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	October 10, 2004

WORLD'S ON FIRE, AND WORD FROM BAGHDAD Instead of spending a budgeted $150,000 for a video for her song World's on Fire, Canadian singer-songwriter and Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan made the video on a shoestring and donated the budget to humanitarian projects that will make life better for thousands of people in 20 different countries around the world. Here's the video, and here's the list of projects. Brava! And speaking of worlds on fire, if you haven't already read Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassini's e-mail From Baghdad, you owe yourself to read it now. This article, coming from a writer for the hawkish WSJ, will dispel any illusions you might have that: Iraq is safe enough for people to venture outdoors, let alone carry on with their lives Average Iraqis want US troops to stick around The US and its selected Iraqi government successors are 'in control' in Iraq The crisis in the country isn't quickly disintegrating into civil war Any significant progress has been made in rebuilding the hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure inflicted by Bush's 'liberation' Average Iraqis are grateful for the US intervention There is any real hope for an orderly transition of power from US troops to an Iraqi security, military and police force Sufficient oil flow will resume in the foseeable future to help start paying for the rebuilding of the Iraqi state, or to lessen the growing shortage of oil reserves and soaring cost of oil There is any hope whatsoever for free and fair elections 90 days from now as scheduled, when the most influential power blocs in the country are either banned from or boycotting the election, and when potential voters know that voting means risking your life Thanks to Dynamic Doug and Mousemusings for the link to Sarah's video.. 12:29:43 PM  trackback []  comment []

UNSAFE IN ANY COUNTRY Consumer Reports, in an investigation available only to subscribers, describes the Bush administration's evisceration of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the organization instituted to protect consumers from unsafe products from unscrupulous and negligent corporations. As part of the Bush agenda to deregulate all restrictions whatsoever on their big corporate friends, and hamstring consumers and citizens from fighting back, the budget of the CPSC has been held at $18 million per year, less than half what it was in the 1970s when it was formed. Not only has its budget and manpower been slashed (they now have only 470 staff responsible for inspecting 22,000 lines of products), but its authority has also been reduced, and the amount of assistance it gets from customs officials in detecting and reporting hazardous imports and exports has also been slashed. All it can do now is negotiate with suppliers of hazardous products, relying on them to voluntarily stop selling and recall such products. 'Self-enforcement', which, like similar Bush administration schemes really means 'no enforcement', is now the standard for hazardous products. Their manpower is only sufficient to check a tiny fraction of goods produced and imported. Not surprisingly, the quantity of dangerous and hazardous goods on the market, being reported to Consumer Reports and other agencies by outraged consumers, mostly crap manufactured in China and other third world countries and mostly sold in discount stores, is skyrocketing. What's worse, even when especially shoddy and dangerous goods are 'voluntarily' recalled for fear of litigation in the US resulting from user injury and death, this crap is simply resold, completely legally, to unsuspecting third world countries that have no consumer regulations or protections.  And the CPSC also lacks transparency, says CR, with no public disclosure of over 11,000 recent citations of products for various safety violations, which, because the standards are voluntary, the cited companies are free to ignore. Some examples from CR's lengthy litany: One third of all products they bought from discount outlets for investigation violated mandatory or voluntary safety standards. Many of the toys sold in such outlets posed a choking hazard to small children, and/or sharp edges that could cut children. Some products contained dangerous amounts of lead. Some cheap batteries were leaking acid. Counterfeit brands and falsified UL and other certifications are now a "mammoth illegal industry" according to an international anti-counterfeiting coalition. Millions of dangerous and recalled products remain in consumers' homes, due to lax enforcement and consumer notification processes. The number of unsafe toys on the market has doubled in the last decade. Many of the products sold in 'party stores' and Wal-Mart, including products for children's parties, are extremely flammable, but as long as they are labelled "extremely flammable" and "use only with adult supervision" their sale is completely legal. Half a billion disposable lighters are imported into the US each year, all of them subject only to voluntary standards, which are routinely ignored by Asian manufacturers. They're illegal in Canada and Mexico, but the CPSC, citing only a few deaths and a few dozen fires and injuries directly attributed to these lighters, refuses to institute a similar ban in the US. Many defective products do not identify the manufacturer or product origin. One manufacturer, TGH International, was censured 16 times over eight years by CPSC for serious violations of mandatory regulations covering 111,000 toys it manufactured or distributed, but was never fined. Due to a cap on fines imposed by Congress, fines are not a deterrent. The largest fine was $750,000 against Wal-Mart for repeatedly failing to warn customers of known safety hazards of fitness equipment it sold, a fine amounting to 90 seconds' worth of Wal-Mart revenues. Re-exports to third-world countries of dangerous products deemed too risky to sell in the US due to product-liability lawsuits included: A million dangerous extension cords, 250,000 defective Christmas lights, 175,000 bunk beds that have repeatedly collapsed, a million 'Zapper' balloon toys with a demonstrated asphyxiation hazard, 7,500 flammable scarves, 1,000 flammable children's bathrobes, 32,000 BCBG brand flammable sweaters, 1,000 banned cigarette lighter-switchblade combos, and tens of thousands of children's toys with parts that would choke small children. This epidemic of corporate negligence, which poses a direct threat to the health and safety of consumers and citizens worldwide, is a perfect illustration of what happens when the corporatist mantra of profit at any cost is unchecked. This is why we need government regulation, and why "deregulation" is not, as the corporatists would have you believe, the removal of red tape, but is in fact the removal of protections of public health and safety, and the removal of standards of ethical conduct. The re-export of known dangerous products, especially for children, to third world countries is heinous and contemptible behaviour. We should be ashamed that our governments openly condone it. Another legacy of untrammelled 'free' trade, and the lack of checks on greedy, disgraceful corporatist conduct. The warning in the illustration above is from an actual product label. 12:28:06 PM  trackback []  comment []

© Copyright 2004 Dave Pollard. Last update: 01/11/2004; 5:32:17 PM.