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Man With Bullhorn Takes Stand Against Newsom’s Lockdowns In California Costco

Man With Bullhorn Takes Stand Against Newsom’s Lockdowns In California Costco
Tyler Durden
Mon, 12/14/2020 – 17:00

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

An anti-lockdown protester staged a one man demonstration in a California…

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Man With Bullhorn Takes Stand Against Newsom's Lockdowns In California Costco Tyler Durden Mon, 12/14/2020 - 17:00

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

An anti-lockdown protester staged a one man demonstration in a California branch of Costco, telling shoppers, “Don’t let them do it!”

“Don’t let them do it! You know why we’re under this lockdown right now – because all the information that’s coming out about COVID, they know it’s a farce,” said the man.

“You must not do this, if you continue, this is the life that you will have,” he added.

The protester continued to address shoppers via a bullhorn as staff tried to intervene.

“Governor Newsom doesn’t have the right to shut us down or make you wear a mask!” said the man as two other customers walked up to give him a fist bump.

“We’ve got to stand up for ourselves because this Governor is gonna keep us locked down until we do something about it – are you gonna let this happen?” he asks.

The backlash against Governor Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home order is growing after it was revealed that Sheriffs in counties that represent 40 percent of California’s population say they won’t enforce his coronavirus restrictions.

Newsom’s shutdown of children’s playgrounds and outdoor dining has prompted fury, with business owners saying they are being unfairly punished.

In a viral video, Angela Marsden, owner of the Pineapple Hill Saloon & Grill, explained how she obeyed all the instructions for outdoor dining but now faces financial ruin while a movie company was allowed to set up its own eating section in a nearby parking lot.

“I’m losing everything,” a tearful Marsden says in the clip.

“Everything I own is being taken away from me and they set up a movie company right next to my outdoor patio, which is right over here.”

Governor Newsom’s rampant hypocrisy was also exposed when he was caught on camera unmasked eating indoors at a Michelin star restaurant with a group of 12 people while telling Californians they could only celebrate Thanksgiving outside.

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Supreme Court’s questions about First Amendment cases show support for ‘free trade in ideas’

These cases have asked the justices to consider how to apply some of the most sweeping constitutional protections – those of free speech – to an extremely…

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Clouds float over the Supreme Court building on March 15, 2024. Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

This term, the U.S. Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in a total of five cases involving questions about whether and how the First Amendment to the Constitution applies to social media platforms and their users. These cases are parts of a larger effort by conservative activists to block what they claim is government censorship of people who seek to spread false information online.

The most recently heard case, on March 18, 2024, was Murthy v. Missouri, about whether the federal government’s direct communication with social media platforms, specifically about online content relating to the COVID-19 public health emergency, violated the First Amendment rights of private citizens.

The case stemmed from the Biden administration’s efforts to combat misinformation that spread online, including on social media, during the pandemic. The plaintiffs said White House officials “threatened platforms with adverse consequences” if they didn’t take down or limit the online visibility of inaccurate information – and that those threats amount to the unconstitutional suppression of free speech from private individuals who shared content that contained debunked conspiracy theories and contradicted scientific evidence.

It is not uncommon for government officials to informally pressure private parties, like social media platforms, into limiting, censoring or moderating speech by third parties. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett seemingly implied during the Murthy v. Missouri oral arguments, “vanilla encouragement” by government officials would be constitutionally permissible. But when the informal pressure turns into bullying, threats or coercion, it may trigger First Amendment protections, as the Supreme Court ruled in another case called Bantam Books v. Sullivan, from 1963.

But the Biden administration said its effort to fight COVID misinformation was normal activity, in which the government is allowed to express its views to persuade others, especially in ways that advance the public interest.

Two men in suits stand in a room with screens and flags.
President Joe Biden and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy attend a meeting in 2022. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Several justices seemingly agreed with the Biden administration and accepted its view that ordinary pressure to persuade is permissible.

More broadly, the Supreme Court has wrestled with the application of the First Amendment to cases involving social media platforms. Earlier this term, the court heard several cases that involved content moderation – both by the platforms themselves and by public officials using their own social media accounts. As Justice Elena Kagan put it during one round of oral arguments: “That’s what makes these cases hard, is that there are First Amendment interests all over the place.”

Perhaps most fundamentally, the court seeks to evaluate the relationship between social media platforms and public officials.

A public official or a private social media user?

On March 15, the Supreme Court released its unanimous decision in Lindke v. Freed – another case involving social media platforms. The issue in that case was whether a public official can delete or block private individuals from commenting on the official’s social media profile or posts.

This case involved James Freed, the city manager of Port Huron, Michigan, and Facebook user Kevin Lindke. Freed initially created his Facebook profile before entering public office, but once he was appointed city manager, he began using the Facebook profile to communicate with the public. Freed eventually blocked Lindke from commenting on his posts after Lindke “unequivocally express(ed) his displeasure with the city’s approach to the (COVID-19) pandemic.”

The court ruled that on social media, where users, including government officials, often mix personal and professional posts, “it can be difficult to tell whether the speech is official or private.” But the court unanimously found that if an official possesses “actual authority to speak” on behalf of the government, and if the person “purported to exercise that authority when” posting online, the post is a government action. In that case, the official cannot block users’ access to view or comment on it.

The court ruled that if the poster either does not have authority to speak for the government, or is not clearly exercising that authority when posting, then the message is private. In that situation, the poster can restrict viewing and commenting because that is an exercise of their own First Amendment rights. But when a public official posts in their official capacity, the poster must respect the First Amendment’s limitations placed on government. The court sent a similar case, O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, back to a lower court for reconsideration based on the ruling in the Lindke case.

An illustration of a person surrounded by phone and computer screens spouting all manner of information and noise.
Online information can be a cacophony from which it is hard to discern truth and accuracy. Nadezhda Kurbatova/iStock / Getty Images Plus

Who controls what’s online?

At the root of the plaintiffs’ claims in both these cases is content moderation – whether a public official can moderate another user’s content by deleting their posts or blocking the user, and whether the federal government can interact with social media platforms to mitigate the spread of debunked conspiracy theories and scientifically disprovable narratives about the pandemic, for instance.

Ironically, though conservatives argue that the federal government cannot interact with the social media platforms to influence their content moderation, Florida and Texas – states governed by Republican majorities in the statehouse and Republican governors – enacted state laws that seek to restrict the platforms’ own content moderation.

While the laws in each state differ slightly, they share similar provisions. First, both laws contain “must-carry provisions,” which “prohibit social media platforms from removing or limiting the visibility of user content in certain circumstances,” according to the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

Second, both laws require the social media platforms to provide individualized explanations to any user whose content is moderated by the platform. Both laws were passed to combat the false perception that the platforms disproportionately silence conservative speech.

The Florida and Texas laws were challenged in two cases whose oral arguments were heard by the Supreme Court in February 2024: Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, respectively. Florida and Texas argued that they can regulate the platforms’ content moderation policies and processes, but the platforms argued that these laws infringe on their editorial discretion, which is protected by well-established First Amendment precedent.

During oral argument in both cases, the justices appeared skeptical of both laws. As Chief Justice John Roberts stated, the First Amendment prohibits the government, not private entities, from censoring speech. Florida and Texas argued that they enacted these laws to protect the free speech of their citizens by limiting the platforms’ ability to moderate content.

But social media users do not have any First Amendment protections on the platforms, because private entities, like Facebook, are free to moderate the content on their platforms as they see fit. Roberts was quick to respond to Texas and Florida: “The First Amendment restricts what the government can do, and what the government’s doing here is saying you must do this, you must carry these people.”

Where are the online boundaries of free speech?

Collectively, these cases demonstrate the Supreme Court’s interest in defining the boundaries of First Amendment protections as they relate to social media platforms and their users. Moreover, the court seems focused on establishing the limits of the relationship between government and social media platforms.

The justices’ questions during the NetChoice cases suggest that they are skeptical of government regulation that forces social media platforms to carry certain content. In this way, the justices seem poised to affirm the principle that government cannot directly or formally force an individual or, in this case, a private company, to convey a message that it does not wish to carry.

But the justices’ questions during Murthy v. Missouri seem to suggest that it is not a violation of the First Amendment for government officials to informally interact or communicate with social media platforms in an attempt to persuade them not to carry material the government dislikes.

Considering all of these cases together, the court seems posed to further promote a robust “free trade in ideas,” which was a theory first invoked in 1919 by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Abrams v. United States. In Lindke v. Freed, the court identified the distinction between private speech on social media platforms by a public official, which is protected by the First Amendment, and professional speech, which is subject to First Amendment limitations that protect others’ rights.

In the NetChoice cases, the court seems ready to limit a state’s ability to directly compel social media platforms to convey messages that they may moderate. And in Murthy v. Missouri, the justices seem ready to affirm that while indirect compulsion may be unconstitutional, ordinary pressures to persuade social media platforms are permissible.

This promotion of a robust marketplace of ideas appears to stem from neither giving the government extra powers to shape public discourse, nor excluding government from the conversation altogether.

Wayne Unger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Greenback Surges after BOJ Hikes and Ends YCC and RBA Delivers a Dovish Hold

Overview: The US dollar is surging today against
most of the G10 currencies, and although the intraday momentum is stretched
ahead of start of the North…

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Overview: The US dollar is surging today against most of the G10 currencies, and although the intraday momentum is stretched ahead of start of the North American session, there may be little incentive to resist before the end of the FOMC meeting tomorrow. The Bank of Japan's rate hike and the end of Yield Curve Control were not seen as the start of the tightening cycle. The two-year JGB yield slipped to a two-week low and settled below its 20-day moving average for the first time since mid-January. The Reserve Bank of Australia delivered a dovish hold by dropping the reference the future tightening. The yen (~-0.95%) and Australian dollar (~-0.85%) are the weakest of the G10 currencies. Emerging market currencies are lower, led by the Philippine peso (~-0.65%). The offshore yuan is weaker for the sixth consecutive session. 

Japanese, Australian, and New Zealand equities bucked the regional trend to advance today. Stoxx 600 in Europe is slightly lower, and if sustained, it would be the fourth consecutive losing session. That would be the long losing streak since last October. US index futures are nursing small losses. Ten-year JGB and Australian bond yield fell almost three basis points today. European benchmark yields are mostly slightly softer, though the periphery is lagging the core today. The US 10-year yield is little changed near 4.32%. The high for the year is near 4.35%. The US two-year yield did set a new high for the year yesterday near 4.75%. It is near 4.72% now. The greenback's strength is capping gold, which is trading inside yesterday's range and straddling the $2150 area. May WTI soared to $82.50 yesterday as its recent rally was extended amid Ukrainian strikes on Russian refiners. Diesel futures rose for the fourth consecutive session yesterday and gasoline futures extend its rally for a sixth session. May WTI is consolidating in a narrow range around $82. 

Asia Pacific

The Japanese press reports turned out to be fairly accurate: the Bank of Japan hiked its overnight target rate to 0%-0.1%. It scrapped the Yield Curve Control and confirmed it would stop buying ETFs. The one surprise was that the central bank indicated it would continue to purchase long-term bonds as needed. Governor Ueda, on one hand, said that the sustained 2% inflation target is not in hand, which sounded dovish. He also recognized that if the positive trends for wages and prices lift inflation expectations, and higher prices results, rate hikes may be necessary. The 10-year yield softened by almost three basis points (to ~0.73%). The Nikkei rallied 1%, and the yen was sold. The US dollar reached about JPY150.50.

As widely expected, the Reserve Bank of Australia left its cash target rate at 4.35%, where it has been since it was lifted by 25 bp last November. Economic activity has slowed, and price pressures are moderating, but the RBA seems to be in no hurry to unwind the November hike. Still, it dropped the reference to possible future hikes. The dovish hold sent the Australian dollar to a nine-day low near $0.6510. The futures market is not 100% confident the RBA will do so before September. However, the odds of an August cut have been marked up to around 97% from about 78% yesterday. 

The dollar is rising against the Japanese yen for the sixth consecutive session. It matches the longest advancing streak since last August and lifted the greenback to two-week highs near JPY150.70. The greenback approached JPY151 in mid-February through early March. The high from 2022 and 2023 was closer to JPY152. The intraday momentum indicators are stretched ahead of the North American open, but there may be little incentive to resist before tomorrow's FOMC meeting. What is being seen as a dovish hold by the RBA has sent the Australian dollar to nearly $0.6500. The trendline off the mid-February and early March lows comes in today a little below there. The low earlier this month was set slightly below $0.6480. The intraday momentum indicators are stretched. Initial resistance now is seen int he $0.6520-25 area. The greenback's gains, especially against the yen, have weighed on the Chinese yuan. The dollar is challenged the CNY7.20 cap that has not been violated this year. The PBOC set the dollar's reference rate at CNY7.0985 (CNY7.0943 yesterday). The Bloomberg average was CNY7.2020 (CNY7.1993 yesterday). The dollar is rising against the offshore yuan for the sixth consecutive session. It has reached CNH7.2130, its highest level in two weeks. The high for the year was set on February 14 near CNH7.2335.

Europe

The focus will not shift to Europe until Thursday. Three central banks meet then, Norway's Norges Bank, the Swiss National Bank, and the Bank of England. It is true the UK sees February CPI tomorrow. The year-over-year rate is expected to fall toward 3.5% from 4.0% and the core rate is seen falling to 4.6% from 5.1%. The UK's three-month annualized rate may near 2% and the six-month annualized increase maybe around 1.6%. Still, the market does not expect the BOE or the other west European central banks to change policy. Still, we suspect the risk is for a SNB move to get ahead of the ECB. The macro backdrop is conducive for a move with softer growth and low inflation. 

The March ZEW survey in Germany showed a little improvement. The assessment of the current situation remains poor. It edged up to -80.5 from -81.7. At its worst, during the pandemic, it fell to -93.5 in May 2020. It had recovered and peaked at 21.6 in October 2021, and had already begun weakening again before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It was at -10.2 in January 2022. The expectations component is a different story. It rose for the eighth consecutive month to 31.7, which is the highest reading since February 2022. The high last year was set in February at 28.1.

The euro met sellers in the US morning yesterday as it pushed above $1.09. The selling knocked it down to new session lows near $1.0865 It has been sold to $1.0835 today, around where the (50%) retracement of the rally from the February 14 lows and the 200-day moving average are found. A break of this area targets $1.08. Note that in the futures market, the non-commercial (speculative) net long euro position has risen by 50% since the mid-February low through March 12 that is covered by the most recent CFTC report. Meanwhile, the non-commercial net long sterling position has risen every week this year but one, and at nearly 70.5k contracts (GBP62.5k per contract or almost $5.6 bln position), it is the largest net long position since 2007. Sterling extended its losses yesterday to nearly $1.2715, and has been sold to almost $1.2665 today, the lowest level since March 4. The $1.2670 area corresponds to the (61.8%) retracement of the recovery off the year's low set on February 14 near $1.2535. The intraday momentum indicators are stretched, but there is little chart support ahead of $1.2600.

America

The focus, of course, is on tomorrow's Fed meeting. No one expects the Fed to do anything. It is more about what the Fed says, and here, the dot plot is important. Keen interest is in the number of rates cuts the median dot signals. Three cuts were signaled in December. While CPI and PPI were slightly above market expectations, we do not think that they deviated much from what the Fed anticipated. To us, a key consideration is Fed Chair Powell's acknowledgement that officials did not need to see better data to boost their confidence that inflation was headed back to target. It just needed to see good data. Other macro forecasts may be tweaked. The 4.1% unemployment rate anticipated for this year looks low. It was at 3.9% in February. The median dot was for the headline and core PCE deflator to be at 2.4% at the end of the year. They stood at 2.4% and 2.8%, respectively in January and are expected to be unchanged when the February series is reported next week. The median dot in December was for the economy to grow 1.4% this year. The median forecast in Bloomberg's monthly survey was for 2.1% growth, which is the same as the IMF's projection. On tap today, February housing starts and permits, which are expected to tick up after weather-related weakness in January.

Canada reports February CPI today. Given the base effect, the 0.6% median forecast in Bloomberg's survey translates into a 3.1% year-over-year rate. It was at 2.9% in January. The low print in 2023 was in June at 2.8%. The underlying core measures are expected to be flat. The swaps market has about a 50% chance of a cut in June. It nearly fully discounted on March 5, the day before the Bank of Canada met. The summary of its deliberations will be published tomorrow. The market has about 60 bp of cuts discounted for this year, which is two quarter-point moves and around a 40% chance of a third. A 100 bp of cuts was fully discounted as recently as February 20.

The US dollar hovered around little changed levels against the Canadian dollar yesterday. Neither rising US equities (risk-on) nor an extension of oil's rally did much for the Canadian dollar. Resistance near CAD1.3550 has been overcome today and it the greenback looks poised to re-test the CAD1.36 area that capped the greenback in late February and earlier this month. A band of resistance extends toward CAD1.3620-25. Yesterday, the US dollar rose for the third consecutive session against the Mexican peso, which matches the longest advance in six months. The nearly 0.9% rally was the most since mid-January. Mexico was on holiday yesterday and the thin markets may have exacerbated the move. The US dollar rose to a six-day high of almost MXN16.87. This effectively recouped nearly half of the greenback's losses this month. Today, the dollar is approaching the next retracement (61.8%) and the 20-day moving average are near MXN16.93. Brazil was not closed and fell for the third consecutive session. In fact, the dollar poked above BRL5.03, its highest level since last November 1. Nearly all emerging market currencies fell yesterday. The South African rand (~-0.95%) was the weakest followed by the Mexican peso (~0.75%). Emerging market currencies are no match for the dollar's surge today. The MSCI Emerging Market Currency Index is off for the fifth consecutive session. 


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International

Anti-Semitism As The Harbinger Of Global Chaos

Anti-Semitism As The Harbinger Of Global Chaos

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness,

On the off chance you hadn’t noticed,…

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Anti-Semitism As The Harbinger Of Global Chaos

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness,

On the off chance you hadn’t noticed, the world appears to be at an especially precarious moment presently. Obviously, war continues to rage in Ukraine and Gaza, with no end in sight to either conflict. Great Britain and Japan are currently in recession. Canada’s economy is an absolute disaster, with almost no hope of near-term recovery. Much of continental Europe and China are struggling economically, if not officially contracting. Some experts believe that the global economy more generally is sliding, slowly but surely, into recession. The only economic bright spot in the world is the United States, and even here we have our problems with consumer spending and sentiment, massive credit concerns, and inarguably sticky inflation.

Meanwhile, China is investing in and winning friends, and influencing people in the Global South. U.S.-backed Kurdish leaders are warning that ISIS is resurgent in Syria and Iraq. The Marine general in charge of U.S. Africa Command is warning of Russia’s increasing influence on that continent. Sudan remains mired in civil war. Nigeria is plagued by Islamist terrorism and mass kidnappings. Mexico is in the midst of a full-blown war with the drug cartels, who continue to grow bolder and more militarily sophisticated.

Everywhere one looks, chaos reigns—or, at the very least, bubbles just below the surface.

Perhaps most telling among the signs of disarray is the unnerving rise of antisemitism in the United States, Europe, and throughout the world. Antisemitism, in general, has been intensifying, slowly but surely, over the last decade or so. Over the last few months, however, it has emerged fully into the open, undaunted and unembarrassed. What was once considered shameful and disconcerting is now warmly welcomed as a “rational” response to American foreign policy, Israeli war practices, “colonialism,” and “white privilege.”

All of this is troubling, to put it mildly, both in and of itself and as a harbinger of greater and more deadly global unrest.

Hatred of and anger toward Jews is not the same as other forms of bigotry.  

In many ways, the history of Western anti-Jewish hatred mirrors the history of Western political chaos and collapse.  Or, to put it another way, historically, Jews are not only the perennial scapegoats during periods of social upheaval and displacement, but resurgent anti-Semitism serves as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the rise of revolutionary movements.

In his classic, The Pursuit of the Millennium, the British historian Norman Cohn argues that the Jewish diaspora generally fit comfortably, if tentatively into European society for most of the first thousand years or so A.D., and only became a hated and perpetually persecuted minority with the rise of utopian Millenarianism that accompanied and then outlived the Crusades.  Beginning then and continuing for the next nearly a thousand years, Europeans came to associate Jews with the antichrist and thus to associate hatred and persecution of Jews with preparing the battlespace for the Second Coming.  Many historians, including Hannah Arendt, believed that the anti-Semitism that was such an integral part of the West’s 20th-century collapse into totalitarianism was relatively new and, in any case, distinct from medieval anti-Semitism.  Cohn’s history suggests otherwise, connecting the religious eschatology of medieval Europe to the quasi-religious eschatology of post-Enlightenment Europe, thereby connecting the persistence of Western anti-Semitism as well.

Cohn tells us that millenarian moments and the millenarian movements that capitalize on those moments all share a common group of characteristics. They all appear under certain social and economic conditions. They all appeal to a certain segment of the population at large, who then present themselves as economic, spiritual, and political leaders. They all utilize scapegoats, meaning that they all identify a different, usually much smaller segment of the population on whom they can blame all the world’s ills and then set about to cure those ills through the elimination of the scapegoat. And more often than not, that scapegoat tends to be Jewish.

In the conclusion to the second edition of Pursuit of the Millennium, Cohn notes that the millenarian fervor of the middle ages may have changed, but it never really died, and it maintained its common characteristics even as it became secular or “quasi-religious.” He wrote:

The story told in Pursuit of the Millennium ended some four centuries ago but is not without relevance to our own times. [I have] shown in another work [Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion] how closely the Nazi phantasy of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy of destruction is related to the phantasies that inspired Emico of Leningrad and the Master of Hungary; and how mass disorientation and insecurity have fostered the demonization of the Jew in this as in much earlier centuries. The parallels and indeed the continuity are incontestable.

The parallels between the rise of Nazism and the current global unrest and demonization of the Jewish people are also largely incontestable. The election that brought Hitler to power didn’t happen in a vacuum, after all. It happened in the midst of global chaos, namely the Great Depression. It also followed the decadence and distortion of the Weimer Era. As the New York Fed has shown, even a global pandemic—the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak—contributed to the sense of discomfort and disconnect among the German population, prompting increased support for Hitler and his Nazis.

The present global chaos doesn’t have to end the same way the chaos of a century ago did. It doesn’t have to result in the ascension of millenarian ideologies and their totalitarian defenders. History has shown that extremism can be short-circuited and radical ideologies undone. The first step in doing so, however, must be to bring an end to the rationalization of the persecution of the world’s Jews. The second step is to end the persecution itself.

Antisemitism is ugly and shameful, and it must be treated as such. For their sake and ours.

Tyler Durden Tue, 03/19/2024 - 02:00

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