Censored 2014 (51 page)

^3.
Project Censored's previous coverage, ibid., mistakenly identified
This American Life
as a National Public Radio program. Chicago Public Radio produces the program and Chicago Public Radio distributes it. Some NPR-affiliated stations broadcast it.

^4.
For coverage of consumer protests at Apple stores following Daisey's appearance on
This American Life,
see Amy Goodman, “Apple Accustomed to Profits and Praise, Faces Outcry for Labor Practices at Chinese Factories,”
Democracy Now!,
February 10, 2012,
http://democracynow.org/2012/10/apple_accustomed_to_profits_and_praise
.

^5.
For more on this episode and what it entailed, see Ira Glass, “Retraction,”
This American Life,
Chicago Public Radio, March 16, 2012,
http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/TAL_460_Retraction_Transcript.pdf
; and also “Who's the Rotten Apple?
This American Life
Goes Daisey Crazy,”
Censored 2013,
168–169.

^6.
“Group Profile,” Foxconn Electronics Inc., accessed May 23, 2013,
http://www.foxconn.com/GroupProfile_En/GroupProfile.html
.

^7.
For one such example, see David Sarno, “Worker from Foxconn, Apple's Chinese Factory, Jumps to Death,”
Los Angeles Times,
June 14, 2012,
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/14/business/la-fi-tn-foxconn-worker-20120614
.

^8.
See, for example, Mary Walton, “Investigative Shortfall,”
American Journalism Review
(September 2010),
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4904
; and James T. Hamilton, “Subsidizing the Watchdog: What Would It Cost to Support Investigative Journalism at a Large Metropolitan Daily Newspaper?,” Duke Conference on Nonprofit Media, May 4–5, 2009,
http://sanford.duke.edu//nonprofitmedia/documents/dwchamiltonfinal.pdf
.

^9.
“Supplier List 2013,” Apple, Inc.,
http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/pdf/Apple_Supplier_List_2013.pdf
.

^10.
For example, see David Barboza, “Workers Poisoned by Chemical at Apple Supplier in China,”
New York Times,
February 22, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/technology/23apple.html?pagewanted=all&_r=o
.

^11.
See, for example, Chenda Ngak, “SumOfUs Launches Apple, Foxconn Watchdog Site,”
CBS News,
May 21, 2012,
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57438213-501465/sumofus-launches-apple-foxconn-watchdog-site
.

^12.
Bradsher and Duhigg, “Signs of Changes.”

^13.
Pun Ngai and Jenny Chan, “Global Capital, the State, and Chinese Workers: The Foxconn Experience,”
Modern China
38 (2012): 383—410.

^14.
Ibid, 397. On
Los Angeles Times
coverage, see Sarno, “Worker from Foxconn, Apple's Chinese Factory, Jumps to Death,” cited in note 7, above.

^15.
See, for example, Fiona Tam and Danny Mok, “New Foxconn Suicide after Boss Visits Shenzhen Plant,”
South China Morning Post,
May 27, 2010,
http://www.scmp.com/print/article/715408/new-foxconn-suicide-after-boss-visits-shenzhen-plant
; and Fiona Tam, “Foxconn Rallies Urge 800,000 to ‘Treasure Life,'”
South China Morning Post,
August 18, 2010,
http://www.scmp.com/print/article/722411/foxconn-rallies-urge-800000-treasure-life
.

^16.
Tam, “Only a Third of Migrant Workers Given Contracts,”
South China Morning Post,
January 22, 2010,
http://www.scmp.com/print/article/704346/only-third-migrant-workers-given-contracts
.

^17.
Mike Kolbe, “Sweatshops in China Are Making Your iPods While Workers Suffer,”
Censored 2013,
145–147.

^18.
Friends of Nature, IPE, Green Beagle,
The Other Side of Apple,
January 20, 2011,
http://www.business-humanrights.org/media/documents/it_report_phase_iv-the_other_side_of_apple-final.pdf
.

^19.
Pun and Chan, “Global Capital, the State, and Chinese Workers,” 397.

^20.
Chris King-Chi Chan and Pun Ngai, “The Making of a New Working Class? A Study of Collective Actions of Migrant Workers in South China,”
China Quarterly
198 (2009): 287–303.

^21.
For a detailed breakdown of how profits from iPhones and iPads are distributed primarily to Apple and not to its suppliers, see Kenneth L. Kraemer, Greg Linden, and Jason Dedrick, “Cap-turing Value in Global Networks: Apple's iPad and iPhone,” paper, Personal Computing Industry Center, July 2011,
http://pcic.merage.uci.edu/papers/2011/Value_iPad_iPhone.pdf
.

^22.
The Other Side of Apple.

^23.
Friends of Nature, IPE, Green Beagle, Envirofriends, Green Stone Environmental Action Network,
The Other Side of Apple II: Pollution Spreads Through Apple's Supply Chain,
August 31, 2011,
http://www.greenbiz.com/sites/default/files/63637255-Apple-II-Final-20-14.pdf

^24.
Ibid., 4.

^25.
The Other Side of Apple,
iy.

^26.
Xiaotian Ma, “‘Interns' Behind the iPhone 5,”
Nanfang People Weekly,
September 21, 2012,
http://www.nfpeople.com/News-detail-item-3661.html
.

^27.
Pun and Chan, “Global Capital, the State, and Chinese Workers,” 393.

^28.
Xiaotian, “‘Interns' Behind the iPhone 5.”

^29.
Ibid.

^30.
Fang Qixiong, “Traits of Nanfang Weekend's Coverage on the Topic of Migrant Workers,”
Henan Social Sciences,
no. 4 (2011) (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, School of News and Communications).

^31.
Fiona Tam, “Delta Short of Workers Even as Migrants Return,”
South China Morning Post,
February 23, 2008,
http://www.scmp.com/print/article/627273/delta-short-workers-even-mi-grants-return
.

^32.
Fiona Tam, “Migrants Left No Choice after Falling Victim to the Global Economic Downturn,”
South China Morning Post,
January 5, 2009,
http://www.scmp.com/article/665862/migrants-left-no-choice-after-falling-victim-global-economic-downturn
.

^33.
Fiona Tam, “Moves to Help Migrants Fail to Convince Critics,”
South China Morning Post,
April 8, 2008,
http://www.scmp.com/print/article/632918/moves-help-migrants-fail-convince-crit-ics
.

^34.
Fiona Tam, “Migrant Workers Get Chance for Urban Residency,”
South China Morning Post,
June 9, 2010,
http://www.scmp.com/print/article/716615/migrant-workers-get-chance-urban-residency
.

^35.
“Five Primary School Students Made Pact to Suicide by Drinking Agricultural Chemical; Most Left-Behind Kids,”
China Business News,
July 5, 2010.

^36.
Jin Ran, “Foxconn and the Ten-Year-Old ‘Nail,'”
Nanfang Weekend,
December 13, 2010,
http://www.infzm.com/content/53351
.

^37.
Ibid.

^38.
Fiona Tam, “Chongqing to Raise Migrant, Rural Incomes,”
South China Morning Post,
January 3, 2009,
http://www.scmp.com/print/article/665654/chongqing-raise-migrant-rural-incomes
.

^39.
The Other Side of Apple,
25.

^40.
The Other Side of Apple II.

^41.
“Apple Supplier Responsibility 2011 Progress Report,” Apple Inc.,
http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsiblity/pdf/Apple SR 20111 Progress Report.pdf
.

^42.
Ibid.

^43.
The Other Side of Apple II.

^44.
Friends of Nature, The Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs, Envirofriends, Nature University, Nanjing Greenstone,
Apple Opens Up: IT Industry Supply Chain Investigative Re
port—Phase VI,
January 29, 2013,
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/lgreer/Report-IT-Phase-VI-Draft-EN.pdf
.

^45.
Bradsher and Duhigg, “Signs of Changes.”

^46.
Steven Greenhouse, “Critics Question Record of Fair Labor Association, Apple's Monitor,”
New York Times,
February 13, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/114/technology/critics-question-record-of-fair-labor-association-apples-monitor.html
.

^47.
Catherine Rampell and Nick Wingfield, “In Shift of Jobs, Apple Will Make Some Macs in U.S.,”
New York Times,
December 6, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/technology/apple-to-resume-us-manufacturing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=o
.

^48.
For Apple revenue breakdown, see “Revenue by Product (as Percentage of Revenues),” Bare Figures,
http://barefigur.es
.

^49.
Fiona Tam, “All Work and No Play Makes It a Dull Plant,”
South China Morning Post,
May 27, 2010,
www.scmp.com/print/article/71543o/all-work-and-no-play-makes-it-dull-plant
.

^50.
Apple Opens Up: IT Industry Supply Chain Investigative Report—Phase VI,
33.

^51.
Ira Glass, “Retraction.”

^52.
Kraemer et al., “Capturing Value in Global Networks: Apple's iPad and iPhone.”

^53.
Fiona Tam, “Number of Migrant Workers in Delta Outstrips Job Vacancies,”
South China Morning Post,
March 4, 2009,
http://www.scmp.com/print/article/671980/number-migrant-work-ers-delta-outstrips-job-vacancies
.

^54.
Pun and Chan, “Global Capital, the State, and Chinese Workers: The Foxconn Experience.”

^55.
See, for example, William I. Robinson,
Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Critical Perspective
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008); Mike Davis,
Planet of Slums
(London: Versa, 2007); and Pun Ngai,
Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace
(North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2005).

^56.
Edna Bonacich and Richard P. Appelbaum,
Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

^57.
Fiona Tam, “Million to Be Trained to Fight Labour Shortage,”
South China Morning Post,
February 26, 2008,
http://www.scmp.com/print/article/627636/million-be-trained-fight-labour-shortage
; and Fiona Tam, “300,000 Foxconn Staff in Move to Henan,”
South China Morning Post,
June 30, 2010,
http://www.scmp.com/print/article/718493/300000-foxconn-staff-move-henan
.

^58.
Nelson D. Schwartz and Charles Duhigg, “Apple's Web of Tax Shelters Saved It Billions, Panel Finds,”
New York Times,
May 20, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/business/apple-avoided-billions-in-taxes-congressional-panel-says.html?hp&_r=i&
.

^59.
Ibid.

^60.
Isaiah J. Poole, “Apple Dodges Enough Taxes to Cover Much of the Sequester,”
Truthout,
May 5, 2013,
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/116177-apple-dodges-enough-taxtes-to-cover-much-of-the-sequester
.

Brian Martin Murphy

In January 2013, a new African conflict burst into world headlines. The French Air Force and Army invaded the Saharan nation of Mali, launching attacks on an advancing force of rebels who had occupied the north of the country and imposed Islamic sharia law.

The official story, circulating in most international media, was that a network of jihadists had emerged from the wilds of the Sahara to sow radical Islam, led by the self-declared “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.” French troops, supported by soldiers from the nations of West Africa grouped under the flag of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), pushed north, and the rebels slowly dispersed back into the desert, to the joy of the occupied Malians.

In reality, what the world witnessed was a tragic new chapter in a conspiracy to create a terrorist threat in the Sahara. The main player has been Algeria, with the involvement of various arms of the United States government. Dating back to the months after the attacks on September 11, 2001, the program started as part of the US global war on terror and has since run parallel with the creation of the US military's Africa Command (AFRICOM), in 2007–2008
¹
Together they signal a “new” American imperialism in Africa,
²
with the primary aim of securing access to oil for US corporations.
³

Aside from Antarctica, the Sahara is the largest desert mass in the world. It covers over 3.5 million square miles, or roughly 10 percent, of the continent. Parts of several African nations occupy the space,
including Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, and Tunisia. Famous for its large sand dunes, most of the terrain in fact features rough, rocky, windswept plains dotted by low mountains of up to 2000 feet. Although the population is estimated at twelve million, most live in towns and villages around the desert's edges. In southern Algeria, northern Mali, northern Niger, and northern Chad—where corporate media have largely ignored a decade of war—the primarily pastoralist population does not number more than five million.

The roots of the secret wars trace back to the 1990s, a period of bloody civil strife in Algeria that pitted Islamist rebels against a de facto military government. The decade featured mass imprisonments, massacres and counter-massacres, and free-floating networks and affiliations among various opposition Islamist guerrilla armies. There were continuous allegations that the Algerian military's secret intelligence service, the
Departement du Renseignement et de la Securite
(DRS), had infiltrated many of the rebel groups. The numbers of the dead and the injured have never been officially counted, but estimates run beyond 100,000.
⁴

By 1999–2000, the war had wound down as amnesties were offered, an army-backed president was elected, and most of the Islamist groups were disbanded. One group vowed to fight on: Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). A leading figure was a shadowy Algerian DRS operative with a string of aliases and the nickname “El Para.” In the mid-1990s, he had trained with the Green Berets (US Army Special Forces) at Fort Bragg.
⁵

At war's end, the Algerian government sought to modernize and rearm. In early 2001, Algeria's newly elected president Abdelaziz Bouteflika met with President George W. Bush in Washington DC. He requested military assistance to counter “terrorism.” There was no interest. After September 11, 2001, all this changed, when the US formulated the global war on terror.

One US focus was on the “arc of unstable Muslim countries” from Afghanistan through the Middle East to North Africa. The Pentagon believed it could work with two nations in North Africa: Morocco and Algeria. Military assistance flowed to them right away.
⁶
A year later, in 2002, a Congressional Research Service report on potential transna
tional terrorism on the continent did not mention the Sahara or even GSPC as a threat.
⁷
But by then both Algeria and the US needed the world to see that roving international terrorists populated the Sahara.

In February 2003, the GSPC, led by El Para, abducted thirty-two Europeans touring the southern Sahara in Algeria. European media reported the story every day. For a month, the GSPC kidnappers and their captives moved in convoy through southern Algeria en route to northern Mali. They were apparently undetected, despite combined US/Algerian electronic monitoring capabilities. For example, some hostages said later that, from time to time, they saw US Air Force Boeing E-3 Sentry planes, carrying the distinctive Airborne Warning and Control System (AWAC) dishes, flying low over the convoy.
⁸

Later, troops from Chad and Niger, backed by US Special Forces, tracked down and cornered El Para. But instead of capturing the GSPC leader, they mysteriously left him to fall into the hands of yet another rebel group, the Movement for Democracy and Justice (MDJT), which sought liberation of Chad. The MDJT handed El Para over to the Algerians and he was sent north to the capital city, Algiers, for trial. A few months later, Algeria quietly released him. One Algerian official said he was no longer needed.
⁹

The US propaganda machine went into action, kicked off by an article in
Air Force Magazine
describing the Sahara as “a swamp of terror,” and ripe for military action.
¹⁰
By 2013, documentation of these endless activities could handily make the case for Congress that the rise of a network of jihadists was responsible for every protest and bombing across North and West Africa.
¹¹

The abductions dovetailed with the first official US military pushes into the region. In late 2002, the State Department had launched the Pan Sahel Initiative. US Special Forces deployed to Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger to train and support border patrolling. Then in July 2003, Algeria, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria signed a counterterrorism cooperation agreement with the US, which promised them increasing levels of military training and assistance. By 2005 the programs had been folded into a broader Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) with Morocco, Senegal, and Tunisia added to the mix. Management was moved from the State Department to the Department of Defense, who would coordinate small projects launched
by the State Department, the Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Department of the Treasury. In effect, four years before the official formation of AFRICOM, US program profiles in Africa—and, specifically, in the Sahara—had been reorganized within a military framework. Funding increased steadily, from an initial sixteen million to thirty million dollars in 2006, the year AFRICOM was announced, to an estimated hundred million dollars in 2011.
¹²
The first “official” arrival of US “boots on the ground” was 500 troops to Mauritania in 2004. A steady increase of US military trainers, Special Forces, and a new and regular program of US naval maneuvers up and down the African west coast followed.

TUAREG, PEOPLE OF THE DESERT: FROM RESISTANCE
SOCIETY TO “TERRORISTS”

Of course, the southern Sahara is not “empty.” Approximately 2.5 million indigenous Tuareg inhabit much of the central Sahara and southern Sahara. Their largest number, estimated at 800,000, live in
Mali, followed by Niger, with smaller populations in Algeria, Burkina Faso, and Libya. This nomadic people, most of who live by herding goats and camels, controlled trans-Sahara trade routes for almost a thousand years, with the peak in the sixteenth century. In more modern times they have developed cultures of rebellion and resistance as wave after wave of outsiders have sought to take their territory, disrupt their traditional social structure, and end their pastoralism.

Tuareg resisted French invasion in the late nineteenth century. After that, there were rebellions in one part or another of Tuareg territory about every fifteen years, leading up to the withdrawal of the French in the 1960s. Boundaries of new nations were drawn without Tuareg consultation; instead, the new governments continued attempts to crush their pastoral culture.
¹³

Rebellion continued. In Mali, a simmering conflict with the state marked the 1960s. Then there was relative peace for about twenty-five years, but by 1990, more widespread revolt rocked northern Niger and Mali. The Tuareg occupied most of northern Mali and declared an independent state, Azawad. Thousands were killed on all sides. France and Algeria brokered a brooding peace in Niger (1992) and in Mali (1995). Both agreements called for decentralization of national power and guaranteed integration of Tuareg resistance fighters into the countries' respective national armies.

By most accounts, the agreements' promises were only marginally implemented or ignored altogether, leaving the Tuareg as ethnic outsiders. Sporadic fighting continued with spikes in 2004 and 2007 in Niger, and 2006 in Mali. Meanwhile, many Tuareg men were attracted to serve and train in Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan armies, where they were not only welcomed but also benefited from a period of relatively steady income. Gaddafi made well-publicized speeches encouraging the formation of a Tuareg state.

Arguably, the rolling Tuareg rebellions after 2004 were responsive to new offensives against them. Newly armed and trained by US Special Forces, the governments of Chad, Mali, and Niger launched sustained attacks in Tuareg communities, killing civilians as well as militants. In 2005, a mob said to be of Tuareg origin attacked and burned the center of the southern Algerian city of Tamanrasset. Subsequent legal proceedings revealed that Algerian security police acting as
agents provocateurs
had led the riot. Similarly, the 2006 rebellion in Mali was found to have been orchestrated by Algerian intelligence operatives assisted by US Special Forces. Someone was trying to frame the rebellious Tuareg as Saharan terrorists.
¹⁴

A “NEW” AMERICAN EMPIRE IN AFRICA?

Empire-making is a two-way street. A dominant power needs a threat to justify its action: “We can thus recognize the initial and implicit source of imperial right in terms of police action and the capacity of the police to create and maintain order.”
¹⁵

Before 9/11, the last time the US had had an official military presence in Africa was 1941–1943, during the Allies' North Africa campaign in the Second World War. Although there had been sporadic intelligence operations, quiet material and logistical support for proxies, as well as the singular disaster in Somalia in the early 1990s, since World War II, the US had expressed no strategic interest in the continent, much less the intent to establish a permanent military presence there. As recently as the 2000 presidential campaign, George Bush had referred to Africa as a continent “of little strategic interest to the US.”
¹⁶

Africa may not have been on Bush's (public) agenda during his 2000 presidential campaign, but it was on the Pentagon's new map by 1995. And yet the policy forces that would identify Africa—and specifically the Sahara—as targets for military expansion, culminating in AFRICOM, trace back to early 1991. Rudderless in the wake of Soviet demise, the Pentagon initiated its global search for continued strategic relevance. By the mid-1990s, military academics provided the Pentagon with a new map of the world, detailing how to perceive strategic allies and threats.
¹⁷

The simplistic map was based on how well nations were integrated into the “global capitalist system.” The first, “core” states, were closely aligned with the US, primarily through the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). Second were “seam states,” partially integrated nations that might be occasional strategic allies. Third were “gap states”: disorganized, failed, unintegrated, and clear threats to current and future core states' interests. In this view,
more than half of the world's gap states were African. South Africa was deemed a core state. But two African nations—Morocco and Algeria—were deemed “seam states” with which the US might work for strategic management of surrounding “gap states.”