The Google Apocalypse Looms

Source: The Google Apocalypse Looms – LewRockwell

Mercola.com

By Joseph Mercola

I’ve written about the dangers of monopolies within the drug and agricultural industries on numerous occasions, but Google is perhaps one of the greatest  monopolies that ever existed on the planet. The reason why I’ve decided to address Google here is because the technology giant is injecting itself ever deeper into our day-to-day lives, from childhood education to patented meat substitutes^1,2 and health care, and with its internet monopoly and personal information tracking and sharing,

Google poses a very unique threat. Anyone concerned about their health and food and their ability to obtain truthful information about both needs to understand the role Google plays, and whose side Google is really on.

Starting with the issue of health care, the company recently partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and is getting deeper into the drug promotion business with its launch of a depression self-assessment quiz.^3,4 Just like WebMD before it, this test funnels you toward a drug solution. No matter how you answered WebMD’s questions, you were diagnosed as being at risk for major depression and urged to discuss treatment with your doctor.

That test, it turns out, was sponsored by drugmaker Eli Lilly, maker of the antidepressant Cymbalta. Now, any time you use the search term “clinical depression” in the Google mobile search engine, you will find a link to a page to “check if you’re clinically depressed.” The quiz is part of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHG-9), “a clinically validated screening questionnaire” according to MedicalXpress.⁵

Beware of ‘Patient’s Rights Groups’ Working on Behalf of Drug Makers

While it may seem like an altruistic ideal to raise awareness about mental illness, the “stop the stigma” campaign is actually funded and driven by the drug industry itself, under the guise of various front groups, of which NAMI is one. As noted by PsychCentral, nearly 75 percent of the organization’s funding comes from drug companies.⁶ Evidence also shows that drug companies have instructed NAMI to “resist state efforts to limit access to mental health drugs” and “how to advocate forcefully for issues that affect industry profits.”

As noted by CCHR International,⁷ the “next time you see an ad promoting ‘stop the stigma’ see it for what it is, a pharmaceutical marketing campaign.” While CCHR was started by the Church of Scientology, which does not believe in conventional psychiatry to begin with, the group has some valid points. What they forgot or failed to include is the fact that the insurance industry has also played a significant role in creating the trend of over-prescriptions by favoring reimbursement for drug treatment over other forms of treatment.

The article goes on to discuss how the drug industry created “patient’s rights groups” for the mentally ill. In reality, these so-called advocacy groups are part of the drug industry’s marketing and lobbying machine. According to CCHR, front groups like NAMI and Children and Adults With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) “have consistently lobbied for legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to represent,” adding:

“A patients’ rights group for the mentally ill would never endorse something as absurd and obviously dangerous as giving electroshock to pregnant women, nor condone schools being able to require children to take a psychiatric drug as a condition of attending school.

Furthermore, they would never be opposed to the FDA actually doing its job and finally issuing long overdue warnings that antidepressants can cause children to commit suicide, or issue warnings that ADHD drugs have serious and even deadly side effects. Yet these are just some of the actions condoned and promoted by these so-called patients’ rights groups.

To put it simply, these groups are not what they appear to be. Yet their influence over legislation, lobbying, drug regulation (or lack thereof), and public relations campaigns is substantial and effects the entire nation,” CCHR warns. “[T]hese groups … frenetically lobby Congress and state governments to channel billions more taxpayers’ dollars into mental health programs that benefit the industry that funds them — not the patients they claim to represent.”

Tech-Driven Mental Health Diagnostics

In 2015, Google hired former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) director⁸ Dr. Tom Insel as senior researcher for the Google Life Sciences (GLS) unit.⁹ (GLS was later rebranded as Verily, partially owned by Alphabet, the parent company that now also owns Google.) At the time, Insel told The Register his job at GLS would entail identifying technology to “help with earlier detection, better prevention and more effective management of serious health conditions.”

Insel served as director for NIMH between 2002 and 2015.¹⁰ In 2010, Insel — who led efforts to tighten ethics rules — got caught up in a conflicts of interest scandal and was accused of having a longstanding “quid pro quo” relationship with Charles B. Nemeroff, a psychiatrist and researcher at Emory University found guilty of failing to disclose pharmaceutical funds totaling $1.2 million.¹¹ According to The Chronicle of Higher Education:¹²

“In 2003, the journal Nature toughened its policies for author disclosures after Dr. Nemeroff used an article in Nature Neuroscience to praise treatments for depression in which he had an unreported financial interest. In 2004, Emory issued a report citing him for multiple “serious” violations of its conflict-of-interest policies for protecting patients.

He quit as editor of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in 2006 after he was reported to have endorsed an implantable device for treating depression without disclosing payments from its manufacturer. And he finally left Emory … after U.S. Senate investigators found he received $2.8 million from GlaxoSmithKline and other pharmaceutical companies between 2000 and 2007 and failed to disclose at least $1.2 million of it.”

Insel initially denied the charge outright,¹³ but weeks later expressed regret in a letter to Sen. Charles Grassley, admitting that helping Nemeroff get a job at the University of Miami was inappropriate.¹⁴ In May of this year, Insel left Verily (formerly GLS) to join another technology startup called Mindstrong. Interestingly, Mindstrong is doing more or less exactly what Verily is doing — creating smartphone and computer app technologies to diagnose and treat mental health disorders. According to Wired:¹⁵

“[A]combination of your medical records … and how you use your gadgets … could be a Big Data bonanza for predicting and treating health issues … In fact, mood is one of the things that Verily’s $100 million Baseline study will track among its 10,000 eventual participants. At Mindstrong, one of the first tests of the concept will be a study of how 600 people use their mobile phones, attempting to correlate keyboard use patterns with outcomes like depression, psychosis, or mania.”

Goopocalypse Underway

I don’t know about you, but the idea that your electronic medical records might eventually be linked to your use of the internet and social media to assess your risk of mental health problems and/or other health issues does not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Google has repeatedly been caught infringing on privacy rights and misrepresenting the type and amount of data it collects on its users.

It’s now become clear that Google catches every single thing you do online if you’re using a Google-based feature. It’s also clear that capturing user data is Google’s primary business.¹⁶ The fact that it provides services while doing so is really beside the point and serves as a convenient distraction from the fact that obnoxious privacy violations are taking place. As reported by Gawker:¹⁷

“Every word of every email sent through Gmail and every click made on a Chrome browser is watched by the company. ‘We don’t need you to type at all,’ [Google co-founder Eric] Schmidt once said. ‘We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.’”

Today’s youth, and their parents, need to be particularly vigilant and aware of what Google is doing. Over the past five years, Google has taken over classrooms across the U.S. As noted by The New York Times,¹⁸ more than 30 million American children now use Google-based education apps such as Gmail, Google docs, Google classroom apps and Google-powered Chromebooks.

Once out of school, these youngsters are encouraged to convert their school accounts into personal accounts, allowing Google to build exceptionally powerful personality profiles of them as they grow into young adults. If these profiles are used for marketing purposes only, that would be bad enough. But what if they’re used for other types of profiling? Google’s data harvesting is particularly concerning in light of its military connections.¹⁹

A recent Activist Post article reveals how YouTube is censoring Ron Paul, former congressman and 2011 Republican GOP presidential candidate, for promoting peace.²⁰ Paul has also been a tireless defender of health freedom throughout his long career. In other words, Google is now actively controlling the public narrative — also known as social engineering — and, as noted in the article:

“When standing up against an illegal war with a message of peace and liberty becomes a censorable ‘offense’ it’s time to start paying attention … Make no mistake, what we are witnessing on YouTube and Facebook right now is a move to silence the peaceful opposition …

[T]his crackdown is also coinciding with a massive push by the mainstream media to stoke divide among the people … [D]ivisive identity politics are shoved down the collective throats of the masses in order to create an atmosphere so divided that people never look up at who’s controlling them. Disagreeing with the status quo is the new hate speech — speak out and you will be mowed down.”

Google’s catchphrase used to be “Don’t be evil,” but that’s exactly what it is. When Google became Alphabet, it dropped the “don’t be evil” slogan for a more comprehensive motto, which begins with doing “the right thing — follow the law, act honorably, and treat each other with respect.”²¹ Yet the company continues to act as if it’s above the law and really struggles when it comes to doing what’s right. In fact, Google seems to think its actions are righteous and justifiable simply by the fact that they’re doing them.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

All of this brings us to the issue of monopolization and the corruption that inevitably follows. At this point, I cannot think of any company operating in breach of antitrust rules as blatantly as Google. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this adage certainly fits when describing Google. As reported by The Washington Post:²²

“Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power. It has reached a dangerous point … The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent … Once you reach a pinnacle of power, you start to believe that any threats to your authority are themselves villainous and that you are entitled to shut down dissent. As Lord Acton famously said, ‘Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.’ Those with too much power cannot help but be evil.

Google, the company dedicated to free expression, has chosen to silence opposition, apparently without any sense of irony… [I]n recent years, Google has become greedy about owning not just search capacities, video and maps, but also the shape of public discourse. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google has recruited and cultivated law professors who support its views.”

According to a recent Campaign for Accountability (CfA) report,²³ Google has paid academics in both the U.S. and Europe millions of dollars to influence public opinion and policymakers alike.^24,25

This includes funding research papers “that appear to support the technology company’s business interests and defend against regulatory challenges such as antitrust and anti-piracy.” Some of these academics have not declared the source of their funding, even though payments have reached as high as $400,000. As noted by The Times:²⁶

“On one occasion Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief executive, cited a Google-funded author in written answers to Congress to back his claim that his company was not a monopoly — without mentioning that it had paid for the paper …”

Europe Fines Google Nearly $3 Billion for Antitrust Violations

Power can be assessed by looking at lobbying expenditures and, so far this year, Google is leading the pack when it comes to corporate spending on lobbying — efforts primarily aimed at eliminating competitors and gaining power over others. Google also appears to take full advantage of its power over organizations that it helps fund.

A recent example of this was when the Open Markets team at the New America think tank published a statement praising the EU’s decision to levy a $2.7 billion fine against Google for antitrust violations. In summary, Google gave preference to its own shopping subsidiaries over competitors in its search results, which the EU deemed to be a violation of antitrust rules (see the featured video above).

The Open Markets team also called on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice (DOJ) and state attorneys general to apply American monopoly law to Google’s business in the U.S. Google’s response to the Open Markets statement was swift, and within three days, the New America think tank — which has received more than $21 million from Google over the years — ousted the entire Open Markets team.²⁷

Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law at Fordham University, writes in her Washington Post article, “Google Is Coming After Critics in Academia and Journalism. It’s Time to Stop Them:”‘ ²⁸

“The imperial overreach of Google in trying to shut down a group of five researchers proves the point that the initial release from Open Markets was trying to make: When companies get too much power, they become a threat to democratic free speech and to the liberty of citizens at large …

Google is forming into a government of itself, and it seems incapable of even seeing its own overreach. We, as citizens, must respond in two ways. First, support the brave researchers and journalists who stand up to overreaching power; and second, support traditional antimonopoly laws that will allow us to have great, innovative companies — but not allow them to govern us.

Google’s actions forced the Open Markets team to leave New America. But, thankfully, it did not succeed in silencing them entirely. Open Markets will continue on as a separate organization, which I will chair. Their work exposing corporate monopolies and advocating for regulation is more important than ever. Google shows us why.”

New America Faces Backlash

The fact that New America was coddling Google and doing the company’s bidding did not go unnoticed, however, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, president of the Google-funded think tank is now accused of jeopardizing New America’s reputation with her decision to kick Open Markets out.

Scholars affiliated with New America have also been “quietly comparing notes on past instances in which they contend she placed donors’ interests over ideology.” According to The New York Times,²⁹ Slaughter has “pledged to re-examine her group’s policies for dealing with donors while defending the organization’s intellectual integrity.” Whatever might come of that “re-examination” remains to be seen.

Antitrust Revival

Former business journalist Barry Lynn, director of Open Markets, who spent over a decade with the New America Foundation before being ousted by Slaughter, has been a longtime advocate against monopolies such as Google, and his work is now gaining traction in what some have called an “antitrust revival.”³⁰ As noted by The Daily Beast:³¹

“For years, Lynn has been warning about the pernicious effect monopolies have on all facets of American life: from the food one eats, to the financial system one uses, to the forms of communications on which one depends. And for years, his work has been restricted to the usual confines of advocacy and academia …

On [July 24, 2017], that changed. [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)] … outlined an agenda that put heavy emphasis on cracking down on corporate monopolies.

The topic occupies the first four pages of a 10-page document and includes placing new standards on the consolidation of corporate power, giving new tools to regulators to confirm and review mergers, and creating a new consumer competition advocate to tackle ‘anti-competitive behavior.’ Lynn, who estimates that he has been working on this stuff for 15 years, called the new agenda ‘fantastic.’”

Monopolies Threaten Public Liberties and Democracy

In a recent interview by The Verge,³² Lynn discusses his plans to continue fighting monopolies in America. Open Markets still has most of its funders and the organization is “already up and running” as an independent institution. They also have new funding sources lined up. When asked why it’s so important to dialogue about monopoly power, Lynn replies:

“[M]onopolies are a threat to our democracy and to our basic liberties and to our communities. Monopolization, this concentration of wealth and power, is a threat to everything that is America … So, Open Markets is built to fight the environment of law and regulation that currently promotes unrestrained monopoly. America today has a monopoly problem.

We’re seeing basically a second wave of consolidation and monopolization because of the digital revolution. These companies are just as bad as Newscorp or Walmart or Citibank was in 2005. Google, Facebook, and Amazon: the danger they pose is on a vastly different level.The first issue is consumer protection and potential consumer harm. We created antitrust laws originally to protect our liberties, often as producers of stuff …  

My liberty to bring my wheat, my ideas, the product of my labor to market. That’s liberty. The second purpose was to protect our democracy against huge concentrations of wealth and power. To protect our democratic institutions. And the third purpose [was] to protect your community.

If I’m living out in Peoria, do I want the city of Peoria to be run by a couple corporations based on Wall Street, or do I want it to be run by the citizens of Peoria? So you use anti-monopoly law to ensure that.”

Tech Monopolies Merge to Create Ultimate AI World

Last year, The Register³³ published an article pointing out the revolving door between Google and EU policy advisers; 16 Google employees have joined the government ranks in the EU while 64 policy advisers left to join Google. We see this revolving door phenomenon so often these days, it’s become quite cliché. Unfortunately, it is highly effective, which is why industry abuses it. Google is running such a clear monopoly, it’s quite astounding the U.S. has not nailed it on antitrust charges similar to those raised in the EU.

Then again, Music Technology Policy published a long article³⁴ last year describing how Google managed to install one of its own lawyers in the DOJ antitrust division, thereby protecting its own interests. These revolving doors between government and corporations exist for a reason, and it is not to benefit the public in any way.

As we look to the future, we also have Google’s sights on artificial intelligence (AI) to contend with. Already, two large monopolies have joined forces to bring about the ultimate AI world. As reported by The New York Times,³⁵ Amazon and Microsoft are now working together, merging their voice-controlled digital assistants — Alexa and Cortana — in order to enlarge the capabilities of both by building on each other’s strengths and abilities.

“In an interview … [Amazon CEO Jeff] Bezos predicted that over time people would turn to different digital assistants … the same way they turn to one friend for advice about hiking and another for restaurant recommendations. ‘I want them to have access to as many of those A.I.s as possible.’ Mr. Bezos said.”³⁶

Ultimately, the goal is to create self-learning AIs capable of imitating human thought processes. Meanwhile, Vanity Fair reports that Elon Musk is raising a “billion-dollar crusade” to prevent the AI apocalypse, calling for regulations on the technology “before it’s too late.” According to Musk, AIs are improving at a far greater pace than most people realize, and there’s no telling what they might ultimately be used for. Vanity Fair writes:³⁷

“In a startling public reproach to his friends and fellow techies, Musk warned that they could be creating the means of their own destruction. He told Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance … that he was afraid that his friend Larry Page, a co-founder of Google and now the C.E.O. of its parent company, Alphabet, could have perfectly good intentions but still ‘produce something evil by accident’ — including, possibly, ‘a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind.’

It’s in Larry Page’s blood and Google’s DNA to believe that A.I. is the company’s inevitable destiny — think of that destiny as you will. (‘If evil A.I. lights up,’ Ashlee Vance told me, ‘it will light up first at Google.’)”

Take Action — Here’s What You Can Do

As you can see, Google (or more accurately, Alphabet, the rebranded parent company that houses all of the various divisions) is turning into a gigantic octopus-like super entity, the tentacles of which reach into government, food production, health care, education, military applications and the creation of AIs that may run more or less independently.

A key component of many of these enterprises is data — your personal usage data; the tracking of every webpage you’ve ever visited and every single thought you’ve ever written on a Google-enabled device, along with geo tracking tracing your every move.

Ultimately, what can be done with that kind of information, besides personalized advertising? How might it be used in combination with military AI-equipped robots? How might it be used to influence your health care decisions? How might it be used to influence your lifestyle decisions? How might (or is) it used to shape politics and society at large?

Today, being a conscious consumer includes making wise, informed decisions about technology. Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time pondering the ramifications of Google’s ever-growing monopoly over our day-to-day lives is likely to shudder at the possibilities and agree that we cannot allow this to continue. To be part of the solution, I encourage you to take the following actions:

1. Sign the “Don’t be evil” petition created by Citizens Against Monopoly
2. Avoid any and all Google products. If you have a Gmail account, close it and open an account with a non-Google affiliated email service. Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends recently published an article suggesting a number of alternatives.³⁸ If you’re a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts
3. Don’t use Google search engine. So far, one of the best alternatives I’ve found is DuckDuckGo.³⁹ It is now my primary search engine and I avoid Gmail and all of Google products whenever possible.

Sources and References

• ¹ Jon Rappaport August 25, 2017
• ² BBC News August 5, 2013
• ³ Buzzfeed August 25, 2017
• ⁴ Daily Mail August 24, 2017
• ⁵ MedicalXpress August 24, 2017
• ⁶ Psych Central, October 22, 2009
• ⁷ CCHR International, The Mental Health Watchdog, Psycho-Pharma Front Groups
• ⁸ NAMI, September 11, 2002
• ⁹ The Register September 16, 2015
• ¹⁰ NIMH.gov, Dr. Tom Insel to Step Down as NIMH Director
• ¹¹ Washington Post June 9, 2010
• ¹² Chronicle of Higher Education June 6, 2010
• ¹³ Science June 16, 2010
• ¹⁴ Nature News Blog July 8, 2010
• ¹⁵ Wired May 11, 2017
• ¹⁶ Fast Company January 13, 2014
• ¹⁷ Gawker October 6, 2015
• ¹⁸ New York Times May 13, 2017
• ¹⁹ Boston Dynamics
• ²⁰ Activist Post August 28, 2017
• ²¹ Geek.com October 5, 2015
• ^22, 28 Washington Post August 30, 2017
• ²³ Campaign for Accountability July 11, 2017
• ²⁴ The Guardian July 12, 2017
• ²⁵ Digit, Don’t Be Evil
• ²⁶ the Times July 13, 2017
• ^27, 35, 36 New York Times August 30, 2017
• ²⁹ New York Times September 1, 2017
• ³⁰ ZeroHedge August 31, 2017
• ³¹ Daily Beast July 25, 2017
• ³² The Verge September 5, 2017
• ³³ The Register June 6, 2016
• ³⁴ Music Technology Policy August 9, 2016
• ³⁵ New York Times August 30, 2017
• ³⁷ Vanity Fair March 26, 2017
• ³⁸ Digital Trends April 28, 2017
• ³⁹ Fast Company, Inside DuckDuckGo

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America’s PC Plague Is a Catastrophe

Source: America’s PC Plague Is a Catastrophe – LewRockwell

http://www.lewrockwell.com

Ladies and Gentlemen, say hello to Dmitry Kiselyov, Russia’s #1 news anchor, and simultaneously, the head of one of the biggest government media conglomerates, Rossiya Segodnya, which owns, among other things, RT.

He has been roundly demonized by the western media, and put on the sanctions list, a strong hint that he probably talks a lot of good sense and is worth listening to.

Kiselyov is an excellent wordsmith, and his carefully crafted video essays pack a punch. This time he’s found an excellent translator to convey a hint at his style. Some choice chops:

I can’t say that we are always happy with our turbulent history, but at least unlike America, Poland or Ukraine, we don’t destroy monuments and don’t ban films.

Otherwise, we would have to stop showing, for example, “And Quiet Flows the Don” or “Battleship Potemkin,” to ban the “The White Guard” or “Lenin in October.” Then, we would begin to destroy the monuments.

And then, we would get indignant because Chekhov romanticizes the old landlord life in the play “Three Sisters.” And then we would ask if we needed Chekhov at all?

And did you know? Pushkin was a landowner himself. He received 200 servants as a wedding gift from his father. Is it possible to give living people as a gift? And hundreds of them at that?

And what should we do with Pushkin now?

For starters, the intellectual fare served to the broad masses in Russia is substantially higher than in the US.

Well worth listening to his take on the PC plague gripping America: (video and full text follows below)

Last week, stunning news came out of America even though to the unobservant eye, what happened could seem trifling at first glance.

At the Orpheum Theater in Memphis, Tennessee, it was officially announced that from now on the movie “Gone with the Wind” would be banned. Although until now, the same Orpheum Theater in Memphis has traditionally shown “Gone with the Wind” in August during the Film Classics days…for 34 years in a row. There won’t be a 35th season.

What happened, in my opinion, is a national catastrophe for America.

I’ll try to explain why. To assess the scale of the disaster, it’s worth recalling something that everyone knows. The great movie of the great director Fleming, “Gone with the Wind,” which premiered in 1939, is the most popular film in the US in the history of American cinema. It’s the absolute champion in tickets sales. Taking into account inflation, nearly $3.5 billion was collected. Modern-day Hollywood blockbusters can’t even get close to that kind of runaway success.

Vivien Leigh was cast in the lead role, an English actress, she was selected out of 1,500 candidates. “Gone with the Wind” immediately brought her world fame. Vivien Leigh is also remembered as an all-time symbol of British cinema. However, she received her first Oscar for the American movie “Gone with the Wind.”

Them damned Yankee, SPLC lovin’, boney-ass globalists up to their monkeyshines again darlin’

In total, this film has received 10 Oscar awards. One of them was given to a black actor for the first time in history. The highest award of the American Film Academy for the Best Supporting Actress was given to Hattie McDaniel, who played the maid, Mammy, in “Gone with the Wind. Now, the film is accused of racism, an insult to the black population of America, and the romanticization of the South during the slavery period.

The love story of this film is told against the background of the Civil War between the South and the North in the 19th century. And, they say, the movie is painful for a portion of America’s modern day population.

The representative for the distribution company states the following: “As an organization whose stated mission is to entertain, educate and enlighten the communities it serves, the Orpheum cannot show a film that is insensitive to a large segment of the local population.”

In order to understand the context, I should add that the Negroes – this word is fine in Russian – are about two-thirds of the population of Memphis. It’s them who are offended by the classics of American cinema. However, banning one film in only one city is only a part of a general process, which was kicked into high gear during the Obama presidency.

Racial tensions are at an all-time high in the United States. It was during Obama’s presidency that the first monument in a larger campaign to remove monuments to White heroes was taken down, the statue of the hero of the South, General Lee, in New Orleans. The decision was finally executed last May during Trump’s administration. But this was only done by labeling the General Lee monument a symbol of the superiority of the White race or, to translate it into PC-speak, a symbol to “White Supremacy.”

However, it is impossible to speak today in the United States about the atrocities of the northerners, in particular, about the “scorched earth” tactics of General Sherman during the American Civil War. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, the monument to the president of the Southern Confederation, Jefferson Davis, has already fallen, followed by a monument to the fighters for the freedom of the South.

Another general for the South, Pierre de Beauregard, was taken down as well. Later, the monument to General Lee was slated for demolishing in Charlottesville. This is similar to the mass toppling of Lenin statues, only done in the American way and it quickly spread to Baltimore. There, they brought down the monuments to four generals of the Confederation and other figures of the South of the Civil War period. A monument to the soldiers of the South was removed in North Carolina.

The fervor is so contagious that desecration operations are now planned for monuments all over the US. Moreover, not only memorials and monuments to the Southerners will be removed, of which there are more than 1,500 in the country, but their names will also be erased from the names of streets, schools, and public institutions.

With a red-hot iron against history.

The cinema’s turn has now come. Now, the brilliant movie “Gone with the Wind” runs the risk of disappearing from all American screens. The Memphis precedent will work. And they will certainly never ever show one of the first US full-length films, “The Birth of a Nation,” directed by David Griffith, who, by the way, is considered the father of American cinema.

It was he who laid the foundations for sensible editing and even special effects. “Birth of a Nation.” 1915. Three hours. The historical period the movie was set in was the Civil War in the US and the events immediately after.

The film had unprecedented battle scenes for cinema of that time. The drama lay in a gripping account of a fratricidal war and the drama of the defeated where “the White South was crushed by the Black heel of the North.” Without regard to rules of war and decency. The North unleashed Black brutality on the Southern Whites in the name of revenge for the past.

How can this film be shown now, especially since the birth of the awful Ku Klux Klan is also realistically depicted in the movie as well? It emerged as a necessary organization for the self-defense of Whites. And, the cavalry charges while “Ride of the Valkyries” by Wagner is playing as the score. All of this is unacceptable now, so this picture will be permanently banned from American cinemas. All of this even though the US President, Woodrow Wilson, who was a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, but who was also considered an authoritative historian, called the film “Birth of a Nation” a “terrible truth.”

President Wilson made this statement right after he organized a review of Griffith’s new movie in the White House, where he invited both his ministers and foreign ambassadors.

Surprisingly, it turns out that a hundred years ago America coped with its past and was ready to comprehend it and accept it as it is. Now, this ability has been lost, and a war has been declared on the past. And so far it proceeds in a very primitive fashion, through the destruction of monuments and censorship. And no one knows where it will stop.

Why not then take a new look at the American Westerns? Are they next on the chopping block? There are many films where the Indians are depicted as stupid and bloodthirsty, and they are killed by the White man in great numbers.

It seems that the fight against the Westerns hasn’t started just yet. But monuments to Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of America, are already being defiled all over the US. They say that he is to blame for initiating the genocide of the indigenous population of the country. Last Wednesday, in the State of New York, a statue of Columbus was knocked down from the pedestal, and then smashed to pieces.

There are new heroes in America now. American cinema does its best to create a new cast of heroes, infused with modern sensibility. The last Oscar for Best Picture is characteristic of a larger trend. The film “Moonlight”, has the main character be the son of a drug-addicted mother, a gay Black man, a brutal gangster with gold teeth. But look at his wounded soul, and his difficult childhood. It’s now beyond “Gone with the Wind.”

This is also an example of how America can’t cope with the real history of its own country. The conflicts of the past, the wounds of which they never managed to heal, have reopened. History seems to be coming to life and creating serious tension.

We lived through something similar in our Soviet experience, when all of society was ideologically balkanized and forced to take up the position of one of the parties in the conflicts of the past. We all supported the red and not the bourgeoisie. We were for the rebels of Pugachev and StepanRazin. We were against the landlords. We were for the insurgent officers, the Decembrists, and not for the Tsar. We were for the Narodnik terrorists and not for the tsarist police.

And we were all as one against those enemies as if they were still alive today.

The same thing is happening in the US now. The Confederates of a century and a half ago are turned into the living enemies of today. And, the relationship between the Negroes and the Whites in those days can’t be shown as it really was back then.

Political correctness is the instrument of American censorship. Under its banner, they forbid films and demolish monuments. Under its banner, you can destroy White history to your heart’s content.

In Russia, we are already so fed up with all that nonsense and thank God, we can now quietly write, publish, read, film and show our history. We can allow ourselves to look at events from different sides. I can’t say that we are always happy with our turbulent history, but at least unlike America, Poland or Ukraine, we don’t destroy monuments and don’t ban films. Otherwise, we would have to stop showing, for example, “And Quiet Flows the Don” or “Battleship Potemkin,” to ban the “The White Guard” or “Lenin in October.” Then, we would begin to destroy the monuments.

And then, we would get indignant because Chekhov romanticizes the old landlord life in the play “Three Sisters.” And then we would ask if we needed Chekhov at all? And did you know? Pushkin was a landowner himself. He received 200 servants as a wedding gift from his father. Is it possible to give living people as a gift? And hundreds of them at that? And what should we do with Pushkin now?

But this would mean applying today’s norms to the past. We have already spilt so much blood over the past, that we don’t want to reopen those wounds again. We want to heal our past divisions, to learn and accept everything as it was, and to learn from the experience. We don’t want new civil conflicts.

Meanwhile, America still has the energy to reopen old wounds and stoke the flames of resentment. Political Correctness only worked as a band-aid it seems, it masked the old tensions under a superficial layer of civility, meanwhile the old racial hostility and enmity smoldered in the deep like a simmering, submerged peat fire.

Now, the tongues of flame are already peeping out of the ground, licking the turf on top. And the scale of the fire when it finally breaks out is difficult to predict.

When a society is split, when politics are saturated with hatred, and the rule of law no longer exists, what will hold keep the whole thing from collapsing?

Reprinted from Russia Insider.

Copyright © 2017 Russia Insider

Political activist Adam Kokesh bids his farewell to YouTube

Source: Political activist Adam Kokesh bids his farewell to YouTube

With permission from

http://www.intellihub.com

By Shepard Ambellas

September 12, 2017

 

“It’s been a good run” 

(INTELLIHUB) — Political activist Adam Kokesh bid his farewell to YouTube on Monday when he told his subscribers that YouTube is not what it used to be.

The outspoken Californian said that it is “sad” to see what YouTube has turned into and said that it’s not the free spirited platform that it once was.

The “AdamKokesh” channel officially has over 65 million views and over 70 million unofficially, according to Kokesh, who said some of his videos were taken down or deleted.

“It went from being the Internet’s answer to mainstream media that was an open platform that anybody could get on and could compete and you’ve ruined that,” he said. “But then Google bought YouTube.”

Kokesh is best known his show “Adam vs. the Man” and for racking a shell into the chamber of a shotgun on a public street in the District of Columbia.

©2017. INTELLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved.

Hey Macarena: Dancing teen arrested in Saudi Arabia

What? Can’t do the Macarena? Saudi Arabia is a barbaric country.

Source: Hey Macarena: Dancing teen arrested in Saudi Arabia – World – CBC News

CBC News

The Associated Press

Posted: Aug 23, 2017

14-year-old later released with warning after swaying to ’90s hit in intersection

(ahmed/Twitter)

Western music and dancing are taboo in Saudi Arabia, but such incidents have not necessarily led to lengthy imprisonment or serious punishment.

Police in Saudi Arabia arrested and later released a 14-year-old boy who was filmed dancing to the ’90s hit song Macarena at an intersection in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, according to local media reports on Wednesday.

The 45-second video, which went viral on social media in the kingdom, shows the boy wearing headphones, sweat shorts, a striped shirt and neon Crocs. He sways his hips and arms to the Los Del Rio song, and appears to be smiling and giggling throughout the dance.

More words:

Hey Macarena: Dancing teen arrested in Saudi Arabia – World – CBC News

Alternative to YouTube? DTube Is Here! A Blockchain Solution To YouTube Censorship! (18 min)

1:22 / 16:17

Censored: Putin takes American’s question live – Q&A highlights 2017 (16 min)

16 Jun 2017

On June 15th, Russia’s Vladimir Putin held his 15th annual live Q&A session, lasting for four hours. I have condensed the video into a mere 17 minutes – which was quite the hard task! I have left only matters of foreign policy, which I thought would be interesting to the Western audience, as well as a few odd bits and pieces from the programme. The majority of the show dealt with specific internal Russian issues; wages, pensions, roads, rubbish collection, medical care, and specific cases of injustice. The call center opened 11 days before the direct line with President Putin – it is said that as soon as regional leaders got word of a complaint from their region to the programme, they immediately sprung to action, as if the problem never existed at all.

President Putin is only one man and he can’t do everything, so it is important that everyone does their job properly. Unfortunately, that is not the case so far. One more interesting part of the session that is unlikely to air in Western mainstream media is the heartfelt address of a US citizen, Jeremy Bowling from Arizona, to President Vladimir Putin. It starts @6.54.

YouTube Begins Purging Alternative Media as the Deep State Marches Toward WW3

I take the bus every day and I walk among you. People are sheeple. As a group, people don’t think but hide behind the group-think. It’s easier that way. That is also why we have wars, poverty, Nazis, Napoleon, Trumpf, the Queen, and all the other evils. And we are all responsible for this. Don’t think for a second that you are better or above the sheeple. We are the sheeple. We allow this. We know we are the majority. 99%. And yet we fail to connect the dots. We are that stupid.

Also, in reply to this paragraph: “Truthout, a not-for-profit news website that focuses on political, social, and ecological developments from a left progressive standpoint, had its readership plunge by 35 percent since April.”

This blog used to have permission to re-post Truth-Out articles. A new editor came in and prohibited me to re-publish their articles. No problem. Look where they are now. My point is that anyone who fails to understand the connection between copyrights and corporate bullshit should not call themselves alternate anything. “If you’re not part of the solution…” Bye bye TruthOut. No one misses you.

Censorship and corporatocracy go hand in hand.

Quite literally overnight, Google’s YouTube moved in and demonetized thousands of videos in an unprecedented purge of alternative media.

Source: YouTube Begins Purging Alternative Media as the Deep State Marches Toward WW3

 

If you get your news from mostly far left sources, chances are you’ve heard YouTube and Google are censoring or blacklisting left and progressive sites and content. Conversely, if you get your news from far right sources, chances are you’ve heard YouTube and Google are censoring their content as well. If you want to know which side is being truthful in trying to expose their censorship, it is both of them.

In the last week, we’ve witnessed a massive crackdown on alternative media — the likes of which are unprecedented. Quite literally overnight, YouTube issued a sweeping update and demonetized thousands of video in accounts across all political spectrums.

If you ask Paul Joseph Watson from Infowars.com, it’s because they are cracking down on pro-Trump pages. Pro-Trump personalities Diamond and Silk were also hit with the demonetization purge and they also claim it’s because YouTube is going after Trump supporters.

While both Watson and Diamond and Silk had their videos demonetized, the rabbit hole goes far deeper than just pro-Trump sites.

If it were just pro-Trump videos being hit with the censorship sweep, then why is Luke Rudkowski, founder of We Are Change, also being purged?

The Free Thought Project spoke to Rudkowski Friday and asked if any of his many videos that were clearly critical of Trump were demonetized. He tells us that all of them were.

Rudkowski is most certainly not a participant of the left/right paradigm, nor is he a Trump supporter, but he was hit as well.

We asked Rudkowski what he thought about people claiming that it’s their pro-Trump status getting them censored, here’s what he said:

“Obviously that is not the case since it looks like they hit me first and my channel is clearly very critical of Donald Trump for the real reasons that the MSM would never touch.”

It’s not just We Are Change and pro-Trump folks either. The folks over at World Socialist Web Site — a far left organization with a clearly advertised agenda — is also being hit.

According to a scathing report from wsws.org, they aren’t alone either. Google, YouTube’s owner, has reportedly undertaken a similar attack on alternative viewpoints. As wsws reports, 

Truthout, a not-for-profit news website that focuses on political, social, and ecological developments from a left progressive standpoint, had its readership plunge by 35 percent since April. The Real News , a nonprofit video news and documentary service, has had its search traffic fall by 37 percent. Another site, Common Dreams , last week told the WSWS that its search traffic had fallen by up to 50 percent.

“This is political censorship of the worst sort; it’s just an excuse to suppress political viewpoints,” Robert Epstein, a former editor in chief of Psychology Today and noted expert on Google, told wsws.

Those who’ve been paying attention predicted this crackdown and watched it come to a head at the beginning of this month when the Anti-Defamation Leauge applauded Google and YouTube for taking on hate speech and extremist content while having the ADL be the ones who decide what gets flagged.

“The fight against terrorist use of online resources and cyberhate has become one of the most daunting challenges in modern history,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “Google has been a leader in this area from the beginning. The reality is extremists and terrorists continue to migrate to and exploit various other social media platforms. We hope that those platforms can learn from and emulate what YouTube is doing to proactively identify and remove extremist content.”

For those that don’t know, last year, the ADL labeled the cartoon, Pepe the frog, a symbol of hate. This irrational behavior is hardly indicative of a third party who ostensibly possesses the skills to determine what people should and shouldn’t see online.

Given these recent moves, we can infer that what is likely happening is far more insidious than pro-Trump censorship or pro-left censorship. While the ADL is likely using their newfound authority to silence those with whom they disagree politically — by labeling them extremists — this new censorship appears to go after anyone who challenges the establishment.

Disagreeing with the status quo is the new hate speech.

Those who challenge the corporate government paradigm are being lumped in with extremist groups and being flagged as hate speech. Sadly, only those who get their information from these alternative sources who are unafraid of challenging the oligarchy will even know this is happening. 

It takes years of hard work to build a platform that is able to break through the static shoved out by the mainstream media and reach people still plugged into the matrix. However, once they see the establishment for what it is, this cannot be unseen. The powers that be know this and appear to be moving in to stop it.

Imagine if you never came across alternative media that challenged your thought process and made you question the government. Imagine if you never ‘woke up’ to the atrocities committed by the state on a daily basis. Imagine where you’d be right now without that information. Now, imagine that information is snubbed out forever. Is that a world you want to live in?

We didn’t think so.

If ever there were a time for people to get over their political, religious, racial, sexual, or any other differences — it is now. While we may disagree on different issues, if any one group is allowed to be silenced, it is only a matter of time until everyone else is silenced too.

What makes freedom work is the ability for contrasting ideas to be presented — even if you find them repugnant. When we stop the dissemination of ideas, only one idea prevails and it is certainly not freedom.

The good news is that many have seen this day coming and have made moves to combat it. One such move is the social media platform Steemit. 

This uncensorable network is a blockchain-based social media platform where anyone can post and read what they want — and even earn money. It works in a similar fashion to Reddit, however, instead of being banned or censored for posts, if other users like your content, you make money.

As the deep state continues to tighten its grip on humanity, we need to continue to resist through outlets like this one. Also, it has never been more important to inform your family members and friends of the blatant censorship taking place under their noses. Please, encourage them to seek out alternative media and bookmark it as those like Google, YouTube and Facebook — who have a monoploy on the dissemination of information — may make it all but impossible to find in the near future.

For now, Americans, along with the rest of the world, would do well to remember these most powerful words by the German journalist and poet, Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, “Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.”

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.