"Strong profits at Amazon surprises analysts" by Spencer Soper Bloomberg News July 24, 2015
Not me. It's a corporate economy for the cru$t of elites and those feeding of their large$$e. The rest of us are being left behind and looted.
NEW YORK — Amazon.com Inc. reported a surprise second-quarter profit on top of sales that beat analysts’ estimates, showing investors — as it has done before — that the Web retailer can make money when it puts the brakes on investments.
Shares in Amazon jumped as much as 19 percent after it reported Thursday that revenue rose 20 percent to $23.2 billion, helped by a fast-growing cloud-computing business and initiatives to attract more customers.
Net income was $92 million.
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Jeff Bezos, the chief executive and founder, is pushing the Web retailer beyond sales of books, electronics, and household items as the company matures.
While Bezos has focused on pouring profits back into growing Amazon’s business, he has periodically pulled back on spending to show that Amazon can be profitable.
“They are showing investors that if they want to deliver profits, they can,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc., who has the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock. “Amazon is a dominant online retailer, well on its way to becoming one of the world’s largest retailers.”
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Shares surged after the close of trading in New York, helping to push Amazon’s market capitalization to about $267 billion, more than Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer....
Amazon is also investing to bring in more customers as competition intensifies. Walmart is rolling out a new membership service to challenge Amazon Prime, which offers two-day shipping, TV shows, photo storage, and other benefits for an annual fee.
Startup Jet.com Inc. officially debuted this week, following months of testing to give online deal-hunters an alternative to Amazon.
A day of sales on July 15 to mark Amazon’s 20th anniversary, which the company called Prime Day, exceeded expectations, said Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer. The promotion, designed to drive Prime membership signups, featured reduced prices on television sets, lawn mowers, and other goods and helped to drive orders surpassing Black Friday, an annual US sales event that kicks off the year-end holiday shopping season.
Not hard to beat after the poor numbers year after year.
Amazon’s cloud-computing division, which offers Web data storage and computing services and includes customers such as Pinterest Inc. and Netflix Inc., had sales of $1.82 billion, up 81 percent from a year earlier.
The Amazon Web Services Group reported a revenue gain of 49 percent in the first quarter. The cloud-computing effort has disrupted traditional technology companies as customers buy less hardware and software, instead renting computers from Amazon....
“We’ve had competition for 20 years now from some of the biggest names in retail and other areas,” Olsavsky said on a call. “We’re used to competition, but we focus on the customer. ... We’re happy with the results.”
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"Anthropologists to visit remote Amazon tribe; Conflict has led to concern among officials" by Ishaan Tharoor Washington Post July 24, 2015
WASHINGTON — For the first time, anthropologists working for the Peruvian government will attempt to make contact with members of a remote tribe living in the Amazon jungle. The move follows growing concerns about the behavior of the Mashco Piro people, which has included attacks and raids on neighboring communities.
South America, and in particular the vast Amazon region, is home to some of the world’s last remaining ‘‘uncontacted’’ tribes — indigenous communities that, for whatever reason, have managed to exist almost entirely outside the purview of the nation-states in which they technically live.
Meaning they aren't under the control of some sort of centralized authority, and that is bad!
Specialists fear a slew of risks that could follow should these tribes come into full contact with the outside world, from exploitation by rapacious mining and logging companies to the devastating transfer of pathogens to which they have no immunity.
In recent decades, some governments have taken a protective stance, working to shield these communities from outside contact mostly because of the health risks involved.
The jungle of self-internalized agenda-pushing propaganda with a point of view is getting pretty thick.
After all, some estimates suggest contact with outside diseases killed up to 100 million indigenous people following the European arrival in the Americas.
Now THAT, with all due respect, is a HOLOCAUST™!!!!!
(My history books gave it a sentence! I got three chapters on Germany during the, well, you know)
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Rights groups and activists have long campaigned to protect indigenous lands in the Amazon, fighting against the predatory interests of oil companies and a tragic history of violence that saw tribal peoples victimized by generations of settlers, loggers, and traffickers....
That is who government generally protects, yeah.
In 2013, the Mashco Piro earned global attention when dozens of tribe members appeared on the banks of Amazonian tributary near a small Yine town and demanded rope, machetes, and bananas. Rangers stationed there dissuaded them from crossing the river, but the standoff was tense, with some of the men from the tribe carrying bows and long wooden lances.
Nearby villagers, Christian missionaries, and the occasional tourist have all reported meeting Mashco Piro people.
‘‘We can no longer pretend they aren’t trying to make some sort of contact,’’ Luis Felipe Torres, a Peruvian official working on state tribal affairs, told Reuters. ‘‘They have a right to that, too.’’
Specialists say the phrase ‘‘uncontacted’’ is something of a misnomer, given that all communities on the planet are aware of their neighbors and have some sense of the wider world outside their home.
Yeah, what this is about is the RIGHT TO BE LEFT ALONE, and thus it is about FREEDOM!
‘‘People have this romanticized view that isolated tribes have chosen to keep away from the modern, evil world,’’ said Kim Hill, an anthropologist at Arizona State University, in an interview with the BBC last year. But that’s rarely the case.
Well, I don't know. I mean, look at who he is talking to there. They are right up there with the Catholic Church with the, well, you know, diddling the kids and stuff. I can see why certain "tribes" would want to keep them out.
(Of course, there is one tribe that demands their own apartheid state and that's okay)
‘‘There is no such thing as a group that remains in isolation because they think it’s cool to not have contact with anyone else,’’ Hill said.
Writing in Science magazine last month, Hill and colleague Robert Walker reiterated this point, suggesting that many of South America’s uncontacted communities had ‘‘chosen isolation out of fear of being killed or enslaved’’ and that, like most human beings living in constrained circumstances, ‘‘they also wanted outside goods and innovations and positive social interactions with neighbors.’’
Yeah, unfortunately there is a very small percentage controlling the levers of power and pre$$ that are pushing $elf-$erving wars and division of all kinds (except cla$$, and when they cover it they quickly break it down into race and gender categories).
The academics suggested the best path forward is a policy of controlled contact with these communities, carefully managed to avoid the spread of disease, but also enable the building of trust and providing aid and medical help if needed. The current Peruvian mission could serve a test case for this sort of endeavor.
We will penetrate every square foot of ground on the planet! No one will be left uncounted and every square inch of this planet will be catalogued.
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If they fight you coming in, there is always the military option.
