there was always some controversy about this but there is certainly a great difference between a group of independent, unknown, uncapitalized artists using the name ironically and a multinational corporation just trying to make a buck or 1000 million with sweatshop product.

Sneakers? Nah, what you need are Joy Division Oven Gloves.

i didnt know new balance was sweatshop-made. nike is infamous for this, but new balance was american manufactured as long as they could and to avoid death moved their manufacturing to china.

so i googled "new balance sweatshop" and i came up w/ these finds:

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_45/b3706008.htm
this article mentions new balance making efforts to oversee their suppliers--not always successfully because they don't own them but they do try

http://72.166.46.24/archive/features...W_BALANCE.html
this article chronicles new balance's grappling with the dark side

http://www.boston.com/business/artic...t_new_balance/
more sweatshop controversy but NB denies contracting w/ sweatshop

--

now i thought it was funny they'd make that shoe-- but funnier that someone would get excited about it? i mean it's a corporate product, like pokemon, or something... i dont know im maybe just too jaded. i hate logos & i never wear conspicuous brand names on my clothes-- i find that tasteless and nouveau riche. but i'm weird, so...

the institutionalized rape centers were not called Joy Division. Joy Division is the name of the women forced to serve at the institutionalized rape centers, and the name comes not from what the Nazis labeled it but a novel, the HOUSE OF DOLLS
The House of Dolls is a 1955 novel by Ka-tzetnik 135633.
In the novel, the Joy Divisions were groups of Jewish women in the concentration camps during World War II who were kept for the sexual pleasure of Nazi soldiers
The origin of Ka-tzetnik's story is not clear. Some say it is based on a diary kept by a young Jewish girl who was captured in Poland when she was fourteen years old and forced into sexual slavery in a Nazi labour camp. However the diary itself has not been located or verified to exist. Others claim that it is based on the actual history of Ka-Tzetnik's younger sister (The House of Dolls is about the sister of Ka-Tzetnik's protagonist, Harry Frelshnik).
Records of organized sexual slavery exist at Auschwitz but not at other camps. [1] In the Documentary film, Memory of the Camps; a project that was supervised by the British Ministry of Information and the American Office of War Information during the summer of 1945, camera crews filmed women whom they stated were forced into sexual slavery for the use of guards and favored prisoners. The film makers stated that as the women died they were replaced by women who were transported there from Ravensbrück. [2]
The barracks in which the women were kept were located in distant locations within existing concentration camps, usually close to the front lines. Troops on their way to the front spent a day drinking and molesting underage women. If they were not 'pleased' with their prisoner, they could have her killed. These female prisoners were better fed than other prisoners of the camp.
The book Stella: One Woman's True Tale of Evil, Betrayal, and Survival in Hitler's Germany, a biography of Stella Goldschlag, says she was threatened with being forced into sexual slavery unless she cooperated with the Nazis. [3]

The "House of Dolls" books is fascinating yet very grim reading.

That would make cooking just a tad more enjoyable, don't you think?