Slavery is Part of China, Inc’s Business Model; Slaves Were Even Brought to Brazil for a Chinese EV Plant

Slavery is thriving in Chinese manufacturing, both in China proper, and at Chinese plants built in other countries. “Free traders” and others who blanch at the thought of corporations paying any labor expense have green-lit the aggressive renaissance of chattel labor in the 21st century. They are willfully blind to slave labor being the linchpin of the “China, Inc.” business model, because it gets labor expense as close to $0 as possible.

Meanwhile, libertarians and free traders say it’s all cool because consumers get lower prices. While I like to mock their buzzphrase “Tariffs are a tax on consumers,” they have effectively adopted a corollary phrase, “Abolishing slavery is a tax on consumers.” Sen. James Hammond of South Carolina made pretty much that exact argument in the 1850s when defending slavery in America.

The embrace of 21st century slavery as part of the globalist economic system is an abomination that I keep returning to, because slavery is as offensive now as it was 165 years ago. In a recent piece at The American Spectator titled “The War on Labor Expense is Renormalizing Slavery, Just in a 21st Century Form” I wrote, “So, despite America’s hangover from 19th-century slavery, many 21st-century libertarians still condone its practice overseas. If this type of slave labor offends our sensibilities when it occurs in Georgia, why is it acceptable for manufacturing that is outsourced to China to use the same labor system? The acceptance of slave labor anywhere in our supply chain makes the domestic acceptance of slavery possible.”

The Washington Post performed some important journalism recently in covering the horror of slaves being brought from China to the Americas to work at an electric vehicle plant in Brazil. It’s important to remember that if Chinese companies are brazen enough to use slave labor on foreign soil, think about how pernicious the use of slave labor is in China itself.

“They came to build China’s EV future; Investigators found conditions akin to slavery” [Washington Post – 3/14/2026]

As weeks passed, Oliveira’s curiosity deepened. [The 56 Chinese laborers’] food was prepared in an improvised kitchen in the garage, amid industrial detritus and vermin, and they never seemed to do anything for fun. All they did was work. “Seven days a week,” Oliveira, 35, recalled. “Sunday to Sunday. I never saw any one taking a day off.” They departed every morning at dawn and didn’t return until dusk. The hours in between were spent helping to build Latin America’s largest electric car factory for the world’s biggest electric automaker, China’s BYD.

Brazil welcomed the BYD electric vehicle operation because the intent was to provide manufacturing jobs for Brazilians. The intent was not to bring in foreign labor, and certainly not to import slaves. Perhaps because Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery (in 188 it is very sensitive to those trying to find a workaround to bring it back. When word of slavery being used at the factory filtered up, the government investigated. It found hungry Chinese nationals living in squalor, and working all-day, seven days a week.

Chinese men were inhabiting practically every square inch. Most slept without mattresses. Trash lay everywhere. Food was stored on the ground. In one of the buildings, 31 laborers shared a single bathroom; it was coated with an “excess of sludge,” government inspectors reported. This went far beyond labor violations, the inspectors concluded. The workers enlisted by BYD to build its keystone factory in the Americas had been forced, they wrote, into conditions that recalled slavery.

Much like sex traffickers luring girls into prostitution with promises of a modeling career, BYD and its subcontractors lured poor Chinese men into slavery by promising them a high-paying, overseas job. Once in Brazil, their passports were confiscated, and the promised pay was withheld. Armed security patrolled their sleeping spaces to ensure they couldn’t escape.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (330) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Michel Foucault
Gerard Fromanger

I normally dislike this sort of pretend art, but the scribbles across Foucault are a perfect representation of his chaotic ideas. He was the darling of the post-modernists, but he was a flaccid thinker who covered up his shallowness with linguistic nonsense.

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (369) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 3/23/26

Good morning kids. So, tick tock, tick tock. . .

Trump Draws Red Line: 48 Hours To Open Strait Or U.S. Strikes Begin

The president has promised to "obliterate" Iranian power plants if Tehran does not comply.

Well, time's up. . .

On Saturday, March 21, President Donald Trump delivered a 48-hour ultimatum to the Iranian regime to stop terrorizing the strategic Strait of Hormuz or face devastating consequences. The Iranian Islamic regime has defied the ultimatum and promised to shut down the strait altogether.. . .It is hardly surprising that the Iranian regime is doubling down, considering that it is run by fundamentalist Muslim fanatics who truly believe Allah has given them a mission to fight the “great Satan” America to the death. This defiance does, however, illustrate clearly to the world why the joint U.S.-Israel Operation Epic Fury is necessary and how fully justified Trump is in carrying through on his ultimatum.

Trump had warned, “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

It is a shame that the long-suffering Persian people are going to suffer even more because of the intransigence and belligerence of the Mullahs who are hell bent on bringing about Armageddon as the precursor to global Shiite Islamic conquest.

For those who question if this trip was necessary, give Iran's 47-year bloody wave of terror not only in the Middle East but across the globe, (that has spilled rivers of American blood to the tune of "Death to America!") which is on top of Islam's 1500 year wave of terror. So, if scimitars, firearms and tanks and planes won't do the trick, there are always ICBMs.

The position taken by Obama, Democrats, the media and, more recently, Tucker Carlson, is that we should accept Iran’s claims about its military capabilities, whether it comes to its nuclear weapons or its ballistic missiles. After all, a bunch of Islamic terrorists would never lie to us. Would they? . .

. . . Iran launched ballistic missiles at the joint US-UK military base in Diego Garcia on Friday, demonstrating a weapons capability that goes beyond what Tehran was known to have possessed.

The base, a strategic airfield that can host B-2 stealth bombers located nearly 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) away from Iran, suffered no damage, according to a person familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity.

The media is now busy pretending that we had no idea that Iran had that kind of capabilities despite repeated warnings, including the Obama Iran Deal, that Iran had missiles capable of hitting European capitals. . . Netanyahu said in an interview with right-wing podcaster Ben Shapiro on Monday that Iran is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles with a range of about 8,000 kilometers, warning that Tehran’s expanding weapons program could threaten major American cities. The Iranian missiles could “put New York City, Boston, Washington or Miami under their atomic guns,” the Israeli prime minister said.

. . . imagine that the ICBMs Iran lied about having don’t simply travel 2,000 miles, but 4,000 miles or more, which would allow them to strike a major city in the United States.
“That’s what they’re planning to do. Now, imagine that those ICBMs are tipped with nuclear warheads, which they were planning to do as well. So, we have to face a very difficult situation,” he said before noting that while gas prices are temporarily higher as a result of the war, they will return to normal.

And speaking of tyrannical regimes and malign, evil oppressors . . .

So many people inside the United States believe the left’s narrative about the United States today, the question becomes very real: can the nation survive the presence within it of a large and growing population of people who hate it and wish to see it destroyed?

For the left, the truth doesn’t matter as much as the narrative. And if the narrative is incendiary enough, and they can convince enough people to believe it, it could indeed be destructive, and even bring the whole nation down, with incalculable effects for the world at large. The narrative that the left is pushing hard right now is a variation on a theme it has harped upon repeatedly since the war in Vietnam and even before that, from the time of the beginning of the Cold War. . . And so we come to one Joe Iosbaker, a 67-year-old leader of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), which describes itself as “a national organization of revolutionaries fighting for socialism in the United States. Our home is in the working class.” FRSO’s rhetoric is pure 1930s-era Marxist agitprop, as if the Stalinist purges, the gulags, the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge killing fields had never existed: “We are organizing the united front against monopoly capitalism — with the strategic alliance of the multinational working class and oppressed nationality movements at its core. This is our general strategy for revolution in the U.S.”

With that from friend and friend of the blog Robert Spencer as the set-up, Raw Egg Nationalist takes it further, a lot further than maybe we'd like to go . . .

The transformation of El Salvador dramatically illustrates a point made by Friedrich Nietzsche, one that’s often missed. In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche set himself the task of revealing the non-moral origins of various institutions, including morality itself. One of his main targets was the state and the notion of a primitive “social contract.” Far from originating in a friendly handshake and an agreement among equals, the state was birthed in blood. Before the state was the state, it was ravaging barbarians—the blonde beasts—who descended on less warlike peoples and subjugated them. Over time, through great violence, these pitiless lords shaped and molded their captives into citizens, self-regulating creatures that could live together, act responsibly, and obey commands. . .

The broader point—that great violence is an inescapable part of the civilizing process—is obviously true. Historians of medieval Europe have shown that, generation after generation, something like 1 percent of the male population was put to death in the name of law and order. The peaceful, high-trust societies that European governments are now destroying through mass immigration—societies where murder was no longer a valid social strategy, only the rare product of intoxication or sexual jealousy—existed because the most violent people were systematically put to death until their genes were expunged for good. . .

Predictions make fools of us all, they say. Bukele may prove a lone exception in the Americas: a leader of unusual will and a ruthless pragmatism who is prepared to assert the rights of the peaceful majority against those of the small minority of murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and pimps who once acted with impunity.

Have a great day!

And lastly, a quick shout-out and a huge thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS




• Two pilots dead, LaGuardia closed as flight, emergency vehicle collide: sources
  AIRPORT COLLISION

• El Salvador’s turnaround under Nayib Bukele suggests an uncomfortable truth: order often returns not through consensus, but through force most societies are unwilling to wield.
  Raw Egg Nationalist: Will There Be Blood? Can America and the West Be Recivilized without Violence?
  
• Robert Spencer: As pro-Islamic Republic of Iran Marxists rally in Chicago, the U.S. is finding out.
  How Long Can a Country Survive the Presence of Those Who Wish to Destroy It?

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:15 AM | Comments (371) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily News Stuff 23 March 2026

Top Story

• Elon Musk has announced TeraFab, a Tesla-SpaceX joint venture to bring the various companies' (including xAI and I guess Twitter) chip manufacturing together under one very large roof. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  $20 billion buys a lot of roof.
  
  Primarily it will be producing local AI chips for robots - vision processing and similar systems, and large scale general purpose AI chips for orbital datacenters.
  
  This is the 21st century I asked for. Certainly more so than anything OpenAI has delivered.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (69) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Overnight Open Thread - March 22, 2026 [Doof]

From Earth Pictures

Howdy Hordelings! Thanks for stopping by the Sunday ONT. Spring has sprung! I was out enjoying the amazing weather today - playing some mediocre golf. What were you up to today? Hopefully something enjoyable. Join us in the comments. What's on YOUR mind tonight?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:04 PM | Comments (471) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: Fourth Edition O' March!

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving hell did it get to be the Fourth Edition O' March? Hmmm?

With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (233) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: Eat, Drink, And Be Merry (And Ignore What Anyone Else Says!)

[Courtesy of Commenter "Dr_No" Take a look at his stuff!]

Food and drink pomposity is a real thing, especially among the nomenklatura and their hangers-on in Park Slope and Hyde Park and Tribeca and Austin. Sure, we all have our little foibles about food (shaken Manhattans are a creation of the Devil), but most people just try to make and eat what they like, and don't trouble themselves too much about appearances when it comes to what is on the plate in front of them.

And that is as it should be!

If you want to eat microwave frozen burritos while standing over the sink, or fast food while hunched over the steering wheel? Have at it! I have done both, and have enjoyed those meals. If you want to eat at a fancy restaurant with 19 forks, knives, spoons, and three unidentified utensils, while being served nine courses over four hours? Go for it! I have done that and it's a hoot!

One of my most memorable meals was a chunk of Safeway Cheddar, half a Galileo salami, several chunks of sourdough bread, and three bottles of Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve beer. Granted, it was a glorious Northern California day, on the beach at Fort Ross after a particularly successful abalone dive, and that might beat the kitchen sink scenario, but still...

What were some of your memorable meals? Extra credit for interesting locations.

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (260) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First World Problems...

Steam heating systems are robust...they last forever, in part because they are so simple. But they also need some maintenance, and bleeding the air out of the system is one of those things that needs to be done.

Unless your bleed valve looks like mine! One side of the system (it's split into two parts) gurgles like a drunken hobo guzzling Mad Dog 20-20. And it's not the noise that's the worst part; obviously it isn't heating as efficiently, and since I am a cheap bastard, every gurgle is a reminder that my obscenely expensive heating costs (thanks to the leftists in NJ state government) will be just a bit more.

And to top it off, the radiator is behind a decorative panel with an access opening designed for someone with petite hands who can see in the dark.

My best option is probably to rip out the steam system, rip up the floors, install radiant heat, and install new hardwood floors. Or maybe do it the other way...rip out the ceilings and install radiant from underneath.

Or...of course...just burn it down and start over!

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (174) | Trackbacks (Suck)

"Regime Change" In Iran Is Nothing New...Trump Is The First Western Leader To Act Rather Than Obfuscate

The world would be a very different place had Western leaders taken seriously the existential threat of Iran's fanatical Mullahs and their particular brand of Shia Islam.

Western governments have been aware of Iran and its support for terror groups at least since the early 1980s. The 1983 embassy bombing in Beirut, and then the Marine barracks bombing the same year should have been a clarion call for the destruction of the Mullahcracy, but as is the post-modern West's wont, there was lots of tough talk about sanctions and isolation and containment, but no understanding of the bedrock of the Mullahs...the destruction of Israel, America, and the West.

The 1990s, with the fall of the Soviet Union could have been a tremendous opportunity for a united effort to destroy what was becoming the nexus of Islamic terror, as Iran busily expanded its footprint across the world, and gathered the various Islamic groups. Pivoting to Iran would have been easy. But the West, led by the feckless Bush senior and then the execrable Bill Clinton was more interested in the cash they could extract out of their defense budgets, rather than using them in the defense of America and Europe from the depredations of Iran.

And the terror continued! The Khobar Towers bombing, bombings in Argentina (the Israeli embassy and a Jewish center), and uncountable suicide bombings...all at the hands of iran's proxies.

And continued... Iran enthusiastically supported attacks on Coalition troops in Iraq...even exporting its IED technology to maximize death and destruction. The assassination of Lebanon's Prime Minister in 2005, which led to the downfall of Lebanon as a (barely) functioning state, Hamas and Islamic Jihad bombings, and even limited support for the Afghan insurgency... all of it followed the same tired script that the West carefully ignored.

And why? Oil. Europe and the rest of the world was addicted to Iranian oil, and they would rather have a steady supply of petroleum than defend themselves from an apocalyptic philosophy whose only goal was their destruction! Add in rabid Jew-hate among the left, who relished the thought of an ascendant Iran as a counter to Israel and its rapidly growing technological and military base, and the stage was set for Iran to become the power in the Middle East.

Oceans of oil money, a complacent West that was comfortable with some level of death and destruction that Iran paid for, and only Israel saying publicly what most people didn't want to hear...Iran wants the destruction of...everything!

So Iran got busy expanding the manufacturing capacity...theater ballistic missiles, drones, antiaircraft systems, and most terrifying; a massive nuclear research program with the goal of nuclear weapons.

And it was all paid for with Western and Chinese money! Even billions of dollars of American taxpayer funds, courtesy of the Obama administration, supposedly in exchange for...who knows!

But President Donald Trump shattered the paradigm of Western Weakness vs. Iranian intransigence. It should have been done 40 years ago after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 American Marines and 58 French soldiers. It should have been done after the Paris bombings in 1985-1986. It should have been done after the Argentina bombings in the early 1990s. It should have been done after the Hariri assassination. And it most certainly should have been done after Iran was proven to be the source for the IEDs and other weapons that were used to kill so many American servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The price we are paying for what should have been done a long time ago is a painful reminder that, as Winston Churchill famously said:

Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely.

President Donald Trump is not an appeaser, and future generations will laud him as the American president who finally stopped the apocalyptic Iranian dictatorship, and prevented a nuclear war in the Middle East.

His interlocutors are curiously silent about the 47 year history of Iranian-exported death and destruction. They are more interested in exercising their hatred of Donald Trump, and far less interested in defending America from Iran's unshakable focus on the death of America and the West. They are the appeasers about whom Churchill spoke, and it should be a permanent stain on anyone who does not have the moral clarity to see that the destruction of the Mullahcracy is a fundamental good.

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (206) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 3-22-2026 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (332) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 22 March 2026

Top Story

• An Ohio datacenter planned by Japanese company SoftBank will cost $40 billion to build - and require a new 9.2GW gas turbine generator complex that will cost another $33 billion. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Or, as the article notes, 9 nuclear reactors, though that option is off the table due to the excruciatingly long lead times thanks to a thousand layers of bureaucratic nonsense.
  
  Which is ironic considering that the site chosen for the datacenter near Piketon was used to produce nuclear fuel from 1956 until 2001.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (212) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Night Club ONT - March 21, 2026 [D squared]

Welcome to Club ONT - a collaboration of The Disco and The Dino. Come in in, grab a drink or 3. Make a new friend. Hang out with an old friend. Talk about your hoops bracket. It's a laid back kind of night. Let's keep it light and fun!

[Top photo: Vintage Tavern - Suffolk, VA]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (369) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Post [moviegique]: The Magnificent Ambersons

Orson Welles' follow-up to Citizen Kane is the touching, tragic tale of an American family that rose to riches and prominence in the 19th century—only to lose it all in the wake of the burgeoning automobile industry.

Well, sort of. A funny thing happened on the way to the bijou (and there is an actual theater called "The Bijou" in this movie): War broke out. And not just any war, but World War II. More about that in a moment. (Stay tuned! for breaking World War II news!)

The second book of Booth Tarkington's trilogy, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, had been filmed previously, as a 70 minute 1925 silent picture which was chopped down to 33 minutes.

Orson Welles recorded a version of this story as an hourlong radio special featuring his Mercury Players. But he wanted to give it proper cinematic treatment. The Tarkingtons were family friends, and the character of Eugene (Joseph Cotton) Welles claimed was based on his own father, also an inventor, who died when Welles was 15.

This little turd is going to get his come-uppance, and it's not going to be fun at all.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:30 PM | Comments (246) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - March 21, 2026 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. When you follow the long and windy road, you end up with maps as a theme for this Hobby Thread.

[Top photo: Lupine Lane, 20x30 acrylic, Misanthropic Humanitarian]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (195) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, March 21

Courtesy Russell Beers

* * *

Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

Posted by: K.T. at 03:32 PM | Comments (67) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, March 21

Happy Spring! With Easter and Passover coming up, we're starting with some seasonal flowers today:

My Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter cactus blooms for all 3 holidays. Here is the most recent one.

sharon(willow's apprentice)

Truly amazing that you get three holidays from that cactus! Beautiful photo.

*

Posted by: K.T. at 01:29 PM | Comments (50) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Women of The New Religious Wars

So disappointing to some . . . .

I woke up this morning to the following trending news item on X:

Carrie Prejean Boller Challenges Bishop Barron Over Commission Firing

Boller, a recent Catholic convert and former evangelical, said the text supported her belief that modern Israel does not fulfill biblical prophecy, a stance she links to her February removal from President Trump's White House Religious Liberty Commission. Barron acknowledged the text but attributed her dismissal to disruptive behavior at a prior meeting, like browbeating witnesses and hijacking discussions. He affirmed the Catholic view condemning antisemitism and supporting Israel's right to exist while rejecting prophetic fulfillment, a position less common among evangelicals. The public clash highlights tensions in conservative circles over theology, religious authenticity, and coalition unity.

This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.

Prediction prompted by a bit of earlier communication from Prejean Boller to the Bishop:

Posted by: K.T. at 11:18 AM | Comments (192) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

[That and prayer!]

*****

Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in North Hudson)

1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice. Or don't get caught.
3) Running with sharp objects is no way to impress the one you want to.
4) Have a great weekend!

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:00 AM | Comments (296) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 21 March 2026

Top Story

• Press X to doubt: Microsoft says it is fixing Windows 11. (Nerds.xyz)
  
  Almost everything on the list is reversing changes that they push on users against vehement objections, or side effects of those changes.
  
  I'll believe it when I see it. Or six months after that, really.
  
  Meanwhile the Windows 10 IoT Enterprise Edition still exists (and there's a Windows 11 version that is also less broken than the Home edition, if you need support for recent features like Ethernet-over-Thunderbolt.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (158) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Top O' The Ont To Ya!

Howdy folks! Thought I might not get to do my ONT this week, but we are back up and running! So, what do you feel like doing tonight?

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (342) | Trackbacks (Suck)