admin – Page 10925

‘Thousands’ Of Dutch COVID-19 Survivors Likely Have Permanent Lung Damage According To Top Pulmonologist

‘Thousands’ Of Dutch COVID-19 Survivors Likely Have Permanent Lung Damage According To Top Pulmonologist

Tyler Durden

Thu, 05/28/2020 – 12:54

COVID-19 may be far less deadly than originally projected – and asymptomatic cases may be even more common than first suspected, but for those who have caught it and come down with symptoms, the disease can result in lasting symptoms, including shortness of breath, lethargy, recurrent fevers, headaches, itchiness and other mystery problems that aren’t going away.

To that end, a top pulmonologist in the Netherlands says that thousands of Dutch residents who have recovered from COVID-19 may be left with permanent lung damage, resulting in decreased lung capacity and difficulty absorbing oxygen.

*A computer tomography (CT) X-ray scan shows the signature “ground glass” tissue due to COVID-19 infection, which is caused by fluid in the lungs.*
*Weifang Kong and Prachi P. Agarwal*

According to Leon van den Toorn, Chairman of the Dutch Association of Physicians for Pulmonary Disease and Tuberculosis NVALT, people are underestimating the consequences of the coronavirus.

“In severe cases, a kind of scar formation occurs, we call this lung fibrosis. The lungs shrink and the lung tissue becomes stiffer, making it harder to get enough oxygen,” Van den Toorn told Dutch newspaper AD (via the NL Times), adding that “there may be thousands of people in the Netherlands who suffered permanent injury to the lungs from corona.”

Of the 1,200 Covid-19 patients who so far recovered after admission to intensive care, “almost 100 percent went home with residual damage”, he said to AD. And about half of the 6 thousand people who were hospitalized, but did not need intensive care, will have symptoms for years to come.

So far 45,500 people in the Netherlands tested positive for the coronavirus. Many did not get sick enough to need hospital care. In this group, Van den Toorn expects that permanent problems will be less serious, but still possible. –NL Times

Van den Toorn says that patients experiencing lung issues should immediately see a pulmonologist, as “there may be a low oxygen level in the blood, which is harmful to the body.”

“People with a history of corona infection should be monitored closely to see if recovery is complete,” he added.

Drilling down on lung issues, let’s flash back to March, when a New Orleans respiratory therapist dealing with coronavirus patients told ProPublica that coronavirus patients suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are extremely difficult to oxygenate.

Authored by Lizzie Presser via ProPublica

“Normally, ARDS is something that happens over time as the lungs get more and more inflamed. But with this virus, it seems like it happens overnight. When you’re healthy, your lung is made up of little balloons. Like a tree is made out of a bunch of little leaves, the lung is made of little air sacs that are called the alveoli. When you breathe in, all of those little air sacs inflate, and they have capillaries in the walls, little blood vessels. The oxygen gets from the air in the lung into the blood so it can be carried around the body.

A screenshot of chest radiographs of a man suspected to have COVID-19. (Obtained by ProPublica via the Radiological Society of North America, cited in the paper “Severe Acute Respiratory Disease in a Huanan Seafood Market Worker: Images of an Early Casualty” by Lijuan Qian, Jie Yu and Heshui Shi.)

“Typically with ARDS, the lungs become inflamed. It’s like inflammation anywhere: If you have a burn on your arm, the skin around it turns red from additional blood flow. The body is sending it additional nutrients to heal. The problem is, when that happens in your lungs, fluid and extra blood starts going to the lungs. Viruses can injure cells in the walls of the alveoli, so the fluid leaks into the alveoli. A telltale sign of ARDS in an X-ray is what’s called ‘ground glass opacity,’ like an old-fashioned ground glass privacy window in a shower. And lungs look that way because fluid is white on an X-ray, so the lung looks like white ground glass, or sometimes pure white, because the lung is filled with so much fluid, displacing where the air would normally be.”

…

“It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu. Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube and out of his mouth. The ventilator should have been doing the work of breathing but he was still gasping for air, moving his mouth, moving his body, struggling. We had to restrain him. With all the coronavirus patients, we’ve had to restrain them. They really hyperventilate, really struggle to breathe. When you’re in that mindstate of struggling to breathe and delirious with fever, you don’t know when someone is trying to help you, so you’ll try to rip the breathing tube out because you feel it is choking you, but you are drowning.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3gwkX2c Tyler Durden

28 North Koreans Charged In Sweeping Conspiracy To Launder $2.5 Billion For Nuclear Program

28 North Koreans Charged In Sweeping Conspiracy To Launder $2.5 Billion For Nuclear Program

Tyler Durden

Thu, 05/28/2020 – 12:36

Is the Trump Administration finally coming around to the notion that disarming North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is never going to happen? Well, at least not while the Kims are still in power.

Since President Trump started his ‘bromance’ with Kim Jong Un, which briefly reemerged following the Dear Leader’s purported brush with illness, corners of the intelligence community have been grumbling to the press about how the president was being played by both Kim and his chief benefactor, President Xi and China, which accounts for more than 90% of North Korea’s foreign trade, and protects the Hermit Kingdom from harsher penalties and sanctions via China’s veto power at the security council.

As the administration ramps up its assault on Beijing as “decoupling” moves into hyperdrive, the DoJ on Thursday has unsealed an indictment against North Korean and Chinese nationals who are accused of operating a multibillion-dollar money laundering scheme to help fund North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The indictment charges 28 North Koreans and five Chinese nationals of using a web of more than 200 shell companies to launder more than $2.5 billion in assets through the international banking system. according to the NYT.

Ultimately, the money flowed back to the Foreign Trade Bank of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s primary, state-operated foreign exchange bank, which is also known as Josen Bank. It’s believed the money was then used to finance the country’s nuclear program, which is believed to have produced several rather rudimentary nuclear weapons, making NK an unacknowledged nuclear power (kind of like Israel).

Since succeeding his dead father as North Korea’s supreme leader, the third in the Kim dynasty, Kim has overseen four underground nuclear tests and has pushed for North Korea to heavily invest in its nuclear weapons and missile programs while its poverty-stricken people struggle to feed their families.

Under his leadership, NK flight-tested three intercontinental ballistic missile tests in 2017 (remember that?). Kim recently commanded the country’s top officials to start ramping up the country’s weapons program again as talks with the White House stalled, with both sides acknowledging that the impasse reached during a second global summit in Hanoi – the US insisted that NK must first give up some or all weapons to get sanctions relief, while NK insisted on a gradual schedule of relief in exchange for disarmament – remains insurmountable.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Xb4993 Tyler Durden

47 U.S.C. § 230 and the Publisher/Distributor/Platform Distinction

I’m still doing some research related to President Trump’s “Preventing Online Censorship” draft Executive Order, and hope to post more about this today. But for now, I wanted to post some background I put together earlier about 47 U.S.C. § 230 (enacted 1996), the statute that is so important to the order; I hope people find this helpful.

Section 230 makes Internet platforms and other Internet speakers immune from liability for material that’s posted by others Congress enacted 47 U.S.C. § 230 (with some exceptions). That means, for instance, that

I’m immune from liability for what is said in our comments.
A newspaper is immune from liability for its comments.
Yelp and similar sites are immune from liability for business reviews that users post.
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube (which is owned by Google) are immune from liability for what their users post.
Google is generally immune from liability for its search engine results.

And that’s true whether or not the Internet platform or speaker chooses to block or remove certain third-party materials. I don’t lose my immunity just because I occasionally delete some comments (e.g., ones that contain vulgar personal insults); Yelp doesn’t lose its because it sometimes deletes comments that appear to have come from non-customers; the other entities are likewise allowed to engage in such selection and still retain immunity. Section 230 has recently become controversial, and I want to step back a bit from the current debates to explain where it fits within the traditions of American law (and especially American libel law).

Historically, American law has divided operators of communications systems into three categories.

Publishers, such as newspapers, magazines, and broadcast stations, which themselves print or broadcast material submitted by others (or by their own employees).
Distributors, such as bookstores, newsstands, and libraries, which distribute copies that have been printed by others. Property owners on whose property people might post things —such as bars on whose restroom walls people scrawl “For a good time, call __“—are treated similarly to distributors.
Platforms, such as telephone companies, cities on whose sidewalks people might demonstrate, or broadcasters running candidate ads that they are required to carry.

And each category had its own liability rules:

Publishers were basically liable for material they republished the same way they were liable for their own speech. A newspaper could be sued for libel in a letter to the editor, for instance. In practice, there was some difference between liability for third parties’ speech and for the company’s own, especially after the Supreme Court required a showing of negligence for many libel cases (and knowledge of falsehood for some); a newspaper would be more likely to have the culpable mental state for the words of its own employees. But, still, publishers were pretty broadly liable, and had to be careful in choosing what to publish. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 578.
Distributors were liable on what we might today call a “notice-and-takedown” model. A bookstore, for instance, wasn’t expected to have vetted every book on its shelves, the way that a newspaper was expected to vet the letters it published. But once it learned that a specific book included some specific likely libelous material, it could be liable if it didn’t remove the book from the shelves. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 581; Janklow v. Viking Press (S.D. 1985).
Platforms weren’t liable at all. For instance, even if a phone company learned that an answering machine had a libelous outgoing message (see Anderson v. N.Y. Telephone Co. (N.Y. 1974)), and did nothing to cancel the owner’s phone service, it couldn’t be sued for libel. Likewise, a city couldn’t be liable for defamatory material on signs that someone carried on city sidewalks (even though a bar could be liable once it learned of libelous material on its walls), and a broadcaster couldn’t be liable for defamatory material in a candidate ad.

Categorical immunity for platforms was thus well-known to American law; and indeed New York’s high court adopted it in 1999 for e-mail systems, even apart from § 230. See Lunney v. Prodigy Servs. (N.Y. 1999).

But the general pre-§ 230 tradition was that platforms were entities that didn’t screen the material posted on them, and indeed were generally (except in Lunney) legally forbidden from screening such materials. Phone companies are common carriers. Cities are generally barred by the First Amendment from controlling what demonstrators said. Federal law requires broadcasters to carry candidate ads unedited.

Publishers were free to choose what third-party work to include in their publications, and were fully liable for that work. Distributors were free to choose what third-party work to put on their shelves (or to remove from their shelves), and were immune until they were notified that such work was libelous. Platforms were not free to choose, and therefore were immune, period.

Enter the Internet, in the early 1990s. Users started speaking on online bulletin boards, such as America Online, Compuserve, Prodigy, and the like, and of course started libeling each other. This led to two early decisions: Cubby v. Compuserve, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 1991), and Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. (N.Y. trial Ct. 1995).

Cubby held that Internet Service Providers (such as Compuserve) were entitled to be treated as distributors, not publishers.
Stratton Oakmont held that only Service providers that exercised no editorial control (such as Compuserve) over publicly posted materials would get distributor treatment, and service providers that exercised some editorial control (such as Prodigy)—for instance, by removing vulgarities—would be treated as publishers.

Neither considered the possibility that an ISP could actually be neither a publisher nor a distributor but a categorically immune platform, perhaps because at the time only entities that had a legal obligation not to edit were treated as platforms. And Stratton Oakmont‘s conclusion that Prodigy was a publisher because it ” actively utilize[ed] technology and manpower to delete notes from its computer bulletin boards on the basis of offensiveness and ‘bad taste,'” is inconsistent with the fact that distributors (such as bookstores and libraries) have always had the power to select what to distribute (and what to stop distributing), without losing the limited protection that distributor liability offered.

But whether or not those two decisions were sound under existing legal principles, they gave service providers strong incentive not to restrict speech in their chat rooms and other public-facing portions of their service. If they were to try to block or remove vulgarity, pornography, or even material that they were persuaded was libelous or threatening, they would lose their protection as distributors, and would become potentially strictly liable for material their users posted. At the time, that looked like it would be ruinous for many service providers (perhaps for all but the unimaginably wealthy, will-surely-dominate-forever America Online).

This was also a time when many people were worried about the Internet, chiefly because of porn and its accessibility to children. That led Congress to enact the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which tried to limit online porn; but the Court struck that down in Reno v. ACLU (1997). Part of the Act, though, remained: 47 U.S.C. § 230, which basically made all Internet service and content providers platforms as to their users’ speech—whether or not they blocked or removed certain kinds of speech.

Congress, then, deliberately provided platform immunity to entities that (unlike traditional platforms) could and did select what user content to keep up. It did so precisely to encourage platforms to block or remove certain speech (without requiring them to do so), by removing a disincentive (loss of immunity) that would have otherwise come with such selectivity. And it gave them this flexibility regardless of how the platforms exercised this function.

And Congress deliberately imposed platform liability (categorical immunity) rather than distributor liability (notice-and-takedown immunity). For copyright claims, it retained distributor liability (I oversimplify here), and soon codified it in 17 U.S.C. § 512, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998: If you notify Google, for instance, that some video posted on YouTube infringes copyright, Google will generally take it down—and if it doesn’t, then you could sue Google for copyright infringement. Not so for libel.

So what do we make of this? A few observations:

[1.] Under current law, Twitter, Facebook, and the like are immune as platforms, regardless of whether they edit (including in a politicized way). Like it or not, but this was a deliberate decision by Congress. You might prefer an “if you restrict your users’ speech, you become liable for the speech you allow” model. Indeed, that was the model accepted by the court in Stratton Oakmont. But Congress rejected this model, and that rejection stands so long as § 230 remains in its current form. (I’ll have more technical statutory details on this in a later post.)

[2.] Section 230 does indeed change traditional legal principles in some measure, but not that much. True, Twitter is immune from liability for its users’ posts, and a print newspaper is not immune from liability for letters to the editor. But the closest analogy to Twitter isn’t the newspaper (which prints only a few hundred third-party letters-to-the-editor words a day), but either

the bookstore or library (which houses millions of third-party words, which it can’t be expected to screen at the outset) or
the phone company or e-mail service.

Twitter is like the bookstore or library in that it runs third-party material without a human reading it carefully, and reserves the right to remove some material (just as a bookstore can refuse to sell a particular book, whether because it’s vulgar or unreliable or politically offensive or anything else). Twitter is like the phone company or e-mail service in that it handles a vast range of material, much more than even a typical bookstore and library, and generally keeps up virtually all of it (though isn’t legally obligated to do so, the way a phone company would). Section 230 is thus a broadening of the platform category, to include entities that might otherwise have been distributors.

[3.] Now of course § 230 could be amended, whether to impose publisher liability (in which case many sites, including ours, would have to regretfully close their comment sections) or distributor notice-and-takedown liability (which would impose a lesser burden, but still create pressure to over-remove material, especially when takedown demands come from wealthy, litigious people or institutions). And it could be amended to impose distributor liability for sites that restrict user speech in some situations and retain platform liability for sites that don’t restrict it at all. I hope to blog some more about these options in the coming days. I also hope to blog some more in the coming days with more details about the specific wording of § 230. But for now, I hope this gives a good general perspective on the traditional common-law rules, and the way § 230 has amended those rules.

(Disclosure: In 2012, Google commissioned me to co-write a White Paper arguing for First Amendment protection for search engine results; but this post discusses quite different issues from those in that White Paper. I am writing this post solely in my capacity as an academic and a blogger, and I haven’t been commissioned by anyone to do it.)

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

47 U.S.C. § 230 and the Publisher/Distributor/Platform Distinction

I’m immune from liability for what is said in our comments.
A newspaper is immune from liability for its comments.
Yelp and similar sites are immune from liability for business reviews that users post.
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube (which is owned by Google) are immune from liability for what their users post.
Google is generally immune from liability for its search engine results.

Historically, American law has divided operators of communications systems into three categories.

Publishers, such as newspapers, magazines, and broadcast stations, which themselves print or broadcast material submitted by others (or by their own employees).
Distributors, such as bookstores, newsstands, and libraries, which distribute copies that have been printed by others. Property owners on whose property people might post things —such as bars on whose restroom walls people scrawl “For a good time, call __“—are treated similarly to distributors.
Platforms, such as telephone companies, cities on whose sidewalks people might demonstrate, or broadcasters running candidate ads that they are required to carry.

And each category had its own liability rules:

Publishers were basically liable for material they republished the same way they were liable for their own speech. A newspaper could be sued for libel in a letter to the editor, for instance. In practice, there was some difference between liability for third parties’ speech and for the company’s own, especially after the Supreme Court required a showing of negligence for many libel cases (and knowledge of falsehood for some); a newspaper would be more likely to have the culpable mental state for the words of its own employees. But, still, publishers were pretty broadly liable, and had to be careful in choosing what to publish. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 578.
Distributors were liable on what we might today call a “notice-and-takedown” model. A bookstore, for instance, wasn’t expected to have vetted every book on its shelves, the way that a newspaper was expected to vet the letters it published. But once it learned that a specific book included some specific likely libelous material, it could be liable if it didn’t remove the book from the shelves. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 581; Janklow v. Viking Press (S.D. 1985).
Platforms weren’t liable at all. For instance, even if a phone company learned that an answering machine had a libelous outgoing message (see Anderson v. N.Y. Telephone Co. (N.Y. 1974)), and did nothing to cancel the owner’s phone service, it couldn’t be sued for libel. Likewise, a city couldn’t be liable for defamatory material on signs that someone carried on city sidewalks (even though a bar could be liable once it learned of libelous material on its walls), and a broadcaster couldn’t be liable for defamatory material in a candidate ad.

Cubby held that Internet Service Providers (such as Compuserve) were entitled to be treated as distributors, not publishers.
Stratton Oakmont held that only Service providers that exercised no editorial control (such as Compuserve) over publicly posted materials would get distributor treatment, and service providers that exercised some editorial control (such as Prodigy)—for instance, by removing vulgarities—would be treated as publishers.

So what do we make of this? A few observations:

the bookstore or library (which houses millions of third-party words, which it can’t be expected to screen at the outset) or
the phone company or e-mail service.

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

China Secures Brazilian Soy As Trade War Restart Appears Imminent

China Secures Brazilian Soy As Trade War Restart Appears Imminent

Tyler Durden

Thu, 05/28/2020 – 12:15

With a new round of trade war increasingly likely between the US and China, Beijing has been buying Brazilian soybeans in a sign the Asian nation may be looking to secure an alternative source of supplies. According to Bloomberg, the world’s top soybean importer purchased more than 10 cargoes in Brazil this week, despite higher prices. In a further sign that China appears to be distancing from the US, Bloomberg adds that while China bid for American soy on Tuesday, state-run buyers were absent from the market Wednesday, the people said.

“Even with Brazilian soybeans being more expensive this autumn, China is securing this origin via what they see as the political risk in U.S. soybean/grain sales,” Chicago-based consultants AgResource said.

Most of the soybeans Brazil sold to China were for August and September, with some deals stretching into October. This is a disappointment for US farmer, because AgResource said it “had expected that the U.S. would be able to garner Chinese demand from late August into early 2021.”

“The U.S. will still dominate China’s purchases in this time slot, but totals will be cut from prior expectations,” the consultants said.

As a reminder, as part of the Phase 1 “trade deal”, China pledged to buy $36.5 billion in US agricultural goods this year, an increase of $12.5 billion over 2017 levels, before the start of the trade war. However due to the disruptions from the pandemic, not to mention the fact that China never intended to follow through with the trade deal, purchases have been running well behind; meanwhile the record plunge in Brazil’s currency has made its products more attractive.

An escalation in tensions between Beijing and Washington could jeopardize outstanding U.S. soy cargoes to China. About 1.8 million tons of soybeans sales to China for the current marketing year and 1 million tons for the next year are yet to be shipped, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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

Sorry, Twitter, But Trump Is Right About Mail-In Ballots

Sorry, Twitter, But Trump Is Right About Mail-In Ballots

Tyler Durden

Thu, 05/28/2020 – 11:55

Authored by Michael Graham via InsideSources.com,

President Donald Trump has had a problematic week on Twitter, engaging in political combat with foils like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough has inspired a backlash beyond any he’s faced before as president.

Part of the reaction was Twitter’s decision to stick a “fact check” label on two of Trump’s tweets about mail-in ballots. This decision, in turn sparked its own backlash around issues of freedom of expression and political bias. (Will President Stacey Abrams ever get a tweet fact-checked by Twitter? Probably not.)

Overlooked in the social media scrum over Trump’s tweets, however, is the one issue most relevant to voters in New Hampshire: Donald Trump is right about mail-in ballots.

Mostly.

First, the tweets:

Per usual with President Trump, there’s a lot he gets wrong. Is it true that California is “sending Ballots to…anyone living in the state?” No. They are sending ballots to “all registered voters.”

But that’s where Trump’s concerns about mail-in ballots are on target.

Concerns about mail-in voting and fraud aren’t new.

A bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker declared, “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”

In the 2018 midterms, a congressional election in North Carolina was overturned and had to be re-held because an unscrupulous Republican operative was using mail-in ballots to scam the system.

And the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) just released data that more than 28 million ballots by mail went unaccounted for from 2012 to 2018, with more than one million going to the incorrect address in 2018 alone.

“Absentee ballot fraud is the most common, the most expensive to investigate, and it can never be reversed after an election,” said the organization’s president J. Christian Adams.

“The status quo was already bad for mail balloting. The proposed emergency fix is worse.”

More recently, “in a Supreme Court contest in Wisconsin in April, about 1,600 ballots were discovered the morning after Election Day in a mail processing facility in Chicago — 1,600 voters whose ballots did not count,” The Hill reports. “Hundreds more who applied for absentee ballots did not receive them in time, according to a report by the state Board of Elections.”

And literally the same day President Trump tweeted that mail-in ballots “would be forged,” the Department of Justice announced a mail carrier in West Virginia was being charged with attempted election fraud by committing forgery on mail-in ballots.

Does this mean mail-in ballot fraud is widespread? A threat to democracy? Not necessarily.

But it does prove that Trump’s point — mail-in voting is more susceptible to fraud — is indisputably true. And for obvious reasons: New Hampshire’s polling places and handling of ballots there is entirely secure.

Which is why the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s efforts on behalf of mail-in voting, online voter registration (also fraught with opportunities for fraud) and other changes to the election system inspire such little passion from voters. Granite Staters tell pollsters they support “no-excuse absentee ballots” (aka “vote by mail,”), but the state has the third-highest turnout in the nation using traditional, and secure, voting practices. New Hampshire voters turn out at higher rates than states that have implemented more expansive mail-in voting.

Still, Democrats press on. Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas voted to have the federal government take control of New Hampshire elections and force the state to use mail-in voting, not just as part of a COVID-19 election solution in 2020, but permanently.

As for the impact of mass mailings of ballots to last-known addresses, read this first-person story of mail-in ballot “fraud.”

Twitter’s decision to fact-check politicians’ tweets is problematic enough. They probably should have waited for a Trump tweet that actually got the facts wrong.

If history is any guide, they wouldn’t have to wait long.

* * *

Don;t take our word for it… here’s none other than Jerry Nadler explaining: “Paper ballots are extremely susceptible to fraud…I can show you experience which would make your head spin.“

Jerry Nadler in 2004: “Paper ballots are extremely susceptible to fraud…I can show you experience which would make your head spin.” pic.twitter.com/L7zJhoB3O8

— Danny De Urbina (@dannydeurbina) May 25, 2020

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

China Rattled After Taiwan Pledges Help For Fleeing Hong Kongers

China Rattled After Taiwan Pledges Help For Fleeing Hong Kongers

Tyler Durden

Thu, 05/28/2020 – 11:35

A furious Beijing denounced Taiwan’s Thursday promise to settle displaced Hong Kong residents who flee the city for political reasons, saying that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party was seeking to “loot a burning house” and sow discord, according to Channel News Asia.

*Protesters holding a banner in support of Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators at Taipei main train station in Taiwan on May 23, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Ben Blanchard)*

The move comes as Hong Kong protesters have taken to the streets in opposition to new security legislation which would allow Chinese intelligence services to operate on Hong Kong soil, increasing Beijing’s grip on the semi-autonomous city and targeting secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference – terms used by China to describe last year’s protests across the city sparked by a now-shelved extradition treaty.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen this week became the first world leader to step up and pledge specific help to Hong Kong residents who wish to leave over the new legislation.

It’s really amazing that Taiwan—which faces a, you know, existential threat from China—can muster a more strongly worded tweet than any statement the Europeans are putting out. https://t.co/kuBNt7SoYE

— Michael Mazza (@mike_mazza) May 28, 2020

According to Taiwan’s top China-policy maker at the Mainland Affairs Council, Chen Ming-tong, the government will establish a “humanitarian relief” organization that will include employment and settlement assistance in a joint effort with activist groups – adding that counseling services would also be provided for Hong Kongers – some of whom have participated in often-violent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

“Many Hong Kongers want to come to Taiwan. Our goal is to give them settlement and care,” said Chen, urging the public not to call people “refugees” as it could be “emotionally harmful” to people from the city.

“Bringing black, violent forces into Taiwan will bring disaster to Taiwan’s people,” warned China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.

Hong Kong’s demonstrators have won widespread sympathy in democratic Taiwan, which China considers as its territory to be taken by force, if necessary. Taiwan has shown no interest in being ruled by autocratic China.

Help for Hong Kong has won rare bipartisan support in politically polarised Taiwan and three opposition parties have introduced bills to make it easier for Hong Kongers to live in Taiwan if they have to leave the city due to political reasons.

Taiwan has no law on refugees that could be applied to protesters seeking asylum, but its laws promise to help Hong Kongers whose safety and liberty are threatened for political reasons. –Channel News Asia

Some Taiwan lawmakers say Tsai’s government isn’t moving fast enough with relief efforts.

“Please come up with details of the humanitarian relief at the soonest. Don’t wait until people shed blood like water,” said opposition lawmaker from the Kuomintang party.

CNA notes that Taiwan has granted residency to 2,383 Hong Kong citizens in the first four months of 2020, an increase of 150% vs. one year ago. Meanwhile, university applications to Taiwan from Hong Kong have spiked 62% in 2020 vs. last year – while Taiwan’s education ministry announced this week that it would raise the quota for students from Hong Kong.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3ddT0tN Tyler Durden

UK uses Feudal System law to seize £150 million from bank accounts

During the summer of 1215 in a riverfront meadow near London, some of England’s top barons gathered to confront King John and force him to sign a contract guaranteeing their rights and freedoms.

The contract became known as the Magna Carta. And one of its key provisions (#43) gave the Barons protection against something called ‘escheat’.

In medieval times, ‘escheat’ referred to the property being forcibly passed to the King if its original owner died without heirs.

So if a Baron passed away without a son, his domain would pass by escheat back to the crown.

Over time, kings vastly expanded the use of escheat; anyone convicted of a crime would have their property seized by escheat. Occasionally someone’s son or daughter could be pressed into servitude by escheat.

It was like a medieval version of Civil Asset Forfeiture: the King took whatever he wanted, for any reason, and people had no rights.

By 1215, England’s noblemen were sick and tired of it, and they successfully forced King John to sign the Magna Carta.

Unfortunately for the other 99.9% of England’s population, most of the Magna Carta’s guarantees only applied to Barons and other noblemen.

Plain ole’ regular serfs still had their meager property plundered by the King, and by the noblemen themselves who had just fought to preserve their own rights at the expense of everyone else’s.

So if a feudal serf in England died without an heir, or was convicted of a crime, all his property was escheated to the local Lord, or to the King.

This became such big business in England that the government appointed special agents called ‘escheators’ in every single English county to oversee property confiscation every time someone passed away.

If there was any doubt at all whether or not the deceased had valid heirs, the escheator would seize the property immediately.

Amazingly enough, this ridiculous feudal custom still exists. And not just in England– in many countries around the world.

In just about every state in the Land of the Free, for example, your possessions, real estate, etc. are forfeited to the government if you die without heir.

Even bank accounts that are left dormant for some period of time– usually a few years– can be confiscated by the government.

But this is totally bizarre, because ‘dormant bank account’ rules can be incredibly loose. In many jurisdictions, for example, simply having some savings stashed away in a bank account that doesn’t have any other activity can put your funds at risk of being seized.

They actually still use the same word– escheat. So money in dormant bank accounts is escheated to the state.

To be fair, this practice has been relatively rare… until Covid. But now governments are starting to look at every source of funding they can get their hands on, including the medieval ones.

The British government recently announced that they had “unlocked” £150 million from dormant bank accounts, with cooperation from some of the biggest banks in the UK, all to help fight World War Covid.

And now the UK is looking to expand the practice beyond bank accounts; they’d like to be able to seize unclaimed financial assets (including stocks and bonds), insurance proceeds, and even dormant pension accounts.

As one UK government official put it, “I look forward to the potentially millions more we can unlock for good causes through expanding the Dormant Assets Scheme.”

This is a practice that literally dates back to the feudal system. And it reinforces a simple truth: you don’t really own anything if the government has the authority to take it.

I have no doubt the bureaucrats who came up with this idea have very good intentions.

After all, what nobler cause is there in this bizarre world of ours but to wage an endless crusade against the Coronavirus, no matter the cost?

They’re willing to do whatever it takes, spend whatever it takes, print as much money as it takes, and yes, even confiscate people’s private property, to rid the world of the virus.

This is our new reality: medieval serfdom.

Source

from Sovereign Man https://ift.tt/2ZKU2K0
via IFTTT

Will the Faithless Electors Cases “Do Grave Damage to Originalism”?

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the so-called “faithless electors” cases, Chiafalo v. Washington and Colorado Department of State v. Baca. Professor John McGinnis worries that originalists on the Court may let pragmatic concerns trump original meaning altogether.

John compares these cases to Noel Canning: these cases lack any controlling precedent, and can be decided without regard to stare decisis.

The cases’ significance for originalism stems from the absence of controlling Court precedent on the question of a presidential elector’s discretion. Most Supreme Court cases have prior cases that arguably dispose of the issue, but these do not. The only case about the obligations imposed on electors, Ray v. Blair, concerned moral pledges that parties required of the electors, not the very different question of whether the electors’ choice can be disciplined by law. In their lack of controlling precedents, these new cases resemble NLRB v. Noel Canning, in which the Court had to address, for the first time in its jurisprudence, certain important questions about the scope of the Recess Appointments Clause.

I analogize Noel Canning to originalism in “precedential open fields, as opposed to deep in the thicket.” There are no institutional constraints to follow some wayward precedent from the Warren Court. Here, the faint-hearted originalists can’t hide behind stare decisis.

Instead, McGinnis warns, they’ll hide behind precedent-by-another name: call it the “chaos” theory of constitutional law:

Unfortunately, if the oral argument for the cases about presidential electors is any indication, the Court may do grave damage to originalism by suggesting that the bad consequences of a constitutional provision or practice subsequent to the time of its enactment can override its original meaning….

And in oral argument, some justices who might be thought to harbor originalist sympathies openly appealed to consequentialist arguments. For instance, Justice Kavanaugh suggested that when it is a “close call” on meaning, the Court might consider avoiding the “chaos” that he implied might follow from a decision allowing electoral discretion.

John explains that the Justices’ concerns for “slippery slopes” will always trump original meaning;

Furthermore, who is to decide how “close” the case must be to permit the consideration of consequences? That is a slippery slope that will allow the original meaning to become merely one consideration among many. For instance, assume that the question of whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms is close, even if the better view tips in its favor. Kavanaugh’s approach would authorize judges to decide the case based on their assessment of the consequences of various gun control measures.

At bottom, a ruling against the electors could “bury originalism.”

As Mike Rappaport and I have argued, it is constitutional for judges to follow Court precedent rather than original meaning. It is even warranted in certain, limited circumstances. Originalists need to frame better-reticulated rules about what those circumstances are. But inviting judges to consider the consequences of their decisions or the recent practice of other governmental actors as guides to interpretation threatens to bury originalism.

Seth Barrett Tillman and I had similar concerns after oral arguments. We wrote two posts about how to properly characterize electors as a matter of original public meaning: we think they hold “public trusts under the United States.” But we acknowledged that some of the Justices worried about that “chaos” that could result in a judgment for the electors. As a result, we offered a middle-ground approach to help reconcile the original public meaning of the Constitution with pragmatic concerns. If the Court is truly motivated by a desire to avoid “chaos,” and cannot rule that electors have discretion, our approach helps to avoid originalism’s burial.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3er2m5B
via IFTTT

Retail Store Closures Have Huge Impact On Communities

Retail Store Closures Have Huge Impact On Communities

Tyler Durden

Thu, 05/28/2020 – 11:15

Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

Abandoned Malls, A Canary In The Coal Mine

Across America many buildings stand empty or under-leased. They once housed thriving businesses that provided Americans with good-paying jobs. Over the last several years retailers have been closing stores and as the carnage rapidly accelerates this will be back in the news bigger than ever. The impact of these store closings all across America will be huge and take a huge toll on communities with a great number of jobs being lost forever. Much of this is linked to small businesses having its clock cleaned when forced to shutdown because of Covid-19, however, a lot is related to paying higher wages, complying with new government regulations, and being forced to compete with big businesses backed by Wall Street money.

Retail closures come with a hidden cost to society that the average person fails to internalize. Retail closings will result in lots of other small businesses closing their doors. Not only will the retail employees lose their jobs but these stores support many local businesses. People often forget that the brick and mortar stores suffer several expenses not fostered upon online companies. All these constitute a sort of tax on these stores which benefits the community in which they are located.

These costs rapidly add up and include such things as maintaining landscaping, ensuring safe ingress and egress, or providing a parking lot for customers. Staffing for longer hours, for the convenience of customers, often results in being open when foot traffic would indicate a store should be closed. Dealing with security and shoplifters is another expensive burden. Over the last few years, stores such as Target and Macy’s have even had to face a slew of dishonest shoppers trying to sneak defectives products purchased online back as exchanges and trading them for a fresh unbroken product. I have seen this costly abuse recommended by several online shoppers that see this as an “easy fix” on how to handle defective merchandise.

Large retailers as a group are collectively set to lock the doors for the last time at thousands of stores this year. In the past I have written about how we should think about what kind of community and world we wish to live in and how best to preserve the nature and quality of the life we seek. I have even gone as far as to suggest consideration be given to levying an online transaction fee to level the playing field. The revenue from such a fee would be sent to local governments in the area where the sale originated or goods are shipped. The ugly reality that store closures are a cancer will soon be clear to those that have rushed to buy from online retailers. All this flows into what we will soon witness as rents fall, mortgages go unpaid, commercial real estate values fall, and the local tax base shrinks away. Defaults on loans and bonds in conjunction with the reduced property taxes for local communities now appears in the cards.

A Great Example Of “And Its Gone!’

Even before Covid-19 struck, Credit Suisse predicted 25 percent of shopping malls might have to shutter their doors by 2022 if shoppers continued to move online and mall traffic declined. Now, Bloomberg, reports that landlords have been sending out thousands of default notices to tenants. These businesses have experienced a collapse in foot traffic, sales and cash flow due to the COVID-19 pandemic are simply unable to pay their debt obligations.

Restaurants, department stores, apparel merchants and specialty chains have in some cases gone as long as three months without paying rent. With many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers having very heavy debt loads and looking at nearly $1 trillion of debt coming due over the next 3 to 5 years if the economy turns south these closings might only be the tip of the iceberg. We are about to see a slew of empty buildings blighting our landscape and driving down the value of properties across the nation. This is occurring while online retailing giant Amazon continues to acquire a more significant share of the consumption pie.

Sadly, most politicians have a poor grasp of business and are more interested in pandering for votes than trying to create more sustainable communities. Washington lawmakers have shown little interest in addressing the issue of how online shopping plays into the overall economy other than initially granting it some rather large advantages. This has been followed by state and local officials going over the top in competing for what they call new industries and jobs. This often results in special tax breaks, deals, or incentives for companies such as Amazon in exchange for investing or locating a facility in their area. In the long run, this hurts and weakens companies already located and competing in their market but that often gets brushed aside.

In the last few years, department stores like Kmart, Macy’s, Sears, and JCPenney, and retailers including Best Buy, Payless, BCBG, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Bebe have decided to close dozens of locations. Some have even slid into bankruptcy or vanished completely. The fall of the once massive Toys ‘R’ Us name in 2018, should have drawn more attention. With more than 700 U.S. stores the Toys “R” Us chain was a prime example of just how much retail has changed in just the last decade. When KKR & Co., Bain Capital, and Vornado Realty Trust took over the company in 2005, the buyers justified the $7.5 billion price, in large part based on the supposedly valuable properties that came with the deal. If current trends continue, the drop in the value of these properties has only started and in the future will have a gigantic effect on the economy.

Much of this space is located in the large shopping malls that once flourished in commercial zones of suburbia and many now sit empty and abandoned. While some of the empty storefronts will be re-purposed many will not. Sadly, America has created a bureaucratic obstacle course to rehabbing buildings by adding a great deal to the cost. This makes demolition more appealing. Between meeting new regulations and codes dealing with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other issues building owners often choose to simply tear down the structure and rip up the parking lot which is also required as part of the demolition. This reduces the often huge tax burden while they try to recoup part of their investment by selling off the land.

US retail vacancy rates were at 10.2% in the fourth quarter of 2018, but are expected to go through the roof. America has far more retail space than it needs. The country now has roughly 24 square feet of retail space per capita, more than twice that of Australia and 5 times that of the UK. Much of it has been built in recent years using low-interest money as investors rushed to build malls and shopping centers under the premise that if they built it “they would come.” The shift to buying from online retailers such as Amazon and overbuilding has broken retail’s decade-old profit formula. The culling of unprofitable stores and bankruptcies has added to the number of empty storefronts and malls. Do not expect retail construction to recover anytime soon.

Last year more than 9,275 stores closed their doors while only 4,454 stores that opened in the same time period. While some people make the argument this is all part of “creative destruction” where new technologies and better ways of doing things simply crowd out the old, something more sinister is going on here. Retail is in full-fledged liquidation mode as a result of being monkey hammered into submission by a wave of new reality sweeping across America. Not only have they been battered by online retailers such as Amazon but paying employees more so they can spend the money “elsewhere” simply does not work.

There are a number of trends at work behind America’s retail apocalypse such as retailers taking on too much debt and our government giving online retailers special tax treatment. in the past, state and local governments have put packages together with special incentives to lure Amazon to build in their areas oblivious to the future damage this will cause. This is a company that often pays no taxes but sells billions of dollars worth of foreign-made goods and services to our government. Even the United States Postal Service has joined in this effort which destroys small local businesses by making deals to deliver goods at below their cost even on weekends. Add to this state and local governments that burden brick and mortar businesses with taxes and fees it is no wonder things are in such a sorry state.

Consumers might someday regret throwing their communities under the bus for the promise of free overnight shipping. The closing businesses, both large and small are often viewed as the bedrock of our communities and with the closing of each one, a little bit of us goes with them. Consider this post a reminder of the massive amount of real estate taxes these stores pay. This money flows directly into the support of local police and fire departments as well as maintaining roads and such is a big disservice to the companies that also employ our friends and neighbors. These stores are where we go when we need something fast or that has to fit just right. As a final argument as to why we should support local stores, remember, that we the people will be forced to pony up more dollars in local real estate taxes as their contributions drop and local services are cut.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3c7nyfz Tyler Durden