Kevin Marshall's America » apple

Mike Daisey lied, but he’s not wrong about Apple vendor Foxconn’s abhorrent practices in China

kevinmarshall — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:12:09 +0000

Late last week, monologist Mike Daisey was disgraced by revelations that his famous (now infamous?) segment on “This American Life” last Fall, where he recounted his visit to the Foxconn plant where our beloved Apple products are made, was a lie.

Mike Daisey lied about seeing things that actually happened.

His segment, excerpted from his one-man show The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, told stories of child labor, suicides at the workplace, dangerous conditions including but not limited to poisoning via the neurotoxin N-Hexane, long hours, and various other transgressions that showed Apple not to be the good guy it portends to be and China to, once again, be anything but the caretaker of the working man.

“This American Life” producers did as much fact-checking as they could, but Daisey claimed at the time not to have current contact information fir the woman who served as his translator. Unfortunately, someone was able to track her down, and it turns out Daisey lied about much of what he saw.

For years, reporters in China have uncovered a sizable list of problems that have shown the dark side of what it’s like to work at factories that assemble Apple products. Mike Daisey would have you believe that he encountered—first-hand—some of the most egregious examples of this history all in just a six-day trip he took to the city of Shenzhen.

…

Cathy Lee, Daisey’s translator in Shenzhen, was with Daisey at this meeting in Shenzhen. I met her in the exact place she took Daisey—the gates of Foxconn. So I asked her: “Did you meet people who fit this description?”

“No,” she said.

- An Acclaimed Apple Critic Made Up the Details (Rob Schmitz for Marketplace.org)

All at once, the house of cards came tumbling down. It seemed on the surface to be another instance not unlike Greg Mortensen’s Three Cups of Tea and all the tales he fabricated in that memoir that led to money being sent to build useless, abandoned structures that claimed to be educating children (as if the situation of uneducated and suffering nomadic tribes could be remedied by slapping a sign that says “school” on a stationary structure). In Mortensen’s case, he completely made up stories and situations to fit his own narrative; one that may not fit the current situation and diverted resources into areas that did little good and in some cases lined his own pockets. Ditto with “Stop Kony 2012,” which has become the penultimate and ugliest example of a racist, condescending campaign heralding the great “white man’s burden” that intentionally distorts history to paint a different picture of Uganda than what’s actually on their canvas.

But buried in the lead of the article that exposes Daisey’s fabrications is what makes this situation slightly different:

What makes this a little complicated is that the things Daisey lied about seeing are things that have actually happened in China: Workers making Apple products have been poisoned by Hexane. Apple’s own audits show (PDF) the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers. These things are rare, but together, they form an easy-to-understand narrative about Apple.

The poisonings, the suicides, the manglings, the long hours, the child labor: none of this happened while Daisey was there, or went down in the way he described. But even by Foxconn and Apple’s own admission, they are (they’ll claim were) actual problems at their plants.

Let’s break that down: this is just what a giant corporation and its vendor, situated in the strongest and most consistently oppressive nation-state in modern history, is willing to admit to the public. Can you imagine what would be uncovered if a real investigation were to occur?

I can’t and won’t try to excuse Mike Daisey in this instance. He didn’t do himself any favors by fabricating all those events he witnessed, and I find the invocation of artistic license a specious defense. Perhaps a more apt term would be “fucking horseshit.” It’s one thing if you’re writing and/or performing a family memoir or something along those lines, but when it comes to activism, this always – ALWAYS – does more harm than good. Just take a look at Mortensen, Invisible Children, and now Daisey. The story briefly becomes the conditions, but then when the lies are exposed – which they invariably are, particularly in this day and age – the story becomes “they profited from lies.” And in our condemnation of the con artists we forget and forgive the great and powerful Apple their transgressions and consume their products without a tinge of regret, because that guy that went on “This American Life” made it all up.

Except he didn’t. It all happened, just not to him and not in that narrative. Though we are eager to believe otherwise because of the sleek products that we carry with us and help define and establish our social identity, the tales of horrible conditions at Foxconn are very real, and what Daisey made up is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

Lies have been exposed. But let’s not allow the con to make rubes of us all over again.

The convenient lie: Apple, consumerism, and culpability

kevinmarshall — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:47:01 +0000

When the Penn State scandal broke several months ago and the depth of the cover-up was revealed, the cries of outrage were nearly drowned out by angry denials and gasps of disbelief. Residents of Happy Valley and Penn State fans throughout the country steadfastly refused to believe that Joe Paterno, head coach of forty-six years, would allow such a thing to happen under his watch. Further investigation and court documentation revealed the worst, or what we think is the worst. The Board of Trustees at Penn State fired Paterno, likely saving him from further revelations of impropriety.

The reason people were shocked is because Paterno has a previously unshakable reputation as a man of honor and integrity. He was a shining beacon in an ethically muddled NCAA. How exactly did he gain that reputation? Simple: because that’s what he and his handlers told people. Should that be enough? It is for most people, even though it shouldn’t be.

Did we really not know?

I was reminded of Paterno this morning when seeing reaction on Facebook to this week’s edition of the NPR program “This American Life,” which included an excerpt from writer and monologist Mike Daisey’s one-man show about Steve Jobs. The excerpt detailed the atrocious working conditions at Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer responsible for making Apple products. Among the findings were crippling injuries, toxic exposure to unsafe chemicals, and children as young as twelve years old working at the plant.

The shock and dismay I saw expressed over the piece seemed genuine, just as it did with Paterno. Yet at least Penn State’s boosters had the excuse that they were not given any reason to suspect Paterno would help cover up pedophilia and child abuse. In the case of Apple and Chinese working conditions, though, there was plenty of precedence.

Did we really not know, or was (is) it just easier to pretend we didn’t?

When Steve Jobs died last month, deification from the media and inconsolable consumers made gripes about Apple’s use of sweatshops seem like the cynical mumblings of contrarians. The problem is that there’s plenty of documentation and reporting that supports the criticism. Apple’s own website makes its audits of plants like Foxconn available to the public. The reports detail the transgressions they encounter and try to remove themselves from culpability by noting actions taken to improve conditions. Yet we’d be aghast to read of the kind of conditions in a first world nation that Apple’s auditors respond to with the equivalent of a wag of a finger. In one example from their 2010 report, over 130 people sustained permanent injury from exposure to a chemical Foxconn knew was hazardous. Apple’s response was to give the company the chance to stop using the hazardous chemical with the threat of a follow-up audit.

That’s it. And it’s not enough.

Even more transparent is the apologist tone the piece on “This American Life” takes in its second act. Host Ira Glass brings in New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to ease our consciences, which he is more to happy to do even while acknowledging the atrocities being committed for the sake of our own pleasure and convenience.

“There’s no doubt that it’s been a tremendous benefit,” Kristof said of the deplorable working conditions. His argument in the piece and for years has been that the type of terrible working conditions that Daisey and others have communicated to the West are somehow permissible as a lesser evil. Socially conscious, even, as he adds that companies like Foxconn “created massive employment opportunities, especially for young women.”

I find that reasoning specious to say the least. The idea that terrible working conditions is better than no working conditions at all is on the surface a valid observation, but it’s misguided if not intellectually dishonest. It’s based in a belief that the current circumstances are somehow the best that the Chinese government and corporations can do. Furthermore, Kristof invokes our own labor history and says it could take a hundred years for places like China to catch up, which completely discounts the exponential nature of technological, social, and cultural progress.

Kristof’s position is, I think, rooted in a genuine belief that things are bad but that we simply cannot confront it with traditional means (boycotts and so forth) without some tragic unintended consequences. He’s not alone in holding that belief. But I can’t help but feel that’s just another convenient lie we tell ourselves so that we can drift to sleep at night along beside the fading light of our idle iPhones.

The tone of the program is typical of NPR programming and reporting on human rights abuses, particularly those in which American consumers are in some way culpable. They want us to listen, so they don’t want to make us feel bad. They want us to pity the Chinese, but they don’t want us to feel guilty over it. Yet the simple fact of the matter is that things can be much better than they are. China’s oppressive communist regime and corporations in and outside of the country could improve conditions, but they choose not to out of convenience and concern for their bottom line.

Even Apple, with its ridiculous profit margin, could do even more than it already does. Unfortunately, we are a society that identifies with brands more than workers overseas for the simple fact that we can see and hold an iPhone, so we are far less likely to rail too hard against them even though deep down we are aware that they are capitalizing on a dire situation. It is an unfortunate but understandable oversight given the degrees of our removal from the situation. Apple deserves the scorn and bad press they’ll receive for this press. Part of the problem, though, is that we have been and continue to be far too eager to give them a greater status than they deserve simply because we like their products. We want to equate progressive ingenuity with humane practice, but they are not even related let alone mutually inclusive.

Another convenient lie.

That said, the problem is much bigger, literally and conceptually, than Apple. The root of it is that China, as their human rights record has shown, view their own people as an expendable resource. We’re all culpable – some of us more than others – but none more so than China itself. Is Apple reprehensible for taking advantage of this system? Yes. But as far as the Chinese government goes, these are their people.

But is there anything we can do about it? The honest, simple answer for those looking to consume with a clear conscience is to steadfastly refuse to buy anything made in China and make as much noise as possible about it on a large, organized, and mobilized scale. Unfortunately, our economy makes it very hard for any of us – myself included – to engage in such a radical departure from our regular spending habits and even day to day functioning.

Still, the very least we can do is call it out when we see it and make an effort to let companies like Apple know that they’re not doing enough, and especially to make as much noise as possible about the Chinese government (which has countless violations on its human rights record and regular evils committed by its government…and that’s just what we’re aware of). Maybe our President and other heads of state have to be polite for political reasons, but we sure don’t.

Harvard cancer expert: Steve Jobs death was preventable

kevinmarshall — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 01:39:37 +0000

Harvard cancer expert Ramzi Amri believes that the death of Steve Jobs was preventable.

The issue at hand is Jobs’ stubborn refusal to pursue conventional medicine, opting instead for “alternative medicine” quackery.

According to a 2008 Fortune article, Jobs for nine months pursued “alternative methods to treat his pancreatic cancer, hoping to avoid [an] operation through a special diet.” The Buddhist vegetarian took this approach from the time he was diagnosed in October 2003 until at least the end of July 2004, when he underwent surgery at Stanford University Medical Center.

By then the cancer was so far along Jobs had to lose his pancreas and duodenum in a “Whipple procedure.” The cancer also spread to all the major parts of his liver. “The only reason he’d have a transplant,” wrote Amri, “would be that the tumor invaded all major parts of the liver, which takes a considerable amount of time.” Amri said the Whipple procedure and liver transplant were clear signs the cancer was out of control and should have been stopped earlier.

The condition might have been nipped in the bud if Jobs had acted right away. Jobs’s cancer manifest in neuroendocrine tumors, which are typically far less lethal than the “pancreatic adenocarcinoma” that make up 95 percent of pancreatic cancer cases.

Amri isn’t the first to make the observation, as the 2008 article did spur some discussion at the time about alternative medicine. But he’s the first high profile figure that is an expert in his field to voice such an opinion.

Others aren’t likely to follow. Amri is careful to insist that this be viewed as his own personal opinion shared on his own personal space and not to be construed as academic. Jobs was a pathologically private person considering his stature, and as such did not subject himself to much in the way of examination. This extends to his personal health, to the point where he would refuse to comment on concerns about his health even though he would appear in front of packed conferences and on film looking gaunt, frail, and speaking with a harsh scratch in his voice.

But it’s still a valid observation and one worthy of further exploration.

Alternative medicine’s role in health is wholly speculative. It’s also a placebo effect. If you need to pursue it in the same way some need to hold a cross and/or mutter an offer to their God(s), then all the more power to you. But you do yourself and potentially the rest of the world a true disservice when you use that in lieu of, rather than in addition to, treatment that could save your life.