The Woke Decry American Slavery That Ended Over 150 Years Ago While Enjoying The Benefits Of Slave Labor In Place Today | “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad” | The New York Times

November 29, 2022 / Great Bloggers

Expose Published Jan. 25, 2012

An explosion last May at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China, killed four people and injured 18. It built iPads.

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

“Are you Lai Xiaodong’s father?” a caller asked when the phone rang at Mr. Lai’s childhood home. Six months earlier, the 22-year-old had moved to Chengdu, in southwest China, to become one of the millions of human cogs powering the largest, fastest and most sophisticated manufacturing system on earth. That system has made it possible for Apple and hundreds of other companies to build devices almost as quickly as they can be dreamed up.

“He’s in trouble,” the caller told Mr. Lai’s father. “Get to the hospital as soon as possible.”

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

“If Apple was warned, and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible,” said Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United States Labor Department. “But what’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.” . . .

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

“If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?” the executive asked. . . .

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad | The New York Times

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‘Defund the Police’ Movement Could Mean More Lone Wolf Attacks: Terrorism Experts

By James Risdon | The Epoch Times | June 21, 2021

Lone wolf killers are likely going to strike and murder innocents more often as a result of the “defund the police” movement, says a former strategic analyst in the Canadian intelligence community.

“Security systems in Canada are being torn in all directions simultaneously and they’re understaffed to do what they are being asked to do,” Phil Gurski, the president and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting, said in an interview.

“If you don’t have enough resources, then potentially there will be more of these attacks.”

The most recent lone wolf attack in Canada occurred on June 6 in London, Ont., when Nathaniel Veltman jumped the curb with his vehicle and struck a family of five, killing four of them and injuring one. Veltman, 20, is now facing terrorism charges.

Lone wolf, or lone-actor, attacks—in which an individual without formal ties to a terrorist organization goes on a murderous rampage—are considered among the most difficult to prevent, and the most shocking.

According to the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security, and Society, since the 9/11 attacks in New York there have been several high-profile lone-actor terrorist attacks in Canada, the United States, France, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, and other countries.

Terrorism experts Mark S. Hamm and Ramón Spaaij, authors of “The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism,” have documented 216 attacks by 83 lone wolves in the United States alone between 1940 and 2013.

Their research reveals a chilling fact: Lone wolves are striking more often. . . .