Apple pulls Confederate flag from App Store

Apple is purging its App Store of mobile games featuring the Confederate flag, a new report says.

The technology giant is discontinuing apps that feature the controversial symbol, according to the New York Daily News.

It said on Thursday that multiple strategy games, such as “Civil War: 1862,” “Civil War: 1863,” “Civil War: 1864” and “Civil War: Gettysburg” are thus no longer available in the popular marketplace.

Those titles were targeted, despite featuring the historical emblem in context of the Civil War, it added.

Andrew Mulholland, creator of the “Civil War” franchise, told Kotaku on Thursday afternoon he is shocked by the move.

“It seems disappointing that they would remove it as they weren’t being used in an offensive way, being that they were historical war games and hence it was the flag used at the time,” he said of the Confederate flag’s appearance in his games.

“At the moment we’re working on the games to replace the flags that are deemed offensive,” he added.

Mulholland said the franchise is replacing the banner used in the game with the Confederate flag used in 1861 and 1862. The Confederate battle flag that some find offensive, he said, was not introduced until late 1862.

The New York Daily News also said a “Dukes of Hazzard” game remains untouched in Apple’s App Store.

That app features the title characters’ car — an automobile called the General Lee — with the Confederate flag on its roof.

Warner Bros. announced on Tuesday that it is no longer sanctioning merchandise for the popular 1980s TV series that sports the controversial symbol.

Multiple corporations have stopped displaying the Confederate flag on their products amid national outcry over the emblem following last week's mass shooting in Charleston, S.C.

Dylann Storm Roof, the alleged gunman, had the Confederate flag printed on his car’s license plate.

Nine people died during the attack on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last on June 17. Roof is accused of uttering racial epithets before opening fire on congregants at a Bible study that evening.

Daily Mail, 16/2/11, Apple's new chief visits Chinese factory to hang nets after workplace suicides

The man now running Apple, Tim Cook, had a delicate job last year.
After nearly a dozen workers committed suicide at a contract manufacturing plant in China, he flew to visit the company - and pressured them to improve working conditions.
One move was to hang large nets from the factory buildings.
(remainder snipped)

Daily Telegraph, 11 Jan 2012, 'Mass suicide' protest at Apple manufacturer Foxconn factory

The workers were eventually coaxed down after two days on top of their three-floor plant in Wuhan by Foxconn managers and local Chinese Communist party officials.
Foxconn, which manufactures gadgets for the likes of Apple, Sony, Nintendo and HP, among many others, has had a grim history of suicides at its factories. A suicide cluster in 2010 saw 18 workers throw themselves from the tops of the company's buildings, with 14 deaths.
In the aftermath of the suicides, Foxconn installed safety nets in some of its factories and hired counsellors to help its workers.

The Guardian, 29 Dec 2014, Apple under fire again for working conditions at Chinese factories

Workers in Chinese factories making Apple products continue to be poorly treated, with exhausted employees falling asleep on their 12-hour shifts, the BBC has said after an undercover investigation.
Reporters who took jobs at the Pegatron factories found workers regularly exceeded 60 hours a week – contravening the company’s guidance – and that standards on ID cards, dormitories, work meetings and juvenile workers were also breached.
The broadcaster said promises made by Apple to protect workers in the wake of a spate of suicides at supplier Foxconn in 2010 were “routinely broken”.

I can continue...

The point is not that they use sweatshop labor (outside of the US and Western Europe, all labor is what we'd consider "sweatshop" standards). The point is that it takes a special kind of chutzpah for them to then become politically correct on a connection to US slavery.

Well then I didn't need to put a question mark on my last sentence. It's a combination of all those things. I can imagine all the supervisors are males and the sexual harassment must be intense. It can by favors on both sides.

I'm not alleging one thing or another.

Have you ever built any electronics before?

Mounting components on a board is incredibly intense work...particularly with the microelectronics we are dealing with here. Even assembling components requires a lot of concentration. I wouldn't even want to think about mounting surface mount components on a multi-layered circuit board (I'd hope they would have that bit automated)

I know that I have to take a break and stretch after doing that kind of thing for an hour. And I'm talking about doing that kind of thing on a small-lot basis at work or for hobby purposes, not on a high-rate production line.

I should have put a question mark on the sentence too. Damned middle aged eye sight. So what is the purpose of the nets?

It was suicide prevention. . . but the number of suicide was VERY low compared to the overall suicide rate in the similar age cohorts in the Chinese population in general. In fact the 18 to 28 year old cohort was four times higher in the general population than FoxConn's rate which was 0.75 per 100,000 per year. The suicide rate in the United States is 11 per 100,000 per year.

This was a tempest in a Chinese teapot ginned up by anti-Apple FUD spreaders to depress iPhone sales. . . ignoring that the same FoxConn factories made the competitions' products as well. . . with the help of the China Labor Watch, a left-wing organization that used faked videos from other manufacturers and fraudulent interviews with workers claimed to be from FoxConn that weren't to misrepresent facts. They've been debunked numerous times by other sources.

After nearly a dozen workers committed suicide at a contract manufacturing plant in China, he flew to visit the company - and pressured them to improve working conditions.

The nets were not "hung" by Tim Cook, who was also not yet Apple's "new chief," as the story claims, since Steve Jobs was STILL CEO at the time and Cook had been Chief Operating Officer for over ten years. So much for the accuracy of that bogus article. Terry Gou, CEO of HonHai Precision Manufacturing, the owner of FoxConn had the nets hung and they were hung well before Apple was involved, regardless of what that story claims. SHEESH. So much FALSE FUD.

As a matter of fact, iPhones and iPads are assembled over 150 miles away from the plant where the largest spate of suicides occurred and where these nets were hung. That didn't stop the international press from tarring Apple with the blame for either, though.

From your second linked article:

The latest protest began on January 2 after managers decided to move around 600 workers to a new production line, making computer cases for Acer, a Taiwanese computer company.

The actual facts of the even are these: the Wuhan factory was making Microsoft Xbox 360s and approximately 600 workers were being transferred from making the Xboxes to another assembly line making Acer computer laptop cases. They did not like this because the Acer line did not require nearly as much overtime as the Xbox line allowed. They demanded more overtime opportunities. When FoxConn managers pointed out they did not need overtime, 150 of the workers objected strongly and went on a rampage. . . and wound up on the roof. Some of the leaders made the ridiculous claim that if FoxConn did not capitulate, and give them the overtime they wanted, all of them would jump. THAT is the source of this "threat."

Now, how did this THIS Microsoft Xbox / Acer Laptop case manufacturing plant become an "Apple manufacturing plant" in the headline? Simple, it gets more hits with Apple in the headline rather than either Microsoft or Acer, even though the workers were NOT WORKING ON APPLE PRODUCTS! No one would click on an article about Microsoft or Acer having Suicide threat problems.

Those are the facts.

Your third link was pretty much debunked. . . the BBC "reporter" turned out to have been an employee of China Labor Watch, not BBC, and the workers involved disagreed with the claims made by China Labor Watch. Now could they have been coached on questions? Probably. . . but the fact is for every job that opens on Apple assembly lines they have thousands of qualified applicants, so I doubt coaching is necessary. And napping is a fairly standard practice on breaks.

I can continue...

So can I. . . with facts. I've be answering and debunking these FUD articles for five years. . . and that's what most of them are. As I said, not one of the suicides was related to an Apple production line. There was only one suicide at FoxConn related to Apple products but that was in 2008 when a mid-level FoxConn engineer was questioned for eight hours by Chinese Police about the theft of a production design model iPhone that had been in his possession. After release, he went home and then threw himself off of his fourth floor apartment building balcony after writing a letter to his parents stating he couldn't face the guilt. That's it.

And Apple HAS done more for the working conditions and pay of its workers than any other maker contracting with these companies using Chinese labor. That is simply a fact. They cannot be everywhere but they do try. Apple has its own employees at all major suppliers and most minor ones to monitor conditions, and has roving teams of monitors checking other suppliers' working conditions. No other Consumer Electronic maker does anything like that, leaving it instead to industry organizations to do it for them.

So you can be as judgmental as you like, but Apple is trying to police their supply chain and improve conditions. . . and gets blamed for conditions that are NOT EVEN IN THEIR SUPPLY CHAIN!

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