Friendly Reminder That Jeff Bezos Is Still Trying To Take Over The Universe, by Caitlin Johnstone

Jeff Bezos is proving as adept at expanding his power base as he has been at building Amazon. From Caitlin Johnstone at medium.com:

Jeff Bezos, currently the wealthiest human being on planet Earth, did not purchase the Washington Post in 2013 because he was expecting newspapers to make a lucrative resurgence. This self-evident fact doesn’t receive enough attention.

I will say it again for emphasis: Jeff Bezos, who has used his business prowess to become the wealthiest person in the world, did not purchase the Washington Post in 2013 because he was expecting newspapers to make a profitable comeback. That did not happen.

What did happen is the world’s richest plutocrat realizing that he needed a mouthpiece to manufacture public support for the neoliberal corporatist establishment that he is building his empire upon. This is why WaPo ran sixteen smear pieces on Bernie Sanders in the span of sixteen hours at the hottest point in the Democratic presidential primary battle. It is also why it continues to publish filth like this:

“How will Democrats cope if Putin starts playing dirty tricks for Bernie Sanders (again)?” http://wapo.st/2hodRiM  via @PostOpinions

10:27 AM – Nov 13, 2017

Opinion | How will Democrats cope if Putin starts playing dirty tricks for Bernie Sanders (again)?

Division, not ideology, is Russia’s goal, and it’s time to think ahead.

washingtonpost.com

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Last year Silicon Valley venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya said thatAmazon is “a multi-trillion-dollar monopoly hiding in plain sight.” In June Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, wrote that Amazon is trying to “control the underlying infrastructure of the economy.”

Bezos continues to get cozier and cozier with the US power establishment as his empire metastasizes across human civilization. He kicked WikiLeaks off Amazon servers in 2010, he scored a 600 million dollar contract with the CIA in 2013, he joined a Pentagon advisory board in 2016, he hung out with Defense Secretary James Mattis in August, and he’s spent nearly ten million dollars this year lobbying the federal government, which is likely what led to an NDAA amendment gifting Amazon a $54 billion market it’s expected to dominate as a supplier to the Pentagon.

To continue reading: Friendly Reminder That Jeff Bezos Is Still Trying To Take Over The Universe