More Gif Giving:
For a period in 2018, Biden could be seen stopping by art openings and parties on the Lower East Side, and attended a runway show for the hip downtown fashion brand Lou Dallas. Sources said that many of his art-world connections came through his relationship with Zoe Kestan, the lingerie entrepreneur who is better known by her Instagram handle @weed_slut_420. In addition to modeling her wares on her account, where she has nearly 75,000 followers, Kestan is also an artist whose Polaroid snapshots have appeared in group shows with Bernadette Van-Huy, Danny McDonald, and Sam Pulitzer. She has also appeared on the controversial podcast Red Scare, hosted by art critic Anna Khachiyan and actress Dasha Nekrasova, and modeled in runway shows during London Fashion Week. (Reps for Kestan and Biden didn’t get back to us.)
There’s also some concrete leftover evidence of Hunter’s brief wade into the water of downtown art studios and gallery openings. Sources say that, being circulated around the downtown gallery hub of Dimes Square like samizdat, are images of oil paintings of Hunter Biden—that is, images of paintings of all of Biden with nothing left to the imagination—made by another local artist who has asked dealers to not reveal her identity. We’ve yet to get a hold of the depictions of Hunter in the buff or a lead on that painter’s identity, but rest assured: we will keep you posted.
China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, was leaning on Western companies to strengthen his grip on the country. Mr. Guthrie realized that few companies were bigger targets, or more vulnerable, than Apple. It assembled nearly every Apple device in China and had made the region its No. 2 sales market.
So Mr. Guthrie began touring the company with a slide show and lecture to ring the alarm. Apple, he said, had no Plan B.That last link goes to a story the Times published last month about Apple’s decision to effectively hand over data on all of its customers in China to the CCP.
“I was going around to business leaders, and I’m like: ‘Do you guys understand who Xi Jinping is? Are you listening to what’s going on here?’” Mr. Guthrie said in an interview. “That was my big calling card.”
His warnings were prescient. China has taken a nationalist, authoritarian turn under Mr. Xi, and American companies like Apple, Nike and the National Basketball Association are facing a dilemma. While doing business in China often remains lucrative, it also increasingly requires uncomfortable compromises.
Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has said the data is safe. But at the data center in Guiyang, which Apple hoped would be completed by next month, and another in the Inner Mongolia region, Apple has largely ceded control to the Chinese government.Those compromises had to be made because China has a lot of leverage. Nearly all of Apple’s products are manufactured and assembled there. It’s also Apple’s 2nd biggest market after the US. Refusing to play ball with China could decimate the company. And according to Doug Guthrie the company still has no plan B. It is almost entirely dependent on China.
Chinese state employees physically manage the computers. Apple abandoned the encryption technology it used elsewhere after China would not allow it. And the digital keys that unlock information on those computers are stored in the data centers they’re meant to secure…
Mr. Cook often talks about Apple’s commitment to civil liberties and privacy. But to stay on the right side of Chinese regulators, his company has put the data of its Chinese customers at risk and has aided government censorship in the Chinese version of its App Store. After Chinese employees complained, it even dropped the “Designed by Apple in California” slogan from the backs of iPhones.
All American companies need to pull out of China; it would be the best thing for America and the rest of the “democratic” world. Our money continues to support the Chinese government and their suppression of Tibet, Taiwan, and many of their peoples.Maybe a complete withdrawal isn’t possible but it’s not hard to understand the impetus. We’re funding China’s rise and it’s crackdown on human rights, complete with a system of prisons in Xinjiang. If we’re not thinking hard about how to get out of this position, we really ought to be. Another one:
I’ve never understood why investment (and travel, etc) allowed in China and other communist countries while we continue our complete boycott of communist Cuba. What is the difference? China is a lot more “dangerous” to us than Cuba.
The following should appear in every article on this and related subjects: The United States considers China to be engaged in genocide against their Uyghur population, which includes forced labor for foreign companies (which can be difficult for foreign firms to track). How we can be doing such volumes of business with China while they are violating any and all human right against the Uyghurs is beyond me — we will hold our heads in shame, one day, as we should be doing now.How long before China just changes the names on the factories and cuts the legs out from under...
