Month: November 2020

Submitted by Swiss Policy Research,

A Joe Biden presidency means a “return to normality” simply because it means a return of the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

 

In 2008, Barack Obama received the names of his entire future cabinet already one month prior to his election by CFR Senior Fellow (and Citigroup banker) Michael Froman, as a Wikileaks email later revealed. Consequently, the key posts in Obama’s cabinet were filled almost exclusively by CFR members, as was the case in most cabinets since World War II. To be sure, Obama’s 2008 Republican opponent, the late John McCain, was a CFR member, too. Michael Froman later negotiated the TPP and TTIP international trade agreements, before returning to the CFR as a Distinguished Fellow.

In 2017, CFR nightmare President Donald Trump immediately canceled these trade agreements – because he viewed them as detrimental to US domestic industry – which allowed China to conclude its own, recently announced RCEP free-trade area, encompassing 14 countries and a third of global trade. Trump also canceled other CFR achievements, like the multinational Iran nuclear deal and the UN climate and migration agreements, and he tried, but largely failed, to withdraw US troops from East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, thus seriously endangering the global US empire built over decades by the CFR and its 5000 elite members.

Unsurprisingly, most of the US media, whose owners and editors are themselves members of the CFR, didn’t like President Trump. This was also true for most of the European media, whose owners and editors are members of international CFR affiliates like the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, founded by CFR directors after the conquest of Europe during World War II. Moreover, it was none other than the CFR which in 1996 advocated a closer cooperation between the CIA and the media, i.e. a restart of the famous CIA Operation Mockingbird. Historically, OSS and CIA directors since William Donovan and Allen Dulles have always been CFR members.

Joe Biden promised that he would form “the most diverse cabinet” in US history. This may be true in terms of skin color and gender, but almost all of his key future cabinet members have one thing in common: they are, indeed, members of the US Council on Foreign Relations.

This is the case for Anthony Blinken (State), Alejandro Mayorkas (Homeland Security), Janet Yellen (Treasury), Michele Flournoy and Jeh Johnson (candidates for Defense), Linda Thomas-Greenfield (Ambassador to the UN), Richard Stengel (US Agency for Global Media; Stengel famously called propaganda “a good thing” at a 2018 CFR session), John Kerry (Special Envoy for Climate), Nelson Cunningham (candidate for Trade), and Thomas Donilon (candidate for CIA Director).

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor, is not (yet) a CFR member, but Sullivan has been a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (a think tank “promoting active international engagement by the United States”) and a member of the US German Marshall Fund’s “Alliance For Securing Democracy” (a major promoter of the “Russiagate” disinformation campaign to restrain the Trump presidency), both of which are run by senior CFR members.

Most of Biden’s CFR-vetted nominees supported recent US wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen as well as the 2014 regime change in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, neoconservative Max Boot, the CFR Senior Fellow in National Security Studies and one of the most vocal opponents of the Trump administration, has called Biden’s future cabinet “America’s A-Team”.

Thus, after four years of “populism” and “isolationism”, a Biden presidency will mean the return of the Council on Foreign Relations and the continuation of a tradition of more than 70 years. Indeed, the CFR was founded in 1921 in response to the “trauma of 1920”, when US President Warren Harding and the US Senate turned isolationist and renounced US global leadership after World War I. In 2016, Donald Trump’s “America First” campaign reactivated this 100 year old foreign policy trauma.

Was the 2020 presidential election “stolen”, as some allege? There are certainly indications of significant statistical anomalies in key Democrat-run swing states. Whether these were decisive for the election outcome may be up to courts to decide. At any rate, Joe Biden may well be the first US President known to be involved in international corruption before even entering office.

Why are most US and international media hardly interested in this? Well, why should they?

Spot, the autonomous robot dog, from Boston Dynamics, was equipped with radiation sensors to create a map of the radiation coming out of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, according to news agency Ukrinform.  

Researchers at the University of Bristol and nuclear experts from the State Specialized Enterprise “Central Enterprise for Radioactive Waste Management” recently deployed the four-legged robot to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone that has been abandoned since the catastrophic meltdown in 1986. The site has since been covered up with layers of steel and concrete to keep nuclear material from escaping into the atmosphere. 

Weekly measurements around the Chernobyl site are mainly done by humans, which puts them at risk, unlike Spot, a robot who could do so without putting humans in grave danger of radiation poisoning. 

Dr. Dave Megson-Smith, a researcher at the University of Bristol, was one of the scientists aiding Spot on its nuclear power plant adventure. Megson-Smith specializes in sensor development and equipped Spot with a collimated radiation sensor. 

“We built a map of the radiation coming out of the front wall of Chernobyl power plant as we were in there with it,” Megson-Smith told IEEE Spectrum. 

Spot was able to wander around the Chernobyl nuclear site, as well as into the New Safe Confinement structure, which is a steel dome that contains hazardous radioactivity. The robot surveyed radiation levels in the area, creating a 3D map of the distribution. 

According to Megson-Smith, there’s a lot of uncertainty on how much radiation Spot is capable of handling. He said Spot is a “system that we can send into places where humans already can go, but where we just don’t want to send humans.”

Video: Spot’s Chernobyl Adventure 

Engineering a completely radiation-proof robot is challenging – as was seen after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 when robots were sent to die as they surveyed the damaged nuclear power plant. 

The future purpose of Spot at Chernobyl could be autonomous radiation mapping to detect radiation leaks. 

Not too long ago, a different Spot was assigned to a BP Plc oil rig to “read gauges, look for corrosion, map out the facility, and even sniff out methane.” 

While Spot conveniently completes tasks that may endanger humans – the most important takeaway is that robots will displace millions of jobs over this decade. 

Authored by Jim Bovard via The Libertarian Institute,

Politicians and petty czars have canceled Thanksgiving across the nation.  What have government health departments offered in lieu of a family gathering? Endless idiotic advice for “safe sex” during COVID.

The Vermont Department of Health captured the ethos of many health departments across the nation: “Decisions about sex and sexuality need to be balanced with personal and public health.” COVID Federal Superstar Anthony Fauci reflected that judgment when he declared in April that those who meet strangers for sex via Tinder or other dating apps are entitled to make their “choice regarding a risk.” Many government officials have been far more tolerant or even encouraging of risky sexual relations during the pandemic while mercilessly suppressing other social and economic relations.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is an Emmy-award winning hero of the COVID pandemic, regardless of the ten thousand elderly New Yorkers who died after he ordered nursing homes to admit COVID patients. Cuomo’s endless restrictions have been spurred by his view that “government can be a force for good,” as a New Yorker profile recently noted.

While Cuomo has vehemently condemned synagogues that disobeyed his orders to disperse, other officials in New York give their blessings to behavior which is reckless even by “woke” standards. The New York City Health Department recommended that people who organize orgies should “Limit the size of your guest list. Keep it intimate.” The guidance does not quite specify “rooftop” but it is clearly implied: “Pick larger, more open, and well-ventilated spaces.”

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, New York City’s deputy health commissioner, boasts, “Our health department has a really strong record of being very sex positive.” At the same time that New York cops have violently assaulted people for not wearing face masks, the city government officially sanctioned “glory holes.” The Big Apple’s health department urged people to “be creative with… physical barriers, like walls, that allow sexual contact while preventing close face-to-face contact.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom has become infamous for his bizarre list of Thanksgiving prohibitions to fight COVID. But the pandemic has uncorked other official weirdness in the Golden State.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health took preemptive action to re-define “premature” out of existence. The local bureaucrats advised: “Quicker can be better. The longer we are within 6 feet of someone, the greater the risk.” Will health departments take the next step, promoting Revolutionary Era imagery celebrating the return of the “Minute Man”?

As part of its recommendations for “navigating the landscape of love,” San Francisco bureaucrats urged to “embrace dirty thoughts. And clean surfaces.” The guidance stresses the importance of cleaning “shared toys,” especially when switching “collars” and similar items from one body to another. The department also noted: “When it comes to COVID-19 risk, outdoors is better than indoors.” Considering that the local government already permits homeless people to perform any other bodily function on Market Street, adding copulation might not be that much of a change in the local scenery.

The Fenway Health Center, a “Federally Qualified Community Health Center,” served up bad news to spatially-challenged Bostonians: “Using the social distancing recommendation of 6 feet, oral sex may still put you at risk of COVID.” Bizarrely, the Fenway Center urges people NOT to wear masks during hook-ups: “Leave the protective gear to the medical professionals and those who have the virus.”

The Austin, Texas Health Department alerted local residents: “COVID-19 has been found in fecal matter. Avoid activity that could allow virus from feces to enter your mouth.” In the COVID era, “Eat shit and die” has gone from being a juvenile taunt to being an ominous government health warning. Similar warnings on the dangers of “rimming” occurred in other health department recommendations.

The City of Milwaukee Health Department advises, “Masturbation will not spread COVID-19, especially if you wash your hands (and any sex toys) with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before and after sex.” But if you wash your hands for only 15 seconds afterwards, then ‘Rona wins. Actually, if people need to be told to wash their hands after taking their pleasure, they are probably beyond redemption. Besides, do post-game prophylactics make any sense after a solo performance?

Many other government agencies have become cheerleaders for self-reliance, as if there was a dire need for officialdom to specify how hundreds of millions of Americans should let off steam. At last report, the World Health Organization had not yet added masturbation to its Five Heroic Act list though it may soon qualify for a #ThanksHealthHeroes honorable mention.

In the same way that politicians focused myopically on COVID transmission risks to justify inflicting vast collateral damage on the economy, health departments offer recommendations that might avoid COVID transmission but could be otherwise ruinous.  Instead of meeting sex partners online, the New York City Health Department recommends, “Video dates, sexting, subscription-based fan platforms, sexy ‘Zoom parties’ or chat rooms may be options for you.” Other health departments made similar recommendations.

So maybe invite Jeffrey Toobin to your Zoom party? (Toobin was fired after masturbating during a New Yorker zoom call.)  Many of the “chat rooms” that bureaucrats recommend are stockful of jailbait, police and FBI agents masquerading and looking to entrap people for underage sex or other offenses.  Maybe someone should ask Jeff Bezos about his billion dollar emailed pictures of his private parts? The National Security Agency and foreign governments vacuum up a huge amount of online activity; anything that people reveal to a group of people online could easily turn up in their dossier.

Since the pandemic began, politicians have claimed a prerogative to micro-manage citizens’ lives with one harebrained edict after another. For instance, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf decreed on November 17 that people must wear masks in their own homes whenever someone visits who does not live in that household. On Monday, Gov. Wolf banned all alcohol sales in bars and restaurants on Thanksgiving Eve – a completely arbitrary edict that sows havoc and will do nothing to make COVID vanish.

Wolf would never dare to outlaw sex outside of wedlock but somehow politicians captured the right to throttle almost every other aspect of people’s lives. But a “copulation exemption” to the de facto COVID cancellation of the Bill of Rights makes no sense. People deserve as much freedom to drink rancid Rolling Rock beer on Thanksgiving Eve as they do to throw the Philly dice for a Tinder Thanksgiving treat. When politicians are permitted to selectively nullify freedom, the injustices will be exceeded only by the absurdities.

Real Vision managing editor Ed Harrison welcomes Jack Farley for a Thanksgiving “Ask Me Anything” special edition of the Daily Briefing. Sourcing questions from the Real Vision Exchange, Jack asks Ed questions about whether the U.S. will enter a second round of lockdowns, and whether the equity market could once again undergo a major crash. Ed shares his views on the future of debt, deflation, and commodities, over the next 30 years, as well as his technique learning new languages. Jack and Ed share the ways in which they follow market news, as well as their views on the difference between accounting antics and downright fraud. Lastly, Jack and Ed give an inside look at Real Vision’s ongoing mission to democratize finance.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the shortcomings of the global health-care system, while also exposing how developed and developing world economies could demonstrate such unexpected responses. Tiny South Korea has managed to suppress the virus with mass testing and tracing. The US, meanwhile, has recorded the most deaths, while China has already vaccinated more than 1 million people before its leading vaccine effort has even been approved.

With so many variables at play, Bloomberg has tried to develop a ranking for which countries fared the best during the coronavirus outbreak. While crunching the numbers, reporters asked questions like ‘where were the best places to be during the coronavirus pandemic’? and ‘where was the virus handled most effectively?’

The rankings were based on two broad categories, COVID status and quality of life.  Additionally, Bloomberg introduced what it called the “Covid Resilience Ranking scores” for the economies, which purported to measure how resistant a given economy was to the disruptions caused by the coronavirus. There were 10 key metrics: from growth in virus cases to the overall mortality rate, testing capabilities and – importantly – whether the country had managed to secure any supply agreements for the COVID-19 vaccines that are about to hit the market in the west.

Unsurprisingly (this is Bloomberg, after all), the top three finishers were New Zealand in first place (the country used a massively costly economic lockdown to quash a few mild flareups), Japan in second (the country has seen remarkably few cases and deaths despite Japan’s perceived slowness in implementing measures to prevent the virus from spreading, and finally Taiwan, which has been hailed as having one of the most successful approaches to combating the virus.

To try and simplify things, Bloomberg kept the ranking to economies with a GDP of at least $200 billion. According to Bloomberg, the three top performers all took early concrete steps to stanch the spread of the virus.

Ironically, Bloomberg noted that border control was a critical component of the most successful countries’ strategies, beginning with Beijing’s decision to cordon off Hubei Province and the city of Wuhan.

Here are the complete rankings, courtesy of Bloomberg:

Finally, Bloomberg pointed out that authoritarian countries generally outperformed democracies like the US and UK. And while lockdowns have been deployed around the world with mixed results, Bloomberg claimed that there’s nothing more effective than when citizens have faith in the authorities and their guidance. When that happens – and Bloomberg cites Japan and Sweden as examples – lockdowns aren’t necessary to stanch the surge in cases.

But while the US has lagged in several aspects of its response to the virus, it holds the lead in the number of vaccine agreements it has forged.

In the end, whoever has the vaccines will likely be in the best position moving forward.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Barack Obama took a shot at President Trump in an interview Wednesday, blaming him for border ‘cages’ that were actually instituted and used under the former President’s administration.

Obama was decrying the level of support that Trump received from hispanic voters during the election campaign.

“But there’s a lot of evangelical Hispanics who, you know, the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans,” Obama said during the interview with with The Breakfast Club radio show.

“Or puts detainees, you know, undocumented workers, in cages — they think that’s less important than the fact that, you know, he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion, right?” Obama claimed.

It is more than a tad ironic that Obama begins by talking about how metropolitan elites can be out of touch with the rest of America, and then immediately goes on to pigeon hole Hispanic voters as only caring about abortion.

Are hispanic voters incapable of caring about economic issues or crime? Just because they are brown?

That isn’t the most egregious aspect of his comments, however, given that he completely ignores the fact that for many years the so called ‘cages’ were used by the Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration.

It was in 2014, two years before Trump was elected, that the ‘cages’ story reached its peak, with overcrowded and squalid conditions at holding facilities making headlines.

While leftists pretty much ignored the story while Obama was in the White House, it suddenly became a major issue when Trump took office.

Indeed, the very same photos from 2014 were recycled and presented as if they were taken during Trump’s tenure.

Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages. They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires. Dems must agree to Wall and new Border Protection for good of country…Bipartisan Bill!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2018

Democrats and leftist celebrities hammered Trump, using the footage and photos that were taken under Obama and Biden’s regime.

“The photos, taken by The Associated Press, were from 2014, during the Obama administration, but were presented by liberal activists as if they showed the effects of Trump’s immigration policy now.”https://t.co/9x3F7VYUTz

— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) July 9, 2019

House Democrats are promoting their “civil rights” hearing on “kids in cages” and “inhumane treatment” with a photo from 2014, when Joe Biden was Vice President. So dishonest! pic.twitter.com/Exuj1eudrr

— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) July 9, 2019

This continued right up until the election.

When the conditions at the border facilities again made headlines in 2018 and 2019, particularly because children were being separated from their families, Trump asked that pressure be put on House Democrats to pass a law to end the practice:

Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018

When Democrats failed to do so, Trump signed an executive order demanding that the practice of separating children be immediately halted:

Democrats then complained that the EO wouldn’t fix the issue, while still doing nothing themselves:

This Executive Order doesn’t fix the crisis. Indefinitely detaining children with their families in camps is inhumane and will not make us safe.

— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) June 20, 2018

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even used the story as a photo-op, fake crying while wearing designer clothing and an expensive watch.

I’ll never forget this, because it was the moment I saw with my own eyes that the America I love was becoming a nation that steals refugee children from their parents,& caged them.

More kids died after this. To date, no one has been held accountable.

We need to save these kids. https://t.co/HhdMqc5zML

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 25, 2019

It was later revealed that the “cage” AOC was behind concealed nothing but a parking lot.

I try to stay outta politics on twitter and in general honestly. We all have opinions and voices that we want to express, I get it. But that inept Cortez lady was pandering photos of herself crying over immigrants behind chain link fences was a facade. pic.twitter.com/kHPmNV0yms

— Faider Adam (@01lowbird) June 27, 2019

When news organisations, including Infowars, attempted to highlight this, the photographer who took the images claimed copyright and demanded they be removed from the story.

If Joe Biden takes office in January, expect photos of kids in cages to return. He has repeatedly promised to rapidly send an amnesty deal to the Senate within the first 100 days of his presidency that would give amnesty to 11 million immigrants who currently reside in the US without documentation.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Chief Mark Morgan has warned that if President Trump’s enforcement priorities on illegal immigration are abandoned, the US will see a huge “invasion” at the border.

If the current network of tools and policies we have, which ended catch and release, are stopped – we won’t just have another illegal immigration crisis – we’ll have an invasion. pic.twitter.com/oDJneEkd23

— CBP Mark Morgan (@CBPMarkMorgan) October 28, 2020

Indeed, reports suggest that the Biden border rush has already begun.

The coronavirus has accelerated a trend in American holiday-season consumption: the shift away from packing malls on Black Friday, and toward shopping online, placing some orders as early as “Prime Day” (which Amazon held in October this year). Instead of braving the elements and the lines, a growing number of Americans instead place most, or all, of their holiday gift orders via Amazon.

In recent years, the trend was attributed to  bitterly cold weather and other impediments. But old habits die hard, and up until last year, millions of Americans continued to pack into stores on Black Friday, with many big box stores opening earlier and earlier (eliciting public backlash over pulling workers and shoppers away from their families).

But as COVID-19 infections peak and governors tighten restrictions on ‘non-essential’ businesses like retailers, analysts are bracing for e-commerce sales to finally eclipse brick-and-mortar sales for the first time.

Why? Because according to a survey from Deloitte, for the first time ever, more American holiday shoppers are planning to spend a total of $189 billion, which would be a staggering 33% from last year. That’s equal to two years’ growth in one season. “This year is unlike anything else,” said Ken Perkins, president and founder of Retail Metrics. “People are going to be really adverse to come into stores on Black Friday, so traffic will be relatively more modest. Curbside pick will be extremely important this holiday season. Impulse buying will also fall off as online shopping tends to be very targeted.”

Retailers (including specifically department stores) that rely on mall traffic have been particularly hard-hit this year. Just the other day, we reported that America’s brick-and-mortar stores owe a staggering $52 billion in rents.

What’s even more worrisome: department stores even reported steep declines in online traffic ahead of Thanksgiving, according to CFRA Research analyst Camilla Yanushevsky. That could be a sign that consumers are focusing on proven e-commerce platforms like Amazon and a select few others, while the laggards are doomed.

However, there are exceptions, as with every trend. Bloomberg points out that Williams-Sonoma and TJX Corp – owner of HomeGoods and TJ Maxx – could outperform as the rush to the suburbs has led to heightened demand for furnishings, while TJ Maxx’s everyday bargains typically attract more shoppers in hard economic times (though according to the economic wizards on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, the Dow’s latest milestone has NOTHING to do with central bank liquidity injections and EVERYTHING to do with the “wonderful engine of prosperity” that is the American economy).

“Even with the vaccine coming, people are moving out of the city, into the burbs, and they need to fill their homes,” one analyst at RetailMetrics said.

Other potential beneficiaries, according to Bloomberg, include Best Buy, Conn’s Inc and Acco Brands, as demand for hot gadgets like the PS5 and new phones from Samsung and Apple leads to a surge in sales. Bloomberg also cited Mattel, Hasbro, Amazon and Walmart as other potential holiday season outperformers.

According to Bloomberg and CNBC, COVID has helped to separate the wheat from the chaff in the retail space, compounding the problems of retailers who neglected their digital business, while rewarding companies that did, via increased opportunities for synergies (like order online, pickup in store functionality).

This holiday season should put all that to the test.

As the start of the holiday shopping season arrives, some analysts are getting worried. JPMorgan Chase’s Matthew Boss recently cut his estimate for Q4 same-store sales – one key metric for retailers that’s closely watched by analysts – to below-consensus levels. If the shift to ecommerce is as dramatic as the Deloitte survey suggests it might be, then that might prove to have been a prescient move.

Submitted by Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

Democracy is subverted when the free exchange of information and opinion is suppressed.

That subversion is now reality in America and much of the world thanks primarily to censorship by big technology platforms and our unapologetically dishonest and biased national media.

Last week, the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate held hearings on one of those causes, big tech censorship. If you are unaware of how pernicious and common that censorship has become, particularly by Twitter and Facebook, you are dangerously uninformed. Comedian Bill Maher, hardly a right-winger, said it right: The censorship is “evil” and “f—ed up.”

This is not about Trump. He and censorship of him are now in mostly in the rear view mirror. Though censorship was blatantly targeted at him, it’s the future that matters now,  — whether the marketplace of ideas can survive in a world where big tech’s authoritarianism is broad and growing.

For example, Twitter and Facebook last week censored Oxford University scientists who posted an article about a recent study questioning the effectiveness of face masks to stop COVID-19. One of the censored authors said such censorship is “one of the reasons we face a global meltdown of free thinking and science.” His name, sadly ironic, is Thomas Jefferson.

Question big tech censorship and even prominent liberals face retribution. For example, Glenn Greenwald, a respected liberal journalist, dared to question big tech’s brazen suppression of stories about Hunter Biden’s emails and foreign influence peddling. His story on it was killed by The Intercept. Commendably, Greenwald then resigned from that publication.

With hundreds of other examples readily available, it was therefore entirely appropriate and urgent for the Judiciary Committee to take up the matter. Aside from the meltdown of free thinking and science that Prof. Jefferson described, many of America’s razor-thin elections beyond the presidential race could easily have been turned by false narratives rigged by big tech. Easily.

But how did Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, a Judiciary Committee member, preface his comments?

It’s a big waste of time and a political stunt, he told us. “I think there are more important and timely questions…but we are trying to determine whether or not the social media instruments of America are fair to the Republican Party.”

What’s more important? Oh, national security, the pandemic and the possibility that Trump would refuse to leave when the election is certified, Durbin said.

No, Senator Durbin. The Judiciary Committee is the top legislative oversight body on the rule of law in what is supposed to be the world’s leading democracy. National security and coronavirus are not within the committee’s charge. And a speculative case on presidential transition is premature for a hearing. What is within its jurisdiction, and should be top priorities, are freedom of expression and the hotly debated Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives big tech immunity and central the censorship issue.

As for the censorship, bring it on. Durbin wants more.

He wants more censorship to combat hate crimes, he said. That means stifling hate speech. Citing numbers on hate crimes, he said, “It’s clear to me that it’s more important that social media combat this more than ever.  “Are you looking the other way on that?” he asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

We’ve seen repeatedly that hate speech, to many on the left, is pretty much everything said by anybody on the right.  Would Durbin include among his concerns the endless labeling of some 72 million Republican voters as white supremacists and fascists or violence by radical leftists who are encouraged by that kind of labeling? No, Durbin made it clear he didn’t mean that. “This is not Antifa. These are documented hate crimes from the FBI…”

Under the First Amendment, hate speech is permitted as long as it doesn’t rise to the level of provoking violence. That’s as it should be. Everybody should be free to express hatred towards, for example, those they regard as fascists or communists, provided they don’t incite violence. But the First Amendment does not cover private entities like big tech and Durbin, like many on the left, showed no interest in letting First Amendment be the precedent for big tech censorship, provided it is targeted selectively at the right.

Some of Durbin’s colleagues on the Judiciary Committee joined him with calls for more censorship by big tech. Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), for example, asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey why Twitter doesn’t have a standalone climate change misinformation policy. “Helping to disseminate climate denialism in my view, further facilitates and accelerates one of the greatest existential threats to our world.”

Illinois’ other senator, Tammy Duckworth, earlier had a particularly stupefying response to concerns about big tech censorship. Regarding a previous hearing on the topic by a different Senate committee, she said it was Repubicans “aiding Trump’s and Russia’s efforts to use social media for misinformation campaigns” and “undermine confidence in our democracy.”

Got that? You’re helping Russia if you’re against censorship.

Despite such attitudes, the Judiciary Committee hearing uncovered a major turn for the worse on tech censorship: They collude on who and what to censor. Facebook, Twitter and Google use a software communication tool called Centra to communicate on who and what they want to stifle, which magnifies the impact of any decision by any one of them. What’s clear, however, is that a solution must be found because a keystone of open society is shattered.

A telling postscript to the hearing is that NBC, ABC and CBS all refused any coverage of it.

How to address the problem of big tech censorship is challenging and reasonable minds differ. Their platforms are more powerful than any other public forum in history, yet their censors make no pretense of selectively enforcing their dictates or applying any of the time-honored principles our courts have developed under the First Amendment. And Section 230 is a complicated matter.

Pending a solution, here is where we are:

First, what tens of millions of people read for news is determined by the two people shown here.

Second, the subversion of democracy by suppression of the free exchange of information and opinion is no longer just a threat. It’s here.

The naval forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Thursday conducted large-scale exercises in the Strait of Hormuz at a moment Tehran believes Israel will launch a preemptive strike aimed at drawing Trump into ordering US military action in the region before he leaves office in January.

According to state-run English language PressTV, “The event saw sailors, enlisted with the popular volunteer Basij force, taking to the waters aboard more than 1,000 light and semi-heavy-lift vessels.”

Photos showed an impressive number of small but fast military boats that are typically used by the IRGC Navy (which is separate from the much larger national navy of the Islamic Republic) to harass and encircle larger ships, whether tankers or foreign warships.

 IRGC Admiral Ali Reza Tangsiri, who oversaw the maneuvers, called it a display of strength and a showcasing of Iran’s “maritime power” which provides security in the Arabian and Oman Seas. 

Crucially the ‘show of force’ comes amid widespread reports that Trump is mulling some of kind of preemptive action against either Iran or its regional allies, such as the powerful Shia militias in Iraq.

Earlier this month The New York Times reported that Trump’s advisers talked him down from ordering a strike, which they argued would certainly spiral into a larger war. 

Included in the “strike options” were most likely plans to hit the Natanz enrichment facility, according to the report, which suffered sabotage and damage last summer in a likely Israeli covert operation but which is being repaired and rebuilt.

Israel too is said to be preparing for such a scenario, with its armed forces said to be in a high state of readiness. Iran is apparently taking these reports very seriously. 

America’s “stability promotion” works in mysterious ways…

(The US – and the region – would be better off it the US simply didn’t…)

In threat to Iran, US sends heavy bombers to Middle East via Israel https://t.co/YrxXDwBdL8 via @timesofisrael

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) November 26, 2020

Axios reported Wednesday based on unnamed senior Israeli sources: 

The Israel Defense Forces have in recent weeks been instructed to prepare for the possibility that the U.S. will conduct a military strike against Iran before President Trump leaves office.

SCOOP: Israeli military prepares for possibility Trump will strike Iran https://t.co/uwtCDmRKxW

— Axios (@axios) November 25, 2020

Middle East war correspondent for Al Rai Media, Elijah Magnier has cited unnamed Iranian military sources who say they believe Israeli leaders are planning to create a “pretext” designed to trigger US intervention just weeks before the inauguration of Joe Biden:

In an unprecedentedly high level of military readiness, the “Axis of the Resistance” led by Iran has declared a maximum alert on all fronts, as a preparation for a possible battle or war breaking out in the Middle East prior to the arrival in office of President-elect Joe Biden.

Sources within the “Axis of the Resistance” say that “the US may not be planning for a war against Iran with President Donald Trump leaving office soon. However, it is not excluded that the “bully of the neighborhood”, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, would like to carry out a swift hit on the Iranian nuclear facilities in order to sabotage the nuclear deal ready for when Biden takes over. In the case of an Israeli bombing followed by an Iranian retaliation, the Trump administration can then intervene with the pretext of “defending” Israel.

This means that it’s more than likely we’ll see Iran ramp up its military exercises and shows of strength as the weeks wind down on the Trump presidency. 

By Jeff Diest of the Mises Institute

YouTube, the dominant video platform owned by Google, decided yesterday to remove a Mises Institute video. This decision apparently lasts for all eternity, cannot be appealed to an actual human, and comes with this friendly admonition: “Because it’s the first time, this is just a warning. If it happens again, your channel will get a strike and you won’t be able to do things like upload, post, or live stream for 1 week.” 

The video, a talk by Tom Woods titled “The Covid Cult” with more than 1.5 million views, was recorded at our live event in Texas two weeks ago. It offered challenges to the official narrative surrounding the coronavirus, particularly with respect to mask mandates. Woods’s talk featured several charts showing rises in Covid “cases” across multiple cities and countries not long after imposing mask rules, demonstrating how such rules apparently have little effect on slowing transmission of the virus.

The speech was nothing less than a heartfelt tour de force against the terrible lockdowns and pseudoscience plaguing the debate over Covid, and a call to reexamine tradeoffs and priorities. It was, as you might imagine, a mix of unassailable data combined with our friend Tom’s strong prescription for liberty and personal choice rather than centralized state edicts.

In other words, YouTube had no earthly business removing it. This kind of discourse seems to me the best and highest use for YouTube, its most important function.  

“Big Digital,” as Professor Michael Rectenwald terms tech companies, have become “governmentalities”: supposedly private enterprises turned into instruments of state power and state narratives. This sordid process is different for each company, (some are more complicit than others, a few are heroically non-compliant) but it involves a mix of early start-up funding; connections and contracts with state agencies, particularly relating to defense and surveillance; and propaganda campaigns in service of state narratives. Rectenwald explains this phenomenon in his own recent talk titled “The Google Election“:

In short, Google, Facebook and others are not strictly private sector entities; they are governmentalities in the sense that I have given to the term. They are extensions and apparatuses of the state. Furthermore, these platforms are governmentalities with a particular interest in the growth and extension of governmentality itself. This includes championing every kind of “subordinated” and newly created identity class that they can find or create, because such “endangered” categories require state acknowledgement and protection. Thus, the state’s circumference continues to expand. Big Digital is partial to the interests and growth of the state. It not only does business with statists but also shares their values. This helps makes sense of its leftist bent and their preference for the deep state Democrats. Leftism is statism.

We encourage readers to consider the entirety of Rectenwald’s talk, and his sobering book Google Archipelago for his thorough treatment of the facts and realities behind tech companies and the US state. This is not alarmism or conspiracies, but documented examples of how Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and others actively participate—including financially—in a melding of corporate and state power. 

This, then, is real fascism. Big Digital—what writer Ilana Mercer calls “Deep Tech”— is not a collection of private companies in the sense we think of such. They are partners of the federal government, committed to ideological service as part and parcel of their own bottom line.

Thankfully, the sneering call to “build your own platforms” is being answered. Companies like Bitchute and LBRY (its video platform is Odysee) continue to host Mises Institute content, and promise to continue doing so. In fact, you can view Dr. Woods’s forbidden talk at those respective source here and here.

Truth tellers matter more than ever. It’s time for our own institutions and platforms, which is precisely why the Mises Institute exists.