Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
The Fall of Bo Xilai
Full Article:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-10/bo-xilais-fall-complicates-chinas-leadership-transition
Former high-flying conservative Bo Xilai has been suspended from China’s Central Committee, a 200-plus-member top leadership body, as well as the more powerful Politburo, now with two dozen members. The charge: “suspected of being involved in serious discipline violations,” said Xinhua news agency on April 10. And in a stunning development, the state news agency also announced that Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, and an orderly from the Bo household are “highly suspected” in the homicide of a British businessman who died in Chongqing last November.
It is the biggest political scandal to hit China in years. It destroys any possibility of a smooth transition to the next generation of top leaders slated to take control at the National Party Congress, which will happen this fall. That had been the intention of China’s party brass, eager to present a unified face to the world. And it ends the career of the 62-year-old former party secretary and princeling—son of a Communist Party revolutionary—whose once-likely ascension to China’s Standing Committee would have made him one of the nine most powerful men in the country.
For Bo, it is an ignominious end to a career that earned him occasional kudos and plenty of enemies. He was praised for creating one of China’s most livable cities when he ran coastal Dalian in the 1990s. As minister of commerce from 2004 to 2007, he earned few friends among the foreign business community while gaining a reputation as a nationalist who favored Chinese state enterprises.
Bo’s prospects of reaching top office faded when his former chief of police, Wang Lijun, fled to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, Sichuan, in an apparent failed bid for political asylum. Now it appears Wang carried with him explosive allegations about Bo’s wife’s involvement in the Chongqing murder, effectively ending any possibility of Bo ever being promoted again. The unfolding scandal saw him replaced as Chongqing’s party secretary earlier, on March 15...
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Foxconn's Other Dirty Secret: The World's Largest 'Internship' Program
Alex PasternackWednesday, Feb 15, 2012
http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/2/15/foxconn-s-other-dirty-secret-the-world-s-largest-internship-program
In June 2010, a university student named Liu Jiang arrived in the southern Chinese city of Foshan to begin his summer internship, at a factory that produces LCD screens for laptops and cell phones for the manufacturing giant Foxconn. As a student at the Dongfang Vocational School of Technology in the northern city of Shijiazhuang, Liu had traveled hundreds of miles for a chance to get hands-on experience working for China’s leading electronics maker.
But his internship was brief. Less than a month later, in the early morning of July 18, the eighteen-year-old would climb to the roof of his six-story dormitory and leap to his death.
Liu quickly became a statistic in Foxconn’s ugly worker history, a blip on the Internet radar: his was the seventeenth suicide attempt, and the thirteenth death, at a Foxconn factory that year alone. (The suicide rate at Foxconn is still lower than that of the general population in China, but striking for its concentration among a group of workers at a single company.) Apart from his school, few details emerged about Liu’s life or the conditions of his particular internship, a gig that landed him among other full-time workers his age and younger.
But in light of a series of reports that have emerged in the years since, Liu’s suicide points at one of the under-reported but more unsavory aspects of the much-criticized labor practices that produce gadgets for Apple and many other popular computer brands: with the help of schools and government officials, the company runs a massive internship program built not on voluntary education but on “compelled” factory work for teenage students. According to Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, Foxconn may be running “the world’s single largest internship program – and one of the most exploitative.”
By Foxconn’s standards, Liu’s internship — which he landed through a labor placement firm in the nearby city of Guangzhou — would have included housing, food, and a small stipend estimated to be about half the salary of a typical factory worker, all in the name of hands-on education. But according to independent studies, and by Foxconn’s own admission, interning in a gadget factory is often less about job training and more of a lesson in the crude economics of globalization.
Foxconn says it relies on as many as 180,000 interns during the summer months to fulfill the needs of the voracious beast of Western gadget demand — and the requirements of companies like Apple, Amazon, HP and nearly every other major electronics brand. The Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), a longtime critic of Foxconn, estimates the number is much higher, and that interns have at times made up as much as a third of the company’s 1.3-million-strong workforce, or 430,000 interns. Either way, it’s an intern workforce more sizable than Disney, Congress and Hollywood combined.
But neither Apple nor recent widely-spread reports in the mainstream media make mention of interns. Sourced from schools and third-party recruitment firms, SACOM reports that interns tend to fall into a class of indirect workers, for whom Foxconn is not directly responsible. At the time of Liu’s death, Foxconn deflected responsibility for his case because he was hired by an outside recruitment company in Guangzhou.
“Because [indirect workers] are not directly hired by the factories, the factories will say, ‘we are not responsible for taking care of them,’” Fan Yuan, of the New York-based China Labor Watch, told me. “They usually work longer hours than regular workers. If there is an inspection or auditing from these companies, these workers will disperse.”
As a result, the use of interns can complicate attempts to surveil the supply chain for labor violations. “If we want to dig deeper, if we want to find the factories that are selling raw materials to Foxconn, in these factories the conditions may be even worse,” says Yuan. “But it’s really difficult for any organization to have specific data about them.”
This isn’t the venerated internship of the privileged college student, building valuable work and life skills with school credit and on-the-job training in place of pay – if such an internship even still exists. Historically, Foxconn’s low-wage internships involve essential factory labor by poor students, some of whose areas of study have nothing to do with electronics, and turn the “school credit” idea on its head. According to SACOM, vocational students, including those studying journalism, tourism and languages, have had practically no choice but to participate in such internships if they want to graduate from their schools. As temporary workers, they have little legal protection or recourse in the event of injury, over-work, or underpayment. And if they complain, they could jeopardize their diplomas.
“It is evident that this use of student workers is a form of involuntary labour, which is supposedly prohibited by Apple,” says a recent letter by SACOM to Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook. Apple, which is only one of dozens of Western brands that contract to Foxconn, has taken steps to address concerns at the manufacturer, including threats to workers’ health and safety, a heavy emphasis on overtime, and the use of underage workers. This week Apple announced, to some skepticism, that the independent auditor Fair Labor Watch was beginning to examine the company’s supply chain.
Apple’s most recent 27-page Supplier Responsibility Report, however, makes no mention of student internships. And while Foxconn’s internships have been reported in Chinese media, in Perlin’s book and in a recent Alternet story, student workers were not mentioned in recent reports by the Times, This American Life and others.
School work
Even if Foxconn is the largest employer of interns, the system is far larger than Foxconn, and depends upon the collusion of local governments and schools. Observers like the Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin and SACOM say the system is abetted by a network of government officials, who are paid fees for recruiting students, work with an unruly system of public and private vocational schools that funnel students into internships and reap fees and other benefits in the process. Such schools have proliferated across the country in recent years, often targeting rural and low-income high school graduates not privileged or accomplished enough to make it through the testing gauntlet and enter China’s middle- and top-tier universities.
On June 26, 2010, a week after Liu Wang began his internship in Foshan, the official China Daily newspaper described a striking approach to labor supply at Foxconn, which was then reeling from a string of suicides and rising labor demands. The Henan provincial government declared that 100,000 vocational and university students would be sent on three-month internships at Foxconn’s Shenzhen plants.
At one vocational school in Zhengzhou, wrote Hu Yinan, students were informed of the government’s requirement after the summer semester had begun, and that “all those who refuse would have to drop out.” That elicited ironic resignation from at least one student who spoke to the paper: “Everybody is going, ‘I can go find out why all those Foxconn employees killed themselves.’ It’s kind of fun.”
Meanwhile, a study that year by Beijing University and Tsinghua University found that local government agencies were given recruitment fees in exchange for filling worker quotas. One student interviewed for the study said she and 30 other students were dispatched from a vocational school in Guizhou Province to intern at an electronics factory in Changzhou, Jiangsu. There they were paid 500 yuan per month, half the pay of an average Foxconn worker, over the course of four months, with their internships tied to their eligibility for graduation.
In exchange for sending interns, schools are compensated, to the detriment of the interns: “it was not unusual for schools to deduct a ‘commission’ from the interns’ salary or get paid directly by factories for providing cheap labour,” according to the 2011 report by China Labor Watch.
The 2010 report concluded that Foxconn was “systematically” abusing internships offered by over 200 vocational schools in Southern China since 2009. Rather than performing “training”-related tasks, they were pressed into factory work, in some instances, forced to work 14-hour days in a standing position with low pay. Foxconn, it said, was as a “concentration camp of workers in the 21st century,” with students “kidnapped” to work overtime in the name of “just in time” production.
The “Internship”
The appeal of internships to employers at Chinese factories is not unlike that for many employers at white-collar offices in Los Angeles or London: free or low-cost labor by eager, energetic workers who earn few, if any, benefits, doing essential work. In China, where the “internship” has migrated from the West, Foxconn may be the tip of the iceberg. “What Foxconn and Apple’s other Chinese suppliers do—and Apple’s willingness to tolerate it—is completely par for the course for manufacturing in China,” says Perlin, who’s spent years working and studying in the country. “Forced labor is a major part of the Chinese economy, in many different respects, and our dependence on Chinese goods binds us to that every day. Forced internships like the ones at Foxconn appear to be somewhat common as well. What may be different here is the scale and the high-level government collusion.”
Since the 2010 suicides, Foxconn has pledged to improve its approach to interns, in addition to pay and worker safety. In an October 2010 statement, Foxconn responded to SACOM’s claim that a third of its workforce was interns, insisting that interns comprised 7.6% of its total employee population in China, “and at no time has this percentage ever exceeded 15% even during the summer peak seasons.”
“While we have found a small number of incidents where interns have voluntarily and legally worked overtime hours,” read the statement, “we are working hard to institute a ban on any overtime work by interns and we are in the process of ensuring that this important policy is enforced across all of our operations.” For its internships – “short-term, on-the-job” training managed by individual schools for students aged 16 and up – compensation levels are now “equivalent to that of the basic workers and higher than the government regulated levels and the average internship period is between two and six months.”
In the electronics industry, which has been called the most labor-abusive in the world, internships are not often addressed, even though guidelines by Apple and others forbid unpaid work and stipulate minimum pay. But those guidelines can mean little in practice when operations like Foxconn are squeezed at the margins to provide unpredictable, overnight deliveries of new products. The tide may be turning though, as a groundswell of labor unrest – and the uncensored reporting of labor abuses by the Chinese press – seem to illustrate.
Though Foxconn raised wages in 2010, they’re still reported to be 50-60 percent of the minimum living wage of the cities where factories are based, according to SACOM. That means overtime is necessary. One student worker in Chengdu explained, “If there is no overtime at all, I will only receive the basic salary. Hence, I have no choice.”
To young workers from the countryside, the ability to work long hours, even in violation of local labor laws, can be seen as a benefit. But the costs are high. Following the string of suicides, an undercover report published by China’s leading investigative newspaper, Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekend), laid bare the grim circumstances: 300,000 employees working and living on a 2 square kilometer patch of land – three times the population density of Manila, the densest city in the world – with ten workers to a dorm room, and little to no time for relationships (cheap prostitutes tend to set up shop just outside the factories). The coverage was excellent (part one, two and three), perhaps because its reporter, Liu Zhiyi, was able to fit in so well with the young workers: he too was a 23 year old intern for the newspaper.
“I know of two groups of young people,” was how he started his first article. “One group consists of university students like myself, who live in ivory towers and are kept company by libraries and lake views.”
The other group are treated more like robots. “They often dream, but also repeatedly tear apart their dreams, like a miserable painter who keeps tearing up his or her drafts,” he wrote. "They manufacture the world’s top electronic products, yet they gather their own fortune at the slowest possible pace. The office’s guest network account has a password that ends with “888” — like many businessmen, they love this number, and they worship its homonym [“rich,” “lucky”]. Little do they know that it’s their own hands protecting the country’s “8,” as their overtime hours, lottery tickets, and even horse racing bets struggle to find the “8” that belongs to themselves."
Few protections
In China, where inflation is colliding with higher wages, and placing a stronger reliance on white-collar internships, few protections for interns exist. Because interns are classified as students rather than workers, they are not protected by the country’s Labor Contract Law or other labor laws. Guidelines issued by the Ministry of Education and other government departments that do govern internships “do not necessarily carry the weight of law,” according to a report by the China Labor Bulletin.
A report published in 2011 by the Chinese Ministry of Education emphasized that the nation’s goal was to improve the supply of skilled workers to a distressed labor market – not necessarily to protect the rights of student interns and workers. “China has entered a critical moment of economic and social development,” it read. “However, secondary vocational education, which is supposed to shoulder the responsibility of cultivating China’s skilled workers, is still weak. Its quality, structure, scale and efficiency have yet to catch up with social and economic development.”
The lack of protections for interns is widespread. Because interns are not permanent workers, a range of employers, from Foxconn to Fox Searchlight – which has recently been named in a class-action lawsuit over “The Black Swan” – can ultimately deflect responsibility.
In October, a spokesman for Fox pointed the finger at director Darren Aronofsky: “These interns were not even retained by Fox Searchlight … which has a proud history of supporting and fostering productive internships.” After Liu’s suicide in July 2010, a spokesman for Foxconn said that because the victim was not an official employee of Chimei Innolux, but a temporary worker employed by a labor dispatching firm, it would not be “handling” the case.
In that same statement, Foxconn revealed that Liu’s internship had been terminated about a week after it began, on July 7, because he failed to show up for work for several days, and that the company had been trying to arrange to have him sent back to his hometown. It’s not clear why he stopped working, what kept Foxconn from buying him a ticket home, or what led him to suicide.
But Liu’s death might be read as the stark sign of an abusive practice that stretches far beyond China’s factories. And it’s another reminder, if we needed one, that calculating the cost of a new gadget is much harder than the price tag suggests.
Editor’s note: Liu Jiang is an alias. Liu is the surname of the intern who died in 2010, but his given name could not be confirmed.
http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/2/15/foxconn-s-other-dirty-secret-the-world-s-largest-internship-program
In June 2010, a university student named Liu Jiang arrived in the southern Chinese city of Foshan to begin his summer internship, at a factory that produces LCD screens for laptops and cell phones for the manufacturing giant Foxconn. As a student at the Dongfang Vocational School of Technology in the northern city of Shijiazhuang, Liu had traveled hundreds of miles for a chance to get hands-on experience working for China’s leading electronics maker.
But his internship was brief. Less than a month later, in the early morning of July 18, the eighteen-year-old would climb to the roof of his six-story dormitory and leap to his death.
Liu quickly became a statistic in Foxconn’s ugly worker history, a blip on the Internet radar: his was the seventeenth suicide attempt, and the thirteenth death, at a Foxconn factory that year alone. (The suicide rate at Foxconn is still lower than that of the general population in China, but striking for its concentration among a group of workers at a single company.) Apart from his school, few details emerged about Liu’s life or the conditions of his particular internship, a gig that landed him among other full-time workers his age and younger.
But in light of a series of reports that have emerged in the years since, Liu’s suicide points at one of the under-reported but more unsavory aspects of the much-criticized labor practices that produce gadgets for Apple and many other popular computer brands: with the help of schools and government officials, the company runs a massive internship program built not on voluntary education but on “compelled” factory work for teenage students. According to Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, Foxconn may be running “the world’s single largest internship program – and one of the most exploitative.”
By Foxconn’s standards, Liu’s internship — which he landed through a labor placement firm in the nearby city of Guangzhou — would have included housing, food, and a small stipend estimated to be about half the salary of a typical factory worker, all in the name of hands-on education. But according to independent studies, and by Foxconn’s own admission, interning in a gadget factory is often less about job training and more of a lesson in the crude economics of globalization.
Foxconn says it relies on as many as 180,000 interns during the summer months to fulfill the needs of the voracious beast of Western gadget demand — and the requirements of companies like Apple, Amazon, HP and nearly every other major electronics brand. The Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), a longtime critic of Foxconn, estimates the number is much higher, and that interns have at times made up as much as a third of the company’s 1.3-million-strong workforce, or 430,000 interns. Either way, it’s an intern workforce more sizable than Disney, Congress and Hollywood combined.
But neither Apple nor recent widely-spread reports in the mainstream media make mention of interns. Sourced from schools and third-party recruitment firms, SACOM reports that interns tend to fall into a class of indirect workers, for whom Foxconn is not directly responsible. At the time of Liu’s death, Foxconn deflected responsibility for his case because he was hired by an outside recruitment company in Guangzhou.
“Because [indirect workers] are not directly hired by the factories, the factories will say, ‘we are not responsible for taking care of them,’” Fan Yuan, of the New York-based China Labor Watch, told me. “They usually work longer hours than regular workers. If there is an inspection or auditing from these companies, these workers will disperse.”
As a result, the use of interns can complicate attempts to surveil the supply chain for labor violations. “If we want to dig deeper, if we want to find the factories that are selling raw materials to Foxconn, in these factories the conditions may be even worse,” says Yuan. “But it’s really difficult for any organization to have specific data about them.”
This isn’t the venerated internship of the privileged college student, building valuable work and life skills with school credit and on-the-job training in place of pay – if such an internship even still exists. Historically, Foxconn’s low-wage internships involve essential factory labor by poor students, some of whose areas of study have nothing to do with electronics, and turn the “school credit” idea on its head. According to SACOM, vocational students, including those studying journalism, tourism and languages, have had practically no choice but to participate in such internships if they want to graduate from their schools. As temporary workers, they have little legal protection or recourse in the event of injury, over-work, or underpayment. And if they complain, they could jeopardize their diplomas.
“It is evident that this use of student workers is a form of involuntary labour, which is supposedly prohibited by Apple,” says a recent letter by SACOM to Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook. Apple, which is only one of dozens of Western brands that contract to Foxconn, has taken steps to address concerns at the manufacturer, including threats to workers’ health and safety, a heavy emphasis on overtime, and the use of underage workers. This week Apple announced, to some skepticism, that the independent auditor Fair Labor Watch was beginning to examine the company’s supply chain.
Apple’s most recent 27-page Supplier Responsibility Report, however, makes no mention of student internships. And while Foxconn’s internships have been reported in Chinese media, in Perlin’s book and in a recent Alternet story, student workers were not mentioned in recent reports by the Times, This American Life and others.
School work
Even if Foxconn is the largest employer of interns, the system is far larger than Foxconn, and depends upon the collusion of local governments and schools. Observers like the Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin and SACOM say the system is abetted by a network of government officials, who are paid fees for recruiting students, work with an unruly system of public and private vocational schools that funnel students into internships and reap fees and other benefits in the process. Such schools have proliferated across the country in recent years, often targeting rural and low-income high school graduates not privileged or accomplished enough to make it through the testing gauntlet and enter China’s middle- and top-tier universities.
On June 26, 2010, a week after Liu Wang began his internship in Foshan, the official China Daily newspaper described a striking approach to labor supply at Foxconn, which was then reeling from a string of suicides and rising labor demands. The Henan provincial government declared that 100,000 vocational and university students would be sent on three-month internships at Foxconn’s Shenzhen plants.
At one vocational school in Zhengzhou, wrote Hu Yinan, students were informed of the government’s requirement after the summer semester had begun, and that “all those who refuse would have to drop out.” That elicited ironic resignation from at least one student who spoke to the paper: “Everybody is going, ‘I can go find out why all those Foxconn employees killed themselves.’ It’s kind of fun.”
Meanwhile, a study that year by Beijing University and Tsinghua University found that local government agencies were given recruitment fees in exchange for filling worker quotas. One student interviewed for the study said she and 30 other students were dispatched from a vocational school in Guizhou Province to intern at an electronics factory in Changzhou, Jiangsu. There they were paid 500 yuan per month, half the pay of an average Foxconn worker, over the course of four months, with their internships tied to their eligibility for graduation.
In exchange for sending interns, schools are compensated, to the detriment of the interns: “it was not unusual for schools to deduct a ‘commission’ from the interns’ salary or get paid directly by factories for providing cheap labour,” according to the 2011 report by China Labor Watch.
The 2010 report concluded that Foxconn was “systematically” abusing internships offered by over 200 vocational schools in Southern China since 2009. Rather than performing “training”-related tasks, they were pressed into factory work, in some instances, forced to work 14-hour days in a standing position with low pay. Foxconn, it said, was as a “concentration camp of workers in the 21st century,” with students “kidnapped” to work overtime in the name of “just in time” production.
The “Internship”
The appeal of internships to employers at Chinese factories is not unlike that for many employers at white-collar offices in Los Angeles or London: free or low-cost labor by eager, energetic workers who earn few, if any, benefits, doing essential work. In China, where the “internship” has migrated from the West, Foxconn may be the tip of the iceberg. “What Foxconn and Apple’s other Chinese suppliers do—and Apple’s willingness to tolerate it—is completely par for the course for manufacturing in China,” says Perlin, who’s spent years working and studying in the country. “Forced labor is a major part of the Chinese economy, in many different respects, and our dependence on Chinese goods binds us to that every day. Forced internships like the ones at Foxconn appear to be somewhat common as well. What may be different here is the scale and the high-level government collusion.”
Since the 2010 suicides, Foxconn has pledged to improve its approach to interns, in addition to pay and worker safety. In an October 2010 statement, Foxconn responded to SACOM’s claim that a third of its workforce was interns, insisting that interns comprised 7.6% of its total employee population in China, “and at no time has this percentage ever exceeded 15% even during the summer peak seasons.”
“While we have found a small number of incidents where interns have voluntarily and legally worked overtime hours,” read the statement, “we are working hard to institute a ban on any overtime work by interns and we are in the process of ensuring that this important policy is enforced across all of our operations.” For its internships – “short-term, on-the-job” training managed by individual schools for students aged 16 and up – compensation levels are now “equivalent to that of the basic workers and higher than the government regulated levels and the average internship period is between two and six months.”
In the electronics industry, which has been called the most labor-abusive in the world, internships are not often addressed, even though guidelines by Apple and others forbid unpaid work and stipulate minimum pay. But those guidelines can mean little in practice when operations like Foxconn are squeezed at the margins to provide unpredictable, overnight deliveries of new products. The tide may be turning though, as a groundswell of labor unrest – and the uncensored reporting of labor abuses by the Chinese press – seem to illustrate.
Though Foxconn raised wages in 2010, they’re still reported to be 50-60 percent of the minimum living wage of the cities where factories are based, according to SACOM. That means overtime is necessary. One student worker in Chengdu explained, “If there is no overtime at all, I will only receive the basic salary. Hence, I have no choice.”
To young workers from the countryside, the ability to work long hours, even in violation of local labor laws, can be seen as a benefit. But the costs are high. Following the string of suicides, an undercover report published by China’s leading investigative newspaper, Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekend), laid bare the grim circumstances: 300,000 employees working and living on a 2 square kilometer patch of land – three times the population density of Manila, the densest city in the world – with ten workers to a dorm room, and little to no time for relationships (cheap prostitutes tend to set up shop just outside the factories). The coverage was excellent (part one, two and three), perhaps because its reporter, Liu Zhiyi, was able to fit in so well with the young workers: he too was a 23 year old intern for the newspaper.
“I know of two groups of young people,” was how he started his first article. “One group consists of university students like myself, who live in ivory towers and are kept company by libraries and lake views.”
The other group are treated more like robots. “They often dream, but also repeatedly tear apart their dreams, like a miserable painter who keeps tearing up his or her drafts,” he wrote. "They manufacture the world’s top electronic products, yet they gather their own fortune at the slowest possible pace. The office’s guest network account has a password that ends with “888” — like many businessmen, they love this number, and they worship its homonym [“rich,” “lucky”]. Little do they know that it’s their own hands protecting the country’s “8,” as their overtime hours, lottery tickets, and even horse racing bets struggle to find the “8” that belongs to themselves."
Few protections
In China, where inflation is colliding with higher wages, and placing a stronger reliance on white-collar internships, few protections for interns exist. Because interns are classified as students rather than workers, they are not protected by the country’s Labor Contract Law or other labor laws. Guidelines issued by the Ministry of Education and other government departments that do govern internships “do not necessarily carry the weight of law,” according to a report by the China Labor Bulletin.
A report published in 2011 by the Chinese Ministry of Education emphasized that the nation’s goal was to improve the supply of skilled workers to a distressed labor market – not necessarily to protect the rights of student interns and workers. “China has entered a critical moment of economic and social development,” it read. “However, secondary vocational education, which is supposed to shoulder the responsibility of cultivating China’s skilled workers, is still weak. Its quality, structure, scale and efficiency have yet to catch up with social and economic development.”
The lack of protections for interns is widespread. Because interns are not permanent workers, a range of employers, from Foxconn to Fox Searchlight – which has recently been named in a class-action lawsuit over “The Black Swan” – can ultimately deflect responsibility.
In October, a spokesman for Fox pointed the finger at director Darren Aronofsky: “These interns were not even retained by Fox Searchlight … which has a proud history of supporting and fostering productive internships.” After Liu’s suicide in July 2010, a spokesman for Foxconn said that because the victim was not an official employee of Chimei Innolux, but a temporary worker employed by a labor dispatching firm, it would not be “handling” the case.
In that same statement, Foxconn revealed that Liu’s internship had been terminated about a week after it began, on July 7, because he failed to show up for work for several days, and that the company had been trying to arrange to have him sent back to his hometown. It’s not clear why he stopped working, what kept Foxconn from buying him a ticket home, or what led him to suicide.
But Liu’s death might be read as the stark sign of an abusive practice that stretches far beyond China’s factories. And it’s another reminder, if we needed one, that calculating the cost of a new gadget is much harder than the price tag suggests.
Editor’s note: Liu Jiang is an alias. Liu is the surname of the intern who died in 2010, but his given name could not be confirmed.
When will workers share in Apple's wealth?
Scott Nova, Special to CNNFri February 17, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/17/opinion/nova-apple-foxconn
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Scott Nova: Labor rights problems at Apple's supplier factories an issue for years
Apple joined an organization called the Fair Labor Association to audit its supply chain
Nova: If Apple wants to improve labor practices, it should reach out to independent groups
Nova: If Apple genuinely "cared about every worker," it would pay every worker a living wage
Editor's note: Scott Nova is executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent, nonprofit labor rights-monitoring organization that investigates working conditions in factories around the world.
(CNN) -- Apple's CEO Tim Cook says the company "cares about every worker" in its factories and that "no one in (the) industry is doing more to improve working conditions than Apple."
Of course, when it comes to issues of corporate responsibility, talk is cheap. What matters is not what Apple says, but what it does.
And what Apple does in its vast global supply chain has been well-documented, which is why the company is in public relations overdrive, frantic to protect its once pristine corporate image.
Consider the fate that befell workers at a factory in Chengdu, China, that makes products for Apple. In May, independent investigators issued a report documenting grave dangers to workers at the facility. They warned the factory was failing to control the profusion of dust produced by the manufacture of aluminum cases for the Ipad 2. When a factory is suffused with aluminum dust, there is a high risk of explosion. Apple ignored the report and refused to meet with the authors, the investigators said. It did nothing to address the danger.
Two weeks later, the factory exploded, killing four workers and injuring 18. In the wake of the explosion, Apple said its suppliers took measures to control aluminum dust. But despite this, in December 2011, another explosion, at an Apple supplier factory in Shanghai, injured 61 workers.
Grievous labor rights problems at Apple's supplier factories have been known for years, including the spate of worker suicides in 2010 at the giant plant in Shenzhen, China, known as "Ipod City." At this factory -- owned, like the Chengdu plant, by Apple's biggest supplier, Foxconn -- more than a dozen workers took their own lives by throwing themselves from the roof of the factory's overcrowded dormitories, in apparent protest of the brutal treatment facing workers at the facility. (Foxconn reportedly responded by putting up nets outside the dorms and making workers sign pledges not to kill themselves.)
In recent weeks, public awareness of these issues has increased exponentially, thanks to a huge jump in media interest, raising Apple's public relations problems from a low simmer to a rolling boil.
When a company comes under this kind of pressure, sometimes genuine change in policy can occur. The more typical response is a mere change in rhetoric. This is the route Apple is choosing.
Apple's major move has been to announce that it has joined an organization called the Fair Labor Association, which will "audit" Apple's factories. According to Apple, the Fair Labor Association is an independent watchdog that will work tenaciously to hold Apple and its suppliers accountable.
Unfortunately, while there are some fine people at the association, the organization is not the independent watchdog Apple claims it to be. Indeed, most of its money -- millions of dollars per year -- comes from the very companies whose labor practices it is supposed to scrutinize. Although Apple has not disclosed its financial relationship with the Fair Labor Association, it is likely now the organization's largest funder. Moreover, on the association's board of directors sit executives of major corporations such as Nike, Adidas and agribusiness giant Syngenta. The job of these executives is to represent the interests of other member companies, such as Apple. Under the Fair Labor Association's rules, the company representatives on the board exercise veto power over major decisions.
Independence, as most people understand the term, means an organization is not funded and governed by the companies it is charged with investigating. Despite the financial relationship, Apple argues that the Fair Labor Association will act independently and that the association's review of Apple's factories will probably be "the most detailed factory audit in the history of mass manufacturing."
Early indications are not encouraging. Just one day after launching what was supposed to be a long and uncompromising investigation of Foxconn's Ipad plant in Shenzhen, the association was already issuing public praise of Foxconn and Apple.
On Wednesday, CNNMoney/Fortune ran an article with the headline, "Apple iPad plant is 'way, way above average,' says inspector." Fair Labor Association President Auret van Heerden said this about Foxconn to Reuters: "The facilities are first-class. ... I was very surprised when I walked in the door how tranquil it is. ..." The CNNMoney/Fortune article notes that "whether intended or not, van Heerden's remarks served to support (Apple CEO) Cook's contention that no one has done more than Apple to address the working conditions at factories."
Van Heerden reached these conclusions after a guided tour of the factory provided by Foxconn's owner, Terry Gou. The views of Gou, one of the wealthiest men in Asia, are well-known to Foxconn workers because, as punishment for displeasing their managers, workers are sometimes forced to spend hours writing out copies of his personal sayings. Clearly, Apple's partnership with the Fair Labor Association is not, in and of itself, going to usher in radical change.
So what steps would Apple take if it were genuinely committed to improving its labor practices? For starters, it would open its factories for inspection and worker trainings to genuinely independent groups such as Hong Kong-based SACOM, the organization whose report on the Chengdu factory could have saved the lives of the workers killed there in May, had Apple paid it heed.
And if Apple genuinely "cared about every worker," it would pay every worker a living wage -- enough for workers to achieve a minimally decent standard of living, support their families and even save a bit toward a better future. Today, barely 1% of the retail price of an Ipad goes to the workers who make it; 33% goes to Apple's profits. Apple's profits are so high, and its global labor costs so low, that it could triple the wages of its 700,000 manufacturing workers and help them achieve a living wage (just a few dollars an hour in China), and still make $40 billion a year. A wage increase of 16% to 25% at Foxconn, announced today as Apple's public relations blitz reaches a crescendo, doesn't come close.
Next time you are at the Apple Store, consider bellying up to the Genius Bar and asking why the most profitable company in the history of technology can't pay its workers a living wage and why, if Apple is really ready to open itself to independent scrutiny, it doesn't allow inspections by organizations in which it is not a dues-paying member.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/17/opinion/nova-apple-foxconn
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Scott Nova: Labor rights problems at Apple's supplier factories an issue for years
Apple joined an organization called the Fair Labor Association to audit its supply chain
Nova: If Apple wants to improve labor practices, it should reach out to independent groups
Nova: If Apple genuinely "cared about every worker," it would pay every worker a living wage
Editor's note: Scott Nova is executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent, nonprofit labor rights-monitoring organization that investigates working conditions in factories around the world.
(CNN) -- Apple's CEO Tim Cook says the company "cares about every worker" in its factories and that "no one in (the) industry is doing more to improve working conditions than Apple."
Of course, when it comes to issues of corporate responsibility, talk is cheap. What matters is not what Apple says, but what it does.
And what Apple does in its vast global supply chain has been well-documented, which is why the company is in public relations overdrive, frantic to protect its once pristine corporate image.
Consider the fate that befell workers at a factory in Chengdu, China, that makes products for Apple. In May, independent investigators issued a report documenting grave dangers to workers at the facility. They warned the factory was failing to control the profusion of dust produced by the manufacture of aluminum cases for the Ipad 2. When a factory is suffused with aluminum dust, there is a high risk of explosion. Apple ignored the report and refused to meet with the authors, the investigators said. It did nothing to address the danger.
Two weeks later, the factory exploded, killing four workers and injuring 18. In the wake of the explosion, Apple said its suppliers took measures to control aluminum dust. But despite this, in December 2011, another explosion, at an Apple supplier factory in Shanghai, injured 61 workers.
Grievous labor rights problems at Apple's supplier factories have been known for years, including the spate of worker suicides in 2010 at the giant plant in Shenzhen, China, known as "Ipod City." At this factory -- owned, like the Chengdu plant, by Apple's biggest supplier, Foxconn -- more than a dozen workers took their own lives by throwing themselves from the roof of the factory's overcrowded dormitories, in apparent protest of the brutal treatment facing workers at the facility. (Foxconn reportedly responded by putting up nets outside the dorms and making workers sign pledges not to kill themselves.)
In recent weeks, public awareness of these issues has increased exponentially, thanks to a huge jump in media interest, raising Apple's public relations problems from a low simmer to a rolling boil.
When a company comes under this kind of pressure, sometimes genuine change in policy can occur. The more typical response is a mere change in rhetoric. This is the route Apple is choosing.
Apple's major move has been to announce that it has joined an organization called the Fair Labor Association, which will "audit" Apple's factories. According to Apple, the Fair Labor Association is an independent watchdog that will work tenaciously to hold Apple and its suppliers accountable.
Unfortunately, while there are some fine people at the association, the organization is not the independent watchdog Apple claims it to be. Indeed, most of its money -- millions of dollars per year -- comes from the very companies whose labor practices it is supposed to scrutinize. Although Apple has not disclosed its financial relationship with the Fair Labor Association, it is likely now the organization's largest funder. Moreover, on the association's board of directors sit executives of major corporations such as Nike, Adidas and agribusiness giant Syngenta. The job of these executives is to represent the interests of other member companies, such as Apple. Under the Fair Labor Association's rules, the company representatives on the board exercise veto power over major decisions.
Independence, as most people understand the term, means an organization is not funded and governed by the companies it is charged with investigating. Despite the financial relationship, Apple argues that the Fair Labor Association will act independently and that the association's review of Apple's factories will probably be "the most detailed factory audit in the history of mass manufacturing."
Early indications are not encouraging. Just one day after launching what was supposed to be a long and uncompromising investigation of Foxconn's Ipad plant in Shenzhen, the association was already issuing public praise of Foxconn and Apple.
On Wednesday, CNNMoney/Fortune ran an article with the headline, "Apple iPad plant is 'way, way above average,' says inspector." Fair Labor Association President Auret van Heerden said this about Foxconn to Reuters: "The facilities are first-class. ... I was very surprised when I walked in the door how tranquil it is. ..." The CNNMoney/Fortune article notes that "whether intended or not, van Heerden's remarks served to support (Apple CEO) Cook's contention that no one has done more than Apple to address the working conditions at factories."
Van Heerden reached these conclusions after a guided tour of the factory provided by Foxconn's owner, Terry Gou. The views of Gou, one of the wealthiest men in Asia, are well-known to Foxconn workers because, as punishment for displeasing their managers, workers are sometimes forced to spend hours writing out copies of his personal sayings. Clearly, Apple's partnership with the Fair Labor Association is not, in and of itself, going to usher in radical change.
So what steps would Apple take if it were genuinely committed to improving its labor practices? For starters, it would open its factories for inspection and worker trainings to genuinely independent groups such as Hong Kong-based SACOM, the organization whose report on the Chengdu factory could have saved the lives of the workers killed there in May, had Apple paid it heed.
And if Apple genuinely "cared about every worker," it would pay every worker a living wage -- enough for workers to achieve a minimally decent standard of living, support their families and even save a bit toward a better future. Today, barely 1% of the retail price of an Ipad goes to the workers who make it; 33% goes to Apple's profits. Apple's profits are so high, and its global labor costs so low, that it could triple the wages of its 700,000 manufacturing workers and help them achieve a living wage (just a few dollars an hour in China), and still make $40 billion a year. A wage increase of 16% to 25% at Foxconn, announced today as Apple's public relations blitz reaches a crescendo, doesn't come close.
Next time you are at the Apple Store, consider bellying up to the Genius Bar and asking why the most profitable company in the history of technology can't pay its workers a living wage and why, if Apple is really ready to open itself to independent scrutiny, it doesn't allow inspections by organizations in which it is not a dues-paying member.
Apple Partner Foxconn Has ‘Tons of Issues,’ Labor Group Says
Peter BurrowsFeb 17, 2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-17/foxconn-auditor-finds-tons-of-issues-.html
The Fair Labor Association, a watchdog monitoring working conditions at makers of Apple Inc. products, has uncovered “tons of issues” that need to be addressed at a Foxconn Technology Group plant in Shenzhen, China, FLA Chief Executive Officer Auret van Heerden said.
Van Heerden made the comments in a telephone interview after a multiday inspection of the factory. Apple, the first technology company to join the FLA, said on Feb. 13 that it asked the Washington-based nonprofit organization to inspect plants owned by three of its largest manufacturing partners.
“We’re finding tons of issues,” van Heerden said en route to a meeting where FLA inspectors were scheduled to present preliminary findings to Foxconn management. “I believe we’re going to see some very significant announcements in the near future.”
He declined to elaborate on the findings. The FLA plans to release more information about its inspection in the coming weeks. By then, the company will have had a chance to contest or agree to steps to prevent further violations.
“Foxconn is cooperating fully with this audit and we will review and act on all findings and recommendations,” Foxconn said in an e-mailed statement today. “This is a very professional and thorough review and any deficiencies the FLA might find in the implementation of customer or Foxconn policies will be addressed.”
Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, referred to the company’s Feb. 13 statement about the audits.
Hard-to-Find Violations
Van Heerden said in an interview with Reuters published Feb. 15 that Foxconn’s plants were “first class.” He said he was surprised “how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory.”
Heather White, the founder of Verite, another monitoring group, said that many alleged violations -- say, forced overtime or use of certain toxic chemicals -- can be hard to detect.
“Those are not things one would see on a hosted tour that was planned in advance,” she said.
Van Heerden said the comments reflected his previous interactions with Foxconn.
Apple had commissioned the FLA to carry out smaller projects in the past two years, in order to try out some of the inspection techniques used by the group to more effectively root out workplace problems.
Responses to Hazards
Van Heerden said he had been impressed with Apple and Foxconn’s responses to hazards related to the polishing of aluminum, which led to explosions at Foxconn and another Apple supplier, Pegatron Corp. (4938), that killed at least three workers and injured more than 70 people last year. Van Heerden said that Apple researched the problem and hired a respected consultant.
Apple shares were little changed at $502.12 yesterday. The stock has risen 24 percent this year, extending Apple’s lead as the world’s most valuable company.
In response to the consultant’s recommendations, Foxconn bought state-of-the-art extraction and ventilation equipment to prevent dust buildup, and developed an automated approach so that no humans are involved in the polishing work.
“I’ve seen the improvements that have been made, and they’re dramatic,” he said. “The room is full of robots. It’s totally automated. But people need to see the proof.”
Random Interviews
Van Heerden said that FLA’s 30-person inspection team will interview 35,000 Foxconn employees, via meetings with small groups of randomly picked workers, chosen to reflect the demographics of the campus in terms of age, gender and skill levels. As part of the process, workers log answers to questions on tablets connected to FLA servers so they can be tabulated.
White, who is now a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, says group meetings on Foxconn’s premises may not yield honest responses. She says she found it more productive to talk to workers in their homes or other off- site locations.
“It’s very hard to get people to speak openly about very serious issues,” she said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Burrows in San Francisco at pburrows@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-17/foxconn-auditor-finds-tons-of-issues-.html
The Fair Labor Association, a watchdog monitoring working conditions at makers of Apple Inc. products, has uncovered “tons of issues” that need to be addressed at a Foxconn Technology Group plant in Shenzhen, China, FLA Chief Executive Officer Auret van Heerden said.
Van Heerden made the comments in a telephone interview after a multiday inspection of the factory. Apple, the first technology company to join the FLA, said on Feb. 13 that it asked the Washington-based nonprofit organization to inspect plants owned by three of its largest manufacturing partners.
“We’re finding tons of issues,” van Heerden said en route to a meeting where FLA inspectors were scheduled to present preliminary findings to Foxconn management. “I believe we’re going to see some very significant announcements in the near future.”
He declined to elaborate on the findings. The FLA plans to release more information about its inspection in the coming weeks. By then, the company will have had a chance to contest or agree to steps to prevent further violations.
“Foxconn is cooperating fully with this audit and we will review and act on all findings and recommendations,” Foxconn said in an e-mailed statement today. “This is a very professional and thorough review and any deficiencies the FLA might find in the implementation of customer or Foxconn policies will be addressed.”
Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, referred to the company’s Feb. 13 statement about the audits.
Hard-to-Find Violations
Van Heerden said in an interview with Reuters published Feb. 15 that Foxconn’s plants were “first class.” He said he was surprised “how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory.”
Heather White, the founder of Verite, another monitoring group, said that many alleged violations -- say, forced overtime or use of certain toxic chemicals -- can be hard to detect.
“Those are not things one would see on a hosted tour that was planned in advance,” she said.
Van Heerden said the comments reflected his previous interactions with Foxconn.
Apple had commissioned the FLA to carry out smaller projects in the past two years, in order to try out some of the inspection techniques used by the group to more effectively root out workplace problems.
Responses to Hazards
Van Heerden said he had been impressed with Apple and Foxconn’s responses to hazards related to the polishing of aluminum, which led to explosions at Foxconn and another Apple supplier, Pegatron Corp. (4938), that killed at least three workers and injured more than 70 people last year. Van Heerden said that Apple researched the problem and hired a respected consultant.
Apple shares were little changed at $502.12 yesterday. The stock has risen 24 percent this year, extending Apple’s lead as the world’s most valuable company.
In response to the consultant’s recommendations, Foxconn bought state-of-the-art extraction and ventilation equipment to prevent dust buildup, and developed an automated approach so that no humans are involved in the polishing work.
“I’ve seen the improvements that have been made, and they’re dramatic,” he said. “The room is full of robots. It’s totally automated. But people need to see the proof.”
Random Interviews
Van Heerden said that FLA’s 30-person inspection team will interview 35,000 Foxconn employees, via meetings with small groups of randomly picked workers, chosen to reflect the demographics of the campus in terms of age, gender and skill levels. As part of the process, workers log answers to questions on tablets connected to FLA servers so they can be tabulated.
White, who is now a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, says group meetings on Foxconn’s premises may not yield honest responses. She says she found it more productive to talk to workers in their homes or other off- site locations.
“It’s very hard to get people to speak openly about very serious issues,” she said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Burrows in San Francisco at pburrows@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net
Foxconn Plans to Lift Pay Sharply at Factories in China
DAVID BARBOZAFebruary 18, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/technology/foxconn-to-raise-salaries-for-workers-by-up-to-25.html
BEIJING — Foxconn Technology, one of the biggest manufacturers of products for Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other electronics companies, said Saturday that it would sharply raise worker salaries at its Chinese factories.
Foxconn said that salaries for many workers would immediately jump by 16 to 25 percent, to about $400 a month, before overtime.
The company also said it would reduce overtime hours at its factories.
Labor rights groups say that over the years, many Foxconn plants have violated Chinese labor laws by pushing workers to endure excessive amounts of overtime.
Criticism has grown over working conditions at several Apple suppliers in China, including Foxconn, which employs more than one million workers to assemble some of the world’s most popular devices.
Apple announced last Monday that the Fair Labor Association, a nonprofit group, would provide independent audits of its supplier factories in China and elsewhere. Apple said the group’s findings would be made public. The association began inspecting Foxconn operations in China this week.
Apple and Foxconn, which is based in Taiwan, have strongly denied allegations that the workers are treated poorly. But Apple has acknowledged in its own audits that some of its suppliers in China violate Apple’s own code of conduct, with instances of child labor, forced overtime and unsafe working conditions and evidence that employees are sometimes exposed to hazardous and toxic chemicals.
In recent years, Foxconn facilities in China have experienced a series of worker suicides, and labor rights groups have documented varied abuses.
Last year, four workers were killed and about 20 were injured because of a dust explosion at a Chinese factory that was producing the Apple iPad.
According to Bloomberg News, the auditor at the Fair Labor Association said recently that he had already found “tons of issues” at Foxconn plants. He did not detail the problems.
A Foxconn spokesman could not be reached late Saturday.
A version of this article appeared in print on February 19, 2012, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Foxconn Plans To Sharply Lift Workers’ Pay.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/technology/foxconn-to-raise-salaries-for-workers-by-up-to-25.html
BEIJING — Foxconn Technology, one of the biggest manufacturers of products for Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other electronics companies, said Saturday that it would sharply raise worker salaries at its Chinese factories.
Foxconn said that salaries for many workers would immediately jump by 16 to 25 percent, to about $400 a month, before overtime.
The company also said it would reduce overtime hours at its factories.
Labor rights groups say that over the years, many Foxconn plants have violated Chinese labor laws by pushing workers to endure excessive amounts of overtime.
Criticism has grown over working conditions at several Apple suppliers in China, including Foxconn, which employs more than one million workers to assemble some of the world’s most popular devices.
Apple announced last Monday that the Fair Labor Association, a nonprofit group, would provide independent audits of its supplier factories in China and elsewhere. Apple said the group’s findings would be made public. The association began inspecting Foxconn operations in China this week.
Apple and Foxconn, which is based in Taiwan, have strongly denied allegations that the workers are treated poorly. But Apple has acknowledged in its own audits that some of its suppliers in China violate Apple’s own code of conduct, with instances of child labor, forced overtime and unsafe working conditions and evidence that employees are sometimes exposed to hazardous and toxic chemicals.
In recent years, Foxconn facilities in China have experienced a series of worker suicides, and labor rights groups have documented varied abuses.
Last year, four workers were killed and about 20 were injured because of a dust explosion at a Chinese factory that was producing the Apple iPad.
According to Bloomberg News, the auditor at the Fair Labor Association said recently that he had already found “tons of issues” at Foxconn plants. He did not detail the problems.
A Foxconn spokesman could not be reached late Saturday.
A version of this article appeared in print on February 19, 2012, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Foxconn Plans To Sharply Lift Workers’ Pay.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Apple’s Foxconn Auditing Group ‘Surrounded With Controversy’
Apple’s Foxconn Auditing Group ‘Surrounded With Controversy,’ Critics Say
Christina Bonnington
February 13, 2012
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/02/apple-foxconn-investigations
Following ongoing public outcry and organized protests at Apple stores last week, Apple has announced that an organization called the Fair Labor Association is conducting independent assessments of worker conditions inside the factories of Foxconn, its manufacturing partner in China.
The FLA audit began this morning in Shenzen’s “Foxconn City.” In the inspections, FLA representatives will interview thousands of factory employees about their living and working conditions, delving into topics such as compensation, health and safety, working hours, and the workers’ communication with management. The results of the inspections will be posted on the FLA’s website in early March.
“We were hoping for a quick response, but I don’t know if we were actually expecting such a fast response from Apple,” said Sarah Ryan, a human rights organizer at Change.org, one of two groups that orchestrated last week’s protests at Apple stores. “It’s especially exciting that these audits are going to be transparent and public.”
The FLA said the audits will be conducted by “a team of labor experts” composed of FLA staff and representatives from two accredited service providers, Openview and INFACT. They’ll be visiting another Foxconn facility in Chengdu, China in the coming weeks.
While encouraged by today’s Apple announcement, Ryan also conceded the FLA is “surrounded with controversy in terms of effectiveness and objectiveness.” Still, Ryan says Change.org recognizes Apple has an existing relationship with the FLA, and as long as its findings are open and transparent, that’s a good thing.
But another key advocate of the Foxconn workers was even less impressed with Apple’s Monday announcement. Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, executive director of SumOfUs.org, told Wired, “We’re hopeful that this is a step towards the solution, but it’s not even close to the solution itself. The FLA does not have a great track record of conducting effective investigations.”
SumOfUs and Change.org co-sponsored a petition asking Apple to respond to allegations of Foxconn worker abuse, and to commit to developing “ethical” products. More than 250,000 people signed the petition, which was hand-delivered to Apple Stores across the globe on Thursday morning. A second petition, from Hong Kong group SACOM, takes last week’s protest one step further by outlining five specific areas in which Apple needs to improve, including ending the use of student workers and providing a living wage for factory employees.
Although knowledge of poor working conditions inside Foxconn has existed for years, after Apple’s record earnings in 2011, the issue struck a big nerve with much of the public. A New York Times piece that highlighted some of the dire conditions inside Apple’s Chinese factories motivated people to start taking action against the status quo.
The new FLA investigations, detailed in an Apple press release, appear to be a direct response to this outcry. Apple has conducted more than 40 supply chain audits of Foxconn since 2006 and over 500 audits of its factories total.
“We believe that workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment, which is why we’ve asked the FLA to independently assess the performance of our largest suppliers,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in the release.
“As an Apple consumer, I’m relieved to hear that Tim Cook is taking this seriously and is breaking ground in the industry with Fair Labor Association auditing,” said Mark Shields, the consumer who originally launched the Change.org petition, in a statement. “But Apple still needs to use some of their trademark creativity and problem solving to create a worker protection plan for new products — especially the upcoming iPad 3 — so that they’re proactively taking care of their workers.”
But for those looking for Apple (as well as other tech companies) to really change their ways, the FLA may not be the best company to perform these assessments, if its history is anything to go by.
Stinebrickner-Kauffman pointed out a site called FLA Watch that’s dedicated to monitoring the company’s well-publicized audits. It calls the FLA “a public relations mouthpiece” for corporations (particularly the apparel industry).
“The FLA was created in response to student protests around the sweatshop issue in the late 90s, specifically to monitor garment shops, with NIKE as a founding member,” Teresa Cheng, international campaigns coordinator with United Students Against Sweatshops (the organization behind FLA Watch), told Wired. “Ten years later, we see little to no reform of sweatshop conditions in NIKE’s supply chain, and no positive changes can be attributed to the FLA.”
Another veteran of the garment industry backs up Cheng’s opinion of audits.
“Reading that Apple has been auditing their vendors since 2006 does not mean anything,” says Sindy Sagastume, production manager for a fashion c'ompany called Aimee Lynn, which imports clothing for distribution to companies like Walmart, Target, and Sears. “Audits are truly a tool used by retailers in the US to make themselves seem to be socially compliant, but in fact does nothing to ensure factories are acting appropriately,” Sagastume told Wired.
So how much teeth does the FLA really have behind its audits? The organization has developed a code of conduct with which it judges workplace conditions, but all it does is investigate and report on working conditions; it doesn’t actually instigate any change itself. According to the organization’s website: “The FLA is a brand accountability system that places the onus on companies to voluntarily achieve the FLA’s labor standards in the factories manufacturing their products.”
In other words: The FLA is a reporting agency, not a policing agency. Any real change for Foxconn workers will come from either Foxconn itself, or pressure from the Chinese government or Apple.
“This is at best a decent first step,” echoed Stinebrickner-Kauffman of SumOfUs.org. “At worst, the beginning of a white-washing campaign.”
When asked to comment on its Foxconn investigations, the FLA supplied Wired with an official statement that mirrors the language of Apple’s press release. We will continue to reach out to the FLA for comment.
Christina Bonnington
February 13, 2012
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/02/apple-foxconn-investigations
Following ongoing public outcry and organized protests at Apple stores last week, Apple has announced that an organization called the Fair Labor Association is conducting independent assessments of worker conditions inside the factories of Foxconn, its manufacturing partner in China.
The FLA audit began this morning in Shenzen’s “Foxconn City.” In the inspections, FLA representatives will interview thousands of factory employees about their living and working conditions, delving into topics such as compensation, health and safety, working hours, and the workers’ communication with management. The results of the inspections will be posted on the FLA’s website in early March.
“We were hoping for a quick response, but I don’t know if we were actually expecting such a fast response from Apple,” said Sarah Ryan, a human rights organizer at Change.org, one of two groups that orchestrated last week’s protests at Apple stores. “It’s especially exciting that these audits are going to be transparent and public.”
The FLA said the audits will be conducted by “a team of labor experts” composed of FLA staff and representatives from two accredited service providers, Openview and INFACT. They’ll be visiting another Foxconn facility in Chengdu, China in the coming weeks.
While encouraged by today’s Apple announcement, Ryan also conceded the FLA is “surrounded with controversy in terms of effectiveness and objectiveness.” Still, Ryan says Change.org recognizes Apple has an existing relationship with the FLA, and as long as its findings are open and transparent, that’s a good thing.
But another key advocate of the Foxconn workers was even less impressed with Apple’s Monday announcement. Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, executive director of SumOfUs.org, told Wired, “We’re hopeful that this is a step towards the solution, but it’s not even close to the solution itself. The FLA does not have a great track record of conducting effective investigations.”
SumOfUs and Change.org co-sponsored a petition asking Apple to respond to allegations of Foxconn worker abuse, and to commit to developing “ethical” products. More than 250,000 people signed the petition, which was hand-delivered to Apple Stores across the globe on Thursday morning. A second petition, from Hong Kong group SACOM, takes last week’s protest one step further by outlining five specific areas in which Apple needs to improve, including ending the use of student workers and providing a living wage for factory employees.
Although knowledge of poor working conditions inside Foxconn has existed for years, after Apple’s record earnings in 2011, the issue struck a big nerve with much of the public. A New York Times piece that highlighted some of the dire conditions inside Apple’s Chinese factories motivated people to start taking action against the status quo.
The new FLA investigations, detailed in an Apple press release, appear to be a direct response to this outcry. Apple has conducted more than 40 supply chain audits of Foxconn since 2006 and over 500 audits of its factories total.
“We believe that workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment, which is why we’ve asked the FLA to independently assess the performance of our largest suppliers,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in the release.
“As an Apple consumer, I’m relieved to hear that Tim Cook is taking this seriously and is breaking ground in the industry with Fair Labor Association auditing,” said Mark Shields, the consumer who originally launched the Change.org petition, in a statement. “But Apple still needs to use some of their trademark creativity and problem solving to create a worker protection plan for new products — especially the upcoming iPad 3 — so that they’re proactively taking care of their workers.”
But for those looking for Apple (as well as other tech companies) to really change their ways, the FLA may not be the best company to perform these assessments, if its history is anything to go by.
Stinebrickner-Kauffman pointed out a site called FLA Watch that’s dedicated to monitoring the company’s well-publicized audits. It calls the FLA “a public relations mouthpiece” for corporations (particularly the apparel industry).
“The FLA was created in response to student protests around the sweatshop issue in the late 90s, specifically to monitor garment shops, with NIKE as a founding member,” Teresa Cheng, international campaigns coordinator with United Students Against Sweatshops (the organization behind FLA Watch), told Wired. “Ten years later, we see little to no reform of sweatshop conditions in NIKE’s supply chain, and no positive changes can be attributed to the FLA.”
Another veteran of the garment industry backs up Cheng’s opinion of audits.
“Reading that Apple has been auditing their vendors since 2006 does not mean anything,” says Sindy Sagastume, production manager for a fashion c'ompany called Aimee Lynn, which imports clothing for distribution to companies like Walmart, Target, and Sears. “Audits are truly a tool used by retailers in the US to make themselves seem to be socially compliant, but in fact does nothing to ensure factories are acting appropriately,” Sagastume told Wired.
So how much teeth does the FLA really have behind its audits? The organization has developed a code of conduct with which it judges workplace conditions, but all it does is investigate and report on working conditions; it doesn’t actually instigate any change itself. According to the organization’s website: “The FLA is a brand accountability system that places the onus on companies to voluntarily achieve the FLA’s labor standards in the factories manufacturing their products.”
In other words: The FLA is a reporting agency, not a policing agency. Any real change for Foxconn workers will come from either Foxconn itself, or pressure from the Chinese government or Apple.
“This is at best a decent first step,” echoed Stinebrickner-Kauffman of SumOfUs.org. “At worst, the beginning of a white-washing campaign.”
When asked to comment on its Foxconn investigations, the FLA supplied Wired with an official statement that mirrors the language of Apple’s press release. We will continue to reach out to the FLA for comment.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Top 10 Threats of 2012
Arnaud De Borchgrave
Friday, 06 Jan 2012
Full Article:
http://www.newsmax.com/deBorchgrave/Iran-al-Qaida-Pakistan-threats/2012/01/06/id/423323
These are the top 10 that directly threaten the U.S. homeland and are likely to trigger U.S. military involvement:
A mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally.
A severe North Korean crisis (e.g., armed provocations, internal political instability, advances in nuclear weaponry).
A major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces.
An Iranian nuclear crisis (e.g., surprise advances in nuclear weapons/delivery capability, Israeli response).
A highly disruptive cyber-attack on U.S. critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, electrical power, pipeline output, transportation and emergency services.
A significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States.
Severe internal instability in Pakistan triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attacks.
Political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies.
A U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation, triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counter-terror.
Intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis that leads to the collapse of the euro, triggering a double-edged transatlantic crisis.
Happy New Year!
Friday, 06 Jan 2012
Full Article:
http://www.newsmax.com/deBorchgrave/Iran-al-Qaida-Pakistan-threats/2012/01/06/id/423323
These are the top 10 that directly threaten the U.S. homeland and are likely to trigger U.S. military involvement:
A mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally.
A severe North Korean crisis (e.g., armed provocations, internal political instability, advances in nuclear weaponry).
A major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces.
An Iranian nuclear crisis (e.g., surprise advances in nuclear weapons/delivery capability, Israeli response).
A highly disruptive cyber-attack on U.S. critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, electrical power, pipeline output, transportation and emergency services.
A significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States.
Severe internal instability in Pakistan triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attacks.
Political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies.
A U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation, triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counter-terror.
Intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis that leads to the collapse of the euro, triggering a double-edged transatlantic crisis.
Happy New Year!
Obama Signs Global Internet Treaty Worse Than SOPA
White House bypasses Senate to ink agreement that could allow Chinese companies to demand ISPs remove web content in US with no legal oversight
Paul Joseph Watson
Thursday, January 26, 2012
http://www.infowars.com/obama-signs-global-internet-treaty-worse-than-sopa
Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.
The hacktivist group Anonymous attacked and took offline the Federal Trade Commission’s website yesterday in protest against the treaty, which was also the subject of demonstrations across major cities in Poland, a country set to sign the agreement today.
Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.
A country known for its enforcement of harsh Internet censorship policies like China could demand under the treaty that an ISP in the United States remove content or terminate a website on its server altogether. As we have seen from the enforcement of similar copyright policies in the US, websites are sometimes targeted for no justifiable reason.
The groups pushing the treaty also want to empower copyright holders with the ability to demand that users who violate intellectual property rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated, a punishment that could only ever be properly enforced by the creation of an individual Internet ID card for every web user, a system that is already in the works.
“The same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The treaty will also mandate that ISPs disclose personal user information to the copyright holder, while providing authorities across the globe with broader powers to search laptops and Internet-capable devices at border checkpoints.
In presenting ACTA as an “international agreement” rather than a treaty, the Obama administration managed to circumvent the legislative process and avoid having to get Senate approval, a method questioned by Senator Wyden.
“That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement?” asks TechDirt. “The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.”.
26 European Union member states along with the EU itself are set to sign the treaty at a ceremony today in Tokyo. Other countries wishing to sign the agreement have until May 2013 to do so.
Critics are urging those concerned about Obama’s decision to sign the document with no legislative oversight to demand the Senate be forced to ratify the treaty.
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.
Paul Joseph Watson
Thursday, January 26, 2012
http://www.infowars.com/obama-signs-global-internet-treaty-worse-than-sopa
Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.
The hacktivist group Anonymous attacked and took offline the Federal Trade Commission’s website yesterday in protest against the treaty, which was also the subject of demonstrations across major cities in Poland, a country set to sign the agreement today.
Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.
A country known for its enforcement of harsh Internet censorship policies like China could demand under the treaty that an ISP in the United States remove content or terminate a website on its server altogether. As we have seen from the enforcement of similar copyright policies in the US, websites are sometimes targeted for no justifiable reason.
The groups pushing the treaty also want to empower copyright holders with the ability to demand that users who violate intellectual property rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated, a punishment that could only ever be properly enforced by the creation of an individual Internet ID card for every web user, a system that is already in the works.
“The same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The treaty will also mandate that ISPs disclose personal user information to the copyright holder, while providing authorities across the globe with broader powers to search laptops and Internet-capable devices at border checkpoints.
In presenting ACTA as an “international agreement” rather than a treaty, the Obama administration managed to circumvent the legislative process and avoid having to get Senate approval, a method questioned by Senator Wyden.
“That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement?” asks TechDirt. “The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.”.
26 European Union member states along with the EU itself are set to sign the treaty at a ceremony today in Tokyo. Other countries wishing to sign the agreement have until May 2013 to do so.
Critics are urging those concerned about Obama’s decision to sign the document with no legislative oversight to demand the Senate be forced to ratify the treaty.
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Alien ET Cities You Can Visit On Earth Now
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1383/629/NL/Alien_ET_Cities_You_Can_Visit_On_Earth_Now.html
Ever dream of visiting alien worlds and studying their amazing wonders? Well, you don't have to leave Earth to do that—you can travel right now to cities where aliens visited, even lived.
Walk the pathways along many of Earth's ancient cities and you're walking in the footsteps of the gods. At least that's what the legends and myths of the civilizations that seem to have sprung from nothing overnight record in their earliest records.
Anthropologists agree the human race is at least two million years old and ancient Man was much like us more than one million years in the past.
Mankind and help from the stars
So, why did the human race scavenge like animals and live in caves and the hollows of trees—supposedly for 990,000 years—if humans back then were so much like us?
While some evidence exists that supports the idea that humans had advanced civilizations as far back as 100,000 years ago, that still leaves uncounted some 900 millennia where human beings made very little progress in anything important.
Were they that stupid?
Perhaps they were. Perhaps real advancement didn't start happening until extraterrestrials appeared. Researchers like Erich von Däniken and others have argued as much while being viscously attacked or mocked by debunkers, self-styled skeptics, and orthodox science.
Why humans seem so ignorant for so many hundreds of thousands of years remains a mystery, but clues to the rise of civilization are filled with testimonies of interaction with aliens from the stars starting about 8,000 years ago and continuing through the millennia into the records of religious writings by the ancient Indians and Hebrews.
While modern scientists and archaelogists shrug off what some ancients believed important enough to paint onto or carve into stone for posterity—or to include in their religious texts—remnants of impossible architecture and artifacts that hint at other worlds cannot be easily dismissed…unless a lucrative research grant is at stake.
Yes, money sometimes trumps real science and knowledge suffers as a result.
Ancient manuscripts, scrolls, glyphs and cylinders recorded human meetings with Sky Gods—beings that came from the stars to help Mankind build (or rebuild) civilizations. Did they tame the Earth, erect massive monuments and construct the world's first cities?
Five of the most fascinating alien cities still exist: the earliest human civilizations guided by the all-powerful gods from the stars.
You can visit these amazing alien cities because they're still right here on Earth.
ET City 1: Eerie Hopi Reservation, American Southwest
Where the Hopi came from is a mystery to scholars. Academics theorize the Southwestern natives originated from the earlier Anasazi. The Hopi deny this, however, calling the Pueblo people Hisatsinom: The Ancient People.
The Hopis explain their ancestors arrived from deep within the earth, ascending upwards through massive caverns called kivas to the surface, The Fourth World.
Hopi art and myth is bursting with images and imagery of otherworldly contact—not only with a rich spirit world, but also with advanced beings from other worlds.
Because their origin mythology is interlaced so tightly with actual alien contacts it is sometimes difficult to separate the two. But there's little doubt the early Hopi did have some contact with ETs, as did other Mesoamerican tribes such as the Anasazi, Olmecs, Incas, Mayans and Aztecs.
ET City 2: The amazing Aztec Teotihaucan, Mexico
Rising from the fall of the mighty Mayan civilization that preceded it, the Aztecs were to the Romans, as the Mayans were to the Greek city states.
The Aztec origins were built upon much of the earlier Mayan knowledge including the Mayan records that bluntly stated: "Men came from the stars, knowing everything, and they examined the four corners of the sky and the Earth's round surface." [From the Mayan Popol Vuh text]
Today you can walk the ruins of the magnificent city, sift through the centuries with your fingers, and walk the pathways where men once commiserated with gods from the stars.
ET City 3: The mysterious Tiwanaku, Bolivia
With an estimated population of 250,000 to 1.5 million people, Tiwanaku has no surviving written history. Its power and influence peaked around 700 A.D., but it's origins are believed to go far back into time.
A power of the Andes, like the amazing Incas that preceded them, the people of Tiwanaku believed that gods from the sky taught them survival skills.
The few records that survive suggest E.T.s shared with them some of the secrets once taught the mighty Incas…or so their legends claim. But what did they know, right? They only lived through the experience.
ET City 4: The fabled Babylon, Iraq
The fabled Babylon, at one time the virtual center of world civilization may owe its existence to the Sumerians. The Babylonians borrowed heavily from Sumer, adopting parts of their culture and technology in a fashion similar to Rome's adaption of the Greek culture thousands of years later.
The Babylon mysteries continue to confound: their knowledge of batteries, advanced mathematics, belief that superior beings lived on planets orbiting other star systems. Where did they come upon such knowledge in the 23rd Century B.C.?
How did they know all this?
Much of what the Babylonians knew they adopted from ancient Sumer. The Sumerians knew. They had the first-hand, original knowledge because they met and lived with with the Sky Gods.
Paleocontact, according to the research of Zacharia Sitchen—that literally fills volumes—involves a vastly superior race that contact with the people of Sumeria. These aliens helped build Sumer's culture and steer the Sumerian people towards a higher level of learning and technology.
The Sumerians were the first people on Earth to develop writing enabling them to chronicle their advancements and history and—perhaps most importantly—document their contact with alien intelligences for posterity.
Although paleocontact's been researched extensively, the works and conclusions drawn by its two leading proponents, von Däniken and Sitchen, are mostly dismissed by academics and not taken seriously.
Yet the records tell a tale of meetings and interactions with advanced beings from the stars. The evidence survives to this day in fragile cylinder seals, stunning artwork, and the rich tapestry of Sumerian mythology...myths built upon contact with extraterrestrials.
Translation mentions beam weaponry
This translated excerpt from one of the Babylonian texts relates an episode where one of the female ETs takes a new Earthman as her husband and elevates him to the ruling class. She boasts that his power will be greater than a "Power-Weapon" that curiously sounds like a high energy laser or beam weapon:
"I have cast for you the spell, exalting you in the Assembly of the gods.
To counsel all the gods I have given you full power.
Truly, you are supreme, you are my only consort!
Your utterance shall prevail over all the Anunnaki!"
She gave him the Tablet of Destinies, fastened on his breast:
"As for you, your command shall be unchangeable, your word shall endure!"
As soon as Kingu was elevated, possessed of the rank of Anu,
they decreed the fate for the gods, his sons:
"Your word shall make the first subside shall humble the `Power-Weapon,' so potent in its sweep!" [Enuma Elish ("When on high...")]
Visit Babylon and walk where gods walked
The city of Babylon, heir to Sumer and the Land of the Sky Gods, can still be visited. Mostly a giant mound with ruins spread from central radial points, what was Babylon is in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq some 55 miles south of Baghdad.
ET City 5: 'Impossible' Xianyang pyramid city, Mount Baigong Qinghai, China
China is the focus of legends, myths and stories of alien visitations and many of them center on the Xianyang pyramid.
Local villagers claim their distant ancestors spoke of sky great ships that navigated the heavens and used the pyramid as a landing, refueling and resupply site.
20th Century historians have called the early Chinese culture an "enigma wrapped in a mystery."
Tales of China's ancient days are crammed with stories about the "sky people" and the "god-men" who came from the stars using the Earth as a base for exploration.
Along the way these beings taught some of the primitive peoples they met the basics of technology, engineering, farming, and the complex structure of the universe.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
China's Area 51?
These pictures were found via Google Maps in China's Kumtag Desert. To read more on these mysterious structures:
Why Is China Building These Gigantic Structures In the Middle of the Desert?
Jesus Diaz
Nov 13, 2011
http://gizmodo.com/5859081/why-is-china-building-these-gigantic-structures-in-the-middle-of-the-desert
Chinese TV Host Says Regime Nearly Bankrupt
Matthew Robertson, Epoch Times
November 13, 2011
China’s economy has a reputation for being strong and prosperous, but according to a well-known Chinese television personality the country’s Gross Domestic Product is going in reverse.
Larry Lang, chair professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a lecture that he didn’t think was being recorded that the Chinese regime is in a serious economic crisis—on the brink of bankruptcy. In his memorable formulation: every province in China is Greece.
The restrictions Lang placed on the Oct. 22 speech in Shenyang City, in northern China’s Liaoning Province, included no audio or video recording, and no media. He can be heard saying that people should not post his speech online, or “everyone will look bad,” in the audio that is now on Youtube.
In the unusual, closed-door lecture, Lang gave a frank analysis of the Chinese economy and the censorship that is placed on intellectuals and public figures. “What I’m about to say is all true. But under this system, we are not allowed to speak the truth,” he said.
Despite Lang’s polished appearance on his high-profile TV shows, he said: “Don’t think that we are living in a peaceful time now. Actually the media cannot report anything at all. Those of us who do TV shows are so miserable and frustrated, because we cannot do any programs. As long as something is related to the government, we cannot report about it.”
He said that the regime doesn’t listen to experts, and that Party officials are insufferably arrogant. “If you don’t agree with him, he thinks you are against him,” he said.
Lang’s assessment that the regime is bankrupt was based on five conjectures.
Firstly, that the regime’s debt sits at about 36 trillion yuan (US$5.68 trillion). This calculation is arrived at by adding up Chinese local government debt (between 16 trillion and 19.5 trillion yuan, or US$2.5 trillion and US$3 trillion), and the debt owed by state-owned enterprises (another 16 trillion, he said). But with interest of two trillion per year, he thinks things will unravel quickly.
Secondly, that the regime’s officially published inflation rate of 6.2 percent is fabricated. The real inflation rate is 16 percent, according to Lang.
Thirdly, that there is serious excess capacity in the economy, and that private consumption is only 30 percent of economic activity. Lang said that beginning this July, the Purchasing Managers Index, a measure of the manufacturing industry, plunged to a new low of 50.7. This is an indication, in his view, that China’s economy is in recession.
Fourthly, that the regime’s officially published GDP of 9 percent is also fabricated. According to Lang’s data, China’s GDP has decreased 10 percent. He said that the bloated figures come from the dramatic increase in infrastructure construction, including real estate development, railways, and highways each year (accounting for up to 70 percent of GDP in 2010).
Fifthly, that taxes are too high. Last year, the taxes on Chinese businesses (including direct and indirect taxes) were at 70 percent of earnings. The individual tax rate sits at 81.6 percent, Lang said.
Once the “economic tsunami” starts, the regime will lose credibility and China will become the poorest country in the world, Lang said...
Full Article:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/chinese-tv-host-says-regime-nearly-bankrupt-141214.html
November 13, 2011
China’s economy has a reputation for being strong and prosperous, but according to a well-known Chinese television personality the country’s Gross Domestic Product is going in reverse.
Larry Lang, chair professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a lecture that he didn’t think was being recorded that the Chinese regime is in a serious economic crisis—on the brink of bankruptcy. In his memorable formulation: every province in China is Greece.
The restrictions Lang placed on the Oct. 22 speech in Shenyang City, in northern China’s Liaoning Province, included no audio or video recording, and no media. He can be heard saying that people should not post his speech online, or “everyone will look bad,” in the audio that is now on Youtube.
In the unusual, closed-door lecture, Lang gave a frank analysis of the Chinese economy and the censorship that is placed on intellectuals and public figures. “What I’m about to say is all true. But under this system, we are not allowed to speak the truth,” he said.
Despite Lang’s polished appearance on his high-profile TV shows, he said: “Don’t think that we are living in a peaceful time now. Actually the media cannot report anything at all. Those of us who do TV shows are so miserable and frustrated, because we cannot do any programs. As long as something is related to the government, we cannot report about it.”
He said that the regime doesn’t listen to experts, and that Party officials are insufferably arrogant. “If you don’t agree with him, he thinks you are against him,” he said.
Lang’s assessment that the regime is bankrupt was based on five conjectures.
Firstly, that the regime’s debt sits at about 36 trillion yuan (US$5.68 trillion). This calculation is arrived at by adding up Chinese local government debt (between 16 trillion and 19.5 trillion yuan, or US$2.5 trillion and US$3 trillion), and the debt owed by state-owned enterprises (another 16 trillion, he said). But with interest of two trillion per year, he thinks things will unravel quickly.
Secondly, that the regime’s officially published inflation rate of 6.2 percent is fabricated. The real inflation rate is 16 percent, according to Lang.
Thirdly, that there is serious excess capacity in the economy, and that private consumption is only 30 percent of economic activity. Lang said that beginning this July, the Purchasing Managers Index, a measure of the manufacturing industry, plunged to a new low of 50.7. This is an indication, in his view, that China’s economy is in recession.
Fourthly, that the regime’s officially published GDP of 9 percent is also fabricated. According to Lang’s data, China’s GDP has decreased 10 percent. He said that the bloated figures come from the dramatic increase in infrastructure construction, including real estate development, railways, and highways each year (accounting for up to 70 percent of GDP in 2010).
Fifthly, that taxes are too high. Last year, the taxes on Chinese businesses (including direct and indirect taxes) were at 70 percent of earnings. The individual tax rate sits at 81.6 percent, Lang said.
Once the “economic tsunami” starts, the regime will lose credibility and China will become the poorest country in the world, Lang said...
Full Article:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/chinese-tv-host-says-regime-nearly-bankrupt-141214.html
Gadhafi’s Gold-money Plan Would Have Devastated Dollar
Alex Newman Friday, 11 November 2011
http://thenewamerican.com/economy/markets-mainmenu-45/9743-gadhafis-gold-money-plan-would-have-devastated-dollar
It remains unclear exactly why or how the Gadhafi regime went from “a model” and an “important ally” to the next target for regime change in a period of just a few years. But after claims of “genocide” as the justification for NATO intervention were disputed by experts, several other theories have been floated.
Oil, of course, has been mentioned frequently — Libya is Africa‘s largest oil producer. But one possible reason in particular for Gadhafi’s fall from grace has gained significant traction among analysts and segments of the non-Western media: central banking and the global monetary system.
According to more than a few observers, Gadhafi’s plan to quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. dollars — demanding payment instead in gold-backed “dinars” (a single African currency made from gold) — was the real cause. The regime, sitting on massive amounts of gold, estimated at close to 150 tons, was also pushing other African and Middle Eastern governments to follow suit.
And it literally had the potential to bring down the dollar and the world monetary system by extension, according to analysts. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. The “Insiders” were apparently panicking over Gadhafi’s plan.
"Any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks,” noted financial analyst Anthony Wile, editor of the free market-oriented Daily Bell, in an interview with RT. “So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward [for] removing him from power."
According to Wile, Gadhafi’s plan would have strengthened the whole continent of Africa in the eyes of economists backing sound money — not to mention investors. But it would have been especially devastating for the U.S. economy, the American dollar, and particularly the elite in charge of the system.
“The central banking Ponzi scheme requires an ever-increasing base of demand and the immediate silencing of those who would threaten its existence,” Wile noted in a piece entitled “Gaddafi Planned Gold Dinar, Now Under Attack” earlier this year. “Perhaps that is what the hurry [was] in removing Gaddafi in particular and those who might have been sympathetic to his monetary idea.”
Investor newsletters and commentaries have been buzzing for months with speculation about the link between Gadhafi’s gold dinar and the NATO-backed overthrow of the Libyan regime. Conservative analysts pounced on the potential relationship, too.
“In 2009 — in his capacity as head of the African Union — Libya's Moammar Gadhafi had proposed that the economically crippled continent adopt the ‘Gold Dinar,’” noted Ilana Mercer in an August opinion piece for WorldNetDaily. “I do not know if Col. Gadhafi continued to agitate for ditching the dollar and adopting the Gold Dinar — or if the Agitator from Chicago got wind of Gadhafi's (uncharacteristic) sanity about things monetary.”
But if Arab and African nations had begun adopting a gold-backed currency, it would have had major repercussions for debt-laden Western governments that would be far more significant than the purported “democratic” uprisings sweeping the region this year. And it would have spelled big trouble for the elite who benefit from “freshly counterfeited funny-money,” Mercer pointed out.
“Had Gadhafi sparked a gold-driven monetary revolution, he would have done well for his own people, and for the world at large,” she concluded. “A Gadhafi-driven gold revolution would have, however, imperiled the positions of central bankers and their political and media power-brokers.”
Adding credence to the theory about why Gadhafi had to be overthrown, as The New American reported in March, was the rebels’ odd decision to create a central bank to replace Gadhafi’s state-owned monetary authority. The decision was broadcast to the world in the early weeks of the conflict.
In a statement describing a March 19 meeting, the rebel council announced, among other things, the creation of a new oil company. And more importantly: “Designation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”
The creation of a new central bank, even more so than the new national oil regime, left analysts scratching their heads. “I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising,” noted Robert Wenzel in an analysis for the Economic Policy Journal. “This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences,” he added. Wenzel also noted that the uprising looked like a “major oil and money play, with the true disaffected rebels being used as puppets and cover” while the transfer of control over money and oil supplies takes place.
Other analysts, even in the mainstream press, were equally shocked. “Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power?” wondered CNBC senior editor John Carney. “It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era.”
Similar scenarios involving the global monetary system — based on the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency, backed by the fact that oil is traded in American money — have also been associated with other targets of the U.S. government. Some analysts even say a pattern is developing.
Iran, for example, is one of the few nations left in the world with a state-owned central bank. And Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein, once armed by the U.S. government to make war on Iran, was threatening to start selling oil in currencies other than the dollar just prior to the Bush administration’s “regime change” mission.
While most of the establishment press in America has been silent on the issue of Gadhafi’s gold dinar scheme, in Russia, China, and the global alternative media, the theory has exploded in popularity. Whether salvaging central banking and the corrupt global monetary system were truly among the reasons for Gadhafi’s overthrow, however, may never be known for certain — at least not publicly.
http://thenewamerican.com/economy/markets-mainmenu-45/9743-gadhafis-gold-money-plan-would-have-devastated-dollar
It remains unclear exactly why or how the Gadhafi regime went from “a model” and an “important ally” to the next target for regime change in a period of just a few years. But after claims of “genocide” as the justification for NATO intervention were disputed by experts, several other theories have been floated.
Oil, of course, has been mentioned frequently — Libya is Africa‘s largest oil producer. But one possible reason in particular for Gadhafi’s fall from grace has gained significant traction among analysts and segments of the non-Western media: central banking and the global monetary system.
According to more than a few observers, Gadhafi’s plan to quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. dollars — demanding payment instead in gold-backed “dinars” (a single African currency made from gold) — was the real cause. The regime, sitting on massive amounts of gold, estimated at close to 150 tons, was also pushing other African and Middle Eastern governments to follow suit.
And it literally had the potential to bring down the dollar and the world monetary system by extension, according to analysts. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. The “Insiders” were apparently panicking over Gadhafi’s plan.
"Any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks,” noted financial analyst Anthony Wile, editor of the free market-oriented Daily Bell, in an interview with RT. “So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward [for] removing him from power."
According to Wile, Gadhafi’s plan would have strengthened the whole continent of Africa in the eyes of economists backing sound money — not to mention investors. But it would have been especially devastating for the U.S. economy, the American dollar, and particularly the elite in charge of the system.
“The central banking Ponzi scheme requires an ever-increasing base of demand and the immediate silencing of those who would threaten its existence,” Wile noted in a piece entitled “Gaddafi Planned Gold Dinar, Now Under Attack” earlier this year. “Perhaps that is what the hurry [was] in removing Gaddafi in particular and those who might have been sympathetic to his monetary idea.”
Investor newsletters and commentaries have been buzzing for months with speculation about the link between Gadhafi’s gold dinar and the NATO-backed overthrow of the Libyan regime. Conservative analysts pounced on the potential relationship, too.
“In 2009 — in his capacity as head of the African Union — Libya's Moammar Gadhafi had proposed that the economically crippled continent adopt the ‘Gold Dinar,’” noted Ilana Mercer in an August opinion piece for WorldNetDaily. “I do not know if Col. Gadhafi continued to agitate for ditching the dollar and adopting the Gold Dinar — or if the Agitator from Chicago got wind of Gadhafi's (uncharacteristic) sanity about things monetary.”
But if Arab and African nations had begun adopting a gold-backed currency, it would have had major repercussions for debt-laden Western governments that would be far more significant than the purported “democratic” uprisings sweeping the region this year. And it would have spelled big trouble for the elite who benefit from “freshly counterfeited funny-money,” Mercer pointed out.
“Had Gadhafi sparked a gold-driven monetary revolution, he would have done well for his own people, and for the world at large,” she concluded. “A Gadhafi-driven gold revolution would have, however, imperiled the positions of central bankers and their political and media power-brokers.”
Adding credence to the theory about why Gadhafi had to be overthrown, as The New American reported in March, was the rebels’ odd decision to create a central bank to replace Gadhafi’s state-owned monetary authority. The decision was broadcast to the world in the early weeks of the conflict.
In a statement describing a March 19 meeting, the rebel council announced, among other things, the creation of a new oil company. And more importantly: “Designation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”
The creation of a new central bank, even more so than the new national oil regime, left analysts scratching their heads. “I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising,” noted Robert Wenzel in an analysis for the Economic Policy Journal. “This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences,” he added. Wenzel also noted that the uprising looked like a “major oil and money play, with the true disaffected rebels being used as puppets and cover” while the transfer of control over money and oil supplies takes place.
Other analysts, even in the mainstream press, were equally shocked. “Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power?” wondered CNBC senior editor John Carney. “It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era.”
Similar scenarios involving the global monetary system — based on the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency, backed by the fact that oil is traded in American money — have also been associated with other targets of the U.S. government. Some analysts even say a pattern is developing.
Iran, for example, is one of the few nations left in the world with a state-owned central bank. And Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein, once armed by the U.S. government to make war on Iran, was threatening to start selling oil in currencies other than the dollar just prior to the Bush administration’s “regime change” mission.
While most of the establishment press in America has been silent on the issue of Gadhafi’s gold dinar scheme, in Russia, China, and the global alternative media, the theory has exploded in popularity. Whether salvaging central banking and the corrupt global monetary system were truly among the reasons for Gadhafi’s overthrow, however, may never be known for certain — at least not publicly.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
The future of manned aircraft
This past summer, the Economist decried the expense of the F-35, and chided the American military for spending too much money on what would be "the last manned fighter". I'm willing to stick my neck out on this and say that they're wrong. There will still be at least one generation of manned fighters.
The Economist is wrong because they underestimate two important factors, of which the most important is sheer bureaucratic inertia. In practically all western air forces, the career path of high-ranking officers is that of a fighter pilot. Decades of propaganda and bureaucratic infighting have established the fighter pilot as one of the celebrated heroes of the modern military, and the core identity of the air force. That won't be given up easily. The move to unmanned aircraft would mean that bold, gutsy and manly fighter pilots will be replaced by guys with Playstation controllers, and even if the latter are more effective in combat, they're just not cricket. In Top Gun 2020, the young fighter jocks won't barge their way into a bar, drink like mad and wow the girls with their rendition of Great Balls of Fire on the piano; they'll sit in the corner, order some apple juice and turn up the J-Pop.
Bureaucratic inertia is made even worse by the fact that air forces the world over are still, to some extent, young services fighting to establish themselves. Go back 50 years and witness the intense fighting on both sides of the Atlantic: in the States, over whether the army is allowed to operate fixed-wing aircraft or not, and in the UK over who controls naval aviation. That may seem like a long time ago, but in both countries, there is a level at which air forces still perceive themselves as younger and less secure services than the other two. Unmanned aircraft question the very existence of a separate air force: if, after all, you're just going to fly drones, then the army already has people doing just that. Why would they need a special service of their own? The navy could easily ditch naval aviation in favor of NCOs flying drones off their ships. It's not just the pilots that will go, after all, but nearly all of the support staff and facilities will be rendered irrelevant. The massive fixed airbases that were such a huge liability in the cold war will finally meet their end.
It's a well-established fact of defense policy that the armed services will, in the pursuit of administrative goals and inter-service rivalries, make inefficient decisions. What makes this even worse is the lack of a real military-technological rivalry to drive development forward. Unlike in the cold war, the US doesn't have a real technological challenger. The Russians can still produce very good aircraft, but nothing with which to really challenge the F-22 and F-35 in terms of pure technology. In its current decrepit state, Russia is still years away from being able to mount any kind of challenge to US air superiority, and China is much further away.
Remember that in the cold war, Western fighter development was basically driven by intelligence panics. A new Soviet prototype would show up on the runway at Ramenskoye and be spotted by a US reconnaisance satellite; then the intelligence guys would try to figure out what characteristics it had. Because of the difficulty of getting solid intelligence out of the Soviet Union, this was mostly guesswork, and regularly led to incredible overestimates of Soviet capabilities. The actual characteristics of a plane like the Su-24 Fencer had almost nothing to do with the intelligence projections, but because all they had to go on were the more-or-less informed guesses of their intelligence, Western aircraft were produced to face a much more powerful threat than the real one. For instance, the F-15 Eagle, which some people consider the greatest air superiority fighter of the 20th century, was essentially created to meet and defeat what the West imagined the MiG-25 Foxbat to be. The MiG-25 was seen at a runway somewhere, and the intel guys panicked. "It's got swing wings and two engines OH MY GOD IT CAN DO MACH FOUR AND HAS MISSILES THE SIZE OF MY HOUSE!" The actual aircraft was, well, different, but the threat of the imagined MiG-25 drove the US to create the F-15. There's nothing like the Ramenskoye panics driving aircraft design now.
This combination of a lack of research impetus and real air threat simply means that the Americans can be quite content with a substandard jack-of-all-trades, master-of-fuck-all aircraft like the F-35, and even inflict it on unsuspecting allies at a gigantic price. Even if drones would be cheaper and more effective, the West can settle for the far more expensive and ineffective manned aircraft, because they're good enough. It also, in all likelihood, means that since a new generation of pilots will be trained up on the F-35, they will fight just as hard against the inevitable as their predecessors did, and will probably manage to secure a next generation of manned aircraft for themselves. After all, think of all the jobs that would be lost.
As a side note, maybe this could restart the US space program. After all, the air force will need something to do.
In summary, assuming, say, the US Air Force will switch to unmanned aircraft in the near future assumes a level of rational decision-making that is totally alien to any peacetime military establishment. As a piece of military hardware, the manned aircraft will far outlive its usefulness. As the Economist put it in a more recent piece, the pilot in the cockpit may be an endangered species, but he's surrounded by a gigantic bureaucracy dedicated to his preservation.
**
And besides, the drones will just get taken over by Skynet anyway.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Road safety, Chinese style
As the World Health Organization puts it in their 2004 World report on road traffic injury prevention:
Road traffic injuries are a major but neglected public health challenge that requires concerted efforts for effective and sustainable prevention. Of all the systems with which people have to deal every day, road traffic systems are the most complex and the most dangerous. Worldwide, an estimated 1.2 million people are killed in road crashes each year and as many as 50 million are injured. Projections indicate that these figures will increase by about 65% over the next 20 years unless there is new commitment to prevention. Nevertheless, the tragedy behind these figures attracts less mass media attention than other, less frequent types of tragedy.
It's true: despite great improvements in car safety over the years, road accidents are still a major cause of death everywhere in the world that has cars. So it's a subject worth taking a look at. And because that news item on Chinese prisoners being forced to play World of Warcraft got me thinking about China, we'll take a look at Chinese road safety.
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The Euro NCAP does crash tests of commercially available cars and posts the results online, so we can see what we're getting into when we buy a car. As a starting example, here's the crash test video from a Volvo V70 estate. My dad drove one, or something very similar to it, and even though it was never crashed properly, one of the near-death situations in my life did occur in it when a lunatic in Finland ran a red light at very high speed, nearly hitting us.
To get an idea of how things are supposed to work, here's the Euro NCAP video of a Volvo V70 crash test:
As you can see, the essential features of modern car safety are functioning. There's airbags to cushion the impact, and most of the force of the collision is absorbed by the crumple zones of the car while the passenger compartment stays intact. The V70 got a five-star rating, out of a possible maximum of five.
Here, on the other hand, is a Chinese-made Brilliance BS6 in an Euro NCAP crash test.
As you can see, well, yeah. It got one star. In case you're wondering what you have to do to get no stars, here's the Jiangling Motors Landwind:
And if that wasn't frightening enough, here's an inside view:
And finally, an unidentified Chinese car being crashed into a barrier at 64 km/h in Russia.
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I'm not in a position to offer any kind of advice on buying cars, but I will say this: there seems to be a rather large difference between a five-star rating and a no-star if-you-drive-this-you-are-going-to-die rating.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Criminal insanity, online and off
First, a piece of madness I must have missed when it hit the news and just happened to run into.
NY Daily News: Florida mom Alexandra Tobias pleads guilty to murdering baby for crying during her FarmVille game
NY Daily News: Florida mom Alexandra Tobias pleads guilty to murdering baby for crying during her FarmVille game
A Florida woman admitted shaking her 3-month-old baby to death after the little boy's crying distracted her from playing a wildly popular Facebook game.
Alexandra Tobias, 22, told cops she was playing FarmVille and her baby, Dylan Lee Edmondson, wouldn't stop crying.
According to the Florida Times-Union, she confessed to shaking the baby, smoking a cigarette to calm down and then shaking the baby again. The baby may have hit his head during the January incident.
Tobias pleaded guilty on Wednesday.
She later got a 50-year sentence. And here I thought FarmVille was bad for you before I knew about this.
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Here's another example of criminal insanity:
FOX Chicago: Teen Charged with Murder in Police-Involved Shooting, Armed Robbery Case
Ross was charged Thursday evening with murder and armed robbery with a firearm, police News Affairs Officer Robert Perez said.
The incident unfolded about 8 p.m. Wednesday when two police sergeants were stopped by a person saying two people had just committed a robbery near East 70th Street and South Cregier Avenue.
The sergeants saw two people matching the description and ordered them to stop, police said. One of the suspects, with a weapon in his hand, turned in the sergeant’s direction. The sergeant shot the suspect, identified by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office as 15-year-old Tatioun Williams.
Williams, of 1311 E. 69th St., was pronounced dead at 8:40 p.m. at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, according to the medical examiner’s office. An autopsy Thursday found he died from a gunshot wound to the back and ruled the death a homicide.
A weapon and proceeds from the robbery were recovered at the scene, police said.
No one else was injured, police said.
So two guys commit an armed robbery, and as they're escaping, the police shoot one of them. Therefore, the surviving criminal is charged with murder.
This is how the felony murder rule works: if one perpetrates a felony, and as a result someone is killed, the perpetrator is charged with the murder. Here, the result even means that if the police shoot your accomplice, you are charged with his murder.
Another example of this idea in action here:
NY Times: Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers
CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. — Early in the morning of March 10, 2003, after a raucous party that lasted into the small hours, a groggy and hungover 20-year-old named Ryan Holle lent his Chevrolet Metro to a friend. That decision, prosecutors later said, was tantamount to murder.
The friend used the car to drive three men to the Pensacola home of a marijuana dealer, aiming to steal a safe. The burglary turned violent, and one of the men killed the dealer’s 18-year-old daughter by beating her head in with a shotgun he found in the home.
Mr. Holle was a mile and a half away, but that did not matter.
He was convicted of murder under a distinctively American legal doctrine that makes accomplices as liable as the actual killer for murders committed during felonies like burglaries, rapes and robberies.
In all seriousness, this is insane. As the New York Times article says, this law doesn't actually seem to have any deterrent effect, by comparison with jurisdictions that don't have it. Furthermore, it blurs the definition of murder; as the paper referenced by the New York Times points out, murder is defined by an intent to kill, except in this case, where you can be guilty of murder by lending your car to someone.
What makes it even more dangerous, in my opinion, is the simple precedent that a person who is in no way directly responsible for a crime, and who may even be totally unaware that it has occurred, can be charged with it. Imagine extending that idea to other crimes.
But most of all, it's completely unrealistic to postulate, even as a system of ethics, that everyone must take responsibility for all consequences of their actions. Responsibility for consequences needs to be within reason; if someone lends a homicidal friend a shotgun, I have no problem with them being held culpable, but lending someone a car doesn't seem to be strictly comparable.
Even crazier is the notion that when the police shoot your accomplice in the back, you're guilty of murder. Yes, I accept the idea that had you not been involved in the armed robbery in the first place, your friend wouldn't have been shot. But is this in any way a realistic standard of ethics? If people are going to be held criminally liable for the actions of others, where on earth do we draw the line? And doesn't this, in fact, give police a virtual blank check when pursuing a felony suspect, because any deaths that occur during the crime and subsequent pursuit will be blamed on the suspect, whether he had anything to do with them or not?
This touches on what I've been thinking about in general with regard to law lately. It seems to me that on the whole, our legislation is essentially random. I've been toying around with the idea of constructing a legal code not as a confusing jumble of separate laws but as a system of principles. Surely one of those principles should be that a person can only be held responsible for his own actions or inactions, not for the actions or inactions of others. In this case, both armed robbers should be responsible for themselves, and the cop who shot one of them responsible for the shooting. If the shooting is deemed justified, then it is, but under no stretch of the imagination should the police officer's decision to use lethal force be the other robber's responsibility.
I'll chalk this up as yet another odd aspect of an increasingly insane US justice system. Here's another example:
Wired: There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says
“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”
What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can’t precisely explain without disclosing classified information.
The United States seems to be reaching the point where legistlation is classified to protect national security.
I'd comment, but I don't know how.
**
Here's some surveillance state news, too.
Nature: Terrorist 'pre-crime' detector field tested in United States
Planning a sojourn in the northeastern United States? You could soon be taking part in a novel security programme that can supposedly 'sense' whether you are planning to commit a crime.
Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.
Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.
The tactic has drawn comparisons with the science-fiction concept of 'pre-crime', popularized by the film Minority Report, in which security services can detect someone's intention to commit a crime. Unlike the system in the film, FAST does not rely on a trio of human mutants who can see the future. But the programme has attracted copious criticism from researchers who question the science behind it (see Airport security: Intent to deceive?).
Do, in fact, see the linked article, which starts off with this:
In August 2009, Nicholas George, a 22-year-old student at Pomona College in Claremont, California, was going through a checkpoint at Philadelphia International Airport when he was pulled aside for questioning. As the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees searched his hand luggage, they chatted with him about innocuous subjects, such as whether he'd watched a recent game.
Inside George's bag, however, the screeners found flash cards with Arabic words — he was studying Arabic at Pomona — and a book they considered to be critical of US foreign policy. That led to more questioning, this time by a TSA supervisor, about George's views on the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. Eventually, and seemingly without cause, he was handcuffed by Philadelphia police, detained for four hours, and questioned by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents before being released without charge.
George had been singled out by behaviour-detection officers: TSA screeners trained to pick out suspicious or anomalous behaviour in passengers. There are about 3,000 of these officers working at some 161 airports across the United States, all part of a four-year-old programme called Screening Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT), which is designed to identify people who could pose a threat to airline passengers.
It remains unclear what the officers found anomalous about George's behaviour, and why he was detained. The TSA's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has declined to comment on his case because it is the subject of a federal lawsuit that was filed on George's behalf in February by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Again, I'm not sure how to comment on this. It's terrifying.
**
It seems fitting that just as my copy of The Gulag Archipelago arrived in the mail, I saw this news item:
Guardian: China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work
As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells.
Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old, a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for "illegally petitioning" the central government about corruption in his hometown, reckons the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners were also forced to do.
"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."
In the Soviet Union, it was gold-mining on the Kolyma: in China, it's World of Warcraft. Surreal. However, they haven't abandoned their efforts at reforming the inmates:
He was also made to memorise communist literature to pay off his debt to society.
You can't make this stuff up. It only happens in real life.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Obama's foreign policy failure
When Barack Obama was elected, one of the campaign's favorite buzzwords was "change". In the field of foreign policy, the Obama administration was going to make America the darling of the world again. Remember the big New Beginning speech in Cairo? And the state visits that US critics called the "World Apology Tour" that were supposed to usher in a new era of American foreign policy?
So what actually happened?
Iraq
Almost two years ago, I predicted that if Obama actually goes through with the US withdrawal from Iraq, the consequences will be catastrophic. If the Iraqis are abandoned to their own devices, or to put it in Vietnam-era terms, the conflict is "Iraqi-ized", the country will face a real danger of collapse.
So far, this has been avoided through a simple ploy; the Obama administration has said it withdrew all US combat troops, leaving just 50,000 troops in the country. Back in the Cold War, it was customary for both superpowers to station troops in third countries but not admit it. Back then, they were usually called "advisers" no matter what they were actually doing. In the terminology of the time, the US has withdrawn all its combat troops, but left five divisions of advisers.
Now, with the supposed withdrawal carried out, Obama can declare victory. David Letterman actually said it best. Remember when George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and delivered his "Mission Accomplished" speech? As Dave put it: "Well, they're trying that again."
The real withdrawal is coming at the end of 2011. In terms of strategy, I believe these deadlines have a horribly detrimental effect on the coalition effort to stabilize Iraq. What the late 2011 deadline does is it gives all the al-Qāʿida -affiliated insurgents a target to prepare for. If you know the Americans are leaving on such and such a date, start planning to overthrow the Iraqi goverment immediately afterward. Until then, stockpile armaments and supplies and expand your infrastructure. I believe this is exactly what they're doing.
This is exactly what happened in late 1974, when the Americans had left Vietnam. Congress signed a bill banning any US military activity in Indochina, and President Nixon was impeached and resigned. Knowing that the Americans wouldn't intervene, the North Vietnamese Army overran South Vietnam in a matter of months. The entire process of Vietnamization, transferring the burden of the war from the American to the South Vietnamese armed forces, had been a complete failure.
There's a very real risk that the same thing will happen in Iraq a little over a year from now. Remember when George W. Bush talked about the axis of evil and all that, including the idea that Iran was supporting the Iraqi insurgency? He was ridiculed for it back then, but now we can read, via the New York Times, what Wikileaks has let us know about Iran's involvment in Iraq.
NYT: Leaked Reports Detail Iran’s Aid for Iraqi Militias
So what actually happened?
Iraq
Almost two years ago, I predicted that if Obama actually goes through with the US withdrawal from Iraq, the consequences will be catastrophic. If the Iraqis are abandoned to their own devices, or to put it in Vietnam-era terms, the conflict is "Iraqi-ized", the country will face a real danger of collapse.
So far, this has been avoided through a simple ploy; the Obama administration has said it withdrew all US combat troops, leaving just 50,000 troops in the country. Back in the Cold War, it was customary for both superpowers to station troops in third countries but not admit it. Back then, they were usually called "advisers" no matter what they were actually doing. In the terminology of the time, the US has withdrawn all its combat troops, but left five divisions of advisers.
Now, with the supposed withdrawal carried out, Obama can declare victory. David Letterman actually said it best. Remember when George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and delivered his "Mission Accomplished" speech? As Dave put it: "Well, they're trying that again."
The real withdrawal is coming at the end of 2011. In terms of strategy, I believe these deadlines have a horribly detrimental effect on the coalition effort to stabilize Iraq. What the late 2011 deadline does is it gives all the al-Qāʿida -affiliated insurgents a target to prepare for. If you know the Americans are leaving on such and such a date, start planning to overthrow the Iraqi goverment immediately afterward. Until then, stockpile armaments and supplies and expand your infrastructure. I believe this is exactly what they're doing.
This is exactly what happened in late 1974, when the Americans had left Vietnam. Congress signed a bill banning any US military activity in Indochina, and President Nixon was impeached and resigned. Knowing that the Americans wouldn't intervene, the North Vietnamese Army overran South Vietnam in a matter of months. The entire process of Vietnamization, transferring the burden of the war from the American to the South Vietnamese armed forces, had been a complete failure.
There's a very real risk that the same thing will happen in Iraq a little over a year from now. Remember when George W. Bush talked about the axis of evil and all that, including the idea that Iran was supporting the Iraqi insurgency? He was ridiculed for it back then, but now we can read, via the New York Times, what Wikileaks has let us know about Iran's involvment in Iraq.
NYT: Leaked Reports Detail Iran’s Aid for Iraqi Militias
During the administration of President George W. Bush, critics charged that the White House had exaggerated Iran’s role to deflect criticism of its handling of the war and build support for a tough policy toward Iran, including the possibility of military action.
But the field reports disclosed by WikiLeaks, which were never intended to be made public, underscore the seriousness with which Iran’s role has been seen by the American military. The political struggle between the United States and Iran to influence events in Iraq still continues as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has sought to assemble a coalition — that would include the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr — that will allow him to remain in power. But much of the American’s military concern has revolved around Iran’s role in arming and assisting Shiite militias.
As of this writing, the Iraqi political process is still deadlocked, with no government in place. This year, Iraq ranked seventh on the Failed States Index, barely doing better than Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe. In all likelihood, the US withdrawal will leave behind a country in total disarray, if it isn't completely taken over by the Iranian-supported militias.
Whatever happens, the hurried retreat from Iraq will ensure that the eight-year war will have one enduring result: some 4,000 American soldiers will have died in order to cement Iran's status as the leading power in the Middle East. The only country that directly gains from the chaos in Iraq is Iran.
Over the years, several left-wing commentators have delighted in pointing and laughing at the US attacking Saddam Hussein, because in the 1980's, the West largely supported Saddam's regime. What they either don't realize, or leave unsaid, is that there was a very good reason why the Americans supported Saddam: his Iraq wasn't the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranian islamism was seen as a much greater threat than Saddam.
The defining political dynamic of the Islamic countries of the Middle East has been that there is no clear leader. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran have all contended for a dominant position in the region, with the Iraqi-Iranian conflict being, in one sense, precisely about regional dominance. Now Iran is becoming more and more powerful, and the elimination of Iraq as a counterbalance is a major geopolitical victory for Teheran.
It might be worthwhile for the decision-makers in Washington to recall that the reason the United States became embroiled in Iraq in the first place, that is twenty years ago, is because of the threat Iraq posed to Saudi Arabia. Ever since FDR, Saudi Arabia has been seen as a vital ally of the United States in the Middle East; some readers may be surprised to learn that over the years, the Saudis have received more military aid from the United States than Israel. The reason for the Gulf War was the threat Saddam's Iraq posed to Saudi Arabia. If the Obama administration goes through with the policy of withdrawal, effectively leaving behind a failed state under the sway of Iran, all the Iraq War will have accomplished is to change the threat to the Saudis from the Iraqis to the Iranians.
It's ironic that in the 1980's, Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war over the dominance of the Middle East. By some estimates, Iran may have suffered as many as one million casualties in the fighting. The war was inconclusive. Twenty years later, the US fought an eight-year war against Iraq, and this time, Iran won.
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Afghanistan
Next summer, according to Barack Obama's timeline, the US will begin to withdraw from Afghanistan as well. If Iraq was seventh on the Failed States Index, Afghanistan is sixth. The post-Ṭālibān government of Hamid Karzai has turned into a dictatorial, corrupt regime reminiscent of South Vietnam at its worst.
The comparison isn't far-fetched: the coalition forces in Afghanistan are fighting an insurgency based in a neighboring country, waiting for the occupying forces to leave so they can take over. The key to Afghanistan is Pakistan, a fact that Obama seemed to recognize in pre-election debates but has resolutely ignored in office.
Just recently, we were told that American's most wanted man, Usāmah bin Lādin, is living comfortably in northern Pakistan, along with second-in-command Ayman aẓ-Ẓawāhirī and the rest of the gang.
The Daily Telegraph: Osama bin Laden 'living comfortably in Pakistan'
Osama bin Laden is alive and well and living comfortably in a house in the north-west of Pakistan protected by local people and elements of the country's intelligence services, according to a senior Nato official.
The latest assessment contradicts the belief that the al-Qaeda leader is roughing it in underground bunkers as he dodged CIA drones hunting him from the air.
"Nobody in al-Qaeda is living in a cave," according to an unnamed Nato official quoted by CNN.
He added that Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's second in command, was also living in a house close by somewhere in the country's mountainous border regions.
Pakistani officials on Monday repeated their long standing denials that the Saudi-born terrorist mastermind was being given safe haven.
Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Pakistani intelligence service has been playing a double game. In addition to channeling US and other Western aid for the anti-Soviet insurgency, Pakistani intelligence moved drugs the other way. Afghanistan has been the world's premier producer of heroin for a long time, and Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence moves some of the stuff out of Pakistan. The money they make off the operation is used, among other things, to interfere in Pakistan's internal politics and to fund terrorist operations against India.
As part of this lucrative narcotics deal, the Pakistanis have a cozy relationship with the Ṭālibān, who also fund their operations through the drug trade. At the same time, they're supposedly a staunch ally of the United States and totally committed to the war on terrorism. While the intelligence service continues to move heroin for the Ṭālibān, there is a full-blown insurgency going on in northwest Pakistan, which has by all accounts become the most important basing area for the Ṭālibān operating in Afghanistan.
As in Iraq, so in Afghanistan: the US withdrawal will leave behind a failing state that will probably fall to the Ṭālibān. If this happens, the next target of the insurgency will be Pakistan, and in the worst case scenario, Pakistan will fall to Islamism. It's more than probable that the Pakistani government will have to come to terms with the Ṭālibān, possibly meaning a wholesale radicalization of the whole country and an escalation of the conflict with India.
For the United States to withdraw from Afghanistan before a viable government is in place and the Ṭālibān insurgency has been defeated amounts to, for all intents and purposes, abandoning the country to the Ṭālibān. If the Obama administration goes through with the plan, then the entire Afghanistan War will have been fought for nothing.
At best, US troops will leave behind a corrupt dictatorship that will come to some kind of terms with the Ṭālibān. The country will continue to be used as a base for terrorism, which was the reason the US invaded it in the first place.
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What is needed in both Iraq and Afghanistan is not a withdrawal strategy, but a winning strategy. For Iraq and Afghanistan to become viable states that won't collapse like a house of cards as soon as the last American troops leave, the insurgencies need to be defeated. In the case of Afghanistan, this also means addressing the insurgency in Pakistan.
Right now, none of these things are happening. With the Ṭālibān securely based in Pakistan, largely immune from US operations, there's going to be very little stopping them from retaking Afghanistan after the US withdrawal. The situation in Iraq looks slightly better, but again, there's very little standing in the way of the militias restarting a full-fledged civil war, with Iranian support, as soon as the Americans leave.
Both the Iraq and the Afghanistan war were badly conceived, poorly executed and massively expensive policy blunders. The wars in themselves weren't necessarily a bad idea; getting rid of the Ṭālibān and Saddam Hussein is a victory for the entire world. The way the George W. Bush administration went about them was the problem, and now the Obama administration is compounding the problem by essentially abandoning both countries to the islamists. I genuinely hope I'm wrong and nothing horrible happens. It's just incredibly difficult to see how either Iraq or Afghanistan can become anything other than failed states if Obama goes through with the withdrawal.
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Israel
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Obama administration has also had grandiose plans for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was even described as a top priority.
That said, this is a topic on which the administration, even the President himself, can't seem to make up their mind. A couple of years back, I wrote about how Obama visited Israel as president-elect and strongly supported Israel's reprisal air strikes. On the other hand, Obama had stressed the need for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and demanded that Israel stop its "settlement" construction. At Cairo, he told the audience that "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements".
Any hopes of a fresh approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were dashed quite spectacularly in March 2010. As vice-president Joe Biden was visiting Israel, the Israeli government announced that it was going ahead with a plan to build 1,600 new homes in occupied East Jerusalem, in direct defiance of the Obama administration's demands that Israel halt "settlement" construction.
In diplomacy, this is what is called a slap in the face, and the Obama administration politely turned the other cheek.
This year, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a new round of talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, going so far as to say that a Palestinian state could be achieved within a year. Anyone who felt skeptical was amply rewarded when the Israelis torpedoed the negotiations by deciding to continue "settlement" building in occupied territory. Again, the Obama administration was apparently powerless to react.
American policy-makers don't always seem to realize how crucially important the Palestinian issue is in the Middle East. Despite Obama's grandiose talk of a new beginning, his administration's policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has in many ways been the worst possible choice. He's managed to antagonize Israel and the Israeli lobby in America, while failing to further the peace process or improve America's relations with the Muslim world.
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Russia and Europe
In 2007, the George W. Bush administration announced plans to build a missile defense system based in Eastern Europe. The goal of the system is to defend the United States and Europe against small-scale missile attacks from a country like Iran or North Korea. The system the Bush administration planned would have a very limited capacity, and would be practically useless against a Russian nuclear attack. Nonetheless, the Russians were vocal in their protests against the system. Their opposition has nothing to do with missile defense in itself, but is geopolitical: a US missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic is a very strong guarantee to these countries that the United States is interested in their security versus Russia.
In August 2008 there was the Georgia war, or if you prefer the Sov...Russian nomenclature, the amred conflict in South Ossetia. According to the Russians, they have stationed peacekeepers in the sovereign states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. These sovereign states are recognized by a wide variety of free countries, including and limited to Russia, Venezuela, Nauru and Nicaragua.
Nicaragua.
In what was apparently a colossal miscalculation, Georgia attacked the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, which gave the Russians the perfect excuse to invade Georgia. This was old-fashioned sphere of influence politics: the Russians consider Georgia to be in their backyard, and they get to decide what happens in their backyard. It was also a brazen violation of international law and an invasion of a sovereign country. To make things worse, the country in question was a member of the NATO Partnership for Peace, and had recently hosted US troops on a joint exercise.
How did the Obama administration react to Russia's actions? By deciding to scrap the missile shield.
Guardian: US scraps plans for missile defence shield in central Europe
Barack Obama today reversed almost a decade of Pentagon strategy in Europe, scrapping plans to deploy key elements of a US missile defence shield.
Instead, he said, a more flexible defence would be introduced, allowing for a more effective response to any threat from Iranian missiles.
The U-turn is arguably the most concrete shift in foreign policy from that of the Bush administration, which spent years negotiating to place silos and interceptor missiles in Poland, and a radar complex in the Czech Republic.
The shift is a triumph for the Kremlin, which has long and vehemently argued that the shield is aimed at neutralising its intercontinental missiles; Moscow had warned of a return to a cold war arms race, and threatened to deploy nuclear missiles in its Kaliningrad exclave, surrounded by EU states.
Yes, of course the administration said that Russia shouldn't invade other countries, but this is the only concrete political action they took immediately following the crisis.
Viewed on its own merits, several commentators considered Obama's missile defense U-turn reasonable. That may be so, but this is to ignore the geopolitical significance of the missile shield for Eastern Europe. Viewed from the Kremlin, Obama's move to scrap the missile shield is pure weakness. The Americans come up with a plan; Moscow protests; the Americans retreat.
This wasn't the first time Obama was ready to sell out Eastern Europe, either. in March 2009, Obama approached the Russians on the subject with a letter.
NYT: Russia Welcomes Letter From Obama
The Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said Tuesday that his administration was open to overtures from the United States on its proposed missile defense plan, but he dismissed the notion of a deal in which the United States would shelve the plan in exchange for Russia’s help on Iran.
The statement came in response to a report in The New York Times about a private letter from President Obama to his Russian counterpart, saying the proposed missile defense system would not be necessary if Moscow could help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons and nuclear warheads.
On the Foreign Policy website, a blog post described the letter as "Yalta all over again":
"it could also turn out to be a second coming of Yalta -- a sell-out of America's eastern European allies of epic proportions."
The Yalta Conference was held at Yalta in February 1945 between these three gentlemen and their entourages._(B%26W).jpg)
One of the topics of the conference was no less than the division of Europe into two spheres of influence. Probably the most infamous example is Churchill's draft proposal, which he pencilled out on a sheet of paper: he suggested to Stalin that they divide up Central Europe between themselves, listing names of countries and percentages of influence each side would have. For example, Romania would be 90% Soviet and 10% Western, with Greece the opposite. On a smaller scale, Yalta was where the Western Allies agreed to repatriate all Soviet citizens to the Soviet Union, regardless of their own wishes or their upcoming fate. This meant death for thousands at the hands of Stalin's execution squads.
In short, at Yalta the western allies sold out Eastern Europe to the Soviets. The comparison may be exaggerated, but the way Barack Obama's administration has reacted to the Georgian war certainly doesn't show strength. Offering to trade the missile defence of NATO to the Russians in exchange for fuzzy diplomatic guarantees is unlikely to send a strong message that the United States is committed to resisting Russian expansionism, and the failure to react in any way to the invasion of Georgia only strengthens the message. If anything, the weakness of the Obama administration will embolden the Russians to act more aggressively inside what they consider their sphere of influence. As I'm writing this blog post uncomfortably close to the Russian border, I can say that this is bad news for all of us over here.
It isn't just relations with Eastern Europe that Obama seems intent on sabotaging, though. He caused a stir in 2009 by seeming to downplay the UK-US "special relationship", prompting the Daily Telegraph to ask:
DT: Will Barack Obama end Britain's special relationship with America?
A British official said: "I don't think Obama is steeped in the tradition of the special relationship going back to Churchill and Roosevelt. Of course someone of his generation is going to look at it differently. I think what he looks at are the assets that are brought to the table and the expertise you have. This is a definite change of emphasis."
In the six decades since in which Winston Churchill first coined the phrase special relationship, successive American presidents have paid ritual obeisance to the notion that Britain should assume a place at the White House top table.
Now even allies of Mr Obama believe he intends to extract a higher price for access to the corridors of his power.
This might seem overly paranoid, but a year later, Argentina brought out an old hobby-horse: the Falklands. The Argentinians consider the Falkland Islands their territory, but the islands' British-born population does not. Earlier this year, Argentina threatened to blockade the islands, and Venezuela's dear leader strongly supported them. As a blogger for the Telegraph put it:
So far, the mounting Falklands conflict has been met with deafening silence from Washington. Both the White House and State Department have failed to comment on the situation, despite a significant heightening of tensions. Not only is this another striking failure of leadership on the part of the US administration, but it also demonstrates an extraordinary level of indifference towards America’s closest ally.
As far as Europe is concerned, Obama's foreign policy looks worryingly like an effort to appease the Russians at the expense of Europe.
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All in all, I consider President Obama's foreign policy so far to be a total failure. He has brought no leadership and no new vision to US foreign policy. The mere fact of his election, and the rhetoric of the first few months, seemed to raise the world's opinion of the United States, and got him the Nobel Peace Prize. A prize that was earlier given to organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Grameen Bank, and since to an imprisoned Chinese human rights activist, was given to an American president for making a speech. To paraphrase a percentage-jotting alcoholic, never has so much been awarded to so few for so little.
Obama did succeed in raising hope; where he failed was in capitalizing on it. His Middle Eastern policies range from the inept to the potentially catastrophic, and his humiliation by Israel has effectively ended any hope of an outreach to the Muslim world. If his administration has had any impact on relations with Europe, it has been a negative one, undermining the special relationship with the UK, destabilizing NATO and encouraging the Russians in their quest to become a superpower with a Cold War-like sphere of influence.
I haven't really mentioned East Asia, as I don't feel that I'm qualified to comment on it, but suffice to say that the Obama administration has attracted criticism for a soft policy on China as well, preferring to concentrate on economic interests to the detriment of human rights.
One of the many great injustices of a representative democracy is that in foreign policy, as in nearly all other fields, the consequences of Obama's actions will be borne by his successor. If the rest of his term plays out like this, the next guy is getting a bum deal.
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