76 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
76 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 8 Num. 44
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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JIM HIGHTOWER -- 07/11/96
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=========================
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They say if you lay down with dogs, you'll wake up with fleas.
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Meet Phillip Knight, the flea-ridden chief executive of Nike,
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Inc. "Just do it!" exclaims the advertising slogan of his
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company. And Mr. Knight has been "doing it" big-time, to working
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people all over the earth. Mr. Knight is a "bazillionaire" shoe
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salesman with more than $5 billion in personal wealth. He got
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all this by peddling sneakers at up to 175 bucks a pop. Boy,
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those must be some sneakers, huh?! Probably made by master
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craftsmen, paid a premium for their art.
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Hardly. Phillip Knight is always scanning the world, looking for
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the cheapest contractors he can find: whichever dirty dog will
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pay the most miserly, miserable wage to the workers who actually
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make his shoes, and his fortune.
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In recent years, "Mr. Phil" has centered Nike's production in
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Indonesia, a repressive military dictatorship that encourages
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exploiters like him to move their factories and jobs there, where
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impoverished young women can be hired dirt cheap. These women
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get just over 2 bucks a day to make your high-dollar high-tops, a
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poverty wage even in this poverty-stricken country.
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But wait! Like the money-grubbing hound he is, Phil has sniffed
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out an even better deal: Vietnam! Yes, our country's former
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enemy is now the friend of American corporations, allowing
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executives like Knight to get their products made at slave wages.
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"Hold it," says Nike. "We pay those workers 331,000 Vietnamese
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dollars a month."
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True. But Bob Herbert, the award-winning New York Times
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columnist, dared to ask, "How much is that in American?"
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"I don't know," said the Nike man.
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But Herbert figured it out on his own. It's about a
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buck-and-a-quarter a day.
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This is Jim Hightower saying: Remember the name Phillip Knight.
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He's what they had in mind when they coined the term, "filthy
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rich."
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-----------------------------------------------------------------
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I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
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If you would like "Conspiracy Nation" sent to your e-mail
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address, send a message in the form "subscribe cn-l My Name" to
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listproc@cornell.edu (Note: that is "CN-L" *not* "CN-1")
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For information on how to receive the improved Conspiracy
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Nation Newsletter, send an e-mail message to bigred@shout.net
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-----------------------------------------------------------------
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Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc?
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(1) telnet prairienet.org (2) logon as "visitor" (3) go citcom
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See also: http://www.europa.com/~johnlf/cn.html
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See also: ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
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Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
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pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
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