Really, Wat!  Well I suppose that 150 years ago, you would have been
calling the Emancipation Proclamation "protectionist," and you would
have scoffed at the Christian yankees who actually undertook a boycott
of Southern textiles because they were made with slave labor.  You would
have worn your slave-picked cotton shirt with the same vaccuous pride
you now sport your tennis shoes with open diregard of their possible
provenance by the forced labor of political prisoners.  You're a true
globalist, Wat.  And would do you now wish to assert, on top of all
that,  that Professor Chomsky agrees with your position?

Peace,
Ken Freeland

-----Original Message-----
From: The philosophy, work & influences of Noam Chomsky
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Wat Tyler
Sent: Sunday, March 19, 2000 7:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CHOMSKY] Prison Labour and Human Rights in . . . .


These issues need to be separated into labor, human rights and political
topics. It seems to serve the purpose of cetain spammers to the list to
confuse them. Really, if I thought unravelling fallacious logic was a
worthwhile endeavor I might look at Rush Limbaugh's audience which seems
to
need a daily emotional reinforcement of outrage.

It seems to me that if the scenarios about slave labor and Morally
Repugnant Elites as presented here were correct then Bangledesh, India,
Pakistan and others would be rich countries. The US would still be
selling
cotton to Britain at English pleasure. If protectionism were viable then
the Japanese consumer forced to pay artifically high prices for domestic
production would be doing well rather than badly. The confusion of these
issues results in the nationalistic alliance of rightwing business and
'leftwing labor' interests. This is a hollowing out of a viable left
which
leaves it ripe for plucking. Nothing new in that.

We could discuss slave labor and the US Cival War along with WWII. I am
not
ready to go to war against a billion Chinese for 'humanitarian' reasons.
In
the aggregate, slave labor just doesn't work.  Nor will I stop buying
shoes
of Chinese manufacture lest the prisoners become sources for harvested
eyeballs and livers in replacement of their labor value.

Ken Freeland wrote:
>Dan,
>
>Thanks for forwarding this excellent summary article.  But actually, it
>only underscores the point I was making about the Chinese exploitation
>of prison labor, and the inevitable result of its emulation here, given
>capitalism.  Really, this is only common sense.
> . . .