BENETTON - - - AT IT AGAIN WITH LATEST AD CAMPAIGN "UNHATE".......

Truth Tellers: Dirty Laundry Report, Roberto Saviano, and CANDY mag......

In an intriguing investigation, Greenpeace International exposes the hazardous underbelly of the textile industry in China by focusing on two facilities: the Youngor Textile Complex and the Well Dyeing Factory Limited, located respectively on the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, evidence gathered indicates that both facilities use chemicals that have exhibited 'hormone-disrupting' properties (Alkyphenols, nonylphenol, PFCs, PFOA, and PFOS) - this 'use' occurs during the production process, then eventually these products are bought by consumers and at some point throughout this cycle, the chemical by-products are released into the major rivers which surround each facility. Clearly, this particular study demonstrates the presence of a massive threat that has the capacity to devastate both environmental and human health. 
Major brands that have a documented connection to these specific Chinese facilities include: Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Bauer Hockey, Calvin Klein, Converse, Cortefiel, H&M, Lacoste, Li Ning, Meters/bonwe, Nike, Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation (PVH Corp), and Puma..

Check out the full Dirty Laundry report @: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/Dirty-Laundry/ 
and Dirty Laundry 2: Hung Out to Dry @ http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/Dirty-Laundry-2/


Images from their rigorous investigation into textile manufacturing in China and the toxic water pollution which streams from the industry:

Another example of how the supply chain's within any industry oftentimes lack the necessary degree of transparency, accountability, and somehow instead seem to inevitably repeat played out business practices that in an era of globalization and outsourced production can not easily be ignored nor swept under the proverbial rug any longer......

Speaking of not sweeping things under the proverbial rug.........................

Roberto Saviano's journalistic investigation of Italian organized crime and the shadowy world of lucrative business practices is a must read!!!!!

"A powerful work of reportage, “Gomorrah” became a literary sensation when it appeared in Italy in 2006, selling an astonishing 600,000 copies. It started a national conversation, but also won its 28-year-old first-time author uglier accolades: death threats and a constant police escort. He now lives in hiding. The stakes are high. In “Gomorrah,” Saviano charts the Camorra’s involvement in the garment industry and its grip on the port of Naples, where 1.6 million tons of Chinese merchandise are unloaded a year — and another million pass through without a trace, evading taxes. In mapping out the Camorra’s control over garbage and industrial waste removal, as well as drug dealing, construction and public works fraud, Saviano considers human rights indicators (the price of an AK-47 is low in Campania), and economic ones (in the 1990s, the Mercedes sales in one Campania town were among the highest in Europe). Drawing on trial transcripts and his own reporting, he explains the internecine battles between rival factions of the Di Lauro clan for control of the region’s drug trade." (- Rachel Donadio is a writer and editor at the New York Times Book Review) 

After the publishing of his book and its success, Saviano began to and continues to receive threats on his life.

An image of 'child soldiers' as portrayed in the film Gomorrah.  

CANDY magazine is described by its founder as the first "Transversal Style" magazine: "the first fashion magazine ever completely dedicated to celebrating transvestism, transexuality, cross dressing and androgyny, in all its manifestations."(Luis Venegas)
For more information, check out:
http://www.towleroad.com/2009/11/candy-first-transversal-style-fashion-magazine-launches.html

Cover Model: Luke Worrall

Luis Venegas as Anna Wintour / Andreas Borque as Grace Coddington

Newest edition: Chloe Sevigny on cover

Clever, well-placed, POP-centric - - - Faux Ads in the newest W Magazine.....

For deeper analysis into the meaning of each of these fake advertising campaigns, see The Cut @: http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2011/10/steven-meisel-w-fake-ads-enninful.html

" THIS IS NOT CHARITY, THIS IS JUST WORK" - Vivienne Westwood

WHO: Vivienne Westwood in collaboration with the International Trade Center's Ethical Fashion Program (a joint body of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization), Yoox.com, and fashion photographer Juergen Teller.

WHAT: The creation of Westwood's new Autumn/Winter 2011/12 Ethical Fashion Africa collection, "a program which", according to Vogue.com UK, "has so far enlisted 7,000 local women to use their skills to produce bags for Westwood and earn a fair wage in return"(L. Milligan). Materials used: electrical wiring, aluminum, cotton canvas, plastic bags (all recycled).

**** "Ethical Fashion Africa = a social enterprise, based in Nairobi, that coordinates the work of community screen-printers, bead makers, tailors, metal-workers and weavers". 

(http://hotsecretz.blogspot.com/2011/06/vivienne-westwood-was-in-kenya-for.html)

WHERE: Nairobi, Kenya

WHEN: As of June 16, 2011 the collection of handbags and accessories has been available online at yoox.com  and at Vivenne Westwood stores.

WHY: Shifting supply-chain and manufacturing dynamics, conscious sourcing of goods and human capital, job creation in areas where opportunities are scarce, capacity building and the 'empowerment' of women in general...

Simone Cipriani, head of the International Trade Center contends that the project, "enables some of the world's poorest people to enter fashion's value chain as producers, while also allowing designers, who want to source ethically, to do so knowing their collaborators in the slums of Nairobi or impoverished rural areas are being paid a fair wage following the Code of Conduct stipulated by the Fair Labour Association." 

This isn't the first Vivienne Westwood Inc. advertising campaign to include this......and it certainly won't be the last but just to amplify the obvious text message:
 LEONARD PELTIER IS INNOCENT

"What I do, making bags, can make a difference. This project gives people control over their lives - charity doesn't give control, it does the opposite, it makes them dependant." (V. Westwood)

The Many Faces of Shipping Containers

The mere fact that these oftentimes nondescript boxes - in some circles lauded as the poster children of globalization -  can simultaneously embody such diametrically opposed realities is staggering. A few words that quickly come to mind are: innovation, simplicity, decadence, desperation, corruption, survival, adaptation.....

With the advent of viable shipping containers in the 1950's, global trade was revolutionized in one fell swoop. In his book, "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy," Marc Levinson discusses the impact the container has had upon the modern economy.

Both licit and illicit markets have flourished through the ease with which shipping containers traverse the seas.

....art installation "Journey" depicts the shadow economy that is human trafficking on the side of a shipping container, which serves as one of the many vessels employed to traffic and smuggle human beings across borders.

Worker housing, shipping containers, Dubai.

While statistics regarding transnational organized crime are speculative at best, the UNODC estimates that "less than 2% of the 420 million shipping containers used globally every year are inspected, creating major opportunities for drug traffickers and smugglers to conceal illicit cargo." If these numbers are even remotely close to being realistic imagine the resulting implications. Being floored would be a natural response.

Home made of shipping containers outside of Kabul, Afghanistan. The occupants are workers who 'cast blast-wall sections' in concrete. Copyright: Simon Norfolk. Burke + Norfolk: Photographs from the War in Afghanistan (show at the Tate's Level 2 Gallery).

Operation Smoking Dragon / Operation Royal Charm: a recent take down of an international smuggling ring stretching from China and Taiwan to Canada and the U.S. - contraband included counterfeit cigarettes, counterfeit pharmaceuticals (viagra), methamphetamine, counterfeit $100 bills, and Chinese military-grade weapons (QW-2 surface-to-air missiles).
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/july/dragon_07051

House made of shipping containers that I spotted in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona.

Central Gaza Strip, Nusseirat refugee camp's 'primary school' located in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) containers. 06/21/10.

Shipping container temporary relief housing prototype for Haiti post-earthquake disaster. A Shipping Container Housing Project. 02/10.

August 1, 2011 - Maersk Line flexes their corporate social responsibility muscle by partnering with the World Food Program to address the food scarcity situation of refugees from the Ivory Coast.

Four containers have been deployed by Maersk to Liberia, they have been painted in the United Nations World Food Program colors and are serving as mobile warehouses in Bahn refugee camp (located approximately 50 km from the Liberia - Ivory Coast Border).


“Our company can play a key role during crises and disasters, where transport and the lack of logistics is often a challenge,” says Lise Damkjaer, Head of In-fleeting, Maersk Line.


“The ongoing political instability in countries such as Ivory Coast, Libya and Syria has had a tremendous impact on the inhabitants,” explains Helene Regnell, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, Maersk Line.

“As a transportation company we can help assist those people simply by leveraging what we do well, and by forming collaborative public–private partnerships to make the most of our relief efforts.”