• Osborn shoes offers one vegan style for guys with cotton uppers and rubber soles. They are fair trade, small-scale, and pretty freakin’ cool. I wish all their soles were rubber!
• Treehugger recently published a list of 7 unethical companies with the most abusive labor conditions. Who made the list?
- 1. H&M: sweatshop fire recently killed 21, organic cotton fraud, trashing unsold clothing.
- 2. Abercrombie & Fitch: sweatshops in Saipan, exploitative worker contracts, zero-transparency according to Corporate Responsibility, ILRF’s Hall of Shame
- 3. The Gap (Old Navy & Banana Republic): New Delhi child labor, Saipan sweatshops labeled as “Made in USA”, Forced abortions on female factory workers.
- 4. Nike: Human trafficking and indentured slavery, anti-union policies, sweatshops and unpaid workers.
- 5. Limited Brands (Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works, Express and The Limited): Jordanian sweatshops, human trafficking & slave labor.
- 6. Phillips-Van Heusen (Calvin Klein): violent sweatshops, forced labor in Saipan.
- 7. Wal-Mart: criminal labor practices, sweatshops.
• A New York Times article today reports on the grossly underestimated amount of oil gushing into the Gulf. “A government panel on Thursday essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been spewing from the out-of-control BP well, with the new calculation suggesting that an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days. The new estimate is 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day. That range, still preliminary, is far above the previous estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.”
• The New York Times Magazine, this week, has a heart-wrenching and though-provoking feature article on a phenomenon many psychologists, criminologists, prosecutors, veterinarians, and law enforcement professionals have suspected for a very long time: cruelty towards animals is directly connected to violence towards other people. “… a growing sensitivity to the rights of animals, another significant reason for the increased attention to animal cruelty is a mounting body of evidence about the link between such acts and serious crimes of more narrowly human concern, including illegal firearms possession, drug trafficking, gambling, spousal and child abuse, rape and homicide.”
