Month: July 2014

Senate Takes Stab at NSA Reform. Can It Do Better Than the House?

WiretapIn May, the House of Representatives
passed
a bill to rein-in National Security Agency surveillance that
was so watered down that its own sponsor, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner
(R-Wis.), commented, “I wish it more closely resembled the bill I
originally introduced.” Now the Senate considers its own version of
the USA Freedom Act, with an attempt to remedy the flaws that drove
many privacy advocates to condemn the approved legislation.

The Senate’s bill
comes courtesy of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy
(D-Vt.), In a
floor statement, he acknowledges that he “continue[s] to prefer
the original version of the USA FREEDOM Act” that he crafted with
Sensenbrenner, but that he has to work with what he has—which means
something that can be reconciled with the weak-tea legislation
passed by the House. He claims that the reworked bill “ensures that
the government cannot rely on Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act,
the FISA pen register and trap and trace device statute, or the
national security letter statutes to engage in the indiscriminate
collection of Americans’ private records.”

The American Civil Liberties Union’s Neema Singh Guliani

notes that the proposal is “not perfect, and it only deals with
one narrow surveillance authority,” but says that it really is an
improvement.

You might remember that one of our main criticisms of the
House-passed version of the USA Freedom Act was that it contained a
broad definition of “specific selection term” (SST), which, simply
put, is the term that the government uses to describe the records
it wants to collect. As it was approved in the House, that
definition could be abused to permit the collection of everyone’s
records in an entire area code or zip code, even an entire network
server.

The new version of the bill creates an exhaustive list of
permissible SSTs for certain programs. If the new version works
properly, the government will no longer be able to abuse the
provision that led to the collection of the call detail records of
virtually everyone in America.

For programs without an exhaustive list of SSTs, the bill
contains language indicating that the SSTs must be narrowly
limited, and it explicitly prohibits broad SSTs based on, for
example, an entire city or telephone service provider.

That’s something, but…Note that the USA Freedom Act only
addresses surveillance under Section 215 of the Patriot
Act—snooping carried out under any other authority isn’t
touched.

Baby steps.

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'An Even Bigger Bite': Obama Announces New Sanctions on Russia

President Barack Obama
just announced a new round of sanctions against Russia,
assuring that they will take “an even bigger bite” out of Russia’s
economy than the previous ones have.

“Today Russia is once again isolating itself from the
international community, setting back decades of genuine progress,”
the president
said. “It does not have to be this way. This a choice Russia
and President Putin has made,” in reference to the Russian
government’s ongoing support for so-called separatist militias that
have for months been destabilizing Ukraine.

The Treasury Department issued a
press release explaining that it has “imposed sanctions that
prohibit U.S. persons from providing new financing to three major
Russian financial institutions, limiting their access to U.S.
capital markets.  Treasury today has also designated one
Russian state-owned defense technology firm pursuant to Executive
Order (E.O.) 13661.  These measures coincide with actions
taken to suspend U.S. export credit and development finance to
Russia.”

So far, as is apparent, U.S. sanctions have done little if
anything to stop Putin’s incursion in Ukraine.

The Associated Press
highlights the fact that today’s announcement includes
“particularly significant” action from the European Union, “Given
that the continent has a far stronger economic relationship with
Russia than the U.S. does.”:

Until this week, the EU sanctions had lagged behind American
penalties, in part because of leaders’ concerns about a negative
impact on their own economies. …

The new European penalties include an arms embargo on Moscow and
a ban on the unapproved sale to the Russians of technology that has
dual military and civilian uses or is particularly sensitive, such
as advanced equipment used in deep-sea and Arctic oil drilling.

To restrict Russia’s access to Europe’s money markets, EU
citizens and banks will be barred from purchasing certain bonds or
stocks issued by state-owned Russian banks, according to EU
officials.

Also, Reuters just published a
special report that indicates some of the separatists’
firepower has come directly from Russian government storage:

On the last day of May, a surface-to-air rocket was signed out
of a military base near Moscow where it had been stored for more
than 20 years.

According to the ornate Cyrillic handwriting in the weapon’s
Russian Defence Ministry logbook, seen by Reuters, the portable
rocket, for use with an Igla rocket launcher, was destined for a
base in Rostov, some 50 km (31 miles) from the Ukrainian border. In
that area, say U.S. officials, lies a camp for training Ukrainian
separatist fighters.

Three weeks later the rocket and its logbook turned up in
eastern Ukraine, where government troops seized them from
pro-Russian separatists.

The logbook, which is more than 20 pages long, records that
rocket 03181 entered service on May 21, 1993, and had regular tests
as recently as 2005 to make sure it was in fighting form. The seal
of the Russian Defence Ministry has been stamped over the signature
sending the weapon to Rostov.

For more Reason coverage of the Ukraine-Russia crisis,
click
here. 

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‘An Even Bigger Bite’: Obama Announces New Sanctions on Russia

President Barack Obama
just announced a new round of sanctions against Russia,
assuring that they will take “an even bigger bite” out of Russia’s
economy than the previous ones have.

“Today Russia is once again isolating itself from the
international community, setting back decades of genuine progress,”
the president
said. “It does not have to be this way. This a choice Russia
and President Putin has made,” in reference to the Russian
government’s ongoing support for so-called separatist militias that
have for months been destabilizing Ukraine.

The Treasury Department issued a
press release explaining that it has “imposed sanctions that
prohibit U.S. persons from providing new financing to three major
Russian financial institutions, limiting their access to U.S.
capital markets.  Treasury today has also designated one
Russian state-owned defense technology firm pursuant to Executive
Order (E.O.) 13661.  These measures coincide with actions
taken to suspend U.S. export credit and development finance to
Russia.”

So far, as is apparent, U.S. sanctions have done little if
anything to stop Putin’s incursion in Ukraine.

The Associated Press
highlights the fact that today’s announcement includes
“particularly significant” action from the European Union, “Given
that the continent has a far stronger economic relationship with
Russia than the U.S. does.”:

Until this week, the EU sanctions had lagged behind American
penalties, in part because of leaders’ concerns about a negative
impact on their own economies. …

The new European penalties include an arms embargo on Moscow and
a ban on the unapproved sale to the Russians of technology that has
dual military and civilian uses or is particularly sensitive, such
as advanced equipment used in deep-sea and Arctic oil drilling.

To restrict Russia’s access to Europe’s money markets, EU
citizens and banks will be barred from purchasing certain bonds or
stocks issued by state-owned Russian banks, according to EU
officials.

Also, Reuters just published a
special report that indicates some of the separatists’
firepower has come directly from Russian government storage:

On the last day of May, a surface-to-air rocket was signed out
of a military base near Moscow where it had been stored for more
than 20 years.

According to the ornate Cyrillic handwriting in the weapon’s
Russian Defence Ministry logbook, seen by Reuters, the portable
rocket, for use with an Igla rocket launcher, was destined for a
base in Rostov, some 50 km (31 miles) from the Ukrainian border. In
that area, say U.S. officials, lies a camp for training Ukrainian
separatist fighters.

Three weeks later the rocket and its logbook turned up in
eastern Ukraine, where government troops seized them from
pro-Russian separatists.

The logbook, which is more than 20 pages long, records that
rocket 03181 entered service on May 21, 1993, and had regular tests
as recently as 2005 to make sure it was in fighting form. The seal
of the Russian Defence Ministry has been stamped over the signature
sending the weapon to Rostov.

For more Reason coverage of the Ukraine-Russia crisis,
click
here. 

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Boots On The Ground In Ukraine: "I Needed To See This For Myself"

Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,

Looking back over the past ten years, I can’t even begin to describe all the experiences I’ve had in Ukraine.

For a while, I actually owned a business based here. I’ve been travelling here frequently for years. I still have many friends here. Some of our employees are based here. And Kiev is one of the cities in the world that I know best.

Yet even after all of that, I still can’t make heads or tails of this place.

Consider this: by 2004, people in Ukraine were desperate from economic hardship and de facto mafia rule.

They held a runoff election in November of that year– an illusion of choice– between Viktor Yanukovich and Viktor Yushenko. Yushenko was viewed as the breath of fresh air. The ‘change’ candidate.

And when it became clear that Yanukovich had rigged the election in his favor, people went out into the streets to demand change.

They called it the Orange Revolution. And it ended after two months of bloodshed when Yushenko, the ‘good guy’ was finally sworn in as president. Happy days were to follow. Hope and change, all that jazz.

Fast forward a few years.

By 2010, Yushenko had proven himself to be an utter disappointment. Corrupt. Incompetent. Out of touch. When he ran for re-election that year, President Yushenko garnered a pitiful 5% of the vote.

This is amazing when you think about it: the candidate that the people of Ukraine went out into the streets and spilled their blood for received just 5% of the votes in his re-election.

So who did the people elect that year? Viktor Yanukovich… the very person they had fought against in 2005.

Yanukovich was a known criminal. Literally, a convicted felon. Ukrainians spilled their blood fighting against him in 2004… then elected him President in 2010.

Unsurprisingly Mr. Yanukovich spent the next several years pillaging the country of every possible resource for his own benefit. And a few years later– revolution #2.

People went back out in the streets to fight against government forces and oust Yanukovich. Since then, the currency has tanked. Banks are nearly insolvent. GDP is falling. And there’s insurrection in the East.

Now they have a new President– a chocolate billionaire who formerly sat on the executive council of the Ukrainian central bank. And he’s mobilizing the entire country to fight the rebels, fight the Russians.

People are forced into serving in the very same government forces they were fighting against just months ago, all to re-annex a region of the country that isn’t even of Ukrainian ethnicity.

The entire world is getting involved now. With the downing of MH-17, it has become impossible to stay neutral… and the US in particular is doing everything it can to escalate the situation.

Actions have consequences.

And just as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand 100 years ago led politicians to make a series of pitiful, short-sighted decisions that led the world into the most destructive war it had ever seen, today’s ‘leaders’ are raising the stakes towards an even more destructive kind of war.

This new kind of war is fought with bits and bonds rather than steel. But it’s one that affects almost everyone on the planet.

Change is very clearly afoot. And it’s time to start paying very close attention to the canary in the coalmine.

Just as I was in Iraq a few weeks ago to see the ISIS mess for myself, I had to come back to Ukraine and see what’s happening with my own eyes.

Join me in our newest podcast episode to explore this further– what to watch out for, how it may unfold, and what you can do about it:

Click image to link to podcast




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Boots On The Ground In Ukraine: “I Needed To See This For Myself”

Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,

Looking back over the past ten years, I can’t even begin to describe all the experiences I’ve had in Ukraine.

For a while, I actually owned a business based here. I’ve been travelling here frequently for years. I still have many friends here. Some of our employees are based here. And Kiev is one of the cities in the world that I know best.

Yet even after all of that, I still can’t make heads or tails of this place.

Consider this: by 2004, people in Ukraine were desperate from economic hardship and de facto mafia rule.

They held a runoff election in November of that year– an illusion of choice– between Viktor Yanukovich and Viktor Yushenko. Yushenko was viewed as the breath of fresh air. The ‘change’ candidate.

And when it became clear that Yanukovich had rigged the election in his favor, people went out into the streets to demand change.

They called it the Orange Revolution. And it ended after two months of bloodshed when Yushenko, the ‘good guy’ was finally sworn in as president. Happy days were to follow. Hope and change, all that jazz.

Fast forward a few years.

By 2010, Yushenko had proven himself to be an utter disappointment. Corrupt. Incompetent. Out of touch. When he ran for re-election that year, President Yushenko garnered a pitiful 5% of the vote.

This is amazing when you think about it: the candidate that the people of Ukraine went out into the streets and spilled their blood for received just 5% of the votes in his re-election.

So who did the people elect that year? Viktor Yanukovich… the very person they had fought against in 2005.

Yanukovich was a known criminal. Literally, a convicted felon. Ukrainians spilled their blood fighting against him in 2004… then elected him President in 2010.

Unsurprisingly Mr. Yanukovich spent the next several years pillaging the country of every possible resource for his own benefit. And a few years later– revolution #2.

People went back out in the streets to fight against government forces and oust Yanukovich. Since then, the currency has tanked. Banks are nearly insolvent. GDP is falling. And there’s insurrection in the East.

Now they have a new President– a chocolate billionaire who formerly sat on the executive council of the Ukrainian central bank. And he’s mobilizing the entire country to fight the rebels, fight the Russians.

People are forced into serving in the very same government forces they were fighting against just months ago, all to re-annex a region of the country that isn’t even of Ukrainian ethnicity.

The entire world is getting involved now. With the downing of MH-17, it has become impossible to stay neutral… and the US in particular is doing everything it can to escalate the situation.

Actions have consequences.

And just as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand 100 years ago led politicians to make a series of pitiful, short-sighted decisions that led the world into the most destructive war it had ever seen, today’s ‘leaders’ are raising the stakes towards an even more destructive kind of war.

This new kind of war is fought with bits and bonds rather than steel. But it’s one that affects almost everyone on the planet.

Change is very clearly afoot. And it’s time to start paying very close attention to the canary in the coalmine.

Just as I was in Iraq a few weeks ago to see the ISIS mess for myself, I had to come back to Ukraine and see what’s happening with my own eyes.

Join me in our newest podcast episode to explore this further– what to watch out for, how it may unfold, and what you can do about it:

Click image to link to podcast




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1pCEv1X Tyler Durden

Currency Wars Intensify As Russia Buys 18.6 Tonnes Of Gold In June

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,307.50, EUR 972.84 and GBP 770.39  per ounce.

Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,305.00, EUR 971.20 and GBP 768.55 per ounce.

Gold climbed $2.30 or 0.18% yesterday to $1,305.10/oz and silver rose $0.12 or 0.58% to $20.62/oz.





Gold rose 0.4% in London this morning after gold in Singapore traded sideways overnight. Futures trading volume continues to increase and was almost double the average for the past 100 days for this time of day, Bloomberg data shows.


Gold in U.S. Dollars – 50, 100, 200  Simple Moving Averages (Thomson Reuters)

Silver for immediate delivery rose 0.8%  to $20.73 an ounce in London. Platinum was 0.1% lower at $1,486.82 an ounce. Palladium gained 0.3% to $883.63/oz and remains close to a 13 year nominal high of $889.75.

Geopolitical tension in Europe and in the Middle East is supporting gold. Israel’s military pounded targets in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country should prepare for a long conflict in the Palestinian enclave, squashing any hopes of a swift end to 22 days of fighting.

Gaza residents reported heavy Israeli bombing in Gaza City. Israeli aircraft fired a missile at the house of a Hamas Gaza leader and flattened it before dawn. An Israeli military spokeswoman said 70 targets were struck in Gaza through the night. At least 30 people were killed in the assaults from air, land and sea, residents said, after a night of the most widespread attacks so far in the tiny enclave.


The new sanctions are set to inflame relations further. They are on “key sectors” of Russia’s economy, U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said yesterday. Russia also signaled possible retaliation, announcing yesterday that it may ban imports of chicken from the U.S. and fruit from Europe because of concern about contamination.

Futures options expiration is over but we are not out of the woods yet and gold and silver could see more volatility this week ahead of key reports on gross domestic product on Wednesday and employment data on Friday. The Federal Reserve’s chief policy making committee meets today and tomorrow and this could have another short term impact on prices.

Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Buy Gold – Bye Bye Petrodollar
Russia continues to aggressively accumulate gold reserves. Its gold holdings increased again in June as the crisis in the Ukraine and relations with the West deteriorated.

The Russian central bank officially increased its gold holdings by 16.8 tonnes to 1,094.8 tonnes in June, the IMF’s International Financial Statistics report showed. In ounce terms, Russia increased its gold holdings by some 500,000 ounces, to 35.197 million ounces in June from 34.656 million ounces in May.




Russia recently became the world’s fifth largest bullion holder after the United States, Germany, Italy and France.

Importantly, China’s gold holdings, the world’s biggest store of wealth buyer of gold, haven’t been updated since March, 2009 and remain at just 33.89 million ounces or 1,054.1 tonnes and just 1% of their huge foreign exchange reserves. More than five years later, it is likely that China’s reserves have doubled or trebled as they quietly corner the global physical gold market.

It is important to note that there remain doubts as to the integrity of the gold holdings of the U.S. and concerns that other countries national gold reserves could be encumbered, loaned or sold in the market. Indeed, the Bundesbank is having grave difficulty in having its gold reserves returned from the Federal Reserve in New York.

So far in 2014, Russia has now bought substantially more than their entire annual gold production of nearly 1,500,000 ounces.

Russia was not the only central bank to diversify foreign exchange reserves, primarily held in dollars, into gold. Allies of Russia also bought gold in June. The central banks of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, all Russian economic and military allies all accumulated gold in June.

Currency wars are set to intensify and the buying by the former Soviet states is another manifestation of this.

Russia’s foreign reserves fell $39 billion to $472 billion in June, data from the Russian central bank shows. Gold now accounts for 9.3% of the country’s reserves, according to the World Gold Council substantially less than the percentage of gold in fx reserves of the other leading gold owners.

Greece, Serbia, Mexico and Equador also diversifed and increased their gold reserves in June.


Turkey increased its holdings to 16.491 million ounces from 16.172 million ounces in May. It accepts gold in its reserve requirements from commercial banks and as payment from other sovereign nations such as Iran.


Germany, the second-biggest gold holder, lowered its holdings by a tiny 1,000 ounces to 108.805 million ounces from 108.806 million ounces.


Gold advanced the most in four months in June as fighting in Ukraine to Iraq and Israel boosted demand for a haven. Hedge funds and banks almost doubled net-long position in gold during June, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data show.

Gold’s safe-haven appeal is being driven by heightened tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine and increasing concerns of financial and economic war and indeed of actual war.

Geopolitical risk in June likely prompted some central banks to further diversify their foreign exchange holdings and buy gold which is used to hedge against geopolitical, currency and credit risks.

Reserve Currencies In History – Dollar’s Demise Cometh

Central banks continue to be buyers of gold at these attractive price levels. As sanctions, economic war and currency wars intensify we expect Russian and Russian ally buying of gold reserves and selling of dollars to intensify. Aggressive buying of gold and particularly silver by Russia will likely lead to defaults on the COMEX gold and silver futures exchanges and potentially an international monetary crisis.

See important guide to Currency Wars here Currency Wars: Bye, Bye Petrodollar – Buy, Buy Gold





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Yellen Capital Humiliated After First Facebook And Now Twitter Surge Higher: TWTR's Quarter In Charts

Moments ago TWTR reported Q2 earnings which beat EPS expectations of a 1 cent loss, posting non-GAAP EPS of $0.02 (let’s ignore that the GAAP EPS was actually –$0.24 and that GAAP Net Loss was $144.6 million, much worse than the $42.2 million a year ago, all driven by stock-based compensation expense, because clearly retaining employees is never a factor when calculating earnings).

And yet, the stock has exploded by 30% after hours on what appears to be a super squeeze after hours, as the company also reported revenue of $312 million up from $139.3 million a year ago and some $54MM in EBITDA, up 461% Y/Y. This is just a little awkward for the Federal Reserve which some 2 weeks ago was warning about a bubble in social networking stocks, just before first Facebook and now Twitter have exploded higher on what can best be described as yet another massive short squeeze of those who decided to not fight the Fed on this one.

Anyway, what everyone is looking for was the user metrics so here they are.

Monthly Active Users: 271 million, up 24% Y/Y, vs expectations of 267MM. Recall that this is where TWTR had a big miss last quarter.At the same time, US growth was +3 million users to 60 million, the same as in Q1, and a modest improvement from previous quarters.

Twitter’s preferred non-GAAP metric, Timeline views, was 173 million, up 15% from a year ago, even if the US number of 47 million was only a 1 million sequential increase from Q1, less than the 5 million increase from Q4, if certainly an improvement from that big drop between Q3 and Q4.

The one place where Twitter stumbled was in Timeline Views per MAU because while the first rose, the second rose faster, leading to a decline in the overall metric on a Y/Y basis, and Y/Y and sequential for the US.

Still, far more important were revenue and EBITDA.This is how they did in Q2:

And EBITDA:

 

And finally, revenue per 100 timeline views saw a solid 100% increase Y/Y from $0.80 to $1.60, the closest comparable metric to the trusty old CPM. However, at $3.87 for the US, we doubt there will be much upside opportunity going forward.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Twitter announced that less than 5% of all accounts are fake: a claim most will certainly take with a huge grain of salt.

For now, however, the momentum chasing algos are loving the stock which is up 30% after hours. So will Yellen Capital upgrade the social networking space after these two embarrassments, or will she keep her “Strong Sell” rating” Stay tuned for the FOMC announcement tomorrow afternoon…




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1n04r66 Tyler Durden

Yellen Capital Humiliated After First Facebook And Now Twitter Surge Higher: TWTR’s Quarter In Charts

Moments ago TWTR reported Q2 earnings which beat EPS expectations of a 1 cent loss, posting non-GAAP EPS of $0.02 (let’s ignore that the GAAP EPS was actually –$0.24 and that GAAP Net Loss was $144.6 million, much worse than the $42.2 million a year ago, all driven by stock-based compensation expense, because clearly retaining employees is never a factor when calculating earnings).

And yet, the stock has exploded by 30% after hours on what appears to be a super squeeze after hours, as the company also reported revenue of $312 million up from $139.3 million a year ago and some $54MM in EBITDA, up 461% Y/Y. This is just a little awkward for the Federal Reserve which some 2 weeks ago was warning about a bubble in social networking stocks, just before first Facebook and now Twitter have exploded higher on what can best be described as yet another massive short squeeze of those who decided to not fight the Fed on this one.

Anyway, what everyone is looking for was the user metrics so here they are.

Monthly Active Users: 271 million, up 24% Y/Y, vs expectations of 267MM. Recall that this is where TWTR had a big miss last quarter.At the same time, US growth was +3 million users to 60 million, the same as in Q1, and a modest improvement from previous quarters.

Twitter’s preferred non-GAAP metric, Timeline views, was 173 million, up 15% from a year ago, even if the US number of 47 million was only a 1 million sequential increase from Q1, less than the 5 million increase from Q4, if certainly an improvement from that big drop between Q3 and Q4.

The one place where Twitter stumbled was in Timeline Views per MAU because while the first rose, the second rose faster, leading to a decline in the overall metric on a Y/Y basis, and Y/Y and sequential for the US.

Still, far more important were revenue and EBITDA.This is how they did in Q2:

And EBITDA:

 

And finally, revenue per 100 timeline views saw a solid 100% increase Y/Y from $0.80 to $1.60, the closest comparable metric to the trusty old CPM. However, at $3.87 for the US, we doubt there will be much upside opportunity going forward.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Twitter announced that less than 5% of all accounts are fake: a claim most will certainly take with a huge grain of salt.

For now, however, the momentum chasing algos are loving the stock which is up 30% after hours. So will Yellen Capital upgrade the social networking space after these two embarrassments, or will she keep her “Strong Sell” rating” Stay tuned for the FOMC announcement tomorrow afternoon…




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1n04r66 Tyler Durden

Flashback: If Smoking Doesn't Kill You, Superman Will. For the Government.

These days, everyone knows that
smoking doesn’t do any favors for their health. Back in the ’80s,
not so much. Over the years, government busybodies have adopted
some questionable tactics to pressure people to kick the habit.
Sometimes-humorous-sometimes-serious site Cracked just dug
up a real gem on this front: the British government once aired a
PSA warning kids that if the tobacco didn’t kill them, Superman
would.

From
Cracked:

In one of the TV ads, Superman faces off against a new villain:
Nick O’Teen, a presumably Irish rogue bent on getting kids hooked
on cigarettes, which really doesn’t seem so bad in the grand scheme
of villainy.

Superman arrives to apprehend the villain (and we’re using the
term loosely, seeing as he’s committing a misdemeanor at most),
then takes him to the authorities and makes sure he gets the mental
help he needs – or that’s what would happen if Superman could
be bothered to fill out the paperwork. He can’t, so instead he just
throws the guy into orbit.

If the shock didn’t kill Nick O’Teen, something tells us the
fall probably did. Lex Luthor gets a slap on the wrist for plotting
to destroy the Earth, but if you try to give cigarettes to kids
(for free!), then it’s a terrifying death for you. …

Superman doesn’t even stop to consider the circumstances that
might have led Nick O’Teen to peddle cigarettes before murdering
him.

Watch the
video here. We can laugh it off  as a weird, old piece of
nanny-state propaganda, but it’s got an eerie resonance this month
with the death of Eric Garner. The 46-year-old father of six was
allegedly selling black market cigarettes, so cops
choked and killed him. When it happens in real life, it sure
doesn’t sound as cool or as black-and-white as some superhero
chucking some baddy-bad to his death. 

Bonus: Read Reason‘s coverage of the time
a Cracked writer got
interrogated by the Secret Service for a joke article.

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