4 Plagues Are Marching Across Asia Simultaneously: Coronavirus, African Swine Fever, H5N1 Bird Flu, & H1N1 Swine Flu

4 Plagues Are Marching Across Asia Simultaneously: Coronavirus, African Swine Fever, H5N1 Bird Flu, & H1N1 Swine Flu

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

The coronavirus outbreak that is raging all over China right now has been making headlines on a daily basis all over the globe, and rightly so.  At this point we don’t know if it will ultimately become a horrifying global pandemic that will affect tens of millions of people, but what we do know is that the virus spreads very easily and the number of cases has been rising at an exponential rateMeanwhile, three other plagues have also been marching across Asia, and most people in the western world don’t even realize that this is happening.  What I am about to share with you in this article is quite chilling, and the months ahead will be very dark if these plagues continue to spread.

Long before we ever heard of this new coronavirus, African Swine Fever was devastating pork farms from one end of China to the other.  There is no vaccine for “pig ebola”, there is no cure, and once it hits a farm the only thing that can be done is to kill every single pig so that it won’t spread anywhere else.  But even though draconian measures have been implemented, it has just kept spreading, and at this point “about two-thirds of China’s swine herd has been lost”

Video of people fighting over pork at Chinese meat counters will likely become more common as the fallout from the African swine fever outbreak in China progresses.

Brett Stuart, president of the market research and analysis firm Global AgriTrends, estimates that about two-thirds of China’s swine herd has been lost to the disease and contrary to official government reports of recovery, more pigs are dying every day as ASF continues to spread.

Prior to this crisis, approximately half of all the pigs in the entire world lived in China, and they would usually slaughter about 700 million a year.  But now pork production has absolutely plummeted, and this is driving pork prices in China through the roof

In China itself, pork prices are at an all-time high at just under $300 per hundredweight and the country outbids Japan, which is usually the top bidder. Food inflation is soaring and some Chinese people have been unable to buy pork in six months.

Unfortunately, this insidious disease has also been devastating farms in many other nations all over the planet.  In particular, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines have been hit particularly hard.

It has been estimated that one out of every four pigs in the entire world has already died, and this crisis is far from over.

Fortunately, African Swine Fever does not affect humans, but this new coronavirus seems perfectly suited to be transmitted from person to person.  Johns Hopkins has put up a map that is continually updated, and according to the latest official numbers there are now 14,637 cases and the death toll has risen to 305.  But by the time you read this article those numbers are likely to be even higher.

Of course many are extremely skeptical that the official numbers coming out of China are accurate, and this is something that I have written about repeatedly.  There have been multiple reports that indicate that China has been falsely categorizing the deaths of many of the victims to keep the death toll down, and it is also suspicious that so many corpses are being taken “directly to the crematorium”

Radio Free Asia (RFA) has tweeted a disturbing video on its Twitter account on Saturday morning detailing how those who died of coronavirus in Wuhan, the outbreak area in China, were loaded up on a bus and taken “directly to the crematorium.”

RFA said (in a translated tweet): “[Latest Situation of Wuhan Fifth Hospital] Some Wuhan citizens entered Wuhan Fifth Hospital on February 1st and found many patients who died of pneumonia. The corpses were packed directly to the crematorium. Paramedics are busy rescuing the dying patient.”

RFA’s video is in line with our report from Friday that said those who died of the deadly virus were hauled off to a crematorium in Wuhan by Chinese authorities.

At this point we don’t know how bad this outbreak will ultimately become, but we do know that the very first death outside of China has now been confirmed

The Philippine Department of Health said a 44-year-old Chinese man from Wuhan was admitted on Jan. 25 after experiencing a fever, cough, and sore throat. He developed severe pneumonia, and in his last few days, “the patient was stable and showed signs of improvement, however, the condition of the patient deteriorated within his last 24 hours resulting in his demise.”

The man’s 38-year-old female companion, also from Wuhan, also tested positive for the virus and remains in hospital isolation in Manila.

Meanwhile, there has been a very alarming resurgence of the H5N1 bird flu in China.

According to the Daily Mail, more than 17,000 chickens have been culled in an effort to keep this new outbreak from spreading further…

China has reportedly seen an outbreak of a ‘highly pathogenic’ strain of H5N1 bird flu which has already killed 4,500 chickens.

The outbreak was initially reported at a farm in Shaoyang city in the southern province of Hunan, south of the epicentre of the Coronavirus in Wuhan.

According to the Reuters report, Chinese authorities have already culled 17,828 poultry in the wake of the outbreak.

Unlike African Swine Fever, humans can become infected by the H5N1 bird flu.

And according to the World Health Organization, the mortality rate for human cases is approximately 60 percent.

So let us hope that this current outbreak remains limited to chickens.

Alarmingly, the H5N1 bird flu has also popped up at a facility in India

Authorities in an eastern Indian state will start culling chickens and destroying eggs from Tuesday to contain a bird flu virus of the H5N1 strain, a government statement said on Monday.

The samples collected from a poultry breeding and research farm of a veterinary college in Odisha state tested positive, the statement said.

We haven’t heard much about the H5N1 bird flu in recent years, but this is an extremely deadly disease, and so we will want to monitor these developments very carefully.

On top of everything else, the H1N1 swine flu is starting to spread once again.  In fact, more than 100,000 people in Taiwan “sought medical treatment for flu-like symptoms at hospitals across the country over the past week” and there have been 13 confirmed deaths

At a time when the world is panicking over a 2019-nCoV coronavirus outbreak, the H1N1 flu virus is actually posing a greater threat in Taiwan, claiming 13 lives in the country in just one week, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

At a weekly meeting Friday, CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said 116,705 people sought medical treatment for flu-like symptoms at hospitals across the country over the past week, including 61 more confirmed flu cases.

Not too long ago, the H1N1 swine flu caused mass panic all over the globe, and I personally knew someone that was killed by it.

So the truth is that all of these outbreaks are very concerning.

And never before have we seen so many alarming outbreaks occur simultaneously.  Could it be possible that we have entered a period of time when mass pandemics are going to become “the new normal”?

Hopefully none of these current outbreaks will end up killing millions of people all over the globe.

But we have been warned for a long time about how vulnerable we are, and the experts assure us that it is just a matter of time before a mass pandemic brings death to every corner of the planet.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 02/03/2020 – 19:25

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Petition For WHO Director General To Resign Reaches Over 210,000 Signatures

Petition For WHO Director General To Resign Reaches Over 210,000 Signatures

Amidst the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, there has been plenty of skepticism about the World Health Organization’s handling of the epidemic thus far. That skepticism has now grown into a call for the WHO Director General to resign, in the form of a petition with over 200,000 signatures. 

Notably, the World Health Organization engaged in a press conference last week where WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised China repeatedly for the job they were doing in containing the virus.

To some on social media, the conference immediately smelled like the WHO carrying the party line for China’s government instead of exercising real world cautions about the quickly spreading epidemic.

And the WHO wasn’t the only organization claiming that China was handling the outbreak well. Early last week the Washington Post claimed  that China was working well with the WHO to contain the outbreak.

“Chinese leader Xi Jinping defended his country’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic as ‘open, transparent, responsible’ on Tuesday in a meeting with World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, even as the Chinese mayor at the epicenter of the outbreak apologized for withholding information from the public,” The Post wrote. 

But it is looking like that is less and less the case. Just days later, for instance, the NY Times ran an article saying the Chinese government put secrecy ahead of transparency. 

Perhaps this is why a newly created petition on change.org has accrued more than 200,000 signatures asking for Ghebreyesus to resign. 

The petition states: “On January 23rd, 2020. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declines to declare China virus outbreak as a global health emergency. As we all know, the Coronavirus is not treatable at the moment. The number of infected and deaths has risen more than ten times (infected from 800 – close to 10,000) within only 5 days.”

The petition also claims: “Part of it is related to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus under estimated the coronavirus. We strongly think Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is not fit for his role as WHO Director General.  We call for the Immediate Resignation of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.”

It continues: “A lot of us are really disappointed, we believe WHO is supposed to be political neutral. Without any investigation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus solely believes on the death and infected numbers that the Chinese government provided with them.”

“On the other hand, Taiwan should not be excluded from WHO for any political reasons. Their technologies are far more advanced than some of the countries on the “selected WHO list”. Please help the world to gain faith to the UN and WHO again,” it concludes.

Recall, back in 2017, Ghebreyesus was accused of covering up epidemics – a story that was also picked up by the New York Times


Tyler Durden

Mon, 02/03/2020 – 19:05

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Michael Bloomberg’s Gun Violence Ad Is Wrong: The Data Is Off By 73%

Michael Bloomberg’s Gun Violence Ad Is Wrong: The Data Is Off By 73%

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Michael Bloomberg paid for and anti-gun ad during the Super Bowl, and while that isn’t all that surprising, what’s even less shocking is how bad he bungled the statistics. He was off by 73%, which amounts to a straight-up lie.

Michael Bloomberg’s Super Bowl ad, which presents the Democratic presidential contender as a brave advocate of public safety who is not afraid to take on “the gun lobby,” claims “2,900 children die from gun violence every year” in the United States. This is far from the factual truth. That number includes young adults as well as minors, and it includes suicides as well as homicides.

Bloomberg’s campaign cited Everytown for Gun Safety, a Bloomberg-backed group, as the source of the number used in the ad. “Annually,” the organization said in June 2019 fact sheet, “nearly 2,900 children and teens (ages 0 to 19) are shot and killed.” The ad changed “children and teens” (including young adults) to “children,” presumably because that makes the deaths more shocking, strengthening the emotional case for the gun control policies Bloomberg favors.

According to to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FactCheck.org notes, the average number of firearm-related deaths involving Americans 17 or younger from 2013 through 2017 (the period used by Everytown for Gun Safety) was about 1,500, roughly half the number cited by Bloomberg. Furthermore, nearly two-fifths (40%, or 600) of those deaths were suicides, meaning the number of minors killed each year by “gun violence,” as that term is usually understood, is about 73 percent smaller than the figure cited in Bloomberg’s ad.-Reason

The real number is about 900, not 2900, based on the statistics made available by the very same people who want to disarm everyone.

The case highlighted by the TV ad does not actually fit into any of these categories, either. It is most accurately described as voluntary gang violence, although it was made to appear that the person shot was a random victim. The ad features Calandrian Kemp, whose 20-year-old son, George, was shot to death in 2013 at a park in Richmond, a Houston suburb, during a confrontation that a Texas appeals court described as “gang-related.” According to the court, “two groups of young men, most of them teenagers, had met that night for a fight.” Two of them, including an 18-year-old, Corey Coleman, fired the handgun rounds that struck Kemp. Coleman was convicted of murder and sentenced to 34 years in prison, according to Reason. 

Bloomberg’s gun law plans would also have little to no effect on the gang-related activity that killed Kemp. Bloomberg wants to ban “assault weapons” (Kemp was shot with a handgun), raise the minimum age to buy a gun to 21 (Coleman and other gang members are not buying their guns in places where ID is needed) and passing more “red flag laws” (gang members aren’t going to tattle on each other.)

To read more about Bloomberg’s plans to eliminate private gun ownership stop “gun violence” click here. 


Tyler Durden

Mon, 02/03/2020 – 18:45

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Elizabeth Warren Absolutely Wants the Government To Punish Facebook for Spreading Disinformation

PEN America, an advocacy organization that defends writers, journalism, and free speech in general, asked Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) 10 pressing questions about how she would combat various threats to free expression. Warren responded by attacking Facebook repeatedly—indeed, she mentioned the social media company more times than she mentioned President Donald Trump.

As evidenced by her answers, Warren believes that Big Tech is one of the greatest threats to free expression, if not the greatest. (Her proposed solutions to this supposed problem are themselves significant threats to free expression.)

After briefly discussing the need to eject Trump from the White House, Warren quickly pivoted to her real hobby horse:

We also need to crack down on the spread of disinformation that severely undermines free expression and legitimate journalism. Once again, we’re seeing Facebook throw up its hands in the face of disinformation campaigns on its platforms, because when profit comes up against protecting democracy, Facebook chooses profit. We need to stop this generation of big tech companies from profiting off of lies to the American people. That’s why my administration will make big, structural changes to the tech sector—including breaking up giant tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google—and requiring large tech platforms to be designated as “Platform Utilities” and broken apart from any participant on that platform. My administration will also appoint regulators committed to reversing illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers.

I’ve bolded the above sentence because it confirms that Warren believes the government should take action to deter those who spread “disinformation” online. This is highly relevant since media outlets that recently reported a Warren plan to fight disinformation were accused of getting the story wrong. Complaints weren’t unreasonable; CNBC used the headline, “Elizabeth Warren proposes criminal penalties for spreading disinformation online,” which was too broad since she had only proposed criminal penalties for spreading disinformation about polling locations (an illegal form of voter disenfranchisement, in Warren’s view).

“With the first elections in the Democratic primary race closing in, Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a plan this week to combat digital disinformation,” wrote Boston.com‘s Nik DeCosta-Klipa. “Then—in what was both an ironic, if not unpredictable, twist and a “perfect case study” of the problem—the plan fell victim to false information itself.”

It’s true that Warren has not specifically proposed criminal penalties for the broader category of disinformation. But based on the above interview with PEN America, it’s perfectly clear that she does think the government has a role to play in suppressing disinformation broadly defined. When the feds “crack down” on something, it is often by regulating it, making it illegal, and penalizing the people and institutions who defy the crackdown. It’s thus not crazy to think that Warren is calling for the criminalization of a kind of speech she does not like—since that’s exactly what she’s calling for.

This theme of aggressively regulating, breaking up, and punishing tech companies is one that Warren returns to over and over again in the PEN America interview. She calls on congressional and state authorities to open up investigations of Facebook. She says that Section 230, which shields tech companies from some legal liability if unprotected speech appears on their platforms, should be reformed. This is the true irony of her free speech defense plan: It involves the government ordering private companies to police more kinds of speech.

Given all her statements on this matter, Warren is obviously no friend to free speech online. Perhaps anti-tech conservatives should stop using her exact same talking points.

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Elizabeth Warren Absolutely Wants the Government To Punish Facebook for Spreading Disinformation

PEN America, an advocacy organization that defends writers, journalism, and free speech in general, asked Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) 10 pressing questions about how she would combat various threats to free expression. Warren responded by attacking Facebook repeatedly—indeed, she mentioned the social media company more times than she mentioned President Donald Trump.

As evidenced by her answers, Warren believes that Big Tech is one of the greatest threats to free expression, if not the greatest. (Her proposed solutions to this supposed problem are themselves significant threats to free expression.)

After briefly discussing the need to eject Trump from the White House, Warren quickly pivoted to her real hobby horse:

We also need to crack down on the spread of disinformation that severely undermines free expression and legitimate journalism. Once again, we’re seeing Facebook throw up its hands in the face of disinformation campaigns on its platforms, because when profit comes up against protecting democracy, Facebook chooses profit. We need to stop this generation of big tech companies from profiting off of lies to the American people. That’s why my administration will make big, structural changes to the tech sector—including breaking up giant tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google—and requiring large tech platforms to be designated as “Platform Utilities” and broken apart from any participant on that platform. My administration will also appoint regulators committed to reversing illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers.

I’ve bolded the above sentence because it confirms that Warren believes the government should take action to deter those who spread “disinformation” online. This is highly relevant since media outlets that recently reported a Warren plan to fight disinformation were accused of getting the story wrong. Complaints weren’t unreasonable; CNBC used the headline, “Elizabeth Warren proposes criminal penalties for spreading disinformation online,” which was too broad since she had only proposed criminal penalties for spreading disinformation about polling locations (an illegal form of voter disenfranchisement, in Warren’s view).

“With the first elections in the Democratic primary race closing in, Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a plan this week to combat digital disinformation,” wrote Boston.com‘s Nik DeCosta-Klipa. “Then—in what was both an ironic, if not unpredictable, twist and a “perfect case study” of the problem—the plan fell victim to false information itself.”

It’s true that Warren has not specifically proposed criminal penalties for the broader category of disinformation. But based on the above interview with PEN America, it’s perfectly clear that she does think the government has a role to play in suppressing disinformation broadly defined. When the feds “crack down” on something, it is often by regulating it, making it illegal, and penalizing the people and institutions who defy the crackdown. It’s thus not crazy to think that Warren is calling for the criminalization of a kind of speech she does not like—since that’s exactly what she’s calling for.

This theme of aggressively regulating, breaking up, and punishing tech companies is one that Warren returns to over and over again in the PEN America interview. She calls on congressional and state authorities to open up investigations of Facebook. She says that Section 230, which shields tech companies from some legal liability if unprotected speech appears on their platforms, should be reformed. This is the true irony of her free speech defense plan: It involves the government ordering private companies to police more kinds of speech.

Given all her statements on this matter, Warren is obviously no friend to free speech online. Perhaps anti-tech conservatives should stop using her exact same talking points.

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Adam Schiff: ‘Trump Has Betrayed Our National Security, and He Will Do So Again’

Rep. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.), the lead impeachment manager, made a broad final plea in President Donald Trump’s Senate trial on Monday, urging lawmakers to listen to their moral compasses and vote to convict.

“He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again,” Schiff said on the Senate floor. “You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all. I do not ask you to convict him because truth or right or decency matters nothing to him, but because we have proven our case and it matters to you. Truth matters to you. Right matters to you. You are decent. He is not who you are.”

While the Wednesday Senate vote will almost certainly result in an acquittal, Schiff seemed to zero in on moderate Republicans who might toe the party line, thus putting to rest Trump’s assertion that his impeachment was an entirely partisan affair. 

“Every single vote, even a single vote by a single member, can change the course of history,” Schiff said. “It is said that a single man or woman of courage makes a majority. Is there one among you who will say enough?” 

Trump’s defense team emphasized the politically-charged nature of the moment, arguing on multiple occasions over the course of the trial that an impeachment drawn along partisan lines is an invalid one. Ken Starr, the independent counsel whose report led to former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, compared the process to “domestic war” and said that impeachments should thus be “powerfully bipartisan.” (It’s worth noting, however, that impeachment has always been a partisan exercise, regardless of the charges brought forth.)

The president’s defense shifted slightly over the course of the trial, with the initial focus resting on Trump’s purported innocence. Former national security adviser John Bolton changed the conversation when it was reported that, in his book, he says Trump directly withheld security assistance from Ukraine in order to pressure their president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, into announcing investigations targeting Trump’s political rivals. The House impeached Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress pertaining to his role in that scandal.

Trump’s team later called into question the impeachable nature of that offense, particularly since the articles of impeachment, as drawn, do not contain references to an actual crime. Schiff said that notion fails to withstand historical scrutiny, as “there were no statutory crimes when the Constitution” was ratified, he said. 

“The president had to look far and wide to find a defense lawyer to make such an argument, unsupported by history, the founders, or common sense,” declared Schiff. “The Republican expert witness in the House would not make it, serious constitutional scholars would not make it, even Alan Dershowitz would not make it—at least he wouldn’t [have] in 1998.” 

Dershowitz, the retired Harvard professor and lawyer for Trump, said in the Clinton era that an impeachable offense “certainly doesn’t have to be a crime.” He has since changed his stance multiple times: In his 2018 book, The Case Against Impeaching Trump, he argued that impeachment does indeed require a crime, but most recently asserted that the offense may not necessarily be a crime, but must be “crime-like.” During Trump’s trial, he said that any quid pro quo put forward by Trump to secure his own re-election cannot be impeachable, because Trump thought his presidency would be in the “public interest.”

The defense concluded by reminding lawmakers that the election is a mere nine months away, imploring them to leave it to the voters. It is nothing more than “an effort to overturn the results of one election,” said Pat Cipollone, the head White House counsel, “and to try to interfere in the coming election that begins today in Iowa.”

Schiff rejected that argument, seizing on Republicans who have conceded that the House has proven its case and that Trump acted inappropriately. “History will not be kind to Donald Trump. If you find that the House has proved its case and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history,” he said. “But if you find the courage to stand up to him…your place will be among the Davids who took on Goliath.”

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‘Trump Might Trade Alaska To The Russians!’ Cries Schiff During Closing Impeachment Remarks

‘Trump Might Trade Alaska To The Russians!’ Cries Schiff During Closing Impeachment Remarks

Impeachment manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) argued on Monday during closing remarks that if President Trump isn’t removed from office, he “could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and leave Jared Kushner to run the country, delegating to him the decision whether they go to war.”

Last week, Schiff enraged Republicans after he claimed that Trump was threatening to put their ‘heads on a pike’ if they voted to impeach him – a claim that was immediately refuted by GOP lawmakers.

Because the strongest arguments require lies, innuendo and ‘parody’ to sell to your audience, right?


Tyler Durden

Mon, 02/03/2020 – 18:25

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Should Woke Social Media Barons Be The Arbiters Of Truth?

Should Woke Social Media Barons Be The Arbiters Of Truth?

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via EasyDNS.com,

On Friday night (Jan 31), a few days  after my  new book about deplatforming and cancel culture came out, the news broke that Twitter had permanently suspended Zerohedge for breaking the platform’s policies. The move was taken in response to an article penned by Buzzfeed writer Ryan Broderick which falsely accused Zerohedge of “doxxing” a Chinese coronavirus researcher. We have not amplified the false account by linking to it.

Excerpt from the Buzzfeed hit piece

Buzzfeed, which describes itself as a global news organization has 11 million likes on Facebook and more than 7 million followers on Twitter is run by Jonah Perretti, a Huffington Post co-founder and repeat-offender engaging in identity theft. The site has a long history of promulgating discredited Russian collusion narratives, multiple instances of plagiarism, and has been the subject of myriad defamation and copyright violation lawsuits.

Over the weekend the article’s author, Ryan Broderick, had his own social media effluences undergo a crowdsourced purity review and he didn’t exactly pass with flying colours. Old tweets surfaced, he’s the one doing the doxing in this one, tweeting out a Pastebin link inciting targeted harassment (a violation of Twitter rules, btw)

…and another revealing himself to be a self-professed hebephile (a hebephile is an adult with a sexual predilection toward pubescent adolescents, aged 11-14)..

Mr. President, can you please pass legislation legally defining the difference between us good-natured hebephiles and amoral pedophiles?

— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) August 29, 2012

…not to mention several entries in an old Tumblr which are…. disturbing. I don’t know… is it racist to say “All black people smell like cocoa butter” ? You tell me, and you have to decide without looking at whether the Twitter profile has a blue check mark.

Normally I wouldn’t pile on to highlight any individual’s mental kinks, but given the tendency on the part of the cancel culture crowd to stake a claim on the moral high ground as the basis for their rationale on who should have a platform and who shouldn’t, it somehow seems relevant.

This reason Broderick’s article and then Twitter’s using it as a basis for deplatforming Zerohedge is of concern is because…

Zerohedge is an easyDNS client.

This alone is not newsworthy. We have all sorts of clients from across the range of discourse. Both Antifa and BLM had their DNS here for years. Had either one of them faced a takedown like this, our response below would be the same (we did receive numerous requests to take down both sites over the years and they all received variations of our standard issue “go to hell” response).

But in the case of Zerohedge, that site routinely runs my own Guerrilla Capitalism posts, and before that several articles from my old Rebooting Capitalism blog.

I started following Zerohedge in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis because they were the only clueful financial / economic outlet that was not simply regurgitating CNBC / Bloomberg talking points. In these 10+ years since the financial crisis, there is a growing awareness outside of the mainstream financial press that the policy response was wrongheaded and harmful. It exacerbated wealth inequality via Cantillon Effects, the banker bailouts were a travesty whose consequences are only beginning to be felt, and it set the global economy up for another, even bigger credit crisis.

It is by definition contrarian to hold these views, and to do so publicly earns one derision and scorn. Zerohedge has been one of the main outlets giving a platform to these renegade views on economics and it’s no surprise to me that the mainstream media and finance/political/globalist establishment wouldn’t mind so much if Zerohedge somehow “went away”.

More than once, topics that mainstream pundits have dismissed as “conspiracy theory” on Zerohedge’s part have turned out to be, in reality, prescient calls which were then minimized as irrelevant by those same pundits.

Examples include

  • the rampant fraud in home foreclosures after the GFC

  • precious metals price rigging

  •  LIBOR rate rigging

I’ll admit, when Zerohedge ventures outside of economics / finance / markets they are outside their circle of competence and they tend to veer toward sensationalism (in a way that, say, Buzzfeed, CNN, Fox, HuffPo never sensationalize, amiright?)

However, nobody is perfect, and not getting everything exactly right is not a valid reason to deplatform them.

Big Tech platforms seek to insulate themselves from their decisions by cloaking subjective judgement calls in methodical sounding processes, like Facebook’s distinctly Maoist-sounding charge of “Inauthentic Behaviour” or Patreon’s asinine “Manifest Observable Behaviour”.

In the video Patreon CEO Jack Conte pleads his case that they’ve dreamed up a system which removes all subjectivity from the platform/deplatform equation. However, as I lay out in the book, it’s impossible to remove subjectivity from an abuse / AUP judgement call. It’s hard enough to get it right with respect to what is happening on your own system; that to expand your so-called “jurisdiction” to what happens off your platform is an act of hubristic grandiosity.

The reality is that nobody can remove their subjectivity from any process that involves a judgement call. A lot of these tech platforms seem to think it’s incumbent upon them to judge what is the mind of others, the intent of others, the possible outcome of other people’s actions. Not to mention that when they do, they are frequently, in essence, adjudicating international law.

In this case, Twitter suspended the account based on either an uninformed take of Zerohedge’s off-platform article (they never bothered to look to see that they didn’t dox anybody) or a completely subjective and kneejerk response to it.

Additionally, Twitter then removed the #FreeZerohedge hashtag from the trending list, as it hit #2 position.

It’s disturbing to consider the logical extensions that would arise in a world where all manner of private entities are taking it upon themselves to render judgement and level sanctions on others. If Twitter is any indication, it would occur with a complete absence of due process combined with a prevalence of favouritism and two-tier hypocrisy. One set of rules for the Blue Checks, and another set for the nobodies. It would quickly devolve into a dystopia even worse than that “Nose Dive” episode of Black Mirror.

The antidote to stopping the flow of “fake news”

Given the obvious hurdles of granting the power to literally define truth to an unelected, unaccountable clique of well connected and exceedingly wealthy mavens, the answer is simple, but not easy. There has to be a renewed refocus on teaching the lost art of critical thinking to all members of society, starting in school (at the latest) and continuing throughout.

When I combed through Ryan Broderick’s Substack and Medium posts, I found it entirely devoid of substance or critical thought. It was mostly self-referential pop-culture quips that deign to make newsworthy the incessant, never-ending brain farts that everybody experiences, but that more refined intellects aspire to attenuate.

I don’t like it when midwits like this have the ability to impact what I see in my social media intake. Neither should you.

Zerohedge unscathed. Deplatform backfires.

It’ll be interesting to see if Twitter reinstates Zerohedge’s account, especially after these revelations of hebephilism and racist tropes surrounding the original author have emerged. But in any case, Zerohedge will be largely unscathed by this. Over the weekend they confirmed to us that traffic their website was up markedly, over 40%, as a response to the increased publicity.  The number of hits from Twitter is higher now than before the ban. Exactly as one might have predicted after reading Chapter 4 of my book, “Does Deplatforming Even Work?“, to which the short answer is…. mostly, it doesn’t.

We have also suggested to them moving their microblogging feed to a Mastodon instance which would feed into Twitter, either via a reinstated official Zerohedge account or by anybody who so desires to create accounts there to syndicate the Mastodon feed.

All of the above, the increased traffic after the suspension, the ability to keep there core outlet (their website) unscathed, the move to a decentralized microblogging platform out of the control of woke messianic personalities is in line with the blueprint and approach outlined in Unassailable.

You may be thinking, “But Mark, shouldn’t you, the libertarian, recognize the right for companies to lord over their property?”

You would be right, and this is something I’ve wrestled with. Personally I’m wary of anyone who doesn’t wrestle with cognitive dissonance and who doesn’t constantly test their own beliefs with difficult edge cases. I mention this as well in the epilogue of Unassailable.

Where I eventually landed on this is: I don’t think this is the type of thing that mandates further government intervention as these incumbent entities are, once again, incentivizing their own disruption. If there’s one thing this era has taught us, it’s that no matter how large and entrenched any given 800 pound gorilla is, they can be swept aside into irrelevance with ever increasing speed.

If governments were to intervene, it would be more likely in the form of increasing regulatory burdens that increase the incumbents’ defensive moats than to guarantee freedom of expression for all.

*  *  *

Learn more about Mark E. Jeftovic’s second book Unassailable: Protect Yourself From Deplatform Attacks, Cancel Culture and other Online Disasters by clicking here, or pick up a copy from your preferred bookstore below.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 02/03/2020 – 18:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UoZ9wG Tyler Durden

Adam Schiff: ‘Trump Has Betrayed Our National Security, and He Will Do So Again’

Rep. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.), the lead impeachment manager, made a broad final plea in President Donald Trump’s Senate trial on Monday, urging lawmakers to listen to their moral compasses and vote to convict.

“He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again,” Schiff said on the Senate floor. “You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all. I do not ask you to convict him because truth or right or decency matters nothing to him, but because we have proven our case and it matters to you. Truth matters to you. Right matters to you. You are decent. He is not who you are.”

While the Wednesday Senate vote will almost certainly result in an acquittal, Schiff seemed to zero in on moderate Republicans who might toe the party line, thus putting to rest Trump’s assertion that his impeachment was an entirely partisan affair. 

“Every single vote, even a single vote by a single member, can change the course of history,” Schiff said. “It is said that a single man or woman of courage makes a majority. Is there one among you who will say enough?” 

Trump’s defense team emphasized the politically-charged nature of the moment, arguing on multiple occasions over the course of the trial that an impeachment drawn along partisan lines is an invalid one. Ken Starr, the independent counsel whose report led to former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, compared the process to “domestic war” and said that impeachments should thus be “powerfully bipartisan.” (It’s worth noting, however, that impeachment has always been a partisan exercise, regardless of the charges brought forth.)

The president’s defense shifted slightly over the course of the trial, with the initial focus resting on Trump’s purported innocence. Former national security adviser John Bolton changed the conversation when it was reported that, in his book, he says Trump directly withheld security assistance from Ukraine in order to pressure their president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, into announcing investigations targeting Trump’s political rivals. The House impeached Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress pertaining to his role in that scandal.

Trump’s team later called into question the impeachable nature of that offense, particularly since the articles of impeachment, as drawn, do not contain references to an actual crime. Schiff said that notion fails to withstand historical scrutiny, as “there were no statutory crimes when the Constitution” was ratified, he said. 

“The president had to look far and wide to find a defense lawyer to make such an argument, unsupported by history, the founders, or common sense,” declared Schiff. “The Republican expert witness in the House would not make it, serious constitutional scholars would not make it, even Alan Dershowitz would not make it—at least he wouldn’t [have] in 1998.” 

Dershowitz, the retired Harvard professor and lawyer for Trump, said in the Clinton era that an impeachable offense “certainly doesn’t have to be a crime.” He has since changed his stance multiple times: In his 2018 book, The Case Against Impeaching Trump, he argued that impeachment does indeed require a crime, but most recently asserted that the offense may not necessarily be a crime, but must be “crime-like.” During Trump’s trial, he said that any quid pro quo put forward by Trump to secure his own re-election cannot be impeachable, because Trump thought his presidency would be in the “public interest.”

The defense concluded by reminding lawmakers that the election is a mere nine months away, imploring them to leave it to the voters. It is nothing more than “an effort to overturn the results of one election,” said Pat Cipollone, the head White House counsel, “and to try to interfere in the coming election that begins today in Iowa.”

Schiff rejected that argument, seizing on Republicans who have conceded that the House has proven its case and that Trump acted inappropriately. “History will not be kind to Donald Trump. If you find that the House has proved its case and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history,” he said. “But if you find the courage to stand up to him…your place will be among the Davids who took on Goliath.”

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How 3 Past Presidents Dealt With Scandal During Their State of the Union Addresses

A State of the Union Address during the middle of an impeachment trial? How unprecedented is that? Not at all, turns out.

Twenty years and two weeks ago, about halfway through a monthlong Senate trial that would end with two verdicts of not guilty, President Bill Clinton strode like a gladiator into a joint session of Congress and unfurled an almost comically triumphalist 78-minute stemwinder to near-constant applause.

Craziest of all? He didn’t even mention impeachment. It really was the damndest thing. “That year,” Clinton speechwriter Michael Waldman recently recalled, “the State of the Union was…weird.”

From Clinton to Ronald Reagan to Richard Nixon, Donald Trump’s predecessors have had their big nights dogged by various scandals and tribulations, to which they variously responded with defiance, contrition, or gleeful disregard.

Knowing what we know about Trump’s rhetorical style, we can guess he probably won’t pull a 1999 Bubba on Tuesday night. But seeing how the other presidents handled adversity is an interesting benchmark, and may just remind us of the gravity and/or fleeting nature of some of America’s noisiest White House scandals.

Presented in reverse chronological order:

President: William Jefferson Clinton

Date: January 19, 1999 (seventh year in office)

Scandal: Known as the “Lewinsky Affair,” because the entire impeachment case stemmed from a sexual relationship Clinton had (and subsequently lied about) with 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr, seen more recently defending Trump against impeachment, originally started investigating the president in 1994 over a suspicious-looking real estate deal Bill and Hillary Clinton had negotiated with the Whitewater Development Corporation before they moved to Washington. Clinton was charged by the House of Representatives with perjury and obstruction of justice.

Timing: Halfway through the Senate trial.

Referencing the Unpleasantness: He…just didn’t. Instead, it was a never-ending list of un-humble brags and ridiculously specific micro-programs. About as close as Clinton got to acknowledging the elephant in the room was this clever high-road bit at the end:

We must all be profoundly grateful for the magnificent achievement of our forebears in this century. Yet perhaps, in the daily press of events, in the clash of controversy, we don’t see our own time for what it truly is, a new dawn for America.

A hundred years from tonight, another American president will stand in this place and report on the state of the Union. He—or she—he or she will look back on a 21st century shaped in so many ways by the decisions we make here and now. So let it be said of us then that we were thinking not only of our time but of their time, that we reached as high as our ideals, that we put aside our divisions and found a new hour of healing and hopefulness, that we joined together to serve and strengthen the land we love.

Biggest Policy Focus of the Speech: Saving Social Security and Medicare in advance of baby boomers retiring.

How’d That One Go?: Sorry, can’t hear you; too busy sobbing.

Other Retrospective LOLs: “We also must be ready for the 21st century from its very first moment, by solving the so-called Y2K computer problem…[We need] to make sure that this Y2K computer bug will be remembered as the last headache of the 20th century, not the first crisis of the 21st.”

Random Storm Cloud: “For nearly a decade, Iraq has defied its obligations to destroy its weapons of terror and the missiles to deliver them. America will continue to contain Saddam, and we will work for the day when Iraq has a government worthy of its people.”

President: Ronald Wilson Reagan

Date: January 27, 1987 (seventh year in office)

Scandal: The Iran-Contra Affair, in which administration officials secretly sold arms to Iran as part of an attempt to free seven U.S. hostages in Lebanon, and used the proceeds to secretly fund the opposition Contras in Nicaragua. All such actions had been explicitly prohibited by Congress. The various investigations would eventually lead to 11 convictions, though most were either vacated or resulted in their perpetrators being pardoned. Reagan’s involvement is a source of speculation to this day.

Timing: The scandal had broken November 3, 1986; Reagan appointed John Tower to lead an investigative commission three weeks later, and Congress on January 7 had launched a special committee to look into the scheme.

Referencing the Unpleasantness: Qualified contrition, with a dash of defiance:

But though we’ve made much progress, I have one major regret: I took a risk with regard to our action in Iran. It did not work, and for that I assume full responsibility. The goals were worthy. I do not believe it was wrong to try to establish contacts with a country of strategic importance or to try to save lives. And certainly it was not wrong to try to secure freedom for our citizens held in barbaric captivity. But we did not achieve what we wished, and serious mistakes were made in trying to do so. We will get to the bottom of this, and I will take whatever action is called for. But in debating the past, we must not deny ourselves the successes of the future. Let it never be said of this generation of Americans that we became so obsessed with failure that we refused to take risks that could further the cause of peace and freedom in the world. Much is at stake here, and the Nation and the world are watching to see if we go forward together in the national interest or if we let partisanship weaken us. And let there be no mistake about American policy: We will not sit idly by if our interests or our friends in the Middle East are threatened, nor will we yield to terrorist blackmail.

And now, ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, why don’t we get to work?

Biggest Policy Focus of the Speech: Stopping Commies.

How’d That One Go?: Pret-tay, pretty good.

Other Retrospective LOLs: “For starters, the federal deficit is outrageous. For years I’ve asked that we stop pushing onto our children the excesses of our government. And what the Congress finally needs to do is pass a constitutional amendment that mandates a balanced budget and forces government to live within its means. States, cities, and the families of America balance their budgets. Why can’t we?”

Random Storm Cloud: “My friends, it’s my duty as president to say to you again tonight that there is no surer way to lose freedom than to lose our resolve. Today the brave people of Afghanistan are showing that resolve. The Soviet Union says it wants a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan, yet it continues a brutal war and props up a regime whose days are clearly numbered. We are ready to support a political solution that guarantees the rapid withdrawal of all Soviet troops and genuine self-determination for the Afghan people.”

President: Richard Milhous Nixon

Date: January 30, 1974 (sixth—and final—year in office)

Scandal: It‘s the reason we add the suffix “gate” to every damned thing.

Timing: The impeachment process against Nixon had started the previous October, after the Saturday Night Massacre series of presidentially prompted firings and resignations of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox over at the Justice Department. The formal impeachment proceeding was initiated by the House Judiciary Committee just one week after the SOTU.

Referencing the Unpleasantness: Nixon, he wasn’t so good at making accurate predictions in his speeches.

I would like to add a personal word with regard to an issue that has been of great concern to all Americans over the past year. I refer, of course, to the investigations of the so-called Watergate affair. As you know, I have provided to the special prosecutor voluntarily a great deal of material. I believe that I have provided all the material that he needs to conclude his investigations and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent.

I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough.

[many such paragraphs]

And I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do for the people of the United States.

Biggest Policy Focus of the Speech: Energy independence.

How’d That One Go?: Enjoy this photograph from the California of my childhood.

Other Retrospective LOLs: “As we turn to the year ahead we hear once again the familiar voice of the perennial prophets of gloom telling us now that because of the need to fight inflation, because of the energy shortage, America may be headed for a recession. Let me speak to that issue head on. There will be no recession in the United States of America.” Whoops!

Random Storm Cloud: “The 17-year rise in crime has been stopped. We can confidently say today that we are finally beginning to win the war against crime…A massive campaign against drug abuse has been organized. And the rate of new heroin addiction, the most vicious threat of all, is decreasing rather than increasing.”

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