Tea at Trianon: Forced Labor in China

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Forced Labor in China

From Forbes:

America’s leading climate and environmental groups including Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Energy Foundation, and Environmental Defense Fund have not responded to repeated queries about evidence that China is forcing Uyghur Muslims to choose between forced labor at factories which make solar panels which all three groups promote, or being sent to concentration camps.

NRDC, Environmental Defense Fund, and Energy Foundation are the three most influential environmental organizations within the Biden Administration and among Democrats in Congress. In December President Joe Biden named NRDC President & CEO Gina McCarthy as his National Climate Advisor. The organizations routinely denounce abuses of human rights and issue regular calls for environmental justice.
Yesterday, the Solar Energy Industries Association issued a set of guidelines, or a “protocol,” for solar panel companies to use to avoid the use of genocide labor. “Solar customers expect their products to be ethically produced, and this protocol helps ensure that solar products coming into the United States are not made using forced labor,” it says. (Read more.)