On Tuesday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the platform would invite “offensive” content back onto the site – writing in an open letter to YouTube creators “Without an open system, diverse and authentic voices have trouble breaking through.“
“I believe preserving an open platform is more important than ever,” she added.
In response, Infowars relaunched its ‘War Room’ YouTube channel – which boasted 2.4 million followers before being terminated in August 2018 for “violating YouTube’s community guidelines.”
The first new video uploaded to the new War Room channel featured host Owen Shroyer celebrating Wojcicki’s announcement, and was titled “Breaking! YouTube CEO says ‘Alex Jones’ and ‘Infowars Ban Is Over.’”
Wojcicki didn’t mention Infowars in her letter, but this is how Shroyer apparently interpreted it. Since going live, War Room has uploaded 13 videos covering topics typical to Infowars, like “liberal racism,” the end of “globalism,” and how Lizzo’s performance at the VMAs was “disgusting.” –VICE
That didn’t last long
Shortly after VICE published their article noting that Shroyer’s video had been up for 17 hours, YouTube deleted Infowars’ War Room channel – again.
“We’re committed to preserving openness and balancing it with our responsibility to protect our community,” said YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi. “This means taking action against channels that continue to violate our policies.”
Infowars and its founder Alex Jones suffered coordinated bans across several platforms last year, including Facebook and Apple’s iTunes, after online activists Sleeping Giants lobbied tech companies to cut all ties with Jones and his network.
Okay…what is happening here?@iTunes@apple, are you really choosing to host Infowars on your platform after Alex Jones’ harassment of Sandy Hook parents and Vegas shooting victims and threats to the Special Counsel? How does this not break your Terms Of Service? https://t.co/Bfhwf6NXYN
We haven’t seen this sort of seismic activity on the west coast in a very long time. Last month, two monster earthquakes in southern California were followed by thousands upon thousands of aftershocks, and the shaking still hasn’t stopped. Scientists tell us that the San Andreas fault is “locked and loaded” and that it could potentially “unzip all at once” without any warning at all. But meanwhile, another ominous threat is looming farther north.
As you will see below, more than 4,500 earthquakes have rattled the Cascadia Subduction Zone over the last two weeks, and that includes a magnitude 6.3 quake that struck off the coast of Oregon on Thursday. The following comes from the official USGS website…
The August 29, 2019, M 6.3 earthquake near the coast of Oregon occurred as the result of strike-slip faulting along the Blanco Fracture Zone, a transform fault marking the boundary between the Pacific Plate to the southwest and the Juan de Fuca Plate to the northeast. Moment tensor solutions show faulting occurred as a result of slip on a steeply dipping fault, either from left-lateral slip on a northeast striking fault or right-lateral slip on a southeast striking fault. Given the moment tensor and orientation of the fracture zone, this event occurred on a steeply dipping, right-lateral, southeast striking fault. At this location, the Juan de Fuca Plate slides past the Pacific Plate at a rate of 49 mm a year along an azimuth of 110 degrees from north.
If this was an isolated event, that would be concerning enough, but this earthquake happened in the midst of a very unusual earthquake swarm…
Did you feel the ground move this week? Not likely, even though a wave of small tremors was spreading under people’s feet in the coastal Pacific Northwest.
The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network has detected more than 4,500 tremors over the past two weeks deep beneath the Olympic Peninsula and southern Vancouver Island and from another swarm stretching from Eugene to the Siskiyou Mountains.
Could it be possible that all of this seismic activity is putting additional stress on the “locked” portion of the Cascadia Subduction Zone?
According to the director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, this is something that “we don’t know”…
The key question for seismic network director Harold Tobin at the University of Washington (UW) is whether the current slow slip has implications for the feared Big One, a large Cascadia earthquake.
“There could be a heightened chance that that would be adding stress to the part of the plate we actually worry about, which is the ‘locked zone’ or the seismogenic zone, for the big earthquake,” Tobin told public radio on Tuesday. “But the fact is the jury is very much out on that. That is a hypothesis, but we don’t know.”
But what we do know is that low level shaking can sometimes lead to a larger event, and that is something that we witnessed in southern California last month.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone stretches from northern California all the way up to Vancouver Island, and scientists assure us that it is only a matter of time before it produces another monster earthquake. And when that happens, we will almost certainly also see a colossal tsunami which will completely wipe out communities all along the west coast. In fact, the head of FEMA’s Region X once told the New Yorker that “everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast” when this sort of an event finally strikes…
If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2. That’s the very big one.
…By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”
In the Pacific Northwest, everything west of Interstate 5 covers some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people.
We are talking about a tsunami that will be many magnitudes worse than the tsunami that devastated much of the Japanese coastline back in 2011.
According to Oregon State University paleoseismologist Chris Goldfinger, the Cascadia Subduction Zone has the potential of producing a giant wall of water up to 100 feet high that would devastate everything in sight…
The tsunami would bring water 20 to 80 – maybe even 100 – feet higher than today’s high tides.Most of the structures that have survived the killer quake but built too low will be smashed into by a devastating wall of water. And the next surge could be even higher, and the one after that higher still.
It won’t just be the water causing destruction, but everything it picks up. Goldfinger described what would happen all around and on the spit of land where CBN News interviewed him in the middle of Newport, Oregon’s Yaquina Bay, a few hundred yards from the Pacific.
“Then suddenly you’ve got a bay full of fishing boats, refrigerators, cars and everything else,” Goldfinger explained. “And it’s like a glacier of debris that’s just kind of sloshing back and forth.”
This is why many of us are so concerned about all of the shaking that we are seeing in the Northwest right now.
The sort of disaster that I just described could literally happen at any time.
In addition, let us not forget that there are many extremely dangerous volcanoes in the Northwest that could reawaken suddenly. I am particularly concerned about Mt. Rainier, and this is something that I have warned about extensively.
Some of our most important cities are essentially built on a “time bomb” that could go off at any moment.
And scientists tell us that it is absolutely certain that someday disaster will strike.
Let us hope that day can be put off for as long as possible, but without a doubt our time is running out.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32hSrJD Tyler Durden
Following the collapse in preliminary data, August’s final University of Michigan Sentiment index was expected to bounce modestly (given the exuberance in stocks), but instead tumbled further.
This was the biggest drop in six years, slumping to the lowest level of Donald Trump’s presidency as Americans expressed concern about how his tariffs will affect the economy.
The University of Michigan’s final sentiment index fell to 89.8 in August from a previously reported 92.1 and 98.4 in July, data showed Friday. The gauge of current conditions dropped to the lowest since October 2016, while the expectations index matched January as the weakest since that same period.
Source: Bloomberg
The 8.6-point drop from July was the largest since December 2012, while the 89.8 reading for the sentiment index was the lowest since October 2016.
“The recent decline is due to negative references to tariffs, which were spontaneously mentioned by one in three consumers,” Richard Curtin, director of the University of Michigan consumer survey, said in a statement.
“ Trump’s tariff policies have been subject to repeated reversals amid threats of higher future tariffs. Such tactics may have some merit in negotiations with China, but they act to increase uncertainty and diminish consumer spending at home.”
The data indicate that the erosion of consumer confidence due to tariff policies is now well underway. Compared with those who did not reference tariffs, consumers who made spontaneous negative references to tariffs also voiced higher year-ahead inflation expectations, more frequently expected rising unemployment, and expected smaller annual gains in household incomes
All income levels saw sentiment decline but the richest suffered the largest drop…
Source: Bloomberg
While the overall level of sentiment is still consistent with modest gains in consumption, the data nonetheless increased the likelihood that consumers could be pushed off the “tariff cliff” in the months ahead, as buying climates tumbled for homes, vehicles, and household durables…
Source: Bloomberg
The economic outlook for the next 12 months fell to the lowest since January, while the five-year outlook also tumbled.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZDSoWX Tyler Durden
Today in “it’s not a car company, it’s a technology company” news, researchers have again hacked and exploited a security flaw in Tesla’s Model S key fob.
It was about one year ago when researchers unveiled a serious flaw in the security of Tesla’s vehicles, relating to the Model S keyless entry system, according to Wired. With little more than standard radio equipment, hackers were able to defeat the car’s encryption and wirelessly clone the sedan’s key fob in seconds, allowing them to unlock the car and drive away without ever touching the owner’s key.
In response to this report, Tesla created a “new” version of its key fob that supposedly patched the underlying flaw. But now, predictably, the same researchers are back and say that they have found yet another vulnerability that even affects the replacement key fobs.
Researcher Lennert Wouters of Belgian university KU Leuven revealed in a talk at the Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems conference in Atlanta recently that his team had found a technique capable of breaking the Model S’s key fob encryption yet again. This flaw – again – allowed them to clone the keys and steal the vehicle.
Wouters noted that the new attack is more limited in its radio range than the previous one was, and that it takes a little bit longer to perform. He also noted that researchers haven’t carried out the full attack demonstration as they did last year, but they have proven that it’s possible.
The researchers’ analysis was convincing enough that Tesla acknowledged the possibility of it being exploited and was forced to roll out yet another fix that will be pushed over the air to Tesla owners. The good news is that the new flaw can be blocked with a security software update instead of a hardware replacement. The previous vulnerability required installing a security update, but also buying a new key fob.
Tesla responded to the hack by stating:
“While nothing can prevent against all vehicle thefts, Tesla has deployed several security enhancements, such as PIN to Drive, that makes them much less likely to occur. We’ve begun to release an over-the-air software update (part of 2019.32) that addresses this researcher’s findings and allows certain Model S owners to update their key fobs inside their car in less than two minutes. We believe that neither of these options would be possible for any other automaker to release to existing owners, given our unique ability to roll out over-the-air updates that improve the functionality and security of our cars and key fobs.”
The key fob is manufactured by a company called Pektron. Wouters notes that the vulnerability relates to a configuration bug that reduces the time necessary to crack the fob’s encryption. Despite Tesla and Pektron’s upgrade from 40 bit encryption to 80 bit encryption, the bug still allows hackers to reduce the problem to cracking two 40 bit keys, instead of one 80 bit key. The shortcut makes cracking the key fob only twice as hard as before, instead of the “trillion times harder” it should have been with the update.
Wouters said:
“I do think the way Tesla fixed it this time is pretty cool. That’s something that I don’t think any other car manufacturer has ever done before, or at least not publicly.”
Video of the original hack can be seen here:
When the initial vulnerability came to light a year ago, Tesla stated that the car‘s GPS tracking feature could help stop thieves. But that feature hasn’t since stopped multiple Tesla thefts that have used keyless entry hacks and have been documented on surveillance video.
As we pointed out in both a non-Tesla specific report – and a Tesla-specific report weeks ago, these types of hacks are the new reality for an automotive industry where wireless entry has become the standard.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Hy8f2M Tyler Durden
On the heels of rebounds across various regional Fed surveys, Chicago’s PMI survey rebounded from recession-signaling lows in July, jumping from 44.4 to 50.4 (back into expansion) in August.
Source: Bloomberg
5 of the components rose in July (the most since Feb)
Prices paid rose at a faster pace, signaling expansion
New orders rose and the direction reversed, signaling expansion
Employment fell at a slower pace, signaling contraction
Inventories fell and the direction reversed, signaling contraction
Supplier deliveries rose at a slower pace, signaling expansion
Production fell at a slower pace, signaling contraction
Order backlogs rose and the direction reversed, signaling expansion
Business activity has been positive for 8 months over the past year.
This follows regional Fed surveys rebound…
Source: Bloomberg
So everything is awesome again? What happens when Powell disappoints in September?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32f7ljF Tyler Durden
After 250 weeks without a purchase of Treasuries (since Oct. 2014), for the second week in a row, the Federal Reserve bought Treasuries.
The $14 billion in purchasing is in stark contrast to zero purchases since Quantitative Easing ended and selling during Quantitative Tightening.
When the Fed sells Treasuries, asset prices struggle, but when the Fed buys Treasuries, asset prices have surged.
Chart below shows the Fed’s total Treasury holdings (red line) versus the weekly change in Treasuries (black columns) since 2014. The QE taper is visible with the first dashed yellow line, the Quantitative Tightening the second dashed yellow line, and then the QT taper highlighted by the third dashed yellow line. Now, the Fed seems to have begun a new period of Treasury purchasing…but for how long and for what purpose, only Mr. Powell knows.
To put things in perspective, the chart below shows the Fed holdings of Treasuries (red line) and weekly change in Treasury buying (black columns) since 2003. Clearly visible is the activist role the Fed has taken since the GFC…QE1, QE2, Operation Twist, QE3, Quantitative Tightening…and now???
And just to highlight the immediate and incredible impact of the Federal Reserve purchasing of Treasuries on equity prices, the chart below is weekly changes in Treasury purchases (yellow columns) versus the Wilshire 5000 (red line), representing all publicly traded US equities.
Data via St. Louis FRED.
Plunge Protection Team saves the world (from a 5% dip) once again.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zCoEih Tyler Durden
A U.S.–Taliban deal will leave many American troops in Afghanistan. “Under the proposed deal, the initial withdrawal would include roughly 5,000 of the 14,000 U.S. troops in the country,” The Washington Postreported Thursday.
“We’re going to keep a presence there,” Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade yesterday. “We’re reducing that presence very substantially. We’re not fighting a war over there. We’re just policemen.”
But this comes after an announcement from Trump last December that the U.S. would be withdrawing 7,00 from Afghanistan within weeks. That didn’t pan out. The new plan is the latest in what’s becoming a Trumpian habit: promising a different path than his predecessors in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, only to cave to the more militaristic forces in his party and in the broader media/corporate/political establishment.
In this case, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) has been one of the harshest critics of Trump’s impulses to pull back the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and the Middle East. “Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, has repeatedly warned the president not to trust the Taliban to control al-Qaeda and other militant groups in Afghanistan,” notes the Post:
Some within the Trump administration have sent the same message. Trump has maintained that bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan is his long-term priority. On Sunday, Graham said Trump and his would-be 2020 Democratic presidential rivals are “all wrong” on the issue.
People in the Trump administration said earlier this month that the president still wants all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by 2020.
And so here “is where we find ourselves,” as Matt Welch wrote in the July issue of Reason:
with a president who accurately declares in his State of the Union address that “great nations do not fight endless wars,” even while 14,000 of the troops under his command still suffer and inflict death more than 200 months (and 2,300 Americans killed) after U.S. forces first overthrew the Taliban government.
“We should leave Afghanistan immediately,” Trump tweeted as far back as March 2013. “No more wasted lives.” He was right then, and presumably still leans that way now.
Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) thinks the “problem is that several of his advisers that he has appointed don’t necessarily agree with him. So they either countermand his sentiments or talk him into delaying.”
The American people are more in line with Paul’s impulses than with those of forever-warmongers like Graham. As Lucy Steigerwald wrote here in January:
The long life of the Afghan war makes it hard to remember how popular it was when it began. As the fighting began, 80 percent of America supported it. Nobody in Congress except Rep. Barbara Lee (D–Calif.) was prescient enough to vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force and its open-ended-enough-to-attack-a-dozen-more-countries wording. Not until 2014 did a majority of Americans begin to regret that the war ever started.
Speaking of both wars, people have been calling B.S. on Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s recent attempt to slam Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) Walker tweeted “How many members of the true Greatest Generation fought and died so @AOC and her generation could have the peace & prosperity they enjoy today?” This, critics note, makes light of millennial military service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's amazing how prone Republicans are to ignore the more than two million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of whom are millennials. https://t.co/20EWb19Vc3
we've been at war for 18 years. the authorization for use of military force that started that war has been invoked to justify actions in 20 (!) different countries. a service member born after 9/11 (not a millennial!) will likely die in this war sometime soon. https://t.co/x37Qj3nZyx
You do realize I have millennial brothers and sisters who have died serving this country? Is that the peace and prosperity that the greatest generation paved for us like you say? Just stop. https://t.co/vMwRGbxGPV
And while Trump has been talking down these military misadventures, his actions don’t always reflect the same. As Brian Doherty pointed out here last year, “if you’re assessing how serious a peacenik Trump is prepared to be, you should contemplate some hard facts about Washington’s longest-lasting active war: the U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan.”
According to an interesting analysis that Niall McCarthy of Statista has done of Air Force Central Command data, 2018—the first full year that the Trump administration has run the Afghanistan coalition—saw in just its first nine months more bombs dropped on Afghanistan than any other year in the history of the war: 5,213. The entire year of 2010, the previous record, saw just 5,101.
The number of bombs dropped had declined to 947 in 2015; in 2016, it was 1,337. But after “Trump announced a new Afghan strategy last August and committed more troops to the country,” McCarthy writes, “the number of bombs dropped by the U.S. coalition has surged dramatically.”
FREE MINDS
Sexting illegal in Texas without affirmative consent. Texas is enacting a law making it illegal to text or direct message someone an unsolicited image of a “sexually explicit” nature. “Many people—especially women—get unwanted sexually explicit pictures by text or social media. It’s disgusting. Now, it’s illegal in Texas,” wrote Republican Gov. Greg Abbott last Friday.
The law, which takes effect September 1, makes it illegal to send any sexually explicit imagery that “is not sent at the request of or with the express consent of the recipient.” What could go wrong…?
FREE MARKETS
Elizabeth Warren’s “economic patriotism” is just protectionism dressed up in a differentphrase, writes J.D. Tuccille. We’re already seeing the negative effects of this tendency in the Trump administration, with its “America First” economics.
“There’s no reason to believe other countries will be more receptive to a hypothetical President Warren’s foreigner-bashing and trade-tinkering just because she sticks a different brand name on bad policy,” writes Tuccille. “Protectionism and nationalism would still draw retaliation.”
QUICK HITS
“Can a minor legally engaged in consensual sexual activity be his or her own pornographer through the act of sexting?” Yes, rules Maryland’s top court by a vote of 6–1.
The National Law Review says “2019 has quietly been an important year for CDA jurisprudence with a number of opinions enunciating robust immunity under CDA Section 230.” Relatedly:
Politicians like Sen. @TedCruz argue the law requires social media sites like @Facebook and @Twitter to be “neutral public forums”.
Ken White of @Popehat digs into why this is not true on the latest @MakeNoLaw.
An incarcerated woman who says she was forced to give birth behind bars without medical attention is suing the Denver County Jail.
“Your right to free speech does not automatically mean that people will agree with you. In fact, you have an absolute God-given and inalienable right to be on the losing end of this argument,” U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman told a room full of Ohio police chiefs yesterday.
A U.S.–Taliban deal will leave many American troops in Afghanistan. “Under the proposed deal, the initial withdrawal would include roughly 5,000 of the 14,000 U.S. troops in the country,” The Washington Postreported Thursday.
“We’re going to keep a presence there,” Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade yesterday. “We’re reducing that presence very substantially. We’re not fighting a war over there. We’re just policemen.”
But this comes after an announcement from Trump last December that the U.S. would be withdrawing 7,00 from Afghanistan within weeks. That didn’t pan out. The new plan is the latest in what’s becoming a Trumpian habit: promising a different path than his predecessors in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, only to cave to the more militaristic forces in his party and in the broader media/corporate/political establishment.
In this case, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) has been one of the harshest critics of Trump’s impulses to pull back the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and the Middle East. “Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, has repeatedly warned the president not to trust the Taliban to control al-Qaeda and other militant groups in Afghanistan,” notes the Post:
Some within the Trump administration have sent the same message. Trump has maintained that bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan is his long-term priority. On Sunday, Graham said Trump and his would-be 2020 Democratic presidential rivals are “all wrong” on the issue.
People in the Trump administration said earlier this month that the president still wants all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by 2020.
And so here “is where we find ourselves,” as Matt Welch wrote in the July issue of Reason:
with a president who accurately declares in his State of the Union address that “great nations do not fight endless wars,” even while 14,000 of the troops under his command still suffer and inflict death more than 200 months (and 2,300 Americans killed) after U.S. forces first overthrew the Taliban government.
“We should leave Afghanistan immediately,” Trump tweeted as far back as March 2013. “No more wasted lives.” He was right then, and presumably still leans that way now.
Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) thinks the “problem is that several of his advisers that he has appointed don’t necessarily agree with him. So they either countermand his sentiments or talk him into delaying.”
The American people are more in line with Paul’s impulses than with those of forever-warmongers like Graham. As Lucy Steigerwald wrote here in January:
The long life of the Afghan war makes it hard to remember how popular it was when it began. As the fighting began, 80 percent of America supported it. Nobody in Congress except Rep. Barbara Lee (D–Calif.) was prescient enough to vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force and its open-ended-enough-to-attack-a-dozen-more-countries wording. Not until 2014 did a majority of Americans begin to regret that the war ever started.
Speaking of both wars, people have been calling B.S. on Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s recent attempt to slam Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) Walker tweeted “How many members of the true Greatest Generation fought and died so @AOC and her generation could have the peace & prosperity they enjoy today?” This, critics note, makes light of millennial military service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's amazing how prone Republicans are to ignore the more than two million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of whom are millennials. https://t.co/20EWb19Vc3
we've been at war for 18 years. the authorization for use of military force that started that war has been invoked to justify actions in 20 (!) different countries. a service member born after 9/11 (not a millennial!) will likely die in this war sometime soon. https://t.co/x37Qj3nZyx
You do realize I have millennial brothers and sisters who have died serving this country? Is that the peace and prosperity that the greatest generation paved for us like you say? Just stop. https://t.co/vMwRGbxGPV
And while Trump has been talking down these military misadventures, his actions don’t always reflect the same. As Brian Doherty pointed out here last year, “if you’re assessing how serious a peacenik Trump is prepared to be, you should contemplate some hard facts about Washington’s longest-lasting active war: the U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan.”
According to an interesting analysis that Niall McCarthy of Statista has done of Air Force Central Command data, 2018—the first full year that the Trump administration has run the Afghanistan coalition—saw in just its first nine months more bombs dropped on Afghanistan than any other year in the history of the war: 5,213. The entire year of 2010, the previous record, saw just 5,101.
The number of bombs dropped had declined to 947 in 2015; in 2016, it was 1,337. But after “Trump announced a new Afghan strategy last August and committed more troops to the country,” McCarthy writes, “the number of bombs dropped by the U.S. coalition has surged dramatically.”
FREE MINDS
Sexting illegal in Texas without affirmative consent. Texas is enacting a law making it illegal to text or direct message someone an unsolicited image of a “sexually explicit” nature. “Many people—especially women—get unwanted sexually explicit pictures by text or social media. It’s disgusting. Now, it’s illegal in Texas,” wrote Republican Gov. Greg Abbott last Friday.
The law, which takes effect September 1, makes it illegal to send any sexually explicit imagery that “is not sent at the request of or with the express consent of the recipient.” What could go wrong…?
FREE MARKETS
Elizabeth Warren’s “economic patriotism” is just protectionism dressed up in a differentphrase, writes J.D. Tuccille. We’re already seeing the negative effects of this tendency in the Trump administration, with its “America First” economics.
“There’s no reason to believe other countries will be more receptive to a hypothetical President Warren’s foreigner-bashing and trade-tinkering just because she sticks a different brand name on bad policy,” writes Tuccille. “Protectionism and nationalism would still draw retaliation.”
QUICK HITS
“Can a minor legally engaged in consensual sexual activity be his or her own pornographer through the act of sexting?” Yes, rules Maryland’s top court by a vote of 6–1.
The National Law Review says “2019 has quietly been an important year for CDA jurisprudence with a number of opinions enunciating robust immunity under CDA Section 230.” Relatedly:
Politicians like Sen. @TedCruz argue the law requires social media sites like @Facebook and @Twitter to be “neutral public forums”.
Ken White of @Popehat digs into why this is not true on the latest @MakeNoLaw.
An incarcerated woman who says she was forced to give birth behind bars without medical attention is suing the Denver County Jail.
“Your right to free speech does not automatically mean that people will agree with you. In fact, you have an absolute God-given and inalienable right to be on the losing end of this argument,” U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman told a room full of Ohio police chiefs yesterday.
13 boats with 500 to 600 migrants onboard landed in the outskirts of Skala Sykamineas on the island of Lesvos on Thursday afternoon.
All boats arrived at the same location in less than an hour.
Last time this happened was in the peak of migration crisis in 2015.
It was shortly after 5pm, when several boats were spotted on their way to Sykamia having crossed into Greek territorial waters with the Frontex apparently in the role of passive bystander.
A total of 546 people, men, women and children disembarked following instructions by refugees NGOs,Aegean Boat Report reports.
According to local media, the migrants are excepted to be transferred to the hot spot of Moria already overcrowded with more than 10,000 people, while its capacity is designed for 3,000.
It is the largest number of migrants massively coming to Lesvos from the Turkish coast since the migration crisis in 2015-2016.
Moria workers are deeply concerned about the current situation, not only to the overcrowded situation but also to the under-performance of medical service.
They say that 6,000 migrants of Moria have not been medically registered.
Political and military leadership of the Greek Shipping Ministry are concerned not only about the massive arrivals on Thursday but also for their increase in the month of August.
Next to the massive arrivals on Lesvos, a total of 122 migrants and refugees landed on the islands of Farmakonisi, Kos, Lesvos as well as in Alexandroupolis in north-eastern Greece.
According to latest data, the islands of the Eastern Aegean Sea Lesvos, Chios, Samos, leros and Kos are hosting more than 24,000 refugees and migrants.
The Ministry is to hold an extraordinary meeting on the issue is to take place on Friday noon.
There are reportedly still 4 patrol boats in the area of Sykamia.
The massive arrivals coincide with the growing tension between Turkey with the US and the European Union. Granting traffickers freedom of movement would increase the political pressure, Ankara seems to think.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZFOlZY Tyler Durden
Well, that certainly escalated quickly. On Wednesday we were told that Hurricane Dorian would only be a Category 3 storm when it hits the Florida coastline, but now we are being told that it will be a Category 4 storm. Hurricane Dorian is rapidly gaining strength over very warm waters in the Atlantic Ocean, and the latest forecast has it making landfall somewhere along the east coast of Florida on Monday. If it is officially a Category 4 storm when it arrives, it will be the most powerful storm to hit the east coast of Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Dorian is being described as a “monster hurricane”, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has already declared a state of emergency for all 67 counties in the state of Florida.
We will see how things develop over the next several days, but at this point it has become clear that Dorian has the potential to be an exceedingly dangerous storm.
In fact, President Trump himself is telling us that Dorian could be “perhaps one of the biggest” hurricanes that the U.S. has ever seen…
Hurricane Dorian looks like it will be hitting Florida late Sunday night. Be prepared and please follow State and Federal instructions, it will be a very big Hurricane, perhaps one of the biggest!
The reason why meteorologists are so concerned is because Dorian will be traveling over extremely warm waters for the next 48 hours, and that means that we should see “steady intensification during the next 2 to 3 days”…
“The warmer the water, the more moisture is in the air,’’ the website for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says. “And that could mean bigger and stronger hurricanes.’’
The weather service said current conditions in the Atlantic “should allow for at least steady intensification during the next 2 to 3 days.’’
We haven’t seen such favorable conditions for a storm in a very long time, and so ultimately it is difficult to project just how bad this storm will turn out to be.
At this point, authorities are telling us that we should expect winds of “at least 130 mph” when it finally strikes the mainland…
It is in that kind of environment that Hurricane Dorian, currently at Category 1, is expected to gain considerable strength as it heads northwest, with the Sunshine State almost certainly on its path.
Forecasts call for Dorian to increase in intensity and become a Category 4 hurricane, with winds of at least 130 mph, and it could strike the U.S. on Labor Day. The National Hurricane Center says it will “remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through the weekend.’’
It is interesting to note that Thursday was the 14th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans. We remember what a monstrous storm that was, but the truth is that it was only a Category 3 storm when it made landfall…
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell commemorated the 14th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina today during a wreath-laying ceremony.
LaToya and other public officials gathered at the Katrina Memorial on Canal Street to remember the victims of the storm, which made landfall near Grand Isle, Louisiana, in 2005 as a Category 3 storm with winds near 127 mph.
So that means that Hurricane Dorian has the potential to be worse than Hurricane Katrina.
And Florida is not the only state that is in danger. Some meteorologists are warning that after it passes over Florida, Dorian could enter the Gulf of Mexico, restrengthen, and make “a second landfall” somewhere along the Gulf Coast…
Though it’s forecast to hit somewhere along the east coast of Florida, there “is certainly a chance that the storm could drift into the Gulf of Mexico and produce a second landfall,” noted University of Georgia meteorologist Marshall Shepherd in Forbes.
In addition, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that Dorian could continue turning south, bypass Florida entirely, and enter the Gulf of Mexico as one of the most dangerous storms that we have ever seen.
Needless to say, that would definitely be a “nightmare scenario”, and there are many of us that will be watching the development of this storm with great interest.
We just don’t know how this storm is going to play out yet, but store shelves in Florida are already being stripped clean as residents feverishly prepare for what is ahead…
In Port Orange, 40 miles northeast of Orlando, Brooke Koontz found shelves of bread and water nearly empty at a Walmart on Wednesday. There were also slim pickings among canned goods, toiletries and bananas, too.
Thankfully, soon after she arrived, employees brought out a pallet of water.
“It was gone in seconds,” she told CNN. “People were trying to race.”
What is happening in Florida right now should be a lesson for all of us. If a horrific national crisis of some sort were to suddenly erupt, food and other critical supplies would disappear from the stores almost instantly. If you were not one of the lucky few that got to the stores in time, you would be forced to depend on whatever you already had on hand. And for many Americans, that is not a whole lot.
If this storm is as powerful as they are now projecting, it is likely that there will be widespread power outages. One south Florida resident told one reporter that his family was without power for 13 days after Hurricane Irma struck two years ago…
Sanchez, who was filling tanks of gas for generators after he waited his turn, told NBC affiliate WBBH of Fort Myers that he didn’t want to have to relive what he and his family went through during Hurricane Irma two years ago.
“We were stuck with no electricity for almost 13 days, so you see I’m going to be prepared,” he said.
It certainly appears that this storm will be much more powerful than Hurricane Irma was when it made landfall, and that is really, really bad news for those living in the Sunshine State.
Let’s keep them in prayer, and let’s also hope that this storm doesn’t get into the Gulf of Mexico, because that would be the worst scenario of all for this storm.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZEWKNo Tyler Durden
