Home » Posts tagged 'commentary'
Tag Archives: commentary
Marketwatch: Commentary Censorship
Marketwatch: Commentary Censorship
Yesterday (February 1, 2021), MarketWatch published an article on why the short squeeze on silver being discussed by some on WallStreetBets/Reddit would be short-lived. Having read a number of articles on the issue it was not difficult to identify some misleading/faulty statements in the article. I sent a comment through to point out these inconsistencies in the article only to receive a message back that my comment “has been rejected as it contains content that is in breach of our community guidelines.”
Here is the comment:
__________________
Some misleading and missing ‘facts’ in this story.
First, the gold-to-silver price ratio is not ‘historically’ 60-1. That is only a relatively recent ratio. Historically, the ratio is about 15:1. (https://www.mining.com/web/alert-gold-silver-ratio-spikes-highest-level-27-years/)
Second, the argument that the WallStreetBets/Reddit crowd is justifying its position based on the industrial use of silver in electronics/technology is only partially accurate. Several others justifications have been forwarded: the ratio of silver mined to gold mined is even lower than the price ratio, about 8 ounces of silver to every 1 ounce of gold (https://www.jmbullion.com/investing-guide/james/silver-supply/); and, most importantly, there are 100s of paper ounces of silver to every actual physical ounce in existence, so taking physical deliver, as many are suggesting, will expose the fraud that is the precious metals market (https://www.goldbroker.com/news/paper-silver-market-250-times-size-physical-silver-market-526#:~:text=This%20would%20mean%20that%2C%20for,circulating%20in%20several%20financial%20products.)
And finally, many simply want to expose the fraud and manipulation by the Big Banks that has been going on for ages. (https://www.reuters.com/article/jp-morgan-spoofing-penalty/jpmorgan-to-pay-920-million-for-manipulating-precious-metals-treasury-market-idINKBN26K325)
__________________
The community guidelines are fairly extensive, but I can find no where in my comment where I was in breach of them, except maybe “excessive links to external websites”; but is 4 excessive?
Blatant censorship? It seems so to me.
Today’s Contemplation: The Coming Collapse VIII
Once again, a comment I posted in response to an article on The Tyee.
Where to begin? I realise this article is primarily about a federal political party and its future but there are two underlying issues that are discussed that need far more exploration and understanding if we are going to be projecting where a particular party or even government will be down the road (let alone the entire world).
If we are going to be discussing energy and Peak Oil then there is SO much more to bring into the conversation. Yes, politics plays a role (as it always does) but the topic is vastly wider than sociopolitics. It encompasses virtually everything in our complex, globalised industrial world. Everything. From the way we create potable water, to how we feed ourselves, to how we build and heat our homes (I’ve purposely focused on the three items we NEED to live…everything else is icing but just as dependent on energy, especially fossil fuels).
First things first. There is NO substitute for fossil fuels. At least not one that can sustain our current world the way it is configured. No, alternatives to fossil fuels cannot do it. They are not ‘clean’ as the mining, refinement, and manufacturing processes for them are environmentally damaging. They have a low energy-return-on-energy-invested (EROEI) and provide little ‘bang for the buck’. They cannot fuel many important industrial processes such as steel and concrete production. They depend very much on continued exploitation of fossil fuel, both upstream and downstream. They are NOT a panacea.
We are stuck with fossil fuels, until and unless we are ready and willing to give up probably 90% or more of what we consider ‘modernity’.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The War on Free Speech – U.S. Department of Justice Subpoenas Reason.com Over Comment Section
The War on Free Speech – U.S. Department of Justice Subpoenas Reason.com Over Comment Section
The United States Department of Justice is using federal grand jury subpoenas to identify anonymous commenters engaged in typical internet bluster and hyperbole in connection with the Silk Road prosecution. DOJ is targeting Reason.com, a leading libertarian website…
The D.C. court was right — the government won’t start issuing grand jury subpoenas every time someone writes “my husband left underwear on the bathroom floor again; I could just kill him.” But they won’t because they don’t have the time, inclination, or the resources.
Instead, they will use their discretion to decide when to bring their vast power into play to pierce the anonymity of internet assholes (or for that matter, people who may have valid points on political matters but express them in the wrong fashion). That discretion is much more likely to be exercised where, as here, the person being trash-talked is a powerful federal judge in the district of that U.S. Attorney’s Office, a judge that the office must appear before every damned day. The power is more likely to be exercised on behalf of establishment political figures, not outsiders. The power is more likely to be exercised when it is consistent with the politics of the administration.
The D.C. court implies that we can trust federal prosecutors to use the grand jury power to pierce the anonymity of political firebrands even when their rhetoric is clearly protected by the First Amendment. That the government will investigate anonymous political rhetoric in even-handed fashion, whether that rhetoric comes from a magazine known to be friendly to the government and its establishment, or one that is, like Reason, prone to question both.
– From the excellent Popehat article: Department Of Justice Uses Grand Jury Subpoena To Identify Anonymous Commenters on a Silk Road Post at Reason.com
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Three Types of US ‘Regime Change’
January 22, 2022
The Three Types of US ‘Regime Change’
When the U.S. overthrows a foreign government it either works from the top down, the bottom up, or through military invasion, writes Joe Lauria.
Chilean presidential palace during U.S.-backed coup, Sept. 11, 1973. (Library of the Chilean National Congress/Wikipedia)
Throughout the long, documented history of the United States illegally overthrowing governments of foreign lands to build a global empire there has emerged three ways Washington broadly carries out “regime change.”
From Above. If the targeted leader has been democratically elected and enjoys popular support, the C.I.A. has worked with elite groups, such as the military, to overthrow him (sometimes through assassination). Among several examples is the first C.I.A-backed coup d’état, on March 30, 1949, just 18 months after the agency’s founding, when Syrian Army Colonel Husni al-Za’im overthrew the elected president, Shukri al-Quwatli.
The C.I.A. in 1954 toppled the elected President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, who was replaced with a military dictator. In 1961, just three days before the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, who favored his release, Congolese President Patrice Lumumba was assassinated with C.I.A. assistance, bringing military strongman Mobutu Sese Seko to power. In 1973, the U.S. backed Chilean General Augusto Pinochet to overthrow and kill the democratically-elected, socialist President Salvador Allende, setting up a military dictatorship, one of many U.S.-installed military dictatorships of that era in Latin America under Operation Condor.
From Below. If the targeted government faces genuine popular unrest, the U.S. will foment and organize it to topple the leader, elected or otherwise. 1958-59 anti-communist protests in Kerala, India, locally supported by the Congress Party and the Catholic Church, were funded by the C.I.A., leading to the removal of the elected communist government…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…