Annotate the essay below by identifying the different types of first- and secondhand evidence presented to develop the argument. Analyze how each type of evidence appeals to ethos, logos, pathos, or a combination of those. Terror’s Purse Strings
DANA THOMAS
Luxury fashion designers are busily putting final touches on the handbags they
will present during the spring-summer 2008 women’s wear shows, which
begin next week in New York City’s Bryant Park. To understand the importance of the handbag in fashion today consider this: According to consumer
surveys conducted by Coach, the average American woman was buying two
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110 CHAPTER 3 • ANALYZING ARGUMENTS
new handbags a year in 2000; by 2004, it was more than four. And the average luxury bag retails for 10 to 12 times its production cost.
“There is a kind of an obsession with bags,” the designer Miuccia Prada
told me. “It’s so easy to make money.”
Counterfeiters agree. As soon as a handbag hits big, counterfeiters around
the globe churn out fake versions by the thousands. And they have no trouble
selling them. Shoppers descend on Canal Street in New York, Santee Alley in
Los Angeles and flea markets and purse parties around the country to pick up
knockoffs for one-tenth the legitimate bag’s retail cost, then pass them off as real.
“Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys shop here,” a private investigator
told me as we toured the counterfeit section of Santee Alley. “Affluent people
from Newport Beach.” According to a study by the British law firm Davenport
Lyons, two-thirds of British consumers are “proud to tell their family and
friends” that they bought fake luxury fashion items.
At least 11 percent of the world’s clothing is fake, according to 2000 figures from the Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group in Paris. Fashion is easy to
copy: counterfeiters buy the real items, take them apart, scan the pieces to
make patterns and produce almost-perfect fakes.
Most people think that buying an imitation handbag or wallet is harmless,
a victimless crime. But the counterfeiting rackets are run by crime syndicates
that also deal in narcotics, weapons, child prostitution, human trafficking and
terrorism. Ronald K. Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, told the House
of Representatives Committee on International Relations that profits from the
sale of counterfeit goods have gone to groups associated with Hezbollah, the
Shiite terrorist group, paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland and
FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Sales of counterfeit T-shirts may have helped finance the 1993 World
Trade Center bombing, according to the International AntiCounterfeiting
Coalition. “Profits from counterfeiting are one of the three main sources of
income supporting international terrorism,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism
expert at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland.
Most fakes today are produced in China, a good many of them by children. Children are sometimes sold or sent off by their families to work in
clandestine factories that produce counterfeit luxury goods. Many in the West
consider this an urban myth. But I have seen it myself.
On a warm winter afternoon in Guangzhou, I accompanied Chinese
police officers on a factory raid in a decrepit tenement. Inside, we found two
dozen children, ages 8 to 13, gluing and sewing together fake luxury-brand
handbags. The police confiscated everything, arrested the owner and sent the
children out. Some punched their timecards, hoping to still get paid. (The average Chinese factory worker earns about $120 a month; the counterfeit factory worker earns half that or less.) As we made our way back to the police
vans, the children threw bottles and cans at us. They were now jobless and,
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SHAPING ARGUMENT 111
because the factory owner housed them, homeless. It was Oliver Twist in the
21st century.
What can we do to stop this? Much like the war on drugs, the effort to
protect luxury brands must go after the source: the counterfeit manufacturers.
The company that took me on the Chinese raid is one of the only luxury-goods
makers that works directly with Chinese authorities to shut down factories, and
it has one of the lowest rates of counterfeiting.
Luxury brands also need to teach consumers that the traffic in fake goods
has many victims. But most companies refuse to speak publicly about counterfeiting — some won’t even authenticate questionable items for concerned customers — believing, like Victorians, that acknowledging despicable actions
tarnishes their sterling reputations.
So it comes down to us. If we stop knowingly buying fakes, the supply
chain will dry up and counterfeiters will go out of business. The crime syndicates will have far less money to finance their illicit activities and their terrorist
plots. And the children? They can go home.