Global News Blog

Mars, as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA/AP/File)

Good Reads: Mars mission, gene patents, cellphone tracking, 'absurd' start-ups, Netflix streamlines

By Chris Gaylord, Staff writer / 05.01.13

Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp says he will establish a human colony on Mars within 10 years. The technology already exists, he says, but current missions have the wrong business model. Don’t copy space agencies, he says. Copy the Olympics. 

“The 2012 Olympics in London had revenues of $4 billion for an event that lasted only three weeks,” explains Casey Johnston of Ars Technica. Why? Because people wanted to tune in and see what humans are capable of. “[Mr.] Lansdorp stated that by the time the mission launches the settlers to Mars in 2023, four billion people will be connected to the Internet. Thus, a massive audience is equipped to watch the journey and see how the colonizers’ time on Mars unfolds.”

In other words, Lansdorp plans to fund a Mars colony by turning it into a reality TV show. His organization, Mars One, is accepting applications for the first wave of astronauts. Lansdorp plans for a second voyage to depart in 2025, just in time for Season 2.

Patents for human genes

The Supreme Court heard arguments in April over whether companies should be able to patent human genes. The biotechnology firm Myriad Genetics in Salt Lake City currently holds patents for BRCA1 and BRCA2, two human genes that doctors have linked to breast and ovarian cancer. Because of these patents, Myriad is the only company that may create tests to detect mutations in those genes.

The legal issue here comes down to how the court defines genes. If it decides that genes are “products of nature,” then they cannot be patented. “But Myriad’s patents do not cover the genes as they occur in living cells,” writes The Economist. “Rather, they cover isolated forms of the genes ... snipped from the genome and chemically modified to make them analysable in a laboratory.” The company says it spent $500 million creating viable tests for the BRCA pair. That investment and others from the $92 billion biotechnology industry deserve to be protected by patents, argues Myriad.

Companies that track your phone

Cellphone companies have an unprecedented ability to track the behavior of subscribers. Through phone data, carriers know where people go, how long they stay, and what applications they use while there. “This data is under lock and key no more,” writes Jessica Leber in MIT Technology Review. “Under pressure to seek new revenue streams, a growing number of mobile carriers are now carefully mining, packaging, and repurposing their subscriber data to create powerful statistics about how people are moving about the real world.”

Verizon Wireless, America’s largest carrier, changed its privacy policy in 2011 to give itself permission to sell anonymous data to businesses, city planners, and marketers. For example, Verizon determined that there were three times as many fans in the stands from Baltimore at this year’s Super Bowl than fans from San Francisco. (The Ravens won, too.)

Data-tracking firm AirSage has signed its own deals with two major US carriers to monitor and look for patterns among the activities of about one-third of all Americans. AirSage does not know the identities of the millions of people it follows, but it can track their movements to within 100 yards. 

While these new practices raise many privacy concerns, Ms. Leber writes, “Research and experience suggest that in practice most people don’t mind, or don’t care as much as they think they do about privacy.”

Who would have believed it?

Revolutionary ideas can sound pretty dumb at first. On the website Quora, serial tech entrepreneur Michael Wolfe distilled a list of start-ups down to their absurd-sounding essence:

“Twitter – it is like email, SMS, or RSS. Except it does a lot less. It will be used mostly by geeks at first, followed by Britney Spears and Charlie Sheen.

“PayPal – people will use their insecure AOL and Yahoo email addresses to pay each other real money, backed by a non-bank with a cute name run by 20-somethings.”

“Google – we are building the world’s 20th search engine at a time when most of the others have been abandoned as being commoditized money losers. We’ll strip out all of the ad-supported news and portal features so you won’t be distracted from using the free search stuff.”

Netflix narrows its focus

Netflix’s transformation from rental service to Web video empire has taken many years and many business deals to pull off. “When Netflix first got into the streaming video business, it went to movie studios and TV networks and bought whatever they were selling,” writes Peter Kafka of All Things D. “It didn’t have a choice. Things are different now.” Netflix says that it will not renew its sweeping contract with TV giant Viacom. Instead, Netflix will cut deals for only the Viacom shows that it knows viewers want to see. (Think more quality dramas and fewer old reality shows.)

US military vehicles cross Unification bridge, which leads to the demilitarized zone separating North Korea from South Korea near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, Tuesday. The US-South Korean annual military drills ended Tuesday without incident. (Ahn Young-joon/AP)

As South Korea and US end military drills, how will North Korea react?

By Steven Borowiec, Correspondent / 04.30.13

The US-South Korea annual military exercises ended without incident on Tuesday, perhaps allowing a chance for weeks of tensions on the Korean peninsula to enter an indefinite period of calm.

The annual military defensive exercises are intended to act as a deterrent to North Korea through shows of military prowess. North Korea, however, called the two month-long exercises an aggressive invasion threat and promised military retaliation if provoked directly.

But now that the exercises are over, the North could tell its people that its own military successfully warded off the threat, conceivably allowing it enter dialogue with the South without appearing to lose face. But some analysts argue that as the general atmosphere has cooled, action by North Korea could actually be more likely.

“Now that the exercises are over, this is an opportune time for a missile launch,” says Sung-yoon Lee, professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. “Now that their adversaries have their guard down, they could go ahead with a launch now, ahead of the upcoming summit between Obama and Park Geun-hye, to put pressure on Park.”

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who was inaugurated on Feb. 25, is scheduled to meet with US President Obama in Washington on May 7. North Korea has been known to purposely raise tensions in an effort to rattle new administrations in Seoul or Washington. 

"The drill is over, but the South Korean and US militaries will continue to watch out for potential provocations by the North, including a missile launch," said Kim Min-seok, a spokesperson for South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense.

The two-month long exercises started up shortly after the North's third nuclear test in February and involved around 10,000 US troops and 200,000 South Korean forces. Throughout the exercises, some impressive weaponry was shown off, including B-52 bombers and a nuclear-armed submarine. After the exercises began, the North announced it was scrapping an armistice agreement that effectively put the Korean War on hold, and said it was entering a "state of war." The North also cut two hotlines to South Korea, symbols of North-South cooperation, but left a joint economic region alone until April. 

The jointly-operated Kaesong industrial park, the last major symbol of cooperation between South and North was designed to economically benefit both sides, providing South Korean companies with cheap labor, and North Koreans with much needed income. Since it was started in 2004, it has survived years of chilly inter-Korean relations. 

But North Korea unexpectedly barred South Koreans from entering the area early in April and then withdrew all its workers shortly thereafter. Though some South Korean workers stayed at the complex, many went back to South Korea.

The situation at Kaesong is one aspect of the crisis that appears set to continue.

Yesterday, 43 of the final 50 South Korean workers in Kaesong returned home. Seven stayed behind to deal with some unpaid wages, as North Korea has not approved their departure yet, according to Chosun. There is not yet any indication that Seoul and Pyongyang will cooperate in finding a way to get operations at the complex back underway. The complex brought in about $80 million in revenue for North Korea in 2012, so there is a large financial incentive for the North to restart business there. 

Today South Korean Minister of Unification Ryoo Kihl-jae said that while the South is interested in restarting operations at Kaesong, Seoul wouldn’t accept just any conditions demanded by North Korea.

"It is pointless to normalize operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex if it entails accepting unreasonable claims and preconditions," Minister Ryoo said.

All throughout the war games, many analysts speculated that North Korea’s intention was to stir tensions and pull back at the last minute from any kind of engagement in an effort to strengthen its bargaining position when it returns to the table at some later date. 

“The general principle is to escalate tensions in order to later be able to negotiate from a position of strength,” Leonid Petrov, a researcher in Korean studies at Australian National University, told the Monitor on Apr. 10.

The Eiffel Tower and the sun are reflected in a tourist's sunglasses during a mild and sunny spring day in Paris, this month. (Christian Hartmann/Reuters)

The Paris beat: not all chocolat et fromage

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / 04.29.13

When I wrote a farewell letter to Mexico City as I left for my new post in Paris, I received not a few snide remarks: “Oh, poor thing.” “Oh, what a hardship beat.”

Well, I am here to tell you, that it is hard. At least setting up the bureau is, with far more hassle than anything I experienced while establishing the Monitor’s office in Mexico.

It’s an endless task of official stamps, translations, long lines, subway rides, closed office hours, misinformation, and rigid rules (that appear to be inexplicably bent at any given moment).

Immigration to Mexico is not exactly easy. I spent countless hours standing in lines, only to be told I didn’t have the right paperwork and that I needed to return the next day to stand in line again.

But this, I dare say, has been worse.

Per the French consulate in Boston and then a reconfirmation from the French embassy in Mexico, I will have the right to reside in France through my husband’s European citizenship. I was told (in writing) to enter France without a visa and head to the police station upon arriving.

Having dealt with the pains of immigration – both living abroad and in the US, since I married a foreigner – I know to call first and find out what documents are required, even when there is a list of what you need online. Except that here, there is no such place to call. Every attempt led me to the same answer: “You will get all of the information at the prefecture assigned to you.” So I went. Only to find huddled masses, in the freezing cold of a Parisian morning, in a line that did not budge, at all, for two hours (when I finally gave up and went home). There were no officials to ask any questions, no information posted anywhere. There must be another way to get information, I assumed.

So I went with a friend to the central offices the next day, where I was told that I needed to have gotten the visa before having arrived. The consulate and the embassy, she said, were wrong. But then she added that I should go the prefecture, to find out if she was wrong. And the documents I need to bring with me? “You need to go there and ask,” she said.

I’ve experienced variations of this story for everything we have on our to-do list, from finding an apartment (which we mercifully did in a mere 10 days), to setting up Internet service. I do think once we’re settled it will be an amazing beat, and so many parts of the French system make life so much easier than life in Mexico or the US – but we’ve definitely got some hard steps ahead.

Reporter note: After writing this blog, I did go back to the prefecture. I stood in line for 8 hours in total. The good news is that I apparently did not need a visa prior to entrance. The bad news: I did not have all of the paperwork - I was asked for things that were not listed on the website.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva at a news conference in Dagestan, Russia, on Thursday. Her sister Maryam, right, is with her. (Musa Sadulayev/AP)

Why the alleged Boston bombers' mom probably won't be extradited (+video)

By Fred Weir, Correspondent / 04.28.13

The mother of the two Boston bombing suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, has become a focus of interest after it emerged that her name had been added to a key terrorist watchlist in 2011 and fresh materials, including wiretaps, handed over to the US by the Russians showed her "vaguely discussing" jihad with her elder son two years ago. 

Ms. Tsarnaeva, a naturalized US citizen who moved back to Russia a few years ago, has best been known until now as the most passionate defender of her two sons, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, up to the point of insisting that they were "framed" because they were Muslims. Now investigators may want to look into what role she may have played, if any, in the radicalization process that may have led her two sons to carry out the Boston Marathon bombing almost two weeks ago.

Tsarnaeva was reportedly added to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database in 2011 at the request of US intelligence agencies. That list, which held about 750,000 names at the time, is used to compile the consolidated Terrorist Watchlist used as the main reference tool by airlines and law enforcement agencies. It is believed her name, and that of her son Tamerlan, were appended to the list after the Russian FSB security service appealed for more information about the pair to the FBI and the CIA and warned of their growing radicalization. 

In recent days the Russians have also turned over wiretaps of conversations between Tsarnaeva, who was by that time back living in her native Dagestan, and her son Tamerlan in Boston. In one they reportedly discuss "jihad" in a general way. In another, Tsarnaeva is recorded talking with someone who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case.

In his annual town hall meeting with the Russian public last Thursday, President Vladimir Putin called for stepped up security cooperation between the US and Russia in the wake of the Boston tragedy. He downplayed any links between Russia and the Boston bombers, and added "to our great regret" Russian security forces lacked any "operative information" that they might have shared with US law enforcement in the run up to the attack.

Tsarnaeva is an ethnic Avar, one of the largest groups in Russia's multi-national, but solidly Muslim, mountain republic of Dagestan which abuts the Caspian Sea. Dagestan has been wracked for over a decade by a growing Islamist insurgency that has made parts of the republic a no-go zone even for law enforcement.

Tsarnaeva's ex-husband, Anzor, is a Chechen and, judging by their social media postings, their two sons appear to have identified closely with the long trail of suffering that comprises much of Chechen history.

Both live today in Makhachkala, the Caspian port city that is Dagestan's capital. Anzor had earlier said that he wanted to return to the US, to attend his son Tamerlan's funeral, talk to Dzhokhar, and "find out the truth" about what happened to them. However, following an impassioned news conference Thursday, Tsarnaeva told journalists that her former husband was being transported to a hospital in Moscow to be treated for "nerves, head, stomach, and elevated blood pressure."

Tsarnaeva, dressed in black and wearing a hijab, told journalists last Thursday that she's certain her two sons were "set up" and were innocent of any wrongdoing. She added that she was sorry the family ever left Dagestan in 2002 to move to the US. If they hadn't gone, "my kids would be with us, and we would be, like, fine," she said, speaking excellent English. "So, yes, I would prefer not to live in America now! Why did I even go there? Why? I thought America is going to, like, protect us, our kids, it’s going to be safe."

According to news reports, there is an outstanding arrest warrant in the US for Tsarnaeva, over her failure to appear in court last October to answer charges of shoplifting in a Massachusetts clothing store.

She and her former husband met with a visiting team of FBI investigators in the Makhachkala FSB headquarters last week. If she chooses not to return to the US, there is probably nothing authorities can do to compel her, even if more serious allegations against her appear.

The US and Russia do not have a bilateral extradition treaty, despite repeated requests by Moscow to negotiate one. And the Russian constitution forbids the extradition of Russian citizens – Tsarnaeva reportedly did not renounce her Russian citizenship when she was naturalized in the US – a stipulation the Russians frequently invoke when Western law enforcement agencies ask Moscow to hand over people on their wanted lists.

Someone claiming to be Tsarnaeva opened a Twitter account Saturday, @Tsarnaeva, and posted a picture of a purported Tsarnaev aunt, Patimat Suleimanova, asking supporters to send donations to a numbered account in Russia's state-owned Sberbank to "get a good lawyer" for Dzhokhar. The account has since gained nearly 500 followers, and a tweet by @Tsarnaeva on Sunday morning claimed that $2,000 had already been raised.  

A Bangladeshi woman weeps as she holds a picture of her and her missing husband as she waits at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday. (Kevin Frayer/AP)

After Dhaka garment factory collapse, chances for supply chain changes low

By Ryan Lenora Brown, Correspondent / 04.26.13

As Bangladeshi rescue workers continue to pull survivors and bodies from the ruins of a Dhaka, Bangladesh factory where some 300 were killed in a building collapse Wednesday, thousands of protesters took to the streets across the city to express their outrage at negligence that has racked the world's second-largest garment-exporting country for years.

Blocking traffic and vandalizing garment factories that stayed open during today’s official day of mourning, protestors smashed cars and clashed violently with police, demanding accountability for what The New York Times is calling “one of the worst manufacturing disasters in history.”

Among those at the receiving end of the rage are not only unscrupulous local factory owners and lax regulators, but also the Western corporations whose demands for cheaply-made garments have fueled the precarious working conditions in Bangladesh’s 5,000 clothing factories.

Plucked from the rubble of the eight-story factory were labels from several Western brands, including some sold in major chains such as Wal-Mart, JC Penney, and Spanish retailer El Corte Ingles, who immediately began to issue a flurry of sympathetic press releases. British retailer Primark said it was “shocked and deeply saddened by this appalling incident” and the Canadian retailer Loblaw said it was “extremely saddened” by the tragedy, the Times reports.

None, however, went so far as to implicate themselves in the disaster.

“These companies have come up with some very effective approaches to distance themselves from responsibility in tragedies like this,” says Heather White, founder of Verite, an independent auditing group. Indeed, she says, Western companies often bring their garments from factory to store through a tangled and globally sprawled cluster of middlemen – subcontractors, auditors, consultants – who not only drive down their prices but also help ensure that responsibility for corporate stumbles are spread thinly.

That leaves many Western consumers, even the most conscientious, flummoxed by how to react to tragedies like the factory collapse, Ms. White says. Short of switching to niche-marketed fair trade brands—think American Apparel or TOMS Shoes – there’s “no real way for your average consumer to use their buying power to mobilize around these issues,” she says.

But it wasn’t always that way.

In the late 1990s, a widespread campaign against labor conditions in Nike factories helped shame the company into adopting a code of conduct in its factories for the first time. Responding to massive protests, sit-ins, and hunger strikes, a large number of universities forced the suppliers of their branded athletic apparel to institute labor code reforms in return for their business.

“It was amazing to see how people bought in [to the campaign],” remembers Kirsten Moller, organizing director for the human rights group Global Exchange, which helped lead the Nike campaign. “They really had no idea what was happening, no idea under what conditions these products they loved were being made.”

So what changed?

As the issue slid from the front page, "people got tired of protesting,” Ms. Moller says.

Many of the activists from the 1990s – immortalized by their chaotic protests at the 1999 summit of the World Trade Organization – moved on to new causes, White says, with many becoming deeply involved in anti-war efforts in the early 2000s. 

And perhaps more importantly, the corporations simply caught up. “They co-opted the language of human rights and social responsibility,” she says, “because they realized their consumers now cared about that.”

As a result of the Nike movement, she says, most corporations now at least pay lip service to the idea that transnational companies have a responsibility to the people who work for them and the land they work on.

“But we’re nowhere near where we should be,” she says.

In the streets of Dhaka today, it seems there are many who would agree with that. 

Former Canadian Ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor and his wife Pat, pose for photographers at the premiere of the film Argo in Washington, Oct. 2012. Taylor, who protected Americans at great personal risk during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979, has achieved some name recognition in the US since the 2012 movie 'Argo' swept theaters and the Academy Awards. (Cliff Owen/AP/File)

Don't blame Canada: Former ambassador to Iran on Argo, America, and nukes

By Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer / 04.26.13

Former Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor is neither the James Bond lookalike he hoped might portray him in the Hollywood blockbuster "Argo" nor is he quite the Austin Powers double he says might have been a more accurate choice.

But he's achieved some name recognition in the US since the 2012 movie swept theaters and the Academy Awards, and he has plenty to say about Iran in 1979 and the country it has become since. 

Mr. Taylor was Canada's ambassador to Tehran in 1979 when the US embassy there was stormed and dozens of Americans were taken hostage. Six Americans escaped and spent months holed up with him, waiting for their extraction.

Those months are the premise of the Ben Affleck-directed movie, which Taylor mildly says took “a bit of poetic license.”

Speaking before a gathering of the New England Canada Business Council in Boston yesterday, Taylor, who now lives in New York, joked that after friends saw "Argo" at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival, they called him and said, “I thought Canada was involved.”

According to Taylor, he replied, “That’s odd, So did I.”

As the tense months of being trapped inside the embassy wore on, Taylor tried to reassure the Americans that they would be home by Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then the Super Bowl. He warned the US that “they’re going to wonder if Washington forgot about them.”

Taylor revealed little about the actual operation that got the six men and women safely back to the United States. But, he joked, at least the movie showed that he “opened the front door of the embassy with great dexterity.”

Iran then

When Taylor arrived in Tehran in 1977, “the country was booming.”

There were rumors that Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi – more commonly referred to as simply “the Shah” – was preparing to buy Pan American Airways. It did not seem like the “stalwart of the West” was going anywhere.

For all the blame heaped on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for not predicting the Islamic Revolution, almost nobody saw it coming, he said. Afterward, the Ayatollah’s secular advisers told Taylor that even they didn’t expect the Shah’s government to fall like it did.  

Revolutionary fervor did not sweep up the whole country the way it seemed to be portrayed in "Argo." And Taylor said a great disappointment for him was the way the movie portrayed Iranians, some of whom became “marvelous friends” with him during his posting in Tehran.

“The movie was too heavy handed,” he said. “It gave no idea that there is another side to the Iranian character. Everybody isn’t on the street. Everybody isn’t part of the revolution.”

Too many sanctions, too little talking

He is on board with the growing chorus of voices in Washington urging the Obama administration to ease up on its sanctions-heavy approach to negotiations with Iran although he acknowledges that Iran needs to give ground too.

Sometimes sanctions work, he says, citing South Africa during the apartheid era, but “sometimes they strengthen resolve.”

When asked his opinion of whether Tehran has nuclear weapon ambitions, he cautions that “Iran is an opaque society,” and there’s too little information to guess.

“I think they’ve got some military use in the back of their mind,” he says. “But they don’t want to destroy themselves … Maybe they are working at capabilities, but not necessarily producing [a nuclear weapon].”

That the military option for halting Iran’s nuclear development is “on the table” worries Taylor, who points to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as cautionary for anyone considering going to war with Iran.

"A bombing mission would be a fatal error. It would solve nothing,” he says. “It would postpone [Iran’s nuclear program] for two to three years,” but nothing more, because Iran’s nuclear facilities are too dispersed.

He says, “I wake up every morning hoping [the military option] is still on the table” – instead of being used.

Libyan rebels riding at the back of a pickup truck retreat east towards Benghazi from Ajdabiya, Libya, in April 2011. When the Shanghai auto show opened a week ago, ZX Auto, proudly displayed on its stand a version of its trucks that were a hit among Libyan rebels. (Nasser Nasser/AP/File)

Shanghai auto show: where you, too, can buy a machine-gun ready pickup

By Peter Ford, Staff Writer / 04.26.13

Ever fancied owning your own “technical” – the sort of pickup truck fitted with a heavy machine gun that rebels careering around the streets from Somalia to Libya have made notorious? Come to the Shanghai Auto Show and a Chinese automaker will sell you one.

When the show opened a week ago, Zhongxing Auto proudly displayed on its stand a version of its Grand Tiger pickup with an unusual accessory – a four-legged steel frame fixed to the cargo bed, ready for the weapon of your choice.

Once upon a time, irregular forces had to do their own welding to turn Toyotas and other pickups into mobile platforms for rocket launchers or machine guns. Now the small Chinese auto company, based in the eastern province of Hebei, takes the trouble out of such transformations for you.

Zhongxing Auto, known as ZX Auto, seems a little conflicted, though, about its new model. The vehicle is clearly designed for people going to war, but the pickup on display at the opening of the auto show was emblazoned with the slogan “Resist war, love peace!” In Arabic…

That is because the idea for the ready-made rampage wagon came from Libya. ZX had sold thousands of its Grand Tigers to Libya during Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s rule, and as rebel forces took over government car pools during the civil war they came into possession of the Chinese-made trucks.

It didn’t take them long to fit them out with rocket launchers and machine guns, and TV news footage carried images of ZX pickups around the world.

“The car really proved its launch strength, engine strength … and stability,” wrote one Libyan rebel, Saad Sati, in an account published on the chinacartimes.com website. “It acted as a catalyst in the process of the Libyan revolution … and gave the rebels the upper hand.”

ZX was pleased with the publicity. If World War II shot the Jeep to international prominence, and the Gulf War made the Hummer a must-have for a certain sort of driver, the Libyan civil war might do the same sort of thing for the Grand Tiger, the firm hoped.

“Models will stand out after the baptism of war that prove reliable, durable, and easy to maintain,” the company says coyly on its website. “The Libyan civil war could really help build a name for the Zhongxing pickups.”

Heaven forbid, though, that anyone should think the appearance of the ZX technical on the company’s Shanghai Auto Show stand might suggest that the company is seeking new strife-torn markets.

“All the cars we design are for civilian use,” insisted Lin Jing, a ZX sales department employee, in a telephone interview from the auto show. “If Libyans used them as vehicles of war that has nothing to do with us.”

Why had the company installed the machine gun stand, then? Ms. Lin’s answer was unconvincing. “So that when people saw it they would think of the Libyan war which brought such disasters,” she said.

Eh?

There are no signs yet that Syrian rebels have done the same sort of thing as their Libyan forbears did to their Grand Tigers; ZX has sold less than 500 of the vehicles to Syria, according to Lin.

But if they want more, ready for action, they know where to come.

Bangladeshi rescue workers watch from a damaged section of a wall at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday. (Kevin Frayer/AP)

Q&A: Who ultimately bears responsibility for Bangladesh factory disasters?

By Ryan Lenora Brown, Correspondent / 04.25.13

When an eight-story factory outside Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka collapsed Wednesday, the ensuing devastation was met with horror (more than 200 were killed), but not disbelief.

Catastrophic industrial accidents are something of a regular occurrence in the south Asian nation, which is the second-largest garment exporter in the world. Lax labor and building standards, coupled with a rock bottom minimum wage for garment workers ($37 per month), have played a large part in that boom, though at a high cost.

In fact, only five months ago, a fire at another factory in the city killed 111, prompting a flurry of apologies and promises of reform from both the Bangladeshi government and the western companies whose goods were produced there, including Walmart.

But who ultimately bears the responsibility for these disasters – and can they be stopped? The Monitor spoke to Aman Singh, editorial director of the CSRwire, a website for corporate social responsibility news, about consumer choices, the supply chain blame game, and who sets the standards for global garment production.

When a disaster like the one in Bangladesh occurs, everyone involved immediately starts pointing fingers – at the factory owners, at the government, at the Western companies who source goods there. So whose fault is it?

The chain of command between retailer and source is purposefully pretty complex. And in the middle of the chain of command you have all these different players – the subcontractors, the auditors, the analysts, the people negotiating these contracts every year. Because the responsibility is so thinly distributed, no one person or group of people is really being held accountable for compliance with building standards, say, which makes it really hard to pinpoint where the issue started.

And then you have companies like Walmart that come forward and say, we contract out to suppliers, so we don’t even know if our products were made in this factory or not. Is that a good excuse?

No, it’s really not. Walmart is so big and so powerful that they really could go to any supplier they want and say, stick to our wage and safety policies or get out. And they can do that far more effectively than government legislation ever could. These companies have more power than entire governments, entire nations.

It sounds like the corporate supply chain is often very opaque – is there any attempt being made to change that on a global level?

That’s the million dollar questions we’re all trying to answer: We have to work in a global economy, we have to work with different understandings of what’s acceptable in terms of labor and workers. It’s acceptable culturally, for instance, for women as young as 14 to work in a lot of countries. But it’s not OK in the UK or US markets.  

The UN is trying to standardize this supply chain management. The International Trade Center has a standards map out that’s visible online, and what they’re trying to do is bring all these apparel companies together to see what standards everyone is using and where they stand against their peers. They’re billing it as a competitive advantage for companies. It’s an interesting strategy because we all know when [labor practices] impact the dollar they’re all going to want to be interested in making them better. The maps are only available to the companies participating now, but the hope is to make it publicly eventually. And I think when that kind of information becomes public it’ll force companies to be more transparent in their supply chain policies.

What about consumers – do disasters like this change their buying habits?

I don’t know if they’re really impacting consumers – I don’t know if they’re really starting to come out and say, you know what, I’m not going to buy from this company because this kind of thing is just happening way too often. There’s a real gap there. We as consumers have a very short memory and we tend to forget these disasters after they happen.

Since I’ve started working in this field though, I have really changed my shopping habits. The biggest shift is I’ve become far more conscious of how much I buy. I try to not over-consume. I’ve realized that the core of our problem is over-consumption. But also buying very cheap goods is a part of it: If you’re paying $5 for a pair of pants, you can only assume the person making them is getting much less than that, although volume does play a huge factor in price margins and wages.

But if you pay more, does that guarantee the conditions the garment was made under were any better?

That’s true. There’s no way of making that correlation.

Is there any way for consumers to know from the information on their garment – the brand, the country it’s made in – if they’re getting something produced under decent conditions?

The problem is we don’t have any labeling with clothing that identifies ethical sourcing. It almost always requires going back to the Internet and looking at their supply chain policy. Many brands are starting to put their whole supply chain on their website, but from a consumer perspective who has time to do that? You want to be able to just pick up a piece of clothing and know if it has an ethical history. And right now you can’t.

In the late 1990s, Nike and other major sporting apparel companies faced a large protest movement led by American college students against the labor conditions in their factories. It forced them to reexamine a lot of these kinds of problems. Is any similar movement building now?

Activism had such a big role to play at that time. And it still does. But that activism has slowly changed into collaboration – the NGOs that once fought these companies are now working with them. And obviously the companies prefer that because they have a partner rather than someone working against them. But I think for Nike the protests and their extremely public nature was the big motivator in changing their policy. And I think we need more of that. Apple for example: What is stopping us from saying we're going to stop using its products until it proves it can provide better working conditions in its factories? Do we as consumers have the courage to boycott some of our favorite brands over ethics?

Overall, when you look at supply chain issues around the world, are you optimistic? Is the world trending towards progress?

It’s such a complex sector. We’re doing better in so many things but we’re starting to go the wrong way in so many others that it’s hard to stay optimistic for too long. Incidents like these tell us the road ahead is long and will require continuous courage.

A cafe is seen in Zurich is seen in this photo taken April 18. (Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters/File)

Switzerland shuts the door on EU migrants: A new 'us vs. them' in Europe?

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / 04.25.13

The anti-immigration class across Europe has found many new adherents as of late, especially in the most economically devastated countries, like Greece and Italy. But now these Europeans might themselves become the unwelcome migrants, at least in Switzerland.

As I happened to be standing in the most intolerable immigration line that I've ever faced – more on that later – I read on my Twitter account that the Swiss government on Wednesday announced a new policy to cap residence permits for all of Western Europe. Switzerland, which is not part of the EU but joined the Schengen bloc that allows freedom of movement of people across European borders, says that it is being overwhelmed by arrivals from across the continent, to the tune of 80,000 people each year.

So it is invoking a “safeguard clause” it negotiated during the 1999 Schengen treaty talk, which it already implemented for eight Central and Eastern European states. Now, as of May 1, residence permits for the citizens of 17 older EU states, from Germany to Spain, will be capped at 53,700 for a year.

According to the EU Observer, the Swiss said that the million-plus EU residents who live in the country have "had a positive impact … in particular in terms of consumer spending and on the construction industry," but that restrictions are “needed to make immigration more acceptable to society.”

The move drew immediate criticism from Brussels. ''The measures disregard the great benefits that the free movement of persons brings to the citizens of both Switzerland and the EU,” Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief, said in a statement.

Is this a new manifestation of intolerance in Europe? The levels of resentment continent-wide against the migrants from Africa and the Middle East are already clearly documented, but in the midst of crisis, is Europe even excluding Europe? And what does that mean for identity and equality moving forward?

The possibility of a new, intra-European divide struck a chord for me, as I experienced my own "us vs. them" moment in France today.

Well, more than a moment. Eight hours, in fact.

That's how long I waited in a Paris prefecture along with Moroccans, Romanians, Malians, Senegalese, Tunisians, and Peruvians – most of us, like me, there only to get information about what we needed to have with us, only to return and stand in line again.

I got to know my fellow immigrants well as we stood outside. Some around me had been in this line before, but were told they were missing a translation, a photocopy, or any of myriad document requirements that are not posted in their totality anywhere on the Internet – or even on the wall of the prefecture where we line up – but rather seem to be, at least from my informal surveys today, requested at the whim of whichever officer is behind the desk. One woman was told to bring back her CV.

Some of my linemates felt the French immigration officials were being deliberately obstructionist.

“They don’t want us to get the carte de sejour,” said the Malian, referring to the permission that allows foreigners to reside in France (and, with it, the right to tap into the country’s amazing social security system).

“They do everything they can to hold us back,” said the Romanian, who was on her third trip here – and the third day lost on her job as a cleaning woman. Today, she was told that the pay stub she brought didn’t have the minimum number of hours on it, so she needed to bring in another stub. Another lost day of productivity for this poor woman.

Regardless of the motivations, one can see the "us vs. them" motif very clearly at the prefecture. On the one side, masses desperate to get in, and feeling unwelcome all the while. And on the other side of the glass wall, a society wanting to protect a social system that is replicated in few other places in the world.

By the end of the day in the unforgiving sun, some people were clearly losing their cool, me among them. (I, an American, was more indignant about the inefficiency than most, which makes me wonder if that’s a nationality trait, but that's a subject for another time.)

“But this can’t be!” I kept saying. “How can people waste an entire day in a line – and for nothing! Just to come back and stand in the line again?”

“Welcome to France,” said the Malian, smiling.