Beet L. Jooz

Ms Young was reportedly let go from the business a few months ago

2,000 students will be taught at the 35,000 square foot facility on the former Federal City site.

Papa John's International Inc on Friday said it would lower royalties and fees charged to its U.S. and Canadian franchisees as sales at the U.S. pizza chain decline following the acrimonious exit of it founder.

Authored by Maria Popova via BrainPickings.org,

“The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.”

In 1937, George Orwell got the idea for his now-classic dystopian allegory exploring the ferocious dictatorship of Soviet Russia in a satirical tale eviscerating Stalin’s regime. In his 1946 essay Why I Write, Orwell remarked that this was his first conscious effort “to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.” But by the time he finished it six years later, in the middle of World War II and shortly before the start of the Cold War, the book’s decidedly anti-Soviet message presented an obvious challenge in politically cautious Britain. The manuscript was rejected by four major houses, including Orwell’s publisher of record, Gollancz, and T.S. Eliot himself at Faber and Faber.

Perhaps even more interesting than the story of the book, however, is the prescient essay titled “The Freedom of the Press,” which Orwell intended as a preface to the book. Included in Penguin’s 2000 edition of Animal Farm (public library) as “Orwell’s Proposed Preface to Animal Farm,” the essay — penned more than seven decades after Mark Twain bewailed that “there are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press" - tackles issues all the more timely today in the midst of global media scandals, vicious censorship, and near-ubiquitous government-level political surveillance.

Orwell begins by excerpting a letter from a publisher who had originally agreed to publish the book but later, under the Ministry of Information’s admonition, recanted:

I mentioned the reaction I had had from an important official in the Ministry of Information with regard to Animal Farm. I must confess that this expression of opinion has given me seriously to think … I can see now that it might be regarded as something which it was highly ill-advised to publish at the present time. If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offense to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.

Noting the general menace of such governmental meddling in the private sector of publishing and the resulting censorship, Orwell bemoans the broader peril at play:

The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of … any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face. … The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.

(Exactly thirty years later, E. B. White would come to redirect this critique at commercial rather than governmental pressures.)

The picture he paints of the press and its relationship with dissent and public opinion is ominously similar to what Galileo faced with the Catholic church nearly half a millennium earlier:

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines — being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that “it wouldn’t do” to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was “not done” to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

Orwell critiques the groupthink of the intelligentsia and the odd flip-flopping of moral absolutism and moral relativism they employ when confronted with the question of whether Animal Farm should be published:

The reaction towards it of most English intellectuals will be quite simple: “It oughtn’t to have been published.” Naturally, those reviewers who understand the art of denigration will not attack it on political grounds but on literary ones. They will say that it is a dull, silly book and a disgraceful waste of paper. This may well be true, but it is obviously not the whole of the story. One does not say that a book “ought not to have been published” merely because it is a bad book. After all, acres of rubbish are printed daily and no one bothers. The English intelligentsia, or most of them, will object to this book because it traduces their Leader and (as they see it) does harm to the cause of progress. If it did the opposite they would have nothing to say against it, even if its literary faults were ten times as glaring as they are.

At the heart of the question is an ethical dilemma manifest all the more viscerally today, when opinions can be — and are, prolifically — expressed on more platforms than Orwell could have possibly imagined:

The issue involved here is quite a simple one: Is every opinion, however unpopular — however foolish, even — entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say “Yes.” But give it a concrete shape, and ask, “How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?” and the answer more often than not will be “No.” In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you.

But his most prescient point is his concluding one:

To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.

On August 17, 1945, Animal Farm was at last published. It went on to sell millions of copies and has been translated into more than seventy languages.

Complement Orwell’s essay with E. B. White on the free press, cultural icons on censorship and Rudyard Kipling’s satirical poem poking fun at the press.

*  *  *

The Freedom Of The Press

Authored by George Orwell,

This material remains under copyright and is reproduced by kind permission of the Orwell Estate and Penguin Books.

This book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937, but was not written down until about the end of 1943. By the time when it came to be written it was obvious that there would be great difficulty in getting it published (in spite of the present book shortage which ensures that anything describable as a book will ‘sell’), and in the event it was refused by four publishers. Only one of these had any ideological motive. Two had been publishing anti-Russian books for years, and the other had no noticeable political colour. One publisher actually started by accepting the book, but after making the preliminary arrangements he decided to consult the Ministry of Information, who appear to have warned him, or at any rate strongly advised him, against publishing it. Here is an extract from his letter:

I mentioned the reaction I had had from an important official in the Ministry of Information with regard to Animal Farm. I must confess that this expression of opinion has given me seriously to think… I can see now that it might be regarded as something which it was highly ill-advised to publish at the present time. If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.

This kind of thing is not a good symptom. Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship (except security censorship, which no one objects to in war time) over books which are not officially sponsored. But the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

Any fairminded person with journalistic experience will admit that during this war official censorship has not been particularly irksome. We have not been subjected to the kind of totalitarian ‘co-ordination’ that it might have been reasonable to expect. The press has some justified grievances, but on the whole the Government has behaved well and has been surprisingly tolerant of minority opinions. The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news - things which on their own merits would get the big headlines - being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you are not allowed to criticise the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticise our own. Hardly anyone will print an attack on Stalin, but it is quite safe to attack Churchill, at any rate in books and periodicals. And throughout five years of war, during two or three of which we were fighting for national survival, countless books, pamphlets and articles advocating a compromise peace have been published without interference. More, they have been published without exciting much disapproval. So long as the prestige of the USSR is not involved, the principle of free speech has been reasonably well upheld. There are other forbidden topics, and I shall mention some of them presently, but the prevailing attitude towards the USSR is much the most serious symptom. It is, as it were, spontaneous, and is not due to the action of any pressure group.

The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions. On one controversial issue after another the Russian viewpoint has been accepted without examination and then publicised with complete disregard to historical truth or intellectual decency. To name only one instance, the BBC celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army without mentioning Trotsky. This was about as accurate as commemorating the battle of Trafalgar without mentioning Nelson, but it evoked no protest from the English intelligentsia. In the internal struggles in the various occupied countries, the British press has in almost all cases sided with the faction favoured by the Russians and libelled the opposing faction, sometimes suppressing material evidence in order to do so. A particularly glaring case was that of Colonel Mihailovich, the Jugoslav Chetnik leader. The Russians, who had their own Jugoslav protege in Marshal Tito, accused Mihailovich of collaborating with the Germans. This accusation was promptly taken up by the British press: Mihailovich’s supporters were given no chance of answering it, and facts contradicting it were simply kept out of print. In July of 1943 the Germans offered a reward of 100,000 gold crowns for the capture of Tito, and a similar reward for the capture of Mihailovich. The British press ‘splashed’ the reward for Tito, but only one paper mentioned (in small print) the reward for Mihailovich: and the charges of collaborating with the Germans continued. Very similar things happened during the Spanish civil war. Then, too, the factions on the Republican side which the Russians were determined to crush were recklessly libelled in the English leftwing press, and any statement in their defence even in letter form, was refused publication. At present, not only is serious criticism of the USSR considered reprehensible, but even the fact of the existence of such criticism is kept secret in some cases. For example, shortly before his death Trotsky had written a biography of Stalin. One may assume that it was not an altogether unbiased book, but obviously it was saleable. An American publisher had arranged to issue it and the book was in print — I believe the review copies had been sent out — when the USSR entered the war. The book was immediately withdrawn. Not a word about this has ever appeared in the British press, though clearly the existence of such a book, and its suppression, was a news item worth a few paragraphs.

It is important to distinguish between the kind of censorship that the English literary intelligentsia voluntarily impose upon themselves, and the censorship that can sometimes be enforced by pressure groups. Notoriously, certain topics cannot be discussed because of ‘vested interests’. The best-known case is the patent medicine racket. Again, the Catholic Church has considerable influence in the press and can silence criticism of itself to some extent. A scandal involving a Catholic priest is almost never given publicity, whereas an Anglican priest who gets into trouble (e.g. the Rector of Stiffkey) is headline news. It is very rare for anything of an anti-Catholic tendency to appear on the stage or in a film. Any actor can tell you that a play or film which attacks or makes fun of the Catholic Church is liable to be boycotted in the press and will probably be a failure. But this kind of thing is harmless, or at least it is understandable. Any large organisation will look after its own interests as best it can, and overt propaganda is not a thing to object to. One would no more expect the Daily Worker to publicise unfavourable facts about the USSR than one would expect the Catholic Herald to denounce the Pope. But then every thinking person knows the Daily Worker and the Catholic Herald for what they are. What is disquieting is that where the USSR and its policies are concerned one cannot expect intelligent criticism or even, in many cases, plain honesty from Liberal writers and journalists who are under no direct pressure to falsify their opinions. Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed. This rule has been almost universally observed since 1941, but it had operated, to a greater extent than is sometimes realised, for ten years earlier than that. Throughout that time, criticism of the Soviet régime from the left could only obtain a hearing with difficulty. There was a huge output of anti-Russian literature, but nearly all of it was from the Conservative angle and manifestly dishonest, out of date and actuated by sordid motives. On the other side there was an equally huge and almost equally dishonest stream of pro-Russian propaganda, and what amounted to a boycott on anyone who tried to discuss all-important questions in a grown-up manner. You could, indeed, publish anti-Russian books, but to do so was to make sure of being ignored or misrepresented by nearly the whole of the highbrow press. Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was ‘not done’. What you said might possibly be true, but it was ‘inopportune’ and played into the hands of this or that reactionary interest. This attitude was usually defended on the ground that the international situation, and the urgent need for an Anglo-Russian alliance, demanded it; but it was clear that this was a rationalisation. The English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed a nationalistic loyalty towards the USSR, and in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on the wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards. The endless executions in the purges of 1936-8 were applauded by life-long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.

But now to come back to this book of mine. The reaction towards it of most English intellectuals will be quite simple: ‘It oughtn’t to have been published.’ Naturally, those reviewers who understand the art of denigration will not attack it on political grounds but on literary ones. They will say that it is a dull, silly book and a disgraceful waste of paper. This may well be true, but it is obviously not the whole of the story. One does not say that a book ‘ought not to have been published’ merely because it is a bad book. After all, acres of rubbish are printed daily and no one bothers. The English intelligentsia, or most of them, will object to this book because it traduces their Leader and (as they see it) does harm to the cause of progress. If it did the opposite they would have nothing to say against it, even if its literary faults were ten times as glaring as they are. The success of, for instance, the Left Book Club over a period of four or five years shows how willing they are to tolerate both scurrility and slipshod writing, provided that it tells them what they want to hear.

The issue involved here is quite a simple one: Is every opinion, however unpopular — however foolish, even — entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say ‘Yes’. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, ‘How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?’, and the answer more often than not will be ‘No’. In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands liberty of speech and of the press, one is not demanding absolute liberty. There always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organised societies endure. But freedom, as Rosa Luxembourg [sic] said, is ‘freedom for the other fellow’. The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire: ‘I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way. Both capitalist democracy and the western versions of Socialism have till recently taken that principle for granted. Our Government, as I have already pointed out, still makes some show of respecting it. The ordinary people in the street – partly, perhaps, because they are not sufficiently interested in ideas to be intolerant about them – still vaguely hold that ‘I suppose everyone’s got a right to their own opinion.’ It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.

One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. This argument was used, for instance, to justify the Russian purges. The most ardent Russophile hardly believed that all of the victims were guilty of all the things they were accused of: but by holding heretical opinions they ‘objectively’ harmed the régime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations. The same argument was used to justify the quite conscious lying that went on in the leftwing press about the Trotskyists and other Republican minorities in the Spanish civil war. And it was used again as a reason for yelping against habeas corpus when Mosley was released in 1943.

These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists. Soon after the suppressed Daily Worker had been reinstated, I was lecturing to a workingmen’s college in South London. The audience were working-class and lower-middle class intellectuals — the same sort of audience that one used to meet at Left Book Club branches. The lecture had touched on the freedom of the press, and at the end, to my astonishment, several questioners stood up and asked me: Did I not think that the lifting of the ban on the Daily Worker was a great mistake? When asked why, they said that it was a paper of doubtful loyalty and ought not to be tolerated in war time. I found myself defending the Daily Worker, which has gone out of its way to libel me more than once. But where had these people learned this essentially totalitarian outlook? Pretty certainly they had learned it from the Communists themselves! Tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England, but they are not indestructible, and they have to be kept alive partly by conscious effort. The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous. The case of Mosley illustrates this. In 1940 it was perfectly right to intern Mosley, whether or not he had committed any technical crime. We were fighting for our lives and could not allow a possible quisling to go free. To keep him shut up, without trial, in 1943 was an outrage. The general failure to see this was a bad symptom, though it is true that the agitation against Mosley’s release was partly factitious and partly a rationalisation of other discontents. But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?

It is important to realise that the current Russomania is only a symptom of the general weakening of the western liberal tradition. Had the MOI chipped in and definitely vetoed the publication of this book, the bulk of the English intelligentsia would have seen nothing disquieting in this. Uncritical loyalty to the USSR happens to be the current orthodoxy, and where the supposed interests of the USSR are involved they are willing to tolerate not only censorship but the deliberate falsification of history. To name one instance. At the death of John Reed, the author of Ten Days that Shook the World — first-hand account of the early days of the Russian Revolution — the copyright of the book passed into the hands of the British Communist Party, to whom I believe Reed had bequeathed it. Some years later the British Communists, having destroyed the original edition of the book as completely as they could, issued a garbled version from which they had eliminated mentions of Trotsky and also omitted the introduction written by Lenin. If a radical intelligentsia had still existed in Britain, this act of forgery would have been exposed and denounced in every literary paper in the country. As it was there was little or no protest. To many English intellectuals it seemed quite a natural thing to do. And this tolerance or plain dishonesty means much more than that admiration for Russia happens to be fashionable at this moment. Quite possibly that particular fashion will not last. For all I know, by the time this book is published my view of the Soviet régime may be the generally-accepted one. But what use would that be in itself? To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.

I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech — the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don’t convince me and that our civilisation over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice. For quite a decade past I have believed that the existing Russian régime is a mainly evil thing, and I claim the right to say so, in spite of the fact that we are allies with the USSR in a war which I want to see won. If I had to choose a text to justify myself, I should choose the line from Milton:

By the known rules of ancient liberty.

The word ancient emphasises the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice. An example of this is the failure of the numerous and vocal English pacifists to raise their voices against the prevalent worship of Russian militarism. According to those pacifists, all violence is evil, and they have urged us at every stage of the war to give in or at least to make a compromise peace. But how many of them have ever suggested that war is also evil when it is waged by the Red Army? Apparently the Russians have a right to defend themselves, whereas for us to do [so] is a deadly sin. One can only explain this contradiction in one way: that is, by a cowardly desire to keep in with the bulk of the intelligentsia, whose patriotism is directed towards the USSR rather than towards Britain. I know that the English intelligentsia have plenty of reason for their timidity and dishonesty, indeed I know by heart the arguments by which they justify themselves. But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it. In our country — it is not the same in all countries: it was not so in republican France, and it is not so in the USA today — it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect: it is to draw attention to that fact that I have written this preface.

Proposed preface to Animal Farm, first published in the Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972 with an introduction by Sir Bernard Crick. Ian Angus found the original manuscript in 1972.

A photographer called police to a Martha's Vineyard restaurant Wednesday after actor Bill Murray allegedly poured a drink on him.

Channel reportedly receives strike for reporting on Infowars ban

A Pineville man accused of having a sexual relationship with a minor has been found guilty on two of four felony counts.

A mother who was pushing her one-year-old son in a stroller in Gretna Thursday morning was stabbed to death by her boyfriend, according to Gretna Police. 

A former Zulu president accused of sexual harassment was in court Friday.  Former Zulu employee Gemell Hulbert is suing Namaan Stewart in Orleans Parish Civil Court. Hulbert says Stewart refused to let her leave a bathroom in 2015 until she showed her breasts and had sex with him. 

A 16-year-old who was pushed off a bridge into a river in Washington State on Tuesday is speaking out about her injuries.

The governor also met with the president Wednesday.

Controversial claim by authors of Lancet study criticised by other scientists who say vast majority of research shows lower salt is linked to lower risk of heart attack and stroke

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) signed into law Thursday a bill that would automatically register state residents to vote when they make transactions at the state's Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) or through the sta...

Surveillance video shows how people pull off a series of auto break-ins in New Orleans' Fontainebleau neighborhood. That video was captured around 3 a.m. Wednesday morning.

A former Ohio State University wrestling coach says comments attributed to him regarding Rep. Jim Jordan were not accurate or were misconstrued by media, distancing himself from the Ohio Republican’s chief accuser, who maintains the congressman ignored claims of sexual abuse while serving as an assistant coach more than two decades ago.

Mark Coleman, who wrestled at OSU and later served as an assistant wrestling coach, said that “at no time did I ever say or have any direct knowledge that Jim Jordan knew of Dr. Richard Strauss’s inappropriate behavior.”

“I have nothing but respect for Jim Jordan as I have known him for more than 30 years and know him to be of impeccable character,” said Coleman, a former UFC champion.

The university is investigating claims by student-athletes of abuse by Strauss, the sports doctor for numerous teams for nearly two decades. Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach from 1986 to 1994.

As WND reported, 14 former Ohio State University wrestlers already have joined six former OSU wrestling coaches, including the head coach under whom Jordan served, in stating they, too, were unaware of any claims of sexual abuse by Strauss. And the wrestlers described Jordan as a man of honesty and integrity who stood up for his athletes.

Coleman made it clear he is distancing himself from the primary accuser in the case, Mike DiSabato, who has brought several lawsuits against OSU in recent years.

“Mike DiSabato and his PR representative have released information and made statements publicly without my authorization and, in my opinion, are using them to exploit and embarrass The Ohio State University,” said Coleman.

DiSabato, he said, “is not my manager and does not speak for me.”

“I am also disappointed with many of the public statements made by Mr. DiSabato and his personal attacks on individuals employed by the university and others.”

Coleman said he was a “victim of Strauss” and wishes “to cooperate with the investigation to see that whatever justice is available is achieved.”

The number of alleged victims – more than 1,500 across at least 15 varsity sports at Ohio State – threatens to dwarf the historic $500 million case recently settled at Big Ten counterpart Michigan State, where more than 300 victims filed suit in the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal.

President Trump, along with House Speaker Paul Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the conservative House Freedom Caucus have stated they believe Jordan.

Jordan and some of his defenders have suggested there may be political motives behind the accusations against him, arguing he is regarded as a candidate to succeed Ryan as House speaker and has been a leader in confronting the Justice Department and FBI for their handling of the Hillary Clinton email and Russia probes. The investigation of the Strauss allegations at Ohio State is being led by Perkins Coie, the Seattle law firm retained by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign that figured in the anti-Trump “dossier.”

Jordan noted that CNN was trying to contact every one of the more than 100 staff members and interns associated with the OSU wrestling program during Jordan’s tenure, “asking for dirt on me.”

Last month, Jordan responded to the allegations against him in an interview with the Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, affirming his insistence that they are “false.”

“I never saw, never heard of, I never was told about any type of abuse,” Jordan said.

“If I had been, I would have dealt with it. Our coaching staff – we would have dealt with it – these were our student athletes,” said Jordan.

“A good coach puts the interest of student athletes first. We would have dealt with it if we had known about anything that happened.”

Jim Jordan is a man of integrity, and we believe him and stand with him 100 percent. If he had seen or heard something he would have acted. We continue to support his work in Congress to fight for everyday Americans.

— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) July 11, 2018

Jordan was a four-time state wrestling champion in high school in Ohio and won two NCAA titles, in 1985 and 1986, for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He twice defeated future two-time Olympic gold medalist John Smith in an NCAA tournament in 1985.

In the interview with Baier, Jordan said he believes that DiSabato “has a vendetta against Ohio State,” pointing out DiSabato lost a licensing agreement with the university, was caught “bilking” a fund for a slain Marine and was arrested five months ago for threatening the lawyer of Chris Spielman, the former football star who is suing OSU over the marketing of his name. Another accuser, Dunyasha Yetts, is a convicted criminal who spent 18 months in prison, Jordan noted.

Authored by Gary Galles via The Mises Institute,

The Trump administration EPA and Department of Transportation have announced their intent to change the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard from what was decreed by their Obama administration predecessors. They were scheduled to reach 54.5 mpg in 2025. The new target will be 37 mpg.

The rationale being given the most attention is that reducing the CAFÉ standards would reduce automobile deaths. However, that is being panned by left-leaning critics.

For instance, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik characterized the plan as “dirtier cars are safer, so lets keep them dirty.”

Two days later, former Clinton and Obama administration member David J. Hayes was featured on the oped page (8/6/18) with a criticism titled, “Gas guzzlers won’t make us safer.”

However, while these (and similar) critical articles deride the possibility that reducing fuel economy standards from the much higher levels they would have been bumped to could increase automobile deaths (Hiltzik described it as “fatuousness” and Hayes termed it “baloney”), they not only misrepresent the arguments rather than examine them, they fail to consider the actual evidence for that “fatuous baloney.”

Consider the title, “Gas guzzlers won’t make us safer.” Not only is the conclusion asserted rather than demonstrated, but what gas guzzlers (a term Hitzlik also uses) is it referring to? Cars that averaged 37 mpg would be by far the cleanest vehicle fleet in American history. And the air is far cleaner than it was, meaning that the additional benefits from each further improvement is far less than in the past, undermining the argument for sharply more stringent standards.

Further, the logic such critics dismiss out of hand is hardly new or preposterous. It goes back to a famous 1989 Harvard-Brookings study that found that CAFÉ caused a 14–27% jump in traffic deaths due to the resulting car downsizing. An update for 1996 found that 2,700–4,700 automobile deaths, of 22,000 total, were attributable to such downsizing.

The arguments made in such studies are far from preposterous, either. When the higher costs of downsizing make newer cars more expensive relative to older, less safe cars, people buy fewer new cars, and increase the risks borne by such drivers and passengers. And if far better mileage lowers the cost of driving additional miles, the law of demand implies such people will drive more, other things equal. It is a matter of how large such effects are, demanding empirical research, not just a hand-wave of dismissal.

Both these writers echo the EPA’s January 2017 Final Determination, that the 54.5 mpg standard to be phased in “will have no adverse impact on automobile safety.” However, that contradicts the July 2016 Draft Technical Assessment Report finding that “mass reduction continues to be an important technology option … in meeting future … standards,” and the admission that there is a “relationship between vehicle mass and safety.” In fact, in 1992, a federal appeals court held that “the 27.5 mpg standard kills people,” but that the EPA had broken the law, using “fudged analysis,” “statistical sleight of hand,” and “bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo” to keep from admitting demonstrated increases in safety risks.

It is also important to consider evidence from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), whose research is intended to more accurately determine risks for companies with billions of dollars at stake, not justify a political agenda. Their April 2018, post on “Vehicle size and weight” focuses on the fact that “the bigger the crush zone … the lower the forces on the occupants,” in explaining the role of vehicle size and that, in a collision, “the bigger vehicle will push the lighter one backward during the impact. As a result, there will be less force on the occupants of the heavier vehicle and more on the people in the lighter vehicle,” to explain the effect of weight (bigger vehicles are similarly safer in single-vehicle crashes). In summary, “All other things equal, occupants in a bigger, heavier vehicle are better protected than those in a smaller, lighter vehicle.” Supportive evidence includes that in 2016, 1–3 year old very large cars had 22 deaths per million registrations, but minicars had 62. Small cars also made up a vastly disproportionate share of high driver death rate vehicles for the 2011–2014 model years. Perhaps most dramatic, however, was a study comparing hybrid models with their conventional counterparts. The occupant-injury rate for the hybrids, which weighed substantially more (10% in the study), was one-quarter lower.

Those who would roll back CAFÉ standards from an eventual 54.5 mpg to 37 have a much better case, while their opponents offer much more bombast. But there is a further question that should be asked, but can get lost in the politics — why do we need CAFÉ standards at all?

Nobody knows better than those who buy and fuel their vehicles with their own money what kind of vehicles are most appropriate for the circumstances they face. In particular, I see no evidence that politicians and bureaucrats know us better or care about us more than we do. Why can’t we be allowed to make our own choices in the face of the tradeoffs between mileage, carrying capacity, safety, etc.? And as must always be asked about such nanny state intrusions into our liberty, if we are deemed incapable to make such automobile choices with our own money (much of which is sucked off by government as proof of how much they care), how can we be capable of intelligently determining who our political representatives should be?

"Everything is on a 100 times scale," exclaimed Craig Cottrill, chief of the Wellington Fire Department in New Zealand, who along with 52 other firefighters from down under, are battling the biggest wildfires California has ever seen. "This thing's massive."

In fact there are now over 14,000 on the frontline with crews, including almost 2,000 inmates, 200 soldiers, and dozens of firefighters from overseas.

They are deployed statewide and led by Cal Fire. The state's firefighting agency employs 5,300 full-time firefighters and hires an additional 1,700 each fire season. Trained prisoners and firefighters from 17 states and around the world fill out the ranks.

Those on the ground get help from more than 1,000 fire engines, 59 bulldozers, 22 air tankers, 17 airplanes, 12 helicopters and 11 mobile kitchens.

They are battling blazes on the Nevada border and along the coast.

Status:

Source: SFChronicle FireTracker

Ranch Fire (Mendocino Complex)

The fire, started off Highway 20 in Mendocino County, has prompted mandatory evacuations in three counties. Together with the River Fire, it is the largest wildfire in California’s history.
Acreage:255,482 acres
Containment:48%
Injuries:2
Damage:119 residences and 110 other structures destroyed (Mendocino Complex total)
Fire began:12:03 p.m. July 27, 2018

River Fire (Mendocino Complex)

The fire in Mendocino and Lake Counties, south of the larger Ranch Fire, has prompted evacuations. The two fires comprise the Mendocino Complex, California’s largest wildfire in history.
Acreage:48,920 acres
Containment:84%
Fire began:1:01 p.m. July 27, 2018

Carr Fire

An erratic and fast moving fire in Shasta County that spread to Redding and has taken the lives of seven people, including three firefighters.
Acreage:177,450 acres
Containment:48%
Deaths:8
Injuries:3
Damage:1,077 residences, 22 commerical structures and 500 other structures destroyed
Fire began:1:16 p.m. July 23, 2018

Ferguson Fire

A deadly wildfire burns in steep, rugged forestland along the Merced River west of Yosemite National Park. The fire has taken the lives of two firefighters.
Acreage:95,104 acres
Containment:79%
Deaths:2
Injuries:14
Damage:10 structures destroyed
Fire began:10:35 p.m. July 13, 2018

Holy Fire

A blaze in the Cleveland National Forest has prompted evacuations in Orange County. A suspect has been arrested for arson in connection with the fire.
Acreage:9,614 acres
Containment:5%
Damage:12 structures destroyed
Fire began:1:20 p.m. Aug. 6, 2018

Cranston Fire

This fire in Riverside County is prompting highway closures and evacuations. A man has been arrested for arson in connection with the fire.
Acreage:13,139 acres
Containment:96%
Injuries:2
Fire began:11:57 a.m. July 25, 2018

Sadly, the death toll in what was already the most lethal year for firefighters in California since 2008 increased to five on Thursday, when Andrew Brake, 40, of Chico - a heavy equipment mechanic - was killed after falling asleep at the wheel on his way to the fire lines near Redding, a family member told The Chronicle.

Brake was the third firefighter killed in the battle to contain the Carr Fire, which has burned 177,450 acres in three weeks, ravaging the area around Redding and destroying 1,077 homes. It continues to scorch steep, dry uninhabited land and has no projected date for containment. Two firefighters died in the early days of the fire as flames roared into Redding: Don Ray Smith, 81, a contract bulldozer operator from Pollock Pines (El Dorado County); and Jeremy Stoke, a fire inspector for the Redding Fire Department.

According to figures released by Cal Fire, 22 fire service workers have died on duty since 2008, not including this year. Thirteen of those deaths came in 2008, including nine firefighters killed in a helicopter crash in Trinity County while fighting the Iron Complex Fire. Since then, fire service deaths have been relatively few. 

“What we’re seeing are conditions that are off the charts as far as fire behavior,” said Jonathan Cox, a Cal Fire battalion chief. “And unfortunately, the risks are also off the charts.”

 

Today saw two arsonists charged with starting some of the deadly wildfires:

A man has been arrested in connection with the Holy Fire burning in the Cleveland National Forest southwest of Corona, according to CBSLA.

The Cleveland National Forest Twitter account posted about the arrest late Wednesday morning. The suspect, 51-year-old Forrest Gordon Clark, was booked into Orange County Jail on suspicion of two counts of felony arson, one count of felony threat to terrorize, and one count of misdemeanor resisting arrest.

A 32-year-old man from Temecula was arrested on suspicion of arson Wednesday night after he was accused of setting multiple fires, one of which burned thousands of acres in the San Bernardino National Forest, destroyed homes and forced thousands to flee.

Brandon N. McGlover was arrested on suspicion of five counts of arson to wildland after the Cranston Fire erupted earlier the same day.

Finally, there is some good news, firefighters said for the first time tonight that they have made good progress battling the state's largest-ever wildfire, they admitted that they didn't expect to have it fully under control until September.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions criticized the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) by name Wednesday as he spoke at the Religious Liberty Summit of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the successful Christian public interest law firm the SPLC designates a "hate group."

Authored by Carey Wedler, op-ed via TheAntiMedia.com,

This week, internet giants like Facebook, Youtube, Spotify and others banned the notorious Alex Jones and InfoWars from their platforms, and the purge is enjoying widespread support among the left, which has made a reputation for itself as intolerant of differing opinions (last year, for example, a group of Antifa protesters beat one of our own Anti-Media reporters and destroyed his camera equipment at a rally simply because he was filming).

In Jones’ case, Facebook cited hate speech, though this stance seems inconsistent considering the platform has caught flack for allowing anti-semitic content. This lack of principle doesn’t matter to many left-wing partisans, though, as long as someone they find reprehensible is silenced - even as others with far better reputations are banned from other platforms (to clarify, Anti-Media does not endorse Infowars in any way, nor do we consider them to be a legitimate news outlet).

At the same time, however, the right is proving equally open to banning speech and news outlets they dislike. A recent poll from Ipsos found  43 percent of Republicans advocate giving the president, and thereby the government, the power to shut news outlets down. The president, too, has fantasized about doing so:

With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2017

Disdain for journalists is palpable at Trump rallies, and popular right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos recently called for the assassination of journalists (before claiming the comment was just a joke).

Adherents to both sides of the false dichotomy are increasingly okay with silencing speech and ideas that conflict with their own. What this represents is a bipartisan war on free speech as both factions lust after control of the power institutions that create and perpetuate the divide and conquer struggle for that authority in the first place.

Worse still, companies like Facebook, Google, and Youtube, which is now owned by Google, are aligned with intrusive government agencies and policies that regulate speech and expression on the internet — whether it’s these platforms working with government to monitor speech, colluding to install backdoors for spy agencies to access users’ private data, or Google having roots with the CIA and NSA. Further, we may not know the extent of just how much shadowy levers of government dictate platform’s decisions to allow or ban users and pages, but it has happened and will likely continue.

At the same time, public opinion is creating demand for these kinds of crackdowns. It may be true that Facebook is a “private” platform, but the reality is that whether it’s Facebook banning Jones or Disney firing Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, who was critical of conservatives, they are, at least in part, responding to the public’s intolerance of ideas and opinions that don’t align with their own — and this intolerance is directly linked to people’s views on government and politics.

Aside from ever-encroaching state and corporatist power, the biggest problem is that due to people’s dogmatic, programmed, and evidently fragile beliefs on both sides - views emboldened by government and “acceptable” media outlets - the people themselves are condoning the suppression of ideas and speech, and this further cements consent for government and corporatists to continue doing just that, fueling an ever-worsening cycle specific to neither left nor right.

This disdain for free expression is parallelled in government. American press freedom in the U.S. has been deteriorating for years, Obama and his cabinet had their own blatant war on journalism, and in 2012, Congress legalized government-funded propaganda. Democrats are currently looking to regulate speech on the internet in the name of fighting the Russians and fake news, and Senator Chris Murphy is eager to shut down more pages:

Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 6, 2018

Meanwhile, “acceptable” outlets spew propaganda for bipartisan priorities, like war and the two-party system itself (in 2016, the Washington Post ran a story smearing independent anti-war outlets, including Anti-Media, as “useful idiots” for Russia, if not outright shills, and weeks later issued a clarification admitting that the “experts” they were citing were anonymous and many of the outlets they condemned objected to the designation).

The government and their corporate partners are objectively terrible, but the influence of the mainstream ideologies they espouse has made the public they’re supposed to be accountable to so blind with hysteria that they are voluntarily demanding suppression of speech. This inevitably requires more state power as both sides grapple for government control and battle each other instead of the institutions breathing down their necks.

We can blame the government and Big Tech all we want, but at some point, we’re going to have to take a look in the mirror and stop begging those suffocating our freedom for more power to regulate it.

App has shot to number one on the charts after big tech censorship.

A Baton Rouge man was arrested Wednesday night after he and four others allegedly stripped a man naked, held him hostage and stole his wallet, police said.

His comments came during a private fundraiser for a Republican colleague.

The coroner ruled Canadian-born actor Margot Kidder died from a "self-inflicted drug and alcohol overdose."

President Trump’s White House director of media affairs for Latino and African-American news outlets quietly left her role in the administration recently. Helen Aguirre Ferré did not publicly acknowledge her departure, but Mercedes...

As we enter the third day of the Tesla "going private" saga, one big question continues to haunt investors: who is (are) the source(s) of the "secured funding" that Elon Musk promised he had arranged ahead of his unprecedented tweet that sent Tesla stock soaring, eventually resulting in a delayed halt and made Musk $1.4 billion richer.

As Bloomberg writes this morning, "no one has stepped forward publicly - or privately - to say they’re behind the plan."

People with or close to 15 financial institutions and technology firms who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they weren’t aware of financing having been locked in before Musk’s tweet.

It's not just traders who are scratching their head over this question: late on Wednesday, the WSJ first reported that regulators have also started asking the company if what Musk tweeted was factual and why such a disclosure was made via social media rather than in a filing.

But while everyone has so far focused on the Musk financing tweet, the CEO has now been caught in a second potential "untruth", which would only add to the severity of any market manipulation enforcement action lobbed at the eccentric CEO.

Recall that as part of Musk's Tuesday tweetstorm, when addressing shareholder receptivity, he said that "Investor support is confirmed."

Only, as Bloomberg reported this morning, it wasn't, as this too appears to have been gross hyperbole at best, and outright misrepresentation at worst: "At the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which as of March owned about 213,000 shares, spokeswoman Michelle Mussuto said there was no advance warning."

“We have not been contacted by Tesla IR,” she said. “They didn’t reach out before the tweet either.”

So here's what we know so far: the "natural" source of cash for a deal of this magnitude, SoftBank, has passed on a possible deal, saying the company was "overvalued", and that following an April 2017  meeting between Musk and Masayoshi San that touched on a potential investment in TSLA (whose stock at the time was far lower), the talks failed to progress due to disagreements over ownership and have not started up again.

Meanwhile not a single bank that would be part of the obvious financing syndiate that would fund such a deal, has been approached by Musk. Finally, the investors, whose support Musk allegedly had canvassed ahead of his announcement, had little idea of what Musk was set to announce.

Surely the SEC will be curious to connect the dots between all these three potential misrepresentations contained in a tweeted "statement" that boosted Musk's own net worth by $1.4 billion.

And then there is a report from the NYT overnight, according to which Tesla and banks are studying a structure that would involve reducing the number of holders such that Tesla’s shares could be delisted from Nasdaq and it would no longer be required to make quarterly filings with the SEC, NYT reports. Call it an "LBO-lite", or what the NYT calls a "going dark" transaction.

While still expensive - it could cost $10 billion to $20 billion - it would be much less so than a full leveraged buyout, the NYT reported.

In this situation, Tesla could buy out many but not all of its shareholders to reduce the total number of investors who hold Tesla stock. One way to make that math work would be to persuade as many small shareholders as possible to sell their holdings.

The largest shareholders of the company — including Mr. Musk, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and Scotland’s Baillie Gifford, who collectively own about 45 percent of Tesla shares — would not need to sell their stakes under that arrangement.

Tesla’s shares would no longer be listed on the Nasdaq, but investors could buy or sell them on loosely regulated, over-the-counter markets that are typically the domain of small companies. Because shares on these exchanges are generally traded less heavily than those on larger public markets, it would likely be harder for investors to bet against, or short, Tesla’s stock, which is one of the rationales Mr. Musk outlined on Tuesday for taking the company private.

While examining creative alternative structures is great, the problem for Musk is that has already represented a going private deal, together with a take out price, to the public. And with every hour that passes and neither Musk, nor the board, disclose just what were the facts that led Musk to his bizarre announcement, it becomes more likely that the SEC will eventually launch enforcement action against either the company, its CEO, or both.

Finally, as we first noted last night, the SEC has a simple solution it can pursue to end all the debate of Musk's tweet mystery. As former NYSE president Thomas Farley said yesterday, "this is an easy one: ask TSLA to show you the agreement(s) signed by their funding source(s) by 5pm EST that demonstrates the funding is “secured” and “certain.” If there is no such agreement, require a statement by 5:30pm. Inspire market confidence."

Dear @SEC_News, this is an easy one: ask TSLA to show you the agreement(s) signed by their funding source(s) by 5pm EST that demonstrates the funding is “secured” and “certain.” If there is no such agreement, require a statement by 5:30pm. Inspire market confidence.

— Thomas Farley (@ThomasFarley) August 8, 2018

With the entire world watching with Musk, or the US capital markets regulator will do next, the SEC may have no choice but to pursue Farley's advice. And judging by the stock price, which recently dipped below the conversion price on the March 2019 converts, the market is starting to get cold feet about this whole soap opera.