“I’m afraid that I coming to an unfortunate conclusion about some of these people protesting about the wages and working conditions at Foxconn,” Tim Worstall writes for Forbes. “They don’t seem to have much understanding of the world that they inhabit.”
MacDailyNews Take: What’s taking you so long, Tim? 😉
“The people at SACOM (Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior) have released yet another report insisting that Apple and Foxconn just aren’t doing enough,” Worstall writes. “Yes, I am aware that working conditions there aren’t great and that wages, by your and my standards, are low. But that’s what being a poor person in a poor country means. Working hard at a bad job for little money. All of which is well known and so I really do find it terribly difficult to understand what SACOM are on about. Maybe the bright students are studying and the others are running SACOM?”
Read more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Stupid and Stupider Announcing Colossal Mendacity.
Ever notice that the stupidest “activists” are often extremely cloistered in well-to-do parts of the world? These wet-behind-the-ears wannabe-activist bozos with absolutely no sense of perspective and zero idea what “poor” really means would do well to get out and see a bit of the world before opening their pampered pie-holes and/or signing electronic petitions that aren’t worth a bucket of warm piss.
Also, for a wonderful example of biased, slanted, yellow journalism, check out Reuters today which starts with the lies right from the headline, “Apple assembly plant conditions still harsh in China: activists,” here.
Related articles:
Foxconn workers talk about jobs, working conditions assembling iPhones and iPads – May 5, 2012
Apple Foxconn petition maker Mark Shields a D.C.-based professional activist – May 3, 2012
Marketplace goes inside Foxconn, posts exclusive look at how an iPad is made (with video) – April 12, 2012
Liar Mike Daisey dumped as Cornish College commencement speaker, will not receive honorary degree – April 9, 2012
Apple supplier Foxconn cuts working hours; workers worry, question why – March 30, 2012
Fair Labor Association releases Foxconn report; looks to correct overtime, safety issues – March 29, 2012
Change.org petition calls for Change.org to retract petition against Apple; says based on Mike Daisey’s lies – March 21, 2012
Foxconn won’t take legal action against ‘This American Life’ after retraction of Mike Daisey lies – March 19, 2012
Foxconn glad Mike Daisey’s lies exposed; says media hasn’t gone far enough in reporting truth – March 19, 2012
Apple and the Daisey affair: Why did the company keep its silence, when it knew a year ago what we know now? – March 18, 2012
Apple firestorm leads Mike Daisey to change his ‘agony and ecstasy of Steve Jobs’ show – March 17, 2012
‘This American Life’ retracts story, says it can’t vouch for the truth of Mike Daisey’s monologue about Apple in China – March 16, 2012
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
I do love it when the head MDN Take writer is on the job!
thumbs up
yes
Liberals, always ruining greatness and freedom.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/230283-house-rejects-bill-penalizing-doctors-for-sex-selection-abortions
Dems kill bill banning sex-selection abortions…
Another good sign that an activist doesn’t know what the fsck they’re saying, they have no ideas to improve things. They think things should just be generally better but have no plan or idea on how to get there.
What they’re really asking for, even if they don’t know it, is for Apple to singly handedly change China’s economy. Apple is one American company, their power is limited.
Occupiers.
Ignorantivism.
wolf-PAC.com is the purpose of occupy. Dumbass.
Itch
You would be the Brain-Dead-Dumb-Ass.
The FLEA Party has no idea where they are, what they stand for, what day it is, what a SHOWER is, what responsibility is, what’s it’s like not to be high on DRUGS, and so on.
I’ll take the Tea Party Heroes any day of the week. True Patriots and Americans.
Not like you communist, nut jobs.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/31/2826708/feds-demand-florida-cease-its.html
Feds to Florida: halt non-citizen voter purge
“… before opening their pampered pie-holes …”
lol, superb.
dont know about that….I laughed more at the warm bucket reference!
Btw – nice avatar.
There will never be a point where they’ll stop saying “Apple can do more.” Just like “we’re not there yet” will always be present when discussing race relations.
They’re rallying cries for the lazy.
Apple and China could automate the crap out of the factories and build the products with a stuff about 1% the size of the current staff, getting rid of all those “Crappy jobs”. The reality is that the Chinese government and the people of China don’t want that automation. They’d rather have 500,000 people employed making iDevices.
One has to wonder whether automation will at some point make humans obsolete altogether. People keep saying this will never happen, but it happens year after year (particularly since the advent of the computer).
It’s going to happen.
Yes, the more automation the world has, the more pompous asses like these people at SACOM will be breeding like rabbits.
That’s why they call is “slacktivism”.
Don’t bogart the bong, yo!
Four words: White Savior Industrial Complex
Funny how these clueless activists are all over China as the PC flavor the month ignoring their own country turf in areas that could be improved here. Thanks for all the vacuous concern a-holes!
Uhm, they’re STUDENTS! Of course they don’t know what they’re talking about.
As a comedian once said:
“Why do college students think they’re so smart? You don’t see people in hospitals bragging about their health!”
——RM
Or as Al Capp portrayed them, S.W.I.N.E. – Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything!
omg! how many zeros in your age before you get to the first significant digit?! i had decided a while ago i would never come across that again.
There’s no Jack S., like our Jack S.
I am saying this as someone who proudly stands on the left side of politics:
Liberal students p*ss me off. They p*ssed me off when I was a student, and they still p*ss me off today. When I was in grad school, I referred to them as “baby liberals”, as in “maybe one day they’ll grow up into real liberals”.
But when they’re in college? They. Don’t. Know. Sh*t.
It’s the outrage of the week. The liberal bumper sticker of the day. They don’t use their brains, that comes later. They just hop on whatever bandwagon their friends are on. In the 80’s, this meant plastering the campus with stupid flyers. Now it means idiotic Facebook or Twitter campaigns. Or making “demands” of foreign countries that don’t even know you exist — that was popular back then, too.
As a committed lefty, it infuriates me to see so-called “activists” wasting their time making meaningless “demands” of foreign countries when there are critical progressive causes in this country that need their attention.
But that would require, you know, work. Much easier to release a list of demands of a Chinese company and then pat yourself on the back for being such an involved progressive activist.
——RM
Liberals piss off the majority of the US, period.
That is because you watch Fox News. They twist things around to make you hate us.
No Itch, it’s because liberals SUCK.
Your hero, Rachel MadCOW, is the racist-hater, just like all you liberals.
Funny.in China Foxconn is considered a good place to work.
Perhaps they (the students of SACOM) don’t realize that on a global basis they are the 1%… or then again they do…
You know there’s a ridiculous amount of compensation swirling around the vacant heads of the “well-off from mom and dad’s work and feels bad about it” slacktivists. I’d prescribe a month working at Foxconn, followed by a month plowing the fields of the Chinese countryside for pennies a month (like the workers did before Foxconn). Call it “forced perspective”.
@TheMacAdvocate,
YES!!!
Nothing like a dose of reality to help them eliminate some of that guilt they’re lugging around.
Funny thing about propaganda; both sides can do it. The key to understanding any issue is to apply critical thinking skills and ample amounts of skepticism. When someone makes a claim, regardless of which side they are on, they are required to supply proof of that claim. And not just quoting a website – unbiased and verifiable proof. As Americans, we all too often take as proof any opinion that agrees with our own and rarely do we seek to verify or even be skeptical of the motives of people making claims. This goes for students AND corporations. I tend to side with the people making claims that can be tested and verified, not with the people shouting the loudest.
I love conservatives. There’d be no knee-jerk, reactionary entertainment without ’em. The easiest question to shut ’em up, at least as regards this issue: “Would you want your grandchildren working in those conditions and for those wages?”
Yeah….even the crickets are silent, aren’t they?
Please keep the entertainment coming, conservatives! And so you’ll feel better, laugh along with the rest of us!
@Justin American,
Short answer: yes, absolutely, if my grandchildren had low skills and lived in China.
BTW, TheMacAdvocate in his post (above) has a great solution to that unfortunate case of “holier than thou” guilt you’re carrying around. Seriously, it would make you a better person.
So we can be concerned about working conditions and wages only for people in this country? No, that’s fairly myopic of you (and conservatives in general). Nice name-callin’, though, Darlin’; you’re so sweet to smugly attempt recognition of smug behavior in others (you failed, but keep trying; your efforts aren’t in vain!).
Let’s be concerned with people other than just ourselves for once. And for the record: I’d have to save a long time to do it, but I’d gladly continue to buy Apple products made in the US by union workers.
Go back to your work at being your OWN better person……charity starts at (your own) home, Darlin’.
How about you butt out of China’s issues and go get debriefed to undo the years of brain washing that’s scrambled your tiny-Lemming-Brain. You Marxist pile of excrement.
The problem with viewing everything through the double lens of conservative vs. liberal, is that you end up with this myopic double vision of things which often obscures what’s really going on.
There’s way more going on in the world than most of us realize, and it can be at best tasteless, and at worst dangerous, to apply petty US political squabbles to the world stage.
Yes, we want the best for people who live in conditions far worse than what we’re privileged to have. But if we attempt to impose our standards upon other sovereign nations, doesn’t that start to tread dangerously close to cultural imperialism?
The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.
The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
This world exists simply to satisfy the needs–including, importantly, the sentimental needs–of white people and Oprah.
The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.
[…]
I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.
[…]
That is what made me compare American sentimentality to a “wounded hippo.” His good heart does not always allow him to think constellationally. He does not connect the dots or see the patterns of power behind the isolated “disasters.” All he sees are hungry mouths, and he, in his own advocacy-by-journalism way, is putting food in those mouths as fast as he can. All he sees is need, and he sees no need to reason out the need for the need.
You are an idiot.
Many of the activists I know are people I generally agree with on other issues. I can see now why Dylan wrote “My Back Pages”- Mr. Jones is everywhere.
The reason you can relate to these types is because you are one in the same, communist, Freedom, Haters. Your party oozes of Racism as well.
Here’s another one…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/30/foxconn-abuses-despite-apple-reforms
It’s like a rite of passage in newbie journalism. Pick a well known company, regurgitate sh*t, wait for hits to drive up your worth.
Hit whoring is the new maxim.