Kids May Be Using Laptops Made With Forced Labor This Fall (theintercept.com) 86
The ongoing persecution by the Chinese government of Uyghur Muslims is far from a distant problem. Recent reporting has identified Uyghur forced labor in the supply chain of major global brands, including BMW, Ralph Lauren, Samsung, and Sony. From a report: Now, as school districts scramble to obtain electronic devices for a school year that may be primarily virtual, some children may end up using computers assembled by Uyghurs working in inhumane conditions. Shipping records show that since the start of the pandemic, Lenovo has imported an estimated 258,000 laptops from a Chinese manufacturer that has participated in a troubling labor scheme and been singled out by the U.S. government for violating human rights. The revelations serve as a reminder of how much of the supply chain is tied to forced labor and how many products that will aid us through the Covid-19 pandemic may be manufactured under duress.
The Lenovo computers were made by the manufacturer Hefei Bitland, which participates in a Chinese government program to provide factories with cheap labor from persecuted Uyghurs. Some of the computers included lightweight Chromebooks bound for public schools in the U.S. -- and some were delivered even after the company was placed on a government list restricting trade. After they arrived at port, sources say, Lenovo apparently removed a portion of the computers from distribution; over the past few weeks, multiple school districts have reported holdups in their orders of Lenovo Chromebooks.
The Lenovo computers were made by the manufacturer Hefei Bitland, which participates in a Chinese government program to provide factories with cheap labor from persecuted Uyghurs. Some of the computers included lightweight Chromebooks bound for public schools in the U.S. -- and some were delivered even after the company was placed on a government list restricting trade. After they arrived at port, sources say, Lenovo apparently removed a portion of the computers from distribution; over the past few weeks, multiple school districts have reported holdups in their orders of Lenovo Chromebooks.
No, I swear, China will liberalize (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course America and the EU are not doing to much to make sure their companies are properly handling their supply chain.
Many of these "Illegal Immigrants" that America is hunting down and locking up, have been doing forced labor in the states. Because you are not going to complain to your "Employer" that you need more money, because they can just send you over to ICE.
China has been liberalized with this trade. However there are still problems, basically because our western values include looking the othe
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Of course America and the EU are not doing to much
What do you suggest? That we invade China? If you don't like how things may be made, don't buy them.
No, we rather just comment on how bad things are in other countries, while reading the article on our iphones and macbooks. We rather complain about those big evil companies. It's everybody elses fault, but ours.
How many Americans and EUSSR citizens are willing to assemble those electronics? There's a good documentary on Netflix about a car factory that is taken over by the Chinese: "American Factory".
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The only thing I get from this article, Lenovo is now going to become number one on the USA hitparade, most probably because they are adding more and more Linux into the lineup and squeezing out M$. USA wants the M$ update global backdoor and will kill to get it.
Re:No, I swear, China will liberalize (Score:5, Insightful)
It will be hard to move away from China. It will take time. But we really need to: for moral reasons and economic security.
The idea that prosperity brings some kind of democratic capitalism really did make sense many decades ago. All the evidence pointed that way. Sadly, China has disproven that idea. It's time do disassociate ourselves with them, including deep into the supply chain. If we want a TV not made with Chinese concentration camp labor, we're going to need to ban import of Japanese and Korean goods that are in turn made by Chinese forced labor. Because today, all TV manufacturers are guilty. Shoes are bad too.
We need to stop rewarding totalitarianism with trade. And we desperately need to entirely cut of the flow of Chinese propaganda into US platforms. Complete ban on taking money from China on any social media platform of any kind.
If the Chinese people ever heroically manage to overcome their government, we can return to shared prosperity. But right now we're just enriching their oppressors.
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There are two models we've used to fight totalitarianism.
Of the two, I'd say the latter works slightly better. The problem in
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Economic isolation. Sanctions, trade embargoes, etc. The Cuba/North Korea model. Both countries are still stubbornly Communist.
On the other hand, it ended up being rather effective against South Africa.
Re: No, I swear, China will liberalize (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's because South Africa was a US ally, not an enemy. It's pretty easy to make a regime fall when you are the only one propping it up.
You do know that the Reagan administration's official position was that Nelson Mandela was a communist sympathiser and terrorist, right?
Re: No, I swear, China will liberalize (Score:2)
The thing that our elites never really comprehended was that for some cultures, honor as they c
Re: No, I swear, China will liberalize (Score:1)
We could BECOME China (Score:2)
Rather than fighting the slavery and other human rights abuses that come with a totalitarian communist regime, the US could instead join China, and become a communism country ourselves.
That seems to be the path preferred by about 40% of the population.
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Rather than fighting the slavery and other human rights abuses that come with a totalitarian communist regime, the US could instead join China, and become a communism country ourselves.
That seems to be the path preferred by about 40% of the population.
You are forgetting the other 50-60% who believe in having a completely free market and that the right of anyone who is not a US civilan do not matter. They only argument between the two groups is whether it is the state or the corporations who gets the dish out the abuse.
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We need to expand voting rights. Universal Vote by Mail & Automatic Voter Registration are good starts.
No, no and no! First off everyone has the right to vote already who is a citizen and above the age of majority unless its been stripped because of felony conviction.
We don't need ex-cons voting - they have a record of bad decision making society does not stand to gain by taking their input at the polls.
We don't need vote by mail and automatic registration. The former has major security problems, swapping issues, and peer pressure problems. The latter just encourages more people to vote. Guess what this is
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The latter just encourages more people to vote.
Can you tell us why that's a problem?
Re: It's worse than that (Score:2)
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Re: It's worse than that (Score:2)
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Voting should require some amount of deliberate effort.
Automatic registration removes a ridiculously miniscule amount of that effort. It took me less than five minutes to complete the form, lick a stamp, and stick it in the mail the last time I registered. You still have to show up at the polls to vote, and that takes a helluva lot more effort than putting a voter registration card in the mail.
Not voting is also a legitimate exercise of political power. Automatic registration works against that principle and also opens a small window to fraud if you are registered but do not show up yourself, leaving room for someone else to show up as you either in person or by mail.
I'm aware of no "principle" that states one is exercising political power by not voting. It flies in the face of common sense. Maybe you can point me to an authoritat
Re: It's worse than that (Score:2)
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LOL, so what? If someone wanted to boycott an election in the US tomorrow, how would automatic voter registration stop them? It absolutely would not. Registration, automatic or otherwise, doesn't force anyone to vote. Period.
Look, I wanted to know why DarkOx thinks encouraging more people to vote through automatic registration is a problem. He hasn't responded, but you've stepped in and made this ridiculous claim that automatic registration somehow affects one's ability to not vote. It's nonsense on
Re: It's worse than that (Score:2)
I'll share an anecdote. Two years ago, I voted in the GOP primary in my town in Massachusetts. We have semi-open primaries. If you're registered as a Republican you may only vote in the Republican primary but if you're not registered with a political party, you may vote in any party's primary. I saw at least one person, middle class, middle aged, who wan
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I'm not speaking for him, but I think I made my point: if registration is so easy already, why make it automatic, and why open that little window to fraud?
You think you made your point? Which point was that? Automatic voter registration keeps you from not voting? Taking five minutes to fill out a form somehow adds effort to the process? Mandatory voting has anything to do with automatic registration? LOL, you're nowhere near batting 1.000 pal.
You keep mentioning fraud where there is none. Fraud by false registrations in the US is also exceedingly rare. [heritage.org] There have been 191 documented instances of fraud by "False Registrations" in the last ~40 years. D
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We don't need ex-cons voting - they have a record of bad decision making society does not stand to gain by taking their input at the polls.
Completely disagree. Many people are in prison for things many other citizens would objectively say should not be crimes at all. They are there to feed the machine - cheap labor for private prisons.
If everyone blindly obeyed every law, nothing would ever change. Everyone would just bow down no matter how ridiculous the laws became. Laws change because people take the risk of standing up, and widely reviled laws should absolutely be ignored and broken, that is how law evolves. That is actually how your
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We don't need ex-cons voting - they have a record of bad decision making society does not stand to gain by taking their input at the polls.
No taxation without representation? Can they be represented without the right to vote? Also, lots of people make bad decisions and using poor decision making as an argument for not letting ex-cons could lead you to the point of excluding those who are bankrupt, etc., not being allowed to vote which has been the case in various countries before. Or those who have made the 'bad decision' not to own property.
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They call it the "Belt And Road" initiative. They're doing the same thing we do with our army but using economics instead.
We need to expand voting rights. Universal Vote by Mail & Automatic Voter Registration are good starts. Ranked Choice voting (to do away with the "First Past the Post" voting that makes it easy to corrupt our system) should be next. Finally things like Universal Suffrage and Mandatory Voting (voting is made mandatory not to force participation but to make suppression impossible).
I'm for most of that, but how will any of it stop the Chinese "Belt And Road" initiative?
Re: It's worse than that (Score:2)
The rest of your list has nothing to do with the problem at hand.
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Thanks, Nixon.
As well as Nike (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's One Laptop By Child (OLBC).
The bastards! (Score:5, Interesting)
"Here are some of the products you use every day that might have been built or produced by jailed Americans.
Clothing. A zipper on a pair of jeans | Pixabay. ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Uniforms.
Furniture.
Mattresses.
Product packaging.
Signage.
Lingerie.
Car parts.
More items...
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Idaho Potatos, farmed by prisoners.
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Idaho Potatos, farmed by prisoners.
Oh, that explains the shiv I found the other day in a box of Betty Crocker Au Gratin potatoes...
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Re:The bastards! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm absolutely for this, but I think it should be done more rationally.
First and foremost, American prison labor should have minimum wage protections. They should, though.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, federal inmates earn 12 cents to 40 cents per hour for jobs serving the prison, and 23 cents to $1.15 per hour in Federal Prison Industries factories. (https://isps.yale.edu/news/blog/2013/10/time-to-reckon-with-prison-labor-0)
How that wage is used should be strictly regulated as well. Here are some options:
1. Restitution to victim harmed by criminal
2. Remittance to prisoner family
3. Savings for distribution upon release and successful completion of addiction and job training programs.
However, I don't think prisoner wages should be used as compensation to the state for court fees or the cost of imprisonment. Those are the burdens of a democratic society to pay. If we want to pay less, we shouldn't resort to forced labor. We should instead work to raise fewer criminals.
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The way our for profit prisons work, they nickle and dime the prisoners over every little thing. So if they pay them for labor they'll need to be allowed access to that money just to get a good tooth brush and soap.
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This is impossible. Putting prisoners to work is expensive, very very expensive. If you are going to make a shoe with prison labour, first off it is pretty much impossible to pay more than china is paying, in fact we have some weird shipping laws that make shipping more expensive within America than from China to America, so you are already at a disadvantage. Then you have to take into account the guards, walls, guns, xray machines, etc needed for these prisoners to work and not get access to weapons or esc
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The problem with that is that you literally cannot put a price on certain things. What's the price of a life (and this alone goes into controversial factors of its own), or better yet, the price of being loud and obnoxious in public? Not to mention it gives a reason to dole out maximum sentences because hey, cheap labor. That and what about victimless crimes, crimes against God, or crimes that exist because of a random edge case in 1822 that caused problems? If you can look someone in the eye and say with a
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What's the price of a life
About $10 million, give or take.
See: https://www.bloomberg.com/grap... [bloomberg.com]
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That philosophy is more for how much money you should be expected to spend if it would prevent one death.
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Forced labour because of one's religion is, well, criminal
Unless, of course, your religion is criminalized, in which case *you are a convicted criminal*. The problem with forced prison labor is that it creates incentive to incarcerate people. Incarceration should be a solution that "sucks, but these people can't be trusted out on their own, so what can you do?" not, "Oooooohhhhh goodie! Here come's another cash cow in chains!". There are other ways to teach prisoners labor skills. They can also be productive, but their product *should not make money for those
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"I think all convicted criminals should be forced to provide labour. They have caused harm to society ..."
By smoking dope or inhaling a powder into their body?
How do you figure that "harm to society"?
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The harm of setting a bad example!
Also, secondhand smoke.
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All the people they helped to kill, enslave, and threaten, to maintain that supply of drugs.
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The least they could do is repay their debts to society.
It used to be that serving time WAS repaying your debt to society. Now in addition to being locked up, you're practically forced to work for pennies an hour, and charged for your "room and board". Thanks prison industrial complex!
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Here are some of the products you use every day that might have been built or produced by jailed Americans. [several examples]
And (of course) the classic example; licence plates.
Another item: Firefighting wildfires.
Now that the Democratic convention is over and the campaign ramping up, watch for the resurfacing of the issue that Kamala Harris' office argued, in court, to keep prisoners past their parolle dates, to avoid losing manpower at fire camps during the 2014 fire season. (Especially the nonviolen
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How many of those Americans were in jail because they had the wrong religion?
Oblivious media (Score:2, Interesting)
It's okay, the media has been curiously quiet to the fact that many of the masks people are being told to wear are also made by slave labor: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
I'm sure that it's somehow morally different between the two. Somehow or another slave labor is okay for one, but not the other.
Stay in (Remote) School Kids (Score:5, Funny)
Adults are safe (Score:2)
Forced labor is everywhere. (Score:2, Insightful)
Forced labor is legal in the US [wikipedia.org] under some limited circumstances.
US versus Chinese children (Score:2, Redundant)
US child (holding two tomato cans with a tight string between them): "look what I made"
Chinese child (holding a freshly shrink-wrapped iPhone): "look what I made"
Bring high tech forced labor home! (Score:1)
Since manufacturing went to China we have ramped up private prisons to levels that we should be able to start competing with our own forced labor. Plus we've got all this immigrant children sitting around in cages getting free water and sex, they should produce for the greater American good, don't ya think?
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They already do..as well as many other things.
it's illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
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Aww, that's cute.
You have to be really strong now: Santa ain't real either.
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It's illegal to import products into the US for sale that was produced by forced labor. If yo have ACTUAL CREDIBLE evidence that laptops were produced by forced labor please notify the appropriate authorities.
I know reading three paragraphs of text is a lot to ask, so I'll help you out:
Some of the computers included lightweight Chromebooks bound for public schools in the U.S. -- and some were delivered even after the company was placed on a government list restricting trade.
Same Old, Same Old (Score:3)
You buy anything, it was likely made by subjugated people or prisoners. If you want to make something cheaply, it is almost always easier to do it if your employees can't quit.
Yeah, homegrown forced labor for me! (Score:2)
Slavery has never been outlawed entirely in the US, so it goes on in prisons. Convicts are forced to work at 10 cents per hour, in conditions that are not required to follow the OSHA rules (since it's slavery, not work).
Told you so. (Score:2)
Years ago Slashdot ran story after story repeatedly criticizing Apple for the terrible worker conditions at FoxConn. I pointed out multiple times that if it's only a problem when Apple does it then it's just going to be Apple who does something about it... for themselves. The response I got was "nuh huh, we're going after the biggest target and that'll put everybody in line."
Nope. I was right. You all should have shamed the other manufacturers, too, but apparently principles only matter when there are
Supporting the American way of life (Score:2, Informative)
Lets see now... (Score:2)
Schools have been using stuff made by US labor in prisons for decades... Suddenly force labor from China is an issue? Not that it's good in China, but let's get really real here.
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US prisoners were sentenced for crimes such as stealing, maiming, molesting rape, murder.... Uighurs were sentenced for ethnicity.
Do you have a point?
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"Our slave labor is fine. Theirs is the problem."
If you want the high moral ground, ban all forced labor in the US first. The US actively opposes UN resolutions against slavery because the US uses more slaves than anyone. We just claim it's OK when we do it.
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exactly
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my position is very strong. You seem to think there is a hair's difference between an asian muslim and a rapist or armed robber. your position is weak. We are making the trash do something useful, the Chinese are persecuting.
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So you think Uighurs in concentration camps are bad, okay. Shame on those bad Jews in WW II then too, they must have had it coming.
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Every form of slave labor has some reason to justify it.
Large percentages of the criminals doing slave labor here violated laws related to the "war on drugs"
I can carry it further but why bother
We like slave labor (Score:2)
"Yo, we got you a forced labor laptop for school (Score:2)
so you can profit from forced labor while performing forced labor."
Um (Score:2)
Um, this isn't new. China has always been doing this. And as a dictatorship, all of their citizens are slaves to the state and have to do the work they are ordered to do anyway.
Is it also bad when cool hip people use laptops and other Chinese made gear made with forced labor to, I dunno, cancel people on Facebook and stuff?
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Like "Jury Duty"? (Score:1)