Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Apple Bends to China

Apple removed an app late Wednesday that enabled protesters in Hong Kong to track police, a day after facing intense criticism from Chinese state media for it, plunging the technology giant deeper into the complicated politics of a country that is fundamental to its business.
...
Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has become a deft diplomat in China. He has traveled there frequently and attended numerous Chinese government events. In recent months, Mr. Cook has argued for moderation in the trade war between the United States and China. Unlike in the United States, where he regularly speaks out on political issues like gun control and immigration, he has largely remained silent on Chinese politics, including the clashes in Hong Kong.
...
Apple also pulled the app of the news organization Quartz from the App Store in China less than two weeks ago. Quartz, which has been covering the Hong Kong protests, said that Apple sent it a vague notice about removing its app “because it includes content that is illegal in China.” Apple did not clarify what content was illegal, Quartz said. A Quartz editor tweeted that Apple removed it “at the request of China.”
This is what happens when one crawls deeply into bed with a murderous dictatorship. Cook is bleating about gun control, but you'll have to search far and wide to find where he has uttered a single word about China's ethnic cleaning of the Uighurs. (You'll probably find nothing.)

Corporations can be politically bought. In watching ABC News, it seemed that they barely mentioned the kerfuffle between the NBA and the Chinese Communists. A cynic might suspect that the fact that ABC's parent company, Disney, which has a large stake in China (Disneyland Shanghai, for example), doesn't want to incur the ire of the Chinese regime. (There do seem to be more stories on CBS News's website than ABC's.)

4 comments:

The New York Crank said...

When nearly every Republican Senator and Congressman acts like a vote slut, whaddya expect from corporations who have a lot more than one personal career at stake?

The sad truth is, we live in a rank corruptocracy which seems to grow worse by the day. We have three choices:

1) Learn to live with it and love it

2) Emigrate to Canada and hope it doesn't get as bad there

3)Keep fighting it until the Trump administration acts even more like some banana republic government in the 1970s, and protesters get taken up in airplanes and dumped, live, into the ocean,200 miles from land.

Yours crankily,
The New York Crank

B said...

I heard they put the app back.

Comrade Misfit said...

apparently not.

0_0 said...

Crank, remove Republican from your comment and you will be twice as correct.