retail stampedes.
In recent years, some experts have questioned whether the hidden costs of the Thanksgiving holiday have become excessive;
whether the celebration is worth its massive environmental impact and the increased health risks due to traffic accidents and overeating.
Still, the majority of the population holds fast to these pastimes.
For them, they are part of a rare, quintessentially American tradition in a modernizing society that finds itself increasingly under the influence of the outside world.
Black Friday: Price Tags, underpaid workers, injuries, health and safety
Posted on: November 29, 2017
The Other Side of Black Friday Price Tags
Throughout the Global South, underpaid workers face wage theft and injury to meet Western consumers’ demands.
By Michelle ChenTwitter NOVEMBER 25, 2015
When the glass doors fly open this Friday, riotous crowds will spill into a tide of mass consumption at Walmarts nationwide. But amidst the frenzy, the bleak undertow of global commerce will wash up against the rock-bottom prices: For workers on a distant shore, Black Friday caps another cycle of the round-the-clock drudgery driving the biggest shopping day of the year.
China Labor Watch’s (CLW) report on China’s toy industry is a seasonal reminder of how American families’ appetite for cheap toys is fed by not-so-fun factory jobs, in which workers struggle to sustain their own families on pennies an hour. The advocacy group reports:
In workshops that are hazardous to their health, millions of workers toil under cruel management, 11 hours a day, six days per week. Over the course of a year, a toy worker may only be able to see her parents and children one time.
In low-wage factories that bring Star Wars and Frozen toys to big-box shelves, field researchers reported observing up to 80-hour workweeks, widespread wage theft, and apparent violations of both corporate ethical sourcing codes and Chinese labor law—including age-discriminatory hiring, nonpayment of mandatory social insurance, and inadequate safety training.
For example, at two suppliers, Winson and Jetta, employers reportedly “diverted” overtime hours to discount weekend work. As a result, CLW claims, “employing up to 11,000 workers, the two companies may be cheating workers out of $1 to 2 million a year.”
A worker stuffs newly made toys at the production line of a factory in suburban Shanghai. (Reuters / Nir Elias)
The true price of toys, according to CLW, is measured in the everyday suffering of workers in Chinese cities, who might spend all-day shifts contorting their bodies to mold doll heads or inhaling toxic toy paint fumes.
For the Mattel Rock’ Em Sock’ Em Robots, sold on Amazon for $30, CLW reports: “each Winson worker earns only 0.05% the market value of the Rock ’Em Sock ’Em toy. Workers produce nonstop. Young workers sacrifice their youth and health…. Despite such sacrifice, a worker earns only 1/2000 the value of a toy she produces.”
As a brand and sales outlet, Walmart shapes working conditions in both Asia’s manfacturing hubs and the United States’ low-wage retail and logistics industries. While American Walmart associates are staging scattered Black Friday protests, more volatile labor dynamics are erupting in China. CLW details a recent uprising at a Mattel supplier factory, in which workers protested a months-long lag in wages and benefit payments during a lull in production.
Riot police and K-9 units cracked down “to suppress the workers’ action and compel them to accept partial compensation.”
Another uprising in July at the Jingyu toy factory in Shenzhen reportedly resulted in a strike being similarly squelched by police. Yet in response to CLW’s investigation, the toy industry’s corporate-monitoring organization ICTI-CARE took issue with the findings, commenting that the Jingyu dispute had been successfully resolved and stemmed partially from “poor communications” and “misunderstanding” between employees and management.
In a statement to The Nation, ICTI-CARE argues that in contrast to CLW’s report, the group has observed “a different pattern of continued progress across the 1,100 factories we work with,” and that “[d]riving lasting improvements on labor standards requires commitment from both the top and bottom of the supply chain.”
One thing Western brands seem committed to is showing zero tolerance for labor disruptions overseas, or for any taint on a company’s facade of social responsibility.
So establishment-supported auditing firms have produced regular reports showing purported improvements in labor conditions. Still, CLW’s report shows that despite voluminous ethical sourcing protocols and proclamations about acting as good global corporate citizens, the reality on Chinese assembly lines vanishes behind slick media packaging and irresistible prices.
“Pressure on toy producers has actually not been sufficient,” CLW Program Coordinator Kevin Slaten says via e-mail. “What is required is an even more successful awareness campaign which can produce enough reaction that the toy companies put more resources into improving working conditions in their supply chains.”
Another area where consumer awareness is a key blind spot is the fashion sector, though anti-sweatshop campaigns are pressuring some brands to take some action on unsafe conditions and exploitation in Global South factories. The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) is campaigning on the third anniversary of the Tazreen factory fire, which killed more than 100 garment workers in a Bangladesh “death trap” plant linked to Walmart and other Western brands.
Public pressure has already spurred image-polishing corporate social responsibility campaigns, with brands funneling aid to the victims and recently establishing a new charity, the Tazreen Trust Fund, to issue payouts to workers’ families.
So far, Walmart has donated primarily through a corporate-funded philanthropic outfit called BRAC USA. A company spokesperson stated that “through BRAC, we have donated to a medical fund for Rana Plaza and Tazreen survivors and just recently to the newly established Tazreen Victim’s Trust Fund.”
This apparently corresponds with a new BRAC Trust Fund donation of $250,000—equivalent to a sliver of 1 percent of Walmart’s profits last year.
But the real debt Walmart owes doesn’t just stem from workers’ injuries: it stems from the impunity with which the company has managed to evade liability.
Walmart claimed the factory was not an “authorized” supplier, shifting the blame to shady subcontractors lower on the production chain.
In a comment to The Nation, Walmart stated that it was “committed to helping our suppliers make factories safer for all and preventing tragedies like Tazreen,” stopping short of calling its charity “compensation” for victims. But advocates nonetheless condemn Walmart for failing to protect safety for all workers in its manufacturing network.
“Had Walmart put into place fire safety renovations after its inspections to remediate the high risk violations that it uncovered, it could have saved 112 lives,” says ILRF Director of Organizing Liana Foxvog via e-mail. “Instead, Walmart didn’t take any meaningful action to protect workers…and then distanced itself as much as it could after the horrific fire.”
Transnational supply chains trade on the political and social distance between the Global North and South to extract maximum profits. At the same time, the global economic forces girding Walmart’s commercial empire are also helping globalize messages of economic injustice and social unrest.
It’s up to American consumers to respond by politically leveraging their purchasing power. Because while multinationals eagerly claim credit for delivering the best Black Friday deals, only the savviest shoppers will link Western brands to the exploitation underwriting those unbeatable prices.
Note: This article has been updated to correct a reference to the ICTI-CARE’s comment on the Jingyu factory protest in Shenzhen—not the protest at the Mattel supplier Ever Force, as originally stated.
‘Black Friday’: Carnage in Rafah (2014 Israel pre-emptive war on Gaza)
On 8 July 2014, Israel launched a military operation code-named Operation Protective Edge, the third major offensive in Gaza since 2008.
It announced that the operation was aimed at stopping rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli civilians.
A ground operation followed, launched on the night of 17-18 July. According to the Israeli army, one of the primary objectives of the ground operation was to destroy the tunnel system constructed by Palestinian armed groups, particularly those with shafts discovered near residential areas located in Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip.
On 1 August 2014 Israel and Hamas agreed to a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire that would take effect at 8am that day.
Three weeks after Israel launched its military offensive on Gaza, thousands of Palestinians who had sought refuge in shelters or with relatives prepared to return to their homes during the anticipated break in hostilities.
In Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, a group of Israeli soldiers patrolling an agricultural area west of the border encountered a group of Hamas fighters posted there. A fire fight ensued, resulting in the death of two Israeli soldiers and one Palestinian fighter.
The Hamas fighters captured an Israeli officer, Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, and took him into a tunnel. What followed became one of the deadliest episodes of the war; an intensive use of firepower by Israel, which lasted four days and killed scores of civilians (reports range from at least 135 to over 200), injured many more and destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes and other civilian structures, mostly on 1 August.
In this report, Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture, a research team based at Goldsmiths, University of London, provide a detailed reconstruction of the events in Rafah from 1 August until 4 August 2014, when a ceasefire came into effect. The report examines the Israeli army’s response to the capture of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin and its implementation of the Hannibal Directive – a controversial command designed to deal with captures of soldiers by unleashing massive firepower on persons, vehicles and buildings in the vicinity of the attack, despite the risk to civilians and the captured soldier(s).
The report recounts events by connecting various forms of information including: testimonies from victims and witnesses including medics, journalists, and human rights defenders in Rafah; reports by human rights and other organizations; news and media feeds, public statements and other information from Israeli and Palestinian official sources; and videos and photographs collected on the ground and from the media.
Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture worked with a number of field researchers and photographers who documented sites where incidents took place using protocols for forensic photography. Forensic Architecture located elements of witness testimonies in space and time and plotted the movement of witnesses through a three-dimensional model of urban spaces.
It also modelled and animated the testimony of several witnesses, combining spatial information obtained from separate testimonies and other sources in order to reconstruct incidents. Three satellite images of the area, dated 30 July, 1 August and 14 August, were obtained and analysed in detail; the image of 1 August reveals a rare overview of a moment within the conflict. 7
Forensic Architecture also retrieved a large amount of audiovisual material on social media and employed digital maps and models to locate evidence such as oral description, photography, video and satellite imagery in space and time. When audio-visual material from social media came with inadequate metadata, Forensic Architecture used time indicators in the image, such as shadow and smoke plumes analysis, to locate sources in space and time.
An Israeli infantry officer described to Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence the events that ensued after the Hannibal Directive was announced on the radio:
He reported that the initial burst of fire lasted three hours. An artillery soldier said his battery was “firing at a maximum fire rate” right into inhabited areas. According to the report of an Israeli military inquiry, more than 2,000 bombs, missiles and shells were fired in Rafah during 1 August, including 1,000 in the three hours following the capture.
According to the Israeli army, the initial strikes aimed to stop the movement of all “suspicious” persons and vehicles, to isolate the area until the arrival of ground forces and to target known and suspected tunnel shafts, which meant bombing residential buildings and agricultural installations suspected of harbouring tunnel exits or entrances.
Another officer explained the logic of the operation, including potentially killing the captured soldier: “In such an event you prefer a killed soldier rather than a soldier in enemy hands, like [Gilad] Shalit. I told myself ‘even if I bring back a corpse I have brought back the missing person’.”
As the strikes began, the roads in eastern Rafah were full of disoriented civilians moving in all directions. Believing a ceasefire had begun, they had returned – or were returning – to their homes. Many decided to turn around, attempting to flee under a barrage of bombs and gunfire.
Palestinian witnesses described jets, drones, helicopters and artillery raining fire at pedestrians and vehicles at the intersections, indiscriminately hitting cars, ambulances, motorbikes and pedestrians. “You see the hysteria of the children, destruction, and mushroom clouds, and you try to get as far away from them as you can,” said Wa’el al-Namla, a local resident and father of two.
Inam Ouda Ayed bin Hammad, a local resident, told Amnesty International that, after 9am on 1 August, she noticed the shelling intensifying and missiles landing in close vicinity to their home in the al-Tannur neighbourhood of Rafah. She and her family were on the streets seeking shelter elsewhere when a bomb hit a building nearby and killed her son Anas, her cousin Wafa and at least 14 other civilians, as well as injuring scores of other fleeing civilians.
One of the scenarios that the Israeli military considered was that the captured soldier, Lieutenant Goldin, had been wounded and taken to the Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital, the medical facility closest to the area of capture. The flood of casualties started coming into the hospital at about 10am, according to medical staff. The attacks around the hospital grew nearer and more frequent as the day went on. Studying photographs of the hospital, Forensic Architecture noted both internal and external damage.
On the satellite image taken on 14 August, Forensic Architecture detected one crater about 120m south-west of the hospital and three craters about the same distance north-east of the hospital.
Patients, staff and persons seeking refuge at the hospital proceeded to evacuate the building in a rush when the attacks intensified. An organized evacuation took place in the evening. By about 7pm the hospital was closed and reporters claimed that the entire neighbourhood around the Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital was under artillery fire.
The pounding of Rafah continued for three days after the initial strikes of 1 August, even after Lieutenant Goldin was declared dead by an Israeli rabbinical court and buried on 2 August.
There is overwhelming evidence that Israeli forces committed disproportionate, or otherwise indiscriminate, attacks which killed scores of civilians in their homes, on the streets and in vehicles and injured many more. This includes repeatedly firing artillery and other imprecise explosive weapons in densely populated civilian areas during the attacks on Rafah between 1 and 4 August. In some cases, there are indications that they directly fired at and killed civilians, including people fleeing.
Public statements by Israeli army commanders and soldiers after the conflict provide compelling reasons to conclude that some attacks that killed civilians and destroyed homes and property were intentionally carried out and motivated by a desire for revenge – to teach a lesson to, or punish, the population of Rafah for the capture of Lieutenant Goldin.
There is consequently strong evidence that many such attacks in Rafah between 1 and 4 August were serious violations of international humanitarian law and constituted grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention or other war crimes.
The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict examined the Israeli army attack on Rafah on 1 August and also raised serious concerns about the conformity of the Israeli army actions on that day with international law. The Commission investigated attacks it considered disproportionate or otherwise indiscriminate and found that some might amount to war crimes.
The Commission also concluded that the Israeli army did not appear to have taken precautions to verify that targets of attacks were lawful military objectives and to choose the weapons which could avoid or minimize civilian casualties and destruction to civilian structures.
Israeli army commanders and officers can operate in confidence that they are unlikely to be held accountable for violations of international law due to the pervasive climate of impunity that has existed for decades. This is due, in large part, to the lack of independent, impartial and effective investigations.
Despite the massive toll that Operation Protective Edge had on civilians in Gaza, almost one year after the conflict, military prosecutors have indicted only three soldiers for one incident of looting. A significant number of cases have been closed on the basis that no crimes were committed (the main reason given in such decisions) or that there was insufficient evidence to indict.
With regard to Israeli army operations in Rafah between 1 and 4 August, the Israeli authorities have failed to conduct genuine, effective, and prompt investigations into any of the allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law documented in this report, let alone to prosecute individuals, including commanders and civilian superiors, suspected of committing or ordering related crimes under international law.
The authorities have failed to ensure that victims have effective access to justice, or to provide them with full and prompt reparation, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition.
The events need to be independently and impartially investigated. Amnesty International’s view is that no official body capable of conducting such investigations currently exists in Israel. It is therefore calling on the Israeli authorities to: co-operate fully with the ongoing preliminary examination by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court into the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and any future investigations or prosecutions; reform their domestic mechanisms for investigating allegations of violations of international humanitarian law to ensure that it is independent, effective, prompt and transparent; allow human rights organizations access to Gaza to investigate suspected violations of international law by all parties to the conflict; and immediately and fully lift the blockade imposed on Gaza since 2007.
Amnesty International is also asking the international community in general to support the role of the International Criminal Court in examining allegations of crimes under international law including those documented in this report, and to pressure the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to co-operate fully with the Office of the Prosecutor.
All states should oppose punitive measures against Palestine for joining the International Criminal Court or for submitting information on Israeli violations to the Court or taking other steps to activate international justice mechanisms.
On the same day three ambulances from the hospital went to collect wounded people near a mosque in Rafah; one ambulance was hit and completely destroyed by what appeared to be three drone-launched missiles. The three medics and all the wounded within the ambulance were burnt to death.
A second ambulance left, while the other, which remained to collect the wounded and dead, was hit by another apparent drone strike.
“There is overwhelming evidence that Israeli forces committed disproportionate, or otherwise indiscriminate, attacks which killed scores of civilians in their homes, on the streets and in vehicles and injured many more.
This includes repeatedly firing artillery and other imprecise explosive weapons in densely populated civilian areas during the attacks on Rafah between 1 and 4 August.
In some cases, there are indications that they directly fired at and killed civilians, including people fleeing.”
Adonis Diaries 