The Fifth Rule Of Zero Hedge Is…
Courtesy of Marla Singer
In my capacity as a casual comment viewer on Zero Hedge I have found myself of late issuing an unduly expansive number of warnings for bad behavior in print. One hates to use the heavy hand of moderation on a site dedicated to transparency and throwing sunlight on the cipher-laden world of finance, but I need to make something absolutely clear:
Anyone directly advocating violence against any individual, group of individuals, institution or organization is going to feel the sting of the lash from here on out.
This kind of psychotic noise gives us a bad name (kill the messenger, you know), tends to attract the attention of authorities, particularly in the United States (which is already predisposed to wonder after our subversive criticism of The One and the National Security™ risk we present to Bailout Nation) and more importantly, is antithetical to the goals and purposes of Zero Hedge.
To be even more specific:
Zero Hedge and the legal team here will vigorously oppose thorough all the legal means at our disposal any attempt to obtain, coerce or outright steal data from our offshore servers. This probably won’t take much effort since we keep very sparse logs in the first place. However, it is not impossible to imagine that we would entertain a very narrow exception if asked to cooperate with authorities. To wit:
The credible threat of future violence.
There is no moral position we are willing to entertain that would permit us to stand idly by and ignore cases like these.
Let me provide some examples so there will be no misunderstanding:
- “Let’s throw [all the bankers/banker x/that loser currently on trial] in jail.” [Stupid on a truly Henry VIesque level, even forgetting for the moment that you probably only know as much about any particular case as you have read that afternoon in the New York Post - but borderline - seems to suggest due process (of a sort) at least]
- “Let’s kill all the bankers.” [Stupid on a truly Henry VIesque level, and also infringing - violence]
- “The next time you meet a Goldman employee, crack a fucking bottle over their skull.” [Beyond stupid. Intensely infringing]
- “I’m going to slit [hedge fund manager's throat] when I next see her at L’escale in Greenwich.” [So mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence so as to be mistaken for a mineral. Infringing to the level that causes serious and animated debate among the Senior Staff at Zero Hedge over the wisdom of proactively reporting this potential conduct to the authorities]
Hey. How about you do yourself and all of us a favor? Just because it’s borderline and we appear to be tolerant, don’t just defecate all over the whole of due process jurisprudence (due process IS in the Constitution of the United States, you know. You don’t hate the Constitution. Do you, my outraged patriot friend?) as well as immediately brand yourself as a reactionary, populist tool who differs with Barney Frank only in the degree to which you tolerate violence by calling for hanging some random douchebag banker.