Not a disconnect. The super bowl half time show is being sponsored by Bridgestone-Firestone, the American division of a corporation which had $25 Billion in revenues in 2006 (enough to pay for a full 6 weeks of the Iraq War, just as an aside). Why are they sponsoring the super bowl half time show? You get three guesses, and the first two don’t count.
1. So question number one is: If you or I watch the super bowl, with its multiple ads from Bridgestone-Firestone, are we thus … glorifying Bridgestone-Firestone? And by “glorifying” in this question, I mean “making more weighty, lending esteem, honor, profit, etc. to” That is, by watching the superbowl, are you giving away some of your power to Bridgestone- Firestone?
Emira Woods writes today at Allafrica.com about the ongoing use of child labor by Bridgestone-Firestone in Liberia, and the ongoing lawsuit regarding that child abuse. If you poke around the internet a bit, you’ll find that there’s quite a bit of eyewitness testimony to the horrible conditions at rubber tree plantations owned and operated by Bridgestone-Firestone in Liberia. I guess it’s probably fairly easy to take advantage of people who have the sort of widespread PTSD that Liberians without a doubt have to deal with after the years of really vicious, savage, horrifying civil war in that nation.
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Yesterday Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission held its first public hearings. Along with the ongoing trial of former warlord and Liberian president Charles Taylor in the Hague, it marks an astoundingly hopeful turnaround for a nation that spent 10 years in the grip of one of the more horrifying civil wars of the 20th century. They’ve still a ton of work ahead of them, but I hope it will not be inappropriate for me to say tres HOORAY for Liberia. They’ve had a truly breathtaking turnaround in the last couple of years. Almost enough to make one hope for Kenya, and Darfur, and Iraq, and Palestine, and …
Read more at Allafrica.com
as well as here