Aug 18

Today’s News 18th August 2018

  • 5 Articles Show How TPTB "Fix" You Like Staked Goats

    Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces ) via SHTFplan.,com,

    Five recent articles exemplify the ever-increasing surveillance by TPTB (The Powers That Be) to “fix” you and I… in the manner of goats staked out to lure in the lion. In this case, the lion is a ravening wolf, performing his own staking in the guise of a sheep. The articles will be listed in chronological order. Ironically, the level of alarm should increase with that order, as well.

    The reason I’m writing about this is that it is important to cite the things that generally do not receive the greatest amount of interest by the public overall. Some of them are obscure and do not really “jump” out at you until you examine them and see them not merely as they are presented… but the underlying significance to it all. Then it materializes into a puzzle piece.

    When the pieces are matched with others in the jigsaw picture? To paraphrase O’Brien in Orwell’s “1984,” you will then see the true portrait of the world they are creating.

    1. July 24th, 2018 “What is 5G and what will it mean for you?” by Matthew Wall. 

    This explains the 5G system that will be emplaced by many nations by 2020, according to the article. Here are some excerpted passages, compressed together to save time:

    “What is 5G exactly?  It’s the next-fifth generation of mobile Internet connectivity promising much faster data download and upload speeds, wider coverage, and more stable connections. What will it enable us to do?  “Whatever we do now with our smartphones we’ll be able to do faster and better,” says Ian Fogg from OpenSignal, a mobile data analytics company. “Think of smart glasses featuring augmented reality, mobile virtual reality, much higher quality video, the Internet of things making cities smarter. But what’s really exciting is all the new services that will be built that we can’t foresee…driverless cars will be able to “talk” to each other and traffic management systems…swarms of drones co-operating to carry out search and rescue missions, fire assessments and traffic monitoring, all communicating wirelessly with each other and ground base stations over 5G networks…mobile videos should be near instantaneous and glitch-free….wearable fitness devices could monitor your health in real time, alerting doctors as soon as any emergency arises.”

    Ian Fogg goes on to write that “…China is experimenting with ultra high definition live drone broadcasts using 5G,” and then adds “Meanwhile, regulators around the world have been busy auctioning off spectrum to telecom companies, who’ve been experimenting with mobile phone makers on new services.”

    I like the manner in which that last sentence was presented. Preceding it, Wall mentions “friendly” China, the “lab experiment” for the rest of the world…testing out new gear on their subjects that will be implemented here in Oceania and Eurasia. Then, as if Wall is writing a story for starry-eyed high-school students: “Meanwhile, regulators…”  interchangeable with “Meanwhile, your friendly, honest, elected rulers/lawmakers”… Let’s translate the whole last sentence:  Meanwhile, politicians and lobbyists have been steering the contracts off to those telecoms already in their back pockets, as Edward Snowden revealed in his expose “Citizen Four” a few years ago, to put you completely under their thumb and surveilled…you, the citizen paying for the surveillance placed upon you.

    Remember the line I just paraphrased from “1984”?  Can you see what they’re creating? A world where your refrigerator will be able to tell the authorities how much Absolut you have, and how much you’ve consumed. A world where everything…everything, people, and everyone…will be monitored. Swarms of drones on “search and rescue missions?” Or will they be search and destroy operations? Traffic management systems, traffic monitoring, regulators…all of this they want to bring in.

    Funny, though: with all of this, they don’t seem to want it when it is placed upon themselves, as you’ll see in the 3rd article cited. First this:

    2. July 31st,  2018 “Senate Democrats are Circulating Plans for Government Takeover of the Internet: Reason Roundup,” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown.

    The Democrats are using the Russians as the “bogeyman/Emmanuel Goldstein” to push forward measures that are totalitarian. A leaked memo by Senator Mark Warner is entitled “Potential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms,” with the created threat in this instance being listed as “Russian disinformation techniques.”

    Really, Warner? To address him as “Senator” would be an insult to the few remaining who truly are. How about the American disinformation techniques by the MSM (Mainstream Media) such as CNN, NBC, CBS, and all of the other quacking, lying, Associated Press (AP) sanctioned scriptwriters who have lied to us over the decades?

    Here is what Warner and the other communists (Democrats) want, regarding the Internet and Social Media in the U.S., individuals and companies alike:

    1. Mandatory location verification – on all user accounts and posts

    2. Mandatory identity verification – authentication by companies and forced compliance of those companies by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and the FTC (Federal Trade Commission)

    3. Bot Labeling – companies to label bots or be penalized

    4. Define popular tech as “essential facilities” – THIS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IS THE KEY TO THE WHOLE THING…to force regulation in the “interests of national security for critical infrastructure,” and “to protect the public good.” That is the vehicle…for your own good do they subjugate you

    5. More disclosure requirements for online political speech – simply put, to know who is going against the establishment…identify all of them

    6. Countering Cybersecurity Threats – i.e., creating the eternal threat/bad guy for justification for protection of the public and the nation, yada yada.

    7. More funding for the FTC – Of course! What better way to prompt a bureaucracy to regulate the people…than to pay them more money?  Especially as the money is coming from the people, via taxes!

    8. Requirements for social media and Internet firms’ algorithms to be audited by the feds – undoubtedly requiring a whole new bureaucratic arm to be created and funded

    9. [This one I’ll quote directly]: “The paper also suggests making as a rule that tech platforms above a certain size must turn over internal data and processes to “independent public interest researchers” so they can identify potential “public health/addiction effects, anticompetitive behavior, radicalization, scams, user propagated misinformation, and harassment – data that could be used to inform actions by regulators or Congress” Sounds great!  Nebulous and open to selective interpretation.

    Regarding “item 9” above, I wrote a piece for SHTF that was released July 16, 2018, entitled “A Micro Example of the Increasing U.S. Totalitarianism” that completely ties in with Warner’s memo. Please read it to see what they suggest here in “item 9”…an “outside” firm that is non-governmental set up to be an “authority and regulator” but with government approval and support. It’s a new paradigm: hire a “patsy” to do the dirty work with your authority that can be shut down and take a fall at any time. With the citizens, that’s called a “shell company,” but the government calls them “independent public interest researchers.”

    3. August 6th, 2018 “Pentagon Prohibits Personnel From Using GPS Services in All ‘Operational’ Areas,” by Jack Corrigan of Nextgov.

    [As mentioned, this one ties in to #1…how the government will not allow any restrictions upon themselves] 

    Here is a short excerpt:

    “The Defense Department on Monday issued an order barring all personnel from using geolocation services on their personal and government-issued devices in all operational areas. The policy, which applies to smartphones, tablets, fitness trackers, smartwatches and all other applications with geolocation features, goes into effect immediately.”

    The article goes on to say that the government can exempt personnel from this (termed “make exceptions”) when they want to. Naturally, the measure is to protect government workers, soldiers, operatives, etc., from being compromised when their little clicking toys and devices reveal their locations.

    But of course, we common folk are permitted to stroll around the kingdom, shop, talk, twitter, tweet, etc., with all of our locations known, monitored, and recorded. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

    4. August 8th, 2018 “Homeless people wearing barcodes to accept cashless payments,” by Camilla Turner of The Telegraph. 

    This is in England, as a part of an Oxford University-based initiative superficially appearing to “aid the homeless,” but in reality, it is a purely totalitarian construct. You need to read this article.  The homeless individual carries a card that is matched to an account that is managed by a caseworker…to assure that the donation goes toward a rental payment or an identification card. The “donor” can even make the “donation” with their happy cell phone! Yay! And they can see a “profile” on the homeless individual that gives their circumstances, etc. Isn’t that wonderful?

    So, they can actually verify the miserable cause of the person’s misery, and make a miserly donation that will be accounted for by a miserable case worker with their miserable computer…ensuring the miserly money goes toward a miserable, approved payment of some kind. Eliminate the cash, and control all of the serfs.

    5. August 9th, 2018 “MLB and NFL fans submit their faces and fingerprints to buy food, beer, and tickets,” out of massprivatei.blogspot.com. 

    This piece details how citizen-serfs can line up for their sporting events and scan their fingerprints for CLEAR’s TSA checkpoints and even to purchase food and alcohol. Complete, of course, with biometric-gathering photo and camera devices. The photo shows a guy who could be quarterback Tom Brady’s brother scanning his fingerprint at the counter while a smiling puppet-person-employee lovingly watches.

    Read the article. They’re collecting the data in the easiest manner: passively, and all the while conditioning the people to submit to such actions. What could be the purpose? That is a question you should have answered already. I’ll give it to you, in case you missed it.

    They want to monitor, control, and enslave every person on the globe, and kill any who resist or will not serve of use to them.

    That is it, plain and simple.

    Five different articles from different sources. Look at them as jigsaw puzzle pieces, and see them for their underlying significance. 5G technology interconnecting everything, the Internet and social media completely regulated with no privacy, government maintaining privacy and secrecy for itself, every segment of society including the homeless being controlled and “managed,” and biometric collection on people proceeding without halt.

    It’s just an article, I know. The problem lies with the fact that we’ve all been so conditioned as to just accept what is done to us as a whole. Acceptance and complacence are interchangeable in this instance, as either translates into doing nothing to stem the flow toward tyranny. The first step to resisting that tyranny is to be aware, and to sift what is truly relevant from what does not appear to be important at first glance. If you can visualize how the cage is being constructed, you can complete the puzzle, and just maybe the door to the cage will not close with you in it.

  • Death Of A Nation: Drug Overdose Deaths Jump To Record 72,000 Last Year

    The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates drug overdose deaths based on a current flow of mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System has just reached a record of 71,568 Americans in 2017. That is a 6.6 percent jump in overdose deaths over 2016 and represents a rapid deterioration of America’s inner core: The middle class.

    More than 40,000 Americans died from opioid-related overdoses last year, and around 30,000 people died from overdoses of synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, said The Hill.

    The overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids increased sharply from 2016, while deaths from heroin, prescription opioids, and methadone dropped.

    Last month, in a separate CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, we explained: The third wave of the opioid epidemic is here, as new synthetics [fentanyl analogs] that are 10,000 times as potent as morphine and used to tranquilize elephants are attributing to the latest surge in deaths.

    Watch: First responders revive women with Narcan after an opioid overdose

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    For context, drug overdoses killed more Americans last year (71,568) than the Vietnam War (58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties).

    Overdoses outpaced fatalities from suicide, or from influenza, and pneumonia, which claimed about 44,000 and 57,000 lives, respectively, in 2016. Drug overdoses almost rivaled the 79,500 people who die from diabetes each year in the U.S., which is the 7th leading cause of death.

    But there is no comparison to the 150,000 Americans that die each year from automobile crashes.

    The biggest spike in drug overdoses occurred in Nebraska, North Carolina, New Jersey, Indiana, and West Virginia (33.3 percent, 22.5 percent, 21.1 percent, 15.1 percent, and 11.2 percent increases, respectively).

    Infographic: Overdose Deaths Hit 72,000 As Numbers Still Come In | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    On a lighter note, the report mentioned areas like Wyoming, Utah, and Oklahoma experienced fewer deaths.

    Regions like Mississippi and, notably, Massachusetts, saw modest declines in overdoses, said the report. New England, the South, and the Rust Belt have been particularly hard-hit by the opioid epidemic, as their local economies continue to deteriorate.

    The Department of Health and Human Services recently declared the opioid outbreak a public health emergency. States are using grant money, which was signed into law in 2016, to counter the funding stress as the crisis continues to spread.

    Earlier this summer, House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill in June aimed at curbing the out of control overdoses. Some Democrats voted for the legislation; others opposed it for not going far enough and for not containing guaranteed funding.

    The drug epidemic is so concerning that opioid-related deaths have shifted the overall life expectancy rate for the U.S. lower for the second consecutive year. The last time this occurred, it was the early 1960s when the stock market raced to new highs, but then, shortly after that, experienced a sizeable market correction.

    America is in decline. Drug overdoses are at record levels. So…what now?

  • This Week Showed Internet Censorship Is As Much A Threat To The Left As The Right

    Authored by Danielle Ryan via RT.com,

    The banning of right wing controversialist Alex Jones from multiple social media platforms last week was a cause of celebration for many liberals, but should those on the left really be so complacent about creeping censorship?

    So far, the evidence suggest that there is indeed plenty for the left to worry about when it comes to corporations like Facebook and Twitter and their alliances with government censors.

    1. Facebook censorship of Venezuelan news

    In May, Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council in an effort to weed out “inauthentic content” on the platform. This organization is funded by various NATO governments and a slew of arms manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Its board includes names like Henry Kissinger and former CIA director Michael Hayden — and it has consistently lobbied for regime change in Syria and, you guessed it, Venezuela, where it has funnelled large amounts of money into pro-opposition groups for years.

    So, it’s no surprise that weeks after Facebook partnered up with this less-than-objective group, it deleted from its platform the page belonging to top English-language, left-leaning Latin American news outlet Telesur without any explanation at all. The page was restored two days later, with Facebook citing vague “instability on the platform” as the cause of the block.

    Telesur just so happens to be one of the only major outlets reporting on events in Venezuela in a manner that goes against the US government position and US mainstream media perspective — so obviously, out with Alex Jones it must go.

    It wasn’t just Telesur, though. Facebook deleted the pages belonging to independent grassroots Venezuela Analysis and Haiti Analysis, which are also leftist websites highly critical of US foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean region.

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    2. Facebook complying with Israeli deletion orders

    Last year, journalist Glenn Greenwald reported that Facebook met with Israeli government officials to determine which Palestinian activists should have their accounts deleted. The Israeli government threatened to enact laws forcing Facebook to comply with its deletion orders if it did not do so voluntarily.

    Of course, Facebook capitulated immediately and set about deleting accounts owned by Palestinian activists. Of some 158 requests submitted (over just four months) by Tel Aviv to Facebook asking for the removal of Palestinian content, 95 percent of them were granted. According to the same Intercept report,  Facebook hasn’t been overly concerned about what Israelis themselves are saying on Facebook and even calls for murder can be ignored by the social media giant.

    3. Google and Facebook censorship of left/socialist websites

    The World Socialist Web Site reported last year that changes to Google’s algorithms had seriously negatively impacted left-wing socialist and anti-war websites. An analysis by WSWS found that 13 such websites had seen their traffic plunge by a whopping 55 percent in the six months since Google had changed its algorithms. WSWS itself experienced a 74 percent drop in traffic between April and July last year. The changes also affected sites like Alternet, which saw its traffic plunge by 71 percent between April and September, Democracy Now (50 percent drop) and Truth-out.org (49 percent drop).

    Similarly, Police the Police (a page dedicated to exposing US police brutality) and the Free Thought Project (which focuses on government transparency) also saw their Facebook page traffic tank in 2018 after Facebook made changes to its newsfeed and search algorithms in an effort to combat “fake news”. PTP traffic dropped from between 12-15 million people per week to about 4 million — and the website had to fire its writing staff as a result. “The left is cheering this on, when historically the left is usually the side cheering for free speech,” PTP founder Jason Bassler told Mic.

    Amidst all of the celebration over the banning of Jones, some on the left cautioned that in fact, the left may indeed be the“real target” in all of this — and that those celebrating while people like Jones are banned are in fact being “conditioned”into accepting further censorship down the road.

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    4. Legitimate left-wing protests targeted?

    A particularly strange example of Facebook’s commitment to banning “fake news” and promoting a nice, cozy atmosphere for everyone online is its decision to delete event pages for anti-racist and anti-fascist protests happening in Washington D.C.

    The “No Unite the Right 2-DC” event (a counter-rally against a previous white nationalist event in the city) was taken down after Facebook decided it displayed some “coordinated inauthentic behavior” (the kind of random phrase that can no doubt be arbitrarily applied to anything without explanation).

    The event organizer said in a statement: “This is a real protest in Washington, D.C. It is not George Soros. It is not Russia. It is just us.”

    5. Twitter suspending and banning anti-war activists

    Twitter has come under fire recently for “shadowbanning” conservative accounts, making them harder to find on the platform and having their tweets appear less prominently in people’s feeds in an effort to limit their audience. But again, it’s not just the right.

    Twitter recently suspended the accounts of Daniel McAdams, the executive director of the libertarian and antiwar Ron Paul Institute and Scott Horton, the editor of the AntiWar.com website. Explaining what happened, McAdams said that he and Horton were suspended after defending former US diplomat Peter Van Buren who had just been banned permanently from Twitter after heated exchanges with journalist Jonathan M. Katz over what Van Buren said was his “unwillingness to challenge government lies”. In one of his tweets to Katz, Buren sarcastically commented: “I hope a MAGA guy eats your face”. Katz reported him for “promoting violence” and Twitter later caved and removed Buren’s account.

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    In explaining his suspension, Twitter told McAdams that he could not “promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease” — none of which he accepts that he did.

    *  *  *

    Perhaps the really amazing thing about all of this is that it is happening in front of our eyes and the powers that be are not even bothering to lie about it. Elected US officials are openly promoting this kind of censorship as a way to prevent the“sowing of discord” among populations. At a Senate Judiciary Committee last year about “Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online,” Democratic Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono called on social media platforms to prove their commitment to preventing “the fomenting of discord” online.

    Working hand-in-glove with governments, corporations like Facebook have been handed enormous power to decide what constitutes free speech and which opinions are worthy of being heard. How long will it be before people realize banning Alex Jones wasn’t really a victory at all?

    Danielle Ryan

  • How The Hell Did A Teenager Hack Apple's Secured Servers?

    An Australian teenager whose name has been withheld is facing serious charges by authorities over a massive data breach of Apple’s secured network.

    Apple said on Friday no customer information was compromised after Australian media reported a boy, 16, from the southern city of Melbourne, hacked into the world’s most valuable company from his parent’s basement many times over the last year, The Age newspaper reported, citing statements by the teenager’s lawyer in Children’s Court. He was summoned to a Melbourne court on Thursday.

    Apple contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation which launched a major international investigation, The Age said, quoting statements made in court. The FBI then passed the case to the Australian Federal Police (AFP), where they later tracked down the teen and found software that had enabled the hacking.

    The AFP raided the teen’s family home in Melbourne and seized two laptops, a mobile phone, and a hard drive. Court documents said the teenage hacker stored 90 gigabytes of Apple secured files and customer accounts in a folder titled “hacky hack hack,” the newspaper said. Authorities also said he readily spoke about his illegal activities on Facebook-owned instant messenger WhatsApp.

    Here is what the court heard:

    “Two Apple laptops were seized and the serial numbers matched the serial numbers of the devices which accessed the internal systems,” a prosecutor said.

    “A mobile phone and hard drive were also seized and the IP address … matched the intrusions into the organization.

    “The purpose was to connect remotely to the company’s internal systems.”

    The teen’s lawyer told the courtroom his client had become so popular in the international hacking community that even mentioning the case in detail could expose him and his family to unwanted risk.

    Crown Prosecutors also acknowledged that Apple was “very sensitive about publicity,” as it seems the story has not been widely reported.

    An Apple spokesman said this in a statement to Guardian Australia:

    “At Apple, we vigilantly protect our networks and have dedicated teams of information security professionals that work to detect and respond to threats,” said the spokesman.

    “In this case, our teams discovered the unauthorized access, contained it, and reported the incident to law enforcement. We regard the data security of our users as one of our greatest responsibilities and want to assure our customers that at no point during this incident was their personal data compromised.”

    Dr. Suelette Dreyfus, a privacy expert from the University of Melbourne’s school of computing and information systems, urged against jailtime. “I have researched a number of teen hacker cases internationally,” Dreyfus told Guardian Australia.

    “Almost all these teens grew out of the technology boundary-pushing of their youth, and then went on to live useful lives and contributing to society. Putting them in prison is often a waste of that potential. “Young people often make mistakes when they are exploring and rule-breaking especially online – including boasting about their exploits. It’s not right, but for tech teens, it can be a part of growing up … there’s usually a really worried teen and family at the end of this sort of court case.”

    Both AFP and Melbourne court declined to comment on the matter when asked by Guardian Australia. Reports indicate the teenager would be sentenced next month on September 20.

    So we ask a difficult question: How the hell did a teenager hack the world’s most valuable company and steal customer data? Apple has a lot of explaining to do…

  • Twitter Bans Anti-War Activist Caitlin Johnstone For "Abusing" John McCain

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    UPDATE: It looks like the suspension was lifted just after I hit publish on this. A lot of my fans and even a few haters made a big noise in objection to Twitter’s actions, and it worked! As we discussed recently, the plutocratic manipulators work so hard to manufacture our consent because they need that consent, and they can’t act if we don’t give it to them. I’ve left the article as-is below for posterity, and so people can see my experience with #Resistance Twitter’s attempt to silence dissident speech. Never stop fighting.

    *  *  *

    I’ve received an email from Twitter which reads as follows:

    Hello Caitlin Johnstone,

    Your account, caitoz has been suspended for violating the Twitter Rules.

    Specifically, for:

    Violating our rules against abusive behavior.

    You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.

    Note that if you attempt to evade a permanent suspension by creating new accounts, we will suspend your new accounts. If you wish to appeal this suspension, please contact our support team.

    They’re calling it a “suspension”, but nobody can view my page and I can’t perform any activities on it, and it appears to be permanent unless I succeed in going through the anonymous and unaccountable appeals process. Now when people try to access my account, they get a screen that looks something like this depending on what device they’re using:

    I haven’t abused anybody, and I’ve been observing extreme caution with my language for the last few days ever since I made a political tweet about John McCain which drew the wrath of #Resistance Twitter. The offending tweet reads as follows:

    “Friendly public service reminder that John McCain has devoted his entire political career to slaughtering as many human beings as possible at every opportunity, and the world will be improved when he finally dies.”

    I posted this four days ago when John McCain was trending because Donald Trump didn’t pay him any respect when signing the bloated NDAA military spending bill that was (appropriately) named after him. My reason for doing so was simple: the establishment pundits responsible for manipulating the way Americans think and vote have been aggressively promulgating the narrative that McCain is a hero and a saint, and I think it’s very important to disrupt that narrative. If we allow them to canonize this warmongering psychopath, then they’ll have normalized and sanctified his extensive record of pushing for psychopathic acts of military violence throughout his entire political career. They’ll have helped manufacture support for war and the military-industrial complex war whores who facilitate it. Saying we’ll be glad when he’s gone is a loud and unequivocal way of rejecting that establishment-imposed narrative.

    Interestingly, I’ve been saying this exact same thing repeatedly for over a year. An article I wrote about McCain in July of last year titled “Please Just Fucking Die Already” received a far more widespread backlash than this one, with articles published about it by outlets like CNN, USA Today and the Washington Post. Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar talked about me on The View. I was never once suspended or warned by any social media outlet or blogging platform at that time; it was treated as the political speech about a public figure that it clearly and undeniably is. The only thing that has changed since that time is the climate of internet censorship.

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    So anyway, I tweeted the thing about McCain, it was getting some angry backlash, and I received an email that a different tweet I’d made about McCain had been reported, reviewed and found not to be in violation.

    Then a popular #Resist account condemned my post and was retweeted by Caroline Orr, a pundit with hundreds of thousands of followers who works with the David Brock propaganda firm Shareblue. Instantly, my Twitter notifications began filling up with comments like these:

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    I also got a bunch of notifications like these from bot accounts as soon as Orr shared the response to my tweet:

    And I’ve received furious, vitriolic notifications from Clintonite Twitter accounts ever since, up until my account was shut down.

    So it looks like anyone who voices a political opinion that is deemed sufficiently offensive to Centrist Twitter can be purged in this way now. If you can get enough people reporting the same thing over and over again for a few days, one of those reports will eventually land in the lap of an admin whose personal bias allows them to squint just right at political speech about a public figure and see a violation of Twitter policy.

    I’ve been writing about the dangers of internet censorship so much lately because this is becoming a major problem. In a corporatist system of government, wherein government power and corporate power are not separated in any meaningful way, corporate censorship is state censorship.

    The plutocratic class which effectively owns the US government also owns all the mass media, allowing that plutocratic class to efficiently manipulate the way Americans think and vote so as to manufacture public consent for the establishment status quo upon which those plutocratic empires are built.

    Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The only cracks in plutocratic narrative control have come in the form of alternative media outlets and social media, the access to which is unfortunately guarded by plutocrats with well-documented ties to secretive and unaccountable government agencies. The plutocratic alliance has successfully funneled online audiences into platforms that can be easily regulated, and now they are censoring those platforms.

    An ungoverned media landscape would cripple the consent-manufacturing propaganda machine of the ruling oligarchs, making us impossible to manipulate and control. This would give us our only real shot at ending the wars that the John McCains of the world have devoted their lives to facilitating, our only shot at creating true and authentic democracy, and our only shot at turning the world around from the omnicidal, ecocidal trajectory that these sociopathic oligarchs have us on.

    They can’t allow that. Their rule depends upon it, and, historically, rulers do not give up power willingly.

    The longer we wait to fight this, the more marginalized our voices become, and the smaller our window to escape the cage they are building around us shrinks. Make your voices heard and refuse to consent to allowing a few Silicon Valley plutocrats to manipulate public discourse in their own interest. The time to act is now.

    *  *  *

    Internet censorship is closing in, so the best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to get on the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

  • How US Sugar Subsidies Bring A 'Red Tide' Of Algae To Florida's Shores

    Authored by Mark Thornton via The Mises Institute,

    ABC News reports that “Toxic red tide blooms are creeping up Florida’s west coast, killing marine life and irritating humans.” The red (or maroonish) tide is truly a nasty problem that I have experienced first-hand in the form of a ruined vacation.

    It is a potentially toxic algae to wildlife when it occurs in high concentrations. The Karenia brevis algae can be a threat to fish, birds, and even manatee. At least 92 manatees have been killed so far and at least one whale shark! This creates conditions at the beach of discolored water, dead fish, and a horrible smell. Tourists are adversely affected as well as local businesses.

    The algae are a natural phenomenon that has been known of for almost two centuries. However, the harmful “blooms” have occurred much more often and in more places in recent decades. More recently, it has been plaguing southwest Florida beaches since November 2017 and is now particularly bad over a larger area.

    I was recently attacked on Facebook for explaining all the benefits we would receive if we reduced the number of regulators and their budgets, i.e., fewer unnecessary regulatory restrictions on businesses and resource owners, less spending and taxes, more resources in the productive economy, and more entrepreneurship to name the primary ones.

    My “friend” wrote that if we reduced the number of regulators, who would protect him from all the various perceived evils, including the red tide at the Florida coast. I replied to him, in part, that we pay for over 100,000 regulators for financial markets and they did not protect us from the financial crisis, that BP’s deep-water oil rigs are extremely highly regulated (in fact they would not be drilling in deep water at all if not for regulations!), and in fact, EPA rules and regulators are there to protect the interests of polluters and to block citizens from protecting themselves in court. That was the end of the conversation.

    Back to the story. Actually, this is an old story that I most recently I wrote about 4 ½ years ago. There is an easy answer to why this red tide problem is growing increasingly worse, as well as having an easy solution. There is no need to create a Red Tide Project to do declare a War on Red Tide.

    The Red Tide starts as natural growth of the “bad algae” dozens of miles off shore near the continental shelf. That algae can then drift toward shore and enter brackish water inlets. The blooms are not stimulated in open circulating waters. However, they are stimulated to grow and get bigger in the presence of manmade nutrients, such as fertilizers that have run into water sources from agricultural production all over the Gulf of Mexico.

    In contrast, if the water in the Gulf is circulating well, then it brings more natural nutrients to the coastline. These nutrients feed other types of green “good algae” which keeps the Red Tide in check. In other words, mother nature can keep the problem in check.

    However, when water circulation is down and fertilizer runoff is in play, you have a problem. A multi-billion-dollar problem.

    Though other factors play a role in the algae bloom crises, one of the most significant involves the sugar industry. A combination of federal sugar subsidies, federal regulations on pollution, and federal control of Lake Okeechobee (a giant lake in southern Florida) runoff guidelines has created a recipe for disaster.

    The federal sugar subsidy prevents Americans from buying sugar from Cuba and other sources. This means that we have to produce our own sugar and that we pay the world’s highest price for sugar. It also means that we grow sugar and sugar substitutes in a high-cost fashion using a lot of fertilizer!

    According to ABC News:

    Once the red tide is inshore, the algae can grow even more using man-made nutrients, such as fertilizer.

    “The increase in runoff may likely exacerbate an existing bloom,” Weisberg said.

    Earlier this week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott called for the FWC and FDEP to “mobilize all available resources” to address the impacts of the red tide.

    On Friday, Scott blamed the cause of the blooms on “the federal government releasing water from Lake Okeechobee.”

    “For too long, Floridians have had to deal with harmful algal blooms caused by the federal government releasing water from Lake Okeechobee into our rivers and coastal estuaries,” Scott said in a press release.

    So, there you have it. Federal rules, regulations, and regulators are the cause. The federal sugar subsidy has created a massive increase in fertilizer use in agriculture in southern Florida and in other states, such as Louisiana. The EPA protects farmers and others who dump chemicals into the water by setting protection “limits,” and then federal officials dump excessive pollutants into our water ways and we have no recourse against them.

    I think the solutions are simple and straightforward. End the sugar subsidies and the EPA and its protection limits. Restore the right of the people to sue polluters that cause demonstrable harm.

  • The 2nd Special Counsel, Assange, & The 'Free' Press

    Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

    Two thirds of Americans want the Mueller investigation (inquisition, someone called it) over by the midterm elections. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has said that if Mueller wants to interview Trump, he’ll have to do so before September 1, because the Trump camp doesn’t want to be the one to unduly influence the elections. Mueller himself appears to lean towards prolonging the case, and that may well be with an eye on doing exactly that.

    And there’s something else as well: as soon as the investigation wraps up, Trump will demand a second special counsel, this time to scrutinize the role the ‘other side’ has played in the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath.

    He’s determined to get it, and he’ll fire both Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein if they try to stand in his way.

    There have of course been tons of signs that it’s going to happen, but we got two significant ones just the past few days.

    The first is the termination of John Brennan’s security clearance. It looks impossible that no additional clearances will be revoked. There are more people who have them but would also be part of a second special counsel’s investigation. That doesn’t rhyme.

    The second sign is Senator Rand Paul’s call for immunity for Julian Assange to come talk to the US senate about what he knows about Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Obviously, we know that he denies its very existence, and has offered to provide evidence to that end. But before he could do that, a potential deal with the DOJ to do so was torpedoed by then FBI chief James Comey and Senator Mark Warner.

    Both will also be part of the second investigation. Rand Paul’s motivation is simple: Assange’s testimony could be a very significant part of the process of figuring out what actually happened. And that should be what everybody in Washington wants. Question is if they all really do. That’s -ostensibly- why there is the first, the Mueller Russian collusion, investigation. Truth finding.

    But Mueller doesn’t appear to have found much of anything. At least, that we know of. He’s locked up Paul Manafort on charges unrelated to collusion, put him in isolation and dragged him before a jury. But don’t be surprised if Manafort is acquitted by that jury one of these days. The case against him seemed a lot more solid before than it does now. A jury that asks the judge to re-define ‘reasonable doubt’ already is in doubt, reasonable or not. And that is what reasonable doubt means.

    But it wasn’t just Brennan and Comey and Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and all the rest of them in the intelligence community who played questionable roles around the election and the accusations of Russian meddling in it. The American media were also there, and very prominently. Which is why when 300 papers publish editorials pushing against Trump ‘attacking’ the media, you can’t help but -wryly- smile.

    Why does Trump attack the press? Because they’ve been attacking him for two years, and they’re not letting go. So the press can attack the president, but he cannot fight back.

    That’s the rationale, but with the Mueller investigation not going anywhere it’s a hard one to keep alive.

    There are three reasons for the behavior of the New York Times, WaPo, MSNBC, CNN et al.

    The first is political, they’re Democrat hornblowers.

    The second is their owners have a personal thing against Donald Trump.

    But these get trumped by the third reason: Trump is their golden goose. Their opposition makes them a fortune. All they need to do is publish articles 24/7 denouncing him. And they have for two years.

    That puts the 300 papers’ editorials in a strange light. Many of them would have been fighting for their very lives if not for anti-Trump rhetoric. All 300 fit neatly and easily in one echo chamber. And, to put it mildly, inside that chamber, not everyone is always asking for evidence of everything that’s being said.

    It’s not difficult to whoop up a storm there without crossing all your t’s. And after doing just that for 2 years and change, it seems perhaps a tad hypocritical to claim that you are honest journalists just trying to provide people with the news as it happened.

    Because when you’ve published hundreds, thousands of articles about Russian meddling, and the special counsel that was named to a large degree because of those articles, fails to come up with any evidence of it, it will become obvious that you’ve not just, and honestly, been reporting the news ‘as it happened’.

    You have instead been making things up because you knew that would sell better.

    And when the second special counsel starts, where will American media be? Sure, it may not happen before the midterms, and you may have hopes that the Democrats win those bigly, but even if that comes to pass (slim chance), Trump will still be president, and the hearings and interviews won’t be soft and mild. Also, there will be serious questions, under oath, about leaks to the press.

    Still, whichever side of this particular fence you’re on, there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on. That is, when we get to count how many of the 300 editorials have actually mentioned, let alone defended, Julian Assange, and I’ll bet you that number is painfully close to zero, that is where we find out how honest this defense of the free press is.

    If for you the free press means that you should be able to write and broadcast whatever you want, even if it’s lacking in evidence, as much of the Russiagate stuff obviously is, and you ‘forget’ to mention a man who has really been attacked and persecuted for years, for publishing files that are all about evidence, you are not honest, and therefore probably not worth saving.

    Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are the essence of the free press. A press that is neutral, objective, fearless and determined to get the truth out. The New York Times and CNN simply don’t fit that description -anymore-. So when their editors publish calls to protect free press, but they leave out the one person who really represents free press, and the one person who’s been tortured for exactly that, you have zero credibility.

    Sure, you may appear to have credibility in your echo chamber, but that’s not where real life takes place, where evidence is available and where people can make up their own minds based on objective facts provided by real journalists.

    You guys just blew this big time. You don’t care about free press, you care about your own asses. And the second special counsel is coming. Good luck. Oh, and we won’t forget your silencing of Assange, or your attacks on him. If you refuse to do it, WE will free the press.

  • Not The Onion: Southwest To Allow Miniature Horses As 'Emotional Support Animals'

    Southwest Airlines has revamped their policy for travelers who need to fly with unconventional “emotional support animals,” following similar moves by JetBlue, United, American and Delta – which have all cracked down on those traveling with everything from motherfu*king therapy snakes, to supportive spiders, to peacocks trained to stow one’s emotional baggage. Cats and dogs are still allowed. 

    One animal Southwest hasn’t restricted, however, is miniature horses. Because why not? 

    Each passenger will be allowed one Emotional Support Animal (ESA) – which we imagine will be the ultimate Sophie’s Choice for those hoping to smuggle their emotional ant farms past security. Also, a note from a licensed medical doctor or mental health professional will be required on the day of departure. 

    For everyone not bringing an emotional support cat, dog, or miniature horse – looks like you’re just going to have to go to your happy place – or take a road trip.

     

  • Crispin Odey: It Feels Like Tesla's "Final Stage of Life"

    Hedge fund manager and noted Tesla bear Crispin Odey, in the wake of Tesla’s nearly 10% crash on Friday, talked in his most recent investor letter about how difficult it was to be short the name. He also made the revelation that he believes that the company is “entering the final stages of its life”.

    Odey, like many shorts, has ridden out the seemingly never-ending bullishness in Tesla stock as, despite failed promises and erratic behavior from CEO Elon Musk over the last couple of years, the equity has done very little but move higher since it has been a public company.

    Odey also compared Musk’s behavior to Donald Crowhurst, “the amateur sailor who set off in the 1960s on a solo voyage around the world and never came back,” according to a Bloomberg article. 

    Tesla shares were pummeled on Friday, dropping almost 10% after Thursday night’s New York Times piece, in which Musk tearfully broke down and admitted not only that no one had reviewed his going private Tweet before he put it out whilst driving, but also that he would voluntarily resign the position of CEO to somebody who could do it better.

    “…if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know,” he told the New York Times. “They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.”

    Also in Musk’s interview with the New York Times, published Thursday evening, he again couldn’t help himself and had to take a shot at short-sellers like Odey.

    Musk said he was bracing for “at least a few months of extreme torture from the short-sellers, who are desperately pushing a narrative that will possibly result in Tesla’s destruction.”

    Referring to  short-sellers, he added: 

    “They’re not dumb guys, but they’re not supersmart. They’re O.K. They’re smartish.”

    It’s not just short sellers that Musk thinks are “not supersmart” – he reserves that designation for virtually anyone, especially if they happen to disagree with him: in recent months, in addition to wrangling with short-sellers and sending David Einhorn “short shorts”, Musk has belittled analysts for asking “boring, bonehead” questions.

    The Bloomberg article noted that Tesla is Odey European Inc’s second biggest equity short position.

    “The path this fund has taken to reach this place was so painful, but now I would not swap this portfolio for anyone else’s,” Odey wrote in the letter. “It is a pity you daren’t give it a try.”

    Perhaps over the coming weeks, we will truly see who is smart and who is “smartish”.

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