Month: September 2021

CNN Shuts Down Access to Facebook Pages in Australia After Court Ruling Holding Media Outlets Liable for Commenters


CNN_1161x653

In response to Australian court decisions holding media companies legally liable for the comments by users, CNN has blocked access to some of its Facebook pages from users in that country.

This is an inevitable outcome of a bad decision and a reminder of why it’s important not to try to force government-mandated moderation policies onto massive social media platforms that will inevitably lead to either censorship or lack of access to information.

Earlier in September, Australia’s High Court (the country’s top court) ruled that a television station could be found legally liable for comments posted on Facebook about Dylan Voller, footage of whom was part of media coverage of problems in Australia’s youth jail system. Voller claimed the comments were defamatory and sued not the commenters but the media outlets, arguing that they were the publishers of such comments.

Media outlets fought back, pointing out that they were not the publishers of outside comments that came to them on Facebook and had limited ability to moderate or control them.

But the court disagreed, with the justices concluding that by creating a Facebook page in the first place, media outlets were inviting people to comment on the stories and therefore were publishers responsible for the content of the comments.

The Wall Street Journal now reports that CNN has decided the risk is just not worth it and will cut access to some of their pages. According to the Wall Street Journal‘s report, representatives from CNN asked Facebook to implement the ability for outlets to disable all comments for their Australian pages in order to reduce the liability exposure. Facebook apparently declined to do so, leaving them only with the option to moderate individual comments:

Ultimately, CNN concluded that managing comments on posts from each of its accounts was too time-consuming and instead opted to restrict access to its pages in the country, the person said. CNN executives believe that Facebook should be responsible for helping publishers comply with laws that apply to content on its platform, the person said.

“We are disappointed that Facebook, once again, has failed to ensure its platform is a place for credible journalism and productive dialogue around current events among its users,” a CNN spokeswoman said.

There is some traditional media vs. social media conflict going on here as well. Facebook responded by calling for reform in Australia’s defamation laws, but also by assuring Australians that the platform still “provide[s] a destination for quality journalism, including through Facebook News which we launched in August.”

The big losers here are citizens of Australia who want to access CNN’s content via social media. The Wall Street Journal reports that CNN is the first media outlet to cut Facebook access in the country, but they’re certainly not going to be the last. So if you’re not a fan of CNN’s media coverage—even if you absolutely loathe CNN—this is not something to celebrate. Not only does this potentially affect every single media outlet, but it could also affect anybody who draws the attention of trolls on Facebook who want to make their lives miserable by posting defamatory statements.

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Seattle City Council Passes Rent Control by Another Name. Is It Legal?


reason-seattle2

The Seattle City Council might have found a clever way around Washington state’s ban on local rent control policies. On Monday, it passed two bills that respectively require landlords to give generous notice to their tenants of any rent increases and to provide relocation expenses to low-income renters who do move in response to large rent hikes.

Current city and state law require landlords to give their tenants 60 days’ notice of any rent increase. One bill passed by the council would increase that notification period to 180 days, likely the longest notification period in the country.

And if a low-income tenant decides to move in response to a rent increase of 10 percent or more, landlords will be obligated to provide them with “economic dislocation relocation assistance” equal to three months’ rent, thanks to another bill passed by the council on Monday.

Both are the handiwork of Councilmember Kshama Sawant, a member of the Socialist Alternative party, who argues the twin bills are needed to protect tenants from a post-pandemic upswing in rents—and from capitalism more generally.

“Today’s victories will benefit tens of thousands of renters in Seattle, who are facing skyrocketing rent increases from profit-hungry corporate landlords and the venture capitalists and big banks who are [fueling] a speculative bubble,” said Sawant after the bills passed.

Landlords were less pleased with the bills’ passage, arguing during public comment that they’d raise their costs of doing business and are, per the Seattle Times, tantamount to rent control.

That latter charge could open up the new bills to legal challenges.

Washington state law preempts municipal governments from enacting laws “which regulate the amount of rent to be charged” and instead reserves that power under the state government.

That law should preempt Seattle’s 180-day notice requirement, says William Shadbolt, a lawyer with the Rental Housing Association of Washington’s (RHAWA) Legal Defense Fund.

While the notification bill doesn’t put a cap on rent increases, as rent control laws in Oregon and California do, it is limiting when a particular rent increase goes into effect. That is clearly a regulation on the “amount” being charged, he says.

The prior requirement that landlords give tenants 60 days’ notice of rent increases was a standard set in state law, while the new 180-day notice requirement is unique to Seattle.

The relocation assistance bill could be vulnerable to a legal challenge as well.

Landlords in Portland, Oregon, sued their city government over a similar policy requiring landlords to pay relocation expenses to tenants who move in response to a 10 percent rent increase. They argued that this was clearly intended to deter landlords from raising rents beyond a certain level and thus banned by Oregon’s preemption of local rent control laws.

That challenge was rejected at the county and appellate court levels. The Oregon Supreme Court held a hearing on the case earlier this year.

A recent Supreme Court decision striking down part of New York state’s eviction moratorium could also pose a danger to Seattle’s relocation assistance bill.

That decision, in the case Chrysafis v. Marks, invalidated a section of the moratorium allowing tenants to self-certify that they had suffered economic hardship, and thus were protected from eviction under the state law. That violated landlords’ due process rights because it didn’t give them an opportunity to contest tenants’ self-declaration that they were protected by the moratorium, ruled the court.

Seattle’s rent relocation assistance bill—which only covers tenants making up to 80 percent of area median income—likewise allows tenants to self-certify their income, and thus could be vulnerable to a similar legal challenge, says Shadbolt.

He says the RHAWA is currently reviewing the legislation to see if they’ll file a lawsuit.

Sawant herself has described her bills as adding momentum for “a full renters’ Bill of Rights, which includes citywide rent control with no corporate loopholes.”

Both bills will now go to Mayor Jenny Durkan for her signature.

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Canary Island Residents Told To “Stay Inside” After Toxic Cloud Emitted As Lava Reaches Sea

Canary Island Residents Told To “Stay Inside” After Toxic Cloud Emitted As Lava Reaches Sea

Nine days after the volcanic eruption on the Spanish island of La Palma, officials have warned residents to hunker down inside their homes due to toxic gases emitted from the lava.

Lava over 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit from the Cumbre Vieja volcano is pouring into the Atlantic and creating a dangerous chemical reaction emitting steam, toxic gas (including hydrochloric acid), and tiny shards of volcanic glass into the atmosphere. 

Authorities warned residents within a two-mile range of where the lava meets the ocean to stay indoors and duct tape windows and doors to ensure that toxic gases don’t come inside. 

Sky’s Becky Cotterill said the wind was blowing the toxic gases into the ocean on Wednesday, but fears conditions could quickly change. 

“The lava has been slow-moving and changing course, but at 11pm last night it did finally drop off a cliff about a hundred feet high into the sea, creating what essentially looked like a lava waterfall.

“Scientists were really concerned about that because when lava hits the water it creates a thermal shock.

“That shock releases toxic gases that contain hydrochloric acid and it’s very dangerous to breathe in and also dangerous if it gets in your eyes or on your skin.

“Residents in the surrounding areas have been told to stay inside,” Cotterill said. 

More than 6,000 people have had to evacuate, and at least 400 homes have been destroyed since the Sept. 19 eruption. The volcano continues to emit large columns of smoke that have produced ashfall across the island and acid rain in southern parts of Europe. 

Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/29/2021 – 12:59

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3zUb0nF Tyler Durden

CNN Shuts Down Access to Facebook Pages in Australia After Court Ruling Holding Media Outlets Liable for Commenters


CNN_1161x653

In response to Australian court decisions holding media companies legally liable for the comments by users, CNN has blocked access to some of its Facebook pages from users in that country.

This is an inevitable outcome of a bad decision and a reminder of why it’s important not to try to force government-mandated moderation policies onto massive social media platforms that will inevitably lead to either censorship or lack of access to information.

Earlier in September, Australia’s High Court (the country’s top court) ruled that a television station could be found legally liable for comments posted on Facebook about Dylan Voller, footage of whom was part of media coverage of problems in Australia’s youth jail system. Voller claimed the comments were defamatory and sued not the commenters but the media outlets, arguing that they were the publishers of such comments.

Media outlets fought back, pointing out that they were not the publishers of outside comments that came to them on Facebook and had limited ability to moderate or control them.

But the court disagreed, with the justices concluding that by creating a Facebook page in the first place, media outlets were inviting people to comment on the stories and therefore were publishers responsible for the content of the comments.

The Wall Street Journal now reports that CNN has decided the risk is just not worth it and will cut access to some of their pages. According to the Wall Street Journal‘s report, representatives from CNN asked Facebook to implement the ability for outlets to disable all comments for their Australian pages in order to reduce the liability exposure. Facebook apparently declined to do so, leaving them only with the option to moderate individual comments:

Ultimately, CNN concluded that managing comments on posts from each of its accounts was too time-consuming and instead opted to restrict access to its pages in the country, the person said. CNN executives believe that Facebook should be responsible for helping publishers comply with laws that apply to content on its platform, the person said.

“We are disappointed that Facebook, once again, has failed to ensure its platform is a place for credible journalism and productive dialogue around current events among its users,” a CNN spokeswoman said.

There is some traditional media vs. social media conflict going on here as well. Facebook responded by calling for reform in Australia’s defamation laws, but also by assuring Australians that the platform still “provide[s] a destination for quality journalism, including through Facebook News which we launched in August.”

The big losers here are citizens of Australia who want to access CNN’s content via social media. The Wall Street Journal reports that CNN is the first media outlet to cut Facebook access in the country, but they’re certainly not going to be the last. So if you’re not a fan of CNN’s media coverage—even if you absolutely loathe CNN—this is not something to celebrate. Not only does this potentially affect every single media outlet, but it could also affect anybody who draws the attention of trolls on Facebook who want to make their lives miserable by posting defamatory statements.

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Unvaccinated Students Told To Wear Different Coloured Wristbands So They Can Be Identified

Unvaccinated Students Told To Wear Different Coloured Wristbands So They Can Be Identified

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

First year students at the University of Bath have been given armbands by authorities to signal whether they’ve been double-vaccinated, with unvaxxed students having to wear a different colour.

“Freshers have been given wristbands to signal whether they are vaccinated against coronavirus amid anger at emerging “two-tier” university campuses,” reports the Telegraph.

“Students arriving this week at the University of Bath have been given a different coloured wristband on club nights if they can prove in advance they are double jabbed, or have Covid-19 immunity.”

Those who cannot prove they’ve been vaccinated are forced to enter a different queue in a clear example of segregation.

Bath is a notoriously left-wing city, as is its main university.

Vaccine passports are being enforced on campuses despite the government’s inability to impose them on the country after studies found they would be discriminatory and ethically unsound.

Students at Sheffield University must also prevent a COVID pass to gain access to enter freshers events or union nights out, meaning those who fail to comply will miss out on a social life altogether, with one student revealing how he felt “excluded” and feared being “shamed in front of friends.”

Students at Oxford and Cambridge are also being asked to disclose their vaccination status.

“We are worried that some universities appear to have implemented what amounts to a vaccine passport via stealth,” said Arabella Skinner, the director of parents group UsForThem.

“The idea of making students display their private medical information in such a public way is unacceptable. This echoes examples of discrimination we have seen in schools through the pandemic and raises concerns of a two-tier system for students to access education.”

Vaccine passports have largely proven to be ineffective everywhere they’ve been adopted, including in France where in many cases they are not even enforced.

After Israel set up one of the world’s first vaccine passport schemes, it experienced a record new wave of COVID infections.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/29/2021 – 12:40

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Democrats Are Denying Basic Economics


psaki-econ-polspphotos849079

The simplest way to understand economics is that it is a reckoning with unavoidable tradeoffs. If you spend money on something, you may obtain something in return—but you lose the ability to use those resources on something else. In the world of politics, economics helps us weigh the merits of those tradeoffs. It answers the question: Do the benefits of a policy outweigh the costs? Sometimes the benefits are larger. Sometimes they are meager or even nonexistent. But there are always costs. To acknowledge this is merely to acknowledge reality. 

Under President Joe Biden, however, Democrats in Washington have decided that they can simply wish those tradeoffs away by declaring that they do not exist. Over and over again, they have argued that their policies do not or should not have any costs whatsoever. 

Just this week, for example, White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question about the tax impact of the $3.5 trillion spending plan now working its way through Congress by declaring that “there are some…who argue that in the past companies have passed on these costs to consumers…we feel that that’s unfair and absurd and the American people would not stand for that.”  

When taxes are raised on corporations—the “companies” in Psaki’s response—corporations often respond by passing that tax on to others. In some cases, they pass costs to consumers. In others, as the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome wryly notes on Twitter, they reduce the amount they would have otherwise spent on wages. They have to pay more to do business, and so they make adjustments accordingly. Costs create consequences and tradeoffs. 

Empirical research has consistently shown that a large portion of corporate tax increases is actually paid by labor down the line. There are some reasonable academic debates about the precise percentage of the tax paid by labor, and how that might change under certain circumstances. But there is little real debate about whether or not some of the costs are passed on. The point is that it happens. Workers, not owners, pay at least some share of higher corporate taxes. 

Yet Psaki’s position—the Biden White House’s position—is that this sort of thing is “absurd and unfair.” 

One may feel that the omnipresence of gravity is unfair and absurd. Nevertheless, few people plan their lives around the ability to leap into the air and fly whenever they would like. We accept reality and make plans around its constraints, however absurd or unfair they may seem. To do otherwise would be foolish. 

Yet that is essentially what Democrats are doing as they work to pass the Biden agenda. They are insisting that their plans, which are still in flux but amount to a call for some $4 trillion in spending over two bills, have no real costs at all—or that the costs should not be factored in, because they are “unfair and absurd.” 

Just last week, Biden himself tweeted that the $3.5 trillion spending bill would not actually cost $3.5 trillion. Instead, its true price was more like nothing at all. “We talk about price tags. It is zero price tag on the debt,” Biden said from a White House podium. “We are going to pay for everything we spend.”

Biden’s remarks came after a week in which congressional Democrats had run into something of an impasse over their spending plans. In response, they decided that the problem was not with the plans themselves, but with the messaging. Early messaging for the bigger of the bills, which is mostly focused on welfare state expansions and climate policy, had revolved around the $3.5 trillion figure, which Democrats had taken to as a sign of how much they wanted to commit to their agenda. But the size of the spending package became a point of contention with moderates, who worried, understandably, that $3.5 trillion was a lot of money—probably too much. 

Some Democrats admitted that the final legislation would likely end up trimmed down. But some backers of the spending bill, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) have continued to insist that there is nothing that could reasonably be cut. After all, the $3.5 trillion figure was itself a compromise from their initial $6 trillion ask. 

So Democrats and their backers in the press focused most of their energy on altering the way they described the legislation. 

Hence we were treated to essays attempting to downplay the cost with headlines like: “$3.5 Trillion Is Not a Lot of Money” (New York magazine) and “It’s Not Really a ‘$3.5 Trillion’ Bill” (The New York Times). And then, of course, there were the official statements from Biden and White House communications functionaries making claims like “it’s just a fact” that the plan “adds $0 to the debt.”

It is not “just a fact.” It is, at best, a dicey projection. And as Reason‘s Eric Boehm has noted, it may not even be that, partly because the legislation in its current form is structured via timing gimmicks intended to induce further spending down the road or begin spending late in order to hide the long-term, on-paper cost of the plans. 

But in some ways, this is all beside the point. It is a plan that, in its broadest form, calls for spending $3.5 trillion. Even in the unlikely event that such a plan turns out to be truly fully paid for, it would still spend $3.5 trillion. Those economic resources would be used to do some specific things, which in turn would reduce the ability to do other things. In other words, there would be costs and tradeoffs. 

Changing the description is just a way of wishing away those costs, of thinking that it is possible to make them disappear by saying that they aren’t real or shouldn’t matter. Under Biden, this has been the way for Democrats, especially the self-identified progressives, who have implied that large minimum wage hikes might not cost jobs (they would) and that debt and deficit-driven federal spending constraints are effectively not real (they are). The intent in every case is to downplay concerns that any significant tradeoffs actually exist. After all, costs and tradeoffs are absurd and unfair. Perhaps. But they are also real. And lawmakers ignore them at our peril. 

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China Is Blocking Its Airlines From Buying “Tens Of Billions Of Dollars” In U.S. Made Boeing Airplanes

China Is Blocking Its Airlines From Buying “Tens Of Billions Of Dollars” In U.S. Made Boeing Airplanes

In what should serve as a wakeup call for the Biden administration about the climate of trade between the U.S. and China (but won’t), China is reportedly blocking its domestic airlines from doing business with Boeing.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo made the revelation on Tuesday, according to Reuters, stating that Chinese airlines were being prevented from buying “tens of billions of dollars” in U.S. made airplanes.

Raimondo also pointed out that China wasn’t living up to its promises made in 2020 to buy U.S. goods. 

Raimondo commented on Tuesday: “I don’t know if Boeing is here. … There’s tens of billions of dollars of planes that Chinese airlines want to buy but the Chinese government is standing in the way.”

She went into depth on a National Public Radio broadcast, also on Tuesday, stating: “The Chinese need to play by the rules. We need to hold their feet to the fire and hold them accountable.”

Recall, Boeing had previously urged the U.S. government to keep hostility toward Beijing as a result of its human rights violations separate from trade relations. Now, it appears we know why. 

Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun said toward the end of Q1 2021: “I am hoping we can sort of separate intellectual property, human rights and other things from trade and continue to encourage a free trade environment between these two economic juggernauts. We cannot afford to be locked out of that market.”

Meanwhile Boeing, obviously with its finger on the pulse of its largest customers, came out an raised its forecast for China’s aircraft demand for the next 20 years last week. Chinese airlines will need 8,700 new airplanes through 2040, Boeing estimated. That amounts to $1.47 trillion in aircraft.

China’s aviation authority was the first to ground the Boeing 737 MAX and China accounts for about 25% of Boeing’s sales. 

Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/29/2021 – 12:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3F5Pxf5 Tyler Durden

Democrats Are Denying Basic Economics


psaki-econ-polspphotos849079

The simplest way to understand economics is that it is a reckoning with unavoidable tradeoffs. If you spend money on something, you may obtain something in return—but you lose the ability to use those resources on something else. In the world of politics, economics helps us weigh the merits of those tradeoffs. It answers the question: Do the benefits of a policy outweigh the costs? Sometimes the benefits are larger. Sometimes they are meager or even nonexistent. But there are always costs. To acknowledge this is merely to acknowledge reality. 

Under President Joe Biden, however, Democrats in Washington have decided that they can simply wish those tradeoffs away by declaring that they do not exist. Over and over again, they have argued that their policies do not or should not have any costs whatsoever. 

Just this week, for example, White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question about the tax impact of the $3.5 trillion spending plan now working its way through Congress by declaring that “there are some…who argue that in the past companies have passed on these costs to consumers…we feel that that’s unfair and absurd and the American people would not stand for that.”  

When taxes are raised on corporations—the “companies” in Psaki’s response—corporations often respond by passing that tax on to others. In some cases, they pass costs to consumers. In others, as the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome wryly notes on Twitter, they reduce the amount they would have otherwise spent on wages. They have to pay more to do business, and so they make adjustments accordingly. Costs create consequences and tradeoffs. 

Empirical research has consistently shown that a large portion of corporate tax increases is actually paid by labor down the line. There are some reasonable academic debates about the precise percentage of the tax paid by labor, and how that might change under certain circumstances. But there is little real debate about whether or not some of the costs are passed on. The point is that it happens. Workers, not owners, pay at least some share of higher corporate taxes. 

Yet Psaki’s position—the Biden White House’s position—is that this sort of thing is “absurd and unfair.” 

One may feel that the omnipresence of gravity is unfair and absurd. Nevertheless, few people plan their lives around the ability to leap into the air and fly whenever they would like. We accept reality and make plans around its constraints, however absurd or unfair they may seem. To do otherwise would be foolish. 

Yet that is essentially what Democrats are doing as they work to pass the Biden agenda. They are insisting that their plans, which are still in flux but amount to a call for some $4 trillion in spending over two bills, have no real costs at all—or that the costs should not be factored in, because they are “unfair and absurd.” 

Just last week, Biden himself tweeted that the $3.5 trillion spending bill would not actually cost $3.5 trillion. Instead, its true price was more like nothing at all. “We talk about price tags. It is zero price tag on the debt,” Biden said from a White House podium. “We are going to pay for everything we spend.”

Biden’s remarks came after a week in which congressional Democrats had run into something of an impasse over their spending plans. In response, they decided that the problem was not with the plans themselves, but with the messaging. Early messaging for the bigger of the bills, which is mostly focused on welfare state expansions and climate policy, had revolved around the $3.5 trillion figure, which Democrats had taken to as a sign of how much they wanted to commit to their agenda. But the size of the spending package became a point of contention with moderates, who worried, understandably, that $3.5 trillion was a lot of money—probably too much. 

Some Democrats admitted that the final legislation would likely end up trimmed down. But some backers of the spending bill, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) have continued to insist that there is nothing that could reasonably be cut. After all, the $3.5 trillion figure was itself a compromise from their initial $6 trillion ask. 

So Democrats and their backers in the press focused most of their energy on altering the way they described the legislation. 

Hence we were treated to essays attempting to downplay the cost with headlines like: “$3.5 Trillion Is Not a Lot of Money” (New York magazine) and “It’s Not Really a ‘$3.5 Trillion’ Bill” (The New York Times). And then, of course, there were the official statements from Biden and White House communications functionaries making claims like “it’s just a fact” that the plan “adds $0 to the debt.”

It is not “just a fact.” It is, at best, a dicey projection. And as Reason‘s Eric Boehm has noted, it may not even be that, partly because the legislation in its current form is structured via timing gimmicks intended to induce further spending down the road or begin spending late in order to hide the long-term, on-paper cost of the plans. 

But in some ways, this is all beside the point. It is a plan that, in its broadest form, calls for spending $3.5 trillion. Even in the unlikely event that such a plan turns out to be truly fully paid for, it would still spend $3.5 trillion. Those economic resources would be used to do some specific things, which in turn would reduce the ability to do other things. In other words, there would be costs and tradeoffs. 

Changing the description is just a way of wishing away those costs, of thinking that it is possible to make them disappear by saying that they aren’t real or shouldn’t matter. Under Biden, this has been the way for Democrats, especially the self-identified progressives, who have implied that large minimum wage hikes might not cost jobs (they would) and that debt and deficit-driven federal spending constraints are effectively not real (they are). The intent in every case is to downplay concerns that any significant tradeoffs actually exist. After all, costs and tradeoffs are absurd and unfair. Perhaps. But they are also real. And lawmakers ignore them at our peril. 

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An NBA Star And New York’s Governor Show That Liberal COVID Discourse Is Devoid Of Science

An NBA Star And New York’s Governor Show That Liberal COVID Discourse Is Devoid Of Science

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

It is virtually a religious belief in the dominant liberal culture that people who do not want the COVID vaccine are stupid, ignorant, immoral and dangerous. As large sectors of the population continue to question or disobey their COVID decrees, they have begun to make more explicit this condescending view.

NBA player Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic explains why he is hesitant to take the COVID vaccine at a post-game press conference, Sept. 27, 2021.

Liberals feel free to disparage them as “stupid” notwithstanding long-standing (though diminishing) racial disparities among this group. A CNN headline from last month told part of the story: “Black New Yorkers may have the lowest vaccination rates, but community groups refuse to give up.” Citing data from the city’s health agency, the network reported that “citywide, just 28% of Black New Yorkers between the ages of 18 and 44 are fully vaccinated. The Hispanic community is the second-least fully vaccinated population in that age group, with 49% being fully vaccinated.”

Two weeks ago, Bloomberg reported that while some of the unvaccinated are unable to get the vaccine (due to work pressures or health conditions), most of them are vaccine-hesitant by choice and continue to reflect racial disparities. Under the headline “U.S. Racial Vaccine Gaps Are Bigger Than We Thought: Covid-19 Tracker,” the news outlet reported: “the White vaccination rate is not as bad as it had seemed and Hispanic communities are lagging more than previously thought.”

Yet liberal elites continue to call anyone who is unvaccinated “stupid,” ignorant and immoral. On Sunday, New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, when announcing her intent to use National Guard soldiers to replace health care workers fired for refusing the vaccine, told her audience: “yes, I know you’re vaccinated, you’re the smart ones.” She then said those who refuse to get the vaccine are not just stupid but have turned their back on God: “there’s people out there who aren’t listening to God and what God wants.” Gov. Hochul added that the vaccine “is from God to us and we must say, thank you, God,” and said to her “smart” vaccinated supporters: “I need you to be my apostles.”

On September 16, CNN host Don Lemon maligned those who have chosen not to be vaccinated as “stupid,” “selfish,” filled with “ignorance,” and “not acting on logic, reason and science.” He then issued this decree: “it’s time to start shaming them or leave them behind.” When controversy erupted over the lavish indoor gala former President Obama threw for himself, at which his guests were unmasked while the servants were masked, New York Times reporter Annie Karni explained on CNN that while some of Obama’s neighbors on Martha’s Vineyard objected, many believed that a maskless party was fine because “this is a sophisticated, vaccinated crowd.” Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel suggested the unvaccinated should be deprioritized for health care in hospitals, while Howard Stern recently lambasted the unvaccinated as “imbeciles” and “nut jobs” and argued they should be denied health care and be left to die.

That the unvaccinated are inherently primitive and stupid troglodytes was always a claim as baseless and offensive as it is counter-productive. Although I personally took the vaccine the first day it was available to me — as I repeatedly said I would in every forum where I speak, including Fox News — it was always clear that there were cogent reasons why those with different circumstances and risk factors (age, health, prior COVID status) might assess their own risks differently and reach a different conclusion. And what made me most comfortable about my choice to get vaccinated, or to decide whether my kids should, was precisely that it was my choice, after informing myself: the idea of forcing someone to do it against their will, or condition people’s rights and privileges on vaccine compliance — as both President Biden and the ACLU astonishingly advocated — always struck me as inconceivable.

The attempt to equate being unvaccinated with stupidity and ignorance suffered a massive blow on Wednesday night when NBA star Jonathan Isaac was asked why he was hesitant to take the vaccine. Like many unions, the NBA’s player union has refused a vaccine mandate, and Isaac, the 23-year-old player with the Orlando Magic who previously had and recovered from COVID, gave a stunningly compelling, informed, well-reasoned and thoughtful exposition on his rationale for not wanting the vaccine. Isaac also defended the right of individuals to make their own choice. One need not agree with his ultimate conclusion on the vaccine to see how groundless (and obnoxious) it is to claim that anyone who chooses not to take the vaccine — like him — is stupid, ignorant and primitive. I really encourage everyone to watch his two-minute master class in demonstrating why such a choice can, depending on one’s circumstances, be perfectly rational:

Is there anyone who can argue with a straight face that Isaac sounds stupid, ignorant or evil? One can cogently dispute the wisdom of his conclusion: while it is true that most people who recover from COVID (as he did) enjoy “natural immunity” in the form of antibodies — indeed, one major study found that “the natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine” — some studies conclude that immunity is stronger still with the vaccine.

Nonetheless, Issac is indisputably right that the risk of dying or becoming seriously ill from COVID is extremely low for someone like him: early 20s, healthy and with natural immunity. In fact, during the entire course of the pandemic, the total number of people aged 15-24 (Isaac’s age group) who have died of COVID — in a country of 330 million people — is 1,372: fewer than the number in that age group who have died of non-COVID pneumonia. Add onto that Isaac’s physical fitness and the fact that he already had COVID once, and it is clear that his risk from contracting the virus is vanishingly small.

It is true that the long-term effects of COVID are unknown, but that is also true of the long-term risks from these new vaccines. Isaac is also right….

* * *

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Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/29/2021 – 12:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3oiI0Uv Tyler Durden

Key Theranos Whistleblower Unveiled At Trial

Key Theranos Whistleblower Unveiled At Trial

A lab director that is in the midst of testifying against Elizabeth Holmes at her trial has revaled themselves to be a key source for the Wall Street Journal’s eventual unraveling of the massive fraud. 

Lab director Adam Rosendorff resigned from the company in 2014 and testified on Tuesday that he later got a phone call from the Journal’s John Carreyrou, whom he spoke with off the record, according to Bloomberg Law. 

“I felt obligated to alert the public. I didn’t quite know how I should do that. But when this opportunity presented itself I took advantage of it,” Rosendorff said at trial.

Following their talk, Carreyrou wrote a series of stories in 2015 that catalyzed scrutiny on Theranos. In 2018, his work was made into a book called “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.”

Rosendorff, in the book is referred to under the pseudonym Alan Beam.

“Adam Rosendorff was my first and most important source. I couldn’t have broken the Theranos story without him. Hats off to his integrity and his courage. He’s one of the heroes of this story,” Carreyrou said.

Rosendorff admitted at trial that he had been talking to “prosecutors and officials at various federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Postal Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation,” according to Bloomberg.

He marks the latest witness in a stream of former Theranos employees that will testify at the trial. He “really bought into the idea” of Theranos when he was hired in 2013, Rosendorff said. “I thought it was going to be the next Apple.”

Months later, he would be sending an email to Holmes labeled “Concerns about the launch”, raising question about Theranos’ new partnership with Walgreens. “I have some medical and operational concerns about our readiness for 9/9,” he wrote. 

He told jurors this week: “I was raising the alarm bells. I felt it was important for Elizabeth to be aware of these issues as the chief executive of the company.”

“Holmes was noticeably shaken, responded nervously and wasn’t her normally composed self” when Rosendorff sat with her one-on-one to discuss the failures of Theranos’ testing, he said. 

Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/29/2021 – 11:44

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3m6IiLr Tyler Durden