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.
> . . .