Month: May 2020

“It’s All Bullsh*t” – 3 Leaks That Sink The COVID Narrative

“It’s All Bullsh*t” – 3 Leaks That Sink The COVID Narrative

Tyler Durden

Sun, 05/31/2020 – 14:00

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

In recent days a series of leaks across the globe have further shown the “official line” on coronavirus does not hold water…

The science of the coronavirus is not disputed. It is well documented and openly admitted:

  • Most people won’t get the virus.

  • Most of the people who get it won’t display symptoms.

  • Most of the people who display symptoms will only be mildly sick.

  • Most of the people with severe symptoms will never be critically ill.

  • And most of the people who get critically ill will survive.

This is borne out by the numerous serological studies which show, again and again, that the infection fatality ratio is on par with flu.

There is no science – and increasingly little rational discussion – to justify the lockdown measures and overall sense of global panic.

Nevertheless, it’s always good to get official acknowledgement of the truth, even if it has to be leaked.

Here are three leaks showing that those in power know that the coronavirus poses no threat, and in no way justifies the lockdown that is going to destroy the livelihoods of so many.

1. “IT’S ALL BULLSHIT!”

On May 26th Dr Alexander Myasnikov, Russia’s head of coronavirus information, gave an interview to former-Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak in which he apparently let slip his true feelings.

Believing the interview over, and the camera turned off, Myasnikov said:

It’s all bullshit […] It’s all exaggerated. It’s an acute respiratory disease with minimal mortality […] Why has the whole world been destroyed? That I don’t know,”

2. “COVID-19 CANNOT BE DESCRIBED AS A GENERALLY DANGEROUS DISEASE”

According to an e-mail leaked to Danish newspaper Politiken, the Danish Health Authority disagree with their government’s approach to the coronavirus. They cover it in two articles here and here (For those who don’t speak Danish, thelocal.dk have covered the story too).

There’s a lot of interesting information there, not least of which is the clear implication that politicians appear to be pressing the scientific advisors to overstate the danger (they did the same thing in the UK), along with the decision of some civil servants to withhold data from the public until after the lockdown had been extended.

But by far the most important quote is from a March 15th e-mail [our emphasis]:

The Danish Health Authority continues to consider that covid-19 cannot be described as a generally dangerous disease, as it does not have either a usually serious course or a high mortality rate,”

On March 12th the Danish parliament passed an emergency law which – among many other things – decreased the power of the Danish Health Authority, demoting it from a “regulatory authority” to just an “advisory” one.

3. “A GLOBAL FALSE ALARM”

Earlier this month, on May 9th, a report was leaked to the German alternate media magazine Tichys Einblick titled “Analysis of the Crisis Management”.

The report was commissioned by the German department of the interior, but then its findings were ignored, prompting one of the authors to release it through non-official channels.

The fall out of that, including attacks on the authors and minimising of the report’s findings, is all very fascinating and we highly recommend this detailed report on Strategic Culture (or read the full report here in German).

We’re going to focus on just the reports conclusions, including [our emphasis]:

  • The dangerousness of Covid-19 was overestimated: probably at no point did the danger posed by the new virus go beyond the normal level.

  • The danger is obviously no greater than that of many other viruses. There is no evidence that this was more than a false alarm.

  • During the Corona crisis the State has proved itself as one of the biggest producers of Fake News.

After being attacked in the press, and suspended from his job, the leaker and other authors of the report released a joint statement, calling on the government to respond to their findings.

*  *  *

If the current crisis was being approached rationally by all parties, these leaks would seal the debate. Evidence is piling up that the people in charge knew, from the very beginning, that the virus was not dangerous. The question remaining is: Why are these leaks happening now?

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3dm2jYy Tyler Durden

Protesting Police Violence Is Critical. But Why Are the Social Distance Shamers Suddenly So Quiet?

The protesters taking to the streets to demand justice for the killing of George Floyd certainly have a righteous cause. They are, however, breaking just about every rule of social distancing. And many of the most committed voices in support of continuing the aggressive, painful measure to contain the spread of coronavirus suddenly have nothing to say about it.

A month ago, when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) ended the state’s COVID-19 lockdown and allowed gyms, restaurants, nail salons, and other businesses to reopen, many in the mainstream media accused him of wanton disregard for human life. The Atlantic described the state’s relaxation of the very strictest social distancing measures as “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice.”

When Florida beaches reopened, it was the same story. CNN highlighted the activism of a local man who had dressed as the grim reaper and was warning sun-bathers that people would die unless they went home. Referencing the stereotype of the Florida man as a reckless and moronic thrill-seeker, The Washington Post wrote that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was essentially “standing astride the alligator cage, hollering at the rest of the country to check out what’s about to happen.”

Photos and videos of people gathering in parks in New York City, beaches in California, and public places elsewhere, have generated thunderous denunciation on social media for the past few weeks. Shaming people for failing to socially distance is now common practice for health authorities, government officials, amateur social media sleuths, and of course, many journalists in the mainstream press. (There has also been some welcome pushback.)

It is no accident that the term Karen, a derisive nickname for a type of snitch who summons the authorities to intervene in trivial matters, has suddenly become culturally ubiquitous. Karens are calling out social distancing fails on social media. Karens are on cable news scolding the unmasked. Karens are giving press conferences threatening those who violate stay-at-home orders with arrest.

It’s hard to imagine how that can continue.

In their formal statements, a lot of public officials are (correctly) endorsing the protesters’ concerns about police violence, and many have condemned the street violence that occurred during the protests.

But what we are not seeing is widespread condemnation of the protesters on what might have been the most obvious point of criticism: They are manifestly violating the social distancing orders. Again, if we are to believe the earlier, dire warnings from public health officials about what would happen if lockdowns were relaxed too quickly, people who fail to practice aggressive social distancing will spread the disease and get others killed. By the logic of lockdown supporters, even the protesters who are practicing strict non-violence have a lot of blood on their hands.

And make no mistake, the protests unfolding all over the country are violating quarantine in any number of ways. Remember that many places are still under stay-at-home orders, and people are only supposed to go outside for essential work or allowable recreation in small numbers. On the plus side, some protesters are thankfully wearing masks, and their activities are unfolding outdoors, which are both factors that work to stop the spread of the virus. But the sheer number of people involved, packed tightly together, often engaging in high-spread activities—like yelling—certainly override much of the benefit. Even Denver protesters, whose comparatively restrained demonstration involved gathering in a public place and lying prone on the ground for eight minutes—the amount of time Floyd’s alleged killer had a knee on Floyd’s neck—shouted “I can’t breathe,” the entire time.

Holding police accountable is a very important cause. But the logic of the lockdowns was that they were so necessary to stem the spread of COVID-19 that they should override other pressing concerns. Small business owners were forced to shutter, and many will close permanently, because policymakers ordained that slowing the pandemic was the top priority. Daring to reopen was an “experiment in human sacrifice,” a dangerous practice akin to riding an alligator while yelling yeehaw. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has fought to prevent churches from reopening to the public, characteristically said the protesters were “rightfully outraged.” He did not scold them to go back inside before they get their grandparents killed.

Media and government experts who fail to consistently call out social distancing violations risk giving the impression that their commitment to zealous enforcement of public health measures wasn’t as absolute as they claimed. It turns out they are willing to make exceptions for their preferred causes. Perhaps those who previously went overboard on the social distance shaming should admit this was a mistake. The current silence of the Karens is deafening.

 

 

 

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D.C. Cops Kept Herding Protesters Into Harm’s Way

As people around the country gathered Saturday to protest police brutality and racism—most recently evidenced by the murders of Minneapolis resident George Floyd and Louisville resident Breonna Taylor—the District of Columbia saw a day of passionate and peaceful demonstration. But by late Saturday night, a mass of militarized cops and a small group of destructive rioters transformed the streets around the White House to one of tense and often chaotic action, as cops and protesters took turns gaining ground and a few dudes with baseball bats smashed in nearby business windows.

When I got there around 10:30 p.m., protesters had recently begun moving back part of a barrier that law enforcement had erected close to 16th Street NW, a road that butts up against Lafayette Square—the public park just north of the White House—about a block up from where the barricade battle was playing out.

A few protesters would move a piece of the barricade forward, the rest of the group would come on up too, and then everyone would stand chanting—”I can’t breathe,” “No justice, no peace,” “Black lives matter,” or “Hands up, don’t shoot”—until something spooked the line of baton-wielding, shield-carrying officers up the street into marching forward in a unison line and chanting “move back, move back, move back.”

This went on for roughly 30 minutes in a fairly controlled manner. Under the neon lights of the AFL-CIO sign and backdropped by the Washington Monument, both sides breached and then retreated from the intersection of I and 16th St NW at least a couple of times. There was an occasional stream of pepper spray from the cops, or a stray object—mostly plastic bottles and other soft things, though at least one hubcap—flung from somewhere on the other side.

The fraught but symbiotic energy might have held for a while—but then the SUV caught on fire.

I don’t know who torched the thing, which was parked not quite a block north of the contested intersection. But I watched the vehicle go from having little more than smoke pouring out its window to being engulfed in flames that reached up past the first story of the neighboring building—as cops inexplicably marched everyone toward the flaming vehicle.

At this point, there were police blocking off three out of four exits to the area and a rapidly growing fire near the fourth.

Protesters urged each other to stay away from the vehicle. A number of folks started making their way down the most open street—only to be told by the line of cops there that they had to turn around and exit the other way.

“This is some fucking bullshit, you’re trying to box us in, really?” one woman shouted. A few other people tried to explain to the cops that their colleagues were also saying no exit at their ends and that there was a car on fire blocking the other exit.

The far line of cops seemed surprised to learn of the fire (which couldn’t yet be seen from their vantage point) and began talking on their radios. It seemed promising, until their next move—starting a unified march forward. “Move back, move back, move back…”

For far from the last time that evening, the lines of cops were advancing on all sides of the crowd and not letting anyone out from any side. The effect was to force socially-distanced protesters in and make the crowd get closer and closer together (increasing the risk of COVID-19 spread, though a majority of protesters and cops—but far from all in either group—were wearing masks). It also meant ushering people toward, rather than away, from areas that had been rendered dangerous and difficult to breathe in by virtue of smoke, fires, pepper spray, tear gas, and flash-bangs.

Throughout the night, officers repeatedly refused requests from people just trying to leave the protest area, only stopping just short of forcing people to trample one another.

For all of that, D.C. law enforcement still seems to have behaved better than did police in many cities with protests yesterday. Footage from New York City and elsewhere shows cops acting in myriad ways with total disregard for protesters’ safety or rights.

In D.C., the lines of local cops marched and drove vehicles backward from crowds on multiple occasions, retreating to avoid direct confrontation with advancing protesters. Police on the edges of their marching lines often talked politely with protesters who had questions and offered firm but non-threatening instructions to back up when necessary. And cops and protesters at the front of standoff lines repeatedly refrained from actual physical contact, despite getting perilously near. The one direct skirmish I did see between a few cops and a protester involved light pushing and then both sides backing down and moving on.

Several times, I saw officers talk hotheaded colleagues out of escalating a confrontation. In one instance, this involved an officer who got really mad that someone was “disrespecting the [U.S.] flag” by raising another flag on the pole. It had gotten sort of stuck and couldn’t be read anyway at this point. But it took several cops to convince their buddy to let it go, with one eventually putting his arm around the aggro cop’s shoulder and walking him away as the flag guy shouted “suck my fucking dick.”

Much credit for the not-as-horrific vibe from D.C. cops must go to the protesters themselves. People were testing limits but, with very few exceptions, ultimately complying with orders from police and trying to keep things from getting out of control.

Around 11:30 p.m., a firetruck finally came to deal with the flaming SUV, which was blocked by a line of cops. Protesters began making their way from Farragut Square (where the lines of cops had eventually driven the crowd on I St) toward the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) next to the White House. An organizer encouraged people to follow her and keep their energy up.

As I straggled behind the crowd, I heard a few young men talking about breaking into a jewelry store. “You want something from Tiffany’s?” one said to another, laughing.

In front of the EEOB, the woman who had been leading the crowd yelled for “white allies to the front,” and people came forward to form a line behind which the rest of the crowd gathered. Facing police, who stood behind a gate, the crowd chanted: “I can’t breathe.”

After a while, I walked back toward Farragut Square and watched a group of about six people smash in the windows of the building where Twitter’s D.C. office is located. It isn’t marked as Twitter, and it’s unclear if those smashing windows knew it; the signs on the ground floor advertised The Oval Room. On the windows, protesters painted an anarchy symbol, “Fuck 12,” and “The rich are no longer safe.”

The window-smashing gang was occasionally cheered on by a few passersby. But those leading the crowds and chants encouraged people to stay away from them, and for the most part, people did.

And as more of the crowd started making its way back from the EEOB, the window-smashers began to move north. Up the street, I saw one young man standing alone with a bat across from Farragut Square, smashing in the front window and door of a Subway shop. Another man approached him, they went inside, and came out with a few bags of potato chips.

By this point, however, alarms were going off all over the place. A few small fires had been set (by whom I’m not sure; I did see protesters trying to put them out). And lines of police started boxing the crowd in again.

At one end, D.C. cops threw flash-bangs and deployed tear gas into the crowd. At the other end, they refused to let people fleeing the chaos actually leave. People kept running with nowhere to go, as the whole area filled with an eye-stinging smog of tear gas and smoke that made breathing through masks difficult.

As two lines of cops marching from opposing sides got within about 10 feet of one another, they finally let protesters start escaping from the sides, then joined forces to start marching people further and further back.

By this point, around 12:30 a.m., the crowd near the White House was thinning out. Some protesters reportedly gathered and had a confrontation with cops by the Lincoln Memorial.

This was the second night in a row of protests in the D.C. area, joining protests across the country. D.C.’s police chief said Sunday that 17 people were arrested last night and one police officer had suffered a leg fracture.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said on Twitter that D.C. police “will always protect DC and all who are in it whether I agree with them (such as those exercising their First Amendment Right) or those I don’t (namely, @realdonaldtrump).” Bowser added that she stands with “people peacefully exercising their First Amendment Right after the murder of #GeorgeFloyd & hundreds of years of institutional racism.”

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D.C. Cops Kept Herding Protesters Into Harm’s Way

As people around the country gathered Saturday to protest police brutality and racism—most recently evidenced by the murders of Minneapolis resident George Floyd and Louisville resident Breonna Taylor—the District of Columbia saw a day of passionate and peaceful demonstration. But by late Saturday night, a mass of militarized cops and a small group of destructive rioters transformed the streets around the White House to one of tense and often chaotic action, as cops and protesters took turns gaining ground and a few dudes with baseball bats smashed in nearby business windows.

When I got there around 10:30 p.m., protesters had recently begun moving back part of a barrier that law enforcement had erected close to 16th Street NW, a road that butts up against Lafayette Square—the public park just north of the White House—about a block up from where the barricade battle was playing out.

A few protesters would move a piece of the barricade forward, the rest of the group would come on up too, and then everyone would stand chanting—”I can’t breathe,” “No justice, no peace,” “Black lives matter,” or “Hands up, don’t shoot”—until something spooked the line of baton-wielding, shield-carrying officers up the street into marching forward in a unison line and chanting “move back, move back, move back.”

This went on for roughly 30 minutes in a fairly controlled manner. Under the neon lights of the AFL-CIO sign and backdropped by the Washington Monument, both sides breached and then retreated from the intersection of I and 16th St NW at least a couple of times. There was an occasional stream of pepper spray from the cops, or a stray object—mostly plastic bottles and other soft things, though at least one hubcap—were flung from somewhere on the other side.

The fraught but symbiotic energy might have held for a while—but then the SUV caught on fire.

I don’t know who torched the thing, which was parked not quite a block north of the contested intersection. But I watched the vehicle go from having little more than smoke pouring out its window to being engulfed in flames that reached up past the first story of the neighboring building—as cops inexplicably marched everyone toward the flaming vehicle.

At this point, there were police blocking off three out of four exits to the area and a rapidly growing fire near the fourth.

Protesters urged each other to stay away from the vehicle. A number of folks started making their way down the most open street—only to be told by the line of cops there that they had to turn around and exit the other way.

“This is some fucking bullshit, you’re trying to box us in, really?” one woman shouted. A few other people tried to explain to the cops that their colleagues were also saying no exit at their ends and that there was a car on fire blocking the other exit.

The far line of cops seemed surprised to learn of the fire (which couldn’t yet be seen from their vantage point) and began talking on their radios. It seemed promising, until their next move—starting a unified march forward. “Move back, move back, move back…”

For far from the last time that evening, the lines of cops were advancing on all sides of the crowd and not letting anyone out from any side. The effect was to force socially-distanced protesters in and make the crowd get closer and closer together (increasing the risk of COVID-19 spread, though a majority of protesters and cops—but far from all in either group—were wearing masks). It also meant ushering people toward, rather than away, from areas that had been rendered dangerous and difficult to breathe in by virtue of smoke, fires, pepper spray, tear gas, and flash-bangs.

Throughout the night, officers repeatedly refused requests from people just trying to leave the protest area, only stopping just short of forcing people to trample one another.

For all of that, D.C. law enforcement still seems to have behaved better than did police in many cities with protests yesterday. Footage from New York City and elsewhere shows cops acting in myriad ways with total disregard for protesters’ safety or rights.

In D.C., the lines of local cops marched and drove vehicles backward from crowds on multiple occasions, retreating to avoid direct confrontation with advancing protesters. Police on the edges of their marching lines often talked politely with protesters who had questions and offered firm but non-threatening instructions to back up when necessary. And cops and protesters at the front of standoff lines repeatedly refrained from actual physical contact, despite getting perilously near. The one direct skirmish I did see between a few cops and a protester involved light pushing and then both sides backing down and moving on.

Several times, I saw officers talk hotheaded colleagues out of escalating a confrontation. In one instance, this involved an officer who got really mad that someone was “disrespecting the [U.S.] flag” by raising another flag on the pole. It had gotten sort of stuck and couldn’t be read anyway at this point. But it took several cops to convince their buddy to let it go, with one eventually putting his arm around the aggro cop’s shoulder and walking him away as the flag guy shouted “suck my fucking dick.”

Much credit for the not-as-horrific vibe from D.C. cops must go to the protesters themselves. People were testing limits but, with very few exceptions, ultimately complying with orders from police and trying to keep things from getting out of control.

Around 11:30 p.m., a firetruck finally came to deal with the flaming SUV, which was blocked by a line of cops. Protesters began making their way from Farragut Square (where the lines of cops had eventually driven the crowd on I St) toward the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) next to the White House. An organizer encouraged people to follow her and keep their energy up.

As I straggled behind the crowd, I heard a few young men talking about breaking into a jewelry store. “You want something from Tiffany’s?” one said to another, laughing.

In front of the EEOB, the woman who had been leading the crowd yelled for “white allies to the front,” and people came forward to form a line behind which the rest of the crowd gathered. Facing police, who stood behind a gate, the crowd chanted: “I can’t breathe.”

After a while, I walked back toward Farragut Square and watched a group of about six people smash in the windows of the building where Twitter’s D.C. office is located. It isn’t marked as Twitter, and it’s unclear if those smashing windows knew it; the signs on the ground floor advertised The Oval Room. On the windows, protesters painted an anarchy symbol, “Fuck 12,” and “The rich are no longer safe.”

The window-smashing gang was occasionally cheered on by a few passersby. But those leading the crowds and chants encouraged people to stay away from them, and for the most part, people did.

And as more of the crowd started making its way back from the EEOB, the window-smashers began to move north. Up the street, I saw one young man standing alone with a bat across from Farragut Square, smashing in the front window and door of a Subway shop. Another man approached him, they went inside, and came out with a few bags of potato chips.

By this point, however, alarms were going off all over the place. A few small fires had been set (by whom I’m not sure; I did see protesters trying to put them out). And lines of police started boxing the crowd in again.

At one end, D.C. cops threw flash-bangs and deployed tear gas into the crowd. At the other end, they refused to let people fleeing the chaos actually leave. People kept running with nowhere to go, as the whole area filled with an eye-stinging smog of tear gas and smoke that made breathing through masks difficult.

As two lines of cops marching from opposing sides got within about 10 feet of one another, they finally let protesters start escaping from the sides, then joined forces to start marching people further and further back.

By this point, around 12:30 a.m., the crowd near the White House was thinning out. Some protesters reportedly gathered and had a confrontation with cops by the Lincoln Memorial.

This was the second night in a row of protests in the D.C. area, joining protests across the country. D.C.’s police chief said Sunday that 17 people were arrested last night and one police officer had suffered a leg fracture.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said on Twitter that D.C. police “will always protect DC and all who are in it whether I agree with them (such as those exercising their First Amendment Right) or those I don’t (namely, @realdonaldtrump).” Bowser added that she stands with “people peacefully exercising their First Amendment Right after the murder of #GeorgeFloyd & hundreds of years of institutional racism.”

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Nation’s Cops Seem Determined To Demonstrate Why People Are Protesting Them in the First Place

It’s already a surreal scene: The National Guard and local police are marching through a leafy neighborhood in Minneapolis. Then the shooting starts.

Tanya Kerssen was standing on her front porch filming the procession of armored vehicles and riot gear–clad troops rolling through Whittier, a neighborhood a few blocks north of where protests over the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, had recently turned into riots. The National Guard had been called in to help restore order and enforce an 8 p.m. curfew set by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Kerssen was complying with that order—the curfew applies only to public spaces, not private ones like residences, porches, or front yards—but she became a target anyway.

“Light ’em up!” someone can be heard shouting in the video. Then bean bag rounds and paint canisters are fired at Kerssen and others, who quickly flee inside.

The video is shocking, but it was hardly the only scene of apparently unnecessary policy brutality to be captured by smartphones and TV news cameras on Saturday, as peaceful protests in many cities across the country turned violent once again. Rather than helping to lower the tensions and restore peace, however, aggressive police tactics are likely going to worsen the situation—after all, the protests began because Minneapolis cops used unnecessarily brutal tactics to subdue and ultimately kill Floyd.

In Atlanta, cops smashed a car’s windows and tasered the occupants while TV cameras rolled.

In New York City, a cop ripped off a protester’s face mask to pepper-spray him at point-blank range while the protester had his hands raised to surrender.

And elsewhere in New York City, cops literally drove into a crowd of protesters.

Reporters who were on the scene to cover protests in many cities were not spared. Cops in Minneapolis shot rubber bullets at an MSNBC camera crew during a live shot with reporter Ali Velshi, fired tear gas at reporters, and reportedly shot out the windows of a car driven by a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter, bloodying the man inside.

It is important to remember that photos and videos of clashes between protesters and police can omit critical context. They are snapshots of wide-ranging and chaotic scenes, and often do not tell the whole story.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the police do not have a monopoly on senseless violence. Protesters looting private businesses, setting fire to buildings, and destroying public property do not get a pass for their actions. Such violence should stop.

Still, it is exactly when tensions are running so high that the police, National Guard, and other law enforcement personnel must keep their cool. Driving a squad car through a group of protesters is never justified. Neither is firing potentially harmful projectiles at Americans who are peacefully standing on their own property, exercising their First Amendment rights.

Officials in charge of the law enforcement responses to this weekend’s protests could learn a lesson from Chris Swanson, the sheriff of Michigan’s Genesee County. Swanson was caught on video Saturday removing his helmet and telling his officers to lay down their batons. He spoke directly to a group of protesters, encouraging peaceful protest and denouncing the actions of cops like the ones who killed George Floyd.

 

Enforcing a curfew is not a license to commit violent acts. Doing so will only encourage more violence. If cops show up to today’s protests looking for another fight—or behaving like an occupying army—they are likely to find one.

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Nation’s Cops Seem Determined To Demonstrate Why People Are Protesting Them in the First Place

It’s already a surreal scene: The National Guard and local police are marching through a leafy neighborhood in Minneapolis. Then the shooting starts.

Tanya Kerssen was standing on her front porch filming the procession of armored vehicles and riot gear–clad troops rolling through Whittier, a neighborhood a few blocks north of where protests over the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, had recently turned into riots. The National Guard had been called in to help restore order and enforce an 8 p.m. curfew set by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Kerssen was complying with that order—the curfew applies only to public spaces, not private ones like residences, porches, or front yards—but she became a target anyway.

“Light ’em up!” someone can be heard shouting in the video. Then bean bag rounds and paint canisters are fired at Kerssen and others, who quickly flee inside.

The video is shocking, but it was hardly the only scene of apparently unnecessary policy brutality to be captured by smartphones and TV news cameras on Saturday, as peaceful protests in many cities across the country turned violent once again. Rather than helping to lower the tensions and restore peace, however, aggressive police tactics are likely going to worsen the situation—after all, the protests began because Minneapolis cops used unnecessarily brutal tactics to subdue and ultimately kill Floyd.

In Atlanta, cops smashed a car’s windows and tasered the occupants while TV cameras rolled.

In New York City, a cop ripped off a protester’s face mask to pepper-spray him at point-blank range while the protester had his hands raised to surrender.

And elsewhere in New York City, cops literally drove into a crowd of protesters.

Reporters who were on the scene to cover protests in many cities were not spared. Cops in Minneapolis shot rubber bullets at an MSNBC camera crew during a live shot with reporter Ali Velshi, fired tear gas at reporters, and reportedly shot out the windows of a car driven by a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter, bloodying the man inside.

It is important to remember that photos and videos of clashes between protesters and police can omit critical context. They are snapshots of wide-ranging and chaotic scenes, and often do not tell the whole story.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the police do not have a monopoly on senseless violence. Protesters looting private businesses, setting fire to buildings, and destroying public property do not get a pass for their actions. Such violence should stop.

Still, it is exactly when tensions are running so high that the police, National Guard, and other law enforcement personnel must keep their cool. Driving a squad car through a group of protesters is never justified. Neither is firing potentially harmful projectiles at Americans who are peacefully standing on their own property, exercising their First Amendment rights.

Officials in charge of the law enforcement responses to this weekend’s protests could learn a lesson from Chris Swanson, the sheriff of Michigan’s Genesee County. Swanson was caught on video Saturday removing his helmet and telling his officers to lay down their batons. He spoke directly to a group of protesters, encouraging peaceful protest and denouncing the actions of cops like the ones who killed George Floyd.

 

Enforcing a curfew is not a license to commit violent acts. Doing so will only encourage more violence. If cops show up to today’s protests looking for another fight—or behaving like an occupying army—they are likely to find one.

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“Get The Facts”: How Twitter Is Making The Case Against Itself And Free Speech

“Get The Facts”: How Twitter Is Making The Case Against Itself And Free Speech

Tyler Durden

Sun, 05/31/2020 – 13:10

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

President Donald Trump has continued to tweet on cracking down on the riots as well as controversy over his tweets on Twitter.  Like former Vice President Joe Biden, he is now calling for the outright elimination of Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act.  While supported by many liberal members and commentators, Twitter continues to build a case against itself – and ultimately free speech on the Internet.

Free speech, our defining right in the United States, seems to be dangling on social media. Twitter added warnings on tweets from President Trump, marking a major escalation of speech controls on the internet, something that has been demanded by Democrats. While the company clarified that Trump did not violate the rules, it still intervened between him and all his followers to add its own view of the truth on a political controversy.

The action against Trump on his mail voting tweets is the realization of the fear of free speech advocates. People sign up for updates from Trump, not Twitter, but the company decided to force his 80 million followers to view its own position on this issue. Imagine if a telephone company listened for errant political statements on calls to flag its business concerns.

Unfortunately, Trump added his own threat to free speech by pledging to “shut down” Twitter and others if they do not change their positions. It is akin to denouncing people without fire detectors by threatening to burn down their homes. His new executive order would seek to eliminate key liability protections for social media companies while calling for federal investigations into political bias. But without legislative support, such a crackdown on these companies is highly unlikely to succeed. However, Congress has been angling to curb online free speech for years.

Curtailing free speech has now become an article of faith in many circles. News host Don Lemon told Twitter chief executive officer Jack Dorsey to “stop hiding behind the First Amendment” and censor Trump. Democrats such as Representative Adam Schiff sent letters to social media platforms to demand greater regulation and removal of certain statements that are seen as misleading, which many of us warned is a potential abuse of free speech. Former Vice President Joe Biden added his voice to the call this week for Twitter to remove any statements deemed to be false.

The choice to target a political statement on Twitter was no accident. This is precisely the type of statement that Democrats have been searching for years with threats of a federal takeover. During one hearing, Senator Mark Warner boomed that “the era of the Wild West in social media is coming to an end.” That intolerable Wild West is the existence of an area of relatively unregulated free speech. Indeed, like those pioneers of democracy, many people have gone on social media to speak their minds openly.

That frontier of free speech may now be vanishing. On the mail voting tweets, Twitter dispensed with any discernible standard to intervene in political exchanges. Speech regulation will evidently go back in time to retroactively mark unreliable views. The website archive service called Wayback Machine claims it will label articles as “disinformation” when faced with views it deems false or misleading. Now there will be both censorship and retroactive action taken against past thoughts.

The mail voting tweets from Trump are based on a widespread view of the dangers of using such a system on a large scale basis in an election. This concern was certainly raised when multiple ballots for a primary race next week were mailed mistakenly to several voters across Pittsburgh and Allegheny County in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. Officials have said barcoding will prevent anyone from voting more than once.

Such insistence of Trump that mail voting is “substantially fraudulent” is unsupported, while there are good faith arguments that mail voting may increase participation in an election. Yet it is also just as unsupported to suggest there is no danger in sending ballots to every home to be filled out without supervision or confirmation. Some households will receive multiple ballots, including for some who may be uninterested. The only reliable way to confirm mail voting fraud would be to do what no state could do and demand that voters must verify who they voted for.

The danger of stolen mail ballots is probably less pronounced, since such criminal acts would likely produce traceable multiple votes if the victims sought to vote in person or by other means. Then there are the concerns over ballot harvesting, where a third party can collect such ballots. Some Democrats want to make ballot harvesting legal across the nation.

If races in swing states like Pennsylvania prove as close as expected, that increase in mail ballots may pose challenges. We have never relied to this extent on mail ballots with at least 40 million voters able to use them. The logistical or criminal interruptions may undermine our faith in the election results. The prospect of using this novel system this fall is stressful. There is a relatively short window, as we saw in 2000, between Election Day and the required certification before inauguration. The reliance on mail voting, therefore, may trim the period for challenges and delay the results.

I do not believe the sweeping claims of fraud any more than I believe the sweeping dismissals of concerns. This is an important matter for debate. Yet Twitter has labeled one side of that debate to be presumptively false. That is why this concern is not about free elections but free speech. The warning tells Trump followers to “get the facts” about mail voting. When you click the added link, it takes you to a page that says Trump made an “unsubstantiated claim” that mail ballots will lead to voter fraud.

The issue is whether websites will label other views as unreliable. Would Wayback Machine label all those false tweets from Democrats that claim evidence of Russian collusion in the 2016 election? What about all those tweets on the discredited dossier? We have learned that several Obama officials testified privately that they had never seen evidence of Russian collusion. Indeed, the Twitter standard seems to mean intervention with claims that Schiff had “ample evidence” of Russian collusion. Would his followers now be warned to “get the facts” on Russian collusion?

The executive order to eliminate protections for companies is precisely the type of retaliation that some Democrats have threatened in the past. Indeed, it may bring an involuntary response from Democrats to oppose the very crackdown they previously threatened. They could also defend the free speech rights of Twitter despite not wanting recognition of free speech rights for the companies in cases such as Citizens United.

There is, however, an alternative. These companies could return to being neutral forums for free speech, and Trump can return to using rather than regulating social media. Otherwise, before they seek to engage with their friends and followers on social media, citizens should first “get the facts” on free speech before it dies with the cheerful chirping of a tweet.

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

Trump Designates Antifa “A Terrorist Organization”

Trump Designates Antifa “A Terrorist Organization”

Tyler Durden

Sun, 05/31/2020 – 12:45

In what should not come as a surprise to many (especially those with open minds and open eyes), President Trump has tweeted that he is designating Antifa a terrorist organization.

Trump added:

This decision comes almost a year after he first tweeted that he was considering labeling the militant, black-clad, mask-wearing ‘anti-fascist’ group as a terrorist organization.

“Consideration is being given to declaring ANTIFA, the gutless Radical Left Wack Jobs who go around hitting (only non-fighters) people over the heads with baseball bats, a major Organization of Terror (along with MS-13 & others),” tweeted Trump, adding “Would make it easier for police to do their job!”

And As Politico pointed out in September 2017, previously unreported FBI and Department of Homeland Security studies found that “anarchist extremist” group like Antifa have been the “primary instigators of violence at public rallies” going back to at least April 2016 when the reports were first published.

The question is what does this mean in terms of response. Deadly force allowed?

One thing is certain:

And, as Jordan Rachel (@TheJordanRachel) asks: “Why is the Attorney General of Minnesota holding a terrorist handbook! “

Somehow, we suspect this will not ease the tensions.

*  *  *

By way of background, we remind readers that Antifa has gained notoriety since the 2016 election for instigating violent confrontations with conservatives – most recently journalist Andy Ngo, who was beaten and robbed by members of Portland’s Antifa cell, sending him to the hospital. 

In July, 2018, the same Portland groupl, Rose City Antifa, planned a “direct confontation” with participants at a pro-Trump rally – “calling for militant antifascist resistance against Patriot Prayer,” according to a call to action on the leftist website, “It’s Going Down.“

The previous month, a clash between the groups ended up in a viral video of an Antifa member using an object to assault conservative Ethan Michael Nordean, also known as Rufio – who subsequently knocked out the ‘terrorist’ (or so he would be classified under the new declaration). 

Last week, GOP Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) introduced a bill to classify Antifa as domestic terrorists – defining it as “a movement that intentionally combines violence with the group’s alt-left positions,” and “represents opposition to the democratic ideals of peaceful assembly and free speech for all.” 

As noted by The Blaze, however, labeling Antifa as “Domestic Terrorists” may also require an entirely new law. 

federal law does not have the same clear-cut designation for domestic terrorism organizations that it does for foreign terror organizations (FTOs), explained Andy McCarthy in a 2017 column at National Review. 

“There are federal-law processes for designating foreign and international terrorism because defending against foreign threats to national security is primarily a federal responsibility,” McCarthy explained, because foreign operatives have fewer civil rights protections than American citizens and that the best weapon against domestic terror is local law enforcement, not federal. –The Blaze

Why is the left so violent?

 

 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Aq4IDf Tyler Durden

The Cyberlaw Podcast: Here’s the evidence

In the 2020s, one fears, everyone will feature in a coPodcast logonspiracy theory for fifteen minutes. In an effort to get in front of this development, and the inevitable Twitter mob to follow, I will now disclose the secret symbol that I anticipate will drive future conspiracy theories about the Cyberlaw Podcast.

Many readers are familiar with the podcasts’s logo, shown to the right.

Sputnik cartoonLess familiar to readers under 70 is the image to the left. It is a 1957 cartoon published in Pravda, the Soviet Union’s dominant newspaper, to mark the surprise launch of a Soviet satellite into earth orbit—well ahead of anything the United States was able to do.

It triumphantly shows little Soviet Sputnik beaming its signal back to a smiling world (well, as close to smiling as anyone in the Soviet Union ever seemed to get in public). It was a remarkable achievement, and one that the Soviets turned into a great propaganda coup.

The similarities could be a complete coincidence uncovered by a listener who’s also a Soviet history buff, but where’s the fun in that? Future conspiracy buffs will surely find a secret message hidden in the podcast’s choice of logo. But what message? Some may think it’s a dog whistle to rally Russian revanchists to our audience. Those who believe I’m an egregious statist will no doubt see it as confirmation of my secret plan to collectivize American agriculture and liquidate the kulaks. Other theories are welcome.

Thanks to Jacob Nelson for the find.

 

 

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2XKVNUS
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The Cyberlaw Podcast: Here’s the evidence

In the 2020s, one fears, everyone will feature in a coPodcast logonspiracy theory for fifteen minutes. In an effort to get in front of this development, and the inevitable Twitter mob to follow, I will now disclose the secret symbol that I anticipate will drive future conspiracy theories about the Cyberlaw Podcast.

Many readers are familiar with the podcasts’s logo, shown to the right.

Sputnik cartoonLess familiar to readers under 70 is the image to the left. It is a 1957 cartoon published in Pravda, the Soviet Union’s dominant newspaper, to mark the surprise launch of a Soviet satellite into earth orbit—well ahead of anything the United States was able to do.

It triumphantly shows little Soviet Sputnik beaming its signal back to a smiling world (well, as close to smiling as anyone in the Soviet Union ever seemed to get in public). It was a remarkable achievement, and one that the Soviets turned into a great propaganda coup.

The similarities could be a complete coincidence uncovered by a listener who’s also a Soviet history buff, but where’s the fun in that? Future conspiracy buffs will surely find a secret message hidden in the podcast’s choice of logo. But what message? Some may think it’s a dog whistle to rally Russian revanchists to our audience. Those who believe I’m an egregious statist will no doubt see it as confirmation of my secret plan to collectivize American agriculture and liquidate the kulaks. Other theories are welcome.

Thanks to Jacob Nelson for the find.

 

 

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2XKVNUS
via IFTTT