Wednesday, April 25, 2007


COTTON GETS BAGGED
Image right is of Sagar Shah and Kenyon Gibson talking to reporters outside Sainsburys in Camden this morning. [courtesy of Chris Sanders at schmoontherun]
As thousands queued up all over the UK today to support the globalist pesticide companies by purchasing an Anya Hindmarch cotton bag, I stayed in bed soundly asleep...until my conscience woke me up and dragged me out of bed to go and speak up for those who are forced into lives of misery by the cotton industry. So I did not get there at 3 am to hang out with the real die-hards who wanted to bag a bag and go sell it on Ebay (they will soon find out that a limited edition of tens of thousands will not command a very high price...they may be working for less money than they pay the farm hands in Third World countries). But I did get there some time before the magic hour of 8am when the crowd was allowed in.
I met Sagar, who just started a hemp and natural fibres website, and we proceeded to hand out fliers, printed on hemp paper made in the UK.
We got a mixed reaction from the crowd; some wanted to listen, some wanted to go home and sleep (but their girlfriends, who wanted this bag, were not letting them back into bed without it) and others looked like they wanted us dead. Walking around with a bag that proudly proclaims it is made of the real thing, hemp, was not very flattering to all the eco-wannabes engaged in this trivial pursuit of the killer weed.
This last reaction is about what the cotton industry wants for us, and it reminds me of an episode in New York when two thieves took a woman's purse out of her bag. I took it back from them and started to get her attention when they both started to yell and threaten, acting very put out; how dare someone come by and intervene?
The cotton industry is making billions, if not trillions, and they like to keep their slaves working hard on the plantations. So hard in fact, that some 142, 000 a year fall sick or die in India each year alone. Another gang member who might like to threaten me is the pesticide industry, and a third is the press. As cotton uses 50% of all the world's pesticides, they stand to lose a lot of money if hemp, jute, ramie or other fibres are introduced. The press works quite often with whatever bully is in charge of the schoolyard, and right now the hemp industry does not have trillions of dollars, so the press ignores a lot of crucial information. Many journalists do not like to work too hard, they have never had to pick cotton for the fashionistas in the West to go around looking cool. They do not have to worry about the massive water shortages that cotton causes, leaving people to die in far away places.
So what happened to that pink change purse I was holding up in my hand whilst two thugs tried to get me to "mind my own business before I got hurt?" I finally got the woman's attention, yelling over the crowd as she was walking away unawares. Otherwise her keys, her money and her cards would have been gone.
Hopefully yelling over the crowd will work again, even if the thugs have trillions of dollars and lots of huffy journalists who would rather do an easy scoop on silly BS which sells so many papers.

1 comment:

Galli Galli Sim Sim said...

Great report!

I thought that I was being cynical and overly critical of the whole Anya affair. The need to replace plastic shopping bags in our society should not "become a fashion victim."

We're with you,
http://www.alternativeconsumer.com/