Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Rep. Jim Jordan Lays Out the Charge of Election Interference Against Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook



Source

9 comments:

  1. Tucker Carlson asked Jordan a few relevant questions the other night and Jim wasn't looking good, Google is his second top donor... Carlson: "without asking why nothing's been done so far"... yeah, GOP is gaming the public, do I need to prove it? Judging from the comments below, some conservatives are wising up to the game. Not sure if the process is fast enough though, hoping on GOP means sure defeat due to a severe zeitnot. A different structure is needed and fast... GOP is holding us hostage, really.

    Tucker & Jordan:

    https://www.mediaite.com/tv/tucker-carlson-to-jim-jordan-what-actual-consequences-will-republicans-get-big-tech-companies-to-face/

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgzE1UBBs8Q

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    1. Thanks for the links.

      Re: Google donating to Jim Jordan, is there any Senator or Congressman in DC that Google does not give a coupla thousand dollars

      Jordan makes the point, that Google's contribution of several thousand was trivial in relation to his multi-million-dollar fund raising effort, so I think you would need better evidence than that to make the case that Jordan is a Google-owned politician. Rather, I would say that Google cynically gives money to every politician, and Jim Jordan cynically accepts the money without being deterred from his anti- big-tech talking points.

      But we won't know what the real intentions of the Republicans are unless they have the votes in Congress to dismantle the tech monopolists. Like you, I doubt they would.

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  2. I didn't even know anyone was talking about breaking up the tech monopolies.

    What I wonder is what's the muscle behind these companies? Who has Bill Gates's back?

    None of these characters (Bill Gates, Matt Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos)seem capable of power politics, but with this kind of money involved, someone has to be supplying the ass kicking and head busting, and I wonder who.

    My strong suspicion is it is the CIA or maybe a coalition of CIA and other intelligence agencies. I would like to hear other candidates for the role.

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    1. Is it not the case that a venture capital arm of the CIA was involved in the development of Google? The information that Google has at its disposal has implications for national security, so one would certainly expect the Government to require access to and, under certain circumstances, control over the distribution of that information.

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    2. Thanks for that link.

      What is the CIA doing with a venture capital arm?

      The CIA isn't supposed to have any domestic jurisdiction.

      I understand your justification regarding implications of Google for national security and I also understand thinking the CIA has ever been limited to purely foreign affairs is naive to the point of brain dead.

      There's never been a way to rein in the CIA.

      It is probably likely the US government is the governance arm of the CIA.

      I have this quote I'd like to share with you,

      "It was during that pre-World War II period that Reagan appears to have been contacted for the first time by the FBI. His name, "Ronald Reagan, Warner Brothers Studio, Hollywood," was included in a list of eleven people forwarded by Washington FBI national headquarters to a special agent stationed in Hollywood. He was listed as someone the FBI believed "might be of assistance to the Bureau." As president of the Screen Actors Guild Reagan became a secret informer for the FBI and was assigned a number, T-10, as a confidential informant. This was in 1947, during anti-Communist witch-hunting days of the House Un-American Activities Committee. It set the stage for the Joseph R. McCarthy period of character assassinations that followed in the early 1950s."

      The foot note to this is also important:

      "The FBI documentation is the result of detective work by author Anne Edwards who obtained FBI documents relating to Reagan through the Freedom of Information Act requests. She describes them in Early Reagan: The Rise to Power (New York:William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1987) For more elaboration of the FBI connection, see Dan E. Moldea's Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob (New York: Viking Press, 1986)."

      The above, from Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years, by Haynes Johnson, page 47, W.W. Norton & Company, 1991.

      So, in 1980 we had a POTUS who secretly worked for the FBI and a VPOTUS who was, remarkably, a former director of the CIA.

      When Reagan started working for the FBI,(pre-WW2) there was no CIA. My take on it is after the creation of the CIA, the FBI became a domestic-policing arm of the CIA, and the more minor partner. I also think Ronald Reagan was the minor partner of George Herbert Walker Bush, who may have been a three term or even five term POTUS. (Maybe even seven term, if you include the Clinton years.)

      This is juicy:

      "The firm is seen as a trend-setter in the information technology industry, with the average dollar invested by In-Q-Tel in 2012 attracting nine dollars of investment from other companies."-- from your link.

      That's the way you invest these days. None of this due diligence, "fundamentals analysis" "value investing" stuff. You find out where the people who command and control the economy are placing their bets and then do likewise.

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    3. "The CIA isn't supposed to have any domestic jurisdiction."

      The founders of the United States never sought to create a democracy. They created a Republic with democratic trappings to keep the populace in line.

      Legislators were, as they still are, rewarded in various ways, whether legal or illegal, to serve the interests of those who owned the country.

      Elections have thus always been mainly a contest among those seeking to serve the interests of Property in the name of the People.

      The weakness of this system of government is that some group hostile to the existing owners of the country may seize the imagination of the people and cause the People to elect a revolutionary government.

      What to do?

      Most importantly, control the public's sources of information and ideas, i.e., the mass media and the education system. Controlling the media was, apparently, among the first concerns of the Council on Foreign Relations, the CFR being a spin-off of the British (Cecil Rhodes founded) project for global empire.

      But there is much more than can be done to keep the masses in ignorance, including:

      the identification and elimination of any who might challenge the system, i.e., domestic spying to identify and, as necessary, crush populist movements and eliminate charismatic opponents of the established order, e.g., Huey Long, George Wallace, maybe Trump, or is he really on the other side?

      The Internet and the rise of universal higher education complicates the challenge of maintaining plutocratic control. Hence search engine manipulation to control what information is accessible to the public, and the generally mind-boggling stupidity of propaganda disseminated in academia today.

      Perhaps Ronald Reagan, far from being an exception, was one of a majority of leaders selected by the Deep State. Boris Johnson, perhaps, whose father was connected with MI6.

      Then there are the leaders who are themselves members of the monied elite, Treason May, for example, whose husband, the financier Sir Philip John May, is currently associated with the Capital Group which is a shareholder in BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin; or David Cameron, whose family fortune also derives from the world of finance.

      It is time, I think, for public acknowledgement of the true source of power, together with reform of the structure of government. Senate/Houses of Lords, etc. should be replaced by a House of Plutocrats, the membership of which would be made up of the nation's top one hundred taxpayers. This would discourage tax avoidance and evasion, while forcing the very rich to publicly justify what they seek in their own interest. I think this would have a healthy effect on how plutocrats seek to manage public affairs.

      Meantime, agencies such as the FBI, MI5, etc., should be acknowledged for what they are, i.e., the equivalent of the Stasi, the KGB and the Gestapo, and thus in need of greater public oversight.

      As if!

      Meantime, thanks for dropping by. At one time we sometimes had as many as ten thousand visitors a day, according to Google's stats. Now we are often down to a mere handful, and we are no longer able to find many of our own blog posts, as published on Google's Blogger, with a Google search.

      Has our traffic been throttled, or what?

      PS. Did you realize that Richard Nixon was a protege of the Bush family, an agent of the Nazi collaborationist Prescott Bush?

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    4. I agree with all you've said.

      I didn't know Richard Nixon was a protege of the Bush family, but it doesn't surprise me. I did know the Bush family had a remarkable relationship with the Nazi regime.

      I'm sorry your traffic has been throttled, but I do appreciate your work and plan to keep dropping by.

      I sent an email to Cornell West at Harvard Divinity School. I didn't receive a reply but now I get automatic email updates to his propaganda.

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  3. I viewed the Tucker Carlson-Jim Jordan interview from the link provided by commentor number one, above.

    I wasn't impressed with Jordan.

    Tucker's questions were right on the mark: what are you going to do, Rep. Jordan, about this situation, in specific terms?

    Jordan had no real idea. He could rightfully be expected to have an entire road map prepared for how we go from here, in this deplorable situation, to where we need to be, with these tech giants reined in. He can't be taken seriously otherwise.

    Surely he could at least prepare detailed proposals to get the ball rolling. I believe this is a very modest expectation for him. He is a congressman with a staff, budget, and many other resources at his disposal.

    I personally credit Jordan for speaking on the censorship problems, but the purpose of the hearing was to discuss anti-trust issues, and Jordan evinced no signs he cares about that. Does he understand the two are interlinked and would need to be addressed together?

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    1. Yes, you make an important point.

      Politicians inveighing against evil tend to be short on plans for effective reform. Indeed, they may very well be in the pocket of those they inveigh against, and are thus to be relied upon to pull their punches in a serious fight.

      Jordan make an effective case that Big Tech seeks to manipulate the political process through their control of access to information, and that is something the public needs to know. Going further than that, i.e., openly stating the need for anti-monopoly action in the information sphere, would likely be political suicide. The leading elements of the US media have been under oligopolistic corporate control for over one hundred years and there's no reason to suppose that the Money Power would tolerate any junior member of Congress who was serious about changing that long-established arrangement.

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