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Colin Kaepernick has made headlines in recent days for his decision to sit during the National Anthem. According to the mainstream media, his reasoning is simple (because the only thing that is comprehendible to the majority of Americans is a soundbite) – police brutality and the oppression of people of color.

Implicit in that simple narrative is one thing unsaid – it’s Trump’s fault… and Hillary will fight the good fight to support black people.

However, if one took the time to actually read Kaepernick’s full interview transcript, the narrative is very different… and not at all what the mainstream would like you to hear…

Colin Kaepernick (CK): People don’t realize what’s really going on in this country. There are a lot things that are going on that are unjust. People aren’t being held accountable for. And that’s something that needs to change. That’s something that this country stands for freedom, liberty and justice for all. And it’s not happening for all right now.

 

Media: Does the election year have anything to do with timing?

 

CK: It wasn’t a timing thing, it wasn’t something that was planned. But I think the two presidential candidates that we currently have also represent the issues that we have in this country right now.

 

Media: Do you want to expand on that?

 

CK: You have Hillary who has called black teens or black kids super predators, you have Donald Trump who’s openly racist. We have a presidential candidate who has deleted emails and done things illegally and is a presidential candidate. That doesn’t make sense to me because if that was any other person you’d be in prison. So, what is this country really standing for?

 

Media: It is a country that has elected a black president twice…

 

CK: It has elected a black president but there are also a lot of things that haven’t changed.

So, it’s not just Trump that is racist… Hillary Clinton is racist too.. and should be in prison… and Barack Obama has failed in eight years to make any difference.

Now that doesn’t play well on CNN, does it?

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Having grown up in Toronto (and currently renting in a Liberty Village Condo),
every day I have to hear the same things from my parents, aunts/uncles and
family friends that I’m helping fund my landlord’s retirement and not my own. While
putting together an extremely basic budget will quickly debunk that myth, most millennials
are blinded by the dream of home ownership (and their parents advice). I’m not advocating or suggesting that prices will collapse, the value of homeownership has fallen compared to our parents’ generation.

If you haven’t been following the Toronto real estate bubble (one that even Canadian banks agree on), the average single detached home price in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has jumped to $1.28 million in May 2016, with the average price home price reaching a record $782k. TO give you an idea of growth, National Post published the following chart only a few months ago:

However, the average sale price of a single detached home doesn’t really paint an overall picture of the market. With the average home price (including condos), at a record $782k, it really doesn’t leave much hope for us millennials trying to get into the market. Here is a chart of average prices across Toronto since 1995 (works out to around a 7.4% return annually).

With 7.4% being an unlevered return, older generations who purchased real estate (including multiple properties) with 15-20% down, it’s easy to see why they are so keen on pushing the value of homeownership on their children and grandchildren (despite the growth in real estate prices, lack of income increases and high debt levels). TREB publishes a more interesting chart, an affordability indicator, which shows the average $ amount of household income used to cover mortgage payments (principal and interest), property taxes and utilities on the average priced GTA resale home:

 

Household affordability (or lack thereof) reached 38% (a percentage not seen since 1992 when the real estate market was falling. What’s scarier this time, affordability continues to deteriorate even in the face of record low (and currently falling) interest rates. With a decoupling of interest rates to household affordability, we’re adding additional instability to an already high-levered Canadian consumer.

While that provides a bit of a primer on what’s going on with Toronto real estate, more importantly, how does that impact millennials. Anecdotally, I have friends and colleagues who are afraid of getting priced out and feel that landlord’s are stealing their money (I’m sure their parents have something to do with this), however, these friends and colleagues are looking to buy blindly without looking at their income levels or finances. For example, a couple are currently looking to purchase a $500k condo in the downtown core while they currently rent close by for just under $1,000 / month (including utilities). 

In the case of this young couple, investing in the condo market comes at a very expensive cost. In two examples, one where the couple could rent that exact same place for $1750 and another where they continue to live in their current place at $985 / month, I look at the difference in their networth:

In the first example, the renter would have an additional $200k in net worth (in addition to the value of the property + capital appreciation gains). As a side note, I do not take into account tax advantages for capital appreciate gains on property (which would work in favour of purchasing, slightly). In the second example, staying put would net them an additional $707k over and above the value of the property.

Ill educated parents, who have been fortunate to have caught the bottom of a 30 year housing bubble, pushing their kids into real estate is a losing proposition in the long term. Lack of job security and long-term wage stagnation (atleast here at home) are other reminders that investing in “stable” real estate is as risky as ever.

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Some time in the early days of August, Vancouver’s housing bubble burst with a bang, not a whimper, just days after the July 25 announcement by British Columbia of a 15% luxury real estate tax, whose purpose was first and foremost to stop the Chinese “hot money” invasion. It succeeded. As we reported two weeks ago, what happened next was dramatic: at least in the first days after the tax was implemented, the local market essentially imploded, with the average City of Vancouver home price dropping to $1.1 million, down 20.7% over a period of only 28 days and down 24.5% over the last three months.

 

Confirming that the market has found itself in a state of paralyzed shock, there were only three home sales in West Vancouver between Aug. 1 and 14 this year, compared to 52 during the same period last year. That was a decrease of 94% (full details here).

 

Needless to say, while most Vancouverites had long been priced out of the domestic real etate bubble – and some say were hoping for the recent substantial pullback in prices, if not outright crash – the biggest losers from this sudden, dramatic collapse, were foreign buyers, mostly the Chinese, whose aggressive, “buy at any price” money laundering “purchase tactics” have been duly documented on this website for the past year.

The result was swift: as Bloomberg reports, China’s top envoy in British Columbia slammed the Canadian province’s new 15% tax on foreign home buyers, questioning the justification behind the hastily imposed measure.

“Why a 15 percent tax? Why now? Why this rate? What’s the purpose? Will it work?” Liu Fei, China’s infuriated consul general in Vancouver, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “The issue is how to help young people afford housing,” she added. “I’m not sure even a 50 percent tax would solve the problem.”

Ah, ye olde redirection “think of the young people who can’t afford housing” trick… just ignore the not so young Chinese money launderers who have been scrambling to funnel billions in (mostly illegally obtained) funds into local real estate to avoid the ongoing, and accelerating, Chinese currency devaluation. As for “solving the problem”, we would say a 20% drop in one month has done a rather admirable job of just that. 

Liu’s comments come amid signs of the expanding fallout from the levy, which took effect on Aug. 2 just eight days after it was announced and threatened to slow or scuttle many deals. The measure was a response to growing public pressure in Canada’s third-largest city, where anecdotes abound of offshore investors bidding up prices and then leaving homes empty.

The justificiation for Liu’s fury was just as hilarious: the envoy said she has expressed qualms to some provincial ministers after receiving calls from distressed Chinese students locked in contracts to buy homes but unable to drum up the extra cash to pay the tax.  As we reported before, even before the collapse in home prices and transactions, the tax had derailed thousands of deals, and prompted calls for legal action. Attempting once again to shift the blame on the local government, which had been derelict in its duties to protect local real estate from a seemingly endless wall of Chinese money, Liu also noted that the tax would hit Canadian home sellers who suddenly lose their buyers. Actually, the sellers in the ultra-luxury segment already cashed out, to all too willing Chinese buyers. It is they who find themselves in limbo, holding rapidly depreciating assets whose true value is suddenly unknown.

When the levy took effect, roughly 2,300 units valued at C$1.25 billion had been pre-sold to foreign buyers that may be at risk, according to estimates by Vancouver-based Urban Analytics Inc. Re/Max Holdings Inc., one of the biggest residential real estate brokerages in Canada, estimates 45 home sales could collapse this month. The tax has suddenly chilled the market and “virtually no business is being done,” Western Canada Regional Executive Vice President Elton Ash said.

Failed deals could have a “domino effect” that potentially jeopardize as many as six subsequent sales, Ash said.

So far, however, the fallout has remained confined to the Vancouver market.

Liu saved the punchline for last, saying that “blaming high property prices on foreign buyers, especially Chinese, is unjustified” and adding that while Chinese nationals represent the biggest group of foreign home buyers, they comprise less than 3 percent of total transactions in the Vancouver region.

What she did not add is that it is the small, but cost-indiscriminate Chinese buyers who, on the margin, unleashed the unprecedented scramble for luxury properties, which in turn has pulled the entire local market dramatically higher. Prior to the bubble burst, Vancouver home prices were rising at the fastest pace in the world, up over 20% in the past year, and in many cases, far higher.

Liu, however, was undeterred and used Merkel’s favorite diversion tactic: “This is a big country with a small population,” Liu said. “It needs immigration to grow the economy.”

Her solution? Liu called for a more holistic approach to make housing more affordable, such as timelier data to better match supply with demand, a more extensive public transit system and taller buildings to house a growing population.

In other words, China is happy to provide advice to the Canadian city of Vancouver on how to zone itself, and how to boost supply… for even more Chinese oligarchs.

Many Vancouverites, accustomed to unimpeded views of mountains and ocean, are fiercely resistant to increased high-rise development. About 65 percent of the city of Vancouver is zoned for only single-family homes, according to the Urban Development Institute. Meanwhile, a C$7.5 billion plan to fund public transit was voted down in a referendum last year despite increasingly long commutes that undermine labor productivity.

Her parting words were interesting: “Without a plan, everything is a disaster,” Liu said. “We can send people to the moon – housing is just a small problem.”

What she meant to say is that Chinese buyers had sent Canadian housing “to the moon.” And now that reality is finally reassrting itself, and the bubble has burst, “everything is a disaster.” If only for the wealthy Chinese buyers whose interests Liu represents.

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Very soon, on October 1, 2016, much of the internet's governance will shift from the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) authority to a nonprofit multi-stakeholder entity, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, also known by its acronym ICANN. As The Gatestone Institute's Judith Bergmann explains,

Until now, NTIA has been responsible for key internet domain name functions, such as the coordination of the DNS (Domain Name System) root, IP addresses, and other internet protocol resources. But in March 2014, the U.S. announced its plan to let its contract with ICANN to operate key domain name functions expire in September 2015, passing the oversight of the agency to a global governance model. The expiration was subsequently delayed until October 1, 2016.

 

According to the NTIA's press release at the time, "NTIA's responsibility includes the procedural role of administering changes to the authoritative root zone file – the database containing the lists of names and addresses of all top-level domains – as well as serving as the historic steward of the DNS. NTIA currently contracts with ICANN to carry out the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions and has a Cooperative Agreement with Verisign under which it performs related root zone management functions. Transitioning NTIA out of its role marks the final phase of the privatization of the DNS as outlined by the U.S. Government in 1997".

 

According to the NTIA, from the inception of ICANN, the U.S. government and internet stakeholders envisioned that the U.S. role in the IANA functions would be temporary. The Commerce Department's June 10, 1998 Statement of Policy stated that the U.S. government "is committed to a transition that will allow the private sector to take leadership for DNS management." The official reason, therefore, is that: "ICANN as an organization has matured and taken steps in recent years to improve its accountability and transparency and its technical competence. At the same time, international support continues to grow for the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance as evidenced by the continued success of the Internet Governance Forum and the resilient stewardship of the various Internet institutions".

The Obama Administration says that the transition will have no practical effects on the internet's functioning or its users, and even considers the move necessary in order to maintain international support for the internet and to prevent a fracturing of its governance.

Oh really?

Civil society groups and activists are calling on Congress to sue the Obama Administration — perhaps at least to postpone the date until more Americans are aware of the plan.

However, never one to miss an opportunity, The Daily Caller's Peter Hasson reports that:

An internal proposed strategy from George Soros' Open Society Justice Initiative calls for international regulation of private actors’ decisions on “what information is taken off the Internet and what may remain.”

 

Those regulations, the document notes, should favor “those most supportive of open society.”

The Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) is part of the Open Society Foundations, Soros’s secretive network of political organizations. According to the organization’s website, “The Open Society Justice Initiative uses law to protect and empower people around the world, supporting the values and work of the Open Society Foundations.”

The call for international control of the internet is part of a 34-page document titled “2014 Proposed strategy” that lays out OSJI’s goals for between 2014 and 2017.

 

The leaked document was one of 2,500 documents released by “hacktivist” group DCLeaks. As reported by The Daily Caller, the section of DCLeaks’ website dealing with Soros has since gone offline for unknown reasons. TheDC saved a version of the 2014 strategy before the site went offline.

 

In the document, OSJI argues that international regulation of the Internet is needed to protect freedom of expression.

 

“Our freedom of expression work furthers the free exchange of information and ideas via the media and internet, and proposes to begin to address the free expression and association rights of NGOs. The internet has been a key tool for promoting freedom of expression and open societies — as in the Arab Spring — and is a potential safeguard against monopoly control of information in such places as China and Central Asia,” page 19 of the document notes.

 

“But it is also presenting underaddressed challenges, including lack of regulation of private operators that are able to decide, without due process procedures, what information is taken off the Internet and what may remain. A ‘race to the bottom’ results from the agendas of undemocratic governments that seek to impose their hostility to free speech on the general online environment. We seek to ensure that, from among the norms emerging in different parts of the world, those most supportive of open society gain sway.”

 

Open Society Justice Initiative Proposed 2014 Strategy/DCLeaks

 

One of the “Program concepts and initiatives” listed in the document is to “Promote — by advocating for the adoption of nuanced legal norms, and litigation — an appropriate balance between privacy and free expression/transparency values in areas of particular interest to OSF and the Justice Initiative, including online public interest speech, access to ethnic data, public health statistics, corporate beneficial ownership, asset declarations of public officials, and rights of NGOs to keep information private.”

 

Another initiative is to “Establish states’ responsibility to collect data necessary to reveal patterns of inequality, and define modes of collection that are effective and protect privacy.”

 

Throughout the document, OSJI’s position appears to be that private actors on the internet must be brought under international control in order to prevent them from suppressing each other’s freedom of expression and speech.

 

One of the organization’s goals is to “Establish soft law and judicial precedents safeguarding online free expression, including adequate protection against blocking of online content, intermediary liability, user standing, and related issues.”

 

“One weakness of current efforts to promote online free expression has been the relatively sparse and uneven use of the international human rights law framework, including protections for free speech. This may be due to the paucity of coordinated efforts to generate hard law, and some soft law, in this area, both domestically and internationally,” the document states later, before noting the opportunity for the organization to influence “international free speech law in the online environment.”

 

“One reason for this failure may be that the leading digital rights groups/movements have developed separately and at a certain distance from the traditional free speech groups (though this is beginning to change). The Justice Initiative, working with other OSF programs that fund leading players in both sub-fields, is well placed to help bridge that gap and promote the use and development of international free speech law in the online environment.”

The U.S. is set to cede control of the internet, stoking fears that the internet could eventually be subject to the United Nations instead.

OSF previously called DCLeaks’s release of the documents “a symptom of an aggressive assault on civil society and human rights activists that is taking place globally.”

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With 3 days left in the month of August, the city of Chicago has recorded 84 homicides making it the deadliest month since October 1996 when 85 homicides were committed.  In fact, as the Chicago Tribune points out, YTD through August, Chicago has recorded more homicides than New York City and Los Angeles, combined.  So far Chicago has recorded 487 homicides in 2016 compared to 222 in New York and 176 in Los Angeles.  This staggering data comes despite the fact that Chicago's total population is roughly 20% the size of New York and Los Angeles. 

This weekend was one of the most violent of the year in Chicago and one which claimed the life of Dwyane Wade's cousin, Nykea Aldridge.  Aldridge was reported to be pushing her baby in a stroller in the 6300 block of South Calumet Avenue when two men approached and began shooting at man walking near her.

HeyJackass! has the latest statistics on violent crime in Chicago.  So far through the month of August Chicago has recorded 439 total shootings and 84 total homicides.

 

Meanwhile, for the full year so far Chicago has recorded 2,858 total shootings and 487 total homicides.

 

Sunday proved to be such a violent day that the number of shootings actually exceeded the scale of the HeyJackass! chart.

 

With 3 days left in August the city has already exceeded the original estimate of 470 homicides for the YTD period through 8/31.  Moreover, the city is on the verge of surpassing the 509 homicides recorded for the full year of 2015, despite having 4 months left in 2016.

 

Homicides remains concentrated in Chicago's notoriously violent south and west side neighborhoods but, as we noted recently (see "Chicago Violent Crime Spreading To The "Safe" North Side Neighborhoods"), seems to be spreading to the "safe" north side neighborhoods as well.

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Submitted by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

The two biggest buyers of Japan Inc. are flying blind and don’t care.

The Bank of Japan and the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) have been buying stocks to inflate the market, create some kind of “wealth effect,” and bamboozle regular Japanese into pouring once again into stocks, after many of them lost a big chunk of their savings when the prior bubble imploded without ever recovering.

In 2014, the GPIF – buckling under the pressure from the Abe administration – decided to plow about 25% (“±9%”) of its assets into Japanese stocks. With assets at the time of still about $1.4 trillion, 25% would amount to about $350 billion. So the fund has been buying a lot! And it has been a disaster! [Read…  Japan Mega-Pension Fund Dives into Stocks, Foreign Assets, Loses Shirt. People Not Amused]

But even after Japanese stocks took a licking over the past year, the fund’s allocation to domestic equities is still 21%, so near its range and no longer a powerful buyer. But to make up for any holes left behind by the pension fund, the BOJ announced on July 28 that it would nearly double its annual purchases of equity ETFs to ¥6 trillion ($59 billion).

The holdings of Japanese stocks by these two entities have nearly tripled over the past five fiscal years to about ¥39 trillion ($381 billion), according to The Nikkei. During that time, the Nikkei stock index soared 70%, “demonstrating their powerful support.”

But, but, but… the index remains 57% below its bubble peak of 1989.

So what has this done to overall government ownership of Japanese stocks? We don’t really know, because it’s kept purposefully opaque, according to The Nikkei:

These major public-sector buyers do not appear on shareholder lists because of their indirect ownership via trust banks and other intermediaries.

And yet, The Nikkei figured that “the two together are the largest shareholders for 474 of about 1,970 stocks” on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s first section (the section for large companies), “based on public information.”

And this is just the beginning.

So for example, between the GPIF and the BOJ, they own 17% of TDK, 16.5% of Advantest, 14.2% of Nitto Denko, 14.2% of Yokogawa Electric, more than 10% of entertainment company Konami Holdings and security services provider Secom.

“We hope they will hold the shares over the long term,” fretted an official of Yokogawa Electric. Because if they ever tried to sell those shares, all heck would break loose.

Overall, the BOJ and the GPIF now hold over 7% of stocks in the first section of the TSE. By contrast the largest private-sector stockholder, Nippon Life Insurance, holds only about 2% of the stocks in the first section.

So hopes are high that the BOJ’s buying binge of ¥6 trillion in equity ETFs, and whatever the GPIF might still buy – though it’s largely finished as a buyer – will inflate the market. Nomura Securities chief strategist Hisao Matsuura thinks that the ¥6 trillion a year from the BOJ alone will inflate the Nikkei index by 2,000 points per year, or about 12%… year after year… come hell or high water, one would assume, because according to this logic, nothing else but central-bank and government-pension-fund buying matters.

If companies have declining sales, losses, and nightmarish management, it wouldn’t matter. These companies would still be able to raise funds and go on as if nothing happened because there will be a relentless and dumb bid, and their stocks would soar since the BOJ and GPIF are passive shareholders, blindly buying equities mostly in form of ETFs. Owners of ETFs cannot dump individual stocks; they cannot punish companies by selling their shares – the most fundamental action of the market.

In other words, the largest most relentless buyers and owners of Japan Inc. are blind, dumb, and mute. That might suit Japan Inc. just fine. Entrenched management coddled by these big passive investors has nothing to worry about. Forget the discipline of the market, or price discovery, or pressures on corporate governance, or any other function of the market. They will all disappear – if they haven’t already.

In this scenario, companies can turn into zombies while the BOJ and the GPIF will still be loading up on ETFs that contain these shares and keep their prices high. And keeping prices artificially high is the only goal of all this buying.

Neither the BOJ nor the GPIF could ever unload these ETFs without unwinding the stock price inflation their relentless and blind buying has caused. And in turn, if the BOJ and the GPIF start selling their ETFs, even high-performing companies would see their share prices get eviscerated.

With these two public elephants in the room, nothing else matters. And this has some ironic consequences, according to Shingo Ide, chief equity strategist at NLI Research Institute: “Regular investors who focus on company analyses may hesitate to buy.” And that may have something to do with the swoon of Japanese stocks over the past 12 months.

But the BOJ is already fretting about the next crash and is building up a big pile of dry powder. Read…  Bank of Japan Prepares for Crash Triggered by Fed Tightening

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With both political parties increasingly sensitive to allegations of electoral rigging in the upcoming presidential elections, whether due to direct manipulation of the counting process or as a result of “hacks” potentially leading to accusations of vote rigging by the losing candidate and their supporters, today’s striking news that the FBI has evidence that hackers targeted two state election databases in recent weeks may be a harbinger of what is to come. 

According to Reuters, the FBI is urging U.S. election officials to increase computer security after it uncovered proof that hackers targeted two state election databases in recent weeks, according to a confidential advisory. The warning was in an Aug. 18 flash alert from the FBI’s Cyber Division. Reuters obtained a copy of the document.

Yahoo News first reported the story Monday, citing unnamed law enforcement officials who said they believed foreign hackers caused the intrusions. Citing a state election board official, Yahoo News said the Illinois voter registration system was shut down for 10 days in late July after hackers downloaded personal data on up to 200,000 voters. The Arizona attack was more limited and involved introducing malicious software into the voter registration system, Yahoo News quoted a state official as saying. No data was removed in that attack, the official said.

As usual, the narrative immediately gravitated toward blaming Russia: as Reuters writes, “U.S. intelligence officials have become increasingly worried that hackers sponsored by Russia or other countries may attempt to disrupt the November presidential election.”

Officials and cyber security experts say recent breaches at the Democratic National Committee and elsewhere in the Democratic Party were likely carried out by people within the Russian government. Kremlin officials have denied the allegations of Moscow’s involvement.

 

Concerns about election computer security prompted Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to convene a conference call with state election officials earlier this month, when he offered the department’s help in making their voting systems more secure.

 

The FBI warning did not identify the two states targeted by cyber intruders, but Yahoo News said sources familiar with the document said it referred to Arizona and Illinois, whose voter registration systems were penetrated.

It will not come as a surprise to anyone that in the latest manifestation of McCarthyism, the democratic party has accused Donald Trump of enjoying implicit support from the Kremlin, which has led to the anecdotal narraative that any Russian-sponsored hacks would benefit Trump.

Which is why we find it surprising that the FBI would come out with this story 70 days before the election, because if anything, it would serve as a strawman to “explain” a potential Hillary loss: should the shock outcome take place (a la Brexit), in which all polls were wrong, the media can then pivot to blaming the Kremlin for rigging the vote, perhaps leading to a voiding of the electoral outcome.

Of course, it is impossible to make that prediction as of this moment, especially with polls yet to reflect the upcoming debates between the two candidates, however keep an eye on similar stories suggesting that US electoral databases are unsafe and that “Russians” have made their way inside them over the coming weeks. With “easy to digest” narratives  – especially those pandering to the lowest common denominator – taking on an increasingly greater significant in this election, the “hacked” election plot may be just what the media fallback story is, should there be a “shocking” result on November 8.

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Historically, gold bull markets last years and as you can see in the following chart from Casey Research we are still in the very early innings of this one.

 

 

As OtterWood Capital notes, Gold has been correcting recently and the question is how much further can it go?

 

During any bull market the long term moving averages act like support (I look at the 50 day and 200 day moving averages).

Gold has broken through the 50 day and could fall as far as the 200 day and still be in a perfectly normal bull market.

Corrections in long term bull markets happen repeatedly and should be bought.

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Over the weekend we posted about how the media's coverage of Trump and Clinton's health had become "outright bizarre" (see "American Electorate Loses As Partisan Media Coverage Of Candidate Health Turns Outright Bizarre").  We also asked whether Google had taken measures to censor searches related to Hillary's health condition (see "Is Google Censoring Search Results To Protect Hillary?").   Turns out that the Huffington Post may have just joined in on the bizarre behavior by censoring a journalist with the audacity to question Hillary's health.

On Sunday night, an obviously shaken Huffington Post contributor, David Seaman, posted a video to YouTube after the HuffPo had taken measures to revoke his publishing access and delete two articles he had previously published on Hillary's health…a move that left him "a little scared" and "spooked out".

According to Seaman, he has a long standing relationship with the Huffington Post which has included "100's of successful articles" that have been published under the banner. 

Seaman reported the move by Huffington Post by live streaming a video of his reactions on YouTube (full video below). 

"Huffington Post, where I was a contributor, they have revoked my publishing access and they've deleted both of my articles that were published earlier over the weekend.  Both of my articles have been pulled without notice of any kind.  Just completely deleted from the internet.  And both of those articles mention Hillary's health which is both a hashtag on Twitter and I linked to a video that a YouTuber, Paul Joseph Watson, had uploaded back on August 4th showing signs that Hillary Clinton's health is quite poor."

 

"Whenever a video concerning a presidential candidate's health is viewed more that 3.5 million times somebody who is under contract to the Huffington Post and AOL should be able to link out to that."

Seaman goes on to point out that completely removing a published article from the internet is unprecedented and leaves him "a little scared" of being the next person to be "vanished" for criticizing the Clinton campaign. 

"I've honestly never seen anything like this.  This is happening in the United States in 2016.  It's frankly chilling.  I'm a little scared.  I'm doing this video also to say, I'm not suicidal right now; I am not a particularly clumsy person; I don't own a car at the moment.  So if I'm to slip in the shower over the next couple of days or something silly like that you have to really employ probability and statistics here because I'm not a clumsy person, right, and I'm also not a depressed person right now.  I'm a person who is spooked out though."

 

"For Huffington Post to delete those posts without any notice, that is Orwellian.  That is something I've read about happening in mainland China."

 

Fortunately, we've discovered a cached version of one of the articles published by Seaman (which can be read here).  In it, Seaman questions whether his readers truly believe Hillary to be healthy noting that he can't express an opinion because he "needs to keep [his] job and platform."  Seaman goes on to point out that "we all know what happens when you speak a little too much truth about the Establishment-beloved Clintons."   

 

I realize some readers might be wondering after watching Paul Watson’s video… how is she strong, or healthy, after seeing all that?

 

Look guys, I need to keep my job and platform. A lot of people read the Huffington Post and AOL properties. We all know what happens when you speak a little too much truth about the Establishment-beloved Clintons.

 

Just ask longtime broadcaster Dr. Drew Pinsky. “CNN has canceled Drew Pinsky’s HLN show, Dr. Drew On Call, just eight days after Pinsky made comments on a radio show questioning the health of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Pinsky’s show, which is six years old, will air for the last time Sept. 22,” The Daily Beast reported.

Unfortunately for Seaman, it turns out that even posing a question about Hillary's health is a little too much for the Huffington Post.  

 

And, just for good measure, here is Paul Watson's original video posted on August 4, 2016.  Sure enough, the video is up to 3.6mm views and counting. 

 

 

Just to confirm his story, we took the opportunity to check out Seaman's "long-standing relationship" with the Huffington Post.  Certainly a quick search reveals that Seaman is a frequent contributor to the website on a variety of topics.   

 

And sure enough, two of his posts, "Donald Trump Challenges Hillary Clinton To Health Records Duel" and "Hillary Clinton's Health Is Superb (Aside From Seizures, Lesions, Adrenaline Pens)" seem to have been deleted from the website.  Clicking on those two posts redirects readers to the following "Editor's Note" indicating that "This post is no longer available on the Huffington Post."

 

"Surprisingly", however, the Huffington Post isn't quite as concerned about censoring Seaman's views on Canada legalizing medical marijuana…that post can still be enjoyed in its entirety. 

 

And the "outright bizarre" behavior continues… 

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