This post was published at SGTreport
Category: Corruption
Apple, The BeeEss Company
Done being a “fanboy” yet? No? You must like getting ripped off.
Hiding something you know is defective in a manner that will cause people to think their device should be replaced with a newer one, instead of either having it fixed under warranty or performing a relatively inexpensive repair, is outrageous.
Apple is being sued on this basis alleging consumer fraud, and IMHO rightly so.
Make no mistake — Apple only came clean after being caught. They didn’t tell anyone up front, they didn’t disclose the presence of the software change they made in anything like release notes that accompanied the new code, nothing.
They in fact said nothing despite people noting a problem until they were caught by irrefutable evidence that was presented to the public by a customer, and only thendid they come clean as to what they did.
That is evidence of bad faith and intentional misconduct and I hope the plaintiffs shove it so far up Cook’s and Apple’s ass that they can taste it.
That was not a mistake. It was in fact just the latest manifestation of what Apple as a company is — an extractive firm that has managed to create a religious cult of fervent grape Kool-Aid drinkers among Americans who parade around like they’ve got some part of God in their pockets and thus are blessed.
The truth does not matter to any of those fanbois however, nearly all of whom will keep buying their crap despite now having hard evidence that they’ve been intentionally screwed.
This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2017-12-30.
The Hidden-in-Plain-Sight Mechanism of the Super-Wealthy: Money-Laundering 2.0
Financial and political power are two sides of one coin.
We all know the rich are getting richer, and the super-rich are getting super-richer. This reality is illustrated in the chart of income gains, the vast majority of which have flowed to the top .01%–not the top 1%, or the top .1% — to the very tippy top of the wealth-power pyramid:
Though all sorts of reasons have been offered to explain this trend–I’ve described the mechanisms of financialization here for years–two that don’t attract much mainstream media attention are money laundering and control fraud, i.e. changing the rules of what’s legal so what was illegal yesterday is legal today–presto-magico, illegally skimmed wealth is now “legal.”
Correspondent JD recently submitted an excellent summary of the progression from Money Laundering 1.0 to Money Laundering 2.0:
Money laundering 1.0 is making dirty money legal, control fraud is manipulating the ‘legal’ options, and money laundering 2.0 is making sure that ‘legal’ fortunes are not taxed and cannot be clawed back.”
Conventional money laundering works by shifting ill-gotten gains into legitimate banks and/or assets. Ill-gotten gains can be laundered quite easily by buying homes or businesses (in the U. S., Europe, etc.) with cash. The home or enterprises can then be sold and the net is now legit.
This post was published at Charles Hugh Smith on DECEMBER 29, 2017.
What Happens When A Russiagate Skeptic Debates A Professional Russiagater
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
Have you ever wondered why mainstream media outlets, despite being so fond of dramatic panel debates on other hot-button issues, never have critics of the Russiagate narrative on to debate those who advance it? Well, in a recent Real News interview we received an extremely clear answer to that question, and it was so epic it deserves its own article.
Real News host and producer Aaron Mat has recently emerged as one of the most articulate critics of the establishment Russia narrative and the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, and has published in The Nation some of the clearest arguments against both that I’ve yet seen. Luke Harding is a journalist for The Guardian where he has been writing prolifically in promotion of the Russiagate narrative, and is the author of New York Times bestseller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.
In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill accurately described as ‘brutal’.
The term Gish gallop, named after a Young Earth creationist who was notoriously fond of employing it, refers to a fallacious debate tactic in which a bunch of individually weak arguments are strung together in rapid-fire succession in order to create the illusion of a solid argument and overwhelm the opposition’s ability to refute them all in the time allotted. Throughout the discussion the Gish gallop appeared to be the only tool that Luke Harding brought to the table, firing out a deluge of feeble and unsubstantiated arguments only to be stopped over and over again by Mat who kept pointing out when Harding was making a false or fallacious claim.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Thu, 12/28/2017 –.
China Beige Book Warns Economic Slowdown Has Begun
When it comes to the global economy, few things matter as much as China, the trajectory of its economy and especially the pace and impulse of its credit creation, which is ironic because virtually all data coming out of China is fabricated and manipulated, and thoroughly untrustworthy, either on purpose or “by accident.”
The latest example of the former was highlighted over the weekend, when we discussed that a nationwide Chinese audit found some local governments inflated revenue levels and raised debt illegally, once again making a mockery of China’s credibility on the global stage. As Bloomberg reported ten cities, counties or districts in the Yunnan, Hunan and Jilin provinces, as well as the southwestern city of Chongqing, inflated fiscal revenues by 1.55 billion yuan, the National Audit Office said in a statement on its website dated Dec. 8.
An even more blatant example of the former was highlighted in October ahead of China’s Communist Party Congress, when the local securities watchdog literally “advised” some loss-making companies to avoid publishing quarterly results ahead of the Congress as authorities sought to ensure stock-market stability during the critical gathering of China’s political elite. As a result, at least 17 Shenzhen-listed companies announced delays to their earnings reports from Oct. 20 to Oct. 24, up from three during the same period last year.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Wed, 12/27/2017.
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