July 8, 2015

The Shocking Truth About Wednesday’s Apocalypse Involving Wall Street, China, ISIS, and United Airlines

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?”

Henk Badenhorst/iStock

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When the New York Stock Exchange inexplicably halted trades at about 11:30 Wednesday morning, people around the Twittersphere reacted with their typical restraint, reasoned analysis, and careful double-checking of the facts.

Or not.

After all, there were an unusual number of suspicious events today, and Twitter was swirling with paranoid conspiracy theories linking Wall Street, the grounding of United Airlines flights, ISIS, and the Chinese financial meltdown.

Initial reactions were largely variants of this one:

But the conspiracy theories—involving the Chinese, the CIA, and even ISIS—were not far behind. Some came from on high. Here’s one from US Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.):

He wasn’t the only one taking things in that direction:

And even after the US Department of Homeland Security said there was no indication that the NYSE situation was due to a malicious act, some people weren’t buying it:

The theory that China might be behind this series of events could be supported by data from the Norse Intelligence Network,  a California-based online security company. The company offers up a real-time cyber attack map, which seemed to show at midday on Wednesday that China was the number-one attacker and the US was the number-one target:

Screenshot from the Norse Intelligence Network attack map on July 8, 2015. map.norsecorp.com

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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