a vantage point on activist consumerism
From the category archives:
In the past few days it’s been revealed that six cases of child labour have been uncovered during audits of Apple’s suppliers, flying in the face of the company’s “zero-tolerance policy” towards such practices. According to Reuters, the news caused a stir at one of Apple’s stores in Beijing: Enraged Chinese shoppers pelted Apple’s flagship [...]
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Of course, many of us have heard how the iPad will revolutionise our lives, how it will make things more convenient and how we’ll go for days without needing to turn on our computers. What many of us hadn’t heard about, until the report in today’s Observer, are the conditions under which these wonders of [...]
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Iran has long been known as a volatile state, prone to violent authoritarian activity that continuously threatens the security of its inhabitants. Telephone calls in Iran are carefully monitored by government security agencies: the slightest whiff of a political discussion and your conversation is hastily disconnected. While most of the world stands by, aghast that [...]
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Answer: they all scored very poorly in a recent survey designed to find out how high street retailers treat their foreign workers. The survey, carried out by Labour Behind the Label, reported that: “The scandalous truth is that the majority of workers in the global fashion industry rarely earn more than $2 a day in [...]
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Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury, has been directing attention recently to environmental issues and our responsibility to reduce our ‘footprint.’ One of his suggestions (in a recent interview with The Times) could take a serious toll on the livelihood of many African farmers: He said that the carbon footprint of peas from Kenya and [...]
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Time reports that in Kenya a seed that was recommended by scientists and the government as an ideal Biofuel for growth in arid areas is actually heavily dependent on water. “Convinced they could reap large profits from the plant in the global craze for alternative energy sources, hundreds of farmers turned over acres of their [...]
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