#you are not morally responsible for purchasing from a company with a monopoly on what you need

[uglyspoon]

It isn't fair that what you need to live is so hard to get. From aids and supports, to accomodations, to medications. From cost, to moral arguments in the culture around you, you're not imagining how challenging this can be.

You should be able to get whatever you need, medication, supports, and quality of life convenience like plastic bags.

#actually disabled #medication #you are not morally responsible for where the products you need to live are manufactured #you are not morally responsible for purchasing from a company with a monopoly on what you need #q #us insurance being whay it is you may not have a choice even if other options are available #and you shouldnt be made to choose between food and meds

[bestethgame2095ky-blog]

Corruption is for charitable donations? Paving just how for illegal methods, the "prestige company" of rich Canadian entrepreneurs exposed

Editor's notice: "Dark Money" chronicles the stories from the world's top companies using various unlawful means to combine their commercial jobs. For example, after WikiLeaks, the biggest drip in history-confidential information revealed from the International League of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in 2016. The Panama Documents have made the information of corruption, taxes evasion, and money laundering of global political figures and rich chaebols public one at a time. This article is an excerpt from your profession of Canadian billionaire Victor Dahdaleh: After the charges of bribery were exposed with all the Panamanian paperwork, he placed on the mask of "charitable wealthy businessman" to cover up his unlawful benefits. On June 20, 2016, Victor Dahdaleh, putting on a deep reddish and blue graduation gown, got up from his chair and walked onto the podium within the conference hall of York University or college in Toronto. There is a round of applause. York University is one of the most prestigious educational institutions in Canada. Lately, it has established an excellent reputation around the world, especially in business schools and legislation schools. Because the beginning of the 21st one hundred year, Dakhdal has been probably one of the most important customers of the institution. Dakhdal (still left) received a doctorate in law from York University or college in 2016 and addressed the graduates. Victor Dahdaleh Foundation (victor dahdaleh base) There is a building named after him on the campus, and there will be another soon after. In 2015, Dahdaleh donated US$20 million to greatly help the school set up the "Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research" (Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Study). Mamdouh Shoukri, the leader and vice chief executive of York University, called it a "disruptive gift" and also "the biggest alumni donation in the annals of the school." IN-MAY 2016, Dakhdal donated US$3.5 million to McGill University in Montreal to fund new important posts in neuroscience study. He received the school's administration diploma in 1975. McGill University or college praised him as Britain's greatest donor. In November 2016, Dakhdal donated more than $6 million to the "British Lung Foundation" (Uk Lung Foundation)-again, this is the organization's largest donation. In recognition of his charitable deeds, York University awarded Dakhdal the highest honorary diploma in law. When he stood in the central podium of the conference hall, he advised the market: "Do your very best to be always a good citizen. & most importantly," he ongoing: "Once you succeed, be sure you drink water and think about the resource." When he While standing on the podium praising the virtues of altruism, his resources in Switzerland were frozen. Since 2009, the Judicial Courtroom office in Bern provides continued to file felony proceedings against Dakhdal on suspected cash laundering, and contains frozen a lot more than 60 million U.S. dollars-this large sum may only be Dakhdal's total property A little part of. From smelting to mining, the purchase of the upstream and downstream of Worldwide Aluminum Dakhdal made huge amount of money through bribery. That is just the first step in his astonishing career. In a series of activities, he laundered money and gained prestige and status in the global liberal elite circle. All processes started with Alcoa (ALCOA, hereinafter known as Alcoa). As soon as Dakhdal shifted to Alcoa's Swiss workplace, he stepped in to the company's sphere of influence. IN-MAY 2000, Alcoa merged with another American aluminum giant Reynolds to be the world's largest aluminum company. Before approving the merger, the EU Executive Committee necessary Alcoa to sell a few of its European property to avoid monopoly. Alcoa's forging and warm extrusion herb in Indiana. Shutterstock Among the shares that the company must sell, section of this is a 50% ownership of a Reynolds-acquired refinery in Stade, Germany. The Love Channel With Swing on Blogspot was Dakhdal, who was simply no longer only a corrupt intermediary, but also an important participant in the global aluminum market. In June 2004, the rest of the 50% of the Stade refinery had been also looking for a buyer. The seller is the Norwegian energy organization Norsk Hydro. Dakhdal paid 110 million U.S. dollars at that time and possessed all shares within the Stade smelter. This acquisition also allowed him to obtain 10% of the company known as "Halco", which is the owner of 51% of the shares of Guinea Bauxite Business (CBG). The latter is a bauxite mining organization within the Republic of Guinea. (The rest of the 49% from the shares are kept by the Guinean authorities.) The Guinea Bauxite Corporation has exclusive legal rights to one of the world's largest established reserves of bauxite in the world, and Dakhdal is now also divided. From then on, he was in a mansion in Belgravia, and he began to purchase his bauxite directly from Africa and sent it to a refinery in Germany. He changed himself into a vertically integrated light weight aluminum tycoon. Further reading: The largest borderless cooperation in history-the journalist firm behind the Panama Papers, 6 things you should know At the peak from the philanthropy with numerous donations to the mid-2000s, Dakhdal launched the third motion: to be a global philanthropist. He established a foundation in his own name and donated huge amount of money to universities, healthcare research, and liberalism. He furthermore gave thousands to the individual rights organization Global Crisis Group (ICG) and backed cancer research at Imperial College in London; a lot more than 20,000 bucks was donated to the Institute of Community Policy (IPPR), a left-wing think tank in London. In 2007, the National League of Nations (NECO) granted Dakhdal using the "International Ellis Isle Medal of Respect"; this prize is to identify people who have "professional, private or charitable efforts to the worldwide community." Dakhdal entered an increased social circle, donated money to the Labour Party in England, and became a pal of former Uk Prime Minister Blair and previous US Chief executive Clinton. In 2004, when he has been in full control of Stade, he had already started donating towards the Clinton Foundation. It is rumored that the quantity of donations fell between 1 million and 5 million US dollars. (The building blocks did not disclose the actual amount.) The Clinton Base and the Dakhdal Foundation possess jointly supplied a scholarship to enable outstanding learners from poor nations, especially the center East, to get into McGill University. McGill University been the most glorious minute of Dakhdal's philanthropy: In '09 2009, he persuaded the institution to grant Clinton an honorary level. What is even more impressive is the fact that while the All of us Section of Justice's felony investigations of Alcoa and Dakhdal were in full swing, he also persuaded Clinton to visit Montreal to get the honor. On the early morning of Oct 10th, when Clinton stood in front of about 700 spectators, Dakhdal smiled proudly and personally hung a hood on Clinton's shoulders and awarded the amount. In the film record of this ceremony, Dakhdal gave Clinton a heavy embrace. In his talk, Clinton known as Dakhdal "my pal." His conversation lasted nearly an hour, and he recurring the necessity of "moral responsibility" frequently. He put forward many data on worldwide inequality and adjustment of the fundamental social structure. The numbers are usually precise and terrifying. He put a lot of statistics collected in to the content of the wonderful speech, these information accurately and powerfully clarify the trend of global injustice and the structure used to control the indegent. If he previously also told the story of Dakhdal at that time, it would completely illustrate how business bribery (especially the size of Alcoa) can deepen inequality and weaken the prospects for democracy by empowering authoritarian regimes. Wrap the dark money company with moral prestige. Now, Dakhdal continues his philanthropy, splitting time taken between Greater london and another large mansion-the latter can be his and his wife's big home in Paudex, Switzerland, situated in A remote alley. Nowadays, Dakhdal (pictured) proceeds his philanthropy. The image implies that he visited Cambridge University or college in December 2019 and donated 瞿25 million in the name of the foundation to the Uk Lung Base (British Lung Base). Research on mesothelioma. victordahdaleh.com Generally there, Dahdal is constantly on the reap the benefits of his long-term partnership with Alcoa in his old Morris Hotel building. Harco, their jv in Guinea, experienced a surplus of US$117 million from 2015 to 2017, and Dakhdal got 5% (Editor's notice: approximately NT$175 million) . The role from the intermediary illustrates perhaps one of the most destructive effects of high-level commercial corruption: it is a disturbing cycle in which prestige paves just how for corruption, which paves the way for increased prestige. Through the Alcoa test in Pittsburgh, Charles Gibbons, an attorney representing Bahrain Aluminium, said one mid-day: "The truth will observe the trajectory from the questions you ask and unfold before you." Dakhdal's profession , Which just implies that lies are usually piled-up where no-one dares to ask. This statement furthermore applies to foreign government officials who get bribes. Only once the powerful Western systems and professions (companies, banking institutions, and attorneys) elect to ignore black cash, can corrupt international officials have the ability to acknowledge bribes and launder money. Just like those bribery behaviors that use intermediaries, the impact of corruption not merely stays overseas, but additionally disturbs us at home. This article certified excerpt from "black money", Author: David ??Montero (David Montero), together publishing. Editor in charge: Zhang Tingluo

#bitcoin mining game #coinbase earn #cryptocurrency mining #earn free bitcoins instantly #etheroll #free btc #gods unchained #how to get free bitcoins instantly #rpg token maker #sophophilia

[akoaganier]

Jeff Bezos the founder and CEO of Amazon, owner of Blue Horizon and The Washington Post has become the Richest man in the world and modern history as of October 27 2017.

He now surpasses Bill Gates by 10 billion dollars.There is a lot I would want to ask a person of this affluence. How did you accumulate this wealth? Did anyone help you? What do you do with all this money? A lot of us are struggling, are you helping America? What kind of effect are you having on our country? How much richer are you than than the rest of us?

Jeff Bezos makes $231,000 a minute, his warehouse workers make $12 an hour.

It’s safe to say that the wealth of Jeff Bezos comes from the hard labor of others and unjustly so. Excusing the likes of Jeff Bezos and his type of psychotic anti-social business practices is perpetuating the exploitation of the American people and widens the gap of income inequality. Jeff Bezos just bought a 23 million dollar home, an old textile museum he plans to covert into two mansions. I do not think I would be alone in this to say; he should probably properly accommodate his employees before making the grandeur purchase of a 27,000 square foot property. TIME magazine says that from January 1st to May 1st of 2015 Jeff Bezos saw his wealth increase by 275 million every single day. His average employee makes $28,446 a year, he makes that every 8.93 seconds. His warehouse workers from Lehigh Valley, whom are documented to have worked in an 114 degree environment and pass out from heat exhaustion, make $12 an hour while he makes $190,920 every minute in 2015 (as of 2018 he makes $231,000 a minute). Jeff Bezos paid ambulances and paramedics to be stationed outside of the warehouses rather than install air conditioning. In the list of priorities, running your business ethically would be at the top, a customer receiving their package with two day shipping is not worth the cost of a warehouse workers health. Furthermore your fortune should not be made on the savings that come from underpaying your staff.

Elmer Goris, a resident of Allentown, worked in warehouses for over 10 years, he worked for Amazon at their Lehigh Valley warehouse for one year before quitting in July 2011, because he was “frustrated with the heat and demands that he work mandatory overtime”. "I never felt like passing out in a warehouse and I never felt treated like a piece of crap in any other warehouse but this one" Elmer Goris says "They can do that because there aren't any jobs in the area”. Amazon is notorious for their abuse of temporary workers. Amazon hires workers through third party contractors to save money and to avoid being responsible for injuries - it allows them to avoid the American standard regulations that would otherwise give workers unemployment insurance and make Amazon liable for worker compensation. Abused workers cannot even unionize, because the work force is constantly changing and most of them are not legally tied to Amazon. It is a loophole and it leaves Americans in the dust after they are overworked by this mega-monopoly.

Amazon runs on a dystopian set of moral values. Temporary workers interviewed at the Lehigh Valley warehouse say “few people in their working groups actually made it to a permanent Amazon position. Instead, they were pushed harder and harder to work faster and faster until they were terminated, they quit, or they got injured”. Rosemarie Fritchman a 67 year old warehouse worker was driven away by an ambulance after medical staff examined her for heat exhaustion. Rosemarie Fritchman says “Following company policy, she provided a doctor's note upon returning to work, and she was still terminated without explanation”. She was in a conference room pleading for unemployment benefits of about $160 a week and was denied. The human resources agent that sat across from her denied her plea, this agent of course does not work for Amazon instead she works for Integrity Staffing Solutions, a company paid by Amazon to recruit warehouse workers and “one of the fastest-growing agencies of its kind in the country”. Jeff Bezos uses them to save money by fighting off workers like Rosemarie Fritchman who were injured on the job and are pleading for unemployment benefits. In June of 2011 an emergency room doctor called federal regulators to report the Amazon warehouse as an “unsafe environment”.

“Tell Mr. Bezos and the rest of management to come out of their offices and get on the shop floor. At the end of the day, they never feel what we go through in a day for $12 an hour. They get to sit down in their offices and get paid more than we will see in a year,” - a single mother of two, 2017.

In 2018 Amazon still avoids compensating Amazon workers for injuries acquired on the job

This is not a resolved issue, since then Shannon Allen 49 years old of Azle, Texas was injured twice after beginning work on May 2017. When being injured on the job her experience was this; “Nobody was taking me seriously about my injury. My injury was being minimized. It was not being acknowledged”.  On October 24, 2017, at 10:30 at night she told her manager “My back is killing me” she felt a sharp pain in her back “It felt like someone stabbed me in the back and dragged it all the way down my spine”. There were no doctors or nurses, just EMTs. The EMT told her to lie down on a heating pad for 30 minutes, then she was discharged without pay which Amazon labeled “voluntary time off”, a bizarre label for an injury on the job. Rather than send her to a doctor, Amazon set up a questionable “treatment plan” that consisted of sitting on a heating pad for 15-20 minutes a night. She went back to work the next night but the pain was so severe she could not get passed the first four hours of her shift, and when she could not complete her shift, Amazon sent her home without payment for the work she did complete. “Amazon paid Shannon $25 a week for her short-term disability”. She says “They tried to push narcotics on me. I said I don’t want your narcotics. I want to get better”.

She “returned to work on January 27, a day before her birthday”. Amazon called her time off an “excessive amount of time to complete therapy” and cancelled her workers’ compensation. The day she returned to work Shannon was injured a second time. This time Shannon looked for other doctors other than the therapist chosen by Amazon’s insurance company. This doctor said “he did not understand why she was being released to go back to work. He said that she was seriously injured, ordered her to take off work for a month, and indicated that she may need surgery”. Amazon’s “peer review group” overturned this doctor’s diagnosis. After both injuries in the Amazon warehouse, on April of 2018 Amazon’s workers’ compensation manager told Shannon that the company’s “safety senior ops” manager “had determined that she did not need any accommodations for her job”. “They really don’t care about anything but profit” says Shannon.

Shannon Allen even had to take a co-worker to the emergency room herself because her blood pressure skyrocketed, “The doctor said if she had not come in, she would not have made it”. “Every time we would go on break, ambulances would be waiting outside to pick people up. But not one manager, nobody from HR, nobody from security is out there escorting people to the ambulances. They just don’t care. You are on your own”. Shannon Allen says “On my shift we were picking people up from heat exhaustion”. As per usual Shannon Allen described the Amazon warehouse as “sweltering” the working environment reached levels of 80, 85, and 90 degrees Fahrenheit “In the summertime, it gets over 100 degrees in there”.

Bill Gates uses “billions of dollars a year on global health, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is putting $1 billion a year into his Blue Origin space venture” - GeekWire. “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel” says Jeff Bezos during the Axel Springer award ceremony in Berlin. Jeff Bezos just referred to the profit that he makes off the underpaid sacrificial labor of his workers…as Amazon winnings, this is not a lottery it is the deliberate exploitation of the American people. Jeff Bezos has the personal financial resources to pay his workers especially if he can say something like this; “Blue Origin is expensive enough to be able to use that fortune. I am liquidating about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock to fund Blue Origin. And I plan to continue to do that for a long time” liquidating as in cashing-in his stock, thats tangible money. All the while many Amazon workers are relying on food stamps and being pushed to work until they burn out. “They brag about the number of people that they fire” - Shannon Allen.

Allen says “There are people living in the parking lot at (Amazon warehouse) DFW-7. I have seen that myself. They go in to wash up in the bathroom”. She says “I hate this place. I feel like I’m working in a prison camp”.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders posted a video on May 22 2018 outing Jeff Bezos for his greed highlighting the fact that "Bezos makes more in 10 seconds than the median Amazon employee makes in a year: $28,466”. In response Amazon News posted “Please compare our median pay & benefits to other retailers. We’d be happy for you to come see (an Amazon warehouse) for yourself”. Accepting their invitation Bernie Sanders posts "I remain deeply concerned about Amazon, an enormously profitable corporation, paying workers wages that are so low that they are forced to depend on federal programs like Medicaid, food stamps and public housing for survival. At a time of exploding profits, I would hope that Amazon would pay everyone who works in your (warehouses) a living wage”.

Amazon threatens housing for homeless

Amazon was founded on July 5, 1994  in Seattle, Washington,  its about time this morally questionable monopoly and Jeff Bezos pay their fair share to the American People. Just last month on May 1st of 2018, Amazon “halted construction of a new 17-story office building in downtown Seattle, Washington to protest a proposed city council tax that would fund housing for the homeless”. Amazon also “threatened to sublease office space it is presently using in another downtown building”. Another massive corporate move to manipulate our government and policies, halting progressive reforms.

“The city council proposal would tax large businesses in Seattle by a total of $0.26 per worker hour for those employed in Seattle (i.e. if an Amazon employee in Seattle makes $50/hour, Amazon will pay $50.26/hr, with $0.26 going to the city). This would generate $75 million a year to fund the construction of 1,780 affordable housing units within five years, as well as a modest expansion of social programs for the homeless. If enacted at a city council meeting on May 15, the tax would cost Amazon $20 million per year—roughly one sixth of what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes each day”. - wsws.org

Seattle has the third largest homeless population in America. In 2017 the Seattle Times reported that “Nearly 22,000 homeless people” were counted, a 3.5 percent increase over the course of a year. 169 of which died outdoors in 2017.

Amazon has routinely exploited the American people for the last 23 years and has built a $129 billion fortune for it’s founder Jeff Bezos, at a 2018 rate of $231,000 per minute. To make matters worse Amazon does not pay it’s taxes. Steve Kovach a Business Insider senior correspondent says that Amazon's profits in 2017 were about $3 billion and it paid almost no federal taxes. Bob Bryan a Business Insider Policy Reporter says “Amazon avoids paying federal taxes using a variety of tax credits and tax exemptions that are legal and built into the U.S. federal tax code. Some of these can include the research and development tax credit which allows them to deduct some of the costs of new investments” this includes Amazon’s research into drone delivery, but that simply means they get tax breaks for investing in themselves and becoming an even bigger conglomerate.

“Amazon does a really good job at avoiding federal taxes, and for most of its existence, it avoided charging you state sales tax. That's because of a Supreme Court case from 1992 that prevented states from collecting sales tax from e-commerce companies. It allowed Amazon and other retailers to sell tons of stuff to you effectively tax-free. By 2017, that all changed, Amazon started charging sales tax in all the states that have it, but it's not that simple, a lot of third-party sellers sell stuff through Amazon as well, and many of them don't charge sales tax” says Kovach. Bryan adds “there are tens of millions of dollars every year in state sales tax that go uncollected from third-party sellers”. According to Kovach, in addition to the saving Amazon has collected from avoiding federal taxes and sales taxes “(Amazon) has gotten over $600 million in tax breaks to build warehouses in certain states. It got another $147 million in tax breaks for building data centers around the country. Keep in mind Amazon is valued at over $700 billion, it's not like the company is struggling to save money”.

Every time you order using amazon to save a few dollars, those are tax dollars that will not go to schools, benefits for federal retirees and veterans, science and medical research, elderly and disabled citizens, and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) which provides health care to 60 million low-income American children and parents.

There are alternatives to shopping at Amazon, buy products locally or visit sites like: www.ethicalconsumer.org/boycotts/boycottamazon/amazonshoppingalternatives.aspx to find ethical shopping sources.

https://www.gofundme.com/5impots — Here is a gofundme link for Shannon Allen an Amazon warehouse worker that was injured on the job.

a few random notes to keep in mind

Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million and installed a policy to not write anything that criticizes its’ investors witch include the CIA

Jeff Bezos also bought WholeFoods for $13.7 billion

https://www.gofundme.com/5impots — Here is a gofundme link for Shannon Allen an Amazon warehouse employee that was injured on the job

http://time.com/money/5192998/jeff-bezos-net-worth-2018-worlds-richest-man/ - Jeff Bezos makes $230,000 a minute

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/09/amaz-d09.html - warehouse employee quotes

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html - amazon forces warehouse workers to heat exhaustion

http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-amazon-temporary-workers-unemployment-20121215-story.html -workers pushed to heat exhaustion than fired for missing work and denied unemployment insurance

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/04/amaz-m04.html - amazon protests tax increase to fund the construction of homeless shelters and affordable housing units

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-not-paying-taxes-trump-bezos-2018-4 - how amazon avoids paying taxes

#jeffbezos #corruption #amazon #politics #income inequality #wage theft

[yay855]

There are a lot of people out there who subscribe to the Libertarian ideology of “an economy without regulation is a prosperous one”. And while I can understand their reasoning, the fact is, it’s just not based in reality. And I’m going to explain why, because, quite frankly, the best way to argue against an economic ideology is to explain logically.

Part one: why regulations are important.

Before regulations were put in place in the United States, there was an economic era known as the Gilded Age. During this Gilded Age, American corporations were flourishing, with manufacturing being in its prime. The assembly line had just recently begun to be a thing, and many American workers had begun to move from rural areas to the city searching for work. However, this was not necessarily a good thing.

Back then, factories, mining jobs, and other low-level work were generally not good to their workers. They suffered from a list of very, very unpleasant problems.

- Lack of minimum wage. Because the workers weren’t required to be paid a minimum amount, they were often paid extremely little, to the point where there were entire towns of workers who could barely afford to eat. And that’s on top of...

- Child labor. Because children were allowed to work in factories, and because there was no public school system in place yet, children would have jobs just the same as their parents, often at the same factory. This is often what allowed the parents to feed their children- the fact that their children were themselves earning their own food.

- Lack of an actual paycheck. Instead of paying their workers in, you know, money, many companies would instead pay their workers in something known as scrip- it was a false currency that could only be used at the company store. If the company went belly-under, or just left town (as coal mining companies often did), the workers were left with absolutely nothing.

- Lack of safety. Factories would often force their workers to work at a breakneck pace, without any actual safety measures in place. A worker in a clothes factory would often find themselves with breathing problems, because they had fabric particles build up inside of their lungs. And there was no air circulation either, not even open windows. If a worker got caught in the machinery, they would get chewed up inside of it unless a fellow worker turned it off- and doing so, even to save a life, could get them in serious trouble.

These are, in fact, actual problems that actually happened. 

Then, the workers decided to strike back- specifically, by striking. They refused to do their jobs until their demands were met. In response, the factories hired strikebreakers, mercenaries whose job was to beat rebellious workers into submission so they’d stop striking and get back to work. You may even have heard of one group of strikebreakers- the Pinkertons.

Striking ultimately did not work until The Great Strike of 1877, in which workers from every single industry struck together, refusing to work until their demands were met. The entire US economy shut down- first the railroads, then the factories, and so on. This ultimately got the attention of those in charge, who decided to actually meet the demands of unions, aka groups of workers banding together to demand better rights. They then also forced unions into bureaucracy, slowing down any further progress they may make quite a bit. It didn’t work completely, but then, they also began to demonize unions, to the point where many people in the modern world believe unions are bad, even though unions got you:

- Minimum wage

- The eight-hour workday

- The weekend

- The end of child labor

- Employer-based health coverage

- Family and medical leave

While obviously not everyone has these things, things like minimum wage and child labor laws still exist.

But yay855, you might say, why did those things exist? Why couldn’t the people just use the Free Market to end them?

Well, I’ll tell you why: monopolies.

See, this all happened prior to one of the biggest regulations enacted: the ban on monopolies. Monopolies are when a single corporation owns an entire industry, meaning that they are no longer subject to competition. This allows them to enact all kinds of immoral practices without being challenged, to raise their prices as high as they like without anyone getting in their way. And if someone does attempt to stop them by creating competition, the big industry-spanning corporation can afford to lower their prices far below their new competition, waiting them out until the competition goes bankrupt before raising their prices back up. This is actually a tactic we see very often in modern business, such as with Uber- they have big backers, but ultimately charge less than the actual cost of business in order to put their competition out of business. This is also often used by big-name stores like Walmart and Starbucks, who will move into a new town, have large sales that the local competition can’t compete with, and then drive their prices back up once the local businesses close down.

But yay855, you might say, wouldn’t people just choose the more expensive option if it means supporting ethical business practices?

The short answer? No.

The long answer: Apple is known as one of the leading technology corporations, responsible for making Apple-brand electronics. Their biggest products are smartphones and computers. It is also effectively common knowledge that Apple products are manufactured using Chinese slave labor, as it is apparently cheaper to pay Chinese slave factories to make the product and ship it over to the US than to pay US factory workers. And yet, Apple is still one of the leading computer and smartphone brands. Their customers actually see Apple products as a point of pride, using them to fuel their own elitism. All this is despite the fact that Apple products are very expensive, despite the fact that Apple blatantly refuses to use industry standards like MicroUSB and Audio Jacks, instead replacing them with their own custom input adapters, the newest being the Lightning Port. While the Lightning Port being a multi-use port compatible with both audio output and data transfer is a promising development that should become the new standard, the iPhone X only has a single Lightning Port, forcing users to purchase an expensive and unwieldy accessory just so they can listen to music and charge their phone at the same time. And let’s not forget that the phone itself costs over a thousand dollars! And yet, it is consistently rated at or above four stars, despite all its fallbacks. Despite Apple using immoral practices to construct it.

Let’s also not forget that big oil spill caused by BP Oil in 2010, where a big-name oil company spilled a lot of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and did basically nothing to clean it up. And yet, they’re still a big-name oil company.

Most consumers do not care how moral their purchase was, they only care about what’s cheapest. That is because consumers themselves are concerned most with their immediate issues- things like “how much money can I afford to spend”. And because they are most concerned with how much money they are spending, they will gladly support a corrupt business if it means spending the least amount of money. While many middle-class and upper-class people will choose a more moral option, they can afford to do so- the majority of Americans (50.1% as of 2015) are of the working class, and their actual earnings shrink more and more every year as inflation goes up and wages remain largely stagnant. They are therefor forced to scrimp and scrounge every penny they can, and will ultimately always choose the cheapest option, not because they can afford to, but because they have to. And thus, immoral business practices will ultimately always succeed in a nation without regulation.

Part two: other reasons why businesses do immoral practices

Although pure profit is ultimately the biggest cause of why businesses act immorally, there are other reasons that cause them to act that way. The most important one is the stock market.

Here in the US, and in most places, a corporation is a publicly-traded entity, with shares of the company, known as stocks, being purchased and sold by stock brokers. The value of a stock is ultimately representative of the value of a corporation- the more profit a corporation brings in, the more its stocks are worth, and the more people will purchase and sell them.

Why is this a problem, you ask? Well, it’s a problem because it forces corporations to perform an ever-more-frantic dance of profit. Not long-term profit, mind you, but immediate profit. The faster an investor can sell their stock for a premium, the better.

A corporation can only improve profits so much. Once they hit that limit, where there is reasonably nowhere else to improve upon without sacrificing morality, they will sacrifice morality. The shareholders do, after all, typically control the majority of a company’s shares. Thus, once they hit that level, they dive down. Suddenly, corners are cut everywhere- this typically starts at the lowest levels first, but ultimately stops right around upper management. The CEO typically also benefits from this, as the increased profits thanks to reduced expenses go right into his bonus.

Final words:

Corporations are ultimately driven towards ever-increasing profits thanks to greed. The consumers ultimately do not notice the immorality of businesses, and if they do, they cannot normally afford to change their spending habits. And often, those that can will also not change their spending habits, because the cheapest options guarantee they have more money.

Libertarianism, specifically the ideal of zero corporate regulation, is ultimately a pipe dream. It relies on a populace willing and able to spend extra money to support moral business practices, something which we do not have. It also relies on immoral businesses not forming a monopoly by purchasing and/or driving out the competition, something which only is prevented thanks to government regulations.

#capitalism #libertarianism

[investmart007]

WASHINGTON | The Latest: Reddit says it banned 944 suspicious accounts

New Post has been published on https://goo.gl/yJDwhs

WASHINGTON | The Latest: Reddit says it banned 944 suspicious accounts

WASHINGTON | April 10, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) The Latest on Facebook’s privacy scandal and Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony (all times local):

8:20 p.m.

Discussion forum company Reddit issued its transparency report for 2017 during Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate appearance, saying it had found and banned 944 suspicious accounts associated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says in a post that the company is cooperating with Congress and informed lawmakers of its findings Tuesday.

Sen. Mark Warner welcomed the announcement in a statement, saying all technology platforms have a responsibility to prevent foreign adversaries from interfering in U.S. elections.

The update went out during Zuckerberg’s five-hour appearance before a joint U.S. Senate committee hearing. Senators grilled him about privacy in the wake of pro-Trump data mining firm Cambridge Analytica’s collection of Facebook data on millions of Americans without their knowledge.

__

6:55 p.m.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook has not seen a falloff in usage in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Zuckerberg had already said last week that the company has not seen any “meaningful impact” from an online campaign to “delete Facebook” or from some high-profile departures, such as Elon Musk’s companies pulling their pages from the site.

Tuesday’s congressional hearing is the first of two Zuckerberg faces this week to answer questions about Facebook’s privacy protections and other issues.

__

6:25 p.m.

If his notes are any indication, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expected senators to ask whether he’d resign. His notes acknowledge he’s made mistakes and say the company is facing a “big challenge” but will solve this one too.

Zuckerberg’s notes were briefly visible to an Associated Press photographer during a hearing Tuesday in which he answered questions about privacy, election interference and other issues.

The bullet-pointed pages include sections on “diversity,” ”competition,” and GDPR, the European data-privacy rules that go into effect next month. Zuckerberg’s notes warn him, “don’t say we already do what GDPR requires.”

The notes even refer to Tim Cook, the Apple CEO who recently criticized Facebook. One note says there are “lots of stories about apps misusing Apple data, never seen Apple notify people.”

__

6:20 p.m.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal had a piece of evidence during Tuesday’s grilling of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The former Connecticut attorney general displayed what his staff called a previously undisclosed 2014 agreement in which Facebook granted the researcher at the center of the Cambridge Analytica scandal permission to sell data collected from Facebook users through a survey.

Facebook has claimed it was deceived by the researcher, whose survey was used to collect data on up to 87 million users.

Blumenthal asked if the document violated a 2011 consent decree on improving user privacy that Facebook reached with the Federal Trade Commission.

Zuckerberg said no, but also said the document was “in conflict” with Facebook rules.

Blumenthal decried Facebook’s “willfull blindness” and insisted it will only change its ways with strict regulation.

___

5:40 p.m.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is assuring lawmakers he has learned a lot since starting the social network in his Harvard dorm room 14 years ago.

The roughly 2.2 billion people now using Facebook can only hope Zuckerberg’s views on personal privacy have changed.

Not long after Zuckerberg started Facebook while he was still 19 years old, he mocked the people entrusting him with their emails, pictures and other sensitive information while instant messaging with a friend. The exchange was obtained and published in 2010 by Business Insider.

After his friends asked him how he obtained so much information about 4,000 people, Zuckerberg said they “trust me” and then described people as “dumb” for doing it, punctuated with a profanity.

Zuckerberg later apologized for the remarks in a 2010 interview with “The New Yorker” and said he had “learned and grown a lot.”

___

5:10 p.m.

Investors are rallying around Facebook as CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears before Congress to answer questions about the social media giant’s recent privacy scandal.

Facebook shares rose 4.5 percent to $165.04, their biggest percentage gain in almost two years.

About half the gain came early in the day as the broader market surged on signs of an easing in trade tensions between the U.S. and China. Facebook shares gained further as Zuckerberg took questions from senators seeking an explanation for how Facebook failed to prevent a data-mining company from gathering personal information on 87 million users and whether the company does enough to protect users’ data.

Facebook shares are still down about 11 percent since the scandal broke last month due to concerns about stricter regulation of social media companies.

___

5 p.m.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company wouldn’t necessarily know if someone set up a shell corporation to run political ads in the U.S. to skirt the company’s verification process.

The company announced recently that it would require political advertisers — and those running so-called political “issue ads” — to verify who they are and that they have a physical address. Facebook would verify this by asking for a government-issued ID and by mailing a special code to the advertiser’s physical address to verify it.

Zuckerberg was responding to questions by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, who asked how the company is able to verify the “true beneficiary” of a site that is putting out political material.

Tuesday’s congressional hearing is the first of two Zuckerberg faces this week to answer questions about Facebook’s privacy protections and other issues.

___

4:50 p.m.

Crisis-management experts say the Facebook CEO looks a bit shaky at points but is overall doing a fairly good job on appearing cooperative and forthright.

Mike Chapple, a University of Notre Dame professor, said Zuckerberg was doing a good job overall.

Chapple said: “As far as I can tell the answers he’s providing are accurate, he’s being upfront about mistakes they’ve made in past and committed to correcting issues in the future.”

But Dartmouth Business Professor Paul Argenti said he sounded “staged and careful.”

Argenti said: “He’s probably said 15 times, ‘I’ll have my people get in touch with you.’ There’s a formality about the way he’s presenting himself.”

__

4:35 p.m.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is “responsible for the content” on its platform.

That’s a departure from how internet companies have traditionally viewed themselves — as neutral platforms generally not responsible for what people post and share on their services.

But Zuckerberg, who is testifying before a rare joint congressional committee on Tuesday, says Facebook needs to take a “broader view” of its responsibility in the world.

He also says that advances in artificial intelligence mean companies like Facebook will have to think about proactively removing objectionable content, for example, not just reactively after someone flags it. This, he says, raises “moral and legal” obligation questions.

Facebook already removes some content, such as suspected terrorist propaganda before anyone sees it. But as its systems improve, it’ll likely be able to remove other content too.

___

4:30 p.m.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz says many Americans are concerned that Facebook is biased against conservatives.

Questioning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a Senate hearing Tuesday, the Republican senator and former GOP presidential candidate said that to many people there “appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias” after some conservative pages were taken down from the platform. In a series of pointed questions, Cruz asked Zuckerberg if he had tracked the political affiliations of his employees.

Zuckerberg said he had not. But he noted that the company is based in left-leaning Silicon Valley, and said “it is a fair concern.”

Cambridge Analytica, the data-mining firm alleged to have collected private Facebook data on users, has boasted of helping Cruz win the Iowa caucus in 2016.

___

3:55 p.m.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his company is “working with” special counsel Robert Mueller in his probe into Russian interference.

Earlier this year Mueller charged 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies in a plot to interfere in the 2016 presidential election through a social media propaganda effort that included online ad purchases using U.S. aliases and politicking on U.S. soil. Some of the Russian ads were on Facebook.

Zuckerberg says he has not been personally interviewed and said he is not aware if the company has been subpoenaed.

___

3:50 p.m.

Asked by Senator Lindsey Graham if Facebook has a monopoly, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it “certainly doesn’t feel that way to me.”

Zuckerberg is facing 44 senators in a rare joint committee hearing to talk about how his company protects user data and deals with elections meddling, among other issues. He says Facebook has many competitors and demurred at naming just one.

He says Facebook provides a “number of different services” and that the average person uses eight different apps to communicate with friends.

Some critics who say Facebook is too big say it should be forced to spin off apps like WhatsApp and Instagram.

Generally, though, Facebook is considered a “duopoly” with Google when it comes to the digital advertising market. It does have several competitors on other fronts, including by Twitter, Snapchat and various messaging apps around the world

___

3:45 p.m.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is trying to assure U.S. lawmakers who are worried that Russia and other foreign powers will use the social media network to meddle in the upcoming midterm elections.

Testifying for the first time publicly on Capitol Hill, the 33-year-old told lawmakers that 2018 was an “incredibly important year” for elections around the world, including the U.S. , India and Brazil.

He says Facebook has deployed new artificial intelligence tools that do a better job identifying fake accounts. This is intended to help prevent elections interference by foreign actors — something Zuckerberg says is an “arms race.”

He’s said in the past that the company is in better shape this year than it was in the 2016 U.S. presidential election when Facebook said to be used by Moscow to sow discord among Americans.

___

3:40 p.m.

Facebook could have artificial intelligence tools within a five to 10 year period that accurately flag hate speech.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Senate hearing that he is optimistic that in that time period the company will have the tools that can get into “linguistic nuances” of content to be more accurate in flagging posts that use hate speech.

Today, he said, “we’re just not there on that.”

Zuckerberg is facing 44 senators as part of a rare joint committee hearing to address how his company handles user privacy and other issues.

___

3:30 p.m.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says “it was clearly a mistake” to believe the data-mining company Cambridge Analytica deleted Facebook data it had gathered in an attempt to sway elections.

A former employee of Cambridge Analytica, a London-based data-mining firm with ties to U.S. President Donald Trump, said the company collected the Facebook information of tens of millions of users without their permission. The firm got Facebook information through an app in order to build psychological profiles on a large portion of the U.S. electorate.

Zuckerberg said the company considered the data collection “a closed case” because they thought the data had been deleted. He said they would handle it differently today.

He said the company did not alert the Federal Trade Commission about the data collection.

___

3:05 p.m.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is facing 44 senators as part of a rare joint committee hearing to address how his company handles user privacy and other issues.

Zuckerberg said in his opening statement Tuesday that Facebook didn’t do enough to prevent its tools from being used for harm. This, he says, goes for fake news, foreign elections interference, hate speech and data privacy.

Zuckerberg is apologizing, as he has in the past, and says he is “responsible” for what happens on Facebook. Zuckerberg is also reiterating that the company is in the process of investigating apps that had access to user data. He says the company is investigating “many apps,” in the tens of thousands.

__

2:40 p.m.

A person wearing a blue and green pointy wig, aiming to look like a Russian troll, watched from the back of the room as the Senate kicked off its hearing with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The person wore a red and blue Russian flag around his neck.

Other protesters held up signs that said “Stop Corporate Spying.”

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley noted that the crowd was not big by the standards of the gargantuan social network platform. But the hearing room was filled, with a line of hundreds of people waited down the hall and into the next office building.

Zuckerberg is testifying in the Senate on Tuesday and the House on Wednesday.

__

2:15 p.m.

The first of two congressional hearings with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has begun.

Zuckerberg is testifying in the Senate on Tuesday and the House on Wednesday. He agreed to testify after revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, gathered personal information from 87 million users to try to influence elections.

Senators are expected to also ask him about Russian interference on his company’s platform in the 2016 election.

In testimony released Monday, Zuckerberg apologizes for the privacy scandal and for not recognizing Russian interference sooner.

___

2 p.m.

Twitter says it is endorsing the Honest Ads Act, a bipartisan bill designed to make online political advertisements more transparent by revealing who paid for them, among other information.

Facebook recently came out in support of the bill. The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is testifying before Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday on users’ data privacy and other issues, including foreign elections interference.

Google, Facebook and Twitter were questioned last fall about Russian elections meddling through their platforms and all three were asked whether they’d support the bill. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday afternoon.

___

12:30 p.m.

Facebook faces two new federal lawsuits for allegedly violating the trust of the millions of users whose personal data was shared with the data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.

A California suit filed Monday seeks a court order to halt what it calls Facebook’s unfair and deceptive business practices.

A Delaware case filed Tuesday contends Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. It also names Cambridge Analytica and its business partners as defendants, alleging they committed fraud by using the social network to obtain personal data on at least 80 million Facebook users without their knowledge and consent.

Both are seeking class-action status. Lawyers in the Delaware case say they are aware of about a dozen similar suits. Facebook had no comment, but referred to previous statements that called Cambridge Analytica’s actions a breach of trust.

___

10 a.m.

Facebook has begun alerting some users that their data was swept up in the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.

A notification that appeared on Facebook for some users Tuesday told them that “one of your friends” used Facebook to log into a now-banned personality quiz app called “This Is Your Digital Life.” The notice says the app misused the information, including public profile, page likes, birthday and current city, by sharing it with the data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.

As many as 87 million users who might have had their data shared were supposed to get a detailed message on their news feeds starting Monday. Facebook says more than 70 million of the affected users are in the U.S., though there are over a million each in the Philippines, Indonesia and the U.K.

___

1:45 a.m.

Experts are questioning whether Facebook is fundamentally changing its relationship with users or just tinkering around the edges of its deep need for user data to sell ads.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday in the wake of revelations that pro-Donald Trump data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica scooped millions of Facebook users’ data without their knowledge.

Researchers say it’s unlikely that Facebook will upset its business model, which allows advertisers to precisely target users, even as the company clamps down on the information it passes to app developers.

And Wall Street analysts are counting on Facebook to survive a user revolt, with shares up some 4 percent after a nine-month low hit late last month.

___

12:10 a.m.

After privately assuring senators that his company will do better, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is undergoing a two-day congressional inquisition that will be very public — and could be pivotal for his massive company.

Zuckerberg visited with senators in closed-door meetings Monday, previewing the public apology he plans to give Congress on Tuesday after revelations that the data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica gathered personal information from 87 million users to try to influence elections.

Zuckerberg will testify before a joint session of two Senate committees on Tuesday and before a House panel on Wednesday.

In prepared testimony released Monday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Zuckerberg apologizes for fake news, hate speech, a lack of data privacy and Russian social media interference in the 2016 elections.

___

By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (A.S)

___

#Facebook privacy scandal #Mark Zuckerberg congressional testimony #Reddit CEO Steve Huffman #Russia Internet Research Agency #U.S. elections #Washington

[bitcoinegoldrush]

Buy Bitcoin, Not Real Estate

Op-Ed

Real estate is how ordinary people have stored value and ultimately accumulated wealth. Indeed, post World War II societies all but demanded access to credit through politics, and governments responded with in-kind favors to keep power. Compounding of easy, loose money spurred decades of growth in housing construction, materials, land, and requisite financial products. This, in turn, triggered the Business Cycle, and the basis for entire economies was exposed as theft and fraud. Bitcoin might be the chance to starve parasitical redistributive governments, ushering in an entire new way to build equity. 

Also read: Silk Road – The Theatrical Version, Funded by Bitcoin, to Debut in London

Real Estate as Malinvestment

The dean of the Austrian School of Economics, Ludwig von Mises, wrote extensively of malinvestment. Though kept alive in fringe American paleoconservative circles, and as libertarianism’s cult favorite economist, the notion hadn’t gained much popular traction until the US Great Recession of 2008.

My guess is he’s poised to make another appearance in the coming years.

Malinvestment starts the Business Cycle, that boom and bust you’re probably all too familiar with, according to Austrian theory. Central banks are its main culprit. Their monopoly of the money supply has created what is called fiat currency: a paper or digital money backed only by the full faith and credit of a given government. It is without restraint other than inflationary pressure, which governments for over a century have battled using central banks.

Inflation acts as debasement, enabling more tickets or digits to circulate than might otherwise under a sound or tight money, and it is a chance for politicians to promise goodies such as housing guarantees. The trade-off is to keep dollars, pesos, and won flowing enough to produce a wealth effect but not so much that government units of exchange become useless.

Central banks can then artificially slow the rate of fiat through the price of money, interest rates. It’s a faucet, controlling the flow.

Malinvestment is the inevitable result. Even with the myriad of tools available in our present age, you’d think someone crazy if they told you they could predict economic production levels, adequate investment allocations, research and development, etc. Yet that is what a central bank essentially does.

By socializing housing’s risk through mortgage guarantees, while privatizing profit, central banks signaled to property speculators, land holders, construction companies and equipment providers, brokers and investment funds that this industry was a “winner.” It created a classic moral hazard. Producers then dedicated resources and time toward housing because customers on the retail side were armed with hundreds of thousands of dollars in risk-free incentives.

It was simply a matter of time before markers were called on outstanding loans of credit, and creative financial instruments, which would have never existed otherwise, were revealed as hustles to take advantage of political cynicism.

As is now well understood, the US economy, the world’s reserve currency, collapsed in short order. Like dominoes clacking, people abandoned newly constructed homes, construction workers filed for unemployment insurance, entire housing neighborhoods ghosted, bankruptcies flooded federal courts for relief, foreclosures swept the world, and the globe’s biggest banks were added to welfare rolls, the dole. In a private, free economy malinvestment is a cruel mistress, unforgiving. In our modern central banking economies, it literally pays to match government folly absurdity for absurdity. They’ll bail you out.

Malinvestment’s keen insight is not the bust, but the blowing up of the bubble or boom. Understand boom times are suspect in a central bank economy, and much of modern economics comes into focus.

It was around this time too Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper was released in response. Getting out from under the petty machinations of politicians and the whims of their constituents might be finally achievable with the advent of bitcoin.

Real Estate versus Bitcoin

Real estate’s historic appreciation might be a chimera, an illusion, as a store of value. It might be the case real estate in a voluntary, organically free economy could be rather inexpensive and without much fuss with regard to equity.

It’s hard to know without running history’s tape backwards, having no recourse to coercive malinvestment and redistributive policies. We are where we are.

Paul Moore, in a column for Bigger Pockets, completely ignores theory and history as recent as nine years ago, and asserts “I’m particularly passionate about multi-family real estate.” In a post riddled with appeals to authority, anecdotes, and half-truths, he ‘bravely’ comes down on the side of real estate in my proposed debate.

Bitcoin is rank speculation, he argues, insisting it is sexy while investment, the adult way to wealth, should now and forever be boring. He also attributes a bitcoin price fall in November to Jamie Dimon. How Mr. Moore could know this to be the cause isn’t exactly explained, but that doesn’t stop him from rhetorically asking if some yahoo’s statements could ever move real estate markets in such a way. Um, 2008 called, Mr. Moore, and would love to chat.

Nevertheless he continues, “I wanted to know exactly how multi-family stacks up against the other asset classes,” he wrote. “The numbers say that multifamily and retail are: 3x better than the S&P 500, […] 9x better than NASDAQ, 4x better than private equity,” and so on. The rest of his assessment of bitcoin as an investment is hacky and stale, sprinkling words like scam and lottery to leave a decided impression before any real consideration. Oh, and he has charts.

Bitcoin has had close to a decade to burst, but instead has managed to remain resilient, and has advantages over real estate in terms of the future of wealth accumulation. Investors can buy it in fractions. Barriers to entry in the housing market are notorious, but all bitcoin takes is a smart-ish phone.

Indeed, future investors have been raised on real estate kool-aid: they’ve learned to spend rather than save, as fiat economies demand due to inflation, and now cannot afford the down-payment anyway. The average home price has been blown up to such an extent, even if they were savers they’d be out of luck. In fact, bitcoin’s relative ease of purchase and lack of central control apparently appeal to the next investment generation ahead of even government-boosted stocks.

And as a result, the future seems crypto: free from government machinations, borderless, permissionless. It might even end up bringing housing prices down, closer to reality.

Are you buying bitcoin or real estate? Tell us in the comments.

Images courtesy of Pixabay.

Do you like to research and read about Bitcoin technology? Check out Bitcoin.com’s Wiki page for an in-depth look at Bitcoin’s innovative technology and interesting history.

Article Source

The post Buy Bitcoin, Not Real Estate appeared first on Bitcoin E-Gold Rush.

#Bitcoin #Bitcoin news

[humanauction]

THE WEATHER REPORT #10

W.R. 10 - week ending 24.11.17

Brrr it is getting cold in Baghdad this week with temperatures ranging from lows of 18C/64F to highs of 21C/69F. if it gets any colder, we would have to recommend moving to Somaliland. there will be no rain, of course, but humidity will sit around the 30% mark and winds will not exceed 10mph. this week’s Weather Report is presented in association with the Iraq Bikers. they’re a mixed bunch, riding all over Iraq and include Sunni, Shia, Christian, Kurd and Turkmen among its membership. they are currently on the look-out for 1 Jew, some Sikhs and a pair of Mormon as they feel this would really help break down barriers regarding “Motorcycle Clubs” and their nefarious reputation, so if you are Jewish, a Sikh or Mormon and in Iraq (or even if you just like motorbikes) give them a call on [phone] or send them a message on facebook - they usually reply within 24 hours!!

Iraqi Bikers - supported by HUMAN AUCTION

*

meanwhile, elsewhere:

EUROPE - SCOTLAND: Scottish National Party introduce a minimum alcohol price standard as the whole of Scotland, literally the whole country, totally lost their shit. Kirsty Leslie commented “the SNP are literally, destroying Scotland"; Richard Haines echoed the sentiments of her and most other people adding “low income (households) just about getting by, and happen to enjoy a few responsible drinks here and there, will now have to give that up as well,” for any readers who don’t know much about Scotland, there are a few things you should know:

i) Scotland is **beautiful**. it’s really stunning - from the forests in the middle, to the windswept and brutal coastline, including the borders to the south, and all the way out to the far-northern isles (hebrides) where little has changed, well, ever, it is really quite a special place. if you haven’t been you should *totally* go. but go in august. and take your winter clothes.

ii) Scotland is COLD. like really, really, cold. it’s a wet cold too and it chills you to your bone. you need to be warmly wrapped and waterproof at all times.

iii.) Scotland is a nation of alcoholics, drinking mainly single malt whisky and Buckfast. it is so ingrained in the culture that in Scotland they are wary of non-drinkers, treating them as other nations would treat severe alcoholics. how much do they like drinking? well, 24.11.17 was Black Friday, and where the rest of us perused electronics, internet deals, that kind of thing, in Scotland they had massive ***4.5 LITRE*** bottles of Famous Grouse (a terrible whisky) - “normal” size is 0.7L or 1.0L - as well as other spirits. for Black Friday. why did the SNP make such a desperately unpopular decision now? well, to be fair this legislation passed five years ago and has been in court ever since. also, the Scots aren’t very good at drinking. for a nation of just under 6 million people, in the last 2 years, Scottish police confirmed 6,500 reports of antisocial behaviour and violence relating to buckfast alone. “alcohol-related” crime statistics include: 54% of all violent crime was influenced by booze; 50% of convicted murderers were drunk or on drugs at the time of offence; 67% of young offenders were drunk when they committed the crime(s) they were sentenced for. as usual this will impact society’s poorest the hardest, with most Scots seeing it as yet another stealth-tax for the already poor. that said, in a 2016 report, alcohol harm (inc. health; social care; productive capacity) cost the tax-payer £3.6billion PLUS National Health Service bill was £267million PLUS crime cost at £727 million. and they reckon a minimum price is the thing destroying the country.

making friends, with Buckfast (a.k.a. Break the Hoos(house) Juice, Vino d’Jaikey, Commotion Lotion)

*

NORTH AMERICA - USA: all-round definitely (and you know what that means) good eggs, facebook, are set to release (in December 2017) a tool allowing users to see where posts actually come from. this is all because of the US voting “scandal” where Hillary lost to the Donald because she is a sadistic sociopath with a long list of extra-judicial killings to her name, personally, whereas the Donald only killed some people and only ever over money - which is the one thing you can do without facing jail time. so long as you give a stack of cash to someone. like the president at the time. *then* it’s ok. anyway, the Russian company Internet Research Agency - which doesn’t sound at all sinister - and behind “hundreds of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts”, posting thousands of politically-charged messages and buying advertising space has been outed as… hackers?! apparently this is not an okay thing to do. no one uses propaganda to further their own narrative. except for terrorists. these “fake” pages were patriotically designed & presented appearing as if they were created and posted by Americans, and had *white power-y* names like “Heart Of Texas” or “Secured Borders”. in previous statements, facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has said as many as up to, maybe, 126 million Americans *may* have seen content uploaded since early 2015. the confusing thing about all of this is why is it illegal if Russia do it and it is pro-the Donald? Hilary’s people put together a concert with Beyonce and Jay-Z headlining which some might have called propaganda (because that’s exactly what it was). shouting out (or post, article, op-ed, tweet, interview, photo, opine…) your biased views - that’s called campaigning; not telling the truth - politics; manipulating details to make them appear as something else/new - that’s called spin; the people who write these ideas - communications directors; making sure specific people are in a photo or post (even if they wouldn’t choose to be) - Public Relations; spreading ideas for support, influence, money - lobbying/lobbyist; deciding how to split the image you wish to project between various media - that is a campaign manager. what you wear, how you talk, “anonymous” charitable donations you make, what your kids do… all of this , and *SO* much more is how you become head girl or boy. there are also things like the party whips - who lie and bully and collect information to use against someone in the future. none of the above is morally just, hell most of it is morally deplorable, but it is what happens, *every day*, on both sides of the coin. but don’t take our word for it, check out the figures below:

Expenditure/Figure --------------------------Number/Detail

Total US operation expenses -------------- $2.3 million

Staff working on US campaign ------------ up to 90 people

# of US social media accounts ------------ at least 118

Total subscribers --------------------------- more than 6 million

Most page views in a week ---------------- 70 million (October 2016)

American activists supported ------------- 100

Rallies held in US cities -------------------- 40

Budget to support US activists ----------- approximately $80,000 over two years

Budget for social media promotion ------- approx. $120,000 over two years

so whilst we don't know about you guys, it sure looks a lot like campaigning from over where we’re standing. the difference? the Russian campaign team ran a good race and the Donald won. whereas the Democrat campaign team were rubbish and Hilary lost.

Russia & America - closer than most think

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THE WORLD - BEEHIVES, EVERYWHERE: who doesn’t love them? especially the chubby little high-fiving bumble bees. bees control ALL international honey deals and they run the international honey monopoly with support from HSBC (money), DeBeers (diamonds) and Goldcorp (gold). bees are the ultimate “blood in, blood out” organization renowned for their unflinching readiness to sacrifice as many as it takes in the face of certain death. because what matters is the hive. with internet connections and speeds improving all the time though, access to information is now available to juvenile bees in a never-seen-before way. and young bees have been exploring different avenues. at first it was suspected that they were just curious, maybe even lazy, or that it was a generational phase the kids would grow out of. however this recent study has shown that in fact the bees are more likely to be so god-damned high on pesticides that they have forgotten how to buzz! with many young bees now rejecting the practice as “old-fashioned” - preferring to communicate via smart phone using the iBee messaging service - they are also rejecting traditional pollen collection methods. an ever increasing number of bees preferring instead to purchase pollen online through notorious websites like beeroad and using beecoins. the problem with this, apart from the fact it is illegal and unregulated, is that 80% of all plant species rely on pollination - with bees doing most of it. talks are due to take place next month with the wasps preparing their pitch for the control of the pollination racket and honey industry. the wasps have been muscling in on bee territories for the last 10 years now, but their inability to produce honey has always left them with operating costs far exceeding the bees. however with several prominent hornets named in the paradise papers and damning allegations of sexual misconduct and rape against 5 queen bees has created a power-void and now the insect world is gearing up for a war between the bee and wasp mafias.

wasps - just assholes

*

AFRICA - ZIMBABWE: Robert Mugabe falls asleep as the world tries to work out what kind of coup took/is taking place. if it is a coup, but everyone *insisted* it isn’t a coup, per se, and if you’ve read the various W.R.s you all know what that means (i.e. of course it is without a doubt a Coup). the whole thing started when Robert Mugabe was placed under house arrest and his wife, Grace, fled the country altogether, by the military in what appeared to be your run-of-the-mill coup d’etat led by military chief General Constantino Chiwenga. so it was a standard “get the f@*k out” Coup d’Etat. *then* someone confirmed it was actually the Army who arrested him, making it a military coup again; only then it became not the army, but the Veterans Association - making it a *guardian* coup. at this point, Mugabe’s own party - ZANU-PF - said they wanted him gone too and would fire and impeach Mugabe on Sunday and Tuesday respectively if he didn’t go quickly and quietly. those deadlines came and went during which time - over 72 hours since the initial coup - Mugabe was presiding over a university graduation ceremony(?!). then he fell asleep. then embarked on one of several looooooooong speeches. then the police added their support to the army, via the veterans association, taking it back to some sort of military coup; then the opposition said they were involved - from exile in Kenya - and it became a political coup; then the people all came out on the street insisting it was ***their*** coup (which would mean it was a civilian coup). and through all of this, Mugabe was giving rambling speeches and generally falling asleep. to be fair, he is 93. **everyone** was now saying “get the f@*k out or we will arrest, impeach and imprison/execute you”. to which Mugabe said “i give **ZERO** f@^!s, this is my country, f@^k you”. this had, for Mugabe, a most undesirable effect - it galvanized everyone else for the first time since the British left Rhodesia. suddenly, it was a VETO coup! Mugabe, still giving zero f@^!s, went back to sleep. as of the 23.11.17 though Mugabe is willing to step aside so long as no one can try the corrupt, racist, war criminal we all know him definitely not to be ;-/

robby’s next project - it’s the mugababes!

have a sunny weekend,

HA

@humanauction

p.s. please, if you liked this report leave comment, share, like, re-post, link to, follow or any of that good stuff. you know, if you’d like to. we sure would really appreciate it! :-)

HA

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