3 days ago
Timbuk2 tried to recycle and reuse plastic shopping bags that were otherwise headed to a landfill but Target sent a cease and desist order.

Timbuk2 tried to recycle and reuse plastic shopping bags that were otherwise headed to a landfill but Target sent a cease and desist order.

1 week ago
2 weeks ago
1 month ago
 
“Pollution in China”. Wuhai City, Inner Mongolia.  April 10, 2005. Workers in the factories have no immunity defenses. They get ill after one or two years on the job. Photo by Lu Guang / Finalist World Understanding Award.

“Pollution in China”. Wuhai City, Inner Mongolia.  April 10, 2005. Workers in the factories have no immunity defenses. They get ill after one or two years on the job. Photo by Lu Guang / Finalist World Understanding Award.

1 month ago

It is labor revolt by text message and video upload, underwritten by the Chinese government.

The 1,700 workers who went on strike at the Honda Lock auto parts factory here are mostly poor migrants with middle-school educations.

But they are surprisingly tech-savvy.

Hours into a strike that began last week, they started posting detailed accounts of the walkout online, spreading word not only among themselves but also to restive and striking workers elsewhere in China.

They fired off cellphone text messages urging colleagues to resist pressure from factory bosses. They logged onto a state-controlled Web site — workercn.cn — that is emerging as a digital hub of the Chinese labor movement. And armed with desktop computers, they uploaded video of Honda Lock’s security guards roughing up employees.

Cite Arrow

In China, a Labor Movement Aided by Modern Technology - NYTimes.com

Can you believe there are labor strikes going on in China?

… And the times they are a changin’…

(via tedr) (via mikehudack)

1 month ago

His daughter tried to comfort him. “Father, I will keep this pair of pants until I die!” she pledged. He told her the cutting board would be her wedding gift.

“At that moment, I really wanted to kill myself,” he said. He gestured toward the safe-house window and beyond toward nighttime Yanji, brightly lighted and humming with traffic. “It is not like here,” he said. “Here, it is not a big deal to make money. There, it is suffering and suffering; sacrificing and sacrificing.”

He said he lay awake night after night afterward, fixated on the navy track suit his daughter had coveted. She had said it put her thick winter sweater and plain trousers to shame. He had put her off because the cheapest ones were nearly $15. When she brought it up once too often, he had cursed and shouted, “People in this house need to eat first!”

“I cannot describe how terrible I feel that I didn’t buy that for her,” he said, his voice trembling.

Cite Arrow

The NY Times interviewed eight North Koreans who recently left their country about the increasingly dire conditions there. It seems impossible, but the November currency devaluation has made life worse for what was already essentially a country of slaves. (via kottke)

1 month ago

bbook: Apologies for laughing at all or most spoofs…

1 month ago
Nixon’s Nose by Xiaoda Xiao, June 2010

In Maoist China, a political prisoner feels his way through a Kafkaesque tableau of rumors, betrayal, interrogation, and execution.
When I was twenty years old, and a college student, I defaced a portrait of Chairman Mao. For this act, and without a trial, I was declared a political prisoner and sent to a forced labor prison on Taihu Lake, where I served in a labor reform brigade in a stone quarry for seven years: five years in the labor prison and two years as an ex-prisoner laborer. The tales in this book, transformed by memory, imagination, and time, are based on my experiences in this camp, and are not, I believe, unlike experiences suffered by millions of others who did not live to tell their tales. (read the entire article here)

Nixon’s Nose by Xiaoda Xiao, June 2010

In Maoist China, a political prisoner feels his way through a Kafkaesque tableau of rumors, betrayal, interrogation, and execution.

When I was twenty years old, and a college student, I defaced a portrait of Chairman Mao. For this act, and without a trial, I was declared a political prisoner and sent to a forced labor prison on Taihu Lake, where I served in a labor reform brigade in a stone quarry for seven years: five years in the labor prison and two years as an ex-prisoner laborer. The tales in this book, transformed by memory, imagination, and time, are based on my experiences in this camp, and are not, I believe, unlike experiences suffered by millions of others who did not live to tell their tales. (read the entire article here)

2 months ago 2 months ago
POST-WW2 TAIWAN MILITARY PATCH