Nike's Slave Labor, Marijuana & Schizophrenia, Twitter Covers for China, Retail Changes Forever (The Five for 12/02/20)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Just a quick note…I’ll be live tomorrow night on my Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts, along with Drew, my partner in this new venture we’re building to make a dent in the student loans crisis and move more people into the middle class.
There will be times when we also dive into topics that I cover here in The Five.
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And on that note…here’s The Five:
[one]
Both Nike and Coca Cola have lobbied (and admitted, more or less) to using materials in their products produced by Muslim minorities living in concentration camps in Eastern China. The New York Times reports on the proposed law to ban importing goods from Xinjiang, China, where the slave labor is rampant.
The bill, which would prohibit broad categories of certain goods made by persecuted Muslim minorities in an effort to crack down on human rights abuses, has gained bipartisan support, passing the House in September by a margin of 406 to 3. Congressional aides say it has the backing to pass the Senate, and could be signed into law by either the Trump administration or the incoming Biden administration.
But the legislation, called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, has become the target of multinational companies including Apple whose supply chains touch the far western Xinjiang region, as well as of business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Lobbyists have fought to water down some of its provisions, arguing that while they strongly condemn forced labor and current atrocities in Xinjiang, the act’s ambitious requirements could wreak havoc on supply chains that are deeply embedded in China.
Xinjiang produces vast amounts of raw materials like cotton, coal, sugar, tomatoes and polysilicon, and supplies workers for China’s apparel and footwear factories. Human rights groups and news reports have linked many multinational companies to suppliers there, including tying Coca-Cola to sugar sourced from Xinjiang, and documenting Uighur workers in a factory in Qingdao that makes Nike shoes.
The Washington Examiner has accused Nike of using former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the Black Lives Matter movement to distract the U.S. from the shoe giant’s move to embrace slave labor and Islamaphobic genocide…and I’d say that accusation holds water.
As for me and my house…no more swoosh products while their shoes are being made like this.
[two]
I wanted to highlight two stories around free speech, which I think are related.
The first is Senator Marco Rubio’s open letter to Twitter after the social network has allowed a doctored photo to continue to circulate, which was posted by a Chinese diplomat. The fake photo shows an Australian soldier stabbing an Afghan girl.
Twitter came under fire during the 2020 election for locking the account of the New York Post for a story on Joe Biden’s son Hunter, which still appears to be credible.
By contrast, the social network will allow Chinese officials to put out propaganda which is easily proven false.
Twitter suppresing the free speech of the New York Post feels kinda like…life in Cuba. Rapper Denis Solis was senteneced to eight months in jail for filming a police officer who allegedly entered his home illegally, and insulting the man, according to the Washington Post.
Protetors attempting to shield Solis from further retribution have been accused of being a part of a U.S. coup to “stir up dissention” in Cuba.
Even if Solis had not filmed the police officer, he might still have landed in prison, just for the free expression of his music. The Miami Herald reports:
Because it is a crime in Cuba to paint, to write, to sing lyrics in any way that a bureaucrat or a police officer might deem inappropriate.
It can land you in prison without charges or access to a fair trial for months, as happened to the artist El Sexto a few years ago. Or, it can land you under constant surveillance, detention, and interrogation by state security as is happening to the San Isidro members now.
Subversion to foreign powers, you call it, underestimating Cubans who can think for themselves.
This is why free speech is the most vital right in the U.S., and the absolute most important to protect.
Imagine the George Floyd death from earlier this year…only it ended with not just the death of Floyd, but the arrest and imprisonment (without a trial) of everyone who filmed George’s final moments.
That’s life under Communist dictatorship. That’s the system Twitter is co-signing when they refuse to remove clearly false propaganda from their network.
One thing that baffles me about my fellow Millennials is the number of my peers (40%) who support government intervention (and punishment) for free speech. If you want that, hop one of the tire rafts used by Cuban refugees and reverse-commute to an island where the government “protects” it’s citizens by limiting free speech. I’m sure any of the refugees in Miami would gladly give you their homemade boat, as they will never return.
I’d say “send me a post card and let me know how it’s going,” but writing something negative about the Cuban government in a letter is grounds for imprisonment.
This goes back to the Latin phrase “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes,” or “Who Watches the Watchmen?”
The answer, when it comes to giving up free speech rights, is nobody. Every time a government has the power to imprison people for speech, the definition of what’s “hate speech” or “dangerous speech” expands to include criticizing the government itself.
[three]
This one is scary. Marijuana continues to be more legal and available in the U.S. In some ways, I agree with this from a legal standpoint. I recently learned of a young guy who did 10 years for dealing weed (no other crimes, just dealing weed) and served the last two years of his sentence in an Illinois prison while citizens [strike that], subjects [closer], prisoners [there we go] of The People’s Democratic Republic of Chicago-stan could buy The Devil’s Lettuce at retail stores.
However, as marijuana becomes legal it’s also becoming more potent. For adults, that means users are as likely to experience anxiety and paranoia as they are to get a comfortable buzz…and young people who smoke could be set up for a lifetime of mental health issues. Evie Magazine reports:
It’s not just anxiety that marijuana users are at risk for. In fact, a report from Harvard Medical School found that teenagers who smoke pot face an increased risk of developing psychosis later in life.
Psychosis is an umbrella term, but it includes medical disorders like schizophrenia, which is characterized by a loss of connection to reality.
Teenagers who smoke pot face an increased risk of developing psychosis later in life.
In the U.S., marijuana is the most commonly used drug of abuse. A 2015 National Survey on Drug and Health found that 22.2 million people, aged 12 and up, have used marijuana. 12 and up. Meaning a large percentage of those users are teens or even pre-teens, and have yet to develop fully.
Psychosis includes schizophrenia, where affected individuals hear voices in their heads…one of the most terrifying mental illnesses on the planet.
[four]
Stores are not likely a thing of the past…but going into them may never be the same in the post-COVID era due to the rise of BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store).
BOPIS encompasses curbside pickup and also “ship from store,” a relatively new option that gets items to you faster by shipping from your nearest store rather than from a warehouse. Amid the pandemic, many stores that were closed to in-person shoppers still had employees inside, packaging and shipping orders from the store.
Big brick-and-mortar chains like Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), Best Buy (BBY), Urban Outfitters (URBN), and Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) have all cited BOPIS as a game-changer on recent earnings calls—and they don’t expect the trend to slow after the pandemic.
Dick’s launched curbside pickup early in the pandemic and said 75% of its online orders in Q2 were fulfilled by stores (shipped to the customer from their nearest store, or picked up curbside). In Q3, even after Dick’s reopened stores, curbside kept growing.
“We anticipated originally that we would see a large drop-off when the stores reopened, but that is not the case,” Dick’s president Lauren Hobart noted on the company’s Q2 earnings call. (Hobart will be the next CEO of Dick’s, effective Feb. 1, the company announced this week.) Dick’s CEO Ed Stack added: “It started off as a safety piece... It's now becoming a convenience piece.”
This has to be one of the best trends birthed from the COVID pandemic…now that the genie is out of the bottle and you can get stuff without going into stores…why go into stores?
[five]
Let’s round out this issue with a pop culture roundup.
Chase Darkness with Me, the true story of a New York Post journalist who has solved some real life murders, may not be the best book I’ve read (err, listened to on Audible this year, but it’s without a doubt the most engaging. On top of it, Billy solves a murder that happened in River North Chicago, outside a 7/11 I’ve stopped at a bunch of times. This is one of those books I can reccomend to everyone, but if you’ve lived (or currently live) in Chicago, it’s a must-read (err, listen).
I’m really enjoying the new Smashing Pumpkins alubm, Cyr, which dropped last Friday. It’s got a bit of a synth-y vibe closer to the 80’s sonics of The Cure than what you might think of when someone brings up SP. Billy Corgan, one of the most dysfunctional singers in rock music, is now a stable person, parent and apparently not insane. I got a lot out of his interview with Grant Random on SiriusXM. The biggest takeaway is that the band has learned not to blow their personal issues up when together and treat Smashing Pumpkins as a business…and that’s made all the difference. Corgan credits everyone in the band having kids with the reason they’re able to avoid the drama and focus on the creativity.
And speaking of, 20 years after satellite radio launched, I’m finally a believer. I I did a three month trial just to get a $50 Google Nest smart speaker for $15, and I listen to XM a good bit despite having YouTube Music for full albums, playlists etc. Apparently you can keep XM for $5/month if you call and threaten to cancel a couple of times a year…so that’s my strategy (thanks to Nancy, who reads this newsletter for that tip!) In the meantime, you can try it out for $1 for next four months. (Again, not an affiliate link, I just share stuff I enjoy).
You can check out the most streamed artists (and albums, and songs, etc) on Spotify this year…Bad Bunny was the biggest artist in the world, followed by Drake. I barely no who bad bunny is…and I don’t listen to Drake because I like real hip hop. And I’m defining real hip hop as rappers who don’t sell candles that…smell like themselves?
Until the next one,
-sth