Tue. 12/04 8.30a: A fire at a garment factory in Bangladesh kills over 100 workers just as TV networks go wall to wall with coverage of bargain frenzied Black Friday shopping.
The horrible death toll at the factory, which was manufacturing clothing for big brands like Walmart, Disney and Sears, has forced media to take a look at worker abuse and the role of U.S-based corporations that seem to want us to believe that they have almost no control over how their own products are made. We'll talk it over with Scott Nova of the Workers Rights Consortium.
Also on CounterSpin today: "War torn, mineral rich" --that's pretty much all Time magazine thinks you need to know about the region of eastern Congo, now consumed in violence from a rebel group called M23, that has occupied the city of Goma and claims they hope to topple the Kabila government. Readers seeking a more thoughtful analysis will need to get beyond that mainstream gloss on the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the fighting only adds to a near unbelievable ongoing humanitarian disaster, particularly if you hope to understand the role played by the US as something other than that of concerned onlooker. We'll hear from Maurice Carney of the group Friends of the Congo about how to interpret confused and conflicting reports from the country.