Victoria’s Secret revealed: Child labor picking its cotton

[Maine-ah]

BENVAR, Burkina Faso — Clarisse Kambire’s nightmare rarely changes. It’s daytime. In a field of cotton plants that burst with purple and white flowers, a man in rags towers over her, a stick raised above his head. Then a voice booms, jerking Clarisse from her slumber and making her heart leap. “Get up!”

The man ordering her awake is the same one who haunts the 13-year-old girl’s sleep: Victorien Kamboule, the farmer she labors for in a West African cotton field. Before sunrise on a November morning she rises from the faded plastic mat that serves as her mattress, barely thicker than the cover of a glossy magazine, opens the metal door of her mud hut and sets her almond-shaped eyes on the first day of this season’s harvest.

She had been dreading it. “I’m starting to think about how he will shout at me and beat me again,” she said two days earlier. Preparing the field was even worse. Clarisse helped dig more than 500 rows with only her muscles and a hoe, substituting for the ox and the plow the farmer can’t afford. If she’s slow, Kamboule whips her with a tree branch.

This harvest is Clarisse’s second. Cotton from her first went from her hands onto the trucks of a Burkina Faso program that deals in cotton certified as fair trade. The fiber from that harvest then went to factories in India and Sri Lanka, where it was fashioned into Victoria’s Secret underwear — like the pair of zebra-print, hip-hugger panties sold for $8.50 at the lingerie retailer’s Water Tower Place store on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.

http://bangordailynews.com/2011/12/16/politics/victorias-secret-revealed-child-labor-picking-its-cotton/

[Syrinx]

1. I always wondered what Victoria's secret was

She never seemed like the secretive type.

[lunatica]

2. Behind those glamorous runway goddesses of sexy frill

lie the ruined and maimed lives of children. Life sure seems to be prying our blindfolds off a lot lately.

[Sirveri]

3. The tears of child laborers make it that much softer!

[Peace Patriot]

4. Suspicion: The only reason this gets Corporate Press coverage is...

...that the farmers are making a big effort to grow organic cotton. No pesticides. No Monsanto. No Dow Chemical.

I'm not saying that the traditional system of indentured slavery for orphans in West Africa is OK. Of course it isn't. But Corporate propaganda can be subtle and twisty. It can utterly ignore the virtual slavery and poisoning of millions of peasant farmers and farm workers by Transglobal monsters around the world--indeed, in Colombia, 5 MILLION peasant farmers have been driven from their lands by state terror, funded by U.S. taxpayers, with a combination of murder and toxic pesticide spraying--and focus attention instead on this relatively small, local farming project in West Africa, to drive these farmers and their organic cotton out of the market.

I listened very carefully to this story which was covered by NPR with their usual fake unctiousness and high notes of liberal hysteria and I found myself saying, "You bastards. You bastards!"

Following Corporate Press stories about Latin America over the past decade has taught how it's done--how Corporate propaganda and manipulation of 'the news' operates: First of all, in its choice of stories to cover; second, in its "framing" of headlines; third, in its failure to provide historical and current context; fourth in the blackholes where information should be; and fifth, by the highly selective quoting of "experts" or other persons who reinforce the Corporate message and other heavy bias in the body of the article.

This story smells of Corporate manipulation no. 1: the choice of stories to cover.

Of all the crimes against workers and the poor being committed in the world, why this one? It's NOT that this story should not be covered. Of course it should be. It's that they ignore massive oppression on a nearly unimaginable scale inflicted on people in Latin America, Asia and other regions, including other parts of Africa, often involving shocking brutality and all for Transglobal corporate profit and power.

I've also seen this Corporate Propaganda machine slander leftist governments in Latin America, day after day--on-going for years now--governments that are doing a good job of correcting wrongs against workers and the poor inflicted by the same monstrous Transglobal corporate entities and their local fascist allies. They entirely leave out these governments' achievements--which are often momentous--and only cover negative stories. The propaganda crime is in the selection of stories. What is 'news'? Is it news that the Chavez government in Venezuela has cut poverty in half and extreme poverty by over 70% and was recently designated "THE most equal country in Latin America" on income distribution, by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean? Did you see this anywhere in the Corporate Press? No! That is not permitted to be 'news.' You got rightwing opposition/CIA "talking points" about high street crime or drought-caused power outages, to the exclusion of everything else.

Is this balanced coverage? Is this useful and informative coverage for people who want to know what is going on in the world? No, it is propaganda and its purpose is to serve the wealth and power of Transglobal corporate monsters.

So, all I ask is that you THINK about context and coverage when you find the Corporate Press getting all sympathetic over an oppressed child worker. WHY are they covering this, and not something else including stories of oppression that would blow peoples' minds, on scale and brutality, committed by our Corporate Rulers?

[phasma ex machina]

5. +1 Your take seems right on the money. Thanks!

[BlueToTheBone]

6. Thanks for taking it from the gallows humor and into the context of

what is happening.

[Auggie]

7. Recommend this Post

Thanks, Peace Patriot

[a simple pattern]

9. I recced the OP because of your post.

Wish there was a free press.

[Doremus]

12. Another rec for this post.

[StarsInHerHair]

13. what you said is true-what are the conditions on the non-organic farms? who works the fields

on the biggest, most successful farms & what are their working conditions?

[joshcryer]

20. Do the non-organic farmers have to hand sift weeds from the fields?

[StarsInHerHair]

22. organic costs more & is here illegally using unfair labor practices, so the label is a fraud

I would like to know the working conditions-the baseline on other non-organic farms, to be able to compare conditions. There should be inspectors on these organic farms to stop child labor.

[joshcryer]

23. I think he's exploiting kids and using their free labor and calling it "organic."

Yeah, sure, you are stealing a kids labor and don't have to use pesticides, so why not, right?

I'm sure this is not the first place it's happened and it won't be the last.

[StarsInHerHair]

24. I agree, & without quality controls labels become meaningless.

[midnight]

14. Interesting...

[joshcryer]

21. What's more interesting is Cam Simpson (the author) and his journalistic history.

The guy is a hero: http://www.kellyaward.com/mk_award_popup/simpson_c.html

And he's being slighted as some "corporate press" stooge.

[joshcryer]

19. I agree, the article does appear to place organic cotton highly while ignoring...

...the working conditions of the children there.

Feel good consumerism, if it's organic, it must be good!

[tawadi]

8. I hate to think about how many of our 'cheap' goods produced in underdeveloped countries..

are made with the blood and sacrifice of children. Have you ever wondered why Christmas ornaments, painted in China, often look as if they were painted by a 4 year old?

[closeupready]

10. People don't seem to get angry much about modern slavery. Or they do, but

they just kind of shrug, as if they can do nothing about it - or perhaps they think it's "not really slavery" but something else. Very sad. This story will go nowhere.

[JNelson6563]

11. Why do I suspect Gingrich had to read this with one hand?

[BeHereNow]

15. I HATE that company for what they do to young women.

The images in their advertising are SICK.
Wonder how many cases of anorexia are affected /made worse by the crap
that corporation peddles.
Doesn't surprise me at all that they use child labor.
They don't care about people, just profits.

BHN

[seabeyond]

16. i use to love buying my stuff from VS. it was advertised to women, empowering womens sexuality in

fun. then, 90's they shifted to handing womens sexuality to men and it becoming male ownership, instead of women. turn the man on and have him want his wife to be one of the runways....

i stopped buying their product. i use to be able to hold them up as a company that was for/pro women. not anymore.

[BeHereNow]

17. I wont step foot in a mall if I can help it...

and certainly not in a VS store.
I hate most bras and underwear in general.
If I have to buy a new bra, I like to go to
Nordstroms. They have sensible and well made bras
that are comfortable and the staff always helps me find a good fit-
VS bras feel like torture devices to me, and customer assistance
in finding a bra is non existent in VS.

Fortunately, Nordstroms merchandise lasts a long time, so I don't
have to buy one very often because I HATE
shopping, period.

BHN

[Politicalboi]

18. Old Newt would be proud

See this girl knows what it's like to make a living.

[joshcryer]

25. Kick.

If only so people can see the aplogea for tyranny.

[lonestarnot]

26. Disgusting fuckers! Newt's latrine duty is the gateway duty.