News aggregator websites play critical role in driving readers to media outlet websites

by Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

News aggregators help to simplify consumers' search for news stories by gathering content based on viewing history or other factors. Commonly used aggregators include Google News, Yahoo! News, and others. They offer links to news stories published by news outlets and save consumers considerable time and effort in finding news.

New research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science examined the relationship between the two, specifically data compiled after the shutdown of 'Google News' in Spain in December 2014. The study, "What do news aggregators do? Evidence from 'Google News' in Spain and Germany," was conducted by Joan Calzada of the University of Barcelona and Ricard Gil of Queen's University. It found daily visits to Spanish news outlets dropped between 8 and 14%, relative to news outlets in France and Italy where Google News remained active.

"Amidst the growing importance of online platforms, news aggregators are one of the most successful new players in the Internet's new era, quickly rising to occupy top positions in audience rankings," said Calzada, a professor in the Department of Economics and BEAT at the University of Barcelona.

News outlets can opt out of aggregators by using software that blocks the links to the content, but most publishers want to be indexed even without receiving economic compensation for the use of their content.

Despite initial turmoil and initiative to impose indexing fees on news aggregators, traditional news outlets around the world have been silent about aggregators' indexing practices because of their potential effects on consumers' browsing behavior, and in conjunction, advertising revenues.

The research suggests measurable consequences of website activity without aggregators. News aggregators increase consumers' awareness of news outlet content, thereby increasing their number of visits.

"Aggregators create a market expansion effect by bringing visitors to news outlets, but they can also generate a substitution effect if some visitors switch from the news outlets to the aggregators," continued Calzada.

The data from the shutdown period showed sports and regional outlets were affected the most, while having a lower effect on national outlets and no significant effect on business outlets. The evidence suggests that smaller and geographically local outlets benefit the most from news aggregators. The study also shows that the shutdown decreased online advertising revenue and advertising intensity at news outlets.

Spain: Google News vanishes amid 'Google Tax' spat

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More information: Joan Calzada et al, What Do News Aggregators Do? Evidence from Google News in Spain and Germany, Marketing Science (2019). DOI: 10.1287/mksc.2019.1150

Journal information: Marketing Science 

Provided by Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences 

From 9/11 to COVID-19: The United State[s] of Emergency
Its time Americans stop waiting for political saviors to fix what is wrong with this country. 

by John Whitehead
May 27th, 2020

CHARLOTTESVILLE (Rutherford) –– Don’t pity this year’s crop of graduates because this COVID-19 pandemic caused them to miss out on the antics of their senior year and the pomp and circumstance of graduation.

Pity them because they have spent their entire lives in a state of emergency.

They were born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks; raised without any expectation of privacy in a technologically-driven, mass surveillance state; educated in schools that teach conformity and compliance; saddled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion; made vulnerable by the blowback from a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies; policed by government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice, and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.

It’s a dismal start to life, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, we who should have known better failed to maintain our freedoms or provide our young people with the tools necessary to survive, let alone succeed, in the impersonal jungle that is modern America.

We brought them into homes fractured by divorce, distracted by mindless entertainment, and obsessed with the pursuit of materialism. We institutionalized them in daycares and afterschool programs, substituting time with teachers and childcare workers for parental involvement. We turned them into test-takers instead of thinkers and automatons instead of activists.

We allowed them to languish in schools that not only look like prisons but function like prisons, as well—where conformity is the rule and freedom is the exception. We made them easy prey for our corporate overlords while instilling in them the values of a celebrity-obsessed, technology-driven culture devoid of any true spirituality. And we taught them to believe that the pursuit of their own personal happiness trumped all other virtues, including any empathy whatsoever for their fellow human beings

No, we haven’t done this generation any favors.

Given the current political climate and nationwide lockdown, things could only get worse.

For those coming of age today (and for the rest of us who are muddling along through this dystopian nightmare), here are a few bits of advice that will hopefully help as we navigate the perils ahead.

Be an individual. For all of its claims to champion the individual, American culture advocates a stark conformity which, as John F. Kennedy warned, is “the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth.” Worry less about fitting in with the rest of the world and instead, as Henry David Thoreau urged, become “a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.”

Learn your rights. We’re losing our freedoms for one simple reason: most of us don’t know anything about our freedoms. At a minimum, anyone who has graduated from high school, let alone college, should know the Bill of Rights backward and forwards. However, the average young person, let alone citizen, has very little knowledge of their rights for the simple reason that the schools no longer teach them. So grab a copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and study them at home. And when the time comes, stand up for your rights before it’s too late.

Speak truth to power. Don’t be naive about those in positions of authority. As James Madison, who wrote our Bill of Rights, observed, “All men having power ought to be distrusted.” We must learn the lessons of history. People in power, more often than not, abuse that power. To maintain our freedoms, this will mean challenging government officials whenever they exceed the bounds of their office.

Resist all things that numb you. Don’t measure your worth by what you own or earn. Likewise, don’t become mindless consumers unaware of the world around you. Resist all things that numb you, put you to sleep or help you “cope” with so-called reality. Those who establish the rules and laws that govern society’s actions desire compliant subjects. However, as George Orwell warned, “Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they rebelled, they cannot become conscious.” It is these conscious individuals who change the world for the better.

Minneapolis riot police deploy to disperse protesters gathered for George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020. Richard Tsong-Taatarii | Star Tribune via AP
Don’t let technology turn you into zombies. Technology anesthetizes us to the all-too-real tragedies that surround us. Techno-gadgets are merely distractions from what’s really going on in America and around the world. As a result, we’ve begun mimicking the inhuman technology that surrounds us and have lost our humanity. We’ve become sleepwalkers. If you’re going to make a difference in the world, you’re going to have to pull the earbuds out, turn off the cell phones and spend much less time viewing screens.

Help others. We all have a calling in life. And I believe it boils down to one thing: You are here on this planet to help other people. In fact, none of us can exist very long without help from others. If we’re going to see any positive change for freedom, then we must change our view of what it means to be human and regain a sense of what it means to love and help one another. That will mean gaining the courage to stand up for the oppressed.

Refuse to remain silent in the face of evil. Throughout history, individuals or groups of individuals have risen up to challenge the injustices of their age. Nazi Germany had its Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The gulags of the Soviet Union were challenged by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. America had its color-coded system of racial segregation and warmongering called out for what it was, blatant discrimination and profiteering, by Martin Luther King Jr. And then there was Jesus Christ, an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day—namely, the Roman Empire—but provided a blueprint for civil disobedience that would be followed by those, religious and otherwise, who came after him. What we lack today and so desperately need are those with moral courage who will risk their freedoms and lives in order to speak out against evil in its many forms.

Cultivate spirituality, reject materialism and put people first. When the things that matter most have been subordinated to materialism, we have lost our moral compass. We must change our values to reflect something more meaningful than technology, materialism and politics. Standing at the pulpit of the Riverside Church in New York City in April 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. urged his listeners:


[W]e as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motive and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Pitch in and do your part to make the world a better place. Don’t rely on someone else to do the heavy lifting for you. Don’t wait around for someone else to fix what ails you, your community or nation. As Mahatma Gandhi urged: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Stop waiting for political saviors to fix what is wrong with this country. Stop waiting for some political savior to swoop in and fix all that’s wrong with this country. Stop allowing yourselves to be drawn into divisive party politics. Stop thinking of yourselves as members of a particular political party, as opposed to citizens of the United States. Most of all, stop looking away from the injustices and cruelties and endless acts of tyranny that have become hallmarks of American police state. Be vigilant and do your part to recalibrate the balance of power in favor of “we the people.”

Say no to war. Addressing the graduates at Binghampton Central High School in 1968, at a time when the country was waging war “on different fields, on different levels, and with different weapons,” Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling declared:

Too many wars are fought almost as if by rote. Too many wars are fought out of sloganry, out of battle hymns, out of aged, musty appeals to patriotism that went out with knighthood and moats. Love your country because it is eminently worthy of your affection. Respect it because it deserves your respect. Be loyal to it because it cannot survive without your loyalty. But do not accept the shedding of blood as a natural function or a prescribed way of history—even if history points this up by its repetition. That men die for causes does not necessarily sanctify that cause. And that men are maimed and torn to pieces every fifteen and twenty years does not immortalize or deify the act of war… find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow-man.

Finally, prepare yourselves for what lies ahead. The demons of our age—some of whom disguise themselves as politicians—delight in fomenting violence, sowing distrust and prejudice, and persuading the public to support tyranny disguised as patriotism. Overcoming the evils of our age will require more than intellect and activism. It will require decency, morality, goodness, truth and toughness. As Serling concluded in his remarks to the graduating class of 1968:

“Toughness is the singular quality most required of you… we have left you a world far more botched than the one that was left to us… Part of your challenge is to seek out truth, to come up with a point of view not dictated to you by anyone, be he a congressman, even a minister… Are you tough enough to take the divisiveness of this land of ours, the fact that everything is polarized, black and white, this or that, absolutely right or absolutely wrong. This is one of the challenges. Be prepared to seek out the middle ground … that wondrous and very difficult-to-find Valhalla where man can look to both sides and see the errant truths that exist on both sides. If you must swing left or you must swing right—respect the other side. Honor the motives that come from the other side. Argue, debate, rebut—but don’t close those wondrous minds of yours to opposition. In their eyes, you’re the opposition. And ultimately … ultimately—you end divisiveness by compromise. And so long as men walk and breathe—there must be compromise…

Are you tough enough to face one of the uglier stains upon the fabric of our democracy—prejudice? It’s the basic root of most evil. It’s a part of the sickness of man. And it’s a part of man’s admission, his constant sick admission, that to exist he must find a scapegoat. To explain away his own deficiencies—he must try to find someone who he believes more deficient… Make your judgment of your fellow-man on what he says and what he believes and the way he acts. Be tough enough, please, to live with prejudice and give battle to it. It warps, it poisons, it distorts and it is self-destructive. It has fallout worse than a bomb … and worst of all it cheapens and demeans anyone who permits himself the luxury of hating.”

The only way we’ll ever achieve change in this country is for people to finally say “enough is enough” and fight for the things that truly matter.

It doesn’t matter how old you are or what your political ideology is: wake up, stand up, speak up, and make your citizenship count for something more than just voting.

Pandemic or not, don’t allow your freedoms to be curtailed and your voice to be muzzled.

It’s our civic duty to make the government hear us—and heed us—using every nonviolent means available to us: picket, protest, march, boycott, speak up, sound off and reclaim control over the narrative about what is really going on in this country.

Mind you, the government doesn’t want to hear us. It doesn’t even want us to speak. In fact, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government has done a diabolically good job of establishing roadblocks to prevent us from exercising our First Amendment right to speech and assembly and protest.

Still we must persist.

So get active, get outraged, and get going: there’s work to be done.

Feature photo | Minneapolis police launch tear gas and flash-bang grenades at protesters gathered for George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020. Richard Tsong-Taatarii | Star Tribune via AP

John W. Whitehead is a constitutional attorney, author and founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
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PALESTINE/ISRAEL
US Senate Quietly Approves $38 Billion for Israel Amid Historic Economic Downturn

S.3176 was passed without being named, debated, or even discussed, even though it would set into law the largest such aid package in US history

 THE FIFTY FIRST STATE OF THE USA

by Alison Weir
May 22nd, 2020

Menifee, CA (IAK) — The Senate Foreign Relations Committee quietly passed a bill yesterday to give Israel a minimum of $38 billion over the next ten years despite the ongoing devastation to the U.S. economy caused by the coronavirus.

The bill – S.3176 – will now go before the full Senate. Since the legislation has already been passed by the House of Representatives, if the Senate passes the bill, it will then go to the president to be signed into law.

The bill was passed by the committee under two unusual circumstances and with almost no public awareness.

First, Senate Committee Chairman Jim Risch (R-Idaho) refused to allow a live stream of the meeting, despite the fact that the Senate Rules panel had recommended that extra efforts be taken to ensure public transparency while the Capitol is closed to the public and the presence of reporters is severely limited. The Senate’s Press Gallery Standing Committee of Correspondents had objected strongly to Risch’s decision.

Second, the bill was passed without being named, debated, or even discussed, even though it would set into law the largest such aid package in U.S. history. There has been no mention of the bill by most media in the United States.

The massive package is particularly noteworthy in light of the current devastation to the American taxpayers who will be footing the bill – over $10 million per day. In recent months approximately 30 million Americans have lost jobs, 100,000 small businesses have already closed forever, and over seven million are at risk of doing so.

The bill was voted on as part of a package of 15 bills that were voted on “en bloc” (all together).

After Senator Kaine said he didn’t know what the list contained, Risch responded: “I’m not trying to pull anything here… this was circulated among the staff.”

Risch then rapidly listed the numbers but did not give the titles. There was then a voice vote and the motion passed unanimously.

Democratic members of the committee had voiced strong objections to blocking a live stream of the meeting because of a different agenda item. After the meeting, Committee Ranking Member Robert Menendez (D-NJ) released a video of the meeting.

None, however, voiced any concern for giving a massive aid package to a country widely documented as a major violator of human rights.

Neither did any Democrats on the committee object to requiring American taxpayers to give Israel what amounts to over $7,000 per minute when many Americans are suffering catastrophic financial difficulties.

Democratic committee members Menendez, Ben Cardin, Cory Booker, and Chris Coons, like many of the Republican members, are particularly known for being under the influence of AIPAC and the Israel lobby and receiving pro-Israel campaign donations. Many of the members are co-sponsors of the bill.

The bill, entitled “United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020,” expands and sets into law a memorandum of understanding agreement signed by the Obama administration with Israel in 2016. This agreement is nonbinding and not required by law. It also set the $38 billion as a ceiling.

The legislation just passed by the committee would make this disbursal legally required, and, in addition, it would make the $38 billion a floor rather than a ceiling. In other words, the amount of money could legally go even higher.

Given the power of the pro-Israel lobby, combined with the fact that U.S. media are not informing Americans of this use of their tax money, the likelihood is that U.S. money to Israel will go up in the future – possibly even this year.)

Most Americans say they feel the U.S. is giving Israel too much money. Israel has received more U.S. tax money than any other country – on average, about 7,000 times more per capita than others around the world.

The Council for the National Interest has posted a petition against this year’s installment, $3.8 billion. So far, it has been signed by close to 2,000 people.

Feature photo | Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, right, listens to an aide before the start of a hearing with Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 13, 2017. Jacquelyn Martin | AP

Alison Weir is an author and activist. Her book, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel is an Amazon best-seller and has been called a “must-read for all Americans.” Learn more about it here.

Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.

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GAME OVER
Wayback Machine Latest Victim of Big Tech Consolidation and Censorship

The promise of an internet modeled around democratized access to information is quickly eroding before our very eyes as the Wayback Machine falls prey to censorship creep and major tech sector consolidations take us to the point of no return

OH NO I AM A SUPPORTER AND USER OF THEIR ARCHIVE.ORG SITE AS REGULAR READERS WILL KNOW AND MY BLOGS ARE LOCATED IN THE WAYBACK MACHINE 

by Raul Diego
May 22nd, 2020

In what is turning out to be something of a latter-day dot com bust, many small to medium-sized tech startups are teetering on the edge of oblivion as the deliberate economic shutdown eats away at their capitalization and opens the door for the biggest fish in the tech space and others to pick the ripest fruit from the tech start up tree.

As opposed to the original, this start up bust is accompanied by a very precise view of market opportunities for interested buyers and investors, brought on by an equally deliberate reshaping of workplace conditions and societal interactions which are driving companies like Microsoft to “aggregate capabilities” in “cloud computing, collaboration, access management, and other business continuity tools that saw a surge in demand during regional lockdowns.”

The ride-share behemoth, Uber, for example, is reportedly in talks to acquire Grubhub and expand its food-delivery operations, while Microsoft just completed its purchase of robotic automation company, Softomotive. One global research and advisory firm that focuses on IT and finance has even put out a guide “on how tech startups can best prepare for being acquired by a larger company,” revealing that just 13 companies accounted for a full 60 percent of the $150 billion raised by tech startups between March and April.

Signs that yet another massive wave of consolidation in the technology sector is on the horizon and is already raising concerns throughout the industry, but the fact that it is occurring in tandem with a larger push by outfits like Twitter, Facebook and other huge tech players to stifle freedom of online expression and association should make us pay closer attention to the dynamics at play.


Censorship creep

Under the guise of facilitating conversation, Twitter unveiled changes to the reply feature that ostensibly gives users more control, but in reality, it broadens the ability to censor content. The new format, still in testing mode, will allow users to select who can and cannot reply to their tweets. This, of course, presents a serious problem from the vantage point of free flowing interaction and gives even more power to the most popular accounts to stifle undesirable feedback, leaving their viewpoints publicly unchallenged.

Another seemingly innocuous development in the last few days was the announcement made by popular podcaster Joe Rogan on his move to Spotify. The comedian and UFC commentator’s immensely popular podcast has been freely available on YouTube and other platforms since its inception, but his multi-million-dollar exclusive licensing deal with the music platform will further cloister content behind a single outfit and likely diminish its reach and propagation.

Perhaps the most concerning, however, are the changes taking place at one of the most important research tools on the Internet and, up to now, a venerable tool for online transparency: The Wayback Machine.


Misplaced century

In the campy 1970s futuristic movie “Rollerball,” starring a young James Caan as a superstar athlete at the twilight of his celebrated career, there is a curious scene in which his character, Jonathan E, visits an archive where the entire knowledge base of humanity is stored. The man in charge of the quantum computer-like machine mentions, in passing, that due to some unknown glitch, the records containing the whole of the thirteenth century have been lost.

Such a predicament is, no doubt, much closer to becoming a real possibility as more and more of humanity’s knowledge is accumulated in massive digital repositories. The danger is not only in the outright loss of stored data as a result of technical malfunctions but also in the greater ability to execute historical revisionism and misrepresenting facts to future generations. Wikipedia – a widely consulted online encyclopedia – is already guilty of this. But, now the Wayback Internet archive is trending down this slippery slope with its recently implemented labeling of snapshot results as potential disinformation.

As a former editor, Elliot Leavy, warns in an article addressing the changes at the Wayback Machine site, “if we continue to censor the past, attaching intent to some but not to others, we will be unable to evaluate anything at all.” Indeed, the new measures instituted at the behest of MIT’s Technology Review over worries of COVID-19 hoaxes do not bode well for the survival of historical accuracy and a discerning populace.

The promise of the internet as an “information superhighway” modeled around democratized access to information is quickly eroding before our very eyes, as the measures are taken to curb the COVID-19 pandemic are being used to restrict unfettered knowledge. Together with the swift consolidation of tech companies that own the means to distribute and create the platforms we are obliged to use, we might soon find ourselves feeling like Jonathan E did when he realized that his once greatest supporters and benefactors were only looking to push him out the door and find a more pliable and less curious superstar.

Feature photo | The homepage of Internet Archive is displayed on a PC. Sharaf Maksumov | Shuttershock

Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.

COVID-19 is Laying Bare How Big Ag is Taking America’s Small Farmers to Slaughter

As the door for greater consolidation across industries opens wider, entrenched transnational food interests are feeling the heat from American farmers and ranchers to curb their monopolistic dreams.
by Raul Diego
May 27th, 2020

There is a bottleneck in the nation’s food supply chain. Specifically in the meatpacking operations of the country’s “big four”: Tyson Foods, National Beef, Cargill, and Brazilian giant JBS – the world’s largest processor of beef and pork products. The logjam has been exacerbated by a slew of coronavirus outbreaks in Iowa meatpacking plants and several other plants across the United States, but the real problem seems to lie with big ag’s penchant for unfair antitrust practices and monopolistic designs.

In a protracted battle against the powerful industry that dates back a hundred years, the latest salvo emerged out of Kentucky last week when that state’s Commissioner of Agriculture, Ryan Quarles and Attorney General Daniel Cameron called for the Justice Department to “undertake and investigation into the potentially illegal anticompetitive practices by some meatpackers in the cattle industry.” Their jointly issued letter to the DOJ was motivated by grievances from Kentucky cattle farmers who claim the price they are being paid for their animals has dropped between 30 and 40 percent as the pandemic-induced shortfalls in production send beef prices sky-high.

Some economists, like Kansas State University’s Ted Schroeder, believe the current problem is the logical result of supply and demand forces, saying that there is “plenty of cattle” to go around and that challenges lie in getting them “through the system.” This position is, of course, shared by the companies that are under fire, like Tyson Foods, which published an open letter in the Washington Post and the New York Times back in April, warning that the shuttering of production facilities due to COVID-19 would severely impair the ability of farmers to sell their livestock.

The reality though is that these economic causalities are inextricably tied to the stranglehold of these enormous corporations, which control over 85 percent of U.S. beef production, resulting in a growing chorus calling for the break-up of these massive corporations.

Election-year lip service

In early May, a bipartisan group of eleven state’s attorney generals (AGs) authored a letter addressed to the Department of Justice warning of the threat of “increasing consolidation” in the beef industry and warned that the main players like Tyson, Cargill, and JBS are able to “artificially” lower the prices they pay suppliers, while simultaneously gouging consumers.

The AGs stopped short of actually calling for a formal investigation, but did recommend reviewing “regulatory strategies” that would “promote competition.” It is unclear, nevertheless, how committed legislators really are to changing the status quo and despite an executive order issued by President Trump the day after John Tyson’s open letter to keep beef processing plants open via the Defense Protection Act, the virtual monopoly currently enjoyed by the big four continues to be largely unchallenged.

Only in states like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri, where a significant portion of the voter base works in farms, does there seem to be any kind of political will to address the issue. Following Trump’s order, Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) asked the Federal Trade Commission to open an antitrust investigation “into the meatpacking industry and its potential to cause significant disruptions in the food supply chain.” But, just how consequential such actions will be in the end remain to be seen. Considering the long-drawn-out history of the problem, the sudden concern by politicians might just be election-year lip service.

Out to the slaughterhouse

A lawsuit filed by the Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF) and others in April of 2019 accused Tyson, Cargill, National Beef Packing Co., and JBS of conspiring to fix beef prices and manipulate the futures market since 2015. The class-action suit accused the beef processors of “collectively reducing their slaughter volumes and purchases of cattle… manipulating the cash cattle trade” among other egregious forms of market manipulation and sabotage.

The plaintiffs claim that the big four colluded to make selling cattle “an unmanageable nightmare” thereby increasing their “collective leverage over producers.” In addition, the claimants accused the large companies of purposely blocking market access to domestic ranchers by flooding the U.S. with foreign cattle from Mexico and Canada and using loopholes in the law to label foreign beef a “Product of the USA,” a move which has seriously affected the grass-fed cattle industry in the country.

American ranchers and farmers have lost patience with the legislative and executive branches of government, who they see as not heeding their requests to curtail the big corporations’ monopolistic practices, which also extend to other sectors, such as the packaged seafood industry. They hope to take their fight to the third branch of government in hopes that the judiciary will help shift the balance of power. But, as the COVID-19-driven shutdowns continue to open the door for greater consolidation across industries, it is a battle that may have already been led to the slaughterhouse by well-entrenched transnational interests.

Feature photo | Workers leave the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Logansport, Ind., May 7, 2020. Michael Conroy | AP

Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.
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AMERICA'S OLIGARCHS
“Germ-Ridden Masses” – How America’s Wealthy Elite Describe the Rest of Us

Increasingly, journalists at establishment publications come from and represent the one percent that they claim to be holding to account.
by Alan Macleod
May 27th, 2020

Many of the world’s super wealthy are trying to wait out the COVID-19 pandemic on their luxury yachts. But how to get to them without interacting with the public and catching the virus themselves? Such are the difficult quandaries only billionaires have to deal with. Fortunately, financial news outlet Bloomberg has solved the big question of the current era. A new company, it excitedly informs its readers, offers chartered private jets from your location to the Mediterranean island of Malta, without the need to “risk exposure to the germ-ridden masses.” New York-based reporter Suzanne Woolley, who has recently penned articles such as “How to arbitrage your U.S. taxes for difficult economic times” and “Where to invest $1 million right now,” notes that aviation company VistaJet allows its clients to reserve its freshly sanitized jet to take them to Malta. “Lest anyone be worried that the island nation itself is germ-ridden,” she writes, the World Health Organization has praised it for its capable fight against the coronavirus.

One big problem, however, is where your yacht is. The article explains that “if your yacht is moored in Antibes [France] or Porto Cervo [Italy], you’re out of luck,” taking for granted that anyone reading does own one, also suggesting that now would be the perfect time to shop for a Maltese passport, as the island, an E.U. member state, levies no income or capital gains taxes on that earned abroad, and there is no estate tax on the island. All you need is $1.3 million in cash or property.

The article’s tone, especially twice describing the general public, even of Malta, one of the richest states in the world, as “germ ridden masses,” highlights the increasing gap between the world’s super wealthy and the rest of us, and the contempt and disgust the haves feel for the have-nots. In April, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was met with a storm of criticism after posing in front of her enormous refrigerator costing tens of thousands of dollars, revealing her penchant for deluxe ice cream at $12 per tub. For many, the centi-millionaire and wife of one of California’s richest men telling others how to survive lockdown while residing in a mansion was a Marie Antoinette-like moment of pure ignorance.

Since the lockdown began, America’s billionaires have seen their wealth balloon by $434 billion according to the Institute for Policy Studies, even as the economy crashes and nearly 40 million Americans have been made unemployed. Among the biggest winners from the worldwide suffering has been Michael Bloomberg himself, owner of the eponymous news network. The former Mayor of New York has added $12.3 billion to his net worth in the last two months, increasing his fortune by over 25 percent. Bloomberg spent around $1 billion on his recent failed presidential run, amassing only 43 delegates before pulling out. Regardless, his big money media campaign flop pales in comparison to the fortune he has reaped thanks to the Trump administration’s CARES Act, perhaps the largest wealth transfer in human history, in which 82 percent of the tax savings will be enjoyed by those who earn over $1 million per year.

The winners from the CARES Act – America’s billionaires – have also chosen New Zealand as a convenient destination to avoid a pandemic. A new company is doing a roaring trade designing and installing nuclear bunkers in remote areas of the Pacific nation’s South Island. They are designed so that even locals are unaware they are there. Prices begin at $2 million for the simplest designs but can rise to over $11 million, depending on the level of luxury desired.

Increasingly, journalists at establishment publications come from and represent the one percent that they claim to be holding to account. A study published in the Journal of Expertise found that editors and writers for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The New Republic were actually slightly more likely than billionaires to have attended an elitist institution like Harvard University or the Columbia School of Journalism, where attendance costs well over $100,000 per year. As the study concluded: “Elite journalists resemble senators, billionaires and World Economic Forum attendees in terms of educational attainment.” This elitism begins to seep into writing, hence the inability to understand political movements like those around Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, or the temptation to casually demonize human beings as “germ-ridden masses” in news reporting.

As of Wednesday, there have been over 5.7 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 354,762 reported deaths.

Feature photo | Former Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg pauses as he speaks to supporters about the suspension of his campaign, and his endorsement of former Vice President Joe Biden for president, in New York, March 4, 2020. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez | AP

World’s Super Rich Buying Pandemic Escape Mansions in New Zealand

A number of the planet’s richest people are buying luxury bunkers designed to withstand even nuclear explosions amid the COVID-19 pandemic,

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.
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Billionaires fled for doomsday bunkers in New Zealand as the ...

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Apr 20, 2020 - How super-rich Americans fled to New Zealand to stay in their lavish ... luxury bunkers during the COVID-19 crisis; Silicon Valley billionaires escaped as the ... destination for the world's elite with many buying up property recently ... to hide out in their luxury bunkers throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

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Aug 7, 2019 - World's elite choosing to custom-design private (and super secret) shelters to ride out a pandemic, World War III or any ... Say "doomsday bunker" and most people would imagine a concrete room filled with cots and canned goods. ... A number of companies around the world are meeting a growing demand ...

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A number of the planet's richest people, including billionaire co-founder of Paypal Peter Thiel, ... Thiel, have, amidst a growing global pandemic, escaped to the country and bought luxury bunkers designed to withstand even nuclear explosions. ... .com/super-rich-buying-covid-19-pandemic-mansions-new-zealand/267406/ ...

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Apr 3, 2020 - These aren't Cold War-style bomb shelters stocked with canned ... “We made them more like homes.” ... Coronavirus Map: Tracking COVID-19 cases across California ... “Saying you're 'buying a house in New Zealand' is kind of a wink, ... Altman told the New Yorker in 2016 that in the event of a pandemic, ...