Tag Archives: Amazon

Former Intelligence Officials, Citing Russia, Say Big Tech Monopoly Power is Vital to National Security, by Glenn Greenwald

Yes, we have to have Google in its present form to protect the nation. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

When the U.S. security state announces that Big Tech’s centralized censorship power must be preserved, we should ask what this reveals about whom this regime serves.

(l) An illustration of the CIA logo (Getty Images); (r) An illustration shows the logos of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft displayed on a mobile phone and a laptop screen. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP)

A group of former intelligence and national security officials on Monday issued a jointly signed letter warning that pending legislative attempts to restrict or break up the power of Big Tech monopolies — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — would jeopardize national security because, they argue, their centralized censorship power is crucial to advancing U.S. foreign policy. The majority of this letter is devoted to repeatedly invoking the grave threat allegedly posed to the U.S. by Russia as illustrated by the invasion of Ukraine, and it repeatedly points to the dangers of Putin and the Kremlin to justify the need to preserve Big Tech’s power in its maximalist form. Any attempts to restrict Big Tech’s monopolistic power would therefore undermine the U.S. fight against Moscow.

While one of their central claims is that Big Tech monopoly power is necessary to combat (i.e., censor) “foreign disinformation,” several of these officials are themselves leading disinformation agents: many were the same former intelligence officials who signed the now-infamous-and-debunked pre-election letter fraudulently claiming that the authentic Hunter Biden emails had the “hallmarks” of Russia disinformation (former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Obama CIA Director Michael Morrell, former Obama CIA/Pentagon chief Leon Panetta). Others who signed this new letter have strong financial ties to the Big Tech corporations whose power they are defending in the name of national security (Morrell, Panetta, former Bush National Security Adviser Fran Townsend).

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Amazon’s Woke Lord Of The Rings Is The Death Rattle Of Social Justice Content, by Brandon Smith

J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings is an allegorical masterpiece and Peter Jackson’s film trilogy actually did it justice. Amazon is bringing out its own adaptation and it’s got nowhere to go but down. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

Modern social justice in all of its forms is communism. The political left doesn’t want to admit it openly, but there is no way around it and there is no debate. Some would call it “cultural Marxism,” but the bottom line is that there is no such thing as a legitimate social justice movement in the west because by law all people regardless of their ethnic circumstances are equally protected. You could say that SJWs are rebels without a cause, but I would point out that “social justice” is not their real cause. They aren’t really interested in equality, they are interested in control.

There is a classic playbook for communist sabotage of a target society, and one of the first tactics is always the destruction of that society’s history and symbols. When Mao Zedong announced the birth of the “Cultural Revolution” in China in 1966, his goal was to disrupt growing discontent among the Chinese people with the broken promises of the communist regime. Only 8 years earlier in 1958 Mao had initiated the “Great Leap Forward,” which was a purge of his political opponents as well as a massive population reduction program that used food as a weapon. After the deaths of over 65 million Chinese citizens, Mao sought to redirect public anger by scapegoating a supposed conspiracy of “capitalists and imperialists.”

The Cultural Revolution was essentially a nationwide witch hunt spearheaded by rabid and ignorant children; people easy for the government to manipulate and exploit. They scoured their own towns and cities as spies and enforcers for the CCP, looking for any signs that their neighbors were part of the conspiracy to disrupt the communist collective. They held tribunals and struggle sessions where anyone who said the wrong thing or who angered the wrong person was publicly humiliated or even murdered as “insurrectionists” by a mob of communist zealots.

Most importantly, the Cultural Revolution was used as a means to utterly destroy any remnants of Chinese history before the commies arrived on the scene. Museums and universities were raided and ancient artworks, documents, books and historical parchments were burned in pyres. Historians and people with knowledge of the Chinese heritage were marched up and down the streets and chastised as enemies of the people. Statues were torn down and entire buildings razed to the ground. The communist system cannot gain dominance without two things – Rule at the barrel of a gun, and complete control over cultural products and information.

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Looters Raid Union Pacific Trains In Los Angeles, Searching For Amazon And UPS Package, by Tyler Durden

Does this count as a supply chain issue? From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

California leads the way in transitioning the US into what could be considered a third-world country. Progressive leadership in the state has lowered theft of $950 or less from felonies to misdemeanors, allowing for a wave of smash-and-grab robberies.

Organized retail crime gangs no longer target large department and or boutique stores, snatching high-value merchandise from shelves but instead raid containers double stacked on train cars.

“A section of the Union Pacific train tracks in downtown Los Angeles has been littered with thousands of shredded boxes, packages stolen from cargo containers that stop in the area to unload,” CBS Los Angeles reported Thursday evening.

CBSLA photojournalist John Schreiber tweeted shocking videos of torn-apart packages by looters after they raided containers. Many of the boxes on the ground were from Amazon and UPS.

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Amazon Borrows From FedEx Playbook To Smoke Union Drive In Bessemer, by Mark Solomon

The workers just didn’t believe they were exploited. From Mark Solomon at freightwaves.com:

News Analysis: Amazon wins big by playing to well-paid workers’ logic

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Denied Equal Opportunity in the Marketplace, Conservative Filmmakers Start to Fight Back, by Christian Toto

Hollywood wants to ignore all voices but those of their pet liberals and leftists, but libertarians and conservatives are smart enough to figure out workarounds. From Christian Toto at realclearinvestigations.com:

A documentary film about an African American lawyer who rose from poverty and oppression in the Deep South to the highest court in the land would seem a natural for Black History Month. Yet, in February, at the very time its Prime Video service was featuring films highlighting black history makers, Amazon without explanation stopped offering digital streams of “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.”

While the film was pulled despite having at one time reached No. 1 on Amazon’s documentary charts, the world’s largest online retailer continued to make available streams of less-popular documentaries, including a favorable one on Anita Hill, the former Thomas colleague who nearly derailed his Supreme Court confirmation.

 
Wikipedia
Amazon initially refused to carry this film challenging the liberal narrative about the 2014 shooting in Ferguson, Mo., which helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement.
 

That was frustrating to Michael Pack, writer-director of “Created Equal” and a documentary filmmaker for decades. But it was no surprise to him and the small but growing cadre of other conservative documentarians, who say they face obstacles because of their politics and are starting to fight back against the long odds of “cancel culture.” Black conservative scholar Shelby Steele saw Amazon initially refuse to carry his documentary “What Killed Michael Brown?” last year because it challenged the liberal narrative about the 2014 shooting in Ferguson, Mo., that helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement. Amazon, which relented after a public outcry, did not respond to a request for comment.

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Parler Just Flipped Big Tech’s Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory on Its Head, by Tyler O’Neil

Parler wasn’t upended because of what was on the site or any laxity in keeping advocacy of violence off of it. Rather, it’s been a target of a big tech conspiracy because it’s a platform for conservatives. From Tyler O’Neil at pjmedia.com:

(Parler screenshot)

In the days after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Big Tech moved against a conservative alternative social media platform, Parler, based on the premise that the rioters has used Parler to plan the attack on the Capitol and that Parler had failed in its responsibility to prevent such coordination. Based on this narrative, Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores and Amazon removed Parler’s internet hosting. Yet on Thursday, Parler flipped the narrative on its head.

On Thursday, Parler sent a response to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s request for documents regarding the riot, the company explained in a press release. In that response, Parler revealed that it had “proactively developed an open line of communication with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the fall of 2020 and referred violent content and incitement from Parler’s platform over 50 times before January 6th. Parler also warned the FBI about specific threats of violence being planned for the events at the Capitol on January 6th.”

The letter details Parler’s efforts “to flag and remove unlawful speech from its platform that was not protected by the First Amendment.” It also notes that of the 270 charging documents filed by the Department of Justice, 80 percent of social media references involved Big Tech platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. “Only 5% referred to Parler.”

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How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler, by Glenn Greenwald

Silicon Valley is ready, willing, and able to ban anyone who poses a competitive threat to statist ideology in the marketplace of ideas. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

In the last three months, tech giants have censored political speech and journalism to manipulate U.S. politics, while liberals, with virtual unanimity, have cheered.

Users of the social media platform Parler encountered this error message as of Jan. 11, 2021, after Apple, Google and Amazon united to remove them from app stores and hosting services (Photo by Lorenzo Di Cola/NurPhoto via Getty Images).

Critics of Silicon Valley censorship for years heard the same refrain: tech platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter are private corporations and can host or ban whoever they want. If you don’t like what they are doing, the solution is not to complain or to regulate them. Instead, go create your own social media platform that operates the way you think it should.

The founders of Parler heard that suggestion and tried. In August, 2018, they created a social media platform similar to Twitter but which promised far greater privacy protections, including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests in order to promote content or products to them. They also promised far greater free speech rights, rejecting the increasingly repressive content policing of Silicon Valley giants.

Over the last year, Parler encountered immense success. Millions of people who objected to increasing repression of speech on the largest platforms or who had themselves been banned signed up for the new social media company.

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“This Was A Coordinated Attack”: Parler CEO Speaks Out After Amazon Boots From AWS, Vows To Rebuild ‘From Scratch’ by Tyler Durden

We should expect no quarter from the opposition’s social media. They should expect no quarter from us. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Update (2210 ET): Parler CEO John Matze has issued a statement (emphasis ours):

Sunday (tomorrow) at midnight Amazon will be shutting off all of our servers in an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet. There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch. We prepared for events like this by never relying on amazons proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products.

We will try our best to move to a new provider right now as we have many competing for our business, however Amazon, Google and Apple purposefully did this as a coordinated effort knowing our options would be limited and knowing this would inflict the most damage right as President Trump was banned from the tech companies.

This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place. We were too successful too fast. You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue, but don’t count us out.

#speakfreely

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Update (2130 ET): And so the hammer has come down late on Saturday, when Amazon officially kicked Parler off its cloud Web hosting service, AWS according to Buzzfeed. The suspension means that once the ban takes effect on Sunday, the website – which as of this moment is still up – will be offline until it finds someone else to host it.

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Update (2100 ET): As expected, Apple removed Parler permanently from its app store on Saturday. “[T]here is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity,” the iPhone maker said, according to CNN which adds that Apple notified Parler of its decision in a message that said it had violated the company’s app store terms.

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Facebook, Twitter and Big Tech Make Their Money in China, by Daniel Greenfield

Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon don’t make much money selling into China, but they make a lot of money by facilitating Chinese sales in the US. From Daniel Greenfield at danielgreenfield.org:

Last year, Amazon was forced to shut down its marketplace business in the People’s Republic of China. Amazon’s defeat followed that of a long line of Big Tech players who had tried to make a go of it in China and failed miserably. China’s economy is built to boost domestic businesses and foreign exports, with some needed imports, by companies linked to the Communist Party.

And no matter how politically correct Amazon may try to be, it can never join that club.

But Amazon’s business in China isn’t done. To a large degree, Amazon’s business is China. Behind the smiling logo, the massive array of businesses covering everything from running the CIA’s cloud to spending $500 million to make a Lord of the Rings streaming series, are a bunch of grim offices, apartments, and warehouses in Chinese cities that make up its real business.

Three years ago, third-party sellers topped Amazon’s own sales. They now make up 58%. Who are they? If, like most Americans, you shop at the giant dot com retail monopoly, you’ve already waded through a stream of random shop names, fake misspelled reviews, and counterfeit products while searching for just about anything. What happened? China happened.

Between 40% to 48% of top third-party sellers on Amazon are operating out of China. The massive growth in Chinese third-party sellers has been fairly recent and transformative.

What Amazon Prime members are really buying is membership in a club that helps third-party sellers from China push counterfeit and imitation products to Americans. Amazon acts as a middle man, charging Chinese sellers and American customers for handling listing, shipping and sales..

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Investigative Issues: Here’s an Excerpt From My Covid E-Book That Was Quarantined by Amazon, by Alex Berenson

Amazon ventures into content censorship. From Alex Berenson at realclearinvestigations.com:

Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson has developed a wide following on Twitter for detailed posts that challenge some mainstream reporting and government declarations about COVID-19. 

Read the full thread here.

Thursday morning he tweeted that Amazon had refused to offer for sale his self-published book, “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns Part 1: Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates.”

Among those responding in outrage over what they called blatant censorship were SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (“This is insane @JeffBezos”) and journalist Glenn Greenwald. And late Thursday Berenson reported that Amazon had backed off and is now offering the book for sale on Kindle.

Before Amazon reversed itself (calling its earlier move an “error,” according to Fox News), RealClearInvestigations asked the award-winning novelist to elaborate on his experience. Here’s his response, followed by an excerpt from the book:

By Alex Berenson

The booklet was the first in a series of coronavirus pamphlets I plan to put out covering various aspects of the crisis. Readers of my Twitter feed encouraged me to compile information in a more comprehensive and easier-to-read format, and when I polled people on Twitter to ask if they would be willing to pay a nominal fee for such a pamphlet, the response was strong.

Originally I only planned to write one, but I had so much information I realized that the booklet would be an awkward length – longer than a magazine article but shorter than a book. Also, doing so would take too long, and I wanted to put it out quickly. So I decided to split the booklet into pieces. Part 1 included an introduction and a discussion of death coding, death counts, and who is really dying from COVID, as well as a worst-case estimate of deaths with no mitigation efforts. It is about 6,500 words, and I planned to sell it for $2.99 as an ebook or $5.99 for a paperback. It is called “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1, Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates.”

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