Oh My, How The ‘Woke’ Are Just Tools Of The Corporate Behemoths | “Shareholders challenging Apple on unions & alleged slave labor” | Apple Insider

December 1, 2022 / Great Bloggers

Well in advance of the annual shareholders’ meeting, Apple investors have filed challenges that the board must address, such as the company’s stance on unions and human rights in China.

Trillium Asset Management filed a union proposal, asking Apple’s board to improve its oversight of how the company’s management has handled recent unionizing. Trillium also mentioned how employees had allegedly accused Apple of intimidation tactics to deter employees from organizing.

Advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services also plans to consider recommending against board members at companies that fail to act on shareholder proposals that have won majority support.

Another proposal, by activist group SumOfUs, calls for Apple to create a “phaseout transition plan” to stop the company’s supply chain from using labor from Uyghur forced labor programs. Apple had also been challenged on that topic in 2021.

Apple faces two other proposals that call on the board of directors to examine the company’s remote work policies on employee retention and competitiveness, according to the Financial Times.

In August, the UN published a report that accused China of “serious human rights violations” regarding Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. Apple told the SEC that there was “no evidence that any of its suppliers were located” in the Xinjiang region, home to the Uyghurs.

Apple isn’t fighting the union proposal but does plan to challenge the others because they involve internal business decisions that don’t pertain to outsiders.

Shareholders challenging Apple on unions & alleged slave labor | Apple Insider

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Pulitzer winner Seymour Hersh claims US Navy behind Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion | New York Post

By Great Bloggers | February 13, 2023

WASHINGTON — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has alleged US Navy divers laid bombs that destroyed the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea last September, drawing a denial from the Pentagon Wednesday.

Hersh, who scooped journalism’s top award more than five decades ago for exposing the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by US troops in 1968, cited an unnamed source in reporting on Substack that Americans planted remotely triggered explosives that wrecked three of the four pipelines built to carry natural gas from Russia to Europe.

Hersh, 85, went on to claim that the Navy conducted the operation under the cover of a NATO maritime exercise, BALTOPS 22.

In a short statement, Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Lt. Col. Garron J. Garn told The Post “the United States was not involved in the Nord Stream explosion,” reiterating the Defense Department’s response to the same question in October.

Swedish officials suspected the blasts were the result of “gross sabotage,” and some Western officials were quick to blame the attacks on Moscow as it blocked gas supplies to Europe in response to sanctions over last year’s invasion of Ukraine.

“These are deliberate actions, not an accident,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at the time. “The situation is as serious as it gets.”

Pulitzer winner Seymour Hersh claims US Navy behind Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion | New York Post