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On November 18th, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt spoke about how Google will help to defeat Russia. He said that Google helps in this effort not by “censoring” Russian newsmedia, but by “de-ranking” them in Google web-searches, so that web-pages from these sites, which he calls “propaganda,” will show so far down in the rankings in any Google-search, so that users of Google will not encounter (or will be vastly less likely to encounter) Russian sites — or any other non-mainstream sites (such as this one), which refuse unquestioningly to trumpet government lies.

Schmidt was speaking to the NATO-sponsored Halifax International Security Forum, which is headquartered actually in Washington DC, though “The Forum is best known for its annual security summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia” in order to strengthen Canada’s bond to America’s anti-Russia military alliance, NATO.

Schmidt’s full speech, and the Q-and-A’s after Schmidt’s presentation, are shown complete in the video here:

https://www.facebook.com/Halifaxtheforum/videos/1642381182492613/

Since no transcript was provided, extensive excerpts from the video will be quoted here.

At the video’s start, it’s marked as 1:51:38, and at its end, it is marked as 0:00:00, but only the end-marking shows in the video while it’s running, and that end-marking indicates the number of minutes-till the video’s end. I therefore provide both markings [with the minutes-from-the end being shown in brackets like here], because the video’s producers had made unusually difficult the finding and location of anything that’s said in Schmidt’s war-speech presentation. The presentation wasn’t addressed to the publics of NATO-member countries, but instead to scholarly and financial elites in those countries, people whose own careers are in service to these nations’ aristocracies (people who themselves are highly invested in their nation’s military-industrial complex). It thus reveals some things that Schmidt might prefer that the public not know.

1:08:00-[-43:00]

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Censorship Comes to Google

December 1, 2017

Censorship Comes to Google

Senator Feinstein rather boldly asked Google to take action to hamper RT’s ability to communicate its views to American audiences.

At Saturday’s Halifax International Security Forum, Eric Schmidt announced that Google will alter its search algorithm to “de-rank” results from Russia Today.

Why did Google do this? Perhaps they were concerned about Russia meddling in American elections or they thought their customers wished to see less of Russia Today. It matters not. Generally, Google has broad power to police its platform. We might not like the decision, but it is not ours to make.

Feinstein boldly asked Google to hamper RT’s ability to communicate with American audiences.

There is a second possibility. Government officials may have threatened Google to bring about this “de-ranking” of Russia Today. If so, the First Amendment poses questions for us. We need to answer such questions, however, only if government officials did, in fact, threaten Google.

Congressional Pressure on Google

Consider the following exchange between Sen. Feinstein and Google General Counsel Kent Walker from the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on Russian influence in the 2016 election:

Feinstein: Why didn’t Google take any action regarding RT after the intelligence community assessment came out in January of 2017.

Walker: … with regard to RT, we recognize the concerns that have been expressed about RT and concerns about its slanted coverage, this is of course a question that goes beyond the internet, RT is covered, its channel is on major cable television stations, on satellite television stations, its advertising appears in newspapers, magazines, airports, it’s run in hotels in pretty much every city in the United States.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Asymmetry of Bubbles: the Status Quo and Bitcoin

November 30, 2017

The Asymmetry of Bubbles: the Status Quo and Bitcoin

Shall we compare the damage that will be done when all these bubbles pop?

Regardless of one’s own views about bitcoin/cryptocurrency, what is truly remarkable is the asymmetry that is applied to questioning the status quo and bitcoin. As I noted yesterday, everyone seems just fine with throwing away $20 billion in electricity annually in the U.S. alone to keep hundreds of millions of gadgets in stand-by mode, but the electrical consumption of bitcoin is “shocking,” “ridiculous,” etc.

Since the U.S. consumes about 20% of the world’s energy, we can guesstimate the total amount of electricity wasted on stand-by and similar sources of waste is more on the order of $100 billion annually.

What’s shocking and ridiculous is that upwards of $100 billion in electricity is squandered globally annually on stand-by devices and other painfully obvious sources of waste. But this attracts essentially zero concern or commentary. Do you notice any asymmetry in the scrutiny being applied to the status quo and to bitcoin et al.? The status quo– wasteful beyond measure–is just fine: nobody questions the staggering waste built into the status quo, from hundreds of millions of devices consuming electricity but doing no work to hundreds of millions of vehicles idling in traffic for hours each and every day across the globe–nope, the really big issue is bitcoin / blockchain consumption.

Does anyone question how much electricity the vast server farms of Google and Facebook consume in order to serve up adverts and store photos of puppies and kittens? And how about the energy consumed by the NSA and the dozens of National Security agencies that have proliferated over the past 16 years? How much coal gets burned to serve adverts, archive photos of puppies and kittens, and store billions of emails, phone calls to Aunt Sadie, etc. for future analysis?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Goodbye Net Neutrality; Hello Competition

November 25, 2017

Goodbye Net Neutrality; Hello Competition

We should take our deregulation where we can get it.

At long last, with the end of “net neutrality,” competition could soon come to the industry that delivers Internet services to you. You might be able to pick among a range of packages, some minimalist and some maximalist, depending on how you use the service. Or you could choose a package that charges based only on what you consume, rather than sharing fees with everyone else.

Internet socialism is dead; long live market forces.

With market-based pricing finally permitted, we could see new entrants to the industry because it might make economic sense for the first time to innovate. The growing competition will lead, over the long run, to innovation and falling prices. Consumers will find themselves in the driver’s seat rather than crawling and begging for service and paying whatever the provider demands.

Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC, is exactly right. “Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet. Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them.”

A Fed for Communication

The old rules pushed by the Obama administration had locked down the industry with regulation that only helped incumbent service providers and major content delivery services. They called it a triumph of “free expression and democratic principles.” It was anything but. It was actually a power grab. It created an Internet communication cartel not unlike the way the banking system works under the Federal Reserve.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mark Zuckerberg’s Long Litany Of Failings – Mainstream Media Turns On Social Media

November 17, 2017

Mark Zuckerberg’s Long Litany Of Failings – Mainstream Media Turns On Social Media

The mainstream media is a fickle beast beholden to the direction of the prevailing political winds. Unfortunately for Facebook, Google and Twitter, those winds have turned about face in recent weeks as the political establishment thrashes about in its misguided efforts to prove that – aided by social media – Russia changed the course of the 2016 presidential election. While Facebook’s share price has suffered very little so far, the mainstream media is going to work on the reputations of Facebook and its billionaire founder. For example, according to Vanity Fair last month.

“…the tech giant is broadly focused on repairing its reputation following revelations that its platform was weaponized by Russia in the 2016 election.”

“Weaponized” seemed a very strong word to use.

With the social media platform deemed “fair game” in the mainstream media, the Financial Times has lined up Mark Zuckerberg in its crosshairs. The FT journalist who penned the piece on Zuckerberg, Edward Luce, is cut from establishment cloth…and then some. Luce is the son of Richard Luce, now Baron Luce, the former MP, former Lord Chamberlain to the Queen and Knight of the Garter. Edward Luce read PPE at Oxford, took a sabbatical as a speech writer for Larry Summers and is the FT’s chief US commentator.

We are no fans of Zuckerberg and sympathise with some of it, but we recognise a hatchet job when we see it. In the article, Luce accuses Zuckerberg of…

Self-evident observation, or “stating the bleeding obvious”, to use the English vernacular:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Demise of Dissent: Why the Web Is Becoming Homogenized

November 17, 2017

The Demise of Dissent: Why the Web Is Becoming Homogenized

In other words, we’ll be left with officially generated and sanctioned fake news and “approved” dissent.

We’ve all heard that the problem with the web is fake news, i.e. unsubstantiated or erroneous content that’s designed to mislead or sow confusion.

The problem isn’t just fake news–it’s the homogenization of the web, that is, the elimination or marginalization of independent voices of skepticism and dissent.

There are four drivers of this homogenization:

1. The suppression of dissent under the guise of ridding the web of propaganda and fake news–in other words, dissent is labeled fake news as a cover for silencing critics and skeptics.

2. The sharp decline of advertising revenues flowing to web publishers, both major outlets and small independent publishers like Of Two Minds.

3. The majority of advert revenues now flow into the coffers of the quasi-monopolies Facebook and Google.

4. Publishers are increasingly dependent on these quasi-monopolies for readers and visibility: any publisher who runs afoul of Facebook and Google and is sent to Digital Siberia effectively vanishes.

The reason why publishers’ advert incomes are plummeting are four-fold:

1. Most of the advert revenues in the digital market are being skimmed by Facebook and Google, as the chart below illustrates.

2. Ad blockers have become ubiquitous.

3. Few people click on the display ads that are the standard in desktop web publishing; in other words, these ads simply don’t work very well, and much of the revenue being generated is click-fraud, i.e. bots not real people clicking on adverts because they’re interested in the product/service. As a result, advertisers are pulling away from these type of ads as they search for advert models that aren’t so vulnerable to click-fraud.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tax Them Till They Bleed

November 12, 2017

Tax Them Till They Bleed

Jean-Léon Gérôme Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind 1896An entire library of articles about Big Tech is coming out these days, and I find that much of it is written so well, and the ideas in them so well expressed, that I have little to add. Except, I think I may have the solution to the problems many people see. But I also have a concern that I don’t see addressed, and that may well prevent that solution from being adopted. If so, we’re very far away from any solution at all. And that’s seriously bad news.

Let’s start with a general -even ‘light’- critique of social media by Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan for the Guardian:

How Did The News Go ‘Fake’? When The Media Went Social

Social media force us to live our lives in public, positioned centre-stage in our very own daily performances. Erving Goffman, the American sociologist, articulated the idea of “life as theatre” in his 1956 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, and while the book was published more than half a century ago, the concept is even more relevant today. It is increasingly difficult to live a private life, in terms not just of keeping our personal data away from governments or corporations, but also of keeping our movements, interests and, most worryingly, information consumption habits from the wider world.

The social networks are engineered so that we are constantly assessing others – and being assessed ourselves. In fact our “selves” are scattered across different platforms, and our decisions, which are public or semi-public performances, are driven by our desire to make a good impression on our audiences, imagined and actual.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Facebook and Google threaten public health – and democracy

November 11, 2017

How Facebook and Google threaten public health – and democracy

The sad truth is that Facebook and Google have behaved irresponsibly in the pursuit of massive profits. And this has come at a cost to our health

woman holds smartphone — ‘Substance cannot compete with sensation, which must be amplified constantly, lest consumers get distracted and move on.’ Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In an interview this week with Axios, Facebook’s original president, Sean Parker, admitted that the company intentionally sought to addict users and expressed regret at the damage being inflicted on children.

This admission, by one of the architects of Facebook, comes on the heels of last week’s hearings by Congressional committees about Russian interference in the 2016 election, where the general counsels of Facebook, Alphabet (parent of Google and YouTube), and Twitter attempted to deflect responsibility for manipulation of their platforms.

The term “addiction” is no exaggeration. The average consumer checks his or her smartphone 150 times a day, making more than 2,000 swipes and touches. The applications they use most frequently are owned by Facebook and Alphabet, and the usage of those products is still increasing.

In terms of scale, Facebook and YouTube are similar to Christianity and Islam respectively. More than 2 billion people use Facebook every month, 1.3 billion check in every day. More than 1.5 billion people use YouTube. Other services owned by these companies also have user populations of 1 billion or more.

Facebook and Alphabet are huge because users are willing to trade privacy and openness for “convenient and free.” Content creators resisted at first, but user demand forced them to surrender control and profits to Facebook and Alphabet.

The sad truth is that Facebook and Alphabet have behaved irresponsibly in the pursuit of massive profits. They have consciously combined persuasive techniques developed by propagandists and the gambling industry with technology in ways that threaten public health and democracy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Washington Stomps on Civil Liberty

November 5, 2017

Washington Stomps on Civil Liberty

The insouciant American electorate is so inattentive that it routinely elects enemies of civil liberty to represent the public in Congress. Last Wednesday Rep. Adam Schiff (D, CA), Rep. Trey Gowdy ( R, SC), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D, CA), Sen. Mark Warner (D, VA), Rep. Jackie Speier (D, CA), Sen. Tom Cotton (R , AR ), and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D, TX) tried to intimidate executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google into blocking all digital dissent to the anti-Trump/Russian line taken by the DNC and military/secrurity complex and to serve as spy agencies for the CIA.

Two of the above—Gowdy and Cotton—are Republicans who have aligned themselves with the attack on Russia and Republican President Trump. What unites the members of the two parties is that they want a police state. Jackie Speier demands to know from Google why Google hasn’t “shut down RT on YouTube.” Joaquin Castro wants messages linked to Russia turned over to the US government. Trey Gowdy wants false statements blocked, which would mean that the entire print and TV media in the US would be shut down along with Congress, John Brennan, Robert Mueller, and James Comey. Gowdy does not know that the First Amendment guarantees free speech and leaves it up to the public to decide what is true and what is false.

You tell me. What kind of insouciant people are capable of electing representatives who do not respect the Bill of Rights? Is a country whose government does not respect its own Constitution a democracy? Is such a country an exceptional, indispensable country? Or is it a completely corrupt entity whose government no longer has the slightest allegience to the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Seneca Cliff for the Web as we know it?

November 1, 2017

A Seneca Cliff for the Web as we know it?

We can’t ignore the evidence any longer. The “Web”, intended as a constellation of independent information providers is dying. It is going through a Seneca Cliff of its own, being replaced by a “Trinet”, controlled by the three giant companies, Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

I have been noticing it with the stats for “Cassandra’s Legacy”. You can see how the decline in the number of contacts has been steady over the past year. Here are the stats:

We don’t yet see a Seneca Cliff, that is a rapid drop in the audience (don’t look at the drop at the end of the graph; it is just because the data are for the current month). I think it is mainly because I have been trying to contrast the decline by publishing more posts, but that has not been sufficient to change the trend. Here are the data for another blog of mine, “Chimeras”

In this case, the blog used to be visited by students looking for text to cut and paste for their term papers on mythology. They are not coming anymore; evidently, they found other sources of information. Or maybe the search engines don’t lead them to my blog anymore. Hard to say, but it is a fact.

So, what’s happening? As always, things change and, in our times, tend to change fast. Many of us can remember the “age of mass media,” now obsolete as steam engines and mechanical calculators. It looks incredible that there existed a time when everyone was exposed to the same information, provided under strict control by the government. In the Soviet Union, it was under control of the Communist Party.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ministry of Truth Goes After Facebook, Twitter, Google

October 31, 2017

Ministry of Truth Goes After Facebook, Twitter, Google

Facebook, Twitter and Google meet with Congress on Tuesday about Russia’s use of fake accounts and paid advertising to meddle in the 2016 election.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google are under close scrutiny as Congress is set to crack down on alleged election-ad abuses. The three tech giants meet Congress](https://www.bloomberg.com//news/articles/2017-10-31/facebook-twitter-google-to-tell-congress-how-russia-meddled) today.

Senators want to know how the companies failed to keep Russians from exploiting their networks — buying 3,000 Facebook ads mostly with rubles — and using fake accounts to spread chaos and disinformation to millions of Americans. The three companies’ general counsels will appear before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday and the House and Senate Intelligence panels Wednesday.

“The foreign interference we saw is reprehensible and outrageous and opened a new battleground for our company, our industry and our society,” Colin Stretch, Facebook Inc. general counsel, said in prepared remarks. “We’re determined to prevent it from happening again.”

Facebook plans to tell lawmakers that 80,000 posts by 470 fake Russian accounts reached an estimated 126 million people, and that it closed 5.8 million fake accounts from all sources in October 2016 alone. Fake Russian accounts on Facebook’s Instagram posted another 120,000 pieces of content, the company will tell lawmakers.

At the same hearing, Twitter Inc. will say it has suspended 2,752 Russian-linked accounts, far more than it previously disclosed, according to testimony obtained by Bloomberg. Alphabet Inc.’s Google plans to say the impact on its sites was much smaller, with $4,700 worth of Russian-linked ads, compared to the $100,000 Facebook disclose.

Facebook head of security Alex Stamos has said using algorithms to try to cut fake news or political comments would result in the company acting as the “Ministry of Truth” — something it doesn’t want to be. But its current effort to stop misinformation, by letting neutral third parties fact-check posts flagged by users, is falling short, according to people familiar with the process.

Meanwhile …

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Capitalism Dead or Merely Dying?

October 22, 2017

Is Capitalism Dead or Merely Dying?

Alfred Wertheimer Elvis 1956

New Zealand’s new prime minister Jacinda Ardern calls capitalism a blatant failure. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis says capitalism is ‘merely’ coming to an end because it is making itself obsolete. Mathematics professor Bruce Boghosian claims that without redistribution of wealth, our market economy would not be stable, because wealth always tends to concentrate. The people at Artemis Capital Management write that the stock market has begun self-cannibalizing like a snake eating its tail, and the only reason we’re not in a recession already is ‘financial alchemy’.

At the very least we can say that the system is under pressure. But what system is that? It would be nice to have a clearcut definition of capitalism, but alas, there are many, about as many as there are different forms of it. That doesn’t make this any easier. Americans call many European economies ‘socialist’, which seems to mean they are not capitalist. But Scandinavian countries don’t function like the Soviet Union either.

And if you see how much money is involved in transfer payments to citizens in the US, the supposed bastion of free market capitalism, it’s tempting to conclude the system has already failed. But even with transfer payments, inequality is at record levels. That would seem to confirm Boghosian’s statement that “even if a society does redistribute wealth, if it’s too small an amount, “a partial oligarchy will result..” So what then?

Varoufakis and others want a “universal basic dividend”, or “universal basic income”. Would that be the end of capitalism as we know it? Or is it just a -perhaps more extreme- form of ‘state capitalism’? Varoufakis deems it inevitable because technology will eradicate so many jobs from societies that people won’t be able to make money from work. Personally, I’ve long thought that the pending large-scale demise of pensions systems will lead to some form of UBI.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Madrid Waged Cyber-War & Catalonia Votes Overwhelmingly to Leave Spain

October 7, 2017

Madrid Waged Cyber-War & Catalonia Votes Overwhelmingly to Leave Spain

Catalonia voted overwhelmingly to secede from Spain. Of course, the hard line invasion of riot police who beat and threatened the people discouraged many from showing up with the turnout being only 43%. The fascist government in Spain has demonstrated to the entire world that there is a major country risk in dealing with Spain. Any government that uses force against democracy will do whatever it takes to sustain power as the economy gets wose going into 2021.

Hundreds of people were injured by riot police attempting to prevent voting, and this has only caused outrage and further protests solidifying the resolve to separate from such a fascist government. Both Canada and Britain allowed separatist votes. Why Spain deemed the vote illegal was clear that they knew they would vote to leave.

Madrid even waged a cyber-war against Catalonia. They sought to shut down the internet and even ordered Google to shut down traffic coming from Catalonia. Madrid has shown the future civil war tactic will be to shut down the internet to prevent communication.

Catalonia’s parliament may well now declare independence; Madrid could decide to impose direct rule on the region and the police have been transformed into terrorists resembling the imported Russian police in Ukraine. Barcelona is perhaps the most beautiful city in Europe. Obviously, Madrid will be off the tourist agenda in the years ahead.

Dark Days Ahead for Catalonia

September 30, 2017

Dark Days Ahead for Catalonia

It isn’t just about what happens on Sunday; it’s about the ensuing days and weeks.

The next 72 hours could be crucial not only for Catalonia, but also for the rest of Spain and Europe. For now, the cards are overwhelmingly stacked in Madrid’s favor. The central government enjoys the outward support of all European institutions, key Western partners and has the full power of the law on its side as well as the full arsenal of state repression at its disposal.

After confiscating millions of ballot slips and thousands of ballot boxes, and launching what Wikileaks’ Julian Assange has termed the “world’s first Internet War” against Catalonia, freezing telecommunications links, occupying telecoms buildings and censoring hundreds of websites, the Rajoy administration has made it logistically difficult, if not impossible, for the region to hold a credible referendum.

Spain’s constitutional court even went so far as to ask Google to shut down the app that allows Catalans to see where they have to vote on Sunday. Even the two main civil associations behind Catalonia’s push for independence have begun to tamp down expectations, conceding that the police operations have made it “very difficult” to hold a meaningful vote.

Now, all the government in Madrid has to do is sit back, watch and enjoy as the referendum’s organizers struggle to achieve a turnout even close to that of the purely symbolic consultation it held on November 9, 2014. Then, on Monday or Tuesday, Rajoy, with a small dose of humility, can launch political negotiations with Catalonia’s representatives from a position of strength.

But he probably won’t.

The Spanish government’s strategy so far has been to use the full extent of Spanish law to crush each and every attempt by Catalonia’s independence movement and regional government to organize this vote. It’s unlikely to stop now, when it’s winning.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rajoy Shuts Down Airspace & Orders Google to Stop Assisting Separatists

September 30, 2017

Rajoy Shuts Down Airspace & Orders Google to Stop Assisting Separatists

The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy who is becoming a disgrace to the image of a free society,
The Catalan supporters are now occupying poll points to protect their right to vote, while Rajoy has now blocked airspace over Barcelona as he wants to prevent the referendum in Catalonia by all means.

Rajoy had his puppet Spanish Supreme Court order that Google had to delete an app that had been used by the operators of the referendum to communicate with each other. The corrupt Spanish court ruled that the “On Votar 1-Oct” application on the Google Play smartphone app shop violated the ban imposed by Spain to conduct the referendum. Rajoy is totally out of control and is illustrating everything that is wrong about the EU and how it claims to stand for human right with the refugees but crushes anyon Europe who disagrees with the politic elite.

The vote will take place in a total of 2,155 polling stations. The government has shut down airspace to prevent others from flying into Barcelona to join the protests.

The Rajoy’s judiciary has also initiated investigations against more than 700 Catalan mayors, who support the independence referendum. The Regional Parliament had passed a bill in Barcelona in early September, which freed the way for the popular decision. The government in Barcelona had originally declared that if the independence won a majority, they would decline independence in 48 hours.

Canada allowed Quebec to vote of separatism TWICE. Even Britain allowed Scotland to vote on separation from the UK. Spain is showing the world that it is still a fascist state true to heart – not a democratic state. This raises serious concerns about foreign investment into Spain. If the government changes its position, you will find that country risk overpowers investment opportunity. BEWARE!

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