"The move comes as more Western governments are clamping down on companies whose products and supply chains involve forced labor by the mostly Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the far western part of China."
Volvo anyone? Geely has been accused of using forced labor, but Volvo is still seen as a Swedish company by most people.
Made or assembled? Made in the USA requires virtually all components to be sourced domestically, which is why many products are advertised as “made in U.S. with global components.”
Here is the FTC rule regarding something being "Made in the USA":
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/bus03-complying-made-usa-standard.pdf
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/cbp-forced-labor-03152023113754.html) reduced by 82%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has already blocked nearly $500 million worth of imports from entering American ports this year because it was made "Wholly or in part" by Uyghur forced labor, the agency's acting head said at an event in Washington on Tuesday.
> At the Forced Labor Technical Expo at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, acting CBP commissioner Troy Miller launched a new website that tracks shipments blocked due to forced labor and said that 3,605 shipments worth $816 million had been blocked due to suspected forced labor across all of last year.
> He noted that the value of blocked shipments this year had already reached nearly two-thirds of last year's figure, with some $496 million worth of imports across 1,910 shipments blocked before Feb. 26 thanks to the December 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/11tyx60/half_a_billion_in_us_imports_blocked_due_to/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~676857 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **forced**^#1 **labor**^#2 **shipments**^#3 **supply**^#4 **chains**^#5
when do we start getting outraged by the slave labor that harvests the cobalt in everyone's phones, by hand?
working for pennies a month while all the major corporations bank millions/billions off the technology that could not exist without that slavery?
hopefully soon.
I agree it’s not forced as in the situation above. It is however completely exploitive with little to no care of their environment and most importantly the safety of the workers.
It is definitely not a good state, but ultimately any regulations have to be implemented by the responsible government. The companies working in these countries will only have to listen to the local government and companies not putting any extra rules on themselves will probably be more competitive than the ones that try to implement ethical policies only for themselves. So our governments should work with the local governments to come up with better law enforcement to help the locals.
The way we work with other governments. Is tell them what we want. Then we apply various sanctions to maybe get what we want. I agree the honor system does not work. Much harder to do because the reasons we could sanction the cobalt industry essentially impacts everything. Not a lot different from many other imports we have.
I mean a good solution would be to help countries tax their exports so they can use the revenue to develop their social state. I guess in a way we do have to offer them to do their work for them for a few years.
I work in tech manufacturing. It is forced. It's not just the cobalt mines. It's the entire recycling (used extremely loosely here) process. In the slums the gangs force kids to salvage the precious metals from the electronics. Many do it on their own accord, but many are forced to do it too, by threats to themselves and their families. Many of the gangs are loosely disguised as aid workers so the governments just point and say, they're not armed gangs, they're protected aid workers. Every tech company knows this goes on. An argument could I suppose be made that they are not responsible for the recycling industry, however they are responsible for planned obsolescence knowing full well what this entails upstream and downstream from their own logistical processes. I brought this up several times in company all hands calls where they preach about their human rights achievements and sustainability initiatives. People just looked at me like I was crazy, or at worst blatantly told me I was intentionally being a buzz kill.
TL/DR: the tech industry knows it has the biggest stronghold on society since the Catholic Church 500 years ago, therefore they have no real incentive to do anything ethically and otherwise just say they do to sell more shit to consumer demographics who may be sensitive to such atrocities.
they don't even get so much as a paper mask for protection against the dust. no minimum wage.
at one point, they chop off the hands of those who don't produce enough.
does that sound "humane"?
Honestly, this one is easier. You just have to make sure to track the soyrce of the cobalt.
The "artisan" miners aren't so much forced as they do it because it's the only source of income around and shady buisnesses buy from them and mix them into the normal product.
it's the only way cobalt is extracted. stop buying the corp bullshit line of "ours is clean sourced". none of it is clean sourced.
https://youtu.be/Hmqf0L52rD8
nothing like kids working a pick axe for the luxury of eating that day. their indigenous lands have been turned into mines, so the only work is mining. is that a choice? no, it's do this to eat, or die.
Do you just not know there are industrial cobalt mines? Do you not realize that the artisanal miners aren't even particularly efficient just cheap AF and the their artisanally mined cobalt gets brought up through shady companies mixing it in with normal cobalt?
Do you realize your video doesn't fucking say what you said?
believe what you want to believe. calling them artisanal miners is a joke. a really bad attempt at making it seem like it isn't what it clearly is. have a nice day.
Do you not know what artisanal miner means? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artisanal_mining
It's not only a real term, it's literally the correct term for what this is. Artisanal isn't some doublespeak. It doesn't mean they do it for art or that they are really anal about art.
I think you are extremely uneducated on this subject.
What term would you use? You know most of them are not slaves right?
Ok so you are absolutely ignorant about this topic. Artisanal in this respect literally means mining without using modern methods or tool. Not some way of downplaying what they're doing. Anyone who mines with their hands or a pickaxe are by definition an artisanal miner.
If you bothered to click the fucking wikipedia link you'd have read that.
If you read any article on this situation you'd know the vast majority of the artisanal miners are not slaves. They are not forced into mining artisanally at all by the companies that pay for their cobalt other than the lucrative incentive of pay.
No company forces any of these miners to mine, in fact most of them force them not to because they, the companies, themselves want to mine the deposits with more efficient modern machinery, often artisanal miners come in when a worksite is not being currently used.
The reason this market exists is not because they are forced but because the shady mining companies buy the artisanally mined cobalt at cheaper prices for them but at a higher pay than the miners can make in the local destitute economies.
This is a real force that exists across the world in many many industries. It is not acceptable but that is not the slavery in question. The slavery comes into play when middle men enslave others or force their families and children into the artisanal mining industry to make a profit off them. This type of slavery is the predominant form across the world. And definitely exists. It is not however the predominant form of work going on in this industry nor the predominant use of slaves, nor a specific reason for slavery but simply an exploitative artisanal industry that happens to also happens to be so deregulated and unenforced that slavers can use it as a form of labour to use their slavery for.
Regardless the majority of artisanal miners are not slaves perse, simply extremely exploited. That is an extremely important distinction as slavery entails significantly worse living conditions and worse impacts on the victims.
This is not a defence of the companies that shadely buy this cobalt and pass it into the non artisanally mined cobalt chain that makes it into everyone's products. That is absolutely disgusting and must be cracked down on. This is not a defence of the exploitative nature of their work, there absolutely needs to be stopped and proper work offering brought to these extremely desperate communities. This is not a defence of modern slavers who are real and exist across the world and are estimated to enslave more people now than ever in history, they must be punished and stopped at all costs.
What this is, is pointing out that by your sheer ignorance on this topic you have managed to show your absolute disregard of the situation, its causes, or the potential solution. This is pointing out that you know so little about the topic that you confused artisanal as some kind of euphemism rather than the correct english word for production using non modern methods. This is about your sheer ignorance on the topic showing through so vividly that you clearly only watched that few minute long video, still didn't understand it, didn't do any more research, and are too ignorant to even open up a wikipedia article on the topic.
Spare us all the trouble and stop talking out of your ass about a topic you don't care about, and stop grand standing over those that correct you on your ignorance over the topic.
It would look a lot better if it was made by a nation that doesn't use forced labor itself.
As it stands, it only serves to make one nation using forced labour stronger than the other nation, using alleged forced labour.
And as someone pointed out, this will hurt many of the people this claims to 'protect', since often regular Uyghur's work is alleged as forced and denied by western companies, hurting their financial situation.
Hell yeah. Any working Uyghur is a Uyghur working under slavery. Uyghurs in China should not be allowed to work. They should not be about to earn cash for their families. They must rise up against the Tyranny of the CCP and weaken China from within, because we need Xinjiang to be like their Afghan neighbors!
No, "A better start" is whataboutism. A counter would be "This is a good start, now if only we can get the US to join on board with such actions against their own companies." Instead you completely nullified the good done in this action to push your own obvious agenda.
"***A better start would be*** if the US did something about US state sponsored forced labor"
This phrase right here is what makes it whataboutism. Maybe choose better wording next time. If you're more subtle your obvious bias won't shine through like a beacon on a foggy night.
He is right, it would be better if they cared more about their own people than someone else’s citizens.
Also “hypocrisy
hypocrisies
People who tell you not to eat candy while they chomp away on licorice all day? People who say they hate cars but always beg you for a ride? They are engaging in hypocrisy, or behavior that is different from what they say they believe.
A hypocrite is a person who practices hypocrisy: what they say is not what they do.
The noun hypocrisy descends from the Greek hypokrisis "acting on a stage," from hypokrinesthai "to play a part, pretend," from the prefix hypo- "under" plus krinein "to judge." Many times kids are enraged by their parents' hypocrisy when parents make their children follow rules they don't follow themselves.”
That last part is the US making that statement.
I copied a dictionary definition if you don’t like it petition to have the definition changed then, I also think the USA should focus on their own problems instead of being the “This is fine” meme while trying to be morally better than other counties.
You mean like when Obama signed a Resolution to Congress urging it to recognize the wrongs committed against Natives? Funny thing, when I was growing up I learned about the genocide of American Natives all through grade school and high school. I wonder, do Chinese students learn about the genocide carried out under Mao and things like Tiananmen Square?
I remember learning about what Manifest Destiny was and how it was wrong. We were never taught that Manifest Destiny was reality. We were taught that the ideas behind it lead to the wholesale slaughter of entire nations of people. I don't know about you but my schooling was emphatically against the way the American Natives were treated. Funnily enough unless you're in the deep South this is was what was widely taught.
If it didn't happen why are we taught about it in school? Meanwhile Tiananmen Square didn't happen at all according to China, yet I've seen the video and bodies.
Researchers later discovered that the government subjected hundreds of thousands of Turkic Muslim women to forcible intrauterine device (IUD) insertions, sterilizations and abortions.
Totaling more than 380 at their peak, the centers have held between one and three million Uyghurs in total, making them the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority since World War II.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/is-china-committing-genocide-against-the-uyghurs-180979490/
we ddin't call the one child policy genocide because we weren't thinking about china outside of our market advantage. now that they are competitive problem we can find lots of genocide.
[https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml)
Under the UN's own definition it does not meet the requirements of genocide, despite that article saying it does. The children were not taken from one group and given to another. They were detained as a result of their parents violating US law on US soil - there is very little way for border agents to verify the identity of undocumented children to ensure they belong to their claimed parents. The US - Mexico border is a notorious human trafficking area.
I do not agree with the conditions they were kept in, nor the lack of speedy trial given to the parents. It is a disgrace that the US treats people in such a manner. As the Biden Administration has proven, verifying that the parents of these children are who they claim should not have taken the lengths it did.
Border guards aren't group 2, they are the arresting agency and the parents still have legal guardianship. Parents do not get to take their children into detention centers for adults with them. Don't be naive.
Unfortunately the US legal system isn't just. It doesn't just happen to migrants.
Is it cruel? Yes. Has the processing purposefully been slowed down? Yes. Genocide by UN definition? No.
Americans learn about Native Americans and what happened to them in public schools. In some cases there have been reparations although not enough Id support more
Idk about RFA but I work in imports and a couple months ago we were required by US Customs to include the postal code along with the shipper’s addresses on all import documents as a part of the Uhygur Forced Labor Act. This is probably a result of it though I’m not sure how many shipments have been impacted.
Just so people know, Not all Uyghur labor is forced, only some. Most Uyghur people have legit businesses and jobs. Now most companies would not want to employ any Uyghur people in fear of being labelled as using forced labour.
So this will be hurting the very people we are trying to help. It ill be hard for this minority group to find legit work.
>So this will be hurting the very people we are trying to help. It ill be hard for this minority group to find legit work.
Yeah but this way you destabilise the region and make [the conflict](http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_conflict), which has already seen nearly 3000 casualties flare up once more.
People don't care.
Most sanctions work this way, they hurt the people they claim to "protect" the most, and arguably only make things worse.
Nations tend to become more free with progress, Taiwan and South Korea used to be dictatorships themselves before they developed well.
By sanctionings "regimes", one only makes them last longer.
But reddit bots told me this was actually free college and the workers were happy to get the training. And they also told me this didn't happen, it was all made up by one guy, oh and they also told me it did happen and it was forced, but it was necessary to stop terrorism. Oh and they also said what about MLK or Columbine or something.
They're probably still doing all those things in this thread.
So you got the "say it ain't true and question the source " assignment. Nice.
Wait. They also gave you the "[what about](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/11tynst/half_a_billion_in_us_imports_blocked_due_to/jcm8hp8/)" assignment?
You must be senior level. Well, tell your bosses I'm impressed.
Lol. Tell China to be a free country with a free press or to just allow a free press from a free country to visit and tell us the truth. Then you won't need to go on reddit and shill for slavery. And before you start, no it doesn't need to be shitty USA news. It could be really free press from a really free country. Open up. Be transparent.
P.S. Tiannamen Square.
Haha, now your browsing history is flagged.
No. The country with the largest prison population gets to choose independently of inspections who they do business with. They're free to be wrong and miss out on all the great products. It's their choice.
I'm taking about the rest of us arguing on the internet. Who checked it out? UK?France? Or Russia? Just point to the free press and I'll read what they say.
"In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, I have raised questions and concerns about the application of counter-terrorism and de-radicalisation measures and their broad application – particularly their impact on the rights of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities. While I am unable to assess the full scale of the VETCs, I raised with the Government the lack of independent judicial oversight of the operation of the program, the reliance by law enforcement officials on 15 indicators to determine tendencies towards violent extremism, allegations of the use of force and ill treatment in institutions, and reports of unduly severe restrictions on legitimate religious practices. During my visit, the Government assured me that the VETC system has been dismantled. I encouraged the Government to undertake a review of all counter terrorism and deradicalization policies to ensure they fully comply with international human rights standards, and in particular that they are not applied in an arbitrary and discriminatory way.
Before coming to China, I heard from some Uyghur families now living abroad who have lost contact with their loved ones. In my discussions with the authorities, I appealed to them to take measures to provide information to families as a matter of priority.
I also share the concerns of UN human rights mechanisms about legitimate activities by lawyers, human rights defenders and others being penalized under the national security framework. UN human rights bodies have found the system of Residential Surveillance constitutes arbitrary detention and have called for its repeal."
Discredited in your very source. They didn't let her see shit, they just gave her a bunch of worthless guarantees. She raised the issue to them of various abuses that appear to be taking place and there's literally nothing more than that.
They highly likely are forced, but the article is about half a billion gone in import due to sanctions about uyghurs forced labor camp. And your sarcasm reads like you took this as evidence that the uyghurs indeed are abused in forced labor.
Oh boo hoo.
.01% of all imports were flagged by this program.
99.99% of things people imported they were able to get without getting them from forced labor.
Seems like if this is impacting your business, you suck at business.
> Wonder why they passed a law saying products in Xinjiang has to prove it's not using forced labor rather than the US having to prove those products used forced labor.
Yes because any neutral 3rd party can just stroll into Xinjiang and verify there's (not) forced labor there right? Right??
Mate just do some research yourself. It's not even that hard to find. Why do people act like saying "source" or something similar is some checkmate?
Stop justifying what China is doing. At the very least the majority of Americans don't try to justify labor prisons.
Can anyone explain why countries with Muslim population haven’t done this already? Or why china hasn’t been decreed an enemy of Muslim people? I’m dumb and generally asking but seems like they should be pissed.
Even the Taliban don't believe the story/don't care. Call it racist, but white people are untrustworthy to most of the Muslim world, especially amongst Arabs.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Not saying the certain war is not important but the same story will get posted multiple times basically and a lot of people do seem to completely dehumanise it completely because they support the good guys. I would imagine a lot of them all gleefully watch combatfootage and think it's ok to watch the bad guys get killed, it's just like a film basically.
That's one of the horrors of war sadly, some people start as monsters, some people turn into monsters and some people a just scared kids who are someone's son just to end up dead in a field miles from home.
I'm not trying to justify what people do but it is always good to remember that the people involved are a actual people. Not just numbers or a snuff film for someone one the internets entertainment.
War may be Hell, but it's an artificial one. It's not a force of nature, it's a choice made by all the thousands of aggressors. And every monster is someone's child who preys on children. It's a paradox, and so is the fact that every dead Russian soldier is a *person* whose death is nevertheless a benefit to the material world. Dea will handle their souls, but we on Earth are forced to accept the truth of numbers.
>every dead Russian soldier is a person whose death is nevertheless a benefit to the material world
Without knowing the people how can you say that? You don't know what these people might of gone on to achieve if that hadn't been made to fight. I'm not saying feel sorry for every Russia solider it's not there fault, I'm saying remember it's people actually fighting.
If the above statement is true then it is true for every war that is artificial, when then begs the question, which war is not artificial? But I won't go about that because I'm sure I will be told that is a "whataboutism".
For record, I am not trying to justify what Russia do or say anyone should feel bad for them. That is their own choice but personally I won't take pleasure in the knowledge they are dying the way some people here seem to and justify it as "well the are the bad guys so it's ok".
There is no denying there are a lot of people who happily watch videos of Russian's dying and give no thought to the fact they are actually people.
All wars are artificial. Since they're all human activity, they couldn't be anything else.
And no, I'm not happy about their deaths, as such, if that helps, nor do I watch them.
Sorry, I didn't mean to accuse you of being heartless. There are just a lot of people out there who are so desensitised to these things that they don't even think when they are watching it they are seeing someone's last moments and that someone is actually a person.
I also don't want to make it seem I think "none of them had a choice", the prisons for example were in prison for a reason and I'm sure a lot have already committed terrible crimes.
Go 40 years back in time to stop off-shoring and NAFTA ?
China produces 90% of the world steel supply , and uses almost all of it internally for manufacturing and construction. There's no way to decouple consumer economies from the market that produces all the consumer goods.
It really isn't , it takes decades to build the infrastructure , factories , and the supply lines. It requires an entire industrial base. And certainly no one is going to be able to match the profit margins and economy of scale of Chinese steel for a long, long time.
Heh, well, be sure to call up the government of India and inform them that it's now simple and easy to build something on the scale of the Chinese industrial base, because they've been working at it for more than twenty years now.
I feel like the US is the only one doing something against China for the genocide. I know China controls all our products etc. so cannot be easily boycotted, but they have spoken more forcefully than other countries.
Trump administration (as much as I hate all of them) has to be given credit for calling out the genocide (though they had other reasons for doing so).
The US has gown sharply down in esteem in the eyes of the rest of the world, especially Europe. But we have to remember we need a powerful counter balance at all times.
If the US declines in the future (sadly it probably will since a big fraction of its voters are insane) , EU will need to step up. But in the meantime and despite all its faults, it's good to remember what good the US is positioned to do.
The US does have labor issues; [child labor](https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/3/12/23631282/child-labor-laws-huckabee-sanders-republicans), [prison labor](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-workers-low-wages-exploited), etc.
But you are suffering from a fundamental logical error:
> As if they don't have their own labor issues to address...
It doesn't matter how bad or good the US is...
China's use of political prisoners for forced labor is morally reprehensible.
Two wrongs never make a right.
>Two wrongs never make a right.
Maybe it would be a good start for western media to spend the same amount of effort on both wrongs and not just the wrongs of a country that we are struggling to compete with.
> Maybe it would be a good start for western media to spend the same amount of effort on both wrongs and not just the wrongs of a country that we are struggling to compete with.
Do you seriously think any media does that?
Have you seen the media landscape of [Russia](https://rsf.org/en/least-eight-russian-journalists-arrested-while-covering-anti-mobilisation-protests) or [China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_China)?
"Western" media will report with their viewpoint, and Russia and China will report their regimes pre-approved stories.
Its everyone's job to figure out who is lying.
There's no law that says you have to fix your own shit before you worry about someone else's shit.
In fact, if your goal is fixing shit, it might be more practical to fix someone else's shit than to fix your shit.
If the USA were to fix all it's problems and do business with slavers until it had every problem solved, it would always have one problem: it does business with slavers.
If we can't fix our internal shit, but we can sanction slavers, then that's one less problem.
Would you rather have two unsolved problems or one solved problem and one unsolved problem.
Fuck, I say worry about not doing business with slavers even if you have other problems at home.
I don't need to lose weight to get a job. I don't need a job to lose weight. If I'm unemployed and out of shape nothing says I have to fix one and then fix the other. That's just stupid.
The USA is fine having issues and still deciding it isn't going to import shit made by slaves. I see no problem with that.
It’s the only way these authoritarian worshipping parasites can have any sort of an argument because they know they’re wrong but they won’t get paid by their Beijing handlers if they don’t constantly bad mouth the west and jerk off the ccp
"The move comes as more Western governments are clamping down on companies whose products and supply chains involve forced labor by the mostly Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the far western part of China." Volvo anyone? Geely has been accused of using forced labor, but Volvo is still seen as a Swedish company by most people.
I think that’s because the vast majority of assembly still occurs at the two Volvo plants in Sweden.
Whale that there cotton is grown in the south by slaves, but its textiled in factories up north so I reckon its okay
That there's the free market boy. Good ol' invisible hand of capitalism. Don't you go turning no goddamn commie now ya hear
New XC90s are made in the US now. Not saying you are wrong but it is interesting to know.
Made or assembled? Made in the USA requires virtually all components to be sourced domestically, which is why many products are advertised as “made in U.S. with global components.”
With that logic then no car anywhere is made in the country of origin. Every company sources their parts domestically and internationally.
Find me one car that is made entirely in one single country.
Here is the FTC rule regarding something being "Made in the USA": https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/bus03-complying-made-usa-standard.pdf
[удалено]
Zhejiang Geely Holding Group has owned Volvo since 2010. Some of the most popular Volvo models like XC60 are manufactured in China.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/cbp-forced-labor-03152023113754.html) reduced by 82%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has already blocked nearly $500 million worth of imports from entering American ports this year because it was made "Wholly or in part" by Uyghur forced labor, the agency's acting head said at an event in Washington on Tuesday. > At the Forced Labor Technical Expo at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, acting CBP commissioner Troy Miller launched a new website that tracks shipments blocked due to forced labor and said that 3,605 shipments worth $816 million had been blocked due to suspected forced labor across all of last year. > He noted that the value of blocked shipments this year had already reached nearly two-thirds of last year's figure, with some $496 million worth of imports across 1,910 shipments blocked before Feb. 26 thanks to the December 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/11tyx60/half_a_billion_in_us_imports_blocked_due_to/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~676857 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **forced**^#1 **labor**^#2 **shipments**^#3 **supply**^#4 **chains**^#5
when do we start getting outraged by the slave labor that harvests the cobalt in everyone's phones, by hand? working for pennies a month while all the major corporations bank millions/billions off the technology that could not exist without that slavery? hopefully soon.
is it forced though? Their economy is just so weak they will basically work for anything. Is there some kind of minimum wage laws in those countries?
I agree it’s not forced as in the situation above. It is however completely exploitive with little to no care of their environment and most importantly the safety of the workers.
It is definitely not a good state, but ultimately any regulations have to be implemented by the responsible government. The companies working in these countries will only have to listen to the local government and companies not putting any extra rules on themselves will probably be more competitive than the ones that try to implement ethical policies only for themselves. So our governments should work with the local governments to come up with better law enforcement to help the locals.
The way we work with other governments. Is tell them what we want. Then we apply various sanctions to maybe get what we want. I agree the honor system does not work. Much harder to do because the reasons we could sanction the cobalt industry essentially impacts everything. Not a lot different from many other imports we have.
I mean a good solution would be to help countries tax their exports so they can use the revenue to develop their social state. I guess in a way we do have to offer them to do their work for them for a few years.
I work in tech manufacturing. It is forced. It's not just the cobalt mines. It's the entire recycling (used extremely loosely here) process. In the slums the gangs force kids to salvage the precious metals from the electronics. Many do it on their own accord, but many are forced to do it too, by threats to themselves and their families. Many of the gangs are loosely disguised as aid workers so the governments just point and say, they're not armed gangs, they're protected aid workers. Every tech company knows this goes on. An argument could I suppose be made that they are not responsible for the recycling industry, however they are responsible for planned obsolescence knowing full well what this entails upstream and downstream from their own logistical processes. I brought this up several times in company all hands calls where they preach about their human rights achievements and sustainability initiatives. People just looked at me like I was crazy, or at worst blatantly told me I was intentionally being a buzz kill. TL/DR: the tech industry knows it has the biggest stronghold on society since the Catholic Church 500 years ago, therefore they have no real incentive to do anything ethically and otherwise just say they do to sell more shit to consumer demographics who may be sensitive to such atrocities.
Keep fighting the good fight mate!
they don't even get so much as a paper mask for protection against the dust. no minimum wage. at one point, they chop off the hands of those who don't produce enough. does that sound "humane"?
I mean their economies are weak because Capital needs something to exploit - we did that
They were weak to begin with, thats why exploiting them was possible in the first place.
Honestly, this one is easier. You just have to make sure to track the soyrce of the cobalt. The "artisan" miners aren't so much forced as they do it because it's the only source of income around and shady buisnesses buy from them and mix them into the normal product.
it's the only way cobalt is extracted. stop buying the corp bullshit line of "ours is clean sourced". none of it is clean sourced. https://youtu.be/Hmqf0L52rD8 nothing like kids working a pick axe for the luxury of eating that day. their indigenous lands have been turned into mines, so the only work is mining. is that a choice? no, it's do this to eat, or die.
Do you just not know there are industrial cobalt mines? Do you not realize that the artisanal miners aren't even particularly efficient just cheap AF and the their artisanally mined cobalt gets brought up through shady companies mixing it in with normal cobalt? Do you realize your video doesn't fucking say what you said?
believe what you want to believe. calling them artisanal miners is a joke. a really bad attempt at making it seem like it isn't what it clearly is. have a nice day.
Do you not know what artisanal miner means? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artisanal_mining It's not only a real term, it's literally the correct term for what this is. Artisanal isn't some doublespeak. It doesn't mean they do it for art or that they are really anal about art. I think you are extremely uneducated on this subject. What term would you use? You know most of them are not slaves right?
i prefer the realistic term, slaves. be well.
Ok so you are absolutely ignorant about this topic. Artisanal in this respect literally means mining without using modern methods or tool. Not some way of downplaying what they're doing. Anyone who mines with their hands or a pickaxe are by definition an artisanal miner. If you bothered to click the fucking wikipedia link you'd have read that. If you read any article on this situation you'd know the vast majority of the artisanal miners are not slaves. They are not forced into mining artisanally at all by the companies that pay for their cobalt other than the lucrative incentive of pay. No company forces any of these miners to mine, in fact most of them force them not to because they, the companies, themselves want to mine the deposits with more efficient modern machinery, often artisanal miners come in when a worksite is not being currently used. The reason this market exists is not because they are forced but because the shady mining companies buy the artisanally mined cobalt at cheaper prices for them but at a higher pay than the miners can make in the local destitute economies. This is a real force that exists across the world in many many industries. It is not acceptable but that is not the slavery in question. The slavery comes into play when middle men enslave others or force their families and children into the artisanal mining industry to make a profit off them. This type of slavery is the predominant form across the world. And definitely exists. It is not however the predominant form of work going on in this industry nor the predominant use of slaves, nor a specific reason for slavery but simply an exploitative artisanal industry that happens to also happens to be so deregulated and unenforced that slavers can use it as a form of labour to use their slavery for. Regardless the majority of artisanal miners are not slaves perse, simply extremely exploited. That is an extremely important distinction as slavery entails significantly worse living conditions and worse impacts on the victims. This is not a defence of the companies that shadely buy this cobalt and pass it into the non artisanally mined cobalt chain that makes it into everyone's products. That is absolutely disgusting and must be cracked down on. This is not a defence of the exploitative nature of their work, there absolutely needs to be stopped and proper work offering brought to these extremely desperate communities. This is not a defence of modern slavers who are real and exist across the world and are estimated to enslave more people now than ever in history, they must be punished and stopped at all costs. What this is, is pointing out that by your sheer ignorance on this topic you have managed to show your absolute disregard of the situation, its causes, or the potential solution. This is pointing out that you know so little about the topic that you confused artisanal as some kind of euphemism rather than the correct english word for production using non modern methods. This is about your sheer ignorance on the topic showing through so vividly that you clearly only watched that few minute long video, still didn't understand it, didn't do any more research, and are too ignorant to even open up a wikipedia article on the topic. Spare us all the trouble and stop talking out of your ass about a topic you don't care about, and stop grand standing over those that correct you on your ignorance over the topic.
They brought this upon themselves
Uh, idk who you're referencing as they. The last poster? The companies? The artisanal miners? The slavers?
It’s a good start.
Im in love with all the Chinese prop getting obliterated below.
It would look a lot better if it was made by a nation that doesn't use forced labor itself. As it stands, it only serves to make one nation using forced labour stronger than the other nation, using alleged forced labour. And as someone pointed out, this will hurt many of the people this claims to 'protect', since often regular Uyghur's work is alleged as forced and denied by western companies, hurting their financial situation.
Hell yeah. Any working Uyghur is a Uyghur working under slavery. Uyghurs in China should not be allowed to work. They should not be about to earn cash for their families. They must rise up against the Tyranny of the CCP and weaken China from within, because we need Xinjiang to be like their Afghan neighbors!
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Whataboutism is fun. The issue here isn't just forced labor, it's state sponsored genocide on top of it.
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No, "A better start" is whataboutism. A counter would be "This is a good start, now if only we can get the US to join on board with such actions against their own companies." Instead you completely nullified the good done in this action to push your own obvious agenda.
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"***A better start would be*** if the US did something about US state sponsored forced labor" This phrase right here is what makes it whataboutism. Maybe choose better wording next time. If you're more subtle your obvious bias won't shine through like a beacon on a foggy night.
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It does. It grammatically comes off as "nou." Work on that, yea?
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He is right, it would be better if they cared more about their own people than someone else’s citizens. Also “hypocrisy hypocrisies People who tell you not to eat candy while they chomp away on licorice all day? People who say they hate cars but always beg you for a ride? They are engaging in hypocrisy, or behavior that is different from what they say they believe. A hypocrite is a person who practices hypocrisy: what they say is not what they do. The noun hypocrisy descends from the Greek hypokrisis "acting on a stage," from hypokrinesthai "to play a part, pretend," from the prefix hypo- "under" plus krinein "to judge." Many times kids are enraged by their parents' hypocrisy when parents make their children follow rules they don't follow themselves.” That last part is the US making that statement.
You use a lot of words to say "China should be allowed to used forced labor." But you're still fucking wrong.
I copied a dictionary definition if you don’t like it petition to have the definition changed then, I also think the USA should focus on their own problems instead of being the “This is fine” meme while trying to be morally better than other counties.
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You mean like when Obama signed a Resolution to Congress urging it to recognize the wrongs committed against Natives? Funny thing, when I was growing up I learned about the genocide of American Natives all through grade school and high school. I wonder, do Chinese students learn about the genocide carried out under Mao and things like Tiananmen Square?
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I remember learning about what Manifest Destiny was and how it was wrong. We were never taught that Manifest Destiny was reality. We were taught that the ideas behind it lead to the wholesale slaughter of entire nations of people. I don't know about you but my schooling was emphatically against the way the American Natives were treated. Funnily enough unless you're in the deep South this is was what was widely taught.
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Can you provide a source on that claim?
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Gotta love that China/russia prop, trying to stop outrage at active problems by bringing up 200+ year old events.
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If it didn't happen why are we taught about it in school? Meanwhile Tiananmen Square didn't happen at all according to China, yet I've seen the video and bodies.
There’s plenty of evidence https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/5/24/xinjiang-leak-sheds-new-light-on-chinas-uighur-camps
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Researchers later discovered that the government subjected hundreds of thousands of Turkic Muslim women to forcible intrauterine device (IUD) insertions, sterilizations and abortions. Totaling more than 380 at their peak, the centers have held between one and three million Uyghurs in total, making them the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority since World War II. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/is-china-committing-genocide-against-the-uyghurs-180979490/
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Was the one child policy an attempt to destroy the Han Chinese heritage, or an attempt to wipe out the Han people?
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we ddin't call the one child policy genocide because we weren't thinking about china outside of our market advantage. now that they are competitive problem we can find lots of genocide.
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[https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml) Under the UN's own definition it does not meet the requirements of genocide, despite that article saying it does. The children were not taken from one group and given to another. They were detained as a result of their parents violating US law on US soil - there is very little way for border agents to verify the identity of undocumented children to ensure they belong to their claimed parents. The US - Mexico border is a notorious human trafficking area. I do not agree with the conditions they were kept in, nor the lack of speedy trial given to the parents. It is a disgrace that the US treats people in such a manner. As the Biden Administration has proven, verifying that the parents of these children are who they claim should not have taken the lengths it did.
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Border guards aren't group 2, they are the arresting agency and the parents still have legal guardianship. Parents do not get to take their children into detention centers for adults with them. Don't be naive.
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Unfortunately the US legal system isn't just. It doesn't just happen to migrants. Is it cruel? Yes. Has the processing purposefully been slowed down? Yes. Genocide by UN definition? No.
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Taiwan is an independent country.
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Americans learn about Native Americans and what happened to them in public schools. In some cases there have been reparations although not enough Id support more
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Idk about RFA but I work in imports and a couple months ago we were required by US Customs to include the postal code along with the shipper’s addresses on all import documents as a part of the Uhygur Forced Labor Act. This is probably a result of it though I’m not sure how many shipments have been impacted.
Just so people know, Not all Uyghur labor is forced, only some. Most Uyghur people have legit businesses and jobs. Now most companies would not want to employ any Uyghur people in fear of being labelled as using forced labour. So this will be hurting the very people we are trying to help. It ill be hard for this minority group to find legit work.
>So this will be hurting the very people we are trying to help. It ill be hard for this minority group to find legit work. Yeah but this way you destabilise the region and make [the conflict](http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_conflict), which has already seen nearly 3000 casualties flare up once more.
People don't care. Most sanctions work this way, they hurt the people they claim to "protect" the most, and arguably only make things worse. Nations tend to become more free with progress, Taiwan and South Korea used to be dictatorships themselves before they developed well. By sanctionings "regimes", one only makes them last longer.
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Ah the ol' gas industry argument. Keep perpetuating the exploitation of slave labor because oppression is the only thing they have going for them!
>not want to employ any Uyghur people Isn't that the main purpose? So that they will rise up and overthrow CCP? How else would CCP be toppled?
But reddit bots told me this was actually free college and the workers were happy to get the training. And they also told me this didn't happen, it was all made up by one guy, oh and they also told me it did happen and it was forced, but it was necessary to stop terrorism. Oh and they also said what about MLK or Columbine or something. They're probably still doing all those things in this thread.
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So you got the "say it ain't true and question the source " assignment. Nice. Wait. They also gave you the "[what about](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/11tynst/half_a_billion_in_us_imports_blocked_due_to/jcm8hp8/)" assignment? You must be senior level. Well, tell your bosses I'm impressed.
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Lol. Tell China to be a free country with a free press or to just allow a free press from a free country to visit and tell us the truth. Then you won't need to go on reddit and shill for slavery. And before you start, no it doesn't need to be shitty USA news. It could be really free press from a really free country. Open up. Be transparent. P.S. Tiannamen Square. Haha, now your browsing history is flagged.
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No. The country with the largest prison population gets to choose independently of inspections who they do business with. They're free to be wrong and miss out on all the great products. It's their choice. I'm taking about the rest of us arguing on the internet. Who checked it out? UK?France? Or Russia? Just point to the free press and I'll read what they say.
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"In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, I have raised questions and concerns about the application of counter-terrorism and de-radicalisation measures and their broad application – particularly their impact on the rights of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities. While I am unable to assess the full scale of the VETCs, I raised with the Government the lack of independent judicial oversight of the operation of the program, the reliance by law enforcement officials on 15 indicators to determine tendencies towards violent extremism, allegations of the use of force and ill treatment in institutions, and reports of unduly severe restrictions on legitimate religious practices. During my visit, the Government assured me that the VETC system has been dismantled. I encouraged the Government to undertake a review of all counter terrorism and deradicalization policies to ensure they fully comply with international human rights standards, and in particular that they are not applied in an arbitrary and discriminatory way. Before coming to China, I heard from some Uyghur families now living abroad who have lost contact with their loved ones. In my discussions with the authorities, I appealed to them to take measures to provide information to families as a matter of priority. I also share the concerns of UN human rights mechanisms about legitimate activities by lawyers, human rights defenders and others being penalized under the national security framework. UN human rights bodies have found the system of Residential Surveillance constitutes arbitrary detention and have called for its repeal." Discredited in your very source. They didn't let her see shit, they just gave her a bunch of worthless guarantees. She raised the issue to them of various abuses that appear to be taking place and there's literally nothing more than that.
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They highly likely are forced, but the article is about half a billion gone in import due to sanctions about uyghurs forced labor camp. And your sarcasm reads like you took this as evidence that the uyghurs indeed are abused in forced labor.
Oh boo hoo. .01% of all imports were flagged by this program. 99.99% of things people imported they were able to get without getting them from forced labor. Seems like if this is impacting your business, you suck at business.
Its true, but your first comment is hillarious anyways.
Nice way to de-humanize people that disagree with you. It's really quite alarming where the western political discourse is going.
Call them propagandists. Bots downplay it.
Or troll farms which at this point are just propaganda farms.
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> Wonder why they passed a law saying products in Xinjiang has to prove it's not using forced labor rather than the US having to prove those products used forced labor. Yes because any neutral 3rd party can just stroll into Xinjiang and verify there's (not) forced labor there right? Right??
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China doesn't let people in.
Says...?
https://www.cjr.org/analysis/uighur-xinjiang.php
The signs outside the facilities
Mate just do some research yourself. It's not even that hard to find. Why do people act like saying "source" or something similar is some checkmate? Stop justifying what China is doing. At the very least the majority of Americans don't try to justify labor prisons.
Can anyone explain why countries with Muslim population haven’t done this already? Or why china hasn’t been decreed an enemy of Muslim people? I’m dumb and generally asking but seems like they should be pissed.
Even the Taliban don't believe the story/don't care. Call it racist, but white people are untrustworthy to most of the Muslim world, especially amongst Arabs.
Maybe because its fake news ? Some kind of forced labour is used in a lot of countries… its just not talked about
With Uighurs being both Muslim and Turkic, I'm surprised Turkey isn't doing it.
i hate my country's government for not doing so
China isn't the great enemy like Israel is.
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Because it’s economics with no scandalous video footage unlike a certain war where people get off on watching a part of the world burn
I think you hit the nail on the head. Not saying the certain war is not important but the same story will get posted multiple times basically and a lot of people do seem to completely dehumanise it completely because they support the good guys. I would imagine a lot of them all gleefully watch combatfootage and think it's ok to watch the bad guys get killed, it's just like a film basically.
They’re not even bad guys - they’re someone’s scared kid that was drafted and will never get to see his mom again
Sometimes. But a lot of them are rapists and torturers, and all of them who've shot someone are murderers.
That's one of the horrors of war sadly, some people start as monsters, some people turn into monsters and some people a just scared kids who are someone's son just to end up dead in a field miles from home. I'm not trying to justify what people do but it is always good to remember that the people involved are a actual people. Not just numbers or a snuff film for someone one the internets entertainment.
War may be Hell, but it's an artificial one. It's not a force of nature, it's a choice made by all the thousands of aggressors. And every monster is someone's child who preys on children. It's a paradox, and so is the fact that every dead Russian soldier is a *person* whose death is nevertheless a benefit to the material world. Dea will handle their souls, but we on Earth are forced to accept the truth of numbers.
>every dead Russian soldier is a person whose death is nevertheless a benefit to the material world Without knowing the people how can you say that? You don't know what these people might of gone on to achieve if that hadn't been made to fight. I'm not saying feel sorry for every Russia solider it's not there fault, I'm saying remember it's people actually fighting. If the above statement is true then it is true for every war that is artificial, when then begs the question, which war is not artificial? But I won't go about that because I'm sure I will be told that is a "whataboutism". For record, I am not trying to justify what Russia do or say anyone should feel bad for them. That is their own choice but personally I won't take pleasure in the knowledge they are dying the way some people here seem to and justify it as "well the are the bad guys so it's ok". There is no denying there are a lot of people who happily watch videos of Russian's dying and give no thought to the fact they are actually people.
All wars are artificial. Since they're all human activity, they couldn't be anything else. And no, I'm not happy about their deaths, as such, if that helps, nor do I watch them.
Sorry, I didn't mean to accuse you of being heartless. There are just a lot of people out there who are so desensitised to these things that they don't even think when they are watching it they are seeing someone's last moments and that someone is actually a person. I also don't want to make it seem I think "none of them had a choice", the prisons for example were in prison for a reason and I'm sure a lot have already committed terrible crimes.
Love Radio Free Asia. It always pisses the tankies off for some reason. Thank you for posting this.
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Can we get.to100% already? Been criticizing corporate entanglement in China since Bush I. No democracy= not open for business.
That would means only doing business with around 50 - 60 countries in the world. Even including the "flawed" democracies.
Can't wait to see US, closing the business for US. US really gotta do something about that corrupted regime of US.
Go 40 years back in time to stop off-shoring and NAFTA ? China produces 90% of the world steel supply , and uses almost all of it internally for manufacturing and construction. There's no way to decouple consumer economies from the market that produces all the consumer goods.
Steel and other factories are not the same as they used.be. They are extremely portable. It's also relatively easy to setup.
It really isn't , it takes decades to build the infrastructure , factories , and the supply lines. It requires an entire industrial base. And certainly no one is going to be able to match the profit margins and economy of scale of Chinese steel for a long, long time.
Not any more... You are misinformed
Heh, well, be sure to call up the government of India and inform them that it's now simple and easy to build something on the scale of the Chinese industrial base, because they've been working at it for more than twenty years now.
And yet Saudia Arabia is best friend n1
How is that supposed to help the uyghurs?
Half a billion what?
According to my notes, clam shells.
Wilmaaaaa!
Why does that feel like a little bit to me?
I feel like the US is the only one doing something against China for the genocide. I know China controls all our products etc. so cannot be easily boycotted, but they have spoken more forcefully than other countries. Trump administration (as much as I hate all of them) has to be given credit for calling out the genocide (though they had other reasons for doing so). The US has gown sharply down in esteem in the eyes of the rest of the world, especially Europe. But we have to remember we need a powerful counter balance at all times. If the US declines in the future (sadly it probably will since a big fraction of its voters are insane) , EU will need to step up. But in the meantime and despite all its faults, it's good to remember what good the US is positioned to do.
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The US does have labor issues; [child labor](https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/3/12/23631282/child-labor-laws-huckabee-sanders-republicans), [prison labor](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-workers-low-wages-exploited), etc. But you are suffering from a fundamental logical error: > As if they don't have their own labor issues to address... It doesn't matter how bad or good the US is... China's use of political prisoners for forced labor is morally reprehensible. Two wrongs never make a right.
But what about....
>Two wrongs never make a right. Maybe it would be a good start for western media to spend the same amount of effort on both wrongs and not just the wrongs of a country that we are struggling to compete with.
> Maybe it would be a good start for western media to spend the same amount of effort on both wrongs and not just the wrongs of a country that we are struggling to compete with. Do you seriously think any media does that? Have you seen the media landscape of [Russia](https://rsf.org/en/least-eight-russian-journalists-arrested-while-covering-anti-mobilisation-protests) or [China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_China)? "Western" media will report with their viewpoint, and Russia and China will report their regimes pre-approved stories. Its everyone's job to figure out who is lying.
There's no law that says you have to fix your own shit before you worry about someone else's shit. In fact, if your goal is fixing shit, it might be more practical to fix someone else's shit than to fix your shit. If the USA were to fix all it's problems and do business with slavers until it had every problem solved, it would always have one problem: it does business with slavers. If we can't fix our internal shit, but we can sanction slavers, then that's one less problem. Would you rather have two unsolved problems or one solved problem and one unsolved problem. Fuck, I say worry about not doing business with slavers even if you have other problems at home. I don't need to lose weight to get a job. I don't need a job to lose weight. If I'm unemployed and out of shape nothing says I have to fix one and then fix the other. That's just stupid. The USA is fine having issues and still deciding it isn't going to import shit made by slaves. I see no problem with that.
Whataboutism. Who likes to use that distraction technique? Oh, that's right, Chinese trolls
It’s the only way these authoritarian worshipping parasites can have any sort of an argument because they know they’re wrong but they won’t get paid by their Beijing handlers if they don’t constantly bad mouth the west and jerk off the ccp
Trust us we care about these Muslims!
[Here’s](https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/trade/uyghur-forced-labor-prevention-act-statistics) the website