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February
7, 2002
Tariq
Ali
Mullahs
and Heretics
February
6, 2002
Amira
Hass
On
the Edge of the
Non-Violent Demonstrations
Vivian
Berger
Sentenced
to Rape
Vladimir Georgiyev
Russian Intelligence:
War on Iraq Begins in Sept.
Tom Turnipseed
"Axis
of Evil" a Cover for Corporate Corruption?
David
Vest
The
Enron Creature
February
5, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Dispatch
from Pôrto Alegre
Tom Malinowski
What
to do with
Our "Detainees"?
Dita Sari
Why
I Rejected the
Reebok Human Rights Award
February
4, 2002
Eric Miller/Beth
Daley
Five
Weapons Systems
That Bilk the Taxpayers
Kenneth
Roth
Dear
Condoleezza,
You've Misstated the
Geneva Convention
Robert
Jensen
The
Occupation Must End
Shahid
Alam
How
Different Are
Islamic Societies?
David
Vest
Everybody
Says I Loathe You
John Chuckman
American
Politics of Grief
February
3, 2002
Zoltan
Grossman
War
and New Military Bases
February
2, 2002
Francis
Schor
Carlucci's
Strange Career
February
1, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
The
Great Ashcroft Cover Up
Jeremy
Voas
Why
We're Suing Ashcroft
David
Vest
10
Things I Know About Him
January
31, 2002
Rahul
Mahajan
The
State of the Union:
A New Cold War
Dave Marsh
Miles
Copeland, War
and the Future of Music
John Pilger
The
Colder War
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Killer Dog, Weird Couple
Dr. Susan
Block
Blowback
and Daniel Pearl
January
30, 2002
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Linda
Lay, Hill and Knowlton and the Tears of a Clown
Jack McCarthy
Free
Noelle Bush!
Michael
Ratner
Memo
to Bush: Adhere to
the Geneva Convention
Jay Moore
Proud
to be an American?
Susan
Block
The
Great Pretzel Swallower
and Guantanamo Porn
January
29, 2002
Gary Leupp
Why
This War Was, and Remains, Utterly Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Birds of Kandahar
Patrick
Cockburn
Afghan
Opium Trade
Back in Business
January
28, 2002
Larry
Chin
Brosnahan
for the Defense
Mokhiber/Weissman
Tyranny
of the Bottom Line
George
E. Curry
Civil
Rights Nominee Called Affirmative Action "Racist"
Sen. Russ
Feingold
Campaign
Finance Reform?
Think Enron
John Chuckman
Liberal?
Media?
January
27, 2002
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Enron's
Drip, Drip, Drip
Tom Turnipseed
MLK
Jr.'s Dream Perverted
January
26, 2002
Norman
Madarsz
Adieu,
Bourdieu
January
25, 2002
National
Lawyers Guild
Know
Your Rights
Alexander
Cockburn
You
Call This Terrorism?
CounterPunch
Wire
Cal
Energy Crisis Hoax:
It Wasn't A Shortage,
It Was a Shakedown
Tariq
Ali
Kashmir,
Klinghoffer,
the Kurds and Chomsky
Nadine
Strossen
Protecting
MLK Jr.'s Legacy:
Justice and Liberty After 9/11
January
24, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Turkey
Targets Chomsky
Dean Baker
Lying
on Top:
Ken Lay One of Many
David
Vest
Idiot
Wind
January
23, 2002
Terry
Waite
Guantanamo
Prisoners:
Justice or Revenge?
Molly
Secours
The
Case of Abu-Ali:
Racism and the Death Penalty
Robert
Jensen
Speak
Out, Get Slimed
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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This Explosive
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Reviews of Gore:
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February 6,
2002
Take This Prize and Shove it:
Dita Sari Says
No to Reebok
By Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St Clair
Right till the end of January, Dita Sari, an Indonesian
in her late twenties, was preparing to fly from her home near
Jakarta to Salt Lake City to bask February 7 in the admiration
of assorted do-gooders and celebrities mustered by the public
relations department of Reebok, for the thirteenth annual Human
Rights Awards, overseen by a board including Jimmy Carter and
Kerry Kennedy Cuomo. Reebok is a company that dukes it out each
year with Adidas and New Balance for second place, far behind
the Behemoth of the business, Nike, in the world of sports shoes
and apparel.
Make no mistake, the folk usually
somewhere between four  and
six getting these annual Reebok awards have all been fine
organizers and activists, committed to working for minorities,
the disenfranchised, the disabled, the underdogs in our wicked
world.
Dita Sari's plan was to accept the ticket
from Reebok, proceed to the podium in the Capitol Theater in
downtown Salt Lake where the world's winter athletes are now
assembled, and then, when offered the human rights award by either
Desmond Tutu or Robert Redford, reject it.
Now, this annual Reebok ceremony isn't
up there with the Nobels, or the genius grants from McArthur.
Despite Reebok's best efforts, it's definitely a second tier
event . Nonetheless it's paid off for Reebok. Says Jeff Ballinger,
a anti-sweatshop activist who's organized with shoe workers in
Indonesia the past 13 years, "With this kind of ceremony,
Reebok gets its name into respectable company. When they give
a prize to someone like Julie Su, a lawyer for immigrant workers
in California, people who wouldn't be seen dead in Nikes, are
impressed."
Dita Sari got picked by Reebok's judges
because she defied her government on the issue of independent
trade unions. In her own words: "In 1995, I was arrested
and tortured by the police, after leading a strike of 5,000 workers
of Indoshoes Inti Industry. They demanded an increase of their
wages (they were paid only US$1 for working 8 hours a day), and
maternity leave as well. This company operated in West Java,
and produced shoes of Reebok and Adidas."
She got out of prison in 1999. Since
then she's been building a union of workers in plants across
Java. It was there that she got a good look at Reebok's contractors,
the underbosses of all the apparel, footwear, computer, and toy
companies that contract out their work. These contractors run
their plants in a notoriously harsh manner, whether in China,
Indonesia, Guatemala or Mexico.
Reebok's flacks can brandish armloads
of studies, codes, monitoring reports, guidelines and kindred
matter all attesting to the company's dedication to the fair
treatment of anyone making consumer items with the name Reebok
printed on them. But nothing has really changed. "We've
created a cottage industry of monitors and inspectors and drafters
of codes," Ballinger says, "but all these workers ever
wanted was to sit down in dignity and negotiate with their bosses
and this has never happened."
Due in large part to the efforts of the
workers and western allies like Ballinger's Press for Change,
the daily wage in Indonesia actually went up over 300 per cent
between 1990 and 1997, at which point the Asian economic crisis
struck. Inflation wiped out all these gains. Workers' daily pay
is now half what it was before the crisis hit.
These were the points Dita Sari was going
to make when she got to Salt Lake City. Then she learned that
Reebok intended to schedule her and other recipients for some
public events before the actual award ceremony. Rather than let
Reebok benefit in any way from her presence Dita Sari pulled
the plug and at last word is in Jakarta trying to raise relief
money for workers left destitute by the worst flooding in decades.
She's sent the speech she was planning to give at the Awards
in Salt Lake City:
"I have taken this award into a
very deep consideration. We finally decide not to accept this.
On the one hand, this is a kind of recognition of the struggle
and the hard work that we have done for years. But on the other
hand, we are very conscious of the condition of the Reebok workers
from the third world countries, such as in Indonesia, Mexico,
China, Thailand, Brazil and Vietnam.
"In Indonesia, there are five Reebok
companies. 80% of the workers are women. All companies are sub-contracted,
often by the South Korean companies such as Dung Jo and Tong
Yang. Since the workers can only get around $1.5 a day, they
then have to live in a slum area, surrounded by poor and unhealthy
conditions, especially for their children. At the same time,
Reebok collected millions of dollars of profit every year, directly
contributed by these workers. The low pay and exploitation of
the workers of Indonesia, Mexico and Vietnam are the main reasons
why we will not accept this award."
But with its awards isn't Reebok at least
trying to do something decent? The way Dita Sari sees things,
the answer is that the attempt is a phony. All the awards in
the world, all the window dressing with Desmond Tutu, Carly Simon,
Sting, Robert Redford, doesn't alter the basic facts, that workers
in the third world are being paid at the absolute minimum to
make a very profitable product. According to Ballinger, the labor
cost of a $70 pair of sneakers made in China, Vietnam or Indonesia
is $1 or less.
Is there such a thing as a virtuous sneaker?
Ballinger cites Bata, a Toronto-based company that runs its own
factory in Jakarta. Its executives chose to sit down with the
union and work out a contract with significant improvements on
issues that workers care about greatly, such as seniority. Though
the margin has fallen recently, the wage scales are better than
minimum. Instances of bullying and intimidation of workers are
far fewer. Bata's shoes are sold only in Indonesia, for what
an Indonesian can afford, which somewhere from $7 to $10.
Ten years ago another courageous Indonesian,
Teten Masduki, was asked by the Levi Strauss company to broker
a clinic to be built near a contractor's factory. Teten, uncompromising
labor advocate that he is, refused even though the assignment
would have made him a local hero. His reason: a clinic wouldn't
give the workers what they need, a voice, the power to bargain.
Teten Masduki and Dita Sari see the world
clearly, a lot more clearly than the celebrities and activists
massed at such events as the one organized by Reebok in Salt
Lake City, a city already awash with Olympian bunkum about human
brotherhood. Dita Sari turned down $50,000 from Reebok and will
go on organizing against corporate exploitation and government
harassment. Teten Masduki turned down a fine position with Levi
Strauss. These days he's been responsible for chasing out a corrupt
attorney general from his post as head of Indonesia's Corruption
Watch. Do-gooders should study these fine examples and stiffen
their spines.
Click here
to read Dita Sari's statement on the Reebok award.
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