Author Topic: Baghdad  (Read 2542 times)

Offline oldspice

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« Reply #15 on: February 06, 2008, 08:46:24 pm »
I agree but we have to make it possible for people to help themselves. Often, countries need resources or expertise rather than money. They also need to be able to compete fairly on the world's markets.
 

As an example, many years ago, I worked as a Produce Manager and we started to import very up-market products such as specialist melons, mangoes, courgettes, aubergines and some exotic fruits from Eithopia. These products were of superb qaulity, despite being flown half-way around the world. They fetched a premium price. And yet, at the same time, thousands and thousands of people in that country were starving. The state had to choose between feeding its own people, or selling exotic products to the West. They needed the export markets to boost the economy. It made me slightly sick that people were gorging themselves on products grown in a country where people were starving.

 

In a similar way, the production of chocolate for the Western markets relies on cheap labour in South America and in Malaysia. In many cases, women and quite young children are employed for long hours, picking beans, often suffering effects from the pesticides that are used.  These people are very poor.  Here in the West, we get our chocolate dirt cheap because of this cheap labour.  A poor mother here, wishing to treat her children, has two choices. Buy Fairtrade chocolate, which is more expensive but helps to avoid the exploitation previously described, or buy cheaper chocolate, thus indirectly contributing to the continued almost enslavement and poverty of poor families on the other side of the globe. It's completely immoral.

 
Old but spicey!

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« Reply #16 on: February 06, 2008, 08:56:49 pm »
So is Nestle's interpretation of chocolate in the UK.




 

 

Err...I'll get my coat.

Offline MayRae

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« Reply #17 on: February 06, 2008, 11:25:40 pm »
A poor mother here will surely have the same choices as a poor mother anywhere.
She will choose to do the best that she can possibly afford for her children, whilst wishing she could afford the luxury of worrying about the children of other poor mothers elsewhere.

 

Offline oldspice

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« Reply #18 on: February 07, 2008, 07:10:39 am »
Yes, and that's the point I'm trying to make. The poor are often forced to keep other people poor by the choices they have to make.  It's ironic that a choice made by a poor mother in one country can unwittingly uphold the poverty of a mother far away somewhere.  Many goods we enjoy in this country are far too cheap, they don't reflect the true cost of production and are cheap because someone else somewhere is underpaid.  I give up. It's too tiring.
Old but spicey!

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« Reply #19 on: February 07, 2008, 05:13:59 pm »
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7230959.stm

It doesn't just happen in poor countries.
I wouldn't touch one.