From the New Yorker regarding the recent factory fire in Bangladesh:
Deaths in modern garment factories tend to be different from plane crashes or many other catastrophic traumas in the slow-motion extravagance of their pain. For minutes, or even hours, workers’ lungs fill up with smoke. For days, even a week, workers struggle to survive under rubble until someone digs them out. Akter told me about a mother in a rural village who came to her for help after Tazreen. During that fire, the woman had gotten a call from her twenty-four-year-old son, a garment worker. “Mom,” he’d said, “there is a fire in the factory. I’m trying my best to escape, but smoke is filling my lungs.”
“Run to the stairs!” his mother told him, according to Akter. “Run to the window, and I’ll hop on a bus to come and get you.”
Ten minutes later, he called again. The stairs were jammed by a stampede. “Mom, I’m trying my best. There is no way I can get out.”
“Go to the toilet,” his mother told him, “and run the water so that it clears the smoke and you can breathe.” The son said, “O.K., I’m doing that.” He tried this, without luck, then returned to the factory floor, where his colleagues’ bodies were piling up in the dark.
Finally, he called home once more. This time, he rang with an apology. “Mom,” he cried, “it will be my last call—I’m dying for sure. I am sorry. I tried my best. I cannot breathe.” He wanted to convey a message. “I’m removing my shirt from my body, and I will tie it to my waist, so you can find me.” So he ripped off his shirt, made a knot around his torso, and collapsed so as to be found the next day by his mother.
WTF world, how can we still allow this to happen?
More here.
![thepoliticalnotebook:
This is this year’s World Press Photo of the Year for 2012, taken by Paul Hansen of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. It’s a photo taken on November 20th of the funeral of two Palestinian children in Gaza City. The children are brothers: two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and his older brother Muhammad. They were killed in an Israeli missile strike, which hit their house. Their father’s body is also being carried further back in the picture.
This is a very tough photo and I had a small debate over whether or not to post it on here. Not because of controversy related to Israel vs. Palestine in contemporary politics, but because this is a picture of two very small, dead children and the grief that surrounds their death. It is a heartrending and personal moment, and often on here I choose not to post images that are graphic or of dead bodies, out of respect to both my readers’ preferences and to the subjects of the photos. I decided to post this one for a few reasons. It won the award, making it now a very public photo which many will see and discuss. Primarily, though, I chose to post it because I think everything about this picture is important and that it’s supposed to be seen because we are not often enough treated to a visual understanding of life as a Palestinian under occupation in Gaza or the West Bank. It matters that this photo exists for us to see and think about and it matters that we see suffering of this nature. If you are displeased that I’ve shown this photo (for reasons not including some incensed assumption that by showing you Palestinian children killed by Israeli missiles that I must support Hamas or hate anyone who is Jewish, because neither is true or makes sense), I’m sorry for showing you something you did not want to see. It was genuinely because I think it’s important that you see it.
[Via NBC]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/9c61717782b8282cf1496e2ded5f7345/tumblr_mi9lj9dwxc1qchhhqo1_1280.jpg)
