“Protestors are planning at assemble at some Apple Stores in Washington, DC’s Georgetown, New York City, and San Francisco this Friday, presumably in anticipation of the new iPad’s release,” Mike Schramm reports for TUAW.
“These campaigns are being run from Change.org by Mark Shields… [who] says he’s an Apple fan who wants assurance that Apple isn’t using underpaid and overworked Chinese laborers to make its products,” Schramm reports. “Apple has already taken steps to ensure that its workers aren’t treated poorly. Shields admitted, via press release, that auditing supplier factories and raising worker pay are good moves.”
Schramm reports, “It’s still unclear exactly what Shields wants… Without a clearly-defined definition of what Apple should do for those workers, it’s hard to see these protests as anything more than noise around the iPad’s already big launch.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Shields probably wants a new iPad and, as any good slacktivist would, is simply trying to combine sitting in line with a couple more hours of meaningless “protest” against whatever “evil” he’s concocted in his mind.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Foxconn: The fire that wasn’t – March 15, 2012
Apple supplier Foxconn again lifts pay for China workers; 16-25 percent increase – February 17, 2012
FLA President: Foxconn factories ‘first-class; way, way above average’ – February 15, 2012
‘Slacktivism’ groups claim credit for Apple supplier audits over a month after Apple originally announced its plans – February 14, 2012
Thousands line up for iPhone assembly jobs at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou, China plant – January 30, 2012
Apple CEO Tim Cook calls New York Times supplier report ‘patently false and offensive’ – January 27, 2012
Apple audit led by COO Tim Cook prompted improvements at Foxconn – February 14, 2011
Media blows it: Foxconn employees face significantly lower suicide risk – May 28, 2010
Let’s hope the crowds don’t rough him up too badly.
maybe they get samsunged for a change.
COMMIES SUCK! Hey, I have a great idea, let’s protest success! Freaking IDIOTSS
Please try to use at least two or three of your low supply of brain cells and not just erupt into screaming vitriolic name-calling every time does something you don’t agree with.
Perhaps try making an actual point, with a little bit of logic and some rationality.
(I also disagree with this protest, by the way. I disagree with brainless hatred even more.)
Seamuck, you Marxist sympathizer, go to hell. This type of BS is destroying the US and the rest of the world. Get a clue nimrod!
A particularly stupid comment, because I’m not anything remotely close to Marxist or left wing. Hence the knee-jerk brainlessness of such “views” is illuminated. In fact, my own views on some topics would be characterized by the left as extremely RIGHT wing. I have a range of views that don’t fit into one unthinking pigeonhole, because I actually think — for myself.
Go to hell Commie!
So a pirate walked into a bar, and the bartender said, “Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. What happened? You look terrible.”
“What do you mean?” said the pirate, “I feel fine.”
“What about the wooden leg? You didn’t have that before.”
“Well,” said the pirate, “We were in a battle, and I got hit with a cannon ball, but I’m fine now.”
The bartender replied, “Well, OK, but what about that hook? What happened to your hand?”
The pirate explained, “We were in another battle. I boarded a ship and got into a sword fight. My hand was cut off. I got fitted with a hook but I’m fine, really.”
“What about that eye patch?”
“Oh,” said the pirate, “One day we were at sea, and a flock of birds flew over. I looked up, and one of them shit in my eye.”
“You’re kidding,” said the bartender. “You couldn’t lose an eye just from bird shit.”
“It was my first day with me hook.”
You can’t go a minute these days without a tiny group of Marxist trying to ruin everything for everyone. Effing LOSERS!
+1
Weak, Mark. What, no protests at Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Intel, Toshiba, Visio, Samsung, Motorola, or Amazon? They use FoxConn facilities too, just like Apple. What’s that you say? There’s no valuable publicity in that?
Pathetic.
Now that the slacktavista has gotten assurances from Apple, it is now time for him to go elsewhere. Many of the major computer, phone, and tablet makers also use Foxcon. Time to protest ten, if he is really serious about making a change. 🙂
Mark should go to China and get a job with Foxconn so he can see for himself.
Exactly!
Exactly. Beyond pathetic.
Just in case anyone forgot, China still is a communist country.
So is Wisconsin!
++1
The fire that wasn’t…
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11455556/1/foxconn-the-fire-that-wasnt.html
Like blood in the water to sharks…
EVERYONE wants a piece of Apple now. Apple is just too successful for the rest of the world.
Does Change.org accomplish anything besides trolling for $ and giving emo kid’s and earthy crunchie granola eating bitches a platform to feel important?
It seems to me they are trying to be like the ACLU but instead of holding to set of principles (even when you don’t agree with them you gotta like what they stand for) they are just trying to be like the little kids at sporting events that act a fool hoping the camera will pan to them.
“trolling for $ and giving … bitches a platform to feel important”
Sounds exactly like MDN to me.
In what way is MDN like Change.org? Just curious.
Zero! You freaking COMMIE-LEMMING!!!!
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74109.html
CBO: Exploding debt under Obama policies – David Rogers – POLITICO.com
F*sk these idiots.
Seriously.
Foxconn has increased their wages 3 times since since 2010. The last increase was up to 25%.
Bunch of emotionally retarded self-righteous do-gooders, always jumping from one cause to the next.
Oh, are they giving out a cheque again?! lol
Shut-up and put-out!
I almost forgot, is the Samsung gate-crashers coming too?!
How about Greenpeace?!
Come one come all!
Let’s celebrate!
Hahahahaha!
I love the left!
They are a riot….
Left or right, there are idiots all over.
Individually, yes.
Collectively, the über-left’s entire mantra is based solely on their ignorance of reality.
This article is the tip of the proof-berg.
There have already been other stories, and there will be many more.
The irony is that it was business as usual when Exxon, Wal-Mart, Haliburton, Pfizer, and Sarah Palin were castigated….but now it has been turned on Apple.
It’s time to reap what you, like, so…..
I’d like to kick his ass. The morons send me e-mails asking me to sign their petition!!! I don’t care if one of their pet peeves is world peace, they ruin their credibility with this nonsense! Why aren’t they picketing Best Buy or the (ugh) Microsoft Store? Cretins. An embarrassment to us all.
Why are they picketing anywhere you brain dead idiot!
Picket a Microsloth store? Isn’t that like picketing an abandoned building?
“Home of the twelve monkey’s”
Must be Evergreen College grads. Haha
They’re going to be there to buy an iPad, so why not? Multi-tasking protesters.
Changediapers.org, sponsored by Soros and other left wing loonies, supporting Ohbummer and his cronies, trying to turn the world into one big Commie Gulag.
Yes! Another Fox News parrot!
You’re another brain-dead-LEMMING!!!!!!!
Sam is another PMSBC-Rachel Madcow Lemming!
Panty Shields – go away.
Time to head to Costco and pick up one of those big cartons of eggs for special delivery tomorrow for the protestors.
Totally stupid, because Apple deserves less critique in this field than any other big companies. So not protesting against them, but protesting against Apple is hypocritical farce.
Gee, maybe that moron wants Apple to quit offering Chinese factory workers jobs that are so attractive they line up for hours on end to apply?
>It’s still unclear exactly what Shields wants
No, it’s perfectly clear what he wants. He wants to get some free publicity by crashing someone else’s party. His end game is to become a lobbyist and get paid for bribing left-wing politicians to get free money for the next round of idiotic boondoggles like “solyndra” and the Chevy Volt.
Yep.
A Greenpeace member admitted to me they choose Apple not because they are big violators, but because anything done to Apple generates mega publicity.
Don’t be stupid, folks. Regardless of what is your platform, if you want publicity, you must go where publicity is. What possible exposure would they get if the had picketed Dell??? Or RIMM???
You can argue against their platform all you want, but their methods are exactly the same as anyone else who needs publicity: try and attach yourself to the biggest ones.
Nobody bothered Apple five years ago when their market cap was smaller than Dell’s. Our mindset hasn’t changed since then (we still think of Apple as rebellious underdog; we can’t help it), but the world sees Apple exactly the same way they saw Microsoft or Exxon-Mobile not long ago.
This type of thing comes with the territory and Apple is handling it exactly the right way (mostly ignoring).
The message is the problem Tool Boy!
Man o man, the more Apple succeeds, the more the comments on here remind me of MS comments back in the 90’s.
And that’s not remarking on MS, just the calibre of the posts.
Screw you auren, you simpleton-LEMMING-WING NUT!
Thanks for your thoughtful and well-reasoned arguments, Craigster. Sure convinced me!
The problem with you liberals is that you are drones. Nothing will convince you morons of how horrible your religion of socialism-marxism-communism-progressivism-etc. is. You are drones. The people that can learn are those wishy-washy middle of the road types. Not the drones.
As I’ve been posting elsewhere regarding this lunacy:
Change.org has done some terrific work. But this ‘iSweatshop’ BS sadly proves that stupid rulz at BOTH ends of the 1 dimensional political scale. There are actual factual sweatshops to worry about. There is child slavery and child prostitution to worry about. There is the Corporate Oligarchy buying and owning our government to worry about. There is the rise of China, criminal nation to worry about. Railing on Apple about conditions at Foxconn is just plain IGNORANT.
Those of us who pay attention know that Apple directly addressed this issue, after the suicides problem (which was statistically LOWER than China’s average) over ONE YEAR and a HALF AGO. It’s over. At this point the workers at Apple’s Foxconn plants are so relatively well off that Foxconn has lost enough profitability to have the incentive to start planning and building plants out amidst the peasantry where they don’t have such high and expensive expectations.
It’s amazing what knowing what you’re talking about can do for your causes. Change.org gets an F grade for this FAIL move. (o_0)
Sheesh, Derek! Don’t try to confuse some of the people here with reality or reasonableness. Or even worse — by actually making concrete POINTS, backed up by actual THOUGHT. Don’t you know that ALL protests on ALL issues are stinkin’ commie-unpatriotic-lemming-wingnut-freakin-idiot bull.
I strongly suspect the 14 yr old Marx lemming troll is snarfing under several handles here because MDN is passive.
!!! Funny, Jane, that you should also hit upon 14 as the seeming age. I was going to write something further with that very number. And thanks for the idea on multi-handles. Seems pretty likely. Obvious – in retrospect.
Multi, got the idea from warbux, I’m not sure…
Yeah like those occupy whatever dumb fxcks. You progressives are very misguided. Obama and comrades are destroying the US as fast as they can. You lost souls just happily follow it right off the CLIFF!
Commie,lemmings, trolls, liberals.
Vote conservative this fall!
You libs never want to stand up to the real problems. You love to complain about people that have JOBS in China and are working hard but it’s crickets about what the middle easterners and North Koreans do to their women and citizens in general. Not a peep, ever. And if anything positive is done for the citizens you have conniptions over it. You know China won’t do anything but maybe a middle eastern terrorist would.
Instead of worrying about China’s poor, depraved “workers” you need to focus on stopping the abominable, out of control, Democrats, on an all out mission to ruin every sector of American life and bankrupt everyone. You need to focus on getting your heads screwed on right.
You may be right but it’s simple, old man. All we have to do is vote the Democrats out of office. We don’t need a palace revolution. We don’t need to smack somebody upside the head. You’re getting too old for that anyhow. If Santorum is nominated, some of us will vote for him. This country is great and will abide no matter what happens. If you need some help getting to the polls next November, let us know and one of us may be able to help. In the meantime, I don’t think we really need the lecture.
You do need the lecture, very, very, much need it!
Get it through your head, jackass. I am not a Dem. I am not a progressive. I am not a Commie. I voted for Richard Nixon, ever hear of him? Back the fuck off before I sic the NSA on you. Don’t you even know the government is listening to every word we say? Don’t you realize they can secretly subpoena your ISP? Smart people know that. Save yourself.
Progressives suck! Vote them out. Don’t be intimidated by people like Jane. We need to stand up to thug progressives every chance we get.
Someone is lying about which way they swing……… Extremely obvious from years of reading MDN.
Democrats never can win an argument. Instead they try to censor and silence debates. Telling how people like Jane that pretend to be non-liberals never, ever, complain about vitriol constantly coming from liberals on this and other sites.
By the way, Great videos!
Jane = super lib
How very nazi-ensue of Jane to be threatening posters. Pretty weak!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2115871/The-CIA-wants-spy-TV-Agency-director-says-net-connected-gadgets-transform-surveillance.html
Commie tool for progressives to spy on all of us.
@Grand Pa: I hope you were sarcastically trying to emulate a psychosis patient. I was with you until you went off the rails and train wrecked:
<you need to focus on stopping the abominable, out of control, Democrats, on an all out mission to ruin every sector of American life and bankrupt everyone. You need to focus on getting your heads screwed on right.
You’ve got your 1 dimensional political scale backwards. Do some homework and figure out exactly WHY we’re in a continuing worldwide depression right now.
• What party consistently licks the backsides of our Corporate Oligarchy Overlords?
• What party elected the worst and stupidest President in US history?
• What party invented, perpetrated and lied our way into the Afghanistan and Iraq wars?
• What party just recently reestablished misogyny as an acceptable subject of public expression?
• What party refuses to let women testify at hearings about women’s reproductive rights?
• What party consistently drives up US debt to historic levels during periods of economic growth?
The evidence might just drive you to drive off a cliff in embarrassment. These are sick times where sick people refuse to cure their ignorance.
Dinesh D’Souza
2016
Great Movie in the making! Another layer of the hidden onion peeled back on Maobama…..
I liked Jane better when she was diddling with her name hobby, voodo, and what not….
Just like Russia, turn them all into the secret police and send them off to the Goo-LOGS!
Sad, simply sad and pathetic.
“Democrats never can win an argument. Instead they try to censor and silence debates.”
Incredibly laughable and incredibly untrue. If a post on this site or any other is simply a list of vitriolic name-calling with no actual thoughts, it is, inevitably, the “frothing sector” of the right wing (as opposed to right-wingers who actually think and make real points). It’s NOT left-wingers, not centrists.
The fact that Jane doesn’t agree with the form of your infantile vitriolic ravings is SO threatening that you must immediately accuse her of PRETENDING to be conservative and that she must actually be a liberal.
“Progressives suck!”
Talk about Stockholm Syndrome. The reason that your children (if you’re old enough to have any) don’t have to work 7 days a week, 12 hours a day is NOT because the factory owners got together and said, “Gee willikers, let’s stop having children work in factories”.
Nor did they say, “Let’s institute all kinds of safety measures so a lot less people got mangled, cut up and poisoned in our factories.”
Slaves were not freed by the slaveowners deciding, “Let’s allow these folks to participate in society”.
Women didn’t get the vote because those in control decided, “Well, gosh-darn-it, this is just not fair.”
These – and innumerable other comforts of modern society – were won and are being won by people who said, “We’re not going to take this crap any more.” That’s just how it works. You can’t dismiss that by calling those people some name.
Let me see if I can save you time and post your insightful rebuttal for you in advance. (Or is rebuttal too big a word for you?) Just reorder the words to your taste and put a few filler words in between.
“Commie, progressive, liberal, suck, marxist, lemming, wingnut, effing, loser, idiot.”
Seamus. I’m happy that I decided to check back in this forum before I ship out. I’m definitely not used to having someone have my back outside surgery. I’ve been recalled to Walter Reed as an instructor, and it’s a new opportunity to serve my country. I think I must shut Jane down as I will be very busy with my new role. Unexpected but very excited to be back in the fight after a long furlough, and best of luck to you, and to all the Apple faithful!
SEA-ASS,
First of all, who cares about that nut Jane whatever and what she claims to be doing in her life!!!!!
Nothing you said makes any sense whatsoever. IN FACT, many slaves were freed by the slave owners wanting to set them free. Not all but many did. And it was conservatives who led the charge. Your Democrat party is the pary of having KKK members in it prominently.
You liberals are the ones with Stockholm Syndrome and every other SYNDROME you can imagine.
Speak for yourself shit head about how many days per week I or anyone works. That’s none of your effing business.
The free market regulates where people want to work. If you don’t want to work 7 days a week you quit your job and go work for a business that doesn’t require that you ahole.
The problem with you, dirt bag, is you just assume all people are greedy and evil and for the good of man kind you LIberal-TARDS must come to the rescue of all of us poor, stupid, common folk. Well double screw you. We don’t need nor want your COMMIE – Help. We are all perfectly capable of solving our own problems and do not want you sticking your freaking slimy-progressive nose into all aspects of our lives. GET LOST.
So what do you think the liberals should do to save the middle eastern woman that are forced into Burkas, marriage, not driving, can’t get an education, are honor killed, etc.? Maybe you all should bus yourselves into their countries and start protesting and OCCUPYING. Complain to the middleeastern 1% ! I dare you.
You probably support no ID voting.
You are a progressive ahole, jackass. You are wrong as usual.
Some people and I’m not saying women or any race of people, but some people who are completely clueless and don’t have any idea about the reality going on around them in their country of origin probably should not be allowed to vote.
Capitalism and the US has brought man kind out of the stone ages. WE HATE YOU Self imagined master minds that think you and only you know what is best for the rest of us. Take your ill conceived rant and shove it.
YOUR POST SAYS IT ALL WHEN YOU IGNORE EVERY LIBERAL NASTY POST AND ONLY FOCUS ON CONSERVATIVE POSTS. JUST LIKE A TRUE LIBERAL. WHEN BADLY LOSING THE DEBATE TRY TO SHUT IT DOWN. GO TO HELL.
NOVEMBER 2012 WILL BE WAKE UP DAY FOR YOU.
Liberals get schooled again!