Unsealed Affidavit Tries To Put WikiLeaks In Cahoots With The Taliban, Bin Laden

On Monday a federal judge in Virginia unsealed the original 2017 affidavit and criminal complaint on which Assange’s extradition request to the US is based, offering new details including chat logs between Assange and former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning, which attempt to support a single count of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” which may or may not have succeeded.

The US alleges Assange actively sought for and encouraged Manning to crack a password to access classified information on a Defense Department network; the affidavit claims details related to this charge, for instance chat log discussions between the pair over how to crack a password, though the affidavit notes that “it remains unknown whether Manning and Assange were successful in cracking the password,” related to the conspiracy charge.

File photo via the AFP.

“Investigators have not recovered a response by Manning to Assange’s question, and there is no other evidence as to what Assange did, if anything, with respect to the password,” the document states.

However, the FBI-produced affidavit’s language throughout makes no mention of Assange acting in the way of a journalist or a publisher, but instead takes pains to paint him as conspiring to commit espionage.

The document further notes that though Manning suspected the person on the other end of the chat was Assange, ultimately “it took me four months to confirm that the person i was communicating was in fact assange.”

The affidavit describes the individual in communication with Manning “appeared to have extensive knowledge of WikiLeaks’ day-to-day operations, including knowledge of submissions of information to the organization, as well as of financial matters.”

Manning had spent seven years in prison on violations of the Espionage Act and copying and disseminating classified military field reports, before receiving a commutation from President Obama. The secret military documents and files were what put WikiLeaks on the international media map after they were released on 2010, and included sensitive information about the Iraq and Afghan wars, Guantánamo Bay operations, as well as other State Department cables.

The document uses maximal and hyped language to describe “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States,” yet struggles to ascertain whether “illegal agreement that Assange and Manning reached” specifically led to the release of the document trove (obviously crucial for charges against Assange to hold up).

Concerning a potential extradition to the US, “probable cause” is cited to be the hundreds of messages sent between Manning and Assange on the Jabber platform. The argument is that Assange and Manning understood that it “would cause injury to the United States,” especially with US forces active on the ground in Afghanistan. 

But on this point of whether the leaks did actual harm and damage to US efforts, the document is left reaching, trying to spin and insinuate a narrative that puts WikiLeaks and terrorist groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda in cahoots.

It starts by claiming that “after the release of the Afghanistan War Reports, a member of the Taliban contacted the New York Times.”

The supposed Taliban member said, “We are studying the report… If they are US spies, then we will know how to punish them.” This strange and somewhat comical example is meant to support the notion that Assange ultimately aided America’s enemies with the leaks. 

Worse, the affidavit makes Osama bin Laden — killed in a 2011 raid by US Navy Seals while living comfortably in an Abbottabad, Pakistan compound — out to be a WikiLeaks fan, given letters had been found instructing an al-Qaeda member to “gather” the publicly available material leaked by Manning.

Somehow this is meant to imply WikiLeaks in a round-about way assisted al-Qaeda’s mission. The FBI is perhaps left grasping with this “bin Laden benefited” theory given the relative flimsiness of evidence to support the original “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” aspect on which the case originated. 

The affidavit also alleged the Taliban exploited the WikiLeaks disclosures to put U.S. allies in danger, citing a New York Times article headlined, “Taliban Study WikiLeaks to Hunt Informants.” It also said the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, showed that the terrorist was actively seeking information contained in the WikiLeaks disclosures and that al Qaeda was providing him with information from the leaked Afghanistan war reports. The Afghanistan war reports also contained specifics on improvised explosive device techniques and countermeasures espoused by the U.S. that “the enemy could use these reports to plan future lED attacks,” the affidavit said. — Washington Examiner

Also of crucial note is the timing concerning the US government’s pursuing the case out of which the affidavit originated. The document’s author, FBI special agent Megan Brown, was assigned to the case in 2017, less than a year prior to filing the affidavit. 

This suggests, as long suspected, the Obama DOJ likely wasn’t moving forward with charges, after which the Trump DOJ decided to go for it.  

The compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden lived. Image source: EPA

In the document Brown confesses that her understanding of the seven-year-old “criminal conspiracy” is based on “testimony of a forensic examiner in Manning’s court martial, my conversations with FBI forensic examiners, and research on the internet.”

Research on the internet? Perhaps the FBI found itself over-reliant on Wikipedia for those times it couldn’t concoct “WikiLeaks-Taliban” connections out of New York Times headlines. 

* * * 

The full US federal affidavit below:

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2v6Am2D Tyler Durden

Greenspan Comes Clean – 3 Things That Keep Alan Up At Night

Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

Call Me Al

You can call me Al. By Al I mean Alan Greenspan. Oh I know, he has tons of detractors and critics and there’s a lot to be critical about. But before you go on a hate tirade let’s all have some respect. The man is 93 years old and I for one, if I make it to that age, would be glad to be just half as lucid as he is at this age. Respect.

Now what I’m talking about here is Alan’s interview on CNBC on Friday. Have a close listen as there are some interesting nuggets in there.

It’s actually fascinating for several reasons:

One: He acknowledges that a 10% $SPX rally correlates to 1% GDP growth. That’s how closely markets and the economy are linked. Hence the vested interest by the powers that be to keep levitating asset prices. No wonder then that President Trump is so eager for the Fed to go on the path of QE:

If only we had QE4 we could grow at 4% and the $DJIA would be at 31K-36K. Part of this statement is of course political calculus. After all someone has to be blamed if growth slows ahead of the US election, may as well blame the Fed, not self initiated trade wars or tax cuts. Yet the president of the United States has now squarely made central bank policy responsible for not only the direction of equity markets, but also their levels and directly linked the Fed’s policy to GDP growth. But in context of the upcoming 2020 election the tweet makes sense as he of course doesn’t want to see markets falter into the 2020 election.

Two: But Alan also acknowledges the larger economy is in massive trouble and by extension, markets. A short term boost he calls the current rally with growth faltering in the long term. Key reasons: Slowing growth in Europe and substantial fiscal problems related to entitlements which are rising and will continue to rise due to the demographic picture which can’t be changed. Add an “awful” political climate and you have a structural drag on the economy that Alan sees fading “dramatically”.

Three: The spread in the yield of the 30 year and 5 year. Alan Greenspan sees that as a key measure of the degree of willingness on the part of corporate management to make investments in the longer run.

Here’s that yield chart in correlation to past recessions:

That curve hasn’t inverted, but it exhibits behavior similar to previous pre-recession periods when unemployment was at a cycle low.

How willing is corporate management to make investments for the longer run? Given the pre-occupation with buybacks the action seems to suggest buybacks over CAPEX:

While 10 firms made up 31% of all buybacks in 2018 (according to Goldman) Apple has spent $74B on share buybacks, 2.5 times more than it spent on Capex + R&D. Overall buyback growth in 2018 was way higher than Capex growth.

Certainly says a lot about priorities. In conjunction with the charts posted this weekend in Mind the Gaps this screams 2020 recession risk to me and if so, buybacks will disappear quickly when that reality sinks in perhaps later in the year.

Before you think I’m a lone butty voice on this: Guggenheim is seeing a 2020 recession: “Our Recession Dashboard also continues to point to a recession starting by mid-2020.”

And with it their broader risk assessment for markets is pointing toward a 40%+ drawdown:

That’s a lot of GDP takedown given Alan Greenspan’s ratio outlined above.

The larger message: In essence Al is affirming my Combustion case, that it all will end badly and that the current rally will not last.

We’re playing the same tune. You can call me Al:

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via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UnGkpU Tyler Durden

Biggest European IPO Of 2019 Plunges

“A good company at the wrong price…” is how Stefano Girola, a portfolio manager at Alicanto Capital SGR in Milan, is describing the plunge in Nexi SpA after its IPO – the biggest in Europe in 2019 – collapsed from the open.

As Bloomberg reports, a mix of existing and new shares in the payment services specialist had been sold to more than 340 investors from around the world at 9 euros each… but things were not good from the start as the company opened below that IPO price and kept sliding…

The Nexi IPO is the largest in Europe since German brake maker Knorr-Bremse AG’s 3.8 billion-euro share listing in October. It is also the biggest in Milan since Pirelli & C. SpA returned to the market in 2017.

“The Nexi IPO is a source of pride for the country,” CEO Paolo Bertoluzzo said during an opening ceremony at the Milan exchange.

“The share price should be viewed over time, this is only day one.”

But, as Alicanto’s Girola warns,

“I am not particularly surprised by the negative performance of Nexi, which in my view was wrongly priced on expectations that rarity value would have boosted demand.”

All of which is rather odd since CNBC’s Bob Pisani proclaimed that the dismal post-IPO performance of LYFT was a “one-off.”

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2V2LQ5O Tyler Durden

The Worst Areas in America For Weed Arrests: Reason Roundup

With so many states, cities, candidates, and cultural authorities gung-ho about legalizing weed, it’s sometimes easy to forget just how little has changed in terms of prohibition and enforcement for many parts of the country. Arrest numbers from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data provide a good reality check.

Its data shows that in many jurisdictions, one-fifth of all arrests are still for marijuana possession. In a few areas, policing pot possession accounts for upwards of 40 and 50 percent of all arrests.

The worst offenders in the country:

  • Dooley County, Georgia (54.5 percent of all arrests)
  • Hamilton County, New York (43.5 percent)
  • Texas’ Sterling County (42.1 percent) and Hartley County (42 percent)
  • Edmunds County, South Dakota (33.3 percent)

According to federal data, “marijuana possession led to nearly 6 percent of all arrests in the United States in 2017,” writes The Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham, “underscoring the level of policing dedicated to containing behavior that’s legal in 10 states and the nation’s capital.”

But this presents a positively rosy picture compared to local-level arrest data. Just check out this map:

 

What gives? The still-raging federal drug war, of course.

“The federal government incentivizes aggressive drug enforcement via funding for drug task forces and generous forfeiture rules that allow agencies to keep cash and other valuables they find in the course of a drug bust,” notes Ingraham. “And because marijuana is bulky and pungent relative to other drugs, it’s often easy for police to root out.”

Arrest data doesn’t neatly map to liberal/conservative, urban/rural, or any other particular trends. Places like North Dakota, Georgia, and Texas showed high marijuana arrest rates, but so did some East Coast and New England states (New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey) and areas outside Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, “Alabama and Kentucky—which are not known for liberal marijuana policies—also appeared to place a low priority on marijuana possession enforcement,” the Post points out.

FREE MINDS

Pulitzer Prize winners for 2019 were announced yesterday. Poynter has a complete list of winners here. A few highlights:

 

 

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger also won an award (best commentary) for a series on his city’s bail problems.

 

 

Hannah Dreier of ProPublica won the best feature writing prize for this piece:

 

FREE MARKETS

“Bethany and Justin Rondeau are in two very different but oddly parallel businesses: falconry and cannabis.” The Stranger’s Katie Herzog investigates:

ELECTION 2020

Enter Bill Weld. After running for vice president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 2016, Bill Weld will return to his Republican Party roots to mount a 2020 primary challenge to President Donald Trump

Read more from Matt Welch.

QUICK HITS

  • Fires ripped through both the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque on Monday, sending watchers around the world into a sort of cosmic panic that very quickly gave way to the same old culture war bullshit and speculation. The fire at Al-Aqsa only affected a small bit of the mosque. As for Notre Dame, French rich folks and companies have already been offering up billions to help repair the damage.
  • The ACLU is leading a class action lawsuit to change Detroit’s bail system. “Bail was originally intended to ensure a person returns to court to face charges against them,” said ACLU of Michigan Deputy Legal Director Dan Korobkin. “But instead, the money bail system has morphed into mass incarceration of the poor. It punishes people not for what they’ve done but because of what they don’t have.”
  • In case you’re interested in Beto O’Rourke’s tax returns.
  • “The Trump campaign is spending nearly half (44%) of its Facebook ad budget to target users who are over 65 years old, as opposed to Democratic candidates who are only spending 27% of their budget on that demographic,” reports Axios.
  • Tiger Woods is getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom, because why not?
  • Land of the free:

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US Industrial Output Contracts In March As Auto Production Slumps

Having slipped for two consecutive months, US Manufacturing production was expected to modestly rebound in March (by 0.1% MoM) but it failed, ending unchanged.

However, headline industrial production data was not just woirse than expected but contracted by 0.1% MoM in March…

The biggest drivers were Mining which fell 0.8% in March after no change in February, and Motor vehicles and parts production, which tumbled 2.5% in March to the lowest level since July. Q1 saw auto production slide 6.9% – the biggest drop since Oct 2014.

Capacity utilization fell to 78.8% from 79% in February (revised down from 79.1%).

Manufacturing output fell at a 1.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the worst performance since late 2017.

As Bloomberg notes, the data signal further manufacturing softness as producers cope with an inventory buildup, continuing uncertainty around trade and a dimming global growth outlook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2ZelUn4 Tyler Durden

What Is Bank of America Seeing: Credit Loss Provision Spikes To 6 Year High

There was some good and some not so good news in Bank of America’s just reported Q1 earnings report. On one hand, the bank unveiled that its quarterly profit rose 6% to $7.3 billion, a new all time high, even as revenues dipped with the company trimming some more fat (and/or muscle) as operating expenses dropped by 4% to offset the continued shrinkage in the bank’s trading revenues (all of which was discussed previously).

And while the rest of BofA’s results were generally in line if on the soft side, there was one aspect of the quarterly report that was especially notable, and it had to do with the bank’s asset quality.

Here, what was remarkable is that even as the economy is reportedly getting stronger with better consumer trends, Bank of America bumped up its provision for credit losses to just above $1 billion, or $1.013BN to be specific, up over $100MM from both a year earlier and Q4. This was the highest credit loss provision number since in 6 years, or Q2 2013.

What was also notable, is that this increase took place even as net charge-offs remained relatively stable and as the bank’s total nonperforming loans declines by $0.1BN to $4.9BN, “driven by improvements in consumer.”

Which begs the question: if the economy is so strong and the bank’s NPLs are declining, just what is BofA seeing to be raising its loss provision to a 6 year high?

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2DfTxvt Tyler Durden

Republican Senators Introduce Bill to Cut Legal Immigration in Half

A trio of Republican senators reintroduced the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act (RAISE) Act last week, which seeks to reduce legal immigration by 50 percent.

Spearheaded by Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) with support from Sens. David Perdue (R–Ga.) and Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), the bill would establish a merit-based point system that prizes those with lucrative job offers, U.S.-recognized college degrees, domestic financial holdings, and English language skills. It also aims to undercut White House Adviser Jared Kushner, who has pushed a plan in recent months that would give temporary visas to migrant workers.

President Trump lauded the RAISE Act when it was first unveiled in July 2017, characterizing the current immigration setup as “a terrible system where anybody comes in,” particularly “people that have never worked” and “people that are criminals.”

But almost none of that is true: The low-skill immigrants that the president has cast as criminal welfare queens are anything but. Those same people tend to be steadily employed, use fewer government resources, commit crimes at a lower rate than the native-born, and consistently drive innovation.

In recent months, however, the vast majority of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has been narrowly directed toward the undocumented, potentially signaling a change of tune. “Legal immigrants enrich our nation and strengthen our society in countless ways,” the president said during his 2019 State of the Union address. “I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.”

Yet how the RAISE Act would further Trump’s new open-arms attitude toward legal migrants remains to be seen, as the bill proposes to slash successful applicants in half. Nor is it apparent how it would curb illegal immigration, if that’s an unstated goal.

In any case, the bill’s bare-bones proposal would cost the country 4.6 million jobs, with the gross domestic product sinking 2 percent over the next few decades, according to an analysis by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. “Job losses emerge because domestic workers will not fill all the jobs that immigrant workers would have filled,” researchers conclude, particularly as the country is already experiencing a labor shortage.

What’s more, low-skill workers—whom the bill threatens to exclude almost entirely—constitute a core section of the U.S. workforce, particularly in the agricultural, construction, and transportation sectors, among others.

The rebirth of the RAISE Act is certainly a bad thing, particularly if Trump is serious about welcoming more legal immigrants. But even more troublesome is the current system as a whole, so burdened by a bureaucratic slew of rules that even the most experienced policymakers don’t seem to understand. In 2017, Kansas’s then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach said of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients: “Go home and get in line, come into the United States legally, then get a green card, then become a citizen.” That same year, over 22.4 million people applied for one of the 50,000 green cards allotted. That means that approximately 99.8 percent of people were denied lawful permanent residence through the visa lottery program.

“Go the legal way,” they say.

But a low-skill Mexican immigrant seeking residence to the States has to wait an average of 131 years for approval. That’s time no person has to spare—and it’s likely why more than 11 million people opted for the illegal route.

That immigrants keep the economy in motion is not lost on Trump. “I need people coming in because we need people to run the factories and plants and companies that are moving back in,” said Trump after his State of the Union address. “We need people.”

He’s right. We need people. But those people will be hard to come by with a bill like the RAISE Act, and even harder still so long as the legal system remains impenetrable.

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The Internet Erupts With Speculation About Who Started The Notre Dame Cathedral Fire

Update 2: Ever careful to watch for false-flags and conspiracy theory concerns, video is emerging of a Gilets-Jaunes in black clothes at one of the two towers half an hour after the start of the fire at Notre-Dame…

One definite way to disenfranchise the yellow vests – as they crush French autocracy – would be to set them up as the fall-guys for this national disaster. Surely that is not possible!

*  *  *

Update 1: A silver lining – if that’s possible: a Catholic priest was today hailed a hero as it emerged he entered the Notre-Dame last night during the height of the inferno to rescue precious cathedral relics including the Crown of Thorns.

The hallowed artefact, which symbolises the wreath of thorns placed on the head of Jesus Christ at his crucifixion, was stored in the cathedral’s treasury and was brought to Paris by French King Louis IX in 1238. Jean-Marc Fournier, Chaplain of Paris Fire Brigade, was also said to have saved the Blessed Sacrament last night from the 850-year-old Gothic masterpiece.

*  *  *

Paris prosecutor Rémy Heitz stressed early indications suggest the fire was accidental, as he added:

“Nothing indicates a deliberate act.”

But, as Michael Snyder details below, now that the initial shock of the fire has subsided, the Internet is buzzing with speculation about the origin of the fire.  In the end, there are only two options.  Either this was an accident, or someone intentionally started the fire.  And if the fire was intentionally started, obviously someone had a motive for doing so.

Time columnist Christopher J. Hale set off a firestorm of speculation when he tweeted that a friend who works at the cathedral told him “cathedral staff said the fire was intentionally set”…

Hale deleted the tweet just a few minutes later.

Was he lying about what he had been told?

Coming from a professional journalist, that doesn’t seem likely.

Instead, it is much more likely that Hale quickly figured out that he said something that he wasn’t supposed to say.

A YouTube video that purportedly contains audio of Muslims celebrating the fire at the Notre Dame cathedral has also sparked a lot of speculation.  But at this point there doesn’t appear to be any way to verify the authenticity of the video.

But what we do know is that all of this comes at a time when churches all over France are being attacked.

On March 17th, the second largest church in France erupted in flames, and police later ruled that it was not an accident…

While Notre Dame is undoubtedly the most well-known landmark to be affected, Paris’ second largest church, Saint-Sulpice, briefly burst into flames on March 17, the fire damaging doors and stained glass windows on the building’s exterior. Police later reported that the incident had not been an accident.

Overall, a dozen Catholic churches were either set on fire or greatly vandalized during one seven day stretch last month…

A dozen Catholic churches have been desecrated across France over the period of one week in an egregious case of anti-Christian vandalism.

The recent spate of church profanations has puzzled both police and ecclesiastical leaders, who have mostly remained silent as the violations have spread up and down France.

Last Sunday, marauders set fire to the church of Saint-Sulpice — one of Paris’ largest and most important churches — shortly after the twelve-o’clock Mass.

And some of the vandalism that was reported during that seven day period was deeply, deeply disturbing…

In Nimes (department of the Gard), near the border with Spain, the church of Notre-Dame des Enfants was desecrated in a particularly odious way, with vandals painting a cross with human excrement, looting the main altar and the tabernacle, and stealing the consecrated hosts, which were discovered later among piles of garbage.

Likewise, the church of Notre-Dame in Dijon, in the east of the country, suffered the sacking of the high altar and the hosts were also taken from the tabernacle, scattered on the ground, and trampled.

Could it be possible that there is a connection between those attacks and the fire that just erupted at the Notre Dame cathedral?

That is a question that any decent investigator would be asking at this point.

We also know that anti-Christian and anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in France.  Just check out these numbers…

The number of anti-Semitic attacks (541) rose 74 percent from 2017-2018 while anti-Muslim attacks numbered just 100, the lowest since 2010.

Meanwhile in the same period, there were 1063 anti-Christian attacks, a slight increase on the previous year.

Needless to say, radical Islamists are responsible for most of the attacks against Christians and Jews, and the number of Muslims living in the Paris area has greatly increased in recent years…

According to reports, the number of Jews fleeing France for their safety has dramatically increased since 2000.

In one Paris suburb alone – Seine-Saint-Denis – 40 percent of the population is Muslim while 400,000 illegal immigrants also live there.

But in this politically-correct era, we aren’t supposed to talk about attacks against Christians, and this is especially true if those attacks are conducted by radical Islamists.

On Monday, even anchors at Fox News had apparently been instructed that any speculation about who started the Notre Dame cathedral fire must be immediately shut down.  These days there is very little difference between Fox News and the other major news networks, and that is very unfortunate.

On another note, I also find it very interesting that at one point on Monday a YouTube algorithm linked the fire at the Notre Dame cathedral with the 9/11 attacks…

A YouTube feature designed to combat misinformation offered some of its own during a major news event Monday: It linked the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The company blamed the mixup on its algorithms. It removed the links on all Notre Dame fire posts after the issue was flagged.

In this day and age, the “spin” is often more important than the actual events themselves.

In the coming days, a tremendous effort will be made to get us to feel a certain way about the Notre Dame cathedral fire.

But what would be so wrong with allowing us to think for ourselves and allowing us to come to our own conclusions?

The Internet was one of the last bastions for global free speech, but now the heavy hand of censorship is descending, and our ability to freely discuss global events is eroding a little bit more with each passing day.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Gb1UZC Tyler Durden

Concordia University Disinvites Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield Over His Conservative Gender Views

Concordia University in Canada had invited Harvard University Professor Harvey Mansfield to give the spring commencement address for its Liberal Arts College. The college’s students study great books and Western thought, and Mansfield teaches these subjects, so one might think he was a good fit.

But then the university rescinded its invitation. Principal Mark Russell sent Mansfield a weaselly letter expressing regret that faculty and alumni “were unable to reach consensus as to what we wanted to achieve with this event.” Russell lamented that the selection committee “acted in good faith but rather precipitously” when it invited him in the first place.

This is clearly doublespeak: Thankfully, Mansfield discovered the true explanation, which he relates in his Wall Street Journal op-ed:

What had taken place, I learned but not from him, was a faculty meeting prompted by a letter from 12 alumni that demanded a reversal of the committee’s invitation because my “scholarly and public corpus … heavily traffics in damaging and discredited philosophies of gender and culture.” Promoting “the primacy of masculinity,” apparently a reference to my book “Manliness,” attracted their ire. Though I was to speak on great books, not gender, this “trafficking”—as if in harmful drugs—disqualified me without any need to specify further. Such sloppy, inaccurate accusation was enough to move a covey of professors to flutter in alarm.

Mansfield is a political conservative, and his views on gender reflect his conservative outlook. No doubt many people would disagree with them—especially those on the hyper-woke left, whose gender-related opinions are not shared by the vast majority of the population. If this means that Mansfield should be denied a platform, then no one who has ever expressed a problematic opinion on any matter would be deemed fit to speak on campus.

Mansfield spends the rest of his op-ed theorizing about why his critics wanted him disinvited. He characterizes the new left as believing the following:

Speech is not an alternative to power but a form of power, political power, and political power is nothing but the power to oppress. A professor like me might trick gullible students and lure them to the wrong side. So it is quite acceptable to exclude speakers from the other side. Supremacy of the wrong side must be prevented by supremacy of the right side.

I don’t think this is quite right. I researched the motivations of anti-speech campus actors for my forthcoming book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump (pre-order here), and generally found that their desire to shutdown conservative speakers mostly stemmed from the notion that offensive speech had the power to cause tangible emotional harm to vulnerable populations with which far-left activists sympathize. Their view would probably be that Mansfield’s opinions are mentally taxing for female, queer, and transgender students—and that harming the students in this way is akin to physically harming them. Preventing Mansfield from speaking, then, is a matter of self-defense—a response to a threat of violence.

Obviously, this approach to speech is incredibly flawed, and would make it impossible to have all sorts of interesting conversations on campuses. Again, Mansfield is an incredibly intelligent and respectable scholar whose views are well within the mainstream. If Concordia’s students are too timid to hear what he has to say, it’s hard to imagine they are prepared to face the outside world.

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Gold Dumps As ‘Someone’ Decides 0830ET Is Perfect Time To Puke $1.5 Billion Notional

Precious metals traders are using the ‘f’ word a lot this morning – ‘Fiduciary’ – as they question the rationale for ‘someone’ deciding to puked over 11,000 gold futures contracts (around $1.5 billion notional) into the market, sending the price tumbling to its lowest since January…

Some have argued this is technically driven as Gold breaks below its 100DMA…

But others noted the recent trend of weakness ahead of the London Fix…

Silver was also hammered lower…

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GrQRwQ Tyler Durden