Bangladesh building collapses in Dhaka - 100 + dead

[mellenORL]

Yet another tragedy unfolding. Because of exchange rates, your dollar, pound or euro goes very far indeed in helping the injured factory workers. I wish they would force the factory owner to dig through that rubble with his bare hands. Nobody was supposed to be in there after the building inspector's order Tuesday.

http://www.bdrcs.org/

Site is busy, and online donation pathway for this specific disaster not set up yet. Below is info for bank wire transfers. The numbers can be verified as legitimate by your bank branch manager if you want to ACH a donation today, but there will be a fee for sending an ACH - so, only worth the trouble if you want to send a 50 dollar equivalent or more donation. Otherwise, I guess just wait until the site gets it set up for online payment.

Bangladesh Red Crescent Society
 A/C No. 01-1336274-01
 Standard Chartered Bank
 Dhaka Bangladesh
 SWIFT Code: SCBLBDDX


http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/24/17890506-almost-100-dead-after-building-with-2000-people-inside-collapses-in-bangladesh?lite

[ThunderWulf]

Just goes to show with this after the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas that negligence is a universal language unfortunately.

[mellenORL]

Randian capitalism taken through to it's inevitable extreme. Humanity just =/= humane.

[KZN02]

I was really hoping bad news would stop at last week, but ...

[mellenORL]

Here it is, 16 days later, the death toll ten times that of the original reports. I looked through a photoblog on Bangladeshi garment factory disasters over the last decade, just one tragedy after another. Then I dared to read the comments, which were not as horridly stupid as usual for an MSN article. Below is a copy paste of one I thought out standing in it's "typical ordinary person outraged by it all" tone. Well said and heartfelt. In the EU, agencies and pols and journalists are focusing pressure on the clothing importers and retailers. Same needs to happen here in the US, now.
http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/09/18108815-ever-present-danger-looms-for-bangladeshi-workers?lite

yomama1971




The cost of cheap clothing? How about the expensive stuff?

For budget reasons, as a young mom-to-be, I never shopped the likes of Lord & Taylor, etc. My good ol' grandma, rest her soul, took me into L&T for a 'treat shop' just before the birth of my first son. She cited higher prices, but better quality and made in USA, for the most part.

Guess what? We were taken aback! The EXACT same sh*t on the racks as at WM--'made in Korea', made in Pakistan', and, yes, 'made in Bangladesh'...We read tags for nearly an hour in the baby section and found NOT ONE made-in-USA garment!!!

So, does it solve the problem for us westerners to stop buying $10 jeans at WM, and start buying the SAME crap at L&T for $70? No.

Maybe be we should stop buying clothes altogether, and make our own...now, where's that fabric manufactured...retailers want to keep THAT as cheap as possible, too...

Or maybe, we should move all the jobs back home, and FORCE everyone, REGARDLESS of income, to buy 4 or 5 pairs of $70 jeans (IF they could be kept down to $70 a pair being manufactured here...) a season PER CHILD for their schoolkids who outgrow and outblow them in the course of a couple months? PERFECT solution...IF your income is in the top 5 or 10%...

Or maybe, just MAYBE (until the ridiculousness of out-of-control, artificial inflation puts on the brakes and starts making living on and working for a little less a bit easier here in the good ol' US--ha ha) we should let companies hire whom they will to make the clothes they sell...but hold THEM accountable 100% for tragedies such as these.

The US companies, middleguys, and the Bangladeshi building owners should all sit shoulder-to-shoulder on trial.

Let's face it--laws over there won't protect these workers. Not really our issue (though we'd love things to be different). But when US companies sign on to do business with them, those factories BECOME a part of their company--a 'Bangladesh branch'. They are then culpable if things are not run safely there.

They're just as accountable as McD's for their bad eggs and horsemeat hamburgers. They didn't produce these things firsthand, but they signed an AGREEMENT to buy from the guys who did. It is then up to McD's to fix things. Just like it's up to the US co's that buy clothes from countries that don't protect their workers to make sure things are run safely and smoothly. I mean, if all the garments from a factory were shipped over here with gaping holes in them, that business relationship would be history.

Same should go if there are gaping holes in worker safety. These are real, hard-working folk, after all, just like us, with families, friends, loves, and lives that they deserve to live.

I mean, holey garments put up for sale would ruin a US co's rep...but what do you think something like this is gonna do?

Maybe, instead of another trip to Cancun, France, or Hawaii, the CEO's of these US co's should book an annual trip to wherever it is that they get their clothing from...then demand changes if they see that they are needed...and switch suppliers if they are not carried out. Stamped paperwork never really certifies ANYTHING--seeing IS believing.

I mean, these fat-cat top .1%'ers probably LOVE it when the blame shifts to the US population for buying cheaply-manufactured clothes...but they don't stop selling them, do they...at $10 or $70?

We should train our beams onto the ones behind all this in the first place...the ones with the REAL buying power...and the means to get up-close-and-personal with the clowns who own these unsafe factories.

When a multimillion-dollar contract's on the line, 'shape up or ship out' takes on a WHOLE new meaning...

[ironbite]

...that's...that's ....

Trihorn-well thanks, you broke his CPU.

[kefkaownsall]

This will actually cause Islamic terrorism. Think about it those 1000 people had lovers etc. 

[ironbite]

...what?  No seriously explain how this will cause a wave of Taliban/Al Qaeda style bombings Kef.

Ironbite-I really want to know how you got to that conclusion.

[mellenORL]

I think these bereaved and raging young men would very much like a chat with all of the following: the factory owners, the corrupt officials, the retail buying agents who push such penny pinching contracts. That would not be terrorism, though. Al Qaeda might very well cite these virtual death camp garment factories as justification for future acts of terrorism. As much as I loathe terrorists, still I believe that all that rage and hatred of the West does not come out of a vacuum, and it really shouldn't surprise us that this is one of the prices we pay for allowing the unscrupulous exploitation of poor people in the developing world. That blind eye we turn to these peoples' suffering in the name of profit has caused more people to become radicalized Islamo-zealot militants than any propaganda put out by the terror organizations.

[kefkaownsall]

this basically

[wyvern999]

The cost of cheap clothes.

(click to show/hide)

This picture of a couple cuddled together in their last moments, illustrates the full human tragedy of the Dhaka factory disaster.

Photographer Taslima Akhter captured the image of the so-far ­unidentified pair in the rubble of the collapsed building.

Taslima, who was working alongside rescue teams in Bangladesh, said: “When I saw them, I felt I knew them.

"They felt very close to me. It’s as if they’re saying, ‘We are not a number – not only cheap labour and cheap lives. We are human beings like you’.

“Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me.”

Student Taslima hopes her harrowing image will aid her campaign to improve working conditions in her native city.

Yesterday 94 more bodies were found as the death toll hit 950 and another 2,500 were injured.[/quote]


Thanks to the Daily Mirror.

[Sleepy]

Someone spoiler that, please. Seriously fucking disturbing.

[Søren]

Edited your post. It was a bit much

[wyvern999]

Edited your post. It was a bit much

It was meant to be. It was in a national newspaper here and it was a lot bigger. They should make it into a poster and put it opposite every stockmarket on the planet so everyoe knows the real price of capitalism and who's paying it.

[Witchyjoshy]

Edited your post. It was a bit much

It was meant to be. It was in a national newspaper here and it was a lot bigger. They should make it into a poster and put it opposite every stockmarket on the planet so everyoe knows the real price of capitalism and who's paying it.

Because using shock tricks makes us so much better than the anti-choicers with their images of dead fetuses everywhere, doesn't it?