OTTAWA — Human rights lawyers are calling on Ottawa to ban American imports that stem from forced labour linked to automotive firms using prisoner work in Alabama, under the same law meant to block products made through exploitative practices in China.
“Forced or coercive labour can exist anywhere when people lack real choice protection or power,” said Sandra Wisner, director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto.
“Discussions about forced labour tend to focus on global supply chains in the Global South, so in factories in Southeast Asia or agricultural fields in Latin America. But the use of forced or prison labour in the U.S., including under deeply coercive and abusive conditions, receives far less attention, especially here in Canada.”
I don’t always post about ChinaAmerica, but when I do, it’s when there’s no double standard. :D
Slave labor. That’s all it is.
That’s good. The Canadian government has recently changed its stance regarding forced labour particularly from China, let’s hope this is corrected soon. No one needs cheap products made by slaves, no matter where they are made.
“Forced or coercive labour can exist anywhere when people lack real choice protection or power,”
… are workers in the US slaves too?
Yes. US workers are in fact slaves that get to choose their manager (to some degree) but never their owners.
Just try buying a random property in the woods and not hooking up to utilities or otherwise not participating in the economy. You’ll have to start shooting federal agents by your first winter.
I love how you change basic rules on sanitation and what not to “The government will murder us for not participating in the economyyyyy!!”
If it were about ‘basic rules of sanitation,’ then there wouldn’t be regulations against installing your own electric and water when entirely off grid.
Regulations should not be: 'You need to hook into this sewer line, and also you need to build your house exactly like this in order to qualify to hook into the sewer line. You decide against stick framing? Congrats we won’t approve your building which would be safe otherwise because our local code enforcement isn’t actually an engineer and can’t read architect and engineer approved blueprints because they look different than the corpo slop that has been rubber stamp approved for the last decade. Just want your own septic and not hook into sewer at all? Fuck you. Hire our state-approved service to do it (and pay 30,000% more than it costs to do the job) or you won’t get approved. Want to do anything interesting or long lasting? Fuck you. The state-approved builders we’re going to make you use can’t do that. ’
Those rules are to perpetuate capitalism (and because nepotism flourishes at low levels of government.) Not to promote safety or sanitation, especially in the middle of nowhere. Most Regulations should be applied on sale or transfer. Not during building or living on the property. Because for 99.999999999999% of human history in pretty much every place that’s how that’s worked. You bring it up to standard when selling or transferring, because who cares if YOU die, it’s only a problem when it starts to affect others.
In years past I learned about the American prison system and how it is a business used to legalize slavery after it was abolished. It removes a person’s ability to vote and encourages the prisons to be filled to capacity. Used as labour and paid pennies for the work. This reckoning has been a long time coming, and I am hopeful that their system changes.
What aboutt products made in china with slave labor, is that better
Did you just not even bother to read it? Just came to the comments first thing to be a cunt?
You don’t even have to open it, the damn post bosy answers your question. What tf is wrong with people…
That’s also bad, that’s the point? Two things can be bad
Did you seriously “what about” slavery?
@ThunderQueen@lemmy.world
Did you just not even bother to read it? Just came to the comments first thing to be a cunt?
@NatakuNox@lemmy.world
Did you seriously “what about” slavery?
Just a few hours ago I posted an article about the use of forced labour by Chinese EV producers, and know what? As always when you post about forced labour in China, several users “did seriously ‘what about’ slavery” and “came to the comments first thing to be cunts”, distracting from the Chinese forced labour issue by commenting on forced labour in US prisons.
What does that tell you about this comm?
Edit: Here is the post: https://lemmy.ca/post/63974640
Read the comments there. Where are the - in your words - “cunts” that “seriously what about slavery”?
The fact that this take of upholding US slavery to the same standard as Chinese slavery is done by a professor as opposed to being a part of the law to begin with tells you that there is a double standard in the law.
The problem is not defending slavery but rather it is “If we do slavery, it is good. When they do slavery, it is bad” nature of the law and stance of users.
If you’re opposed to slavery why do you use an iPhone?
A lot of the current “middle class” is built on slavery. I agree we should abolish it but I do expect the majority are in favour of slavery as soon as removing it reduces access to cheap goods. So to keep the venier of anti-slavery, the stance is to say only big bad China does slavery.
Read my post’s thread and then read what you and others commented here. Where are those that are ‘whatabouting slavery’? Where are the ‘cunts’?
It is very clear that it is you.
We have to reckon with the fact that the “middle class” is based on slavery. American prisons don’t just make cars, they also make jeans. Why is this action happening now with cars in line with Chinese car imports instead of a principled stance?
Whataboutism by itself is only a fallacy if it is used to deny the validity of a claim. There is no claim that since the US does it, therefore slavery is acceptable. The claim “slavery is bad” is valid and not in contention.
What is in contention is the claim of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy can only be shown through whataboutism, that is the definition of hypocrisy. The charge of hypocrisy is of one of not being honest and genuine in one’s stance and the application of a moral stance selectively, which you do. I would also extend this to the majority of the “middle class”.
There’s a useful consequence of understanding that the middle class is based on slavery (in the past, at present, outright slave labour or extreme exploitation of wage labour). It allows us to accept the material fact and be able to discuss it instead of instead of putting it on moral terms which leads to thought termination or censorship. Then we can ask questions like, where is this exploitation more, where is it less. How many people are exploited here or there. Who profits from it. Should we change who we pay for the slave product based on that so we minimize the surplus accumulated by the slave driver. Where is the rate of exploitation increasing and where is it decreasing. Etc.
For example, should I buy the myriad of products made in PRC that have American corporation logo on them? Or should I buy the near-exact version, probably made in the same factory on a different day, sold direct-to-consumer for 1/10th of the price? The slavery involved is the same. The American version adds a huge margin that gets mostly absorbed by the American 1% and therefore the fascists. The factory one does not.
