Delayed in Dubai airport, while en route to Montreal to attend a friend’s wedding. Journey, as usual, is wrought with witnessing glaring vulgarities of enormous wealth. I am mesmerised by some familiar pop star reading Anthony Keidis’ autobiography, who is concentrating on the perfection of his hair, instead of waking up to the realities of Middle East brutality. I am using my return business class ticket for my flight, so it offers a glimpse into the vacuous noggins of the obscenely rich – ah, but perhaps I have already become one, at least as I am considered in Sri Lanka. But I cannot understand the rich and comfortable decision to sit back and watch atrocities unfold on telly, and not lambast their governments, international organisation, neighbours, their own consumption, for not doing a bloody thing!
What must pass through this bimbo pop star’s head (o, what is his name? Some-kind-of-singer) to ignore, not even blink, at the carnage unfolding on the bbc? Moreover, how have we gotten to the point where genocide, massive amounts of unfounded violence, is a pleasurable pastime, that can never really satiate our hollywoodised appetite for destruction?
Meanwhile, I am doubly disturbed about my companion passenger coming from Colombo. Apparently, this Indian fellow is in charge of marketing, developing, controlling, managing, cracking the slave whip, of Victoria’s Secret in Sri Lanka. His factories produce all the fabric used for Victoria’s Secret – serviced by sub-contracted Korean manufactories. This fabric supplies all the sub-contractors that produce lingerie, swim-wear, and all ready-made garments (ah, the latest season’s fashions) for Victoria’s Secret, as well as Next, Neiman Marcus, Marks& Spencer’s, Gap. I noted to him that it is interesting that none of these garments are available domestically in Sri Lanka – everything is produced and exported from the Export Processing Zones, surrounding the airport. This nameless Indian guy finished off the summer’s end blitz of preparing to meet Back-to School clothing demands, and now is off to join his Zambian wife (daughter of a Prime Minister) and 3 children on a trip to Egypt, snowing South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Oh, you should have heard the way he romanticised Africa – all deserted, with lovely noble savages – Maasai. It is perplexing to observe class stratification within a formerly colonised society (albeit, India or Zambia or Sri Lanka).
I tried to bring up that I visited a garment workers’ home, 9 crammed into a 8 sq. ft slum dwelling, and that they had no idea what clothing lines they supplied. They had no idea about fair wages or that they are entitled to good working conditions, as Sri Lanka is bound to ILO codes. It means little that these garment workers often turn to seeking other forms of employment to supplement their monthly pittances. In addition to slave labour, in order to clothe the emperors of this neo-liberal paradigm, many of these young women become sex workers or members of terrorist circles. In the case of Nason, he harboured impoverished LTTE cadres in the home he also let out to garment workers; are the lines blurred here?
So however much I chat with this moghul about workers’ conditions coming before profit, he argues that the workers for V.S. are taken care of, that bad incidences of factories are only anecdotal not indicative of the whole industry, and that he is offering them employment. It is often true that many women living in poverty prefer a job in a sweatshop, rather than revert to begging or sex work, but it cannot be the main excuse to continue to let labour conditions deteriorate. No matter how much you harp on, try to explain things from an economic perspective (many studies show that good wage and working conditions improve productivity, stability in employment, commitment to MNCs, etc), the rich and powerful do not listen, as they want to hang on to their small bit of wealth and power.
In other news, there are 22,000 recently displaced Sri Lankans, due to escalating violence in North and East. Tigers have bombed Muttur – a predominantly Muslim town near Jaffna. Unfounded and unforgiveable. So this brief journey, as I continue to wait in Dubai, has shown more interconnections of violence, only there are significant differences in terms of which ones corporate media decides to highlight.
P.S. Words of Caution: Don't Eat Dorian Fruit If Drinking Alcohol - some say it can cause death?!
