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Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#301

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

Talyen42 wrote: post #273
barnacled wrote: post #229

And yet Tim Cook has the cheek to get 'woke'. Apple could easily afford to build everything in a country that isn't an awful dictatorship running concentration camps and still earn obscene profits. And yet they still somehow maintain this aura of being the 'good guys'...

Apple's supply chain is more than 1,000 companies. Do you really think Apple has the expertise and personnel to replicate what 1,000 companies have spent decades mastering? Not likely. No company on earth has ever been able to make a smartphone entirely themselves, and no company ever will, although i'd like to be proven wrong.

Perhaps the OP's point was missed here.

Pointing out that no company can make the entire smartphone by themselves is all well and good. The OP was applying that wisdom to the "woke" culture Cook is seeking to solidify within Apple.

It's just as unrealistic for Apple to be woke as it is for them to make the whole phone by themselves. They love existing under that banner, though, because it succeeds in tricking many people into believing they can use iPhones and avoid being hypocrites.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#302

Post by mvanbaak »

saladgnu054 wrote: post #284
Talyen42 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

please list smartphones i can buy that have no suppliers with any history of human rights issues thank you

Why are you moving the goalposts? What does the history matter, the list of countries currently with millions of people in concentration camps is quite short.

As far as I can see they are not moving the goalpost. They simply asked to what mobile phone brand they can go to make things better.

Yes, the answer is: not one.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#303

Post by rowanG077 »

daenz wrote: post #9

"forced labor" It's slavery...modern day slavery. Why are we mincing words? We stand on our soap boxes and preach about historical injustices and how we need to repair them. Well here is your chance to prevent a future historical injustice, and all it takes is for you to take a stand, instead of quietly consuming the products and leaving it for future generations to atone for methods by which those products were prod…

Because it's not about the historical injustices. Those people don't care about injustices. They care about looking good and moral.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#304

Post by wry_discontent »

animal_spirits wrote: post #198

I have yet to see any actual evidence of forced labor in China. Only claims, nothing more. Americans have been fed false propaganda against communist USSR for decades, and I have a gut feeling the same is happening against communist China. Maybe it has to do with China's plan to collapse the US petrodollar global monetary system [0] and the US is trying to rouse a new Red Scare and push us into a second Cold War. EDI…

I looked into the Uighur detention story a couple weeks ago and found very little in terms of substance. Most sources either traced back to the US State Department, which obviously shouldn't be trusted, or Adrian Zenz, a weirdo with a religious (literally) obsession with destroying China. It comes across very much like propaganda to decrease China's world standing and justify increased aggression economically and politically.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#305

Post by buttercraft »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #228
tiahura wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you've never been incarcerated? There's all sorts of volunteering: such as fixing the TV or coffee maker, teaching other inmates to read, helping another inmate file a frivolous appeal, and so on. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/07/20/538062911/wh... [What's It Really Like To Work In A Prison Goat Milk Farm? We Asked Inmates] But what do the workers themselves think? I find Jeremiah Pate in the…

The previous poster made a very obvious point that work is not voluntary when the alternative is punishment, which your post very helpfully illustrates as “sitting in [a] tiny little cell.” This doesn’t seem like a point that should require so much explanation for thinking people.

'sli stated, "It was major news that prisoners were sent to fight fires in California for little to no pay." This makes it sound as if they were forced to do a dangerous job against their will. As 'stickfigure pointed out, they could have chosen to sit in a cell instead. The fact that nobody goes to prison voluntarily is beside the point.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#306

Post by ogre_codes »

echelon wrote: post #275
barnacled wrote: post #229

And yet Tim Cook has the cheek to get 'woke'. Apple could easily afford to build everything in a country that isn't an awful dictatorship running concentration camps and still earn obscene profits. And yet they still somehow maintain this aura of being the 'good guys'...

If you buy an iPhone, you're complicit in human slavery. Period. Don't even try to explain yourself out of it.

Then by extension if you buy any computer, consumer electronics, smartphone, manufactured toy, etc, you are complicit in human slavery.

There are almost no computer or smartphone companies which do not participate in these markets. Samsung, Dell, HP, Lenovo (which is a Chinese company yet oddly gets ignored every time these discussions come up), Microsoft, LG, etc etc etc. All of them participate in these same industries. Most of them get little or no scrutiny even though they use many of the same supply lines Apple does and have far less in terms of transparency about their supply chain.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#307

Post by bigbubba »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #299
bigbubba wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This also seems to describe prison labor that occurs in the US, which [...] is definitely different from slavery Did you sleep though civics class? Go read the thirteenth amendment.

> The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un... This doesn't say “prison labor is slavery”; it says that prison labor is allowed to be slavery. You should've provided some reference to e.g. a news article to back up your claim. It's legal to pai…

Forced labor is slavery, full stop. This was recognized by the men who wrote the 13th amendment. It is not "definitely different". And no, paying a slave does not make it 'not slavery.' Slaves have been paid paltry sums some of the time throughout history. It's still slavery.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#308

Post by CydeWeys »

Talyen42 wrote: post #273
barnacled wrote: post #229

And yet Tim Cook has the cheek to get 'woke'. Apple could easily afford to build everything in a country that isn't an awful dictatorship running concentration camps and still earn obscene profits. And yet they still somehow maintain this aura of being the 'good guys'...

Apple's supply chain is more than 1,000 companies. Do you really think Apple has the expertise and personnel to replicate what 1,000 companies have spent decades mastering? Not likely. No company on earth has ever been able to make a smartphone entirely themselves, and no company ever will, although i'd like to be proven wrong.

> Apple's supply chain is more than 1,000 companies.

And whose choice was that? Apple has chosen to do business with all of these companies and they have chosen to consistently do business in China even despite the long history of China's violations of human rights abuses. Of course Apple is responsible for their choices of who to do business with!

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#309

Post by berdario »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #225
berdario wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The situation in Xinjang is such that for an Uyghur it is in fact impossible to decline to do what the state says ... > The situation anywhere is such that for anyone it is in fact impossible to decline to do what the state says FTFY As long as you have a police force and prisons, you'll never be able to NOT do what the state says. Now, it's a matter of: - do you disagree with what the state does? - do you agree wi…

You are obviously eliding the distinction between a state where officials can arbitrarily order you to do anything and a state bound by the rule of law and a constitution enforced by independent courts that limits what the executive and legislature can order you to do.

Yes, because that's a separate/orthogonal (and much more controversial point).

I just don't want anarchists to be fooled into supporting the warmongering US propaganda.

i.e. do you agree that the state should have the power to do what's described above?

I was leaning to say more "no". I basically used to be more of an anarchist. That was probably (also) because I was disappointed in our cronyist, capitalist, disfunctional governments...

I'm now finding myself as more of a statist, after realizing how much good is being accomplished in China, and how arbitrary and ridiculous are the falsehoods that the US propaganda is pushing.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#310

Post by kortilla »

hobs wrote: post #77
simonh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like it may well be going that way, sure, but making this about Apple is headline bait. It's about China. The fact is you can't buy a single thing made in China and be sure it isn't implicated in this in some way. Think of the last few things you bought that were manufactured or sourced some parts in China. Can you honestly say the manufacturer audits their supply chain with the same rigour? At least Apple i…

So we shouldnt shame the richest company on earth for using slave labor because its about "china"? If anyone has leverage, its Apple, so actually yes its a way to start fixing the problem. There's a simple way to keep slave labor out of your supply chain, stop doing business with people who are fine with that, not "performing audits to find out they are using slave labor again so we switched!"

>So we shouldnt shame the richest company on earth for using slave labor because its about "china"?

No, that’s a convenient misdirection to avoid real change. By making it “Apple is evil”, people just switch to another phone manufactured in China and pat themselves on the back for doing absolutely nothing.

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