A professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara who gave a lecture on the “error of American Exceptionalism,” says coronavirus is just one piece of evidence of America’s shortcomings.
Rudy Busto teaches a course titled Asian American Studies/Religious Studies 71: Introduction to Asian American Religion. Toward the end of the spring semester, Busto posted a lecture on “American Civil Religion,” during which he proceeded to explain to the class how “history has dispelled the notion of American Exceptionalism.”
WATCH:
Busto’s examples as proof for this claim included “losing the Vietnam War,” the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the “ongoing, unwinnable wars in the Middle East’,” and even the United States’ coronavirus death toll and case count.
“The escalation of coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States, currently the most of any other country has reported, is a blow to our ego, certainly to our current administration’s ego,” Busto said during his lecture.
According to Busto, “American Exceptionalism” is a “culturally hegemonic” idea, which seeks to “manufacture consent” by the “dominant class.”
“Cultural hegemony,” according to Busto, is “the idea that dominant ideas and beliefs and society are promoted by the dominant class as a way to maintain control.”
Busto suggested that the notion that “socialism is unacceptable for the United States” is a similarly culturally hegemonic idea.
The professor goes on to compare the acceptance of “American Exceptionalism” to the way Americans once accepted slavery as a normal part of society.
Ethan Barcelos, a freshman studying statistical science at UCSB and a student in Busto’s class, told Campus Reform he was initially confused by Busto’s lecture content.
“My first reaction was ‘what does this have to do with this class’. I was under the impression that I would be learning about Asian American Religions, not a litany of the wrongdoings of America,” said Barcelos.
“ I disagree with the notion that believing that America is the best country in the world is Marxist ‘cultural hegemony,’ Barcelos added, saying that the professor “used his claim of this being ‘important context’ as an excuse to bash America and push Marxist propaganda.”
According to the course description of Asian American Studies/Religious Studies 71: Introduction to Asian American Religion, the class is meant to be a “survey of the major themes and issues in Asian American religious history, belief, and practice.”
Busto is an associate professor of religious studies at UCSB. His focus is “approaching religion in North America through the lens of race,” which “allows us to uncover hidden and subjugated histories and actors in American religion.”
His research is based on examining “how the study of religion has itself been structured and shaped by assumptions about race/ethnicity and helps explain the theoretical absence of race as a variable for critical analysis of religion.”
Busto did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for comment in time of publication.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XCWoZO Tyler Durden
Gulf Coast Braces For Tropical Storm Cristobal To Strike On Sunday Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/06/2020 – 20:00
Tropical Storm Cristobal continues to strengthen as the storm is headed to an area of the Louisiana coast littered with offshore oil platforms.
A look from above of #Cristobal this morning. Winds will increase to tropical storm force Sunday morning for parts of the northern Gulf Coast. Preparation should be competed as soon as possible.
A 10:00 ET tropical update via the National Weather Service (NWS) warns “tropical-storm-force winds, storm surge, and heavy rainfall are expected to begin along portions of the northern Gulf Coast tonight and Sunday morning.”
h/t NWS
Ahead of impacts, here’s our reporting last week of Cristobal’s movements:
Cristobal is sustaining winds of 50 mph and could strengthen before making landfall along the Louisiana coast on Sunday. The center of the storm will likely strike the eastern Louisiana coastline late Sunday afternoon.
At least 65 Gulf of Mexico offshore oil platforms have shuttered operations, resulting in a decline of 500,000 barrels per day (BPD) of oil production. Gulf of Mexico oil platforms represents about 15% of total daily US production.
Cristobal’s trajectory
A Reuters source said crude refineries located on the Louisiana coast plan to continue operating this weekend, despite tropical threats on Sunday into Monday. Torrential rains and high winds are expected between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Cristobal’s impact zone
As of early Saturday afternoon, Cristobal is about 365 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River and traveling north at around 14 mph.
*Updates will follow as the storm closes in on the Louisiana coast.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UhZa4S Tyler Durden
In this week’s edition of Straight Talk Guy Adami, Dan Nathan and I are diving into the surprising jobs report, the hot topics of the widening wealth gap and social unrest, the Fed’s role in all of it, the implications of the widening rift on our society, the risks of a building record rift between asset prices and the real economy and we also offer a heartfelt discussion of the reasons of why we do what we do, offer our often contrarian and critical opinions.
Markets closed the week at a red flag screaming 151% market cap to GDP. There is no history, none, that shows valuations above 150% market cap to GDP are sustainable. None.
But this is what you get when you have a market that treats a phase one trade deal as something better than the trade volumes that were in place before the trade war ever started. This is what you get when a market treats phase one Covid vaccine trials as an actual vaccine already in place. This is what you get when a market prices in a perceived uptick in employment from a total collapse as an economy already having returned to full employment. This is what you get when a market perceives the injection of trillions of dollars as a substitute for actual growth in the economy.
This is what you get:
Welcome to the first massive financial asset bubble inside of a recession.
A financial asset bubble the likes we have never seen before. Asset bubbles happen at the end of a business cycle. Now we have one with nothing, absolutely nothing, on a extended proven growth path and the global economy still in a recession.
What bubble do we have in store for when the economy actually emerges from the recession?
Fact is the China US relation is frayed, the phase one trade deal in shambles in terms of actual volumes. There is no vaccine and while we’ve had a slowing of infections of wave 1 of the virus it is still ravaging in places such as Brazil and Mexico and back on the uptick in countries that have reopened their economies. The jury is still out.
Companies continue to make layoff announcements and more are to come.
There is little doubt the trillions in liquidity injections by the Fed and other central banks have juiced asset prices to levels that pretend to convey that nothing has happened.
New all time highs on the Nasdaq in the most vertical and aggressive “V” shaped rally ever.
$SPX back to levels last seen during the fleeting January 2020 lows when GDP growth was expected to be 2%, earnings growth deemed to be 5%-8% and unemployment at 3.5%.
Markets pretend that nothing’s happened and things are back to normal:
But they aren’t. Far from it, but that’s the illusion purposefully propagated by central banks. Millions unemployed with permanent job losses on the horizon but American billionaires having increased their wealth by $565B since March 18. This is America.
George Carlin once said:
When you are born to this world you get a free ticket to the freak show and if you are born in America you get a front seat. Welcome to the freak show that works for fewer and fewer people.
No, the market is not forward looking its blindly chasing liquidity and by doing so has blindly gone vertical and embraced an, in my view, unsustainable path of historical valuations overly reliant on overnight unfilled gaps:
A path that keeps building risks of future gap fills to come, especially in context of ever tightening price patterns not only on the market charts, but also the $VIX:
The building disconnects and the societal rifts are subjects dear to our hearts.
For out latest perspectives please join please join Guy Adami, Dan Nathan and I in this week’s edition of Straight Talk:
* * *
For the latest detailed technical review on markets please see Market Videos. For the latest public analysis please visit NorthmanTrader. To subscribe to our market products please visit Services.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3h32Qks Tyler Durden
50 State AGs Are Pushing To Breakup Google’s Ad-Tech Dominance Alongside DOJ Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/06/2020 – 19:00
In what would be a monumental move — and we might ad good for independent media breaking the shackles of the mainstream’s ongoing attempts to police content and punish dissent — Google’s total dominance over online advertising could soon come to an end.
CNBC revealed Friday that no less than 50 sate attorneys general have been investigating Google’s business practices as part of a months long probe alongside a parallel DOJ effort, and momentum is gaining toward a looming major antitrust lawsuit against the internet giant.
Source: Ad Age
Leading the probe among the states is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who did not comment in Friday’s CNBC report. Google, however, did respond, with a Google spokesperson rebutting with, “The facts are clear, our digital advertising products compete across a crowded industry with hundreds of rivals and technologies, and have helped lower costs for advertisers and consumers.”
President Trump has lately put big tech in the spotlight over allegations of targeted censorship of conservative content, lately signing an executive order which seeks to reduce liability protections of major internet companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google.
Independent and alternative voices have also long complained of being demonetized or unfairly targeted for analysis and commentary falling outside of accepted ‘groupthink’.
— Millions for Truth (@Millions4Trump2) June 5, 2020
It remains that the bulk of Google’s some $161 billion in revenue comes via ad sales, with a far smaller amount coming through products the tech giant and its parent company Alphabet Inc. are traditionally known for: software and technology.
Critics have said that Google bundles its ad tools so that rivals can’t afford to match its offerings and that its operation of search results, YouTube, Gmail and other services to hinder ad competition. They also say that Google owns all sides of the “auction exchange” through which ads are sold and bought, giving it an unfair advantage.
But a key legal obstacle the courts would have to consider is the fact that Google’s ad group doesn’t function as a stand alone business, but is made up of Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager.
* * *
A prior WSJ explainer walked through how Google ad dominance works in three charts:
Source: the company’s website, via WSJ
If said company wants advertise on third-party websites and apps:
And finally, if the airline wants to advertise on YouTube:
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30n0Dua Tyler Durden
Over the last few days, several different friends, relatives, and members of the media from foreign countries have reached out at least in part to ask whether I am safe and well. One was even a high-ranking public official in his own country.
For the record, I’m happy to assure everyone that my family and I are safe and well, and that life in northern Virginia has been essentially normal these last few days (or at least as normal as it gets during the pandemic).
However, the fact these people thought they needed to inquire about my safety is just one of many indications of the severe damage the crisis caused by police abuses such as the death of George Floyd and resulting protests and riots have done to the image of the US across the world. Such queries are usually directed at people in the midst of natural disasters, or those visiting a dangerously unstable authoritarian state.
The harm to the standing of the US is even greater because these events come on the heels of several other blows to America’s image, such as Trump’s brutal family separation policy, multiple trade wars with allies, the badly flawed handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and so on.
Russian, Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian propagandists are having a field day:
Officials in Iran, mainland China, Russia, Venezuela, North Korean and the pro-Chinese government in Hong Kong have all called out U.S. President Donald Trump after he told state governors to “dominate” those protesting the death of George Floyd — something that he has criticized other nations for doing in the past. Trump has also claimed without evidence that the protests are illegitimate, and described the protesters as “terrorists,” “thugs” and “lowlifes…”
Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, also called out the U.S. at a news conference in Beijing. He said the protests “once again reflect the racial discrimination in the U.S., the serious problems of police violent enforcement and the urgency of solving these problems.”
Zhao, whose government has put more than 1 million Muslim-minority Uighur people in detention camps, urged the U.S. to “safeguard and guarantee the legal rights of ethnic minorities…”
Russia, which meddled in the 2016 U.S. election in part by exploiting movements like Black Lives Matter, also condemned the latest violence.
“The United States has certainly accumulated systemic human rights problems: race, ethnic and religious discrimination, police brutality, bias of justice, crowded prisons … to name a few,” Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
But at the end of the day, it is unavoidable that the nation that seeks to lead the free world is going to be held to a higher standard than the Putins and Xis of the world. And we should work to meet those standards, rather than evade them. We can and should aspire to more than being not as bad as the likes of Russia and China.
America’s position in the world does not depend only on “hard power,” such as having a powerful military and a large and productive economy. It also critically depends on “soft power”—the appeal of our ideas and our political and economic systems to the people of the world. Foreign governments—especially democracies—are more likely to cooperate with us if we have a favorable public image with their people.
As during the Cold War the US is engaged in a a war of ideas with authoritarian states, most notably China and Russia. Unlike during the Cold War, our current adversaries lack an ideology with broad, international appeal. Few people outside of these two countries are enthusiastic about Chinese or Russian nationalism, or about these two powers’ authoritarian systems of government. Nonetheless, we are doing poorly in the war of ideas, largely through our own errors, rather than because of any great skill on the part of our opponents.
During the Cold War, US leaders—including political conservatives—well understood the the importance of the war of ideas, and that winning it depended in significant part on the image America’s domestic policies projected abroad. As legal historian Mary Dudziak recounts in her important book Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, one of the reasons why the federal government began to support the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s was the growing recognition that ending racial discrimination would boost the US image in the world and counter communist propaganda.
Even at its awful worst, American racial oppression in the twentieth century was not as bad as the horrific mass murders of communist states, or their repression and deportation of entire ethnic groups. But US leaders of the Cold War era knew that we could not prevail in the war of ideas merely by being less awful than the communists. We had to do a lot better than that.
As was the case during the Cold War, cleaning up our own house is a key element of winning the war of ideas internationally. There is much we can do to curb police abuses, reform cruel immigration policies, stop self-destructive trade wars, and address other issues that have damaged the US image in the world in recent years.
We should not necessarily reverse any and all policies that are unpopular abroad. But, as with desegregation during the Cold War, there are many ways for us to improve our image abroad by doing things that are also right in themselves and beneficial to US domestic policy. Such measures as curbing police misconduct and racial profiling, letting in refugees fleeing the oppression of our adversaries, and ending trade restrictions that damage our economy can benefit Americans at home at the same time as they strengthen our position in the world.
If we want to win the international war of ideas and thereby make our America’s position in the world great again, we have to pay more attention to the ways in which what we do at home affects our position abroad. Right now, we’re a long way from being able to say we’re winning so much we can be sick and tired of all the winning.
UPDATE: I have made minor additions to this post.
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via IFTTT
Over the last few days, several different friends, relatives, and members of the media from foreign countries have reached out at least in part to ask whether I am safe and well. One was even a high-ranking public official in his own country.
For the record, I’m happy to assure everyone that my family and I are safe and well, and that life in northern Virginia has been essentially normal these last few days (or at least as normal as it gets during the pandemic).
However, the fact these people thought they needed to inquire about my safety is just one of many indications of the severe damage the crisis caused by police abuses such as the death of George Floyd and resulting protests and riots have done to the image of the US across the world. Such queries are usually directed at people in the midst of natural disasters, or those visiting a dangerously unstable authoritarian state.
The harm to the standing of the US is even greater because these events come on the heels of several other blows to America’s image, such as Trump’s brutal family separation policy, multiple trade wars with allies, the badly flawed handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and so on.
Russian, Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian propagandists are having a field day:
Officials in Iran, mainland China, Russia, Venezuela, North Korean and the pro-Chinese government in Hong Kong have all called out U.S. President Donald Trump after he told state governors to “dominate” those protesting the death of George Floyd — something that he has criticized other nations for doing in the past. Trump has also claimed without evidence that the protests are illegitimate, and described the protesters as “terrorists,” “thugs” and “lowlifes…”
Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, also called out the U.S. at a news conference in Beijing. He said the protests “once again reflect the racial discrimination in the U.S., the serious problems of police violent enforcement and the urgency of solving these problems.”
Zhao, whose government has put more than 1 million Muslim-minority Uighur people in detention camps, urged the U.S. to “safeguard and guarantee the legal rights of ethnic minorities…”
Russia, which meddled in the 2016 U.S. election in part by exploiting movements like Black Lives Matter, also condemned the latest violence.
“The United States has certainly accumulated systemic human rights problems: race, ethnic and religious discrimination, police brutality, bias of justice, crowded prisons … to name a few,” Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
But at the end of the day, it is unavoidable that the nation that seeks to lead the free world is going to be held to a higher standard than the Putins and Xis of the world. And we should work to meet those standards, rather than evade them. We can and should aspire to more than being not as bad as the likes of Russia and China.
America’s position in the world does not depend only on “hard power,” such as having a powerful military and a large and productive economy. It also critically depends on “soft power”—the appeal of our ideas and our political and economic systems to the people of the world. Foreign governments—especially democracies—are more likely to cooperate with us if we have a favorable public image with their people.
As during the Cold War the US is engaged in a a war of ideas with authoritarian states, most notably China and Russia. Unlike during the Cold War, our current adversaries lack an ideology with broad, international appeal. Few people outside of these two countries are enthusiastic about Chinese or Russian nationalism, or about these two powers’ authoritarian systems of government. Nonetheless, we are doing poorly in the war of ideas, largely through our own errors, rather than because of any great skill on the part of our opponents.
During the Cold War, US leaders—including political conservatives—well understood the the importance of the war of ideas, and that winning it depended in significant part on the image America’s domestic policies projected abroad. As legal historian Mary Dudziak recounts in her important book Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, one of the reasons why the federal government began to support the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s was the growing recognition that ending racial discrimination would boost the US image in the world and counter communist propaganda.
Even at its awful worst, American racial oppression in the twentieth century was not as bad as the horrific mass murders of communist states, or their repression and deportation of entire ethnic groups. But US leaders of the Cold War era knew that we could not prevail in the war of ideas merely by being less awful than the communists. We had to do a lot better than that.
As was the case during the Cold War, cleaning up our own house is a key element of winning the war of ideas internationally. There is much we can do to curb police abuses, reform cruel immigration policies, stop self-destructive trade wars, and address other issues that have damaged the US image in the world in recent years.
We should not necessarily reverse any and all policies that are unpopular abroad. But, as with desegregation during the Cold War, there are many ways for us to improve our image abroad by doing things that are also right in themselves and beneficial to US domestic policy. Such measures as curbing police misconduct and racial profiling, letting in refugees fleeing the oppression of our adversaries, and ending trade restrictions that damage our economy can benefit Americans at home at the same time as they strengthen our position in the world.
If we want to win the international war of ideas and thereby make our America’s position in the world great again, we have to pay more attention to the ways in which what we do at home affects our position abroad. Right now, we’re a long way from being able to say we’re winning so much we can be sick and tired of all the winning.
UPDATE: I have made minor additions to this post.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Y45lKK
via IFTTT
The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police spurred widespread protests which have been followed by looting in dozens of American cities. CNN’s Don Lemon compared looters who plundered Neiman Marcus and other upscale stores to those at the Boston Tea Party. But far more Americans likely agreed with Quinta Caylor, a black North Carolina nurse on Twitter, who denounced the looters who “THUGGED OUT in 1 day” businesses that owners had worked long and hard to build.
There are not yet any solid estimates of the total damage from the looting and burning that has occurred in many cities across the nation. Total losses may range in the tens of millions of dollars or perhaps in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The pillaging has been especially ruinous to many small family-owned businesses, some of whom may not have insurance to cover their losses.
Many cities have responded to violent rampages by imposing curfews and other severe restrictions on movement.
In Portland, Oregon, “rioters have broken into Portland’s main mall in downtown and began looting the Louis Vuitton. Youths ran out with designer bags. They shouted about expropriation,” as Andy Ngo tweeted.
But the damage they inflicted was not even pocket change compared to the wreckage produced by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She prohibited anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. Whitmer severely restricted what stores could sell; she prohibited purchasing seeds for spring planting in stores after she decreed that a “nonessential” activity (unlike buying state lottery tickets). Though COVID infections were concentrated in the Detroit metropolitan area, Whitmer shut down the entire state – including northern counties with near-zero infections and zero fatalities, boosting unemployment to 24% statewide.
In the District of Columbia, looters pillaged an Apple Store. “I bet this is about the [COVID] contact tracing in the latest upgrade,” quipped one wag on Twitter.
But Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has inflicted vastly more damage on the city with a lockdown order that helped destroy almost 100,000 jobs.
In Richmond, Virginia, looters pillaged many black-owned small businesses as well as torching the headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Local damage is far outweighed by Gov. Ralph Northam shutting down the state economy for more than two months– including vast swaths of the Old Dominion that had few if any COVID cases, helping destroy more than half a million jobs.
But more than two million New Yorkers have lost their jobs since Gov. Andrew Cuomo effectively put almost 20 million people under house arrest – a drastic step that he said would be justified if it “saves just one life.” Most counties had only a smattering of COVID cases before Cuomo caused profound upheaval in the lives of vast numbers of his subjects. Also, unlike for Cuomo, there is no evidence tying the looters to 5,000+ deaths in nursing homes.
Most of the media coverage, reciting the official narrative that shutdowns were vital and justified, has ignored the human carnage of the COVID shutdowns.
Almost 40% of households earning less than $40,000 per year have someone who lost their job in recent months, according to the Federal Reserve. Politicians destroyed much of the economy in the name of “risk reduction.” Unprecedented restrictions on personal and economic freedom were justified in part by federal Centers for Disease Control fatality forecasts that turned out to be wildly exaggerated.
Some leftists on Twitter urged the looters to go after national chain stores such as Target and avoid small family-owned businesses. Politicians issuing COVID shutdown decrees followed the opposite standard, effectively padlocking small businesses while Walmart and other large stores easily received the “essential” bureaucratic holy water and Amazon practically won the lottery. The recent riots may have destroyed hundreds of businesses. But forecasts predict that millions of businesses could be forced to close or file bankruptcy because of the pandemic disruptions.
The people who pillaged stores in recent days deserve vigorous prosecution, and the deluge of Twitter plundering-in-progress videos could make it easier to identify culprits. It remains to be seen whether mayors will have the gumption to throw the book at the thieves. But it is even less likely that the politicians and other government officials who inflicted far greater damage on the economy will ever be held liable.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/377SGdO Tyler Durden
Anything But “Incredible”: For Millennials And Women, The Jobs Report Was Catastrophic Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/06/2020 – 18:05
There were clear problems with Friday’s “incredible” – as Trump put it – jobs report.
First and foremost the BLS’ own admission there was a “survey error” which may have reduced the real unemployment rate by up to 3% as survey-takers mistakenly counted about 4.9 million temporarily laid-off people as employed, then moving through some very aggressive statistical assumption revisions to boost the “birth/death” model, the curious case of millions of “jobs” resurrected temporarily thanks to the PPP program: as recruitment firm LaSalle Network head Tom Gimbel said, today’s jobs report may offer a “false ray of light” because almost all job gains stemmed from furloughed employees kept on the books due to PPP loans (he said he was seeing real weakness in new hiring).
But even if one accepts the report at its face, if one digs beneath the glossy veneer, the details are anything but “incredible” as described by the president.
Start with Trump’s “incredible” V-shaped rebound: after the 2.5mm new jobs added, total US employment is basically where it was at the depth of the financial crisis, while 21 million workers find themselves unemployed – this number was 6 million just two months ago.
Putting that number in context, with roughly 133 million employed workers, there are a record 102 million Americans who are not in the labor force, of whom 92.7 million don’t even want a job.
Among those who were lucky enough to remain in the work force, millions were shifted from full to part-time.
Adding insult to injury, the only jobs created in May according to Deutsche Bank were for highly-skilled, highly-paid workers as low and medium wage jobs continue to shed millions of workers – mostly young, recent graduates – as employers shift to zoom-ing or outsourcing.
That said, we find the above chart unlikely since a breakdown of actual jobs added by industry shows that the low-paying leisure and hospitality, education and health, and retail trade made up 3 of the top 4 sectors.
In any case, the unemployment rate for those without a college education is around 16% (and 20% for those who never finished high school), which is why with young, unemployed people already protesting almost daily, it is shaping up as a summer of teenage/young adult discontent and violence for the ages.
It’s not just teenagers: millennials, already facing dire labor prospects as a result of the zombie post-GFC economy, just saw their employment rate plummet to recession levels.
The core, prime-aged segment of the workforce, those 25-54 just saw a historic collapse in their job prospects.
Yet while millennials are fired by the millions, so are older Americans: the ratio of employment of those 65 and older to the overall population just plunged to crisis levels as well.
And here is the catalyst for the next round of social discontent: women unemployment is now far higher than that of men after being roughly the same before covid: how long before accusation of rampant employer sexism are the next big thing?
What is one to do with these data? Why buy stocks of course, what else. It is “Jay’s market“, where an economic depression means +∞ for the S&P.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3h1w6YZ Tyler Durden
Update #1: File under irony, some folks on Hackernews “flagged” this post as inappropriate, after hitting the top-10 and the front page. Article about Big Tech censorship, flagged as inappropriate.
* * *
Yesterday, author Alex Berenson reported via Twitter that Amazon had spiked his new book about COVID-19 and the lockdowns.
Berenson is a former New York Times reporter, author of other books, fiction and non-fiction, and he’s even a Twitter blue check. This morning I exchanged a few emails with him and he’s slammed with emails so he sent me his statement on the matter:
The booklet was the first in a series of coronavirus pamphlets I plan to put out covering various aspects of the crisis. Readers of my Twitter feed encouraged me to compile information in a more comprehensive and easier-to-read format, and when I polled people on Twitter to ask if they would be willing to pay a nominal fee for such a pamphlet, the response was strong.
Originally I only planned to write one, but I had so much information I realized that the booklet would be an awkward length – longer than a magazine article but shorter than a book. Also, doing so would take too long, and I wanted to put it out quickly. So I decided to split the booklet into pieces. Part 1 included an introduction and a discussion of death coding, death counts, and who is really dying from COVID, as well as a worst-case estimate of deaths with no mitigation efforts. It is about 6,500 words, and I planned to sell it for $2.99 on ebook or $5.99 paperback. It is called “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1, Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates.”
I created covers for both yesterday and uploaded the book. I had published Kindle Singles (Amazon’s curated program for short Kindle pieces, which now focuses more on fiction from established writers), so I was relatively familiar with the drill. I briefly considered censorship but assumed I wouldn’t have a problem because of my background, because anyone who reads the booklet will realize it is impeccably sourced, nary a conspiracy theory to be found, and frankly because Amazon shouldn’t be censoring anything that doesn’t explicitly help people commit criminal behavior. (Books intended to help adults groom children for sexual relationships, for example, should be off-limits – though about 10 years ago Amazon did not agree and only backed down from selling a how-to guide for pedophiles in the face of public outrage.)
I didn’t hear anything until this morning, when I found the note I posted to Twitter in my inbox. I will forward it to you in its entirely. Note that it does not offer any route to appeal. I have no idea if the decision was made by a person, an automated system, or a combination (i.e. the system flags anything with COVID-19 or coronavirus in the title and then a person decides on the content). I am considering my options, including making the booklet available on my Website and asking people to pay on an honor system, but that will not solve the problem of Amazon’s censorship. Amazon dominates both the electronic and physical book markets, and if it denies its readers a chance to see my work, I will lose the chance to reach the people who most need to learn the truth – those who don’t already know it.
The text of the Amazon notice follows:
Hello,
We’re contacting you regarding the following book(s):
Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1: Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates by Alex Berenson (AUTHOR) (ID: PRI-GRW1ZENP2S2)
Your book does not comply with our guidelines. As a result we are not offering your book for sale.
Due to the rapidly changing nature of information around the COVID-19 virus, we are referring customers to official sources for health information about the virus. Please consider removing references to COVID-19 for this book.
Amazon reserves the right to determine what content we offer according to our content guidelines.
Berenson is considering releasing the book from his website, so check there for updates. But it looks like I’ll have to add a chapter to my book on surviving deplatform attacks for what to do when the world’s largest retailer (a.k.a The Company Store), refuses to sell what you have to say.
Is it censorship or is it free markets in action?
It’s been an ongoing theme in our #AxisOfEasy newsletter (most recently mentioned this week) that when Big Tech insists that when it comes to coronavirus only information emanating from “official sources” is permissible, it becomes increasingly problematic for two reasons:
Official sources frequently get it wrong. We saw this when CDC flip flopped on mask use, or when the WHO waited until March to declare coronavirus a pandemic. There are numerous other examples to mention.
Sometimes the unofficial sources get it right and when you decide to tilt the scales of discourse in favour of the former and to squelch the latter, you are no longer a mechanical distributor and you are an arbiter of truth.
It is inevitable that applying this template to coronavirus because we’re in some worldwide global emergency, will sooner than later be applied to adjacent realms, because, hey, emergency, and then over time, to all realms. In Berenson’s case, his material about the COVID-19 virus is being suppressed, as is his material about the lockdowns.
The lockdowns especially, are a contentious issue. Recall the two California doctors, Dan Erickson and Artin MAssihi, who were deplatformed from Youtube for saying that the lockdowns, while initially warranted, were now becoming destructive and would lead to rampant mental health issues such as depression, spousal and child abuse, and suicide. Not only was their video dropped by Youtube, who’s stated policy is also “official sources only”, Facebook dropped their clinics page as well.
Now that Big Tech has embraced an Only Official Sources Permitted (OOSP?) policy, what field of endeavour will be next?
My audiobook shop is due to release the Incrementum guys’ book on The Zero Interest Rate Trap this month. Should we be expecting an email someday, from Amazon, telling us they’re no longer selling the book because:
Due to the rapidly changing nature of information around low and negative interest rates, Fed and Central Bank policy, inflation and wealth inequality, we are referring customers to official sources for monetary policy. Please consider removing references to these topics from your book.
…and from then on the only book Amazon will sell that has anything to say about the matter is Ben Bernanke’s “The Courage To Act”? Is this where we’re headed?
Probably.
People often argue, and libertarians are especially prone to this, that the idea of freedom of speech only applies to protection against the government, “why don’t you start your own Amazon?”. While that may be ideologically tenable, practically speaking it’s an impossible remedy. So as a libertarian, it pains me to say, I would encourage and welcome anti-trust investigations into big tech platforms such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple.
When it comes to Big Tech platforms who were funded with QE-generated hot money and who are the primary beneficiaries of the Brave New World / “never going back to normal” reality we find ourselves in: they get to make their own rules, while everybody else has to play by the rules somebody else decrees.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zenld4 Tyler Durden
Military Pilot Grounded After Low-Flying Helicopter Maneuvers Over D.C. Protests Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/06/2020 – 17:15
Despite according to a prior New York Times report top Pentagon brass initially ordered that National Guard helicopters assist in dispersing protests and riots which overwhelmed streets outside the White House early this week, at least one helicopter pilot has been grounded pending an investigation over low-flying maneuvers.
The Black Hawk helicopter presence created a huge stir among activists nationwide, as footage went viral of the pilots using gusts from the helicopter blades to deter crowds.
The Pentagon had described the “show of force” tactic as a menacing “persistent presence” to dissuade the below throngs amid raging Black Lives Matter protests.
Reporters and demonstrators alleged that in some locations where the swooping maneuver was made store windows were broken by the severe downdraft along with tree limbs, which in at least one case reportedly hurt a bystander when branches struck the person.
Caught on film were US Army UH-72 Lakota helicopters, as well as UH-60 Black Hawks coming within as little as 100 feet over the crowds.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told reporters that the helicopter crew was grounded pending results from an internal investigation, according to local CBS affiliate WUSA9. A Pentagon spokesman told the outlet that the move was standard procedure during such investigations.
The aircraft was one of two Army National Guard helicopters that hovered between 100 and 300 feet above the streets of the District on Monday night, according to an aircraft tracker. Gusts from their helicopter blades were aimed at dispersing crowds of protesters.
Via The Drive/social media footage stillframes.
And further the D.C. National Guard commander, Maj. Gen. William Walker, had indicated in a prior statement that he’d “directed an immediate investigation into the June 1 incident.”
“I hold all members of the District of Columbia National Guard to the highest of standards,” Walker said. “We live and work in the District, and we are dedicated to the service of our nation.”
In a disturbing show of force usually seen in war zones, military helicopters hovered over crowds of protesters in Washington, D.C. pic.twitter.com/K9g3n9Sz2s
No doubt, the pending investigation and grounding of the pilot is largely a political response, given not only the widespread condemnation of military armed forces being utilized for crowd and riot control on American streets, but at a moment the Pentagon and White House are increasingly at odds over the role of soldiers amid the nationwide unrest.
And given the controversy, we’re unlikely to see low-flying helicopters during Saturday’s protest, despite the prediction that they’ll be the biggest yet on the capitol, and potentially most dangerous given the chaos of early this week.
It also suggests a broader trend of lower ranking police officers and soldiers potentially being thrown under the buswhen the “orders” from their higher-ups come under media scrutiny.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3eRaMDw Tyler Durden
