Madeline m’s Reviews > The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion > Status Update

“The pesticide industry is a product of the Second World War, when insects were used to test chemicals as agents of death for people. It should come as no surprise that such brutal carnage followed the explosion. What links the horror of aldicarb (sold as Temik) in Bhopal, is its primary use as a pesticide for cotton, along with beans and peanuts.”

Hermes uses between 3-4 crocodiles to make one bag.

I am genuinely disgusted and pissed off reading about this. There is no human way to kill a crocodile & the methods are sickening. They can live for up to 1 hour after their heads are chopped off (wtf) and that’s not even the worst. Their living conditions are rancid, tiny, filthy, full of disease from bad water, deformities from lack of movement. Horrible

“The draining of the Aral Sea (once the world’s fourth largest lake) is due to its waters having been appropriated to irrigate Uzbekistan’s 1.47 million hectares of cotton, a practice which began under soviet rule. Cotton is hugely water intensive; a single cotton bud uses 3.4 liters of water and a single cotton t shirt consumes 2,000 liters.”

“There is nothing natural about these environmental catastrophes. They are all the result of the workings of the fashion industry under capitalism. Earth, air, animals, water, and human health all are subject to fashion’s bitter harvest.”

“In the wild, crocodiles can live to be 70 years old. On factory farms, they’re shot at the age of 3.”

Myanmar’s military is the most harsh/brutal towards the labor sector, shooting activists and workers who choose to protest unjust working conditions.

“Violence is a means of subjugating freedom and preventing the growth of labor rights, women’s rights, and self expression. It is designed to crush the spirit and make change seem hopeless so the profits keep rolling in.”

- life in a garment factory often involves physical punishments (slapping, hitting) and verbal abuse (public humiliation, swearing, etc.) Most of the laborers are young women/teens.

“In today’s world, Fashion is just a word that robbers wrap their spoils in. It is just an excuse for the rich to exploit the poor.”

The 1943 Bengal Famine: engineered by Churchill & colonial British attitudes towards India, caused the death of 3mil people.

The reason over 4mil Bangladeshis work in fashion production is because Bangladesh was steered into treacherous over dependence on clothing exports by the neo-colonial policies of the international monetary fund (IMF) and World Bank. These institutions pushed for Bangladesh to abandon dreams of self sufficiency.