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Monthly Archives: September 2017

Vietnam Sentences Banker To DEATH For Massive Dong Grab

The BBC is reporting that the former head of a major Vietnamese bank has been sentenced TO DEATH for embezzlement, abuse of power and economic mismanagement that led to losses of 1.5 trillion Dong ($69 million USD).

Nguyen Xuan Son sentenced to death for mishandling Dong.

Nguyen Xuan Son, president of OceanBank received the harshest sentence in a massive case which has led to dozens of employees receiving lengthy prison sentences in the major corruption trial. In all 51 officials and bankers stood trial in the case.

Earlier in the day, Vietnamese tycoon Ha Van Tham – founder of Ocean Group’s banking unit, was sentenced to life in prison for charges ranging from abuse of power to embezzlement.

Via BBC:

OceanBank is partially-state owned, so Son’s crime of mishandling state money was thought to be particularly serious. After leaving the bank, he rose to be head of state oil giant PetroVietnam.

Judge Truong Viet Toan said: “Tham and Son’s behaviour is very serious, infringing on the management of state assets and causing public grievances, which requires strict punishment.”

Can you imagine what would happen if the same thing happened in the US?

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Whole Food Taprooms And Restaurants Hacked, $AMZN Investigating

Seattle Times | 9.29.17

Whole Foods Market says it’s investigating a potential hack or theft of customer payment card information at in-store taprooms and restaurants.

In a news release on Thursday, the Amazon.com-owned grocer said it had recently been informed about unauthorized use of payment cards that had been used at taprooms and table-service restaurants inside some stores. Those venues used a different point of sale system than the company’s primary checkout system, Whole Foods said.

And Amazon, which sealed its $13.5 billion deal to buy the high-end grocer in August, does not link its network to those Whole Foods systems. Transactions on the retailer’s website are not affected, Whole Foods said.

The disclosure follows a series of high-profile breaches in which credit card or other customer data were stolen from corporate hands, often via weaknesses in Internet-linked systems.

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UN Says Blacks In America Deserve Reparations, Ignores Entire History Of Slavery

A recent report published by a U.N. commissioned organization concludes that America’s history of slavery justifies reparations for African Americans. The report notably fails to opine on other nations which have engaged in the practice – considering that less than 10% of African slaves were brought to North America, or the fact that arabs have operated the slave trade for over 1300 years – a practice which continues to this day, primarily in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia.

The U.N.’s Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a body which reports to the U.N.’s High Commissioner on Human Rights, presented its findings on Monday, pointing to the “continuing link between present injustices and the dark chapters of American history.

“In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report stated. “Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.”

The report cites last year’s spate of blacks killed by police officers around the United States, which the panel says has created a “human rights crisis” that “must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”

“Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another, continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of African Americans today,” it said in a statement. “The dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion amongst the US population.”

Mireille Fanon-Mendes-France, chairwoman of a United Nations working group for people of African descent, reads findings about institutionalized racism after an official visit to the U.S. (Youtube/UN Human Rights)

What about the rest of the story?

Conspicuously absent from the U.N. report is the fact that the slavery in the United States was facilitated by 1300 years of Arab slave trade. According to Wikipedia:

Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red SeaIndian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900.[5]  

The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.[4][6][7]

Will this report pave the way for universal basic income for blacks in America?

Ignoring modern slave trade

Meanwhile, the U.N. has been quiet on the topic of countries which haven’t cracked down on the slave trade, including UN Human Rights Council member Saudi Arabia. There are an estimated 21 – 46 million slaves around the world today, with India dominating the top of the list.

source: https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/

Perhaps we can look forward to a followup report from the U.N. on reparations owed by the other 90% of the world which participated in the slave trade, as well as their thoughts on what’s owed to the 48 million modern slaves around the world.

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BACKLASH: NFL Loses First Sponsor, Tells Cameramen Not To Shoot Booing Crowds

The backlash against the NFL allowing players to kneel during the National Anthem is now hitting the league in the pocketbook, as payday lender “Check Into Cash” CEO and owner of Hardwick Clothing Allan Jones has decided to yank all advertising from the NFL – tweeting”Our companies will not condone unpatriotic behavior!”

In a followup statement, Jones said “For the 29 states we operate in, this isn’t much to them, but it’s a lot to us. The Tombras Group is our ad agency in Knoxville and our national media buyer for both TV and radio (for Check Into Cash) and don’t look for Hardwick on the NFL either,”

Noting to see here!

In order to shield TV audiences from in-stadium backlash, NFL camera operators have been instructed to avoid crowd shots during last weekend’s games to avoid capturing images of fans counterprotesting the protests – according to Sporting News.

By covering one of the most significant days in NFL history with rose-colored glasses, the networks cheated viewers. We got an incomplete picture of what really happened in stadiums on Sunday and Monday.

Yes, the main television focus should have been on the players, coaches and owners sitting, kneeling or linking arms. But fans hold the ultimate power over the networks and the league, and they were missing in action during coverage.

CBS denied that they instructed the camera operators to look away, however viewers have taken notice of networks using up-close, ground-up shots of players, coaches and owners – conspicuously avoiding images of fans during the national anthem.

Not to worry, I’ve got your booing right here:

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Roku Raises $219 Million, Jumps 68% On Impressive IPO $ROKU

Streaming device manufacturer Roku ($ROKU) sprinted higher in its Thursday IPO. Priced at $14, the company raked in at least $219 million. Shares jumped as much as 68% to close at $23.50, leaving the company with a $2.23 billion valuation.

The company which started out as a secret Netflix hardware project, which they still carry, is now directly integrated into next gen televisions from Sharp, Hitachi, RCA, TCL, and several other brands – one of which I just bought two weeks ago to use with an Amazon Firestick and over-the-air antenna.

After firing up the TV – I no longer need the firestick, as the Roku user interface is app-based and can launch Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Streaming, as well as a ton of other ala carte apps such as HBO-Go.

Enough about hardware…

Roku’s software side of the business is growing at nearly a triple-digit clip.

Their operating makes money in three ways – selling ads, revenue-sharing agreements with content providers, and subscriptions purchased via its operating system. They company also makes 5% licensing the technology to others.

“[Licensing fees are] probably the place that has the most significant revenue recognition around it,” said Roku CFO Steven Louden, adding “Our licensing fees—we have multiyear deals with TV brands as well as service operators through our Roku Power program. We actually have almost $70 million in deferred revenue on the balance sheet, which is a lot of value.”

Roku Chief Executive Anthony Wood said in an interview that the company will keep riding the wave of television content moving online and away from the cable bundle.

When we sign up a customer to a subscription service or Hulu or Netflix, we get a revenue share as well,” Wood said.

Filings with the SEC show sales growth of 91% in the first six months of 2017 vs. last year.

“What’s important in the evolution of the company is the platform business is becoming a greater and greater portion of Roku,” Louden told MarketWatch in a telephone interview Thursday. “It’s now 80% of our gross profit and I think it’s great proof-point for investors about really what the Roku business model is about.”

Industry experts agree – software is where it’s at

With hardware margins shrinking, Roku executives have received praise for recognizing that software and licensing is where it’s at:

What [executives] were able to do was recognize their hardware business model was not a long-term smashing success and manage to change, and not to have a giant dip in the process moving from the hardware to the platform and have some decent margins along the way,” said Barrett Daniels, Chief Executive of Nextstep, a San Francisco company that helps private firms go public. “The good part of the business is really growing.”

Solid Execs? 

Daniels told MarketWatch he was ‘pleasantly surprised’ that according to Roku’s S-1 filing, Roku executives didn’t stuff their pockets with massive stock grants, and the company’s financials appear to be ‘well-managed,’ adding that he thinks the company went public at the right time.

“Unlike Evan Spiegel at Snap—large stock grants are actually pretty common—the executives don’t seem to be robbing the place. I think they’ve done a very responsible job.”

Roku Chief Executive Anthony Wood said in an interview that the company will keep riding the wave of television content moving online and away from the cable bundle.

“When we sign up a customer to a subscription service or Hulu or Netflix, we get a revenue share as well,” Wood said.

Current conditions

In the six months ending June 30, Roku had around 15.1 million active accounts, according to Yahoo Finance, with around 6.74 billion hours of content streamed.

That said, the company has been pumping massive amounts of cash into R&D – posting a net loss of $15.5 million vs. $14.1 million in the same quarter last year.

“I don’t like that they are losing cash, but if you wait for a cash flow positive tech company, you may have to wait for a full solar eclipse to come around again,” said Brian Hamilton, founder of data firm Sageworks.

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United States And Evil Russia To Build NASA-Led Space Station

The liberal science community has a moral dilemma on its hands following today’s announcement that the United States is partnering with Russia on a NASA-led project to build a lunar station.

On one hand, the international base for lunar exploration will serve as a “gateway to deep space and the lunar surface,” according to NASA.

On the other hand, Russia is involved – which means they’ll undoubtedly slit our throats in space, populate the surface of the moon, build a moon cannon – having read Heinlein, and fire silicon, magnesium, and aluminum-rich moon rocks at the United States. Once we are obliterated, Russia will invade the country and enslave all surviving Americans in moon-rock crushing factories.

Pretending not to be evil, Igor Komarov, Roscosmos’s general director, stated that Russia, the United States and other participants agreed it was important to work using unified standards to avoid future problems in space, citing Sandra Bullock’s movie “Gravity” in the process.

“Roscosmos and NASA have already agreed on standards for a docking unit of the future station,” the Russian space agency said.

AFP reports:

“Taking into account the country’s extensive experience in developing docking units, the station’s future elements — as well as standards for life-support systems — will be created using Russian designs.”

NASA said it planned to expand human presence into the solar system using its new deep space exploration transportation systems, the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.

– ‘Better to fly together’ –

Russia and the United States also discussed using Moscow’s Proton-M and Angara rockets as well as other spacecraft to help create the infrastructure of the lunar spaceport, the Russian statement said, adding that the main works were slated to begin in the mid-2020s.

“The station will be a serious platform for future research,” said Komarov.

Igor Lisov, editor at Space News, told AFP of Russia’s potential contribution: “We are offering carriers for flights to a lunar orbiting station, we are offering our docking units or their components,” he said, adding Russia had vast experience in creating life-support systems.

“That is a rather significant contribution.”

Unfortunately, this will be our doom…

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JP Morgan Fucks Up Dead Guy’s Estate, Ordered To Pay $4 Billion To Widow And Family

JPMorgan Chase was ordered to pay over $4 billion in damages to the widow and family of a deceased American Airlines executive.

The six person Dallas jury, which deliberated for over four hours on Monday night, found that the bank committed fraud, breached its fiduciary duty and broke a fee agreement with widow Jo Hopper and her two stepchildren after their father, Max Hopper, died with an estate worth $19 million but no will. Hopper was described as an “airline technology innovator” by the family’s law firm, pioneering such inventions as the SABRE reservation system.

The bank was hired in 2010 to administer Hopper’s estate, failing miserably… “Instead of independently and impartially collecting and dividing the estate’s assets, the bank took years to release basic interests in art, home furnishings, jewelry, and notably, Mr. Hopper’s collection of 6,700 golf putters and 900 bottles of wine,” the family’s lawyers said in the statement. “Some of the interests in the assets were not released for more than five years.”

Hopper’s widow, Jo Hopper, issued a statement:

“The nation’s largest bank horribly mistreated me and this verdict provides protection to others from being mistreated by banks that think they’re too powerful to be held accountable,” said Hopper in a statement. “The country’s largest bank, people we are supposed to trust with our livelihood, abused my family and me out of sheer ineptitude and greed. I’m blessed that I have the resources to hold JP Morgan accountable so other widows who don’t have the same resources will be better protected in the future.”

Billions!

The court’s verdict form revealed that jurors originally awarded $8 billion in punitive damages against JPMorgan Chase, however widow Jo Hopper’s attorney Alan Loewinshon said in an interview that some of that may be duplication of some of the damage findings. The family was originally seeking $2 billion in punitive damages.

Via ZeroHedge

As a result, he said, the punitive damage award could end up being “somewhere between $4 billion and $8 billion.” The verdict form also shows jurors were advised to consider factors including “the net worth of JPMorgan.” JPM has a market cap of about $330 billion.

At the lower end of that range, the jury’s award would erase almost two-thirds of the $6.6 billion profit that JPMorgan generated globally during the second quarter. According to Bloomberg, it would rank high among the largest sanctions ever levied against the bank – somewhere between the $2.6 billion it agreed to pay in 2014 for allegedly failing to stop Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and a $13 billion settlement it reached with government authorities in 2013 for its handling of mortgage bonds that fueled the financial crisis.

“Mrs. Hopper asked the jury to send a message loud enough for JP Morgan to hear it all the way to Park Avenue in Manhattan,” said Loewinsohn, “Hopefully, that message has been received.”

Unfortunately for Mrs. Hopper, the Jury’s massive award is unlikely to hold up on appeal. Punitive damage verdicts such as Hopper’s are often reduced substantially thanks to a Supreme Court ruling that court awards can’t be disproportionate to the actual damages incurred. In Hopper’s case, the actual damage award was less than $5 million.

“Clearly the award far exceeds any possible interpretation of Texas tort reform statutes,” said JPMorgan Chase spokesman Andrew Gray, adding “There has been no judgment entered by the court based on this verdict.”

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West Point Communist Spencer Rapone Inspired By Chelsea Manning, Admits Wanting To Overthrow Govt

Proud communist and Westpoint graduate Spenser Rapone infiltrated the military academy after finding inspiration in Chelsea Manning’s infiltration of the U.S. Government, according to a post Rapone made on Reddit in a thread about Manning.

Rapone wrote “I’m currently an infantry officer at Ft. Drum, NY assigned to the same brigade that she [Manning] was while enlisted. Every single day I think of the contradictions of being a communist while in this organization, and her courage and tenacity gives me strength to continue the long march through the institutions.

Notably, Manning was also in the 10th Mountain Division.

The “long march” refers to a strategy of undermining government via infiltration and subversion – a phrase coined by Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci.

The Daily Caller has more:

From his Reddit post and Twitter history, it seems clear Rapone was a dedicated communist and posted about developing a new manual on guerrilla warfare, presumably for use in the U.S.

“I read Che’s Guerrilla Warfare (★★★★) a month or two back,” Rapone said early this year. “An essential text, although, as Che would say, specific to a certain historical context. I’d suggest Marighella’s Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla (★★★★) after finishing Che’s work. I myself need to read Mao’s On Guerrilla Warfare here soon enough. But, I suppose, more than anything else, the task at hand for all of us is to produce our own text on guerrilla warfare, in the days ahead, yes?”

 

Rapone is no fan of Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, calling him a “vile, evil fuck.”

Richard Rapone, Spenser’s father – Treasurer for Lawrence County, PA, disavowed his son’s “political views and overall politics,” stating that he is “very disappointed in the direction he has chosen and as his father it greatly saddens me.”

According to Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, “Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

The maximum punishment for violating Article 88 is dismissal from the military, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and prison for a year. Something tells me Rapone’s going to be a cult hero to the radical left.

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Famous Fake News Hoaxer Featured In WaPo Found Dead

When the whole “fake news” meme spread during the election to try and explain Trump’s massive support, news outlets were hard pressed to produce actual examples of the propaganda they so vehemently claimed was influencing the election.

The Washington Post was instrumental in seeding the phrase when they published a story in April, 2016 about pro-Trump websites spreading misinformation, implying that misinformation was poisoning voters against Hillary Clinton.

Paul Horner

Then in November, WaPo featured the exploits of fake-news hoaxer Paul Horner, “the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire,” who – according to WaPo “made his living off viral news hoaxes for several years. He has twice convinced the Internet that he’s British graffiti artist Banksy; he also published the very viral, very fake news of a Yelp vs. “South Park” lawsuit last year.”

In 2011, Horner was arrested on multiple drug-related and money laundering charges after being caught with an estimated $15,000 in narcotics.

Horner also performed stand-up at “The Lost Leaf” club, occasionally dressed up as “Fappy the Anti-Masturbation Dolphin,” a satirical Christian character bent on educating children about the dangers of masturbation and benefits of GMOs.

In March of 2016, a fake-news story Horner published about paid protestors at Trump rallies was tweeted by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and Eric Trump. While an undercover investigation by James O’Keefe of Project Veritas later revealed the existence of paid protestors – the article by Horner was a fabrication.

After the election, Horner claimed “I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me.”

And now, he’s dead

10 months after being spotlighted by WaPo as the shining example of fake news that swung the election, Paul Horner is dead.

AP reports:

A leading purveyor of fake news in the 2016 presidential election has died outside Phoenix at the age of 38.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Mark Casey said Tuesday authorities discovered Paul Horner dead in his bed on Sept. 18.

Casey said the Maricopa County medical examiner performed an autopsy which showed there were no signs of foul play. He said Horner had a history of prescription drug abuse and that “evidence at the scene suggested this could be an accidental overdose.

The Horner family is still waiting on toxicology reports, and the case will remain open until the cause of death is finalized.

A tragic end for a man who certainly wasn’t paid to produce fake news to fit a narrative and then suicided. Pour one out for Fappy. /s

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Twitter Testing 280-Character Limit For Tweets $TWTR

Get ready for more information overload! Twitter is beta testing a 280-character limit among a “single-digit percentage” of its 328 million users who will be randomly chosen, according to the company – so, millions of people.

“Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people tweeting in English,” Twitter said in a blog post. “When people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting — which is awesome!”

For an example of a 280 character tweet, see below:

Via WaPo:

The company declined to comment directly on how it’s choosing those people or why it changed its mind about its 140-character limit. But in a company blog post, product manager Aliza Rosen and senior software engineer Ikuhiro Ihara said the team started looking into the restrictions of the 140-character limit after noticing differences among languages.

Some languages — specifically Chinese, Japanese and Korean — allow for greater expression in fewer characters, Rosen and Ihara said.

“We see that a small percent of tweets sent in Japanese have 140 characters (only 0.4%). But in English, a much higher percentage of tweets have 140 characters (9%). Most Japanese tweets are 15 characters while most English tweets are 34,” the post said.

The 280-character test will roll out in all languages except for Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Workarounds that worked

For Twitter users who need to say more than 140 characters will allow, common workarounds include posting an image of a longer text, and the use of “twitterstorms” – lengthy screeds which notify readers that there’s more to come with fractions, such as (1/12) to signal 12 incoming posts.

A 280 character limit will obviously cut that in half.

Removing a point of contention

While Twitter acknowledges that some users may have an emotional attachment to short tweets, the company notes that having to cram your thoughts into a few sentences may in fact be deterring people from tweeting.

“in all markets, when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people tweeting — which is awesome!”

In other words, Twitter has found that removing this pain point — even if it means giving up something that has been core to its identity — can help it reach more people who will then use its product more. And, ultimately, that’s what Twitter has been seeking for years: a way to gain more users and to make its quirky ways easier to understand.

I know one guy who would be OK with a platform-wide increase:

Thoughts on the proposed change from around the Twitterverse: 

 

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