Inside the Chinese factories making iPads for Apple

‘Working excessive overtime without a single day off during the week’
’Living together in crowded dorms and exposure to dangerous chemicals’
Two explosions in 2011 in China ‘due to aluminum dust’ killed four workers
Almost 140 injured after using toxin in factory, reports New York Times
Mark Duell
Mail Online
January 29, 0212

Working excessive overtime without a single day off during the week, living together in crowded dormitories and standing so long that their legs swell and they can hardly walk after a 24-hour shift.

These are the lives some employees claim they live at Apple’s manufacturing centres in China, where the firm’s suppliers allegedly wrongly dispose of hazardous waste and produce improper records.

Almost 140 workers at a supplier in China were injured two years ago using a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens – and two explosions last year killed four people while injuring more than 75. The California tech giant had allegedly been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant in southwest China before the explosions at those plants, reported the New York Times.

‘If Apple was warned and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible,’ Massachusetts Institute of Technology work safety expert Nicholas Ashford told the New York Times.

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For Newt, ‘World War III’ Is Just the Beginning

Wired
January 27, 2012

Newt Gingrich doesn’t just want to lay waste to his political enemies and a large part of the news media. The former House speaker and presidential hopeful wants to bomb a significant part of the planet, too.

Gingrich is on the record favoring American military intervention from North Korea to Lebanon. He recently threatened cyberwar with China and Russia. And on Monday, he called for an all-out assault to topple the Castro regime in Cuba.

With such a wide range of targets, no wonder Gingrich has consistently said that the U.S. is in the middle of “World War III.” His plans for overthrowing the Iranian government? Just the beginning.

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US to expand network of secret bases

Source: The Australian

The new strategy would assign specific US-based army brigades and marine expeditionary units to different regions of the world, where they would travel regularly for joint exercises and other missions, using permanent facilities and the forward-staging bases that some advisers call “lily pads”.

Marines, for example, would use a new forward-staging base in Darwin as a launch pad for Southeast Asia, while Washington is in talks to expand its military presence in The Philippines – both of which are signals to China that the US has quick-response capability in Beijing’s backyard.

Many of the proposed bases will be secret and could temporarily house small commando teams, the Defence officials said.

“There are going to be times when action is called upon, like Tuesday night, when it will be clearly advantageous to be forward deployed. On the other hand, most of the time it will help you to be there to develop host nation or regional security,” a military official said.

The US Air Force now operates 61 drone combat air patrols around the clock, with up to four drones in each patrol. Mr Panetta’s plan calls for the military to have enough drones to comfortably operate 65 combat air patrols constantly with the ability to temporarily surge to 85 combat air patrols, officials said.

The US is also considering new bases in Turkey and Jordan, near the border with Iraq. These would supplement a network of airstrips and other facilities in the region that house drones and operatives used for missions in Yemen, Somalia and beyond.

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Drowning in Hypocrisy

Paul Craig Roberts
Activist Post

The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has become a caricature of hypocrisy. Leon Panetta, a former congressman who Obama appointed CIA director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power against Iran and to convince Iran that “it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.” (Source)

If it requires 11 aircraft carriers to deal with Iran, how many will Panetta need to project power against Russia and China? But to get on with the main point, Iran has been trying “to deal with us through diplomacy.” The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo.

Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?

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SCO: China gets jump on U.S. for Brazil’s oil

Source: Washington Times

BUENOS AIRES — Off the coast of Rio de Janeiro — below a mile of water and two miles of shifting rock, sand and salt — is an ultradeep sea of oil that could turn Brazil into the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, behind Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The country’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, expects to pump 4.9 million barrels a day from the country’s oil fields by 2020, with 40 percent of that coming from the seabed. One and a half million barrels will be bound for export markets.

The United States wants it, but China is getting it.

Less than a month after President Obama visited Brazil in March to make a pitch for oil, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was off to Beijing to sign oil contracts with two huge state-owned Chinese companies.

The deals are part of a growing oil relationship between the two countries that, thanks to a series of billion-dollar agreements, is giving China greater influence over Brazil’s oil frontier.

Chinese oil companies are pushing to meet mandatory expansion targets by inking deals across Africa and Latin America, but they are especially interested in Brazil.

“With the Lula and Carioca discoveries alone, Brazil added a possible 38 billion barrels of estimated recoverable oil,” said Luis Giusti, a former president of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, referring to the new Brazilian oil fields.

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Canada Pledges to Sell Oil to Asia After Obama Rejects Keystone Pipeline…

Source: Bloomberg

President Barack Obama’s decision yesterday to reject a permit for TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline may prompt Canada to turn to China for oil exports.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a telephone call yesterday, told Obama “Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports,” according to details provided by Harper’s office. Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said relying less on the U.S. would help strengthen the country’s “financial security.”

The “decision by the Obama administration underlines the importance of diversifying and expanding our markets, including the growing Asian market,” Oliver told reporters in Ottawa.

Currently, 99 percent of Canada’s crude exports go to the U.S., a figure that Harper wants to reduce in his bid to make Canada a “superpower” in global energy markets.

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China warns US about new military focus on Asia

January 9, 2012
Source: MSNBC

BEIJING — China’s Ministry of defense warned the United States on Monday to be “careful in its words and actions” after announcing a defense rethink that stresses responding to China’s rise by shoring up U.S. alliances and bases across Asia.

The statement from the ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng was Beijing’s fullest reaction so far to the new U.S. strategy unveiled last week. It echoed the mix of wariness and outward restraint that has marked China’s response to the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia since late last year.

“We have noted that the United States issued this guide to its defense strategy, and we will closely observe the impact that U.S. military strategic adjustment has on the Asia-Pacific region and on global security developments,” Geng said in a statement issued on the ministry’s website.

“The accusations leveled at China by the U.S. side in this document are totally baseless,” said Geng.

“We hope that the United States will flow with the tide of the era, and deal with China and the Chinese military in an objective and rational way, will be careful in its words and actions, and do more that is beneficial to the development of relations between the two countries and their militaries.”

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