Meditating on pain and suffering

[Lucky7Strikes]

http://listverse.com/2007/09/12/top-10-gruesome-methods-of-execution/

 

[rain]

Meditating?

[voidisyinyang]

For extensive smuggled out factory photos and workers reports in China:

 

http://www.nlcnet.org/reports?id=0034

 

China's Youth Meet Microsoft

KYE Factory in China Produces for Microsoft and other U.S. Companies

"We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work."

-Teenaged Microsoft Worker

 

China's Recession: When discussing hours and wages at the KYE factory it is necessary to differentiate between pre-and-post recessionary periods. Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, China's economy extended a serious recession beginning in October 2008. In the last quarter of 2008 alone, the government of China estimates that six-and-a-half to nine million migrant factory workers lost their jobs. The recession continued through the first quarter of 2009, but by June the KYE factory started hiring again. Workers report that the factory is returning to near normal, but it has still not reached the pre-recessionary peaks of 2007 and 2008.

 

Even if we use just the 80.5 hours of actual work, this means the young workers were required to work 40 1/2 hours of overtime each week, which exceeds China's legal limit on permissible overtime by 388 percent. The legal limit in China for overtime is 36 hours per month. For years, the KYE factory has blatantly and wildly violated China's legal restrictions on excessive overtime. (40 1/2 overtime hours x 52 weeks= 2,106; 2,106 divided by 12 months = 175 ½ hours; 175 ½ hours - 36 permissible overtime hours = 139 ½ hours; 139 ½ hours divided by 36 hours = 3.875).

 

The above is actually a low end estimate of how many hours the KYE workers toiled each week. In numerous interviews with the workers, they insisted that they worked a full 90 hours a week. The hours we are using above were the bare minimum.

 

The owner of the small stall outside the factory gate confirmed that throughout most of 2008 there were enormous orders at KYE and that the workers were consistently working overtime. The factory was also hiring more workers every single day.

 

The students have to pay a "placement fee" of 300 to 500 RMB ($43.84 to $73.16) to KYE management to secure a summer position. The majority of technical students work 2 ½ to three months at KYE before returning to school in mid-September. However, some of the poorer students who may not graduate from middle school, let alone enter college, opt to remain working at KYE for up to six or even eight months before returning home to school. A few students stay on at the factory to become full-time workers.

 

All of the work study students are young, just 16 and 17 years old. However in 2007 and 2008, when production at the KYE factory was booming, it appears that some 14 and 15 year olds may have been illegally recruited from junior middle schools. We have no way to document this, but in reviewing dozens of pictures smuggled out of the factory, there do appear to be child workers. Moreover, a senior observer at the factory estimated that 80 to 100 of the students were indeed just 14 or 15 years old.

 

China Has Over 112 Million Manufacturing Jobs

Workers Earn just 81 cents an hour-2.7 percent of U.S. wages.

 

Reliable sources for data on the number of manufacturing jobs and compensation levels in China are dated. However, Chinese government data does show that manufacturing jobs in China increased from 108.4 million in 2005 to 111.6 million jobs in 2006, an increase of 3.2 million manufacturing jobs in a single year. In that same period, total hourly compensation for China's manufacturing workers rose from 73 cents in 2005 to 81 cents in 2006.

 

This means that manufacturing wages in China amount to just 2.7 percent of total compensation in the U.S., which averaged $29.98 per hour for manufacturing workers in 2006. So U.S. manufacturing wages were 37 times higher than manufacturing wages in China.

 

Source: "China's Manufacturing Employment and Compensation Costs: 2002-06," Monthly Labor Review, April 2009.

 

Another trade distortion-surely as important if not much more so-is China's total suppression of internationally recognized human and worker rights standards. It is not by chance, and there is certainly nothing natural about it, that China's manufacturing workers are routinely forced to work grueling 12-plus hour shifts, six and seven days a week, often toiling under dangerous conditions, while earning just 65 cents an hour. There is nothing natural about their primitive living conditions or their total lack of rights.

 

A Strange Thing Happened

When the authoritarian government in China

proposed minor labor rights improvements for China's workers...

Microsoft and other U.S. companies fought to block them!

 

One would have thought that Microsoft would have enthusiastically supported these very limited improvements as a first step toward government recognition of internationally recognized worker rights standards.

 

In fact, it was quite the opposite. Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and other U.S. companies remained silent as the American Chamber of Commerce in China-to which they belong-threatened the totalitarian government of China that the new contract law would hurt China's workers, negatively impact on China's investment environment and lead to mass layoffs.

 

"We believe it might have negative effects on China's investment environment" and may "reduce employment opportunities for PRC [People's Republic of China] workers."

 

Microsoft (China) Co. Ltd. and China Hewlett-Packard Co. Ltd. both outsource production to the KYE factory in Dongguan and both belong to the American Chamber of Commerce in China.

Edited July 23, 2010 by drewhempel

[voidisyinyang]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6059570957026470933#

 

In an incident that shocked the world, a teenage Tibetan nun, Kelsang Namtso, was killed when Chinese border police opened fire on a group of pilgrims as they fled Tibet over the infamous Nangpa Pass. The shooting was witnessed by many international mountain climbers, some of whom videotaped or photographed the events and also helped rescue survivors and sent the story out to the world.

 

Using the original climber footage, reenactments and interviews with witnesses and survivors, Tibet: Murder in the Snow tells of young Tibetans who risk their lives each year to illegally cross the rugged Himalaya Mountains in an attempt to see their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, or attend school in India.

 

It is a dangerous journey. In September 2006, more than 70 young people travelled for three nights in the back of a truck as it drove south towards the Himalayas. Then the refugees walked for 10 more nights, with inadequate clothing and limited food and water, to the base of the infamous 6000-metre Nangpa Pass, an ancient trade route to Nepal.

 

Among those who paid their hard-earned savings to illegal mountain-guides, were teenage farm girls Dolma Palki, 16, and her best friend Kelsang Namtso, a 17 year-old nun. Both wanted to meet to meet the Dalai Lama and to study without political interference. Also attempting to cross the mountains were 14-year-old boy Jamyang Samten and Lobsang Choeden, 29, a farmer.

[Lucky7Strikes]

I'm not sure what's with Drew's sudden litany of charges against PRC, but I was more or less getting at exploring directly our fears and revulsion with pain and suffering. Nothing brings these inner most fears to life as imagining the gruesome execution and torture methods, body mutilations, immense suffering, ghosts, demons, executioners...

 

the "dark" stuff....

 

Look at the man in the Ling chi section being slowly cut to pieces. Or the man being sawed from the going upside down...

 

It is incredibly powerful to let the following fears rise and pass away. Our bodily mortality, strong attachments to our flesh, all come rushing in. It is quite terrifying and stomache turning when in the dark these images become real to the mind.

 

It sometimes paralyzes and the chill we often get can completely over take the body and unearth other deep seated fears to pain and suffering. It's a vicious cycle.

 

again..the "dark" stuff...

 

But imo, it's really something one has to face! Face yo FEARS!

 

Good night and happy dreaming!

Edited July 24, 2010 by Lucky7Strikes

[Marblehead]

But imo, it's really something one has to face! Face yo FEARS!

 

And then eliminate the little suckers!!!

 

(Displaying caution is different from having fears, BTW.)

 

Peace & Love!

[Lucky7Strikes]

And then eliminate the little suckers!!!

 

(Displaying caution is different from having fears, BTW.)

 

Peace & Love!

That's a good point Marblehead. Displaying caution is, as I see it, a clear way of distinguishing between values. Kind of like, you wouldn't be afraid of being burnt by hot water, but you use caution, because having a usable hand gives you better things to do then...displaying your courage in front of hot water! (ok, that wasn't such a good example, but you get the idea)

Edited July 24, 2010 by Lucky7Strikes