- Whitehead: America's Revolutionary Founders Would Be Anti-Government Extremists Today
Whitehead: America's Revolutionary Founders Would Be Anti-Government Extremists Today
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 23:55Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”
– Thomas Paine
“When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.”
– Marquis De Lafayette
Had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, resulting in them being placed on a government watch list, targeted for surveillance of their activities and correspondence, and potentially arrested, held indefinitely, stripped of their rights and labeled enemy combatants.
This is no longer the stuff of speculation and warning.
In fact, Attorney General William Barr recently announced plans to target, track and surveil “anti-government extremists” and preemptively nip in the bud any “threats” to public safety and the rule of law.
It doesn’t matter that the stated purpose of Barr’s anti-government extremist task force is to investigate dissidents on the far right (the “boogaloo” movement) and far left (antifa, a loosely organized anti-fascist group) who have been accused of instigating violence and disrupting peaceful protests.
Boogaloo and Antifa have given the government the perfect excuse for declaring war (with all that entails: surveillance, threat assessments, pre-crime, etc.) against so-called anti-government extremists.
Without a doubt, America’s revolutionary founders would have been at the top of Barr’s list.
After all, the people who fomented the American Revolution spoke out at rallies, distributed critical pamphlets, wrote scathing editorials and took to the streets in protest. They were rebelling against a government they saw as being excessive in its taxation and spending. For their efforts, they were demonized and painted as an angry mob, extremists akin to terrorists, by the ruler of the day, King George III.
Of course, it doesn’t take much to be considered an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) today.
If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched by the police, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you’re at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
Indeed, under Barr’s new task force, I and every other individual today who dares to speak truth to power could also be targeted for surveillance, because what we’re really dealing with is a government that wants to suppress dangerous words—words about its warring empire, words about its land grabs, words about its militarized police, words about its killing, its poisoning and its corruption—in order to keep its lies going.
This is how the government plans to snuff out any attempts by “we the people” to stand up to its tyranny: under the pretext of rooting out violent extremists, the government’s anti-extremism program will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.
The danger is real.
Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers, data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).
This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.
For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released two reports, one on “Rightwing Extremism,” which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” and one on “Leftwing Extremism,” which labeled environmental and animal rights activist groups as extremists
Incredibly, both reports use the words terrorist and extremist interchangeably
That same year, the DHS launched Operation Vigilant Eagle, which calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq, Afghanistan and other far-flung places, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.
These reports indicate that for the government, anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—can be labeled an extremist.
Fast forward a few years, and you have the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which Congress has continually re-upped, that allows the military to take you out of your home, lock you up with no access to friends, family or the courts if you’re seen as an extremist.
Now connect the dots, from the 2009 Extremism reports to the NDAA, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies
Add in tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that are beginning to blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the circle, toss in the real-time crime centers being deployed in cities across the country, which will be attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.
Hopefully you’re getting the picture, which is how easy it is for the government to identify, label and target individuals as “extremist.”
And just like that, we’ve come full circle.
Imagine living in a country where armed soldiers crash through doors to arrest and imprison citizens merely for criticizing government officials. Imagine that in this very same country, you’re watched all the time, and if you look even a little bit suspicious, the police stop and frisk you or pull you over to search you on the off chance you’re doing something illegal.
Keep in mind that if you have a firearm of any kind (or anything that resembled a firearm) while in this country, it may get you arrested and, in some circumstances, shot by police.
If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be far wrong.
However, the scenario described above took place more than 200 years ago, when American colonists suffered under Great Britain’s version of an early police state. It was only when the colonists finally got fed up with being silenced, censored, searched, frisked, threatened, and arrested that they finally revolted against the tyrant’s fetters
No document better states their grievances than the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson.
A document seething with outrage over a government which had betrayed its citizens, the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, by 56 men who laid everything on the line, pledged it all—“our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”—because they believed in a radical idea: that all people are created to be free.
Labeled traitors, these men were charged with treason, a crime punishable by death. For some, their acts of rebellion would cost them their homes and their fortunes. For others, it would be the ultimate price—their lives.
Yet even knowing the heavy price they might have to pay, these men dared to speak up when silence could not be tolerated.
Read the Declaration of Independence again, and ask yourself if the list of complaints tallied by Jefferson don’t bear a startling resemblance to the abuses “we the people” are suffering at the hands of the American police state.
If you find the purple prose used by the Founders hard to decipher, here’s my translation of what the Declaration of Independence would look and sound like if it were written in the modern vernacular:
There comes a time when a populace must stand united and say “enough is enough” to the government’s abuses, even if it means getting rid of the political parties in power. Believing that “we the people” have a natural and divine right to direct our own lives, here are truths about the power of the people and how we arrived at the decision to sever our ties to the government:
All people are created equal. All people possess certain innate rights that no government or agency or individual can take away from them. Among these are the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The government’s job is to protect the people’s innate rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The government’s power comes from the will of the people.
Whenever any government abuses its power, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government and replace it with a new government that will respect and protect the rights of the people. It is not wise to get rid of a government for minor transgressions. In fact, as history has shown, people resist change and are inclined to suffer all manner of abuses to which they have become accustomed. However, when the people have been subjected to repeated abuses and power grabs, carried out with the purpose of establishing a tyrannical government, people have a right and duty to do away with that tyrannical Government and to replace it with a new government that will protect and preserve their innate rights for their future wellbeing.
This is exactly the state of affairs we are suffering under right now, which is why it is necessary that we change this imperial system of government. The history of the present Imperial Government is a history of repeated abuses and power grabs, carried out with the intention of establishing absolute Tyranny over the country.
To prove this, consider the following:
The government has, through its own negligence and arrogance, refused to adopt urgent and necessary laws for the good of the people. The government has threatened to hold up critical laws unless the people agree to relinquish their right to be fully represented in the Legislature.
In order to expand its power and bring about compliance with its dictates, the government has made it nearly impossible for the people to make their views and needs heard by their representatives. The government has repeatedly suppressed protests arising in response to its actions.
The government has obstructed justice by refusing to appoint judges who respect the Constitution and has instead made the Courts march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.
The government has allowed its agents to harass the people, steal from them, jail them and even execute them. The government has directed militarized government agents—a.k.a., a standing army—to police domestic affairs in peacetime. The government has turned the country into a militarized police state.
The government has conspired to undermine the rule of law and the Constitution in order to expand its own powers.
The government has allowed its militarized police to invade our homes and inflict violence on homeowners. The government has failed to hold its agents accountable for wrongdoing and murder under the guise of “qualified immunity.”
The government has jeopardized our international trade agreements. The government has overtaxed us without our permission.
The government has denied us due process and the right to a fair trial. The government has engaged in extraordinary rendition. The government has continued to expand its military empire in collusion with its corporate partners-in-crime and occupy foreign nations.
The government has eroded fundamental legal protections and destabilized the structure of government. The government has not only declared its federal powers superior to those of the states but has also asserted its sovereign power over the rights of “we the people.”
The government has ceased to protect the people and instead waged domestic war against the people. The government has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, and destroyed the lives of the people.
The government has employed private contractors and mercenaries to carry out acts of death, desolation and tyranny against other nations, totally unworthy of a civilized nation. The government through its political propaganda has pitted its citizens against each other. The government has stirred up civil unrest and laid the groundwork for martial law.
Repeatedly, we have asked the government to cease its abuses. Each time, the government has responded with more abuse.
An Imperial Ruler who acts like a tyrant is not fit to govern a free people.
We have repeatedly sounded the alarm to our fellow citizens about the government’s abuses. We have warned them about the government’s power grabs. We have appealed to their sense of justice. We have reminded them of our common bonds. They have rejected our plea for justice and brotherhood. Thus, our fellow citizens are equally at fault for the injustices being carried out by the government.
Thus, for the reasons mentioned above, we the people of the united States of America declare ourselves free from the chains of an abusive government. Relying on the Creator’s protection, we pledge to stand by this Declaration of Independence with our lives, our fortunes and our honor.
See what I mean? The abuses meted out by an imperial government and endured by the American people have not ended. They have merely evolved.
Two hundred and forty-four years after a group of anti-government extremists declared their independence from tyranny, the American people have once again managed to work their way back under the tyrant’s thumb.
“We the people” are still being robbed blind by a government of thieves. We are still being taken advantage of by a government of scoundrels, idiots and monsters. We are still being locked up by a government of greedy jailers. We are still being spied on by a government of Peeping Toms. We are still being ravaged by a government of ruffians, rapists and killers.
We are still being forced to surrender our freedoms—and those of our children—to a government of extortionists, money launderers and corporate pirates. And we are still being held at gunpoint by a government of soldiers: a standing army in the form of a militarized police.
The bipartisan coup that laid siege to our nation did not happen overnight. It snuck in under our radar, hiding behind the guise of national security, the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on immigration, political correctness, hate crimes and a host of other official-sounding programs aimed at expanding the government’s power at the expense of individual freedoms.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the building blocks for the bleak future we’re just now getting a foretaste of – police shootings of unarmed citizens, profit-driven prisons, weapons of compliance, a wall-to-wall surveillance state, pre-crime programs, a suspect society, school-to-prison pipelines, militarized police, overcriminalization, SWAT team raids, endless wars, etc. – were put in place by government officials we trusted to look out for our best interests and by American citizens who failed to heed James Madison’s warning to “take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.”
For too long now, we have suffered the injustices of a government that has no regard for our rights or our humanity.
We’ve suffered in silence for too long.
Frankly, what this country desperately needs is more anti-government extremists willing to take the government to task for its excesses, abuses and power grabs that fly in the face of every principle for which America’s founders risked their lives.
- Thailand Monkey Wars Escalate As Rival Gangs Force Locals To Flee Homes
Thailand Monkey Wars Escalate As Rival Gangs Force Locals To Flee Homes
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 23:30Monkeys in the Thai city of Lopburi have become particularly aggressive since coronavirus lockdowns significantly cut into the supply of treat-throwing tourists which had been feeding the city’s wild macaques.
The monkeys, numbering in the thousands, have set up shop in an abandoned local cinema – brawling with each other when they aren’t aggressively attacking locals.
They’re also super horny, according to The Telegraph.
Local efforts to offer the monkey mobs some nutrition may have backfired as some say a sugary diet of fizzy drinks, cereal and sweets has fuelled the animals’ sex lives, making their population grow even more.
“The more they eat, the more energy they have… so they breed more,” Pramot Ketampai, who manages the city’s Prang Sam Yod temple shrines, told AFP. –The Telegraph
In March, a rival monkey gang staged a ‘brazen raid’ on a group of macaques trying to butt in on their territory near the Phra Kan Shrine. The street fight caused mayhem, as traffic came to a standstill for approximately 10 minutes during the melee.
Hoards of starving monkeys storm Lopburi in central Thailand after the tourists who usually feed them fled due to #Coronavirus pic.twitter.com/pOuohtUIcs
— Shakthi #StayHomeSaveLives (@v_shakthi) April 9, 2020
“With the tourists gone, they’ve been more aggressive, fighting humans for food to survive,” said government veterinarian Supakarn Kaewchot in a statement to Reuters. “They’re invading buildings and forcing locals to flee their homes.”
Imagine the smell…
- "The God That Failed": Why The US Cannot Now Re-Impose Its Civilisational Worldview
"The God That Failed": Why The US Cannot Now Re-Impose Its Civilisational Worldview
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 23:05Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
It was always a paradox: John Stuart Mill, in his seminal (1859), On Liberty, never doubted that a universal civilisation, grounded in liberal values, was the eventual destination of all of humankind. He looked forward to an ‘Exact Science of Human Nature’, which would formulate laws of psychology and society as precise and universal as those of the physical sciences. Yet, not only did that science never emerge, in today’s world, such social ‘laws’ are taken as strictly (western) cultural constructs, rather than as laws or science.
So, not only was the claim to universal civilisation not supported by evidence, but the very idea of humans sharing a common destination (‘End of Times’) is nothing more than an apocalyptic remnant of Latin Christianity, and of one minor current in Judaism. Mill’s was always a matter of secularized religion – faith – rather than empiricism. A shared human ‘destination’ does not exist in Orthodox Christianity, Taoism or Buddhism. It could never therefore qualify as universal.
Liberal core tenets of individual autonomy, freedom, industry, free trade and commerce essentially reflected the triumph of the Protestant worldview in Europe’s 30-years’ civil war. It was not fully even a Christian view, but more a Protestant one.
This narrow, sectarian pillar was able to be projected into a universal project – only so long as it was underpinned by power. In Mill’s day, the civilisational claim served Europe’s need for colonial validation. Mill tacitly acknowledges this when he validates the clearing of the indigenous American populations for not having tamed the wilderness, nor made the land productive.
However, with America’s Cold War triumph – that had by then become a cynical framework for U.S. ‘soft power’ – acquired a new potency. The merits of America’s culture, and way of life, seemed to acquire practical validation through the implosion of the USSR.
But today, with America’s soft power collapsed – not even the illusion of universalism can be sustained. Other states are coming forward, offering themselves as separate, equally compelling ‘civilisational’ states. It is clear that even were the classic liberal Establishment to win in the November U.S. elections, America no longer has claim to path-find a New World Order.
Yet, should this secularised Protestant current be over – beware! Because its subterranean, unconscious religiosity is the ‘ghost at the table’ today. It is returning in a new guise.
The ‘old illusion’ cannot continue, because its core values are being radicalised, stood on their head, and turned into the swords with which to impale classic American and European liberals (and U.S. Christian Conservatives). It is now the younger generation of American woke liberals who are asserting vociferously not merely that the old liberal paradigm is illusory, but that it was never more than ‘a cover’ hiding oppression – whether domestic, or colonial, racist or imperial; a moral stain that only redemption can cleanse.
It is an attack – which coming from within – forecloses on any U.S. moral, soft power, global leadership aspirations. For with the illusion exploded, and nothing in its place, a New World Order cannot coherently be formulated.
Not content with exposing the illusion, the woke generation are also tearing down, and shredding, the flags at the masthead: Freedom and prosperity achieved via the liberal market.
‘Freedom’ is being torn down from within. Dissidents from the woke ideology, are being ‘called out’, made to repent on the knee, or face reputational or economic ruin. It is ‘soft totalitarianism’. It recalls one of Dostoevsky’s characters – at a time when Russian progressives were discrediting traditional institutions – who, in a celebrated line, says: “I got entangled in my data … Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism”.
Even ‘science’ has become a ‘God that failed’; instead of being the path to liberty, it has become a dark soulless path toward unfreedom. From algorithms that ‘cost’ the value of human lives, versus the ‘costing’ of lockdown; from secret ‘Black Box’ algos that limit distribution of news and thinking, to Bill Gates’ vaccination ID project, science now portends despotic social control, rather than a fluttering standard, hoist as the symbol of freedom.
But the most prominent of these flags, torn down, cannot be blamed on the woke generation. There has been no ‘prosperity for all’ – only distortions and warped structures. There are not even free markets. The Fed and the U.S. Treasury simply print new money, and hand it out to select recipients. There is no means now to attribute ‘worth’ to financial assets. Their value simply is that which Central Government is willing to pay for bonds, or grant in bail-outs.
Wow. ‘The God who failed’ (André Gide’s book title) – a crash of idols. One wonders now, what is the point to that huge financial eco-system known as Wall Street. Why not winnow it down to a couple of entities, say, Blackrock and KKR (hedge funds), and leave it to them to distribute the Fed’s freshly-printed ‘boodle’ amongst friends? Liberal markets no more – and many fewer jobs.
Many commentators have noted the wokes’ absence of vision for the future. Some describe them in highly caustic terms:
“Today, America’s tumbrils are clattering about, carrying toppled statues, ruined careers, unwoke brands. Over their sides peer those deemed racist by left-wing identitarians and sentenced to cancelation, even as the evidentiary standard for that crime falls through the floor … But who are these cultural revolutionaries? The conventional wisdom goes that this is the inner-cities erupting, economically disadvantaged victims of racism enraged over the murder of George Floyd. The reality is something more … bourgeoisie. As Kevin Williamson observed last week, “These are the idiot children of the American ruling class, toy radicals and Champagne Bolsheviks, playing Jacobin for a while, until they go back to graduate school”.
Is that so? I well recall listening in the Middle East to other angry young men who, too, wanted to ‘topple the statues’; to burn down everything. ‘You really believed that Washington would allow you … in’, they taunted and tortured their leaders: “No, we must burn it all down. Start from scratch”.
Did they have a blueprint for the future? No. They simply believed that Islam would organically inflate, and expand to fill the void. It would happen by itself – of its own accord: Faith.
Professor John Gray has noted “that in The God that failed, Gide says: ‘My faith in communism is like my faith in religion. It is a promise of salvation for mankind’’. “Here Gide acknowledged”, Gray continues, “that communism was an atheist version of monotheism. But so is liberalism, and when Gide and others gave up faith in communism to become liberals, they were not renouncing the concepts and values that both ideologies had inherited from western religion. They continued to believe that history was a directional process in which humankind was advancing towards universal freedom”.
So too with the wokes. The emphasis is on Redemption; on a Truth catharsis; on their own Virtue as sufficient agency to stand-in for the lack of plan for the future. All are clear signals: A secularised ‘illusion’ is metamorphosing back into ‘religion’. Not as Islam, of course, but as angry Man, burning at the deep and dark moral stain of the past. And acting now as purifying ‘fire’ to bring about the uplifting and shining future ahead.
Tucker Carlson, a leading American conservative commentator known for plain speaking, frames the movement a little differently:
“This is not a momentary civil disturbance. This is a serious, and highly organized political movement … It is deep and profound and has vast political ambitions. It is insidious, it will grow. Its goal is to end liberal democracy and challenge western civilization itself … We’re too literal and good-hearted to understand what’s happening … We have no idea what we are up against … These are not protests. This is a totalitarian political movement”.
Again, nothing needs to be done by this new generation to bring into being a new world, apart from destroying the old one. This vision is a relic – albeit secularised – of western Christianity. Apocalypse and redemption, these wokes believe, have their own path; their own internal logic.
Mill’s ‘ghost’ is arrived at the table. And with its return, America’s exceptionalism has its re-birth. Redemption for humankind’s dark stains. A narrative in which the history of mankind is reduced to the history of racial struggle. Yet Americans, young or old, now lack the power to project it as a universal vision.
‘Virtue’, however deeply felt, on its own, is insufficient. Might President Trump try nevertheless to sustain the old illusion by hard power? The U.S. is deeply fractured and dysfunctional – but if desperate, this is possible.
The “toy radicals, and Champagne Bolsheviks” – in these terms of dripping disdain from Williamson – are very similar to those who rushed into the streets in 1917. But before dismissing them so peremptorily and lightly, recall what occurred.
Into that combustible mass of youth – so acultured by their progressive parents to see a Russian past that was imperfect and darkly stained – a Trotsky and Lenin were inserted. And Stalin ensued. No ‘toy radicals’. Soft became hard totalitarianism.
- San Francisco Rent Drops Most On Record As People Flee For Suburbs
San Francisco Rent Drops Most On Record As People Flee For Suburbs
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 22:40Readers may recall, as early as March, city dwellers in California fled to suburbs and remote areas to isolate from the virus pandemic. The proliferation of remote work arrangements has led this shift to become more permanent.
At first, the exodus out of the city was due to virus-related lockdowns, then social unrest, and now it appears a steady flow of folks are leaving the San Francisco Bay Area for rural communities as their flexible work environment (i.e., remote access) allows them to work from anywhere, more specifically, outside city centers where the cost of living is a whole lot cheaper.
Bloomberg notes, citing a new report from rental website Zumper, the latest emigration trend out of the Bay Area has resulted in rents for a San Francisco one-bedroom apartment to plunge 12% in June compared with last year, which is one of the most significant monthly declines on record.
“Zumper has been tracking rent prices across the country for over five years but we have never seen the market fluctuate quite like this,” Zumper co-founder and CEO Anthemos Georgiades said. “For example, rent prices in San Francisco have historically only gone up and typically only incrementally, yet now we are seeing double-digit percent rent reductions. This is unprecedented for this generation of renters.”
Georgiades said the ability to work remotely led to the exodus of city dwellers:
“The very real move of many mainly technology employers to a future of remote work, meaning millions of employees now looking outside of dense metropolitan areas for their next home now that their commute time is no longer a factor,” Georgiades said.
“Silicon Valley hubs such as Mountain View and Palo Alto also saw rents plunge — a sign residents of the tech-heavy region are taking advantage of remote work arrangements to flee to cheaper areas,” Bloomberg said.
“This is the strangest downturn I’ve ever seen,” J.J. Panzer with the Real Management Company told San Francisco KPIX 5.
Rental inventory in the Bay Area has increased since the pandemic began – allowing renters to renegotiate leases and ask for a 10-15% reduction in rents.
Other factors for the steep drop in rents is mainly because of the recession and high unemployment. People can no longer afford pricey rentals in San Francisco – must leave city centers for suburbs where rents are significantly less.
“As the pandemic persists on, the demand for rentals has continued to shift away from these pricey areas, and a significant amount of that demand seems to be moving toward neighboring, less expensive areas,” Zumper said on its blog.
“Your landlord, given the widespread nature of the job loss, actually does have an incentive to negotiate a lower rent with you,” said senior Zillow economist Skyler Olsen.
“Vacant units have no value coming upstream to pay their property taxes and their mortgage and that value as part of the system,” said Olsen.
Financial blog Market Crumbs notes, “with the rise of remote work seemingly inevitable at this point, this trend should continue in San Francisco as well as other major cities in the years to come.”
- Left-Wing CHOP Zone Responsible For 525% Spike In Seattle Crime
Left-Wing CHOP Zone Responsible For 525% Spike In Seattle Crime
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 22:15Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
After characterizing the infamous CHOP area of downtown Seattle as a “summer of love,” Mayor Jenny Durkan was eventually forced to acknowledge that the failed communist experiment was responsible for a whopping 525 per cent spike in crime.
As we highlighted yesterday, following weeks of violence and chaos, CHOP was finally dismantled by Seattle police, but only after occupiers marched on Mayor Durkan’s 5,000 sqft., $7.6 million house.
For almost the entirety of June, the area was plagued with fights, bickering, robberies and rapes, with occupiers targeting both outsiders and each other.
It has now emerged that compared to the same period last year, from June 2 to June 30 there was a 525 per cent jump in crime.
This figure is even greater than the 300% number repeatedly cited by Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best.
Rather embarrassingly, after proclaiming a “summer of love” and telling President Trump, “Seattle is fine, don’t be so afraid of democracy,” Mayor Durkan was forced to acknowledge the numbers in her own emergency order.
The order states that there were, “22 additional incidents, in person-related crime in the area, to include two additional homicides, 6 additional robberies, and 16 additional aggravated assaults (to include 2 additional non-fatal shootings).”
So in other words, a commune that was built in the name of opposing violence and brutality led directly to a massive increase in violence and brutality.
So much for the tolerant left!
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- Has E.T. Gone Home?
Has E.T. Gone Home?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 21:50There is some controversy as to whether World UFO Day falls on June 26 or July 02 with people seemingly celebrating it on both days.
The occasion is an awareness day for UFOs coinciding with the Roswell incident’s anniversary; and, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, it is getting increasingly popular as UFOs have been making headlines again lately, notably due to the “Storm Area 51” event which went viral last year.
That’s on top of The New York Times running an interesting article about several U.S. Navy fighter pilots encountering mysterious objects near the southeastern coast of the United States. The high-profile story remains unexplained and so do plenty of other UFO sightings reported by members of the public every year like strange lights crossing the night sky or orange disks hovering in the distance.
The National UFO Reporting Center which is based in the U.S. maintains statistics about global UFO sightings. Notably, they are ticking up again.
You will find more infographics at Statista
There were just over 3,700 reported sightings in 2018 and in 2019, there were 6,889. So far in 2020, 4,688 UFO sightings have been reported.
With regards to the above-mentioned “Storm Area 51” event, conspiracy theorists have long maintained that a secret U.S. base in Nevada known as Area 51 harbors alien life or parts of a crashed spacecraft. The event called for people to storm the base and find out and it attracted 1.4 million signatures. It also prompted the Air Force to issue a warning to stay well away from the facility. Facebook eventually took the event page down.
- Judge Orders Jeffrey Epstein Accuser To Destroy Files
Judge Orders Jeffrey Epstein Accuser To Destroy Files
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 21:45Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre has been ordered by a US District Judge to destroy files believed to contain the names of Epstein’s associates – because they were “improperly obtained.’
Epstein associates Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, Prince Andrew and Les Wexner Senior US District Judge Loretta Preska said on Wednesday that Giuffre’s attorneys would need to provide proof that the documents had been destroyed, adding that “Counsel shall submit an affidavit detailing the steps taken to do so,” according to Newsweek.
Preska noted that a protective order governing the ‘improperly obtained’ documents only applied during a civil lawsuit proceeding which has been settled.
Preska’s ruling came after a request by attorney Alan Dershowitz to gain access to the documents. Giuffre has claimed that Dershowitz was one of the men Epstein forced her to have sex with. In response, Dershowitz sued Giuffre for defamation in 2019. Dershowitz claimed that obtaining the Epstein files would be an asset to his defense.
Preska said in her ruling that Dershowitz’s desire to see all of the files “with over a thousand docket entries” was not a “targeted strike” but a “carpet bombing.” –Newsweek
In September 2019, an attorney for Epstein’s alleged ‘madam,’ Ghislaine Maxwell – who was arrested on Thursday, told Preska that that there are “hundreds” of people named in some 2,000 pages of documents.
The lawyer, Jeffrey Pagliuca, told U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska Wednesday that the materials also include an address book with about 1,000 names. Preska is considering how to carry out a ruling by the federal appeals court in New York that she must consider unsealing some of the documents. There was no detail at the hearing as to the identity of the people are named in the documents, and they may include women who say they are victims of Epstein, his friends and others. –Bloomberg
Epstein died after being taken into custody in July, 2019 on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking. Since his rampant pedophilia became public, his associates – including Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Ehud Barak, and Victoria’s Secret boss Les Wexner have sought to distance themselves from Epstein and his activities.
Other famous names associated with Epstein include LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, who Musk introduced to the registered sex-offender. Zuckerberg spokesman told Vanity Fair “Mark met Epstein in passing one time at a dinner honoring scientists that was not organized by Epstein,” adding “Mark did not communicate with Epstein again following the dinner.”
Musk told the magazine “I don’t recall introducing Epstein to anyone, as I don’t know the guy well enough to do so, Epstein is obviously a creep and Zuckerberg is not a friend of mine. Several years ago, I was at his house in Manhattan for about 30 minutes in the middle of the afternoon with Talulah [Riley], as she was curious about meeting this strange person for a novel she was writing. We did not see anything inappropriate at all, apart from weird art. He tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island. I declined.”
- Celente: "If We Don't Restore Freedom, America Is Dead"
Celente: "If We Don't Restore Freedom, America Is Dead"
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 21:25Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,
Gerald Celente, a top trends researcher and Publisher of The Trends Journal, declared back in March that the “Greatest Depression” had already started.
Now, he says politicians who are power tripping “imbeciles and freaks out of their minds” closed down the economy for political gain in an attempt to stop President Trump from winning a second term in November. Celente explains,
“They destroyed the economy. The economy is dead. These little liberals, I am surrounded by them here . . . Cuomo loving liberals, when it started, they all said it will come back. It’s not coming back. The economy is dead, and the politicians killed it…
They are doing this as a power trip and to show President Trump is not doing the right thing. So, they are looking at it like that…
If Trump were smart, and I think this is the card he is going to play, he’s going to blame the shutdown of the economy on the Democrats. I don’t like either party because I am a political atheist, but he’s going to blame it on them and rightfully so. Trump is going to say the reason you are out of work, the reason you lost your business, the reason you have escalating crime is because the ‘Democraps’ closed down the economy. That’s the way I see him playing out the Trump card.”
In previous interviews on USAWatchdog.com, Celente predicted that when gold reached $1,485 per ounce, that it would begin to take off and never look back. It looks like that prediction has come true. Now, Celente says look for gold to be going much higher. Celente says,
“You look at gold prices. Look at where gold prices are going. How long have I been saying this? When all this began, I said boom, you are going to see gold spike, and now it’s around $1,800 per ounce. Silver is going to follow when gold breaks $2,000 per ounce. It’s because this economy is going down, and it’s not coming back. According to Yelp, 53% of the restaurants will not be reopening. On average, 43% of the businesses won’t be reopening, and the bigs are going to gobble it up. Here’s a headline, ‘Big hotels could benefit from aid.’ That’s right, more billions and billions of dollars are going to big hotels. . . . Why are the markets up? The Federal Reserve is going to pump money into our big guys who got richer by about $650 billion since this started. We are all becoming workers on the plantation of ‘Slavelandia,’ and here are some crumbs for you.”
Celente says the Democrat party are now communists and Marxists, and he thinks they will employ their tactics. Celente predicts,
“You are going to see violence like we have never seen before this summer. You are going to see police against the people, and it’s going to become more militarized as it becomes more violent. If we don’t unite for peace and restore freedom, America is dead.”
In closing, Celente thinks Trump can win a second term and says, “All he has to do is win the swing states. That’s it.”
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Gerald Celente, publisher of The Trends Journal.
- UMass Nursing Dean Fired For Saying "Everyone's Life Matters"
UMass Nursing Dean Fired For Saying "Everyone's Life Matters"
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 21:15We have been discussing the growing fear of professors and students over the loss of free speech on campuses for years, but recently those concerns have been greatly magnified with the investigation or termination of professors for expressing opposing views about police abuse, Black Lives Matter movement or aspects of the protests following the killing of George Floyd. There is a sense of a new orthodoxy that does not allow for dissenting voices as campaigns are launched to fire faculty who are denounced as insensitive or even racist for such criticism. The most recent controversy involves the recently installed University of Massachusetts-Lowell Dean of Nursing Leslie Neal-Boylan. Dr. Neal-Boylan had only been in her position for a few months when she was fired.
The reason, according to many reports, is that she sent an email on June 2 to the Solomont School of Nursing on the recent anti-racism demonstrations across the country that include the words “everyone’s life matters.”
As a blog dedicated to free speech, it has been difficult to keep up with the rising number of cases of the curtailment of speech or academic freedom on our campuses. What is equally alarming is the relative silence of most faculty members as individual professors are publicly denounced by their universities, forced into retirement, or outright terminated for expressing dissenting views. This case however raises an equally serious concern over the loss of due process for academics who find themselves the focus of a campaign for removal — or simply summary dismissal.
Dr. Neal-Boylan was heralded last September as a “visionary leader” by the university in taking over the deanship. Her writings include strong advocacy for those with disabilities in the nursing field. Those writings show tremendous empathy and concern for inclusivity in the profession.
This controversy began when Dr. Neal-Boylan wrote the email which started with the following words:
“Dear SSON Community,” the email provided to Campus Reform begins.
“I am writing to express my concern and condemnation of the recent (and past) acts of violence against people of color. Recent events recall a tragic history of racism and bias that continue to thrive in this country. I despair for our future as a nation if we do not stand up against violence against anyone. BLACK LIVES MATTER, but also, EVERYONE’S LIFE MATTERS. No one should have to live in fear that they will be targeted for how they look or what they believe.”
One can understand that many felt that the statement detracted from the need to focus on the treatment and loss of black lives. However, one can also read these words as a nursing dean expressing opposition to all violence.
However, the email was immediately denounced in a tweet as “uncalled for” and “upsetting” by “Haley.” The university quickly responded to Haley and said
“Haley – Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The university hears you and we believe black lives matter. See the letter the chancellor sent out Monday.”
The letter isa statement in support of Black Lives Matter. Soon thereafter the University reportedly fired Dr. Neal-Boylan.
University spokesperson Christine Gillette issued a statement to the site Campus Reform Wednesday that stated
“The university ended the employment of Dr. Neal-Boylan on June 19 after 10 months in her role as dean of the Solomont School of Nursing. As with all such decisions, it was made in the best interest of the university and its students.”
What is particularly concerning is a June 19 letter referenced on the site that was allegedly written by Neal-Boylan and sent to Provost Julie Nash. The letter states
“It is important to point out that no one ever gave me an opportunity to share my views of how the college and school were interacting nor explain myself regarding the BLM email. My meeting with you, [Dean] Shortie [McKinney], and Lauren Turner was clearly not intended to give me an opportunity to defend my actions. I was condemned without trial.”
The statement from the university does not state what specifically is “in the best interest of the university and its students.” However, the failure to specifically state the grounds and the process used to reach the decision is alarming. The University let the public record stand — and the view that Dr. Neal-Boylan was fired for expressing the view that “Black Lives Matter, but also Everyone’s Life Matters.”
What is “in the best interest of the university and its students” should include free speech and due process. The mere fact that we do not know if Dr. Neal-Boylan was afforded either right is chilling. If there were other grounds against her, the university should state so. Instead, the clear message to faculty is that the dean was fired for expressing concerns over the loss of lives across the country in these protests.
I can understand the sensitivity to those who feel that the inclusion of other lives tends to take away the focus on the need for action on the treatment of African-Americans in our society. However, it is possible that, as a leading health care figure, Dr. Neal-Boylan was speaking out to seek to end all violence in the protection of human life. Medical and health care professionals tend to oppose all loss of life and violence. The question is whether an academic should be able to express such a view and, equally importantly, whether there is a process through which a professor can defend herself in explaining the motivation and intended meaning of her words.
The uncertainty over the process used in this case creates an obvious chilling effect for other faculty members. In 30 years of teaching, I have never seen the level of fear among faculty over speaking or writing about current events, particularly if they do not agree with aspects of the protests. Not only is there a sense of forced silence but universities have been conspicuously silent in the face of the destruction of their own public art and statues. Even New York Times editors can be forced out for simply publishing opposing views.
As we have previously discussed, chilling effects on free speech has long been a focus of the Supreme Court. Free speech demands bright line rules to flourish. The different treatment afforded faculty creates an obviously chilling effect on free speech. Avoiding the chilling effect of potential punishment for speech is a core concern running through Supreme Court cases. For example, in 1964, the Supreme Court struck down the law screening incoming mail. A unanimous court, Justice William Douglas rejected the law as “a limitation on the unfettered exercise of the addressee’s First Amendment rights.” It noted that such review “is almost certain to have a deterrent effect” on the free speech rights of Americans, particularly for “those who have sensitive positions:”
Obviously, many of these school are private institutions but freedom of speech and academic freedom have long been the touchstones of the academy. What concerned me most was that I could not find a university statement on a matter that resulted in the canning of one of its deans — just an ominous note that the page of Dr. Neal-Boylan can no longer be found.
- COVID Kills 46,000 Jobs In Downturn Baltimore
COVID Kills 46,000 Jobs In Downturn Baltimore
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 21:00The economic realities that a V-shaped recovery is not possible in the back half of 2020 are being realized in Baltimore’s downtown area.
The Downtown Partnership of Baltimore (DPOB) published its annual State of the Downtown report on Tuesday and there are new concerns the COVID-19-induced recession will have long-lasting impacts.
Baltimore Downtown map “The areas that were impacted, as you can imagine more significantly tourism, restaurants, some of our cultural institutions… and those are the ones that we really have to rally behind now,” DPOB President Shelonda Stokes told WJZ Baltimore.
DPOB conducted two surveys in mid-March, just around the time, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan initiated virus-related lockdowns. Out of 150 respondents, DPOB said strict public health orders heavily impacted at least 94% of the businesses in the downtown district. About 29% of respondents said it would take upwards of three months to recover.
The survey found hospitality and restaurant/food service industries were the most impacted. It said restaurants, hotels, and retail shopping stand to lose billions of dollars. Nevertheless, DPOB claims COVID-19 has directly and indirectly impacted 46,000 jobs.
“We’re at a place that you could see even from the consumer sentiment survey that we’re still fearful. We’re cautiously re-entering, we’ve been comfortable in our homes, we’ve figured out how to work from home and be effective,” Stokes said.
Baltimore City is facing a double whammy – it’s not just the virus that has deterred people from traveling to the Inner Harbor area – but also crime across the city is out of control. On a per-capita basis, the city is one of the most dangerous in the country. Readers may recall our countless articles on the socio-economic implosion of Baltimore, starting years before the pandemic.
“Any level of violent crime in unacceptable,” said Councilman Eric Costello.
DPOB is confident some businesses may not survive the virus-induced economic downturn and urged residents to support local businesses in this time of crisis.
What’s unfolding in Baltimore is just one example of how a V-shaped recovery in city centers across the country is, by far, a distant dream, and, in fact, complete bullshit.
Businesses, and to be specific, small businesses, and the bottom 90% of Americans, have been devastated in the last couple of months.
Days ago, readers may recall we noted a quarter of all personal income in the US now comes from the government – this shows how reliant the population has become on the government, or should we say socialist Trump checks.
Twitter handle Long View pointed out last week that “Retail sales bounced back like a rubber band because of stimulus (Trump checks, PPP, UE bonus). It’s all over in a few weeks & with the new uptick we likely see at least 6 more weeks of contraction with no plug. The real hit starts now.”
Knowing the backdrop of consumers, as to how they’re very reliant on Trump checks for consumption, there can be no V-shaped recovery this year – nevertheless, commercial shopping districts like the one in Baltimore – will remain depressed for the foreseeable future which will result in a period of high unemployment.
All of this comes at the worst possible time for Baltimore as the population crashes to a 100-year low – the tax base is collapsing as folks are quickly exiting the city for the suburbs. Coronavirus has exposed just how fragile the economy, society, and municipalities really are, which suggests the worst of the crisis is ahead.
- Three Glaring Problems With The Russian Taliban "Bounty" Story
Three Glaring Problems With The Russian Taliban "Bounty" Story
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 20:35Authored by Barbara Boland via The American Conservative,
There seems to be a lack of sourcing and a big whiff of politics, say former intelligence officers…
A bombshell report published by The New York Times Friday alleges that Russia paid dollar bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan to kill U.S troops. Obscured by an extremely bungled White House press response, there are at least three serious flaws with the reporting.
The article alleges that GRU, a top-secret unit of Russian military intelligence, offered the bounty in payment for every U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan, and that at least one member of the U.S. military was alleged to have been killed in exchange for the bounties. According to the paper, U.S. intelligence concluded months ago that the Russian unit involved in the bounties was also linked to poisonings, assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe. The Times reports that United States intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan came to this conclusion about Russian bounties some time in 2019.
According to the anonymous sources that spoke with the paper’s reporters, the White House and President Trump were briefed on a range of potential responses to Moscow’s provocations, including sanctions, but the White House had authorized no further action.
Immediately after the news broke Friday, the Trump administration denied the report—or rather, they denied that the President was briefed, depending on which of the frenetic, contradictory White House responses you read.
Traditionally, the President of the United States receives unconfirmed, and sometimes even raw intelligence, in the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB. Trump notoriously does not read his PDB, according to reports.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said in a statement Saturday night that neither Trump nor Vice President Pence “were ever briefed on any intelligence alleged by the New York Times in its reporting yesterday.”
On Sunday night, Trump tweeted that not only was he not told about the alleged intelligence, but that it was not credible.“Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP” Pence, Trump wrote Sunday night on Twitter.
Ousted National Security Advisor John Bolton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that Trump was probably claiming ignorance in order to justify his administration’s lack of response.
“He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it,” said Bolton.
Bolton is one of the only sources named in the New York Times article. Currently on a book tour, Bolton has said that he witnessed foreign policy malfeasance by Trump that dwarfs the Ukraine scandal that was the subject of the House impeachment hearings. But Bolton’s credibility has been called into question since he declined to appear before the House committee.
The explanations for what exactly happened, and who was briefed, continued to shift Monday.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany followed Trump’s blanket denial with a statement that the intelligence concerning Russian bounty information was “unconfirmed.” She didn’t say the intelligence wasn’t credible, like Trump had said the day before, only that there was “no consensus” and that the “veracity of the underlying allegations continue to be evaluated,” which happens to almost completely match the Sunday night statement from the White House’s National Security Council.
Instead of saying that the sources for the Russian bounty story were not credible and the story was false, or likely false, McEnany then said that Trump had “not been briefed on the matter.”
“He was not personally briefed on the matter,” she said. “That is all I can share with you today.”
It’s difficult to see how the White House thought McEnany’s statement would help, and a bungled press response like this is communications malpractice, according to sources who spoke to The American Conservative.
Let’s take a deeper dive into some of the problems with the reporting here:
1. Anonymous U.S. and Taliban sources?
The Times article repeatedly cites unnamed “American intelligence officials.” The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal articles “confirming” the original Times story merely restate the allegations of the anonymous officials, along with caveats like “if true” or “if confirmed.”
Furthermore, the unnamed intelligence sources who spoke with the Times say that their assessment is based “on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals.”
That’s a red flag, said John Kiriakou, a former analyst and case officer for the CIA who led the team that captured senior al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002.
“When you capture a prisoner, and you’re interrogating him, the prisoner is going to tell you what he thinks you want to hear,” he said in an interview with The American Conservative. “There’s no evidence here, there’s no proof.”
“Who can forget how ‘successful’ interrogators can be in getting desired answers?” writes Ray McGovern, who served as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Under the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Khalid Sheik Mohammed famously made at least 31 confessions, many of which were completely false.
Kiriakou believes that the sources behind the report hold important clues on how the government viewed its credibility.
“We don’t know who the source is for this. We don’t know if they’ve been vetted, polygraphed; were they a walk-in; were they a captured prisoner?”
If the sources were suspect, as they appear to be here, then Trump would not have been briefed on this at all.
With this story, it’s important to start at the “intelligence collection,” said Kiriakou. “This information… appeared in the [CIA World Intelligence Review] Wire, which goes to hundreds of people inside the government, mostly at the State Department and the Pentagon. The most sensitive information isn’t put in the Wire; it goes only in the PDB.”
“If this was from a single source intelligence, it wouldn’t have been briefed to Trump. It’s not vetted, and it’s not important enough. If you caught a Russian who said this, for example, that would make it important enough. But some Taliban detainees saying it to an interrogator, that does not rise to the threshold.”
2. What purpose would bounties serve?
Everyone and their mother knows Trump wants to pull the troops out of Afghanistan, said Kiriakou.
“He ran on it and he has said it hundreds of times,” he said. “So why would the Russians bother putting a bounty on U.S. troops if we’re about to leave Afghanistan shortly anyway?”
That’s leaving aside Russia’s own experience with the futility of Afghanistan campaigns, learned during its grueling 9-year war there in the 1980s.
If this bounty campaign is real, it would not appear to be very effective, as only eight U.S. military members were killed in Afghanistan in 2020. The New York Times could not verify that even one U.S. military member was killed due to an alleged Russian bounty.
The Taliban denies it accepted bounties from Russian intelligence.
“These kinds of deals with the Russian intelligence agency are baseless—our target killings and assassinations were ongoing in years before, and we did it on our own resources,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, told The New York Times. “That changed after our deal with the Americans, and their lives are secure and we don’t attack them.”
The Russian Embassy in the United States called the reporting “fake news.”
While the Russians are ruthless, “it’s hard to fathom what their motivations could be” here, said Paul Pillar, an academic and 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, in an interview with The American Conservative. “What would they be retaliating for? Some use of force in Syria recently? I don’t know. I can’t string together a particular sequence that makes sense at this time. I’m not saying that to cast doubt on reports the Russians were doing this sort of thing.”
3. Why is this story being leaked now?
According to U.S. officials quoted by the AP, top officials in the White House “were aware of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans” in early 2019. So why is this story just coming out now?
This story is “WMD [all over] again,” said McGovern, who in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President’s Daily Brief. He believes the stories seek to preempt DOJ findings on the origins of the Russiagate probe.
The NYT story serves to bolster the narrative that Trump sides with Russia, and against our intelligence community estimates and our own soldiers lives.
The stories “are likely to remain indelible in the minds of credulous Americans—which seems to have been the main objective,” writes McGovern. “There [Trump] goes again—not believing our ‘intelligence community; siding, rather, with Putin.’”
“I don’t believe this story… and I think it was leaked to embarrass the President,” said Kiriakou. “Trump is on the ropes in the polls; Biden is ahead in all the battleground states.”
If these anonymous sources had spoken up during the impeachment hearings, their statements could have changed history.
But the timing here, “kicking a man when he is down, is extremely like the Washington establishment. A leaked story like this now, embarrasses and weakens Trump,” he said. “It was obvious that Trump would blow the media response, which he did.”
The bungled media response and resulting negative press could also lead Trump to contemplate harsher steps towards Russia in order to prove that he is “tough,” which may have motivated the leakers.
It’s certainly a policy goal with which Bolton, one of the only named sources in the New York Times piece, wholeheartedly approves.
- College Students Busted Throwing "COVID-19 Parties" To Infect All Their Friends
College Students Busted Throwing "COVID-19 Parties" To Infect All Their Friends
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 20:10Many older millennials might remember the furor over “Rainbow Parties” back in the late 1990s/early 2000s. We’re not going to get into all the details of this peculiar-sounding “youth culture trend” – the only thing that’s really relevant to our discussion is that these lurid stories horrified parents and – as it turns out – were completely, entirely made-up.
And so it is with the latest COVID-19 related outrage: comments from Tuscaloosa City Councilor Sonya McKinstry, who warned that bored college and high school students in her district were throwing “COVID Parties” where everybody hangs out with somebody who has the virus, and they all place bets on who tests positive first.
Thanks to the Internet, teenagers and young adults have been caught doing many extremely dumb things, like eating tidepods and whatnot. But even those trends were massively overblown and largely the work of a few trolls. This too stretches credulity. So, what kind of evidence does McKinstry have to support this claim?
Actually, quite a bit. State officials have confirmed that 8 cases have been linked to a house party full of 20 year olds somewhere in New York. The host was already symptomatic during the event, and officials heard about two other parties.
McKinstry told ABC that students have been organizing “COVID parties” as a game to intentionally infect each other presumably so they can “get it over with” and get the antibodies, even though the durability of these antibodies to provide lasting protection between ‘seasons’ hasn’t yet been closely studied. Organizers of these parties are purposefully seeking out and inviting COVID-19 positive young people to these parties.
“They put money in a pot and they try to get COVID. Whoever gets COVID first gets the pot. It makes no sense,” McKinstry said. “They’re intentionally doing it.”
Tuscaloosa Fire Chief Randy Smith told the City Council on Tuesday that he has confirmed the behavior.
And what’s worse, those rumored to have attended aren’t cooperating with contact tracers, and 9 people have been subpoenaed over this.
Across the US, young people gathering in bars and other social settings (like protests) have helped reignite the outbreak and push it to a new level of intensity, jeopardizing the progress made by the most successful states. One of the more interesting details about this story is that these “COVID-19 parties” didn’t actually happen in Tuscaloosa, they happened in Westchester.
We’re not exactly sure how the kids from Tuscaloosa managed to travel back and forth, but we imagine it wasn’t very difficult.
Meanwhile, more schools like Yale are calling for remote learning next semester which might leave more college students languishing in their hometowns.
With many young people likely staying home through the fall, we imagine this won’t be the last example of friction between rebellious young people and the authorities charged with enforcing social distancing.
- What Went Wrong In 1971?
What Went Wrong In 1971?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 19:45Written by Jan Nieuwenhuijs for Voima Insight.
An interview with the gentlemen behind the website “WTF Happened in 1971?”
The last remnants of the gold standard were abandoned in August 1971, when President of the United States Richard Nixon decided to close the gold window (foreigners couldn’t redeem dollars for gold at the Treasury anymore). From 1945 until 1971, the U.S. dollar was backed by gold, and served as the world reserve currency under a system called Bretton Woods.
The “Nixon Shock”—as the unilateral suspension of Bretton Woods is often referred to—brought about a sea of change in economies and societies around the world, because from that moment on all national currencies stopped having an anchor. Fiat currencies could be created boundlessly. To get an understanding of the changes since 1971, I decided to interview the gentlemen behind the website “WTF Happened in 1971?”
If you don’t know this website, make sure to have a look. On the homepage you will find a collection of charts that all show a remarkable change around 1971. The founders of the website are Ben and Collin from the U.S., and I truly enjoyed talking to them. (Most of the charts in this article are sourced from their website.)
Jan: So, who are you guys? What is your background?
Ben: My background is very diverse. I have lots of interests, lots of hobbies. I have 3D graphics background. I don’t have an economics background, but as of recently I got very interested in economics. I’m the type of person that when I get into something, I tend to go all the way and learn as much as possible. We obviously found this rabbit hole and most of it’s from our study of money and monetary economics.
Jan: How did your interest in economics begin?
Ben: I got interested in it, because I got interested in bitcoin, and I tried to understand bitcoin, but realized I didn’t understand what money was. And that required asking a lot of questions about the history of money, how it emerged, and what its purpose is in society.
Jan: Same questions for you Collin.
Collin: So, we’re both amateur Austrian economists. That would probably be how we define ourselves. Neither of us have any formal education in finance, or business, or economics, which in a lot of ways has actually been to our benefit. We just like to ask questions, and we—as we continued to ask questions—identified what we think are the first principles of economics. We realized that that’s the best way for people to learn, by asking questions first rather than starting with a conclusion.
Jan: What made you launch the website about economic developments that started in1971?
Ben: Through learning about the history of money, we discovered the Nixon Shock and the ending of the Bretton Woods agreement. If you look at the Wikipedia page, for example, on the Nixon Shock, you’ll see a few of the charts that are on our website. I thought these charts are fascinating, they show an important fundamental change in our society. It had along with it some interesting data that exploded in that time [1971], and we started collecting more and more of these charts. We wished we had a repository where we could just put all these charts to point people to. And the meme was born. It was Collin’s idea to just ask the question: what the f*ck happened in 1971?
Jan: What do you say are the most significant developments that have occurred since 1971.
Collin: Monetary expansion—but we get a lot of criticism on this. People say, “oh you’re not taking into account many of the regulatory changes, or the socio-cultural changes that happened around that same time period, that caused some of these second and third order effects that you attribute to this one 1971 data point.” If you were to sit down and talk with us, we’d tell you that the story goes back much further. We would trace it back to 1944 and 1933, and we would look at the Great Depression in America in 1929. We’d look at the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, and then ideally, we’d go all the way back to the birth of fiat currencies in the United States before the U.S. was even a country. We’d look at the early fiat experiments, we’d go back to the bi-metal standards, we’d look at the process of coin clipping under the feudal lords. The story obviously doesn’t start in 1971, but certainly that’s when there’s an interesting inflection in the data that you can point to and say: “look what happened here, everything went crazy.”
We attribute the expansion of monetary policy to gross malinvestment. Malinvestment that’s perpetuated and unable to be liquidated, in such a way that it creates second and third order problems in our society that are exacerbated as this bubble continues to be expanded, and the can of the liquidation of malinvestment is kicked down the road.
Jan: On your website, the first chart I see is about inequality. How does what you just said ties into inequality in society?
Ben: I think the greatest driver of inequality today is financial asset inflation, which is a direct result of monetary expansion. When you increase the money supply, you’re going to increase the costs of hard supplied assets like stocks for example. And the deterioration of the moneyness of money—because the store of value aspect of money is important—has led society to use financial assets as money, like stocks and real estate. Many people hold their wealth in financial assets and every financial advisor will tell you, “don’t hold dollars as a store of value.” So, the disproportionate access to financial assets, causes a wealth stratification in society, because the poorer you are the less access you have to financial assets as a percentage of your wealth, and the more wealthy you are, the larger percent of your wealth you hold in financial assets.
I have a chart that shows at different wealth levels a car is what percentage of your wealth. For people having a low income, their car makes up a significant share of their assets.
But a car is a depreciating asset. However, the wealthy hold 95 percent of their wealth in financial assets that inflate because of monetary expansion, and their car constitutes only a tiny part of their wealth. Stocks are very disproportionately held by the wealthiest. Something like 10 percent of the population holds 84 percent of all stocks. These dynamics have drawn society apart and hollowed out the middle class.
Average Sales Price of Houses Sold in the U.S./Federal Minimum Hourly Wage in U.S.
Jan: At the moment there’s a lot of social unrest in the United States. Do you think this is related to that the topic we’re discussing?
Ben: Yes.
Collin: People don’t internalize why, but they look around and they understand that things are wrong. They understand that intuitively. Being of our generation [millennial], or even the younger that enter the world, that have no exposure to the “financial asset inflation ponzi,” they’re starting off their lives at a disadvantage.
It’s much harder for them to get an education, it’s much harder for them to get assets that appreciate by inflation such as a home or stocks, and then they’re working with a depreciating currency to store their value in the short term, in order to build a base for themselves.
And to add on to what Ben said. What we’ve also seen is a major disruption in economic calculation, because of the artificially low discount [interest] rate that we’ve seen for so long that’s perpetuated by central banks since the late 1980s in the United States. We’ve seen the discount rate continue to be artificially pushed down, despite the fact that there isn’t the accumulation of capital that in a free market would normally push that discount rate towards lower numbers. We’re seeing that number artificially brought down by central banks.
Interest rates of several benchmark sovereign bonds.
You’re watching the replacement cost of assets exceed the replacement cost of capital. Capital is so cheap for some businesses, that they are more financially incentivized to borrow money, and use that money to pump the price of their stocks rather than reinvest and serving the demands of the consumer. And this is why we see companies in America like Apple, which are very cash rich, borrowing money in order to buy back their stocks, so that they can pump the value of their assets rather than try to earn capital by being entrepreneurs, which is how the world is supposed to work in a free market.
Jan: At the moment, it seems to me that the only thing that is keeping the economy going is the next bubble. Would you agree?
Collin: Yes. It’s a feedback loop of pumping liquidity into the system to prevent the liquidation of malinvestment. But as that liquidity enters the system more malinvestment is created and the bubble just gets bigger.
Ben: This is the idea of zombie companies and the zombie economy I’m sure you’re familiar with. Those are the malinvestment companies that should have probably gone under, weren’t it for zero percent interest loans that keep them alive, and them still staying around. It’s destructive to society because these things should have been liquidated.
Collin: If you study the business cycle, you’ll see that these things are very predictable. They tend to go in 10-year cycles. Currently, everyone is attributing our current economic downturn to the coronavirus pandemic, and is saying, “no one could have seen the corona crisis coming.” While, if you were paying close attention to financial markets in the precursor of corona, you were seeing warning signs that things were beginning to malfunction.
You were watching the repurchase agreement [repo] markets meltdown in the United States. Financial institutions were choosing interest on excess reserves at the Fed over participation in the repo market, which doesn’t make sense in a market where there’s profit to be made. Those are warning signs. You saw an inversion of the yield curve in the Treasuries market, and an extremely low unemployment rate. These are warning signs, by the Fed’s own admission of a potential upcoming recession in 12 to 18 months. And yet, because of the public’s lack of awareness to these economic principles, they think that this economic downturn was caused solely by governments and corporate organizations demanding that people stay home and don’t work. Rather than it being attributed to the business cycles that always happen under these types of expansionary monetary policies.
Jan: Do you think there’s a strong lobby from the banking industry to keep this system how it is? Because, for example, we can also point to deregulation that has caused problems, but maybe this was lobbied by special interest groups, which was possible because since 1971 we don’t have an anchor to gold anymore.
Ben: That’s it. I actually think this is one of the greatest misconceptions about the data on our site. There’s a version of our website that does exactly the same thing as we do, but they point to 1980, Ronald Reagan, and deregulation as the cause. And I find that so fascinating. This is the opposite of what I believe. I believe deregulation would be a good thing if we have hard money. But it’s because of the soft money that deregulation causes problems—not the deregulation itself.
Jan: So, the cause is central banks’ monetary expansion?
Collin: We often attribute central banks to the feudal lords that clipped the coins and then recirculated the currency at their face value. If you study things like the Cantillon effect, you know that those with the fewest degrees of separation from the printing press benefit the most from the creation of new currency. And that’s by design, it has to work that way. If you were to increase the nominal currency values of everybody at the same time equally across the board, nothing would change. In expansionary monetary policies the relative purchasing power of certain groups are affected more than others, or else you are not redistributing wealth, and expansionary monetary policy effectively does nothing.
Jan: The answer is that without central banks we would be better off?
Collin: Absolutely.
* * *
The recording of this interview was not meant to be published, but as Ben and Collin were very pleased with the conversation, I sent them the audio, which they have published as a podcast. If you would like to listen to more of this conversation, please click here.
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- Secret Spy Drone Flights Over San Diego Raise Concerns
Secret Spy Drone Flights Over San Diego Raise Concerns
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 19:20The skies are clear for General Atomics to test fly a new military-grade drone over San Diego, reported Voice of San Diego.
The Federal Aviation Administration is currently evaluating General Atomics’ proposal to fly the Predator, better known as the MQ-9B Reaper, but for domestic affairs purposes has been renamed as the SkyGuardian.
The drone is massive, has a wingspan of 79 feet, and weighs 12,500 pounds. The pilot run above the city, located on the Pacific coast of southern California, could set a new precedent for the US, one where civilian airspace will include military-grade drones as a new form of surveillance – the defense contractor calls the drone, “persistent eye in the sky.”
In regards to the upcoming flights, the Voice of San Diego said, “there’s still a lot the public doesn’t know about the project:”
For months, I’ve been trying to understand whether regulators are satisfied that the technologies on board the SkyGuardian — which allow it, among other things, to automatically detect and avoid collisions with other aircraft — are safe to put above the heads of San Diegans. I’ve also been trying to figure out who’s backing the test flight and why.
Last year, General Atomics announced that San Diego was supportive of the project. But in March, Jose Ysea, a spokesman for the mayor, said the city’s drone program was not working with the company on the SkyGuardian. General Atomics also announced last year that a test flight was scheduled for 2020 — one industry report said summer —but a date hasn’t been set yet and the cause of the hold-up is unclear.
“We can’t get into details about a military aircraft program,” wrote Marcia Alexander-Adams, a public affairs manager for the FAA, in an email. “The FAA is working closely with the manufacturer to ensure the aircraft operates safely in civilian airspace.”
In a complaint filed Friday, VOSD alleged that the FAA is improperly withholding public records initially requested in March about the SkyGuardian flight in violation of the Freedom of Information Act. The law gives the public the right to access certain documents in possession of the U.S. government. By law, those documents are supposed to be released in either full or partial form within a few weeks of a request.
The complaint also names the Federal Communications Commission and makes similar allegations. Earlier this year, the FCC appears to have granted the company an experimental license to fly a drone in the deserts between California and Arizona.
“VOSD believes that access to the records that it seeks from the FCC and the FAA about this drone program are essential to its readers and the public’s understanding of this program before the flight takes place as early as this summer,” Thomas Burke of Davis Wright Tremaine, who is representing Voice of San Diego, wrote in the filing. “There is particular public interest in this flight, not just because it is unprecedented and will open up civilian airspace, but because drone crashes are fairly common.”
Testing military-grade surveillance drones in civilian airspace, above a large city, with limited public awareness or even debate, shows the federal government is quickly installing a Chinese-like surveillance state.
In late May, an MQ-9 was deployed from Grand Forks Air Force Base to surveil the social unrest in Minneapolis.
Under the strict lockdowns in April, Baltimore City officials approved a small fleet of spy planes to fly above the Baltimore Metropolitan Area to monitor crime.
While everyone is distracted with virus-related headlines – the federal government is erecting a massive surveillance state with military-grade drones to surveil people in metro areas.
- National Coin Shortage Shines Light On Worthless Penny
National Coin Shortage Shines Light On Worthless Penny
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 18:55Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,
A shortage of coins is appearing across America due to the covid‐19 pandemic significantly disrupting the supply chain and normal circulation patterns for U.S. coins. The U.S. Mint halted production due to covid-19 which has caused Fed Chair Powell to admit to lawmakers the Fed will be rationing coins until the problem is resolved. Powell said; “What’s happened is that with the partial closure of the economy, the flow of coins through the economy … it’s kind of stopped.” He went on to say the shortage which is expected to be temporary is due to the business closures that prevented people from spending their coins, as well as a lack of places that are open where people can trade coins for paper bills.
We can only hope that this will cause more people to question the usefulness of the penny which is a blemish on the face of America. It is costly to produce, no friend to the environment and it wastes America’s resources while sapping our productivity. It cost our country billions of dollars, year after year. According to the “citizens to retire the penny” it cost the Country one hundred million dollars a year to produce the penny, and more then $15 billion dollars annually is wasted just in handling it. Coins are designed by the government to be a simple and efficient medium for the exchange of goods and services. For many years there have been discussions about discontinuing the penny which has become obsolete because of its minuscule purchasing value. The penny is a perfect example of our government’s inefficiency and waste, and the cost is a burden carried by business. If an employee is paid $12.00 an hour they receive twenty cents per minute. Businesses simply cannot afford to pay an employee to handle and count pennies, the cost of the labor exceeds their value.
Pennies Make A Great Bathroom Floor
In March of 2012 Canada made the decision to do away with its puny penny coin, loved by some but an annoyance to many, it was withdrawn from circulation because it costs too much to make and had become a pecuniary pest. Ottawa said the penny retained only one-twentieth of its original purchasing power. Because it costs 1.6 cents to produce each one-cent coin stamped out, discontinuing the penny was expected to save around $11 million a year.
“It was just one of those no-brainer slam dunks. It’s a place where we can save money,” said legislator Pat Martin, who has long campaigned for the penny to be abolished. In the middle of 2014 the Toronto Sun reported that since circulation of the penny was discontinued on Feb. 4, 2013, more than four billion of the copper coins had been recovered, equivalent to a face value of approximately $40 million. The Royal Canadian Mint at the time estimated that approximately 6 billion pennies were in circulation when production of the coin ceased in 2012. I suspect the number has dropped substantially since then and its use has become non-existent. Once the distribution of the coin ceased vendors were no longer expected to return pennies as change for cash purchases and were encouraged to round purchases to the nearest five cents.
As for the issue of the American penny, simply put, the American penny doesn’t make sense! Let it be decreed that the penny when weighed and measured is found lacking. Other nations have either ceased to produce or have removed low denomination coins the list includes Australia, Brazil, Finland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain, and as stated above Canada. By the time it was discontinued many Canadians considered the penny more of a nuisance than a useful coin. They often stored them in jars, threw them away in water fountains, or refuse them as change. Financial institutions faced increasing costs for handling, storing, and transporting pennies, and over time the penny had become a burden to the economy.
The Penny No Longer Makes Sense
To many people the penny is simply a horrible little thing with no redeeming value that destroys vacuum cleaners when they accidentally suck one up. Still, we find that not only does the government continue making the penny but over the years it has even made new versions of the penny. Voters need to remind Washington that it is not the job of the well-paid employees of the treasury to create collectibles or to pander to small segments of the population by designing coins commemorating or recognizing minor events.
The debate against continuing the penny is overwhelming, anyone still supporting it most likely has not given the subject much thought or is simply resistant to change, “the penny doesn’t make sense”. From an environmental standpoint, the penny is also a disaster when you consider all the energy used to make, transport, and distribute this useless coin. Currently, it costs the U.S. Mint 1.66 cents to make each one-cent coin, meaning that taxpayers are losing 0.66 of a cent for each one of the 9.1 billion pennies the Mint produces each year. That is a loss of $60,181,440 to produce pennies in 2016. The U.S. Mint makes an average of 21 million pennies per day which adds up to around nine billion pennies annually. If we just get rid of the penny, the U.S. Mint would cut its work in half. This figure does not include the time, fuel, expense, and hassle of carting all of those pennies around to the banks, merchants, etc.
If we stop making pennies we would also save all this cost associated with it. Remember the penny coin, has almost no purchasing power today and the cost of making the pennies is higher than face value. The melt value of pennies ranges from more than two cents for the pre-1982 copper pennies, to nearly a full cent for the zinc pennies. Logically, sooner or later the penny is destined to the dustbin of history. Ditching the penny would cost literally nothing and with a flourish of the executive pen create huge annual savings for business but such a move remains fiercely opposed by metal alloy industries and Coinstar, which makes millions each year by helping people get rid of their unwanted change.
According to the folks at RetireThePenny.org, the average American wastes 2.4 hours a year handling pennies or waiting for people who handle them. This statistic is the result of compiling several penny-handling related events. These events include the ubiquitous 30 second period we sometimes spend waiting for someone who has to dig through their pockets or purse to find that last cent so they can pay for something with exact change. They probably do this, so they don’t get stuck with any more pennies. Still, we should not expect the government to take action anytime soon in our country so focused on pandering to those who fear change. It seems we may need some kind of push to bring about the penny’s final demise, because if we wait for those in charge of such things to do the logical thing we may be waiting until the end of time. Small things matter, if our politicians can’t get this right how can they ever deal with the more important issues facing our nation?
- Young Democracy Activist Flees Hong Kong As New Security Law Casts Shadow On 'Foreign Ties'
Young Democracy Activist Flees Hong Kong As New Security Law Casts Shadow On 'Foreign Ties'
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 18:30Hong Kong pro-democracy, anti-Beijing activists are on edge since this week’s formal passage of the sweeping national security law in response to the mass protests and unrest which gripped the city for much of last year.
As we and many others detailed of the law which went into effect Wednesday, it harshly cracks down on dissent with possible maximum life jail sentences for some crimes, largely dependent on the ambiguous and highly open to interpretation (with no independent review) question of what constitutes ‘foreign interference’ or sponsorship of a ‘terror’ organization.
Already some among protest leaders are fleeing in fear for how the law might apply retroactively to their past activities, as well as current activism. For example it’s already spooked a prominent young pro-independence leader named Nathan Law.
Nathan Law in 2019 seen advocating for the US Congress’ Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. Wiki Commons image. “He announced he had left two days after China brought in its new security law,” BBC reports. “Activists say it erodes freedoms but Beijing has dismissed the criticism.”
Law issued a short message announcing his departure: “I have already left Hong Kong and continue the advocacy work on the international level,” he said in English, though without specifying which country he would settle in.
“Based on risk assessment, I shall not reveal too much about my personal whereabouts and situation now,” Law’s message added. After previously spending time in prison for leading protests in 2014, he’s not taking any chances apparently, also given his public links to Washington.
Joshua Wong Chi-fung, secretary-general of the #Demosisto party, said there was “nothing sinister” behind his meeting with Julie Eadeh, a political unit chief of the US consulate general in Hong Kong. #Hongkongprotest pic.twitter.com/fLHXA4fTZ3
— tim anderson (@timand2037) August 8, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Both he and HK’s other most visible independence movement activist, Joshua Wong, have been seen as close to State Department and US embassy officials, even lately briefing Congressional leaders on the new security law:
Within moments of it being announced on Tuesday, Mr Law said he was stepping down from Demosito Party, which he co-founded with well-known activist Joshua Wong. At the time, he said the law marked the start of a “bloody cultural revolution”.
On Wednesday, Mr Law spoke via videolink to a US Congressional hearing on Hong Kong. He told American politicians he was worried about returning to the territory, for fear of being imprisoned by Beijing.
Pro-Beijing officials and media previously accused the pair of being stooges of the US and Britain, doing foreign bidding under the guise of local activism.
No doubt in the eyes of the mainland’s Communist Party, this might be enough to get him locked up on “foreign sponsorship” related to his protest activities.
Nathan Law. Image source: Demosisto. It’s more than likely we’ll see other big activist names flee Hong Kong and the region in the coming days and weeks, also as it’s still a bit up in the air as to what the new law’s application will look like in practice.
Clearly pro-independence leaders are bracing for the worst.
- Daily Briefing – July 2, 2020
Daily Briefing – July 2, 2020
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 18:10Senior editor Ash Bennington joins managing editor Ed Harrison to discuss the latest developments in markets, macro, and coronavirus. Bennington and Harrison dive into the June jobs report and talk about how it fits into the overall picture of the US’s economic recovery. They also explore the implications and future trajectory of the coronavirus’s spread and its continuing impact on the economy. - #StayHomeTexas – When Spouting Coronavirus Idiocy Helps The Bottom Line
#StayHomeTexas – When Spouting Coronavirus Idiocy Helps The Bottom Line
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 18:05Authored by Adam Dick via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
Here we are months into the coronavirus scare when it has become obvious that coronavirus for most people poses little to no threat. Yet, we see businesses and other entities repeatedly trumpeting the danger of coronavirus as if each and every person should view the disease as the Grim Reaper hovering over one’s shoulder.
Of course, these entities will also trumpet their responses to coronavirus, including in many instances requiring people to wear masks that have no clear net benefit in protecting against coronavirus transmission but do have clear negative health consequences.
It is coronavirus idiocy on display.
For an example of such coronavirus idiocy, check out a Monday press release from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science and the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, a couple museums in Dallas, Texas. It notes “the spike in COVID-19 cases in Dallas County” as a reason for deciding “to pause plans to reopen in early July” the museums that, supposedly due to concern about coronavirus, have been long closed.
Of course, a spike in cases by itself is no reason for concern. This is especially so when the spike in cases accompanies a spike in testing, as has been the situation in Dallas County. An increase in cases (people who test positive for coronavirus or are presumed to have coronavirus) can be expected to accompany a testing increase. Such a cases spike says nothing about the spread of or danger from coronavirus.
The recent shift in media and government to talking about the number of coronavirus cases instead of the number of deaths attributed to coronavirus — itself an inflated number — happened when deaths attributed to coronavirus came way down. Death numbers having dropped too low to be used to scare people as well as they had, new higher case numbers have become the focus for instilling and maintaining fear. While cases of coronavirus are nothing to be afraid of, many people do not understand that. They imagine that each case is someone at death’s door hooked up to a ventilator in a hospital. Instead, a case is often a person who is slightly sick or has no symptoms.
Statements such as this in the museums’ press release help cement unfounded fear in regard to cases. People hear that a spike in cases caused a group of museums to stay closed longer, and they conclude that the spike must be something to really worry about — a propaganda success.
The museums’ press release then proceeds to state: “We believe it is important to support Governor Abbott’s, Mayor Johnson’s and Judge Jenkins’ appeals for Texans to stay home, if at all possible, to be good community partners and neighbors.” Not content with just spouting idiocy to explain keeping museums closed, the museums echo and praise extreme hectoring of politicians at the local and state level (Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins) that people should hide at home for the indeterminate future.
Why have so many businesses and other entities, including museums, not fought back strongly against governments’ shut down and operations limitation orders, as well as governments’ absurd exaggeration of the coronavirus threat?
One big reason is that many of these entities, and especially those with strong political connections, are receiving or are hoping to receive money, tax relief, and other benefits from government via special coronavirus aid. They can see it as advancing their pursuit of these benefits to play along with the coronavirus crackdown and amplify its supporting propaganda.
Museums, along with other entities including professional sports teams and preforming arts organizations such as theater companies, symphonies, and operas, are often significantly dependent on governments for funding, including often for the creation of their venues. On top of all that, many of them also can benefit from governments’ special coronavirus aid. All this weighs in favor of these entities being sycophantic concerning governments’ coronavirus crackdowns.
Next time you hear some private entity spouting coronavirus idiocy, consider that it may be doing so for a smart reason – ensuring it receives a good share of government aid.
- Al Qaeda Issues A Propaganda Message To Incite More Violence In America
Al Qaeda Issues A Propaganda Message To Incite More Violence In America
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/02/2020 – 17:15Al Qaeda has issued a message in English urging the “oppressed masses” to rise up in revolt “against the rulers occupying the White House.”
It’s not really surprising that enemies of the United States are trying to take advantage of the current unrest, and given the ongoing protests and riots in the United States, this message can only be meant to incite further violence. (To learn more about surviving civil unrest, go here.)
The message urges no “compromises” and calls upon protesters to “persist in your defiance.” It warns of the punishment of Allah against those who fail to “revolt” and “overthrow the existing order.”
Below you can find screenshots from AlertsUSA of the message.
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