Sunday, February 14, 2021

APPLE'S TIM COOK AND CHINA'S SLAVERY

 

Bloomberg: Tim Cook ‘Architect’ of Outsourcing Apple Production to China

Apple CEO Tim Cook waves as he arrives for the Economic Summit held for the China Development Forum in Beijing on March 23, 2019. (Photo by Ng Han Guan / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read NG HAN GUAN/AFP via Getty Images)
NG HAN GUAN/AFP via Getty Images
6:35

Apple CEO Tim Cook was the “architect” of the multinational corporation’s plan to outsource most of its production to China, ushering what Bloomberg Businessweek calls an “era of outsourced manufacturing and made-to-order products.”

A profile published in Bloomberg Businessweek details Cook’s slick political maneuvering and an outsourcing scheme that has driven Apple’s market value to $2.3 trillion while gutting its U.S. manufacturing base — and encouraging others to do so — for cheap labor in China, India, and Vietnam.

Bloomberg Businessweek reports:

As everyone at the dinner well knew, the idea of mass-producing an iPhone, or any advanced consumer electronics, in a domestic factory was an exceptionally tall order. The big Asian contract manufacturers, especially Apple Inc.’s main partner, Foxconn, had built city-size factories in China with armies of hundreds of thousands of skilled laborers. None of that scale existed in the U.S. Chinese factory employees generally worked much longer hours, for a fraction of what even the lowest-paid American workers make. “I’m not sure, short of dictatorial practices, that you could ever make that work,” says John Riccitiello, another Silicon Valley executive who witnessed the exchange between Cook and Biden. [Emphasis added]

Biden’s question put Cook, who’d become Apple’s CEO the previous August, in an awkward position. He was the architect of the strategy to outsource Apple’s production to China, a trend of increasing concern for the Obama administration. But Cook was also, as it turned out, extremely effective at deflecting political pressure. He was certainly more diplomatic than his old boss. Obama once asked [Steve] Jobs the same question, and Jobs’s characteristically blunt reply landed on the front page of the New York Times: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.” Cook, though, was smooth and noncombative — so much so, in fact, that Riccitiello can’t recall exactly what he said to Biden. By the end of that year, Cook announced a small yet politically significant shift. Apple, he said, would start making some Macs in the U.S. [Emphasis added]

And then, Apple’s reliance on China only grew. You might think its ever-tighter embrace with the country would have put Cook in a worse political position after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 based on a campaign marked by anti-China rhetoric, threats of a trade war, and promises to bring jobs lost to Shenzhen back to American shores — not to mention challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and rising antitrust fervor during his term in office. Strangely, though, Apple thrived under Trump. In August 2018, the company’s market value reached $1 trillion; 24 months later, even as Trump railed on the campaign trail that “these stupid supply chains” in China should move home, it surpassed $2 trillion. [Emphasis added]

Apple’s manufacturing was not always based overseas. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Apple employed thousands of Americans at manufacturing plants in Texas, Colorado, and California. By the mid-1990s, though, Apple started moving its U.S. production to plants in Singapore and Ireland.

In 2004, Apple closed its last U.S. manufacturing plant, laying off 235 American workers. Today, most of Apple’s supply chain is based in China and other foreign countries. A 2017 report from Yahoo Finance found that Apple supports about 4.8 million jobs in China and its Chinese supply chain, alone, has more than a million workers.

Cook, as Bloomberg Businessweek notes, sped up the company’s outsourcing to China by shifting its laptop and webcam production there.

Even amid the Chinese coronavirus crisis, Cook has ensured Apple remains fully operational in China, according to Bloomberg Businessweek by chartering private flights to and from the country so that employees could manage production.

Already, the Biden administration is avoiding criticism of multinational corporations like Apple which have continued doing business in China despite a record of human rights abuses and subpar labor standards.

Last week, when Breitbart News’ Charlie Spiering asked if President Joe Biden supported American companies speaking out against the Chinese Communist Party as they continue to do business in China, White House press secretary Jen Psaki dodged the question.

White House
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“The president’s been outspoken, as he was, in his conversation with the president of China about American values,” Psaki said.

“He’s the president of the United States; he’s conveying what he feels our values are,” Psaki continued. “And he conveys that to anyone he has conversations with whether it’s publicly or privately to companies or to leaders of other countries.”

Last year, Apple successfully avoided U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports for some of its products thanks to Cook’s close working relationship with the Trump administration. In March 2020, the administration gave a tariff waiver for Apple Watch, ensuring that the company avoided a 7.5 percent duty while importing its smartwatches from China to the U.S. market.

In December 2019, Apple avoided tariffs on its iPhones that it makes in China after the Trump administration announced the first phase of a trade deal.

While hundreds of thousands of American small and medium-sized businesses have been forced to permanently close as a result of the coronavirus crisis, multinational corporations like Apple have netted record profits with their increasing market power and monopolies over various industries.

Apple, between October and December 2020, reported more than $111 billion in revenue, an increase of more than 20 percent compared to the same time last year.

Around the same time, amid yet another surge in Covid-19 cases and continued economic uncertainty, the company reported revenue of $111 billion for the previous quarter, a record. Meanwhile, as tens of millions of Americans have been laid off from their jobs, Cook’s annual salary increased by nearly 30 percent in 2020 to $14.8 million.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here

Apple Exec Claims North Dakota App Store Bill ‘Threatens to Destroy the iPhone as You Know It’

Gay-friendly Apple weighs North Carolina despite LGBT laws
Ng Han Guan/AP
2:44

Apple Chief Privacy Engineer Erik Neuenschwander recently spoke out against a proposed bill in the North Dakota Senate that would prevent Apple and Google from requiring developers to use their respective app stores and payment methods, stating that it “threatens to destroy the iPhone as you know it.”

MacRumors reports that this week the North Dakota Senate introduced a new bill that would prevent Apple and Google from requiring developers to use their respective app store and payment methods.

Senate Bill 2333 was introduced by Sen. Kyle Davison (R) who stated that it was designed to “level the playing field” for app developers in North Dakota and shield customers from “devastating, monopolistic fees imposed by big tech companies,” referring to the fees that Apple and Google take from developers.

The bill would prevent Apple from requiring developers to use a digital application distribution platform as the exclusive method of distributing a digital product and would keep the company from requiring developers to use in-app purchases at the exclusive mode of accepting payment from a user.

Apple’s requirement that developers use their payment systems has caused issues in the past, with Epic Games currently embroiled in a lawsuit with the tech giant over the policy.

Apple Chief Privacy Engineer Erik Neuenschwander slammed Senate Bill 2333 stating that it “threatens to destroy the iPhone as you know it” by demanding the company make changes that would “undermine the privacy, security, safety, and performance” of the ‌iPhone‌.

Neuenschwander stated that Apple “works hard” to remove bad apps from the iOS App Store and North Dakota’s bill would “require us to let them in.”

Breitbart News reported recently that iOS developer Kosta Eleftheriou has been highlighting a growing issue in recent weeks — scam apps available in the Apple app store. Each of the scam apps Eleftheriou found appeared to use the same method including boosting their apparent legitimacy in the app store by purchasing fake reviews.

Eleftheriou has exposed a number of scam apps on the App Store. He even compiled a thread titled “How to spot a $5M/year scam on the App Store, in 5 minutes flat.” In this thread, he pointed out an app called Star Gazer+ which is still available on the App Store with a 4.4 rating from over 80,000 allegedly fake users.

Read more at Breitbart News here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

JOE BIDEN'S OPERATION CHEAP LABOR - Biden’s DHS to Release 25.6K Migrants into Texas, California Communities

 Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that about 72

percent of households headed by noncitizens and

immigrants use one or more forms of taxpayer-

funded welfare programs in California — the

number one immigrant-receiving state in the

U.S.

Biden Ends ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy, Allows Asylum Seekers Into US

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The Biden administration announced Thursday it will roll back former president Donald Trump's "remain in Mexico" policy, allowing about 25,000 asylum seekers in Mexico to enter the United States for their immigration hearings. 

The Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of a virtual registration program for asylum seekers that will begin next week. Registered asylum seekers will be advised to travel to a location on the U.S.-Mexico border where they will be tested for coronavirus before entering the United States.

Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the move a step toward reforming the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

"This latest action is another step in our commitment to reform immigration policies that do not align with our nation’s values," Mayorkas said. "Especially at the border, however, where capacity constraints remain serious, changes will take time. Individuals who are not eligible under this initial phase should wait for further instructions and not travel to the border."

Under the Trump administration's Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), asylum seekers were made to remain in Mexico during their immigration proceedings. The policy has applied to more than 70,000 prospective migrants since it was established in 2018, including thousands of asylum seekers who crossed the border illegally.

Rep. Greg Steube (R., Fla.), a member of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, slammed the change in policy, saying it undermines national security and public health.

"This is the latest in a long string of open border policies from the Biden administration," Steube told the Washington Free Beacon. "While his administration lifts travel bans to allow terrorists into the United States and puts out this new MPP order to overwhelm the southern border, his administration has also talked about a domestic travel ban for Florida. His policies put America last by threatening our national security, jeopardizing public health, and attacking our own."

The Biden administration also removed an emergency designation used to secure funding for the border wall on Thursday, after Rep. John Katko (R., N.Y.) and other Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee sent a letter to the president calling for action to address the "mounting crisis" at the border.

"Your recent sweeping border security and immigration enforcement policy rollbacks are causing a new crisis at our southwest border, undercutting the rule of law, and damaging the integrity of our territorial borders," the letter reads. "If you are, indeed, serious about finding common ground on homeland security issues important to the lives of Americans, let us return to a time—not too long ago—when Democrats joined Republicans in supporting increased funding to secure our border, including physical barriers and other commonsense security and enforcement measures."

Exclusive–Texas Sheriff: ‘Clear Evidence’ Illegal Immigration Soaring Under Joe Biden

TOPSHOT - A Guatemalan migrant and his son cross the Rio Grande natural border between El Paso, state of Texas, US, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico in search of political asylum on January 26, 2021. (Photo by HERIKA MARTINEZ / AFP) (Photo by HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images
3:23

There is “clear evidence” illegal immigration is soaring at the United States-Mexico border due to President Joe Biden’s policies, a former Texas sheriff says.

In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Saturday, retired Rockwall County Sheriff Harold Eavenson said recent southern border apprehension totals reveal how the Biden administration is returning to the Obama-era days of high illegal immigration levels, with pro-migration policies the driving the increase.

LISTEN: 

“A lot of those people that come into our country are involved in illegal activity and have criminal records when they come into our country and they do the same here as they were doing elsewhere before they made entry,” Eavenson said. “And that puts a strain on the infrastructure of any sheriff’s office, especially those border counties.”

“It happened under the Obama administration and with all of the arrests that took place in January, 78,000 was higher than any January in the last decade,” Eavenson said. “That’s clear evidence that we’re starting to see an influx of illegals into our country.”

As Eavenson referenced, more than 75,000 border crossers were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border last month — the highest level of illegal immigration in the month of January since 2006.

The surge of illegal immigration occurred as Biden ended the anti-fraud Remain in Mexico policy, restarted the Catch and Release program, ended cooperative asylum agreements with Central America, has halted most interior immigration enforcement, and has attempted to halt deportations for most illegal aliens for 100 days.

“The government, by doing what they’re doing, is violating the oldest and simplest justification that they have protecting its citizens,” Eavenson said. “It’s wrong, absolutely wrong, and not in the best interests of the citizens of this country.”

Eavenson told Breitbart News Saturday that between 2016 to 2020, the Trump administration worked in “cooperation and collaboration” with local communities to help minimize “illegal access to our country by” illegal aliens.

“The arrest numbers went down, the crime numbers went down,” Eavenson said.

Now, Eavenson said Biden seems to be bringing back the Obama years when Border Patrol and local sheriffs are “not permitted to do their job” in terms of arresting illegal aliens and turning them over to federal immigration officials for deportation.

“And now we’re going to see … a rise in those numbers because of a change in policy from the Trump administration to the Biden administration which is — apparently going to be the same — what we saw under the Obama administration,” Eavenson said.

With the Chinese coronavirus crisis, and economic lockdowns, still taking its toll on the nation, Eavenson questioned how it is feasible “to check all of these people that want to come into our country.”

“When you couple [the coronavirus threat] with the threat of increased criminal activity which we know will happen because it happened under the Obama administration, the citizens of our country are at risk because our government under these policies are not doing what they are supposed to be doing,” Eavenson said.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here


Biden’s DHS to Release 25.6K Migrants into Texas, California Communities

Cesar, 35, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua waits with his wife, Carolina, 25, (Right) and his eight-year-old son Donovan to enter the US port of entry to change their asylum court dates on April 6, 2020 at the Paso del Norte International Bridge in Ciudad Jua?rez in the state of …
PAUL RATJE/Agence France-Presse/AFP via Getty Images
3:28

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is planning to release about 25,600 migrants, who have been in Mexico, into American communities in Texas and California, Breitbart News has learned.

After Biden ended the “Remain in Mexico” policy — which drastically reduced asylum fraud by keeping migrants in Mexico while they await their asylum hearings in the United States — DHS announced that it would begin processing the 25,600 migrants in the program on February 19.

Ultimately, the migrants will enter the U.S. interior.

Internal communications Breitbart News has reviewed reveal that DHS plans to release the migrants in San Diego, California; El Paso, Texas; and Brownsville, Texas — locations the Biden administration refused to divulge to the Associated Press when asked.

In San Diego, DHS plans to process and release about 300 migrants a day within two weeks of February 19. The same will be done in El Paso, the internal communications reveal. In Brownsville, DHS will process and release no more than 100 migrants a day.

DHS officials stated in a news release last week that the Remain in Mexico migrants “will be tested for COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] before entering” the U.S. Internal communications at DHS, though, does not mention plans to require coronavirus tests for migrants.

Currently, DHS is releasing thousands of border crossers into the U.S. without requiring that they undergo coronavirus tests. White House press secretary Jen Psaki seemingly confirmed that DHS is releasing border crossers without test requirements.

After Remain in Mexico migrants are released, DHS does not have any plans to track them. Instead, these migrants will be mixed in with all other border crossers and illegal aliens who have been released into the U.S. interior while awaiting asylum and immigration hearings.

A source close to the matter told Breitbart the orders to release Remain in Mexico migrants into the U.S. interior came from top officials at DHS, mainly deputies of Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and the White House.

As Breitbart News reported last week, the Biden administration has surged the release of border crossers into the U.S. interior since restarting the Catch and Release program. In the first 10 days of February, DHS released at least 2,000 border crossers into the country. For comparison, in December 2020 before Remain in Mexico was ended, DHS had released just 11 border crossers.

Federal immigration agents have also had to deal with an influx of Haitian illegal aliens after DHS canceled deportation flights. The move, as Breitbart News exclusively reported, has crowded federal facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border as agents are being ordered to release the illegal aliens into local communities.

DHS officials did not respond to a request for comment at the time of this article’s publication.

BIDEN PARTNERS WITH MEXICO TO ORCHESTRATE

ANOTHER MASSIVE MEX INVASION OF DEM VOTING

ILLEGALS.

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-biden-amnesty-and-mexicos-planned.html

"Mexican president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for mass immigration to the United States, declaring it a "human right". We will defend all the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said, adding that immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job, welfare, and free medical in the United States."

"Fox’s Tucker Carlson noted Thursday that Obrador has 

previously proposed granting AMNESTY TO MEXICAN DRUG 

CARTELS. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s

a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added." 

"Many Americans forget is that our country is located against a socialist failed state that is promising to descend even further into chaos – not California, the other one. And the Mexicans, having reached the bottom of the hole they have dug for themselves, just chose to keep digging by electing a new leftist presidente who wants to surrender to the cartels and who thinks that Mexicans have some sort of “human right” to sneak into the U.S. and demographically reconquer it." KURT SCHLICHTER

As in 2016, Democrats advance a corrupt ruling-class candidate. Like the dead man Gary Ernst, Democrats want people to vote for Joe Biden so they can swap him out for Kamala Harris, already a beneficiary of voter fraud and with the exception of Xavier Becerra possibly the worst attorney general in California history.