Years 2009-2012 Breningstall.com

The Foxconn Jungle, otherwise known as Apple in China

Reports about Apple's behavior in China, conducted by way of its Taiwanese intermediaries at Foxconn, have been coming out for a number of years now. But perhaps none were as damning as the monster New York Times article that was just published. A few key allegations should be highlighted.

1) While Apple has been tediously slow to enforce its own worker guidelines at Foxconn, the leading supplier for iPad and iPhone assembly, lives have been needlessly lost.

"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."

2) While workers have been toiling at 72-hour work weeks, sometimes at less than Chinese minimum wage, Apple has posted record profits.

"Tuesday, Apple reported one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history, with $13.06 billion in profits on $46.3 billion in sales."

3) Apple's complicity in Foxconn's abuse of its workers has not been incidental.

"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?'"

4) Steve Jobs sought to mislead the public about the actual conditions at Foxconn (well-documented by Apple, which has regular audits) telling attendees at a conference, "I mean, you go to this place, and, it’s a factory, but, my gosh, I mean, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools, and I mean, for a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory."

Media roundtable on release of Ai Weiwei and Hu Jia

Newsweek:

With an impending European visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Ai’s release served a strategic purpose and came after weeks of intense international pressure. Both Britain and Germany had lobbied vociferously on Ai’s behalf; on the façade of the Tate Modern museum in London, huge letters spelled out “Release Ai Weiwei,” and at the recent art fair in Basel, Switzerland, visitors perused avant-garde artwork, wearing paper masks of his face. “They just had to free him,” says a European ambassador to China, requesting anonymity. Otherwise, “this would have been a trip about Ai Weiwei and nothing else.

The Independent:

The first tightening came when Chinese security forces began to "tidy" the city in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and its thousands of international visitors. Among those tidied away was Hu Jia, an Aids activist who concluded that the authorities' lack of respect for Aids patients and orphans was rooted in a disregard of human rights. He was imprisoned for fear he might embarrass the authorities during the Games.

It was pretty minor stuff. Among others arrested were people protesting at being forced from their homes for Games redevelopment. Two elderly women were given "re-education" sentences merely for requesting permission to demonstrate. In the months that followed there was low-level harassment of lawyers who acted for such victims.

But it was with the award of the Nobel prize to Liu Xiaobo last October that things moved up a gear. Beijing reacted angrily, blocking all foreign news broadcasts into China.

I was relieved to read of Ai Weiwei's provisional release today. The dissident artist has spent three months in confinement for unspecified charges from Chinese authorities. Will post more about AWW later today.

Gay Girl in Damascus is a 40-year-old American man in Turkey

 The Gay Girl in Damascus blog has been exposed as a fraud and the work of a Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old American activist studying in Scotland and currently visiting Istanbul, according to news sources and the blog itself.

I took a first fleeting look at MacMaster's pseudonymous website around a week ago after Nicholas D. Kristof posted a note about it on Twitter. While I wasn't aware then the website was a fraud, there was something about it that immediately struck me as peculiar: the amount of attention devoted to a diatribe against Israel.

I realize there are ample Syrians of mixed feeling who are opposed to both the Assad regime and the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights- yet there was something about the way the article read that struck as not quite right. For a girl actively involved in the current protests, would this really be the issue foremost on her mind now?

Anyway, Tom MacMaster has achieved his moment of infamy. As to his belief that his blog would help the world know more about Syria, I can't agree. I don't know how to compare his misdeeds to those of someone like Stephen Glass, but I can say with certainty that history is not well served by such deceipt.

If there is any worthwhile result, it is only this: a word of caution against accepting information off the internet with insufficient verification. NPR and The Washington Post (and others) did a worthy job of tracking MacMaster down and exposing him, forcing him to unveil himself. Given how long he had been using the pseudonym, it is likely his fabrications would have continued if journalists had not picked up on his electronic trail.

Two middle fingers: CNN and Reuters write about the same story in different ways

From CNN's "Is Hong Kong afraid of Ai Weiwei":

I'm at Art HK, Asia's leading art fair, and the one-finger salute is from the 2007 sculpture "Marble Arm" by outspoken artist-activist Ai Weiwei. As we all should know by now, Ai was detained by Beijing authorities almost two months ago in an ongoing campaign against Chinese activists. Ai has since been accused of tax evasion.

"Marble Arm" is linked to a series of provocative snapshots featuring Ai raising his middle finger to various symbols of power from the White House to Tiananmen Square.  On reserve, it has a prospective buyer who is willing to pay $280,000 for the work.

And today, that marble middle finger is greeting prospective buyers and curious visitors at Art HK's Galerie Urs Meile exhibition space.

But it is a lonely protest. Among the 260 galleries at the international art fair, "Marble Arm" is the only work by Ai on display.

There are a few "Where is Ai Weiwei?" freebie pins and t-shirts available from Galerie Urs Meile and two other dealers at the fair. But for the most part, at Asian's largest art fair, China's most well-known artist is noticeably missing.

From Reuters' "Hong Kong artists revel in freedom to support Ai Weiwei":

Ai Weiwei may be languishing in Chinese detention, but the influence of the prominent artist and social activist has permeated Hong Kong's burgeoning art scene, from glitzy art fairs to edgy street art.

The cavernous halls of the ART HK International art fair straddling the iconic harbour are filled with a blitz of works, from the nature-inspired art of Iceland's Olafur Eliasson to male nude photographs by Zhang Huan.

But tucked inside one of nearly 300 galleries cramming the stark white spaces, a single marble sculpture of a life-sized arm and hand giving an unseen person the middle finger has gained widespread attention for its particular poignancy...

While China's artists have largely been silenced over the plight of Ai, who was detained by authorities in April for evading a "huge amount" of taxes amid a clampdown on dissent, a tenacious and angry band of young artists in Hong Kong have emerged as a major force rallying to Ai's cause.

U.S. intelligence to develop metaphor program: news report

Literary criticism is apparently taking its place in the offices of U.S intelligence agencies, with plans underway to design a software for analyzing metaphors in multiple languages. Linguistics firms have been asked to put forward bids, according to news articles.

The Telegraph reports:

It will pluck figures of speech from vast numbers of statements by Farsi, Russian, Spanish and English speakers, label them with precise meanings, and store all this in a computerised "metaphor repository"...

In a presentation to companies bidding to take part, Dr Heather McCallum-Bayliss, the project chief, suggested words used by Israelis and Palestinians to describe each other – and by Indians and Pakistanis to describe Britain – could be analysed.

As an example, "you have to find your own way" is neutral and associated with a journey, she said, while "you have to fight for what you want" is negative and associated with a struggle.

Endgadget weighed in with this commentary:

While it's only right that people be protected from bad poetry, this could be taking things a tad too far. Intelligence officials at the Office of Incisive Analysis (no, really) have determined that metaphors could be of vital significance to national security. By, well, incisively analyzing the way people use metaphors in everyday conversations, they believe they can reveal "underlying beliefs and world views" -- such as negative feelings towards a particular country. Now they're calling on civilian scientists and academics to help them do this automatically using pattern recognition and supercomputers. Of course there's always the risk that smart terrorists will switch to using similes instead.

An Australian journalist confronts his spies at a Chinese hotel

This video tells you all you need to know about the current state of press freedom in the People's Republic of China. While it's often noted that this kind of intimidation is done on a local or provincial rather than national level, I don't buy it- it's far too easy for central authorities to issue directives but passively allow local intimidation to continue unabated.

After being tailed by secret agents during an assignment for ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent program, reporter Stephen McDonell decides to confront his shadows. They're not happy. Foreign Correspondent's investigation of China's underground Christian boom is called 'True Believers' and airs in Australia on Tuesday May 17 at 8PM. It will be available internationally on our website soon after - www.abc.net.au/foreign.

Via James Fallows

George Soros holds 139,700 shares in the world's largest censorship company: Baidu, China

Until recently, I was under the impression that George Soros, investor and philanthtropist, was engaged in a global effort to promote freedom of speech, democracy, and an open society.

Well, maybe- when he's not actively funding censorship against several hundred million Chinese netizens. I noticed last quarter Soros purchased 139,700 shares in Baidu, which censors billions of web searches every month on behalf of the Chinese Communist government. This is not the first time he invested in the company (he made a profit on earlier investments at Baidu).

139,700 ways to spell hypocrisy?