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That’s the way it is. The world is in the middle of World War III.
Of course, this is NOT public knowledge. This is something that only the American “leadership”, and international leaders have any idea about.
Not the rabble.
Not people like you.
And let me be blunt. The United States owns the media, and all communication traffic over the internet. They don’t want any one getting near the truth. So if you all want to know what the truth is, look at what they are hiding. Look at what they are omitting. Look at what they are “glossing over”. Look at what they are ignoring.
What won’t they dare talk about?
What is right there, in your face, and yet it is omitted from all public discourse?
Yes. John Bolton -rabid anti-China neocon was put in charge of the Bio-Weapons office in Washington DC and launched a long and concentrated series of bio-weapons attacks against China. Mike Pompeo referred to it as a “live exercise”, and it was coordinated with other efforts in Hong Kong, Taiwan, XinJiang, and throughout the South East Asian environs.
But, the USA was unprepared for the blow-back.
Coronavirus is a bio-weapon that was patented nearly twenty years ago by the State Department, and they “threw caution to the wind” when they carpet bombed China with eight bio-weapons targeting food and livestock, and three new and “novel” never-before-seen viruses against the Chinese people.
Not expecting that China knew what was going on all the time.
Ah. That’s a total of eleven (x11) new and “novel” viruses that hit China “out of the blue” at the same precise moment when Trump decided to conduct a “hybrid war” against China.
But I covered all this elsewhere.
In fact, I even draped the overview on the main index for a spell…
All three bio-Weapons (used against China) are in America now
So America got everything all “fired up” and started the same old playbook. But once they realized that a traditional war was not in the “cards”, they decided to “soften up” China with some bio-weapons. But it didn’t work out as planned. Never the less, the plan is still a “go go go”, and everyone is following the timetable, no matter how insane it appears.
Well,,, let’s review for a second.
I have long argued that the USA under the Trump administration used three bio-weapons targeting Chinese civilians in 2020. The first, the COVID-19B hit on CNY, and supposedly the American population was inoculated from it by the COVID-19A strain.
I have further argued that all the bio-weapons would boomerang back to the United States either intentionally or inadvertently. You simply cannot isolate an infected area well.
And that is what we are seeing today.
Attack One.Brain Seizure Virus. While Americans were (supposedly) inoculated from the lethal “B 1.1.7 strain” of COVID-19 by the flu-like “A strain”, apparently the lethal strain has NOW hit America. I’ve tons and tons of movies knowing what it was like when it hit China.
Of course they were all banned by Trump by Executive Order, so Americans and their allies never saw any of them. Thus the sheeple bought into the lies that the COVID was just a slight cold.
This realization, that the lethal “B strain” is now all over America, is forcing the authorities to scramble for the mRNA vaccine. Which is designed as a multi-purpose solution that can be expanded with other “boosters” when new Bio-weapons events unfold. Read about it HERE.
Attack Two.Death by Vomiting Virus. The second bio-weapon to hit China occurred in July 2020 in Beijing. It was a tick borne virus, (Dabieshantick virus and SFTSV) and should alert anyone because not only does Beijing not have ticks, but the nearest tick infested region is half a nation away. Roughly the distance between Florida and Maine.
As soon as the CIA assets turned over the vials to the PLA, Donald Trump was whisked off to a secure military base, and America went to Defcon One.
The virus causes a disease called “Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome” (SFTS). Essentially your internal organs start to hemorrhage you vomit them out violently until you die. The STFS virus is transmitted to humans, and is thought to be fatal in 1 to 3 out of every 10 infections. The people die a long, drawn out and painful death.
Trump launched this virus against China when it was obvious that [1] China controlled COVID-19B, and that [2] Hong Kong was secure, and [3] the NGO (CIA agents) were escorted out of China.
Well it seems that the American “news media” is readying the American population for some blow back.
One year later, it appears that Los Angeles is expecting the second bio-weapon that hit China; the Death by violent-vomiting bio-weapon. Hitting Los Angles this Summer. Just peachy. And you know, this is a “new virus” of a completely different bio-weapon family. The COVID vaccine won’t protect anyone. Read about it HERE. So local California authorities are taking the necessary precautions for this event.
Attack Three.Death by Diarrhea Virus. The third bio-weapon, the Swine G4 virus is now hitting America. It’s the “spiteful” virus that causes death by diarrhea unless immediate treatment is provided.
Yeah, the infected shit themselves to death and shit out their entire organs though internal hemorrhaging. Just peachy. And you know, this is a “new virus” of a completely different bio-weapon family. The COVID vaccine won’t protect anyone. Trump launched it against China after his eight battle carrier flotilla sailed home in defeat in 2020.
But all that is just an appetizer for what’s to come…
So that’s it, you might think.
The uninformed are waiting until “herd immunity” is attained against the “global pandemic” and then everything will return back to normal. Right? Isn’t that the impression that everyone has, eh?
Well it isn’t.
America is so thick-headed and run by idiots that they are just following the “marching orders” laid down years ago. And given the absolutely unexpected (by American elites) turn of events, that the actions being taken by America (by following out of date and obsolete orders) just makes America look like it’s being run by idiots.
I think that the United States is so stuffed up with imbeciles inside Washington, the military, the government, and the media that both Russia and China are toying with them like a cat toys with a mouse…
America, as it is being run today, is helpless. And it shows.
Yeah.
It’s like this.
And I am not the only person to think so.
Consider this… fine article by Mr. E. A. ( I will provide a link to his site once I get it, and place it here.)
New article–NBC Reporter Give Putin the Third Degree.
I read both the transcript from the Kremlin as well as watched the whole spectacle on RT, it’s also on the Russian Insider YT channel, if you want to subject yourself to it.
NBC Reporter Gives Putin the Third Degree. (He left out the most important question—Mr. Putin, do you still beat your wife?)
On June 11th, President Putin met with NBC journalist, Keir Simmons.
Simmons started off expressing his appreciation for the first meeting after almost three years, and without pausing for Putin to acknowledge the greeting, immediately launched into this litany of accusations posing as questions.
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What was so striking—if you’ll pardon the pun—was the accusatory assumption of guilt, implicit in the questions. It’s as if some presumed guilty serial killer (whoops, sorry, President Putin) was finally brought to the police station to be confronted with numerous allegations…….but no evidence.
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Putin’s ability to keep his composure was pretty remarkable. It seemed as if he was in a ring, and letting his opponent throw multiple punches which he parried. Simmons assumed that he was in charge of the interview:
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“Keir Simmons: It’s just that there’s a limited amount of time, Mr President. Unless we can have more time, I’d be very happy to have to keep going for another 30 minutes.
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Vladimir Putin: I determine the time here, so don’t worry about time.”
The upstart Pulitzer Prize aspirant needed to be reminded who’s boss.
It seems that since the 1958 release of this novel, the USA has still not learned its lesson:
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What is the theme of the Ugly American?
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Racism and Cultural Insensitivity. Despite living and working in another country, most members of the American Foreign Service hold racist views and lack awareness of the cultures they live amongst.
After patiently listening to a series of accusatory, “Guilty until proven innocent” questions, the topic turned to interference in Russia’s affairs, and accusations of Russia interfering in US affairs.
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Simmons objected to Russia’s laws restricting the ability of foreigners’ activity in Russia. Putin noted that it is the USA itself that wrote such a law decades ago.
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Putin summed it up by saying:
We have a saying: ”Don’t be mad at the mirror if you are ugly.“ It has nothing to do with you personally. But if somebody blames us for something, what I say is, ”Why don’t you look at yourselves?“ You will see yourselves in the mirror, not us.
Yet Another Instance of US Cognitive Dissonance and Psychological Projection.
President Putin gave a speech at the UN a few years back pointing out US destructive policies, and asked, “Can’t you see what you have done?” The tone of the interview was yet another example of the inability of the US media and presumably Washington Consensus complex, to see its own crimes, while assuming its own innocence—Cognitive Dissonance, while blaming others for what it does and has been doing—Psychological Projection.
This begs the question, what is going on here? Is this merely a psychological lapse?
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Or is it something more contrived and cynical?
Accuse the victim of that for which you are guilty
Why Did Putin Agree to this Interview?
We of course can’t know, however, to this observer, it looks like he just gave NBC more editable fodder to feed the Western audiences.
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The best example is this edited snippet.
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Keir Simmons: … Mr President. Do you worry that your opposition to NATO has actually strengthened it? For six years, NATO has spent more on defense.
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Vladimir Putin: Some defense. During the USSR era, Gorbachev, who is still, thank God, with us, got a promise, a verbal promise that there would be no NATO expansion to the east. Where is that…
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Keir Simmons: Where is that…
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Vladimir Putin: …promise? Two ways of expansion.
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Keir Simmons: Where is that written down? Where is that promise written down?
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Vladimir Putin: Right, right. Well done. Correct. You’ve got a point. Got you good.
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Well, congratulations. Of course, everything should be sealed and written on paper. But what was the point of expanding NATO to the east and bringing this infrastructure to our borders, and all of this before saying that we are the ones who have been acting aggressively?
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Why? On what basis? Did Russia after the USSR collapsed present any threat to the US or European countries? We voluntarily withdrew our troops from Eastern Europe. Leaving them just on empty land. Our people there, military personnel for decades lived there in what was not normal conditions, including their children.
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We went to tremendous expenses. And what did we get in response? We got in response infrastructure next to our borders. And now, you are saying that we are threatening somebody. We’re conducting war games on a regular basis, including sometimes surprise military exercises. Why should it worry the NATO partners? I just don’t understand that.
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Keir Simmons: Will you commit now not to send any further Russian troops into Ukrainian sovereign territory?
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Vladimir Putin: Look, did we say that we were planning to send our armed formations anywhere? We were conducting war games in our territory. How can this not be clear? I’m saying it again because I want your audience to hear it, your listeners to hear it both on the screens of their televisions and on the internet.
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We conducted military exercises in our territory. Imagine if we sent our troops into direct proximity to your borders. What would have been your response? We didn’t do that. We did it in our territory. You conducted war games in Alaska. God bless you. But you had crossed an ocean, brought thousands of personnel, thousands of units of military equipment close to our borders, and yet you believe that we are acting aggressively and somehow you’re not acting aggressively. Just look at that. The pot calling the kettle black.
So how was it edited?
Putin: Gorbachev, who is still, thank God, with us, got a promise, a verbal promise that there would be no NATO expansion to the east. Where is that…
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Keir Simmons: Where is that…
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Vladimir Putin: …promise? Two ways of expansion.
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Keir Simmons: Where is that written down? Where is that promise written down?
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Vladimir Putin: Right, right. Well done. Correct. You’ve got a point. Got you good. Well, congratulations.
In other words, it was perfectly fine to renege on repeated verbal promises.
So why did Putin accede to this interview? Good question.
Here is the list of questions, taken from the Kremlin transcript.
Russia is preparing, perhaps within months, to supply Iran with an advanced satellite system, enabling Tehran to track military targets. Is that true?
President Biden has defined his first trip to Europe as quote, ”about rallying the world’s democracies.“ He views you as a leader of autocrats, who is determined to undermine the liberal democratic order. Is that true?
President Biden asked you to meet with him. He didn’t make any preconditions. Were you surprised?
Will you go into the summit agreeing to begin more arms control talks immediately after the summit?
President Biden wants predictability and stability. Is that what you want?But he would say that you have caused a lot of instability and unpredictability.
You once described President Trump as a bright person, talented. How would you describe President Biden?
President Biden said one time when you met, you were inches away from each other, close to each other. And he said to you, ”I’m looking into your eyes, and I can’t see a soul.“ And you said, ”We understand each other.“ Do you remember that exchange?
President Biden is saying he told you to your face, ”You don’t have a soul.“ (Laughter.)
Would you have felt that was an inappropriate thing to say?
What do you think of the Black Lives Matter movement?
there is now a weight of evidence, a long list of alleged state-sponsored cyberattacks. Let me give you five.
The US intelligence community says Russia
interfered with the 2016 election.
Election security officials said Russia tried to interfere with the 2020 election.
Cybersecurity researchers said government hackers targeted COVID vaccine researchers, hacking for COVID vaccines.
In April, the Treasury Department said the SolarWinds attack was the world’s worst, including nine federal agencies.
And just before your summit, Microsoft says it has discovered another attack with targets including organizations that have criticised you, Mr Putin. Mr President, are you waging a cyber war against America?
Russian-speaking criminals is the allegation, are targeting the American way of life: food, gas, water, hospitals, transport. Why would you let Russian-speaking criminals disrupt your diplomacy? Wouldn’t you want to know who’s responsible?
You don’t ask for a truce unless you’re fighting in a [cyberspace] war.
Russia is fighting on that[cyberspace] battlefield. Correct? That if you can come to an agreement over hacking and election interference, then you’ll call off the hacking and the election interference if America agrees not to comment on your elections and your political opponents?
What should Americans worry about? What might happen next if there’s no agreement on cyber? Do you fear that American intelligence is deep inside Russian systems and has the ability to do you a lot of damage in cyber?
he’ll [Biden]raise the issue of Alexei Navalny, targeted for assassination, now in a Russian jail. Mr President, why are you so threatened by opposition?
In America, we call what you’re doing now ”whataboutism.“ ”What about this? What about that?“ It’s a way of not answering the question. Let me ask you a direct question.
Can I just ask you a direct question? Did you order Alexei Navalny’s assassination?
Mr President, are you a killer?
Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead. Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned by polonium. Sergei Magnitsky, allegedly beaten and died in prison. Boris Nemtsov, shot moments from the Kremlin, moments from here. Mikhail Lesin died of blunt trauma in Washington, DC. Are all of these a coincidence, Mr President?
Did you have prior knowledge that a commercial airliner would be forced to land in Belarus and that a journalist would be arrested?
You appear to have approved of it judging by your meeting with President Lukashenko soon afterwards. In the case of neighbouring Ukraine earlier this year, the European Union said you had more than 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. Was that an attempt to get Washington’s attention?
Mr President. Do you worry that your opposition to NATO has actually strengthened it? For six years, NATO has spent more on defence.
Where is that written down? Where is that promise [that Nato would not expand outside of Germany written down?]
Will you commit now not to send any further Russian troops into Ukrainian sovereign territory?
The Biden administration has said that at your summit they will bring up the case of two US prisoners in Russia, Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed. They are two former Marines. Trevor Reed is suffering from COVID in prison. Why don’t you release them ahead of the summit? Wouldn’t that show goodwill?
And on the prisoner swap question, is that something that you would consider? Are you looking to negotiate? You’re meeting with the President.
Just to be clear so we hear it from you, which Russian prisoners in the US would you be hoping to bring back to Russia by name?
ust quickly before I move on, on the subject of prisons, again with Alexei Navalny, will you commit that you will personally ensure that Alexei Navalny will leave prison alive?
You complain so much about NATO to your west. Why do you never complain about China’s militarisation to your east?
What do you think of China’s treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang?
There is the accusation of a million Uyghurs in so-called concentration camps. Is that your message to the Muslim communities in the former Soviet Union? You don’t think anything wrong is happening there?
It’s just a question of whether you are prepared to criticise China. China, for example, abstained on Crimea at the Security Council. China’s biggest banks have not contravened American sanctions against Russia. Do you think you get 100% support from China?
Why are you splitting off from the US space programme and moving forward with China?
If the People’s Liberation Army made a move on Taiwan how would Russia respond to that?
You’re threatening to close that crossing in July at the Security Council. Why would you do that, knowing that it will cause the death of refugees?
Mr President, you extended the Constitution so that you could be President of Russia until 2036. Do you worry that the longer you are in power and without any sign of someone to replace you, the more instability there may be when you finally do choose to leave office?
Meanwhile, while Russia is telling the USA to fuck off, so is China.
Why can America send troops and bombers to the border of Russia, and the border of China and expect that no one will shoot them down? Why does the Pentagon believe that they are somehow immune from a military combat event? Why does the USA assume that Russia and China won’t start behaving the same way that America has been behaving all these decades?
Maybe we are starting to see efforts that are telling the neocon “war hawks” in Washington DC, to SHUT THE FUCK UP, or go ahead and start a war. They are not going to play your fucking games any longer. And the morons in Washington DC are taking the bait. They are like moronic children playing with dynamite.
Of course, the American alt-Right, and mainstream media won’t dare mention this. Probably right now there are meetings with professional diversity officers and LGBT advisors discussing how to manipulate the news feeds to calm the situation down. After they take internal polls, and get direction, will they come up with a new narrative that will support an aggressive China and Russia.
But that’s not all.
China just been flying 28 fighter planes in loops and circles all around Taiwan. You won’t find this news in America. I know, I looked.
Maybe tomorrow.
But right now it’s been all over the Chinese media for the last three days. America only displays news to box Americans into believing an approved narrative.
These actions and activities are all so new, and so unexpected, that the Pentagon and the CIA / NSA really hasn’t a clue as to how to spin them.
It seems like they want to provoke America to come out to play. So yeah, what else the fuck does it look like. Will America take the bait?
Curious Bullshit
But America is still playing the same old games. It is still pushing the same tired narratives.
What constitutes “news” from the United States is just getting crazier and crazier. Check out these two outlandish stores about China that I found on Drudge today;
It's from the fierce neocon publication the National Review. But these people are so deluded. I don't even know where to begin.
[1] There is no water scarcity problem in China in any form, shape or configuration anywhere. And secondly, [2] China IS the Chinese people. There just isn't a "ruling class" like you have in the West.
The point is that those who are in this "echo chamber" believe this nonsense. No wonder they seem to be like a moronic idiot monster thrashing about to us "normal's".
I mentioned this article to my Chinese friends inside of China and they actually laughed. Laughed! That is just how deluded, out of touch with reality, and insane these people are.
It's all a pile of bull manure. Not true in the least. But what do you expect from the neocon publication Wall street Journal. Again. Those in the echo chambers believe this nonsense.
Not even remotely true.
That is the essence of propaganda: pick some big lies, repeat them endlessly, and accuse anybody who is willing to contradict them with consorting with the enemy.
Anybody who dares to challenge the propaganda narrative is automatically either a “Kremlin bot”, a “fifty center” or “Xi Peng stooge.”
This is, of course, a convenient dodge. When all sorts of things are going wrong, from lost wars to stolen elections to stolen retirements to stolen futures of one’s children to weapons systems that don’t work, it is easiest to find a single scapegoat.
For such a huge set of problems, the scapegoat has to be a very large one, and Russia and China just both happens to be the right size.
Jim Kunstler:
I think what is really going on, what's sort of behind the insanity of this, is the very strange and mysterious collapse of the intellectual class in America.
Now, you’ve got a class of people in the media and academia, highly educated people, the permanent bureaucracy in the government who now believe in crazy things and are proposing dangerous things and seem to have just completely lost it.
It does demonstrate something about the madness of crowds.
Some things, in a way, are beyond the rational reach of analysis. You know, you're just in kind of unchartered territory of group herd emotion whether it's wildebeests or lemmings or people on the upper east side of Manhattan setting their hair on fire.
I think the real question you have to ask is what happens to a society when the thinking class can't think anymore? To me, that's the most dangerous thing. And the mendacity they are showing is amazing.
Preparation for war
The United States made it perfectly clear what excuses that it would use for Congress to authorize a formal war declaration against China. These were all laid out in the March 2021 Anchorage, Alaska meeting.
And since that date, the world pretty much understands that when the “negotiation party” told China “We don’t want a war.” that it is now official. The USA will conduct a war against China.
And the “negotiations” are only a mere formality.
Both Russia and China are aware of what is going on.
And America is playing and following a script that was established years ago, based on [1] faulty data, [2] incorrect and false Intel, [3] corrupted perceptions and [4] moronic leadership. And they STILL haven’t deviated from that script.
As time moves forward, both China and Russia tick off the predictable check list of American actions, and one after the other each box is checked off, and the predictable actions take place.
Meanwhile, China and Russia maneuvers forces, political assets, Geo-political situations to their advantage. Always guarded to see if the American leadership will deviate form the old stale plan. But it doesn’t. Which might be a really pleasant surprise.
I would well imagine that maybe the USA is much smarter than this, and allowing Russia and China to be lulled into a state of comfortable deception. But I am not so sure that this is actually the case. Noting the neocon war hawks in Washington DC, they are very two-dimensional actors with little hard practical experience and shows linear thinking clouded by emotional distortion.
We, you and I, sit on the sidelines and watch all this take place.
It truly seems like the United States is being run by morons that are just following instructions from other morons who all don’t have a clue as to what the issues are, the stakes actually are, and are absolutely deluded by some kind of mental illness of their superiority when there is no actual advantage in any way, shape or form.
It’s pretty messed up.
To me, it seems that America is sleepwalking toward what it thinks will be a nice standard “boilerplate” “distant” war. From with [1] the military-industrial complex can profit from, [2] the government can use as an excuse to suppress American revolting elements, and [3] from which it can buy some time to rebuild key technologies, infrastructure and economic advantage.
But it is delusional.
Fundamentally it has no advantage. And digging a deep hole in beach sand will only result in more digging. Nothing will actually be accomplished.
And Russia and China consider this activity dangerous, and are positioning themselves to provide a “killing blow” if need be to “an insane and rabid dog”. And to me it seems like Russia and China are quite aware of this and are like a cat toying with a mouse that it caught.
Us outsiders who see the whole picture outside of the American propaganda machine can see this most clearly and we are both bemused and horrified at the same time.
It’s good that Americans are kept in the dark.
Can you just imagine the horror and internal strife if Americans found out the true extent of the American government’s actions, plans and desires.
Conclusions
Just because the world is fucked, doesn’t mean that you need be too.
No one really even understands who is coming up with all of these lunatic ideas, such as ...
“we have to stop the Chinese by doing an earth-shattering world war because we disagree with the way they are managing their Islamic terror threat and also we have a map that indicates they are violating Vietnamese fishing rights.”
My cats have taught me a lot over the years. One of the most valuable lessons that I have learned has become a major platform of my life. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to relearn this most fundamental lesson.
“Life is hard. Then you nap.”
Do you want more?
If you liked this article, you can read similar articles by viewing the New Beginnings index for this class here;
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Google has taken on the role of the former East German Secret police, known as the Stasi . They have been implementing these cold war policies with the full blessings of the United States government, and it’s going to get far, far worse.
Head's up! I am using a ton load of dated references in this post. I do so out of necessity.
It's this Republican said this, and that Democrat did that.
It's all bullshit.
Both political parties are playing a game. Don't fall for the details of the game. Pay attention to the tools that they are using to manipulate you.
Google.
Do not get upset by the dated references to Obama, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and all the rest. I used what was available to me. Keep in mind that the political figures are PUPPETS. When reading this article pay attention to how Google is used as a tool to manipulate you.
Google is no longer “just” a simple indexing medium for the Internet. It has grown in popularity, and has leveraged its finances to the extent of hiring brilliant people. As such, the United States, under President Obama has collaborated with it to greatly expand the NSA and surveillance capabilities of the government.
Google controls what you read and view on the Internet.
That is fine, if you have a very simplistic view of the world. As most humans do. It is our nature as herd animals.
“An under-the-radar startup funded by billionaire Eric Schmidt has become a major technology vendor for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, underscoring the bonds between Silicon Valley and Democratic politics.
The Groundwork, according to Democratic campaign operatives and technologists, is part of efforts by Schmidt—the executive chairman of Google parent-company Alphabet—to ensure that Clinton has the engineering talent needed to win the election. And it is one of a series of quiet investments by Schmidt that recognize how modern political campaigns are run, with data analytics and digital outreach as vital ingredients that allow candidates to find, court, and turn out critical voter blocs.
There is also another gap in play: The shrinking distance between Google and the Democratic Party. Former Google executive Stephanie Hannon is the Clinton campaign’s chief technology officer, and a host of ex-Googlers are currently employed as high-ranking technical staff at the Obama White House. Schmidt, for his part, is one of the most powerful donors in the Democratic Party—and his influence does not stem only from his wealth, estimated by Forbes at more than $10 billion.
According to campaign finance disclosures, Clinton’s campaign is the Groundwork’s only political client. Its employees are mostly back-end software developers with experience at blue-chip tech firms like Netflix, Dreamhost, and Google.”
– From the article; Meet “Groundwork” – Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Stealth Startup Working to Make Hillary Clinton President
Google is not an investigative website like others. It is the most popular search tool used in the United States. The reader must recognize that, as such, it is absolutely controlled by the political machinery originating out of Washington, DC.
Thus, using Google to search to non-biased information is impossible. (A commentator suggested you do a google image search on “white couple” – he said the results would make your blood boil. He was right.)
All the searches are explicitly tailored towards a progressive-narrative that originates out of the United States government. (Just like Facebook.) This is fine for those whom only want a censored dialog presented to them.
However, that bodes poorly for the more open-minded and adventuresome in this world.
Google Integrated with the United States Government
There is a very good reason why China refuses to permit Google to operate inside China. They simply do not want the Internet habits of their citizens to be monitored and tracked. And who can blame them?
“Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad, But it has. Schmidt's tenure as CEO saw Google integrate with the shadiest of U.S. power structures as it expanded into a geographically invasive megacorporation.”
-Julian Assange wrote in his book.
Assange became concerned about former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s ties with the State Department in 2009 when Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state. He has claimed that Schmidt, who is a chairman at the company, has worked with the Clintons for years, as Donald Trump accused Google of political bias saying that it suppresses negative news about Clinton.
Speaking by video link to an anniversary news conference in Berlin earlier this week, he said the leaks include ‘significant material’ on war, arms, oil, internet giant Google, the U.S. election and mass surveillance. (2016) WikiLeaks hoped ‘to be publishing every week for the next 10 weeks,’ Assange said.
Google tracks your location always
Google is facing new scrutiny in the wake of revelations that it stores users’ location data even when “Location History” is turned off.
Once caught, Google used to quietly change it’s illegal activities. Now it simply doesn’t give a damn.
Google quietly edited its description of the practice on its own website—while continuing said practice—to clarify that “some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other services, like Search and Maps.”
As a result of the previously unknown practice, which was first exposed by the Associated Press, Google has now been sued by a man in San Diego. Simultaneously, activists in Washington, DC are urging the Federal Trade Commission to examine whether the company is in breach of its 2011 consent decree with the agency.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court last Friday in San Francisco, attorneys representing a man named Napoleon Patacsil argued that Google is violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act and the state’s constitutional right to privacy.
The lawsuit seeks class-action status, and it would include both an “Android Class” and “iPhone Class” for the potential millions of people in the United States with such phones who turned off their Location History and nonetheless had it recorded by Google. It will likely take months or longer for the judge to determine whether there is a sufficient class.
Perhaps one of the reasons why Huawei was banned in the United States was because they did not preload Google spyware.
Also on August 17, attorneys from the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote in a sternly worded three-page letter to the FTC that Google’s practices are in clear violation of the 2011 settlement with the agency.
In that settlement, Google agreed that it would not misrepresent anything related to
"(1) the purposes for which it collects and uses covered information, and (2) the extent to which consumers may exercise control over the collection, use, or disclosure of covered information."
Until the Associated Press story on August 13, Google’s policy simply stated:
"You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored."
This turns out to not be true.
Google did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.
Alphabet Inc.’s cloud-based Google Photos service
Every time you use Google or a Google-related product, such as their browser, etc., to upload a photo or use your camera to take a photo, or your computer to take a photo, Google keeps the image. Not only that, but they have created a database of images where facial recognition is used to link photos with geolocation data (as well as device data) and provide a photographic record of a given person.
So, if your friend uses Google Chrome to upload a harmless dessert picture up to (say for example) Tumblr, and a blurry image of you in the background is in the picture…congratulations! You are now part of the United States government data base, and they know where you were, and what you looked like at that time.
This software is functionally similar to the Facebook software known as Deepface.
Beware
In an interview, Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies, advises against having any association with Google. He warns of their dangerous practices and comments that they have declared war on anyone who is not a progressive socialist. They expect everyone to cower away in silence. Their expectations are that their consumers be placid and as non-threatening as possible.
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. How is this legal? . How is this not a monopoly? . Why it is permitted to exist int his form? . The Google World infographic created by Overdrive Interactive is a visual representation of Google’s projects, services, technologies, and companies acquired by Google. View the Google World or download it as a PDF with live links to over 200 assets. .
Zach worked as a senior software engineer at both Google and YouTube for over eight years.
He has, and shares, his inside knowledge of his experiences and knowledge. He is convinced that Google and other software giants in silicon-valley possess a global monopoly. A monopoly that is both dangerous and evil. He also states that Google is not a reliable source of information any longer.
We should all heed his advice.
Google’s monopoly over search is mandated simply because of a continued reassurance that it is an unbiased search platform. Yet that is absolutely not true. Google is actively suppressing and censoring information. It is impossible to censor something and be unbiased at the same time.
Manipulation for political objectives
“…If you retained direct links, it was still there depending on the source, but Google wouldn't find it all of a sudden. I started choosing what to read by searching with three or four engines and picking what Google seemed to be not finding but everyone else did. Now, however that doesn't work, a lot of non-Google engines use Google, and the ones that don't have been biased corrupted also.”
The absolute partisan support for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 general election should be enough to satisfy even the most ignorant reader of this manuscript. Google censored, lied, rewrote articles, modified search results, altered hash tags, and blanked out everything deemed a threat to their preferred nominee.
I get it. Not everyone reads the same kind of news, or is exposed to the same kinds of things as other people are. It is ok.
If the reader wants to think that Google is an unbiased tool, believe it. I don’t really care.
There was a time in my life when I actually believed that Santa Claus really existed. There also was a time when I believed that I needed to pay taxes to repair the roads. It’s crazy! As I lived in Pennsylvania at the time.
It was (maybe is) one of the most corrupt states where the DOT funds are routinely stolen from. OK.
Here’s some links for some of the more interested parties;
The entire company, all their money, all their employees and all their efforts were single focused on one objective; the [1] control of the election process (for the election of a puppet figurehead), and [2] a continuance of control over people that represents the desires of the oligarchy inside the United States
Well, the company is getting some negative repercussions from their activity. Go here.
Zach Vorheis has some things to say.
For the video, as well as links to the transcripts, visit Mercola.com here.
It’s pretty much well known, but the Untied States is owned by a handful of oligarchs. They utilize companies and manipulate the people in order to have them do their bidding. Thus, the point of sharing this information is that the largest mechanism for obtaining information in the world is terribly compromised.
Google is manipulating search results to influence our behavior. At the same time, denying this is happening.
The Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal published a a very thorough investigation covering these same points. As well as explaining the consequences of this behavior.
Disclosure of evil intent on Project Veritas
Zach Vorhies released about 950 pages of internal Google documents. These documents provide a comprehensive picture of what’s going on at the upper management within Google.
They illustrate that Google has become corrupt, evil, political in nature and aligned with wealthy oligarchs who intend to use the platform to manipulate great masses of people. In order words, to use Google much the same way that “Over-seers” used to control plantation slaves.
What Happened to ‘Don’t Be Evil’?
Zach comments…
“Everything started out with Google really great,” Vorhies says.
“They had this mission statement of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful. They also had this idea of ‘Don’t be evil.’ It was built right into their initial public offering (IPO) statements.
I thought at the time, ‘This is great. This is exactly the kind of company that the world needs. We need to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible. We need to let the algorithms decide what goes to the top and let the users decide what’s most useful for them and then make sure that other people are able to find that information.’
Google stayed true to those principles all the way up until 2016, until Donald Trump won the election.
For some reason, they decided they were going to throw all these mission statements away and go after the president of the United States, censor the internet and distort the news so that people’s searches could be redirected towards anti-presidential sentiment.
This eventually morphed into not just censorship of the president, but censorship of information related to health …
I realized [that] if this was allowed to continue, then this agenda of Big Pharma would be able to become … ‘the truth’ …
Once I found out that Google was censoring a lot of information, I started looking at the information it was censoring with a new degree of ‘They wouldn’t be censoring it unless it was true,’ sort of thing.
It’s a strange heuristic to use to figure out what’s true in the world, but you’ve just got to figure out what they’re censoring. You kind of understand that they’re censoring it because it’s not Big Tech-friendly. It’s not friendly to the established players.
Some ‘Fake News’ Isn’t so Fake After All
Shortly after Trump won the presidential election, you started hearing more and more about the scourge of “fake news.” Google, like Facebook and others, decided they had to protect users from fake news. The problem is, who determines what’s fake and what’s not?
Exactly.
As Jordan Peterson said in regards to hate speech: "Who is going to regulate it? Who is going to define it?
I know the answer to that - the last people in the world you would want to."
Using Google’s internal search engine, Vorhies set out to determine what Google’s definition of fake news was.
He found several examples in a presentation.
However, in it were actual, verifiable real news events.
“I went, ‘Wait a minute. Is this about fake news or is this about controlling the narrative for like political purposes?'” Vorhies says.
He began collecting these documents because he knew they were explosive enough that Google would remove them if word ever got out about them.
In his continued search for real news presented as fake, he started unearthing other disturbing projects.
The main project responsible for Google censorship is a thing called ‘Machine Learning Fairness’ (ML Fairness).
As you imagine, they’re not going to call their censorship regime something bad. They’re going to call it something like ‘fairness.’
So, if you’re against that, you’re against fairness.
It’s a euphemism. I discovered there was this umbrella project, ‘ML Fairness,’ and there were these sub-components like ‘Project Purple Rain,’ which is a 24-hour response team that is monitoring the internet.
How Machine Learning Fairness Twists Perception of Reality
Just what is ML Fairness and how does it work? Vorhies explains:
Let’s say that this circle right here represents the entire spectrum of all possible artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. ML Fairness is a small part of that type of AI. It’s a relatively new type of AI. What machine learning does is it simulates brain neurons and how they fire.
If you remember how a brain neuron fires, it takes in as input signals from other neurons and then mixes those signals together and decides whether it wants to fire or not, based on the signals that it receives.
Well, these artificial neurons do something similar. They have a collection of inputs, depending on the internal rule set. It will fire depending on the inputs it gets … And then that output is used as input for further downstream processing.
If you have this collection of millions of simulated neurons … you can start to create very complex behavior that’s able to solve problems, like chess or the game Go …
It can classify hate speech. That’s the part that’s interesting to me — how this thing could be used to classify information across the internet.
ML Fairness is a type of AI that takes information on the internet, classifies it and then ranks it. And then the Google engine will figure out whether the information is fair or not. And if it is ‘fair,’ it goes to the top. If it’s not fair, then it gets pushed to the bottom. That’s what ML Fairness is in a nutshell.
What this manipulation ultimately ends up doing is presenting a twisted and false view of the world. What you’re seeing in your search results is what the AI algorithm decided is most fair — not what’s actually happening in the real world.
This is how you now end up getting automated search suggestions such as “men can have periods” and “men can have babies,” even though these are biological impossibilities. However, the algorithm deems the idea that only women can menstruate and bear children as “unfair” and basically “sexist,” and thus it’s pushing these ridiculous search suggestions to the top.
This obnoxious discrepancy is clear when using search terms like “men can …” The manipulation of reality will not be as transparent when using health or political search words, when you cannot be absolutely sure, ahead of time, about what the absolute truth is.
Did Google Conspire to Commit Treason?
Vorhies saw these changes starting to take place in early 2017.
Shortly afterwards, Google announced it was going to start assigning an “authoritativeness score” to all news content.
“I was able to see this ranking on internal documents. High rankings were given to outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
“These outlets, in my opinion, have been producing propaganda,” Vorhies says. “They led to us into war with Iraq with the weapons of mass destruction hoax. They’ve lied to us [about] Vietnam. They have a history of supporting every war and military encouragement around the world that has [led to] the destruction of millions of lives.”
In June 2017, chief executive officer of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, announced that this was how they were going to filter news content across the YouTube platforms.
As Vorhies expected, this led to a clamp down on anything that goes against the mainstream narrative.
“Around that time, I had the fortune of catching [another] seditious activity by Google. What I caught them doing was deleting words out of the translation dictionary from Arabic to English, in order to make a Trump tweet sound crazy.2,3”
President Trump had recently come back from a visit to Saudi Arabia when, on May 31, 2017, he tweeted: “Despite the negative constant press, covfefe.” Originally, people were able to translate “covfefe” to “We will stand up.” Taken together, you could see President Trump’s tweet basically said, “Despite the negative constant press, we will stand up.”
“People got really excited about that,” Vorhies says. “Well, The New York Times decided that they were going to write an entire article saying, ‘Actually, this word is nonsense. And everyone who thinks there’s a decode is just wrong.’
The same day that this article came out, I believe it was June 1, 2017, a senior executive person at Google … of one of the AI divisions, wrote up a design document saying, ‘We translated this world from Arabic to English.
But according to The New York Times, that’s not right. That’s actually nonsense, so let’s get rid of the word.’
And so, they got rid of the word.
The team that was responsible for getting rid of this word called themselves the ‘Derrida Team.’ Why is that significant? Because there was a French philosopher by the name of Jacques Derrida, who advocated for the destruction of Western culture through the manipulation and censorship of language.
What a coincidence that this team responsible for censoring words would have the same name as this very significant philosopher who is considered the father of post-modernism.
About six days later, I saw the newspapers were making a push for invoking the 25th Amendment to remove a sitting president from office due to mental incapacitation. One of the reasons that they cited was how Trump was tweeting nonsense.
Now, wait a minute, that was made nonsense by this manipulation of the dictionary! I realized these people have gone too far. There’s obviously a collusion here. I have to bring this to attention no matter what.
This isn’t because I’m necessarily a Trump supporter — I didn’t vote for him — this is simply because they can’t be doing this to a sitting president of the United States. That just can’t happen. It’s treason.
If this is going to happen, then I’ve got to let the public [and] law enforcement know about it. Because if I don’t, then I’m part of a conspiracy of silence … It was at that point that I decided I could no longer sit in silence. I took my cache of documents and I started to prepare for a disclosure event.”
Comment: Finally, an explanation for the infamous covfefe tweet'! It's insane that this word was actually a translation, yet it was used to paint Trump as insane. And the fact that, up until this insider document dump,
NO ONE KNEW THIS.
YouTube Censorship Has Had Lethal Consequences
In 2018, the real-world ramifications of censorship hit home when an Iranian YouTube creator who had recently been demonetized marched into YouTube headquarters and opened fire on employees and then shot herself.
"Her name was Nasim [Najafi Aghdam]. She had a video that went viral in Iran ... She was creating really bizarre videos that were just — I don't know — I watched them and I actually strangely loved them. I couldn't stop watching them. They were so weird.
She decided that she was going to quit her job and become a full-time content creator, like millions of others ... YouTube was the platform to do that. Everyone was getting a lot of subscribers and were trying to generate money, get monetized on the platform ...
They would get a cut of the ads that were running when people interact with the ads or view them ... What YouTube did is they made a blanket ban. Anyone under 10,000 subscribers got censored. By censorship, I mean demonetized. They lost all of the funding that they could get for their videos. They can still post videos, they just couldn't get any money [from Google Ads] for it.
And so, this person had just lost her job. She felt she was being oppressed by YouTube. She drove all the way from San Diego, came to the YouTube headquarters on 901 Cherry Avenue ... came into the lunch area patio, took out a handgun and started firing ...
She shot a couple of people. Ran out of ammo, reloaded and shot some more and then [shot] herself in the chest and [bled] to death ... Obviously, this person was mentally deranged but, also, she was triggered by Google's censorship. Now I've got this very personal story about how censorship has affected my safety.
You would think that maybe YouTube would [rethink] its censorship, but no. They didn't ... Every day I would come into work and I would think, 'You know, with this increase in censorship, is someone going to come in with a gun?'"
Google Attempts to Destroy Vorhies by ‘Lawfare’
Vorhies resigned from Google June 28, 2019, and was immediately put under investigation, as the company had logs showing the many documents he’d been searching for and reading through.
Vorhies tells the story of what happened next:
"When I went to Project Veritas, I went under anonymity. We only released two pages of the 950 that they had [been given]. My hope was that Google would leave me alone ... But they decided they weren't going to do that.
They decided they were going to attempt to financially destroy me by engaging in lawfare, which is warfare via the legal system.
Within a few weeks of me disclosing ML Fairness to Project Veritas, they sent me threatening letters, demanding access to all my data outside of work ...
I wrote them back a letter admitting I had retained files, telling them I had given them to law enforcement ... The NDA, the nondisclosure agreement I signed is nonenforceable in cases where the company is committing criminal activity. Sedition is criminal activity, which means that the NDA is null and void.
I can submit evidence of Google's criminal activity to the government and to the media when the company is engaging in unlawful activity. That's what I did. Also, I signed the NDA in good faith, believing that Google's word of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful and 'Don't be evil,' were truthful statements ...
I met an attorney who was representing Kevin Cernekee, another Google engineer who attempted to blow the whistle in the most legitimate way possible, which was to notify the Federal Labor Relations Authority in California. Kevin gave these papers to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Google responded by ambushing him with HR, seizing his laptop, seeing all the documents that he had downloaded, and then firing him and creating a legal theory that he had hacked into Google to get documents so that he could reconstruct Google's legal strategy and maybe even sell it.
They applied criminal charges against him. They made him defend himself in court for his collection of evidence that he had sent to the NLRB. He's [spent] $100,000 dollars of his own money defending himself from Google, so I knew what was in store for me.
[Cernekee's] lawyer was like, 'Yeah. This is the first step in a very painful process that's going to drive on for years. They're going to make it very expensive. Their goal is to destroy you.' Well, in that case, I'm not going to fight in the legal law. I'm going to fight in the court of public opinion.
I decided at that point to come out to Project Veritas and disclose who I was so that I could get eyes [on me], and I said, 'If Google's going to take me down, then I'm going to leverage that so that everyone else can see what they do and what they're really about. And then we can make Google's censorship program part of the national discussion.'
I disclosed everything. I released it to the public, all 950 pages ... August 17, 2019 ... [I've] tried to become a cultural force so that we can hold Google to account of what they're doing, because their censorship is wrong.
It's wrong for America. It's anti-American. Their election meddling is something that needs to be looked at, needs to be watched, because they've meddled with the elections in the past. They're meddling in the elections now.
They were able to deactivate Tulsi Gabbard's ad account directly following the Democratic debates.
They've meddled in the Ireland elections.
They've meddled in the Brazil elections.
We know this because there was a Supreme Court ruling that released the evidence showing they had a secret agreement with one of the politicians to generate dirt and boost it up on the current president of Brazil."
How Autofill Can Shift Political Opinion
Vorhies goes on to explain and describe how Google tools such as autofill search recommendations can be used to sway public opinion on political (and other topics), which can have significant political consequences.
Autofill is what happens when you start typing a search query into a search engine and algorithms kick in to offer suggestions to complete your search. We’ve been led to believe that whatever the autofill recommendations are is what most people are in fact searching for — Google has stated that the suggestions given are generated by a collection of user data — but that’s not true, at least not anymore.
“This story about the autofill first got disclosed by Dr. Robert Epstein, who is a Harvard-trained psychologist and former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today,” Vorhies explains.
“What he said was that Google had flipped a bunch of votes for Hillary using this autosuggest feature. I’ve investigated this claim.
I’ve verified it to be true …
It turns out that a lot of the popular searches were being suppressed.
For example, you typed in ‘Clinton body count.’ It’s a popular search term. This brings up all the people who have died in the decades that were associated with Hillary Clinton.
Well, this search result has been deleted off the search suggestion. What’s happened instead is that a bunch of negative search terms have been inserted that went against the current president of the United States, Donald Trump.
So, when you’re typing in search queries for Trump, it’s autocompleting and suggesting, ‘Do you mean that he’s a liar? That he’s a crook?’ … And then you do the same for Hillary Clinton and it has all these positive terms … They were doing this on the political stuff.
The most significant thing about this feature is the fact that you don’t expect to have this part of your online experience to be hatched for political reasons. You think that this is legitimately what other people are searching for.
As a result, you don’t have your filters on. Your brain puts on these filters when it starts to evaluate politically charged information. When you read a newspaper article, you may be thinking to yourself, ‘This may be true, this may not.’ You’re skeptical.
But when you’re typing into a search, you don’t think that because you don’t think that’s rigged, so whatever bias is inherent in that search result slips through and goes directly into your subconscious. This is what Epstein was explaining.”
The Search Engine Manipulation Effect
Epstein developed a “black box test” (a method of software testing) to measure just how influential a tool like autofill can be. Remarkably, his test demonstrated that “Google’s ‘autocomplete’ search suggestions can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split”5,6 — all without anyone being aware of the manipulation.
Similarly, when Epstein looked at the power of search engine manipulation to shift preferences and perceptions, he found that:7
"(1) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, (2) the shift can be much higher in some demographic groups, and (3) such rankings can be masked so that people show no awareness of the manipulation."
The good news is, there are ways to lower this manipulation effect, but to do so, people have to be aware that biased ranking is taking place. In his 2017 paper, “Suppressing the Search Engine Manipulation Effect,” Epstein writes:8
“A recent series of experiments demonstrated that introducing ranking bias to election-related search engine results can have a strong and undetectable influence on the preferences of undecided voters.
This phenomenon, called the search engine manipulation effect (SEME), exerts influence largely through order effects that are enhanced in a digital context.
We present data from three new experiments involving 3,600 subjects in 39 countries in which we replicate SEME and test design interventions for suppressing the effect. In the replication, voting preferences shifted by 39.0%, a number almost identical to the shift found in a previously published experiment (37.1%).
Alerting users to the ranking bias reduced the shift to 22.1%, and more detailed alerts reduced it to 13.8%. Users’ browsing behaviors were also significantly altered by the alerts, with more clicks and time going to lower-ranked search results.
Although bias alerts were effective in suppressing SEME, we found that SEME could be completely eliminated only by alternating search results — in effect, with an equal-time rule.
We propose a browser extension capable of deploying bias alerts in real-time and speculate that SEME might be impacting a wide range of decision-making, not just voting, in which case search engines might need to be strictly regulated.”
As pointed out by Vorhies,
"We've got to watch out for Google, because ... they're going to try to rig the 2020 elections."
Based on Epstein’s results, Google certainly appears to have the power to do so. The only way to prevent it may be an information campaign that exposes this hidden agenda, thereby helping to suppress this search engine manipulation effect.
“Autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms,” spokeswoman Kara Berman said in a statement sent to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Our systems are periodically updated to improve Search, and our users’ search activity varies, so the terms that appear in Autocomplete may change over time. Additionally, our systems automatically filter a small set of offensive or inappropriate content from autocomplete predictions.”
-Google formal statement
This all should be quite understandable because, after all, there have been more than 250 people who have transitioned from Google to government or vice versa during the Obama administration.
At least two dozen among the group have taken jobs in key posts in government or Google in that span. These individuals include Mikey Dickerson, Robert Manhini, Nicole Wong, Jannine Versi, Michele Weslander, Sameer Bhalotra, Julie Brill, Will Hudson, Michelle Lee, Matthew Bye, Joshua Wright and Renata Hesse.
Former Google employees occupy several key slots in the federal government. These include:
Alexander Macgillivray, deputy general counsel at Google 2003-09, general counsel at Twitter 2009-13, deputy chief technology officer at OSTP 2014-present.
Nicole Wong, vice president and deputy general counsel at Google from 2004-11 and deputy chief technology officer at OSTP 2013-14.
Jannine Versi, product marketing manager in Middle East and North Africa for Google 2010-2012, White House National Economic Council 2013-14, chief of staff International Trade Administration at U.S. Department of Commerce 2014-present.
Michelle Lee, deputy general counsel at Google 2003-12, under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office 2012-present.
Mikey Dickerson, site reliability manager at Google 2006-13, administrator U.S. Digital Service 2014-present. Dickerson also assisted with election day monitoring and modeling with Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign and helped repair the broken HealthCare.gov website.
At least 18 former Google employees work or have worked for the U.S. Digital Service and its General Services Administration sidekick, 18F. USDS operates under the Executive Office of the President, consulting on big federal information technology projects.
Search Results for Roger Ailes
The former Chairman and CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes, died in May 2017. He was arguably one of the most consequential individuals in media and politics in the last century, and he leaves behind a loving wife and son. He also leaves behind a cadre of loyal former employees who love and respect him.
However if you run a Google search on him, you’ll find that the top results consist almost entirely of articles from several liberal publications savaging his reputation as a person. The search results, both on mobile and desktop platforms, begin with entries that are strikingly cruel and meanspirited. This behavior raise new questions about Google’s objectivity. (As if there WERE questions to be raised.)
The top results on “Roger Ailes” include [1] a piece by leftist activist Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone declaring Ailes “one of the worst Americans ever,” [2] an article by NBC’s Joy Reid on Time stating that Ailes “built a kingdom on exploited bias,” and [3] a Bret Stephens op-ed in the New York Times, that calls him “the man who wrecked conservatism.” [4] An op-ed on The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi condemning Ailes for helping to “create this nightmare world” shows up alongside the other articles savaging him, way above obituaries or any neutral pieces about the man.
Regardless the opinion anyone might hold about Roger Ailes, the only thing certain is that Google’s search algorithm is deeply biased. In fact, it is biased in favor of publications who oppose his role as a leader in the conservative movement.
Control of Search Results
Google, Inc., isn’t just the world’s biggest purveyor of information; it is also the world’s biggest censor.
The company maintains at least nine different blacklists that impact our lives. It does so without input or authority from any outside advisory group, industry association or government agency. Google is not the only company suppressing content on the internet. Indeed, Reddit has frequently been accused of banning postings on specific topics, and a recent report suggests that Facebook has been deleting conservative news stories from its newsfeed. (A practice that might have a significant effect on public opinion – even on voting. ) Google, though, is currently the biggest bully on the block.
When Google’s employees or algorithms decide to block our access to information about a news item, political candidate or business, things can happen. Control information, and you control thoughts. Opinions and votes can shift, reputations can be ruined and businesses can crash and burn. (Because online censorship is entirely unregulated at the moment, victims have little or no recourse when they have been harmed.) Eventually, authorities will almost certainly have to step in, just as they did when credit bureaus were regulated in 1970. The alternative would be to allow a large corporation to wield an especially destructive kind of power that should be exercised with great restraint and should belong only to the public: the power to shame or exclude.
If Google were just another mom-and-pop shop with a sign saying “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,” that would be one thing. But as the golden gateway to all knowledge, Google has rapidly become an essential in people’s lives – nearly as essential as air or water. We don’t let public utilities make arbitrary and secretive decisions about denying people services; we shouldn’t let Google do so either.
The autocomplete blacklist.
This is a list of words and phrases that are excluded from the autocomplete feature in Google’s search bar. The search bar instantly suggests multiple search options when you type words such as “democracy” or “watermelon,” but it freezes when you type profanities, and, at times, it has frozen when people typed words like “torrent,” “bisexual” and “penis.” At this writing, it’s freezing when I type “clitoris.” The autocomplete blacklist can also be used to protect or discredit political candidates. As recently reported, at the moment autocomplete shows you “Ted” (for former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz) when you type “lying,” but it will not show you “Hillary” when you type “crooked” – not even, on my computer, anyway, when you type “crooked hill.” (The nicknames for Clinton and Cruz coined by Donald Trump, of course.) If you add the “a,” so you’ve got “crooked hilla,” you get the very odd suggestion “crooked Hillary Bernie.” When you type “crooked” on Bing, “crooked Hillary” pops up instantly. Google’s list of forbidden terms varies by region and individual.
The Google Maps blacklist.
This list is a little more creepy, and if you are concerned about your privacy, it might be a good list to be on. The cameras of Google Earth and Google Maps have photographed your home for all to see. If you don’t like that, “just move,” Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt said. Google also maintains a list of properties it either blacks out or blurs out in its images. Some are probably military installations, some the residences of wealthy people, and some – well, who knows? See elsewhere in this manuscript for more details on this subject.
The Google account blacklist.
A couple of years ago, Google consolidated a number of its products – Gmail, Google Docs, Google+, YouTube, Google Wallet and others – so you can access all of them through your one Google account.
If you somehow violate Google’s vague and intimidating terms of service agreement, you will join the ever-growing list of people who are shut out of their accounts.
Which means you’ll lose access to all of these interconnected products. Because virtually no one has ever read this lengthy, legalistic agreement, however, people are shocked when they’re shut out, in part because Google reserves the right to “stop providing Services to you … at any time.”
And because Google, one of the largest and richest companies in the world, has no customer service department, getting reinstated can be difficult. (Given, however, that all of these services gather personal information about you to sell to advertisers, losing one’s Google account has been judged by some to be a blessing in disguise.)
The Google News blacklist.
If a librarian were caught trashing all the liberal newspapers before people could read them, he or she might get in a heap o’ trouble.
What happens when most of the librarians in the world have been replaced by a single company?
Google is now the largest news aggregator in the world, tracking tens of thousands of news sources in more than thirty languages and recently adding thousands of small, local news sources to its inventory. It also selectively bans news sources as it pleases.
In 2006, Google was accused of excluding conservative news sources that generated stories critical of Islam, and the company has also been accused of banning individual columnists and competing companies from its news feed. In December 2014, facing a new law in Spain that would have charged Google for scraping content from Spanish news sources (which, after all, have to pay to prepare their news), Google suddenly withdrew its news service from Spain, which led to an immediate drop in traffic to Spanish new stories. That drop in traffic is the problem: When a large aggregator bans you from its service, fewer people find your news stories, which means opinions will shift away from those you support. Selective blacklisting of news sources is a powerful way of promoting a political, religious or moral agenda, with no one the wiser.
The Google AdWords blacklist.
Now things get creepier. More than 70 percent of Google’s $80 billion in annual revenue comes from its AdWords advertising service, which it implemented in 2000 by infringing on a similar system already patented by Overture Services. The way it works is simple:
Businesses worldwide bid on the right to use certain keywords in short text ads that link to their websites (those text ads are the AdWords); when people click on the links, those businesses pay Google.
These ads appear on Google.com and other Google websites and are also interwoven into the content of more than a million non-Google websites – Google’s “Display Network.”
The problem here is that if a Google executive decides your business or industry doesn’t meet its moral standards, it bans you from AdWords; these days, with Google’s reach so large, that can quickly put you out of business. In 2011, Google blacklisted an Irish political group that defended sex workers but which did not provide them; after a protest, the company eventually backed down.
In May 2016, Google blacklisted an entire industry – companies providing high-interest “payday” loans. As always, the company billed this dramatic move as an exercise in social responsibility, failing to note that it is a major investor in LendUp.com, which is in the same industry; if Google fails to blacklist LendUp (it’s too early to tell), the industry ban might turn out to have been more of an anticompetitive move than one of conscience. That kind of hypocrisy has turned up before in AdWords activities.
Whereas Google takes a moral stand, for example, in banning ads from companies promising quick weight loss, in 2011, Google forfeited a whopping $500 million to the U.S. Justice Department for having knowingly allowed Canadian drug companies to sell drugs illegally in the U.S. for years through the AdWords system, and several state attorneys general believe that Google has continued to engage in similar practices since 2011; investigations are ongoing.
Privacy
Privacy is a pretty big issue with me. The entire concept of monitoring former W(U)-SAP members of MAJestic and other “black operations projects” requires that the agents no longer have any kind of privacy.
Well, I suppose that I could write reams of pages on this subject, but I won’t. If the reader is not aware of how important privacy is, then let it lie at that. I for one, tend to leave my cell phone at home hen I go out so that I know that if someone wants to talk to me or reach me, they will do so when I want them to, not when they want to. It’s my little wall of privacy that I have since erected.
Sigh. Another day, another reminder that companies don’t really have to abide by promises to not share your personal information. They have a big “but” in their contracts.
In 2016, millions of Sports Authority customers began receiving notices that their e-mail addresses and other data were about to be transferred to competitor Dick’s Sporting Goods. The transfer is legal because Sports Authority declared bankruptcy and sold off its spare parts this summer. Dick’s, smartly and legally, bought the customer information.
According to the L.A. Times, a treasure trove of 25 million e-mails and some other data cost Dick’s $15 million. So you might not think your data is valuable, but someone sure does.
But you probably didn’t know that. In fact, when Sports Authority asked for your email, you may have been told, “We won’t share it” by an employee or a web page. Consumers are often told that. It’s a lie, unless it includes the “but,” which is often casually omitted or otherwise missed by consumers.
The Google AdSense blacklist.
If your website has been approved by AdWords, you are eligible to sign up for Google AdSense, a system in which Google places ads for various products and services on your website. When people click on those ads, Google pays you. If you are good at driving traffic to your website, you can make millions of dollars a year running AdSense ads – all without having any products or services of your own. Meanwhile, Google makes a net profit by charging the companies behind the ads for bringing them customers; this accounts for about 18 percent of Google’s income.
Here, too, there is scandal:
In April 2014, in two posts on PasteBin.com, someone claiming to be a former Google employee working in their AdSense department alleged the department engaged in a regular practice of dumping AdSense customers just before Google was scheduled to pay them. To this day, no one knows whether the person behind the posts was legit, but one thing is clear: Since that time, real lawsuits filed by real companies have, according to WebProNews, been “piling up” against Google, alleging the companies were unaccountably dumped at the last minute by AdSense just before large payments were due, in some cases payments as high as $500,000.
The search engine blacklist.
Google’s ubiquitous search engine has indeed become the gateway to virtually all information, handling 90 percent of search in most countries. It dominates search because its index is so large: Google indexes more than 45 billion web pages; its next-biggest competitor, Microsoft’s Bing, indexes a mere 14 billion, which helps to explain the poor quality of Bing’s search results.
Google’s dominance in search is why businesses large and small live in constant “fear of Google,” as Mathias Dopfner, CEO of Axel Springer, the largest publishing conglomerate in Europe, put it in an open letter to Eric Schmidt in 2014.
According to Dopfner, when Google made one of its frequent adjustments to its search algorithm, one of his company’s subsidiaries dropped dramatically in the search rankings and lost 70 percent of its traffic within a few days.
Even worse than the vagaries of the adjustments, however, are the dire consequences that follow when Google employees somehow conclude you have violated their “guidelines”:
You either get banished to the rarely visited Netherlands of search pages beyond the first page (90 percent of all clicks go to links on that first page) or completely removed from the index.
In 2011, Google took a “manual action” of a “corrective” nature against retailer J.C. Penney – punishment for Penney’s alleged use of a legal SEO technique called “link building” that many companies employ to try to boost their rankings in Google’s search results. Penney was demoted 60 positions or more in the rankings.
Search ranking manipulations of this sort don’t just ruin businesses; they also affect people’s opinions, attitudes, beliefs and behavior, as my research on the Search Engine Manipulation Effect has demonstrated.
Fortunately, definitive information about Google’s punishment programs is likely to turn up over the next year or two thanks to legal challenges the company is facing. In 2014, a Florida company called e-Ventures Worldwide filed a lawsuit against Google for “completely removing almost every website” associated with the company from its search rankings.
When the company’s lawyers tried to get internal documents relevant to Google’s actions though typical litigation discovery procedures, Google refused to comply.
In July 2015, a judge ruled that Google had to honor e-Ventures’ discovery requests, and that case is now moving forward. More significantly, in April 2016, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the attorney general of Mississippi – supported in his efforts by the attorneys general of 40 other states – has the right to proceed with broad discovery requests in his own investigations into Google’s secretive and often arbitrary practices.
This brings me, at last, to the biggest and potentially most dangerous of Google’s blacklists – which Google’s calls its “quarantine” list.
The American quarantine list.
Google maintains a quarantine list for every nation that it services. The entities that go on that list are determined by the government of the host nation, and Google itself.
To get a sense of the scale of this list, I find it helpful to think about an old movie – the classic 1951 film “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” which starred a huge metal robot named Gort. He had laser-weapon eyes, zapped terrified humans into oblivion and had the power to destroy the world.
Klaatu, Gort’s alien master, was trying to deliver an important message to earthlings, but they kept shooting him before he could. Finally, to get the world’s attention, Klaatu demonstrated the enormous power of the alien races he represented by shutting down – at noon New York time – all of the electricity on earth for exactly 30 minutes.
The earth stood still.
Substitute “ogle” for “rt,” and you get “Google,” which is every bit as powerful as Gort but with a much better public relations department – so good, in fact, that you are probably unaware that on Jan. 31, 2009, Google blocked access to virtually the entire internet. And, as if not to be outdone by a 1951 science fiction move, it did so for 40 minutes.
Impossible, you say. Why would do-no-evil Google do such an apocalyptic thing, and, for that matter, how, technically, could a single company block access to more than 100 million websites?
The answer has to do with the dark and murky world of website blacklists – ever-changing lists of websites that contain malicious software that might infect or damage people’s computers.
There are many such lists – even tools, such as blacklistalert.org, that scan multiple blacklists to see if your IP address is on any of them.
Some lists are kind of mickey-mouse – repositories where people submit the names or IP addresses of suspect sites.
Others, usually maintained by security companies that help protect other companies, are more high-tech, relying on “crawlers” – computer programs that continuously comb the internet.
But the best and longest list of suspect websites is Google’s, launched in May 2007.
Because Google is crawling the web more extensively than anyone else, it is also in the best position to find malicious websites.
In 2012, Google acknowledged that each and every day it adds about 9,500 new websites to its American quarantine list and displays malware warnings on the answers it gives to between 12 and 14 million search queries. It won’t reveal the exact number of websites on the list, but it is certainly in the millions on any given day.
In 2011, Google blocked an entire subdomain, co.cc, which alone contained 11 million websites, justifying its action by claiming that most of the websites in that domain appeared to be “spammy.”
According to Matt Cutts, still the leader of Google’s web spam team, the company “reserves the right” to take such action when it deems it necessary. (The right? Who gave Google that right?)
And that’s nothing: According to The Guardian, on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009, at 2:40 pm GMT, Google blocked the entire internet for those impressive 40 minutes, supposedly, said the company, because of “human error” by its employees. It would have been 6:40 am in Mountain View, California, where Google is headquartered.
Was this time chosen because it is one of the few hours of the week when all of the world’s stock markets are closed? Could this have been another of the many pranks for which Google employees are so famous? In 2008, Google invited the public to submit applications to join the “first permanent human colony on Mars.” Sorry, Marsophiles; it was just a prank.
When Google’s search engine shows you a search result for a site it has quarantined, you see warnings such as, “The site ahead contains malware” or “This site may harm your computer” on the search result.
That’s useful information if that website actually contains malware, either because the website was set up by bad guys or because a legitimate site was infected with malware by hackers.
But Google’s crawlers often make mistakes, blacklisting websites that have merely been “hijacked,” which means the website itself isn’t dangerous but merely that accessing it through the search engine will forward you to a malicious site.
For instance, the website, http://drrobertepstein.com, was hijacked in this way in early 2012. Accessing the website directly wasn’t dangerous, but trying to access it through the Google search engine forwarded users to a malicious website in Nigeria.
When this happens, Google not only warns you about the infected website on its search engine (which makes sense), it also blocks you from accessing the website directly through multiple browsers – even non-Google browsers. (Hmm. Now that’s odd. I’ll get back to that point shortly.)
The mistakes are just one problem.
The bigger problem is that even though it takes only a fraction of a second for a crawler to list you, after your site has been cleaned up Google’s crawlers sometimes take days or even weeks to delist you – long enough to threaten the existence of some businesses.
This is quite bizarre considering how rapidly automated online systems operate these days. Within seconds after you pay for a plane ticket online, your seat is booked, your credit card is charged, your receipt is displayed and a confirmation email shows up in your inbox – a complex series of events involving multiple computers controlled by at least three or four separate companies.
However, when you inform Google’s automated blacklist system that your website is now clean, you are simply advised to check back occasionally to see if any action has been taken.
To get delisted after your website has been repaired, you either have to struggle with the company’s online Webmaster tools, which are far from friendly, or you have to hire a security expert to do so – typically for a fee ranging between $1,000 and $10,000.
No expert, however, can speed up the mysterious delisting process; the best he or she can do is set it in motion.
So far, all I’ve told you is that Google’s crawlers scan the internet, sometimes find what appear to be suspect websites and put those websites on a quarantine list.
That information is then conveyed to users through the search engine. So far so good, except of course for the mistakes and the delisting problem; one might even say that Google is performing a public service, which is how some people who are familiar with the quarantine list defend it.
But I also mentioned that Google somehow blocks people from accessing websites directly through multiple browsers.
How on earth could it do that? How could Google block you when you are trying to access a website using Safari, an Apple product, or Firefox, a browser maintained by Mozilla, the self-proclaimed “nonprofit defender of the free and open internet”?
The key here is browsers. No browser maker wants to send you to a malicious website, and because Google has the best blacklist, major browsers such as Safari and Firefox – and Chrome, of course, Google’s own browser, as well as browsers that load through Android, Google’s mobile operating system – check Google’s quarantine list before they send you to a website. (In November 2014, Mozilla announced it will no longer list Google as its default search engine, but it also disclosed that it will continue to rely on Google’s quarantine list to screen users’ search requests.)
If the site has been quarantined by Google, you see one of those big, scary images that say things like “Get me out of here!” or “Reported attack site!”
At this point, given the default security settings on most browsers, most people will find it impossible to visit the site – but who would want to? If the site is not on Google’s quarantine list, you are sent on your way.
OK, that explains how Google blocks you even when you’re using a non-Google browser, but why do they block you? In other words, how does blocking you feed the ravenous advertising machine – the sine qua non of Google’s existence?
Have you figured it out yet? The scam is as simple as it is brilliant: When a browser queries Google’s quarantine list, it has just shared information with Google.
With Chrome and Android, you are always giving up information to Google, but you are also doing so even if you are using non-Google browsers.
That is where the money is – more information about search activity kindly provided by competing browser companies. How much information is shared will depend on the particular deal the browser company has with Google. In a maximum information deal, Google will learn the identity of the user; in a minimum information deal, Google will still learn which websites people want to visit – valuable data when one is in the business of ranking websites. Google can also charge fees for access to its quarantine list, of course, but that’s not where the real gold is.
Chrome, Android, Firefox and Safari currently carry about 92 percent of all browser traffic in the U.S. – 74 percent worldwide – and these numbers are increasing. As of this writing, that means Google is regularly collecting information through its quarantine list from more than 2.5 billion people. Given the recent pact between Microsoft and Google, in coming months we might learn that Microsoft – both to save money and to improve its services – has also started using Google’s quarantine list in place of its own much smaller list; this would further increase the volume of information Google is receiving.
To put this another way, Google has grown, and is still growing, on the backs of some of its competitors, with end users oblivious to Google’s antics – as usual.
It is yet another example of what I have called “Google’s Dance” – the remarkable way in which Google puts a false and friendly public face on activities that serve only one purpose for the company: increasing profit.
On the surface, Google’s quarantine list is yet another way Google helps us, free of charge, breeze through our day safe and well-informed.
Beneath the surface, that list is yet another way Google accumulates more information about us to sell to advertisers.
You may disagree, but in my view Google’s blacklisting practices put the company into the role of thuggish internet cop – a role that was never authorized by any government, nonprofit organization or industry association.
It is as if the biggest bully in town suddenly put on a badge and started patrolling, shuttering businesses as it pleased, while also secretly peeping into windows, taking photos and selling them to the highest bidder.
Consider: Heading into the holiday season in late 2013, an online handbag business suffered a 50 percent drop in business because of blacklisting.
In 2009, it took an eco-friendly pest control company 60 days to leap the hurdles required to remove Google’s warnings, long enough to nearly go broke. And sometimes the blacklisting process appears to be personal: In May 2013, the highly opinionated PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak wondered “When Did Google Become the Internet Police?” after both his website and podcast site were blacklisted. He also ran into the delisting problem:
"It's funny, how the site can be blacklisted in a millisecond by an analysis but I have to wait forever to get cleared by the same analysis doing the same scan. Why is that?"
- John Dvorak
Could Google really be arrogant enough to mess with a prominent journalist? According to CNN, in 2005 Google “blacklisted all CNET reporters for a year after the popular technology news website published personal information about one of Google’s founders” – Eric Schmidt – “in a story about growing privacy concerns.” The company declined to comment on CNN’s story.
Google’s mysterious and self-serving practice of blacklisting is one of many reasons Google should be regulated, just as phone companies and credit bureaus are. The E.U.’s recent antitrust actions against Google, the leaked FTC staff report about Google’s biased search rankings, President Obama’s call for regulating internet service providers – all have merit, but they overlook another danger.
No one company, which is accountable to its shareholders but not to the general public, should have the power to instantly put another company out of business or block access to any website in the world.
How frequently Google acts irresponsibly is beside the point; it has the ability to do so, which means that in a matter of seconds any of Google’s 37,000 employees with the right passwords or skills could laser a business or political candidate into oblivion or even freeze much of the world’s economy.
Some degree of censorship and blacklisting is probably necessary; I am not disputing that. But the suppression of information on the internet needs to be managed by, or at least subject to the regulations of, responsible public officials, with every aspect of their operations transparent to all.
Other related issues
No one actually likes this kind of censorship. However, countries will permit it to occur as long as it furthers their political agenda and aims. Yet, the moment that a company self-censors in defiance of a given governmental requirement, expect great and rapid retribution.
Google suffered a major regulatory blow on Tuesday 27JUN17, when the EU’s antitrust regulator fined Alphabet’s Google a record €2.42 billion ($2.71 billion) fine for “abusing its dominance in search” and favoring its own comparison-shopping service in search results: a decision with far-reaching implications for both the tech sector and already strained transatlantic relations. The EU further ordered the search giant to apply the same methods to rivals as its own when displaying their services in search results.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, said Google “denied other companies the chance to compete” and left consumers without “genuine choice.”
“Google’s strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn’t just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors. What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules.”
Is any reader surprised?
Recording all Sounds around a Google Product
Google maintains a record of everything you have said around it (and products aligned with the Google enterprises) for years, and you can listen to the huge archives that if recorded of you yourself. The company quietly records many of the conversations that people have around its products.
The feature works as a way of letting people search with their voice, and storing those recordings presumably lets Google improve its language recognition tools as well as the results that it gives to people. It is considered a “value added” feature, but I for one consider it highly annoying and problematic.
The new portal was introduced in June 2015 and so has been active ever since that date. Therefore, Google now has a very full record of (assumingly non-catagorized) things you have said, which you assumed have been in private.
Google justifies this collection as a kind of audio diary.
The easiest way to stop Google recording everything is to turn off the virtual assistant and never to use voice search. But that solution also gets at the central problem of much privacy and data use today – doing so cuts off one of the most useful things about having an Android phone.
Google is tracking billions of credit card transaction records to prove that its online ads are prompting people to make purchases – even when they happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores, the company said Tuesday, 23MAY17. The advance allows Google to determine how many sales have been generated by digital ad campaigns, a goal that industry insiders have long described as “the holy grail” of online advertising.
To power its multi-billion dollar advertising juggernaut, Google already analyzes users’ web browsing, search history and geographic locations, using data from popular Google-owned apps like YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps and the Google Play store. All that information is tied to the real identities of users when they log into Google’s services.
The credit card data enables the tech giant to connect these digital trails to real-world purchase records in a far more extensive way than was possible before. Privacy advocates said few people understand that their purchases are being analyzed in this way and could feel uneasy, despite assurances from Google that it has taken steps to protect the personal information of its users.
Of course the company said it took pains to protect user privacy, it declined to detail how the system works or what companies are analyzing credit and debit card records on Google’s behalf. Google, which saw $79 billion in revenues in 2016, said it would not handle the records directly but that its undisclosed partner companies had access to 70 percent of credit and debit card transactions in the United States.
“What’s really fascinating to me is that as the companies become increasingly intrusive in terms of their data collection, they also become more secretive,”
-Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Google for years has been mining location data from Google Maps in an effort to prove that knowledge of people’s physical locations could “close the loop” between physical and digital worlds. Users can block this by adjusting the settings on smartphones, but few do so, say privacy experts.
This location tracking ability has allowed Google to send reports to retailers telling them, for example, whether people who saw an ad for a lawn mower later visited or passed by a Home Depot. The location-tracking program has grown since it was first launched with only a handful of retailers: Home Depot, Express, Nissan, and Sephora have participated.
“Google — and also Facebook — believe that in order to get digital dollars from advertisers who are still primarily spending on TV, they need to prove that digital works, these companies have to invest in finding the identity of the consumer at the moment when that shopper is at the cash register”
- Amit Jain, chief executive of Bridg, a digital advertising startup that matches online to offline behavior.
Google executives say they are using complex, patent-pending mathematical formulas to protect the privacy of consumers when they match a Google user with a shopper who makes a purchase in a brick-and-mortar store.
The mathematical formulas convert people’s names and other purchase information, including the time stamp, location, and the amount of the purchase, into anonymous strings of numbers.
The formulas make it impossible for Google to know the identity of the real-world shoppers, and for the retailers to know the identities of Google’s users, said company executives, who called the process “double-blind” encryption.
Consider “double-blind” encryption
The tech giant declined to describe its mathematical formulas in anything more than broad terms, citing a pending patent.
Dischler said the work was based on a 2011 research paper by three MIT scientists, which was funded by Google and Citigroup. The company would not say how merchants had obtained consent from consumers to pass along their credit card information.
Google said it requires its partners to use only personal data that they have the “rights” to use, but it would not say whether that meant the consumers had consented.
Paul Stephens from Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer advocacy group based in San Diego, said only a few pieces of data can allow a marketer to identify an individual, and he expressed skepticism that Google’s system for guarding the identities of users will stand up to the efforts of hackers, who in the past have successfully stripped away privacy protections created by other companies after data breaches.
“What we have learned is that it’s extremely difficult to anonymize data, if you care about your privacy, you definitely need to be concerned.”
Such data providers have been the targets of cybercriminals in the past. In 2015, a hack of data broker Experian exposed the personal information of 15 million people.
Google Tracks you even when off
Those of you that are not using Chinese Huawei or ShaoMi phones had best pay attention to any phones pre-loaded with Google Apps.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Google is actually tracking you even when you switch your device settings to Location History “off”.
As journalist Mark Ames comments in response to a new Associated Press story exposing Google’s ability to track people at all times even when they explicitly tell Google not to via iPhone and Android settings, “The Pentagon invented the internet to be the perfect global surveillance/counterinsurgency machine. Surveillance is baked into the internet’s DNA.”
In but the latest in a continuing saga of big tech tracking and surveillance stories which should serve to convince us all we are living in the beginning phases of a Minority Report style tracking and pansophical “pre-crime” system, it’s now confirmed that the world’s most powerful tech company and search tool will always find a way to keep your location data.
The Associated Press sought the help of Princeton researchers to prove that while Google is clear and upfront about giving App users the ability to turn off or “pause” Location History on their devices, there are other hidden means through which it retains the data.
Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you’ve been. Google’s support page on the subject states: “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”
That isn’t true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.
For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude — accurate to the square foot — and save it to your Google account.
The issue directly affects around two billion people using Google’s Android operating software and iPhone users relying on Google maps or a simple search.
Among the computer science researchers at Princeton conducting the tests is Jonathan Mayer, who told the AP, “If you’re going to allow users to turn off something called ‘Location History,’ then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,” and added, “That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.”
Google, for its part, is defending the software and privacy tracking settings, saying the company has been perfectly clear and has not violated privacy ethics.
“There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people’s experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services,” a Google statement to the AP reads. “We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.”
According to the AP, there is a way to prevent Google from storing the various location marker and metadata collection possibilities, but it’s somewhat hidden and painstaking.
Google’s own description on how to do this as a result of the AP inquiry is as follows:
To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not specifically reference location information. Called “Web and App Activity” and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account.
When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. But leaving “Web & App Activity” on and turning “Location History” off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the “timeline,” its visualization of your daily travels. It does not stop Google’s collection of other location markers.
You can delete these location markers by hand, but it’s a painstaking process since you have to select them individually, unless you want to delete all of your stored activity.
Of course, the more constant location data obviously means more advertising profits and further revenue possibilities for Google and its clients, so we fully expect future hidden tracking loopholes to possibly come to light.
This story about Google surveillance only surprising if you haven't read @yashalevine's Surveillance Valley. The Pentagon invented the internet to be the perfect global surveillance/counterinsurgency machine. Surveillance is baked into the internet's DNA https://t.co/31QcyeYVM5 — Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) August 13, 2018
Beginning in 2014, Google has utilized user location histories to allow advertisers to track the effectiveness of online ads at driving foot traffic. With the continued possibility of real-time tracking to generate billions of dollars, it should come as no surprise that Google would seek to make it as difficult (or perhaps impossible?) as it can for users to ensure they aren’t tracked.
Some of the revelations the former CIA anti-terrorism counter intelligence officer revealed CIA whistleblower, Kevin Shipp.included that
“Google Earth was set up through the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and InQtel.”
Indeed he is correct, the CIA and NGA owned the company Google acquired, Keyhole Inc., paying an undisclosed sum for the company to turn its tech into what we now know as Google Earth. Another curious investor in Keyhole Inc. was none other than the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel run by the CIA according to a press release at the time.
Google is the CIA.
Shipp also disclosed that the agency known as the Joint Special Ops Command (JSOC) is the “president’s secret army” which he can use for secret assassinations, overturning governments and things the American people don’t know about.
FBI warrantless searches violate the Fourth Amendment with national security letters, which Shipp noted enables them to walk into your employer’s office and demand all your financial records and if he or she says anything about them being there they can put your supervisor in jail or drop a case against themselves using the “State’s Secret Privilege law.”
What this means is that Google is connected to and linked into the United States covert investigative agencies.
In the shocking, explosive presentation, Shipp went on to express that there are “over 10,000 secret sites in the U.S.” that formed after 9/11. There are “1,291 secret government agencies, 1,931 large private corporations and over 4,800,000 Americans that he knows of who have a secrecy clearance, and 854,000 who have Top Secret clearance, explaining they signed their lives away bound by an agreement.
He also detailed how Congress is owned by the Military Industrial Complex through the Congressional Armed Services Committee (48 senior members of Congress) giving those members money in return for a vote on the spending bill for the military and intelligence budget.
He even touched on what he called the “secret intelligence industrial complex,” which he called the center of the shadow government including the CIA, NSA, NRO, and NGA.
Shipp further stated that around the “secret intelligence industrial complex” you have the big five conglomerate of intelligence contractors, [1] Leidos Holdings, [2] CSRA, [3] CACI, [4] SAIC, and [5] Booz Allen Hamilton. He noted that the work they do is “top secret and unreported.”
Censoring gmail
Gmail users are claiming that Google is filtering emails from Donald Trump’s campaign into their spam boxes.
There have been previous reports, denied by Google, that the search engine was manipulating search autocomplete results in favor of Hillary Clinton. Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has previously said, “Google is directly engaged with Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”
In 2015, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly funded a startup, “The Groundwork,” with the objective of helping Hillary Clinton get elected.
Fact Checking
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Google is a latecomer to the plethora of Internet “fact check” sites. The announcement that Google would integrate a “fact check” system into their search engine occurred in 2016. I am sad to say that its creation was not the result of a “need” or the creation of a “value added” attribute to the search engine. No. It was the result of the political climate during the contentious election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
At that time, American disgust with the American media was at an all-time high. They had lost all credibility with the media, as the overwhelming support of the Democrat candidate by the media was absolute and unabashed. As such, the media through polling had discovered a number of disturbing trends, one of which was that they had lost their edge in credibility. People were turning to “fringe” and “alternative media”, as well as social media for their news (and here). This included not only the media but every established internet organization, including fact check websites. And HERE.
Google Was "Working To Get Hillary Clinton Elected" With "Silent Donation" According To Leaked Internal Email
Tucker Carlson just blew the cover off the 2016 election influence charade, after he read an internal email on Monday night’s show from a senior Google employee who admitted to using company resources to make a “silent donation” to a liberal group that was creating ads and donating funds to bus Latinos to voting stations during the 2016 election in key swing states, in an effort to help Hillary Clinton win.
The email was sent by the former head of Google’s multicultural marketing department, Eliana Mario, on November 9, 2016.
“That email was subsequently forwarded by two Google VP’s to more staff members throughout the company,” says Carlson, adding “In her email, Mario touts Google’s multi-faceted efforts to boost Hispanic turnout in the election. She noticed that Latino voters did record-breaking numbers, especially in states like Florida, Nevada and Arizona – the last of which she describes as “a key state for us.” She brags that the company used its power to ensure that millions of people saw certain hashtags and social media impressions, with the goal of influencing their behavior during the election.”
Elsewhere in the email Mario says “Google supported partners like Voto Latino to pay for rides to the polls in key states.”
She describes this assistance as a “silent donation”
Mario then says that Google helped Voto Latino create ad campaigns to promote those rides. Now officially Voto Latino is a non-partisan entity, but that is a sham. Voto Latino is vocally partisan. Recently the group declared that Hispanics – ALL Hispanics are in President Trump’s “crosshairs.” They said they plan to respond to this by registering another million additional Hispanic voters in the next Presidential cycle.
It was, in effect, an in-kind contribution to the Hillary Clinton for President campaign.
In the end, Google was disappointed. As Mario herself conceded “ultimately after all was said and done, the Latino community did come out to vote, and completely surprised us. We never anticipated that 29% of Latinos would vote for Trump. No one did. -Tucker Carlson
So it looks like @Google executives have been caught red-handed trying to throw the election to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Maybe that's why they refused to appear before Congress last week?https://t.co/1YELagt8hH
This, of course, isn’t the first evidence of Google doing all they could to help Hillary win the election. In an April 15, 2014 email from Google’s then-Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt found in the WikiLeaked Podesta emails, titled “Notes for a 2016 Democratic Campaign,” Schmidt tells Cheryl Mills that
"I have put together my thoughts on the campaign ideas and I have scheduled some meetings in the next few weeks for veterans of the campaign to tell me how to make these ideas better. This is simply a draft but do let me know if this is a helpful process for you all."
While there are numerous curious nuances in the plan, presented below in its entirety, the one section that caught our – and Wikileaks’ attention – is the following which implicitly suggests Google planned the creation of a voter tracking database, using smart phones:
Key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates all that is known about them. In 2016 smart phones will be used to identify, meet, and update profiles on the voter. A dynamic volunteer can easily speak with a voter and, with their email or other digital handle, get the voter videos and other answers to areas they care about (“the benefits of ACA to you” etc.)
I met with Eric Schmidt tonight. As David reported, he's ready to fund, advise recruit talent, etc. He was more deferential on structure than I expected. Wasn't pushing to run through one of his existing firms. Clearly wants to be head outside advisor, but didn't seem like he wanted to push others out. Clearly wants to get going. He's still in DC tomorrow and would like to meet with you if you are in DC in the afternoon. I think it's worth doing. You around? If you are, and want to meet with him, maybe the four of us can get on to the project.
Another email from February 2015 suggested that the Google Chairman remained active in its collaboration with the Clinton campaign: John Podesta wrote that Eric Schmidt met with HR “about the business he proposes to do with the campaign. He says he’s met with HRC” and adds that “FYI. They are donating the Google plane for the Africa trip”
Meanwhile, according to a Breitbart report by Allum Bokhari, “By inserting negative search suggestions under the name of a candidate, search engines like Google can shift the opinions of undecided voters by up to 43.4 percent, according to new research by a team at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and reported exclusively by Breitbart News.”
The lead author of the study, Dr. Robert Epstein, has previously conducted research into what he calls the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). This research showed that the manipulation of results pages in search engines can shift the voting preferences of undecideds by anywhere between 20 and 80 percent, depending on the demographic.
His latest research looks at how search engines can affect voters by suggesting negative or positive search terms when a political candidate’s name is entered into the search bar. Dr. Epstein’s research found that when negative search terms are suggested for a candidate, it can have a dramatic effect on voter opinion.
So, despite Google’s best efforts to help Clinton win the election, it simply wasn’t enough.
Meanwhile, Google has yet to answer why their search results for the word “Idiot” are vastly different from DuckDuckGo.
Google as a Workplace Nightmare
Apparently, Google has a reputation as a fantastic place to work. They offer many “perks”, which in everyway seems to make the rest of corporate America look like evil slave plantations. It’s pretty “in your face” regarding this. Why “everyone knows” that Google is a great place to work. Why, there is even a Hollywood movie about this…
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles on this. Here are just afew of the top hits;
Ah, the usual suspects. Huffington Post, Slate, Inc., Forbes, Business Insider… With a pedigree like that, you must either conclude that one of two things is going on. Either [1] they truly are a fantastic company to work for, or [2] they have invested heavily on a major propaganda campaign.
Oh and having all that money (where do they get all their billions of dollars? They do not host advertisements, so SOMEONE must be paying them) they have made propaganda films about how great Google is…
“The Internship” 2013 by Director Shawn Levy. Two salesmen whose careers have been torpedoed by the digital age find their way into a coveted internship at Google, where they must compete with a group of young, tech-savvy geniuses for a shot at employment.
Google might be a tool of the corporate elite, but they provide a great working environment for their employees. At least that is the impression that everyone seems to have.
Is this an accurate impression?
Well, in industy, companies always want to put on a “good face”. They want to have a good, clean and positive image. They invest money into their logo, and website. They produce marketing campaigns, and present television commercials to put everything in a favorable light (Remember the Sunbeam-Oster commercials in the 1990’s during the Al Dunlop years while he was gutting the workforce?).
Albert John Dunlap (born July 26, 1937) is a disgraced former corporate executive. He was best known as a turnaround specialist and professional downsizer, although it was later discovered that his reputed turnarounds were elaborate frauds.
The ruthless methods he employed to streamline failing companies, most notably Scott Paper, won him the nicknames "Chainsaw Al" and "Rambo in Pinstripes".
However, his career was effectively ended after he engineered a massive accounting scandal at Sunbeam Products, now Sunbeam-Oster, that ultimately cost that company its independence.
He is barred from serving as an officer of a publicly traded corporation.
His widespread layoffs and accounting frauds have put him on several lists of worst CEOs. I should know, I had the unfortunate experience to work under him.
They do everything in their power to produce a positive image. For image is everything.
It’s often very difficult to determine when a company is actually telling the truth or is trying to hide a harsh reality. I actually do not know what the story is with Google. However, what I do know is that there is one metric that guarantees whether or not a company has a positive work environment for their employees. That metric is “workforce retention”. Happy employees stay at a company. Unhappy employees leave.
So how does Google stack up?
Company
Work length at software companies (Years)
Facebook
2.02 years
Google
1.90 years
Oracle
1.89 years
Apple
1.85 years
Amazon
1.84 years
Twitter
1.83 years
Microsoft
1.81 years
Airbnb
1.64 years
Snap Inc.
1.62 years
Uber
1.23 years
This is how long (on average) employees stay in those companies. Note, that NONE of the values for the work lengths are in 6 month increments. Typically, in the rest of the world, if not in the industry, people work contracts for durations of 6 months, one or upto two years. This table does not show that at all. It shows that people are leaving in an unstructured, and unplanned manner.
This is suggestive of rapid terminations, or individual departures. Since the data was compiled during the “recession” of the Obama Administration, it is rather unlikely that the workers would voluntarily leave during an economic downturn. You simply don’t leave a job unless you have another one lined up, or you physically cannot stand working at that position any longer.
With a turnover like this, I’m impressed that they still manage to deliver a high-quality product. Here’s a telling quote from LinkedIN;
“It's understandable that most people use those companies as a springboard to get higher salaries and less stressful environment elsewhere, but as a hiring manager, I would cry if on my team the retention was like this.”
Indeed.
So WHY the investment that “Google is a great company to work for?”
I argue that if they are so very good at manipulating public opinion for to ohers (the NSA, the CIA, the political machinery) then why not do some things for themselves. And that is exactly what they did.
Conclusions
Yeah, I’m using a shit-load of ancient references that have fallen into the political dust. You, the reader should not be concerned. I used what I could find. And unfortunately most seems to be political in nature. Republicans said this, democrats said that. Blah, blah, blah.
The truth is that both political parties are playing a back and forth game against you. They keep the American people divided up and in constant fight against each other. Don’t fall for that game. Both are tools of the oligarchy.
Never forget that. They are puppets. They are actors. They are lies. They are entertainment.
Pay attention to how they use the systems currently in place. Google.
If you haven’t divorced Google, and blocked it completely from your browser, then DO IT NOW. This is only the “tip of the iceberg” and it’s a lot worse than anyone knows.
If you liked this article, you can read similar articles by viewing the master index for this class here;
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
This stuff was all over the news a few months ago. Then, guess what? Life moved on. And people, being who they are, forgot the message.
People, please listen up.
A private company has taken on the role of the former East German Secret police, known as the Stasi . They have been implementing these cold war policies with the full blessings of the United States government, and it’s going to get far, far worse.
This private company is Google.
In an interview, Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies, advises against having any association with Google. He warns of their dangerous practices and comments that they have declared war on anyone who is not a progressive socialist. They expect everyone to cower away in silence. Their expectations are that their consumers be placid and as non-threatening as possible.
The Google World infographic created by Overdrive Interactive is a visual representation of Google’s projects, services, technologies, and companies acquired by Google. View the Google World or download it as a PDF with live links to over 200 assets.
Zach worked as a senior software engineer at both Google and YouTube for over eight years.
He has, and shares, his inside knowledge of his experiences and knowledge. He is convinced that Google and other software giants in silicon-valley possess a global monopoly. A monopoly that is both dangerous and evil. He also states that Google is not a reliable source of information any longer.
We should all heed his advice.
Google’s monopoly over search is mandated simply because of a continued reassurance that it is an unbiased search platform. Yet that is absolutely not true. Google is actively suppressing and censoring information. It is impossible to censor something and be unbiased at the same time.
Zach Vorheis has some things to say.
For the video, as well as links to the transcripts, visit Mercola.com here.
It’s pretty much well known, but the Untied States is owned by a handful of oligarchs. They utilize companies and manipulate the people in order to have them do their bidding. Thus, the point of sharing this information is that the largest mechanism for obtaining information in the world is terribly compromised.
Google is manipulating search results to influence our behavior. At the same time, denying this is happening.
The Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal published a a very thorough investigation covering these same points. As well as explaining the consequences of this behavior.
Disclosure of evil intent on Project Veritas
Zach Vorhies released about 950 pages of internal Google documents. These documents provide a comprehensive picture of what’s going on at the upper management within Google.
They illustrate that Google has become corrupt, evil, political in nature and aligned with wealthy oligarchs who intend to use the platform to manipulate great masses of people. In order words, to use Google much the same way that “Over-seers” used to control plantation slaves.
What Happened to ‘Don’t Be Evil’?
Zach comments…
“Everything started out with Google really great,” Vorhies says.
“They had this mission statement of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful. They also had this idea of ‘Don’t be evil.’ It was built right into their initial public offering (IPO) statements.
I thought at the time, ‘This is great. This is exactly the kind of company that the world needs. We need to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible. We need to let the algorithms decide what goes to the top and let the users decide what’s most useful for them and then make sure that other people are able to find that information.’
Google stayed true to those principles all the way up until 2016, until Donald Trump won the election.
For some reason, they decided they were going to throw all these mission statements away and go after the president of the United States, censor the internet and distort the news so that people’s searches could be redirected towards anti-presidential sentiment.
This eventually morphed into not just censorship of the president, but censorship of information related to health …
I realized [that] if this was allowed to continue, then this agenda of Big Pharma would be able to become … ‘the truth’ …
Once I found out that Google was censoring a lot of information, I started looking at the information it was censoring with a new degree of ‘They wouldn’t be censoring it unless it was true,’ sort of thing.
It’s a strange heuristic to use to figure out what’s true in the world, but you’ve just got to figure out what they’re censoring. You kind of understand that they’re censoring it because it’s not Big Tech-friendly. It’s not friendly to the established players.
Some ‘Fake News’ Isn’t so Fake After All
Shortly after Trump won the presidential election, you started hearing more and more about the scourge of “fake news.” Google, like Facebook and others, decided they had to protect users from fake news. The problem is, who determines what’s fake and what’s not?
Exactly.
As Jordan Peterson said in regards to hate speech: "Who is going to regulate it? Who is going to define it?
I know the answer to that - the last people in the world you would want to."
Using Google’s internal search engine, Vorhies set out to determine what Google’s definition of fake news was.
He found several examples in a presentation.
However, in it were actual, verifiable real news events.
“I went, ‘Wait a minute. Is this about fake news or is this about controlling the narrative for like political purposes?'” Vorhies says.
He began collecting these documents because he knew they were explosive enough that Google would remove them if word ever got out about them.
In his continued search for real news presented as fake, he started unearthing other disturbing projects.
The main project responsible for Google censorship is a thing called ‘Machine Learning Fairness’ (ML Fairness).
As you imagine, they’re not going to call their censorship regime something bad. They’re going to call it something like ‘fairness.’
So, if you’re against that, you’re against fairness.
It’s a euphemism. I discovered there was this umbrella project, ‘ML Fairness,’ and there were these sub-components like ‘Project Purple Rain,’ which is a 24-hour response team that is monitoring the internet.
How Machine Learning Fairness Twists Perception of Reality
Just what is ML Fairness and how does it work? Vorhies explains:
Let’s say that this circle right here represents the entire spectrum of all possible artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. ML Fairness is a small part of that type of AI. It’s a relatively new type of AI. What machine learning does is it simulates brain neurons and how they fire.
If you remember how a brain neuron fires, it takes in as input signals from other neurons and then mixes those signals together and decides whether it wants to fire or not, based on the signals that it receives.
Well, these artificial neurons do something similar. They have a collection of inputs, depending on the internal rule set. It will fire depending on the inputs it gets … And then that output is used as input for further downstream processing.
If you have this collection of millions of simulated neurons … you can start to create very complex behavior that’s able to solve problems, like chess or the game Go …
It can classify hate speech. That’s the part that’s interesting to me — how this thing could be used to classify information across the internet.
ML Fairness is a type of AI that takes information on the internet, classifies it and then ranks it. And then the Google engine will figure out whether the information is fair or not. And if it is ‘fair,’ it goes to the top. If it’s not fair, then it gets pushed to the bottom. That’s what ML Fairness is in a nutshell.
What this manipulation ultimately ends up doing is presenting a twisted and false view of the world. What you’re seeing in your search results is what the AI algorithm decided is most fair — not what’s actually happening in the real world.
This is how you now end up getting automated search suggestions such as “men can have periods” and “men can have babies,” even though these are biological impossibilities. However, the algorithm deems the idea that only women can menstruate and bear children as “unfair” and basically “sexist,” and thus it’s pushing these ridiculous search suggestions to the top.
This obnoxious discrepancy is clear when using search terms like “men can …” The manipulation of reality will not be as transparent when using health or political search words, when you cannot be absolutely sure, ahead of time, about what the absolute truth is.
Did Google Conspire to Commit Treason?
Vorhies saw these changes starting to take place in early 2017.
Shortly afterwards, Google announced it was going to start assigning an “authoritativeness score” to all news content.
“I was able to see this ranking on internal documents. High rankings were given to outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
“These outlets, in my opinion, have been producing propaganda,” Vorhies says. “They led to us into war with Iraq with the weapons of mass destruction hoax. They’ve lied to us [about] Vietnam. They have a history of supporting every war and military encouragement around the world that has [led to] the destruction of millions of lives.”
In June 2017, chief executive officer of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, announced that this was how they were going to filter news content across the YouTube platforms.
As Vorhies expected, this led to a clamp down on anything that goes against the mainstream narrative.
“Around that time, I had the fortune of catching [another] seditious activity by Google. What I caught them doing was deleting words out of the translation dictionary from Arabic to English, in order to make a Trump tweet sound crazy.2,3”
President Trump had recently come back from a visit to Saudi Arabia when, on May 31, 2017, he tweeted: “Despite the negative constant press, covfefe.” Originally, people were able to translate “covfefe” to “We will stand up.” Taken together, you could see President Trump’s tweet basically said, “Despite the negative constant press, we will stand up.”
“People got really excited about that,” Vorhies says. “Well, The New York Times decided that they were going to write an entire article saying, ‘Actually, this word is nonsense. And everyone who thinks there’s a decode is just wrong.’
The same day that this article came out, I believe it was June 1, 2017, a senior executive person at Google … of one of the AI divisions, wrote up a design document saying, ‘We translated this world from Arabic to English.
But according to The New York Times, that’s not right. That’s actually nonsense, so let’s get rid of the word.’
And so, they got rid of the word.
The team that was responsible for getting rid of this word called themselves the ‘Derrida Team.’ Why is that significant? Because there was a French philosopher by the name of Jacques Derrida, who advocated for the destruction of Western culture through the manipulation and censorship of language.
What a coincidence that this team responsible for censoring words would have the same name as this very significant philosopher who is considered the father of post-modernism.
About six days later, I saw the newspapers were making a push for invoking the 25th Amendment to remove a sitting president from office due to mental incapacitation. One of the reasons that they cited was how Trump was tweeting nonsense.
Now, wait a minute, that was made nonsense by this manipulation of the dictionary! I realized these people have gone too far. There’s obviously a collusion here. I have to bring this to attention no matter what.
This isn’t because I’m necessarily a Trump supporter — I didn’t vote for him — this is simply because they can’t be doing this to a sitting president of the United States. That just can’t happen. It’s treason.
If this is going to happen, then I’ve got to let the public [and] law enforcement know about it. Because if I don’t, then I’m part of a conspiracy of silence … It was at that point that I decided I could no longer sit in silence. I took my cache of documents and I started to prepare for a disclosure event.”
Comment: Finally, an explanation for the infamous covfefe tweet'! It's insane that this word was actually a translation, yet it was used to paint Trump as insane. And the fact that, up until this insider document dump,
NO ONE KNEW THIS.
YouTube Censorship Has Had Lethal Consequences
In 2018, the real-world ramifications of censorship hit home when an Iranian YouTube creator who had recently been demonetized marched into YouTube headquarters and opened fire on employees and then shot herself.4
“Her name was Nasim [Najafi Aghdam]. She had a video that went viral in Iran … She was creating really bizarre videos that were just — I don’t know — I watched them and I actually strangely loved them. I couldn’t stop watching them. They were so weird.
She decided that she was going to quit her job and become a full-time content creator, like millions of others … YouTube was the platform to do that. Everyone was getting a lot of subscribers and were trying to generate money, get monetized on the platform …
They would get a cut of the ads that were running when people interact with the ads or view them … What YouTube did is they made a blanket ban. Anyone under 10,000 subscribers got censored. By censorship, I mean demonetized. They lost all of the funding that they could get for their videos. They can still post videos, they just couldn’t get any money [from Google Ads] for it.
And so, this person had just lost her job. She felt she was being oppressed by YouTube. She drove all the way from San Diego, came to the YouTube headquarters on 901 Cherry Avenue … came into the lunch area patio, took out a handgun and started firing …
She shot a couple of people. Ran out of ammo, reloaded and shot some more and then [shot] herself in the chest and [bled] to death … Obviously, this person was mentally deranged but, also, she was triggered by Google’s censorship. Now I’ve got this very personal story about how censorship has affected my safety.
You would think that maybe YouTube would [rethink] its censorship, but no. They didn’t … Every day I would come into work and I would think, ‘You know, with this increase in censorship, is someone going to come in with a gun?'”
Google Attempts to Destroy Vorhies by ‘Lawfare’
Vorhies resigned from Google June 28, 2019, and was immediately put under investigation, as the company had logs showing the many documents he’d been searching for and reading through.
Vorhies tells the story of what happened next:
“When I went to Project Veritas, I went under anonymity. We only released two pages of the 950 that they had [been given]. My hope was that Google would leave me alone … But they decided they weren’t going to do that.
They decided they were going to attempt to financially destroy me by engaging in lawfare, which is warfare via the legal system.
Within a few weeks of me disclosing ML Fairness to Project Veritas, they sent me threatening letters, demanding access to all my data outside of work …
I wrote them back a letter admitting I had retained files, telling them I had given them to law enforcement … The NDA, the nondisclosure agreement I signed is nonenforceable in cases where the company is committing criminal activity. Sedition is criminal activity, which means that the NDA is null and void.
I can submit evidence of Google’s criminal activity to the government and to the media when the company is engaging in unlawful activity. That’s what I did. Also, I signed the NDA in good faith, believing that Google’s word of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful and ‘Don’t be evil,’ were truthful statements …
I met an attorney who was representing Kevin Cernekee, another Google engineer who attempted to blow the whistle in the most legitimate way possible, which was to notify the Federal Labor Relations Authority in California. Kevin gave these papers to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Google responded by ambushing him with HR, seizing his laptop, seeing all the documents that he had downloaded, and then firing him and creating a legal theory that he had hacked into Google to get documents so that he could reconstruct Google’s legal strategy and maybe even sell it.
They applied criminal charges against him. They made him defend himself in court for his collection of evidence that he had sent to the NLRB. He’s [spent] $100,000 dollars of his own money defending himself from Google, so I knew what was in store for me.
[Cernekee’s] lawyer was like, ‘Yeah. This is the first step in a very painful process that’s going to drive on for years. They’re going to make it very expensive. Their goal is to destroy you.’ Well, in that case, I’m not going to fight in the legal law. I’m going to fight in the court of public opinion.
I decided at that point to come out to Project Veritas and disclose who I was so that I could get eyes [on me], and I said, ‘If Google’s going to take me down, then I’m going to leverage that so that everyone else can see what they do and what they’re really about. And then we can make Google’s censorship program part of the national discussion.’
I disclosed everything. I released it to the public, all 950 pages … August 17, 2019 … [I’ve] tried to become a cultural force so that we can hold Google to account of what they’re doing, because their censorship is wrong.
It’s wrong for America. It’s anti-American. Their election meddling is something that needs to be looked at, needs to be watched, because they’ve meddled with the elections in the past. They’re meddling in the elections now.
They were able to deactivate Tulsi Gabbard’s ad account directly following the Democratic debates.
They’ve meddled in the Ireland elections.
They’ve meddled in the Brazil elections.
We know this because there was a Supreme Court ruling that released the evidence showing they had a secret agreement with one of the politicians to generate dirt and boost it up on the current president of Brazil.”
How Autofill Can Shift Political Opinion
Vorhies goes on to explain and describe how Google tools such as autofill search recommendations can be used to sway public opinion on political (and other topics), which can have significant political consequences.
Autofill is what happens when you start typing a search query into a search engine and algorithms kick in to offer suggestions to complete your search. We’ve been led to believe that whatever the autofill recommendations are is what most people are in fact searching for — Google has stated that the suggestions given are generated by a collection of user data — but that’s not true, at least not anymore.
“This story about the autofill first got disclosed by Dr. Robert Epstein, who is a Harvard-trained psychologist and former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today,” Vorhies explains.
“What he said was that Google had flipped a bunch of votes for Hillary using this autosuggest feature. I’ve investigated this claim.
I’ve verified it to be true …
It turns out that a lot of the popular searches were being suppressed.
For example, you typed in ‘Clinton body count.’ It’s a popular search term. This brings up all the people who have died in the decades that were associated with Hillary Clinton.
Well, this search result has been deleted off the search suggestion. What’s happened instead is that a bunch of negative search terms have been inserted that went against the current president of the United States, Donald Trump.
So, when you’re typing in search queries for Trump, it’s autocompleting and suggesting, ‘Do you mean that he’s a liar? That he’s a crook?’ … And then you do the same for Hillary Clinton and it has all these positive terms … They were doing this on the political stuff.
The most significant thing about this feature is the fact that you don’t expect to have this part of your online experience to be hatched for political reasons. You think that this is legitimately what other people are searching for.
As a result, you don’t have your filters on. Your brain puts on these filters when it starts to evaluate politically charged information. When you read a newspaper article, you may be thinking to yourself, ‘This may be true, this may not.’ You’re skeptical.
But when you’re typing into a search, you don’t think that because you don’t think that’s rigged, so whatever bias is inherent in that search result slips through and goes directly into your subconscious. This is what Epstein was explaining.”
The Search Engine Manipulation Effect
Epstein developed a “black box test” (a method of software testing) to measure just how influential a tool like autofill can be. Remarkably, his test demonstrated that “Google’s ‘autocomplete’ search suggestions can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split”5,6 — all without anyone being aware of the manipulation.
Similarly, when Epstein looked at the power of search engine manipulation to shift preferences and perceptions, he found that:7
“(1) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, (2) the shift can be much higher in some demographic groups, and (3) such rankings can be masked so that people show no awareness of the manipulation.”
The good news is, there are ways to lower this manipulation effect, but to do so, people have to be aware that biased ranking is taking place. In his 2017 paper, “Suppressing the Search Engine Manipulation Effect,” Epstein writes:8
“A recent series of experiments demonstrated that introducing ranking bias to election-related search engine results can have a strong and undetectable influence on the preferences of undecided voters.
This phenomenon, called the search engine manipulation effect (SEME), exerts influence largely through order effects that are enhanced in a digital context.
We present data from three new experiments involving 3,600 subjects in 39 countries in which we replicate SEME and test design interventions for suppressing the effect. In the replication, voting preferences shifted by 39.0%, a number almost identical to the shift found in a previously published experiment (37.1%).
Alerting users to the ranking bias reduced the shift to 22.1%, and more detailed alerts reduced it to 13.8%. Users’ browsing behaviors were also significantly altered by the alerts, with more clicks and time going to lower-ranked search results.
Although bias alerts were effective in suppressing SEME, we found that SEME could be completely eliminated only by alternating search results — in effect, with an equal-time rule.
We propose a browser extension capable of deploying bias alerts in real-time and speculate that SEME might be impacting a wide range of decision-making, not just voting, in which case search engines might need to be strictly regulated.”
As pointed out by Vorhies,
“We’ve got to watch out for Google, because … they’re going to try to rig the 2020 elections.”
Based on Epstein’s results, Google certainly appears to have the power to do so. The only way to prevent it may be an information campaign that exposes this hidden agenda, thereby helping to suppress this search engine manipulation effect.
Do a Google Detox
How can you prevent getting sucked into the false-reality vortex that is Google? Vorhies offers a number of suggestions for how to minimize Google’s influence over your life:
Stop using Gmail. ProtonMail,11 which provides end-to-end encryption and less spam, is an excellent option, and one which I use here.
Switch from an android phone (powered by Google) to an iPhone. (I use Chinese cell phones. 5G and unhackable by the NSA in America.)
There are alternatives for most if not all Google products, and by using these other companies, we can help them grow so that Google becomes less and less relevant.
“Use iPhone, use DuckDuckGo and use Protonmail. Those three things will get most of Google out of your life,” Vorhies says.
“I’ve been a lot happier because of that. I know [Google is] able to read everything that I write when I’m on Gmail or I’m using one of their services. I’ve had people who want to interview me on YouTube, and then their YouTube pages get destroyed.”
Stop using Google docs (Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives12).
If you’re a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into any type of personal accounts.
Both the Chrome and Firefox browsers have been compromised by Google, so consider switching if you’re on either of those.
Brave is my personal favorite, but the Opera browser is another alternative.13
Vorhies is also a fan of Brave.
He says…
“The guy who created this browser, Brave … added features to eliminate all the ads. Now my MacBook runs like new.
I’ve got a 2012 MacBook. I thought I had to upgrade it in order to make it run fast. [Using] Brave instead, my computer operates five times faster when it opens a lot of browser tabs.
It’s phenomenal.
Not only do I get to Google detox, but I get a better experience by not using Google. It’s a no-brainer.
People should just use it. And all of the plug-ins I use, like LastPass, which contains all of my passwords, they all install.” Support Vorhies’ ‘Disclosure Tour’
In the interview, Vorhies recounts a long harrowing incident in which Google instructed local police to perform a mental wellness check on him. Pretty crazy stuff. Which eventually escalated into a full-blown evacuation of the entire street due to a fake bomb threat. Obviously a ruse, confabulated in an effort to get him out of his apartment.
Crazy stuff during crazy times.
He also discusses how Google’s censorship of things like holistic health and clean energy developments is actually evidence that a better future is ahead. The drug and oil industries are starting to lose their grip as safer, less expensive and more effective alternatives are gaining ground.
He argues that censorship is a last-ditch effort to hold on to a crumbling paradigm.
Raising Awareness of the dangers of Google
As Vorhies mentioned earlier, his primary focus right now is to raise awareness about Google and to create a cultural force for change.
You can follow Vorhies on Twitter. His handle is PerpetualManiac (Twitter.com/PerpetualManiac).
“If you click the follow button, you’ll be part of a collection of patriots who are looking to ensure the survival of the republic, to ensure sovereignty and to bring Google to account for the censorship they’re doing.
People are helping me raise awareness by retweeting the things I’m saying. Because honestly, I’m fighting giants,”
“If [Google is] going to take me down, then I’m just going to go down fighting. I’m going to leverage everything they do to further the great awakening that’s happening right now in the United States and across the world.”
“I’m doing that because, ultimately, I’m in service to a higher power … I believe this magnificent creative force in the universe wants people to be free. It’s up to us to ensure that the freedoms we enjoy are handed down to our children … our grandchildren and our collective future.”
If you haven’t divorced Google, and blocked it completely from your browser, then DO IT NOW. This is only the “tip of the iceberg” and it’s a lot worse than anyone knows.
If you liked this article, you can read similar articles by viewing the master index for this class here;
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Hennig Brand was obsessed with discovering the philosopher’s stone.
Alternatively known as the elixir of life, the philosopher’s stone
promised its finder eternal life and the ability to turn common metals
into gold.
Brand grew to believe that human urine offered a gateway to the
elixir of life. This was typical alchemical thinking – alchemists hoped
to better understand eternal life through studying the properties of
body fluids.
Brand collected thousands of liters of urine from his neighbors.
Although someone doing this today would probably be regarded as screwy,
it was a common practice to collect urine in earlier times – it had
plenty of uses, such as fertilizing crops, softening leather, and
cleaning your teeth!
In 1669, in Hamburg, Brand evaporated the urine he collected to yield
a black sludge. He left this to mature until worms started appearing in
it. He heated the sludge with sand, yielding hot gases and oils, which
he condensed using cold water. The final substance to condense was a
white solid. This was phosphorus. (Human urine contains significant
quantities of dissolved phosphates.)
At first Brand called the remarkable new substance ‘cold fire’
because it glowed in the dark. He then named it phosphorus, which is
Greek for ‘bringer of light.’ He was the first named person in history
to discover a new chemical element.
The image herein was painted long after Brand’s lifetime by the British artist Joseph Wright in 1771. Its wordy title is: The Alchymist, in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers. The painting shows white phosphorus glowing with exaggerated intensity. White phosphorus naturally produces a rather dim green glow.
The Alchemist Discovering Phosphorus or The Alchemist in Search of the Philosophers Stone
I find this work of art amazing.
Art Related Index
This is an index of art that I have found profound, interesting,
beautiful or enlightening. In any event, I find that art soothes my
soul. I enjoy painting figurative and portraits in oils using the more
traditional Flemish technique, but it never really brought me the kind
of money I need to live off of. Such is the life of a painter today.
Please enjoy.
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
