In this mailing:
- Gordon G. Chang: Nike, Other Global Brands, Complicit in China Slave Labor
- Lawrence A. Franklin: Iran: The Real Bounty Payer for Killing US Troops
by Gordon G. Chang • July 21, 2020 at 5:00 am
In March, the non-partisan Australian Strategic Policy Institute, in a report titled "Uyghurs for Sale," accused Beijing of forcing more than 80,000 Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities to produce products for Nike and 82 other brands.
The report's accusations against Nike are damning. "A factory in eastern China that manufacturers shoes for U.S. company Nike is equipped with watchtowers, barbed-wire fences, and police guard boxes," it noted.... There, people have been kept against their will in inhumane conditions. This facility, a Nike supplier for more than three decades, produces approximately eight million pairs of shoes each year.
U.S. law provides that products made with forced labor can be seized, but those made in horrific conditions in China and elsewhere routinely are cleared through Customs and end up on the shelves of American retailers.
How can Nike shoes made in a factory surrounded by walls, barbed-wire and watch towers, and where the workers, many from a racial minority, are not allowed to leave, not be made with "forced labor"? Pictured: Nike's flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)
"Slave labor."
That is the term U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used on July 16 when speaking about China to television anchor Bill Hemmer on his Fox News show.
The polite phrase is "forced labor." America's top diplomat, however, was dropping the diplomacy and employing America's most powerful weapon: Unvarnished truth.
The unvarnished — and horrific — truth is that the Chinese party-state has institutionalized slavery, ramped it up to industrial scale, and offered slaves to foreign companies. Moreover, compounding its crime, China picks its slaves from racial minority groups inside its borders.
by Lawrence A. Franklin • July 21, 2020 at 4:00 am
Some U.S. media and politicians have been expressing their indignation of late over Russia's alleged offers of bounty money to the Taliban for every American soldier it kills in Afghanistan.... These same journalists and political figures, however, never raise a similar accusation against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been offering the Taliban bounty money to kill American servicemen for years.
One of Iran's motivations in extending help to its erstwhile enemy, the Taliban, is probably to foil any U.S. effort to exercise influence in Afghanistan.
Iran also may be hoping to frustrate progress in armistice talks between U.S. and Taliban representatives currently being conducted in Qatar. Iran might wish to maintain its own historical influence in the Afghan provinces adjacent to Iran. Iran seems to have allied itself with those Taliban cells opposed to the talks and has hosted these radical Taliban groups in its eastern provinces bordering Afghanistan.
The real issue here is why the U.S. media, journalists, and politicians remain silent about it.
Iran's bounty program for killing U.S. troops began as early as 2010. In one instance, a report indicated that a Taliban messenger was dispatched from Kabul to Iran to pick up $18,000 to be distributed to Taliban cells in Wardak Province, Afghanistan. Pictured: US soldiers arrives at the site of a car bomb attack that targeted a NATO coalition convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan on September 24, 2017. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)
Some U.S. media and politicians have been expressing their indignation of late over Russia's alleged offers of bounty money to the Taliban for every American soldier it kills in Afghanistan. This unsubstantiated story is then expanded to include an insinuation that the Trump Administration has failed to take action against Russia.
These same journalists and political figures, however, never raise a similar accusation against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been offering the Taliban bounty money to kill American servicemen for years.
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