- Staged Chemical Attack Videos And Other Trends In Modern Propaganda
Submitted by Southfront.org
The scandal regarding the fake hospital video published by the White Helmets as a proof of the Douma chemical attack has reached its peak in the media and has caused reaction on the diplomatic level.
On February 13, BBC Syria’s producer Riam Dalati came out with a statement that “After almost 6 months of investigations” he “can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged” and “no fatalities had occurred in the hospital.” Dalati added that he believes that “the attack did happen” but no Sarin was used and “everything else around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect.”
“I can tell you that Jaysh al-Islam ruled Douma with an iron fist. They coopted activists, doctors and humanitarians with fear and intimidation. In fact, one of the 3 or 4 people filming the scene was Dr. Abu Bakr Hanan, a “brute and shifty” doctor affiliated with Jaysh Al-Islam. The narrative was that “there weren’t enough drs [doctors]” but here is one filming and not taking part of the rescue efforts. Will keep the rest for later,” he wrote in a tweet chain on the topic.
An interesting fact that despite the confidence that the attack did take place and no Sarin was used, Dalati was not able to name the chemical substance used and said that it is up to the OPCW to make conclusions.
Even this halfway contradiction to the “Assad did it” version caused a wide attention because BBC was among the mainstream media organizations fueling anti-Assad hysteria when the video first appeared in April 2018. This joint propaganda effort became a formal justification of the US-led cruise missile attack on Syria.
Dalati’s statement widely circulated independent media organizations and was even commented by the Russian defense and foreign ministries. Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the revelation as a “theater of absurd.”
“Over the past years, and not only in Syria, we have seen just a tragic farce performed by the Western community and mass media, which on the one hand, speak about the high democratic goals and how they care about the civilians of a sovereign state, and on the other hand, they just do not give a damn about all laws, the international law, freedoms and rights of a nation and certain people,” Zakharova stressed.
She compared this case with the situation developing around Iraq prior to the start of the US intervention and recalled how then US ambassador to the UN Colin Powell was convincing the international community that there is a need to rescue “Iraq, Iraqi nation and democracy”.
The Russian Defense Ministry also commented on the issue by saying that Russia is not surprised by the appearance of new discrediting details.
“Many of today’s top-ranking politicians in the United States and Europe, then tearing their throats in ‘defending the peaceful Syrians from the terrible chemical attacks of the regime” and sanctioning missile and air strikes on Syria, will try to forget the topic in order to avoid moral, political and criminal liability,” defense ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said.
An interesting fact is that mainstream media outlets and Western diplomats in fact ignored this situation. Furthermore, BBC officially stated that its Syria producer acted on his own and his claims are “personal opinions”, distancing itself from his conduct.
The Douma attack was not the first and only case when studio work was presented by the US-led block as a decisive evidence justifying its actions in the conflict. After the April 2017 attack in Khan Shaykhun, experts voiced concern that the video released by the White Helmets as a proof of the chemical attack conducted by the Assad regime was staged.
In fact, weaponized disinformation campaigns, staged videos and fake news are common approaches used by the US military and special services to promote their own agenda around the world. The US was actively using these tools during its intervention in Iraq and after it.
According to the later revelations, the employed programs were varying from placing Pentagon-provided articles in Iraqi newspapers as “unbiased news” to producing footage, which were made to look as if they had been “created by Arabic TV,” and CDs with fake al-Qaeda videos, which then distributed through various channels.
The employed propaganda approaches are constantly evolving. Therefore, propaganda coverage of the conflict in Syria has some differences with those which were observed in Iraq. Now, mainstream media, the Pentagon, the intelligence services and diplomats are actively using Hollywood-style approaches. This style of the coverage is based on providing catchy, even if horrible, pictures and videos influencing the emotions of the audience rather than convincing it with logical conclusions.
Just like with Hollywood movies, the mainstream news has increasingly been turning away from the logical narration of stories with realistic motivations to emotional judgements based on anonymous sources, non-verified images, pocket citizen journalists and even open speculation. The content developed within the framework of this approach is usually based on the results of social and psychological research. This allows results to be maximised by the targetted development of content and appropriate segmentation of the audience. An interesting and successful example of this audience reaction modelling can be seen in the mainstream media coverage of the Salisbury incident, which gave rise to large-scale hysteria in Western countries about Russian spies.
Considering that US defense officials openly admit that the Pentagon, as well as other institutions, are going to develop their influencing tools and irregular warfare capabilities further, it should be expected that the intensity and sophistication of disinformation campaigns waged around the globe will continue to increase.
- Illinois Considering "Asset Transfers" To Pensions: Be Afraid
Submitted by Mark Glennon of Wirepoints
Governor JB Pritzker’s administration has now made clear it will seriously consider the latest idea to address Illinois’ pension crisis – transferring public assets directly to state pensions. It recently announced the formation of a task force on the subject.
At its core, the concept is exceptionally simple. In practice, however, it’s exceptionally subject to smoke and mirrors and would further obscure a pension system that’s already far too opaque. More importantly, asset transfers do nothing to improve the state’s overall fiscal health.
Just convey ownership of some public assets to the pension, for free, in addition to the cash contributions taxpayers make now. That’s all this is about. Maybe the Illinois Lottery or Illinois Tollway for state pensions. Maybe Midway Airport or its water system for Chicago pensions. Those are examples of assets that have been mentioned that might be handed over.
Illinois state pensions are officially reported to have assets about $130 billion less than what they need to have on hand to pay for pension benefits already earned. Turn over ownership of the tollway and some other assets and, voila, the thinking goes, that shortfall would shrink by whatever the transferred asset is worth.
The first problem should be obvious – the state, as a whole, would be no better off. Whatever assets the state owns – which are your assets as taxpayers – would simply be moved over to the pension funds for the sole purpose of covering benefit obligations. But the pensions are really just a unit of government because Illinois courts have made clear that the sponsoring unit of government is liable directly to pensioners if pension assets ever fall short. So, pensions might be made more secure by an asset transfer, but the government’s overall balance sheet remains the same.
Not true, I’ve heard some proponents of asset transfers say. They claim there are certain public assets where the value of the asset can only be fully unlocked through a transfer to a pension. Just selling or leasing the asset to some third party, they say, wouldn’t work. I’ll believe that when I see an example.
If you’re wondering at this point whether accounting shenanigans might be at play, you’re right to be concerned. Some valuation would have to be placed on the asset transferred in order to understand a pension’s true position. But public assets don’t have clear market values. What’s the Illinois Lottery really worth, for example? Experts will have different opinions, but the temptation will be to inflate the value in order to make pension financial statements look better.
And how on earth will actuaries decide what rate of return to assume on those assets? Currently, Illinois pensions assume about 7% per year. That’s already extremely controversial, with Nobel economists being the harshest critics. This will make heads explode in the actuary world.
Over time, the value of the asset will change. The lottery’s value, for example, will drop markedly if Illinois expands other forms of gambling as rapidly as planned. Does anybody really expect pensions to honestly report that changing value, given their sordid history distorting their position with phony numbers on things like discount rates and mortality projections?
And even if honest valuations are used, another temptation will be to transfer assets that are on the books at lower valuations. That would improve a government’s reported balance sheet when it’s valued fairly in the pension after transfer, but the government’s position wouldn’t really improve at all.
In the private sector, where asset transfers to pensions are sometimes done, that accounting trick is the whole point – take an asset that’s been heavily depreciated to less than fair value and give it to the pension at fair value, which magically improves the consolidated balance sheet. That’s a sensible tactic for a private company to improve its reported position, but for governments, from a taxpayer’s viewpoint, it doesn’t change the economic realities.
How ’bout we just transfer the Thompson Center to the pensions for $500 billion and call it a day, a reader asked? Sorry, won’t work. What about management and control of a public asset by a pension? Would you really want a pension managing Midway Airport, for example? No, advocates of asset transfers say, the whole transaction would be set up like a triple net lease, where the governmental unit would continue to be in control. Only the cash flow would be diverted to the pension.
But think about that and all kinds of questions are apparent. If the city truly kept control, it would have every incentive to reduce charges for parking, landing and gate fees, which is how airports make money. They’d be sure to cover operational expenses, but nothing would truly be left for the pension, making the whole deal unfeasible. If, on the other hand, the pension could determine those charges, well, heaven forbid that.
The complexity of asset transfers would be mind-boggling for major things like airports, water and sewer systems. They are tied up by layers of mortgages and covenants protecting bondholders. Disentangling them, if that’s possible at all, would be a matter few officeholders or taxpayers would ever understand.
Other questions are endless. Ask them and one thing will come to mind – Chicago’s disastrous parking meter deal. In that case, a public asset was transferred not for pensions but to cover city operating expenses, but the concept is similar, and similar risks of having a bad deal foisted on the public should be apparent.
If this is getting confusing, take a look at the attached example. It’s from a company promoting the idea of asset transfers – Colliers International, an investment manager and real estate services company. It puts the concept in glowing terms, a “brilliant strategy,” using as an example the transfer of an office building used by an Arizona town to it’s underfunded pension.
Read that, and you’ll understand why the concept is getting attention. But ask yourself whether town residents are really better off because of the transaction. They owned the office building. It was worth what it was worth. They used it to pay their pension. Total assets and total liabilities for the town and its pension, combined together, didn’t change.
Our view on this is the same as our view about other ways to throw money at pensions. Don’t do it unless and until the pension system is reformed. Otherwise, Illinoisans will see that their assets are being tossed into a bottomless, corrupt pit. Don’t do it all unless the economic consequences and future reporting will be transparent and certain (which is probably impossible for most assets). Don’t just give away the assets. Demand reform concessions from current workers in Tier 1, who can negotiate collectively, and Tier 1 is where all unfunded liabilities are.
The Pritzker Administration has shown no interest in any of that.
Prepare for smoke and mirrors.
- America’s Socialist Revolution Has Begun
Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereignman.com
On October 31, 1517, an obscure German theology professor put the finishing touches on a paper he had written about the current state of the Catholic Church, and sent it off to Archbishop Albert of Brandenberg for review. The professor’s letter was polite and professional, with a formal tone that one might find in a modern academic work. It could hardly be described as revolutionary.
Yet within a few years, the professor would find himself excommunicated by the Pope, branded an outlaw and heretic and living in hiding under the protection of an army of followers.
His name, of course, was Martin Luther. And the publication of his famous paper, the 95 Theses, is often viewed as the start of the Protestant Reformation, one of the most important social movements in history.
The reformation was a European-wide rejection of Church authority. But its origins far predate Luther or his 95 Theses.
Mini revolts against the Church go back to the late 1300s, more than 150 years earlier. But historians often focus on a single watershed moment to mark the beginning of a major movement or trend, even though there are always multiple events leading up to it. For example, historians consider October 1929’s stock market crash as the start of the Great Depression, even though the London market had crashed in September, and the US market suffered a smaller crash in March.
Point is, there are always multiple, important events that could mark the beginning of a major trend or movement.
There’s a new major trend taking place right now in front of our very eyes– a modern Socialist Revolution. People are storming into power and prominence with a belief system that bigger government, punitive taxes and nationalization of private industry will fix everything.
They find personal wealth utterly revolting, and they’ll stop at nothing to redistribute it.
We’ve been writing about this for years. But its no longer theory or conjecture. It’s happening. The revolution has begun.
There have been several watershed moments recently that future historians might view as the start of this modern Socialist Revolution… including possibly today with Bernie Sanders announcing his 2020 presidential bid.
But I think a less obvious choice would be when Amazon surrendered to the Socialists last week over its proposed headquarters in New York City.
Amazon’s expansion into New York would have brought 25,000 well-paying jobs to the city, plus state-of-the-art green construction, $10+ billion in tax revenue, land for a new school, a tech and art incubator, etc. In exchange, the city government would give up some tax credits that were completely trivial by comparison.
But… the Socialists couldn’t keep their mouths shut. They were disgusted that a behemoth like Amazon, headed by the richest man in the world, would receive any benefits whatsoever. They couldn’t step back and realize that the deal was a WIN/WIN. Amazon wins. The city wins.
Socialists are only happy with a WIN/LOSE, i.e. they have to win at your expense… otherwise no deal.
So they whined and complained until Amazon walked away.
Here’s a perfect example of this WIN/LOSE mentality: Before all the public outcry, Amazon’s proposed headquarters was within a designated “Opportunity Zone,” which meant that the company could have eventually been eligible for federal tax breaks on its $2.5 billion New York investment.
Socialists immediately lamented the gross injustice, claiming that Amazon shouldn’t receive any opportunity zone tax incentives that were “meant for the poor.”
We’ve talked about opportunity zones a few times in the past; the basic idea is that every governor across the US has designated certain portions of his/her state or territory as an “opportunity zone.”
To qualify as an opportunity zone, the area must have a poverty rate of at least 20% and a median household income level that’s at least 20% below the local average.
Federal law provides generous tax breaks for anyone who makes lucrative, long-term investments in opportunity zones– whether starting a business, redeveloping property, etc.
Talk about a win/win.
Opportunity zone investments mean that an underdeveloped community gets to enjoy more job prospects, safer neighborhoods, cleaner streets, greater economic activity, higher tax revenue, etc.
And in exchange for putting up all the money, taking all the risk and doing all the work, investors can enjoy tax free gains.
Everyone wins.
You’d think people would be happy and grateful that some investors are risking their capital and investing their time to improve the neighborhood. But no. The Socialists just can’t keep their mouths shut. They can’t simply accept that they’re going to get a ton of benefit for free because someone else is going to take all the risk and do all the work.
Nope. They’re only happy if they get everything for free… while you get absolutely nothing out of the deal.
That’s a win/LOSE. And it’s the foundation of the Socialist mentality.
If a rich person or a large company derives any benefit whatsoever, they have to stop the deal at all costs, even if they screw themselves in the process.
So now Amazon has pulled out, and the Socialists get 100% of nothing. Everyone loses. And they’re insane enough to consider this a major victory. It’s as if they’re happy to screw themselves, as long as they think they can screw you even more. It reminds me of an old socialist joke from the Soviet days.
A Russian man one day stumbles across an old metal lantern. He picks it up and shines it, and a Genie pops out, saying “I am a Communist genie… so you only get one wish instead of three. Plus, I have to give your comrade neighbor twice as much as I give you.”
So the man thinks for a moment and says, “Then I wish for you to blind me in one eye.” This is the essence of modern socialism that is taking over America: everybody loses. And the revolution has already begun.
- Will The Trade War Lead To Real War With China?
Authored by Chas Freeman via ConsortiumNews.com,
What the U.S. faces with China is not a new Cold War but a contest unlike any it has known before…
Five hundred years ago, Hernán Cortés began the European annihilation of the Mayan, Aztec, and other indigenous civilizations in the Western Hemisphere. Six months later, in August 1519, Magellan [Fernão de Magalhães] launched his circumnavigation of the globe. For five centuries thereafter, a series of Western powers — Portugal, Spain, Holland, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and, finally, the United States — overturned preexisting regional orders as they imposed their own on the world. That era has now come to an end.
In the final phases of the age of Western dominance, we Americans made and enforced the rules. We were empowered to do so in two phases. First, around 1880, the United States became the world’s largest economy. Then, in 1945, having liberated Western Europe from Germany and overthrown Japanese hegemony in East Asia, Americans achieved primacy in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Almost immediately, the Soviet Union and its then-apparently-faithful Asian companion, Communist China, challenged our new sphere of influence. In response, we placed our defeated enemies (Germany, Italy, Japan), our wartime allies, and most countries previously occupied by our enemies under American protection. With our help, these countries — which we called “allies” — soon returned to wealth and power but remained our protectorates. Now other countries, like China and India, are rising to challenge our global supremacy.
Trump receives Chinese Vice Premier Liu He in Oval Office, January 2019 (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour via Flickr )
President Donald Trump has raised the very pertinent question: Should states with the formidable capabilities longstanding American “allies” now have still be partial wards of the U.S. taxpayer? In terms of our own security, are they assets or liabilities? Another way of putting this is to ask: Do our Cold War allies and their neighbors now face credible threats that they cannot handle by themselves? Do these threats also menace vital U.S. interests? And do they therefore justify U.S. military presences and security guarantees that put American lives at risk? These are questions that discomfit our military-industrial complex and invite severe ankle-biting by what some have called “the Blob” — the partisans of the warfare state now entrenched in Washington. They are serious questions that deserve serious debate. We Americans are not considering them.
Instead, we have finessed debate by designating both Russia and China as adversaries that must be countered at every turn. This has many political and economic advantages. It is a cure for enemy deprivation syndrome — that queasy feeling our military-industrial complex gets when our enemies disorient us by irresponsibly defaulting on their contest with us and disappearing, as the Soviet Union did three decades ago. China and Russia are also technologically formidable foes that can justify American R&D and procurement of the expensive, high-tech weapons systems. Sadly, low intensity conflict with scruffy “terrorist” guerrillas can’t quite do this.
China and Russia Blamed for Our Malaise
No one in the United States now seems prepared to defend either China or Russia against the charge that they, not we, are responsible for our current national dysfunction and malaise. After all, we’re the best, Russia’s a rogue, and China’s an unfair competitor. Our patriotism is admirable, theirs is malign.
It must have been the Russians who overcame our better judgment and made us vote against Hillary Clinton and for Donald Trump. Who other than China could have caused our companies to outsource work to places with cheap labor, instead of upgrading equipment and retraining their workers to meet foreign competition? A pox on all foreigners, not just Mexican rapists, European rip-off artists, Japanese free riders, Russian trolls, immigrants from “shithole” countries, and Chinese cyber burglars. Why worry about how to boost our own competitiveness when we can cripple the competitiveness of others?
White House after snow shower, Feb. 1, 2019. (White House Photo by Joyce N. Bogosian via Flickr)
Today our government is trying to break apart Sino-American interdependence, weaken China, and prevent it from overtaking us in wealth, competence, and influence. We have slapped tariffs on it, barred investment from it, charged it with pilfering intellectual property, arrested its corporate executives, blocked tech transfers to it, restricted what its students can study here, banned its cultural outreach to our universities, and threatened to bar its students from entering them. We are aggressively patrolling the waters and air spaces off its coasts and islands. Whether China deserves to be treated this way or not, we are leaving it little reason to want to cooperate with us.
Our sudden hostility to China reflects a consensus — at least within the Washington Beltway — that we need to wrestle China to the ground and pin it there. But what are the chances we can do that? What are the consequences of attempting it? Where are we now headed with China?
Realism is out of fashion in Washington even if it’s alive and well elsewhere in America. It should give us pause that our new enemy of choice is a very different, larger, and more dynamic country than any we have unbefriended before. China had a couple of bad centuries. But 40 years ago, the Chinese Communist Party and government began to evolve what turned out to be a successful model of economic development that blended state capitalism with free enterprise. This unleashed the entrepreneurial talents of the Chinese people. The results have been staggering. Per capita income in China today is 25 times what it was in 1978. Back then, well over 90 percent of Chinese lived in poverty, as defined by the World Bank. Today, less than 2 percent do. China’s GDP is now 60 times bigger than it was 40years ago.
China is no longer isolated, poor, or irrelevant to affairs distant from it. It is a society with capabilities that rival and are beginning to overtake our own. China faces many challenges, but its people are resilient, resourceful, and optimistic that the lives of their descendants will be vastly better than their own — this at a time that we Americans are unprecedentedly pessimistic about our own country’s present and future condition.
Flight view of Beijing Capital International Airport. (Wikimedia)
Despite increasingly problematic policies, the Chinese economy is still growing almost three times faster than ours. By some measures, it is already one-third larger. China’s manufacturing sector accounts for over one fourth of global industrial production and is one-and-a-half times bigger than that of the United States. China’s ability to defend itself and its periphery against foreign attack is now formidable despite its spending less than 2 percent of GDP on its military. If pressed to do so, China could spend as much on defense as we do — and that’s a lot: almost $1.2 trillion when you add up all the military spending that is hidden like Easter eggs all over non-Defense Department budgets.
China is slightly larger than the United States – 6.3 percent of the world’s landmass vs. 6.1 percent for the U.S. But there are 1.4 billion Chinese, with only one-third the arable land and one-fourth the water we Americans have. If we had the same ratio of population to agricultural resources that the Chinese do, there would be almost 4 billion Americans – about 600 million of them over 65 – most of them probably planning to retire in Florida.
In China, No Margin for Error
Nanjing Road, Shanghai. (Wikimedia)
I suspect that, if there were that many people crammed into the United States, Americans would have a much lower tolerance for social disorder and a different attitude toward family planning than we now do. We’d also be more worried about the prospects for individual security and survival. Sixty years ago, perhaps 30 million Chinese died in a man-made famine known as the “Great Leap Forward.” Chinese are acutely aware that they have narrow margins for error. This makes them naturally risk averse and, in most respects, a more predictable actor in foreign affairs than we now are.
Until we suddenly launched a trade war last year, China was our fastest growing export market. It is, after all, the largest consumer of a vast array of commodities and products. China consumes 59 percent of the world’s cement, 47 percent of its aluminum, 56 percent of its nickel, 50 percent of its coal, 50 percent of its copper and steel, 27 percent of its gold, 14 per cent of its oil, 31 percent of its rice, 47 percent of its pork, 23 percent of its corn, and 33 percent of its cotton. It consumes about one-fourth of the world’s energy. It provides one-third of the global market for semiconductors. Its companies’ demand for these has been growing around 16 percent annually. Microchips have become China’s largest single import — around $110 billion this year. China has been the main market for U.S. chips, one of the few products of industry we Americans still monopolize.
By slapping tariffs, quotas, and export bans on China, the United States is throwing these markets away as well as raising prices and reducing choices for American consumers. Food security has been an obsession for every Chinese state over the course of the last 2,500 years. No responsible leader in China is again going to commit his or her country to long-term dependence on the U.S. for its feed-grain, wheat, corn, cotton, pork, or fresh fruit supply. Erratic behavior in business makes one the supplier of last resort. Whatever the short-term outcome of the trade war we launched against it, in future China is going to look elsewhere for critical imports.
No “wall” is in prospect on the U.S.-Mexican border, but the United States is surrounding itself with a moat full of protectionist measures aimed at denying China not just sales in the U.S. market, but opportunities to invest its rising wealth in U.S. industry, agriculture, and services. This is in part a response to a real but far from unprecedented problem. In the 19th century, encouraged by Alexander Hamilton and others, Americans pioneered the art of technology theft from Britain and other more advanced manufacturing economies. As the 20th century began and we became a net exporter of innovation ourselves, we renounced intellectual property crime. Japan and Taiwan then took over our role. When Japan got rich, it too retired. Taiwan moved its pirate industries across the Strait to the China mainland.
Fighting the Last War
China took up the by-now, well-established practice of upgrading its industrial base by lifting technology from wherever it could. But, like the U.S. and Japan in earlier days, China is now itself becoming an exporter not just of capital but advanced, innovative technology. With a lot of competition among its own enterprises and an increasing share of the world’s intellectual property, Chinese companies have become very concerned to secure their innovations from pilferage. This has made them responsive to our pressure on them to clean up their act. In their own interest, they are almost certain to do so whether we make a deal with them or not. Like the proverbial generals, we may be fighting the last war, not the one to come.
The end of the 21st century’s second decade is a remarkably inauspicious moment for us to be severing ties with scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians — so-called STEM workers — in China. Technology advances through collaboration, not the sequestration of knowledge. In the United States, we graduate about 650,000 scientists and engineers annually, over one third of whom are foreigners. (In some disciplines, like engineering and computer science, foreign students account for about half of new U.S. degrees.) Almost one third of all foreign students here are from China. On its own, China now graduates 1.8 million scientists, engineers, and mathematicians annually. It is about to overtake us in the number of doctorates it confers in these fields.
Workers in 2008 perform quality control testing on computer drives; Seagate Wuxi China Factory Tour. (Robert Scoble via Wikimedia)
Already about one-fourth of the world’s STEM workers are Chinese. This Chinese intellectual workforce is eight times larger than ours and growing six times as fast. By 2025, China is expected to have more technologically skilled workers than all members of the OECD combined. (The OECD is not a trivial grouping. It consists of the world’s most advanced economies: the United States, Canada and Mexico, all non-Russian-speaking Europe, Australia, Israel, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, and Turkey.) By severing ties with the Chinese, we Americans are isolating ourselves from the largest population of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in the world.
U.S. Educated, Working in China
The United States has always been a major importer of foreign brainpower. Since 2000, 39 percent of our Nobel Prize winners have been immigrants. A great many of our technology companies were started by immigrants or are now managed by them. Asian immigrants, mainly from China (including Taiwan), India, and Korea, make up about 17 percent of our current STEM workforce. In large part as a result of the less welcoming atmosphere in our country today, less than half of Chinese graduates from our universities now join the U.S. workforce. Most are going home to work or start companies in China rather than here. China is now home to 36 percent of the world’s “unicorns” – start-up companies valued at more than $1 billion.
Some estimates are that the United States is already one million short of the STEM workforce our economy requires to sustain our competitiveness. Tightening restrictions on foreign students and workers as we are now doing undercuts our ability to fill this gap. We are reducing our openness to foreign science and technology at precisely the moment that other countries — not just China but nations like India and Korea — are pulling even with us, Europe, and Japan, or charging ahead. China has begun to outspend us on research and development, especially in the basic sciences, where breakthroughs in human knowledge that lead to new technologies occur.
Our strategy is not aimed at upping our own performance but at hamstringing China’s. This is more likely to induce intellectual constipation here than in China. The Chinese are not going to oblige us by ceasing to educate their young people, halting their progress, or severing their science and technology relationships with other countries. Nor will most other countries join us in shunning them. We Americans, not the Chinese, are the most likely to be weakened and impoverished by our growing xenophobia and nativism. Others, not Americans, will leverage China’s advancing prosperity and brainpower to their advantage.
At root, of course, our concern about China’s increasing technological prowess is about the balance of military power between us. Since World War II, Americans have become accustomed to being the privileged custodians of the global commons, setting the rules and calling the shots in all the world’s oceans, including the Western Pacific. We gained our primacy there nearly seventy-five years ago when we defeated Japan and filled the resulting power vacuum in its former imperial domain.
Allied leaders (left to right) at Yalta Conference,1945: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin.(Wikimedia)
But Japan is back as a major power even if it has preferred to pretend otherwise. South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, and others in East Asia have become powerful, independent states that bow to no foreign power. There is no vacuum in Asia for either the United States or China to fill.
No country in Asia can ignore the power that China’s huge and growing economy confers on it. None could achieve a decisive victory in a war with China. But none is prepared to enlist in our campaign against China or China’s backlash against the United States. None wants to choose between us. As uneasy as China’s neighbors may be in the face of its economic and military ascendancy, they all know they must accommodate it.
For over half of the last millennium, all or part of China fell prey to a remarkable range of foreign invaders – Qiang, Jurchens, Mongols, Manchus, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, French, Russians, Austro-Hungarians, Germans, Americans, and Japanese. Often, China was ruled by foreigners or dominated by them. The most recent set of invasions was from the South and East China Seas. It should surprise no one that Chinese are determined to defend the approaches to their coasts or that, to this end, they are developing what the Pentagon calls “anti-access, area denial” or A2/AD capabilities.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s rapidly strengthening capabilities have become a formidable impediment to anyone planning to mount an attack on China or on shipping approaching or leaving Chinese ports. The United States has repeatedly declared that we see China’s new ability to control its periphery as a threat to us. The Chinese take this, our plan to “pivot” much of our military to their frontiers, and our aggressive patrols of their defenses as ipso facto evidence of U.S. preparation for war with them. The United States and China are caught in a classic “security dilemma,” in which each side’s defensive moves are seen as threats by the other.
The contest between our determination to defend our continuing military primacy in the Indo-Pacific and China’s imperative of keeping potentially hostile armed forces like ours at bay is clearest in the South China Sea. Though long claimed by both China and Vietnam and fished in by the Philippines, this was traditionally a no-man’s land – part of the regional commons where fishermen from all the littoral countries felt free to ply their trade. But, in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam seized most of the land features in the Spratly Islands in an effort to secure its seabed resources for themselves. A decade later, China took the few rocks and reefs that were left. It has since turned these into islands with secure harbors, garrisoned them, and built airfields on them.
Games of Chicken
The U.S. and PLA Navies are now engaged in escalating games of chicken around these artificial islands as well as along the coasts of the China mainland. Both navies are highly professional. The danger of an accident is therefore low, but the risk of miscalculation is high. Should actual combat between our armed forces occur, it could rapidly widen.
In the East China Sea, the United States has pledged to back Japan’s claims to the Senkaku (or Diaoyu) islands. These are barren rocks about 100 miles east-north-east of Taiwan and 250 miles west of Okinawa. Chinese in both Taiwan and the mainland claim them as part of Taiwan. Armed Japanese and Chinese coast guards began patrolling them a decade ago.. At least for now, both seem determined to manage their differences prudently. Neither wants a war. Still, there is a decided risk that we Americans might be dragged into a bloody encounter between Chinese and Japanese nationalism.
But the greatest danger of a Sino-American war is Taiwan. Taiwan is a former Chinese province that was recovered from its Japanese occupiers by Nationalist China at the end of World War II. In 1949, having been defeated everywhere else in China, Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist forces retreated to it.
The universal expectation at the time was that the People’s Liberation Army would cross the Taiwan Strait and unify China by finishing off Chiang and the Nationalists. But, when the Korean War broke out, the United States intervened to prevent its widening through a PLA invasion of Taiwan or a Nationalist attempt to retake the China mainland. We Americans thus suspended but did not end the Chinese civil war. To this day, we remain committed to preventing war in the Taiwan Strait. To this end, we continue to sell weapons to the island. China sees this as hostile interference in a quarrel among Chinese in which foreigners should not involve themselves.
Night market in Taipei. (Wikimedia)
Behind its U.S. shield, over the course of 70 years, Taiwan emerged as a prosperous democratic Chinese society with decidedly mixed feelings about whether it should be part of China. The island is now ruled by a political party that is deterred from declaring independence from China only by its realization that this would trigger a violent resumption of the Chinese civil war that would almost certainly destroy Taiwan and its democracy.
Chinese on the mainland see their country’s continued division as an artifact of U.S. policy. While they have pledged to try to resolve their differences with Taiwan peacefully, they remain determined to erase the humiliation that the continued foreign-supported separation of Taiwan from the rest of China represents. War is not imminent, but it is an ever-present danger, with the potential to produce a nuclear exchange between China and the United States.
Taiwan illustrates the dangers of managing disputes by relying exclusively on deterrence to the exclusion of diplomacy. Deterrence can inhibit the outbreak of war, but it does nothing to resolve its underlying causes. In the case of Taiwan, the United States lacks a diplomatic strategy to encourage the parties to the dispute to address and resolve their differences. In default of a strategy, we are now doubling down on our politico-military support of Taiwan. But if Beijing loses confidence in the possibility of a peaceful reconciliation with the Taiwan authorities, it will be increasingly tempted to use force. This is precisely the trend at present. We have no plan to deal with that trend other than to prepare ourselves for combat.
China enjoys widening military superiority over Taiwan. Many judge that it could already defeat an effort by us to defend Taiwan. The PLA need not invade Taiwan to devastate it. Taiwan would be the main loser in any conflict whether the U.S. supported it or not.
A Sino-American war over Taiwan could quickly escalate to the nuclear level. China has a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons but it could deliver a devastating counterstrike on the U.S. homeland if we attacked it. There is very little substantive contact between the U.S. and Chinese militaries, and there are no mechanisms for escalation control in place. It is not clear how either side could fend off domestic pressures for escalation if we come to blows, as we may. Instead of exploring means of establishing and managing a strategic balance with China, we are withdrawing from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in part to enable us to deploy nuclear weapons closer to China.
For better or ill, the admirably liberal Chinese society on Taiwan cannot assure its security or prosperity without reaching some sort of accommodation with the much larger, authoritarian Chinese society on the other side of the Strait. Sooner or later, Taiwan will have to negotiate a durable modus vivendi with the mainland. Current U.S. policies help Taiwan avoid hard choices even as the balance of power shifts against it. We are inadvertently helping Taiwan set itself up for a Chinese offer it will be unable to refuse. Meanwhile, US-China relations are increasingly hostile politically, economically, and militarily.
What we face with China is not a new Cold War but a contest unlike any we have ever experienced in our 230 years as a constitutional democracy. China is fully integrated into the global economy. George Kennan’s grand strategy of containment was based on the correct judgment that, if isolated for long enough, the defects in the autarkic Soviet system would cause it to fail. China cannot be isolated, and its economy is currently outperforming ours.
The Soviet Union was an overly militarized state that collapsed under the burden of excessive defense spending. China has kept the proportion of its GDP devoted to its military at or below the level of our European “allies,” whom we accuse of spending too little on their defense. The Soviet Union controlled satellite countries and sought to impose its ideology on others, including us. The Chinese have no satellites and are notorious for not caring at all how foreigners govern ourselves.
Our competition with China is primarily economic. It will not be decided by who has the more appealing ideology, the most aircraft carriers, or the greatest stash of nuclear weapons, but by who delivers the best economic performance and by which country’s statecraft is soundest.
Are we ready for such a contest? Let’s look at the bright side. Maybe it will challenge us to get our act together. Let’s hope so.
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping with their wives, April 2017. (Wikimedia)
It doesn’t seem to matter which political party controls the House or Senate. Congress still can’t pass a budget or otherwise set national priorities. When it’s not shut down, our government runs on credit rollovers. Our debt is out of control. So far this century, we’ve committed almost $6 trillion to wars we don’t know how to end. Meanwhile, we’ve deferred about $4 trillion in maintenance of our rapidly deteriorating physical infrastructure. We are disinvesting in our human endowment, cutting funding for our universities and scientific research. Our government is bleeding talent. This is not our finest hour.
And, if allies are assets rather than liabilities, the willingness of our security partners abroad to follow us is more uncertain than at any point since we became an active world power seven decades ago. We are withdrawing from international agreements and institutions, not seeking to shape them to our advantage or crafting new ones. Instead of asking our allies to do more to defend themselves, we are asking them to pay us to defend them. Our Senate can no longer bring itself to consider, let alone ratify treaties – even those we ourselves originally proposed. In short, we are not leading the world as we once did. We’re not part of the solution to transnational problems like global warming or arms control. Instead, we are becoming active obstructionists of solutions to pressing global problems.
The social mobility that once made equality of opportunity a reality in our country has ebbed away. Our wealthy are getting richer; those less fortunate are not. We have the highest percentage of our population imprisoned of any country in the world. That superlative aside, on many other measures of international excellence, we have complacently fallen to levels of mediocrity. Our students are thirty-eighth in math proficiency and twenty-fourth in science. We rank forty-second in life expectancy, forty-fifth in press freedoms, nineteenth in respect for the rule of law, and seventeenth in quality of life. Need I go on?
There’s a lot to fix at home before we can be sure we have what it takes to go abroad in search of dragons to destroy. There is a real danger that we have taken on more than we can handle. China is guilty of malpractice in several aspects of its trade policies. We are right to demand that it correct these. Experience strongly suggests that, if we work with others of like mind in organizations like the World Trade Organization to persuade China to do so, we can move China in desirable directions. An across-the-board assault on China of the sort we have just mounted is not only likely to fail, it entails risks we have not adequately considered. These risks include armed combat with a nuclear power. And China is getting relatively stronger, not weaker, even as our inept handling of foreign affairs increasingly marginalizes the United States in areas of human endeavor we have traditionally dominated.
We have given inadequate thought to how to leverage China’s rise to our advantage. Trying to tear China down will not succeed. Neither will it cure our self-induced debilitation as a nation.
We have launched a comprehensive competition with China for which we are not ready. We cannot afford to learn this the hard way. Whatever we do about China, we have to get our act together and do it now.
- The Outlook For Automation And Manufacturing In Seven Charts
Submitted by Visual Capitalist
Over the last decade, the prospect of mass automation has seemingly shifted from a vague possibility to an inescapable reality. While it’s still incredibly difficult to estimate the ultimate impact of automation and AI on the economy, the picture is starting to become a bit clearer as projections begin to converge.
Today’s infographic comes to us from Raconteur, and it highlights seven different charts that show us how automation is shaping the world – and in particular, the future outlook for manufacturing jobs.
The Age of Automation
The precise details are up to debate, but here are a few key areas that many experts agree on with respect to the coming age of automation:
Half of manufacturing hours worked today are spent on manual jobs.
- In an analysis of North American and European manufacturing jobs, it was found that roughly 48% of hours primarily relied on the use of manual or physical labor.
- By the year 2030, it’s estimated that only 35% of time will be spent on such routine work.
Automation’s impact will be felt by the mid-2020s.
- According to a recent report from PwC, the impact on OECD jobs will start to be felt in the mid-2020s.
- By 2025, for example, it’s projected that 10-15% of jobs in three sectors (manufacturing, transportation and storage, and wholesales and retail trade) will have high potential for automation.
- By 2035, the range of jobs with high automation potential will be closer to 35-50% for those sectors.
Industrial robot prices are decreasing.
- Industrial robot sales are sky high, mainly the result of falling industry costs.
- This trend is expected to continue, with the cost of robots falling by 65% between 2015 and 2025.
- With the cost of labor generally rising, this makes it more difficult to keep low-skilled jobs.
Technology simultaneously creates jobs, but how many?
- One bright spot is that automation and AI will also create jobs, likely in functions that are difficult for us to conceive of today.
- Historically, technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed.
- AI alone is expected to have an economic impact of $15.7 trillion by 2030.
Unfortunately, although experts agree that jobs will be created by these technologies, they disagree considerably on how many. This important discrepancy is likely the biggest x-factor in determining the ultimate impact that these technologies will have in the coming years, especially on the workforce.
- Lawsuit To Halt $500 Million Obama Library May Proceed, Judge Rules
A federal judge in Chicago ruled on Tuesday that a lawsuit aimed at scuttling President Obama’s $500 million library may proceed, according to the Associated Press.
Dubbed an “ugly waste of taxpayer resources” by angry Chicagoans, the presidential center slated for construction in a park beside Lake Michigan may be in jeopardy after Judge John Robert Blakey denied the city’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Protect Our Parks.
Supporters of the project had hoped the court would grant a city motion to throw out the lawsuit by Protect Our Parks, some fearing any drawn out litigation might lead Obama to decide to build the Obama Presidential Center somewhere other than his hometown.
…
Blakey’s ruling doesn’t mean the group will necessarily prevail in the end, but confirms that the suit poses a formidable threat to the project. The judge indicated that he doesn’t want the litigation to drag out, and that he would strictly limit any fact gathering leading up to trial to 45 days. –Associated Press
While originally slated to open in 2021, ground has yet to be broken on the project due to the ongoing litigation in which Protect our Parks accused the city of illegally transferring park land to The Obama Foundation, a private entity. The group claims this was effectively “gifting” prized public land to a longstanding crony of Chicago politicians.
“Defendants have chosen to deal with it in a classic Chicago political way … to deceive and seemingly legitimize an illegal land grab,” reads the lawsuit.
The Chicago City Council approved the project in a 47-to-1 vote last May, with the Chicago Park District selling the land to the city for $1 before it was “gifted” to the Obama foundation. Moreover, Illinois legislators made an exception to the state’s no-development rules by amending the Illinois Aquarium and Museum Act to include a “compelling public interest” provision.
The Obama Foundation, a private nonprofit, would pay $10 to the city for use of the park land for 99 years, cover the costs of building the complex and be responsible for covering operating costs for 99 years. Once built, the Obama Presidential Center’s physical structures would be transferred to the city for free, meaning the city would formally own the center but not control what happens there. –Associated Press
“They are essentially giving (property) to Obama … for 10 cents a year for 99 years,” says Mark Roth a parks advocacy lawyer.
Filing a “friend-of-the-court” brief, legal scholar Richard Epstein argued that authorities must meet an additional burden of proving an overwhelming public benefit in their decision to offer the use of public parks to “well-connected figures such as Obama,” writes AP – noting that the city’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel once served as Obama’s White House chief of staff.
That said, the Obama library scored a win, after Judge Blakey tossed out a complaint that taxpayers’ First Amendment rights would be infringed because taxpayer money would be used for the reconfiguration of roads and traffic – and that public funds should not be used to subsidize any potential partisan political activity by Obama at the center.
City lawyers conceded Thursday that Chicago would pay an estimated $175 million to reconfigure roads to manage traffic around the center.
The lawsuit also claims that the center would interfere with migrating butterflies and birds.
City lawyers said Protect Our Parks misread the law, misrepresented how the approval process played out and exaggerated potential environmental disruptions.
The center would comprise 20 acres (8 hectares) of the 500-acre (202-hectare) park. Its centerpiece would be a 225-foot (69-meter) museum tower, surrounded by a cluster of smaller buildings, including a 300-seat auditorium. –Associated Press
According to lawyers for the city, the center would create 5,000 jobs during construction and more than 2,500 permanent positions, with an estimated 760,000 people visiting each year.
- Amazon Paid Zero Corporate Tax For Second Year In A Row
Submitted by SafeHaven.com
President Trump has never hidden his disdain for cyber-retailing giant Amazon Inc., accusing the company of unfair tax practices and antitrust violation. The president probably won’t be too amused by a new report that the company avoided paying any federal income tax in 2018 for the second year in a row despite posting billions of dollars in profits.
The purveyor of two-day delivery of just about everything posted a massive net income of $11.2 billion in fiscal 2018 after doubling it from the previous year’s tab of $5.6 billion. Yet, a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows that the company did not pay a single cent in income tax on both occasions—ironically in large part due to Trump’s tax bonanza of 2017.
Tax loopholes
Source: ITEP Incredibly, the company’s latest corporate filing reveals that far from paying the statutory 21 percent income tax demanded under the new tax laws, it’s the federal government that ended up paying Amazon thanks to a slew of tax loopholes.
In 2017, Amazon collected $140 million in rebates for an effective tax rate of -2.5 percent with the company pocketing another $129 million last year for a tax rate of -1%. The fine print in Amazon’s tax disclosure says the company achieved this partly due to a tax break for executive stock options as well as various unspecified ‘‘tax credits.’’
ITEP, an organization that has studied tax-paying habits by corporations for nearly 40 years, places the blame on Congress for this scenario. Proponents of the new laws claimed that a lower tax rate would incentivize better corporate citizenship.
Yet, Congress failed to anticipate a potentially tricky situation after failing to broaden the tax base or close critical tax loopholes that allow companies to avoid paying federal tax on nearly half their profits. The Tax Act saw the statutory corporate tax rate lowered from 35 percent to just 21 percent with the Trump administration and its congressional allies also throwing in lavish new giveaways for good measure, including the immediate expensing of capital investments.
Numerous prognosticators scored the new law as being a potentially huge revenue loser that would end up giving away far more to big corporates like Amazon that it would take in loophole-closers. And, it appears they were spot on. Many companies now effectively pay zero or single-digit tax rates.
In fact, Amazon is not the only high-profile company that has mastered the art of corporate subterfuge. Last year, Netflix got away with it too despite posting a net profit of $858M, the largest in the history of the video-streaming company.
Tax controversies
Amazon is not exactly a stranger to tax controversies. Last year, the company engaged in an aggressive push for new relocation subsidies for its new HQ2 locations, in New York and Virginia as well as additional tax breaks for its Nashville operations. The latest developments though suggest that the company is likely to find it increasingly hard to muscle its way with local tax authorities. The company’s hubris-laced search for a second headquarter was a pageant-like affair that ended in embarrassment for the retail giant after New York leaders and politicians publicly balked at the massive tax giveaways the company was to receive in return for creating 25,000 jobs.
But so far, allies in Congress are yet to answer why nobody is willing to lay a glove on one of the world’s most valuable companies. Trump himself has criticized the company for its tax avoidance in the past yet seems oblivious to the fact that his generous tax package only appears to have exacerbated the problem. The year 2018 was the first full year of the new tax law, meaning we will get a better sense of just how much the floodgates have opened after most Fortune 500 companies have reported their fourth-quarter results about a month from now. Initial findings though suggest that Amazon and Netflix are unlikely to be the only ones.
- Grand Canyon Museum Tourists Exposed For Years To Dangerous Radiation, Whistleblower Admits
For nearly two decades at the Grand Canyon, tourists, employees, and children on tours passed by three paint buckets stored in the National Park’s museum collection building, unaware that they were being exposed to radiation.
Federal officials learned last year that three five-gallon buckets stored in the Grand Canyon’s museum building were literally overflowing with highly-radioactive uranium ore. The buckets were moved to the museum building when it opened in 2000 and were so full of the ore one literally wouldn’t close.
As AZCentral.com reports, in a rogue email sent to all Park Service employees on Feb. 4, Elston “Swede” Stephenson – the safety, health and wellness manager – described the alleged cover-up as “a top management failure” and warned of possible health consequences.
“If you were in the Museum Collections Building (2C) between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were ‘exposed’ to uranium by OSHA’s definition,” Stephenson wrote.
“The radiation readings, at first blush, exceeds (sic) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safe limits. … Identifying who was exposed, and your exposure level, gets tricky and is our next important task.”
Stephenson says he tried to convince Parks executives to warn the public that anyone visiting the site after 2000 could have been exposed to radiation he calculated at levels potentially over 4,000 times the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s “safe” level for children and 400 times the level for adults, but was “stonewalled” by management. He believes the Park Service violated the law by not informing the public of the danger.
“Respectfully, it was not only immoral not to let Our People know, but I could not longer risk my (health and safety) certification by letting this go any longer,”
Stephenson released a 45-page report detailing the allegations.
As RT reports, the radioactive hoard was discovered by a teenager with a Geiger counter during a museum tour and promptly swept under the rug, Stephenson says, adding that technicians dumped the ore into an old mine near Grand Canyon Village, concealing their meter readings from him the entire time they were cleaning up the radioactive mess.
Alarmed at their unprofessional behavior, he called in the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, who found only the empty drums – which had been “inexplicably returned to the building” and still gave off faint radiation readings.
Emily Davis, a public affairs specialist at the Grand Canyon, said the Park Service is coordinating an investigation with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Arizona Department of Health Services. AZCentral reports that Davis stressed that a recent review of the building in question uncovered only background radiation, which is natural in the area and is safe.
“There is no current risk to the park employees or public,” Davis said.
“The building is open. … The information I have is that the rocks were removed, and there’s no danger.”
Davis declined to address Stephenson’s assertion that thousands of people may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, or his allegation that the Park Service violated the law by not issuing a public warning.
“We do take our public and employee safety and allegations seriously,” she said.
- Covington High School Student Files $250 Million Defamation Suit Against Washington Post
After an investigation conducted by the Covington Diocese turned up no evidence that 16-year-old high school student Nicholas Sandmann confronted Native American activist Nathan Phillips during a March for Life rally at the Lincoln Memorial last month, seemingly confirming that the mainstream press was incorrect to pillory the white, MAGA-hat wearing teen for a confrontation that never actually happened, lawyers for Sandmann filed the first of what are expected to be many defamation lawsuits demanding compensatory and punitive damages for leading an Internet mob that villified Sandmann and his peers.
According to Reuters, lawyers Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry are seeking $250 million in damages from the Washington Post on behalf of Sandmann, a sum equal to the amount that billionaire Jeff Bezos paid to buy the paper in 2013.
The suit claims that the paper – which helped publicize a now infamous photo that helped trigger an Internet mob that swiftly outed the teen and demanded he be punished – led the hate campaign against Sandmann – and failed to practice proper journalistic due diligence – “because he was the white, Catholic student wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ souvenir cap on a school field trip to the January 18 March for Life in Washington, D.C. when he was unexpectedly and suddenly confronted by Nathan Phillips (‘Phillips’), a known Native American activist, who beat a drum and sang loudly within inches of his face (‘the January 18 incident’).”
Not only did the diocese’s investigation corroborate the students’ version of events, but it also found no evidence to support Phillips’ claims that Sandmann and his fellow students had been chanting “build the wall” at the time of the confrontation. What really happened – as is now widely known – is that the students, who were marching with the pro-life rally, were verbally accosted by the Black Hebrew Israelites, who hurled homophobic slurs at the students and accosted them.
“In targeting and bullying Nicholas by falsely accusing him of instigating the January 18 incident, the Post conveyed that Nicholas engaged in acts of racism by “swarming” Phillips, “blocking” his exit away from the students, and otherwise engaging in racist misconduct,” the suit read. “The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump (“the President”) by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President.”
The Washington Post’s Vice President for Communications Kristine Coratti Kelly told Reuters “We are reviewing a copy of the lawsuit and we plan to mount a vigorous defense.”
Sandmann’s lawyers also accused WaPo of resorting to modern-day McCarthyism to “claim leadership of a mainstream & social media mob” of bullies who sought to attack and defame Sandmann. The suit also accused WaPo of publishing “no less than six false and defamatory articles”.
“In a span of three (3) days in January of this year commencing on January 19, the Washington Post engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism to claim leadership of a mainstream & social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified & threatened Nick Sandmann, an innocent minor,” attorney Lin Wood said.
He continued: “The Post published to third parties without privilege no less than six false and defamatory articles of and concerning Nicholas, including two in its print newspaper and four online.”
According to the Daily Wire, Sandmann’s lawyers sent “letters for potential lawsuits to over 50 entities ranging from Democratic politicians to celebrities to media figures.”
That list includes journalists, media outlets and celebrities:
1. The Washington Post
2. The New York Times
3. Cable News Network, Inc. (CNN)
4. The Guardian
5. National Public Radio
6. TMZ
7. Atlantic Media Inc.
8. Capitol Hill Publishing Corp.
9. Diocese of Covington
10. Diocese of Lexington
11. Archdiocese of Louisville
12. Diocese of Baltimore
13. Ana Cabrera (CNN)
14. Sara Sidner (CNN)
15. Erin Burnett (CNN)
16. S.E. Cupp (CNN)
17. Elliot C. McLaughlin (CNN)
18. Amanda Watts (CNN)
19. Emanuella Grinberg (CNN)
20. Michelle Boorstein (Washington Post)
21. Cleve R. Wootson Jr. (Washington Post)
22. Antonio Olivo (Washington Post)
23. Joe Heim (Washington Post)
24. Michael E. Miller (Washington Post)
25. Eli Rosenberg (Washington Post)
26. Isaac Stanley-Becker (Washington Post)
27. Kristine Phillips (Washington Post)
28. Sarah Mervosh (New York Times)
29. Emily S. Rueb (New York Times)
30. Maggie Haberman (New York Times)
31. David Brooks (New York Times)
32. Shannon Doyne
33. Kurt Eichenwald
34. Andrea Mitchell (NBC/MSNBC)
35. Savannah Guthrie (NBC)
36. Joy Reid (MSNBC)
37. Chuck Todd (NBC)
38. Noah Berlatsky
39. Elisha Fieldstadt (NBC)
40. Eun Kyung Kim
41. HBO
42. Bill Maher
43. Warner Media
44. Conde Nast
45. GQ
46. Heavy.com
47. The Hill
48. The Atlantic
49. Bustle.com
50. Ilhan Omar
51. Elizabeth Warren
52. Kathy Griffin
53. Alyssa Milano
54. Jim Carrey
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