It's time to rein in warrantless domestic surveillance before it's too late.

 

By Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com

Google, pardon Alphabet's efforts to influence the American political discourse (not to mention presidential election outcome) stretch far beyond the company’s penchant for subtly disadvantaging independent and conservative thinkers on platforms like YouTube. By financially supporting left-leaning policy shops, Google’s parent company has helped raise a liberal army intent on hashing out policy minutiae to help bend US policy to their benefactors’ advantage.

But what happens when these supposedly “independent” think tanks publish something that displeases their corporate master? As one researcher at the left-leaning New America think tank learned, the punishment is swift and severe.

Barry Lynn, formerly a top researcher at New America, learned that lesson the hard way after publishing a paper praising European Union antitrust regulators for fining Google nearly $3 billion for purportedly rigging its search algorithm to favor its own services over its rivals.

According to the New York Times, the New America Foundation has received more than $21 million in funding from Google, Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt and his family’s foundation since the think tank was first established in 1999. The money helped establish New America as an “elite voice” in policy debates on the American left.

“But not long after one of New America’s scholars posted a statement on the think tank’s website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google, Mr. Schmidt, who had been chairman of New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar.”

Slaughter, a close ally of the Clintons who’s best known for her 2012 Atlantic Cover Story “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” quickly caved.

The statement disappeared from new America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later. But word of Mr. Schmidt’s displeasure quickly rippled  through New America, which employs more than 200 people, including dozens of researchers, writers and scholars, most of whom work in sleek Washington officers where the main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab. The episode left some people concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors.”

The answer to that last question, as employees of New America quickly learned, is, obviously, no, it can't. A few days after the incident Slaughter summoned to Lynn to her office, where she summarily dismissed him – along with 10 of his underlings.

“Those worries seemed to be substantiated a couple of days later, when Ms. Slaughter summoned the scholar who wrote the critical statement, Barry Lynn, to her office. He ran a New America initiative called Open Markets that has led a growing chorus of liberal criticism of the market dominance of telecom and tech giants, including Google, which is now part of a large corporate entity known as Alphabet, for which Mr. Schmidt serves as executive charman.

Ms. Slaughter told Mr. Lynn that ‘the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways,’ according to emails from Ms. Slaughter to Mr. Lynn. The email suggested that the entire Open Markets team – nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows – would be exiled from New America."

While she asserted in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times, that the decision was ‘in no way based on the content of your work,’ Ms. Slaughter accused Mr. Lynn of ‘imperiling the institution as a whole.’”

Lynn, who eventually shared his story with the NYT, blasted Google’s aggressive tactics, which the company has denied through its communications machine.

And the punchline, which also serves as the title for this post: "Google is very aggressive in throwing its money around Washington and Brussels, and then pulling the strings.” said Lynn. “People are so afraid of Google now.”

In a series of statements published on Twitter, Slaughter and New America slammed the NYT’s story as “absolutely false.”

In a separate email sent last year, Slaughter castigated Lynn for organizing a conference where he intended to criticize tech companies’ hegemonic influence.

“We are in the process of trying to expand our relationship with Google on some absolutely key points,” Ms. Slaughter wrote in an email to Mr. Lynn, urging him to ‘just THINK about how you are imperiling funding for others.’”  

Slaughter is now reportedly helping the Open Markets team secure financing for a new, separate nonprofit entity. However, no money will be forthcoming from Google.

Google spent more than $9.5 million on lobbying during the first half of 2017, more than almost any other company. It has helped organize conferences at which key regulators overseeing investigations into the company were presented with pro-Google arguments, sometimes without disclosure of Google’s role in funding NA, according to the NYT.

The company has also donated to more than 170 groups from across the political spectrum, according to voluntary disclosures on its website.

What was that about “don’t be evil”?

Editor's Note:
I don't think President Trump would ever sign a bill like this even if it passed but this shows you precisely why we need to clean house in Congress ASAP.  They are the worst kind of snakes.

 

 

Congress submits bill making it illegal to hold cash, Bitcoin, or other assets outside of a bank without informing them in writing

Just as the War on Drugs was never actually about slowing down or stopping the import and use of illegal narcotics, so too was the spurious War on Terror not about stopping individuals or groups from inciting violence for political means.  In fact, we already know that U.S. agencies have funded, trained, and armed the very terror groups that are supposedly on the FBI’s Terror Watch List when they supported them in the taking over of Libya, and in the attemp to take over Syria.

So the question then has to be asked… what are the purposes behind the ideological wars against drugs and terror really all about?  Well, since the real victims going back to the 1970’s when the War on Drugs was instituted by President Richard Nixon have been the millions of Americans incarcerated for victimless crimes, and the billions of dollars seized without a trial in what is known as Civil Forfeiture, then it is fairly obvious who these wars were really focused against.

And since the advent of the Patriot Act, which hasn’t stopped a single terrorist or terror event following the terror attacks on 9/11, the ability of Americans to do as they please with their own money has been stymied in the government’s attempt to monitor and regulate every single transaction individuals choose to conduct.

These disturbing videos document exactly how out-of-control our Government and Military has become.    The government is now the #1 employer!  If you count ALL the money spent on military and defense operations going on in our nation, all the alphabet agencies, the CIA, NSA, etc., the Department of Homeland Security, Northcom, the domestic Military command center, it accounts for TRILLIONS being spent on government policing, military and prison systems.

We no longer build hardly anything of value.  Instead our economy is utterly dominated with industries that produce nothing but better, more efficient ways to blow crap up, and kill and control people.  If we don't snap out of it FAST, our nation is a hair breath away from the lunatics running our government and military/policing industries from imposing a total fascist police state right onto our necks.  Watch these videos and tell me it's not right on our doorsteps!
 

The Militarization of Our Local Police

If the video won't play please report the problem by clicking here.

 

SUV Assault Vehicles
 

This is an amazing presentation of what is really going on in the world and who is actually "deliberately" orchestrating all of it, and of course lying about what they are actually doing.   To most ordinary folks, it's impossible to understand the course of events simply because it takes an enormous amount of study in order to be able to connect all the dots.  Most people are simply too involved in just squeezing out a living and paying their bills.

Well, David Icke has put the time in and connects the dots for you in this wonderful presentation.
 

Arguably one of the most important documentary series ever made, The Nazis: A Warning from History sets out to show that, far from being a uniquely German aberration, Nazism fed upon and was fostered by the prejudices and lemming-like inclinations of ordinary people. Although culminating with many atrocities, these programmes are equally good on the motives of otherwise perfectly normal people, who needed only the tacit encouragement of the regime to perpetrate horrors against their enemies, their neighbours, or their own family.

When confronted with evidence of their Nazi past, elderly former party members are often unable to find any other justification for their actions than simply that they could get away with it. Far from being a monolithic dictatorship which compelled the citizenry to act in rigidly prescribed ways, the Nazi state just allowed people to give their worst inclinations free reign. Hitler, it turns out, was a profoundly lazy man who rarely got out of bed before midday, and preferred to leave affairs of state to sort themselves out. He subscribed fervently to the doctrine of survival of the fittest as applied to all social and political matters, and actively encouraged in-fighting among his subordinates. The result was an organisational vacuum at the centre of state, which super-ambitious acolytes were only too eager to fill, often acting on nothing more than the Fuhrer's off-the-cuff remarks.

One small example is revealing: after reading a letter from the father of a disabled child, Hitler agreed that it would be best for the boy to die. From this single statement arose a nationwide policy of euthanasia for all disabled children, carried out willingly and without compulsion by the doctors and "carers" themselves. It needed nothing more than the Fuhrer's nod. The message is clear and shocking: it happened in Germany, it could happen anywhere.

Regardless of whether or not we want one, the government intends a National ID card.  I don’t' know what it's going to take for enough people to realize the people running this country don't give one crap what you or I think.  They are dropping a police state on the back of our necks as fast as they possibly can

We have to stop being so darned naive.  This sort of thing is meant to control US, not protect us from the mythic terrorist that is going to kill us and our family because they hate our freedoms.