Where Boats Go To Die
This weekend CBS' "60 Minutes" updated one of the most powerful stories I've seen on how the global economy affects workers. "The Ship Breakers of Bangladesh," produced by Michael Gavshon and reported by Bob Simon, takes us to the shores of one of the world's poorest countries to show us how thousands of people earn $1 a day tearing apart ships that have made their last voyage. To go with the powerful footage of Bangladeshis as young as 14 doing their difficult and dangerous jobs, Simon and Gavshon use vivid words to describe the scene:
The men who work here are dwarfed by the ships they are destroying. And they dissect the ships by hand. The most sophisticated technology on the beach is a blowtorch. The men carry metal plates, each weighing more than a ton from the shoreline to waiting trucks, walking in step like pallbearers, or like members of a chain gang. They paint images of where they would like to be on the trucks - pictures of paradise far from this wasteland.
And when night falls, the work continues and the beach becomes an inferno of smoke and flames and filth.
This "60 Minutes" story builds on the investigative work of The Baltimore Sun's Will Englund and Gary Cohn, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/03/60minutes/main2149023.shtml