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Who Beat Hitler? USA, Britain, Or Russia

In 1945, most French people thought that the Soviet Union deserved the most credit for Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II - even though the Soviets did not play much of a role in France's liberation, relative to the US and Britain. By 1995 and 2004, however, the French had changed their minds, and were crediting the US as the biggest contributor to victory in Europe (survey data from the French Institute of Public Opinion)…

Assessing the "biggest contributor to victory" in a rigorous way is exceptionally difficult. They tend to devolve into comparisons of counterfactuals, and the truth is that nobody has any strong idea how the war would have turned out absent US involvement, or if the German-Soviet non-aggression pact had held, etc. Soviet Union's successful resistance of Nazi invasion and subsequent reclamation of Eastern Europe was the most important of many factors in defeating Germany. As historian Richard Overy Explains In His book Why the Allies Won:

If the defeat of the German army was the central strategic task, the main one was the conflict on the eastern front. The German army was first weakened and then driven back, before the main weight of Allied ground and air forces was brought to bear in 1944. Over four hundred German and Soviet divisions fought along more than 1,000 miles. Axis divisions between 1941 and 1945. The scale and geographical extent of the eastern front dwarfed all earlier warfare. Losses on both sides far exceeded anywhere else in the military contest. The war in the east was fought with a ferocity almost unknown on the western fronts. The battles at Stalingrad and Kursk, which broke the back of the German army, drew from the soldiers of both sides the last ounces of physical and moral energy.

If you are looking at the human toll of the war, the Soviets clearly incurred the heaviest losses. Tony Judt's Postwar cites Estimates Suggesting There Were 8.6 million Soviet Military Deaths and over 16 million civilian Deaths in World War II. The US lost 418.500 Military and Civilians in all theaters of the war - still a staggering figure, but not on the scale as Sami Soviet Losses. Of course, it's possible - and highly preferable! - to contribute to the success of the process. But it's worth reflecting on just how massive the sacrifice the Soviet people made was.

"The victors are those who write History. It is this one that is written in our school books, not the true History as it unfolded, but a History that caresses the camp of the winners. History has ceased long ago to be the sum of the humanities today it belongs only to a handful of individuals. "

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-09/who-beat-hitler-usa-britain-or-russia

Reality TV Star Prostitute Gets Prison For Racking Up $20,000 On Dead "Client's" Debit Card

A former reality TV "bad girl", Shannade Clermont, is now actually heading to jail for a year on wire fraud charges. The sentence comes as a result of "making and attempting more than $20,000 in fraudulent charges using debit card information she stole from a man who died during the course of a prostitution date with her," according to the Justice Department.

Clermont admitted to stealing the debit card information from a man she visited in his Manhattan apartment. The DOJ said: "When the man died of an overdose, instead of notifying the authorities or calling for help, Clermont callously chose to use the man’s debit card information to make tens of thousands of dollars in illegal purchases." After stealing his debit card information she attempted to purchase "thousands of dollars of luxury clothing and other merchandise, including, among other items, Valentino shoes, a Phillip Plein jacket, Beats headphones, as well as a gift certificate at a beauty salon". As far as Reality TV "talent", Clermont was low on the totem pole to begin with. She had appeared on the Oxygen network series “Bad Girls Club” in 2015 which helped her grow a large social media following. Her and her sister have appeared in music videos and have also modeled for Kanye West’s Yeezy brand, appearing in the Yeezy Season 6 campaign. She was ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution.

The Southern District of New York issued the following fantastic Tweet after her sentence. USA Berman: As Shannade Clermont has now learned, her real-life bad behavior has real-life consequences, & has now landed her in federal prison. — US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) April 4, 2019

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman released a longer statement along the same lines: “Former reality TV ‘Bad Girl’ Shannade Clermont lived up to her on-screen persona, as she admitted to stealing the debit card information from a man she visited for a prostitution date in his Manhattan apartment. When the man died of an overdose, instead of notifying the authorities or calling for help, Clermont callously chose to use the man’s debit card information to make tens of thousands of dollars in illegal purchases. As Shannade Clermont has now learned, her real-life bad behavior has real-life consequences, and has now landed her in federal prison.”

“On Jan. 31, 2017, my brother died and she went shopping,” the victim’s sister said at the sentencing, declining to give her name. The overdose was reported to be from cocaine laced with fentanyl.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-06/reality-tv-star-prostitute-gets-prison-racking-20000-dead-clients-debit-card

Amazon Is Challenging Google And Facebook For Dominance In Digital Advertising

If Jeff Bezos has proven anything during the quarter century since he founded Amazon as a humble online bookseller, it's that no industry is immune to his company's expansionary blood lust. Not even its fellow tech behemoths. While the public's focus over the past year has been on Amazon's expansion into industries as diverse as groceries, pharmacies and delivery and logistics, one of the company's biggest success stories has largely flown under the media radar - until yesterday, that is, when the Wall Street Journal published a deeply reported story about the e-commerce behemoth's hostile conquest of the digital advertising business. According to WSJ, Amazon is the first firm to seriously challenge the Facebook-Google digital advertising duopoly that has for years controlled more than 60% of the market, largely thanks to the growth of Amazon's search-ad business.

To be sure, Amazon has a long way to go to catch up with Google: It still controls 78% of the $44.2 billion US market for search ads. But market-research firm eMarketer is projecting that Amazon will generate more than $5 billion in search-ad revenue by the end of 2020, which would put it in the No. 2 spot ahead of Microsoft. This would cause Google's market share to slip to just 71% by then, even as And thanks to its giant online marketplace, Amazon is benefiting from synergies that simply don't exist for Google. Though eMarketer doesn't have an estimate for Amazon's search-ad revenues from 2018, it expects it will account for at least half of Amazon’s $11.3 billion in overall ad revenue this year.

The way Amazon's search-ad business is structured makes it particularly lucrative: companies bid in an auction-based system to have their product ads show up when a user searches for a term like "shampoo." Of course, Amazon only sells ads to companies that sell on its platform. But companies that use the service report a remarkable ROI on dwarfs Google's. Because of this, many have shifted more of their ad spend to Amazon. Moving beyond search ads, Amazon has build a brisk ad business that has moved the company into third place behind Google and Facebook. And Amazon is rapidly developing new advertising options, including video ads.

If there's one risk to Amazon's aggressive expansion into the search ad market, it might be the company's own success. Because of its bidding system for placing search ads, brands' rush to buy with Amazon has sparked a bout of dramatic price inflation, that is swiftly forcing brands to reevaluate whether the ROI is still worth the price. Some brands are also wary of Amazon's ad business because they view the company as a competitor. But in the not-too-distant future, the expansion of Amazon's advertising business could transform the digital advertising duopoly into a triumvirate. Though that's probably the last thing digital media organizations and newspapers wanted to hear. But as the Trump administration ramps up its anti-trust scrutiny of big tech, this could be the rare issue where the Silicon Valley giants join forces with the Trump Administration against one of their own.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-05/amazon-taking-google-and-facebook-dominance-digital-advertising

Apple Scammed For Nearly $900,000 By Chinese Nationals Living In Oregon, Washington

Knockoff iPhones have gotten so good that a pair of Chinese nationals were able to scam Apple out of nearly $900,000 in a counterfeiting scheme involving roughly 3,000 devices, according to federal prosecutors. The two men - who were both engineering students in the US on F-1 student visas at the time - allegedly imported over 3,000 fake iPhones, which they would then claim were broken. Apple replaced 1,493 of the phones with warranty claims linked to Yangyang Zhou and Quan Jiang. The pair would then ship the genuine iPhones back to China where they would be resold for a profit. According to the complaint, Jiang coordinated the iPhone shipments to different addresses in the US in order to evade Customs and Border Protection, while Jiang's mother allegedly collected his share of the profits in China - then deposited it in an account he was able to access. Jiang also paid friends to help with the fraud.

The 1,576 claims that were denied were rejected for tampering, however none of the phones were identified by Apple as counterfeit, according to the filing. As NPR notes, the successful claims suggests that Jiang and Zhou had access to authentic iPhone serial or International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers - which include information on the origin, model and serial number of the mobile device. The complaint does not state how the men obtained this information, while Apple has not clarified if it required either of the numbers before approving claims. Hilariously, one of the warranty claims submitted in April 2018 was for a customer named "Apache Helicopter." Apple took losses of around $600 per phone for an overall estimated loss of $895,000, a company official told the Department of Homeland Security.

US Customs and Border Protection seized three international shipments totaling 95 counterfeit iPhones sent to Zhou. In March 2018, Homeland Security's investigators based out of Portland executed a search warrant at Jiang's residence, where they discovered more than 300 counterfeit iPhones, shipping records and warranty submission records. Four boxes were also addressed to Yangyang Zhou at four different mailbox facilities in the state of Washington. Zhou was stopped at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in August, 2018 with several iPhones - one of which was the genuine replacement for the "Apache Helicopter" warranty claim. On one of Zhou's other electronic devices, investigators found photographs showing what appear to be boxes of iPhones.

Jiang faces charges of trafficking in counterfeit goods and wire fraud, while Zhou is being charged with "submitting false or misleading information on export declaration." Their scam is not new - in fact, fake iPhone laundering has been around for several years. As NPR notes, the problem is so severe in China that "Apple has already developed a more rigorous replacement plan to avoid" fraud. Last year a Chinese national living in New Jersey admitted to selling fake iPhones and iPads - pocketing $1.1 million in revenue from the scheme.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-06/apple-scammed-nearly-900000-chinese-nationals-living-oregon-washington

United States of America vs Yangyang Zhou Quan Jiang

https://www.scribd.com/document/405044839/United-States-of-America-vs-Yangyang-Zhou-Quan-Jiang#from_embed