Posted on 06/24/2006 1:43:00 PM PDT by wagglebee
Does your kid have an iPod?
Does he or she want one?
Don't even answer that question. Every kid in America either has one or wants one.
The demand for these little devices is amazing – and so is the price, between $200-$300.
"What's wrong with that?" you ask. "Commerce is good for America. It creates jobs and stimulates the economy."
Jobs? Stimulated economy?
Do you know where your iPod was made? Do you know by whom?
The London Sunday Mail wanted to find out. It sent reporters to "iPod City," where most of the Apple music players are made.
"iPod City" is not in the Silicon Valley, by the way. It's not in the USA. It's not in the United Kingdom. It's in Longhua, China.
That's where some 200,000 Chinese laborers work to make those iPods. That's more people than live in the city of Little Rock, Ark., for example.
What are the conditions like? How about the pay?
You might think a high-tech company like Apple might care about such matters. You might think the politically correct geeks who founded the company and run it would want to ensure foreign workers were not being exploited.
Here's what the Sunday Mail found:
The iPod shuffles are made in Suzhou, Shanghai, where workers earn $100 a month. Sounds better doesn't it? Except these laborers must pay for their own food and accommodations – requiring about half their salary.
Remember all this when your kid asks you for an iPod.
And remember it the next time you go shopping at Wal-Mart or some other bargain center where all the goods are made in these virtual Chinese gulags for pay just above slave wages.
And remember that Apple is just one of thousands of companies using Chinese sweatshops like those described here to manufacture expensive goods designed for the Western consumer who remains blissfully ignorant about the conditions that created that product.
Why is it that we don't tolerate the exploitation of workers in our own country but turn a blind eye to exploitation 10 times worse elsewhere?
What is happening to the American conscience and psyche that allows this kind of abuse?
How is it that the U.S. government could continue to encourage the kind of corporate greed that results in manufacturing agreements with the fascists in Beijing?
Why is it that we see no screaming headlines about the conditions of "iPod City" in the U.S. corporate establishment press?
Where is our sense of right and wrong?
Would we have so glibly accepting of imports from Nazi Germany as we are of those made in the virtual slave labor conditions of the so-called "workers paradise" in China?
No, there's a double standard that permits China, a totalitarian socialist country, to get away with abuses that would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world.
Welcome to the New World Order – where we're OK with the worst kind of oppression, as long as we can't see it taking place.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,126146,00.asp
"If Lights Blink on Your iPod Shuffle, It Could Be Bad News
Some owners search for help after Apple USB music players flash alternating LEDs and then die."
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