We produced an entire new episode about the retraction, featuring Marketplace reporter Rob Schmitz, who interviewed Mike’s translator Cathy and discovered discrepancies between her account and Mike’s, and New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg, who has reported extensively on Apple. Ira also re-interviewed Mike Daisey to learn why he misled us.
I think that the redaction is going to be informative, but the story is one of the most read and downloaded, so the damage has been done.
So far, no country has decided to use this international law to help Congo end slavery, but the tools are there.
I hope that soon another country decides this is an important issue (because it is) and they use the international laws and tools to help the Congo over come this. No one deserves to be treated so poorly.
The thugs have total control and can do whatever they please, so just crossing from one part of town to another means paying a tax or risking attack or even enslavement.
This is something I wish more people would learn about and try to help stop.
Slaves are producing many of the things we buy, and in the process they are forced to destroy our shared environment, increase global warming, and wipe out protected species.
I wish that more people knew this. I feel like many people are fighting for a cleaner Earth, but our first priority should be ending slavery. With the end of slavery all over the world we can then focus on conservation and being eco-friendly.
Our lives are full of ways that we connect with other people—the food we serve and share, the rings and gifts we exchange—and we understand these objects primarily from the point at which they arrive in our lives.
Phones give us such joy and make our lives so much easier, but the phone game taught us how difficult we are making the lives of slaves in the Congo. It sucks to think that my need for a phone is more important then their need for freedom, because I don't think that it is.
We also know that, while some polishing and skillful carving of names and dates is needed, those heavy, dense, and sharp tombstones will first be handled by children, though they will be taking “great care,” of course, since the slave master is watching.
This makes death seem even more sad to me. I feel like now when I go to visit a grave, I'm just going to think of the memories I have with the person who's grave I am visiting, but I will also be thinking of the poor children who are having their childhood ripped away. Which will make the process even worse.
If we think about where the markers come from at all, we might imagine an elderly craftsman carefully chiseling a name into a polished stone.
That is a 100% accurate description of what I would have thought and answered if someone asked me where tombstones came from.
Expecting industrial operations, they found medieval working conditions and families in slavery
Slavery is obviously one of the worst forms of labor since you are taking away that persons choice to work, but with "medieval" conditions, it makes the work even worse.
“See the little girl playing with the hammer?” asked a local investigator. “Along with the child, the size of the hammer grows, and that’s the only progress in her life.”
This sentence is the hardest to read so far. I love children and have thought about doing something with kids instead of hopefully working in a lab, and this breaks my heart. The preschool my mom teaches in sums up my idea of childhood "Children should learn through, laughing, playing, and loving." I feel like this girls childhood is being taken away. She isn't allowed to play and laugh with her friends as the play with minnows or building sand castles, she is hammering in a granite quarry.
And in India, the most cost effective way to achieve that is slavery.
That is so saddening. I wish that the world could stop caring about money for five minutes and focus on creating a nice place for everyone in every social class. I hate to think that I am buying something that was made by slaves. I helped my mom pick out a tombstone for my dad and I wish had read this before so I could have researched where the materials were coming from.
Granite for German tombstones used to come from the beautiful Harz Mountains, but now no one is allowed to mine there and risk spoiling this protected national park and favorite tourist destination.
I know that tomb stones are important, but I am glad that now no one is allowed to mine in the park. Even if it's because it is a tourist destination it's still a win for the environment.
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thats lit af