Group items tagged

Mcdonald's marketing towards children under attack.

An example of big business turning a blind eye to not only an ethical dilemma, but also a legal one. The countries that buy tobacco have laws in place banning child labor as does the supplying country. The word "help" is used instead of work to cover up the use of small children in dangerous situations.

I suppose I'm a little biased when it comes to the Invisible Children, but I truly believe Obama made the right decision in trying to help free the child soldiers from Joseph Kony by sending in troops to help form a plan to capture Kony. I know there are many people who are outraged and flabbergasted as to why our country is doing this, but I think a large part of that is because they don't fully understand everything that's going on. If you really want to know more, invisiblechildren.com they explain everything.

This is the official statement made by Invisible Children in regards to President Obama deploying troops to Africa.

This is a video that talks about the news release of Obama deploying 100 US troops to Central Africa to help find and bring Joseph Kony (a man who has engaged Central Africa in war for 26 years, has killed hundreds of thousands, and kidnaps children and forces them to fight in his army) to justice. This group has come together because three guys saw a moral and ethical problem and wanted to do what they could to change it. 

Article on how advertising has an impact on the way children develop and grow up.

Many of us take our clean and safe water for granted, but others aren't so fotunate. Glad to see we are taking great strides to make a difference; making a World Water Day is a great start.

A news article about the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia.

Incredible that this sort of thing is so commonplace in our world. Unthinkable in the U.S.

Great article on the sandusky case and mainly about whether Joe Paterno should have been fired or not. A lot of ethical dillema here.

Some people think that money is more important than having a clean enviroment for our children.

I thought considering last week's reading, this blog post was good to look at. It coincides with Maitland's argument for sweatshops. The part I found most interesting was this: "The most important aspect relating to the morality of sweatshop labor is that it is voluntary. That is, sweatshop laborers get up in the morning and choose to work in a sweatshop instead of doing anyother possible thing on any given day. Why would they do that? It's simple, by working at a sweatshop a laborer is able to earn more for himself and his family than he would otherwise be able to were he not employed at that sweatshop. The laborer has the choice to either perform some other task for money, produce his own goods and services, or go work for the sweatshop. He has made the decision that what he gains by working at the sweatshop is more valuable than what he would gain doing anything else." It begs the question of who gets to decide what these workers do in their lives to support their families and how they should feel about those choices.

Another good reflection on this issue, jdybing. One of the issues with this type of argument is that it's rather theoretical. It simply isn't true of all people that "The laborer has the choice to either perform some other task for money, produce his own goods and services, or go work for the sweatshop." Even if this is true, the next question is whether we should just accept a type of work and working conditions that demoralize people and trivialize the value of their lives. What Maitland says of sweatshops is just as true of the practice of child labor early in the industrial era of the US, where children were not only doing dehumanizing work but doing so under extremely dangerous conditions. It's hard to see how anyone would actually "choose" this type of life given viable options for doing something else.

McDonald's currently spends more money on advertising in general than any other brand in all industries combined, helping it replace Coca-Cola as the world's most famous brand, according to "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser.