Newsweek | Diesel inventories in the U.S. have not been so low since 2008, with the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reporting that, as of October 14, the country had 25.4 days left of distillate supplies—which include diesel, jet fuel and heating oil.
The supply crunch is particularly severe in the East Coast, according to analysts who previously talked to Newsweek.
Mansfield Energy, a major fuel supply and logistics company based in Georgia and operating in every U.S. state, wrote in a recent news release that the "East Coast fuel markets are facing diesel supply constraints due to market economics and tight inventories."
According to the fuel supply company, extremely high diesel prices—which have surged due to low inventories combined with high demand—are concentrated in the North East, while supply outages are currently hitting the Southeast.
These shortages, write Mansfield Energy, are due to a combination of
"poor pipeline shipping economics and historically low diesel
inventories."
Mansfield Energy identified the most acute shortages to be in these seven states:
Alabama
Georgia
Maryland
North Carolina
South Carolina
Tennessee
Virginia
These
seven states have been given an Alert Level 4 by the fuel supply
company "to address market volatility," while the entire Southeast was
moved to Code Red, which requires a 72-hour notice for fuel deliveries
when possible "to ensure fuel and freight can be secured at economical
levels."
"Normally, East Coast markets would have about 50 million
barrels of supply in storage throughout the market—and sometimes much
more," wrote Mansfield Energy in a news release published on October 27.
"This
year, however, the East has less than 25 million barrels on hand. That
means that when bulk traders go to pull their inventories, they may not
find much left in the tank. For East Coast fleets, then—now is the
critical time to make sure your supplier has a plan for the winter to
keep your equipment running. Outside the East Coast, markets could face
some challenges, but most of the biggest issues will be concentrated
eastward."
Guardian | Millions of Americans are currently working two or more jobs in order to make ends meet, as global inflation and corporations jacking up prices have sent prices of food, gas, housing, health insurance and other necessities soaring in the past year.
Cashe
Lewis, 31, of Denver, Colorado works two jobs and is currently trying
to find a third job to cover the recent $200 monthly rent increase to
her apartment. She works days as a barista at Starbucks, but claims it’s
been difficult to get enough hours even with taking extra shifts
whenever she can due to scheduling cuts as part of the crackdown on union organizing by management.
At night she works at a convenience store because the hours are reliable, and works six days a week, often 16 hours a day.
“I’m
exhausted all the time,” said Lewis. “On the one day I have off a week,
I donate plasma for extra money. I’m literally selling my blood to eat
because I have no choice.”
Her partner suffers
from epilepsy and can’t work full-time hours because of it. Even with
insurance, their medication is expensive and she spends about half of a
two-week paycheck at Starbucks to cover the health insurance premiums.
Over
the past five years, she has struggled with homelessness, and was
previously fired from her job for sleeping in her car behind her place
of employment.
“All of my friends and family
work multiple jobs as well, just trying to keep our heads above water.
Nothing is affordable and the roadblocks set up to keep people in the
cycle of poverty benefit the most wealthy members of our society,” added
Lewis. “We aren’t living, we’re barely surviving and we have no choice
but to keep doing it.”
More Americans have been working two or more jobs over the past few decades, according to data
from the US census, with women more likely than men to have multiple
jobs and multiple jobholders most prevalent among low-wage workers.
Laura
Richwine of Omaha, Nebraska, works two jobs, one in fraud prevention
and the other doing administrative work, and had previously been working
three jobs to keep up with hefty medical bills she’s been facing since
being hit by a car in 2014.
“It’s
rough and I barely have any energy to keep up with much else,” said
Richwine. “I’ve got a bachelor’s degree and have been working for over
10 years, but up until this year I had never had a job that paid more
than $15 an hour. Many places around me still only offer Nebraska
minimum wage, which is $9 an hour. You can hardly even buy food with
that amount.”
Though US census data estimates these rates and numbers to be much higher, at 7.8% in the most recent year where data is available, 2018, about 13 million workers, while BLS data at the time estimated 5.0% of the workforce holding multiple jobs.
Both data sets are considered an underestimate of the number of multiple jobholders in the US labor market due to constrictions on what is defined as a multiple jobholder and the lack of data on self-employment, such as gig workers.
foxnews |MSNBC host Joy Reid closed her show Friday night by addressing the abrupt exit of her colleague Tiffany Cross.
"Before
I go, I really do just want to say one quick thing about my friend,
colleague and sister Tiffany Cross," an emotional Reid began. "She's not
just my friend, she's my sister. I love her, I support her, I was
boosting for her to get the show that she created, the Cross Connection,
which she put her heart and soul into everyday."
The "ReidOut"
host then took aim at Cross's critics on the "far right" who are
"attacking her on a social media app that I won't name."
"You
don’t understand how sisters move," Reid told critics. "So, watch this
space. We will be here, her sisters will be here to support anything
Tiffany Cross ever does. Know that. Believe that."
Cross’ team was informed on Friday. The move only affects the namesake host and not her staff.
Some
reports speculated Cross' appearance last week on Comedy Central, where
she said Florida should be "castrated" from the rest of the country,
may have played a role in her ouster.
MSNBC declined comment when reached by Fox News Digital.
Cross
was previously a fill-in host for Joy Reid's weekend show "AM Joy" and
got her own Saturday program in 2020. There, she was known for her
vitriolic statements about conservatives, remarking that there is
already a "civil war" happening in the U.S., urged liberals to "pick up a
weapon" in the fight for democracy, and called Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas "Justice Pubic Hair on My Coke Can."
nymag | While
the sort of value Musk got out of Twitter — monetary, reputational,
significant — is rare and has little to do with the most common
experience of the platform, his relationship to the platform is
aspirationally relatable to the people he interacts with in real life
and on the site himself. Musk and his small cadre of sympathetic advisers
narrowly but correctly understand Twitter as a tool that can be used by
public figures to make money and acquire power. Venture capitalists use
it because it helps them build public profiles but also because it
helps them with deals. (Some pay good money
for ghostwritten tweets!) Politicians use it because it lets them
bypass the press — it’s hard to imagine Trump’s term in office without
it, and its value to him was immense. Pundits and some journalists owe
Twitter for raising their profiles, which has made coverage of this
whole situation fraught and occasionally embarrassing. (In fairness, a
direct and accurate way to describe this situation is that a very
wealthy and powerful person has functionally purchased a tool that is
extremely valuable to the function of the free press around the world.)
Among
the 400,000 or so verified Twitter users, there are plenty who use
Twitter in transactional or profitable ways without paying for
advertising: brands, people who think of themselves as brands, people
who have to be there for their jobs, people looking for jobs, people
looking for dates, people running scams. There’s something to the idea
that you can’t understand Twitter’s full value without taking into
account its external influence — again, consider Trump, whose campaign
paid for Facebook ads but who actually attempted to govern with Twitter —
as well as the related observation that YouTube, a social network that
creates and distributes immense value within its marketplace,
in the form of creator payouts, seems to exert much less direct
influence on the broader culture relative to its massive size and
revenue. Most Americans don’t use Twitter at all. But they certainly
hear about it.
It’s an insight! Is it a business plan? The vast majority of people who are on
Twitter don’t derive much or any material value from the platform,
which, according to Twitter’s most recent public filings, prices their
attention to advertisers at about two dollars a month.
The few that do will soon be given a choice to make based on admittedly
imperfect information: Is whatever they’re doing there worth it? And
will it stay that way? By asking heavily invested users to pay to remain
or become verified and to remain or become visible — to
maintain their brand, whatever it is — Twitter is treating this group of
users almost exactly the way it has treated its other most important
customers for years: advertisers. You get what you pay for.
Jessica Lessin, founder and editor of subscription tech site the Information, tweeted,
“Watching @elonmusk + Co take over Twitter is like watching a business
school case study on how to make money on the internet. Amazing that at
some level it is so basic.” Among the obvious lessons, she said, was
charging power uses “what they are willing to pay.” And maybe it will
really turn out to be so simple! Musk charges, blue checks pay, most
everyone else sticks around, and then, uh, some other stuff happens and
Twitter is worth its $44 billion price tag and more.
But
whatever “@elonmusk + Co” believe they understand about Twitter’s
captive upper echelons risks obscuring what makes the platform
interesting, or even tolerable, to a much larger base of users. There’s
been plenty of indignation from verified users about Musk’s ransom, and,
whether Musk ends up calling their bluffs, they do have a point: Their
work contributes to Twitter’s bottom line, and thousands — in some cases
millions — of other users have explicitly expressed interest in their
presence. I expect a lot of those users will still pay; I also expect
that their conversion into de facto advertisers will make their
relationship with the platform worse, and worth less, to them and their
followers.
politico | The
mass firing represents the next stage in Musk’s takeover of the social
network that remains a mainstay in how political leaders from President
Joe Biden to French President Emmanuel Macron to Iran’s supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei communicate with a global audience.
In
the hours after acquiring Twitter in late October, Musk fired the
company’s board, including its chief executive Parag Agrawal, as well as
Vijaya Gadde, who ran the social media company’s legal, policy and
trust teams.
In a bid to increase revenue at the social media network that has
historically struggled to turn a profit, Musk also wants to charge
people $8 a month so that their accounts can be verified via the
company’s now-iconic “blue tick” logo. The mass layoffs announced Friday
are also part of these efforts to make the company more profitable.
The world’s richest man has become a
lightning rod in the battle over free speech and content moderation.
He’s tried to reassure advertisers that he wouldn’t let the platform
devolve into a “free-for-all hellscape.” But some major advertisers have
called for a pause in business with the platform, particularly after
Musk shared a false story about an attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
“He specifically said to us that he
does not want Twitter to be a hate amplifier,” said Yael Eisenstat, head
of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology and Society, who
participated in a call with Musk alongside other civil society groups
this week. “We will continue to watch to make sure that those actions
actually happen.”
igorchudov |Pfizer is “pausing advertising on Twitter”
because it is “concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content
moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable
content on the platform.”
Pfizer
was one of the most significant sources of revenue for Twitter. I
constantly saw Pfizer ads and promoted posts, such as this creepy one:
(If you are not sure why “the human brain” becomes so sweaty once pink “science” grabs it firmly from behind, neither am I)
What
is interesting is that this advertising pause involves not only Pfizer
but other large multinationals with no specific issues related to
Twitter censorship, such as General Mills, a producer of popular but
unhealthy breakfast cereals.
Who is behind this? Meet a new “action coalition” called “Accountable Tech”
that is directing efforts to withhold advertising money from
misbehaving technology companies. You may be very surprised, or not, but
“Accountable Tech” is packed with Democratic operatives:
Accountable Tech is spearheading this letter to Twitter advertisers:
Accountable Tech joined more than 25 groups to deliver the below message in a letter to Twitter’s top advertisers to demand nonnegotiable requirements for their ad business in the midst of Elon Musk’s acquisition:
To whom it may concern:
Elon
Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information
ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among
those already most vulnerable and marginalized.
The undersigned organizations believe that Twitter should continue to uphold the practices that serve as guideposts for other Big Tech platforms. We
call on you – Twitter’s top advertisers – to commit to these standards
as non-negotiable requirements for advertising on the platform:
Keep
accounts including those of public figures and politicians that were
removed for egregious violations of Twitter Rules – such as harassment,
violence, and hateful conduct – off the platform
All
these coalitions attempt to influence large advertisers into doing
their bidding by withholding ad money from tech companies that
“Accountable Tech” wants to punish.
I understand why Pfizer, a
company selling the fraudulent “Covid vaccine” and relying on censorship
for continued sales, has a vested interest in Twitter continuing to
censor vaccine skeptics. However, other companies mentioned above do not
have such reasons.
newstarget | Three doctors in the armed forces have decided to blow the lid
on the United States military’s open deception concerning the negative
outcome of Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “vaccination” on American
troops.
According to the three whistleblowers, medical billing code data
captured by the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), which is
run by the Department of Defense (DoD), shows that rates of miscarriage,
myocarditis, cancer, Bell’s palsy, female infertility, and many other
health conditions are up big time.
Cancer rates are particularly concerning, they say, as the normal
average number of new cases per year is about 38,700, based on the time
period from 2016-2020. In 2021 after Operation Warp Speed was launched,
however, the number of new cancer cases that year rose to 114,645.
The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch (AFHSB) runs the DMED,
which it describes as a “web-based tool to remotely query de-identified
active component personnel and medical event data contained within the
Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS).”
“The database contains every International Classification of Diseases
(ICD) medical billing code for all medical diagnoses submitted by the
military for medical insurance billing,” reports explain. (Related:
Remember at the launch of Operation Warp Speed when Dr. Sara Beltrán
Ponce, MD, suffered a horrific miscarriage right after getting jabbed for the Chinese Flu?)
Neurological issues up 1,000% in military following Operation Warp Speed
The three military whistleblowers in question are Samuel Sigoloff,
Peter Chambers, and Theresa Long. Attorney Thomas Renz issued sworn
statements from these three to the courts as part of a major lawsuit.
During the first 10 months of 2021, Renz says, miscarriages alone
rose by 300 percent in the military. His hope is that the suit will lead
to an end for covid jab mandates in the military.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) is also involved, having recently hosted
“COVID-19: A Second Opinion,” a livestreamed discussion panel featuring
numerous world-renowned doctors and medical experts who offered a much
different take on the scamdemic and how the government handled it.
On February 1 of this year, Johnson wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary
of Defense Lloyd Austin. In it were the findings from a roundtable on
covid jab injuries and deaths, including data showing a 10-fold increase
in neurological issues post-Operation Warp Speed.
Johnson also revealed the following increases in other health
conditions following the mandate of covid injections in the military:
Hypertension: 2,181 percent increase
Nervous system disorders: 1,048 percent increase
Malignant neoplasms of esophagus: 894 percent increase
Multiple sclerosis: 680 percent increase
Malignant neoplasms of digestive organs: 624 percent increase
Guillain-Barre syndrome: 551 percent increase
Breast cancer: 487 percent increase
Demyelinating: 487 percent increase
Malignant neoplasms of thyroid and other endocrine glands: 474 percent increase
Female infertility: 472 percent increase
Pulmonary embolism: 468 percent increase
Migraines: 452 percent increase
Ovarian dysfunction: 437 percent increase
Testicular cancer: 369 percent increase
Tachycardia: 302 percent increase
Between the years of 2016 and 2020, there were 1,499 codes for
miscarriage reported each year. From January through October 2021 – not
even a full year – there were an astounding 4,182 miscarriages logged
into the system.
Throughout October, there have been an average of 1,564 extra deaths
per week, compared with a weekly average of just 315 in 2020 and 1,322
in 2021.
Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed
that in the week ending Oct 21, there were 1,714 excess deaths in
England and Wales, of which only 469 were due to Covid - just 27 per
cent of the total.
It is 16.8 per cent higher than normal. Deaths are also running
higher than the five-year pre-Covid October average from 2015 to 2019,
figures showed.
Health experts have warned that some of the unexplained deaths are being caused by collateral damage from the pandemic, when operations and treatments were cancelled or delayed as the health service concentrated on Covid.
The Government’s “stay at home, protect the NHS” message also left many people who needed medical treatment unwilling to bother the health service, or afraid they would catch coronavirus if they went into hospital.
The NHS is also struggling from long-term staffing issues and current shortages because of coronavirus, leading to record waits for ambulances, treatment and surgery.
Dr Charles Levinson, of the private GP service DoctorCall, which has
seen a rise in patients presenting with advanced conditions, said: “What
is driving the excess death crisis? In my view, delays in
diagnosis/treatment now and throughout the pandemic.
amidwesterndoctor |Recently an article
began circulating stating that the pandemic pushers deserved amnesty
for their actions over the last two years. This article was repeatedly
shared in our community as a way of politely saying "How About No” to
the author, and to illustrate that enough consequences from the vaccine
are starting to emerge that the government has realized they may need to
pivot to a new approach (which suggests additional issues from the
vaccines will emerge in the future). From having thought this article
over, my best guess is that this article was primarily targeted at
assuaging the guilt of the left leaning voters who trusted their leaders
on these vaccines and are not the most motivated to vote for them in
the midterms (as the polling data presently indicates a landslide for
the Republican party).
When I read through this
article, I realize the author highlighted a very common problem I
observe in human interactions (which I will admit I have also been
guilty of). The author is demanding to receive forgiveness for their
conduct, but in their apology, is refusing to admit they did anything
wrong. In order to accomplish this, they utilized a variety of
manipulative rhetorical constructs that are relatively simple and
frequently utilized.
Because it is so common to
encounter propaganda pieces like this, I thought there might be some
value in illustrating my thought process as I read this article. I tried
to not make this be too sophisticated so that it accurately portrayed
what jumped out at me when I first read the article. Additionally,
there are a few pieces of information I consider to be quite important
to know in my commentary and many more in the comments.
In reading this analysis, it is important to remember that many
people make their decisions based on what their peers or the media tells
them to do (which is likely the audience this article was written for)
rather than being self directed and using critical thinking to discern
which decision makes the most sense to them. As a result, we almost
certainly interpreted this article dramatically differently from its
intended audience which is receptive to this style of persuasion.
Thinking about this article more, I believe the fundamental
logical error in this article is that leaders should be absolved of
their responsibility for making incorrect decisions if there was a
degree of uncertainty with the information at hand. This is not the
standard we have held our leaders to, as their job is always to make the
best decision they can with the information that is available, and in
most eras, if the decision was correct they were praised for their
leadership, whereas if the decision was incorrect they were blamed for
their mistakes. The “but I couldn’t have known!” excuse has never been
deemed an acceptable way for leaders to justify their mistakes.
In
the past, leaders have successfully navigated much greater degrees of
uncertainty. In the case of COVID-19, Ron DeSantis, who had no previous
training in public health or medicine, was able to look at the data
himself and correct discern what policy needed to be followed. Although
DeSantis deserves praise for his leadership, the fact that he was able
to successfully figure this out without a scientific background
demonstrates that the degree of “uncertainty” here was clearly
manageable.
As this post shows, it can credibly be
argued much of this article was intentionally deceptive. What I am more
surprised by is the degree of a lack of insight the author shows into
the mistakes that were made. I should note that this is very common
behavior you will observe from those who have been influenced by cults
or cult like groups. As one reader remarked, it is astounding how much
the quality of journalism has declined over the last few years and that
an article of that quality made it to publication:
theepochtimes | A medical board has moved to strip top cardiologist Dr. Peter
McCullough of his certifications in internal medicine and cardiovascular
disease, claiming that he provided misleading medical information to
the public about COVID-19 vaccines.
The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) informed McCullough of the action in a recent letter.
The board stated that McCullough’s statements questioning COVID-19
vaccination for healthy people younger than the age of 50 and pointing
out that Americans have died after getting a COVID-19 vaccine triggered a
review, which led to a recommendation that McCullough’s board
certifications be revoked.
The ABIM’s Credentials and Certification Committee found that
McCullough had “provided false or inaccurate medical information to the
public,” the letter states.
“By casting doubt on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines with such
seemingly authoritative statements, made in various official forums and
widely reported in various media, your statements pose serious concerns
for patient safety,” it reads. “Moreover, they are inimical to the
ethics and professionalism standards for board certification.”
McCullough was given until Nov. 18 to appeal.
If he appeals, the matter will be considered by a panel designated by
the ABIM’s Board of Directors and at least one hearing would be held.
The panel could accept the recommendation, rescind it, or impose an
alternative punishment.
A medical board has moved to strip top cardiologist Dr. Peter
McCullough of his certifications in internal medicine and cardiovascular
disease, claiming that he provided misleading medical information to
the public about COVID-19 vaccines.
The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) informed McCullough of the action in a recent letter.
Allegations
In a May notice
of potential disciplinary measures, the board said it had learned that
McCullough made “numerous widely reported and disseminated public
statements about the purported dangers of, or lack of justification for,
Covid-19 vaccines.”
As an example, the board cites McCullough’s March 10, 2021, testimony
before a Texas Senate panel in which he said that people who have
recovered from COVID-19 have “complete and durable immunity” and that
there was no rationale for vaccinating such a person.
McCullough also said at the time that there was “no scientific
rationale” for people who are healthy and younger than 50 to receive one
of the vaccines.
In a declaration in a court case, meanwhile, McCullough said that
more than 18,000 COVID-19 vaccine deaths had been submitted to the
U.S.-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and that the number of
reported deaths was far above that of all other vaccines combined.
ABIM says the statements might violate the board’s policy on false or
inaccurate medical information, which states that “providing false or
inaccurate information to patients or the public is unprofessional and
unethical” and could lead to sanctions.
To back up his statements on COVID-19 vaccination, for instance,
McCullough referenced data that shows people younger than 50 have a
minuscule risk of death after contracting the illness, particularly if
they don’t have serious underlying medical conditions.
theintercept | Under President Joe Biden, the shifting focus on disinformation has continued. In January 2021, CISA replaced
the Countering Foreign Influence Task force with the “Misinformation,
Disinformation and Malinformation” team, which was created “to promote
more flexibility to focus on general MDM.” By now, the scope of the
effort had expanded beyond disinformation produced by foreign
governments to include domestic versions. The MDM team, according to one
CISA official quoted in the IG report, “counters all types of
disinformation, to be responsive to current events.”
Jen Easterly, Biden’s appointed director of CISA, swiftly made it
clear that she would continue to shift resources in the agency to combat
the spread of dangerous forms of information on social media. “One
could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the
most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so
building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think,
is incredibly important,” said Easterly, speaking at a conference in
November 2021.
Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S.
government has used its power to try to shape online discourse.
According to meeting minutes
and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney
General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate,
discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government
intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining
takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.
“Platforms have got to get comfortable with
gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft
executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a
DHS director, in February.
In a March meeting,
Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive
information on social media could undermine support for the U.S.
government. Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by
senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that “we
need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.”
“We do not coordinate with other entities when making content
moderation decisions, and we independently evaluate content in line with
the Twitter Rules,” a spokesperson for Twitter wrote in a statement to
The Intercept.
There is also a formalized process for government officials to
directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be
throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal
that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time
of writing, the “content request system” at
facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live. DHS and Meta, the parent
company of Facebook, did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI
declined to comment.
DHS’s
mission to fight disinformation, stemming from concerns around Russian
influence in the 2016 presidential election, began taking shape during
the 2020 election and over efforts to shape discussions around vaccine
policy during the coronavirus pandemic. Documents collected by The
Intercept from a variety of sources, including current officials and
publicly available reports, reveal the evolution of more active measures
by DHS.
According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security
Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and
priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target
“inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the
origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines,
racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S.
support to Ukraine.”
“The challenge is particularly acute in marginalized communities,”
the report states, “which are often the targets of false or misleading
information, such as false information on voting procedures targeting
people of color.”
The inclusion of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is
particularly noteworthy, given that House Republicans, should they take
the majority in the midterms, have vowed to investigate. “This makes
Benghazi look like a much smaller issue,” said Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., a member of the Armed Services Committee, adding that finding answers “will be a top priority.”
How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly
articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes
disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make
politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous
speech.
jonathanturley | We have been discussing
how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign companies
to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech
protections on Twitter. The EU has responded aggressively to warn Musk
not to allow greater free speech or face crippling fines and even
potential criminal enforcement. After years of using
censorship-by-surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders
seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) declared Musk’s pledge to restore
free speech values on social media as threatening Democracy itself. She
has promised that “there are going to be rules” to
block such changes. She is not alone. Former President Obama has
declared “regulation has to be part of the answer” to disinformation.
For her part, Hillary Clinton is looking to Europe to fill the vacuum
and called upon her European counterparts to pass a massive censorship
law to “bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently repeated this call for global censorship at the United Nations to the applause of diplomats and media alike.
EU censors have assured Democratic leaders that they will not allow
free speech to break out on Twitter regardless of the wishes of its
owner and customers.
One of the most anti-free speech figures in the West, EU’s Internal
Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has been raising the alarm that
Twitter users might be able to read uncensored material or hear
unauthorized views.
Breton himself threatened
that Twitter must “fly by [the European Union’s] rules” in censoring
views deemed misleading or harmful by EU bureaucrats. Breton has been
moving publicly to warn Musk not to try to reintroduce protections that
go beyond the tolerance of the EU for free speech. Musk is planning to
meet with the EU censors and has conceded that he may not be able resist
such mandatory censorship rules.
Breton has made no secret that he views free speech as a danger
coming from the United States that needs to be walled off from the
Internet. He previously declared that, with the DSA, the EU is now able
to prevent the Internet from again becoming a place for largely
unregulated free speech, which he referred to as the “Wild West” period of the Internet.
kunstler.com | It’s been several days since San Francisco police interrupted a
hammer fight between Paul Pelosi — husband of House Speaker Nancy — and
his “friend… David,” in the Pelosis’ Pacific Heights home, and
apparently the cops have not asked David DePape why he was there in the
first place. Odd, a little bit. Is it possible that a whole chain of
authorities from the SFPD clear up into the top of the US government and
its Democratic Party sidekicks don’t want you to know what actually
happened?
So far, not much in this cockamamie story adds up. Quite a bit is
known now about the attacker, David DePape. He was a colorful character
on the scene in radical Berkeley across the bay, a “nudist activist” and
BLM supporter. He’d lived there and had a child with one Oxane “Gypsy”
Taub, a fellow nude activist and whack-job, who has spent time in prison
for child abduction. That partnership ended seven years ago and DePape
has been homeless on and off since then. Acquaintances and Berkeley
neighbors describe him as not mentally healthy, saying he exhibits
psychotic delusions and is sometimes incoherent.
— Just call me daddy (retired) (@meprogrammerguy) October 29, 2022
So far, police have not disclosed how DePape journeyed from Berkeley
to Pacific Heights at 2:00 o’clock in the morning, about fourteen miles.
Did he walk from Berkeley across the Bay Bridge and then halfway across
town? Mr. DePape is apparently also known to the police as a gay
hustler, that is, a person who sells sex for money. Unless I’m mistaken,
the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) has a detective department —
experienced men and women who go around the city seeking clues,
evidence, and testimony in order to make sense of perplexing crimes —
and then solve them! Shall we assume they are on-the-job?
Now, Paul Pelosi, 82, who made a $300-million fortune running a car
service (also shrewd investments in real estate and the stock market),
has been in quite a bit of trouble this year. On May 28, 2022, he was
arrested for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) in Napa (near a vineyard
estate he owns with Nancy) when his 2021 Porsche crashed into a 2014
Jeep driven by one “John Doe” (as the police identified him). KGO-TV,
ABC’s affiliate in the San Francisco area, said that there was a second
person in the Porsche with Pelosi at the time of the accident. He has
never been identified.
In August, Mr. Pelosi was sentenced to five days in jail, a fine of
roughly $7,000, a three-month drinking-and-driving course, eight hours
of public service, and having an “interlock” device installed on his car
that would require him to blow into an alcohol sensor before the engine
can ignite. By any chance, were the Napa Police or the County Court
contacted in the matter at some point by the US Capitol Police or the
FBI? We may never know.
If David DePape didn’t walk fourteen miles from Berkeley to Pacific
Heights, or take a cab (expensive), how did he get there? Here’s a
theory: he rode the BART subway from Berkeley to the Church Street and
Mission station in the city, a five-minute walk to the Castro, San
Francisco’s fabled gay district. Sometime before 2:00 a.m. closing time,
he met up in a bar there with Paul Pelosi, who drove DePape to the
Pelosi house in a car not equipped with an interlock device. That is to
say, David DePape was let into the house by Mr. Pelosi.
The police and the news media have theorized that DePape broke into
the place by smashing a glass door in back. Uh-huh…. Ask yourself: would
there not be an alarm system at least on all the ground floor windows
and doors in the house? Would there not be security cameras on the back
side of the house — the side that burglars might prefer, if they could
get over the wall? Would the Speaker of the House, with a discretionary
budget on top of a $300-million fortune, and in a time of epic political
rancor, not have a team of security guards in place at her private
home?
Initial news media chatter had both DePape and Paul Pelosi dressed in
their underwear, struggling over a hammer which turned out to belong to
Mr. Pelosi. Not until the police entered the house did DePape wrest the
hammer from Mr. Pelosi and commence to brain him with it. What does the
arrest report actually say about the two men’s state-of-dress? It is
not public information. How and why were the police just watching until
DePape assaulted Mr. Pelosi — who was hospitalized afterward and had
surgery on his cracked skull? (Uh, how did a blow that literally broke
his skull not kill the elderly Mr. Pelosi?)
The news media initially suggested that somebody — a third person on
the scene — opened the door to let the police in. Now they are saying no
such person was there. Was the front door unlocked? (Weird, considering
the general threat level for a public figure of Nancy P’s stature.) Or,
did police break the glass door in the rear of the house to get in?
(However, photos of the door show the glass being broken from the inside
and shards spread over the outside.) Odd, also, that such a wealthy and
powerful couple would not have hard-to-smash security glass on such a
door. (It’s easy to buy.) Odd, too, that there was not one human
security guard on the premises. The house had security cameras all over
the exterior and interior. No mention in the news media or from the SFPD
of what might have been recorded by these cameras at the time of the
incident.
My assessment of this bizarre episode as follows: Paul Pelosi was out
drinking late the night of the incident. He hooked up with David
DePape, a hustler he might have been previously acquainted with, and
took him back to the house in Pacific Heights. Something went wrong with
the transaction. Considering that DePape exhibited psychotic behavior
at times, it might have taken little to set him off. All the authorities
involved are playing it coy, but failing to construct a narrative that
adds up.
The Democratic Party has attempted to convert the sordid incident
into a political talking point, painting DePape as a MAGA crazy. That
spin apparently failed almost instantly. Their next effort will be to
shove the story down the memory hole — the news media will just not
report on any developments. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi put out a statement
that her family is “heartbroken” over the incident. Yes, of course. I’m
sure. Nobody knew about Paul Pelosi’s peccadillos. Boo-hoo. Cry me a
river, you degenerate jade. Don’t suppose the truth about this will be
successfully suppressed, like Hunter B’s laptop. And so, the career of
Nancy Pelosi comes to an ignominious end in the November 8 election,
with a cherry-on-top of personal humiliation. She deserves every bit of
it. Fist tap Dale.
them | In an early warning sign for the future of Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk shared a homophobic conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband only two days after acquiring the social media site.
Los Angeles Times story about David DePape, the man who allegedly broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home
and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi. The article detailed that DePape
had shared far-right conspiracy theories on social media. However, Musk
wrote there is a “tiny possibility” that there is more to the story,
and shared a link to a story from a publication called the Santa Monica Observer titled “The Awful Truth: Paul Pelosi Was Drunk Again, And In a Dispute With a Male Prostitute Early Friday Morning.” The Los Angeles Times
has called the Observer “notorious for publishing false news,”
including claims that Hilary Clinton died and was replaced by a body
double, that Donald Trump appointed Kanye West to the Interior
Department, and that Bill Gates was responsible for a polio epidemic.
The
Observer’s Pelosi story, of course, is no different. It insinuates that
Paul Pelosi is gay and that DePape is a “Castro nudist,” which is
supposedly a subculture of “really radical gay male prostitutes that
parade around naked with c--k rings.” The post only attributes this
information to “Twitter” and “a source.” Essentially, the Observer
claims that Pelosi was not attacked, but that he was caught with DePape
when the cops were summoned to the residence for a wellness check. The
outlet has since updated its story with a note that says that the San
Francisco Police Department confirmed that DePape and Pelosi did not
know each other before the attack, and that it was indeed a break-in,
but the story still remains up and is actively circulating among
right-wing social media users.
Although Musk deleted the link by early Sunday afternoon, per NBC News,
the tweet had accrued more than 24,000 retweets and more than 86,000
likes by Sunday morning. Ironically, the incident is the perfect example
of why Musk’s laissez-faire approach to content moderation on Twitter
is a terrible idea. It’s already been reported that Facebook was guilty
of failing to act on similar misinformation
related to the 2020 election due to a lack of adequate content
moderation. Experts have suggested that Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and
his seeming lack of discernment when it comes to fake news, could have a
worrying impact on the upcoming midterm elections.
The
billionaire’s acquisition of the platform has especially worrying
repercussions for trans people, too. The SpaceX founder has previously tweeted that “pronouns suck” and said that they’re an “esthetic [sic] nightmare.” Right-wingers have widely adopted him as a deity of “free speech.” Especially considering that Twitter accounts like Libs of TikTok
are eager to stoke the flames of anti-LGBTQ+ extremism, the future of
the platform under Elon Musk seems to already be off to a grim start.
NYTimes | Speaker Nancy Pelosi had just urged Brown University graduates to stay resilient and summon their “better angels”
on Memorial Day weekend when she was forced to turn her attention to a
less uplifting situation: her husband’s arrest in California.
The details emerging from the incident were not especially flattering.
The night before, May 28,Paul
Pelosi, 82, had been in Oakville, among the country’s most exclusive
enclaves, leaving a small dinner at the hedgerow-lined estate of
Alexander Mehran, a longtime friend and Democratic donor.
Mr.
Pelosi got behind the wheel of his black 2021 Porsche 911 to drive the
six miles to the Pelosis’ Napa Valley country house. It was around 10
p.m., according to a police report and eyewitnesses.
He
went a little more than half a mile and was trying to cross State Route
29 and make a left. But a Jeep was coming down the highway and hit Mr.
Pelosi’s car as he made the turn.
The
police who responded arrested him on suspicion of driving under the
influence of alcohol and suspicion of driving with a .08 blood alcohol
content or higher. He is due back in court on Aug. 3. If criminal charges are filed, he will be arraigned then. (The driver of the Jeep was not arrested.)
It may not have been only alcohol that hindered Mr. Pelosi’s driving.
A
person who witnessed the accident said both cars were totaled, and that
Mr. Pelosi simply sat in the car, seemingly frozen, for several
minutes, until the sheriff and members of the Fire Department arrived
moments later.
Neither Mr. Pelosi nor the driver of the Jeep was injured.
Some
friends felt that Mr. Pelosi’s full night in custody at the Napa County
Jail after the accident was excessive. Others were puzzled why their
friend hadn’t pre-empted the whole ordeal by simply taking a car service
home.
And some local residents
suggested that, in an earlier era in Napa, driving after drinking was
met with understanding, rather than criminal charges.
“I
feel just awful about what’s happened because there was a time when if a
thing like this happened, the cops would take you home,” said the
society doyenne Diane Wilsey, better known as Dede.
Ms. Wilsey, who is Mr. Pelosi’s fellow trustee
at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, is a
Republican, but she has donated to several of the speaker’s political
campaigns, and sees the couple socially in California.
“I don’t agree with Nancy on everything, but I cannot think of anyone nicer than Nancy or Paul,” she said.
Justice.gov | A
California man was charged today with assault and attempted kidnapping
in violation of federal law in connection with the break-in at the
residence of Nancy and Paul Pelosi in San Francisco on Friday.
According to the complaint, David Wayne DePape, 42, of Richmond, was
arrested on Friday inside the Pelosi residence by San Francisco Police
Department (SFPD) police officers responding to a 911 call from Paul
Pelosi, husband of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Paul Pelosi later described to police that he had been asleep when
DePape, whom he had never seen before, entered his bedroom looking for
Nancy Pelosi.
According to the complaint, minutes after the 911 call, two police
officers responded to the Pelosi residence where they encountered Paul
Pelosi and DePape struggling over a hammer. Officers told the men to
drop the hammer, and DePape allegedly gained control of the hammer and
swung it, striking Pelosi in the head. Officers immediately restrained
DePape, while Pelosi appeared to be unconscious on the ground. As set
forth in the complaint, once DePape was restrained, officers secured a
roll of tape, white rope, a second hammer, a pair of rubber and cloth
gloves, and zip ties from the crime scene, where officers also observed a
broken glass door to the back porch.
DePape is charged with one count of assault of an immediate family
member of a United States official with the intent to retaliate against
the official on account of the performance of official duties, which
carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. DePape is also charged
with one count of attempted kidnapping of a United States official on
account of the performance of official duties, which carries a maximum
sentence of 20 years in prison.
U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds for the Northern District of
California, Special Agent in Charge Robert K. Tripp of the FBI San
Francisco Field Office, and Chief J. Thomas Manger of the U.S. Capitol
Police made the announcement.
The Special Prosecutions Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California is prosecuting the case.
The FBI San Francisco Field Office, the U.S. Capitol Police, and the San Francisco Police Department are investigating the case.
A criminal complaint is merely an allegation. The defendant is
presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a
court of law.
medialens | Last week, Alex Nunns, author of ‘The Candidate – Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path To Power’ and former Corbyn speechwriter, described the current assault on democracy within the Labour Party:
‘What’s happening in the Labour
Party is new. The Labour right, having had the shock of their lives in
2015, are now intent on eradicating the left entirely. This isn’t how
their predecessors thought. It’s a new departure in Labour history
that’ll have long term consequences.’
‘Previous generations of Labour
right bureaucrats accommodated the left not because they were nicer than
the current lot but because 1) the left was part of a power bloc which
they needed to advance their own ends & 2) they were confident in
containing the left within that bloc.
‘This generation of Labour
right bureaucrats acts differently because 2) has changed, but 1)
hasn’t. Their predecessors weren’t all stupid, so there will be a
long-term cost.’
In other words, the Labour right is ‘eradicating the left entirely’
because, as the Corbyn near-miss in 2017 showed, the level of public
support for left policies is now so high that it threatens to surge
uncontrollably through any window of opportunity.
This rings true, and not just for the Labour Party. What we have
often called the ‘corporate media’, but which in truth is a
state-corporate media system, has followed essentially the same path for
the same reasons.
Where once the likes of John Pilger, Robert Fisk and Peter Oborne
were granted regular columns in national newspapers and magazines, and
even space for prime-time documentaries, their brand of rational,
compassionate dissent has been all but banished. Pilger commented recently:
‘In recent years, some of the best
journalists have been eased out of the mainstream. “Defenestrated” is
the word used. The spaces once open to mavericks, to journalists who
went against the grain, truth-tellers, have closed.’
In October 2019, Peter Oborne published an article on ‘the way Boris
Johnson was debauching Downing Street by using the power of his office
to spread propaganda and fake news’. (Peter Oborne, ‘The Assault on
Truth,’ Simon & Schuster, 2021, p.130). The media response:
‘This article marked the end of my
thirty-year-long career as a writer and broadcaster in the mainstream
British press and media. I had been a regular presenter on Radio 4’s The
Week in Westminster for more than two decades. It ceased to use me,
without explanation. I parted company on reasonably friendly terms with
the Daily Mail after our disagreement…
‘The mainstream British press and media is to all intents and purposes barred to me.’ (p.132 and p.133)
As with the Labour Party, the reason is that the game – and it always
was a game – has changed. In the age of internet-based citizen
journalism – heavily filtered by algorithms and ‘shadow-banning’ though
it is – elite interests can no longer be sure that the truth can be
contained by the ‘free press’ and its obedient ranks of ‘client
journalists’.
counterpunch | And even though they may lack the finely
tuned mental framework to fit it all together, thanks to their news
consumption habits, lots of people have begun to glimpse that
Washington’s idiocy could get them blown up tout de suite and meanwhile
is bleeding them dry and will very soon be bleeding them drier. Hence
the public’s growing reluctance to keep handing Ukraine, the most
corrupt country in Europe, blank checks. The GOP even climbed onto the
bandwagon and announced it won’t fund this misbegotten war if it regains
congress. I, for one, will be astonished if Republicans have the
backbone to keep that promise. Anyway, Biden plans to preempt this oath
by forking over more billions to Kiev now. This will not, ahem, help the
Dems, which is probably what Republicans count on. But then Biden gets
to look like he’s a man of principle (the show must go on), while the
rest of us go broke and calculate our distance from atomic ground zero.
Americans struggle with utility bills, grocery and gas prices, medical
and educational debt. They don’t need to fund defense contractors to the
tune of billions of dollars so Ukrainians and Russians can kill each
other halfway around the world. And they certainly don’t need a war that
has humanity teetering on the brink of nuclear Armageddon.
I am sorry, you all aren’t “anti war protesters”, you are dangerous propagandists who are literally making a mockery of the anti war movement.
I have never had the pleasure of responding to 🇷🇺 ridiculous internet disinformation in person before. Thank you for the opportunity ✌🏽 https://t.co/xzTLQCymgO
In an unexpected dribble of good news, on
October 24 the Washington Post reported that some 30 members of the
progressive caucus urged Biden to get diplomacy to end the war rolling.
The next day, they sniveled and recanted. This was the first time any
Dems had the guts not to cheerlead for more bloodshed and more war on
Moscow. What caused this initial sea change, I don’t know. But it was
good news. Better late than never, it seemed. It appeared to mean some
on the so-called left in Washington had finally come to their senses and
just might not behave as disgracefully as so many European socialists
did once World War I started, when they abandoned their erstwhile
pacifism. For a long time, honestly, it has looked like that was the
inheritance Dem progressives wanted to claim, an inheritance not just of
shame and mass murder, but, were the Ukraine war to morph into World
War III, human extinction.
For less than a day the sun of reason and
goodness shone down. Briefly, the people who consider themselves of the
left decided this danger of humanity’s mass execution was worth speaking
out about and that diplomacy for peace is the only sane route out of
the fiasco. But then, the next day they chickened out of bucking their
party’s bloodlust. Even their timid gesture was too much to ask. These
people are not leftists. They are cowards. They are a disgrace to the
left. If anyone in the progressive caucus ever speaks out for diplomacy
again, I’ll be very impressed.
Speaking of being impressed, how about that
Washington Post actually playing this story big, about progressives
calling for diplomacy, instead of burying it? That was unexpected, to
say the least. Because it’s long been sickeningly obvious that our
mainstream media show one side of the story: the NATO, Washington,
imperial, war-mongering side. And it’s been doing that, shamelessly, for
a generation. (It did that earlier too, but with a bit of actual
embarrassment, whenever it got called out.) Remember Iraq’s infamous
weapons of mass destruction? The editors who hyped that lie for months
on end went on to bigger and better things, and so did the politicians –
Biden even became president! – while an entire country, Iraq, was
bombed to smithereens, based largely on mendacious reporting and
political chicanery and now, decades later, has simply swirled down the
drain.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
