Conspiracy Nation Vol. 08 Num. 44

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Conspiracy Nation

 · 4 years ago

  

 
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 8  Num. 44 
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?") 
  
  
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JIM HIGHTOWER -- 07/11/96 
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They say if you lay down with dogs, you'll wake up with fleas.  
  
Meet Phillip Knight,  the  flea-ridden  chief  executive of Nike, 
Inc. "Just  do  it!"  exclaims  the  advertising  slogan  of  his 
company.  And Mr. Knight has been "doing it" big-time, to working 
people  all over the earth.  Mr. Knight is a "bazillionaire" shoe 
salesman with more than  $5  billion  in personal wealth.  He got 
all this by peddling sneakers at up to 175  bucks  a  pop.   Boy, 
those  must  be  some  sneakers,  huh?!   Probably made by master 
craftsmen, paid a premium for their art. 
  
Hardly.  Phillip Knight is always scanning the world, looking for 
the cheapest contractors he  can  find:  whichever dirty dog will 
pay the most miserly, miserable wage to the workers who  actually 
make his shoes, and his fortune. 
  
In  recent  years,  "Mr.  Phil" has centered Nike's production in 
Indonesia, a  repressive  military  dictatorship  that encourages 
exploiters like him to move their factories and jobs there, where 
impoverished young women can be hired dirt  cheap.   These  women 
get just over 2 bucks a day to make your high-dollar high-tops, a 
poverty wage even in this poverty-stricken country. 
  
But  wait!  Like the money-grubbing hound he is, Phil has sniffed 
out an even  better  deal:   Vietnam!   Yes, our country's former 
enemy is  now  the  friend  of  American  corporations,  allowing 
executives like Knight to get their products made at slave wages. 
  
"Hold  it,"  says Nike.  "We pay those workers 331,000 Vietnamese 
dollars a month." 
  
True.   But  Bob  Herbert,  the  award-winning  New  York   Times 
columnist, dared to ask, "How much is that in American?" 
  
"I don't know," said the Nike man. 
  
But  Herbert  figured  it  out  on  his  own.    It's   about   a 
buck-and-a-quarter a day. 
  
This  is Jim Hightower saying:  Remember the name Phillip Knight. 
He's what they had  in  mind  when  they coined the term, "filthy 
rich." 
  
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt. 
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et  
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9