- Escobar: The India-China, Himalayan Puzzle
Escobar: The India-China, Himalayan Puzzle
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 23:45Authored by Pepe Escobar via ConsortiumNews.com,
The Indo-China border is a strategic chessboard and it’s gotten way more complex…
It was straight from an Orientalist romantic thriller set in the Himalayas: soldiers fighting each other with stones and iron bars in the dead of night on a mountain ridge over 4,000 meters high, some plunging to their deaths into a nearly frozen river and dying of hypothermia.
In November 1996, China and India had agreed not to use guns along their 3,800 km-long border, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which sports an occasional tendency to derail into a Line Out of Control.
Yet this was not just another Himalayan scuffle. Of course there were echoes of the 1962 Sino-Indian war – which started pretty much the same way, leading Beijing to defeat New Delhi on the battlefield. But now the strategic chessboard is way more complex, part of the evolving 21st Century New Great Game.
Indian army marching in 1962 war, during which Indian Air Force was not used. (Indian Defence Review)
The situation had to be defused. Top military commanders from China and India finally met face to face this past weekend. And on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Minister spokesman Zhao Lijian confirmed they “agreed to take necessary measures to promote a cooling of the situation.”
The Indian Army concurred: “There was mutual consensus to disengage (…) from all frictions areas in Eastern Ladakh.”
A day later, the breakthrough was confirmed at a videoconference meeting of the three foreign ministers of Russia, India and China, also known as the RICs: Sergey Lavrov, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Wang Yi. President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping Xi will meet in person on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Saudi Arabia next November.
And that will follow probably another videoconference special next month, in St. Petersburg, during the combined summits of the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO.)
So How Did We Get Here?
Our Himalayan drama starts way back in October 1947, when the Maharaja of Kashmir signed an Instrument of Accession – joining the dominion of India in return for military support. As much as the Raj, Kashmir was also partitioned: West and North became Azad (“Free”) Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, under Pakistan; the state of Jammu and Kashmir was to become an autonomous part of India; and significantly Aksai Chin, historically part of Tibet, became part of China.
CIA map from 2002 showing traditional borders of Jammu and Kashmir. (CIA, Wikimedia Commons)
On a personal level, this has always been among my top “roof of the world” travel/reporting areas. Not only for the unrivalled, breathtaking geological apotheosis, but for the people – Hunzakut, Baltistanis, Kashmiris, Tibetans.
Both Kashmirs – Pakistani and Indian – are majority Muslim. Everywhere you go you feel you’re in Central Asia, not India. Barren Aksai Chin is virtually population-free, apart from scattered military posts. Eastern Ladakh, historically and culturally, was part of the Tibetan plateau. The people are Buddhist, and speak a similar Tibetan dialect to the people of Aksai Chin.
Modi’s Move
The root of all contemporary strife is to be found less than a year ago, in August 2019. That’s when the Hindutva – Hindu nationalist, quasi-fascist – government led by Modi unilaterally revoked parts of the Indian constitution that established Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) as an autonomous region.
Narendra Modi in 2008. (Norbert Schiller,World Economic Forum, Wikimedia Commons)
Islamic J&K – heir to a long religious and cultural tradition – was deprived of a parliament and local government and de facto separated from Buddhist Ladakh and its very sensitive eastern border with China. They all fell under direct New Delhi control.
J&K’s characteristics shielded it since 1947 from mass immigration by Hindus. That’s now gone. The game now, for New Delhi, is about engineering a demographic change, turning a majority-Muslim area into majority-Hindu.
And even that might not be enough. For Home Minister Amit Shah, not only what the Hindutva describe as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) but also Aksai Chin as part of J&K. They see the whole Kashmir Valley as an integral part of India.
It’s easy to imagine how this goes down in Islamabad and Beijing.
Add to it the interlocked strategic importance of the Indus river system – Pakistan’s main source of water: it starts in the J&K mountains. So it’s no wonder that for Islamabad, the whole province should be part of Pakistan, not India.
Recently, the action across the Line of Actual Control has been breathless.
India revamped the airfield of Daulet Beg Oldie (DBO), located on an old trade route through the Karakoram pass, and crucially only 9 km away from Aksai Chin. That happens to be right on India’s physical link to Xinjiang, and not Tibet.
(PANONIAN, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)
In parallel, India built the 255 km long Darbuk-Shayok-DBO road. This is an appraisal of what is innocently described as the single lane Indo-China border road. What it means in practice is that New Delhi now has more leeway to transport troops and military equipment across the LAC. No wonder Beijing interpreted it as an extra – unwanted – pressure on Aksai Chin.
As India built a new military access road, they had no clue the Chinese had finished their own on Aksai Chin: Highway 219, which links ultra-strategic Tibet to Xinjiang. Highway 219 then links to the legendary Karakoram Highway – which starts in Kashgar, crosses the border and weaves all the way down to Islamabad.
An important stretch of the Aksai Chin was in fact ceded to China by Islamabad in 1963 in exchange for financial and logistical support.
Predictably there has been a steady patrolling/military buildup on both sides. There are as many as 225,000 Indian troops right behind the LAC. That is matched by an undisclosed number of very well-equipped Chinese troops. The Hindu showed satellite images of Chinese movements at Galwan before the border clash. No less than three Chinese military sub-districts – subordinated to the military in Tibet and Xinjiang – were involved in the skirmishes in Galwan.
It’s All About CPEC
The China-Pakistan border at the Khunjerab pass and the area right to the south, the visually stunning Gilgit-Baltistan, happen to fall exactly into what the Indians call Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Narendra Modi, Flickr)
There’s absolutely no way Beijing would ever allow any sort of New Delhi regional adventurism. Especially because this is prime China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) territory – one of the key nodes of the New Silk Roads, all the way to Islamabad and down to the port of Gwadar in the Indian Ocean.
In the near future, Gwadar will have solidified its direct energy links to the Persian Gulf, and China may even expand them by building an oil/gas pipeline all the way to Xinjiang.
Counteracting China’s New Silk Road nodes, we find, strategically, India’s ambiguous role in both the Quad (alongside the U.S., Japan and Australia) and the U.S. “Indo-Pacific” scheme — essentially a mechanism to contain China.
In practice, and in the name of its own, self-described “strategic autonomy,” New Delhi is not a full member of the Quad. The Quad is such a fuzzy concept that even Japan and Australia are not exactly enthusiastic.
U.S.-India defense “ties” are legion – but nothing really significant, apart from a self-defeating move by New Delhi to cut off oil imports from Iran. To appease Washington, New Delhi prodigiously hurt its own investments in the port of Chabahar — only 80 km away from Gwadar — which until recently was touted as the Indian Silk Road gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Apart from that, we find – what else – threats: the Trump administration is furious that New Delhi is buying S-400 missile systems from Russia.
Self-Reliance or Containment?
China is India’s second-largest trade partner. Beijing imports around 5 percent of everything made in India, while New Delhi imports less than 1 percent of Chinese production.
Madras regiment of Indian Army. (Mannat Sharma, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Only two months ago, in an address to the nation about Covid-19, Modi insisted on “self-reliant India” and “human centric globalization,” focused on local manufacturing, local markets and local supply chains.
For all of Modi’s bluster, foreign adventurism is incompatible with India’s tradition of non-alignment – and it would divert much needed efforts towards “self-reliance.”
There was a lot of expectation that India and Pakistan, becoming full-time members of the SCO, would defuse their myriad problems. That’s not what happened. Yet the SCO – along with the BRICS – is the way to go if India wants to become a significant player in the emerging multipolar world.
Beijing is very much aware of imperial containment/encirclement strategies. There are more than 200 U.S. military bases in the Western Pacific. The New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), boast no fewer than seven connectivity corridors – including the Polar Silk Road. Five of these are overland. The only one including India is BCIM (Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar).
If India wants out, BRI will keep rolling all the way to Bangladesh. Same with the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiated by 15 Asia-Pacific nations. They want India in. New Delhi is paranoid that opening up its markets will balloon the trade deficit with China. With or without India, RCEP will also keep rolling, alongside BRI and CPEC.
Quite a few among upper caste ruling class Hindus cannot see that they are being played to the hilt, full time, by the imperial masters as a war front against China.
Yet Modi will have to play realpolitik – and realize that India is not a priority for Washington: rather a pawn in a full spectrum dominance, “existential threat” battle against China, Russia and Iran, which happen to be the three key nodes of Eurasia integration.
Washington will persist in treating New Delhi as a mere pawn in the Indo-Pacific drive for China containment. India – in theory very proud of its tradition of diplomatic independence – would rather use its ties with the U.S. to counterpunch China’s power across Southeast Asia and as a form of deterrence against Pakistan.
Yet Modi cannot possibly bet the farm on the Trump administration following his lead. The only way out is to sit down and talk to his BRICS/SCO partner Xi: next month in St. Petersburg and in November in Riyadh.
- Why Every Person In America Needs To Become A Prepper During The Second Half Of 2020
Why Every Person In America Needs To Become A Prepper During The Second Half Of 2020
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 23:05Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
It has been on my heart to write this article for a few days, but I knew that it wouldn’t be easy to write. 2020 has already been one of the worst years in modern U.S. history, and it looks like the next six months are going to be extremely challenging as well. But even though most Americans are expecting that things will return to “normal” in 2021 and beyond, the truth is that the “perfect storm” that we are witnessing is only in the very early stages. All of the old cycles are ending, all of the bubbles are bursting, and we are starting to experience the consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions. So even though the remaining months of 2020 will be chaotic, the truth is that things are going to get progressively worse as the years move along. That means that you should use this period of time to prepare for what is ahead of us, because at some point the window of opportunity to prepare will be closed for good.
COVID-19 should have been a wake up call for all of us. Lockdowns were implemented very suddenly once the virus started to spread in the U.S., and shortages of key items began to happen. To this day, many retailers are still limiting the number of items that you can buy in certain categories. Hopefully this has helped people to understand that if you have not stocked up in advance, you may not be able to go out and get what you need when a major crisis strikes.
During the initial stages of this pandemic, a lot of people ended up being stuck at home without enough supplies. In the event of a truly historic emergency, you can certainly survive without toilet paper, but if you run out of food you could find yourself in big trouble quite quickly.
The good news is that COVID-19 is not going to kill us all. About half a million people around the world have died so far, and the final death toll will be a lot lower than the tens of millions that died during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 to 1920.
But if our society was extremely ill-prepared for a pandemic of this nature, what is going to happen when a pandemic that is much more severe hits us?
Scientists assure us that it is just a matter of time before a killer plague sweeps across the planet, and the Bible tells us that there will be “pestilences” in the last days. If you find yourself isolated at home for an extended period of time as millions of others are dying from a virus, will you be able to survive on what you have already stored up?
If not, you need to get to work.
Big economic problems are ahead as well. So far in 2020, more than 47 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits, more than 100,000 businesses have permanently closed their doors, and it is being projected that U.S. GDP will decline by 46.6 percent on an annualized bases during the second quarter. Those are absolutely disastrous numbers, but so far trillions of dollars of emergency government spending has helped to ease the pain.
But those emergency measures were only meant to get us through a few months, and it is now becoming clear that this new economic depression will be with us for a very long time to come.
Of course deteriorating economic conditions will fuel even more civil unrest. We have seen rioting, looting, arson and violence in city after city, and much more civil unrest is on the horizon.
If you live in one of our major urban areas, you may want to move while you still can. Due to a huge surge in demand, property prices in the most desirable small towns and rural areas are already starting to go through the roof.
On top of everything else, food shortages are starting to occur all over the globe. According to the head of the UN, we are on the verge of seeing “unimaginable devastation and suffering around the world”…
The U.N. chief on Thursday warned the largest gathering of world leaders since the coronavirus pandemic began that it will cause “unimaginable devastation and suffering around the world,” with historic levels of hunger and famine and up to 1.6 billion people unable to earn a living unless action is taken now.
Giant swarms of locusts the size of major cities are devouring crops in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, African Swine Fever has already killed about one-fourth of all the pigs in the entire world, and crazy weather patterns have been playing havoc with crop production all over the planet.
And now on top of everything else COVID-19 is greatly disrupting food distribution systems all over the world.
We have never seen so many severe threats to global food production occur simultaneously, and the Bible clearly tells us that there will be “famine” in the last days.
Meanwhile, a major war could erupt in the Middle East at any moment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he will begin the process of annexing portions of Judea and Samaria in July, and Israel’s Arab neighbors have promised a very forceful response if that actually happens.
The region has constantly been on the precipice of war for years, and this could potentially be the trigger that finally causes it to happen.
If everything that I have discussed so far wasn’t enough, the planet that we all live on is becoming increasingly unstable. We have witnessed a number of very alarming earthquakes this week, and a truly catastrophic event could literally happen at any moment.
As my regular readers already know, I am particularly concerned about seismic activity on the west coast and about the potential for a historic earthquake along the New Madrid fault zone.
But even considering everything that I just shared with you, there is no other time in human history that I would have rather been alive than right now.
All of human history has been building up to this point, and we are so fortunate to be living during this moment.
However, it is going to be exceedingly difficult to thrive during the historic events that are ahead if you have not made any preparations for what is coming.
I realize that things may seem very chaotic now, but the truth is that this is your window of opportunity to prepare.
I would take full advantage of that opportunity, because the clock is ticking.
- "Parameters Of Paranoia Are Changing" As Doomsday-Bunker-Builders Boom In Post-COVID Normal
“Parameters Of Paranoia Are Changing” As Doomsday-Bunker-Builders Boom In Post-COVID Normal
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 22:45As we’ve detailed on more than one occasion, and not limited to a certain part of the country, people are fleeing major cities for rural communities due to virus pandemic and social unrest.
Feeling insecure, even after the great migration out of cities to rural areas, some Americans are now exploring their options with an added layer of security if the socioeconomic collapse worsens, which is the installation of a doomsday bunker.
Frank Woodworth, the owner of Northeast Bunkers, specializing in design and construction of underground bunkers and based in Maine, said his business model has evolved, and he’s not concentrating on luxury bunkers for the top 1%, but rather building affordable bunkers that cost around $25,000.
Woodworth told The New York Times that demand for bunkers has increased since the pandemic and riots.
“Buyers of these kinds of underground dwellings say that they simply want to protect their families from an increasingly turbulent world. For many, the decision to build a bunker was made before the coronavirus pandemic surfaced, but they say that they now feel prepared for the next local or global crisis,” The Times said.
Jonathan Rawles, the owner of Survival Realty Brokerage Services, a company with agents and brokers specializing in doomsday bunkers, said:
“There is continual demand for people that are looking to find more of a sustainable future for themselves, for their families,” Rawles said. “A lot of real estate markets only focus on housing in the urban areas, suburban areas, exurbs, and there is very much a missed opportunity for people who are looking to live off-grid, wanting to live remote, or actually looking to secure a property, whether that’s a bunker or a more secure and sustainable home.”
Rawles’ firm connects clients with bunker-building companies in the US. “This market and desire for security cuts across all levels of society — social, political, racial, religious,” he said. “People are looking for the opportunity to secure the family’s future, to have a more sustainable future, and part of that may be having a bunker.”
Woodworth at Northeast Bunkers said inquiries about affordable bunkers isn’t just limited to the US, people from around the world have requested more information because of the unfolding economic turmoil.
“I’m just a businessman who deals with paranoid people,” he said, “and it seems like the parameters of paranoia are changing every day.”
Ron Hubbard, president and owner of Atlas Survival Shelters, a fallout shelter company based in Texas, said his underground shelters “meet FEMA standards for providing near-absolute protection.”
Hubbard’s YouTube account provides access into one of his latest luxury bomb shelter builds – which starts around $94,000 – again these are affordable shelters because demand is with ordinary people, as we’ve noted over the years, the rich have already built their underground luxury bunkers.
With the affordable bunker business booming – these installers are being kept busy as Americans flee big cities for rural communities and now seek shelters as they fear the socioeconomic collapse will worsen.
- The Evil Revealed In First US Nuclear Test: 74 Years Ago Over Bikini
The Evil Revealed In First US Nuclear Test: 74 Years Ago Over Bikini
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 22:25Authored by Greg Mitchell via AntiWar.com,
Besides revealing how the Truman White House and military sabotaged the first movie about the atomic bomb, from MGM, my new book, The Beginning or the End explores other key nuclear-related events of that crucial year of 1946. Among the most important: the start of U.S. nuclear blasts in the Pacific, which would fuel the coming arms race even as it imperiled natives, witnesses, sailors and others thousands of miles away with the radioactive fallout they produced. Here is an excerpt on the evil US military plans for moving the natives of Bikini to a far harsher new home in advance of the first test, which was set off 74 years ago next week.
The US had asked the 167 inhabitants of the Bikini atoll (made up of some 23 tiny islands) in Micronesia to “temporarily” relocate so that America could set up new and devastatingly powerful weapons for “the good of mankind and to end all world wars.” The first test was planned for late spring or early summer of 1946. It called for a weapon exceeding 21 kilotons in force (where the Hiroshima blast was 15 kilotons) to be dropped over dozens of unoccupied junked ships in the Bikini lagoon to judge the effects on that fleet. The second test would be set off in the same area under water, beneath another ghost fleet, by remote control. Journalists and film crew started signing up in vast numbers to witness all this.
The Bikini islanders learned of their forced evacuation when Navy Commodore Ben Wyatt, military governor of the Marshall Islands, arrived to remind them of Biblical passages – they had long welcomed Protestant missionaries – comparing them to “the children of Israel whom the Lord saved from their enemy and led into the Promised Land.” The Bikinians were none too pleased with this notion, but their leader, King Juda finally agreed to the relocation request, announcing “We will go, believing that everything is in the hands of God.”
Wyatt staged a reenactment of this meeting for a newsreel but it required seven retakes because King Juda failed to act enthusiastic enough.
Of the eleven heads of extended Bikini families, nine chose Rongerik, 125 miles to the east – about one-sixth the size of their current island – as their temporary home. In reality, Wyatt and other US officials knew that the islanders would never be allowed to return to what was certain to be a heavily-contaminated former paradise.
Commodore Ben H. Wyatt addressing the Bikini Island natives. Time magazine quoted a US officer as boasting that easing the Bikinians out was “one hell of a good sales job.” The magazine writer added: “Progress chuckled over a victory.”
The US Navy would help the Bikinians to disassemble their meeting house and church while the residents packed supplies and personal belongings, then transported them to Rongerik in landing craft. Time observed that they took few possessions with them beyond their bibles, hymnals and furniture brought by missionaries, along with “latent syphilis left by Yankee whalers of the pre-atomic age.”
No one lived on Rongerik, which was helpful, but the reason for that was not: It had few supplies of food and fresh water. The Navy knew of the challenges the Bikinians would face there, but still left them with only a few weeks of water and food. Time predicted that to convince them not to flee back home after the tests the Navy might have to fly their leader King Juda over Bikini to show him what a tragic wasteland it had become.
Bikini chief, archived image. As the planned July 1 date for the first test neared, few back in the US cared what happened to the Bikinian natives, but some worried the blast might ignite the atmosphere, trigger tidal waves or create a fissure in the earth’s crust. Newspapers carried witty accounts of Los Angeles residents planning to enjoy picnics high in the hills on the day of the blast instead of by the beach in case a tsunami rose from the ocean.
None of that happened, of course, when the test went off on July 1. Many in the press, from a distant vantage point, were disappointed that the mushroom cloud seemed not so large and most of the ships did not immediately sink. One witness, renowned Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins, would title his report in the Saturday Review, “The Standardization of Catastrophe.”
Too many Bikini observers felt the bomb had been “oversold,” that it was “merely” another weapon of war. Its “novelty” had passed. Cousins reminded his readers that too little attention was focused on radiation effects – and on the fact that bombs many times more powerful would be created in years to come.
Within four days a Frenchman named Louis Reard dubbed the new two-piece bathing suit he had designed le bikini.
The first one hundred natives among those forced out of the Bikini Atoll for the bomb tests could not return to their contaminated paradise until 1970.
Ten years later, however, they were forced to evacuate again after high levels of Strontium-90 was discovered in their well water and Cessium-137 in their blood. Only scientists, divers and the occasional tourist would visit in the decades that followed.
- "Restaurant Of The Future" – KFC Unveils Automated Store With Robots And Food Lockers
“Restaurant Of The Future” – KFC Unveils Automated Store With Robots And Food Lockers
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 22:05Fast-food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has debuted the “restaurant of the future,” one where automation dominates the storefront, and little to no interaction is seen between customers and employees, reported NBC News.
After the chicken is fried and sides are prepped by humans, the order is placed on a conveyor belt and travels to the front of the store. A robotic arm waits for the order to arrive, then grabs it off the conveyor belt and places it into a secured food locker.
KFC Moscow robotic-arm takes the order off the conveyor belt Customers use their credit/debit cards and or the facial recognition system on the food locker to retrieve their order.
KFC Moscow food locker A KFC representative told NBC News that the new store is located in Moscow and was built months before the virus outbreak. The representative said the contactless store is the future of frontend fast-food restaurants because it’s more sanitary.
KFC Moscow storefront Disbanding human cashiers and order preppers at the front of a fast-food store will be the next big trend in the industry through 2030. Making these restaurants contactless between customers and employees will lower the probabilities of transmitting the virus.
Automating the frontend of a fast-food restaurant will come at a tremendous cost, that is, significant job loss. Nationwide (as of 2018), there were around 3.8 million employed at fast-food restaurants. Automation and artificial intelligence are set displace millions of jobs in the years ahead.
As for the new automated KFC restaurant in Moscow, well, it’s a glimpse of what is coming to America – this will lead to the widespread job loss that will force politicians to unveil universal basic income.
- A Collapsing Dollar And China's Monetary Strategy
A Collapsing Dollar And China’s Monetary Strategy
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 21:45Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,
This article describes how China can escape the fate of a dollar collapse by tying the yuan to gold. There is little doubt she has access to sufficient gold. Currently, her interest is to preserve the dollar, not destroy it, because it is the principal means of Chinese foreign interests being secured .
Furthermore, a return to sound money requires China to reverse its interventionism under Xi, returning to Deng Xiaoping’s original vision. Sound money can only last if the relationship between the state and the wider economy is properly addressed.
Of all the major economies, China’s is best placed to implement a sound money solution. At the moment it seems unlikely the necessary reforms will be forthcoming; but a general collapse of the global fiat currency regime presents the opportunity for reassessment and change.
Introduction
In last week’s Insight I examined the position of the US dollar, given the Fed’s current monetary policies, and concluded that the Fed’s dollar is likely to become valueless by the end of this year. The consequences for other major currencies — the euro, yen and pound — are that they are likely to fall with the dollar. This is because they adopt the same monetary policies, the same macroeconomic fallacies, and through the Bank for International Settlements, G7 and G20 meetings agree to continue to be bound by common policies. While the intention is for all to survive by working together, instead it ensures that they all sink together.
The maverick nations are Russia and China. Russia is obviously working towards protecting her currency with gold — there is no controversy there. China’s position is more complex. Her leadership relies on the inflation of bank credit through state-owned banks to finance her infrastructure plans as well as in financing the massive uplift her non-financial private-sector economy has enjoyed since 1980. Yet, she has made aggressive moves to ensure her population owns physical gold and has invested in mine production, making her the largest national producer by far, while ensuring virtually no gold leaves the Chinese mainland.
Having more or less gained control over the world’s physical market, China is the greatest hoarder of gold on the planet. She appears to understand the importance of gold to monetary stability while at the same time playing the West’s neo-Keynesian games.
China’s gold
The most controversial aspect of my previous comments about China’s gold ownership is about the level of undeclared bullion. But the strategy has always been clear. In 1983 the Peoples Bank was given a monopolist mandate by the Communist Party to manage the state’s acquisition of gold and silver, while private ownership remained banned. This fitted in with the Peoples Bank’s monopoly of managing foreign currency dealing, confirming that in 1983 at least, the leadership and its advisors regarded both gold and silver as primarily money.
Nineteen years elapsed before the Peoples Bank opened the Shanghai Gold Exchange, permitting members of the general public for the first time to buy and take delivery of gold and silver. Following advertising campaigns, the market for 24 carat gold jewellery exploded, and together with investment gold, since 2002 withdrawals from the SGE’s vaults have been about 17,500 tonnes, admittedly not adjusted for scrap resubmitted for refining. To be consistent with gold policies after the SGE opened for business, those nineteen years must have been used by China to acquire significant quantities of undeclared bullion. But other analysts assume that the public held some gold illegally before 2002 as well, so about 17,000 tonnes net of scrap for private ownership seems about right.
The opportunity for the state to build a bullion hoard before 2002 was there. Following the bull market ,which culminated on 21 January 1980, gold entered a 19-year bear market taking it from $850 on that afternoon’s fix to a low of $256.8 in July 1999. But by January 2002, gold was still on the floor at under $280. And there were substantial sellers: portfolio disinvestment by Swiss banks, the largest private depositories at that time, left them holding virtually no gold.[i] Central banks and official sources reduced their holdings of monetary gold by 3,450 tonnes, but more importantly gold leasing by them supplied an estimated 10,000—16,000 tonnes into the market (Veneroso, 2005).
Meanwhile, demand was soaked up by the expansion of derivative markets, principally LBMA forwards and Comex futures. In all those years global mine output added 43,800 tonnes. Various parties must have absorbed the gold that wasn’t absorbed by jewellery, which probably accounted for about 25,000 tonnes.
US policy was to rub out monetary history by denying gold as having any monetary role and to be replaced by the Fed’s unbacked dollar as everyone’s reserve currency. A new generation of Harvard-educated Arabs went with the neo-Keynesians, preferring stocks to gold, the opposite of that of their forebears who disliked financial assets, including foreigners’ currencies. But these were also the formative years for China’s adoption of capitalism.
The Chinese leadership, having a high degree of control over its population, is given to long-term planning in the form of five-year plans with longer-term underlying objectives. It is inconceivable that these plans would have omitted a gold strategy, particularly since regulations were put in place giving the Peoples Bank its mandate to build national reserves.
Given all the foreign exchange dealings of the Peoples Bank, handling inward investment in the eighties and growing exports in the nineties, it could easily have accumulated 20,000 tonnes of gold at contemporary prices, representing approximately 10% of foreign currency flows across the bank’s trading desks. Traditional secrecy in gold markets would have provided cover. All the Peoples Bank needed to do was acquire an average of 1,000 tonnes a year, which given the bullion flows and market dynamics in gold’s great bear market would have been achievable without attracting attention.
It is only on the basis of this understanding that we can apply a 20,000-tonne ball-park figure to the unknowable. And since 2002, China continued to import gold in addition to its growing mine supplies to ensure its population ended up with significant quantities of gold as well. Whether intentioned or not, the leadership has ensured large quantities of 24 carat gold are in public circulation, which is important in the event that gold backing for China’s currency is implemented.
In the event of a general fiat currency collapse, many nations have sufficient gold to operate a gold exchange standard, admittedly at higher gold prices than those that prevail today. That is not the problem. In government, treasuries and central banks, there are very few who understand economics proper, being sold entirely on neo-Keynesian macroeconomics. Neo-Keynesian macroeconomics is a belief system unfounded on reality and their Zeus, or Jupiter, is inflationism. Their lesser gods all owe fealty to this one overriding directive. Before sound money can be introduced, they must all be swept from their temples.
China’s worship of inflationism is less institutionally embedded and should be easier to overturn, particularly since Marxist philosophy predicts the end of capitalism, which today would be manifest in the collapse of the capitalists’ currencies. The ability of the Chinese to escape the monetary fates of the West is in theory still there.
China’s interest in the dollar
With all its gold, by monetising it China could kill off the dollar tomorrow. Undoubtedly, this financially nuclear option has become a backdrop to her strategy in the ongoing trade and financial war against America. But the idea that by using this undoubted power over the dollar China gains a simple victory if through her actions the dollar is destroyed understates a more complex situation. It is not in China’s interest on many levels, not least because of her ownership of dollars is about $3.4 trillion, of which only $1.5 trillion is invested in Treasuries, agency, corporate and short-term debt in the US. The balance is actively used in loan finance to China’s commodity suppliers, those involved with the belt and road initiatives and other states with which China desires to gain influence.
Destroy the dollar and China’s heft around the world is destroyed as well, because only a small proportion of China’s loan-influence is in renminbi. In that sense, if the dollar collapses America gains a geopolitical benefit over China, her means of international influence being crippled. The Chinese leadership will be acutely aware of the consequences of the dollar’s demise and therefore will do nothing to encourage it. Indeed, if the dollar begins its collapse in the foreign exchanges, we could find China increasingly calling out the Fed on its inflationary policies. But then the Fed’s problem is and will continue to be an inability to stop its addiction to unlimited inflationism.
Unfortunately, a banking crisis is embedded in the script, which will have fundamental effects on all fiat currencies, some more than others. And since international banking is overwhelmingly a dollar affair, after a short pause the consequences are bound to weigh heavily upon it as the reserve currency. This credit cycle unwind is a Category 5 compared with 2008—09’s Category 2 or 3. It is only after such a cataclysm that China will have no alternative to abandoning all attempts to support the dollar and its means of buying overseas influence. China will then need to secure its own currency.
It will require a return to gold backing — the nuclear option so far avoided. While the cost will be writing off trillions of dollars and its means of securing overseas influence, there will be a monetary vacuum to fill. And compensation will be found in an increase in the value of China’s declared and undeclared bullion stocks, as well as the enrichment of its gold-holding people.
Establishing a sound currency
To appreciate what is vital for a currency to be sound requires certain conditions to be satisfied. These are the three immutable ground rules for a gold-backed currency, all of which must be obeyed:
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The state currency must be an accountable gold substitute; that is to say every unit of currency expansion must be fully backed by gold at the fixed exchange rate.
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It must be freely convertible into physical gold on demand by everyone.
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It must be freely convertible for the settlement of domestic transactions and imports and exports.
To these we can add an addendum, and that is to reform the banking system so that there is no expansion of unbacked bank credit.
If the Chinese obeyed these rules to the letter, not only would their gold-backed currency lead to a quantum leap in the progress of its own economy, but given China’s undoubted economic power the yuan would become accepted as the foreign currency of choice for most of the world and it would encourage other nations to adopt similar gold exchange standards.
The proof is found in a nation of ten million which two hundred years ago in less than a century dominated technology and international trade, saw its population increase threefold as prosperity spread and life-expectancy increased, encouraged other nations to adopt gold standards, and by 1914 had built over 80% of the world’s shipping afloat. That small nation was the United Kingdom. Just think of the potential if China repeated the exercise.
Sound money works best with free markets
The impediments to the implementation of the sound money rules defined above are, however, substantial. It requires the relationship between the state and its people to be fundamentally reformed and instead of state control a laissez-faire philosophy must be adopted. The whole point behind sound money is to remove it from state control so the temptation for inflationism, which is leading visibly to the destruction of the current global monetary system, is removed.
The money that people use for their current and deferred consumption is rightly their affair, and not the state’s. This is why every time the state takes control of money away from its people it eventually fails, and the monetary function returns to the metals trusted by people through millennia. Today, we face no less than this transformation, the return to the peoples’ money and the destruction of statist fiat currencies.
Of the world’s significant economies, China appears best able to plan for monetary reform. Even so, it will not be easy and requires the completion of the new capitalist mindset courageously introduced by Deng Xiaoping. Instead, under President Xi China has drifted away from Deng’s vision towards internal suppression and increasing state control. He must recognise that central planning in China has had its day and it is time to give his population its economic freedom.
If only he can recognise it, Xi’s vested interest now lies in that direction. It will not be easy, and there is no certainty he will grasp the opportunity. But if he decides to do so, it requires the following issues to be addressed.
The state and the economy
Being a burden upon it. the state must reduce its role in the economy to the barest minimum to absorb less than 20% of GDP, preferably even less than 10%. Welfarism must be abandoned, or at least reduced until its financial burden on the state is minimal. In this respect, China is better placed than more mature advanced economies. The World Bank estimates China’s government spending in 2018 was 14.7% of GDP, which compares with the US’s 34%.
China scores highly in this respect.
Functions of the state to be restricted
In a sound-money free-market economy the basic state functions are to establish and administer laws to ensure certainty in contracts, to provide national defence and domestic law and order. China discriminates in her laws, is territorially ambitious with respect to Taiwan and the South China Sea, and internal policing is oppressive. There is no sign of change in these regards, which affects international relations adversely. If China dropped its claims to Taiwan and respected Hong Kong’s independence, international relations would immediately improve. Persecution of the Uyghurs is indicative of a heavy-handed statist response to the threat of Moslem terrorism. In these respects, China scores badly and in a new sound-money regime would only gain significant influence with its trading partners if these attitudes were reformed.
Mercantilism must be abandoned
China adopts a mercantilist approach to economic management, which coupled with an iron-fist control over the population has had some successes. But it is one thing for a reforming government to take an impoverished population and provide a framework and monetary stimulation to lift it out of poverty and another to continue the process. In China’s case, anything was better than Mao and Deng seized the opportunity.
In its early stages a mercantilist approach can have obvious objectives, which leads to national capital being deployed with effect. But being based on monetary expansion, even then capital is misallocated through monetary distortion, which only becomes obvious later. As a continuing state policy, it leads eventually to substantial tribulations and inefficiencies, and China has had its share of these.
The error is to regard the state as capable of being fundamentally motivated by profit. A misleading precedent for mercantilists was the East India Company, which ran India as its fiefdom until the Indian Mutiny. But that was a company which was mandated to produce profits for shareholders.
A government is necessarily a bureaucracy, not suited to an entrepreneurial role. China will need to address the relationship between the state and its role in the economy if a yuan gold standard is to be freely accepted through trust and trade, and for the maximum benefit of its economy. In fairness, China is abandoning support for zombie companies, but it still tries to pick winners, so is hardly neutral.
Regulation must be abandoned, allowing the public to set the parameters of its own demand.
Originally the means of control adopted by fascist governments, widespread regulation of economic activities has become the standard of modern government policies. The assumption is that the consumer must be protected from avaricious businessmen. The result is cronyism.
Instead of suffering from the West’s cronyism, China promotes businesses on a purely nationalistic basis, a policy which has now backfired in a crony world. The exclusion of American technology from China’s “Made in China 2025” strategic plan has intensified American hostility and is undermining Chinese technology’s international business. This would not have happened if China had a non-interventionist policy towards her domestic market. That has to change.
Banking must be reformed
The Achilles’ heel of the West’s banking system is the fraudulent issue of bank credit, which is no different in principal from central bank inflationism. Even in the days of the gold standard the expansion of bank credit increased currency in circulation without being backed by gold. There were, in effect, two types of currency; fully backed gold substitutes and fiat currency the product of unbacked bank credit, but indistinguishable from each other in circulation.
The expansion and subsequent contractions in bank credit created a destructive cycle of bank lending, particularly following the 1844 Bank Charter Act in English law, which set the subsequent international standard. This must be stopped. In the case of China, most banking is provided by state-owned banks, so if the state is determined to maintain a sound yuan it should present few difficulties in eliminating bank credit expansion.
The provision of monetary capital must be backed by savings and it is for the market to establish a balance between immediate consumption and its deferral. And here, China is in the fortunate position of having a strong savings culture, unlike the US and UK along with most members of the eurozone, where after allowing for consumer credit saving hardly exists.
Accumulation of private wealth to be embraced
The replacement of unbacked bank credit expansion with genuine savings as the source of investment capital requires the state to take a positive view on the accumulation of private sector wealth. Being a young modern economy, in this regard China is better placed than nations with more mature economies and ingrained socialism, where wealth is regarded as a morally justified source of tax revenue.
Progressively increasing tax rates mitigate against the acquisition of wealth, and China will need to reform its income tax regime to a flat tax rate. Since government spending is under 15% of GDP, with a reasonable personal allowance a flat income tax of 20% should allow for a balanced budget and other taxes to be eliminated over time. State spending targeted to an eventual 10% rate of state spending relative to GDP would allow the income tax rate to be reduced and held to a 15% rate and the abolition of all other taxes.
Income tax should be applied at the same rate on all sources of income. To make income from savings tax-free is a distortion of the market. Post-war Japan and Germany made it easy to avoid tax on savings interest, and their economies became savings driven and highly successful. But in China’s case, where a very high savings rate already exists, not only is such a policy unnecessary, but it leads to unwelcome imbalances in foreign trade which so long as other fiat currencies exist are politically destabilising in the longer term.
Digital money
China is almost certain to be tempted to adopt a centralised cryptocurrency approach, a forerunner of which is reportedly in trials at the moment. It is thought by many that application of this technology may well find a place in a new form of gold substitute.
Other commentators suspect that China’s motivation is to maintain control over its citizens’ spending. If this is the case it would be a mistake, and at odds with an objective to maximise the nation’s economic potential for the benefit of its citizens by returning to free markets. However, state-issued crypto technology is too young at this stage to be relevant to the successful establishment of a gold substitute currency.
The return to sound money
So far, we have established that of all the major economic powers, China is well placed to adopt a durable gold exchange standard. The most significant hurdle is the Communist Party’s control freakery over its people. Under wise leadership, this can be addressed, more likely during a monetary crisis when political objectives can be radically changed, than at any other time.
Otherwise, China has sufficient bullion reserves and gold ownership is widespread in the population. Silver, which is more naturally the money of the people is also widely available for coinage. Furthermore, there is reason to hope that the state is not as beholden to the neo-Keynesian macroeconomic inflationism as are other leading nations.
We have established that it is not in China’s current geopolitical interest to introduce a gold standard that undermines or destroys the dollar. For this reason, China will only do so once it is clear that the dollar is in the early stages of an unavoidable inflationary collapse, and the risk of the yuan going down with it must be urgently addressed. An increasingly certain banking crisis, likely in the next month or so, and a reappraisal of the dollar’s prospects and the debt trap of rising interest rates being sprung on western governments is likely to determine timing.
To be successful in defending the yuan from the gathering global monetary crisis, when the decision is taken to go ahead the following announcements should be immediately made.
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The State is transferring its undeclared bullion to monetary reserves, announcing a figure which we believe could exceed 20,000 tonnes. At the same time, it announces the yuan will be backed by gold from a defining date, perhaps a month hence, the rate to be determined by the markets in the intervening period. The purpose is to let the gold price rise to an appropriate level for a yuan exchange rate to be fixed.
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Following the defining date the quantity of yuan in circulation will be set by market demand, and any increase in the quantity will be fully backed by gold reserves held and allocated for that purpose by the Peoples Bank.
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The announcement will also state that conversion terms will be offered for all government debt (currently about 40 trillion yuan) into a new perpetual loan, interest payable at the holders’ choice in yuan or gold at the yuan/gold fixed rate, which will be set at the defining date.
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All holders of yuan will be free to exchange their yuan for new gold coin at the rate set on the defining date. In due course silver coins at sterling proof will also be issued as circulating currency, the rate set designed to ensure their continued circulation.
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All exchange controls to be removed with immediate effect.
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China’s withdrawal from all international cooperation at G7, G20 meetings etc., currency and economic management being no longer appropriate.
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Digitising plans, if any, will be discarded as unnecessary for the circulation of a gold-backed yuan.
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Consultation with the banks will be initiated to phase in over an appropriate period a restructured banking system. The objective will be to separate deposit-taking as a custodial function from investment funding of bonds and equities on an agency basis. Until these new provisions are in place, the expansion of bank credit will be frozen after which it will not exist.
The markets can then set a gold exchange rate which will be adopted as the fixed rate of exchange for the yuan. The return of a monetary function to silver is likely to reduce the gold/silver ratio to 20 or perhaps less, and allowance should be made for a settled relationship between gold and silver that might take a little longer to establish on a lasting basis. Only then can silver coins return to circulation.
There can be little doubt that a move to a gold yuan will have a profound effect on remaining fiat currencies. As noted above, a short period of time between announcing these plans and their implementation will be required for markets to adjust. It is likely that fiat currencies would face downward pressure on their purchasing power, and China must be seen to be protecting her own interests by returning to sound money and not deliberately undermining the dollar.
The consolidated perpetual loan has many advantages. It never has to be repaid. The coupon, reflecting gold’s rate of interest as well as issuer risk, could be set, at say 2%, and the conversion price set at 50 per notional 100 gold-yuan of the bond. Those prepared to back the Chinese government and its sound money regime would be rewarded for the risk by a running yield of 4%. As the government’s rating improves with the success of the return to gold, the price would rise towards par, giving early investors a solid reward. The wealth creation for holders becomes a solid contribution to providing capital for a progressing economy.
Other nations, particularly those in Asia, are likely to follow China in implementing their own gold exchange standards, and all nations will be then faced with a stark choice: do they hang on to their welfare states and their growing difficulties in financing them, or do they stabilise their currencies? If China does adopt a proper gold exchange standard, she would neutralise all America’s geopolitical power, whether America follows suit or not.
And finally, China should cease to provide the statistics beloved of neo-Keynesian macroeconomists, for they only serve to provide reasons for state intervention.
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- "The More I Won, The More Mad They Got" – Dave Portnoy "Beats Dennis Gartman Like A Drum" In Hilarious Editorial
“The More I Won, The More Mad They Got” – Dave Portnoy “Beats Dennis Gartman Like A Drum” In Hilarious Editorial
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 21:25Dave Portnoy’s decision to leave E-Trade (he claims he was kicked off the platform after criticizing the company over a recent string of outages), was only the brash Barstool Sports founder’s latest repudiation of the Wall Street and financial establishment. Over the past few months, the outrageous founder of Davey Day Trader Global has led an army of Robinhooders into the shares of bankrupt companies like Hertz, and turned the concept of active management on its head by picking stocks by randomly picking tickers out of scrabble letter bags.
Since dismissing Warren Buffett as “Washed up” and irrelevant on his daily livestream, where he shares his trades and stream-of-consciousness commentary, Portnoy has drawn the ire of handful of Wall Street luminaries running the gamut to the respectable (Howard Marks, Leon Cooperman, guys who have actually managed money) to the people like Dennis Gartman and Ron Insana, whom he has torn apart on his twitter feed and during his broadcasts.
In a pair of amusing editorials, Gartman – yes, that Dennis Gartman – hysterically scolds Portnoy for his “rank, almost amateurish, speculation.” Here’s a snippet via Fox Business.
Thousands, perhaps many thousands, of naive, mostly very young and wholly inexperienced “investors” follow his every word and his every recommendation as he engages in day trading.
For the past several weeks he has been right. The market had rallied — but we are again reminded of Joseph Kennedy’s admonition.
We are also reminded of John Maynard Keynes’ admonition that the market can remain illogical far longer than we can remain solvent.
And here’s a clip from a recent interview where Gartman warns that “when the shoe clerks are in the market…that’s always been the sign of a market top.”
Because god forbid the proles make any money while the rich are out there stuffing themselves, right?
We suspect that after Portnoy is finished “beating [Gartman] like a drum” in his response, the newsletter writer will brush it all off as some kind of joke, or like he was being tongue-in-cheek, or whatever.
Portnoy admittedly lost big when he first tried his hand at day trading. But he quickly saw his fortunes turn around when he tuned out the talking heads on CNBC and figured out “that stocks only go up.” Fortunately for him and his army of traders, he came to this realization just as Warren Buffett was publicly dumping his airline stocks. This simple analytical assessment – that the airlines wouldn’t be going out of business – birthed his career as a fly-by-night stock analyst.
Portnoy expounds on his “stocks only go up” theory in a Fox News editorial published below:
* * *
Howard Marks is mad. Ron Insana is mad. Dennis Gartman is mad. In fact, it seems like all the Wall Street suits are mad.
Who are they mad at? Me.Why are they mad? Because when COVID-19 caused sports to be postponed indefinitely a few months ago, I turned from sports gambling to day trading and founded my own fictional firm called Davey Day Trader Global Global.
Yes, that’s two globals because one global isn’t enough to describe how global we are.
I have livestreamed my trading exploits every single day for millions of people to watch.
In the beginning, I struggled. I was down $2 million before I could blink, and all the self-proclaimed pundits and talking heads on Wall Street treated me as a lovable loser.
The finance community welcomed me with open arms. But then something funny happened along the way. I started winning and they started losing.
The more I won, the more mad they got.
While Warren Buffett told people to get out of the airlines and cruises, I told my clients to dive headfirst into both industries.
I bought Spirit at $7.70. Within months, it had tripled. I openly wondered whether I was better than some of the legendary (albeit geriatric) traders of past generations.Suddenly, I became the most talked about person on Wall Street. Every time I turned on the TV, my name was being mentioned, usually in an unflattering light.
It culminated with Dennis Gartman (who is that?) going on FOX Business Network’s “Varney & Co.” Thursday and essentially saying it’s unfair that the public is allowed to invest in the stock market.
He thinks it’s unfair that I’m leading an army of day traders who treat stocks like a game and am making it more difficult for Wall Street veterans to navigate.
Gartman was mad that for the first time in history, retail investors, or the “retail bros” as they call them, don’t need them to invest our money for us. They no longer get a fat commission check every single time the public wants to make a trade.
They want the public’s money, but they want to be the only ones allowed to spend it. They want to get paid whether they win or lose.
The pure arrogance of guys like Gartman, Insana and Marks is surreal. They somehow think trading is their birthright and that they alone should have a monopoly on making money.
They don’t think Joe Public can be smart enough or trusted enough to invest our own, hard-earned money. Only they have that knowledge and insight on what is best for us.
Yet here I am. Beating them like a drum for the past three months at their own game. While they have been slow to react to the changing markets, I’ve adapted on the fly.
All I hear is old-timers say that the retail bros are going to get crushed. That they’ve lived through this before. That the pride comes before the fall.
Yet I ask them, how many global pandemics have they actually lived through? The answer is zero.
I have as much experience in this trading climate as they do. And maybe the very fact that I’m not burdened with their history has allowed me to see this market for what it is, while they have failed miserably.
Whatever the case may be, I’m just glad I can make trades for myself and make money for myself instead of paying commissions for bad advice from talking heads.
* * *
Source: Fox News
- Conservative Journalist Jack Posobiec Assaulted By DC Antifa
Conservative Journalist Jack Posobiec Assaulted By DC Antifa
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 21:24One America News journalist Jack Posobiec was assaulted by a self-described member of Antifa – the violent leftist designated a terrorist organization less than one month ago.
Posobiec was filming a speech by an elderly black man trying to prevent the protesters from destroying the Emancipation Memorial to Abraham Lincoln (funded entirely by the wages of freed slaves in 1876), when he was surrounded by hostile protesters and assaulted.
As the Post Millennial reports: “The situation escalated when a black-clad Antifa insurgent wearing a pair of red ski goggles and bicycle helmet identified Posobiec and accused him of “founding the alt-lite” and of being a “literal Nazi,” drawing a larger group of Antifa to approach and surround the journalist.”
Assault, battery & attempted robberty commited by antifa/blm on @OANN‘s reporter @JackPosobiec in DC
earlier this evening.Clip courtesy of @BreitbartNews edited by moi .. God Blesshttps://t.co/qXrO1MgGg8 pic.twitter.com/QLYiDCks0c
— wlctv.ca (@wlctv_ca) June 27, 2020
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More video of violent black bloc militants attacking @JackPosobiec in D.C. They dumped liquid all over him, hit him and tried to steal his phone. pic.twitter.com/DCrOq8ZUtB
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) June 27, 2020
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For a detailed account of the sequence of events, see here.
One of Posobiec’s assailants has been identified as 25-year-old Jason Robert Charter, an Antifa terrorist who has a history of agitating at political events.
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Literally shaking right now from his intimidating presence. pic.twitter.com/vXEInIylyl
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 27, 2020
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Based chad DC cops vs dork face pic.twitter.com/Cnm9jF1bmD
— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) June 27, 2020
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Posobiec has filed a report with US Park Police and will be pressing charges.
Meanwhile, noted Antifa agitator Luke Kuhn was reportedly spotted at the protest.
— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) June 27, 2020
Kuhn made headlines in 2017 when Project Veritas busted him in an undercover sting at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria – plotting to attack a DC Trump inauguration party. The sting resulted in the arrest of Kuhn – who once made several pedophilic posts to usenet internet groups. Kuhn was sentenced to probation in exchange for agreeing not to attend future Antifa events – however he was caught on camera in April, 2017 when Posobiec was assaulted by another member of Antifa.
@JackPosobiec assaulted by Antifa – and pedo advocate Paul ‘Luke’ Kuhn caught on cam apparently violating probation! https://t.co/a96zafeIA0 pic.twitter.com/1fWAmAUC5p
— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) April 24, 2017
The man who punched Posobiec, Sydney Alexander Ramsey-Laree, served 60 days in jail.
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- Weird: Out Of Nowhere, Something Just Rocked Earth's Magnetic Field
Weird: Out Of Nowhere, Something Just Rocked Earth’s Magnetic Field
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 21:05Authored by Anthony Watts via WattsUpWithThat.com,
A GLOBAL MAGNETIC ANOMALY: On June 23rd, Earth’s quiet magnetic field was unexpectedly disturbed by a wave of magnetism that rippled around much of the globe. There was no solar storm or geomagnetic storm to cause the disturbance. So what was it?
The Sun today, cue ball blank. Image: NASA SDO
Lately, Earth’s magnetic field has been quiet. Very quiet. The sun is in the pits of what may turn out to be the deepest Solar Minimum in a century. Geomagnetic storms just aren’t happening.
“That’s why I was so surprised on June 23rd when my instruments picked up a magnetic anomaly,” reports Stuart Green, who operates a research-grade magnetometer in his backyard in Preston UK.
“For more than 30 minutes, the local magnetic field oscillated like a sine wave.”
This chart recording shows a magnetic wave rippling through Preston UK on June 23, 2020. Credit: Stuart Green.
Green quickly checked solar wind data from NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite.
“There was nothing – no uptick in the solar wind speed or other factors that might explain the disturbance,” he says.
He wasn’t the only one who noticed. In the Lofoten islands of Norway, Rob Stammes detected a similar anomaly on his magnetometer. “It was remarkable,” he says.
“Our magnetic field swung back and forth by about 1/3rd of a degree. I also detected ground currents with the same 10 minute period.”
What happened? Space physicists call this phenomenon a “pulsation continuous” or “Pc” for short. Imagine blowing across a piece of paper, making it flutter with your breath. Solar wind can have a similar effect on magnetic fields. Pc waves are essentially flutters propagating down the flanks of Earth’s magnetosphere excited by the breath of the sun. During more active phases of the solar cycle, these flutters are easily lost in the noise of rambunctious geomagnetic activity. But during the extreme quiet of Solar Minimum, such waves can make themselves “heard” like a pin dropping in an silent room.
Magnetic observatories around the world detected the wave on June 23, 2020. Credit: INTERMAGNET
Earth’s magnetic field was so quiet on June 23rd, the ripple was heard all around the world. INTERMAGNET‘s global network of magnetic observatories picked up wave activity at the same time from Hawaii to China to the Arctic Circle. There’s even a hint of it in Antarctica.
Pc waves are classified into 5 types depending on their period. The 10-minute wave on June 23rd falls into category Pc5. Slow Pc5 waves have been linked to a loss of particles from the van Allen radiation belts. Energetic electrons surf these waves down into Earth’s atmosphere, where they dissipate harmlessly.
With Solar Minimum in full swing, there’s never been a better time to study these waves. Keep quiet … and stay tuned for more.
Story from SpaceWeather.com it is well worth visiting this site
- The Decline Of The Third World
The Decline Of The Third World
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 21:05Authored by Jayant Bhandari via Acting-Man.com,
A Failure to Integrate Values
The only region in the world that has proactively tried to incorporate western culture in its societies is East Asia — Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, which was a grotesquely oppressed, poor, Third World country not too far in the past, notwithstanding its many struggles today, has furiously tried to copy the West.
Famous Greek philosophers: their thoughts are a cornerstone of Western culture. [PT]
Western culture, which developed organically over at least the two and half millennia, starting from Greco-Roman philosophers, is not easy to duplicate. This culture requires thrift, honesty, hard work, liberty, individuality, dispassionate reason, objective justice, loyalty, honor, stoicism, a desire to rise above oneself, and many other factors that perhaps cannot be seen or isolated but must be absorbed subliminally in all their complex interactions. These are reflected in social, religious, and political structures of the West — the three independent branches of government, the rule of law, compassion for others, charity, family system, etc.
The West and East Asia, including China, comprise a mere 2.5 billion people.
“The Rest,” the Third World, comprises 5 billion out of 7.5 billion people on the planet. The cultural factors underpinning the West sound like clichés until one who gives up political correctness for the truth starts to see that the Third World, despite its several centuries of interactions with the West, simply fails to understand them.
The Third World is blind to what makes the West a civilization. It is as if the Third World cannot rise above animal instincts — craving for food, power over others, sex, and for the material.
Over several centuries of western colonization and missionary activities, an attempt was made to infuse Western cultural factors into the Third World. It was only a marginal success. Since the third world countries achieved political independence, without constant Western involvement, all has been lost. Christianity became voodoo, and the political system became a tool for tribalism and tyranny.
Focus on Materialism
The Third World is tempted by only the physical products of Western society. They are pleasure-centric. When they look at the West, all they see is entertainment, an easy-going lifestyle, freedom from responsibility, liberal governments, free health-care, consumerism, social welfare, and good salaries. They either want to be economic migrants to the West or copy the Western lifestyle, without an iota of an understanding that they must have wealth-generating capabilities first and that there is something at the foundations of Western culture.
The lure of materialism [PT]
There is a virtual absence of reading habits in the Third World. If they end up reading Ayn Rand, all they see in it is a drama. They fail to see a non-collectivist philosophy embedded in it. If they watch movies like the Matrix, all they see is a sci-fi movie. They fail to see any suggestion that they might be getting indoctrinated by their leaders.
What they see as the culture of the West from their narrow worldview is primarily the culture of its lower-class and the entertainment industry.
European colonization and technology were a massive relief for the Third World, but merely temporary, for they never learned or even saw the principles that made such prosperity possible. All the advantages, given the mindset of expediency, have been frittered away, through wars, excessive consumption, malinvestment, an increase in population, etc. The Third World’s craving for the material, unconnected with morality or reason, means that it forever wallows in poverty, oppression, and at the edge of a Malthusian crisis.
Nothing it has is sustainable, neither capital nor institutions. All surplus gets consumed or frittered away — it takes a higher calling to invest and preserve the surplus. Everything has a pull towards decay, disintegration, and degradation.
European colonization provided a rational system for the Third World to operate in. Christian Missionaries tried to infuse reason among the inhabitants. In desperation, they sometimes even removed children from their families. All these attempts made only a marginal difference.
Departing European colonizers transferred Western tools — technology, institutions, etc. — to the democratically elected bodies of the Third World. The tools were subverted and used for tribalistic purposes. And democracy enabled the most irrational, base elements to rise to power.
Ease of travel made the situation worse by enabling the emigration of the best people from the Third World.
Post-Colonial Regression
Since the departure of European colonizers, the Third World has been culturally and institutionally regressing to its pre-European dark ages. None of these societies are sane, stable, or sustainable by themselves. It is the fear of America that keeps their tyrants behaving better than they otherwise would and their nations from falling into forever wars between their tribal units.
Despite this cultural and institutional regression, the free-gift of Western technology and the green revolution, and peace imparted by America still enabled economic growth, which alas has allowed more cultural problems to accumulate before Malthusian equilibrium kicks in again.
Thomas Malthus: his concerns over unsustainable population growth were misguided when applied to a Western capitalist market economy – he failed to take human ingenuity, problem-solving capabilities and capital accumulation into account. However, his concerns will become valid in a stagnating or regressing economy. [PT]
Marxist and Keynesian economics has a toehold in the Third World not because those works corrupted them, but because these pseudo-economics match their expectations for free stuff. Every single major leader of the Third World who studied in the UK during the British colonization became a socialist — socialism is all that they saw during their life in the UK.
Importing the wrong prophets from the UK: Marx and Keynes. [PT]
The contribution the West has made to Africa — which for all practical purposes did not have a written language, technology of farming, or tools before the arrival of Europeans — is immense. Unfortunately, these gifts have mostly gone unused.
In the Third World, girls in school-uniforms carry water buckets on their heads. Despite the concept of the wheel having been offered on a platter, they haven’t figured out its use. They have been taught English for centuries by now, but what they have is pidgin, a simple, non-nuanced, lacking-in-grammar language. This predicament had to happen for complex language can only be retained if the society has an interest in ideas, planning, and issues outside immediate needs.
For most in the Third World, “tomorrow” is too far in the future. Their communication needs are limited to teasing each other, consumption needs, activism, and discussing celebrities.
Christianity was spread in the Third World, but it ended up becoming voodoo, heavily mixed with superstitions. Formal education, seen as a magic wand that enables a good life, has turned into at best rote-learning, and its purpose is only to get a certificate at the end. Education without core western values sits unassimilated in superstitious minds. It merely increases stress levels, leading to the spread of ritualistic, superstitious, and materialistic religion.
The tools of Western technology have been corrupted for tribal purposes — steel instead of being used for constructing bridges and factories has been more commonly used for making machetes in Africa. The internet was expected to rapidly spread truth, knowledge, and awakening to the poorest in the Third World. Instead, if they are not watching pornography, they circulate superstitions, rumors and political activism.
Absence of Rationality
Tools for development and growth in the West have failed in the Third World, and often had the opposite effects. The question is, why is it that the Third World has failed to absorb and even notice the cultural qualities of the West? What went wrong? Why did the Third World fail to maintain the benefits offered?
The fundamental problem of the Third World is that the concept of reason is conspicuous by its absence. Without “reason,” intellectual and financial capital is not accumulated. The operating system in their minds is tribalism, superstition, magical thinking, and irrationality. This operating system makes them impervious to absorbing Western intellectual capital.
Rationality – the foundation of civilization [PT]
Without the rationality, civilization is not possible. Irrational societies must vacillate between dogma, hedonism, and savagery, never stumbling on another dimension, rationality.
A society of irrational people, particularly in a democratic system, where the most tribal, least-competent 50% people decide on who rules, eventually has to disintegrate into tribal units, who will then enter into never-ending wars. This is what will happen to 5 billion people living in the Third World, a humanitarian catastrophe never seen before. 100s of millions, perhaps billions will perish, once their problems have become too large for the West to contain.
- Moody's Reignites Feud With SoftBank By Revising Ratings Outlook To "Negative"
Moody’s Reignites Feud With SoftBank By Revising Ratings Outlook To “Negative”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 20:45Weighing in for the third time this year, Moody’s just reignited its feud with SoftBank by reaffirming the company’s junk credit rating while moving its outlook to “negative”, from “ratings under review” on Friday as the collapse of Wirecard (once a major SoftBank holding though the company dumped its stake last year) creates yet another blemish on Masa Son’s reputation one day after the SoftBank Chairman quit the board of Alibaba.
Back in March, the ratings agency downgraded SoftBank’s credit rating to Ba3 and warned that it could soon fall further into “speculative” (ie “junk”) territory. That sparked a feud between SoftBank and Moody’s as the company took the “unusual step” of asking for the rating to be withdrawn.
In response to Moody’s “doubling-down”, as Reuters put it, SoftBank shot back that it hadn’t delivered any new information to Moody’s since the ratings agency’s last update. SoftBank says it has “provided no information to Moody’s”…and it’s…”unclear what Moody’s intention is”…or…”what information it uses” to make these determinations.
Unfortunately, SoftBank’s recent investing track record – and that of its $100 billion “Vision Fund”, which managed to lose money on stakes in Uber, WeWork and many other less-notable companies, speaks for itself. Though, just yesterday, the company announced it had raised $35 billion by selling some of its Alibaba stake back to Alibaba, which it plans to buy back more shares and pay down debt in an attempt to satisfy certain activist investors who have taken an interest in the Japanese disgraced national champion.
Not only are buybacks extremely politically sensitive right now, but both Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings have taken issue with SoftBank’s share-buyback plan for financial reasons.
“Major asset sales have been announced but given the structured nature of the transactions, cash proceeds may not all yet have been received or applied towards debt reduction,” Moody’s said.
SoftBank’s preference for complex financial transactions like collateralised margin loans “signals a heightened tolerance for risk and financial complexity,” Moody’s continued.
The concerns follow peer S&P Global Ratings which earlier this month said SoftBank’s 2.5 trillion yen ($24 billion) buyback plan – launched to stabilise the firm’s stock price after its tech investments faltered – raised doubts about “financial soundness and creditworthiness”.
Of course, none of that matters to SoftBank, since it’s goal with the buybacks is to boost its lagging share price, satisfy the activists nipping at its heels, and alleviate some of the pressure on Masa Son, whose personal wealth is now in play as his SoftBank shares have been used to guarantee loans.
We suspect this won’t be the last we hear from Moody’s or S&P, as the ratings agencies have apparently vowed to make an example of SoftBank – not that the company doesn’t deserve it.
- The COVID-Crisis Could Bring A New Era Of Decline For American Core Cities
The COVID-Crisis Could Bring A New Era Of Decline For American Core Cities
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 20:25Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Manufacturing company 7-Sigma made headlines when it decided to leave Minneapolis as a result of the company’s plant being burned by rioters. “They don’t care about my business,” 7-Sigma owner Kris Wyrobek old the Star-Tribune. After more than 30 years in the city, the company isn’t staying, nor are any of the company’s fifty jobs.
But the costs of being victimized in protests is just one of many reasons homeowners and businesses may be realizing life and business in central cities has lost its luster. The ongoing threat of more business lockdowns, more riots, higher taxes, and failing schools may induce many Americans to flee, once again, to the suburbs as their parents or grandparents did.
This goes well beyond the fear of the disease many journalists have assumed is behind the observed beginnings of an exodus from cities. Yes, many in the upper classes have fled the cities for their mountain homes and yachts for “health reasons.” But these people are relatively few in number and their thinking quixotic. They can afford to drop everything and leave cities overnight.
But the larger impacts are likely to be felt as middle class homeowners and business owners conclude they’d simply rather avoid the edicts and neglect of mayors and city councils in central cities who thinking nothing of issuing job-destroying “stay-at-home” orders while allowing rioters and vandals free rein.
The real cost to cities is likely to emerge over time. It will come in the form of families and shop owners who decide it’s best to move their businesses ten miles down the road to a neighboring city that will actually do something about rioters. It will come in the form of families which decide their next home will be just a little bit farther from the urban dictator-mayors who have the heaviest hands in enforcing lockdowns and business closures. It will come in the form of potential new business owners and homeowners will be decide to never purchase property to start a business in central cities in the first place.
The Decline of Cities at Mid-Century
We may be seeing something reminiscent what happened in America’s large central cities during the 1970s and 1980s. Many Americans concluded these cities had become unlivable and crime infested. Many concluded these were places that were quite inhospitable to doing business. So they left. (Forced busing for “integration” purposes was a factor as well.)
In some cases, there were dramatic events that illustrated the trend. The late sixties in New York saw several strikes by city workers. Transit and sanitation in the city became a disaster. The 1977 blackout in New York City ended in widespread riots that induced many businesses to pack up and never return. Many households followed.
But for the most part, cities saw an exodus that took many years and slowly hollowed out the finances and tax revenues of big cities. Areas of Detroit fell into ruin. By the mid seventies, New York City was lurching from one fiscal crisis to another.
“Nearly half of large cities lost cities shrank by at least 10 percent” during the 1970s, according to the Kansas City Fed :
St. Louis, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Detroit each shrank by more than 20 percent. Vast stretches of urban land were left virtually deserted.
More than half of large cities lost population from 1950 to 1980.
There were other factors at work as well, of course. The central cities were often hit the hardest as the old Rust Belt went into decline after the region was destroyed by labor unions and city and state laws that made business in the region inefficient and uncompetitive. Business owners and workers who possessed any real ambition or entrepreneurial spirit had good reason to leave the region altogether.
City centers, built on an old manufacturing-based working class never recovered.
The situation today is a bit different. During the 1990s, core cities began to recover from their mid-century decline and many officials and intellectuals in these areas began cultivating the so-called ” creative class” (also known as the ” bohemian bourgeoisie “) with the idea that young artists, engineers, architects, and tech workers might be convinced to move into city centers and and revitalize local urban economies. It appears to have worked in many cases.
But in 2020 America the hey day of the new techno-city may be over.
Civil Unrest
The case of the Sigma-7 closure in Minneapolis is just the most famous case of central cities’ hostility to businesses within their borders. We’re not hearing about the many small less-notable businesses that won’t re-open in the wake of riots. In other cities, such as Chicago, city officials are now begging retailers to not leave the city.
Meanwhile, a number of small businesses now within the “CHOP” zone in Seattle is suing the city for abandoning businesses to the whims of the leftist mob.
As reported by the local NBC affiliate, local businesses have been threatened and harassed by the bosses of the “Capitol Hill Occupation Protest” (CHOP) zone in the city. The city government, the plaintiffs have concluded, essentially have abandoned these businesses to the new “government”:
The City’s decision has subjected businesses, employees, and residents of that neighborhood to extensive property damage, public safety dangers, and an inability to use and access their properties.
Minneapolis and Seattle aren’t the only cities the prospect of continued civil unrest. with forty million new unemployment filings in recent months, the US faces a worrisome period of highly elevated unemployment. Many of the worst-affected workers will be lower-income populations living in core cities. This won’t help the prospect of a speedy return to placid city environments.
Regime Uncertainty
As government experts and media pundits emphasize growth in reported COVID-19 cases, the prospect of renewed lockdowns now looms, as well. This is a threat at the state level and in many suburban local governments. But experience strongly suggests that those political jurisdictions controled by political leftists are likely to embrace the longest and harshest lockdowns. In many states, such as Texas and Colorado and California and Pennsylvania, local governments in big cities embraced lockdowns more enthusiastically than the surrounding regions and at the state capitols. “Regime uncertainty”—uncertainty about what business-killing regulations a government might embrace next—appears to be greater in central cities.
Business owners are likely to remember this. In the medium- and long-term, business owners and potential business owners will gravitate to those areas where the threat of harsh lockdowns is smaller.
The Rise of the “Work-at-Home” Trend
If the work-at-home trend persists, core cities will have lost one of their main draws: namely, the prospect of a shorter commute for those who can afford a home close-in to the employment centers. Even if daily commutes are just reduced—say, to a three-days-per-week schedule—the commute-time cost of a home in the suburbs falls dramatically. Without the need to sit in traffic five days per week, more expensive city homes and the congrestion and crime of city centers becomes far less attractive.
Declining Tax Revenue and Urban Blight
On top of it all will come big cuts to city budgets as COVID lockdowns decimated tax revenues. All cities and states will be impacted, but if the most productive taxpayers move out of the core cities, it is these areas that will feel the brunt of revenue shortfalls. In other words, a shift of productivity toward the suburbs and small cities will hollow out big city budgets and school district budgets as well. This will only encourage businesses and families to stay away in even larger numbers. Families will seek to avoid school districts and decline, and employers won’t want to become part of a shrinking tax base where tax increases are frequently eyed by politicians as a way out.
The Beginnings of a Trend?
All of this will take time to play out. Yes, we’ve started to see those with means leave big cities already. The New York Times has reported on numerous former residents of New York City who have left for the surrounding regions. The Times asks “is New York City worth it anymore?” and points out “the pandemic send young New Yorkers packing.”
Meanwhile, some real estate agents report a “mad rush” of wealthy buyers to get out of the city center and into the wealthy suburbs of San Francisco. These are just the early movers. The exiles of more modest means will come later. Not surprisingly, the median rent in San Francisco for a one-bedroom apartment dropped 9.2 percent in May, compared year-over-year.
But these remains a small percentage of the overall population. Most homeowners, families, and business owners need time to move their businesses, sell their properties, and be convinced it’s time to move on.
None of this should be interpreted, however, as a trend away from metropolitan areas overall. There appears to be little risk that large numbers of Americans will be quitting metro areas for rural villages and towns. Some will. But most will notice that metro areas still have most of the jobs, most of the cultural institutions, and most of the health care services. What can’t be said is that core cities have a monopoly on these resources. In recent decades, suburbs and small cities have increasingly become places that host a wide variety of sports teams, museums, convention centers, hospitals, and more. Metro areas are still a good place to be. But old core cities? Not so much.
- Visualizing The COVID-19 Impact On Advertising Spend
Visualizing The COVID-19 Impact On Advertising Spend
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 20:05Before the COVID-19 outbreak, global advertising investment was estimated to grow at a 7.1% clip in 2020.
Now, as Visual Capitalist’s Katie Jones notes, global ad spend is estimated to see a brutal contraction of 8.1% – equating to almost $50 billion – as a result of changing consumer behavior. The total loss becomes a bleak $96.4 billion when taking pre-pandemic growth forecasts into account.
Today’s graphic uses data from the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) to visualize the estimated decline in advertising spend by media format and industry.
As advertisers adapt to rising in-home media consumption, the tug-of-war for ad dollars between online and traditional media seems to have a decisive winner.
The Death of Traditional Media
After decades of experts predicting the death of traditional media formats, the COVID-19 pandemic could be the last nail in the coffin.
In fact, spend across every type of traditional media format will see a decline in 2020, while most online media formats are expected to see an increase in spending.
Mid-term, this era will be associated with an accelerant of latent and incremental trends towards more digital consumption, commerce, and thus advertising”
– Dr. Daniel Knapp, Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe
With consumers spending significantly more time at home, brands are allocating more dollars to certain media formats to reflect that. However, when it comes to traditional in-home formats such as TV, consumers are opting for streaming services instead. In fact, they are streaming twice as much online video on services such as Netflix compared to last year.
Spending Estimates, by Category
Almost every industry will see reduced spending. The one category that will buck the trend is “Telecoms & Utilities”, which will experience a 4.3% increase in ad spend throughout the year.
Interestingly, stay-at-home restrictions have increased consumers’ reliance on these services for staying connected with loved ones and working from home.
Moreover, the pandemic has proved to be a turning point for the telecommunications industry, as the importance of faster internet speeds are emphasized and the potential of 5G is realized.
The Road to Recovery?
When inflation and exchange rates are taken into account, the decline in advertising spend is expected to be worse than that experienced during the global financial crisis.
Although 2021 shows signs of recovery, WARC suggests this is reflective of how steep the decline in 2020 will be.
Data shows that global advertising spending growth did not fully recover for eight years following the previous recession, so a swift recovery may be highly unlikely, and returning to pre-pandemic growth rates may not be possible for a number of years.
The Changing Advertising Landscape
As advertisers come to terms with their new reality, they are faced with the uncertainty of changing consumer behavior and the potential for a second wave to tighten quarantine restrictions once more.
Could the pandemic be accelerating the inevitable shift to digital, or is the pain for traditional media only temporary?
- Again, What Were The Benefits Of Locking Down?
Again, What Were The Benefits Of Locking Down?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 19:45Authored by Edward Peter Stringham via The American Institute for Economic Research,
The school closures, stay home orders, shuttering of businesses, banning of elective surgeries, closure of physical entertainment events, blocked flights, and sudden imposition of a central plan – it all happened suddenly from mid-March in the course of only a few days, and to enormous shock on the part of people who had previously taken their freedom and rights for granted.
Despite enormous pressure from Washington, eight states did not lock down or used a very light touch: South Dakota, North Dakota, South Carolina, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, Iowa, and Nebraska.
After 100 days, we are in a position for some preliminary analysis of the performance of locked down states versus those that did not lock down. AIER has already published the evidence that lockdown states had higher rates of unemployment.
The Sentinel, a nonprofit news source of the Kansas Policy Institute, confirms our research by reporting the following data: locked down states have overall a 13.2% unemployment rate, while open states have a 7.8% unemployment rate.
But perhaps this better economic performance came at the expense of health?
In terms of health, locked down states have nearly four times the death rate from COVID-19.
The results do not prove that staying open necessarily caused the good outcomes, but should certainly lead us to question the notion that “lockdowns are necessary or else we all are going to die.”
To be sure, many mitigating factors may exist. Open states may have had fewer long-term health facilities housing people with low life expectacies; in every state, these account for roughly half of all deaths from COVID-19. In fact, “deaths among a narrow 1.7% group of the population are greater than deaths from the other 98.3%.”
Population density between the states also varies and that could have been an explanatory variable. The open states also lacked governors who mandated that nursing homes accept active COVID-patients. Earlier this month, we published some more detailed research “Unemployment Far Worse in Lockdown States, Data Show” by economist Abigail Devereux who found similar results.
A routine trope in the media is that people who oppose lockdowns are pushing freedom and wealth over safety and health. But as we can see from this clean examination of the results, the open states experienced less economic pain and less pain from the disease itself.
We are seeing desperate attempts by politicians, public health officials, and media commentators somehow to make sense of why the United States pursued the course it did with the closures, stay-home orders, travel bans, and near-universal quarantine, in violation of every principle that America has celebrated in its civic culture.
With the evidence coming in that the lockdowns were neither economically nor medically effective, it is going to be increasingly difficult for lockdown partisans to marshal the evidence to convince the public that isolating people, destroying businesses, and destroying social institutions was worth it.
- Coronavirus Causes Weaponized 'Tentacles' To Sprout From Infected Cells, Directly Inject Virus Into New Ones
Coronavirus Causes Weaponized ‘Tentacles’ To Sprout From Infected Cells, Directly Inject Virus Into New Ones
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 19:25The virus behind COVID-19 causes infected cells to sprout ‘tentacles’ which allow the virus to attack several nearby cells at once – poking holes which allow the disease to easily transfer inside.
This nightmare fuel was discovered by researchers led by the University of California, San Francisco.
“There are long strings that poke holes in other cells and the virus passes through the tube from cell to cell,” said UCSF’s Director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute, Professor Nevan Krogan. “Our hypothesis is that these speed up infection.“
The images taken by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratory in the US and University of Freiburg in Germany will be published in the medical journal Cell on Saturday.
Most viruses do not cause infected cells to grow these tentacles. Even those that do, such as smallpox, do not have as many or the same type of branching as Sars-Cov-2, the virus behind Covid-19. –FT
According to the report, the silver lining is that the tentacle discovery may pave the way for a number of drugs to work against the disease – most of which were previously being used to treat cancer.
“It totally makes sense there’s an overlap in anticancer drugs and an antiviral effect,” said Prof. Krogan, who added that cancers, HIV and SARS-CoV-2 are all searching for the “Achilles heel of the cell.”
Potential drugs include silmitasertib, made by Taiwan-based Senhwa Biosciences – which is working with the NIH on trials in the US. The drug works by inhibiting the CK2 enzyme which is used to build the tubes.
The drug is one of five which were found to be more effective against the virus than Gilead’s remdesivir, including FDA-approved Xospata (aka gilteritinib) made by Japan-based Astellas Pharma, Eli Lily’s FDA-approved abemaciclib (Verzenio) and ralimetinib, and dasatinib, made by Bristol-Meyers Squibb.
Remember, the official narrative is that the virus – which specializes in infecting humans and packs ultra-rare ‘infection tentacles’ – did not emerge from a Chinese biolab located at ‘ground zero’ for the pandemic, where scientists had previously come under international scrutiny for conducting ‘gain of function’ experiments in which chimeric coronaviruses were genetically engineered for the sole purpose of infecting humans.
But we digress.
- Daily Briefing – June 26, 2020
Daily Briefing – June 26, 2020
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 19:25Senior editor Ash Bennington hosts managing editor Ed Harrison to discuss a day of pain on Wall Street as the coronavirus shows no signs of relenting and the normally cautious Federal Reserve issued an alarming mandate to large-cap banks. Ed and Ash also flesh out their thinking on a potential “double-dip recession” and a second wave of coronavirus. In the intro, Jack Farley looks at COVID-19 data and analyzes the dire results from the Fed’s “stress test” of the banking sector. - Satellite Images Show Huge 'Permanent' Chinese Troop Expansion At Site Of India Border Clash
Satellite Images Show Huge ‘Permanent’ Chinese Troop Expansion At Site Of India Border Clash
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 18:45Even though by the start of this week India and China announced a cooling of tensions along the disputed Galwan Valley Line of Actual Control (LAC) border area, new satellite images have revealed a major military build-up especially by the Chinese side.
What was previously but a small, remote Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) outpost has grown huge in size after the June 15 nighttime clash which left 20 Indian soldiers said, many of them having fallen to their deaths during hand-to-hand combat from a precarious ridge line.
Maxar Technologies/CNN The satellite images produced by Maxar Technologies were taken Monday, reports CNN, and show that a week after the deadliest India-China border clash in half a century PLA forces had significantly expanded their encampment.
The PLA has reportedly stationed tank and artillery units in the contested border region.
It was a day later on Tuesday that Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian announced that talks between the two sides’ top regional commanders resulted in a positive breakthrough. They “agreed to take necessary measures to promote a cooling of the situation,” Zhao said.
Maxar Technologies/CNN Below: Before image showing the relatively empty area of what’s dubbed Patrol Point 14 in the Galwan Valley between May 22 and June 22 (compared to apparent build-up in same area shown above).
Maxar Technologies/CNN “The small outpost … has grown hugely in size,” the analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute who first revealed the images, Nathan Ruser tweeted on Thursday.
“Indian troops aren’t dismantling this one,” he added, emphasizing that the new PLA expanded camp appears permanent.
Satellite imagery from the Galwan Valley on June 22nd shows that ‘disengagement’ really isn’t the word that the government should be using. This gif shows the small outpost that sparked the June 15th clashes. It has grown hugely in size. Indian troops aren’t dismantling this one. pic.twitter.com/8Q78ftr3uW
— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) June 24, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Though analysts say it’s clearly a PLA encampment, Indian media reports claimed that the Indian Army was in full control of the disputed Galwan Valley area in question.
However, analysts say the new images refute those claims, as CNN reports:
The Maxar satellite photos released this week appear to show China has put a tank company and artillery units at a camp north of Gogra. Another significant base was shown in the Kongka Pass.
Ruser, in an analysis released before the latest satellite photos came out, said previous such photos showed Chinese troops have been regularly crossing the LAC on patrols into Indian territory — although not at the point of the June 15 clash — but that reports of thousands of Chinese troops encamped in Indian territory were unproven.
Analysts examining the new satellite photos further say that while the PLA presence has increased, the Indian Army appears to have drawn down from the immediate area of dispute.
China has reportedly moved about a thousand additional troops into the area after recent hostilities and spiking tensions.
- Policing The Internet: A Bad Idea In 1996… And Today
Policing The Internet: A Bad Idea In 1996… And Today
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 18:25Authored by Chris Cox via RealClearPolitics.com,
A new wave of regulatory fervor is rippling through Congress as representatives and senators alike search for ways to control online content they find offensive. It is all reminiscent of the debate that took place at the birth of the Internet a quarter-century ago, when the same issues of content moderation, privacy, free speech, and the dark side of cyberspace first surfaced.
At that time, James Exon, a little-known senator from Nebraska, advanced a proposal for federal regulation of every user of the Internet — and almost everyone else involved in its architecture and delivery. Dubbed the Communications Decency Act, his legislation would have placed the federal government in the role of speech police, threatening every user of the Internet and Internet service providers alike with fines and prison for posting content that was constitutionally protected. This misguided approach likely would have prevented today’s seemingly infinite variety of user-generated content from ever developing in the first place.
Exon’s bad idea briefly became law in 1996, but thankfully never took effect because the federal courts, and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court, declared it unconstitutional. That should have been the end of the story.
Amid today’s resurgence of support for government regulation of online content, however, the neo-regulators are resurrecting Sen. Exon’s memory, or at least their revisionist version of it. They want to repeal existing federal law known colloquially as “Section 230” that places responsibility on users who post illegal content, and instead shift the blame to the website or social media platform on which it is posted. And they’re invoking Exon’s unconstitutional attempt to restrain free speech on the Internet in support of the effort.
Exon’s Communications Decency Act and Section 230 became law at the same time, even though Section 230 was originally designed as a reproach of Exon. It declared federal regulation of online speech off limits and gave Internet platforms immunity from liability for their own efforts to moderate content. When these two opposite approaches were both included as amendments to a larger bill in a typical Washington backroom political deal, many observers scratched their heads and wondered what Congress was thinking.
But the claim now being made is that the two were actually like legislative epoxy, with one part requiring the other. Since Exon was tossed out, so the argument goes, Section 230 should not be allowed to stand on its own.
In fact, the revisionists contend, the primary congressional purpose back in 1996 was not to give Internet platforms immunity from liability as Section 230 does. Rather, the most important part of their imagined “package” was Exon’s radical idea of imposing stringent liability on websites for the illegal acts of others — an idea that Exon himself backed away from before his amendment was actually passed. Now, a quarter-century after the Supreme Court threw out the Exon bathwater, the neo-speech regulators are urging us to throw out the Section 230 baby along with it.
The reality is far different than this revisionist history would have it. As the original sponsor of Section 230, I know. I was there.
Playing the Porn Card
It was a hot, humid Washington day in the summer of 1996 when the Democratic senator from Nebraska, standing at his desk on the Senate floor, read the following prayer into the record as a prelude to introducing his landmark legislation that would be the first ever to regulate content on the Internet:
Almighty God, Lord of all life, we praise You for the advancements in computerized communications that we enjoy in our time. Sadly, however, there are those who are littering this information superhighway with obscene, indecent, and destructive pornography. … Lord, we are profoundly concerned about the impact of this on our children. … Oh God, help us care for our children. Give us wisdom to create regulations that will protect the innocent.
Sen. James Exon, whose bill banned anything unsuitable for minors from the Internet. United States Senate Historical Office/Public Domain
Immediately following his prayer, Sen. Exon found it had been answered, in the form of his own proposal to ban anything unsuitable for minors from the Internet. His bill instructed the Federal Communications Commission to adopt and enforce regulations that would limit what adults could access online, and could themselves say or write, to material that is suitable for children. Anyone who posted any “indecent” communication, including any “comment, request, suggestion, proposal, [or] image” that was viewable by “any person under 18 years of age,” would become criminally liable, facing both jail and fines.
The Exon dragnet was cast wide: Not only would the content creator — the person who posted the article or image that was unsuitable for minors — face jail and fines, the intent was to make “online services” and even “access software providers” liable as well. Meanwhile, Internet service providers would be exempted from civil or criminal liability for the limited purpose of eavesdropping on customer email in order to prevent the transmission of potentially offensive material.
Like his Nebraska forebear William Jennings Bryan, who passionately defended creationism at the infamous Scopes “Monkey Trial,” James Exon was not known for being on the cutting edge of science and technology. His motivation to protect children from harmful pornography was pure. But his grasp of the rapidly evolving Internet was sorely deficient. He was not alone: A study completed that same week revealed that of senators who voted for his legislation, 52% had no Internet connection.
Unfamiliarity with the new technology they were attempting to regulate had immediate side effects. What many of these senators failed to grasp was how different the Internet was from the communications technologies with which they were familiar and had regulated through the Federal Communications Commission for decades.
Broadcast television had long consisted of three networks; and even with the advent of cable, the content sources were relatively few and all the millions of viewers were passive. Radio, likewise. For years there had been one phone company and now there were but a handful more. The locus of all of this activity was domestic, within the jurisdiction and control of the United States.
None of this bore any relation to the Internet.
On this new medium, the number of content creators — each a “broadcaster,” as it were — was the same as the number of users. It would soon expand from hundreds of millions to billions. It would be an impossibility for the federal government to pre-screen all the content that so many people were creating all day, every day. And there was the fact that the moniker “World Wide Web” was entirely apt, since the Internet functions globally. It was clear to many, even then, that most of the content creation would ultimately occur outside the jurisdiction of federal authorities — and that enforcement of Exon-like restrictions in the U.S. would simply push the sources of the banned content offshore.
Above all, the Internet was unique in that communications were instantaneous: The content creators could interact with the entire planet without any intermediation or lag time. In order for censors to intervene, they would have to destroy the real-time feature of the technology that made it so useful.
Not everyone in the Senate was wild about the Exon bill. The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Larry Pressler, a South Dakota Republican, tried to table it in his committee. Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust, business rights and competition subcommittee, opposed it for a prescient reason: the law of unintended consequences. “What I worry about, is not to protect pornographers,” Leahy said. “Child pornographers, in my mind, ought to be in prison. The longer the better. I am trying to protect the Internet, and make sure that when we finally have something that really works in this country, that we do not step in and screw it up, as sometimes happens with government regulation.”
But Exon was persistent in pursuing what he called the most important legislation of his career. He went so far as to lobby his colleagues on the Senate floor by showing them the hundreds of lewd pictures he had collected in his “blue book,” all downloaded from the web and printed out in color. It made “Playboy and Hustler look like Sunday-school stuff,” he warned them. The very day he offered his prayer, the Senate debated whether to add Exon’s legislation to a much larger bill pending in Congress. This was the first significant overhaul of telecommunications law in more than 60 years, a thorough-going revision of the Communications Act of 1934. Though that overhaul was loaded with significance, the pornography debate — broadcast live on C-SPAN, then still a novelty — is what caught the public’s attention.
Sen. Patrick Leahy in recent times. More than two decades ago, he worried that Exon’s bill would “screw up” the Internet. Scott Applewhite
During that brief debate, breathless speeches conjuring lurid images of sordid sex acts overwhelmed academic points about free speech, citizens’ privacy rights, and the way the Internet’s packet-switched architecture (which routes data without pre-established paths) actually works. The threat posed to the Internet itself by Exon’s vision of a federal speech police paled into irrelevance.
With millions of people watching, senators were wary of appearing as if they did not support protecting children from pornography. The lopsided final tally on Exon’s amendment to the Telecommunications Act showed it. The votes were 84 in favor, 16 opposed.
The House to the Rescue
When it came to familiarity with the Internet, the House of Representatives was only marginally more technologically conversant than the Senate. While a handful of members were savvy about “high tech,” as it was called, most were outright technophobes quite comfortable with the old ways of doing things. Nothing wrong with paper files in folders, postcards and letters on stationery, and the occasional phone call. The Library of Congress was filled with books, so no need for any additional sources of information. Many of the committee chairs, given the informal seniority system in the House, were men in their 70s.
On the day Exon’s bill passed the upper chamber, more than half of the senators didn’t even have an email address. In the House it was worse: Only 26% of members had an email address. The conventional wisdom was that, with the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body having spoken so definitively, the House would follow suit. And for the same reason: With every House member’s election just around the corner, none would want to appear weak on pornography. The near-unanimous Senate vote seemed dispositive of the question.
While it is often the case that the House legislates impulsively while the Senate takes its time, in this case the reverse happened. As chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee — and someone who built his own computers and had been using the Internet for years — I took a serious interest in the issue. After some study of Exon’s legislation, I had already decided to write my own bill, as an alternative. Fortuitously, I was a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which on the House side had jurisdiction over the Telecommunications Act to which Exon had attached his bad idea.
One of the tech mavens in the House at the time was Ron Wyden, a liberal Democrat from Oregon whose Stanford education and activist streak (he’d run the Gray Panthers advocacy group in his home state during the 1970s) made him a terrific legislative partner. The two of us had recently shared a private lunch and bemoaned the deep partisanship in Congress that mostly prevented Democrats and Republicans from writing legislation together. We decided this was due to members flogging the same old political hot-button questions, on which everyone had already made up their minds.
At the conclusion of our lunch, we decided to look for cutting-edge issues that would present novel and challenging policy questions, to which neither we nor our colleagues would have a knee-jerk response. Then, after working together to address the particular issue with a practical solution, we’d work to educate members on both sides, and work for passage of truly bipartisan legislation. It was not much longer afterward that the question of regulating speech on the Internet presented itself, and Ron and I set to work.
In 1996, then-Rep. Ron Wyden teamed with the author to incentivize technologies allowing parents to become the censors in their own households. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool)
Shortly thereafter, Time magazine reported that “the balance between protecting speech and curbing pornography seemed to be tipping back toward the libertarians.” It noted that “two U.S. Representatives, Republican Christopher Cox of California and Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, were putting together an anti-Exon amendment that would bar federal regulation of the Internet and help parents find ways to block material they found objectionable.”
We named our bill the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act, to describe its two main components: protecting speech and privacy on the Internet from government regulation, and incentivizing blocking and filtering technologies that individuals could use to become their own censors in their own households. Pornographers illegally targeting minors would not be let off the hook: They would be liable for compliance with all laws, both civil and criminal, in connection with any content they created.
To avoid interfering with the essential functioning of the Internet, the law would not shift that responsibility to Internet platforms, for whom the burden of screening billions of digital messages, documents, images, and sounds would be unreasonable — not to mention a potential invasion of privacy. Instead, Internet platforms would be allowed to act as “Good Samaritans” by reviewing at least some of the content if they chose to do so in the course of enforcing rules against “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable” content.
This last feature of the bill resolved a conflict that then existed in the courts. In New York, a judge had held that one of the then-two leading Internet platforms, Prodigy, was liable for defamation because an anonymous user of its site had claimed that an investment bank and its founder, Jordan Belfort, had committed securities fraud. (The post was not defamatory: Belfort was later convicted of securities fraud, but not before Prodigy had settled the case for a substantial figure. Belfort would achieve further infamy when he became the model for Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”)
In holding Prodigy responsible for content it didn’t create, the court effectively overruled a prior New York decision involving the other major U.S. Internet platform at the time, CompuServe. The previous case held that online service providers would not be held liable as publishers. In distinguishing Prodigy from the prior precedent, the court cited the fact that Prodigy, unlike CompuServe, had adopted content guidelines. These requested that users refrain from posts that are “insulting” or that “harass other members” or “are deemed to be in bad taste or grossly repugnant to community standards.” The court further noted that these guidelines expressly stated that although “Prodigy is committed to open debate and discussion on the bulletin boards … this doesn’t mean that ‘anything goes.’”
In the early Internet era, CompuServe chose not to adopt content guidelines, in contrast to its chief competitor, Prodigy. Flickr
CompuServe, in contrast, made no such effort. On its platform, the rule was indeed “anything goes.” As a user of both services, I well understood the difference. I appreciated the fact that there was some minimal level of moderation on the Prodigy site. While CompuServe was a splendid service and serious users predominated, the lack of any controls whatsoever was occasionally noticeable and, I could easily envision, bound to get worse.
If allowed to stand, this jurisprudence would have created a powerful and perverse incentive for platforms to abandon any attempt to maintain civility on their sites. And a legal standard that protected only websites where “anything goes” from unlimited liability for user-generated content would have been a body blow to the Internet itself. Ron and I were determined that good faith content moderation should not be punished, and so the Good Samaritan provision in the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act was born.
In the House leadership, of which I was then a member, there were plenty of supporters of our effort. The new speaker, Newt Gingrich, had long considered himself a tech aficionado and had already proven as much by launching the THOMAS project at the Library of Congress to digitize congressional records and make them available to the public online. He slammed the Exon approach as misguided and dangerous.
“It is clearly a violation of free speech, and it’s a violation of the right of adults to communicate with each other,” Gingrich said at the time, adding that Exon’s proposal would dumb down the Internet to what censors believed was acceptable for children to read. “I don’t think it is a serious way to discuss a serious issue,” he explained, “which is, how do you maintain the right of free speech for adults while also protecting children in a medium which is available to both?”
Dick Armey, then the new House majority leader, joined the speaker in supporting the Cox-Wyden alternative to Exon. So did California’s David Dreier, another Republican, who was closely in touch with the global high-tech renaissance being led by innovators in his home state. They were both Republicans, but my fellow Californian Nancy Pelosi, not yet a member of the Democratic leadership, weighed in as well, noting that Exon’s approach would have a chilling effect on serious discussion of HIV-related issues.
In the weeks and months that followed, Ron and I conducted outreach and education among our colleagues in both the House and Senate on the challenging issues involved. It was a rewarding and illuminating process, during which we built not only overwhelming support, but also a much deeper understanding of the unique aspects of the Internet that require clear legal rules for it to function.
Two months after Sen. Exon successfully added his Communications Decency Act to the Telecommunications Act in the Senate, the Cox-Wyden measure had its day in the sun on the House floor. Whereas Exon had begun with a prayer, Ron and I began on a wing and prayer, trying to counter the seemingly unstoppable momentum of a near-unanimous Senate vote. But on this day in August, the debate was very different than it had been across the Rotunda.
Speaker after speaker rose in support of the Cox-Wyden measure, and condemned the Exon approach. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the mother of 10- and 13-year-old children, shared her concerns with Internet pornography and noted that she had sponsored legislation mandating a life sentence for the creators of child pornography. But, she emphasized, “Senator Exon’s approach is not the right way. … It will not work.” It was, she said, “a misunderstanding of the technology.”
Rep. Bob Goodlatte joined the chorus of those warning about the threat posed by Exon-style regulation of the Internet. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, emphasized the potential the Internet offered and the threat to that potential from Exon-style regulation. “We have the opportunity for every household in America, every family in America, soon to be able to have access to places like the Library of Congress, to have access to other major libraries of the world, universities, major publishers of information, news sources. There is no way,” he said, “that any of those entities, like Prodigy, can take the responsibility to edit out information that is going to be coming in to them from all manner of sources.”
In the end, not a single representative spoke against the bill. The final roll call on the Cox-Wyden amendment was 420 yeas to 4 nays. It was a resounding rebuke to the Exon approach in his Communications Decency Act. The House then proceeded to pass its version of the Telecommunications Act — with the Cox-Wyden amendment, and without Exon.
Rise and Fall
The Telecommunications Act, including the Cox-Wyden amendment, would not be enacted until the following year. In between came a grueling House-Senate conference that was understandably more concerned with resolving the monumental issues in this landmark modernization of FDR-era telecommunications regulation. During the extended interlude, Ron and I, along with our now much-enlarged army of bipartisan, bicameral supporters, continued to reach out in discussions with members about the novel issues involved and how best to resolve them. This resulted in some final improvements to our bill, and ensured its inclusion in the final House-Senate conference report.
But political realities as well as policy details had to be dealt with. There was the sticky problem of 84 senators having already voted in favor of the Exon amendment. Once on record with a vote one way — particularly a highly visible vote on the politically charged issue of pornography — it would be very difficult for a politician to explain walking it back. The Senate negotiators, anxious to protect their colleagues from being accused of taking both sides of the question, stood firm. They were willing to accept Cox-Wyden, but Exon would have to be included, too.
The House negotiators, all politicians themselves, understood. This was a Senate-only issue, which could be easily resolved by including both amendments in the final product. It was logrolling at its best.
President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 into law in February at a nationally televised ceremony from the Library of Congress Reading Room, where he and Vice President Al Gore highlighted the bill’s paving the way for the “information superhighway” of the Internet. There was no mention of Exon’s Communications Decency Act. But there was a live demonstration of the Internet’s potential as a learning tool, including a live hookup with high school students in their classroom. And the president pointedly objected to the new law’s criminalization of transmission of any “indecent” material, predicting that these provisions would be found violative of the First Amendment and unenforceable.
Almost before the ink was dry and the signing pens handed out to the VIPs at the ceremony, the Communications Decency facet of the new law faced legal challenges. By summer, multiple federal courts had enjoined its enforcement. The following summer the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its verdict with the same spirit that had characterized the House rejection. The court (then consisting of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Associate Justices Stephens, O’Connor, Suiter, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer), unanimously held that “[i]n order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable.”
The William Rehnquist-led Supreme Court ruled that the Exon law “effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive.” AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File
The court’s opinion cited Pat Leahy’s comment that in enacting the Exon amendment, the Senate “went in willy-nilly, passed legislation, and never once had a hearing, never once had a discussion other than an hour or so on the floor.” It noted that transmitting obscenity and child pornography, whether via the Internet or other means, was already illegal under federal law for both adults and juveniles, making the draconian Exon restrictions on speech unreasonable overkill.
And there was more: Under the Exon approach, the high court pointed out, any opponent of particular Internet content would gain “broad powers of censorship, in the form of a ‘heckler’s veto.’” He or she “might simply log on and inform the would-be discoursers that his 17-year-old child” was also online. The standard for what could be posted in that forum, chat room, or other online context would immediately be reduced to what was safe for children to see.
In defenestrating Exon, the court was unsparing in its final judgment. The amendment was worse than “’burn[ing] the house to roast the pig.” It cast “a far darker shadow over free speech, threaten[ing] to torch a large segment of the Internet community.” Its regime of “governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it.”
With that, Sen. Exon’s bad idea died, hopefully forever. In the Supreme Court, Ron and I won the victory that had eluded us in the House-Senate conference.
One irony, however, persists. When legislative staff prepared the House-Senate conference report on the final Telecommunications Act, they grouped both Exon’s Communications Decency Act and the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act into the same legislative title. So the Cox-Wyden amendment became Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — the very piece of legislation it was designed to rebuke. Now that the original CDA has been invalidated, it is Ron’s and my legislative handiwork that forever bears Senator Exon’s label.
Exon 2.0?
This history is especially relevant today, as Americans for whom the Internet is a ubiquitous feature of daily life grapple with the same issues of content moderation, privacy, free speech, and the dark side of cyberspace that challenged us then. In Congress, there is a noticeable resurgence of support for government regulation of content, with all that portends.
This neo-regulatory mood is fueled by the same passions and concerns as it was 25 years ago, including protecting children, as well as the more recent trend toward restricting speech that may be offensive to some segments of adults. The New York Times has fired its opinion editor, ostensibly for publishing an op-ed by a sitting Republican U.S. senator on a critical issue of the day. Supporters of the president are inflamed that Twitter is purporting to fact-check and contextualize his tweets, while progressives are inflamed that Facebook is not doing this. Senators and representatives are writing legislation that would settle these arguments through force of law rather than private ordering, including legislation to walk back the now prosaically named Section 230.
In these legislative debates, James Exon’s misguided handiwork is often romanticized by the new wave of speech regulators. Recalling its deep flaws, myriad unintended consequences, and dangerous threats to both free speech and the functioning of the Internet is a worthwhile reality check.
The notion that the Communications Decency Act and Section 230 were conceived together is completely wrong. So is the notion that Exon enjoyed lasting congressional support. By the time the Telecommunications Act completed its tortuous legislative journey, support for the CDA had dwindled even in the Senate, as senators came to understand the mismatch between problem and solution that the bill represented. With the exception of its most passionate supporters, few tears were shed for the CDA at its final demise in 1997. Exon had retired even before his law was declared unconstitutional, leaving few behind him willing to carry the torch. His colleagues made no effort to “fix” and replace the Exon Amendment, after the amendment was unanimously struck down by the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile Section 230, originally introduced in the House as a freestanding bill, H.R. 1978, in June 1995, stands on its own, now as then. Its premise of imposing liability on criminals and tort-feasors for their own wrongful conduct, rather than shifting that liability to third parties, operates independently of (and indeed, in opposition to) Sen. Exon’s approach that would directly interfere with the essential functioning of the Internet.
It is also useful to imagine a world without Section 230. In this alternative world, websites and Internet platforms of all kinds would face enormous potential liability for hosting content created by others. They would have a powerful incentive to limit that exposure, which they could do in one of two ways. They could strictly limit user-generated content, or even eliminate it altogether; or they could adopt the “anything goes” model through which CompuServe originally escaped liability before Section 230 existed.
We would all be very much worse off were this to happen. Without Section 230’s clear limitation on liability it is difficult to imagine that most of the online services on which we rely every day would even exist in anything like their current form.
Not long after his retirement from the Senate, James Exon died in his home state of Nebraska. He was an old-school Democrat who supported lower taxes and a strong national defense, but he was also one of only four Democrats in his chamber to vote against the Martin Luther King holiday, which President Reagan proudly signed into law. When he was governor of Nebraska, the legislature overrode his veto of their bill decriminalizing gay relationships, after he had disparaged this entire population as “homos” and “perverts.” He was not sensitive to the sweeping social and technological changes that shaped the end of the 20th century and could barely have imagined our world in the 21st. In many ways a relic of the past, he was utterly unprepared for the age of the Internet.
Whether Exon’s final bad idea of federal regulation of Internet speech lives beyond him remains to be seen. The continued vitality of the Internet, and the choices we all have to create and access seemingly unlimited information freely and in real time, will depend upon the answer to that question. We can all say a prayer that the answer is no.
* * *
Chris Cox is a former U.S. representative (1988-2005) and co-author, with now-Sen. Ron Wyden, of Section 230.
- Hamas Says Planned Israeli Annexation A "Declaration Of War" While IDF Vows 'We're Ready'
Hamas Says Planned Israeli Annexation A “Declaration Of War” While IDF Vows ‘We’re Ready’
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 18:05In late April Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked the region in declaring he expects that by middle of summer Israel would move to annex broad swathes of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, as part of Trump’s “deal of the century” peace plan. The date consistently referenced in Israeli media reports is July 1st.
“President Trump pledged to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish communities there and in the Jordan Valley,” Netanyahu said. And just this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to an urgent United Nations appeal not to go through with it ahead of the July 1 target date by saying the matter is solely up to Israel to decide.
This as senior Trump aides reportedly met this week to hash out the matter of whether the administration should give the final “green light” – given it appears Tel Aviv is awaiting the moment of unambiguous backing before annexation. This is because it is sure to spark conflict on the ground. Hamas on Thursday said that annexation will be “a declaration of war”.
Hamas file image: AFP Hamas military spokesperson Abu Obeida vowed that Israel will “bitterly regret” such a provocative decision and act of aggressive, Fox News reports. He called it a “declaration of war against the Palestinian people” in a video message directed both at Israel and for supporters. He vowed his Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades will fight as a “loyal guard in defending the Palestinian people and their lands and holy sites.”
Previously senior Hamas officials also said any hope for political dialogue or settlement would be forever destroyed. “Palestinians would not accept these plans at all. They are going to resist these plans by all means available. Gaza is not excluded from this,” another official, Basem Naim, said.
Already the planned annexation has resulted in large protests this week in West Bank cities and towns.
It also appears the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are making ready: “The upcoming events can develop into fighting in Gaza,” IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi said as Israel braces for a possible new intifada. The IDF has essentially said ‘we’re ready to go’.
Former Army Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have formed a power sharing unity government. Image: JTA-Wikimedia “I suggest that Hamas leaders remember that they will be the first to pay for any aggression,” Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz stated Thursday. Gantz is also serving as ‘alternate PM’ as part of the power-sharing agreement with Netanyahu. He further underscored that Israel “will not accept threats”.
The Palestinians from the start have rejected the Trump peace plan, given it allows Israel to annex up to 30% to 40% of the West Bank, including all of East Jerusalem, and further the Palestinian Authority (PA) has claimed it was never ultimately invited to the table as an equal part to negotiations, but that Israel has gotten everything it wants without sacrificing anything.
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